‘I HAVE SCANNED OUR SURROUNDINGS, AND I HAVE A SUGGESTION,’ said BEAST.
‘Pull off some sick jumps while we’re here?’ grinned Axel. ‘Do some snowboarding?’
‘WE HAVE BEEN TAKEN BY SURPRISE ONCE ALREADY. I RECOMMEND STEALTH.’
‘BEAST, this new SNOWDOG form of yours is about as stealthy as a clown with a chainsaw! We can’t waste time sneaking around. We need to get to that mountain fast, before the Devastator wakes up.’
A blue arrow pinged on Axel’s display, above a range of low hills to their left.
‘IF WE GO SLOWLY THROUGH THESE VALLEYS, WE MAY REACH OUR DESTINATION UNDETECTED.’
‘No,’ Axel decided. ‘We’re running out of time already. I want more speed, not less.’
‘AS YOU WISH.’ SNOWDOG’s engine roared even louder.
Axel smiled in satisfaction. I didn’t spend weeks cooped up indoors just to take things slowly on this mission. It’s time to let rip.
Axel only got to enjoy racing SNOWDOG at full speed for a few minutes before doubt set in and he realised how reckless he was being. They’d charged in headlong when they first came to Antarctica, and the penguin missiles had nearly drowned them. Maybe that should have been a lesson in taking things more cautiously?
The more he thought it over, the sillier he felt. This wasn’t supposed to be a thrilling vacation. This was an important mission, and a lot was riding on it. The leopard seal, and thousands like her, were counting on him – not to mention all the other Antarctic wildlife that Grabbem’s greed would endanger.
‘Actually, maybe we should head for the hills after all,’ said Axel. ‘Can we take a detour?’
‘IT IS TOO LATE FOR THAT.’ BEAST sounded strangely ominous, like a vampire in a horror movie.
A red dot appeared on BEAST’s scanner. Something was coming up behind them, and closing in fast. ‘Oh, no,’ Axel groaned. ‘Don’t tell me the Devastator’s out already!’
‘GRABBEM VEHICLES APPROACHING.’
‘Vehicles? But I only see one dot …’
Axel paused. Over the noise of SNOWDOG’s engine he could hear the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades.
BEAST flashed up a rear view.
Coming up at them through the gathering darkness was a gleaming black helicopter, with a dazzling searchlight shining from its underbelly. It was carrying a snowmobile on a long cable. The rider, who was wearing some sort of thick, padded explorer’s outfit, had a gold crash helmet on. As the snowmobile swayed below the chopper, the rider shook his fist at Axel.
Next second, an amplified voice rang out from the chopper:
‘Attention, trespasser! You are driving stolen Grabbem property. Bring your vehicle to a complete stop and step out with your hands above your head!’
‘Oh, for the love of … not those two idiots again!’ Axel banged his head repeatedly on the cushions. ‘It’s Alpha One and Alpha Gold.’
Axel had already had one run-in with Alpha One and his younger brother, Alpha Gold. They were Grabbem pilots who were hell-bent on capturing Axel and returning BEAST to the Grabbem factory where he was made. Last time their paths had crossed, Axel had defeated them – to their total embarrassment.
The Alpha boys somehow managed to keep their jobs no matter how badly they screwed up. Axel wasn’t sure why, but he expected it was because the pair of them were so stupid and eager to show off, they’d charge into any danger their boss told them to.
‘Yahoo!’ shouted Alpha Gold, who was sitting in the dangling snowmobile. ‘We got ’em now for sure. Drop me as close as you can!’
Alpha One was in the chopper, and he was furious. ‘It ain’t fair. Why’d I get stuck flying this stupid chopper?’
‘Because you lost the coin toss.’
‘It’s supposed to be best of three!’
‘Says who? Hey – stop swinging me around!’
‘Sorry,’ smirked Alpha One as he lurched the helicopter from side to side. ‘It’s just soooo windy up here. I dunno if I can fly level.’
‘Aaaaarrr!’ The snowmobile swung back and forth like a pendulum. Alpha Gold clung on, howling.
Axel glanced over his shoulder. ‘Are those two fighting again?’
‘IT SEEMS SO.’
‘Good. Let’s lose them. I’m heading for the hills.’
Alpha Gold screamed and yelled while his brother laughed. All of a sudden, Alpha One felt pretty good about being the one to pilot the chopper.
‘Thugeddigawaaaaaay!’ bawled Alpha Gold.
‘Sorry?’ yelled Alpha One. ‘Say that again?’
‘They’re getting away, you idiot!’
Alpha One looked up and saw that Axel and BEAST had swerved off course, and were now heading towards the hills. ‘Aw, dang. If they get in among those craggy bits of land, we might lose ’em.’
‘So set me down already. No, wait! Gently!’
But Alpha One had already let the snowmobile go. It plunged down and landed on the ice with a jarring crash. Alpha Gold, apparently none the worse for wear, revved his engine and set off in pursuit.
Alpha One wasn’t about to be left out of the chase. He swivelled the searchlight until it clearly lit up SNOWDOG, then zoomed after the fleeing robot and its pilot.
Axel was running out of ideas. He’d hoped to thread in and out of the snowy hills until they lost sight of him, but with that chopper in the air he had no chance to hide. Maybe BEAST ought to shift form? He might be able to shoot the chopper down with LAZBOLT, but that form moved too slowly to be much use. HECKFIRE, then? Axel decided no. He had no idea what HECKFIRE even did, and the middle of a chase was no place to take random chances.
The only way out of here was to outrun them through sheer speed. ‘BEAST, give me all the power you’ve got.’
‘WARNING: BOOSTING ENGINE POWER BEYOND SAFE LIMITS WILL DRAIN MY ENERGY CELLS.’
‘I know. We’ve got to. So do it.’
A whining noise came from BEAST’s insides. Axel smelt burning. SNOWDOG’s engine roared louder than ever, and the caterpillar tracks whipped around and around, shooting them forward faster than a racecar on the ice.
Axel looked back at the retreating figures of Alpha Gold on the ground and Alpha One in the air. They were losing them. It was all going to be okay. They were going to make it.
He looked ahead again … and that’s when he saw the crevasse.
Pure horror gripped him. It was directly in their path, a jagged crack in the ice that looked as broad as the Grand Canyon.
There was no way around, and they were going too fast to stop …
The crevasse gaped in front of them. In seconds, they would plunge into it. BEAST would be smashed to bits against the ice wall.
The caterpillar tracks spun. BEAST’s engines screamed. Axel reached for the brake, then hesitated. Slowing down now would have no effect. They’d just skid over the edge no matter what he did. And there was no time to change forms to something that could fly.
Axel saw a small hump of piled-up snow at the chasm’s edge, and a desperate plan came into his head. He squeezed the accelerator and steered BEAST towards it.
‘ALERT! ALERT! HAZARD AHEAD!’ BEAST warned him.
‘I know.’
‘CHANCE OF AVOIDING HAZARD AT CURRENT SPEED: ZERO PER CENT.’
‘I’m not planning on avoiding it!’
Behind them, Alpha Gold was revving his own snowmobile as hard as he could. He followed right in their path, using the churned-up trench through the snow they’d left in their wake as a road. He grinned. ‘Target in sight. I’m closing in.’
The snow mound grew larger in Axel’s view. The treads ripped at the snow. He clenched the accelerator as hard as he could and prayed.
BEAST hit the mound and rushed up it as if it were a ramp. Next second, he shot over the edge and out across the crevasse. Axel felt a moment of weightlessness. His stomach rose into his mouth.
The far side of the crevasse loomed, solid as a brick wall.
Crump! BEAST crashed down
on the far edge, not quite clearing the crevasse. Axel slammed against the safety cushions. His seatbelt dug into his arms and legs. Dislodged snow and shattered ice went tumbling down.
For a horrendous second, they seesawed on the edge. SNOWDOG’s caterpillar tracks scrabbled at the loose snow like a cat desperate to get out of a bath, sending white powdery spray behind them.
Then, just as it seemed they were going to fall back into the void, one of the spiky tracks caught hold of the ice and held. With a deep ROAR, SNOWDOG hauled itself out of the gulf. ‘Oh, man,’ gasped Axel. ‘Oh, flamin’ piranha poop. On toast. That was too close.’
Alpha Gold’s eyes widened inside his crash helmet. He had only just caught sight of the crevasse, and his snowmobile suddenly seemed like a puny little toy compared with SNOWDOG.
‘Get after him!’ yelled Alpha One from the helicopter. ‘What are you waiting for, a written invitation?’
‘There’s a freakin’ gap!’ Alpha Gold howled.
‘So? The kid jumped it, you can jump it too! Or are you chicken?’
Alpha Gold snarled at that. ‘Nobody calls me chicken. Least of all you.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. Watch this!’
He zoomed towards the same snow ramp that Axel had used. Unfortunately, now that BEAST had driven over it, it was much flatter than it had been. Alpha Gold did not notice this. He put his fist in the air.
‘Yaaaaahooo!’ he cried.
Still punching the air, he went coasting over the edge. He flew in a majestic arc out into space, then down into the yawning chasm. His whoop turned into a scream as he realised he wasn’t going to make it.
‘Bailing out! Bailing out!’
Axel, who by now was well away from the crevasse, heard the screams and winced. ‘Poor guy. I guess he didn’t make it.’
BOOM! … OOM … OOM …
An explosion echoed up from the crevasse, confirming that Alpha Gold had, indeed, not made it.
BEAST’s scanners beeped. ‘GRABBEM AGENT IS STILL ALIVE.’
‘How do you know?’
‘HIS OWN GRABBEM SUIT IS COMPATIBLE WITH MY SOFTWARE. I CAN SCAN HIS VITAL SIGNS. HE HAS SURVIVED THE CRASH.’
‘Good. Guess his guardian angel was watching out for him.’
The Alpha boys were a colossal pain. They’d tried to capture BEAST, and if they had succeeded, BEAST would have been dismantled. They were enemies. No doubt about that. But Axel was still glad Alpha Gold hadn’t become Alpha Splat.
‘How long until the Devastator is charged?’ he asked.
‘TWO HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. WE STILL HAVE TIME TO STOP IT.’
A thought struck Axel. ‘Wait. Alpha Gold’s going to freeze to death out here, isn’t he?’
‘WITH CERTAINTY.’
Axel thought hard, sighed heavily and made up his mind. ‘I hate to say it, but we’ve got to help him. That helicopter can’t fly down into the crevasse to get him, but we can.’
He steered SNOWDOG in a full one-eighty and headed back towards the crevasse. Smoke from the destroyed snowmobile was drifting up from it.
When they reached the edge, Axel looked down. It was like squinting from the top of a skyscraper. There was the burning snowmobile, far beneath them, a glimmer of flame in the distant blue depths. And there, clinging to a ledge halfway down, was the pitiful figure of Alpha Gold.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Axel muttered. ‘BEAST, shift to your normal form. We’re heading down there after him.’
He fired BEAST’s foot jets, gently. Then he slowly lowered them down into the abyss.
Alpha Gold looked up at them and shivered in fright. ‘And I thought my luck couldn’t get no worse,’ he wailed. ‘Kid’s coming to finish me off!’
Flying as carefully as he could, Axel dropped down past the ice wall until he was alongside Alpha Gold. He reached out with BEAST’s hand and gripped the struggling Grabbem agent by the waist.
‘Out you come,’ he said. ‘Gently does it …’
BEAST’s foot rockets stuttered and the robot dropped a few feet.
‘BEAST, what the heck was that?’
‘POWER IS CRITICALLY LOW,’ BEAST said. ‘MY ENERGY CELLS ARE DRAINED.’
Axel groaned. Of course – he’d burnt them out turning SNOWDOG’s engine up so high earlier. He had forgotten all about that.
‘Sorry about this,’ he told Alpha Gold. Then he threw the man up and out of the chasm.
Alpha Gold sailed through the air in a majestic arc (again), only this time, he landed with a whump on the far side of the crevasse. He lay there spread-eagled in the snow, dizzy and confused, but crazily happy to be alive.
The helicopter flew down close to him. The spotlight lit him up.
‘What in heck are you playing at?’ yelled Alpha One.
‘I’m makin’ a snow angel,’ giggled Alpha Gold, swishing his arms and legs in the snow. ‘And it sure is pretty.’
Meanwhile, BEAST dropped down another few feet. Axel quickly grabbed hold of a clump of ice that jutted out of the chasm wall. He shut off the foot jets to save what little power there was left.
From up above came the sound of Alpha One’s helicopter passing by. Axel thought for one wild moment that the Grabbem agent might be coming to help him, to repay him for having saved his brother. Then the sound grew fainter as the helicopter flew away over the ice, taking Alpha Gold with it.
Axel sighed. Typical Grabbem agents, he thought. They only look out for their own.
BEAST had only a tiny sliver of power left. It didn’t look like enough to fly them out of the chasm.
‘Flying’s too risky. We’ll just have to climb out.’ Axel reached up and tried to dig BEAST’s thick robotic fingers into the ice, to make a handhold.
The ice shattered in his powerful grasp. Suddenly he was holding onto nothing. BEAST’s arms flailed as they fell backwards.
‘No!’ Axel screamed, but it was too late.
They plunged down into the icy crevasse. BEAST smashed into one side then the other as they fell, shaking Axel around in his cockpit. It grew darker and darker as their long fall took them deep below the surface. Axel flung BEAST’s arms and legs out, trying desperately to wedge them and stop their fall, but they were falling too fast for that.
A brutal crash ended their drop. BEAST lay pinned sideways in the narrow bottom of the crevasse. Axel looked up at the dim opening far above them.
‘BEAST, are you okay?’
BEAST just made a noise like static. The text displays inside his head were gone, replaced with boxes full of meaningless snow.
‘Oh, no. Please don’t let this be the end. Come on, BEAST. Start up again.’ Axel held down BEAST’s power button and prayed.
Instead of the soft ping of BEAST powering up, there was a sickly thunk. BEAST’s whole inside compartment went dark. The whir of his fans, which kept Axel supplied with warm air, stopped dead.
It was funny how you didn’t realise a noise was even there until it stopped.
Cold began to creep into BEAST’s cockpit.
Axel told himself not to panic. He was trapped at the bottom of an icy ravine inside a robot that wasn’t working, and soon he would freeze to death. But if he panicked, it would be even worse. He’d just start screaming and never stop. He breathed slowly in and out and forced himself to think clearly.
That was when the cave-in happened.
First it was just a few shards of ice falling down the chasm, from where BEAST’s crash descent had knocked them loose. Then a rush of snow followed, then fat boulders of solid ice, tumbling and roaring down to where BEAST lay motionless.
WHOOSH!
It was like being under a mixer pouring out gravelly concrete. Axel could only watch, helpless, as tonnes of Antarctic ice buried him alive …
Silence.
Axel lay in total darkness, listening to nothing. The silence was even worse than the noise had been. At least the noise had meant they were still part of the real world. But now,
in this never-ending darkness, they might as well be in starless space.
His feet were growing cold now. He tried not to think about what that meant.
He thought about his mother back at home, who had tried to feed him a hot meal before he rushed off. Then Axel bit his lip so he wouldn’t start crying. If only BEAST had a time-travel app … Axel would head back in time and do it all differently this time around.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said hoarsely to himself.
Something deep inside BEAST made a strange grinding noise.
Axel hesitated. Was that just the sound of the heavy ice crushing BEAST out of shape? Or had there been a flicker of life from his friend?
‘I’m hungry,’ he repeated, and listened hard.
BEAST buzzed, low and long. He made a strangled-sounding beep. His display screens flared into life, then showed nothing but a single blinking dot.
‘LI. LI. LI,’ said BEAST. ‘LICK. LIQUI. LIQUI-NUMS.’ The fans began to hum, and a soft warm breeze flowed into the cockpit. ‘LIQUI-NUMS ARE AVAILABLE. EMERGENCY LIFE SUPPORT ACTIVE.’
‘You’re alive!’ Axel nearly cried with relief. He almost felt like drinking some of the disgusting Liqui-Nums just to show BEAST how glad he was to have him back.
‘YES, AXEL. MY PILOT NEEDED ME.’
‘But I thought your energy cells were all used up!’
‘BEAST CREATED AN EMERGENCY BACKUP CELL EARLIER ON,’ said BEAST. ‘IT WAS THE SEAL’S IDEA.’
Axel stared in total confusion. ‘The leopard seal?’
‘YES. SHE TOLD ME SOMETHING IMPORTANT.’
BEAST paused, and Axel wondered if he was deciding whether to tell him or not.
‘SHE SAID: THE SMALL ONE INSIDE YOU IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. YOU MUST MAKE SURE HE EATS.’
‘Make sure he eats,’ Axel echoed.
‘BEAST MAY USE ENERGY FOR OTHER THINGS, BUT BEAST MUST ALWAYS KEEP ENOUGH TO LOOK AFTER HIS PILOT, BECAUSE HIS PILOT DOES NOT ALWAYS LOOK AFTER HIMSELF.’
‘You’re right,’ Axel said. ‘I don’t. And I’m sorry.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I handled this like an idiot. I know that now. I wanted to go off on a mission so bad, I just rushed off recklessly without taking any time to plan. Or even eat.’
Antarctic Attack Page 3