Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn (6 page)

It
’
s so beautiful
. She wondered if the real universe contained any worlds or landscapes that were as visually inviting as this one.

‘Here we are,’ said Shelby. He reached for the handle of the thick oak door leading into her castle. ‘Your army awaits you.’

He pushed the heavy door inwards to reveal a small courtyard, surrounded by high pink crenellated walls….and there, before her, filling the courtyard, a carpet of fur and pairs of dark beady eyes that studied her intently.

She felt intimidated by the sight of so many of them.

It might not have been quite so bad if, under many of those pairs of beady black eyes, there hadn’t been lines of sharp jagged canine teeth protruding from bulging leathery lips, and further down, on the end of their short stocky, muscular, arms, long sickle shaped claws that looked like they could gut a person with one easy swipe.

‘They understand rudimentary english, by the way. You won’t get Frasier-level conversation out of them, but they’ll understand simple instructions. Think of them as children.’

Ellie nodded.

'Well there you go….they're all yours. So, what do I do?'

'You talk to them, give them orders.'

'Uh…so…' she clapped her hands together loudly, ‘uh, good morning everyone!’

‘Truly inspiring,’ muttered Shelby to himself. ‘You’d make Sun Tzu proud.’

For a moment her voice echoed unaccompanied around the square walls of her castle. Then as one, in a feminine-sounding chorus, they replied.

‘Good morn-iiiing General!!!!’

CHAPTER 8

Captain Tez ‘Big T’ Mahmoud should have been feeling immensely relieved. He
should
have been feeling a crud-load better than he was. His company freighter, like every other ‘delivery donkey’ in the system was parked along one of the many five mile-long radial docking arms of GateWay, unable to proceed about its business because of the system-wide quarantine being enforced. That meant he and his small crew were stuck here in this vast playground, on full pay of course, for the foreseeable future.

It could have been a lot worse. They could have been stuck on Holstein, where there was a planet-wide religious ban on alcohol and narcotics and a population of glum-looking pious cattle farmers. Or New Mercurio, a small super-heated world far too close to the sun, populated by ore refineries and an almost entirely male workforce comprised of snarling convicts.

GateWay, truth be told, was by far the best place in this system for him and his crew to be kicking their heels until the quarantine was eventually lifted. They had back-pay to spend and places to spend it; flesh-bars, PlusParks, Drinkos; a veritable orgy of hedonism for his crew to indulge in until either they’d exhausted their swollen credit accounts (and had to live back onboard the ship) or until things eased up across the system and they got company orders to saddle up and take their ship through the gateway. They had a cargo hold that was mostly filled with a consignment of refrigerated meat due to be delivered to the Neumann system at a grotesquely inflated price. Some senior ‘Suit’ in
Harmony Transport
’
s
HQ had probably already calculated that keeping this freighter waiting at GateWay, ready to go through as soon as the quarantine was lifted, made more economic sense than ditching the meat cargo and sniffing around for any crumbs of permitted business within the Seventh Veil.

So, Tez Mahmoud was stuck in quite probably the best place to be stuck in this little system. GateWay wasn't
just
the exit/entry portal for the Seventh Veil. Around the vast circular Hawking-Voltram fold-space field loop - a circular energy field that contained a singularity tuned to an exit field in another system - had developed a vast free-floating doughnut shaped metropolis. The centre of the doughnut, the hole, was of course the gateway itself. Since it also functioned as a powerful gravity well in the vicinity, it provided a useful uniform gravity ‘floor’ for the hoop construct built around it. And that’s why virtually every system
gateway in Human Space had become a free floating ring-shaped 'world' in its own right.

And Tez should have been as happy as a
kravitt in mutterjuice
(as his mom used to say) about being marooned here. Except he wasn’t. He was worried. Very worried.

He’d originally suspected that the old man who’d cornered him back on Harpers Reach in Harvest City port was attempting to cover up some personal scandal. Tez's first suspicion was that the dirty old bugger had something going on with one, or even
both
of the girls, and needed them to be gone…like, ghosts, like,
yesterday
. Gone As Far Away As Possible. That this was some seedy scandal he was trying to cover up.

Tez didn’t blame the old man. After all, the taller, sassy-mouthed one was an absolute
stunner
to look at. He’d been happy to back-pocket the ten thousand creds the old fool had pushed into his hands to drop the girls off at GateWay. It would be easy enough to get them past the freight verification officials. Even if one of their cargo pods was scanned and the girls found hiding inside, a small bribe, probably no more than a thousand, would get them through nicely. System migrants with a decent wad of bribe creds could pass as easily from one system to another as any legitimate traveller.

A one-k kick back if they got found at worst…and he'd still have nine ks in his pocket. A nice little earner, and, to be honest, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d smuggled migrants from this shitty system to one of the other older, more established and affluent systems.

But…only days after they’d set off from Harpers Reach to do their system-wide milk-round, the news had been all over the network. Quarantine. Captain Tez Mahmoud had been around the block a few times, long enough to know there was no lethal contagion going round.

That was grubb-shit. This was the Administration’s heavy hand coming into play. The fascist sons-of-bitches were either covering up some disastrous screw up of their’s, that, or they were after someone. If it was the latter, then more than likely they were after a bunch of those Awoken religious fanatics.

Which meant of course, every last goddamned official was going to be on amber alert, including those corrupt slack-jawed desk-monkeys in Freight Verification. No bribe-taking this time. For once, they’d be doing their jobs properly.

So Tez had himself a problem.

A problem he’d decided to resolve by dropping the girls off at the nearest viable location; that odd-looking half-finished installation. His sys-nav database had it down as some moth-balled commercial premises. There’d be life-support there of some sort, it might be rudimentary, but the girls would be okay until somebody eventually dropped by. And then they would be someone else’s problem.

However, since he’d unceremoniously ditched them, some rather unsettling rumours had begun to surface.
Rumours
…that was all, but as so often seemed to be the case with rumours, there might be a kernel of truth behind them.

Word on system-WhisperChat was that the Administration were after an Awoken terrorist cell; a cell preparing to carry out some horrific act of terrorism. And, making Tez just that little bit more twitchy, there was mention of…a
girl
.

A teenaged girl.

Now, he was sitting in a busy synthi-caff bar, looking out from his booth through a perspex bubble at the curving doughnut sky above, watching projected adverts for energy drinks and fashion-garb drift like lazy stratocumulus clouds along the artificial sky’s trans-radial axis.

What if that old guy wasn’t just some old pervert?

Shit
.

What if he had something to do with those fanatics?

Shit. Shit. and Double Shit
.

Tez was beginning to feel queasy; he was beginning to get that you-might-just-be-in-a-world-of-fregging-trouble queasy feeling that he hadn’t felt since he'd been a kid and been marched up to a Law Marshal by his mother for sneakily swiping creds off her card.

What if I just ditched an important terrorist?

It didn’t seem particularly likely. They were just two girls, for crying out loud, two very normal teenaged girls who seemed to be perfectly happy watching crappy sopa-drams and quizzies and singing along to dance-dub songs and giggling at stupid things his crew said to them.

But the taller one, what was her name
… ‘
Jaz
’
? Hadn
’
t she been suffering a gunshot wound?

At the time he hadn’t asked. Didn’t want to know. Didn't need to know. He’d helped the girl into the ships medipod and it had turned out fine. And anyway, Harvest City was full of all sorts of unsavoury violent types; drug gangs, mumps, pimps…sex-traders. In his head, Tez had what he thought was 'their story' nailed;
two girls, rescued from some sex-traffickers by some old man who wanted to help, but also remain anonymous….who maybe wanted to avoid a scandal.

The money in his back pocket, all ten k’s of it was beginning to feel like a curse. Like…like, what was that old kid's story?….Jake and The Beanstalk, or something? Jake stole a golden something-or-other and it screamed and awoke the giant?

That's what the money felt like, something screaming away in his back pocket, screaming out for someone to come and get him.

Tez Mahmoud looked around the busy cafe, wondering if anyone was covertly studying him.

What the crud have I gone and done?

CHAPTER 9

Shelby turned to leave her with her army of bears.

‘Hang on! You’re not staying?’

‘No, of course not. We agreed, Graham and me, that you girls are not to be assisted in
any way
. So,’ he saluted her, ‘the field is all yours General Ellie.’

‘But…but…’ she looked around at the rows of her midget warriors, watching her, waiting for instructions. ‘What do I say? What do I do?’

‘Command them, of course.’

He walked out of the castle courtyard leaving her with an audience of six hundred furry gremlins. The long drawn out, expectant silence was finally broken when the nearest of them stepped forward. ‘You are our leader. What is your name?’

‘Uh…it’s Ellie. Ellie Quin.’

‘
Ell
-
Ee
-
Kwin
,’ he repeated. Then again, louder for the others to hear. The other bears all muttered her name.

‘We will do anything you command of us,’ said the nearest one.

She looked down at it. ‘What’s your name?’

He cocked his head. ‘My fabrication identification number is 59 of batch 1. So I am 59-1.’ It’s high pitched voice seemed gender-neutral. She couldn’t decide whether to think of it as a him or a her.

She turned to another one. ‘What’s yours?’

‘I am 78 of batch 2. So I am 78-2.’

‘You…all of you,’ she raised her voice, ‘you all have fabrication numbers for names?’

Heads nodded like a mexican wave.

‘Hmmm…’ she turned to the plucky little one who’d broken the ice; 59-1 ‘Can I give you another name? I won’t remember a bunch of numbers.’

It’s face seemed to express something. What was that? A look of gratitude? Pride? ‘Of course, Ell-ee-Kwin. What would you like to call me?’

She mulled that over. For a moment there she thought about calling him Harvey. But then thought better of it. If this poor thing was going to be dead in the next hour, she didn’t really want to get too emotionally attached to it.

‘Are you okay with…Jonny?’

‘You wish to name me ‘Jonn-Eee’?’

She nodded. ‘Are you…you know,
male
?’

‘I have no gender. Jonn-Eee is a suitable name.’

She decided then that Jonny was a
him
. ‘Good. You’re going to be my second-in-command then, Jonny.’

‘Thank you, Ell-ee-Kwin.’

I actually
made
these things. I designed them
. She wondered if they even knew that. She wondered if they understood they were artificial life forms, that, in effect, she was their Creator. Their ‘God’.

‘So…’ she stepped forward, raised her voice for all the others to hear. ‘I…I’m uh, your
commander
. I’m in charge here. You…uh….
things
…all understand that?’

They chorused a reply. ‘Yes, Ell-ee-Kwin.’

‘Good. So…if I said jump on one foot. You all have to…’

Without being asked to, they were already hopping.

‘All right. Okay. Stop that.’

They were still once more. Ellie caught a smile before it became a foolish grin.

This is so drool
. She could imagine how intoxicating that could be; to command unquestioning obedience, to have absolute power.

‘So listen…we have a job. A
mission
, kind of. There’s this big red thing out there, it’s called a peach. You things know what a peach is?’

They stared at her.

‘There’s this big red and green ball out there. You know what a
ball
is, right?’

Their heads nodded in unison.

‘Good. Well…you have to roll that ball up a hill into this castle…this place.’ She turned to Jonny. ‘Do you creatures come with a list of things you know about?’

Jonny nodded. ‘We all have a standard language insert. We have an understanding of many things. I know what a ball is. I know what a castle is. I know what a chair is. I know what a…’

‘Okay, okay. Good.’ She turned to face the others. ‘Your mission is to get that ball in here. But there’s these other creatures out there that are going to try and stop you and…’

Be honest with them
.

‘…and hurt you.’

‘We are ready to fight for you, Ell-ee-Kwin,’ the bears chorused.

‘And die,’ added Jonny.

'Die?' She looked down at him. Taken aback by that. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

‘I am 59-1, Jonny. I am a product.’ He said that with a neutral tone. Like it was a stock answer, a placeholder soundbite for any client query that couldn’t be answered.

‘Aren't you, you know, like…a bit scared?'

He shook his head.

'Do you have
any
feelings?’