Helix Wars (49 page)

Ellis stepped over the threshold, open-mouthed.

They were in a chamber as cavernous as a cathedral. To either side were banked tiers of what looked like aquariums. They stretched to a vanishing point in the distance. He looked up, counting thirty tiers on each side.

He approached a unit and peered through the glass.

A sleeping Sporelli soldier, outfitted in familiar bulky armour, lay like the carven image on a sarcophagus. Kranda said, “I estimate there are fifty thousand in here alone. There must be a further nine of these chambers.”

They left the cryogenic chamber, hurried along the corridor and passed another arched entrance. Ellis counted eight more arched entrance-ways giving onto cryogenic chambers.

A kilometre further on they came to a great lateral corridor which Ellis judged ran from one flank of the ship to the other. They stopped, dwarfed by its dimensions. He looked up, making out dim points of light high overhead which dimly illuminated the vast space. A couple of hundred metres wide, he thought, and perhaps as many high.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure... but I suspect it’s an accessway, from when they were building the ship, so that multiple trucks and fliers could negotiate their way across the interior. Look, at the far end: they’ve begun the process of filling in the space with bulkheads and corridors.”

Ellis increased his magnification and made out, perhaps five kilometres away across the ship, what looked like a construction site of half-finished decks and bulkheads.

Kranda went on, “That suggests they were still working on the ship when it took off. Perhaps a ship this size is always a work in progress. It will almost be a tragedy to...”

“Yes?”

“To destroy it,” she finished.

Ellis looked at Kranda’s outline and swore under his breath.

Kranda grunted. “Strange. I feel nothing for the hundreds and thousands of Sporelli my actions will consign to oblivion. But this is a true engineering wonder...”

Ellis saw her outline as she stopped running and sank onto her haunches. He paused beside her. “Kranda?”

“Silence, Jeff. I need to concentrate.”

Ellis looked back the way they had come, expecting to see Sporelli soldiers at any second. The corridors were eerily quiet.

At last Kranda said, “My varnika has infiltrated the ship’s communications nexus and is disabling it. This will aid us considerably. The Sporelli will be unable to communicate other than verbally.” She laughed. “In other words, they won’t be able to coordinate their search for us.”

“If your varnika can compromise the Sporelli com system,” Ellis said, “then what about – ?”

The Mahkan interrupted. “I instructed it to disable the starship, human! Don’t you think that occurred to me?”

“And?”

“And my varnika was unable to break down the smartcore’s defences, only the com-nexus. It’s still working to compromise the smartcore, but there’s no telling how long that might take.”

“So in the interim...?”

“Plan, A, human, even though that offends your squeamish sensibilities.” Kranda surged upright. “Very well. This way.”

They sprinted across the lateral accessway. A low-pitched thrumming filled the air here, which increased in volume as they passed from the accessway into a low-ceilinged corridor. Kranda led the way for a hundred metres, then paused outside a sliding door to their left.

She lasered the sensor beside the door. This time the sliding door did not obligingly open. She forced the muzzle of her laser between the doors and levered. The doors parted enough for her to squeeze her hand inside and, grunting with the strain, force them open.

They ran inside.

The noise here was suddenly deafening. Ellis muted his audio reception and looked around. They were in a cavern, perhaps twice the size of the cryogenic chamber, filled with sloping banks of silver machinery and a labyrinthine system of gargantuan pipes. It was nothing like any engine-room he had ever seen, or even imagined, but then he reminded himself that this was alien technology.

Kranda said, “Follow me,” and moved off into the chamber.

They passed bank after bank of thrumming machinery, each one the size of a city block.

Kranda stopped before a domed machine fully twice her height, its silver surface bearing a single rectangular viewscreen. “This room is the fusion reactor chamber,” she said, “and I suspect that what we have here is its core.”

She led Ellis around the dome so that they were out of sight of anyone entering from the corridor. She deactivated her Varnika and Ellis did the same, allowing Kranda, for the first time since their altercation, to see him. He felt suddenly naked.

Kranda was withdrawing her blaster from its moorings on her left arm. “Now pass me yours,” she said.

Ellis stood very still, staring at the Mahkan. He said, “Has your varnika managed to...?”

“No!” Kranda snapped, staring at him with anger in her eyes. “Do you think I’d be going ahead with this if there was another way?”

Ellis restrained himself from answering that.

“We place the blasters together,” Kranda said, “timed to go off simultaneously, and this will have a greater effect than if we plant them in two locations.” She paused, then went on, “We have to do this, Jeff. There is no other way. The future of the Helix depends on this working.”

Ellis said, “Let’s get it over with, Kranda, and then work out how to get back for Calla.”

“Our original purpose...” Kranda said. “How far we have come since then!”

Ellis grimaced. “How far indeed.”

The Mahkan pressed a red stud on her own blaster. “That sets the charge, Jeff. Now the green one...” She thumbed the green stud and Ellis watched as a screen on the butt of the blaster flickered a string of numerals.

Kranda explained. “The timer. I’ve set it to a little over one hour. That should leave us enough time.”

Ellis glanced at her. “You sure? What about finding Calla?”

“She will be with the others, either in the amphitheatre or back aboard the interworld ship.”

“What if the captain suspected the president of duplicity when she detected us and ordered their arrest? They might be anywhere by now.” The thought sent a shiver of dread down his spine. “I say we set them for a little longer? Two hours?”

Kranda considered this, buckling her muzzle in an ugly gesture. “Very well, I’ll increase the setting.”

She did so, then said, “Now pass me yours.”

Ellis hesitated, and before he could move to pass Kranda his blaster, the Mahkan reached out and snatched it from him. She quickly tapped in the settings.

“The black studs are the primers,” she said. “When I press them, the process is underway...” She looked at Ellis. “Believe me, Jeff, there is no other way.”

Ellis stared at the Mahkan. “I hope you’re right.”

Kranda depressed the black stud on the first blaster, then the second.

A series of vents or flanges encircled the dome at head height. Kranda took the first blaster and inserted it into a vent, grimacing as she wedged it tight within the dome.

She moved to her left and slipped the second blaster into the dome.

Then, surprising Ellis, she stood back, closed her eyes, and murmured something to herself.

Ellis said, “A prayer?”

Kranda grunted. “A Mahkan poem – a haiku, I suppose you might call it – which brings good fortune.”

“I never had you down as a superstitious type.”

“We each have our weaknesses,” Kranda said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They activated their varnikas and Kranda led the way from the engine-room. They sprinted back the way they had come, across the mammoth accessway and along the corridor towards the cryogenic chambers.

Seconds later Kranda said, “Jeff!”

Heart thudding in fear, Ellis fetched up beside her and stared ahead.

He could not believe what he was seeing.

Ahead, two hundred metres away, rank after rank of armoured Sporelli soldiers were filing from the nearest suspension chamber, marching in step and setting up a threatening, thunderous rhythm. As they emerged from the arched entrance, they turned to their left, away from where Ellis and Kranda stood, and marched off into the distance.

Ellis swallowed. “What now?” he managed.

“It would be madness to follow them, even though that route would be the fastest way back. Okay... sub-voc the code
seven-zero-seven-five
, then an over-ride command,
eight-three-five
.”

Ellis did as instructed. Kranda explained, “This tells the varnika to take us back to our starting point by the fastest alternative route.”

“How the hell does it know that?” Ellis asked.

“My varnika accessed the auxiliary core and uploaded the ship’s schemata, then copied it to yours.”

In his left ear he heard the tinny, transistorised voice of the varnika saying, “
Retrace your steps, thirty metres, turn right. Ascend to the next level, proceed straight ahead
.”

“Let’s go,” Kranda said.

Heart hammering, Ellis took off.

3

T
HEY CLIMBED TO
the next level and sprinted along the corridor.

They were above the cryogenic chambers, Ellis judged, in a little-used deck crammed with circuitry, loose wires and humming alien devices. It was as if he had been miniaturised and let loose inside a computer smartcore. Even the stench was redolent of dusty com chips and hot processors.

“
Turn left, continue for twenty metres.
”

He had no idea where he was now, relative to anything. He laughed aloud as he realised that he’d had no real idea where he’d been at the outset, when they left the interworld ship. Somewhere in the great flank of the starship, maybe, two thirds of the way along its length? They’d been running for perhaps an hour since leaving the amphitheatre and had covered only a tiny fraction of the ship’s total area.

Something moved up ahead. A silver flicker, there one second, gone the next. They ran towards where it had been, and he saw it again. He was reminded of a pair of scissors, snipping away at something. The thing looked like a cross between a crab and a spider, metallic-silver and faster than either. It was dancing along the ceiling, emitting showers of silver sparks as it repaired circuitry. A robot, he thought; it made sense to have automata tending to the ship’s repairs over a journey lasting for centuries.

As he ran he was beset by thoughts of everything that might go wrong. The two imperatives were to find Calla and escape from the starship...

He tried to second-guess the starship captain. What might they have done with the interworld ship’s passengers? The most likely scenario was that the president, Calla and the rest had been incarcerated, until such time as the Sporelli troops captured the invisible intruders and assessed their threat. But in a ship ten kilometres long by three wide, the prisoners might be anywhere.

“
Turn left, proceed ten metres, ascend to next level
.”

This level proved to be a narrow, dimly-lit deck even meaner than the previous one, with festoons of wire trailing from the low ceiling and pools of jet fluid on the floor.

“
Ten metres ahead, descend to lower level.”

They came to a recessed staircase and descended cautiously. Kranda paused at the bottom, assessing the possibility of danger ahead.

She tapped Ellis’s arm and hissed, “All clear. After me.”

They were in what looked like accommodation quarters, a corridor of plush carpets, painted walls and low lighting. Ellis was increasingly apprehensive. He had felt relatively safe in the more industrial areas of the starship, but here, where at any second a Sporelli might emerge from a cabin...

“How far are we from the interworld ship?”

After a couple of seconds, Kranda replied, “A little more than a kilometre.”

“And how long before the big bang?” He judged they’d been running for perhaps thirty minutes, but he couldn’t be sure.

Kranda’s reply surprised him. “A fraction under one hour.”

“One hour! And we’re still a kilometre from the ship?”

“That leaves us plenty of time, Jeff. Have faith.”

In what?
he thought.

“
Thirty metres ahead, descend to the next level, turn left, proceed for fifty metres.
”

They came to a sealed elevator and stopped. Kranda said, “If we drop to the next deck, and there’s someone nearby when we exit...”

Ellis’s stomach turned. “What’s the alternative?” He glanced left and right, fearful.

Kranda consulted her varnika. “It’s no good. Any other route would take us over an hour to complete. Okay, we’ll take the risk.”

She palmed the sensor and they stepped into the elevator.

As they plummeted, a bolus of fear lodged in Ellis’s chest like something physical.