Helix Wars by Eric Brown

to look at what had excited them: far away, kilometres across a flat valley bottom, he made out the tiny vehicles of the invading army; he heard the retort of their weapons and, seconds later, saw small puffs of smoke as villages or towns were destroyed.
    He’d passed out again, and some time later awoke to see the façade of the castle rearing up before the minuscule cart. As he lay on his back, staring into the air, his view of the wall was almost vertiginous. The edifice had been chiselled from the very face of the cliff itself, and seemed to rise forever, ending in a succession of towers with, high above in the twilight, the loop of the Helix’s third or fifth circuit – he was unable to tell which – catching the last light of the sun.
    Then they were rattling over a stone road and entering a vast airy space the size of a cathedral which was merely the entrance hall to this magnificent edifice.
    After that his memory misfired. He had sequential recollections of being lifted gently from the cart, of his saviours coming to him one after the other and mouthing soft words of farewell before he was carried rapidly off. He recalled glimpses of pink marbled corridors, helical stairways, and long cloisters. But interspersed with these images of the castle’s interior, he recalled scattered glimpses of paradisiacal gardens and flamboyant flowers, of darting birds and droning insects, and periods where he was left by himself in these strange places before being borne away again. At one point he was in a narrow chamber, on a hard stone bench, surrounded by a dozen Phandrans in red and green robes who stared down at him while murmuring amongst themselves.
    He passed out, and when he came to his senses he was once again outside.
    The nausea had passed, thankfully. He no longer felt the urge to vomit, and the headaches had passed too. As if to compensate for his partial recovery, he could feel an increased pain in his ribs and right leg.
    He was propped up in a bed, and he was indeed in a garden. He was alone in a clearing of short crimson grass fringed by tall, slender trees with drooping frond-like branches. Flowers of every shape and colour grew amid the trees, and the air was filled with birdsong. He stared up into the air, looking for the next circuit of the Helix. He was on the roof of the castle.
    A silver bird darted towards him and inserted its long curved beak into a tangerine trumpet bloom growing nearby. It hovered with the aid of two pairs of wings, and Ellis could only stare at it in amazement.
    He looked down at his body for the first time since waking. He was naked; his flightsuit had been removed, and something placed over his ribs – not so much a bandage as an amber substance which felt wet on his chest and yet glistened like shell, which nevertheless allowed his chest to rise and fall with every breath. His right leg was similarly encased. The flesh of his arms and legs was patched with ugly red sores, and he wondered if these were the result of the pod’s acidic digestive juices.
    Across his loins – suggesting that modesty was not solely a human affectation – a length of white material had been placed.
    He considered the blue aliens, wondering why they had invaded this peaceful world, and if the authorities back on New Earth were aware of the violation.
    He returned his attention to the bird. It had supped its fill of the bloom, and he expected it to fly off to the next one. Instead, and before he could react, it darted towards him, slipped its beak between his lips, and squirted honeyed fluid into his mouth. He had no choice but to swallow, shocked, and watched as the bird darted off and vanished into the trees.
    He wondered if the fluid was a sedative, for minutes later he began to feel lethargic. He smiled to himself at the strangeness of this world, then closed his heavy eyes and slept.
    A sound awoke him. He sat up. The sun was high above. Birds called in the clearing, and the air pulsed with the