Helix Wars (53 page)

She turned her head in the direction of the sound and saw, climbing towards the ledge on which she sat, the improbable figure of a human being.

She stared, incredulity piled on incredulity. A human, at this altitude? They were puny beings, unable to withstand the rigours of such an elevation.

And yet here he was, a dark-skinned human dressed only in a red one-piece uniform, and smiling as he came.

Without a word he sat down, cross-legged, before Kranda, and said in faultless Mahkan, “You have, no doubt, many questions.”

Kranda maintained her outward composure, though internally she was in turmoil. She said, at last, “Indeed I have, and my first question is... Am I alive?”

The human smiled. “Take a breath, pinch your flesh, look upon the stark splendour of your world. Do you doubt that you are alive?”

“And my next question is, how? How did I survive the starship explosion?”

“The varnika,” said the human, “is a wonderful thing. It has the capabilities of which you are aware, and many others beside. It is also indestructible. Put simply, it recorded your essence, your body, your mind and... for want of a better word, your soul, and over the course of days it rebuilt you.”

“And then returned me to the Helix?”

The human smiled. “And then I took a ship out to the wreckage of the Sporelli starship, and retrieved you.”

Kranda inclined her head, taking in these incredible facts as if they were no more than everyday items of news. “And this begs the question, human: why? Why did the varnika bring me back to life?”

“Because, Kranda’vahkan, your destiny is not complete. We would like you to work with us.”

She let the seconds elapse, absorbing the human’s words, and said at last, “And just who are
you
, human?”

He smiled. “I work for the Builders,” he said.

Kranda inclined her head. She had guessed as much. The human could only, after all, be in the employ of the Builders.

“Work with you?” she asked, “in what manner?”

The human stood and gestured down the path. “Perhaps you would care to accompany me? We should return to your hive-mother’s manse, and along the way I will explain everything.”

“That sounds,” Kranda said, “a reasonable proposition.”

She stood, towering over the human, and side by side they set off along the twisting path through the mountain peaks.

4

A
WEEK AFTER
arriving back on New Earth, Jeff Ellis visited the grave garden where his son was buried.

He sat on the small mound in the shade of an oak tree. “...and then,” he finished, “the ship exploded. You should have seen it go. Bang, and bang, bang... But Kranda never got out. We... we shared a lot during those last few days, and I’ve never met a braver person.”

He would make the trip to Kranda’s homeworld soon, and visit her hive-mother, and tell her how her daughter had died a hero’s death. Perhaps, at the same time, he would visit Phandra and call in on Calla before she passed away. They had talked a lot on the way back to the Helix, and he had come to understand that from her point of view her passing would not be an occasion to mourn, but to celebrate. Fahlaine awaited her, she had told him, and she looked ahead to the day she left this life with anticipation. Ellis had smiled and said that he understood, though he still found the fact of her pre-ordained death, and the celebratory nature of her approach to it, difficult to accept.

It seemed, when he reflected upon it, a time of death, death, relentless death.

And yet much good had come of the recent events. The threat to the Helix was no more, with the destruction of the Sporelli starship. President Horrescu was in the custody of the Peacekeepers, and the advance of Sporelli troops across Phandra and D’rayni had ground to a halt. Peacekeeping forces, backed up by Mahkan ships, had confronted the Sporelli armies and threatened them with the combined might of their interworld squadrons. The uneasy stand-off had lasted for a day, until the New Earth authorities had prevailed upon ex-President Horrescu to make a broadcast telling his troops that resistance was useless.

Peace, at last, had come to the worlds of Phandra and D’rayni.

He patted the turf of the mound and said, “So I’m taking a few days off. They offered me a month, but I didn’t want to be kicking my heels around the house for that long. I’d rather be working...” He laughed to himself. “Though I don’t know how I’ll adapt to ferrying shuttles back and forth after my recent adventures.”

He stood and looked down at his son’s grave.

“I’ve come to say goodbye, Ben, for the time being, at least. And to apologise for not coming before now. It was...” He stopped, then said, “It was just too damned painful, but now...”

He thought about his actions aboard the Sporelli starship, and asked himself if there might have been another way he could have prevented the destruction of Mahkana, and New Earth, without taking the lives of those aboard the ship.

For the life of him, he did not know.

He looked up, suddenly, as he realised that he was not alone. He felt a quick pang of embarrassment at being caught addressing his dead son – or talking to himself, as it must have appeared to the watching stranger.

Then he looked more closely at the man, standing a few metres away and smiling at him.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Ellis said, “but you look a hell of a lot like one of the First Four, Friday Olembe.”

The man winked at him. “That’s because, Jeff Ellis, I am Friday Olembe.”

A strange heat passed through his head and he felt suddenly dizzy. He gathered himself. “Now... why don’t I believe that?”

The man laughed. He had an easy way with him that was immediately likeable. “Because, to begin with, Olembe died one hundred and seventy years ago, and surely couldn’t still be alive, could he? Because ghosts don’t exist? Because, when you think about it, why should Friday Olembe seek out Jeff Ellis?”

Ellis managed a smile. “Yes, all those things.”

“One day, Jeff, I’ll tell you what happened to me, one hundred and seventy years ago. For now, I’ll just reassure you that I am indeed, hard though it might be to believe, Friday Olembe. I’m no ghost. And I’m here to make you an offer. Why don’t you sit yourself back down and let me tell you something?”

“Before that...” Ellis began, then gathered his thoughts. “The Builders are powerful,” he said tentatively, “more powerful than I can even begin to imagine. And yet, they did nothing to stop the approach of the Sporelli starship, the imminent invasion of the Sporelli armies.”

Olembe smiled. “They are powerful, yes, more powerful than even
I
can imagine... But there are limits to their powers, Jeff, and limits to their knowledge. There remain only hundreds of their kind, and most of them are in Quiescence, as they call it – the virtual realm as we know it. Physically, perhaps only a dozen go abroad, in various guises – and they use people like myself to monitor events. So, although the Builders are powerful, and have invested me and my colleagues with powers beyond my earlier imagining, there are some events they cannot foresee, and some circumstances they cannot shape, or alter.”

Ellis thought about it, then smiled. “Perhaps it’s good to know that the Builders aren’t... God-like.”

Olembe gestured to the hillock, and Ellis did as he was bidden. He sat under the spreading boughs of the oak, and the African climbed the mound and eased himself down beside him.

“It is two hundred years,” Olembe said, “since we humans arrived on the Helix. Since then, there have been no new arrivals here. That is not unusual. Centuries, sometimes even millennia, can pass by between arrivals. After all, there are only so many races out there in need of salvation... And we – I speak here of the Builders – we have many ways of gathering those races. Some, like the human race, arrived here under their own steam, so to speak, with a little help from the Builders. Others have had to be sought, brought here physically – and there are many ways we go about that. But however we do it, Jeff, we need ships to transport the Saved. And ships, you will need no telling, require pilots, crew.”

Olembe paused, and Ellis just stared at him in silence, aware of what was happening here but unable, just then, to frame an adequate response.

“The Builders are aware of a race on the brink of extinction. We have a world prepared here on the fourth circuit, ten down-spiral from New Earth, called at the moment simply Helix 4721. All that needs to be done is for a starship to travel the five hundred light years to fetch the alien race in question... though I make that sound like an easy operation. I have no doubt that it will not be, that obstacles will have to be overcome, that even on arrival all will not be plain sailing... But all that to one side. I am here today to offer you a period of intensive training, and then a post as one of the starship’s pilots. You have,” Olembe finished, “no need to tell me straight away; take your time to think it through. However, I think there are a couple of people you should meet who might make that decision a little easier to make.”

Ellis stared at the African. “Two people?” he said.

Smiling, Friday Olembe turned and pointed across the grave garden.

Ellis stared, and made out two figures seated on a distant mound beneath a tree. His heart pounded and blood rushed to his head. The pair were a hundred metres away, but even at this distance he could make out that one of them was a Mahkan, the other a Phandran.

He surged to his feet and took a few steps forward, then broke into a run.

He crossed the hundred metres in no time at all, then came to a sudden halt. He stared, open-mouthed, at the people smiling up at him.

“Calla?” he whispered. “Kranda?”

They stood.

He stared at the Mahkan. “Kranda? Is it really you? But...”

The Mahkan pulled back her lips in an attempt at a human smile. “Which other Mahkan would come all this way just to see you, human?” she said.

“But you died! The starship...”

“I died, and the varnika saved me and rebuilt me. And now I live, and perhaps in future, Jeff, you might save my life a few more times?”

Ellis stepped forward and embraced the mighty Mahkan, and Kranda returned the gesture, almost squeezing the breath from his lungs.

He turned to the Phandran, and she murmured, “Friday said I would be working alongside my favourite human being, Jeff, so how could I refuse?”

“But... but I thought you were dying, Calla?”

She smiled up at him. “I was, but no longer, thanks to the Builders.”

He stepped forward and hugged her. He released her after a long minute, and held her at arm’s length, and through his tears he looked from the Phandran to the Mahkan and said, “You can’t begin to imagine how happy I am to see you both again.”

“I always knew,” said Kranda, “that humans were overly sentimental.”

Calla said, “I think I speak for my Mahkan friend, Jeff, when I say that our happiness matches your own.”

They turned. Friday Olembe had joined them, and he gestured towards a vehicle parked beyond the perimeter fence. “And now, if you would care to join me, I have a starship I would like you to inspect.”

Together they stepped from the shade of the oak and walked from the grave garden.

C
ODA
/// A
SCENT

1

J
EFF
E
LLIS HAD
one more surprise awaiting him.

At Carrelliville spaceport they boarded a waiting interworld ship and left New Earth. One day later they arrived at their destination, a world named Helix 1, as yet uninhabited, occupying a position at the very end of the Helix’s two-hundred-million kilometre spiral.

They hurried from the ship and crossed the snow to a silver dome that rose in the all encompassing whiteness. The filed into the chamber and descended to the central spine of the Helix, spending the ten hours of the journey under sedation.

Ellis woke suddenly, seemingly minutes later, to find that they had arrived. Olembe gestured to the flank of the chamber, where an arched hatch opened. He led the way out, Kranda ducking after him, Calla following and staring about her in wonder, while Ellis brought up the rear.

They were in the vast, porcelain dimensions of the spine, a Gaia Machine looming like a mountain perhaps a kilometre away.

Calla gripped his hand and said, “Where are we, Jeff?”

He tried to view this wonder through her eyes, and recalled his own awed reaction to the spine beneath D’rayni. “The central spine of the Helix, Calla,” he murmured.

“And that?” She gestured towards the Gaia Machine.

He told her, then added, “It’s the... the heart, I suppose you could say – or maybe even the brains – of the Helix.”

Friday Olembe laughed. “I think perhaps both, Jeff,” he said.

He led them across the chamber towards a slit in the decking, and Ellis watched Calla as, at their approach, a mono-carriage appeared from the slit like a genie from a lamp. She gasped and stepped back, her grip tightening on his hand.