“What’s that?”
“It will allow you to block out all telepathic and telekinetic signals for about twenty four hours.”
“And then what?”
“Then you’re on your own. Any longer and I risk weakening the effect to such an extent that it will be of no use to you.”
“But I’ll be able to stop them from making me into a human rag doll, right?”
“Yes. The same goes for their pain signals.”
“Great, time for some payback,” said Jack, rising to his feet.
“Jack, remember the mission. Don’t go around blowing up half the ship, besides we don’t know how many of Ren’s soldiers have been coerced, they may be entirely innocent.”
Jack was about to reply when suddenly Ren strode towards them, his eyes as cold and as murderous as ever. Just when Jack thought they’d been discovered Ren’s body shimmered in the electric lighting, the wall behind him clearly visible.
“It’s a hologram,” said Ros, breathing a sigh of relief.
Citizens of the Asvari. We have entered the Earth system. Preliminary scout ships have gone into orbit around their Moon, as well as several other strategically advantageous positions above Earth. Victory is within our grasp, we shall soon be avenged. All personnel report to the main hanger, bring the slaves.
“What are they going to do?” asked Jack. Vyleria… Even now he couldn’t quite push her out of his head, couldn’t quite give up on her.
“The plan was to put them on the flying saucers.”
“Human shields?”
“Exactly.”
“It won’t work.”
“What are you talking about? Who would fire on their own people?”
“You don’t know General Stormborn like I do. They are as good as dead, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Someone stops them, rescues them somehow.”
“But Jack, you can’t.”
“Someone has to. I can’t let them die, I can’t let her die.”
“But you said Vyleria was with Jorge now, that you were over her.”
“But that doesn’t stop me caring for her, stop me… loving her.”
“Oh Jack…”
“It’s okay. I deal with it as best I can.”
“How exactly?”
“By getting Ren to clobber me around my own spaceship,” he said. “It’s remarkably therapeutic. It’s okay, we can be friends I suppose, it might be enough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course not, but it’s all I’ve got. Besides, I’d rather die than see her in chains for another minute, never mind a lifetime.”
“I understand; I…”
“Thanks Ros, you’re the best,” said Jack, gripping Ros by the hand. “It’s that time again.”
“Time to split up?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll see you again soon,” said Ros.
“Faster than the space crow flies.”
“Exactly.”
Jack re-materialised immediately outside where Ros said his weapons would be. No rocket boots though, so he had to be quick. He was running out of time. They all were.
“Slave!” growled a stiff-backed Asvari soldier, teeth bared like a Rottweiler. “What is your business here?”
“Ros requested some extra weaponry for the control room,” he mumbled, head-bowed low. “In case we get boarded.”
“The only way the Earthers will board us,” said the Asvari, his nose shaped like a large rock, “is in body-bags. This ship is too well-equipped, far too advanced…”
“Here are his orders,” said Jack, handing over his data pad to the soldier. Another Asvari joined him. Together, he felt them probing his mind for answers, stroking his brain for information, lies. “He’ll get angry if he’s not obeyed. You know what he’s like when his minions disappoint him.” He hoped they’d pick up on his subtle threat.
It worked.
“Yes, of course,” said the first Asvari. His thin grey lips squeaked up and down like a couple of earthworms stuck together. He turned around and swiped his hand over an illuminated panel. The door hissed open immediately. “Not too fast, slave,” he said as Jack stepped towards the armoury. “We go first, you follow.”
“Sure thing,” said Jack, trying to the hide the thinnest of smiles as it spread across his face. “Right after you.”
Jack sprung the moment the two Asvari entered the room, his right fist crashing against big nose’s temple. He heard a loud crack as his head impacted with the floor, swiftly followed by a torrent of black liquid that pulsed from his ears. He didn’t get back up.
Jack ducked just in time as the other Asvari spun around and fired a salvo from his laser rifle, destroying half the wall behind him.
Not even pausing to breathe, he leapt forwards onto the Asvari, slapping away his rifle as he pummeled his head with his fists. He felt a flurry of mind attacks launched against his brain, then his heart, only for his mind seal to repel them. A straight right to the chin and the Asvari stopped struggling.
Jack looked at the two Asvari lying prostrate on the cold, metal floor. Both still twitched. He had kept his promise to Ros, barely.
Jack got to his feet and walked towards the centre of the room. Floating in front of him on several invisible platforms were an exotic plethora of weapons, from M16s to laser rifles to hand grenades. He walked towards one and pulled his space pistol from a pool of blue light. Light as a feather, as heavy as stone. He attached the holster to his waist at once, both pistol and holster disappearing soon after. Next, he extracted a long silver sword from an electric blue scabbard. The edges shone menacingly, like it was hungering for blood and battle.
Strapping the sword and holster to his back, he strode out of the room, locked it behind him and then made for the nearest transportation room. There was a whole lot of payback due. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
The flying saucers gleamed like droplets of silver on the hangar floor. The spaceship seemed bigger than the last time he’d seen it, like its size had been altered somehow. Space gaped before them like the mouth of a dinosaur. Constellations of stars glittered and shone, the grey, pockmarked moon at their feet. Beyond that a large blue and green ball took up half the horizon, poles straddled by electric green ribbons.
Jack hid behind a pile of equipment, eyes darting around the hangar. Where is she? He thought. Where is anybody for that matter?
He thought about leaving his hiding place to have a look, but thought better of it. There were Asvari everywhere, standing in line, waiting to board the saucers. He could take a few of them on, but not their whole army, not without his space armour, and certainly not with all those saucers around. He could only guess as to the severity of their weapons. Perhaps they will melt my brain or liquidise my bones and organs from the inside out?
One of the saucers suddenly shot out of the hangar in a wisp of blue light, like a stone skimming across a black lake. Then another fired its engines, and another and another, until all of space was filled with them. They looked like a flock of electric geese. They were headed towards the blue and green planet in front of them. So far though, their spaceship had made no attempt to join them. What are they planning?
“What are you doing here slave?”
Jack turned around to be engulfed in shadow. A seven foot tall Asvari soldier loomed over him. He looked like a mountain, dark, dangerous and forbidding. Another mountain was stood next to him.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “This is where I was ordered to report to.”
“What’s your name?” he asked, pulling out a large data pad.
“Jack… Jack Strong.”
The Asvari’s brow creased-up like a freshly ploughed field as he punched away at his screen. “You’re supposed to be on Saucer 17,” he said, teeth glistening in the electric lighting.
“Oh really, no one told me,” said Jack, feigning ignorance. “Can you tell me where it is? I think I’ve gotte
n lost.”
“It took off five minutes ago,” said the Asvari, face now like a storm. “It’s on its way to the ISS. With the others.”
“You mean Vyleria?”
“If you mean the red-headed slave, then yes, that one.”
“Thanks.”
“What for?”
“Everything,” said Jack, his space pistol re-materialising in the palm of his hand.
Jack felt a slight tingling sensation in his scalp, shards of electricity pawing at his brain. “Sorry, you’ve been neutered. Now hands up or…”
One moment the Asvari guards were in front of him, the next they were surging towards him like liquid mercury, pulse rifles arcing towards his head. Jack spun towards them just that little bit faster, half boy half tornado, blasting one of them in the chest and the other in the middle of the forehead. Both of them crumpled to the floor instantly, heads snapping back upon impact. He looked around to see if anyone had raised the alarm, but the hangar was completely deserted. Everybody was evidently either in the control room or else attacking Earth.
Leaving the two guards to doze off his stun blasts, Jack ran across the hangar towards the first available spaceship. It gleamed before him like an angel’s tear, hovering just above the floor. How to get in?
Just when he was about to check the other side for an entrance, the saucer suddenly came alive, sucking him up like a string of spaghetti.
Jack wrestled with a reservoir of metal as it twisted and turned, spinning him round and round. He felt like he’d fallen into a washing machine and someone had pressed the spin cycle. Then it was surging down his throat, up his nostrils, through his ears and eye sockets. He was choking, drowning, coughing. Vyleria…
There was a slight pinging noise and then he was awake again. He looked around, expecting to see some sort of cabin. He saw only the hangar. He looked to the left. Same result. Down. The floor gleamed back up at him. Straight ahead. Nothing but an undulating sea of stars.
He wasn’t inside the flying saucer, he was the flying saucer.
It was a feeling similar to that of the pilot’s control on their spaceship, only this was more intense, more real. He still felt like he was slowly drowning though.
He looked ahead at the Earth. Lights flashed and danced about its atmosphere like fireworks on Bonfire Night. It had begun.
He didn’t so much as take off as imagine himself flying through space. Suddenly he was shooting through the vacuum, skimming over the sea of tranquility like a silver pebble, eyes set on the most important speck of silver in the universe.
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Battle Dome
Grunt got to his feet. He was blind, eyes watering.
He blundered into something large and heavy. It groaned audibly, snorted with pain. Some kind of fluid sprayed over his face. His skin sizzled, burned. He staggered on, legs getting weaker.
He tried to open his eyes. Nothing but a bright white light. It felt like his temples were going to implode.
He tottered on, rubbing at his eyes, a loud hissing sound flooding down his ears. He shuffled towards it, bumping into objects as he went, the din getting louder and louder, like waves crashing against a harsh and barren shore. What was that sound? It sounded familiar somehow.
The light was dimmer now, though no less hot. He looked around, blinking rapidly, the chisels still hammering away at his temples.
He wiped his eyes. Above him rose a giant steel structure that shot-up towards the sky like a mountain. It looked stern and forbidding, even the sun hid behind it. It had to be a mile high at least. He couldn’t see any windows anywhere, what might have been flags fluttered along the top. What is this thing? He thought, following the contours of metal as they sloped off towards the dusty horizon. How come I didn’t see it earlier?
He reached out a hand and touched the metal. For half a second, he felt the hard, cold surface, then his palm tingled with electricity, followed by another bright flash of light.
When he opened his eyes again he was in a dark, oval-shaped room, at the other end of which was a tall rectangle of light. He walked towards it, the hissing sound from before getting louder and louder.
He stepped out onto a long, wide balcony half a mile above a patch of desert, black sands twirling in the hot, harsh winds. Either side of him were several figures, their huge heads hidden by even huger helmets. He was engulfed by their shadow. He froze, expecting to be noticed at any second. Then he remembered his invisibility suit. He’d switched it on shortly before passing through the energy barrier. He looked at the giants again. Judging by the way it hugged their bodies, they were dressed in some kind of flexible armour, huge black capes buffeting on the wind. Their gaze was directed at the patch of desert below, two dim figures cavorting on the sand like seagulls trapped in an oil slick. There was another roar from the crowd. What was going on down there?
He walked towards a stone staircase a few feet to his left. From there he could see the whole blood-red crowd. There were thousands and thousands of them, all cheering, chanting, roaring. All of them Xenti.
What are they doing here? He thought, anger rising in his chest.
He looked around him. The arena was as big as a city, if not bigger; it stretched miles into the distance before curving back round again in a kind of elongated oval.
The crowd roared again. The figures were moving slower now, their steps less pronounced. What were they watching?
He bounded down the steps, hundreds of stairs disappearing in a few gangly strides, until finally he was face to face with the roiling black sands. The crowd’s hisses and shouts roared down his ears. It was a tsunami of noise.
He stepped out into the arena, sand squelching under his feet, and walked towards the two figures, their faces becoming clearer, more distinct.
Xenti.
He’d recognise them anywhere, though he had never seen them dressed in armour like this. A series of dull metal plates covered their bodies from neck to foot, with only their heads fully visible. Each of them wielded a massive two-handed sword, jagged on one side like the mouth of a reptile, the other as blunt as rock. What had happened to their fold-up black space armour? And their laser rifles?
Grunt blinked as a streak of metal arced through the air, slicing one of the armour plates in half as it scythed through tissue and bone. A black fountain erupted at once, followed by a hoarse scream. The Xenti was on his knees now, guttering, choking, drowning in his own blood. There was another glimmer of metal, then the head spouted into the air, a steaming black river gushing all over the desolate sand.
The champion turned around, the crowd’s hysterical cheers rising to fever-pitch.
Xylem.
The face was tattooed into his mind. He hated him, despised him. He’d tried to kill him on the spaceship and had marooned him on his home planet for months. But what was he doing here? And why was he fighting other Xenti?
He almost stepped up and said something to him but then there was a flash of blue light. When he turned around the body of the fallen Xenti was nowhere to be seen. What was going on?
Suddenly a huge, helmeted head the size and colour of a thunder cloud appeared in the middle of the arena. It looked like one of the giants he’d seen on the balcony above, only somehow meaner, colder. The crowd fell silent at once.
WE HAVE A NEW CHAMPION! HAIL XYLEM! LORD OF THE XENTI!
The crowd erupted again, their cries reaching a deafening crescendo. He couldn’t hear anything else.
LET HIS REIGN BE A LONG AND GLORIOUS ONE! BRING IN THE NEW CHALLENGERS.
Grunt turned around as a loud, grating sound filled his ears. A large steel gate the size of a small mansion yawned open like the mouth of a hungry piranha. Five figures poured from its shadows, skipping over the ground with incredible speed. The crowd roared again, cheering in violent, bloody ecstasy.
In no time at all they were onto Xylem, the leader flying through the sky, sword in hand, as he brought it down towards Xylem’s skull. Xylem ducked at the la
st moment and brought his own sword up in response, skewering the Xenti through the abdomen. The Xenti screamed, but not for long. Black blood frothed like a river.
Mayhem followed. An ecstasy of movement and poise. Steel clattered against steel. Swords swore, sang. Lungs panted desperately. A head flew up into the air, followed by a gout of blood, one lost a leg, an arm, another was spliced in two, ribs shattered. Their death cries curdled with the frenzy of the crowd, sudden and absolute.
Less than a minute later only two remained, their swords stained as black as the desert around them.
Then one of them was on their knees, his side pumping blood. A jagged sword arced through the air like an eagle, primed for slaughter. But the other moved to the left at the last second, thrusting his sword up through the other’s gut, chest and then out through his neck. Blood sprayed in every direction as the Xenti coughed, choked and then finally died.
His head was separated from his shoulders moments later, then impaled on a rusty flag pole. Grunt scanned the bloodied face. Even with one eye hanging out of its socket, he would recognize that face anywhere. A prisoner never forgets his torturer.
The Xenti then tore something off Xylem’s tar-like wrist and thrust it up towards the crowd. The crowd screamed, roared, praising their new lord.
WE HAVE A NEW CHAMPION! Thundered the helmeted voice from earlier. PREPARE TO DEFEND YOUR TITLE.
The gate screeched open again and more Xenti poured out, the air erupting into an orgasmic spasm of blood, death and violence.
Grunt ran.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Padget Eats
Padget tucked into a giant humpasaurus steak, gulping it down mouthful after mouthful.
He couldn’t get enough. It was so delicious, so filling, so… needed?
After dabbing-up the last morsel of roast meat he moved onto a large bowl of dappleberry pies, sweet brown sauce oozing all over the thick crust. His mouth watered in anticipation, his hands flickered as fast as his nerves would allow. All seventeen disappeared in moments, a blizzard of crumbs caked down his tunic. Now for the rest: ribs, toast, sweets, pies. The list was endless, and what was more it was all for him. Here, he was his own chef, his own monarch. He didn’t need anyone else. An echo of a thought fluttered away at the back of his mind like a drunken butterfly. Something about a mission, something that he was tasked to do, something he’d promised someone far far away. He batted it away with a blink of his eyes. He was too hungry, too thirsty to care. He slurped-up another jug of sparkling jingleberry juice and then attacked a platter of Paldovia cakes, a river of sugar running straight down the middle.
Jack Strong: Dark Matter Page 11