“You can’t!” she said. “You hate small spaces!”
“Yes, I can,” Elite replied over the comms channel. “I owe you, for the lift.” He flashed her a cocky salute from the gantry, drew his back-up plasma pistol from the holster on the hip of his exo-suit, and vanished into the vents.
Casey felt a lump forming in her throat. But there was no time to get emotional – a whole squad of Red Eyes was storming into the loadout bay. And Scratch was at the front.
29
IN FULL FLOW
The Red Eyes stormed into the loadout bay, tossing four plasma grenades ahead of them. They bounced over the floor grilles towards Fish, landing at his feet with a metallic clatter. He dropped to one knee, lowering his energy shield to the floor, and blocked them like a wicket-keeper stopping a ball at a cricket match.
They triggered simultaneously in a flash of green plasma. The shield took the force of the blast, but the impact ran its battery packs down to empty. As it died, Fish was knocked off his feet by the shock wave.
Seizing the moment, Scratch hollered at her squad to charge forwards. The first Red Eye, a tank just like Fish, ran out in front and activated his shield to protect the others behind him.
The Red Eyes had breached the loadout bay.
Casey swallowed hard and gazed around. Brain was pulling Fish to safety, while Dreyfus covered them both with his plasma pistol. It was so puny it was next to useless. Cheeze was still trying to hack the control systems to release the pods so they could drop back to Earth. But it didn’t look like he’d be able to do it in time.
This is how you die, Casey thought to herself. You and your friends. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t let it end like this. She couldn’t let today have all been for nothing.
She stared at the plasma rifle in her hands. It was all that stood between her and defeat. It was just her and a gun against the aliens, with nothing but four pillars to hide behind as the Red Eyes advanced. She felt a sudden wave of déjà vu, as if she’d been here before.
“It’s just like Space Invaders,” she muttered, realizing why it seemed so familiar. She was the lone gun turret trying to protect everyone, darting from base to base as the aliens rained down fire on her. A wave of calm washed over her. She knew how to do this better than anyone.
Go with the flow, Casey.
She felt her mind snap into focus. Everything else fell away. This, she realized, must be like the Long Walk that her dad had told her about. But, before she knew it, even that thought was gone and her mind completely emptied. All her doubt had vanished.
She felt totally alert. Totally alive.
She dived across the space between the pillars and dropped to one knee. The rifle was already in her hands, its stock against her shoulder, aimed at the Red Eyes. She watched it shoot out a ball of plasma that sailed past the Red Eyes’ shield tank and hit one of the aliens full in the chest. He fell to the ground, his power armour smoking and sparking.
Move. Stop. Shoot.
Casey rolled to the next pillar, confusing the Red Eyes. The aliens’ shield tank spun around, trying to keep track of her. She popped out of cover and blasted them again. She was fighting with a new-found confidence, the exo-suit augmenting every move she took.
She was here, in the moment.
This was flow … in real life.
Scratch shrieked as Casey rolled from behind a pillar and dropped another Red Eye. She was clearly infuriated that this girl seemed to be everywhere, all at once, impossible to stop.
Casey grabbed a second behind the next pillar and caught her breath. The touchscreen on her rifle was flashing; she was low on power. There was one good shot left in it. She had to make it count.
She looked upwards, wondering where Elite was. She could do with his sniper rifle to cover her right now. As she stared up at the shadowy ceiling of the loadout bay, an idea hit her.
“Brain!” she yelled. “I need a distraction. Throw a grenade.”
“I’ve only got one,” Brain replied, terrified by the Red Eyes’ relentless advance. “It’s not enough to do anything.”
“Just throw it!!” Casey yelled, louder than she’d ever yelled anything before.
She crouched low behind the pillar, waiting for her teammate to toss the projectile. The grenade landed in front of the tank, and Scratch and the other Red Eyes ducked behind the shield as it exploded, its blast effortlessly absorbed by the energy field.
Scratch smirked and shouted at her troops to make a final advance. She was convinced they’d won. As the squad moved forwards, Casey swung out from behind the pillar. She aimed her plasma rifle at the ceiling and pulled the trigger hard, draining every last bit of energy out of the gun’s battery packs. A shining orb of plasma flew through the air over the Red Eyes’ heads. Scratch grinned, thinking Casey’s shot had gone wide just like it had done in Starbucks.
“Rth’he calfu mort—” the alien started to say, her black eyes flashing with mockery. Before she could finish her sentence, though, there was a crash as the structure above the blast doors collapsed, its supports destroyed by Casey’s plasma burst. The walkway crashed to the floor right in front of the advancing Red Eyes, blocking their way. The last thing Casey saw as the twisted metal hit the ground was Scratch shouting furiously at her troops. Then the Red Eyes were gone, cut off behind the makeshift barricade that now separated them from the Reapers.
A sudden hush descended over the loadout bay as the dust settled.
“Is everyone OK?” Casey asked. The boys looked at one another, not quite able to believe what they’d just seen.
“That was incredible!” Cheeze exclaimed.
Elite’s voice interrupted them on the comms. “I need some help over here, yo.”
There was a clatter from a vent on the gantry above them and Elite crawled out. Behind him came a smaller figure.
“Pete!” Casey cried.
The two boys jumped down. Casey ran over and grabbed her little brother as he reached the ground.
“Casey!” he grinned. “I knew you’d come for me.” He buried his face into her embrace.
“I thought I’d lost you for ever,” Casey said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Are you hurt?” She broke her hug to check him over, suddenly panicked.
“I’m OK,” he said sheepishly.
“Are you sure?” She ran her hands over him, as if unable to believe he was really there.
“I tried to fight back,” he told her, his voice cracking, “but I wasn’t brave enough. Xander came up with a plan and I—” Ashamed and exhausted, he couldn’t finish his story. He burst into tears. “I let everyone down.”
“You’re safe now,” Casey whispered, stroking the back of his head as she’d seen their mum do. “I love you, little brother. I won’t let anything happen to you ever again. And I promise I won’t let you pretend to be me again, either.”
She felt him half laugh, half sob against her chest. For a moment, Casey imagined they were back home in their kitchen, just the two of them, with their mum coming home from her shift at the hospital with a Saturday night takeaway, just like she always did. Her heart ached for that to be real.
“I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you too,” she whispered to Pete, thinking of how much she missed their dad. She hugged him all the tighter.
She felt someone touch her shoulder apologetically.
“Casey, we need to move,” said Cheeze.
Pete blinked at Cheeze, surprised to see him without his wheelchair. He took in the rest of the Reapers, all of them now wearing exo-suits and carrying SkyWake weapons.
“You guys look badass,” he said, impressed and a little envious.
The Ghost Reapers took a moment and stared at one another. It was true. They did.
“We came, we saw, we …” Brain started to say.
“… kicked alien butt.” Elite finished the sentence for him. They fist-bumped.
Pete looked on, wishing he was part of the team. C
asey, sensing his disappointment, put her arm around his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. She looked over at the collapsed walkway. She could hear the Red Eyes on the other side of it, trying to find a way through. It wouldn’t stop them for long.
“The drop pods are ready,” Cheeze said. “It’s time to get out of here and go home.”
“Hold on,” Fish said, suddenly sceptical. “How sure are you about this?” He looked at the team questioningly. “Do you even know where we are?”
Cheeze squinted at the visuals on the control console. “I think we’re in orbit,” he said.
“You think we’re in orbit?” Fish mocked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Well, sorry, pal, but I’d rather you knew for certain before we blast out into space in a bunch of tin cans.”
“We’re definitely in orbit,” Cheeze said, sounding more confident this time. “That’s the symbol. Look.” He tapped a strange glyph on the console screen.
“He’s right,” Brain said, peering over his shoulder. “It’s the symbol that appears in the game when it’s safe to planet-drop. If we blast off now, the drop pods will take us back to Earth.”
Casey looked around the group, sensing how anxious everyone was feeling. She didn’t want to be blasted out of the dropship either, but it was their only hope of escaping. It wouldn’t take the Red Eyes long to find a way through the rubble blocking their path.
“We can do this, team,” she told them. “We just need to—”
There was a sudden clatter above them.
“What was that?” Fish asked.
They looked up at the vent, the one Elite and Pete had climbed out of just a few minutes before, to see about a dozen tarantulas spilling from it, their sleek metal bodies glinting in the gloom. They skittered over one another as they burst out onto the gantry. They paused a moment, looking at the team down below. Then they started to scurry down the walls of the loadout bay.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Fish said, despairing. “Don’t they ever give up?”
“Run!” Casey shouted. “Get to the drop pods.”
The Ghost Reapers sprinted through the shadows to the far side of the loadout bay with the tarantulas in pursuit. Casey kept hold of Pete’s hand, dragging him with her, determined not to lose him again.
When they reached the gravity well, they found a row of empty pods, open and waiting for them. Cheeze had got everything ready. Each pod was just big enough to hold one person, standing upright. Dreyfus, Elite, Fish and Brain climbed inside and the pods sealed tight behind them with a hiss.
“Where’s Cheeze?” Casey asked.
“There!” Pete cried, pointing to a figure running awkwardly down the gantry with three tarantulas nipping at his heels.
“I’ve set the launch sequence!” Cheeze yelled as he approached. “We need to get into the pods.”
Casey nodded and pushed Pete towards the nearest one. He fell backwards into it and a harness locked around his body, holding him tight against the pod’s padded interior. The lid started to close, but Casey stopped it with her hand. She reached under her exo-suit and yanked their dad’s dog tags from around her neck.
“For luck,” she said, throwing them to her brother. He caught them and closed his fist around them. “Dad would be so proud of you,” she said, and let go of the lid. He started to reply, but the pod sealed shut and she couldn’t hear him.
There was a rattling behind her. A tarantula landed on the walkway, its sharp metal legs click-clacking as it prepared to pounce. She kicked it aside and it tumbled over the edge into the gravity well and vanished. More spider bots appeared above her, scuttling upside down as they clattered over the sealed drop pods that lined the walls. Their pincers snapped at her menacingly.
Casey dived into the next empty pod. A harness zipped around her body, holding her in place, and the door slid shut. Just as the pod closed, three tarantulas landed on the top and scurried onto the viewing window. Their sleek underbellies and pincers were centimetres from her face. She turned her head away in fright. The tarantulas pinched and jabbed at the glass. She prayed it was thick enough to hold them back.
At the same moment, an Arcturian voice delivered a recorded announcement that was streamed into the pods. Although she didn’t recognize the alien words, she’d played enough games of SkyWake to know exactly what they were saying. It was the launch countdown timer.
Preparing drop pod launch. On my mark: five … four … three … two … one … DROP!
She felt a shudder as the doors at the bottom of the gravity well opened and then, with a jolt, the drop pods began to tumble out of it. The tarantulas on the viewing window were ripped off the pod and sucked into space. Casey’s pod fell from the rack, following the others, and plummeted straight out of the belly of the dropship. She looked up through the viewing window as she left the ship, seeing the huge Arcturian vessel above her and the hundreds of drop pods flying out of it like bees from a hive.
Instinctively, she reached for the dog tags around her neck. Then she remembered, with a jolt, that they weren’t there any more.
30
HOT DROP
The drop pod streaked through space. Casey, strapped inside its narrow compartment, felt like she was in a blender. She held on to her harness as she was buffeted from side to side. There was a shudder as the pod pierced the atmosphere of the planet below. She felt the temperature rising beneath her feet as the pod’s metal casing began to heat up. Flames burst around the bottom of it and lapped its side viewing windows. For a terrifying moment, she thought she was going to be cooked alive.
A digital display screen in front of her face flashed whirring alien warning symbols. She guessed it was some kind of altimeter, counting down the distance between the pod and the ground. The surface of the planet was coming up fast.
We’re almost there, Casey told herself. Just hold it together a little longer. The pod’s computerized navigation systems were designed to scan the terrain and lead it from orbit to a safe landing site. She wondered where they’d end up. Would they still be in London? Or might they be jettisoned halfway across the world. Europe, America, maybe even Asia?
She stared out of one of the pod’s narrow viewing windows, expecting to see the familiar and comforting green and blue disc of the Earth, the one they put in science books about space travel. She’d always wondered what it must be like to be an astronaut in orbit looking down on the planet she called home.
She gasped.
The planet below her wasn’t home at all.
It was blue and watery like Earth but its continents were strange and unfamiliar. Beyond the planet’s horizon sat two alien suns – one big and pink, one smaller and redder – set against a backdrop of endless stars.
“Hosin?” Casey whispered, unable to believe her eyes.
Her stomach flipped in terror. She’d imagined the dropship hovering in orbit somewhere above the Earth. How stupid she was not to have realized that the Red Eyes had no need to wait around. They’d got what they’d come for. Why wouldn’t they rush to Hosin and send their new troops into the never-ending battle there?
The dropship, travelling faster than light, must have made the journey while they were fighting the Red Eyes in the loadout bay. She remembered the tremor they’d felt and cursed herself. How could she have been so stupid? And, more importantly, how would they ever get home?
The pods were in the air above the planet now. They fell towards a craggy shoreline that stretched for miles, twisting and turning back in on itself as it curved away into the distance. She recognized the shore instantly; knew this beach…
This was the level she’d played over and over again in SkyWake. Her favourite. The one she knew best of all. This was what the game had trained them for. They were going to fight the Squids for real.
KABOOM!
The pod shuddered as a plasma shell exploded in the air beside it. A jagged piece of shell casing pierced the side of the pod, stopping just centimetres away from Casey’s leg. She
willed the pod to hurry its descent, desperate to get out before it became her coffin. If she was going to die, she wanted to die on the beach, standing in the fresh air.
As panic tightened her chest, she wondered how the others were doing. Through the viewing window she could see hundreds of pods dropping like black stones through the sky around her. She prayed her brother and her friends would make it down in one piece. She thought of Elite – would he be freaking out trapped inside this—
KABOOM! Another shell exploded, rocking her pod. She was close enough now to see figures and vehicles moving on the purple-tinged sand below. From this height, they were like toy figures on a tabletop battlefield.
For a moment, she thought the beach was on fire. Then she realized that what she was seeing was the plasma fire of hundreds of troops as they pushed up the shore, charging towards the Squids’ defensive positions in the cliffs at the top of the beach. Red Eye attack craft streaked through the sky, engines roaring as they swooped and pitched and then unleashed their weapons at the Squids’ bunkers. Explosions burst in the air around them as the enemy retaliated, raining plasma fire on the advancing gamers and their Red Eye commanders.
An alarm screeched inside her drop pod as the glyphs on the altimeter spiralled out of control. With just seconds to go, Casey realized that she needed to brace for impact. The ground was about to—
Ker-unch!
The drop pod slammed into the purple-tinged sand, embedding itself in the beach. Casey yelled as she was jolted around inside it like a rag doll. The pod’s circuits sparked and smoked and then blew out.
After the frantic speed and screaming alarms of the journey down to Hosin, the silent hush that now descended was strange and eerie. Casey felt dazed, uncertain what to do next.
Before she could panic, the pod cracked open. It fell apart in segments like a tapped Chocolate Orange. As its metal casing thudded into the sand, Casey’s harness automatically unclipped and snapped away from her chest. The servomotors on her exo-suit whirred as she stepped out onto the sand.
SkyWake Invasion Page 17