Jack Strong and the Red Giant

by Heys Wolfenden

  Padget was dreaming of a large platter of fried chicken, smothered in a lake of sticky, sweet sauce when Vyleria’s voice ripped him from his culinary fantasy. Gone was the great banquet hall, gone was his horde of servo-bots, gone were the plates of silver and gold; he was back in the place where he was expected to work, where he had to do things for himself, where NO ONE respected him.

  He grunted at the thought of it.

  That silly red girl was back. She was in some spaceship (which he didn’t care about one bit) and she was droning on and on about some race or another and about how she wanted to race Xy-la-la-lem or whatever his name was. Yeah yeah yeah yadda yadda yadda. Same old blibber-blabber. Nothing different there.

  Then just as quickly as she arrived she flew off.

  Good, he thought. Bossy know-it-all. Space is the best place for her. I hope she never comes back.

  “Why can’t Padget go?”

  “What do you mean,” asked Padget. “Go where?”

  “To get Vyleria,” said Ros. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  “Yes, of course I have… I … err… why what’s happening?”

  Padget didn’t think much of Ros either. He too was always bossing him about and treating him like some kind of Direktor’s pet. If only I was back on Paldovia, he wouldn’t dare speak to me like that. My father would...

  “What’s happening,” Ros continued, “is that Vyleria has flown-off in some kind of spaceship and we have to go and find her.”

  “Why do we have to go and look for her?”

  “She saved your life!” shouted Jack.

  Jack was another one he didn’t like. Always following Vyleria around like a lost buddy-bot. Didn’t know his place. Sure he'd saved his life like a dozen times or something like that, but so he should - he was just a skav after all - that was what he was supposed to do.

  If you ask me he has the hots for her. I don’t know what he sees in her to be honest. I mean she’s so bossy and controlling and she talks too much. Women should be seen and not heard went his father's saying and he had to agree with him. Thank the banking Gods that Xy-loo-loo or whatever he was called had put a stop to all that nonsense.

  “I think Padget should be the one to go with Ros,” said Jack. “It will give him something to do at least.”

  “Hey…”

  “No, I need Padget here,” hissed Xylem.

  “Why? What do you need him for?” asked Jack. “He can barely do anything.”

  “You are a better pilot. You can catch her quicker. Yesss.”

  They argued a bit more about this; going back and forth like a wibber-wabber in a nest of zingers. This made him crave home all the more. When he said something to the servo-bots they did it. No arguing, no messing about, no “I think you're wrong Padget and I'm going to do the exact opposite!” routine, or else they were sent back to the re-wiring facilities and turned into kettles.

  “I’m captain ssso it’sss my decccision,” hissed Xylem.

  “Alright fine,” said Jack, striding up to a table-sized spaceship in the middle of the control room. Where had that come from? “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  With that Jack disappeared in a flash of silver light, Ros along with him, their teardrop-shaped craft soon after.

  Padget was fantasising about eating a giant pork pie with thick, crusty pastry and a mountain of mushy peas when Jack and Ros returned in their spaceships, Vyleria in tow. Thank the Direktors, he thought, as he walked towards the door, now I can go and eat ten XXXXXL pizzas, this control room business is tiring work.

  Padget was about to enter the corridor when he suddenly heard the recoil of the sonic cannon behind him. He spun around at once.

  At first he didn't believe what he was seeing. It was like he was in one of those new virtual reality simulators where you enter the game and become part of the action. But this was real. Terrifyingly so.

  Xylem was firing a stream of blue darts at Jack, Ros and Vyleria.

  One of them was hit straight away. The explosion bloomed like a huge mushroom. He thought it had been destroyed but when the sparks cleared it was still there, a long line of dark smoke streaming from its underbelly. Xylem was about to fire again, only to set off in pursuit of the other two spaceships instead. What was going on? Everything was whizzing by so fast.

  Suddenly Grunt launched himself at Xylem with a fury and speed Padget didn't know he possessed (well he didn’t think he possessed much of anything), only for a white streak of light to thud down from the ceiling, striking him in the head. He collapsed to the floor immediately, an orange pool of blood leaking out of a large gash in his temple. He didn’t get up.

  Then he heard Jack's and Ros’ panicked voices. They seemed to be coming out of the walls.

  “What are you doing? STOP! Please.”

  He didn’t know what to do. Maybe it was all just some terrible mistake. Or a bad dream.

  “Xy… Xylem… what are you doing?”

  Still he continued his reign of terror, a gazillion blue darts rampaging through the packs of exploding asteroids.

  “Xylem…”

  An asteroid was sliced down the middle like a knife going through a potato, the two silver darts inches in front. The storm followed them.

  “W-what’s going on?” he asked, getting no reply. “Why are you doing this?”

  “They were planning to kill usss!” Xylem hissed, spinning round to face him, his yellow eyes bearing down on him like a predator.

  “Kill us? How… how do you know?”

  “I heard them,” he screeched, eyeing him up like a morsel of food.

  “Are you… are you sure?” he asked. “They didn’t seem like killers to me.”

  “YESSS,” he rasped, a clenched fist slamming into his jaw.

  Sharp pain jagged all the way up Padget’s face to his temple. His vision fogged and blurred, his knees turned to jelly. He collapsed. The last thing he saw were Grunt’s lifeless eyes staring back at him.

  Padget awoke to a great stabbing pain in his forehead. He stood up, wretched, then opened his eyes.

  He saw nothing at first except for the great blankness of space. Jack, Vyleria and Ros were nowhere to be seen.

  Then a rusty, brown planet came into view, swiftly followed by several more. Large swirls of coal-coloured rain clouds rolled over each.

  Then he saw something glinting in the sun’s glare.

  It looked like a giant metal insect with rows of short, metal arms jutting out from its side. At the end of each was some kind of space cannon almost as big as their own spaceship. Behind its forked tail were five massive rocket engines that burned brighter than the sun. Upon its dagger-like nose was some kind of strange, twisted, alien skull. Padget shuddered at the sight of it. The whole thing was as big as a city.

  Then where there was one there were two, then three, then five, until finally twenty of these giant spaceships reared-up in front of them. Each one was a hive of blinking lights as other smaller, sleekier space craft zipped about them like a shoal of glimmer fish.

  Padget looked on helplessly as Xylem piloted their spacecraft in between them.

  Then they pulled up alongside one of the larger ships, entering through a huge gaping hole in its side, before coming to a stop in what looked like some kind of hangar.

  He could see dim figures moving in front of the spaceship. Then a short while later he heard the sound of heavy footsteps clumping around outside the control room. A second later and they were inside.

  He turned around.

  Before him stood five grim shadows. Each one was covered head-to-toe in some kind of silky, black armour. The rifles they were holding were almost as big as he was. Suddenly the armor covering their faces peeled back in a black wave to reveal five blood-red faces. They looked like…

  Xylem.

  Xylem had betrayed him. Xylem had betrayed them all.

  As soon as they had come into the room two of the soldiers picked up Grunt, scanned him with some sort
of electronic device, and then dragged his lifeless body out into the corridor, a long orange streak trailing behind. He felt like he was going to throw-up.

  Padget looked at Xylem. He had a huge snarl stretched across his face.

  “Why? I… I thought you were my f-friend.”

  Xylem looked at him with his predator’s eyes and laughed. “Friendsss?” he hissed. “Never!”

  Padget opened his mouth to answer, but before he could a red beam of light darted out from one of the soldier’s rifles, hitting him in the gut. His whole body went limp at once, like all the bones had been removed from his body. The last thing he saw was Xylem stood over him like some kind of big game hunter, laughing.

  Chapter 23: Crash

  Jack scrambled out of his smoldering spaceship to a world of fire and smoke.

  In the distance a group of towering volcanoes were erupting, sending columns of ash high-up into the dim, crimson sky, thin slivers of lava streaking down their slopes, a featureless desert gnawing away at their ankles. And up above all of this, hanging in the sky like murder, was the angry face of a massive red star.

  He scanned the horizon looking for a sign of Vyleria and Ros.

  After several frantic minutes he found their ships several miles away to the North, at the base of a canyon just to the right of the highest volcano.

  Something shimmered behind him.

  Jack spun around at once, expecting another attack, only to see that his spacecraft had somehow repaired itself. It now looked fresh out of the showroom. Even the scorch marks were gone.

  He jumped inside to see if it still worked, hope blossoming in his chest.

  It didn't so much as fly an inch. Frustrated, he stepped outside and tried to use his rocket boots, but they wouldn’t work either. He looked down and saw that one of his boots was singed in a couple of places, whilst the other had most of its heel missing. He would have to walk.

  He soon wished he hadn’t.

  It was hotter than he’d imagined, and though his spacesuit sent a wave of cool air around his body, within an hour his throat was almost as dry as the desert around him.

  It was a lot farther than he’d thought too. Miles farther. But he kept on going. There was nothing else he could do...

  The planet was settling into a prolonged crimson twilight when he finally reached Vyleria’s and Ros’ ships. He’d never walked so far in his life, not even on all those rainy camping holidays his mum and dad were always taking him on in the Lake District.

  He raced over to Vyleria’s ship immediately, desperately trying to get in. But there was no door, no way at all to get in. He began to ram his fists into the spacecraft, its skin wriggling under his knuckles. Still it wouldn’t budge.

  He had just finished clattering it with a stone when he heard something moving behind him.

  He turned around at once. A grey shadow flickered for a moment in the twilight, before collapsing into his arms, inky droplets of blood dashing against the palms of his hands.

  CRASH!

  Jack ducked instinctively as a screeching ball of fire cut through the sky like a scalpel, slamming into the spacecraft, before arcing high-up into the air and coming back down with a great thud a few feet away.

  There had been three successive waves since Jack had first bundled Ros into his spaceship, each one more numerous and more deadly than the last. It seemed like there was a giant game of pinball going on, with them in the middle. If it wasn’t for their spaceship being made out of some kind of super-strong, extra-durable material, he guessed they’d be as flat as an intergalactic pancake right now.

  Jack’s gaze drifted from the blood-red sky to Ros. Though he was still unconscious, he had at least stopped bleeding. It was lucky that the spaceship had increased in size, albeit only on the inside, otherwise they would have practically been on top of each other. Like with his own spaceship, much of Ros' had been damaged in the attack, including crucially the engines and weapons. The food dispenser still worked however, though he hadn’t had a bite to eat since they’d crashed. The rampaging meteors and Vyleria’s stricken ship had taken care of that.

  Jack ran a hand down what was now the viewscreen, making the spaceship more transparent, and scanned the sky for fireballs. There were none.

  Breathing a huge sigh of relief, he glanced at Vyleria's ship a few feet away. If only I could swap her with Ros… she would know what to do, she would get everything working again, she would get them out of here, she...

  “What? Where am I?” growled Ros, staring at the two grey moons hanging in the sky like deformed skulls.

  “Oh, sorry I forgot,” said Jack, making the ship completely solid again.

  “Thanks. Now get out.”

  “What? You can’t be serious. I don’t stand a chance out there, my spaceship’s miles away.”

  “Not my problem,” he said, his eyes boring into him like corkscrews.

  “But Ros…”

  “Why should I let you stay? It’s your fault we’re down here in the first place.”

  “How do you make that one out?”

  “For making me go along with your ridiculous plan. If I hadn’t have listened to you I could have been far away by now. I could’ve found a way home.”

  “Yes and Vyleria would’ve died; I’d have died.”

  “Good. Better you than me.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do. Now hurry up and clear off. You’re breathing enough of my air as it is.”

  “No.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no Ros. I’m not leaving until Vyleria’s safe. Until then you can grumble and moan all you want.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” asked Jack, fixing him with the fiercest, most determined glare he could manage. “Try me.”

  Seconds passed.

  “Okay, have it your way,” said Ros just when Jack thought he wasn’t going to give in. “I’ll let you stay. For now. Now hurry up and tell me where we are and what happened to us.”

  “Don't you remember?”

  “No. The last thing I remember is your stupid plan. After that it’s a blank.”

  “Well, how did you manage to pilot your ship down here then?”

  “I don’t know, perhaps it was on autopilot or something. I’d check the spaceship if I knew what to look for, but it would be like looking for a needle in an intergalactic haystack.”

  “Yeah, you can say that again,” said Jack, managing a slight smile. “It’s all a bit like that around here.”

  “Well you better get used to it. We could be here quite a while. Assuming we get off this blasted rock of course.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Remember when I told you about how many star systems I’ve been to?”

  “Yeah. You said seventeen if I remember correctly.”

  “Yeah well, like I say I’ve been to many places, visited many stars and planets...”

  “And?”

  “And nothing here is familiar.”

  “Well we have just crash landed; it’s bound to look different at first...”

  “No, not here. Everything. The stars are all in the wrong places, the planets too. We’re in a completely different part of the galaxy; indeed I’m not even sure we’re still in OUR galaxy. We could be at the other end of the universe for all I know.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “Is it Jack? Look at where we are, look at what we’re in. This stuff is light years ahead of anything my people have. And yours too. We’re traders in the impossible now.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” said Jack, thinking about what else remained to be discovered. “You’ve got to admit though that it was a good idea of mine to imagine-up these spaceships wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sure Vyleria told you about it.”

  “No, she didn’t,” he said, his face beaming. “I came up with it all on my own. I’m starting to get a handle of things around here.” />
  “Oh yeah, then why did they attack us?” asked Ros.

  “I don’t know. They just did. But there’s no point in worrying about it now. They’re not coming back at any rate.”

  “Not unless it’s to destroy us.”

  “If they were going to do that they’d have done so already,” said Jack, making the ship more transparent again. “No, it’s just us now. Us and this planet.”

  “They’ve given us up for dead,” said Ros, scratching his forehead with his claws. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too.”

  “Well, it’s better than being dead I suppose,” said Ros. “By the way what’s happened to your girlfriend?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Jack, going a little red. “She's not my girlfriend, she's...”

  “Yes?”

  “She's just a friend that all. Nothing more. That’s if she’s even still alive...”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier,” said Jack, gently tapping the side of the spacecraft, opening up a window the size of a television screen. He pointed at Vyleria’s ship, sand gusting all over it.

  “I'm surprised you didn't want to snuggle up with her,” said Ros.

  “I would've done,” said Jack, going red again, “but I couldn't get into her spacecraft. I've tried everything. I've banged on the side of her ship, I've called to her on the ship's speaker system and I've even tried to beat my way in with a stone, but it just bounced off without making a dent, which is good of course, because otherwise those fireballs would have reduced us to scrap metal ages ago.”

  “She’s dead,” said Ros. “Just face it.”

  “What? She can’t be, I…”

  “It’s the only possible explanation. How long has she been in there?”

  “I don’t know. A few days.”

  “And all that without air, food, or water. If she were even the slightest bit alive she would have crawled out by now.”

  “No. I don’t believe it,” said Jack, surprised at the indifference in Ros' voice. “You can think what you want. I waited for you and I’ll wait for Vyleria too.”