Helix Wars (23 page)

“Didn’t deserve an end like that.”

“The Sporelli!” an oldster spat.

“But what was the alien doing aboard her barge?” another asked.

She listened to them, and another group nearby, for fifteen minutes, and pieced together a likely scenario. An alien – Jeff Ellis? – had been found by the Sporelli aboard a barge and arrested, and the Sporelli had made an example of the bargee in the square, summarily executing her for harbouring the alien.

Which put an entirely different complexion on Kranda’s mission, now.

She controlled her anger, her impulse to seek retribution on the nearest Sporelli soldier.

And yet...

Perhaps that might be one way to find out what she wanted.

She moved around the square, heart hammering at her proximity to the enemy, and scanned the troops.

She saw one slip off down an alley, unfasten the front of his trousers, and relieve himself against the wall. Kranda followed him. She paused in the entrance to the alley, assessing the likelihood of being observed, then moved towards the soldier.

As fast as lightning she grabbed the Sporelli, clamping a hand over his mouth and fastening her left arm around his torso, binding his arms. She was surprised by how puny and weak the soldier was. She lifted him off the ground and whispered, “You struggle, you die...” and heard her varnika translate her into the Sporelli’s guttural tongue.

The soldier fell limp in her grip, his eyes above her claw bulging with terror.

She took off at speed, carrying the Sporelli through the deserted backstreets towards where she had left the flier.

E
LEVEN
/// E
ASY
T
ARGETS

1

E
LLIS SAT UP,
then raised a hand to his forehead, which throbbed with a seismic headache.

He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. He was in a large timber room, empty but for himself and the chain shackling his right leg, snaking away across the packed earth floor and through a slit in the timber panelling. A window without glass, at Phandran head height, looked out onto a deepening twilight.

He stood up, wincing at the pain lancing through his skull, and when it abated slightly he shuffled across to the window.

The timber shack rested on a hillside surrounded by sere countryside. A Sporelli beetle-tank stood outside the shack, and half a dozen soldiers sat on the vehicle, cleaning their weapons and chatting. They might have been human reservists on a training exercise.

He crossed the shack to the opposite wall and placed his eye to a gap in the planks. There was another vehicle stationed outside, a troop-carrier, and the chain that shackled his leg continued across the sandy ground and vanished into the vehicle. Escape, it seemed, was impossible.

He considered the dead bargee, and then Calla. The Sporelli had shown themselves to be casually brutal, but he reassured himself that Calla would have been spared the fate of the bargee. She was a Healer, after all, and hadn’t she told him that the Sporelli were rounding up Healers and Diviners to aid them in the war effort?

At the far end of the shack was a low door, but the chain didn’t allow him to reach it. He had little doubt that the Sporelli had that angle covered, too.

He returned to his original position against the timber wall and sat down. He thought back – how many days now? – to the morning he’d taken off from Carrelliville spaceport, his row with Maria and the sour taste it had left with him. Well, he’d had other things to occupy his mind since then, but it was odd that even now,
in extremis
, his thoughts should return to Maria, and maddening that he should experience the pain their row had caused all over again.

He listened to the sound of the Sporelli troops talking amongst themselves, the growls and occasional bark of what might have been laughter. He reasoned that, if they wanted him dead, then they would have despatched him by now. Why imprison him, if they intended to execute him somewhere down the line?

Unless, of course, their plan was to question him and then perform the
coup de grace
.

He closed his eyes and thought of Carrelliville, and specifically the Oasis Bar beside the lake and the beers they served there. Hell, what he’d give for just one long draft of ice cold beer now.

If he got away from here, he promised himself, then one of the first things he’d do on arriving back on New Earth would be to stand a round with his friends from the spaceport.

He heard a sound from the end of the shack.

The door swung open and a soldier peered in at him. The Sporelli knelt and rolled a cylindrical canister across the floor. Ellis backed up against the wall, fearing a grenade, then laughed with relief as he realised that the canister contained water. He stopped it with his boot and picked it up. The soldier watched him, then retreated and closed the door.

Ellis opened the canister and sniffed. He poured a drop of the liquid onto his palm and sniffed again. Water, as far as he could tell. He raised his palm to his lips and slurped. It tasted wonderful, cool and sharp. He raised the canister and drank, reasoning that if the Sporelli wished to kill him they would have used a bullet rather than poisoned water.

He set the canister aside and tested the iron cuff around his leg. It was a tight fit, and there was no way he might pull his foot free. He tried, even so, but succeeded only in abrading his ankle. He gave up, sat back, and poured a little precious water over his face and rubbed briskly.

An hour elapsed, then two, and he could not help but dwell on what the Sporelli might have in store for him. The sun went down and darkness descended, and the only source of light was the meagre illumination of the distant stars seen through the window.

Would he be taken back to Sporelli and paraded before their media as the abject human captured during their army’s glorious advance across Phandra? Would he then be handed over to some neutral world, or imprisoned by the Sporelli as a spy?

As the night elapsed and he became ever more tired, his exhausted mind played out increasingly pessimistic scenarios. He must have fallen asleep at some point, as he dreamed of being reunited with Calla, only to find that they were being led towards a compound where a firing squad was waiting.

He sat up suddenly, crying out loud. He leaned against the wall, panting in the aftermath of a nightmare. He had dreamed he’d been chased by a gossamer-tree pod, and had backed away only to find himself chained to the ground.

The window showed a patch of dawn sky. He drank the remainder of the water, which served only to make him aware of how hungry he was. He stood up wearily and crossed to the window, intending to locate the soldier who had provided him with the water and mime his need for food.

The tank was a threatening shape in the dawn light, and around it he made out the bivouacked shapes of sleeping soldiers. He moved to the other side of the shack and peered through the gap in the timbers. The troop-carrier was still there, but there was no sign of its complement of soldiers.

He sat down again, reasoning that surely he would be moved from here sooner rather than later. He was keeping two military vehicles and more than a dozen troops tied down, when they might have been better employed invading D’rayni. He smiled at the thought; at least his capture was achieving that small thing.

He closed his eyes and dozed, then came awake suddenly some time later. The sound of an engine broke the silence. He stood up and shuffled to the window. The troops were struggling from their bivouacs as a military vehicle – a sleek roadster this time, in the sable livery of the invading army – swept up the hillside and braked between the tank and the shack.

A small, rotund soldier climbed from the roadster, eliciting smart salutes from the hastily assembled troops. He strode across to the shack accompanied by an aide carrying an ominous-looking black bag.

Ellis resumed his position against the wall and tried to look disinterested.

So this is what it came down to, he thought; he had been kept captive until the torture squad arrived.

The door creaked open and the squat, imperious soldier stepped through, followed by his aide.

The leading Sporelli looked to be about forty by human standards, round-faced and dead-eyed. A soldier through and through, exercising the dreams of a life-time in the subjugation of a powerless, defenceless world.

His aide advanced, knelt beside Ellis and opened the black bag. Ellis watched, trying not to let his curiosity show, as the soldier withdrew what looked like a safety helmet used by skyball players.

He was determined not to show his fear, not to back away and give the bastards the slightest cause to despise him any further.

The kneeling soldier reached to place the cap on Ellis’s head. Ellis moved away, backed into the corner. The soldier simply followed him, reached out and roughly pulled the skullcap over his head. Then he pulled a com-device from an inner pocket and glanced at the screen.

Ellis knew that there was no way to avoid whatever was about to happen, and it was all he could do not to let his fear show. He turned his head and stared at the fat soldier, attempting to communicate his hatred.

The soldier operating the skullcap turned and spoke. The fat Sporelli nodded and stepped forward.

He peered down his nose at Ellis and began speaking. As he listened to the impassioned flow, Ellis gained the impression that the soldier had rehearsed the speech and was relishing being able at last to deliver his patriotic, self-justifying diatribe.

He looked up at the soldier and, when the latter ceased his address, he gathered a mouthful of saliva and spat. The gob of phlegm fell short of its untended target, the sergeant’s face, and adhered to his greatcoat. The soldier winced, stared at Ellis with murder in his eyes, and snapped an order to his aide.

The soldier tapped something on the hand-held com, and instantly two things happened.

Ellis felt a firestorm blaze through his cranium – and at the same time a deafening explosion sounded outside the shack.

The blast rocked the building, knocking the fat Sporelli off his feet. Ellis rolled over, snatching the skullcap from his head. No sooner had the echo of the first blast died away than there was another explosion, even louder, coming from the other side of the building. He heard a hail of debris pepper the timbers, and then a cacophony of agonised yells issuing from the Sporelli troops outside. He staggered to his feet and lurched towards the window. The beetle-tank was a twisted, smoking tangle of wreckage; one Sporelli soldier was a flaming puppet dancing in agony; others lay scattered across the ground, ripped limb from limb. He reeled away from the window, retching.

The Sporelli aide ran to the door, drawing his pistol. He yanked open the door and was about to dash out when he gave a sudden cry, and Ellis saw daylight through a bloody, fist-sized hole in the soldier’s back. He staggered and fell backwards, his pistol skittering across the floor and fetching up a metre from where Ellis cowered.

He curled in the corner, dazed by events. Certainly this was not the work of the Phandrans, a peaceable people who did not possess the capability to mount such an attack. Who, then? The human Peacekeepers? But they would never commit an all-out assault, such a bloody and violent attack, merely to effect the rescue of a shuttle pilot.

A blur of motion appeared at the door, a sudden whirlwind that deceived the eye and tricked the mind. One second it was on the threshold, the next within the shack. Then the blur vanished completely and Ellis wondered if his eyes had been playing tricks.

Then, as if by magic, a figure manifested itself before the cowering Sporelli soldier.

“Kranda...?” Ellis said incredulously.

The Mahkan was staring down at the overweight soldier, lips drawn back in a snarl. Kranda spoke, a string of flowing Mahkan, and Ellis was bemused to hear harsh Sporelli words fill the air.

He saw movement through the open door. A wounded soldier was staggering towards the shack, drawing a pistol as he came. He paused in the doorway, sagging against the jamb, and was raising his weapon when Ellis acted.

Looking back, he told himself that he’d had no idea he was about to do what he did then: it was a reflexive act committed without conscious thought. He reached for the pistol on the floor, snatched it up and fired just as the Sporelli soldier was about to take aim at Kranda.

The pistol kicked in Ellis’s hand, its power shocking him.

The soldier fell to his knees, clutching frantically at the sudden tumble of innards slopping from the hole in his uniform. He swayed for a second, and then fell on his face. Ellis looked away, a terrible cold weight in his gut.

The Makhan fired. Ellis watched the fat Sporelli soldier fall to the floor, the top of his head spinning away across the room and clattering against the far wall.

Kranda turned and stared at the Sporelli soldier lying face-down in the doorway, then turned to Ellis.

“You have done it again,” the Mahkan said.

“What?” Ellis said, still shocked.