Engineman - Eric Brown [129]
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 bastards 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 pass. 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 hell 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