Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky (11 page)

Just goes to show…you never know
. All the same, she was going to miss the little creature. That brave little creature.

Poor Harvey.

She spotted a food supplies vendor, and pushed the trolley across the concourse towards the stall.

CHAPTER 19

He spotted her almost immediately as she, and her tall friend, emerged from the hangar. Amongst the thick crowd of shuttle delivery men, and farmers and outbackers in for the day to pick up essentials, they stood out.

They stood out way too much. Dangerously so.

He watched them discreetly from across the concourse as they discussed what to do. It was pathetically obvious what their plan was; to replenish their supplies and then go out into the bland wilderness of this planet and what? Hope things would blow over?

Things had suddenly become very dangerous. Somehow the Administration had caught wind of his plan, and they had released their hunting dogs after her scent. They weren’t going to rest until she was dead, and her corpse sealed up and returned to their labs to study.

How the hell did they manage to track her down so damned quickly?

Millions of Paternity Requests,
millions
of them. Millions of mid-term fetuses shipped to planets throughout Human Space. How did they pick out the right child so damned fucking quickly? How did they manage that?

Mason cursed under his breath. The fact was they were onto her already. Unless she found a way off the planet immediately they were going to acquire her very quickly, and many, many years of preparation, a lifetime’s work, would be wasted.

He watched the two girls split up, the taller one heading further down the concourse leaving Ellie Quin on her own.

Good.
The tall one with her bright look-at-me clothes was like a damned beacon, begging for attention. He followed Ellie as she moved slowly through the crowd, her mind it seemed, a trillion miles away. She needed to be more alert, paying attention to her surroundings.

Ellie Quin, you need to be much, much sharper than this.

Now that the Administration seemed to be aware of his plan, everything was different. All bets were off. Mason knew he needed to act quickly to get her as far away as possible. The Administration were most probably already preparing to lock down the entire planet. That’s how they worked. Not subtly, not when they needed to fix something. Their efforts would be overt, excessive with scant regards for lives lost. The disinformation would all come later; blaming any body count, any explosions, or a massacre of innocent bystanders on some separatist group or anti-administration terrorists.

And Ellie - the poor girl was so unprepared for this. There should have been a lot more time for her to mature, to ready herself, with him watching over her development, perhaps even directly mentoring her. But they had taken him by surprise, arriving out of nowhere, descending on Harpers Reach and zeroing in on her so terrifyingly quickly. Time had suddenly run out for her, for him, and she was going to need all the help she could get to stay ahead of them now.

He watched her barter for some food supplies; sacks of that appalling protein sludge that most people on this world seemed to eat routinely. And then she checked the time.

Yes, girl…time is running out for you. Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock
.

There wasn’t much of it left; the hunting dogs were bound to be here in this city already and quite probably had already detected her scent.

*

Ellie looked at the trolley. She had bought as many sacks of the paste as she had money for. Eight heavy sacks of the stuff. Each one would probably do her, Jez and Aaron two weeks. She decided to return to hangar 47, it was two hundred yards back up the concourse. The sooner she and Jez were back in the hangar and aboard the shuttle and ready to go, the better.

She pulled the trolley round and steered to one side of the central throng of people, hugging the wall behind the stalls out of the main flow of ambling foot traffic, doing her best to make her way back unnoticed, unseen.

As she passed behind a long stall, its large back wall shadowing the narrow walk space behind it, she felt a hand on her arm. She spun round, her mouth agape, one hand raised and ready to lash out.

An old man stood before her, the face vaguely familiar.

‘Ellie, if you want to live, listen to me now,’ he said quietly.

‘Wh-who are you?’ she muttered nervously, her heart pounding almost as much now as it had done amongst the ruins of the weather station.

‘It doesn’t matter who I am. Who
you
are, is far more important.’

‘What? Why?’

‘I don’t have time for that now. Listen to me very carefully. I’ve arranged a way off of this world for you.’

‘Huh?’

‘Harpers Reach is about to be closed down, quarantined. Right now there are military ships heading this way and within hours, sometime this afternoon, maybe even sooner, the planet will be thoroughly blockaded. Nothing will be allowed down to the surface, nor up into orbit,’ said the old man hurriedly. ‘And this is all because of
you
.’

‘Oh my crud,’ Ellie whispered breathlessly. ‘What have I done?’

‘Just listen. A surface-to-orbit barge is waiting for you in hangar 113. I paid an enormous sum for them to accept you and one other as
un-credited cargo
. But they won’t wait for long. I’ve warned them about the impending quarantine and the owners are understandably anxious for their barge to leave as soon as it can.’

With that, the old man checked the time. ‘You have just over forty minutes left until they go without you. And they will, Ellie, if you’re not there on time.’

Ellie stared at him, the face was so familiar. She had seen it within the last week, perhaps two. ‘Who are you?’

‘Wrong question, Ellie,’ he replied. ‘You should be asking, who are
you
?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You are special. I made you what you are.’

Ellie frowned, confused.

‘You are so important. And you need to understand why. Here-,’ Mason handed her a small data disc. ‘When you have time, play it. But not right now. Now you must decide which of your two friends you will take with you.’

Ellie shook her head, confused, beginning to feel a growing surge of panic. ‘I’m not leaving either of-’

‘Good God!’ the old man hissed angrily. ‘You need to start being smarter than this, girl. Think!!! Which of your two friends do you trust the most? Which of your two friends can offer you more protection? Which of your two friends has the most skills that you can use to survive? You need to be asking yourself these sorts of questions. You don’t have the luxury of friends, Ellie. From now on its about survival!’

The old man quickly cast a glance up and down the shadowed walkway behind the stall. ‘Once you’re off this world Ellie, you have a chance of shaking them off. It’s a big untamed universe out there. They will struggle to find you, but they’ll keep looking for you, keep looking for you until they find you again.’

Mason’s expression softened. ‘I’m so sorry. They were never supposed to find out, not until it was too late. But they have, and that means you’re in terrible danger, Ellie.’

He grabbed her shoulders firmly. ‘Once you’re out there, ‘ he said nodding upwards, ‘stay away from the older, more stable worlds…seek chaotic places, worlds in turmoil, at war.’

‘There aren’t any wars,’ said Ellie.

The old man shook his head. ‘That’s what they’d have you believe, Ellie, when you calmly sit at home and watch holovision - that everything is okay, at peace. But it’s not. There are many worlds fighting brutally for their independence. And you must thank your lucky stars that, right now, that’s the case….because in places like those you will have a chance to hide from
them
, you will find allies, people willing to help you stay hidden. Now please hurry up and…’

Ellie shook her head. ‘Who are
they
? Please tell me.’

‘Any world government, any authority,
the Administration
…it’s all of them you need to watch out for Ellie. You must stay away from them until you are ready.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘Listen to the disc, later, when you’ve time. Listen to it carefully. Now, you must go back to your shuttle, bring with you the friend you can trust the most, and get to hangar 113 before the barge goes! Do you understand?’

‘Are you coming?’

‘No, I’ll have to find my own way. It’s you that’s important right now. You, not me. Do you understand?’

Ellie nodded uncertainly, ‘will I see you again?’

Mason shrugged, ‘who knows?’ He looked around anxiously. ‘They’re already here in Harvest City, you haven’t much time. Now please, go!’

CHAPTER 20

Deacon stood over the control desk of the port guidance system and studied the various flickering displays. There were over a hundred of them.

‘So think man, what vehicles have you seen come in this morning?’ he asked with growing irritation.

The port controller looked up at him, his eyes shifting from one of the armed men to the next, clearly unsettled by the sight of them. ‘M-many orbit-to-ground ones this morning. A l-lot of small travelling vehicles.’

‘I’m after a white colored surface shuttle. Quite an old model.’

The controller nodded, eager to please, ‘Yes…y-yes..I’ve had some sh-shuttles come in…v-various colors.’

Deacon attempted a disarming smile to encourage him. The fool was gibbering nervously like an idiot. The port controller was no use to him like that – too willing to say
yes
to any question asked. With hindsight, striding into the control room brandishing his credentials and flanked by armed mercenaries had probably been overkill. The port controller was trembling with fear, no doubt convinced that one of his little side-deals with black-market traders had been discovered.

‘Look, all I’m interested in is a particular shuttle, ‘ said Deacon. The port controller seemed to relax a little on hearing that. ‘Have you seen a
white
shuttle come in this morning? On the tail-plane and the wings it’s marked
Goodman Tours
.’

The controller took a moment to consider the question. ‘Uh…no, hang on! Yes, I th-think so. Yes, I think I-I saw a
white
one not long ago.’

Deacon placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure about that?’

He nodded.

Deacon smiled and patted him encouragingly. ‘Good, very good. Now, if it wasn’t too long ago, can you remember which hangar?’

The controller shook his head anxiously, bit his lip as he tried to recall.

‘No, I thought not,’ muttered Deacon. ‘I presume you have monitoring equipment in every hangar?’

The controller smiled uncomfortably. ‘In most of them, w-we do.’

Most of them
. Yes, of course. It wouldn’t be
all
of them. Deacon knew the way things worked on frontier worlds like these. There was always a little room for contraband to exist; a little margin for illegal trades, non-taxed goods. And that all happened in the few hangars where the monitoring equipment and surveillance cameras was supposedly ‘awaiting routine maintenance’. The man fidgeting uncomfortably in front of him was no doubt skimming a little goodwill off of that.

‘Well let’s run through the monitors that
are
working first then. See if we can find that white shuttle still docked. Alright?’

The controller nodded.

‘A white surface shuttle is what I’m after. See what you can find. Leonard?’

‘Yes Deacon?’

‘Give him a hand.’

The young lad settled in a seat beside the agitated controller and began to cycle through the monitored images of each occupied hangar. Deacon gazed at the flickering screens, as images of various vessels appeared one after the other on screen as they cycled through each surveillance channel

They’re here somewhere. I know it.

They had come to Harvest City alright. Deacon had learned to trust his instincts; those, and Leonard’s unique gift to crunch data and spot patterns in chaos, had so far steered them correctly, right across the galaxy to this planet.

And they’d landed bang on the money.

Yes, that bloody shuttle was here somewhere.

*

Ellie hurriedly pushed the trolley inside the hangar.

‘What’s the matter Ellie-girl?’ called out Jez as she struggled after her with several swollen plastic shopping bags.

‘The three of us have to talk, Jez, and
quickly
.’

She pushed the trolley across the floor of the hangar and, with a final burst of effort, up the ramp at the rear of the shuttle and into the passengers’ suite. Jez labored inside after her and, with a gasp of relief, dropped the bags to the floor.

‘What’s the matter El’? You look like you’ve been mugged by a ghost.’

Ellie looked around. ‘Where’s Aaron?’

She hurried across the hold, opened the hatchway leading up into the cockpit and saw him checking the refueling status on a display panel. ‘Aaron!’ she called out, ‘we need to talk!’

‘Just a second,’ he grunted back at her.

‘No, it needs to be
now
!’ she barked.

Aaron turned round with a concerned look on his face. Ellie realized she had all but screamed at him just then. The desperation in her voice was beginning to frighten her. He made his way back to the aft of the cockpit.

‘What’s the matter?’ The expression of concern on his face suddenly intensified. ‘Crap! Have you seen them? Are they here?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No, I dunno, maybe. But there is something else I need to talk to you about urgently. And Jez too.’

She beckoned Aaron into the hold. Jez and Aaron stared at her. ‘What’s happened?’ asked Jez.

‘That man who let us run for it, Jez? You know, back at the weather station…the mercenary?’

She nodded.

‘There are others. Others trying to help me. There’s a surface-to-orbit barge waiting for me in a hangar up at the other end of the port. It’s waiting to take us up into orbit, to a freight ship. Someone has paid a lot of money for that, and it’s only going to wait another,’ Ellie checked the time, ‘another half an hour.’

Aaron and Jez looked at each other.

‘Ellie, this could be a trap,’ Aaron said. ‘Has someone just approached you?’

Jez looked sharply at him and then turned back to Ellie. ‘Or it might
not
be a trap. You’ve got to go for it girl. That’s your chance!’

‘Ellie, you don’t know where that barge will take you! Perhaps out into the middle of nowhere, and they’ll finish you off there,’ he said.

‘Or, like that mercenary…this could be genuine; a chance for her to escape, Aaron. A chance to get away from whoever these…these people are!’

Ellie looked from one to the other. The decision, boiling away in her mind wasn’t whether to go or not. That decision she had made within nanoseconds of turning away from the old man and heading for the hangar. No, the decision was
who
she was going to take with her.

‘Ellie, this is not good. Who the hell did you speak to?’ asked Aaron.

‘A stranger, an old man. But I know his face from somewhere, I’ve met him before.’

‘What? Where? Think Ellie…where?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember!’

‘She’s got no choice Aaron. She
has
to trust him!’ Jez turned to Ellie, and for the first time since they’d met, Ellie saw tears in her friend’s eyes. ‘Don’t get me wrong, girl…I’m going to miss you an’ everything,’ Jez continued with a forced smile, ‘but you’re better off out there in the black than down stuck here.’

Aaron shook his head. ‘The man could be one of
them
…you know? One of those men who were trying to gun you down back there? This is no time to be reckless. We can hide out somewhere remote and let this thing blow over!’

‘We’re utterly fregged if we stay here!’ Jez shouted. ‘How long do you think we’ll last hiding out there in the fregging desert?! As soon as we come back to here for more supplies or New Haven, they’ll have us!’

Ellie checked the time once more. It was running out for her.

*

‘Hold it!’ said Deacon. He walked across the floor to study the display in front of the controller. But by the time he got there, the man had cycled forward through another two or three hangars.

‘Go back!’

The controller tapped an icon on screen and stepped back to the previous image, an empty hangar.

‘Again.’

The image changed to show a shuttle, distinct with its pug nose and stubby delta wings. By the dim light in the hangar it didn’t look as brilliantly white as it had out in the desert against the dark purple night sky. But that was definitely the one.

‘Zoom in on that,’ he said pointing to a company logo on one of the wings. The controller hit another icon on screen and the wing instantly magnified.

Goodman Tours.

‘That’s it,’ he muttered, a smile spreading across his lean face. ‘Which hangar is that sitting in?’

The controller checked another display. ‘Hangar 47. That’s down towards the far end of the concourse.’

Deacon studied the image for a few moments. He could see from the thick cord running across the hangar floor that the shuttle was refueling already. It wasn’t here to stay then.

‘Can you prevent it from taking off again?’

‘Uh…n-no, not really,’ the controller replied.

‘Well, can we get some law marshals down there right now!?’

The controller looked up anxiously at Deacon. ‘W-we could call the port m-marshal’s station. But he’s not often there.’

‘You have just one marshal on duty here?!’

The man nodded uncomfortably, his face pinching into a wince.

Deacon ground his teeth with frustration.
This whole damned planet is a waste of bloody space.

He stood up and turned round to face the mercenaries. ‘Right, let’s go. Hangar 47, now!’

He turned to Leonard. ‘And Leonard you keep watching that image, let me know if anyone enters or leaves the hangar.’

‘Yes Deacon.’

*

Twenty-five minutes left.

She had no idea how far up the concourse hangar 113 was, or how long it would take her to get there weaving her way through all those people. It was almost as crowded as the pedestrian ways back in New Haven.

Decision time Ellie.

That old man had advised her to pick someone she trusted, to pick someone who would best help her survive, who could do the most to protect her. He had advised her to be utterly selfish in deciding who of these two, her closest friends, should escape off-world with her. But there was more to the decision for Ellie, more to this than just her own survival. There was her family too. For the first time since scrambling for safety aboard the shuttle, it occurred to her that they might now be at risk too.

Why? Why? Why?
What was so special about her? She could think of nothing she had done, or said, or seen or heard, nor anything she could possibly do in the future, that would make her so fregging important that someone would travel the universe to kill her; that
a whole planet
might be quarantined just to trap her? Was her family in danger too?

They must be.

She realized that whoever she left behind, Aaron or Jez, she would beg them to do their best to look after her family. The question she had to ask herself
now
…was which one of them could do the most to look after them; keep them safe?

‘Jez, Aaron. The man said there’s room for only two of us to go,’ she said looking from one to the other, and realizing as she spoke, that she was already crying. ‘I can only take
one
of you, and the other…I’m begging, please…will have to look after my family.’

Both Jez and Aaron started to reply but Ellie
shushed
them with a raised finger. ‘I’m out of time!’ she cried. ‘I have to go now!’

They fell silent, as Ellie, still struggling inside with the decision, still not entirely sure which of them she needed by her side and which of them might best serve to protect her family…raised her finger. It wavered for a moment, almost as if it was doing the thinking for her.

Then her eyes locked on Aaron’s. It could only be Aaron.