Despite Dalvor urging him to do otherwise, Cringor had taken David into a separate room, empty besides a decanter of the watery red liquid, and two glasses, sat on a small, stone table, with a stone chair tucked in at either side. He had encouraged David to sit, poured the red liquid into two glasses, and handed one to David. They toasted to their deal and David sipped gingerly from the glass. The drink had a sweet, lively taste to it, reminding him in some way of strawberries, but not quite.

  'So, what do you know about the General?' he asked.

  Captain Cringor took his seat opposite David and drank heavily from his glass.

  'David, you're right. Noah Fallon is on this planet, but I urge you not to go on after him. Go home, it will be much safer for you and the doctor.'

  'Go home? David yelled. 'What the hell for, Cringor? I came to rescue the General and that's what I'm gonna do!'

  'I admire your tenacity, David, but I really think...'

  David slammed his fist against the table.

  'You listen to me, man. I'm going after the General, and that's that. You gonna tell me or not?'

  Cringor looked down at the table and sighed.

  'Yes. Yes, I suppose I better had. We made a deal after all.'

  David listened to everything Cringor told him about Noah Fallon, and The general’s presence on Asylonia. He listened especially to the repeated warning that danger lay ahead should he and Rochelle continue with his mission.

  'Look, that’s just a risk I’ll have to take. I’m not leaving this damn planet til The General is right by my side ' David told him. 'Now, where's Rochelle?'

  'Balzor has escorted her back to your vehicle to fetch your supplies. He'll be returning for you any moment now.'

  David nodded subtly but beamed inside, certain that nothing more would get in the way of rescuing The General.

  Now or never, David.

  XXXIX.

  Cringor took David's empty glass from him and placed it back on the table, before leading the human out into the larger room. There, as promised, Balzor stood by the door, waiting.

  They rode Balzor's pediracer back up the dark, dungeon-like corridor, up the steps and along the narrow corridor with the steel doors and naked light bulbs, until they were back in the foyer of the Exchange, soaring over the heads of busy traders.

  'Well laddo, this is yer lots from me. The lassy knows where yers goin' from 'ere.' Balzor said as he landed the pediracer by the door of the building.

  'Thanks buddy, much appreciated,' said David, slapping Balzor across the back playfully, then leaping to the ground and racing out of the building to find Rochelle.

  She was sitting on the stone bench facing the Delphi, looking up at it, head in hands.

  'Hey, you,' she smiled, and stood up to meet him.

  'Hey, what's going on?'

  'Well, I need a hand getting my supplies out of the car, if you don't mind?'

  David said that he did not mind at all, and followed Rochelle to the Delphi. She climbed inside the car and passed him the medical crates out of an open door.

  They worked until sunset, heaving medical supplies to the office complex, up two flights of corrugated steel steps enclosed in an ill-lit stairwell, and into a long, empty room. Within that room was a smaller room, a supply-room-cum-office with a desk and a small window. Through the window, they could see directly into a second office with two desks, one empty, one home to a baby-blue skinned Askarian female, ratting away at a computer terminal. Having placed the medical supplies in the small room, David and Rochelle made their way back to the exchange to collect six beds, twenty four sheets, twelve blankets, twelve pillows, twenty four pillow cases and six small steel boxes which would temporarily perform the role of bedside tables. They set the furniture in place, with room for three patients on either side of the room, made the beds, and placed the spare sheets, blankets and pillowcases in the supply room.

  Dinner consisted of two large hunks of bread, beans and a decanter of the sweet tasting, blood-red liquid. It was eaten outside a large sandstone hangar, the shape of a pentagonal prism, which made for David's workspace. They sat on the ground, scooping the food out of metal dishes and into their mouths, watching the sun as it hid behind the sand dunes, leaving behind a sky of navy blue infused with streaks of hot pink and white. Neither of them said much of anything, each plotting, planning, daydreaming. David began to see the damage done to the Delphi in his mind, saw himself fixing it and flying off, he and Rochelle heading back to the Boscayg jungle, where he thought he might find Noah half-crazed, like some kind of Colonel Kurtz figure. He tried to conjure up the ghost of Alan Attreus, but the Wing Commander was having none of it.

  Don’t look at me, son. You’re the engineer here, you know exactly what to do. Go on and get to it.

  For her part, Rochelle was concerned only with taking a mental inventory of the symptoms which plagued Cringor's father, and of the medicine needed to cure him. She said a silent prayer, asking whatever God there might have been to channel himself through her, so that she could be used to heal the sick and dying of Askaria.

  Please, God, I really need you right now. Let my thoughts be your thoughts. Let my actions be your actions, and please, let me do this without killing anybody this time.

  Nerves got the better of Rochelle, ruining her already meager appetite. She rejected the rest of her dinner, then stood up and gave David a hug, partly for luck, partly for reassurance, mostly because she needed to. Leaving him to his work, She made her way back to the office block, told the old, mauve-skinned Askarian on the front-desk that the doctor was ready to receive patients, and made her way up to the ward.

  Cringor's father was the first to be brought in, helped along by Cringor himself. He and Rochelle helped the sick Askarian to a bed, and sat him in a comfortable position.

  'I'll be back to check on you later, father,' Cringor reassured him. 'The good doctor here will have you back to your old self in no time, won't you doctor?' He flashed a smile at Rochelle. Her instincts refused to accept it as genuine. For reasons beyond her understanding, that flash of typewriter-teeth repulsed her. She fought against the instinct to barf, and instead smiled a smile equally as insincere.

  'Oh, yes. Yes, of course.'

  Her skin crawled at the touch of Cringor’s paw on her shoulder.

  'You really don't know how much this means to me,' he told her, and sounded as though he meant it.

  Cringor turned to leave, holding the door open as his colleague ushered in a sick looking female, the colleague's mother.

  As the night wore on, four more Askarians were brought to her for treatment. All six displayed similar symptoms; the soft, fury flesh, aching coughs, and leakages of that thick, grey-coloured liquid. She prescribed a modified Acetaminophen substance to ease their discomfort, and began running tests on each of them, working towards a concrete diagnosis which, in a perverse way, made her happy. Her six patients had an infection. More importantly, they all had the same infection, one she had seen before, and had treated successfully.

  With her patients dozing, Rochelle crept quietly across the ward into the small box room that was her office/supply cupboard. She hummed to herself as she reached into various boxes, pulling out one lot of medine, then another, then stopping, frozen dead in her tracks by the sound of a male voice.

  'It will end badly, I tell you,' said the voice.

  Rochelle shot a glance behind her. Nothing there. Hanging on to the door frame, she peeked out into the ward.

  'Did one of you say something?' she asked.

  No answer. She went back to work, pouring two liquid medicines into one container. The voice spoke again.

  'No, no. That’s definitely not a good idea.’

  Heart pounding and nerves shot to hell, she spun round again. This time, she found the source of the voice. It was coming through the small window in her room. Rochelle looked through it. The baby-blue Askarian had vacated her post, yet the desk which had previously been empty was now occupied by a male figure with his back to the window. Against the stump of flesh where his right ear should have been, he held a round disc, large enough that the bottom of it went past his chin. A telephone of some kind, Rochelle thought.

  'I don't know why they didn't just say “no”,' the creature said into the disc.

  Rochelle moved quietly, her hands busy in preparing the antidote, listening in on the phone call.

  'That's what I'm telling you. Two humans, one male, one female, came around looking for Fallon,'

  Rochelle paused dead in her tracks. She shook herself quietly and continued to listen and work at the same time.

  'No of course we didn't tell them his location. You paid us handsomely to destroy that ship of his. Do you really think we'd betray you guys by sending his cavalry right to him?'

  Rochelle bit her lip. Her fingers trembled. She knocked a bottle of medicine from table, and scooped down low to catch it just before it the ground.

  'I was about to tell them that we hadn't seen him, hadn't even heard of him, but Cringor came up with another story altogether. Yeah, you heard me. Told them Fallon had gone mad and was hiding on Boscayg. Deep in the jungle, that's right.'

  Rochelle rose up, banged the back of her head against the underside of the table, and gnawed her bottom lip again to stop the scream escaping her mouth. The sound of human skull smacking against wood made a loud thump which disturbed the creature on the other side of the window. Dalvor stood up and turned around, glared through the window, saw only a room full of boxes and returned to his seat.

  'What? Nothing. I thought I heard something, that's all. Why did he? He had to come up with something. The female is a doctor of some kind, claimed she could fix up Cringor's old man. You know how attached he is to the old bastard. If you ask me he wants taking out back and shooting. What? No, not shoot Cringor, his old man!

  ‘Look, what can I tell you? Cringor wanted that medicine something fierce. So it was a done deal. The old guy gets fixed up, and, what? Yes, and we get away without betraying you, but look, if I were you, I’d get your men down to Boscayg. I don’t think this kid is gonna give up. So you’d better get out there, and see to it that they don’t come back here asking any more questions. What? Oh, you’re welcome. Anything for our favourite clients.’

  Rochelle looked in disbelief from the window, to the jar of medicine on the table. Her first thought was to flee, to run right out of the building, and tell David to get them the hell out of there, yet as she stepped back out onto her ward, something stopped her.

  Six sick Askarians looked up at her with hope in their tired, old eyes. She could not just leave them. It was no longer about getting something out of a deal. It was no longer about redeeming herself for past mistakes. It was about helping the sick because it was the right thing to do.

  Saying nothing, she took out six syringes and filled them with the antidote, then walked around the ward, administering them one by one to her patients, pressing the flat of her hand against their foreheads as she drove the needle into their deltoid muscles.

  Having injected the final dose, she disposed of the needles in a trash can, and headed for the door. Turning back to face her patients one last time, she whispered to them.

  'Now, I want you all to get some rest, and I'll be back very soon to check on you.'

  Rochelle Asa then stepped out into another endless corridor of steel doors and naked light bulbs. Gathering her bearings, she looked left, looked right, and felt like jumping out of her skin as the door beside her opened. Dalvor stepped out of it.

  'What the...what are you doing here?' he asked her, his voice one of fear and alarm.

  'You! You liar!' Screamed Rochelle.

  'But..'

  The crack of Rochelle's forearm across his throat interrupted his sentence. Dalvor grabbed his neck and sank to his knees.

  'And you can tell Captain Cringor his old man is going to be fine. He and the other five patients in there. Leave them to rest and check on them in the morning, they should be perfectly fine after that.’

  'Ah..' coughed Dalvor.

  Rochelle cocked her foot back.

  'In the meantime, here's something to remember me by.'

  She swung her foot forward and kicked him square in the gut, then turned and charged down the corridor, out into the ill-lit stairwell, and down two flights of corrugated steel steps. She ran across the street, past the Exchange building, over the communal meeting area, and towards the sandstone hangar, where she found the Delphi floating in the air, anchored to the ground, with David stood underneath on a stepladder.

  'David!' she yelled through pronounced, whooping breaths. 'David, we have to go!'

  'Yeah, sure. I'm almost done, ‘Chelle,’ he replied, transfixed by his work, not thinking to look at her. ‘Let me just give her a full tank of fuel, then we're off to the jungle.’

  'No!' Rochelle yelled back at him, racing over to the ladder and taking the cuff of his trousers in her grip. 'No! We're not going to the jungle.’

  The alarm in her voice broke the Delphi’s spell over David. Tucking a wrench into the pouch of his dungarees, he climbed down the ladder and placed his hands at the sides of Rochelle’s arms.

  'What do you mean we're not going to the jungle? We have to, ‘Chelle. We have to go get The General.'

  'Yes, David, but we’re not going to find him in the jungle. He isn’t there!’

  She was crying now. Pure release, all her uneasy feelings and fear of the Askarians finally overwhelming her. David drew her in and held her close.

  'What are you talking about, Rochelle? What's happened?'

  'Oh, David! I overheard Dalvor talking to someone on the telephone, or something like it. He said that Cringor made up the whole thing about Noah being in the jungle just so I would help his father,'

  David sighed. What he would have given not to believe her. She sobbed in his arms, her warm tears falling on his shoulder, removing any doubt.

  'And did he say where The General really is?'

  'No, not even on the phone. He just made it very obvious that he isn't in the jungle, David. We've been lied to.’

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ David groaned.

  ‘And that’s...that’s not all,’ wept Rochelle.

  Steadying his emotions for the moment, David tenderly ran his one clean thumb down her cheek, clearing away a tear.

  ‘No? What else, Rochelle? What is it?’

  She buried her face into his chest.

  ‘Dalvor, he said that whoever he was on the phone to had paid the Askarians to destroy Noah's ship. So whatever has happened to him, they're to blame. He also told them to head out to the jungle to, well, to kill us I suspect.’

  David’s composure shattered.

  'You’re friggin’ kidding me?' he snapped. 'C'mon!'

  He let go of Rochelle and started towards the door of the hangar. Rochelle reached out to grab his arm.

  'Wait! Where are you going?' she cried after him.

  'To find out what the hell is going on, and get the truth out of these assholes,' David said, and was about to add that he would stop at nothing to get the truth, when the door to the hangar flew open and Cringor punched him in the face. Balzor and Dalvor strode forth behind their leader.

  David fell to the floor. Three Askarians charged towards him. He swiped his feet at Balzor's legs and took him to the ground. Dalvor pounced. David rolled onto his back and sprang up, kicking his aggressor in the gut with both feet. He leapt to a stand, only to receive a second blow from Cringor. Balzor crawled to his feet, and hooked David's arms. Cringor began to use David’s stomach as punchbag. Every strike sucked more and more air from his lungs. His ribs stung and abdomen throbbed with a bitter pain.

  'I'll tell you what's going on, David,' Cringor smirked, as he dropped another blow into David's stomach. 'It's the end of the road for you and your doctor friend.'

  In the midst of the chaos, Rochelle sprang up the step ladder, leapt into the cockpit of the Delphi and fired her up. Balzor and Dalvor ducked as the jetcar swooped low towards them. Cringor dove out of harm's way before Rochelle could decapitate him. The anchor trailed behind the jetcar. David grabbed it and held on tight as Rochelle pulled him to safety. He shimmied up the rope of the anchor and climbed in beside Rochelle.

  As Cringor, Balzor, and Dalvor reached for their guns and took aim, Rochelle Asa and David Attreus took off into the night.

  XL.

  If David and Rochelle had left Askaria with their faith still grounded in Cringor’s tale, the little fuel they had would have sufficed. As the night passed, growing darker, and then gradually lighter again, the starved Delphi carried them out towards the Boscayg Island. Rochelle piloted. David sat beside her, nursing his wounds.

  He felt embarrassed, not that he had been beaten up, but that Rochelle had seen it happen.

  ‘I could have taken them,’ he insisted.

  ‘I know you could, David,’ she said with a smile that was entirely genuine.

  By the time Boscayg was behind them, the Delphi’s fuel gauge had dropped dangerously to the zero mark. The repaired jetcar coughed and sputtered like the sick Askarians they had left behind. David pressed his digits into Ganesha. The portable computer sifted through her memory banks and pointed out the nearest city.

  David read out the directions. Rochelle followed them, taking them slowly and steadily down to the nearest skyway, and off again, into the city. They held on as the dying vehicle jerked and bobbed to its final resting place at Phil’s Fuel and Diner.

  XLI.

  Noah Fallon hurried down Churchill Avenue with a bottle of gin wrapped in a paper bag and tucked inside his jacket, and a limp cigarette smouldering between his lips. With the last toke, he flicked the cigarette into the gutter and turned up the steps of the theater.

 

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