“Padget, father would like to see you now.”
Padget looked-up at the tall, lanky boy stood near the door.
Egbert.
How could he be his father’s son? He was nowhere near fat enough for a start and as for his clothes… they were far too unflashy. A Direktor’s son should puke in the face of moderation. Ostentatiousness should be his creed, the pursuit of wealth his sole value.
“About what?” said Padget.
“Your request to join the war against the Scourge,” said Egbert, his tone flat and monotonous. No booming voice either! This will never work. He could almost taste the return of his birthright, his power…
The Scourge? He seemed to recall something for a moment, but then it darted away like a rogue comet. “Err… yes,” he said. “And what did he say?”
“He requires a private audience with you, in his greeting chamber. A few things need to be settled first.”
“Right this moment?”
“I’m afraid so. Affairs of the state are pressing matters, Padget. You of all people should know that. The soldier-bots will escort you there.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Sadly, no,” he said, trying to smile and not quite managing it. “I have other responsibilities to dispense, obligations that cannot be shirked.”
“Yes, of… of course.”
A gigantic piece of walking metal scooped Padget up in its arms, eyes flashing like beacons, its silver legs working overtime as it ran down the corridor, steel joints creaking like a demented combine harvester.
His father was sat on an ornate throne of silver and gold. The diamonds that were encrusted along the rim of his crown shone like chandeliers. His face was a serene and tranquil lake, a storm slumbering beneath its surface. The palace yawned above him like the mouth of some almighty beast, masonry, lights, and beams only dimly seen.
“Padget, won’t you have some food?” he asked, gesturing towards a vast bank of food to his left.
“I’m… I’m not hungry,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I…”
Was he hungry? He didn’t feel hungry and yet when he looked at the plates and platters of wottleberry sausages, hummingbee pies and sugar-filled dumplings he felt this immense need, this craving, this desire to shove them down his overlarge gullet as quickly as he could.
Before he knew what was happening he was clambering down the cold arms of the soldier-bot and scrambling across the hall towards the feast. He shoved it into his mouth as fast as he could, desperate to get it down into his stomach, to stop the shaking… the need.
“Are you finished?” asked his father.
Padget looked-up. He was on the floor, what remained of a feast all around him. How much had he eaten? How much time had elapsed? His head felt fuzzy and weird. “Yes,” he said, holding a gallon of sweet juice to his mouth. “I… I think I am.”
“Good,” said his father, a flicker of a smile stretching across his face. “I have something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“Come to the window. All will be revealed.” Again, that smile. Bigger, brighter, and with more malice.
Padget got to his feet; the room swirled violently for a second. When the dizziness had passed he walked across the glass floor, his father following on his hover throne, and looked out of the window.
“What do you think?” his father asked.
“About what? I can’t see anything. Just the palace walls, the grounds.”
“Look closer,” he said, a touch of acid to his voice.
“I…”
Padget was about to ask him what he was talking about when a silver cloud rose above the palace walls, the bright sunlight glinting off its surface like a hail of golden arrows. Then it banked to the left and swerved their way. More sunshine, more arrows.
It was in front of the window now, eclipsing the sun, the dappled green lawn reflecting off its surface. Then a flap of silver parted from the front, like someone opening a tin can. There was a face where the metal had been.
Egbert.
“But how?”
“Does it matter?” said his father, with a tone that would melt through metal. “If you must know you forgot to lock the thing. You always were a stupid boy, careless. It’s taken us this long to learn its systems and master it as you would a fire horse on the plains of Morath.”
“Us?” It was Egbert. His voice sounded colder, meaner.
Padget’s father looked up as a glowing white sphere shot out from under the nose of the spaceship, decapitating him just above the shoulder. Blood spurted like a fountain.
Padget looked up at Egbert, hot blood streaming from his father’s body. It covered him, it was all over the floor, the walls, even the spaceship. He was grinning like a great white shark right before it attacks a seal. There was another flash of light, this one larger, brighter. It hit him in the middle of the chest.
The last thing Padget saw was Egbert stood over him, blood puddling all around his thighs and knees.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Infiltration
A waft of air escaped from the man’s throat like a pestilence. Blood gushed from his larynx like a burst water pipe.
Kat wiped her knife on an old cloth, then moved on, the perimeter guard twitching violently at her feet. She looked up at the processing factory, nestled in between two lumps of earth and rock. Smoke twirled lazily from one, the other as dead as the landscape around it. The air stank of Sulphur and tears. Machinery hammered and whined away, lights blinked and flashed, what sounded like wind twirled around its twisted edifice.
Kat shuddered and moved on. Closer now. She fingered the slick hilt of her knife and smiled.
Her mag-grips stuck to the rock-face like a leach. She moved like a cliff viper, deadly and silent, the angular structure of the factory eclipsing the stars. It was as dark as dark could be.
Kat fingered the rough lattice-work of the perimeter fence and smiled. She was almost there. She could almost smell him. She sliced through the fence with a pair of space cutters, their anti-grav beams snapping the wire instantaneously. She crawled through the hole she’d made with ease, eager now, like a night tiger scenting its unsuspecting quarry.
She gripped the cold brick and inched up the outside of the factory. Quicker now.
A scream pierced the night. Long and sharp, it continued for a few seconds, before falling silent. She didn’t hear it again.
On she climbed, an occasional torch light flicking in her direction. All they found was cold, hard stone. She would be invisible for this, right until the last possible moment. She wanted him to see her face when she did it, to realise that she was the one who had beaten him, after all he’d done to her. She wanted him to beg, she wanted him to bleed.
Kat skirted silently over the sharp tiles like a Night Cat in the Erelien jungles, eyes set on her elusive prey. When she was half way across the roof she clambered over the side, her mag-grips clinging to the wall as surely as a magnet upon iron. Closer now.
When she was about half way down, she pirouetted in mid-air, bringing her space cutters out in one fluid movement, before shearing a large hole in a dirty pane of glass. She slipped through the opening as quiet as the dead, eyes fixed on a frail figure lying on the bed.
She tipped-toed over the stone floor, her space lens’ scanning the room for traps, movement.
Something stirred at the foot of the bed.
Kat fingered the hilt of the knife, inching closer, heart rate rising, rising.
A loud, discordant noise sheered the air. The shadow the scream belonged to was slumped at the bottom of the bed, long, tangled hair tussled by the cold draft.
It was a girl. No more than thirteen, by the look of it. Her wrists were bleeding, other body parts too. She was weeping audibly. Another one of his ‘guests’. She remembered when that had been her. She had tried to wash the stink off for hours, she never could. Still the figure in the bed made no move. Was he dead? Perhaps the g
irl had killed him. Somehow.
The figure stirred, the bed clothes rippling in its wake. She was next to him now, just like she’d always wanted. Breath to breath. It was almost time.
She took the blunt dagger out of her pocket and swung for his head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Human Torpedo
Jack pulsed through the vacuum as quick as a dart.
Earth got steadily bigger, its atmosphere marked by several flashes of light over Africa, North America and Western Europe. The invasion had begun.
How many casualties had there been already? How many cities had been reduced to rubble? It would take Earth decades to recover, centuries.
Jack focused on a small silver dot in orbit around Earth. It got steadily bigger, more distinct.
After several seconds eight huge solar panels, each one as big as a skyscraper came into view. They looked like huge glass chimneys. Either side of these were the crew’s habitat modules. Some kind of ship was attached to the one nearest to him, its rear end spitting sparks and smoking lazily. Evidently it hadn’t been a peaceful takeover.
Jack didn’t see the first flying saucer until it swooped towards him, the oil-black vacuum erupting in a chaos of fire and flame. Several green and red balls hit him just below his undercarriage. He felt a slight tingling sensation. More fire followed, hitting his hull in several places. He felt a sharp pang of pain in his side, like a stitch after an hour and half of football practice. He dived out of the way, moving quicker, swinging to the left of the space station, following the curvature of the Earth. He looked beneath him. Huge black storm clouds were gathering over North America, Africa, Europe and now Asia. Everywhere he looked he saw lightning. London looked to be on fire, Paris and Beijing too, a black pall of smoke hung heavily over Washington D.C. He hoped the President was alright, he didn’t want to have to deal with Stormborn or any of the rest. Too much like playing Russian roulette with Great White sharks. Ros still hadn’t made his move. He had to do something, but what?
He felt a rough, hard kick to his spine. He looked behind to see a squadron of flying saucers in pursuit, their noses spouting a steady stream of fire. He needed to fire back, but how?
Another bolt of lightning slammed into his saucer, slivers of pain slicing through his body. A wave of anger surged through him; suddenly a green stream of light shot out from what felt like his hands, riddling the enemy ships with fire. One of them banked sharply to the left, veering hard and fast into the other. They exploded immediately in an eruption of limbs and steel, smoking debris raining down over the Pacific.
Still Jack continued to fire. Two more were hit, then a third, whilst all the while green lightning thudded into his sides. His chest felt tight, his head fuzzy, more stitch. He felt out of breath now, queasy. He had to get away. And fast. He slammed down on the accelerator, speeding like a comet over Asia and Europe. The saucers chased like aerial bloodhounds, scenting death.
Weapons’ fire rained down all around him. He fired back, but at a slower rate now. His body was in pain, on fire, his ship too. He was burning up, dying, losing control. Not long left now. I’m sorry Vyleria, I tried…
His body shuddered with one last spasm of ordnance fire. He could smell smoke and something burning. His own skin, hair. The pain was intense, he couldn’t take much more. I need to get out, escape!
He felt the saucer break away from under him, shattering into a thousand steel pieces, as he shot out into space like a human torpedo. He expected to boil away in the vacuum, but nothing happened.
There seemed to be some kind of skin or carcass around him. It felt sticky and gloopy, though strangely resilient. He took a deep breath of air from some unseen oxygen tank. How was this even possible?
He zoomed through space like a human bullet, the roiling Atlantic beneath him.
A bright light appeared on the horizon, the sun’s golden rays reflecting off its superstructure. He aimed for it as best as he could, not quite knowing how he was doing it, not knowing if he would even survive.
He felt an explosion of heat next to his head. He turned around just in time to see a green jet of fire darting towards him like a stampede of angry bulls. He swerved to the side just in time, the green darts impaling a large space telescope instead, eviscerating it instantly.
The flying saucers were still chasing him, scenting victory, blood. More weapons’ fire, more swerving. He didn’t have long left. The space station was closer now. He could see all eight solar panels and one of the habitation modules. A hundred feet, fifty, thirty, ten…
A green tongue of flame brushed his back. His skin sizzled, burned, flush with pain.
I’m sorry Vyleria, I failed…
He smashed through one panel, then another, shattering them both instantly. A million shards of glass were flung in every direction, like huge shoals of fish glittering in the sunlight. Then he hit another panel, snapping it in two as he bounced off to the side, slamming into a hatch, a window, a spacesuit, then a twisted, broken slab of scorched metal. What looked like an octopus veered out at him, grasping him with its arms, tentacles, pulling him into its lair, the world exploding behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Emergency Measures
Jack’s body floated towards the angry, grey swirl of clouds behind him, only for a tangle of wires to drag him back towards what was left of the service module.
He waited for the flying saucers to come and finish him off, but nothing happened.
Seconds ticked by like knives.
He looked around, trying to see where the Asvari were, but his view was obstructed by the I.S.S and the burnt-out corpse of the spaceship attached to it.
How was he going to get into the space station? It was locked shut, with no way in or out. Vyleria was right next to him, but she may as well have been a million miles away. He had to do something.
He tried to unsheathe his laser sword, but nothing happened. He tried again. Same result. Had he lost it in the escape from the saucer? He tried to pull out his space pistol, only to find that was missing too. He looked around to see if there was anything he could grab hold of. Two black empty eye sockets stared back. It looked like a body made of soot.
Jack kicked the astronaut’s body away, her mummy-like face etched into his brain forever. One amongst millions…
He caught sight of more flashes down below. A thick plume of smoke was now rising over New York, with even bigger ones over Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing. Intergalactic warfare. Earth had been dragged kicking and screaming into the interstellar club. There was no going back now. He caught sight of a fleet of flying saucers zipping over the Atlantic towards the U.K, only for them to be slashed to ribbons by a fleet of planes coming from what looked like Liverpool. Well, Earth was fighting back at least, if only sporadically. So far, he hadn’t seen any TR3-bs though, or even their own spaceship for that matter. What could it be waiting for?
He saw a thin curlicue of steam drifting in front of the space station. At first, he thought that it was some variety of space slug or one of the star octopi, then he noticed that it was coming from a hole in his arm.
Air.
The realisation hit him like a battering ram.
Then another hole appeared on his right leg, more precious oxygen leaking into space.
He felt his skin underneath both fissures pinch, contract and go cold. The Asvari’s space skin or whatever it was, was starting to erode, but why wasn’t his spacesuit working? The energy field should have appeared instantly. What had gone wrong? Had the Asvari had disabled it when they captured him? Why hadn’t he checked it when he got his weapons back? His heart began to hammer away, his breath catching in his rapidly heaving chest. How could I have been so stupid?
Still the oxygen continued to fizz away into the blackness of space. He felt light-headed, weak, short of breath; his skin was freezing now. Ice cold. How long did he have left?
Jack struggled with the wires that were wrapped around his body, trying to grab hold of something.
Nothing but the cold vacuum of space.
The flow of escaping oxygen was greater now. It looked like two grey snakes were attached to his arm and leg. His life was seeping away before his eyes.
He was swaying about quite violently now, the Earth and stars blurring in front of him like a strange-coloured milkshake.
Then he saw the astronaut suit from earlier. He reached out with an increasingly cold hand and tried to grab it.
Damn. Just out of range.
He tried again.
Same result.
Another try.
More vacuum. More swinging.
One last try. Not long left now.
Just when he was about to swing backwards his fingertips closed around the heel of a boot. They slipped off almost immediately, but the force of his grip yanked it inches closer. On his next pass he reached out and grabbed the whole boot, dragging the spacesuit back with him. It was heavier than he expected. Bulky. More solid.
Jack looked through a jagged slit in the helmet’s visor. The astronaut’s dead, lifeless eyes stared back.
He pushed the shock from his mind and looked to see if there was anything he could use to help him escape. Perhaps she had a knife under her spacesuit? He tugged and pulled at the fabric, trying to wrench it apart, but it wouldn’t budge, the micro-gravity preventing him from getting a good grip. Then he turned towards the set of pockets sewn into the front of her spacesuit. Desperate now. He wrenched the compartments open one by one. Nothing but airless vacuum. Not even so much as a hammer or a screwdriver. What else could he do? He tugged and pulled at the wires around his legs, but the wires were tighter than ever now. He was trapped.
Jack Strong: Dark Matter Page 12