Hatch
Page 29
Something burst from it. Seth felt like all the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs. He saw feathers with the deep, dazzling luster of gold. Breathlessly, he watched as it made an upward spiral into the sky. Fury wafted off it with every stroke of its massive wings.
“It’s a flyer,” said Anaya in disbelief.
“Oh my God,” said Petra, her voice choked. “It was a trap!”
Seth stared. High in the sky, the magnificent creature spread its wings to their full span. Its torso was encased in blinding silver armor, and its head was concealed inside a white helmet that spiked up at the back like the crest of a horned dinosaur. And from this helmet came a vibration that Seth sensed, at any second, could unleash utter devastation.
Gleaming like an angel, the cryptogen folded its wings and plunged toward them.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my early readers, who saw this book when it was a clumsy hatchling and gave me valuable feedback: Philippa Sheppard, Kevin Sylvester, Kevin Sands, Jonathan Auxier. And huge thanks also to my editors, Suzanne Sutherland and Nancy Siscoe, whose thoughtful critiques helped me wrangle this rampaging menagerie of a tale.
I’d also like to give a special thanks to my publishers, who oversaw the release of the first title in the series, Bloom, at a very difficult time. To Kristopher Kam and the whole sales and marketing team at Knopf Books for Young Readers, and to Maeve O’Reagan and her associates at HarperCollins Canada—thanks for being so resourceful and going the extra mile for these books!
An Excerpt from Thrive
THEY. ARE. HERE.
ARE YOU READY?
Touching down May 2021
From outside came the faint rumble of thunder.
“Weird,” Anaya said. “Thunder in summer?”
“It’s not stopping,” Petra said.
Pearson said something into his headset and then looked at her and Anaya.
“We need to get back to the base, now.”
“What’s wrong?” Petra asked.
“It’s beginning.”
Everyone in the control room inside was talking at once. The lights flickered. Petra felt the thunder’s vibration through her feet.
“. . . another sighting over the South China Sea . . .”
“. . . multiple entries reported now . . .”
“What’s happening?” Anaya demanded.
No one heard her over the babble of coordinates, as people talked into headsets and pounded at their laptops.
The air was shuddering. Years ago, there’d been an earthquake, and Petra had heard the old wooden banister rattling in their house, and then in the floor and the walls. She’d stood there, frozen, knowing there was some massive force at work, and she was absolutely powerless against it. This shuddering was no different. It seemed to come at her from all directions, and it was inescapable.
“It should be right over our heads now . . . ,” someone was saying.
Petra felt like all the bones had suddenly been removed from her body. She grabbed a desk, afraid she might fall. Oh my god, it was really happening.
Anaya headed for the exit after Pearson, and Petra followed them. She wanted to move, afraid if she stayed still, she’d literally collapse. Down a corridor, through the doors, and into the shuddering outside.
Shading her eyes, Petra tilted her gaze skyward.
It was like a lid sliding over the top of the sky.
Beyond the mosquito netting, the ship came in from the west.
It curved like a rose petal, curling slightly at the edges. It wasn’t smooth like a flower, though, but rough-textured, like some kind of volcanic stone. It trailed streams of vapor. High against the clouds, the ship’s dimensions were a mystery. She remembered the huge ship in orbit and its array of petals. This was just one petal. What was it Ritter had said—“the length of three football fields”? It had no lights, no engines, no doorways, no jet trail.
The entire sky echoed. She felt the low rumble in her molars.
Weeks ago, she’d seen this ship on a television monitor in the bunker. There had been lots of these petal-shaped ships, all connected to a central, flower-like stem.
But that had been on a screen, seen from a great distance.
Seeing it now, spanning the sky, was something else entirely. It was real, and it was right here.
“I want to get back to the base,” she said.
The words flew from her mouth. She wanted to be with her father for whatever was coming next.
“We’ll get you in a car,” Dr. Weber said.
But no one was moving, not even her—it was like they were all mesmerized by the ship passing overhead. She couldn’t turn away.
It was like watching something momentous: thundering Niagara Falls, or a rocket blasting off. It demanded your full attention. Swirled up with the sheer terror was a racing excitement in her stomach.
She knew what was inside. Anaya had described all those rows upon rows of pods plugged into the fleshy walls. Thousands of slumbering cryptogen soldiers. Or were they awake now? Wide awake and ready.
The ship moved with eerie slowness. When it blotted out the sun, a huge shadow dashed itself against the earth. She could almost imagine a sound accompanying it, like a clash of cymbals. She shivered.
Everyone from the observation room was now outside the biodome, faces turned upward.
“We have ten reports so far, ten ships,” an officer with a headset was saying. “Baltimore, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Brussels, Cairo, Jakarta, Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai. And here.”
“They’re picking human population density,” said Pearson. “And putting themselves within easy striking distance of multiple targets.”
“Sir,” said another officer, holding a phone to his ear, “we have incoming fighters from CFB Comox.”
“No!” said Anaya. “They’ll get annihilated!”
The two warplanes tore strips through the sky, trailing vapor from their wingtips as they closed on the cryptogen ship. Each swooped up sharply after releasing a missile.
Petra wasn’t sure they even touched the ship. There were small pulses of purple light, and both missiles exploded, but when the flame and smoke cleared, there didn’t seem to be any damage to the vast ship at all. It moved on, as indifferent as an elephant to a mosquito.
“Some kind of shielding,” Pearson said.
The planes, spent of ammo, veered off and disappeared. The ship hadn’t even bothered to return fire, which was worrying. They weren’t even concerned the human warplanes might come back with something worse?
As the ship passed directly overhead, Petra staggered to the side, light-headed. She sat down on the grass, the world spinning.
“It’s a low-gravity field,” said Dr. Weber, crouching beside her.
“We’ve lost comms,” Pearson said. “Power’s down, too.”
“Probably an electromagnetic pulse,” said Dr. Weber.
Petra wrapped her arms around herself and held on tight. The ship passed directly over the base, and it seemed to take an eternity. It cast huge shadows over the ravaged buildings of Vancouver. People watched from balconies and rooftops as the ship headed off to the south.
She couldn’t help feeling relief that it was moving on. She’d feared it would hover over Vancouver and unleash a torrent of destruction.
“Do we have a landing site for this one?” Pearson asked.
“Based on trajectory and velocity, somewhere between Vancouver and Seattle.”
Grimly, Pearson said, “Easy striking distance of both.”
And Seth, Petra thought.
Also by Kenneth Oppel
Bloom
Inkling
Every Hidden Thing
The Nest
This Dark Endeavor
Such Wicked Intent
Half Brother
The Boundless
Airborn
Skybreaker
Starclimber
Silverwing
Sunwing
&n
bsp; Firewing
Darkwing
Dead Water Zone
The Live-Forever Machine
Copyright
Hatch
Copyright © 2020 by Firewing Productions, Inc.
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Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
FIRST CANADIAN EDITION
Cover art copyright © 2020 by M. S. Corley
Cover design by Katrina Damkoehler
Interior art used under license from Shutterstock.com
Epub Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 Epub ISBN: 978-1-4434-5689-0
Version 08132020
Print ISBN: 978-1-4434-5688-3
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Hatch / Kenneth Oppel.
Names: Oppel, Kenneth, 1967- author.
Series: Oppel, Kenneth, 1967- Overthrow ; bk. 2.
Description: Series statement: Overthrow ; book 2
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200272128 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200272152 | ISBN 9781443456883 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781443456890 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8579.P64 H38 2020 | DDC jC813/.54—dc23
Printed and bound in the United States of America
LSC/H987654321
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