The Paella That Saved the World (The Paella Trilogy Book 1)

by Elle Simpson

  “The Watchkeepers?” Kal said, totally unruffled. “Yeah. And a little more than half of the Watchkeeper fleet too.”

  “That’s the massive massed peeps?” I asked Col.

  “One and the same.”

  “Wow,” I muttered, sitting back down beside Deeke again. “Talk about the definition of fifteen minutes late with Starbucks.”

  Colin’s wings went for a fluttery rattle. “But however did they find us? My word, however did they even know to come to our aid?”

  Kal shot him a flat look. “I logged my flight plan before I left. Flight Command probably looked at gate activity when I didn’t check in. Had the flagship make an emergency hyperspace jump and figured it out from there. Weird what happens when you follow protocol, huh?”

  “I am very much aware of my operational failings, thank you,” Colin muttered gloomily, just as the spaceship space corpse decided to start its possessed beeping again.

  I waved a hand to attract some extraterrestrial attention. “Seriously, are we ghosting on the massed peeps of the intergalactic whatchamacallthems, or is someone gonna answer that?”

  Kal straightened up, looking especially supersoldiery all of a sudden. He squelched something that stopped the demonic screeching. Then, “Admiral of the Fleet, this is the ship of B’oab Baakatarin, now under Watchkeeper command. This channel is secure. Please go ahead.”

  A holographic screen fizzed out of one of the consoles and solidified in the air in front of us. A lady in a green and gold uniform appeared on screen. She was very blue and had more eyeballs than anyone could ever possibly need, and beside her was—

  “Dr Mensah!”

  “Hannah! Oh goodness, I’m so happy to see you! Are you hurt at all?”

  “No!” I said, scrambling to my feet. “Not even a little. Or no, I mean.” I touched a hand to the mess of my neck and then kinda wished I hadn’t, because that shizz stung. “Like yeah, maybe a little. But not, you know, majorly. Are you okay, though?”

  Dr Mensah let out a startled laugh. “I’m absolutely fine, Hannah, all thanks to you – and to your friend Colin, of course.”

  She gestured to Col. He’d perked back up, but wilted away again just as soon as Admiral Bumtonne-of-Eyes glared his way.

  “I must apologise, Doctor,” Colin said. “I did receive your distress signal upon my return to Planet Earth, but Hannah’s safety was in severe question at the time.”

  Dr Mensah shook her head. “There is absolutely no need to apologise, Your Excellency. I was very well looked after by the crew aboard the space station.”

  I boggled in Dr Mensah’s general direction. “The space what now…?”

  “The International Space Station,” Dr Mensah said. “Which is where Colin’s beacon transported me.”

  The boggle turned Colinwards. “The space station, Col?”

  “Nowhere on Planet Earth would have been safe,” Colin muttered, sounding hella defensive and no lie. “Thus, I was rather short on suitable options. As I’m sure you can bring yourself to understand.”

  But before I could boggle at anyone else, Dr Mensah carried on, “After some understandable confusion, I was able to explain the situation to the crew. We shut down communications so as to prevent Baakatarin’s message being broadcast up to the station. And we remained there, safe but very much ignorant of events on Earth until the flagship made contact – and now,” she said, “I have been able to explain things as much as I’m able to the Admiral here…”

  Admiral Why-Did-Anyone-Need-That-Many-Eyes-Ever took her cue. “Watchkeeper,” she said to Kal.

  “Ma’am.”

  “I’m to gather the situation is in hand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And I see His Excellency is safe?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Baakatarin’s in custody?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That was good work, Helmsman.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Wham bam,” I muttered. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “We have not been introduced,” the Admiral said as every single one of her eyes snapped towards me. “Your name is Wham Bam?”

  “No…uh,” I stammered. “Hannah.”

  “Your name is Nouh Hannah?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s just Hannah.”

  “Just Hannah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The Admiral said, “Then I wish to thank you, Just Hannah—”

  “No it’s – actually? Never mind.”

  “—in my capacity as a representative of the United Intergalactic Council and on behalf of our honoured president. I believe we owe you the greatest debt of all for your heroic efforts in thwarting Baakatarin’s plans.”

  “Oh. Like, no problem?” I offered. “Or no, yeah – some problems. There were some problems. Mainly Creepy Bob problems, actually. But like, no metaphorical problems, I guess? None of them. A few actual problems, though. But, like, I mean – no probs, Admiral. Metaphorically.”

  A whole lot of eyes blinked at me. Not all of them were attached to the Admiral.

  “That translates as ‘you’re welcome,’ ma’am,” Kal said.

  Dr Mensah cleared her throat. “Hannah, I must ask: is the young Akanarin girl able to maintain the compulsion until we’ve even begun to sort out the situation down on Earth?”

  I looked over at Deeke. She nodded – only a little but at a totally normal, non-slow-mo speed. “Yeah, Deeke’s good for now. But don’t take all day about it, if you can? She’s getting pretty tired.”

  Colin eased himself down beside Deeke. “Are you quite sure it is not too trying for you, little one?”

  “No,” Deeke said. “The Humans of Earth…their minds are easily malleable. They offer little resistance.”

  “Wow,” I said to no one at all, because no one at all cared. “Is this Intergalactic Be Mean to Humanity Week?”

  To Kal, the Admiral said, “I’ll send over a team to assist you in securing Baakatarin and her associates. Then we’ll begin contacting the Akanarin child with details of who to release from the compulsion and when. Be sure to keep this channel open and secure, Helmsman.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  To Colin, “Your Excellency, I’ll dispatch a transport shuttle for you. We’re going to need your help explaining this fiasco to the leadership of the planet. And I’m assuming you’ll want to take part in those discussions?”

  Colin clacked a little, obviously uncomfortable. “Thank you, Admiral. It would be both an honour and a privilege.”

  “I’m sure,” the Admiral said curtly, and her image on the screen cut out just as curtly, leaving behind one big, deflated-looking giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from outer space.

  “Oh, Col. You messed up big time, huh?”

  “I fear so.” Colin sighed, a whoosh of air and clattering mandibles. “I know what I did was irresponsible. But I simply wished to visit the planets in my care one last time before everything would…would have to change so. Was that so very wrong?”

  “Yeah,” Kal said. “Real wrong.”

  “No, it wasn’t wrong, Col. Of course it wasn’t. Just, maybe you could’ve gone about it a little differently, yeah?”

  “Real differently,” Kal said.

  I snapped my fingers at him. “If I wanted your input, Cheekbones, I’d have asked.”

  “But the helmsman is right,” Colin said morosely. “I could not have known what Baakatarin had planned or even that she would be here enacting that plan when I arrived. But my actions from that moment on, even inadvertently, placed a dear little hatchling in mortal peril and condemned a young man who had done nothing but his duty to days of excruciating torture.”

  “Eh,” Kal said, shrugging.

  “Eh,” I echoed. “Eh? We’re back to eh again?”

  Kal shrugged his other shoulder. All the shoulders were shrugged. He was a walking, talking alien shrug. “Is it really torture if you heal afterwards?”

  “
Yes!” I said. I turned to Col. “Does he have some kind of fairly significant screw that’s come loose somewhere in his pretty silver head?”

  Kal actually managed to look offended at that entirely reasonable question. “Hey. I don’t have any mechanoid enhancements. It’s all me.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about!”

  Deeke cocked her head suddenly. It looked as if she was listening to some telepathic chitchatting.

  “Releasing peeps from compulsion?” I asked.

  “Yes, only one for the moment. But Dr Mensah thought it best.”

  And in the next second the console started demonically beeping again. “Oh god,” I groaned, “what’s going on now?”

  “Nothing to be alarmed about.” It was Colin’s turn to do some squelching. “Simply a message from Earth on relay from the flagship to our – oh. Someone wishes to speak with you, Hannah.”

  “With me?” I stood up and dusted off my hoodie. This must be whoever Deeke had just hung up on. “Is it the Queen? The Secretary General? Is it—?”

  “It is your mother,” Colin said, just as Mum appeared on the holo screen, wide-eyed, frantic, and so epically, humongously furious.

  “Oh, um, hi Mum.”

  “Hi? Hi, she says!”

  “Yeah…that was…what I…said?”

  The tips of Mum’s ears turned a really weird colour. “Then you bloody well better have something else to say, my girl, because let me tell you – you’ve got some serious explaining to do!”

  41

  Mum grounded me until ‘such time as our solar system is subsumed into the heart of a super massive blackhole,’ but then she also cried a lot and told me she’d never been prouder – which, honestly, left me kind of confused at what disciplinary message she was trying to convey.

  But whatever. I was so totally grounded. I understood that much.

  Releasing Planet Earth from Creepy Bob’s creepy thrall took a while: tracking down all the VVIPs and un-mind-whammying them, then doctors, nurses, police, and everyone else in little controlled dribbles after.

  It all resulted in surprisingly little chaos – mainly because Colin was on hand to spend a lot of time on TV being reassuring in the way only Colin, a ten-foot-tall giant alien cockroach-scorpion hybrid from space, can be.

  (And don’t pretend you haven’t been reassured at some point by Col. He’s everyone’s favourite space uncle by now. I even saw a cuddly toy version of him in Asda just yesterday…

  …which I may have maybe, possibly bought, but you have no proof and I’ll never admit it.)

  Col didn’t do any telepathic chit-chatting on TV, though. Just skittered and tittered and clacked and clicked, and had Kal translate for him. Because by that point, people were full-stop done with aliens being all up in their brains, and I couldn’t blame them.

  (Could not. Cannot. Really wish aliens would stop being all up in my brain too, but if wishes were ponies, I’d be Dartmoor.)

  Uh…what else? Oh, Bendy Spanner. Mr Jenkins? Remember him?

  Colin helped him out with a little brain surgery and he recovered fine. And I know what you’re thinking – that it’s weird he totally didn’t mind his real name being mentioned in this thing, because he doesn’t exactly come across smelling of roses and heirloom potatoes, right?

  But good ’ole Bendy Spanner Jenkins didn’t care. Because he’d already sold his story to some greasy tabloid and made enough bank to buy a croft on some tiny Scottish island up in the North Sea.

  (He seems really happy up there. Sends me postcards every so often. Lots of seals and seaweed and bagpipes. It looks pretty zen in a soggy sorta way.)

  The crowdfunding campaign to repair the damage to the Big Dish was mega successful. It blew through its target a thousand times over in the first week, and ended up raising enough money to build a whole other, much bigger Big Dish on top of the carnivorous-sheep picnic area.

  (Big Dish Jr is still only plans, but from the way Mum keeps cooing over the blueprints, I’m pretty sure Big Dish Jr is also going to be the thing that finally bumps me down the list to favourite child No. 2.)

  Carlotta – who is just fine, by the way, because I know you’re worried – earned herself a really fancy new tank and legit, I think she’s the most photographed snail in the world by now.

  And The Snail’s Arms? I mean, we were always kinda popular, like, very much locally, but now we’re a ‘Destination.’ Most days, we get a bumtonne of coaches through, stuffed full of tourists armed with selfie sticks, who want to take pictures of themselves with a muddy hole in the ground and then eat themselves some thrice-time award-winning authentic Valencian paella.

  Toni’s totally down with the paella part of that equation.

  (And, well – so’s The Snail’s Arms’ bank account, not even one single word of a lie.)

  The night before Colin and Kal and the flagship were due to leave, Col popped down for a visit. And after dinner – which was so obviously paella – I took him over to the planetarium.

  Seemed fitting, somehow.

  Kal came with us for the requisite security check. Did the bodyguard ‘poke about in corners and glare at stuff with a steely, level gaze’ thing, then declared the dome room, “safe, except for the crazy human.”

  I threw a shoe at him for that, which was really satisfying but also meant I was down a shoe and the air-con was running kinda chilly. “Col, my feet are cold,” I whined.

  “Oh dear, can’t have that at all,” Colin said, and tucked them nice and cosy under a pincer for me.

  I was sitting in one of the dome room seats. Col was on the floor next to me and still massively taller, but I reached over and managed to pat the bottom portion of a huge scaly wing. “You’re the best.”

  “I do endeavour to try,” Col said modestly.

  “Listen, I was wondering – do you think maybe I could go and see Deeke again tomorrow? Like, in the morning, just one last time before you all leave?”

  “I shouldn’t see why not,” Colin said. “I shall arrange a time with young Deekerin’s doctor and let you know when to expect the transport shuttle.”

  Deeke’s doctor was a lovely, non-Welsh, non-vampire lady who was basically a manatee with arms and legs instead of flippers. And she was also more than pretty decent at her job, because Deeke already seemed so much better. Brighter. More aware. As if the scrambled eggs were unscrambling just a little more with every passing second.

  “Cool beans. Thanks, Col.”

  Colin didn’t reply, just reached out another pincer and patted me absently on the head.

  But honestly, after the past few crazy weeks, it was kinda nice to just sit in the peace and quiet of the planetarium and take in the digital view. Colin had done something to the projector, though. I knew the show off by heart, and we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Or even Little Buckford, for that matter.

  Planets and stars and moons of every size and shape and colour spun around us. There were space stations that looked like cities in space, and more spaceships than cars on the Buckford road at rush hour. And I was pretty sure I’d just seen a pod of space whales floating past.

  “Where’s home, Col?” I asked, a little faintly, staring up at the epic space madness. “Can we see it from here?”

  “We cannot,” Colin said, “primarily because it does not exist.”

  I looked over at him, appalled, and really hoping we weren’t talking another ‘Fall of Akanara’ type situation.

  And Colin must’ve got that, because he laughed – quietly and a little sadly. “No, nothing of that sort. It is simply that my people have been nomadic by nature for almost as long as we have been a people.”

  “What, you’ve never had a planet of your own? Ever?”

  “Once,” Colin said, eyestalks set to thoughtful, “many, many aeons ago, but we outlived it. As we outlive most things.”

  “But you do have a home somewhere, though?” I mean, okay, if nomadic, couch-surfing, no-fixed-abode was Colin’s thing, then I
couldn’t knock it, but I hated the idea of him just floating through space all on his own, endlessly. “Like, even just somewhere to park your spaceship?”

  “I have no home in the sense that you would understand the notion. But when I have occasion to stop in any one place, for any amount of time, then it is here that I stop.”

  Colin pointed a pincer up at the dome, and the view shifted suddenly, whooshed on through some sparkly nebula clouds and out into another solar system. But we zoomed away from the sun, right out to the edge, where a planet with a ridiculous number of moons hung in the darkness, shining and shimmering like some big, fancy, hella expensive space pearl.

  “So pretty,” I whispered, awed, “but so extra.”

  Colin huffed a chuffy laugh that sent his mandibles fluttering. “Perhaps Old Xantari is a little extravagant in its appearance, that is true enough. But the strange lustre you observe is simply due to the planet’s unusual composition. It is formed almost entirely of a particularly rare form of iridescent rock.”

  “So basically it’s an entire planet made of shimmery white marble?”

  That earned me another chuckle. “A nebulous approximation, but nonetheless, an evocative one.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Is that a yes, you giant alien thesaurus?”

  “That is a yes,” Colin agreed, eye-smiling down at me. “But all the same, it is a extraordinarily beautiful place, is Old Xantari. Moonlit rivers, towering, shimmering spires, deep vaulted caverns illuminated solely by the glow of phosphorescent moss…”

  “It sounds so totally cool, Col. I’d love to see it in person one day.”

  “And you shall,” Colin told me. “I will make sure of it. You will stand before the Council in the hallowed Halls of Old Xantari and be commended for your bravery and your valour.”

  Okay, wasn’t about to turn that one down, but, “Just as long as you’re there too, Col.”

  “By your side, I assure you.”

  We sat chilling for a while longer, just watching the universe twirl slowly across the ceiling. Old Xantari and her bumtonne of moons faded away, then the space cities and the space whales, and planets spun and suns shone, and I started to recognise stuff again.