by Rob May
Her mood was grey too. Brandon’s actions last night had taken him dangerously close to the line he swore he would never cross: using his powers as a weapon. Kat wanted to talk to him about it, but he had gone straight to bed, complaining of a headache. Was it the mental strain of the bionoids that was bringing him down, or was it regret?
Kat noticed Saoirse leaning against the balcony rail one room along. She was dressed as usual in her white leather jumpsuit, and stood out brighter than the paintwork of the Proteus.
‘Morning, Kitty Kat,’ the alien girl said cheerfully.
‘Hi,’ Kat said, joining her at the rail. ‘The boys still asleep?’
‘Yeah,’ Saoirse said. ‘I came out here cos I could hear your brother’s snoring through the wall.’
Kat laughed. ‘So …’ she said, trying to think of a way to break the ice with their mysterious new companion. ‘You speak pretty good English for an alien. The last ones we met had to get their spaceship computers to translate their gibberish.’
‘No, this really is me speaking,’ Saoirse said. ‘You know, I didn’t just jump in a spaceship and rush over here once I learned about the bionoids being on Earth. I spent several months preparing: training, reading up on your culture, and learning the language. I figured that I’d have to be able to fit in; and I thought I’d have my work cut out persuading Talem Tarsus to leave Earth and come back to Corroza, so I needed to plan what I’d say.’
Kat was puzzled. ‘Several months? But the alien invasion was only a few weeks ago! Nobody knew that Brandon’s dad had hidden the bionoids here before then.’
‘Oh, time’s not a problem when you have a spaceship,’ Saoirse laughed. ‘Superluminal drives have a reverse time dilation mode: I just programmed myself a nice leisurely trip over. In reality though, the trip only took a few minutes.’
Kat was stumped. ‘Oh … well that explains it, I guess. Anyway, now that you’re here, do you think Brandon will agree to go back with you?’
‘Well, I sure hope he won’t want to stay. This world is finished.’
As if to emphasise her point, a silvery winged-creature flashed past them at speed, its body glittering in the diffused sunlight. It screamed like a banshee and dive-bombed into the sea. It came up seconds later with a wriggling fish in its beak. The fish jerked around until it freed itself and fell back into the water.
‘Ugh, Kat said. ‘A thanamorph gull—a thanagull! That one doesn’t seem to be a very good fisherman though.’
‘They don’t actually eat,’ Saoirse said. ‘Thanamorphs have a very slow metabolism: they can live for about five years off the bodies of the animals that were originally their hosts. The only reason that gull went after that fish was to bite it: to inject its seed … to create new thanamorphs.’
Kat shuddered. Thanafishes! ‘We’re not really safe on this ship then, are we?’ she said. ‘If even the birds and fish can get us? What happens if we get stung by a thanawasp?’
‘Don’t worry too much,’ Saoirse reassured her. ‘You can’t get turned into one of them unless you get bitten by a thanamorph that’s at least as big as you are. A smaller creature will still attack you aggressively, but it can only hurt you physically, not infect you.’
‘Oh, well that’s alright then!’ Kat said with a mocking laugh. She leaned on the rail and watched the thanagull as it ripped through the air, biting another gull, before it dived down below the surface to go after another fish.
She pondered what Saoirse had said. ‘So humans can get turned into those things then? We did wonder.’
‘Yes,’ Saoirse said. ‘And a human-bred thanamorph would be the most fearsome iteration of them all; the new-born thanamorph takes on the characteristics of its host: physical form, bone structure … intelligence.’
Wonderful, Kat thought. This situation just gets better and better. She had envisaged reuniting with her parents, and had dreamed about forming a new society in a futuristic city under the sea. Stupid, unrealistic dreams, maybe, but they gave her hope. Yet even the sea wasn’t a safe place now. And even humans could turn into raging monsters at any moment.
This world is finished, Saoirse had said. Was Kat being just too optimistic thinking that they could survive it? Was humanity finished too?
10—PIRATES
Gem was awake when Kat went back inside their cabin. Brandon’s sister was sorting through a large suitcase, and throwing clothes all around the floor. She tossed a pair of trainers in Kat’s direction.
‘Found all this stuff in the wardrobe,’ Gem said. ‘The room’s previous occupants probably took permanent shore leave, so I don’t think they’ll be wanting any of this back. Put those shoes on—we’re going for a run!’
‘Er … what?’ Kat looked at the running shoes with distaste. Kat’s feet had seen nothing but black, size-six eight-hole Doc Marten boots since she was ten years old.
‘A run! Come on, Kat—we need to keep our fitness levels up. You never know what you’re gonna be running away from next these days. Plus, it’s a fairly clear day. We can do without our masks and goggles for a change. But mainly, we can go and have a good nosey around the ship.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ Kat said. ‘A reconnaissance mission. Good plan!’
Ten minutes later, Kat and Gem walked out onto the balcony dressed in shorts and sweatshirts. They waved to Saoirse and jogged along until they came to some stairs that took them up to the very top deck. By the time they reached the base of the two massive exhaust stacks at the rear of the ship, Kat was already puffing and sweating.
‘I was useless … at sports day,’ she complained. ‘I was always … the one they got to work … the stopwatches and write down the times!’
‘Yeah, I was useless once too,’ Gem said. ‘I only took up running when James got me involved in his spy games: it’s the perfect cover for exploring places you have no other reason to be in. And the smellier and sweatier you get, the less likely people are to come near you!’
She jogged off across a decking area covered with loungers. Kat took a few deep breaths, then forced her limbs into action and followed Gem’s bobbing ponytail. The older girl was tall and athletic, and even made someone else’s clothes look good. Kat felt like a small, skinny waif in comparison.
There were only a handful of other people out and about on top of the Proteus: one guy was busy sweeping moon dust off the paths, and a couple of others looked like they were repairing a blocked ventilation unit. They were all sporting the little round red badges, the same as the ones that Gem and Kat now had proudly pinned to their running gear.
Gem hung back to let Kat catch up. ‘Talk to me, Kat,’ Gem said. ‘The best pace for running is one that you can keep while still managing to hold a conversation.’
‘Alright,’ Kat puffed. ‘Then let’s talk about Saoirse.’
‘What do you think of her?’ Gem asked.
‘I don’t know, to be honest … I don’t know how much I believe her story. Why would she take it on herself to come all the way here to find Brandon’s dad. I mean,’—Kat sucked in a big breath—‘no one’s that heroic!’
‘I’ve no idea what her game is either,’ Gem said, ‘but she’s got Brandon’s attention, that’s for sure. I saw her whisper in his ear moments before he pulled that heart attack stunt on the Captain.’
Kat pulled up short and put her hands on her knees.
‘I don’t want to lose him to her, Gem!’
‘I know he cares for you, Kat,’ Gem said, putting her hand on Kat’s shoulder.
‘I’m sure he does, in his own distracted way,’ Kat said. ‘But I doubt we would even be together if I hadn’t made all the running. He’s not exactly what you’d call the romantic type.’
‘He just needs to be told what to do, that’s all,’ Gem said. ‘You keep working on him, and I’ll make sure Jason and I keep that space girl from getting too close. Don’t worry, Kat—it’s three against one: she won’t stand a chance! Now come on!’
They set off again, run
ning past the ship’s giant central funnel: twenty metres high and painted glossy red with a bright white star emblem. After passing an Olympic-sized open-air swimming pool, they found themselves jogging across a wide open space with a helipad marked out in the centre of it. Ahead of them was the radar tower and bridge.
‘Where are we going?’ Kat asked.
‘To find some answers,’ Gem replied. ‘The Captain promised he would let us know when he had gathered more information about the rendezvous point and how many other ships full of survivors are out there, but I don’t really trust him. I think we need to see for ourselves exactly how good their communications network is. Maybe we can get a message of our own out.’
They took cover behind a low building that supported two radar domes: enormous golf-ball-like spheres that enclosed rotating radio antennas. The Proteus was obviously fitted with some pretty serious communications equipment, and Kat could see why Gem would want to investigate it personally.
The top deck ended just up ahead, where the bridge building occupied the highest, most forward point on the ship’s superstructure, overlooking the prow below like an eagle’s nest. There were two guards at the entrance: young guys, maybe Gems age or a bit older. Unlike most people on board, it looked like they were allowed to carry guns.
‘Liam said the ship was running on a skeleton crew,’ Gem said, ‘so there can’t be that many people about. I’m going to run and stand over there by the railing. When those lads come over to talk to me, you sneak inside and have a look around. Do you remember the MI Zero call signs?’
Kat nodded. ‘How do you know that they’ll leave their post to come and see you?’
Gem rolled her eyes as if to say, oh please! and jogged off at a languid pace in full view of the guards.
Kat was amazed. Gem barely had time to reach the rail and shake out her ponytail before the two guards rolled their shoulders, puffed out their chests and strolled over to say hello. Kat skirted around their field of vision and let herself onto the bridge.
Why was it even called the bridge anyway? On a piratey game Kat used to play on her phone, the captain commanded from the quarterdeck. If they were going to change the name, semicircle would be a more appropriate word in this case: the bridge of the Proteus was an array of consoles and chairs all facing outwards before a sweeping curve of glass windows. In the centre, a spiral metal stair rose, presumably up into the radar tower. The first thing Kat noticed, though, was that the bridge was deserted.
She could hear muffled conversation from above, so she stepped as quietly as she could around the low-ceilinged space. A large map of the Atlantic was rolled out on a wide table, and Kat noticed that a big X had been marked with a dayglo pink highlighter pen. The X was maybe six-hundred kilometres east of Florida: about fifty-five degrees west, and twenty-five degrees north, according to the lines of longitude and latitude that were marked on the map.
Kat remembered a map-reading homework assignment that she ended up doing for both herself and Jason. Good job it’s me here now, and not him, she thought with a smile, as she tore a small corner off the map and scribbled down the co-ordinates with the highlighter pen that was still lying around.
Most of the screens around the consoles were turned off, but the large display in front of the captain’s chair was showing a whole load of technical read-outs that Kat could hardly make sense of, other than the fact that they were heading west-by-south at a speed of thirty knots. It looked like the autopilot was monitoring the winds and currents. A flickering GPS display showed they had just cleared the tip of Brittany.
Kat continued snooping around. The last desk in the semicircular array was the communications center. A pair of headphones was plugged into a bank of radio equipment. Kat reckoned that VHF stood for very high frequency, and that INMARSAT C had to be something to do with the satellite system, but apart from that the comm center was a confusing blinking mass of lights.
She glanced around, then took a closer look at one of the monitors on the comm desk that had a spreadsheet open onscreen. She almost gasped out loud: it was a list of names of people and ships—the passenger manifests that Liam had mentioned. Her fingers moved to the keyboard and tapped away at the cursor and enter keys, sorting the name column alphabetically, and scrolling down until she got to B:
David Brown … Amphitrite
Alison Brown … Amphitrite
A few more clicks revealed that a ship called the Amphitrite had departed Marseilles in the south of France three days ago, and had left the Mediterranean for the Atlantic, via the Strait of Gibraltar, only nine hours ago. Kat felt a thrill of relief. Her parents were alive! Hopefully, the ship that they were on was heading towards the same big pink X that the Proteus was.
‘No! I’m not killing them!’
Kat almost jumped out of her skin. Her head jerked around, but there was nobody there. The voice had come from the room above, and it sounded like the Captain’s.
Another voice, a woman’s, said something that Kat couldn’t quite hear.
‘I said no! I’m not that ruthless, Doctor. They might be … valuable to us …’
The conversation returned to more hushed tones, but Kat realised that she was pushing her luck if she stayed here much longer. She couldn’t risk trying to send out a message on the satellite system, so she decided to cash in her chips and get out while she still had a chance.
As she turned to the door, it banged open and one of the guards rushed back in. Kat dropped out of sight and rolled under the map table. The guard didn’t notice; he ran up the spiral stairs and came back down less than a minute later, followed by Doctor Chow and the Captain. The big man’s weight made the stairs shake.
From her hiding space, Kat saw the Captain slam some buttons and pull some levers on the centre control console, then all three of them ran back outside. Kat crawled out from under the desk and looked around cautiously, making sure that she really was alone on the bridge again.
‘Well, okay then,’ she said to herself. ‘Cabin girl Kat Brown has command of the ship.’ She rushed back over to the satellite system. The machine was built like a clunky computer from the twentieth century, but was probably one of the only things left in the world that could handle long-distance emergency calls. There was even big red button labelled DISTRESS. Kat held it down and the light on the mic came on. She spoke into it: ‘Zed one three Proteus Atlantic Gyre.’ Hopefully that would make sense to the right pair of ears. She released the red button and left the bridge.
Back out on deck there was shouting and excitement. Gem was still at the rail with one of the guards, and they were looking down at something. When Kat joined them, she saw what it was: a large cargo freighter (but still only half the size of the Proteus) had drawn up alongside them. There was a gap of only about ten metres between the two vessels, and Kat could see mooring cables criss-crossing the divide. As she watched, a guard ran along the promenade deck below her and hitched on to one of the cables with a grapple. He zip-lined down to the deck of the freighter, where other members of the Proteus’s crew were gathering, all armed with rifles and pistols.
‘What’s going on?’ Kat asked.
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ the guard said. ‘The rest of the gang get to play at being heroes while I have to stay and guard the bloody bridge!’ He turned and went back to the door he had been standing outside earlier.
‘That other ship just appeared out of the dust ahead of us,’ Gem said. ‘Looks like both ships managed to slow just in time. But there could be trouble: their crew is armed too.’
Gem was right: Kat could make out two groups of figures facing-off against each other over the freighter’s long, flat horizontal cargo doors. She strained to see: Brandon and Jason had better not be mixed up in all of this.
The stand-off was broken when two water cannons on the Proteus’s deck burst into life and drenched the freighter’s crew. In the sudden confusion, the Captain and his men were able to move forward and disarm the newcom
ers.
Kat flinched as Jason appeared suddenly behind her. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘Can you believe this? I should have guessed that the end of days would bring out the worst in people: with fuel and food running in short supply, it’s not surprising that people are gonna turn to piracy!’
‘Those guys were pirates?’ Kat asked, as a shiver passed down her spine. Down below, she could see Liam organising the connection of fuel pipes between the two ships. Brandon and Saoirse were helping him.
‘No, you lemon,’ Jason said. ‘They’re not pirates. Our guys are stealing their fuel and supplies. We are the pirates!’
11—MAGNETIC
That evening they all gathered around the pool—the heated indoor pool down below deck, not the giant open-air pool up on top. Gem was powering up and down the lengths, impressing everyone with a strong, fluid front crawl. Liam had ventured out of the engine room to join them, and was trying—but failing—to keep up with her. Kat was still worn-out after the morning’s run; she was lazing at the side of the pool, staring down at the array of letters in the wooden rack in front of her:
T S A T R O E
‘Don’t make me put the timer on you,’ Jason said from where he sat, dripping wet, at the edge of the pool.
Kat sighed. How could she concentrate on the game, when on the other side of the pool Brandon was having an animated conversation with Saoirse. What was he trying to explain to her? The workings of a Lego spaceship he once built? Was he … trying to flirt with her? Kat was happy to see Saoirse shifting about as if she was trying to keep Brandon out of her personal space.
And now she was getting up. Oh no, she was coming over!