by Elle Simpson
“Wanted fugitive from the Court of Intergalactic Justice,” Colin carried on. “Thief, smuggler, assassin, and suspected of many worse crimes besides.”
Um… “Worse than, like, murder?”
“Mass murder.”
“Oh,” I said faintly. “Yikes.”
“Just so,” Colin agreed. “And as to B’oab’s intentions – you have seen the ship, yes?”
“The orbiter thingy? Looks like a blood clot?”
Colin eyestalk-nodded. “Indeed. But it is not an orbiter, as B’oab claims; instead, a terraformer.”
“A what now?”
“A terraformer,” Colin said, “which undertakes the process of terraforming. That is, the process whereby a planet is made suitable to accommodate a distinct form of live – most frequently by making said planet distinctly unsuitable for others.”
“Col,” I said, my freakout lowkey but ready to run, “what’s that word that means a word that means the same as another word?”
Colin clacked a little, confused. “A synonym, perhaps?”
“Yeah. So, I mean, how many of them have you got for the word ominous?”
“Ah,” Colin said after a second of also very much totally ominous silence. “Might I venture…menacing? Direful. Minacious. A situation portentous in its inauspiciousness.”
“Yup,” I muttered bleakly. “Yup, think that about covers it.”
I turned to look behind me, out the curvy window, where Earth was hanging in the black of space like a cutscene from some sci-fi blockbuster – all blue and green and beautiful, and apparently completely unaware of the danger she was in.
“So, like, what?” I said, turning back. “Creepy Bob’s going to terraform Earth into the holiday home of the…the…whatever the hay fever people are called—”
“The Akanarin,” Colin supplied.
“—and then what happens to the rest of us? To us humans, I mean? What happens to us then?”
Colin didn’t answer. He let his ominous, direful, minacious silence do it for him.
I took a sticky breath. “Oh my god,” I whispered.
“Quite,” Colin agreed. Then he clacked his wings, looking determined suddenly. “And that is why – oh, indeed, I say, Hannah – that is why I will do everything in my power to stop her! To stop B’oab Baakatarin!”
“Uh…”
(The word rattled around in my patched-up, ding-donged brain, sort of tap danced for a couple seconds, then fell out my mouth and straight into the orchestra pit.)
“…her?”
Colin twitched a mandible. “Pardon me?”
“Her? Stop her?”
“Yes.” There was a confused skitter. “Was…was that not as I said?”
“No, that was exactly as you said. I’m just caught up on the whole ‘B’oab’s a lady’ part of the thing that you just exactly said. Because, I mean, okay – Creepy Bob’s a lady?”
“Indeed,” Colin said, his wings still clacking like confuddled castanets. “You were not aware?”
I boggled at him with all the boggle I had in me. I had to do that for a while – there was a lot of boggle to deal with. Then I said, in a voice that was verging on hysterical and I will absolutely own to that, “Nope.”
So it was totally and entirely for the best that the console started beeping then. Really frantically. Flashing some lights too.
“Col, what? What’s wrong?”
Colin didn’t answer, too busy futzing. He touched a flashy light. Something protested beepily. A fizzy sound like static filled the room, then a distant but very much familiar voice said, “—managed to get most of the minor systems online, and I’ll try to park the dish. Anything else will have to wait until our friends in khaki decide to let my colleagues through the cordon. So afraid your guess is as good as mine on that one, Dot.”
“Is that my mum?” I yelped, aghast.
(It so totally was, oh my god, do not even get me started.)
Colin waved a pincer to shush me. “Please, I must listen.”
“I hope the damage isn’t too terrible,” an unfamiliar voice was saying, obviously on the other end of a phone call that me and Col were listening in on somehow.
“Nothing that can’t be repaired,” Mum said. “Might get ourselves some extra funding in the process. Silver linings and all that.”
“Well, I’ll certainly see what I can do on my end," the voice replied. “But really, you don’t mind about the Akanarin proposal? Shall I tell them yes? I think they feel guilty, you know, about the damage their ship caused, and this is their way of making amends.”
There was a distant clang of something metal hitting the floor and then the closer clang of Mum muttering a very much bleep-worthy swear word. “Definitely wouldn’t say no to an extra pair of hands, Dot, alien or not.”
Dot – that was Dr Mensah, right? Mum’s old uni friend? The U.N. lady?
“Wonderful,” Dr Dot of the Amazing Job Title said. She laughed, sounding just the tiniest touch strangled. “Your new Akanarin assistant should be with you in five, ten minutes.”
Mum’s laugh was just as high-pitched. “Well, I’m certainly in for an interesting afternoon.”
The call cut off. Colin and I stared at each other for a few horrified seconds, then—
“Akanarin assistant?” I said, joining the strangled, high-pitched club. “Why is my mum getting an evil alien assistant?”
“My plan,” Colin said.
“Your plan is that my mum is getting an evil alien assistant?”
“Yes,” Colin said. Then, “No! I mean no.”
“Col! Which is it?”
“An Akanarin is heading to your mother’s place of work,” Colin said in a rush, “because I believe they are searching for the same thing that I am. The fulcrum, if you will, upon which my plan is levered.”
I took a breath. “Okay. All right. Break it down for me then. Little words. Quick as you can.”
(Just fyi, asking Colin for little words is like asking chickens for teeth, but sometimes if you’re really lucky he might cut it down from six syllables to five.)
Colin took a breath too – or I think he did. His mandibles fluttered at least. And then he said, “A highly encoded mayday message, having found no viable recourse of intergalactic transmission or, indeed, transmission beyond the most local of locales, has hidden itself within a computational device in the control room of the Little Buckford Radio Telescope. It is vital I retrieve that message.”
“A message to who?”
“Whom,” Colin corrected distractedly.
“Col!”
“I apologise for the linguistic prescriptivism,” Colin muttered, distracted still, as his pincers flew over the console. “And it matters little currently. Indeed, all that matters is that I get to the message before B’oab has the chance to destroy it. That, in short, is my plan.”
“Right, okay, first? Totally crappy plan. Second?” I said. “The Little Buckford Radio Telescope? Is the Big Dish – which is where my mum is right now, and apparently that’s where the evil aliens are heading!”
“One alien,” Colin said. “Unlikely to be evil. And your mother is in little danger. At worst she may be subjected to another compulsive episode.”
“That’s the thing that popped my brain, Col!”
Colin twitched an eyestalk in my direction. “Yours was a unique circumstance, Hannah, that I have no time to explain. Your mother knows nothing beyond what she saw and heard herself, so she knows nothing damning to tell.”
“You mean Mum’s safe?”
“For now, yes,” Colin said, the whole unspoken ‘until the evil aliens take over the world’ just hanging there in the custardy spaceship air. “And all I must do to enact my plan is transport myself to the observatory, access the telescope’s computer systems, find the message where it has hidden itself, extract it, destroy any evidence of it having ever been there, and transport myself back to the ship.”
“Without being noticed?”
/> “Yes.”
“Col,” I said, because, “c’mon.”
“An unlikely occurrence, I’m aware. But not impossible.”
“Like, full offence,” I said, “it’s completely impossible.
“I…” Colin deflated in a clack of pincers. “Yes, I fear you are correct in your summation.”
So, then, “I’ll do it.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Col—”
“No!” Colin exclaimed. “You are but a hatchling, Hannah. I will not have it. I will not put you in such danger.”
“Like, okay, not even slightly your choice to make,” I told him. “It’s my choice, and I choose to be part of the plan that involves stopping the whackjob evil alien from taking over the world. Because I’m either in danger right now, Col, or when Creepy Bob starts terraforming stuff!”
Colin’s attention focused on me. Suddenly. Completely. There was no fluttering, no clacking, no twitching, no tip-tapping of consoles. “Hannah,” he said. “Are you sure? You must be sure. Are you utterly positive?”
“More positive than the cheesiest American chat show host.”
“Then we must act quickly,” Colin said. “Take this.”
Something appeared out of thin air in front of me – a flattened pebble of white, cloudy glass about the size of my palm.
“A device to extract the mayday transmission,” Colin explained as I pinched the pebble out of midair. “It will let you know when it has detected the message, whereupon you should attempt to place it in close proximity. I must warn you, the extractor is able to enact a degree of camouflage but it is not infallible, so keep it out of sight if you can.”
“Copy that,” I said, because it seemed like a suitably SAS-type supersoldiery thing to say. I shoved the extractor into my back pocket beside my phone. Then, “Col,” I said, not much liking how weedy my voice sounded suddenly, “the Akanarin? It’s not Creepy Bob, right? Because no lie, I’m not sure I have it in me to go another round with that creeper.”
Colin leaned forward to let an eyestalk take a closer look at the console. “No, not B’oab. The Akanarin in question is but a juvenile still.”
“A kid?” I echoed, appalled. “Creepy Bob’s got a kid doing her dirty work?”
“An adolescent,” Colin confirmed, “a young woman. And if my records are to be believed, one akin to your age by Akanarin standards.”
“Oh my god. That’s so wrong, Col.”
“It is an abhorrent situation,” Colin agreed, “and one we have no time to remedy. But should we succeed in our plan and in turn stop B’oab’s, then we could certainly begin attempting to break the compulsion the poor hatchling is no doubt labouring under.”
I had to process that one for a second, because there’s creepy and then there’s creepy. “Wait – you mean Creepy Bob’s doing the freaky mind-whammy thing on her own peeps too?”
“Without question,” Colin said. “Only a few of B’oab’s underlings act of their own free will. The rest are compelled to assist in her criminality – which, of course, should not be possible, but I begin to suspect that B’oab has somehow taken possession of an individual who themselves possesses the immensely rare ability to—”
“Col,” I said, before the word flood could get out of control again, “no offence to you and your, like, posh rambling, but shouldn’t we be getting this show on the road? I’m already creeped out enough, and there’s a time limit, I’m guessing?”
Colin ruffled his wings, squaring his non-existent shoulders. “Indeed. You’re quite right.” He gestured with a pincer. “Take a few steps back, if you would?”
I shuffled into place, and Colin said, “I’m afraid there is a substantial limit as to how close I can transport you to the relevant computer systems. There is a risk, you see, that the latent energy contained within the beam may cause irreparable damage to the message.”
I did some posh alien to completely-not-posh-human translating. “So not the control room then?”
“No,” Colin said, “in close vicinity to, but not the control room itself. I’m sorry, I know that not to be ideal but the risk is too great. I must also caution you on the need to keep communication to a minimum. With B’oab’s ship likely in the area…”
“We really don’t need Creepy Bob listening in on our brain phone calls? Yeah, I get it. Don’t worry, Col. I’ll figure it out if I have to.”
Something started thrumming then, and the console indulged in some more bleeping, loud enough that I could hear it over the growing thrum.
“Uh, what does bleep-bleep-bloop mean?”
“It means that B’oab’s ship has landed at the edge of the human settlement known as Little Buckford.”
Oh god. “Well, c’mon then! What are you waiting for? Beam me up, Col!”
“I think that would be most unwise,” Colin said, “unless you are unique among your species and able to withstand the vacuum of space.”
“Colin!”
“I can, however,” Colin said, “beam you down.”
12
Darkness.
Was the overriding theme of the moment. And it was not a theme I was feeling even slightly at all. So I scrabbled around in the dark, heart thudding wildly – until my hand hit something that clicked. In the exact same second, the domed ceiling above my head burst into light and life, this psychedelic, spinning swirl of galaxies and nebula clouds.
The planetarium. Colin had beamed me straight down into the observatory planetarium.
“Oh my god, how is this close proximity, Col?” I whisper-yelped. “It’s a whole other flipping building!”
And now I had to get out of it.
I pushed away from the projector stand, scrambled up the stairs that cut through the banks of tilted-back chairs, and skidded out into the lobby. Ran across the lobby. Stopped. Ran back across the lobby. Grabbed a hoodie from the gift shop display and tucked the extractor safely away into the oversized kangaroo pocket in front.
Then some more running across the lobby happened, until all the running brought me to the staff break room, where I climbed up onto the counter and pressed my nose to the window there.
If I squinted and craned my neck to an angle it didn’t enjoy, I could just about make out a very much, totally distant security cordon at the far end of the access road. But no highly trained killing machines in the immediate vicinity, and no evil aliens either. Just a few sheep munching on the grass at the edge of the picnic area.
Desertedness – was the new overriding theme of the moment. And it was a theme I was feeling much more than the last. Because if I hustled, I could get to the control room, get the message, and get it back to Colin, no evil alien evasion required.
Therefore? Time to hustle, like majorly.
I creaked open the window and shimmied out, landing with a thump on the grass below. And my phone took a swan dive of its own – it slipped straight out of my back pocket like a cat out a bath and thudded to the ground.
“Oh, buttocks,” I muttered, bending to pick it up. The screen flashed at me as I did. I’d missed a message.
From Toni.
“Oh god.”
Realisation smacked me in the face like a surprise physics mock. As far as Toni knew, I’d gone to the loo to wash my face and then straight-up disappeared into thin air. He’d think I’d gone missing. Or that something had happened to my head. He might’ve phoned the police. Or the supersoldiers. Or – oh god – even the men in black.
“Oh, no no no.”
I unlocked my phone in a proper panic, desperately trying to think up an excuse to explain where I’d been, where I’d gone, why I’d left without saying—
“Wait, what?”
My screen opened to a text. Specifically, to a text I’d apparently sent Toni.
(It read, and I’m quoting here, ‘Dear Antonio, I have gone to visit my mother, Professor Tracy Stanton, at her place of work, the Little Buckford Radio Observatory. Please, do not be unduly concerned by my ab
sence. I will return but shortly and anon. Kindest regards, Hannah Stanton.’)
“Oh my god, Col!” I muttered, thumbing in another text to Toni, one blaming autocorrect for everything and majorly hoping for the best. “Since when do I sound like something out of a Shakespeare play, oh my—”
A shadow fell over me. I looked up. And up. And up.
“—giddy aunt.”
“A good day to you, tiny Human of Earth,” the Akanarin said.
13
“Could you please direct me to the control room of the Little Buckford Radio Telescope?” the Akanarin asked, her robo voice all up in my brain, no permission required.
“Uh…” I managed. Barely.
“Uh,” the Akanarin repeated. “A form of conversational filler used in certain variants of human speech, so as to express surprise, confusion, hesitancy, or a lack of understanding. Could you clarify which use is relevant in this case?”
“Uh…” I had to stop to clear my throat. Gave my brain a reboot while I was at it. “I mean, pretty much all of the above, to be honest.”
That got me a quizzical head tilt. “Would you otherwise be dishonest?”
“What? No! It’s just – it’s just a thing you say, you know? Like, a saying? A figure of speech.”
“And where does this figure stand?” the Akanarin asked, turning her huge head on her epically spindly neck to look.
I was already getting a crick in my own neck staring up at her. It was hard to believe that she was the same age as me. I could climb up on my own shoulders and still not reach hers. She was so, so much taller than Creepy Bob. She might even have been taller than Colin.
“I wonder,” the Akanarin said, turning back, “does the figure you speak of perhaps employ some manner of camouflage? I have exceptional vision by human standards, but I am unable to perceive it.”
“Uh…” Oh my god, how was I supposed to even… “Actually, you know what? Hi. Don’t think we’ve met. I’m Hannah.” I held out my hand, totally well aware the Akanarin girl could crush every single bone in it as easy as stepping on an ant.