Ellie Quin - 04 - Ellie Quin in WonderLand (3 page)

‘No, Jez…you can’t just open-’

Jez had started to open a crate. She slipped aside the locking latches and the lid popped off with a hiss of stale air. ‘We’re just snooping Ellie girl, not stealing anything. Just snooping.’

'That is so-o-o-o wrong!'

'But fun! C'mon Ellie, don't be such a limp-gimp. Get your buns over here before I stamp my feet.'

Ellie reluctantly joined her and looked down inside the crate. It contained an array of parcels of different sizes, most of them swathed in transit-wrap; sheets of green plastic with triangular air blisters that squished and popped satisfyingly like boils. One of the parcels was wrapped in colourful patterned paper. Ellie could imagine it being a child’s birthday present from an auntie on another planet.

‘This feels so wrong.’

‘Yeah, yeah, blah-blah-wrong-blah-blah-blah,’ Jez said absently as she pulled another package out. She peeled the transit-wrap away and pulled out a small plain brown box with a label on the side. ‘Oh, deary, dear!’ she giggled. ‘Alien Sex Vids. Somebody’s a very naughty boy.’

Jez delved in again, like a child rooting for presents beneath a Christmas tree. She pulled out another and removed the mail-wrap. ‘Ohmygod! It's Soyko Chocco! Do you know how
expensive
this stuff is?’

Ellie remembered in one of the sopa-drams some character buying a box of Soyko for a woman he wanted to bed; a week of his janitor’s wages for just a tiny little box of the stuff. The candy was potent, loaded with dopamine hyper- stimulants specifically designed to arouse women. To men it was just sickly sweet pink stuff. To woman it was cat-nip, a guaranteed headspin in handy candy form.

Jez ripped the package open and broke off a square of the pink chocco bar and popped it in her mouth. Her eyes closed blissfully.

‘Jez? See, now, we
ARE
stealing!’

‘No we’re not,’ she said dreamily her eyes still closed. ‘It’s all to be recycled anyway you big gumbo.’

‘Uh?’ Ellie took the pen-torch from Jez’s limp hand and flashed it over the crate’s label. She was right. The crate contained system mail that had insufficient credit-stamping to reach its intended recipient. This lot, all of it –
birthday presents, sex vids, pervy chocolate - was headed to the System Mail depot on Gateway to be trashed and recycled.

Jez was rubbing herself up against the crate, like a cat against a scratching post, almost dry humping the thing. ‘Ohhh, this is totally drool!’

Oh, puh-lease…
.

If it was all going to be junked, then Ellie felt a shade less guilty about dipping into the crate herself. So she did, her fingers
eeny-meeny-ed
their way across the various parcels, turning them over, squeezing them. She wanted to open one that had come from afar. From beyond this system. A parcel that had actually
gate-jumped
.

She found one. It was plastered with several holographic system stickers. It had clearly gate-jumped a number of times before arriving here.

The cost of sending this modest sized parcel would have been prohibitive to someone. And now, unfortunately, whoever it had been intended for was never going to get it. Carefully she peeled open one end of the wrap and shone the torch inside.

She could see a loose bundle of shiny cards. She recognised them for what they were, cellu-film images. What oldies sometimes called
photographs
. Older people seemed to like their memories preserved in these solid-state images, as opposed to storing them on datapads and skipping through them on a holo-display or a toob.

Somebody’s holiday snaps?

She pulled one of them out, expecting to see a grainy image of happy holiday makers standing proudly before some glorious multi-starred sunset. Instead what she held was a stark image of a
grotesque
. A human face, but barely recognisable as such. It was twisted and mangled, in places clusters of lurid purple coloured tumours bulged and dangled from the flesh.

‘Oh, that’s just gross!’ she muttered.

‘Uh?’ Jez mumbled dreamily.

Ellie pulled out another grainy image. This one seemed to show what looked like a large ditch filled with sacks full of something. Food perhaps? Synthi-grain? She looked more closely. On one side of the ditch, she could just about make out what looked like a disheveled stack of lumber.

But not lumber. No. She looked more closely and thought she recognised limbs. Human limbs.

Bodies.

They were bodies. Stacked like pieces of firewood. Dead people.

Just then a klaxon sounded inside the hold. The ground beneath their feet vibrated and juddered.

Jez stirred from her chocolate-induced reverie. Her eyes opened wide. ‘Shizola! What’s happening?’

Ellie glanced at the small porthole and saw the stars were panning to the right. ‘I think we’re turning.’

Jez pocketed the rest of the Soyko bar and rushed to the porthole to get a look outside. ‘You’re right! I think our convoy is finally getting ready to move!’

Ellie tucked the horrific images back into the parcel and sealed the mail-wrap back up. She had no idea what she'd glimpsed, why someone would want to send such horrific images to someone else. She tossed the parcel back into the mail crate just as Jez let out a squeal of delight.

‘LOOK! ELLIE! COME HERE AND LOO-O-O-O-K!

‘What is it?’

Jez turned to look back at her. ‘Duh! Have a guess you dittohead! Get over here and check it out!’

She hurried over and jostled for space alongside Jez to get a look out of the small round window; cheek rubbing cheek, their noses both pressed against the glass, their breath making foggy patches, they caught a first sight of their destination.

‘Uh…’ Ellie frowned. Confused.

‘Whuh?’ Jez turned to her friend. Confused. ‘Gateway? I thought it was way-y-y bigger than that.’

Ellie shook her head slowly. ‘Umm…I don't think that's Gateway.’

OMNIPEDIA:

[Human Universe open source digital encyclopaedia]

Article: The Legend of Ellie Quin
>
Gateways: the system link network

The thirteen hundred worlds of Human Space at the time of Ellie Quin were linked together by a network of system gateways. These were the old Hawking-Voltram fold-space fields loops; circular energy irises that contained a singularity tuned to an exit iris in another system. Most colonised solar systems had at least one gateway that linked them into Human Space. Solar systems not linked in this way, were those that had yet to be developed and populated enough to make it cost effective for The Administration to do so at great cost.

Gateways were thus run by The Administration as a way of collecting entry/exit tax revenue, but also as way of policing and controlling the movement of citizens. The threat of 'locking down' a Gateway was often more than enough to dissuade any local planetary or system authorities from notions of insurrection or independence.

While the Gateway itself was run by The Administration, often the ring-like structure with its artificial gravity attracted a 'bolted on' conurbation of businesses and corporate interests. Built around the ring, in many cases these eventually became whole free-floating cities in space.

User Comment
>
DarkSpaceGobbler

I herd the rings was named after some Old Earth scy-ence dude from like the 23rd century or sumting. He invented stuff.

User Comment
>
Girl495889

DarkSpaceGobbler, your simple minded 'tardo comment is wrong. The ring technology was based on theoretical work by a scientist from the
21st
century, called Stefan Hawking. And FYI he was a
she
. Get your facts straight before posting.

User Comment
>
BungerHungerLolz

Helloooo gentlemens! Is your sex drive failing you? Do you wish you could make love all night long like a true God!? Then try
CosmoRod Stim-Shakers
. Three strokes and your partner will be in seventh heaven!

User Comment
>
AngerMouse

Does anyone actually bother policing the comments on Omnipedia? These porno spams keep popping up everywhere. My sex drive is FINE thankyou. Don't need stims.

User Comment
>
XXX-come-buy-XXX

AngerMouse, want to buy black market alien sex tapes?

CHAPTER 4

The door to the automated barge cranked slowly downwards and clanged noisily against the metal floor. The echo boomed out into the darkness beyond.

It was pitch black outside, lit only by the rotating orange hazard lights on the roof of the barge.

Ellie stepped down the ramp, the heels of her platform boots echoed hollowly, ominously. Jez joined her at the bottom of the ramp and panned her pencil torch around.

Their beams of light picked out grimy metal walls, a cluster of packing crates in one corner, loops of cable and a stack of carbo-ply building panels, all covered in dust.

‘It's a cargo bay,’ said Ellie.

‘Geee, you really think so?'

Ellie panned her torch around. ‘Looks like it hasn’t been used for a while. Why did they drop us here and not at Gateway?’

Jez shook her head. ‘Dunno. Maybe they just got fed up with us.'

Ellie suspected the freighter's captain had figured out he was carrying fugitives from the law, that or had begun to worry they might be carriers of some kind of virulent plague. Either way it seemed he'd decided to ditch them.

Jez curled her lips at the dust and grime. ‘And where the freg is ‘here’, anyway?’

‘Some place that looks like it’s been abandoned.’

‘Great.’

Behind them, the automated barge sounded a soft insistent beep, and the amber warning lights stopped rotating and began to blink. It was getting ready to leave.

‘We could get back on it,’ said Jez.

'And when the crew find us, they’ll just send the barge right back here again.’

Or worse
.

Ellie stepped off the ramp, onto the floor of the cargo bay. The ramp’s motors were already whining; getting ready to lift up. Jez joined her, stepping out into the gloom. ‘Well if we're staying we better find the exit quick-ish.’

Ellie presumed -
hoped
- the cargo bay’s inner and outer bulkhead doors wouldn’t open simultaneously while there were still people inside, blasting them out into space. A safety precaution she was pretty certain all non-planetary
installation cargo bays must surely have built in. She wasn’t inclined to hang about and test that theory though.

‘Over there!’ said Jez.

Ellie followed the path of her torch beam and spotted a small sealed hatchway marked with an Exit sign above. She was relieved to see a small blinking green light beside it.

It was powered.

At least this place wasn’t a derelict structure. She recalled Captain Darcy from Space Fugitive (Jez’s 2nd favourite sopa-dram) saying that this system had quite a number of mothballed installations. Periodic cycles of boom and bust tended to result in dozens of ambitious projects being left half-built, abandoned and floating in orbit, patiently awaiting more favourable economic times before they were dusted down and finished off.

But then again it was just a day time soap opera. And Captain Darcy wasn't real.

They walked quickly across the bay towards the exit, while behind them the automated barge had decided it had waited around long enough. The ramp began to crank upwards with the noisy growl of neglected servo motors.

Jez quickly hit the switch beside the green light and the airlock hatch rattled open. They stepped through into the airlock beyond and it closed again behind them. Several pallid strip lights flickered and winked on as the girls looked back through the thick glass of the door at their barge as the ramp sealed shut with a heavy clang.

‘There goes our lift,’ said Jez sombrely.

The roof of the cargo bay hissed clouds of gas as large pneumatic pistons pulled open the inner bulkheads. The barge lifted up slowly with roaring thrusters pummelling the floor. Ellie could feel the vibration of that drumming through the floor, through her platform boots, tickling her toes. She craned her neck to watch it gently rise into an outer bay. Another hiss and cloud of gas as the bulkhead swung down again and she finally lost sight of the barge that had brought them here.

Muted now, they heard the faint cranking of outer doors opening and the roar of decompression. The rumble of the barge's thrusters was suddenly gone, swallowed up by the vacuum beyond. She felt the slightest vibration once more as the outer doors closed.

It was deathly quiet and unnervingly still.

‘We have been totally fregged-over,’ said Jez. ‘The captain, that fat rat-face dill-head took the money and totally humped us.' She growled. 'We should be at Gateway not at this dump!' She swung a limp kick at the wall beside her. ‘Two minutes…that’s all I’d want; two minutes with my fist and his fat flabby arse…’

What if this place really is derelict?
Ellie began to feel the tremulous start of claustrophobic panic.
We're gonna die in here!

Just then they heard a
thunk
. It came from beyond the small hatch at the other end of the airlock. They heard a mechanical whine and Ellie guessed it must be the door on another connected airlock, opening.

Okay. Maybe it's not totally derelict
.

Then another sound, a light
tap-tap-tap
of approaching footsteps. The girls looked at each other anxiously.

‘At least it’s not
totally
abandoned.’ Ellie forced a look of relief onto her face. ‘At least there's someone else here. That’s good. Right?’

Jez cocked a brow. ‘Just our luck, it’ll be some lonely psycho axe murderer.’ Her bravado seemed to falter for a moment as her dark eyes rounded. ‘Just like that perv-slasher holodram we watched a while back? Remember? What was it called?’

Ellie remembered watching it, and still rather wished she hadn’t. ‘Uh…
Lonely Psycho Axe Murderer
, wasn’t it?’ She bit her lip. ‘Or something like that.’