by Steve Voake
Skipper rammed the lever forward and they accelerated up the ramp, through the double doors and away across the compound. There was the sound of gunfire and a line of bullets ripped through the cockpit just behind Sam’s head, missing him by inches and punching four neat exit holes in the roof.
‘Hell’s teeth!’ shouted Skipper, and pushed the stick to the left. They swerved violently sideways and she switched the screen to rear view again. Sam could see that a group of ants was closing in on them.
A second red light began flashing on the damage-indicator display, accompanied by a loud, intermittent buzzer. ‘What’s that?’ shouted Sam, pointing at the red light on the lower abdomen, next to the first.
In one smooth, fluid sequence of movements, Skipper unbuckled Sam’s belt, pulled the CRB from her pocket, opened a large circular hole in the floor and pushed him through it. Before he even realised what was happening, Sam was falling through the air and bouncing and tumbling across the wet grass, finally slithering to a halt beneath the dark, looming shape of a large horsefly.
He sat up in time to see Skipper hit the ground and roll over as the ant thundered on towards the perimeter fence with the others close behind it. He saw her run towards him and then there was a blinding white flash followed by the thump of a large explosion. Sam watched in horror as Skipper was blown off her feet, while behind her a sheet of red and orange flame ripped through the ant and tore it apart, hurling white-hot fragments high into the air and gouging a deep, smoking crater into the earth. Then a powerful pressure wave from the explosion hit Sam full in the face, scorching through his hair and blowing him backwards. Something fell down heavily next to him and, turning his face sideways, he saw that it was Skipper. She was on fire.
Struggling to his knees, Sam threw himself on top of her in a desperate attempt to smother the blaze, rolling her over and over in the wet grass until the last of the flames was extinguished.
He heard the shouts of soldiers in the distance and the dull thud of debris falling from the sky. Droplets of rain glistened on blades of grass and, as he gulped the cool morning air deep into his lungs, the smell of damp earth filled his nostrils.
Skipper lay on her back next to him. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving.
‘Skipper,’ breathed Sam. ‘Skipper, are you OK?’
There was no reply.
Sam’s heart was pounding.
‘Skipper,’ he repeated more urgently. ‘Skipper, please say something.’
He knelt over her and looked down at her face. She looked as though she was asleep. No, thought Sam. She can’t be. Please don’t let her be…
He frantically loosened the clothing around her neck and put his head on her chest. If he could just hear a heartbeat, even the faintest one…
Three unexpected little taps on his head made him sit up and he was taken aback to see Skipper’s face, wide-eyed and grinning, beneath him.
‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is what I call an explosion. Fantastic!’
Sam sat back on his haunches and, as Skipper raised herself up on one elbow, he cuffed her lightly around the head with a mixture of relief and exasperation.
‘I thought you’d gone and died on me!’ he said.
Skipper sat up and rubbed her head. ‘Nah! Takes more than a drill bomb to finish me off.’ Little bits of black ash floated out of her hair. ‘Heck of a bang though, wasn’t it? Sorry to push you out like that – but you really don’t want to be sitting on top of one of those when they go off.’
Sam took a deep breath and put his hand on her arm. ‘Thanks, Skipper,’ he said. ‘That’s twice you’ve saved my life today.’
Skipper looked over his shoulder to where the ants were gathering around the flaming wreckage. Sam followed her gaze and saw that they were already beginning to fan out towards them.
‘Well, I don’t want to worry you,’ she said slowly, ‘but I think I’m going to have to make that a hat trick.’
As Skipper helped him into the cockpit, Sam saw that the interior of the horsefly was infinitely more complex than the inside of the ant had been. There were at least twice the number of dials, buttons and screens and the whole cockpit was bathed in a dim green light. As he strapped himself in he noticed that the scramble up the horsefly’s leg had brought his arms out in a livid red rash. He made a face and rubbed them against the front of his uniform.
‘Nasty,’ said Skipper. She flipped on the external monitors and the whole cockpit brightened as the screens flickered into life to show a 360-degree view of the airfield.
‘Yep, they’ve spotted us. Don’t give up, do they?’
The ants had come together and were rapidly approaching their position en masse.
‘I don’t understand why they want us so badly,’ said Sam. ‘What did we ever do to them?’
‘Well, let’s see,’ replied Skipper, her hands moving rapidly across the instrument panel in preparation for take-off. ‘We’ve wrecked a larvae tank, stolen an expensive CRB, blown up a hi-tech search-and-destroy ant, hijacked a top-of-the-range horsefly, crashed it…’
‘What do you mean, crashed it?’ Sam interrupted. ‘We haven’t even taken off yet.’
Skipper grinned wryly as she flipped a couple of switches above her head. ‘Well, you know me – I’m a creature of habit. Trouble is, I’ve got a tendency to laugh at the wrong moment, and my front teeth pop the airbag.’
‘You are joking,’ said Sam uncertainly, watching the approaching ants on the external monitor. He’d learned not to take anything for granted where Skipper was concerned.
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I could fly one of these things with my eyes shut.’
Sam looked worried. ‘Please don’t.’
‘OK. Eyes open it is.’ Skipper pushed a glowing red button and Sam heard the low hum of the wings starting up. ‘Right, if we go now, they won’t get up in time to catch us.’
‘But all that damage we did,’ Sam went on, ‘that’s not why they’re after us. That happened because they were after us. They want us for something else.’
‘Correction,’ said Skipper. ‘They want you for something else. Not me. They’re not interested in me, except for the fact that I’m stopping them getting to you. It’s you they want. Now – if you’ll just let me concentrate…’
‘But why?’ he whispered. ‘Why me?’
‘Good question,’ said Skipper as the horsefly lifted up into the air and little puffs of anti-aircraft fire began to explode in the sky around them. ‘I think maybe it’s time you met the Commander.’
Eighteen
They had been travelling for several hours now and there were no signs of Vermian aircraft pursuing them. For the first hour or so, Skipper had flown the horsefly at such speed through narrow mountain passes that at first Sam had felt certain they would crash, but after a while he had begun to realise that Skipper was simply an exceptional flier. Even if they had been followed, Sam doubted that any Vermian pilot would have been able to get anywhere near her.
Now he peered out through the screen and saw that they were flying over a steep river valley. Below them a thick pine forest covered the valley floor, gradually thinning out on the higher slopes where dry bushes and the occasional broad-leaved tree seemed to grow straight out of the hard, barren rocks. It was late afternoon and the sun was weakening above the horizon, deep shades of orange and yellow spilling out into the surrounding sky like paint on wet paper.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Skipper.
Sam nodded. ‘I thought it would be a while before I saw open spaces again,’ he said.
Skipper pushed the control lever forward and they began to descend. Sam caught sight of a silver stream twisting through the forest, its surface glittering as the fading sunlight shone through the trees and was reflected in its bright waters.
‘I know what you mean,’ said Skipper. ‘Sometimes when things are bad you start to wonder if the good things in your life were ever really true. You start to think that maybe the world was
always full of people who wanted to hurt you.’
Sam turned to look at her. ‘But you always look so happy. Like nothing can touch you.’
Skipper shrugged. ‘You’ve got to keep on keeping on. I always say to myself, “Skipper, something will turn up.” And you know what? It usually does. Generally when you’re least expecting it. Thinking about that helps you through the bad stuff.’
‘Yeah, I s’pose so,’ said Sam.
He watched Skipper lean across the control panel and noticed for the first time that her arms were covered in bruises. He realised then how she must have suffered; how they must have tried to break her, to crush her spirit.
But as he looked into her deep blue eyes and saw how the fire inside her still burned as brightly as ever, he knew that – whatever happened – there was no one else he would rather have by his side.
The afternoon shadows were lengthening as Skipper flew the horsefly out of the valley and over a vast open plain. Here the trees began to thin out and clumps of sun-bleached grass and wizened shrubs shared the dry, dusty earth with boulders and stones. Away in the distance, wrinkled skirts of rock gathered around the flattopped mountains.
Skipper turned the fly around and set it down at the edge of the forest, walking it forwards until it was partially hidden by branches. Now that they were up close, Sam began to appreciate the sheer size of the trees. Each one towered at least fifty metres into the air and was covered in a thick, spongy, reddish-brown bark. The massive trunks were anchored to the ground by thick aerial roots which curved outwards from the base of the trees before plunging through a thick layer of pine needles into the soil beneath. The lower third of each trunk was punctured by dark holes, sockets that had been left where branches had fallen or been torn off by winter storms.
‘They’ll extend their search out here soon,’ Skipper said. ‘If we hide it in the trees there’ll be less chance of them spotting us from the air. They’ll probably be expecting us to fly straight to Vahlzi. But if we stay here overnight, we can get some rest and head for Vahlzi first thing in the morning.’
Sam wasn’t looking forward to climbing down the fly’s leg and was relieved to see Skipper throw out a rope ladder. As he descended he caught the scent of pine needles on the breeze and watched the dappled patterns of sunlight on the forest floor below.
By the time he reached the bottom, Skipper was already scurrying around collecting armfuls of bracken and dried grass.
‘Give us a hand, will you?’ she called.
‘Sure,’ said Sam. ‘Of course.’ He began pulling up big clumps of the crackly brown and green bracken that grew where sunlight filtered through the canopy. After a while he had made a pile that came up to his waist. He stood proudly next to it for a while, watching Skipper diligently adding to her own growing collection, and then called out, ‘Skipper – what are we doing exactly?’
Skipper looked at him in surprise. ‘We’re collecting bracken,’ she said.
‘Well, I know that,’ said Sam, ‘but what I really want to know is – why?’
‘Because we’re going to need some shelter tonight,’ replied Skipper, ‘so I’m going to build us a tree house.’
Sam looked at Skipper, tilted his head back to look at the top of the nearest pine tree, then turned to look back at Skipper again.
‘A tree house,’ he said. ‘Up there?’
‘Well, it’s a tree, isn’t it?’ said Skipper patiently. ‘And I’m going to build a house in it. So that makes it a tree house.’
‘But,’ protested Sam, twisting his neck to look back up at the top of the tree again, ‘that’s impossible. It’s too high.’
Skipper threw her bundle of bracken down at the base of the tree and put her hands on her hips. ‘For someone who’s gone from riding his bike down the road to getting locked in prison, thrown in a tank of mosquito larvae and escaping from giant ants in a horsefly, I’d have thought you’d have learned to be a bit more cautious with your use of the word “impossible”.’
Sam had to admit she had a point.
Ten minutes later he watched in admiration as Skipper raced quickly and easily up and down the huge tree trunk carrying bits of wood and bracken tied to her back with lengths of vine. He tried to help at first, but after several failed attempts at climbing the tree, Skipper suggested he collect materials on the ground while she got busy with construction up at the top.
To watch her work was, quite simply, breathtaking. She had no fear of heights and leapt from branch to branch fifty metres or more above the ground, apparently unconcerned that one slip would almost certainly result in death.
In less than an hour, she had constructed a wooden platform wide enough for two people to lie down on comfortably and a canopy of bracken which curved over the top to provide shelter from the elements. She then helped Sam find footholds in the tree trunk and showed him how to pull himself up by the thick aerial roots until he reached the rope ladder which she had taken from the horsefly. Helped by Skipper’s shouts of ‘That’s it!’ and ‘Don’t look down!’ he carefully made a slow and cautious ascent to the top of the tree.
‘This is amazing,’ said Sam. He bit into the mushroom-like flesh of one of the wild truffles that Skipper had unearthed from the forest floor and savoured its rich, musky flavour. ‘Is there anything you can’t do?’
They sat cross-legged on the platform of thick branches, a woven tapestry of wood that Skipper had broken from the upper canopy and collected from the forest floor. A soft breeze ruffled Sam’s hair and as the sun began to set the clouds that hung over the horizon coloured a deep red. He looked out across the treetops towards the mountains that lay like sleeping beasts in the gathering darkness.
It was silent for a while and then Sam tapped the newly constructed platform with his knuckles and looked across at Skipper. ‘Where did you learn to make something like this?’ he asked.
Skipper swept her arms out, indicating the trees that surrounded them. ‘Right here,’ she said. ‘This is my home.’
Nineteen
‘Some years ago, men from one of the forest tribes were walking through the trees looking for food when they heard a sound that made them stop and listen. It was quite faint at first, but the more they listened, the more they realised that it wasn’t a normal forest sound. Eventually they tracked it down to the foot of a tree.’
‘What was it?’ asked Sam, intrigued.
‘It was a baby in a basket,’ said Skipper. ‘Left there by its mother in the middle of the night.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Sam. ‘Why would anyone do a thing like that?’
‘Well, there was a war on,’ said Skipper, ‘and a lot of bad things were happening in the villages and towns. Perhaps she was in danger and wanted to try and save the baby’s life. Maybe she hoped to come back for the baby when things quietened down.’
‘Did she come back?’ asked Sam.
‘No,’ said Skipper. ‘She never came back.’
‘What happened?’
‘The tribal elders agreed that they would look after the baby until it was old enough to fend for itself.’
Sam nodded thoughtfully. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Skipper. ‘It was me.’
There was silence for a moment, broken only by a breath of wind that moved softly through the forest like a sigh.
Skipper drew her knees up under her chin and looked out across the treetops to the dark plain and the mountains beyond.
‘I became one of them,’ she continued. ‘I learned how to forage for food, to climb trees and to move quickly through the treetops when there was danger. I learned how to disappear into the foliage and blend in with the bark so that no one even knew I was there. And I learned how to build a tree house that would keep me warm so that when the winter storms came howling through the forest I would be safe and dry.’
She was quiet for a moment and Sam could see her blue eyes fixed on some point far away in the past, staring down the tel
escope of years at the way things used to be.
‘The men told me I was a gift, a blessing bestowed upon them from out of the darkness, but something made me think that they didn’t know the whole truth. I saw Arbous, the tribe elder, watching from the shadows when I asked questions and I felt he knew more than he would speak of. The men were dark-skinned, but when I drank from the woodland pools all I saw was a reflection of blonde hair and blue eyes. I knew that I was an outsider, that I didn’t really belong.
‘One night, while the others were asleep, I looked down from my sleeping platform and saw Arbous beckon to me from the foot of the tree. I followed him and we walked for nearly an hour until at last we reached the edge of the forest. We crossed into the fields and eventually came to a small grassy mound where a patch of white daisies were scattered like snow. Arbous said, “This is where I buried your mother.” I remember I cried then. I don’t know why really, because I never knew her, but he put his arms around me and we talked until morning.’
Sam found that he had stopped breathing in case his breaths should disturb Skipper’s memories, like pebbles thrown into a pool.
‘Do you know how she died?’ he asked at last.
‘She was shot by Odoursin’s army. As they retreated from Vahlzi they plundered many Mazrian towns and villages, including my own. My village was burnt to the ground and, as far as I know, I am the only one to have survived. Arbous told me that I must have been spared for a reason and that it was my destiny to find out what that reason was.’
‘But why did Odoursin want a war in the first place?’ asked Sam.
Skipper tucked a stray wisp of blonde hair behind her ear and smiled. ‘Time for a quick lesson, I think. Let’s start with geography.’
‘OK,’ said Sam.
‘Aurobon – the world we’re in now – has secret pathways leading to your world through a series of what we call “fabric gaps” in the universe. The people of Vahlzi – who are descended from the Olumnus tribe – work as part of a large force which operates secretly on Earth to ensure that things in your world don’t get knocked out of kilter.’