by Nick Cook
‘Just keep going – you’ve got this,’ I replied.
Her nostrils flared, dislodging a few bees. ‘Damn, this is so bloody hard.’
‘I know, but please keep going if you can. If the bees can act like sentries, they can attack any hornets that manage to break through my tree barrier.’
‘But you do know there are a crap load of hornets out there – and we have a limited amount of bees from this one hive?’
‘Then make each and every one count. Everyone in here is relying on you, Chloe.’
‘Yeah, same old.’ Chloe screwed up her eyes tighter and the swarm rose from her with a murmuring buzz to land on the knotted branches of our fortress.
The gnawing sound outside was growing steadily louder and the branches had begun to vibrate now. Like stars in the night sky, points of light began to appear to reveal the hornets chewing their way through. Soon they’d be attacking us if Chloe didn’t stop them.
Apart from the soft buzzing of the bees, the only sound from inside was the laboured breathing of thousands of Awoken, waiting to see how this panned out. No one spoke – because what could you say at a time like this?
John tightened his arms round George and kissed the top of his head.
The weight of all their lives pulled on me, such responsibility dragging me down to the depths of despair.
A massive thump came from outside our wooden fortress and the trees shook as wind swirled past. People leapt up, arms extended, ready to let loose their sparks at whatever new monster was about to rip through the trunks of the trees to get at us. Instead, three flashes of light followed by Gem, Ethan and Sarah, from Gem’s Panda team, materialised in the middle of the clearing.
‘What happened?’ Chloe asked.
Ethan hitched a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The jump went slightly sideways and we appeared a good five metres off the ground. You probably heard the container crashing down just now.’
My gaze tightened on Gem – and hers on me. There was fierce love in her eyes, I was sure of it, but also the unspoken accusation that I should never have sent her away in the first place. But then she looked away, searching around, and put her hands on her head.
‘Hang on, where’s Pete?’ she said.
Sarah, with tears rolling down her cheeks, shook her head. ‘He was attacked by hornets the moment we teleported in and I had to—’
Gem crossed to her and hugged her hard. ‘You did what you needed to do.’
Sarah pulled away and nodded, smearing her tears away with her hand.
I stared around at the living wall of wood between us – our only defence. Yes, we could teleport away, but what then for the remaining islanders?
My determination hardened. ‘We need to get out there to activate that Waverider.’
‘You’ll have to be quick – those things are already cutting into the container as if it were soft cheese,’ Ethan replied.
I shifted my vision to the Light Web. Beyond the knot of trees, I could see the container in the field, a shadow hornet swarm thickening around it.
‘I’ll teleport in there and activate it,’ I said.
Ethan shook his head. ‘Jake, you know what we were talking about – about you trying to do everything yourself…?’ He grinned at me and, with a flare of light, vanished.
‘God damn him!’ I said.
Chloe stared at the empty air and then turned in the direction of the container. ‘He and I are so going to have words about this.’
My attention tore back Ethan. Within the Light Web, I could see him standing within the Waverider container.
A tight ball of hot plasma was already rushing round in a circle, indicating that its fusion reactor was online within the torus-shaped ring. The only problem was that the steel walls protecting Ethan from the hornets were being rapidly destroyed.
‘We need to give Ethan the time he needs to get the Waverider fully operational,’ I said.
Gem stepped forward. ‘With all due respect, you all look shattered. Let me go. You know I can do it.’
‘Please be careful out there.’
‘I always am.’ In a flash of light, she vanished. The next moment, her angel song seemed to fill the world.
Thousands of faces looked towards the knitted tree walls as everything apart from the song went eerily quiet. John smiled at his son and ruffled his hair.
Tears pricked at my eyes as I glanced at everyone around me, a fierce sense of love filling me up.
So many lives… Then through the holes in the branches, golden light blazed – a shining dawn in the darkness of the Shade night.
Chloe whooped. ‘He’s done it!’
Hands shaking, I crouched down and drove my fingers into the dirt once more and started to withdraw the energy from the trees to channel it back into the surrounding landscape. The wood began to shrink back and gaps appeared between the tree trunks.
A golden sun was racing away and smouldering embers drifted down from the sky to settle like volcanic ash over the encampment, not a hornet to be seen. The Shadowlands had been swept away.
The expanding wave of energy from the Waverider raced outwards across the sea, heading for Alderney and the other Channel Islands, until all sat under a massive glowing golden dome of light.
For a moment no one said a word, and then there was laughter, tears and people hugging each other.
Gem transformed back from an angel as she landed and ran to the container. She swung open the doors peppered with holes. She disappeared inside with another Awoken squad leader and a moment later she and Ethan reappeared and headed back to us.
‘That was too bloody close,’ Ethan said.
I tried to stand, but my legs trembled.
‘Let me help you,’ Gem said. She put her hand under my elbow. With her support, I staggered out of the wood and stared around at the aftermath of the battle.
Eaglehurst was still burning, dead bodies strewn across the encampment. For a moment that was meant to be a victory, there was no joy in this.
Captain Ericsson emerged from the woods and took in the vista alongside me. ‘The ugly cost of war, Jake,’ he said with a sigh.
I stared up at the sky. ‘But we survived to fight another day and that also matters.’
Ericsson nodded and patted me on the shoulder, before turning away and shouting orders to his soldiers.
Chapter Fourteen
I sat on Allan’s bench looking out at the view, surf rolling in over the rocks far below.
In the forty-eight hours since the Shade’s attack, it had been agreed that staying on the island would be too risky now that the Shade knew where to find us. We’d been shifting our centre of operations from Eaglehurst to Culham, while picking our way through the remains of the encampment and retrieving any personal possessions we could find to return to the victims’ families. I felt it was my duty to talk to each and every one of them about the losses, but we simply didn’t have the time. General Hammond, who’d arrived shortly after we’d ended the fight, had personally assured me that he’d send trained liaison officers to all the relatives – including those of the lost sailors on HMS Iron Duke.
Footsteps approached and I looked up to see Kelly in way better shape than she should have done – thanks to Gem’s help while she was in hospital. Kelly carried a cat basket containing Midnight. Staring out between the bars, he seemed less than impressed about his journey.
My gaze flicked away to the ruined remains of Eaglehurst and then back to Kelly. ‘How you doing there?’
She flapped a hand towards her destroyed home. ‘As heartbroken as you’d expect.’
‘I’m so sorry, Kelly.’
‘Don’t worry – a building, even one as special as my home, can be rebuilt – but it’s all the people who died here that really matter.’
‘Tell me about it…’
Kelly sat down on the bench next to me. ‘So what about you, Jake?’
‘Barely able to sleep if I’m honest. I just want to work out where
we went wrong.’
‘There’s nothing that anyone could have done differently. There was a risk that the Shade would eventually track you down here. But the one important thing to come from all this is the people who survived. You have trained for this fight and have shown the Shade you won’t be beaten.’
‘But we lost so many…’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I know.’ She patted my hand.
Ethan appeared on the brow of the gentle hill and headed down the slope towards us. Domino was circling round just behind him, sniffing patches of burned grass.
Kelly picked up Midnight’s basket and stood. ‘I need to get the last few things organised before leaving. I’m going to sail Moon Dancer over to London and stay with some friends there.’
‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Ethan said.
She smiled at Ethan. ‘It’s what I need to do at least – get some space from here for a while.’ As she passed, Domino and Midnight sniffed each other through the basket’s wire mesh door.
Ethan and I watched Kelly go.
‘Poor woman.’ Ethan turned back to me. ‘Anyway, I came to say that everything has been transferred to Culham and we’re ready to move out.’
I patted the arm of the bench. ‘I’m going to miss this place.’
‘Me too. Eaglehurst has felt more like a home than anywhere I’ve been in my whole life.’
That wasn’t particularly hard to imagine when Ethan had spent a fair chunk of his life on the streets of London. ‘Home is where the heart is and all that stuff.’
‘True, but as far as I’m concerned you guys are my family. So as long as I’m with you all, that’s where my home will be.’
I stood and stuck out my hand to him. ‘Here’s to friendship.’
Ethan nodded and shook my hand. ‘Exactly. You see, you and I are on the same page about most things.’
‘Apart from?’
‘Apart from the fact I don’t run away from the woman I love.’
‘Not you too. Chloe has already given me a hard time over that little matter.’
‘And she should, because you’ve been acting like a world-class jerk towards Gem.’
‘It’s not as though I don’t realise that, Ethan.’
‘At least that’s a start.’
‘Look, I know. But here’s the thing – I haven’t got the emotional energy to get involved with anyone who might be stolen away from me at any moment.’
Ethan shook his head. ‘Jake, maybe that’s part of your problem right there. You try to control everything, which might work for organising a group of people into a psychic army, but not quite so effective when it comes to issues of your own bloody heart. For what it’s worth, I’d say chill a bit around Gem and see what happens. I reckon it will be all good.’
‘You think?’
‘Mate, I’ve sort of known that for a fact because of what Chloe and I have. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, especially if it is all about to end. Anyway, enough of this man-to-man chat.’ He patted Domino on his head and the dog wagged his tail. ‘Me and my furry friend here are ready to depart. How about you?’
‘Just give me one last moment.’ I gazed around us at Alderney and its battle-scarred landscape. I was going to leave a chunk of my soul here on the island. Maybe if everything turned out well, we’d all return one day and help Kelly build a new home.
I turned back to Ethan and nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
He held out his phone showing the industrial interior of the Culham Fusion Centre.
I stared at it, absorbing every detail and concentrated my mind. In a flash of light, the island around us disappeared.
This was the first time in months that I’d been back to the experimental fusion plant at Culham. Activity echoed throughout the building as Ethan and I walked through a large room filled with pipes and heavy-duty machinery.
Both of us were sporting ID badges on blue lanyards, which we’d been presented with as we’d materialised at the designated jump point within the building. This was all part of Hammond’s extra security – which had been significantly heightened after the attack on the island. It seemed we weren’t going to shake the government’s influence anytime soon, and maybe also their paranoia about us, especially after I’d single-handedly destroyed one of their frigates.
It had been agreed that we needed to accelerate the roll-out of the Waveriders to major cities around the world. If the Shade had grown confident enough to attack us so blatantly, it seemed nothing was out of their reach.
We left the building and entered an even larger temporary structure that had been set up by military engineers especially for Dad and Claire. It was filled with people standing at a production line, working on building L1, L2 and L3 Waveriders.
Each Waverider machine consisted of a chrome sphere mounted next to a small fusion reactor. A network of conduits connected each machine to a control station with a monitor screen.
On a previous visit, Claire had told me that this production line operated twenty-four hours a day and now I spotted at least fifty silver torus rings stacked off to one side. Through a large door leading outside, we could see assembled Waveriders in blue shipping containers being loaded onto flatbed trucks. Next to them, squads of Awoken assigned to the finished Waveriders were boarding military vehicles. From here they would be driven to the nearby military Brize Norton airbase and then airlifted out to major cities all around the world.
Gem and Chloe headed towards us.
‘Good to see you guys,’ Chloe said.
‘You too. How’s it going here?’ I replied.
‘Organised chaos would be one way to describe all this, but we have good news and your timing couldn’t be better,’ Gem said.
‘Good news would be nice for a change,’ I replied.
‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed – but we need to grab Martin and Claire first,’ Chloe said.
‘Has anyone told you that you’re a tease, Chloe Haze?’ Ethan replied.
She fluttered her eyelashes at him. ‘Well, you don’t normally complain.’
With a grin, Ethan wrapped his arm round her shoulders and we walked along the production line together.
Gem caught my eye but her gaze quickly slid away. I felt a little twist of guilt inside. Despite everyone’s pep talks, I still couldn’t bring myself to make a gesture. Not yet – maybe not ever.
We rounded a corner to see Dad and Claire poring over some schematics on a table.
Claire spotted me first and turned Dad round to face me. ‘Will you look who’s here?’ she said in her soft Irish accent. This was the first time in months I’d seen Dad’s old friend and now reinstated chief government scientist.
Dad’s face lit up as he saw me, and he rushed over and pulled me into a back-slapping hug. ‘So great to see you, Jake.’
‘You too,’ I replied, hugging him back. But seeing Dad brought the anguish about everyone we lost crashing back. All I wanted to do was hang on to him and not let go, but I forced myself to break away.
Dad stepped back and his mouth turned down as he took in my expression. ‘I’m so sorry, Jake,’ he said, reading my mind like only a parent could.
I caught the concern in Gem’s eyes as she watched and that only made me feel worse.
‘I’m not sure I’m ever going to get over it, Dad.’
Claire squeezed my arm. ‘But at least you managed to stop another Shade attack in its tracks.’
I shrugged. ‘That’s something. But we know the Shade are up to something even bigger with whatever this Dark Sunset plan of theirs is. If the attack on London last year was just a distraction to keep us busy, I can’t imagine how awful Dark Sunset is.’
‘That brings me to the good bit of news we mentioned,’ Chloe said. ‘Although we may have lost Sentinel’s main mind when Eaglehurst burned down, taking DT3 with it, his micro mind here has been continuing his work. That includes cracking the encryption of the Lodestone with the sequence we recovered.’
‘I
keep forgetting Sentinel wasn’t completely wiped out when Eaglehurst was destroyed,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ Gem said. ‘This micro-minds thing is very confusing at times.’
‘It’s easier if you think of Sentinel as being omnipotent – able to be everywhere rather than in one place,’ Chloe said.
‘Still sounds like techno babble to me,’ Gem said.
‘I sympathise, because in a way it is,’ Claire said. ‘The Angelus ability to create an AI such as Sentinel is so far beyond human knowledge that it isn’t funny.’
‘It’s just as well he is so advanced, because his micro mind here messaged me right before you guys turned up. It seems that he’s about to crack that Shade encryption any minute now. Follow me – we’re going to want to be there for the big moment.’
She led us towards a two-storey Portakabin that had been set up in the corner of the temporary Waverider production building.
‘Excuse the mess before you go in there,’ Dad said.
‘For such a brilliant man, he has to be one of the most disorganised people to share an office with,’ Claire said.
Dad pulled a face and held up his hands. ‘It’s my system – OK, a disorganised one – but it works for me.’
‘Based on chaos theory, right?’ I said.
He snorted. ‘Something like that.’
Every surface in the temporary lab was piled with papers and half-full coffee cups, and Dad’s handwriting filled whiteboards on every wall with equations, notes and diagrams. One table had been cleared, and on it sat the Lodestones that we’d captured from the Shade. My heart lifted as I looked up and saw Sentinel’s face on a monitor watching us as we entered. But I needed to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t our Sentinel.
‘How are you doing there, mate?’ Ethan asked him.
‘Much better than my core AI. Unfortunately, his final memories aren’t available to me as he didn’t have a chance to upload them before Eaglehurst was shelled.’
I sort of envied Sentinel that. If I could wipe my memory of what had happened on Alderney, I’d do it in a second.
‘So Chloe tells us you’ve made something of a breakthrough with the Lodestones?’ Dad said.