Arthur and the Andarran Rescue

by Craig Speakes

  ‘There are no star systems near Andarra that have eight planets,’ said Vello.

  ‘Our solar system has eight,’ ventured Sky.

  ‘Yes, it’s true,’ said Margot. ‘But even if it’s our solar system, without knowing what he’s saying, it’s not any clearer.’

  Sava had been right about the valley protecting its secrets. The presence of the tower and the steps vanished shortly after they set out from the base of the rock face. Before long, the whole valley was a barely discernible cloud-like mass on the horizon. Progress across the plain also proved to be slow going, not least because they would stop each time Yan began talking and drawing. This made Insuro and the Major nervous. It was hard to hide in the open from prying eyes.

  At the end of the third day, they were finally getting closer to the Elizian glacier. What had looked from far off like a smooth white wall of ice turned out to be anything but smooth. It was a deep mass of extremely jagged and cracked ice.

  ‘We have to get on that?’ asked Arthur, watching as a section broke away from the front and, with a roar, crashed into the ground below.

  ‘Don’t you worry, lad, just think of it as a large, unstable ice cube,’ joked the Major.

  ‘Yep, that makes me feel loads better,’ winked Sky, joining in on the joke.

  ‘Loads!’ smiled Arthur, taking off his pack and sword, and putting them down so he could stretch his back. Without a sound, Yan, who was standing not far from him, leapt forward and grabbed it. He ran several paces forward and, holding up the sword by its sheath, began talking directly to the stone atop the hilt. His strange words rapidly transformed into a chant. Unsure what was going to happen next, everyone backed away from him. Arthur heard the hum of the Major’s plasma rifle being powered up.

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think he means to harm anyone. Let’s just give him some room until he returns to himself,’ said the Major calmly.

  Yan continued chanting words to the sword, repeating them over and over again in a deliberate and almost fevered manner. Then, quite suddenly, he went quiet and held the sword out in Arthur’s direction without turning to face him.

  ‘Steady on, lad,’ cautioned the Major, taking a step nearer and raising his rifle. Arthur heard Insuro talking to him in his thoughts.

  ‘Notice the stone, Keeper.’

  Arthur was surprised to see that it had gone bright red, where just moments before he was sure that it had been brown. ‘I see it – it was like that when I touched it in the tower.’ Arthur took a step slowly towards Yan and the sword.

  ‘Steady,’ said the Major again.

  ‘It’s okay, I know what he wants me to do,’ he replied, reaching forward and touching the stone.

  15

  They Know

  The moment Arthur touched the glowing stone, his whole body suddenly felt twisted and stretched, as though he were being pulled right into the stone itself. The Major, Sky, Yan, the sword – they all vanished. Everything become red. Nothing else, just red. He was neither sitting nor standing, he wasn’t anywhere, but he was there.

  All at once, the redness went and he was falling, falling from a great height straight into what he somehow knew was the Valley of the Serena, straight into that terrible fog. The illusion felt so real that he could sense the wind pummelling and rushing past his face, pulling his skin back, faster and faster. He yelled out in terror as the valley raced towards him, closing his eyes tightly seconds before he plunged into the gloom, the rushing air screeching and howling. With his eyes shut he waited for the terrible end that could be only seconds away.

  When nothing happened, he cautiously opened them. He was standing in front of a gigantic gate. The gate rose up far into the air above him; so high was it that he couldn’t even see the top. Beyond the gate, the starry darkness of the universe lay before him. Wisps of fog drifted across the ground. Behind him and to the sides there was nothing, not darkness, not emptiness, just nothing. There was only the gate in front of him, its thick black ironwork ancient-looking and massive. It stood open. Arthur felt neither fear nor calm as he stepped through.

  It was like stepping into space itself. Its vastness felt crushing. Then, as though someone had changed the picture, Arthur saw twenty or more warships lined up in front of him. In front of them was a very small ship. It looked familiar.

  It’s the Horizon! He thought.

  Behind the Horizon and the line of warships was a large, ugly-looking black planet. Beyond it was another similar planet.

  ‘It’s the Solarians,’ he said out loud, his words hanging and repeating themselves over and over again, getting louder and louder. ‘It’s the Solarians. It’s the Solarians. It’s the Solarians!’

  Then as though being sucked backwards, he flew back through the gate and into the nothingness.

  ‘I think I must have hit him with this sword or something! How did I get that? I can’t remember anything.’

  Arthur could hear Yan, far away in the distance.

  ‘Arthur, I’m so sorry! Can’t someone help him?’

  ‘Give the sword to me,’ instructed the Major. ‘Sezan will look after the boy.’

  ‘Here, please, take it, everything is such a blur, the last few days. What’s happening to me?’

  ‘Come and have a sit over here with me.’ He heard Margot’s voice. ‘A bit of a strange thing happened to you.’

  With each moment he felt himself getting closer and closer to the voices. Finally, when Sezan spoke to him, he returned and opened his eyes. Sezan was kneeling over him and scanning his head. Arthur groaned when he realised that he was sprawled out on the floor again.

  ‘Welcome back, Keeper, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I really need to stop touching that thing!’ said Arthur.

  ‘Easy does it, lad,’ said the Major behind him. ‘You’ve had a fall.’

  ‘Yes, I can feel it.’

  Sitting up slowly, he was surprised to find that nothing in his body was hurting. Apart from feeling a little groggy, he felt okay. Sky handed him a water bottle.

  Since the others were eager to hear what had happened, Arthur recounted everything as best he could. As he did so, he paid particular attention to the expressions on the faces of Insuro and Vello. He had the feeling they wouldn’t be completely surprised by what he’d learned.

  ‘That’s quite a story, lad,’ said the Major, who was the first to speak after he had finished. ‘You say you saw the Horizon in front of a number of star destroyers and a rather grim-looking pair of planets?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I saw.’

  Insuro, who had been aware of Arthur’s prolonged eye contact and knew the reason for it, nodded to him before speaking up.

  ‘I fear that what the Keeper has seen may well be what could soon come to pass.’

  All eyes were now fixed on Insuro. There was a real sense that something important was about to be said.

  ‘Our meeting in Getti was not by chance – that much you already know. But what the Keeper has seen today may confirm that which we had begun to suspect. These past cycles, we have awaited news from the Agash on its mission to return your crew and present our delegation to Earth. We were concerned when we received no further signals from the ship after it entered the wormhole. However, the Earth is many tens of billions of light years from Tresk and wormholes cannot be relied upon as channels of communication over such distances, so we waited. Treskan warships continue to guard our wormhole and proximity to it allows us to monitor Solarian communications which must be routed through it.’ Insuro paused and consulted quietly with Vello before continuing.

  ‘Less than a cycle ago, there began a series of transmissions to the Solarian outposts on Andarra about the Earth prisoners. They were no longer to be accorded ‘special status’, and permissions were given for them to be set to work.’

  Sava and Luca both looked troubl
ed when they heard Insuro’s words.

  ‘This raised the question as to why the Solarains would do this now and where the Agash was,’ he continued. ‘Vello and our other strategists concluded it was probable that the ship never made it to Earth, and that the Solarians were now in possession of Earth’s co-ordinates.’

  Sky and Arthur looked at each other in alarm.

  ‘Um, I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr President,’ said Margot, ‘but are you saying that the crew who were supposed to go home are prisoners again?’

  ‘It is likely. If the Solarians do know the co-ordinates, they could have got them only if they possessed the Arnac, which we know are still with the Keeper, or if they had captured the Agash. It also does not seem logical that they would allow the captured crew on Andarra to be set to work if they had not already obtained the information they required. We must, then, with all haste, move to free your crew – but it is vital that it look like an Andarran attack. If the Solarians suspect that Treskan ships and fighters were also involved, they may assume that Tresk knows about the fate of the Agash and is trying to rescue the captured crew before heading for Earth. If the enemy think this they may push ahead with their own plans ahead of schedule - before we have time to counter them!’

  When Insuro had finished speaking, he looked sympathetically at the concerned faces amongst the members of the group from Earth.

  ‘I realise this is fell news indeed, my friends. Preparations are being made to take us to Earth once a rescue has been made. If we fail, the Solarians will exact a swift and brutal revenge on the prisoners. So… let us focus our thoughts now on what we can control and not expend our energies on what we cannot.’

  Arthur looked about the group. Margot and Yan were clearly shocked to hear that their colleagues and friends, whom they had been rescued with, had in all likelihood been captured again. The Major and the Captain were deep in conversation. When they had finished, the Captain spoke.

  ‘We’re going to need help if we hope to find this base quickly, and then there is still the matter of finding a way into it.’

  Vello nodded.

  ‘I agree, Captain,’ he said. ‘The cruiser Gorkan lies cloaked above us, and since the Keeper reported the discovery of his father, it has been instructed to conduct a tactical analysis of the glacier and, once they’ve located it, the base. We will be sent this information when we reach the relative safety of the glacier. It is too dangerous to receive transmissions in this open space. It makes it all too easy for the enemy to hunt us. There is no need to alert them yet to our presence.’

  ‘There aren’t really enough of us to attack an entire base, are there?’ asked Arthur, wondering if anyone else was thinking it.

  ‘True enough, Keeper,’ smiled Vello. ‘We must see what help arrives when it is time.’

  ‘What exactly does that mean?’ asked the Major.

  ‘It means, Major, that some things are best not spoken. Our laws dictate it. I trust that you can understand this.’

  Arthur watched the Major and Captain exchange glances. It was the first time they’d heard Vello or Insuro speak in riddles. Although he gave the impression of understanding, the Major didn’t look too impressed by it.

  After the shock of hearing about the threat the Earth could be facing and the need to rescue the hostages quickly, everyone agreed not to stop that night but to push on towards their objective. By mid-morning the group arrived before the craggy glacial wall marking the tip of the Elizian glacier. After a very short rest, they broke camp and, after finding a safe way up and onto it, spread out to look for a way to get across without having to risk staying out in the open. Not only was there the threat of being spotted by Solarian drones and patrols, but Sava and Luca had been very keen to stress just how quickly the weather on these glaciers could change and leave you in deadly trouble.

  As no one knew what exactly they were looking for, they spread out in pairs and were soon up to their necks in snow.

  ‘If I had wanted to get covered in snow, I could have jumped in it myself!’ moaned the cat after the third time Arthur lost his footing and fallen over.

  ‘Sorry, Cat, but you are welcome to get out whenever you like.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s not be too hasty. I’m only trying to suggest that it would be better if we didn’t fall over. That’s all.’

  ‘I am tryiiiiinnnnnnnnngggg.’

  Arthur took one more step forwards from where he had just fallen over and disappeared entirely, ending up in a heap in the darkness below.

  ‘You all right, Cat?

  ‘I didn’t land on my feet!’ came a faint reply.

  ‘Yeah, me neither!’’

  ‘You decided to drop in, did you?’ mused the Major’s voice behind him. He swung the light on his rifle round, so Arthur could see what he was doing. The sound of Sky’s laughter echoed.

  Arthur got to his knees and looked around for his rifle.

  ‘You okay? Not hurt?’ asked the Major, extending a hand to help Arthur up.

  ‘Yes, I think so. How did you get in here?’

  ‘Back that way,’ said Sky. ‘It’s like a huge crack in the ice. It could run right through the glacier, who knows.’

  Arthur cleared the snow off his rifle and switched on the light at the front. The crack was three or four metres deep and the same again in width. A roof of snow where he’d fallen through covered it over.

  ‘We should go and tell the others,’ he said at the same moment Captain Schmidt poked his head through the hole Arthur had fallen through.

  ‘Ah, there you are… You okay?’ He asked, hanging upside down, before spying the Major and Sky. ‘I think you have found what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Yes, with any luck. Fetch the others,’ instructed the Major. The Captain’s head disappeared and the Major cracked several green light sticks, setting them down in the shape of an arrow so the rest of the group would be able to see, and would also know in which direction they’d gone.

  ‘Right, come on, let’s go and scout what’s up ahead while the others sort themselves out,’ he said and set off down the tunnel.

  Although the way was uneven, requiring them to constantly scramble across and around the uneven floors and icy deposits, it was possible to keep moving forwards. The likelihood that the floor under them might conceal other hidden crevasses made the Major rope them all together again in case one of them fell through.

  It was perhaps another hour or so before the others climbed down into the tunnel. Following the direction of the arrow, they caught up soon enough.

  ‘Where are Sava and Luca?’ asked Arthur, seeing that they weren’t there.

  ‘They have been sent on an urgent mission. If they are successful we will see them again before we attack,’ said Vello.

  ‘And if they are not?’

  ‘That, Keeper, is not for me to say.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure they will both be fine,’ said Sky a short time later, as the group, now all roped together, continued along the tunnel.

  ‘I hope so. It would be sad not to see them again or to have said goodbye. I wonder where Vello sent them… to find help, I guess,’ said Arthur, half talking to himself.

  ‘I guess,’ replied Sky.

  Arthur turned his head to say something to her and at the same time almost went head over heels on a lump of ice.

  ‘Luca is not my girlfriend, you know,’ he said, composing himself and speaking in a hushed voice so he couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, I really like her, but not in that way, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said softly, unable to hide a flicker of a smile.

  ‘She saved us from Char and Gravis, after all.’

  ‘Yes, she did, she was very brave.’

  Arthur felt his hand brush against hers. ‘I do like someone, thou
gh,’ he said, feeling his cheeks suddenly beginning to burn.

  ‘I know,’ she replied, her smile getting bigger.

  Arthur was about to say what he had been wanting to say for a while when he felt the cat suddenly appear over his shoulder. He had forgotten the cat could hear everything.

  ‘Oh, toads’ toes! You have got to be kidding me… you two!? Can you imagine how unsettling it is for my emotional stability to be woken from a pleasant dream, to discover the two of you smooching away here in the dark?’ He meowed.

  ‘Smooching!? We certainly were doing no such thing!’ hissed Sky.

  ‘Keep your voice down!’ insisted Arthur.

  ‘Kissing, not kissing… you know, I’m not one to eavesdrop, but it sounded like you were well on your way to me.’

  ‘We were not! And why are you always hanging around where you’re not wanted?’ said Sky angrily.

  ‘Where I’m not wanted?! Where else should I be?’

  ‘I don’t know, falling down a deep snow hole somewhere!’

  ‘Phhh!’ said the cat, and he dropped back into the backpack as Sky and Arthur walked on in an uncomfortable silence.

  The group had made good progress through the ice crevasse. It frequently shifted and changed in size, zig-zagging in places and running straight in others. The snow roof, too, was ever-changing, appearing in some sections and absent in others. Where the floor had given way to reveal deeper crevasses below them, they had to climb out of the crevasse and proceed along its edge until it was safe enough to climb back in.

  By late afternoon of their second day on the glacier, a bitter snowstorm had descended and swept down into the crevasse, making it impossible to see anything. The winds were so strong that the group, already roped together, had to hastily dig into the icy walls to create shelter. It would be two full days before the storm eased off enough for them to be able to continue.