Enemy Invasion

by A. G. Taylor

  He calls up the thousands upon thousands of machine designs the Entity loaded into his brain. Spiders…squids…killing machines so strange in appearance they defy easy description. Finally, he settles on one: a skeletal frame that looks almost human, having arms, legs and a head. It’s a battlesuit, designed to hold a humanoid within and to provide an incredibly strong exoskeleton. Its hydraulic limbs are incredibly powerful and within the suit is an array of tactical systems designed for war. Perfect. Channelling May’s power, he begins to re-form the raw material of the assorted junk into the shell and inner components of the suit…

  The others looked on in amazement as the pile of cars began to morph together, almost as if the metal was melting in the sun bursting through the clouds. There was a crunching sound from within as matter was rearranged, re-formed into new configurations. New shapes became apparent from the mass – a torso...crude, oversized legs…thick arms and hands with clawlike digits…a rounded helmet with two red slit eyes, sitting atop the broad shoulders. A shiny outer layer of metal began to form over the skeleton. This protective skin now hid the innards of the machine.

  “Very nice,” Alex said. “What is it?”

  “Can’t you see?” Louise said. “It’s a gorilla.”

  The comparison was an apt one. Its thick arms, which hung down to its knees, and rounded torso indeed made it look like some kind of giant primate.

  “It’s a battlesuit,” Hack said, stepping forward. The front of the machine opened in multiple places to allow access to the cavity within. As the others watched, he grabbed one of the arms and swung himself inside. Then the front closed over him, the helmet slipping down over his head. Hack was gone – only the machine remained. For a moment nothing happened. The moment stretched on…

  “Hack!” May shouted finally, the concern obvious in her voice.

  The machine stirred, raising its arms and straightening its legs. It stumbled to one side, knocking down a stack of cars. Then its head swivelled towards the group of kids and it took a step in their direction. Everyone stepped back.

  “He does know how to control this machine,” Alex said to May. “Right?”

  “Er…”

  The machine took another step, this time putting its foot down so heavily the ground shook. The battlesuit swayed…and then crashed forward. The group scattered as it smacked down on the ground, sending dust flying. The gorilla-like robot gave an ear-splitting groan and pushed itself up into a kneeling position. The helmet swung open again, revealing Hack from the neck up.

  “It’s going to take a little time to get it completely right,” he said apologetically.

  “Well, you’d better make it fast!” Wei called over – he’d climbed the side of another stack and was looking across the junkyard in the direction of the entrance. “There’s two vans coming into the yard! One stopped at the main entrance. One moving round to the south!”

  “The mercs have found us,” Alex said, and turned to Hack. “You and May work out how to use that suit.” He looked at Louise and Wei, who had jumped back down to ground level. “It’s up to us to buy them some time. Wei, you’re with me covering the main entrance. Louise – think you can deal with that second vanload?”

  Louise grinned at him. “Let me at ’em.”

  As the sun is setting, the train arrives at a village by the ocean. Daniel leads Sarah through the tiny collection of wooden houses to one on the outskirts of the hamlet. Here a family (an ageing man with a younger wife and two small children) greets them and lets them into their home. As Sarah and her father take cushions on the floor of a spare room in the back, the sound of a meal being fixed can be heard from the other side of a sliding screen door.

  “Who are they?” Sarah asks. She has so many questions she hardly knows where to begin.

  “Just villagers who have suffered under the rule of the Entity for too long. They want to help any way they can.”

  The door slides open and the woman carries in a tray with tea and soup. Sarah nods her thanks as the tray is placed between them and the woman hurries out, closing the door against the inquisitive eyes of her children.

  Daniel regards her with his intense gaze as she sips the soup. “What do you remember of your life before you came here, Sarah?”

  “I remember…Robert was sick. I have to find a cure for the virus he’s been infected with. Alex and the others…they’re fighting against the Entity on my world. But I can’t remember their names.”

  “It’s okay,” Daniel says softly. “Your memory will start to return the more you fight against the control of the Entity.”

  “But I have to get back,” she says. “I’ve been gone days and days. The Entity will have taken over the world by now…”

  Her father shakes his head. “That’s not how it works in this place, Sarah. Hours here are only minutes in the real world. Days are hours. Trust me, you haven’t been gone long.”

  “Then there’s still time,” she says, almost to herself. “Is this an illusion?”

  “This place is called the construct. It’s a platform through which the Entity controls the minds of individuals with which it is linked. Think of it like an interface – a way for your brain to interact with the Entity. While it keeps you busy here, it can control you completely on your own planet – access your powers.”

  “Then none of this is real.”

  Daniel shakes his head slowly. “That’s a dangerous way to think, Sarah. The construct exists in the link between your mind and the Entity’s. What happens here is of as real significance to you as anything that has ever happened in your life. If you want to escape, you must fight.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “Then you become completely subsumed by the Entity over time. A shadow. No free will. You become part of the illusion, not a participant in it.”

  She shivers as a cold breeze blows through the window. Daniel sets the bowls to one side, rises and slides the screen shut over the window.

  “What about you?” she asks.

  He thinks a moment before answering. “Beings on other worlds have found ways to fight the Entity: to infiltrate the construct and subvert parts of the Entity’s own consciousness. When I first came here they helped me. Showed me how to manipulate the system.”

  “Like taking over a computer.”

  Daniel nods. “The Entity has grown strong by gorging on the consciousness of other beings, but this has also led to a weakness. Its mind is so vast, it can hardly monitor itself. There are many back doors into the construct. Many ways that its own agents can be turned.”

  Sarah nods, processing everything she’s learned since stepping off the train.

  “We’ve been trying to find a cure for you, Daniel,” she says finally. “We didn’t give up on you. But it’s been so hard…”

  Daniel reaches out and strokes a hand down the side of her face. “I know. I sensed it. You and Robert have been very brave. And you have to be brave for a little longer if you’re going to free us all.”

  Sarah looks at him. “But why me?”

  “You should sleep,” he says, blowing out the candles around the room. “There’ll be time for more questions tomorrow. We attack the ocean fortress at dawn.”

  “The ocean fortress?”

  “A guarded structure out to sea where we will find the Entity,” he explains. “I’ll get you in. Then you can kill it.”

  “How can you be so sure the Entity will be at this…fortress place anyway?”

  “If you seek it out, it will be there. Everything around you is merely a sensorial representation of your experience with the Entity. We are in this village now because you are shielding your thoughts from it. Tomorrow at dawn we will make contact again – but at a time and place of our choosing. Now, get some rest.”

  She nods and lays back on the thin mattress, pulling the sheet over her body. “Daniel,” she says as he walks to the door and slides it open halfway. “What happens if I kill the Entity?”

  He paus
es and looks round, a silhouette against the light from the other room. “Then the construct will fall apart. All links will be destroyed.”

  “And what about you?”

  He frowns. “I’m not sure.”

  “You could die. All the sleepers could die.”

  “It will be a worthwhile death to defeat the Entity.” With that, he slides the door closed, leaving her alone in the darkness.

  38

  The passenger door of the lead van swung open and Kotler stepped out onto the muddy ground of the junkyard. Around him, men from his elite team of mercenaries piled out of the vehicle, checked their weapons and assumed defensive stances, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.

  “I want every one of the fugitive children brought to me,” Kotler said. “Dead or alive, I don’t care – except for the two we brought from the island. They’re mine, understand?” Around him, the men nodded. “A bonus for every kill! This is your chance to prove yourselves.”

  “These freaks are already dead, sir,” one of the mercs said, flicking the safety off his weapon. Kotler signalled the men to move out.

  The elites formed two teams, one heading straight into the yard, while another followed the first at a distance, ready to back them up. Kotler watched the movement with satisfaction. After all the messing around with the hypersphere and that idiot Marlon Good, this was just like old times: sending men off into battle to live or die, win or lose.

  He felt alive.

  The elite team from the second van rounded a stack of crushed cars and saw the nine-year-old blonde girl standing out in the open, as if she had no fear. The leader went down on one knee and sighted down his rifle, while his three teammates did the same on either side. This was a routine they’d practised many times since joining Major Bright’s elite army: drills designed to overcome the unique powers of the children they’d been trained to defeat. Each of the mercs knew the girl’s name was Louise and had been told again and again that she was just about the most dangerous of the superhuman group, despite her youth – a high-level psionic who wasn’t afraid to use her powers.

  The leader fired a burst of rounds at her head. The bullets glanced off course as she used her psionic powers to deflect them. A rumble went through the broken cars stacked around the area where the soldiers had taken position. The leader looked around and realized that he and his men were surrounded by the precariously stacked wrecks… Just where the kid wanted us to stop, he thought grimly…

  “Move!” he yelled to his men as the girl raised her hands…

  The stacks crashed down around them as they broke in all directions. One of the men disappeared behind a falling van, but the others managed to dodge the toppling cars. They regrouped in the centre of the clearing. Before them, the girl turned her attention to another stack and it began to list towards them.

  “Flash-bangs,” the leader said. Both he and the others reached for flash-bang grenades from their belts, throwing them at the girl. Distracted by trying to bring the stacks of vehicles down on them, she looked momentarily confused as the grenades landed in the mud before her. They’re powerful, but they don’t have military training, the group leader thought with satisfaction as he averted his eyes.

  The girl backed away...

  The flash-bangs exploded loudly with a blinding burst of light. Louise cried out and threw her hands to her eyes.

  “Take her down!” the leader snapped. He and his men took aim and fired freely at the girl, who was staggering, blinded, towards the cover of the nearest stack of scrap metal. As bullets ricocheted off the broken cars, she fell to her knees, throwing one arm out to desperately block the volleys.

  “Hit her again,” the leader ordered. “Live grenades.”

  His men threw two grenades towards her. The girl was crawling on her hands and knees now in a hopeless attempt to escape...

  The grenades exploded, throwing up mud high into the air and bringing cars crashing down all around. The mercs rose to their feet and started firing freely into the devastation. After a few seconds, the leader held up a fist and they stopped. He pointed forward and they advanced on the heap of twisted metal, rifles at the ready. The words of Major Bright rang in their ears from so many training sessions: they are not to be underestimated.

  The leader reached the edge of the blast area and saw the girl lying face down in the mud, either unconscious or dead, it was impossible to tell. The merc leader pulled a pistol from his belt...and shot Louise in the back. The kid jerked. For good measure, the merc leader took aim at her head. Better safe than sorry...

  The giant fist of the battlesuit hit him with the force of a wrecking ball, lifting him off the ground and throwing him ten metres across the yard. His body landed in a crumpled mass.

  The gorilla-like robot howled as another merc reached for his weapon. It sideswiped him and he flew into a pile of twisted scrap metal, disappearing amid the razor-sharp fragments, never to rise again. It swept its arms around and caught the remaining soldier, who was in the process of fleeing. The blow lifted the man from his feet and threw him into the distance.

  The battlesuit shuffled around the prone body of Louise, as if afraid it was about to step on her, and looked down with its giant, strangely sad eyes. It kneeled down beside her and the helmet section opened up, revealing Hack inside.

  “Louise!” he exclaimed. Her face was covered in mud and blood, but her eyes flickered open. May ran from beside one of the junk stacks.

  “Louise?” she asked, then saw the body of the girl. “Oh, no. We shouldn’t have let her take them on alone.”

  She met Hack’s eyes and he could tell from her expression that it wasn’t good. May placed her hands on Louise’s shoulder. She moaned in pain weakly and spluttered blood from her mouth.

  “You have to do something, May,” Hack said. “Heal her.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” May said, looking down at the bullet wound in Louise’s back. There was blood everywhere. “This is more than a cut…”

  “You can do it,” Hack said. “I believe in you.”

  May nodded and closed her eyes. As Hack watched, the bullet hole began to change shape, becoming smaller and less defined. May passed her hand over the wound and held up a twisted piece of metal that she threw to one side.

  Louise’s eyes flickered open. “Ouch.”

  “You’re okay,” May reassured. “Take it easy.”

  “They shot me.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s get them.”

  On the other side of the junkyard, Alex and Wei had managed to get themselves cornered in a broken-down static caravan that was used as an office. Wei tried to blast the soldiers back, but they were too mobile. Whenever they hit one team, another would flank them from a different location. These mercs were smart.

  Now they crouched on the floor of the office as bullets ripped through the cardboard-thin walls and the shattered windows. Wei took advantage of a lull as one group reloaded to stick his head up and direct a blast of fire-wind through the nearest of these windows. A merc flew backwards, but the gunfire resumed from all directions immediately, driving him back down again.

  What happened? Wei said. We’re supposed to be the ones with superpowers, not them!

  They’re too well trained, Alex replied. They out-manoeuvred us.

  How do we get out of here? Wei added as a line of bullets tore up the floor beside him.

  Alex looked around for something they could use, some magic weapon lying there in the junkyard office. There was an ancient computer. A filing cabinet spilling papers from the drawers. Two dead pot plants.

  Hey! Wei exclaimed, shoving him in the shoulder. What’s the plan?

  Alex looked at him angrily. Why do I always have to come up with… Then he stopped, looking round at the flimsy walls of the caravan. The main thing was that they were keeping the majority of the mercs busy and away from the others. That’s all that mattered. Wasn’t it?

  Think you could blow up this cara
van? Alex said.

  Wei gave him a look. What?

  We have to get out of here somehow, Alex continued. How long do you think we can hold out like this?

  Wei looked like he was about to argue, when abruptly the firing stopped. They looked at one another.

  “That is not good,” Alex whispered now they could hear one another talk again.

  One of the merc leaders shouted an order and there was a sound of metal pins being pulled. Seconds later a grenade flew through one of the open windows. And another. And another...

  “That is really not good,” said Alex, eyes wide. “Tear this place up!”

  Wei closed his eyes... Alex moved closer to him as the temperature inside the office increased. Wei held out his arms, one pointed towards the front of the office and one towards the back. A fireball was forming on each hand that he allowed to grow until it was the size of a table and letting off intense heat. Then he let each of them fly in opposite directions...

  The front and back of the caravan exploded, wooden walls splintering into a million tiny shards. Office furniture, papers and electronics became pieces of shrapnel flying out from the epicentre, where the two boys huddled. The grenades went flying as well – exploding in mid-air. The noise was deafening. Alex stole a look up and saw mercs running for cover from the wave of fire and debris. One grenade exploded near a group, sending them hurtling across the yard.

  “Move!” Alex yelled, grabbing Wei and pulling him to his feet. All that remained of the office now was a raised floor with no walls. They were completely exposed, but the mercs were still in disarray...

  They jumped off the remains of the office and hit the ground running. The cover of a scrap pile was only a few metres away...

  “HALT!” Bullets tore up the mud before them. Alex and Wei skidded to a stop and turned as another volley cut off their retreat...

  Kotler advanced across the open area, Kalashnikov locked into his shoulder. Around him, his remaining elites turned their guns on the boys. They were surrounded.