Lethal Planet

by Rob May

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Jason said. ‘You’re crazy, do you know that? And brave. Alright, I admit it—so long as it doesn’t involve fighting, you’re the bravest person I know.’

  ‘And you,’ Brandon said, with a slight catch in his voice, ‘are the bravest person I know when it does involve fighting.’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ Jason said. ‘Alright, you’re all set. Ready to go where no one has gone before; to take one giant leap for humanity?’

  ‘Of course, I’m ready,’ Brandon said. ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life to do something like this.’

  * * *

  They met Kat in the elevator on the way down to the hangar. She had a trolley full of boxes of food from the stores. ‘Beef jerky, salami and cheese slices,’ she said. ‘Enough to last a few weeks, I think, but not thousands of years.’

  ‘I can use the bionoids to process some more,’ Brandon said. ‘Can’t be any less natural than this plasticy-looking junk.’

  Kat looked cross. Jason could tell Brandon was getting techy with nerves. ‘Do you want a gun?’ Jason asked him. ‘To shoot rabbits for food? When you eventually manage to breed a few rabbits of course.’

  ‘No guns,’ Brandon said firmly. ‘And, you know what—maybe no rabbits either. I have a whole database of DNA to work with, and most of the animals and plants I’ve scanned came from Corroza, not Earth.’

  The elevator doors opened and they rolled the trolley of supplies into the hanger. The wide open space as full of vehicles: armoured MTVs, tanks, zelf fighter ships (left behind from when the Arch Predicant’s men had briefly taken control of the Majestic), and in the far corner: a familiar sleek shape.

  ‘Did you wax her or something?’ Jason asked Brandon. ‘She looks amazing.’

  ‘I got up a week ago to get her ready,’ Brandon said, stopping Jason from running a finger along Discord’s hull. ‘But it’s not wax—I had to polarise the hull with protective gamma paint, so don’t touch.’

  Inside the ship there were stacks of books and comics, piles of clothing and boxes full of tools. ‘You got everything you need?’ Jason said, looking around the deck and thinking about all the adventures they had been on in this little rocket.

  ‘I think so,’ Brandon said. ‘I even found and XBOX and some games to take. The centuries will just fly by. I never did find all the bobbleheads in Fallout first time around.’

  ‘What do you need us to do?’ Kat said.

  ‘Nothing. When I’m gone, just go back to sleep and I’ll see you when you get to Earth.’

  ‘And if your plan doesn’t work?’ Jason said.

  ‘It will. Trust me.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’ Jason persisted.

  A sad look passed over Brandon’s face. ‘I’ve programmed the bionoids to wake you two first,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘If you get back to Earth and it’s still dead … then maybe you might not want to wake everyone else.’

  They all exchanged uncomfortable glances.

  ‘But it will work!’ Kat said. ‘It always turns out alright in the end.’ She paused for a moment, seemingly reflecting on the all the tragedy and destruction that they had battled through to get to this point. ‘Okay, almost always,’ she added.

  There was nothing more to say. Brandon and Kat hugged for a long time, until Brandon had to forcibly extricate himself from her embrace. He hugged Jason next for the minimum possible duration. Then he walked them silently back to the exit ramp.

  Jason and Kat had barely set foot back on the hanger floor before the ramp closed shut and Discord’s boosters fired up.

  ‘He really doesn’t need our help,’ Kat said regretfully.

  ‘He did, and he will,’ Jason said. ‘He needed me to destroy the Arch Predicant; he needed you to lead the balaks to safety. And you can bet that when we get back to Earth, he’ll have accidently created an infestation of those strange purple flying hedgehogs we saw in the jungle, and he’ll be too soft to do anything about it. Trust me, there will be chaos for us to sort out!’

  As Discord hovered into the airlock, Jason and Kat went to the viewport, a long wide strip of reinforced quartz glass that afforded a view out towards the wormhole. Discord hovered back into view again, this time on the other side of the glass, and accelerated towards the strange rippling space anomaly.

  ‘This is going to be as much fun as the water slides in Highgate Leisure Center,’ Brandon said, speaking over the hangar intercom.

  ‘Good luck, you crazy fool’ Jason said, not knowing if Brandon could hear him or not. Kat laughed and took her brother’s hand as they watched.

  Brandon appeared to be talking to himself. ‘Alright, I’m setting an insertion vector now … should be able to drop into the same angular velocity to match the … oh no, ouch—’

  Brandon’s last words coincided with Discord jerking violently, flipping over and settling into a slow roll.

  Jason and Kat watched as Brandon’s ship endlessly rotated over and over. It was just floating in space now, facing to one side, perpendicular to the wormhole.

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ Jason muttered. ‘Bran? Are you okay?’

  ‘Sounded like he banged into something in the cockpit,’ Kat said. ‘Or got hit …’

  There was just static over the intercom. Jason and Kat hesitated only a moment before turning and running for one of the zelf spaceships.

  Kat took to the controls. Jason spied one of the zelfs battle suits. He tore off his tracksuit and started pulling on the armour. Kat manoeuvred the ship to the airlock. They both worked without words, as if what they had to do was both obvious and obligatory.

  Out in space, Kat inched towards Discord with almost agonising care, tapping on the forward boosters and almost immediately compensating with reverse thrust. The last thing she wanted to do was overshoot Discord and fall down the wormhole instead.

  ‘That’s close enough,’ Jason said at last. ‘I’m going out the top hatch.’

  ‘Be careful!’

  Before he could even have second thoughts about what he was doing, Jason was flying through space between the two ships. He hit the hull of Discord with a thump, and hoped against hope that the automatic security would recognise him. Luckily, It did: he slammed his left palm against the door panel and grabbed the edge of the hatch with the same hand as it opened up. He swung his legs in and pulled the hatch shut behind him. The deck was in disarray after the sudden depressurisation and repressurisation of the ship, but the cabin up front had automatically sealed itself shut. Jason opened the door and stepped inside.

  Brandon was lying on the floor next to the pilot’s seat, an ugly bruise above his eye. There was blood on the inside of his helmet’s visor. Jason dropped to his knees and shook him awake.

  ‘Urgh!’ Brandon moaned.

  ‘Come on, wake up,’ Jason urged. ‘What happened, Bran?’ He pulled off his own helmet and looked around the cabin anxiously, half expecting a surprise assailant to appear from somewhere.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Brandon groaned. ‘I forgot to put on my seatbelt, and got thrown to the floor when the wormhole took hold. Where are we?’

  ‘You bounced back out. Hell, Brandon—only you could be so stupid! Your head’s so far in the clouds thinking up grand schemes, you don’t see immediate danger.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ Kat’s voice came out of the intercom.

  ‘Just Brandon being a tool,’ Jason said. ‘Head back to the Majestic, Kat. We’ll follow you in, give Brandon a cup of tea and a biscuit, then try this thing again!’

  Outside the cockpit window, the stars stopped spinning, and instead began to blur and shimmer.

  Brandon scrabbled to his feet and pulled himself up to the dashboard. ‘Oh no, here we go …’

  Jason watched in horror as the yawning void of the wormhole filled the view. ‘Turn us around, Brandon,’ he said as calmly as he could manage. ‘I’m not coming with you on this trip. I’m not leaving Kat and Doo behind.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Brando
n said, dropping back into the seat. ‘I’m sorry, Jason.’

  Jason stood numb with disbelief. He could hear Kat shouting over the intercom—

  ‘You can’t go! You can’t leave! You need me to look after you, Jason!’

  —but he couldn’t find the words to respond.

  And then it was too late. Discord was grabbed by the wormhole and sucked into the twisting, swirling tube. The stars stretched and blurred and they found themselves rushing down a tunnel of technicolour lights.

  ‘We’re both just a couple of worms now,’ Brandon said, risking a faint grin.

  Jason wasn’t so thrilled. ‘More like a couple of turds,’ he said. ‘Flushed down the toilet of the galaxy.’

  Brandon’s smile evaporated. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That would be more like it.’

  23—PARADISE

  There wasn’t any time for further recriminations: almost as soon as they had entered the wormhole, they were through the other side. Looming in front of Jason was a monochrome planet, with white land masses and black seas.

  It was only when he recognised the triangle of India, and the boot of Italy, that he realised they were home.

  But between them and Earth was a dense asteroid field.

  ‘Get to the lasers!’ Brandon shouted.

  Jason stopped gawping at the view and hurled himself into the passenger seat. Last time he had checked, Discord didn’t have any weapons, but in front of him was a joystick and targeting display.

  ‘When did we level up?’ Jason said, taking aim at a massive spinning rock and blasting it into a million pebbles.

  ‘I took the laser cannon from one of the zelf ships,’ Brandon said as he banked to avoid a collision. ‘I guessed they might come in handy.’

  ‘Well, you’re lucky I decided to come along for the ride,’ Jason said, his words dripping with sarcasm. ‘Or did you think you could fly and shoot at the same time?’

  ‘Um, well I didn’t think the moon debris would still be this bad,’ Brandon said as he rolled to avoid an impact. He failed: Discord’s starboard wingtip was smashed into oblivion.

  ‘Oh great. We’re going to crash again,’ Jason said. ‘Can we not go down in Kazakhstan this time? The food was terrible there!’

  ‘We’re not going to crash!’ Brandon insisted.

  ‘Or France,’ Jason said. ‘The food wasn’t particularly amazing there, either. Although I would rather eat frog’s legs than the vegetable slop Doo cooks up.’

  ‘We are not going to—’

  Discord slammed violently to the side as something punched hard into the hull.

  ‘What about America? Bet there’s loads of tinned Spam and cans of Pepsi lying around that’s still good to eat. Let’s crash there.’

  ‘Of course!’ Brandon said, snapping his fingers. ‘I forgot that the wormhole links two different points not only in space, but in time too. The reason there’s so much moon rock flying around is because we’ve gone back to nearer the time when the moon was destroyed. That’s good!’

  ‘How is that good?’ Jason said, flinching in his seat as they had another near miss.

  ‘It means that we’ll have a more time to work on terraforming Earth.’ Brandon tapped away at the computer. ‘An extra thousand years!’

  ‘Great,’ Jason muttered. ‘Well, I’ll help out a bit, but I think I’ll be sleeping away most of that bonus millennium.’

  Brandon didn’t answer. He continued to mess around on the computer.

  ‘Concentrate on avoiding those rocks!’ Jason shouted at him, blasting away at a storm of football-sized chunks that threatened to pebbledash Discord’s window.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ Brandon snapped back. ‘I’m just trying to find us a place to crash … er, I mean land.’

  They eventually made it through the asteroids, albeit with two broken wings and a ruined booster that belched out black smoke behind them. Brandon took them down into a cloud of dense dust. Visibility was non-existent.

  He slapped a button on the dash. ‘Autopilot on,’ he declared. He swivelled in his seat to face Jason. ‘You know, I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘It will be good to have some help. You always did say you wanted to fly through space, fight bad guys, meet alien princesses and save the world. Well, hanging out with me you got to do most of those things. Now you can cross the last one off your list.’

  Jason just grunted in response. Spending an eternity with Brandon, doing what sounded like gardening and zookeeping, wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

  They hit the ground with a thump and skidded along at speed. Jason could still see nothing through the dust, but he fought back his rising wave of panic when he saw Brandon sitting calmly, following their location on an on-screen map. Jason couldn’t tell where it was, but it looked like they were shooting up a long city street. Brandon reached over and nudged the joystick to the left, and suddenly they were rattling over rough ground.

  And then they were slowing down, as Discord hit a slope and started to climb.

  Finally, the crazy journey that had begun halfway across the galaxy was over. Discord had come to a halt. Jason let out a massive sigh of relief.

  ‘Well, so far so good,’ Brandon said. ‘We made it. Do you know where we are?’

  ‘No idea,’ Jason said.

  ‘Go outside and see if you can guess!’ Brandon said, and turned back to the ship’s computer monitor.

  Jason strolled back out to Discord’s long tubular midsection and pulled on his zelf body armour and helmet. The right sleeve and glove hung loose from the stump of his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed in the rush to save Brandon earlier, but there was a handy laser pistol holstered on the suit’s belt. He drew it and hit the door release with the butt of the gun.

  He stepped out into a still world of white and grey.

  ‘Earthquakes have stopped, at least,’ he muttered to himself.

  The planet’s spin and orbit has settled down, Brandon explained, his words popping into Jason’s skull via the bionoids. Losing the moon was like losing a leg … or an arm, ha ha … but things soon adapt!

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Jason agreed. He was now slightly peeved. Was this how it was going to be now? Having Brandon constantly invade his thoughts over the next however many centuries?

  The dust will settle down eventually, allowing the sunlight in. That’s when we can start planting—

  Jason started humming to himself to tune Brandon out. He ambled down the ramp and found himself walking on dust-clogged grass. He bent down to examine it: the grass was knotted with weeds, had both grass and weeds had a silvery sheen to them.

  It was true: the thanamorphs had infected every living thing on the entire planet. And now that the biological nightmare had run its course, everything on the planet was dead.

  The dust shifted in a slight breeze. Discord was revealed to be parked at the top of a hill. Through the ever-changing clouds, Jason could see the ruins of a city below him. There were no recognisable landmarks anywhere, though: it could have been any apocalyptic city anywhere in the world.

  Then Jason saw the bench.

  He walked over to it, holstered his gun and sat down, taking in the view like he was on a Sunday morning stroll. Then after a few moments, he twisted in his seat and wiped the dust off the back of the bench, revealing words carved into the wood. Words he knew would be there, since he had written them himself when he was twelve years old:

  JB WOZ ERE

  ERE I WOZ

  WOZ I ERE?

  YES I WOZ!

  He changed the tune he was humming to something more appropriate: ‘London Calling dum dum dumdede dum …’

  * * *

  Forty years later …

  Jason stopped work, leaned on his hoe and wiped the sweat from his forehead. It was hot; the sun was shining down through a gap in the dust. One of the first things Brandon had done when they arrived was send an army of bionoids up there to clear the skies over London with an electrostatic field.

  There
were even birds flying around in the sky now—strange alien birds that Brandon had created himself, using all the tricks in his scientific repertoire: the bionoids’ DNA records, a freezer full of eggs and cell samples he had packed aboard Discord, and even chunks of living tissue he had surgically removed from Jason and himself.

  ‘It’s not playing god,’ Brandon had said as he had sent the bionoids to slice a sliver off Jason’s kidney and bring it out through his nostril. ‘God supposedly snapped his fingers and created life out of nothing. In the real world, you have to start with something!’

  And here he came now, stomping across Jason’s wheat field with his catron kitten bounding along at his side. Brandon was sporting a shaggy black beard these days, shaving being one of life’s pleasures he seemed to have no intention of ever experiencing.

  Jason, on the other hand, maintained a flawlessly shaved head and cheeks. He enjoyed the routine and discipline, and he also liked the fact that it hid the bald spot that he had first noticed in the mirror on his twenty-third birthday.

  Jason and Brandon were now both twenty-five years old. They worked for six hours every day, and spent the rest of the time in a bionoid-induced sleep. Forty years had passed, while they had aged only ten.

  Did it feel like forty years, though? Not really. The days were packed with farming and building, and partaking in Brandon’s scientific experiments; the years seemed to have just flown by. At the end of every day, they were exhausted. They would spend an hour playing chess while eating Corrozian purple pig burgers (Jason was responsible for breeding, and culling, the herd) and then turn in for the night. Home was a massive fortress, that Brandon had designed and Jason built, made out of salvage from the ruins of London. It was a large multi-coloured, multi-textured box, three stories high. They called it the Rubik’s Cube, and it stood on the site of Brandon’s old house in Highgate.