All The Frail Futures: A Science Fiction Box Set

by J Battle

  Chapter 58

  The battle raged throughout the afternoon. Many of the Succy-y-Rist died under the onslaught from the valiant apes and implacable clickerclackers. But at such a cost. For every one that succumbed to the multiple and lucky blows from an ape’s sword, several apes also died, plucked and smashed, ripped and dismembered. For everyone that fell under the pressure of the clickerclackers’ greed, a dozen of the black discs were picked from the corpse and popped into the gaping maw of another Succ-y-Rist. Although it would undoubtedly suffer severe indigestion for days to come, the defenders could not afford such loss.

  The enhanced humans killed their fair share, and more, as they leapt from place to place across the front, double-tagging as they fought the great white aliens, ripping off heads and dealing fatal blows

  Milligan held his position on the road, picking off the aliens as best he could but, in the end he pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The superb weapon was now no more dangerous than a stick, its chamber empty. To use his fully loaded pistols, he would need to get down to the beach and fight at closer quarters. The idea made his legs weak.

  Down on the beach, there was a lull. Nothing prearranged, but in the way of battles, someone steps back to regroup, and their opponent does the same. Then, for a short time, the killing stops.

  The Succ-y-Rist had moved back, twenty metres or so from the water’s edge, their dead left behind, some crawling with black discs, others draped across the border between land and sea, their remaining tentacles waving slightly in the swell.

  Pi watched everything; her eyes flicking from the battered Succ-y-Rist to the exhausted apes, to the humans standing with their shoulders slumped between the apes and the water. All across the beach were dead and wounded apes, it was hard to remember what colour the sand had been before it was turned to red.

  It was time, she thought. One more push from the attackers and the defenders would fail. Their failure would be valiant, extraordinary even. It would be the subject of countless songs, but it would still be failure. And that could not be allowed. For the battle would not end here. With the apes and the cats defeated, the Succ-y-Rist would turn on the only remaining intelligent race; it was their way, after all. And The Wall had no real way to defend itself, not alone.

  So Pi called the humans and the senior officers to her and gave them their instructions.

  ‘What will happen?’ asked D.

  ‘Trust me, Daniel. Together in this way, we will overcome them.’ Then she smiled; a smile so sad that his eyes immediately clouded with tears. How could he deny her?

  So the remains of the army lined up side by side across the beach; there were so few of them now, less than one thousand still standing. Spaced amongst them were the humans, D at one end, Helen at the other end, a third of the distance from each end stood Pasco and Miles.

  Pi took up a position next to D. She took his left hand in hers. D reached for the hand of the large red ape on the other side of him. The action rippled across the line until there was an unbroken link across the whole of the army.

  For a second, Pi did nothing. She gripped D’s hand and stared across the water at their foe. Then she closed her eyes and whispered, ‘sorry.’ Her voice so low that D didn’t hear her. Then she stepped two paces forward until she was knee deep in the sea. The line followed her example.

  Her grip tightened and he felt the heat burning through his veins as his hand squeezed that of the ape beside him. The ape groaned and tried to pull away, but his hand was an immovable clamp. D’s vision turned red as the blood vessels of his eyes burst, his heart beat jumped and the blood pounded in his head. Every single cell in his body seemed to vibrate with pain and his mouth opened to a silent scream. He could feel the ape shaking as it tried to bear the agony washing over it, or was it he himself that was shaking? Then he heard a simple word, whispered like soothing honey, and he knew what he had to do.

  ‘Now,’ she said, and let go of his hand. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she leapt back to dry land.

  D released the lightning. It flowed along his right arm, through his fingertips, into the ape beside him. It flickered and flashed across the line of apes, growing stronger and more violent as it went. Pascal screamed as it reached him, but was still able to add his own power. Faster now, it reached Miles, and her scream could have torn out his heart.

  A second later, it reached Helen, and she knew what to do. Her whole body glowing with blue white fire, she immersed her free hand in the water and the grey cloudy sky was lit up as the fire roared across the water.

  The sea boiled and flashed to steam, but the fire carried on devouring everything in its path. The sea rushed towards it, to fill the gap left by the evaporated water, dragging the horde of white creatures to their death. The white fire turned them to ash in an instant, then moved on to its next victims.

  Pre-y-Nat watched in horror as the wall of fire bore down on her. She barely had time to turn before the liquid in her body turned to steam and her flesh to cinders.

  D’s first coherent thought was, it’s over. Through the veil of steam, he could not see a single white body. They were all gone; utterly defeated.

  He raised his right hand to his mouth, stunned at what had happened. Then he tasted the ash in the palm of his hand. He looked to his right; the ape was no longer there. He lifted his eyes and looked along the beach, to the three human figures; all that was left alive on the beach. One by one, they collapsed to their knees. Where were the apes? At first, he couldn’t see what had happened. Then he rubbed one finger in the greasy ash in his palm and he knew. This had once been a living creature, now turned to ash.

  He felt the strength slip from him and slumped to his knees.

  He looked up to find Pi standing beside him.

  ‘What have you done?’ He barely had the strength to say the words.

  ‘We won, Daniel. That is all that matters.’

  ‘But they’re all dead! You killed them all!’

  ‘It was a necessary sacrifice, Daniel. You needed their energy to boost your power, to enable you to achieve victory. It was not a choice we took lightly, believe me. There was no other course open to us.’

  ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done? They are all dead! What are we fighting for if they all die?’

  ‘I believe you know the answer to that question, Daniel. You are fighting against the race that conquered your world. You would do anything to exact your just revenge.’

  D held one hand up and gestured along the beach.

  ‘Not this. Never this.’ He rubbed his right hand across his face, leaving a dark grey smear. ‘But that’s not what you meant, is it? None of us are fighting for revenge. We’re not even fighting to save our skins. We’re fighting for you, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? As long as your fucking wall can carry on getting bigger, nothing else matters.’

  ‘Things are never as black and white as that, Daniel. You know that. But, essentially, from our perspective, you are right.’

  She chose that moment to disappear.

  D didn’t see her go. On his knees in the red tainted sand, he held his head in his hands; his body wracked by sobs.

  Chapter 59

  Jones found what he’d hoped for in the engine room and set to work immediately. He didn’t know exactly how to do what he planned but, as usual, he was confident that his hands would find a way to work it out.

  Three hours later, he dropped on to the sand and called the cats to him. He shivered has his wet clothes cooled in the night air.

  ‘We haven’t got a lot of time so we best be on our way now.’

  ‘Will it work?’ asked Deylus, as they set of towards the southern end of the beach.

  Jones shrugged. ‘I hope so. Programming the automatic pilot was simple enough, so it should land in the right place. The other part of the plan is not quite so straightforward, but it was easier than I thought it would be. So, yes, to answer your question.’

  When they reached the spur, Jon
es called a halt and all three turned to see what would happen. The red orange light from the volcano vents gave the scene a lurid hue.

  At first, nothing happened. Then they saw the globe lift easily from the sand and rise to a height of two hundred metres. It hovered silently there for a moment, and then it began to move out over the water. When it reached a distance of a kilometre from the shore, it started its descent, slowly dropping to the water.

  As it touched the light swell, Jones told the cats it was time to leave.

  ‘We have a little time, but we should get to the AEC as soon as we can. I’ve set it to go off half an hour after landing. I guessed that they would probably swim away from it when they saw it begin to descend, and then probably swim back to investigate when nothing dangerous happened.’

  With the spur between them and the beach, they worked their way inland until they reached the AEC. They quickly climbed inside and closed and sealed the outer door.

  ‘Will we see anything?’ asked Perdus, peering through the window.

  ‘No, and we won’t be looking,’ replied Jones, and then he made the windows opaque to prove his point.

  He checked his watch; there were only ten minutes to go.

  Before he’d entered the engine room, he’d guessed that he would find a nuclear power plant there. The globe had powered itself for two years during the journey from the worm-hole, so there had to be a sophisticated power source. And there it was, squat and ugly and efficient. The next step was to rig it to blow, and he didn’t expect that to be at all easy. He had never worked on a nuclear power plant before and what he did know about them he’d picked up from magazines and the net.

  Always the optimist and confident in his own abilities, he’d decided to have a go. When he opened it up, he was more than a little surprised to find that it was already set up to go critical. All that he’d needed do was set the timer, throw three switches, and press a big green button. He guessed that it was some sort of last ditch emergency measure to prevent enemies from taking control of it. When he first saw the set up he’d shaken his head. One thing you can say about the Succy-y-Rist, he’d said quietly to himself, was that they may not be very pretty, but they sure are thorough.

  ‘I can’t strap you in,’ he told the cats, ’the safety belts are not designed for your shapes. So get on the floor between the rows and wrap your legs around the supports. That’s the best you can do.’

  ‘Will it really affect us this far away from the… what did you call it? Explosion,’ asked Perdus, his nose close to the shaded windows as he tried to see what was happening.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe what this explosion will be like.’

  ‘That’s hardly surprising as I don’t have a clear idea what an explosion actually is.’

  ‘Shut up and get down.’

  Jones strapped himself into his chair and mouthed a little prayer. They were only five kilometres from ground zero; he hoped that the lava spur would be enough to shield them from the blast.

  The timer on his watch hit zero. He held his breath for a second, then the darkened windows glowed, the ground began to shake and the loudest bang he would ever hear deafened him. Then the AEC was flipped end over end; finally coming to a rest upside down, at a steep angle with the nose pointing downwards.

  With his head ringing and vomit in his mouth, he hung upside down for several minutes, trying to get his brain back in working order.

  Tightly gripping his safety belt, he undid the clasp and carefully lowered himself to the ceiling, in its new role as the floor. He slid on his bottom down to the nose area where he found a mixed bundle of cat.

  He prodded at various places and everything seemed capable of movement. If they were talking to him, he still couldn‘t hear. Happy that they were still alive, he climbed over them and stretched for the door release button.

  He came very close to pressing it. At the last second, he stopped. Radiation! How could he have forgotten about the fall-out? If he opened the door now, they’d be sure to sicken and die in a matter of days. He rolled away from the door and looked up at the cats as they began to stir. He was trying to remember what he’d read about the Cold War in the twentieth century; all the public broadcast information about how to survive a nuclear attack. People were told to blacken their windows and seal their doors; that they would need to stay inside for two weeks.

  That was it. Something about the half-life of uranium, or was it plutonium? The level of radioactivity drops radically on a day by day basis, but the speed of that reduction slows down quickly, so that, by the time fourteen days have passed, there is little measurable difference between one day and the next. Although they might still get sick after two weeks, there would be no obvious benefit in waiting longer.

  So, he was stuck in this cramped AEC for two weeks with the cats. What fun.

  Chapter 60

  The second cat army arrived late afternoon on the day of the battle. It was a motley crew, with a higher proportion of very young and quite old than you’d really want in a fighting force that was hoped to save the planet. But they were willing. They numbered over three thousand and were led by their Mayor, Heraldus, who’d insisted that a slightly bewildered Dutus accompany him.

  ‘But, your Lordship. I have no martial skills. Surely I would be of more use staying behind to manage the logistics for the army,’ he’d protested, to no avail.

  Along the road, they’d been joined by the few cats who’d been lucky enough to escape the atrocity on the beach, so they knew full well the treachery that had been perpetrated by the apes. When they arrived at the beach, they were looking for vengeance. They found not a single ape; just the humans, kneeling in the sand, without the strength to stand as they watched the calm, swaying sea.

  ‘Where is the army?’ asked Dutus, of the golden furred one.

  ‘Destroyed,’ replied Helen, dragging her face upward, ‘utterly destroyed.’ Her voice drained of emotion.

  ‘And the enemy?’

  ‘The same.’

  The way she spoke, it sounded like a bad thing. But, to Dutus, everything seemed good. The enemy was defeated, and so were the treacherous apes.

  He turned to the Mayor to tell him the good news; then he spotted Pi, and furrowed his brow; she looked good enough to eat, though this was hardly the time or place.

  ‘So, it’s over,’ he said, gesturing to the empty beach. ‘they’re all dead.’

  ‘It’s not over, Dutus,’ she replied, her voice almost a purr, ‘this is barely even the start. The next wave will be here soon. And we must prepare for it.’

  She looked along the beach.

  ‘You will need to help the humans. They have spent themselves to defeat your enemy. They will require time to recover.’

  Sometime later, D had persuaded two large cats to support him as he struggled across the sand to Pi.

  Speaking the language because he wanted the cats to understand, he snapped his words at Pi.

  ‘What are your plans for the next wave? Will the last cat have to give its life also? Will there be just us four and you left standing? Will you count that a victory?’

  ‘What does he mean about the last cat?’ Dutus stretched his neck towards her, his claws clicking free.

  Pi ignored him.

  ‘We have little choice in this matter, as do you. We accept that our methods are extreme, but at least they will ensure that some of the cats will still survive, as will the apes.’

  ‘The old and infirm; is that the future you are offering?’

  ‘It must be enough. But you must think about this, Daniel. The alternative is victory for the Succ-y-Rist. Then there will be no-one left alive. Surely you can see that the sacrifice is appropriate.’

  D stepped away from his supporting cats; closer to Pi.

  ‘And what sacrifice have you made? It is easy to sacrifice others, when it costs you nothing.’

  He laughed; a brief mirthless snort.

  ‘But I guess that’s just the way of the wall. N
othing else matters as long as you survive.’

  ‘Your words are true, but their meaning is less than complete. We have made an extreme sacrifice ourselves; you should remember that. The clickerclackers are our flesh, and now they are gone. You do not understand how much we are diminished by this loss. Yet we did not hesitate, when it became necessary. And neither will we delay when the time comes again. The cats will do well if they serve the same purpose and achieve the same result.'

  ‘I’m not sure I’m entirely clear about what’s happening here,’ said Dutus, glancing over to the Mayor.

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Helen had been listening to the conversation from a few metres distance. Now she moved closer.

  ‘By all means, feel free to make a suggestion.’ Pi’s voice sounded less than interested.

  ‘You don’t need to use the cats as fuel to destroy the next wave. We wouldn’t help you anyway, not now we know what’s involved. There is another way, if it’s possible. The four of us proved very effective in killing the Succ-y-Rist, and they can’t seem to permanently harm us. You have thousands of cats here. Can you imagine what sort of army you’d have if they all went through The Wall? Even a massive horde of Succ-y-Rist couldn’t resist them.’

  ‘This is not as simple as you make it seem. There would be a cost to us, and not all of them would survive. And it would take time; time that we do not have.’

  ‘But it is possible?’

  Pi seemed distracted for a moment, then he simply nodded.

  ‘We’d better get started then,’ Helen smiled, ‘the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll have a super army.’

  *********

  Pi decided that one thousand of the cats would be brought to The Wall; the rest would be required to provide a defence if the Succ-y-Rist should attack before the process was complete. So a third of the army turned around and began to march back along the road.