Free Slaves of Elysium by W. S. Antony Page B

like wild animals the two fleeing females toppled helplessly to the ground.
    Â 
Chapter 5
    Â 
    Â 
    Jeni and Rebecca rolled in the sand, kicking and clawing at the nets that enveloped and entangled them. But the fine black mesh would not break and seemed to cling like a spider’s web, and they only succeeded in entrapping themselves even further. In moments their arms and legs were snagged and they were reduced to flopping about like stranded fish.
    Soundlessly, the gleaming disk settled on the beach a few paces from them, and through the mesh drawn across her face Jeni saw a section of the railing that ringed the upper curve of the disk fold out to form a short ramp. Then four of the craft’s crew clattered down it and ran across to where she and Rebecca lay helplessly cocooned.
    They were all men, tall and well built and clearly soldiers, yet like none Jeni had ever seen before. All wore what looked like synthetic white moulded helmets and body armour over simple red tunics that fell to mid-thigh. Greaves with extended knee guards protected their shins and they carried small oval shields buckled to their left forearms. Their helmets were straight-sided, incorporating cheek and nose-guards and leaving a slot for the eyes. They had ridges running from front to back across the crowns like vestigial crests. A saw-tooth pattern in green and gold decorated the edge of every piece of armour. Buckled about each soldier’s waist was a broad belt from which hung a holstered pistol, a small pouch, a long black baton and a dagger in an ornate sheath.
    The style of their uniforms had echoes of the classical world of the ancient Greeks, Jeni thought. But how could that relate to the flying disk, or the net guns that had so effectively ensnared her and Rebecca?
    One of the men, who had an eight-pointed silver star emblazoned on his helmet and breastplate, circled round them, hand resting on the butt of his pistol. When apparently satisfied they were secure he pulled off his helmet. He was clean-shaven and his burnished skin had a reddish tint. His hair was dark and close-cut, his eyes dark and intelligent, his nose long and somewhat aquiline. He looked down at Jeni and Rebecca with an alert, curious expression, the beginning of a smile curling the corners of his mouth.
    Rebecca, still swathed in her net, managed to struggle to her knees and glare angrily up at him. ‘Get these things off us!’ she snapped. ‘We’ve been shipwrecked. We need help.’
    The man, who Jeni took to be the squad’s commander, shook his head and spoke back in turn, the words fluid and moderately pitched but the language completely unfamiliar.
    Rebecca made the same demands in French and Italian, but with equal lack of success, and the commander said something to the others that set them chuckling.
    â€˜Don’t you understand, we need help?’ Rebecca shouted in frustration.
    â€˜I don’t think anybody here will understand us, miss,’ Jeni said.
    â€˜What do you mean? Of course they must! There’s always somebody in every country who speaks some English.’
    â€˜Not this time, miss. Not here.’
    Rebecca’s self-centredness had evidently blinded her to the strangeness of their surroundings, but a sense of dislocation had been growing within Jeni. The disparity between the soldiers’ uniforms and the flying disk, their peculiar language, the sun rising behind the island, all going back to their time deceived by a will-o’-the-wisp in the mist. There was an obvious explanation if one had the courage to accept it. She and Rebecca were no longer in the world they knew. They were somewhere... else.
    The soldiers were tugging at the nets, doing something that made them lose their stickiness and fall away. In a moment Jeni and Rebecca were free. Strong hands used to handling prisoners, Jeni suspected, pulled them to their feet. Eyes glittered through the slots of the men’s helmets, as