Engineman Part 26

Rhan whispered, "This way!"

They darted from the track and through the dense undergrowth. In the distance Mirren heard a sound that filled him with dread. The repeated blast of rifle fire crashed through the humid evening air.

As they ran, Rhan gave instructions to the second Lho, "We stand a better chance if we divide," he said to Mirren. "For the time being, farewell." And he was gone, slipping silently into the shadows.

The second Lho took Mirren's arm and continued with him through the jungle. They increased their pace. The rifle fire grew louder. Human shouts of triumph sounded close behind.

Then, up ahead, he saw a tall militia-man stand squarely in their path. He raised his rifle, fired. Mirren dived, but the alien was not so quick. Mirren hit the ground and rolled, looked up to see the Lho fall beside him, his shoulder shattered.

The militia-man strode towards them, rifle held at a negligent angle in one hand. He wore a bulbous helmet fitted with a com-system - which made him appear more alien than the Lho-Dharvo - and a mirrored visor concealing his expression.

Then, quite casually, he stood over the twitching alien and pumped two bullets into his skull. He turned to Mirren, gestured with his rifle.

Mirren climbed to his feet with his hands in the air. He stared at the silver visor, trying to look into the eyes of the man responsible for such barbarism, but all he saw was his own reflection. The militia-man prodded Mirren in the ribs, instructing him to turn and walk. He allowed himself to be marched through the jungle towards the waiting troop-carrier, choked with impotent rage at the death of the alien and the awful simplicity of his capture.

In the dark confines of the carrier he was shackled hand and foot. He had hoped to find Dan and the others in the hold, but he was the only prisoner. As the turbos roared and the carrier lurched into the air, a militia-man roughly pulled his head back and clamped a pair of goggles to his face, which sucked at the skin around his eyes and rendered him blind. He was aware only of the reek of sweat, the sound of the carrier as it mach'd over the tree-tops, and his increasing fear. Time pa.s.sed slowly - an hour, maybe more.

He was prodded from a fitful sleep. The turbos were whining down and the carrier no longer lurched; they had landed. Hands grabbed him and bundled him from the hold. He was marched across what might have been the tarmac of an airbase: he could hear the distant roar of jets and the rhythmic blatt-blatt-blatt blatt-blatt-blatt of rotor blades. of rotor blades.

The surface underfoot changed. The sound of aircraft died. He sensed an enclosed s.p.a.ce - the interior of a building. He was hurried down what might have been a corridor, then shoved in the back. He stumbled forward. A door crashed shut behind him.

He sat down on a hard bunk-bed.

The problem with the blindfold and the total silence within the room was that it turned his thoughts inwards, made him dwell on the atrocities committed by the Danzig militia in the jungle. In turn, he could not help but consider his own fate.

He had no idea how much time had elapsed when he heard the door open and more than one person, judging by the sound of their footsteps, enter the room.

"Take this off!" he said, plucking at the goggles. "At least let me see you."

"Be quiet. Sit down." The voice was stern, uncompromising.

Mirren remained standing. Someone - he felt sure it was not the man who had spoken - backhanded him across the face. He tasted blood in his mouth, staggered in the direction of the bunk and collapsed onto it.

"I am going to ask you a few questions, and I want immediate and truthful answers. If I don't like the answers you give me, I will have you shot." There was something so cold and emotionless in the threat that Mirren didn't for a second doubt the man.

A period of silence, then, "You were found with the Lho in the jungle. What did they want with you?"

Mirren hesitated. Even if he told them the truth, he doubted if it would help the Organisation's cause. But the thought of capitulating, bowing to the coercion of these thugs...

"Go to h.e.l.l!"

Silence. He trembled with fear.

The blow came, all the more shocking for being unexpected. Pain shot through his jaw.

"We'll try again, Mr Mirren. What did the aliens want with you?"

He heard the percussion of a safety-catch being switched, felt a cold circle of gun-metal against his temple.

He hated himself for giving in, but the instinct for survival overcame his conscience. "They... they wanted to get me to Earth-" He stopped himself.

"Why?"

"To tell the free worlds of the slaughter you're committing here."

Calmly, his interrogator asked, "And what did they tell you of this slaughter?"

Mirren remained silent.

"Did they tell you the reason for our offensive, Mr Mirren?"

He shook his head. "No."

He sensed his tormentors' retreat. A muttered discussion took place at the other side of the cell. Someone returned. Mirren was expecting another blow - not the fine, wet spray that filled his nose with a stinging, antiseptic scent.

He pa.s.sed out.

When he regained consciousness he felt lethargic, heavy-limbed, and filled with a curious sense of well-being. He also felt amenable. He knew, then, the nature of the spray.

"Glad to have you back with us, Mr Mirren," said the voice from the darkness. "Now, please, tell me who you met in the jungle and what they told you."

He felt as if he had been split into two separate ident.i.ties. One understood what was happening, and wanted more than anything to resist the drug, to tell his other half not to capitulate - but was prevented from doing so by an overwhelming lethargy. He heard his amenable self talking, telling his interrogator about the crashlanding and the trek through the jungle, his witnessing of the ma.s.sacre and his audience with the Lho.

"What did they want with you, Mr Mirren?"

"To get back to Earth, to tell the free planets what is happening here. And..."

"And, Mr Mirren?"

"They wanted to take me to their mountain hide, to commune with their Effectuators."

A silence. He could almost sense their antic.i.p.ation. "Where precisely is their mountain hide?"

This, Mirren felt, was what the Organisation really wanted. He comforted himself that the information he had supplied already would be of little use to them.

He shook his head. "I don't know-"

The interrogator said, "Where, Mirren? Tell me!"

"I said, I don't know. They didn't tell me-"

He sensed their impatience, their anger.

A silence followed, stretched, until it came to him that they must have left the room. Perhaps an hour later, they returned. He guessed he was in for another bout of interrogation. Instead, he felt something being fitted around his head, cold metal bands pressing against his skull, electrodes at his temples.

He knew what was happening to him, and felt relief that they were sparing his life...

He slipped into unconsciousness.

He came to his senses in a hospital bed in a room filled with sunlight. He tried to sit up. An orderly was on hand to restrain him, gently.

"Where am I?"

"On Earth, Mr Mirren."

He fell back, tried to collect his thoughts. His most recent memories were of Paris, the party before his last push for the Canterbury Line.

The orderly was explaining. "Your 'ship crashlanded on an uncharted Rim world, Mr Mirren. You were uninjured, but the trauma of the accident induced comprehensive amnesia..." The orderly went on, but Mirren wasn't listening.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Kelly brought the flier down on a spur of rock overlooking the ma.s.sed tree-tops of the jungle that extended towards the great ball of the setting sun. Ella stretched, her tired muscles protesting at the effort. The Engineman jumped from the flier and strode across to a rock pool, where he knelt and splashed his face with water.

Ella climbed out. The air was warm, still and silent. Inland, against the twilight, a range of mountains rose grey and imposing, their peaks jagged and faceted like knapped granite.

Kelly made his way back to the flier.

"You're awake at last."

"How long have I been out?"

"Around eight hours," he said. "See the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds got you with the old incapacitator."

She lifted her arm, peered at it. The skin was red raw and painful, as if boiled. "I'll live." She looked up at Kelly and smiled. "Thanks for saving my life."

"My pleasure, ma'am." He indicated the rock pool. "Water's wonderful if you feel like a swim."

Ella sat on the hood of the flier and held her head in her hands. "I'll pa.s.s. Don't think I have the energy."

"Food, then? You must be ravenous."

"Yeah, food'd be great."

She felt as if the trauma of the past two days - her injuries, the torture she had withstood, not to mention the mental torment of not knowing whether she was going to live or die - had finally caught up with her. Every centimetre of her body ached, the pain intense in her jaw, shoulder, and thigh.

Kelly was breaking out rations from the flier. He lifted a cooler on to the hood next to her. "In-flight meals for the Danzig Airways - liberated during a raid last week."

Ella opened a self-heating tray of meat and vegetables. They sat side by side on the flier, eating in silence for a while.

She hadn't introduced herself. "Ella Fernandez," she said through a mouthful of potato. "Pleased to meet you."

"Pleased to meet you, Ella. I'm Kelly. But I know who you are. Why do you think we staged the raid on the Danzig base back there? When we learnt you'd been captured, I thought your father would be grateful if we got you out."

She swallowed quickly. "You know my father?"

"We've worked together with the Disciples and the Lho these past six years. Devising strategy, tactics..." Kelly paused. "Six, seven years ago your father was becoming disillusioned with the Organisation - they'd taken over a couple of worlds further along the Rim and there were rumours of civil unrest and military suppression. He began to look into the Disciples. He read books, made contacts. We were suspicious as h.e.l.l of him at first. There he was, a Danzig executive, showing interest in Disciples' philosophy, declaring he wanted to join us..."

"But you let him?"

"He supplied information vital to the resistance movement. Over the next few years we worked together, became good friends."

Ella shook her head. "I never think of my father as having friends."

"He has. He's well respected." Kelly paused. "You know, he regretted that you and he weren't closer."

"He told you that?"

"It was always on his mind. He knew he'd made mistakes, but it wasn't easy for him, you know. His work for the Organisation took him away a lot of the time, and you drifted apart."

"You mean he put me in boarding school and forgot about me."

"He was a busy man, Ella."

She laughed. "Yeah - co-ordinating the take-over or destruction of the last of the shipping Lines-"

"That was a long time ago. He's changed. He knows that what he did then was wrong."

Ella whispered, "All I ever wanted was a proper father. He never gave me any affection. It was as if he didn't know how to."

The Engineman shrugged. "Perhaps he didn't," he said. "I think he only came to appreciate you later, once you'd left home. He kept tabs on you, you know? He had people report on how your work was going. He even bought a piece of yours."

"I know. I've seen it." She fell silent, staring at the sunset. At last she said, "Why didn't he tell me about his conversion back then? He could have told me years ago, when it happened." She paused. "If he'd told me six years ago, things would be different now."

The big American leaned back on the hood of the flier, propping himself on one elbow. "It was difficult, Ella."

She looked at him. "Difficult? How come? All it would've taken was a disc, a card even."

"I was with him during those years. We had to be very careful. If the Organisation had had the slightest hint of where we were, more than the liberation of Hennessy's Reach would have been at stake."

Ella stared at him.

Kelly said, "Not long after his conversion, the Lho who'd survived the plague summoned him. He had the right contacts across the Expansion, the right kind of knowledge, and the Disciples had the finances."

Ella shook her head. The thought of the Lho and her father, working in alliance...

"What did they want with him?"

Kelly said, "They wanted him to help them save themselves, the last of the Lho-Dharvo people. They took him into the mountains, where the survivors lived in a temple far underground, and they explained their situation..." He paused, considering. "When he came back, your father was a changed man. If anything, he was more committed, more determined to see the end of the Organisation. He never spoke about what he experienced in the temple, but whatever it was moved him profoundly. There were rumours-"

"Yes?"