Web of Fire Bind-up

by Steve Voake

  Something stirred deep inside him and his mind was suddenly filled with memories of warmth and sunshine, of a small blonde-haired girl swimming in the lake’s crystal waters.

  ‘Skipper,’ he whispered, remembering how the two of them had once flown wasps together in Aurobon, before something happened which returned him to his old life again.

  Back on Earth, he had forgotten that this world ever existed.

  But now that he was back in Aurobon, it seemed as though he had never left. Instead it was his life on Earth that felt like a distant dream, fading like sunlight on a winter’s afternoon.

  But what had become of Skipper? Was she still alive?

  He decided to try to make his way to the airbase, which as far as he could remember, was somewhere down on the plains. If he could find Commander Firebrand and the others, they might be able to tell him what was going on…

  The wind blew fiercely across the face of the mountain and Sam crawled behind a large rock to try and get some respite from the storm. The morning’s climb through the forest had been quite pleasant. Sheltered from the cold wind and accompanied by the occasional burst of birdsong he had made good progress, following the path of the stream up through the trees with a feeling of hope in his heart. The world had become more and more familiar to him as he made his way beneath the fragrant pines. Every now and then he had stopped to stare at the sunshine filtering through the trees, watching fingers of steam rise from the icy ground to form layers that hung like gossamer above the twisted roots. As he stood alone in the woods and listened to the wind blowing high in the treetops, he had experienced a feeling of belonging, of coming home.

  But now that he had climbed over the ridge onto the exposed slope of the mountain, things were very different.

  Thick white snowflakes swirled all around him and it became almost impossible to see. Afraid that if he carried on he might stumble into some deep abyss, he decided to rest in the shelter of the rock and wait out the storm.

  Pulling his robe tightly around himself, he curled up into a ball in an effort to conserve some heat. As he lay there shivering, he heard a humming sound which grew louder and louder until it felt as though it were coming from inside his head.

  Sam looked up and was immediately confronted by a horrific sight. Only a few metres away hovered a creature that seemed to have flown from the depths of his darkest nightmares. It was the biggest, most frightening insect that he had ever seen in his life.

  Sam shrank back in terror as the grey, evil-looking fly landed in the snow with a heavy thump. It swivelled its head around and scanned the rocks as though looking for something. White bristles sprouted from its body and as it surveyed the winter landscape the snow-covered mountains were reflected in its jet-black eyes.

  There was a loud click as it folded a huge pair of brown-veined wings over its back and then started to walk forward a little way, collecting crystals of ice in the stiff black hairs that covered its legs. It stopped and looked around. Then it began to grind its sharp mandibles together with a rasping, grating noise. As it did so, a dark, foul-smelling liquid spilled from its jaws and a brownish-yellow stain spread out across the snow.

  Sam felt his stomach heave, but he gritted his teeth, swallowed and slowly began to edge his way back around the rock. If he could just make it to the other side, maybe the hideous creature wouldn’t see him. The jagged edges of the rock pressed into his back as he cautiously moved his feet sideways and slid his body along towards the corner of the stone. Keeping his eyes fixed on the massive insect, he was about to manoeuvre his body back around the rock when the fly suddenly tensed and Sam saw that the hairs on its body were quivering. It seemed to be picking up vibrations through the air and, terrified that it might be sensing his own movements, Sam held his breath and remained perfectly still. His natural instinct was to run away as fast as he could, but he knew that to do so would be suicide.

  The fly began to scuttle around in a circle until it was pointing back down the mountain. As Sam began to breathe again its head suddenly twitched around and for one dreadful moment he saw his own terrified reflection mirrored hundreds of times in the insect’s compound eyes. But then it unfolded its wings and rose into the air with a loud buzz, stirring up a huge cloud of snow behind it. Sam was knocked sideways by the stinging blast of cold air that followed in its wake, but as he scrambled to his feet again he saw that the snowstorm had stopped and the sky was beginning to clear.

  Watching the fly disappear across the valley, his heart leapt wildly with excitement as a break in the clouds revealed the outline of tall towers rising from the snow-covered plains below, and he realised that he was looking down upon the great city of Vahlzi.

  Four

  Doctor Janik Jancy was Head of InRaD (Insect Research & Development) and to say that he was having a bad week would have been something of an understatement.

  Vermian government forces had started to lose a lot of their ant squadrons during reconnaissance patrols on Earth. It seemed that many of the ants were being eaten by sheep, and no one could understand why.

  Jancy knew there had to be a solution, but he was damned if he could find it.

  It had never been a problem before. Ant crews were well trained in safety procedures and specifically taught to avoid putting themselves or their vehicles in danger. But interviews with those who had managed to escape from their ants revealed a disturbing pattern.

  It appeared that in each case, the control panels installed in the ants had ceased to function and the ants would suddenly go onto auto-pilot. They would head for fields where sheep were grazing, climb to the top of a blade of grass and then clamp their jaws onto it. No matter how hard they tried, the ant crews simply couldn’t get the ants to move again.

  The lucky ones managed to evacuate and get picked up by other crews. Those less fortunate were never seen again. Over a hundred ant crews had been lost in this way and now all Earth missions were cancelled until further notice.

  Jancy had several teams of his best engineers working on the problem, but so far no malfunctions had been discovered.

  It was proving to be a logistical nightmare and now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had heard rumours that another major attack was being planned against the people of Earth. Not that this bothered Jancy in itself – Earth would certainly be a whole lot better off without them – but it meant that General Martock was breathing down his neck, insisting that the ant problem be rectified immediately. Martock was the Emperor Odoursin’s second-in-command and he was not a man to be crossed.

  Jancy shut his eyes and sighed. He knew that if he didn’t sort this one out pretty quickly he would be ‘relieved of duty’ as the government liked to put it. He was just beginning to imagine some of the horrible things they might do to him when there was a knock at the door and he opened his eyes to see Alya, the new research assistant, standing in the doorway of his office. She was young, keen, and quite pretty, Jancy thought.

  He also thought that he didn’t need any interruptions right now.

  ‘I think I know what your problem is,’ Alya said, and walked into the office.

  Jancy frowned, adjusted his glasses and peered over them at her in order to make a point. The point being that junior research assistants do not just barge into their superior’s office whenever they feel like it.

  ‘Young lady. Firstly, I was not aware that I had a problem. Secondly, if I did have a problem then I believe I would have more sense than to share it with you.’

  Alya blushed and began to look uncomfortable. Jancy watched her tuck a wisp of long, black hair behind her ear and waited for her to explain herself.

  ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean…’

  Satisfied that her discomfort had reached an appropriate level, Jancy gestured towards an empty chair next to his desk. He had heard that she was a good student who worked hard for the company and decided, for once, to be magnanimous.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said in the more kindly, indulgent tones of
an uncle listening to a slow-witted niece, ‘what is my problem and what should I do about it?’

  Alya folded her hands in her lap and looked at him with serious brown eyes.

  ‘The ants,’ she said. ‘I think they’re infected.’

  ‘Infected?’ Jancy raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘With what, may I ask?’

  ‘With a parasitic worm,’ Alya replied.

  ‘I see,’ said Jancy. He smiled patiently. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain?’

  Taking Jancy’s tone to be a sign of encouragement, Alya continued with renewed confidence.

  ‘Well… Like a lot of parasites, the worm has to move between several different hosts before it can reproduce successfully. In this case it needs to live inside snails and ants before moving on to sheep.’

  Jancy studied the young woman carefully as she spoke and decided that he was not dealing with a fool. She knew what she was talking about, and Jancy’s interest stepped up a gear.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The worm starts life as an egg which is eaten by a snail. The worm hatches out inside the snail before being expelled in a ball of slime. The slime is then eaten by an ant which in turn is eaten by a sheep. The worm is then released into the bloodstream of the sheep to continue the next stage of its life cycle.’

  Jancy shook his head. ‘But sheep don’t naturally eat ants. They eat grass. They might occasionally eat an ant by mistake, but surely there’s too great an element of chance for it to be a reliable method of transmission?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Alya, leaning forward excitedly. ‘Don’t you see? It isn’t left to chance at all. The worm instinctively knows that, under normal circumstances, an ant is unlikely to be eaten by a sheep. So somehow, it rewires the ant’s brain and suddenly, all the ant wants to do is climb to the top of a blade of grass and hang around until a sheep comes along and eats it. The worm has actually figured out a way of controlling the ant’s behaviour.’

  Jancy narrowed his eyes and looked at her.

  ‘Prove it,’ he said.

  The double doors swung open and Jancy led the way through the sterile neon glare of the insect labs to an area where one of the research teams was carrying out its investigation. The head of a malfunctioning ant had been recovered from Earth and brought back for analysis. Sections of the head had been dismantled and various switches and circuit boards were laid out on workbenches. Coloured electrical wires hung like spaghetti from the remaining head section which had been hoisted onto a tall scaffolding tower to allow better access.

  The engineer in charge, a thin, arrogant looking man called Frinser, clambered down from the tower clutching a screwdriver and a handful of crocodile clips.

  Jancy nodded. ‘How’s it going?’

  Frinser threw the clips and screwdriver onto a bench and shook his head.

  ‘Can’t find anything wrong,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked nearly all of the circuits and they’re fine, sweet as the day we installed ’em.’ He wiped his hands on his overalls and shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he added pointedly, ‘we could be talking about driver error here?’

  Alya stepped forward. ‘Maybe you should check the brain stem.’

  Frinser threw Jancy a Who the hell is this? look. Then he stared back at Alya and gave her a condescending smile.

  ‘I don’t know who you are, my dear, but you obviously don’t know much about bio-mechanics. You see, there is really no need to go delving down into sensitive brain tissue. All our electrical connections are made directly to neurons on the periphery of the brain. If we were to start rooting around in the central brain cortex we’d cause all kinds of damage.’ His smile widened. ‘Didn’t they teach you that at college?’

  Alya smiled back. ‘I guess not,’ she said. She walked across to the work bench and picked up what appeared to be a small silver torch. ‘A cellular restructuring beam,’ she said. ‘Mind if I borrow it?’

  ‘Hey!’ Frinser protested. ‘Don’t mess with that!’

  Jancy put a hand on his arm and quietened him. ‘Let her be,’ he said.

  The two men watched as Alya climbed the scaffolding tower and pointed the CRB at the ant’s head. There was a blue flash and a hole the size of a football appeared just below the ant’s antennae.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ hissed Frinser.

  ‘I think,’ said Jancy acidly, ‘she may just be doing your job for you.’

  With a loud squelch, Alya thrust her arm deep into the hole and cautiously began to feel around inside the ant’s head.

  Frinser winced and mumbled something under his breath.

  Suddenly, Alya gave a shout, dropped the CRB and braced herself against the metal scaffolding poles. Plunging her other arm into the gaping hole she leaned backwards and pulled hard. There was a sucking, slurping sound like a wet flannel being dragged through a tube and then without warning a white, slimy worm as thick as a man’s arm came slithering out into the light. With a final grunt Alya turned her body around, flicking her arms so that the worm flew from her hands and landed, writhing and twisting, at Frinser’s feet.

  Alya climbed down the scaffolding, returned the CRB to the bench and dried her hands on a towel. Then she turned to the white-faced Frinser and smiled.

  ‘They didn’t teach me that in college either,’ she said.

  Frinser tried to speak, but all he could do was stare into space, opening and closing his mouth like a drowning man.

  Alya held up a hand. ‘Please,’ she told him. ‘No need to thank me.’ Then she turned to Jancy and saw that he was still looking down at the worm in amazement.

  ‘What do you think, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to check the others?’

  Jancy shook his head. ‘No need,’ he replied. ‘I think that Frinser and his team should be able to manage on their own now. Don’t you think so, Mr Frinser?’

  Frinser blinked and came out of his shock-induced trance. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said hurriedly. ‘We’ll get on to it immediately.’

  As Frinser walked off to gather his team together, Alya turned to Jancy and said, ‘What do you want me to do, Doctor Jancy? I could help them if you like. I know which part of the brain the worms will be located in.’

  Jancy took her by the arm and steered her towards the double doors. ‘I’m sure you do, my dear,’ he said. ‘But I think I’d rather you came with me.’

  He smiled.

  ‘You see, there are some people I’d like you to meet.’

  Five

  Sam was about halfway down the mountain when he noticed two tiny black specks moving quickly across the white plains below him. At first he thought that it was just his eyes playing tricks on him, that he had merely been dazzled by the glare of sun on snow, but after closing his eyes for a few moments and then opening them again he saw that the black specks were getting nearer. They seemed to be travelling at an incredible speed and Sam guessed that it would only be a matter of minutes before they reached the mountain.

  His recent experience with the fly told him that getting caught out in the open might not be such a good idea, so he ran towards a clump of pine trees and concealed himself behind their thick trunks.

  A few minutes later he heard a curious thwump, thwump sound, as if something was travelling rapidly up the mountain and repeatedly hitting the powdery snow. The sound became progressively louder until suddenly Sam heard a shout and a wet crunching noise. This was followed by another thwump, thwump, thwump and then the sound of laughter began to echo around the mountains.

  Cautiously, Sam peered out from behind the trees. Crouched in the snow was a dark brown, very flat insect with a segmented body and keel-shaped head. Its body was covered in backward pointing bristles and its long hind legs were tensed as if it was ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. Sam realised that he was staring at a very large flea. Sideways on, it looked like a squashed penny stood on end, but it was about the same size as a powerful sports motorbike and on either side of its head were silver handlebars with what ap
peared to be brake levers on the front. Its upper back had been sculpted and covered with a seat of thick, padded blue foam. Sitting on the flea with his boots just touching the snow was a young man with dark, shoulder-length hair and a week’s worth of stubble on his chin. He wore a brown leather flying jacket and a pair of grubby blue trousers which were ripped above his left knee. He was laughing loudly and staring at the big snowdrift next to him.

  Sam followed his gaze and saw that another flea was partially buried in the snow. A pair of boots waved languidly around in the air, as if their owner – who appeared to reside somewhere within the snowdrift – was not unduly worried by his new surroundings.

  Sam looked back at the first man and suddenly remembered where he had seen him before. They had been sitting together in a big hall, listening to Commander Firebrand discuss plans for an attack against Vermia. His hair was longer now and he no longer wore the neatly pressed uniform that Sam remembered, but he felt sure that it was the same person.

  Wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes, the man climbed down from his flea, kicked out its side-stand and walked across to the snowdrift.

  ‘What y’doin’ in there, Mump?’ he called, still laughing. ‘Building an igloo?’

  Mump.

  Sam smiled a sudden smile of recognition, for in that moment he clearly remembered standing at the side of a swimming pool during his training as a wasp pilot, with the dark-haired man and another thin, gawky-looking man standing next to him.

  Zip and Mump.

  Sam got up from his hiding place and walked over to where the man was leaning forward to grab hold of the still waving boots.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Need any help?’

  In less time than it takes to blink the man dropped to one knee, pulled a silver hunting knife from his jacket and leapt at Sam with such speed and force that he was knocked backward into the snow.

  ‘Zip,’ Sam gasped as he felt the cold steel of the blade press against his throat, ‘it’s me, Sam.’