Norman’s voice broke in on his thoughts. ‘Does anyone know how to drive a spaceship?’ he asked peevishly. ‘Anyway, it would be stealing!’
‘We’re thieves, aren’t we?’ said Gerald, suddenly filled with decision. ‘Let’s do it!’
Commando-like, the adventurers raced through the undergrowth, flitting between the trees one by one, dashing behind the massive bole of an oak before rolling into the cover of a hawthorn thicket. They circled round the reptilian scientists, still intent about their alien business, before reaching the rear of the craft. The metal hull throbbed and hummed with power.
Brian peered round the side, and then dodged back into cover. ‘There’s still a guard on the ramp,’ he hissed.
Gerald nodded silently. He signed to Norman and Percy to circle round the far side of the saucer-like craft, with a further gesture to suggest surprising the alien guard. The instant the two adventurers had vanished round the far side of the saucer, Gerald led Brian at a crouching run.
They reached the shadows beside the ramp. The alien guard stood at attention, cradling some kind of futuristic-looking hair dryer, possibly a ray-gun. The guard was surveying the scientists in the green-lit clearing. Gerald crept up toward it, followed by Brian.
He glimpsed Norman and Percy sneaking up on the far side, flattening themselves against the hull. Norman was still looking peeved.
The two groups converged. The throbbing of the spacecraft’s engines drowned out a muffled grunt which was followed by the thud of a body falling to the leaf-covered earth. Casting cautious glances at the alien scientists, the four youths leapt over the guard’s supine body, sprinted up the ramp and flung themselves through the glowing hatch.
They staggered to a halt in an eerie, green-lit corridor.
The passage opened out into a chamber packed with mysterious machines of an alien technology. To the left and right, hatches led deeper into the ship.
As they walked nervously towards the control console, a klaxon blared into life, and the green lights began to flash on and off. Something resembling a disco-ball revolved on the console while a computerised voice shrieked gibberish inside their heads. The noise of the klaxon grew louder.
‘We’ve set off an alarm!’ Brian shouted, never afraid to state the obvious.
‘Those aliens will hear!’ Percy shouted back.
Gerald tore out his sword and sprinted back towards the main hatch.
Streaming across the clearing and up the ramp, leaping over the fallen body of the guard with angry expressions on their unearthly faces, were the alien scientists. All bore smaller versions of the hair-dryer the guard had held, and as he watched their advance, Gerald cursed his lack of foresight in not looting the corpse.
The aliens - nine or ten of them - surged up the ramp, firing energy bolts as they came. Gerald met them in the hatchway, his sword glowing strangely in the eerie green light.
He dodged a sizzling energy bolt from the first alien, whirled round with his sword, and sent its scaled, reptilian head spinning off into the darkness. Gushing green ichor, the body stumbled and fell back down the ramp. Then the three other adventurers were at Gerald’s side, Brian and Percy and Norman with their weapons at the ready. The remaining aliens bore down upon them. Energy blasts sparked and ricocheted off the fuselage. Steel glittered in eerie light. Aliens scattered across the deck, spouting ichor. The air grew rank with a smell of ozone.
Norman fell back, nursing a scorched shoulder.
Suddenly the struggle was over, as quickly as it had begun. The members of the alien expedition lay in sticky pools of ichor, scattered down the ramp and across the clearing. Brian, Percy and Gerald rooted among their corpses while Norman tended to his wound. The victorious adventurers seized the aliens’ weapons as trophies.
Percy turned to Gerald. ‘With these ray-guns we could zap any barrow wight back to the hell it came from!’ he exclaimed.
Gerald shook his head. ‘Why waste our time with this planet?’ he asked. He was heartily sick of donjons and dragons, taverns and trulls. ‘There’s a whole universe out there. And if these pussies are anything to go by, it’ll be a pushover!
‘Come on, back to camp. We’ll grab the treasure and all our equipment. Then we pilot this flying saucer to the nth dimension. After that…’ He laughed maniacally. ‘We’ll see!’
The four adventurers staggered back up the ramp, weighed down with tents, bedding, backpacks, the treasure chest, and an assortment of swords and axes, ropes and grapnels, lanterns and iron spikes, ten-foot poles and assorted adventuring trash. Slinging this into a pile at the back of the control room, they slouched down on the weirdly shaped chairs and tried to puzzle out the controls.
Percy found the lever that opened and closed the hatch, and amused himself with it until Gerald snapped at him.
‘What’s this do?’ asked Brian, pressing a button. A visi-screen clicked on, showing a 360º view of the surrounding forest. Blast cannons mounted on the central dome rotated. Brian jabbed his thumb down on another button and a barrage of energy beams lit up the night.
‘Dakka-dakka-dakkka!’ he jabbered fanatically.
‘Stop that,’ Gerald said, as two trees went up like Roman candles. Sulkily, Brian obeyed.
Gerald yanked a lever, and a star-map blossomed out to cover the visi-screen. A cursor glowed over the third planet of a star located near the top right of the map. Joggling a joystick, Gerald moved the cursor over onto a neighbouring planet, and pressed a button.
A computerised voice echoed in their heads: ‘This vessel is now en route for Planet Aku.’
Without warning, the engines rumbled into life. The deck shook. Smoke and exhaust fumes billowed up from beneath the craft. Gerald whooped.
‘We’re on our way!’ he bellowed. The spaceship took off, soaring into the black skies above the mist-tapestried forest, its retro-rockets gleefully belching pollution into the hitherto unsullied environment.
As the autopilot guided them through the swirling clouds of the planet’s stratosphere, the four adventurers gathered around the glyph-inscribed chest.
‘Fuck knows where we’re going,’ Gerald muttered, fumbling with the catch, ‘but wherever we end up, they’re bound to appreciate hard cash.’ He flung open the chest, and abruptly gulped in horror.
Quivering evilly, like a venomous spider crouching in the midst of the gold and gems, was the severed hand of the barrow wight. Gerald stared down in shock. Before he could react, the hand sprang into frightful life and leapt at the youth’s throat.
Gerald flung himself backward as the talons snapped within inches of his windpipe. He fell to the metal deck with a clatter, and the withered claw thumped down on his chest. He stared cross-eyed as the thing came scuttling up towards his face.
‘Get it off me!’ he bellowed. The shout galvanised his companions, till now frozen in horror. They scrambled forward, blast guns at the ready.
Gerald threw himself to one side, spilling the reanimated hand onto the deck, where it lay for a moment, clenching and unclenching. With Percy and Norman’s help, Gerald staggered his feet.
He glared at the hand in horror. So its hideous life remained even when severed from its body! He remembered how the barrow wight had reformed again and again, no matter how many times they had dismembered it.
Brian aimed his blast gun at the thing. The claw sprang to one side as the beam lanced down. Brian’s energy bolt danced dangerously round the chamber, causing the youths to duck and dive out of its ricochet. The severed hand bounded forward, and flung itself at the control console.
Percy opened fire from a crouch, hitting the console dead on. Sparks showered the chamber. Undeterred, the withered claw seized a lever and yanked it. As the adventurers rushed the console, the entire ship lurched to the right; the deck tipped at a forty-degree angle, and the four youths went crashing into a bulkhead, showered by a rain of objects from their pile of equipment and plunder. Brian dropped his blast gun, and it clattered off into the shadow
s.
‘Get that hand!’ Gerald bawled.
The deck tipped again, to the left this time, sending them stumbling past the console. Percy aimed a wild blast at the sinister claw as they passed. The console exploded again, and Percy’s energy beam ricocheted. The main lights went out, leaving the chamber illuminated only by a glimmer from the visi-screen.
The ship screamed into a dive. Stars whirled past the visi-screen. The treasure chest, which had been rumbling across the chamber floor with every lurch, came slamming into the instrument bank. It showered the youths with all their ill-gotten gains. The adventurers were flung across the console.
Gerald cried out in fear as he felt something skeletal scamper across him. It clattered down onto the deck.
‘There it goes!’ Percy shouted, seeing the barrow wight’s hand scuttling in the glow of the instrument bank.
Brian sprang down onto the deck, his axe whirling. The blade glittered once in the green light. Above the whine of the out-of-control craft, Gerald heard a final crunch.
‘That’s done for that,’ Brian gloated, gazing down at the mangled, unmoving claw.
The other adventurers climbed down from the console. Gold and jewels jingled beneath their feet as they picked their way up the sloping deck.
‘All very well!’ Gerald muttered tersely. He turned, and stared at the visi-screen, where the yellow orb of an alien planet was rapidly growing in the distance. ‘But thanks to that thing, this ship is out of control.’
He looked wildly at the others. ‘The fight wrecked our controls!’ he said. ‘There’s no knowing where we’ll end up.’ The others returned his gaze unspeaking.
Silence filled the control room, split only by the increasing whine of the engines as the spacecraft hurtled towards the misty surface of the mysterious planet.
TO BE CONTINUED…
The story continues in The Rocketeers 1: Marooned On A Savage Planet (Publication date: 5 July 2013).
And in previous series:
A WORLD OF KNIGHTS AND CASTLES, MONSTERS AND ADVENTURERS, TREACHERY AND INTRIGUE.
While spying on the occult rituals of a White Witch in contemporary England, four youths - Gerald, Percy, Norman, and Brian - find themselves mysteriously transported to another planet.
Their struggle to survive in a hostile world leads them on a terrifying journey through dark forests, dank underground tunnels, war-torn wastelands, and finally to the winding streets of a violent city where they are apprenticed into the notorious Thieves' Guild.
Will they survive the tests set by Grandmaster Mohock, and become star pupils of the Thieves' Guild Academy? Or will the marauding horde of barbarians even now crossing the horizon send them on another, more terrible path?
Book One in THE DUNGEONEERS. Thieves’ Guild Academy is a collection of the first twelve episodes of the popular eBook series.
A DESPERATE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL IN A WILDERNESS INHABITED BY TERRIFYING MONSTERD
After escaping the barbarian assault on Kashamash, the four young adventurers set out into the trackless wilderness.
Their destination is Trinovant, but between them and the city lie the mountains... and wandering monsters!
Following the King's Highway through the Mountain Duchies they will encounter witches and ogres, villains and monsters, but worse is yet to come.
Book Two in THE DUNGEONEERS, Wandering Monsters is a collection of the second twelve episodes of the popular eBook series.
Into the Void (The Dungeoneers) Page 2