Rake looked crestfallen. His shoulders slumped.
‘We’ve failed, then.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Tea-Leaf. There was a steely look in her eyes. ‘I couldn’t override the field generator controls from the Keep. But I’m pretty certain I can shut down the zone from here in the generator itself.’
Rake held her determined gaze for a moment. He gave a firm nod.
‘OK. Do it. Snow and I will watch your back.’
He gave Tea-Leaf a leg-up onto the ducting above. As she hurriedly unfurled her roll-up keypad once more and wrapped its hack-patch around the cable bundle, Rake managed a nervous smile.
‘You’ve got just over seven minutes, so no pressure . . .’
Chapter 14
Flight of the Inimitable
LANISTA’S EXPRESSION AS she advanced on Griffin was one of pure hatred.
‘Do you have any idea what I’ve been through to track you down?’ she spat.
Her wild-eyed glare was fixed on the Skirter leader as though he was a tiny rodent and she a ravenous hawk.
‘I’ll tell you, shall I? I’ve spent over an hour wading through the most revolting, foul-smelling muck I’ve ever had the misfortune to come upon! On top of that . . .’ she raved, ‘I’ve had a most unpleasant encounter with some sort of grotesque, overgrown cockroach!’
She raised her left arm high to display a long, bloody gash in her side.
‘But do you know what?’ She came to a halt a few metres from her old enemy. A crazed smile spread across her pale face. ‘It was worth it.’
She reached over her left shoulder, grasped the hilt of her ion-sica and unsheathed its curving, red-edged blade.
‘Because now I’m going to bring your miserable life to an overdue end!’
She took a step forward aggressively, then suddenly stopped. She seemed to have fully noticed Hoax for the first time. Her gaze moved across his orange and black armour to the medallion in his breastplate. A momentary look of surprise – even alarm – flickered in her fiery eyes.
‘Armouron!’ she hissed poisonously. ‘My brother said your kind had crawled back out from under a stone somewhere! I see they are enlisting infants now!’
Hoax gave a defiant smile.
‘Better young and keen than old and mean.’
Lanista glowered at him.
‘My fight is with Griffin today. But I’ll be only too happy to dispatch you too, if you get in my way!’
She began to advance again, brandishing her lethal weapon. But Griffin made no attempt to draw his own. He simply stood his ground.
‘We settled our differences in the Arena, over ten years ago,’ he said calmly. ‘I have no wish to fight you again.’
‘Oh, but you will fight me!’ spat Lanista. She signalled to her team of White Knights. They immediately levelled their blasters at Hoax. ‘Or your young friend here will pay the price!’
Griffin scowled. After a moment’s pause, he reluctantly drew his double-handed sword from its scabbard.
‘And this time,’ Lanista hissed, ‘I’ll give you more than that pretty little scar I left you with!’
With a sudden blood-curdling screech she lunged at Griffin, slicing her ion-sica at his left side. The Skirter leader side-stepped expertly, parrying her blow. He quickly seized the initiative and swept his own heavy blade in a fierce uppercut. Only his opponent’s impressive speed enabled her to dodge it.
The fight raged on, blade clashing against blade again and again. Hoax watched helplessly. Lanista had clearly set her vengeful heart on a rematch against her old foe. If he tried to intervene, her bodyguards would shoot him where he stood. For the moment, he had no choice but to watch.
Griffin was forced backwards as Lanista rained blows down on him. Her eyes flashed wildly with each strike. She broke off her attack at last, stepping back to sneer at her panting opponent.
‘Not so cocky now, are you, Mister People’s Champion?’
Griffin straightened up, breathing heavily. ‘Your swordsmanship has improved since our last meeting, I confess,’ he said. ‘But you fight with anger, not honour – as you always did.’
Lanista seethed.
‘Let’s see how your precious honour copes with this!’ she shrieked.
Hoax looked on in horror as she charged at Griffin once again, whirling her glowing sword like a berserker.
But as she bore down on him, Griffin suddenly came to life. He dodged Lanista’s first swing and used his right leg to trip her. Her ion-sica slipped from her grasp as she stumbled. A moment later, she was flat on her back with Griffin’s sword at her throat. Now it was his eyes that burned fiercely.
‘I have no desire to kill you,’ he growled. ‘But I will do so. Unless you call off your guards and allow me and my comrades safe passage to leave.’
Lanista looked like she might explode with anger. But she wasn’t in a position to argue. Staring lividly at her enemy, she gave a sharp nod.
‘Do I have your word?’ pressed Griffin.
‘Yes!’ spat the incensed woman. She flashed a look at her robot bodyguard. As one, they lowered their blasters.
Griffin moved his sword from Lanista’s throat. She squirmed away, crawling back to join her android guards. As she got to her feet, she cast a look of utter loathing at Griffin. At that moment, Hoax realized that her word meant nothing.
‘KILL THEM BOTH!’
Hoax only had the split second it took the White Knights to register Lanista’s command to act. But it was enough.
One unique feature of his Armouron suit was its helmet’s ability to manipulate sound. He could use it to throw his voice, or mimic the patterns of people’s speech. Now he combined both these effects in a bid to distract his enemies.
He threw his voice to the area behind the White Knights, imitating the familiar tones of the Chairman.
‘STOP! HOLD YOUR FIRE!’
The trick worked beautifully. Lanista and her bodyguards turned in surprise, convinced that the Corporation boss had just arrived on the scene. Their momentary distraction was all Hoax and Griffin needed.
With lightning speed, the young Armouron unclipped a canister from his suit belt and hurled it at the White Knights’ feet. It burst open on impact, splattering an oily, colourless liquid across the floor.
The androids had now processed the fact that they’d been duped. They turned back to confront Hoax and Griffin. As they did so, their feet lost grip in the pool of anti-friction liquid. All four went sprawling. Their blasters clattered from their grasp as they hit the floor.
Hoax swiftly drew his fighting staff and advanced. A well-aimed jab to a weak spot below the first White Knight’s jaw deactivated it before it could react. As the second android floundered on the slippery surface, Hoax shortened and snapped his staff, converting it into a nunchaku. He delivered a whiplash blow with the chain-linked sticks. The robot slumped to the floor and lay still.
Griffin too had been quick to act. His sword had already put the last two White Knights out of action.
But Hoax’s heart sank, as together he and Griffin turned to confront Lanista – only to find that she had managed to grab one of the dropped blasters.
‘Do I have to do everything myself?’ she complained, raising the weapon. She curled her finger around its trigger.
Suddenly, the floor beneath them shuddered violently. Thrown off balance, Lanista shot wide. She cursed, took aim again, then tottered to one side as the floor once more moved under her feet. And this time, its motion continued. It was accompanied by the low rumble and protesting squeal of machinery.
‘The launch doors!’ yelled Griffin, struggling to keep his feet as the floor lurched. ‘They’re opening the doors!’
Sure enough, a widening crack was now visible along the centre of the hall’s floor. The ceiling doors of the reactor chamber below were slowly but surely sliding apart. They sped up a little and the gap widened quickly. Lanista, stranded on its far side, was struggling desperately to keep her
feet as the section of floor on which she was standing rolled back into the wall. The blaster fell from her hand and slid away from her.
The noise of the door mechanism was suddenly drowned out by a much louder roar. It was the roar of the Inimitable’s engines. Hoax and Griffin staggered to the edge of the moving floor, in time to see the bizarre craft lift off awkwardly from the reactor chamber below. She wobbled, like a nervous skater, then quickly rose.
From a hatch in the ship’s side, which looked like it was made from an old fridge door, hung one of Griffin’s men. As the Inimitable rose through the gap in the ceiling doors, he reached out his arm.
‘Come on!’ he yelled. ‘Get in!’
With his help, first Hoax, then Griffin boarded the hovering craft. Hoax scrambled across to a glass casserole porthole in the ship’s starboard side and looked out at the chaotic scene they were leaving behind.
One of the four White Knights had managed to reactivate. It was floundering pathetically in the pool of Lo-Fric liquid, even less able to get to its feet now the floor was moving beneath it. Behind the stricken androids, the remaining walls of the derelict building were beginning to shake and crumble, destabilized by the Inimitable’s thrusters.
Lanista was tottering on the brink of the sliding floor, watching their escape with a look of insane rage on her face.
Hoax watched with horror as the deranged woman took a step back, then launched herself in a desperate leap. Her long, thin arms were at full stretch, her fingers curled like claws to clutch at the ship’s hull.
It was a jump that no ordinary human could make. Even Snow, fully suited, would have struggled to clear the distance. But fuelled by hatred, the Chairman’s sister almost made it.
Lanista’s bloodcurdling scream as she plummeted into the reactor chamber below was drowned out by a sudden rise in engine volume. The Inimitable thundered up and away, rising fast into the sky above the ruined plant.
Hoax and Griffin made their way forward towards the ship’s cockpit with some difficulty. The ramshackle ship was shaking violently and every centimetre of her was crammed with Skirter bodies. When they finally made it to the cramped cabin, they found Oddball at the ship’s preposterous control console. He was perched on the pilot’s seat – an old fuel canister – frantically pulling levers and flicking switches. He had removed his helmet and was sweating heavily.
‘You did it!’ Hoax yelled at his friend. ‘You got her working!’
Oddball mopped his brow and grinned.
‘Just about! Although I’d never have got her fired up without Tock here talking me through it! Thank clack he came round when he did.’
He gestured to a man lying on a makeshift stretcher against the cockpit wall. He looked in a bad way, but cheerful. Griffin crouched to greet him warmly.
‘I’m setting a course for the field zone that Salt told the others to deactivate,’ said Oddball. ‘At this speed, it should only take us a couple of minutes to get there.’
He flicked a final switch then sat back, blowing out his cheeks.
‘I just hope Rake and Snow fulfil their part of the bargain. Neither of them will find messing with a Corporation system as simple as Tea-Leaf would have—’
‘Tea-Leaf?’ said Griffin, looking intrigued. ‘I know someone of that name.’
‘She knew yours too,’ said Hoax. ‘She had a guardian, when she was a young kid, who was a real big fan of yours.’
Griffin gave a wry smile.
‘Little Tea-Leaf . . .’ he murmured. ‘She was always a feisty one, even as an infant. I’m not surprised Salt has found her worthy of your order.’
‘Then . . . it was you who looked after her?’ said Hoax, peering at Griffin searchingly. ‘Why didn’t you tell her who you really were?’
‘It would have put her in great danger,’ said Griffin simply. ‘Hanging out with a wanted enemy of the Corporation doesn’t go down well with the Chairman.’
Hoax grinned.
‘Can’t wait to see the look on her face when I tell her!’
There was a loud bang and a shower of blue sparks burst from one of the control console’s spinning dials. Oddball gave it his immediate attention.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Hoax,’ he said a few moments later. ‘That was the manual control system. Just blew a whole dunk-load of fuses. Until I fix it, the ship is stuck on the course I set.’
He peered out of the cockpit’s patched view-shield. The wall of crackling green energy ahead was fast approaching. ‘And from where I’m sitting, that containment field still looks one hundred per cent intact.’
He looked up at Hoax.
‘Unless Rake knocks that thing out in the next ninety seconds, it’s a fair bet you won’t be seeing Tea-Leaf – or anyone else for that matter – anytime soon!’
Chapter 15
Breakthrough
IN THE WEST One Peace Keep, the Chairman was enjoying his last few moments gloating over Griffin’s hopeless predicament. Any time now, Decimal would give the order for the White Knights to advance. The fun wouldn’t last long after that. It was almost a shame.
As he looked across the holographic battle-zone map again, delighting in the way the mass of troops symbolized his power, a glint of silvery-grey caught his eye.
‘What’s that?’
He batted General Decimal on the shoulder and pointed.
‘Look – there!’
Something was moving across the centre of the map. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. It had appeared just above the ruined reactor building.
Decimal immediately ordered one of his officers to provide a visual close-up. A video image flashed up moments later on the control room’s main display. What it showed was quite bizarre.
‘What on Jupiter’s moons is that?’ said the Chairman.
It looked like someone had taken a massive piece of rusted metal, magnetized it so that hundreds of other bits of scrap had stuck randomly to it, then somehow got the whole lot airborne.
‘I believe it’s some kind of ship,’ replied Decimal.
The Chairman’s eyes flashed. ‘Griffin!’ he hissed.
Decimal looked back anxiously at the battle-zone map. The mystery craft was moving due east, surprisingly fast.
The Chairman was tracking its course too.
‘It’s heading straight towards us!’
Decimal frowned.
‘It will strike the containment field first,’ he said. ‘They’ll burn up as soon as they hit it. Why would they want to do that?’
‘Maybe it’s some sort of trick,’ said the Chairman. ‘Maybe there’s nobody on board.’
He was becoming increasingly agitated. He was not going to let Griffin slip through his fingers again.
‘Send your troops in now!’ he barked at Decimal. ‘That thing has to be a diversion. Look at it – it’s not fit to be manned. Our knights will finish those Skirter scum on the ground!’
But Decimal was lost in thought. He already knew from the scanner data being fed directly into his brain that there were people on board the strange ship. For them to fly into the field was suicide. It made no sense. He didn’t like things that didn’t make sense. To Decimal, logic was everything.
‘The only way it could work as an escape strategy,’ he murmured to himself, ‘is if somehow . . .’
His computer-aided brain finally solved the puzzle.
‘The field generator!’
He whirled round urgently to address his chief officer.
‘Check the status of all the field generator’s systems, immediately!’
But even as he yelled his orders, an electronic siren broke into a loud wail. All across the control room, alarm lights began flashing red.
Decimal turned back to the holographic map. Before his horrified gaze, a triangular section of the containment field fizzled, then blinked out. The failed zone lay directly in the flight-path of the Skirter ship.
The Chairman, beside him, was turning purple. He began screaming like a l
unatic, to anyone who would listen.
‘ATTACK! ATTACK! ALL UNITS ADVANCE IMMEDIATELY! DON’T LET THEM GET AWAY!’
Salt swung the nose of the Sieger out of the docking bay and began to steer her towards the exit of the Peace Keep’s shuttle garage.
For once, the old Armouron was uncertain what his next step should be. He had delivered Lanista’s repaired armour only so he could get closer to the scene of his team’s secret activities – because he feared they weren’t secret any more. Lanista’s search of the sewers suggested she was on to Oddball and Hoax, at least. Salt had fully expected to arrive at the Keep to hear news of their capture. He had spent the journey from the Academy trying – without success – to think of a way to get them out of trouble.
But his worries had been unnecessary. The Corporation assistant to whom he had delivered the spaulders had been adamant. Lanista was not at the Keep. Nor had there been any recent news from or about her.
Salt knew that no news was definitely good news. Maybe Oddball and Hoax had managed to escape the Chairman’s sister somehow.
But it left him with the problem of what to do now. To choose how best to help his students, he needed to know how the mission was going.
He didn’t have to wait long. As the Sieger glided out from the mouth of the garage, Salt looked west towards the glowing dome of the containment field – and his heart soared.
In the near face of the dome, a triangular window of clear sky was plainly visible.
An instant later, a large, oddly-shaped aircraft burst through it. It zoomed straight towards the Peace Keep, thundered narrowly past its battlements and roared away eastwards across the sky.
They did it! Thank the Twelve!
Salt no longer needed telling what to do. His young knights had got Griffin out, it was clear. Now he had to get them home safely.
The original plan had been for the two teams to meet up after the mission at a specified sewer airshaft. They could then return to the Old School the way Oddball and Hoax had left, through the disused tunnels.
The Caged Griffin Page 7