Helix Wars (52 page)

She felt rather than heard a dull thud deep within the ship. The decking beneath her shifted seismically, tilting. A second, bigger explosion bucked the starship; she imagined bulkheads rupturing, decking twisting and folding in the wave-front of the blast. To her right, she could see along the curving flank of the ship, and what she saw caused her heart to leap. Whole sections of the ship were blown outwards in a silent confetti of metal panels and fragmented decking. She looked over her shoulder and saw the advancing troops lose their footing like toy soldiers and tumble across the canted deck. She slid fifty metres and fetched up against the far frame of the hangar entrance.

She lay on her back, looking up at the destruction of the starship as fragments fell away in silent slow-motion. Individual Sporelli tumbled past her, out into the void, and Kranda laughed uproariously and held on.

Finally, another vast explosion detonated deep within the starship, and a searing heat rushed towards her, caught her up, and carried her out into the hard vacuum.

T
WENTY-
F
IVE
/// R
ETURN

1

M
ARIA
E
LLENOPOULIS STARED
into the familiar face of the man standing before her and said, “Where am I?”

The man smiled. He had a calm and reassuring presence, a gentleness of manner that put her at ease. He wore the red one-piece uniform of the Peacekeepers, but she knew that he could be no real Peacekeeper – or, come to that, a real human.

He said, “You are in the realm of the Builders. This” – he gestured around him at the limitless grassland – “is where the ancient race now reside; though visually it has been
tweaked
, let’s say, to accord to your perceptions.”

She stared about her. “The Builders live here?” she asked.

“All around you,” the man replied.

“I don’t see them...”

He laughed. “But you do. You see, don’t you, the blades of grass, the trees, the far off birds?”

She stared. “They... they’re the
Builders
?”

“It is how their essences are conveyed to your perceptions, yes.”

She laughed, then cut short the laugh in case it sounded irreverent. “And you?” she asked. “Are you a Builder?”

“I am merely a human being, Maria, in the employ of the Builders.”

She stared at him, then asked, “And why me? Why not... I don’t know... one of the liaison team? Someone more qualified to communicate with the Builders?”

“Oh, that will come, in time,” he said. “Now that the Builders have informed your people, via the agency of the Mahkan, of their whereabouts, then in due course the first communications in almost two hundred years can commence.”

“And my role in all of this?” she asked.

“You have no role, as such, in the dialogue that will follow. However, the Builders expressly require your... assistance. They have discerned in you the necessary qualities for the duty they have in mind.”

“Which is?” she asked, heart pounding.

He gestured to a fallen tree trunk which she was sure had not been there a moment ago. “Shall we sit down, Maria, and I will explain?”

She crossed with him to the fallen log, and sat down.

And she listened as he told her exactly why she was here.

2

C
ALLA WAS NEARING
the end of the long journey from her valley to the Retreat of Verlaine. The end, she felt in her bones, was approaching. She had originally, before the last great adventure, planned to continue healing in the small towns and villages that nestled in the mountains south of Verlaine – but that had been before recent events.

The ship had brought her back to Phandra, and set her down in the valley near her hut, and she had said a tearful farewell to the human called Jeff Ellis. He had promised to visit her world in the near future, but she doubted that she would see him again; by the time he did venture to Phandra, if indeed he did, she would be long gone to Fahlaine.

She had watched the interworld ship rise into the air, Jeff Ellis standing tall behind the viewscreen, his arm raised in a farewell gesture. She had waited until the ship was out of sight, then turned and made the long climb to her hut.

A surprise had awaited her therein.

An Elder was seated on the crude wooden stool before the hearth.

He smiled as she entered. “Welcome home, Healer Calla-vahn-villa,” he said.

She wondered what the Elder wanted with her. She offered him a hot drink, but he declined and said, “I will be brief, Calla. I have a message from Diviner Tomar at Verlaine. You are to make your way there forthwith, and meet with him in the Council chamber.”

“But my duties,” she began, flustered. “I have people to heal...”

The Elder smiled and shook his head. “You have more than discharged your duties with your exploits of late, Healer Calla. You are required at the Retreat of Verlaine.”

So she had taken her leave of the Elder and left her valley for the very last time, and here she was, days later, at the foot of the approach road to the mountainous Retreat.

She looked up at the hallowed edifice where she would spend her last few days, the distant spires and towers resplendent in the light of the setting sun. She was suffused with peace as she made the ascent.

The small door in the great gate of the Retreat opened as she approached, and an awed acolyte – had news of her off-world exploits reached here already? – led her through the foyer, up the steps and through the labyrinthine corridors of the Retreat.

Fifteen minutes later she stood before the hallowed silverwood door, and the acolyte slipped away.

She paused, then pushed open the great door and stepped into the chamber.

Effulgent light from the setting sun flooded down the central aisle through the southern window, dazzling her. When her eyes adjusted, she made out the ranked pews, the ancient tapestries, and she felt peace settle in her heart. She was
home
, at last.

She made the long walk down the aisle towards the circular Council area, where a long time ago, it seemed, she had met with Diviner Tomar and he had told her of her destiny.

She came within a hundred metres of the Council area and stopped in her tracks. Diviner Tomar was seated on the padded circular bench beneath the Southern Window, but he was not alone.

Seated beside him, towering above the diminutive Diviner, was the dark alien she had seen in the chamber on her last visit here. And, as before, she sensed not the slightest emanation from his mind; he was a disturbing blank, a mental lacuna.

The alien was deep in conversation with Diviner Tomar, and only fell silent and looked up when she stepped into the circle of benches.

“Healer Calla,” Diviner Tomar said in his hushed voice, “please, be seated.”

The alien – similar in form to Jeff Ellis, but of a different colour – was smiling at her, and oddly his gentle smile reminded her of Jeff’s.

Heart fluttering, she sat down opposite the pair.

“Healer Calla,” said Diviner Tomar, “you have gone far since our last meeting, and achieved much.”

She bowed her head. “It was as you predicted, Diviner.”

“You have more than exceeded our expectations with your bravery, your commitment to all that is good.”

“I did no more than fulfil the destiny you set out for me,” she murmured. She glanced quickly at the dark being. He was watching her, a smile playing about his lips.

“But Calla,” Diviner Tomar said, “you did not quite
fulfil
your destiny.”

She looked up, disturbed. “I failed you in some way?” Her heart sank; she was here to be reprimanded.

The old Diviner laughed gently. “Of course you did not fail me, Healer Calla,” he said. “You did not fulfil your destiny because, at our last meeting, I failed to divulge the entirety of that destiny.”

She stared at the Diviner, shaking her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand.”

“I said you would go far, and achieve much. I said you would pass beyond this world, visit other worlds.”

“And I did, Diviner Tomar. I visited D’rayni, and even the terrible world of Sporell.”

“And I said you would go even further,” Diviner Tomar said, “beyond the Helix, even...”

She smiled as she recollected her flight aboard the interworld ship, the sight of the Helix floating against the backdrop of brilliant stars.

“And that, too, I achieved.”

The old Diviner smiled at her, calm, patient, as if smiling at a child. He said, “I meant, Healer Calla, that you would go even further than just the space surrounding the Helix.”

She looked down at her hands, knotted in her lap. “Well, in that case I failed,” she said, though even as she spoke the words she had some sense that she was being disingenuous.

“You did not fail,” Diviner Tomar said, “because that venture, if you decide to take it, is before you.”

She looked up, her heart pounding. “Before me...?” she echoed. “But... but I am old, I am near the end. Fahlaine awaits...”

Without warning the dark alien stood up, and the sudden movement, and the fact of his great size as he crossed towards her, made her cower involuntarily in her seat.

He knelt before her, but still looked down. He spoke her language in a deep, rich voice, “The end, Calla, awaits only if that is what you wish. You have another destiny, and one which I would very much like you to take.”

She felt dizzy, and fought not to faint. “But I will be dead within the year,” she whispered.

He inclined his head in an affirmative. “That is so, if you wish. But, also, if you wish, I have the means to extend your life.”

“Extend?” she echoed, disbelieving.

“For five hundred of your years, a thousand, even longer.”

“A thousand?” She shook her head. “But why?”

“I could tell you, Calla, but” – he smiled – “it would be far better if I
showed
you.”

She was about to ask him what he meant, when suddenly the blankness within his head was no more. He opened his mind to her and she was instantly privy to the exhilarating rush of his thoughts. She gasped as she basked in the wonder revealed there, and understood why the Builders wanted her.

When the human closed his thoughts to her, minutes later, she looked across at Diviner Tomar as if for confirmation. The old man inclined his head, smiling. “It is the destiny I saw for you, Calla, but withheld.”

“It is your choice,” the human said. He reached out a great, dark hand. “With one touch, I can grant you extended life.”

She considered his words, and what it would mean; a new life far, far from here, new experiences she could only guess at; and a postponement, for now, of her reception into Fahlaine.

It was a hard choice, and it took her several minutes to decide.

3

S
HE WOKE SEATED
in the mouth of the mountain cave.

The icy cold chivvied her flesh, but it was a vital, invigorating cold; a complete contrast to the heat she recalled from her last, living memory.

She was on her homeworld, she realised – which was impossible.

She was dead...

She
should
be dead, immolated in the explosion that destroyed the Sporelli starship, ripped apart by the shrapnel of flying metal, roasted in the resulting sleet of radiation... and, if by some miracle, she had survived that, then surely she should have asphyxiated in the vacuum of deep space.

She raised her hands, and stared at the spars of the varnika encapsulating her limbs. She stared down at her body, which by rights should have been shattered... but, miraculously, she was whole again.

She took a breath, feeling the cold air hit her lungs.

She wondered, then, if this was a trick of her dying mind: if in the nano-seconds before death, her brain had excluded the terrible events occurring all around her and manufactured instead this comforting scenario. In seconds, death would come, extinction, an end to everything.

She sat in the mouth of the cave and waited.

In the distance, notched between two mountain peaks, she made out her hive-mother’s manse. The sight of it filled Kranda with a nostalgia that brought tears to her eyes. She was flooded with memories of her earlier life here, the happy times she had spent while growing up.

It was a cruel vision to place before a dying being.

She heard a sound, far below. She cocked her head, listening. She made out the constant soughing of the wind through the peaks, but no other sound. She must have been mistaken.

Seconds later the sound came again, the dislodging of stone, a curse, a panting breath.