SkyWake Invasion

by Jamie Russell

“Fecht ictu,” hissed one of the Red Eyes in a mechanical tone that was strange and guttural, like Welsh mixed with Mongolian.

  “It’s just a radio,” the guard said, lifting it slowly into the air in an attempt to prove it wasn’t a weapon. His other hand still held the foot-long sub sandwich. That went into the air too. A stray meatball fell out and splatted on the floor in a pool of blood-red marinara sauce.

  For a moment, Pete wondered if this was all just a joke. It was the sort of prank Xander might put on his channel to entertain his subscribers. Yet something about it didn’t seem right.

  “Let’s talk about this…” The guard was trying to stay calm but was visibly shaking. Pete moved slightly, trying to get a better view of the cosplayers. As he did, the guard spotted him. The man’s eyes darted sideways, telling Pete to get away.

  Just then, the guard’s radio squawked back into life.

  “Mick?” said a woman’s voice crossly. “I can’t see you on my monitors. Where are you? You’d better not be snacking in the corridors again…”

  The Red Eyes’ grip on their weapons tightened.

  “Run!” the guard shouted to Pete.

  At the same moment, there was a whoosh that sucked all the air out of the corridor. Green plasma fire burst from a Red Eye rifle.

  Pete didn’t wait to see what happened next. He raced back the way he’d come, his brain feeling like it was about to explode with the insanity of it all.

  These guys weren’t Red Eye cosplayers … they were real Red Eyes!

  As he put his head down and tore towards the next junction, he heard that same whoosh as another plasma blast flew after him. He felt its searing heat on the back of his neck and threw himself to the ground.

  The plasma fire sailed over his head and smashed into the breeze blocks, melting right through them. Pete glimpsed a guy on the other side of the wall, standing in the changing rooms of a clothing store trying on trousers. He stood with one leg in and one leg out of a pair of skinny jeans. The shocked “O” of his mouth matched the hole in the breeze blocks.

  Pete scrabbled to his feet and ran blindly on, desperate to get back to the tournament zone. He had to warn the others. He reached the next corner, glancing over his shoulder to see if he was being followed.

  “Oompf!” he grunted as he crashed into another Red Eye coming around the bend. The impact knocked Pete off his feet. It was like colliding with Mount Everest. He looked up and saw an overseer, a Red Eye commander. Over his armoured suit, the alien wore a long black cloak with a hood that came up over his head, totally obscuring his face. The inside of the hood was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. All you could see in it were three red dots arranged to form a triangle.

  “Sorry,” Pete said automatically. His brain was still living in a sane world where you apologized when you bumped into someone.

  The overseer said nothing. He just stared down at Pete, the triangular dots glowing as a lattice of red lasers shot out. They dazzled Pete, forcing him to close his eyes. He kept them shut as the lasers moved down his chest. There was a bleep as they read the QR code on Casey’s COMPETITOR ID badge.

  Pete felt something cold and heavy snap around his neck. He opened his eyes and stifled a terrified yelp as he saw a black metal loop around his throat. It was shaped like a D-lock, one of those curved metal bars that cyclists use to stop their bikes being stolen. An orange LED flashed on its side. Pete tugged at it helplessly, panic rising in his chest.

  He was a prisoner.

  Behind him, on the other side of the hole that had been blasted in the wall, a shop assistant appeared. She stood beside the man in the changing room and stared at the overseer in disbelief. Then she quickly pulled out her handset and dialled three digits in quick succession.

  “Get me the police,” she said.

  The overseer glared at his unwelcome audience and grunted with displeasure. Then he touched a finger to the side of his hood and gave a command in his harsh alien language. Pete wasn’t sure what the word meant. But something told him it wasn’t good news.

  8

  CONFIRMED INCURSION

  As soon as they realized Pete was missing, the Ghost Reapers stopped bickering and helped Casey search the tournament zone.

  But there was no sign of him anywhere.

  Casey swore under her breath, convinced he’d done it just to get back at her. Her mum was going to kill her for letting him run away.

  “Let’s check the shops,” Brain suggested, leading the group out onto the first-floor balcony. Casey gazed over the railings into the atrium in the centre of the building. The empty space stretched from the ground floor all the way up to the glass ceiling. She could see each of the other seven floors above her. They were teeming with crowds of shoppers.

  Pete could be anywhere.

  Cheeze rolled up beside her. “Does he have a phone?”

  “Mum won’t let him have one until he goes to senior school.”

  “He’ll be here somewhere,” he reassured her. “We’ll find him, I promise.”

  Casey watched the crowds below as they entered and exited through the main doors. So many people… Her heart hammered against her ribs.

  “Could he have left the building?” Cheeze asked, following her gaze. “Maybe he went to the bus stop or a Tube station.”

  “I don’t know,” Casey said despairingly. “I’ve managed to get everything wrong today.”

  Cheeze reached out to pat her arm shyly.

  As he did, there was a thundering crash above them. They looked up to see the glass ceiling smash open. Shards of glass plummeted into the atrium below like a crystal waterfall. There were screams as shoppers ran for cover.

  Casey and Cheeze stared in shock as a swarm of shiny metal drones flew through the jagged glass. They darted left and right, fanning out in packs and whizzing through the shopping centre at speed.

  “Watch out!” yelled Cheeze as a drone flew towards Casey’s head. It was sleek and metallic and the size of a junior rugby ball. It whizzed past her ear, centimetres from hitting her. Then it raced across the balcony through the startled, screaming crowds, dipping wildly as it tried to avoid two men coming out of Currys carrying a boxed-up sixty-inch TV. It dipped so low under the cardboard box that its belly scraped along the marble floor. Weaving this way and that through shoppers’ ankles, it attempted to regain its balance before it was blindsided by a dad pushing a pram.

  Knocked off course, the drone spun sideways and ended up in the nearby food court. It tumbled across a table where a family was eating, spilling the kids’ Happy Meals onto the floor.

  “What the hell are they?” Fish shouted, ducking behind the balcony rail beside Brain and Elite as more of the drones flew in through the roof.

  Casey ran to the food court to get a better look. Cheeze followed, pumping hard on his wheelchair’s tyres to keep up. Casey pushed through the family of diners gathering around the machine.

  The drone lay on the floor, flapping about like a wounded insect. It was smeared in ketchup and splodges of strawberry milkshake. A thin curl of black smoke escaped from its insides.

  The drone had a sleek metal body and a large circular lens at its front that reminded Casey of a giant Cyclops’s eye. On its chassis two LEDs blinked once, twice, and then went out.

  “Is it dead?” Casey wondered aloud. She gingerly slid the toe of her trainer under its battered body and flipped it over. Nothing happened. Then, with a bleep, the drone sputtered back into life. It launched and began to hover a few centimetres above the ground, wobbling.

  “Careful, it could be dangerous,” Cheeze said as the family moved in for a closer look. He opened one of the side pockets on his wheelchair and pulled out a screwdriver, brandishing it like a weapon. “Stay back!” he warned the machine.

  The drone retreated a bit and stared at the crowd for a moment as it bobbed in mid-air. It emitted a series of shrill electronic beeps and whistles. It sounded like it was laughing at them.

  Then, with a sud
den whoosh, it spun around and charged back towards the balcony where the other boys were still crouched. It sailed over their heads and then dropped over the side of the railings like a falling stone.

  Casey ran to the edge just in time to see it joining the rest of the drones as they whizzed across the ground floor. They moved as one, like a swarm of angry bees. Panicked shoppers ducked and ran to get out of their way. Some even jumped into the indoor fountain as the drones flew over their heads.

  “They’re heading for the main doors!” she called, running to the escalators. “Let’s follow them!”

  “Wait!” Cheeze shouted, spinning his wheelchair around. “I don’t do escalators.”

  But Casey, caught up in the thrill of the chase, wasn’t listening.

  The drones smashed through the main doors into the car park. Once outside, they flew up into the sky, momentarily blocking out the sun. Casey arrived to see them hovering in mid-air, as if waiting for something.

  Sirens rang out in the distance. Police or paramedics or fire engines, or perhaps all three, were clearly on their way to the shopping centre. Casey looked over at the TV news vans. Reporters were staring and pointing at the drones, shouting at their camera operators to get filming.

  At the same moment, the doors of the black minivan Casey had seen earlier burst open and the buzz-cut military man jumped out. He surveyed the scene with a steely gaze, apparently unfazed.

  The drones spread out to form a large circle, stretching all the way around the building. They hovered in evenly spaced formation above the car park for a moment. Then, without warning, they fell to the ground, one by one. It was as if they’d all simultaneously lost power. Some hit the tarmac in the car park. Others fell onto the paved pedestrian areas. People screamed and ran for cover.

  Through the panicked crowd, Casey saw the buzz-cut man again. He was the only person not running away in fright. He noticed her staring at him and saw the questioning look on her face.

  “Come with me,” he ordered her, stretching out his hand as the drones rained down around them. “Quickly!”

  “What’s going on?” Casey demanded, ignoring his hand. Everything was happening too fast. The last drone fell right between them. They both stared at it. Casey recognized its ketchup-splattered chassis. It was the one she’d seen upstairs. It burrowed into the tarmac with a crunch and a hiss as metal prongs protruded from its body and tethered it securely to the ground like a limpet on a rock.

  “There’s no time,” the man said, his voice urgent.

  Casey hesitated, glancing over her shoulder at the shopping centre. Frightened shoppers were dashing in all directions trying to find safety. It was total chaos.

  “My brother’s still inside,” she said.

  “You have to hurry,” said the man, insistently. His outstretched hand hung in the air. All the drones had embedded themselves in the tarmac. They lay there waiting for something.

  “No,” Casey said, shaking her head. “I can’t leave Pete…”

  The drone at her feet made a humming sound. Its body rippled with a strange blue energy. All around the car park, the other drones were doing the same thing. Then a beam of blue light shot out of each drone, linking together to form an enormous dome that stretched high over the shopping centre.

  Casey fell back in surprise as the wall of energy cut her off from the buzz-cut man. She realized instantly what it was.

  A force field.

  It was like someone had put a goldfish bowl over the building, dividing the car park in half and separating the mall from the rest of the city. She realized she was trapped inside it. Several shoppers around her screamed, separated from their friends and family on the other side of the energy wall.

  Casey reached a finger out towards the force field and felt her skin tingle and burn before it even made contact. She jerked her hand back, scared.

  From the other side, the buzz-cut man shook his head at her. He started to speak but his voice was drowned out by the sound of four police vehicles screeching into the car park, sirens blaring. There was a squeal of tyres as the driver of the lead car saw the force field blocking her way. She yanked the steering wheel hard and hit the brakes, putting the car into a tailspin. As the vehicle’s rear end skidded into the force field, its back tyres exploded and the metal frame around the boot melted away. Droplets of molten metal hit the ground and ran into the grooves and cracks in the tarmac.

  The other three police cars peeled off left and right, narrowly avoiding a crash. Casey was extremely glad she hadn’t touched the energy field with her bare hand.

  Quick as a flash, the buzz-cut man jumped into action and ran towards the wrecked police car. He pulled the police officers out of the vehicle, moving with the confidence of someone who’d been in dangerous situations before. He helped them to safety behind the cover of a TV news van, a split second before their ruined police car exploded. Chunks of burning metal rained over the car park.

  Casey ducked instinctively, although she didn’t need to. None of the wreckage could penetrate the dome above her. It simply disintegrated as it hit the force field. She looked up into the sky, following the curve of the dome as it stretched above West Point’s roof.

  As she did, she saw the same shimmer that she’d noticed earlier. There was no mistaking it this time. The air glitched and rippled as an enormous spaceship decloaked on the roof of the building. It was as if it had been hidden there all along. It sat under the tip of the dome, happy to reveal itself now that it was safe beneath the energy field’s protective umbrella.

  Casey blinked in astonishment. Shoppers on both sides of the dome looked up and gasped. One man even pulled out his phone and started to take pictures with it. The spaceship was wider than the shopping centre and its wingspan stretched over the edges of the roof. At one end it had a long, pointed nose that made it look like a giant bird of prey.

  Casey recognized it immediately. She’d seen it more times than she could count. It was an Arcturian dropship, straight out of SkyWake.

  But that wasn’t possible!

  How could something from a video game be here, in real life, in the middle of London? On the other side of the force field, over by the TV news vans, she saw the buzz-cut man. He was staring up at the roof too, as he’d done earlier that morning.

  “Just a trick of the light?” Casey shouted at him angrily. Something told her that he’d known about the dropship’s presence all along.

  “You should have come with me,” he said, his voice slightly distorted as it came through the force field. He shook his head at her in annoyance then turned and walked away. As he did, he pulled out his phone.

  “This is Dreyfus,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the call. “We have a confirmed incursion.”

  “Wait!” Casey shouted, but he kept on walking. Just then, a scream rang out from inside the shopping centre. It was followed by a sound that chilled her to the bone. The sound of an Arcturian plasma rifle firing.

  “Oh my God. Pete.”

  9

  INSERT COINS TO CONTINUE

  The summer before Casey’s dad died, he’d taken her to an old video arcade called FunZone. It was hidden down a back street between a barber’s shop that looked like it never opened and a fried-chicken joint that looked like it never shut. The arcade was dirty and rundown and a FOR SALE sign hung on the wall outside.

  “I used to spend all my pocket money here when I was your age,” her dad had whispered as they stood on the pavement outside. “It hasn’t changed a bit.”

  Casey found it hard to imagine her dad ever being her age. He was a tall man with square shoulders, an angular face and playful eyes. It was obvious he was in the army. Not just from the way he moved, precise and full of confidence, but also from the olive-green Royal Engineers T-shirt he wore under his fleece.

  “When we get in there, let me do the talking,” he instructed as they headed to the entrance. “If we’re going to bag this machine at a price that doesn’t break the b
ank, I need to negotiate.”

  Casey saluted him. “Yessir, Lieutenant, sir.”

  “Left-tenant, not Loo-tenant,” he corrected her. “You watch too many American movies.”

  Casey laughed. She was enjoying having her dad to herself. Mum had taken Pete shopping to buy clothes for the new school year. The minute they’d left, her dad had asked Casey if she wanted to go on a “mission”. He always called it that when they had adventures together. Before Casey knew what was happening, they had hired a van and driven out here in search of a vintage piece of video-game memorabilia.

  The owner of FunZone was a man called Dom. He had long hair and an untidy beard and he smelled like he hadn’t had a shower since for ever. As he slurped tea from a chipped mug, he told them how the arcade was closing down and all the machines were being sold off.

  “Turns out the land the shop’s built on is worth more than the arcade itself,” he complained. “Some big-shot developer wants to knock it all down and build ‘urban living’ apartments here instead. Urban living, my arse.”

  Casey tried not to giggle. Her dad shot her a stern look, although she could see his eyes twinkling mischievously.

  “So what exactly are you looking for, mate?” Dom asked. He waved a grubby hand at the machines lining the walls. “We’ve got all sorts in here. Racing games, fighting games, shoot ’em ups.”

  “I don’t really know,” Casey’s dad replied. “I just saw your advert in the paper and I’ve always fancied owning my own arcade machine. Mind if we have a look around?”

  “Help yourself.” Dom shrugged. He took another loud slurp from his mug.

  Casey knew her dad was playing it cool. He’d explained his tactics as they drove across town. If you looked too eager, the seller would bump up the price. Best to pretend you weren’t actually that interested in buying anything. That was why they’d parked the hire van around the corner, out of sight.

  Her dad strolled through the arcade, taking his time. He inspected each machine in turn, occasionally smiling to himself as he recognized an old favourite. Most of the titles Casey had never heard of, but she did her best to look interested.