‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘I’m thinking of the future,’ he said.
‘And what do you see?’
‘I see a very difficult voyage.’
‘That’s good,’ she said, and she really meant it. There was nothing like a challenging goal to focus one’s mind and keep away the demons.
‘What do you see?’ he asked.
She felt herself falter but she held onto his hand. ‘I don’t see anything Myka, but I believe you will be safe. Don’t ask me why I say that, it’s probably what I want to believe, but deep down I really do believe it.’
Elvene felt so sure of this that she wondered whether she was becoming a Kiri herself. She recognised it as something that they would say.
He let go of her hand, and they walked back the way they had come.
Roger, Essayas and Lin joined them for the evening meal. They sat around fires so they could see each other’s faces. There was not a lot of intercourse; the mood was sombre and the Kiri were too honest to feign happiness when it wasn’t there.
The night was mild, but there was a storm brewing and they saw occasional flashes of lightning out to sea. Roger and his group left early, but Elvene stayed with Myka and his family, only going up to the caves when it started raining.
Once they were alone, Elvene and Myka indulged in a slow, sensual lovemaking against the background noise of thunder and rain. Afterwards, they lay awake listening to the abating storm. Elvene wondered if she’d sleep at all this night, but when the storm lulled she drifted off.
She had a very strange dream. She was in a cave; no, it was more like a tunnel but it was different from the Kiri caves. She didn’t recognise any of it. The tunnel scared her, reminding her of the Render’s pit, because she was sure something lived in it. Yet she was compelled to enter it. At the entrance was a large tree that she had to squeeze by to get through. It was night and she was wearing her combat armour, complete with helmet and night vision. But the tunnel was not just an entrance, it was a corridor, only it appeared natural, not manmade.
She awoke with a start. But it was more than the dream; there was a tingling sensation in her bracelet, and she recognised it at once as a message from Alfa.
Elvene felt around in the semi-dark and found her utility belt. She took out the glasses that she’d used earlier that day. When she put them on she could see Roger, so she spoke to him. ‘I have you, Roger. What’s happening?’
‘Marauders are attacking our mothership. We have to leave, Elvene.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
‘We’ll wait for you. Hurry.’
‘I’m on my way.’
She knew that she and Roger would need escort protection to get back, and she knew that Roger would be organising that already. The tingling in her bracelet had stopped, and she took the glasses off and put them back in her utility belt. She started to dress herself.
Myka had woken up. ‘What’s happening?’ He sounded half-asleep.
‘I have to go, we are being attacked. No, not here, our mothership above the planet.’ She pointed up.
Elvene felt strangely at ease; she realised in a sense that this was what she’d been waiting for. ‘Myka, if I leave, the marauders will not come here. Do not rush your migration, it’s not something you can do tomorrow. It will take a lot of planning and a lot of preparation. Do you understand me?’
Myka’s mind felt numb with sleep, but her adrenalin was infectious and he nodded his head in the half-light. He knew that what she said was true.
‘I have to go. If I live through this, I will come back some day.’
‘I will come with you, to your ship, I mean. It’s still dark.’
‘No, don’t. You stay here with your people. In the morning I will be gone.’
She kissed him on the lips and then he grabbed her in a final hug. When he released her she held onto his shoulders momentarily; she could see his worried face in the half-light. She thought that anything she’d say would sound stupid so she said nothing.
Then she turned and slid out of his grasp with the quickness and agility of a snake. He crawled through the tunnels after her, but she didn’t look back. He knew that it was better that she didn’t, and so he just watched her go.
Part 2
9. No escape
ELVENE RAN ALL THE WAY TO THE BEACH, and when she got there she could see Roger’s ship already aloft, in a hovering position, impatient to go. He must have seen her, as his ship flashed a light towards her, then wheeled around before taking off in a direct ascent towards the stars.
Elvene stopped running, and putting her fingers to her lips, somehow found the breath to whistle. Alfa came speeding across the water, the gangplank already opening, so that she could leap aboard before he had even grounded in the sand.
The gangway closed behind her and she immediately seated herself in the pilot’s chair, donning her helmet and gloves as she spoke. ‘Okay, Alfa, let’s go.’
The anti-gravity field balanced any inertial force, so that she didn’t feel any movement even as the beach and ocean departed beneath her.
‘Is there an escort waiting?’
Alfa spoke to her through the helmet for the first time. ‘Yes, madam. We have two escorts and so does Roger. Roger’s ship has already left atmosphere.’
‘Do we know how many marauders we’re dealing with?’
‘Not too sure. Between one hundred and fifty and two hundred.’
‘Holy shit.’
‘What’s that, madam?’
‘It’s an expletive, Alfa. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it before. You may hear some more before this is over. They usually mean we’re in deep trouble.’
‘Understood, madam.’
It was only when she broke atmosphere herself that she could see the mothership and the extent of the battle. The mothership had been in a geostationary orbit to the west of the island so that it was out of sight to the Kiri. It was a fat cigar-shaped cylinder, but on closer inspection it would look like an enormous space-borne city. The escorts had been followed by marauders and Alfa was already positioning them for her in her visor. This is going to be an awkward gauntlet, she thought. She watched as Roger’s ship locked onto its escort and they moved towards their enemy.
Behind the marauders she could see other Corps battle ships coming to attack the marauders from the rear. ‘I have contact with our escort,’ Alfa told her through her helmet.
‘Thanks, Alfa, we’re in their hands.’
As they approached, she could see the chaos of battle that surrounded the mothership. The ship itself had a shield which could be seen only when marauder missiles struck it ineffectually. But Elvene knew that all the marauders would need to be destroyed before the Corps would be able to go to warp. Smaller vessels whipped around the mothership like flies; the corps vessels were larger than the marauders but it didn’t really give them any advantage. It was a contest of missiles and plasma lasers. Roger’s vessel was still ahead of hers, and his escort made a break in the marauders coming towards them, with some help from the Corps fighters at their rear.
Elvene could see that the distance between her and Roger was going to be the weak link. As Roger’s ship got closer to the mothership, his escorts made a hole in the marauder attack which allowed them to make contact with other Corps vessels closer to the ship. This created the opposite effect for Elvene, who was faced with more marauders than Corps fighters.
The escort used their lasers to take out incoming missiles, but they were encumbered by their inability to take evasive action. Elvene could see that the marauders had now effectively cut her off from Roger. Other Corps vessels were coming towards her but she could only hope that her escort would not be overrun before they arrived.
Then her escort on the port side took a hit, and in an attempt to compensate for their vulnerability, Alfa moved behind the remaining one. Elvene knew that the situation was becoming desperate; soon the marauders would cut her off from beh
ind and she couldn’t allow that to happen.
‘Alfa, do you still have the ballast water from the planet?’
‘Yes, madam, why do you ask?”
‘Never mind, just don’t lose it.’
Very soon, the marauders would be behind her and then there would be no avenue for escape. Elvene decided to follow her instinct instead of her orders.
‘Alfa, delink from the escort.’
‘That’s suicide, madam.’
‘Not if we go landside. The options below us are better than the ones ahead of us.’
‘That is correct.’
‘Tell the escort to fend for himself, then release the link.’
‘As you say, madam.’
As soon as Alfa delinked, he dropped down, the escort going the other way. This effectively broke up the marauders who now had two targets instead of one. Most of them went after the escort as he was more heavily armed. Elvene had no armaments at all, but two marauders came after her and released missiles.
‘Missiles dead ahead, 15 seconds,’ Alfa told her.
‘Release the water ballast and full reverse.’
Elvene knew it was a desperate gamble, but it paid off. The water turned to ice as soon as it was released. Shards of crystal travelling at hypersonic speed met the missiles head on, so they exploded ineffectually as Alfa plummeted into the atmosphere. The atmosphere would provide them with some protection, but Elvene knew that the only really safe place for them was under the ocean.
Alfa tore through the atmosphere like a meteor, a fireball trailing a long plasma tail, heading directly for the ocean. If the Kiri had been on the western side of the island and out in the open they may have seen the trail disappear over the horizon but they would not have heard the sonic boom. Neither would they have experienced the swell of Alfa’s entry into the ocean. Elvene knew that it was only the anti-gravity field and the diamond-hard hull of her ship that stopped her from being killed on entry, but once in the water Alfa dived for the bottom.
Underwater was the one environment where the marauders lacked superiority. There simply had never been any reason for them to evolve for underwater dominance and whilst they would not be destroyed by water, they had no sensing ability and no means to effectively use their weapons. Nevertheless, the marauders weren’t completely inadequate in this field, and they dropped sonar chasers which would surface when they found their prey. But the chasers had limitations of their own, having to be ‘seen’ in order to do their detecting, and Alfa knew how to play this game. Firstly he led them north-east in the opposite direction to where Elvene intended to go, then he used the underwater terrain to lose them. Only when he had totally confounded them did he set the course that Elvene requested, following the ocean floor and using underwater ravines and mountain ridges as his foil. It was a game of hide and seek, played by competing computers and Elvene did nothing to interfere, whatever the temptation. She knew that in the long term the marauders would still find her; she was just buying some time.
She knew that when the marauders finally conceded that the chasers were ineffectual, they would start a surface search in a systematic fashion and sense for signs when she surfaced, as they knew she must. While she was underwater, Elvene was relatively safe, but it did not give her any peace of mind to know that the marauders had infinite patience, and would not give up until they had found her and killed her. The marauders were nothing if not predictable.
Roger knew Elvene was in trouble as soon as his escort became cut off from her. His first impulse was to turn back to help her, but not only did he not have the authority, he also knew it was folly. He could only hope that more Corps vessels could get to her before she was overrun by marauders.
He said, ‘No,’ out loud when he saw her escort take a hit, and felt the full pain of his helplessness. So close and so far. Then he watched in absolute horror as she delinked from her remaining escort.
‘Elvene, what are you doing? You have no protection.’ Then he realised the desperation of her manoeuvre and her intention to try and reach atmosphere.
‘You won’t make it,’ he said in a soft voice.
He felt like he was with her in her ship and almost wished he was. He did not want to be witness to her death. Then he saw the explosion, and he believed he was. There was some part of him that died right then, and another part that did not want to believe it, so that against all the evidence of his senses, he held a hope that she had escaped, though by what means he had no idea.
‘Is there any contact with Alfa?’ he asked his ship.
A brief hiatus, then, ‘There’s no response.’
Roger’s heart sank to its lowest ebb; it didn’t occur to him, however, that contact with Alfa through a re-entry plasma was simply not possible.
He no longer felt any concern for his own safety, and the battle that raged around him seemed like it was happening in a holo show outside his own corporeal existence. From his point of view he was drifting through a sea of flashes and explosions, slowly homing in on the mothership. They were now close enough to see the intricate structure of turrets and ports through its invisible shield. His ship and his escort would slide effortlessly through while the marauders and their weapons would simply bounce off. Once they were behind it, he knew they were safe, but he also knew that they wouldn’t leave until all the marauders were accounted for, or enough had been destroyed that their built-in survival programming would call it quits.
Roger felt little relief at achieving his own safety, and when they docked, he watched from the bridge in complete detachment as he saw the marauder force slowly but ineluctably overwhelmed. He felt like he was standing on a stage, only the space opera was happening out there, in another world. Everything now was beyond his control; he felt he was merely a spectator who had lost whatever effectiveness he may have had over events. He detected within himself a certain apathy; he no longer cared.
When the order was given to leave the system, he went to his quarters and put himself into hibernation. It was a form of escape, like taking a drug to numb the mind. He knew that when he awoke he would be home and he would be able to deal with his loss better with distance. Besides the effects of hibernation would temporarily erase the memory until it was regurgitated by the ship’s computer when they docked at their final destination.
Elvene made rapid progress once they had lost the marauders’ chasers, though she didn’t really know how well their ruse had worked. Alfa did all the navigating for her now, based on maps he’d made when he had first arrived and orbited the planet while she slept. He had accurate maps of all land masses, so she simply needed to tell him where she wanted to go, which was as far from the Kiri as possible.
This meant that they were on a westward course heading for a continent of which she knew very little except that it varied from mountainous to open plains and contained an equal variety of vegetation from thick forest to grasslands. She expected it would be just as dangerous as the archipelago from whence she’d just come, only the dangers would be different and just as unpredictable. If Elvene had been quizzed on this, as no doubt she would be at some future time, she would honestly have to say she was simply following her intuition. Where she was going to land, she had no idea, but she decided not to go too close to the poles and not too close to the equator, therefore avoiding extremes. As the Kiri lived slightly north of the equator, she decided to head south; besides there was significantly greater land mass to the south on this side of the planet.
She knew that if Myka followed his plans and managed to migrate east, based on the map he had already memorised in his head, then he would be going north. So, everything she was doing so far made sense. She also knew that if she travelled far enough without surfacing, she’d have a slight advantage over the pursuing marauders and that could make the difference for her between survival and death. She hadn’t thought too much about how she was going to deal with them, but she wanted to make certain that if she didn’t survive, then Alfa would.
&nb
sp; Alfa was forced to navigate from his maps and laser gyroscopics, as he had no means of sensing the sky. He could however detect magnetic fields and subtle differences in gravity which he kept track of even if they didn’t provide him with immediate assistance. These were recorded more as an aid in case he needed to backtrack on his path. Besides, any information he could sense from the planet simply added to his databank, which he could retrieve at any time and any place.
Myka didn’t sleep for the rest of the night; in fact, he didn’t even go back into the caves. He stayed out all night and watched the stars pass over his head and wondered which one was home to Elvene, and where she might be now.
He spent the rest of the night thinking about Elvene. How she had come into his life, literally from the ocean that now beckoned him, and not only had given him his manhood but given him the means to fulfil his dream. A dream he’d held onto almost since he could first remember.
He had, from his earliest childhood, always looked at the eastern horizon and wondered what lay beyond it. And equally he remembered the first occasions he went out with a canoe with his father and brother and sometimes with his father alone, and felt the sea move beneath him. He had known from the first time that this was a special place for him and that it contained his destiny. This was something that he never discussed with anyone, not even his friend, Sendra. It was his own private dream.
And then she had come, at just the right time, and given him exactly what he needed to fulfil it. So, in one sense, it did not perturb Myka if, in spite of her promise, he never saw her again, because his future path was so clear before him. It wasn’t that he did not want to believe her, but in his culture when people left, they never returned. From his point of view, she had already performed her ‘quala’ for him, so from Kiri logic, he knew there was no need for her to return. And Kiri logic was both stronger and more pragmatic than her promise.
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