Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (8 page)

She just wanted this over with, as quickly as possible. With as little bloodshed as possible. She turned from the wall, hurried down the ramp into the courtyard and out through the open gates of the castle.

She waved her hands above her head and cried to get their attention from the platform near the apex of the domed sky. ‘Stop this! I want to stop playing!!!’

But her cry wasn’t being heard.

‘
Woah! Looks like it
’
s first blood to the blue team!
’ boomed Gray’s voice. ‘
We
’
re talking teddy bear burger meat here, sports fans!
’

She turned to watch her bears bravely fighting on, slashing their claws ferociously at the hard carapace shells of the scorpions. From this distance it was impossible to see if they were inflicting any damage at all. But it was clear the scorpions were. More ragged carcasses were being tossed into the air, their faint death wails chilling her to the bone.

She decided the only way to bring this bloodbath to a conclusion was to get that peach up here as quickly as possible. She hurried down the hill towards Jonny and his bears.

She swerved round a small rock formation, then around a copse of the tall melon-headed plants. The nearest of them stirred to life as she passed by, it’s giant bulb beginning to pulsate and flex.

Finally, gasping for breath she joined the pack of bears. Jonny was cajoling them to push harder, their high pitched voices were chorused in effort as the peach slowly rolled up the gentle hill.

‘Make a space. I’m helping!’ she shouted.

‘Thank you, General,’ replied Jonny. ‘This ‘peach’ is very heavy.’

She put her shoulder against it’s furry skin, braced her legs and shoved along with the others. With her weight thrown behind it too, it rolled just a little more quickly up the slope.

CHAPTER 11

‘You…you do understand, it’s a wholly unpredictable process?’ said Dr Takao-Jones. That took some effort for him to say with a steady voice.

He was acutely aware that he was sharing this small cabin with one of the most powerful people in Human Space. He couldn't meet her unflinching steely-eyed gaze, and he certainly didn't want her thinking he was looking at the smooth tanned skin of her legs, so, he was left staring at the hands in his lap.

'I can make no guarantee of creating a viable growth.'

The other person in the small cabin was just as intimidating; a smartly dressed and well-groomed man who’d introduced himself simply as ‘Deacon’.

He knew exactly 'what' Deacon was, though. On Liberty they called the likes of him ‘
fingermen
’, a clandestine ‘fixer’ of 'problems'. The type of freelancer used by the Administration to do their dirtiest work. The fact that he was here, along with Councillor Hayden meant that he was backed into a corner. If he politely declined the request, (and he was tempted, because he was almost certain they'd end up with a stillborn monstrosity), he'd be a security risk…and this
Deacon
would undoubtedly have to take him somewhere quiet on that planet below to ‘fix’ him.

‘You have given me DNA samples of the person in question, and the person’s parents. But you say the person’s DNA has an ‘encrypted’ sequence?’

‘That’s correct,’ replied Deacon. ‘As the Councillor said, we want you to do an
accelerated
growth cycle to see what that encrypted sequence will do to the…candidate.’

‘Yes, but you see…
accelerating
the process is where the problem lies. It will produce unpredictable results.
Mutations
. Even normal-speed growth cycles these days are prone to-’

‘Dr Takao-Jones,’ said Councillor Hayden. ‘We don't use that word any more do we?'

He stopped. His mouth closed with a
clup
. She was extending a small kindness with that, a gentle warning. She was steering him away from saying the unsayable. Among his fellow geneticists back at the Department of Genetical Analysis, the ‘M’ word was used cautiously. Never used in written reports and
only muttered informally between trusted colleagues.
Mutations
weren’t called that any more, not for decades. There were a range of acceptable terms they could use in place of that word; ‘process-wastage’, ‘statistically-anticipated fail rates’, ‘unviable candidates’.

Councillor Hayden spared his discomfort by changing the subject. ‘The lab facilities aboard this battlecruiser are more than adequate for you, Doctor?’

He nodded. ‘Yes…yes, I have what I need here.’

She nodded. ‘Good.’ She uncrossed her legs and leant forward. ‘I do understand that this is a tricky business. You’re going to be growing something in a tube that has a packet of genes that are a complete mystery. But, it
will
be completely contained. If the growth candidate turns out to be…shall we say,
hazardous
, in any way, then there’s always the option to incinerate the whole thing, right?’

‘Yes, Councillor. But, forgive me for, uh…for asking…it would help the process if I may know some details about the growth candidate.’

‘Such as?’

‘For example, gender? Has the candidate been edited for any extreme-environment conditions? What approximate growth-age should the candidate be accelerated to?’

She looked to Deacon. He shrugged in response. ‘I think Dr Takeo-Jones should be made aware of those things, Councillor. I believe the precise mix of proteins, steroids and hormones in the growth solution will vary depending on those factors. He will need to know if he’s growing a boy or a girl, the skin colour, the body frame….simply to know if the candidate is growing
correctly
.’

‘I understand.’ She turned back to the geneticist. ‘It’s a girl. She has a gene-neutral frame, she was developed for the planet below us, Harpers Reach. To all intents and purposes a very normal looking female.’

‘And the target age, councillor?’

‘Well…’ she looked at Deacon, ‘let’s start by saying late teens, early twenties?’

Dr Takao-Jones nodded.

‘How quickly can you develop the candidate to that age?’ asked Deacon.

‘That is a sliding variable, uh…sir. The faster it is done, the greater the chance of…
failure
.’

‘Then what’s a reasonably reliable amount of time?’

Dr Takao-Jones pulled a pained expression at having to give an answer to that question. They were asking him to throw a wet finger in the air and test the wind direction. He could put the DNA into a female foetus, crank up the steroids, poke the stem-cells into action with targeted stimulants and have an adult body inside, say, a week. But, even with a perfectly stable, completely readable genome that might, no, almost certainly
would
produce a horrifically deformed aberration of a human being.

‘Three or four months,’ he replied.

Councillor Hayden sat back in the cabin and crossed her arms. ‘That’s far too slow.’ She looked at Deacon. ‘We need to know what she’s capable of…
now
.’

Deacon shrugged. ‘It could be nothing. You know, she might just be perfectly normal.’

‘Why would Mason go to all that trouble to produce a
normal
human being? No, he’s
hiding
something inside her. We need to know what we’re dealing with and what those terrorists intend to do with her.’

Dr Takeo-Jones noticed Deacon cock a brow and shot a glance his way. She, quickly pressed her lips firmly together. He suspected she’d blurted out more than she’d intended to.

Which, of course, now, made it even more dangerous for him to politely decline their request.

She turned back to him. ‘Dr Takao-Jones…what about a month?’

A month
? What was he meant to say? That’s fine? Super, no problem? He estimated the fail rate was going to be high. Even if he didn’t produce some disfigured monster, the growth candidate might simply just die in the tube.

‘May I recommend something, Councillor?’

‘Of course, Deacon.’

‘We’re asking a lot. Asking this technician to rush the process may end up giving us a corpse in a vat and whole lot of useless information. But, we can ‘multi-thread’ this process. That way we’ll have more information to work on in the same time period.’

Dr Takeo-Jones nodded, he understood what Deacon was saying. ‘Exactly. That is what I was about to suggest, Councillor.’

‘What?’ She looked from one man to the other.

‘We grow a number of candidates at the same time.’

Her eyes rounded at the prospect.

‘It’s no more a hazard than having
one
of her,’ added Deacon. ‘They’d all be contained and all very
flushable
should something unexpected develop.’

'Yes, that's true…multiple redundancy.' She nodded slowly. ‘And…that would give us more data to work from.’

‘Precisely.’

She carried on nodding, her arms still folded, the toe of one foot tapping the plast-mat floor of Dr Takao-Jones small cabin. ‘The irony here is that we’re making more copies of the Trojan horse Mason has created.’

‘But, as I said, all of them perfectly contained and destroyable.’

‘What if…’ she pressed her lips together thoughtfully. ‘What if Mason created something with…psionic abilities?’

‘A
reader
? You mean like a boojam?’

‘Yes. Or worse.’

Deacon shrugged. ‘Boojam’s can read minds. They can’t
control
minds. They can’t move objects. They can’t-’

‘I’d rather you didn’t patronise me.’ She looked at him coolly. ‘I’ve been around long enough not to be treated like some dumb blonde intern.’

‘My apologies, Councillor.’

‘I just want to be sure that if we create something potentially dangerous…that we can damn well
un-create
it.’ She turned back to Dr Takao-Jones. ‘How many candidates could you grow at the same time?’

He’d visited the lab aboard this ship earlier today. The equipment had been hastily appropriated from the DGA and some of it was still crated-up and yet to be assembled. He’d logged about half a dozen growth tubes.

‘Perhaps six.’

‘Six?’ She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘Well then, let’s make six Ellie Quins.’

CHAPTER 12

Ellie shot a glance to her left; her creatures were being massacred. It looked like half of their number had already been pincered in two. However, she could see one of the scorpions had collapsed, either from the exhaustion of carrying around its heavily armoured body, or, her little soldiers had managed to inflict some kind of damage on it.

There was consolation in that…at least it was
possible
to take them down.

To her right, Max and his band of soldier-bears were still luring the other five scorpions after them. The giant lumbering beasts now seemed to be struggling from the exertion of the pursuit, their spindly legs every now and then faltering and stumbling on the uneven ground.

She had a vague hope forming that maybe she’d let the chase continue until those things all started dropping from exhaustion, then she’d give Max the sign to turn on them and finish them off.

She looked down at Jonny. ‘Can you see how much further to the castle?’

Jonny stepped out of the pack of grunting and straining midgets and peaked around the side of the giant peach. ‘We are approximately half way up the hill, General!’

And the hill was going to get steeper near the top….and their progress, much slower.

She wished she had more bears down here pushing this stupid thing.

‘
Well, well well! Seems like General Jez
’
s killer giant scorpions are kicking ass over there on the right? Have you seen how bloody messy it
’
s getting down there, buddy? What
’
s your take on the game so far, Shelbs?
’

‘
Hmm
…
yes, I do believe they are struggling. But then I do believe that
’
s Ellie
’
s strategy. She has deliberately sacrificed her troops on the flanks to distract Jez
’
s heavy armour. Meanwhile, focusing her un-weaponised units on retrieving the tactical object. Which, I do believe, is the
point
of the game
.’

Ellie looked up at their grinning faces projected across the sky, gurning at each other like presenters at a HardBall match. She cursed both of them for making light of the slaughter going on down here.

Game? A game?! You sick fregging creeps!

‘
Ellie clearly has come into the game with a strategy, Graham. Unlike her opponent who seems to have just unleashed-
’

‘
Ah-hah! Sorry to cut in on you Shelbs, it looks like General Jez has woken up to Ellie
’
s game-plan. Here come the cavalry!
’

Ellie turned to look over her shoulder. Jez was charging down the hill towards her, leading her pack of the smaller creatures. Closer now, she could see more clearly what they were; they looked like small shiny coal-black men, slender limbed, with thin torsos and serrated edged spear tips for hands. Their heads looked oddly triangular with horns at the top; like little imps.

‘Hoy there, Ellie!’ screamed Jez at the top of her voice as she closed the gap between them. ‘Your fuzzy bears are goin’ down, girl!’

‘Jez! No! Please! I don’t want to play this stupid game anymore!’

Too late. The spiny little men crashed into Jonny’s pack of straining bears and a moment later the ground around the peach was a squirming mass of blonde fur and shiny coal black limbs, thrashing and swiping. Although her peach-rollers out-numbered the spindly men and outsized them, their jagged hand-spears were slicing and stabbing and spilling gouts of blood onto the swaying, recoiling, amber grass. She watched Jonny, wrestling one of them to the ground, his tubby weight more than a match for the stick-thin creature, but without anything he could use as a weapon, all he could do was to hold it down while the vicious little thing flailed, squealed and drummed it’s arms and legs against the ground like a toddler throwing a fit in a mall.

Ellie stepped out of the chaos and made her way around the edge of the fray towards Jez.