World Killer: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure Novel

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Half-blinded, Daryl fell, frantically waving his hands in front of him for protection. Through the haze of blood and tears and snot, he could just make out the World Killer’s arm shape itself into a long silver blade.

  “P-please. Don’t,” Daryl pleaded, but the blade was already drawing back.

  Daryl’s scream became a gargle as the tip of the blade pierced his chest. He felt it tear through his insides and out through his back, heard the cracking of the floor below him, and then there was nothing but the pain, like fire, burning him up from within.

  “End simulation.”

  The black gloop fell away and Daryl dropped to the floor, clutching his chest and sobbing. Ash and Riley were on the floor, too, their faces slick with snot and tears.

  Hath stepped in front of them and Daryl forced himself to look up. The alien towered over him, just as the World Killer had.

  It had been a simulation. A trick. That was all. It wasn’t real.

  “So what did you learn?” Hath asked.

  Ash gulped down shaky breaths. “That… that you’re a Grade A asshole.”

  “That the World Killer himself is off limits,” Hath said, ignoring the insult. “That he is too dangerous for you to take on. That he would kill you all without breaking a sweat.”

  Daryl stood, still holding his chest where he’d felt the icy cold blade slide into him. It had all seemed so real. “Then how do we stop him?” he asked.

  “You don’t,” Hath said. “Your job is to cripple his army and prevent the invasion of Earth. I will handle the World Killer myself.”

  Riley took hold of Daryl’s arm and used him to pull herself upright. “You? On your own?”

  Hath shook his head. “I will have help. I have allies on Skalgorth, who do not like what has happened to their world. When the time is right, they will reveal themselves and we will seize power.”

  “So wait, wait, wait,” said Ash. He was up on his knees, but that seemed to be as far as he had any intention of going. “Couldn’t you have just told us that? Did you have to scare the crap out of us then show us how much we’d get our asses kicked? Was that really necessary?”

  “Yes, it was,” said Hath, matter-of-factly. “Had I simply told you to stay away from the World Killer, you may have taken it as a challenge.” He stared very deliberately at Ash as he spoke. “You may have thought you knew better, and that you stood a chance against him.”

  The alien’s voice slowed down, as he tried to make himself very clear. “If you challenge the World Killer, you will die. It will be a bad death, with no honor or glory, just your broken bones and bloodied flesh and the life ebbing from your body.”

  He looked at them all in turn. “The World Killer is off limits. Is that understood?”

  “Totally understood. Couldn’t be clearer,” said Riley. “Like… I’m on board with this plan like you wouldn’t believe. Staying alive? Yay. Being horribly killed? Boo!” She looked around at the others. “Am I right?”

  Daryl mumbled his agreement. Ash had his eyes fixed on the floor ahead of him, his expression blank.

  “Ash Stone?” Hath said. “Do you understand why you must not challenge the World Killer?”

  Ash blinked, as if waking from a dream. He stood up. “Whatever,” he spat, then he turned and stormed off toward the room at the back of Yufo.

  The others watched him go. When he had left, Riley adjusted her bobble-hat and said, “Someone should go talk to him.”

  Daryl nodded. He was still shaken up from the simulation, but Ash seemed to be taking it worse. “Yeah,” he agreed.

  Nobody moved. Daryl turned to find Riley and Hath both looking at him expectantly. At least, he thought the alien was looking at him expectantly, but it was hard to read his bat-like features. For all Daryl knew, he might just have indigestion.

  “What? I’m not doing it,” Daryl said.

  “It’ll be better coming from you,” Riley said. “You know? Man to man. I’d do it, but I’m not a man. At least not anymore!” She laughed a little too loudly, then pulled a pained expression. “I’ve never been a man. I don’t know why I said that. Kindly strike it from the record.”

  She gestured toward the door at the back of the ship. “Well? On you go, then.”

  Daryl looked at the doorway and groaned. “I don’t even like him,” he muttered, but he began walking anyway.

  He found Ash sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Ash’s head was between his knees, like he was bracing himself for a crash. Daryl hung back just inside the doorway, not sure what to say.

  Finally, he settled on: “You OK?”

  Ash didn’t look up. “Fine.”

  “You seem, I don’t know. Upset or whatever.”

  “Upset?” Ash looked up. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was pulled into a snarl. “You think I might be ‘upset’? I just watched my mom die, like, a dozen times, and every time she did she was crying out my name. But I couldn’t save her.”

  One of his legs began to bounce and his face went tight, like a toddler about to burst into tears. “And then next thing I know I’m being pulled through a wall and beaten to death by a… a… monster, but all I can hear is my mom screaming over and over and over again.”

  He lowered his head again. “So, y’know, all things considered, I think I’m well within my goddamned rights to be ‘upset or whatever’.”

  “I got stabbed through the chest,” Daryl offered. He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. It sounded like he was trying to compete.

  “Good for you,” Ash said.

  Daryl turned away, hesitated, then half-turned back. “If, you know, if you want to talk or anything.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, you know where I am.”

  “Not gonna happen, Oprah.”

  Daryl sighed. “Fine. I don’t care. I was just trying to be nice, OK?”

  Ash raised a middle finger. Daryl shook his head and walked out, leaving Ash on his own in the room.

  Lifting his head a fraction, Ash looked to the door to make sure Daryl had left. Then, when he was sure he was alone, Ash began to cry, burying his face in his arms to muffle the sound of his sobs.

  Twenty

  The next forty-eight hours passed in a blur of training simulations, strategy talks, and arguments. They weren’t made to face the World Killer again, and Ash didn’t mention his mum popping up in any of his sessions, but the atmosphere in the station was constantly tense and Daryl spent most of the time on edge.

  His individual sessions were mostly made up of physical work, as he learned to hone his fighting skills against opponents of all shapes and sizes. He was constantly amazed by how his body reacted to attacks almost entirely on its own, and by the end of the second day he was battling his way through whole armies of PPA agents, including jeeps, tanks, and—in the last particularly explosive session—an F-22 Raptor fighter jet.

  Outside the simulations, Daryl was working at better understanding his telekinetic power. He could push, pull, lift, and throw things using just his mind, but no matter how much he practiced, it was all still a bit hit-or-miss. Smaller objects were fine, but when it came to anything larger than himself, he managed to shift it one time out of three.

  “You’re overthinking it,” Hath had said, as Daryl struggled to move an old train carriage Yufo had pulled into the station on the second day. When Daryl relaxed, Hath had accused him of underthinking it, and round and round they had gone.

  The other part of Daryl’s training centered around Yufo. Hath’s strategy involved Daryl, Riley, and Ash splitting up and taking out different targets. Daryl’s would be further away and would be the most heavily defended, so mastering Yufo’s flight and weapons capabilities were vital.

  For someone who’d never had a sense of balance or direction, he took to it quickly. The arm movements required to steer the ship were almost like a form of Tai Chi, he decided. To make it work you just had to learn where the dozens of invisible controls were,
the order and direction in which to touch them, and then remember all that when a hundred alien fighters were closing in on you with all guns blazing.

  “Seriously, Hath, get a joystick or a control pad or something,” Daryl protested mid-way through his first lesson. “Trust me, you’ll wonder how you’ve gone so long without one.”

  By the end of the lesson, though, Daryl was getting the hang of it. By the time the third session was done, Hath announced he didn’t need any further training and was ready to fly the ship on his own.

  They’d had joint simulation sessions, too, designed to test how well they worked together against a common enemy. At first, the answer was a definite ‘not very well’ as Daryl and Riley tried to do their own thing, and Ash tried to outdo both of them.

  Eventually, though, following much shouting from Hath, they all began to at least pay attention to what the others were doing. They were still far from working as a team, but at least they were no longer working against one another. It was, Hath accepted, the best he could hope for at such short notice.

  The night before the world was due to end, Daryl, Riley, Ash, and Hath stood inside Yufo, watching the shimmering hologram of Skalgorth’s approach. It was still a way out from the solar system – far beyond Pluto – but the planets were all much bigger now in the hologram. With Skalgorth so close, there was no longer any need to zoom out very far.

  The display on the wall told them there were less than twenty hours left until the planet reached Earth. Hath estimated that gave them around fifteen hours until the World Killer got in contact, broadcasting his message to all the countries of the world.

  It would be a warning, Hath said. Not a warning to prepare for war, but a warning to prepare for annihilation. It would be the only courtesy the alien would show before mounting his attack. The next time anyone would see his skull mask would be up close, and it would be the last thing they ever saw.

  Over the past two days, Hath had revealed snippets of his plan—just enough to explain the training sessions. They knew they were mounting individual attacks at various locations, before coming together to take on Skalgorth’s main forces, but Hath had kept where they were going secret.

  Until now.

  “Show initial attack sites,” he said.

  At his command, three locations illuminated on one of the holographic globes. Riley was the first to notice. The others saw her turn to look and followed her gaze. It was Daryl who was the first to realize their significance, though.

  “You must be joking.”

  Ash looked from the globe with the flashing targets and over to the much more familiar planet spinning in front of him. “What? No way. You’re not serious.”

  Hath’s nostrils flared. “I am always serious, Ash Stone. We cannot wait for the World Killer to come to Earth. We must go to Skalgorth.”

  “But isn’t that, like, a whole different planet?” Ash yelped.

  Daryl rolled his eyes. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”

  “If Skalgorth launches its attack, it will be too late. There will be nothing we can do, no way we can stop them,” Hath explained. “And so, we must go to it and ensure its forces do not leave the surface.”

  “And how the hell are we supposed to stop them from leaving?” Ash demanded.

  For perhaps the first time since they’d met him, something like a smile curved at the corners of Hath’s mouth. “That part, I think you will like, Ash Stone,” he said. With a gesture, he grew the hologram until it filled almost all of the space inside the ship. It spun quickly until one of the flashing lights was directly in front of them.

  “Ash Stone will attack here. This is the launch site for their heavy weaponry. From here, they will send bombers and tanks and terraforming units to Earth to take out military resistance.”

  “Unless I stop them,” Ash said.

  “Correct,” Hath nodded. “The mission is simple enough. Destroy everything you see. Leave nothing intact. Understood?”

  Ash raised his eyebrows in surprise. He nodded slowly. “OK. Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Riley Harper,” Hath said, and the planet spun, as if on cue, to the second flashing light. “You will recall I mentioned I had allies on Skalgorth. Six of them are being held here, deep in an underground prison. I will need their help if I am to stop the World Killer. There are many others, but these six are key to our victory.”

  “So, I’m doing a jailbreak?”

  “Indeed. The prison is buried under half a mile of solid rock. Can you handle it?”

  “Does the pope poop in the woods?” Riley said. Hath frowned. Riley waved a hand. “Forget it. Yeah, I can do it, no problemo.”

  She had a thought. “One thing. What do I do with them when I’ve broken them out?”

  “Daryl Elliot will pick them up on his return from his target.”

  “Which is…?” Daryl said.

  The world spun again, revealing the third and final illuminated target. “This is the central power core for many of Skalgorth’s offensive capabilities,” he said. “Deactivate it, and we will prevent them from beaming their forces to Earth. They will be unable to leave the planet, and so unable to mount their attack.”

  Daryl stepped closer, examining the spot on the planet’s surface. As if reading his mind, it grew so he could make out some of the larger details.

  “So, what? I just destroy it?”

  “No,” said Hath, suddenly behind him. “The core also powers several life-support and planetary stability systems. Flying something as large as Skalgorth through space comes with its penalties. The atmosphere was compromised decades ago. Destroy the core completely and Skalgorth will tear itself apart.”

  “All the more reason to do it,” Ash said.

  Daryl looked at him, then back at the hologram. “I hate to say it, but Ash might be right. Why are we messing around with everything else when we can just take this thing out?”

  “Firstly, the explosion would destroy everything from here to Jupiter,” Hath said slowly, as if explaining to a young child. “And secondly… there are good people on Skalgorth. Innocent people, who never wanted to see their world turn in the direction it has. I will not allow them to perish.”

  “Fair enough,” Riley chirped. “To be honest, you had me at ‘destroy everything from here to Jupiter’. I think we’re all agreed that that would be a bad idea.” She glanced nervously at the others. “We are all agreed on that, yes?”

  “Of course,” said Daryl. “So… what do I do?”

  “I will be in communication with you,” Hath said. “Once you have reached the primary control tower, I will talk you through the steps required to power down the transport system.

  “But be warned,” Hath continued. “The core will be heavily protected. Getting to the tower will not be easy.”

  “Nothing worthwhile ever is,” Riley said, nodding sagely. “Except maybe breathing. Or sleeping. Or going to the toilet, although that isn’t always without problems. Fun fact: in Australia, some people call the toilet ‘the dunny’. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

  Ash blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sorry. I babble when I’m nervous,” Riley said. “I’m a babbler. I can’t help it. I’ve always been that way. I just babble and babble and babble--”

  “Jesus, OK! We get it,” Ash snapped.

  “Your attacks will be synchronized, so as to give them as little warning as possible,” Hath said. “Once you’ve taken care of your initial objectives, we will regroup here.” He pointed to a fourth target, which began to blink on the globe. “This is where we will find the bulk of the World Killer’s forces.” He glanced at the floor, then back up. “And the World Killer himself. This is where we will fight the final battle.”

  Daryl reached out as if he could touch the spot. The hologram flickered as his fingers broke the surface. “So, this is where the fate of the Earth gets decided?”

  “Correct,” Hath said. They all stood in silence for a few mom
ents, contemplating the enormity of it all.

  The hush was finally broken by Ash. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “If we’re all attacking at the same time, and the targets are spread out all over the whole damn world by the looks of things, how are we getting to them?”

  “Daryl Elliot will take Yuf—will take the ship.”

  “What about us?” asked Riley.

  The half-smile played at the corners of Hath’s mouth once again. “I thought you would never ask.”

  Twenty-One

  That night, Daryl lay on the floor of the station’s ticket office, listening to the distant rumble of trains as he tried to get to sleep.

  He’d found he needed less and less sleep over the past few days, to the extent that he didn’t remember sleeping at all the night before. In some ways, he was pleased that he now had much more time in his day, but on the other hand, it was pretty boring being awake when no one else was.

  Riley and Ash were sleeping in Yufo, where the responsive, memory foam-like floor was far more comfortable than the one in the ticket office. Daryl had been in there, too, but had grown increasingly jealous of how soundly they were both sleeping, and had moved outside to be awake and miserable in peace.

  He’d started counting the titles on the ceiling, but it had taken him barely over a second. He’d then calculated how many tiles were in the whole station, and that hadn’t taken him very much longer.

  He turned over in his sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t that he was tired—in fact, he was wide awake—but his mind had been so consumed with the World Killer over the past few days, that he just wanted to escape it for an hour or two.

  The more he tried to sleep, the more awake he became. Finally, he clambered out of his sleeping bag and walked back into the main station. Yufo’s door slid open at his approach, and as he sat down the goo-like floor rose up to wrap itself around him. If he was going to be lying awake all night, he decided, he may as well be comfortable.