Daryl took another look at the screen, with its bewildering maze of code. He watched a single light pulsing on and off in his visor’s view, superimposed over the button he was confident would run the code he’d just inputted.
“Completely Out of your Depth score?” he whispered. “Ten.”
Then, because he had no idea what else to do, Daryl followed the naggingly insistent instructions and pressed the button.
More code scrolled up the screen. Something gave a soft bleep. Otherwise, as far as he could tell, nothing happened.
“Did it work?” he asked. “Is that it?”
“Mission successful, Daryl Elliot,” said Yufo. “We will rendezvous at the coordinates displayed on your visor.”
Turning away from the display, Daryl studied the coordinates. He had absolutely no frame of reference for them, and so had absolutely no idea where to go. Fortunately, an arrow appeared in his field of view, directing him.
Unfortunately, it was pointing up.
Daryl raised his head and spotted Yufo hanging in the sky thousands of feet above him. He squinted at the dark dot, and could just make out a hole appearing in the bottom of the ship, spiraling opening like the shutter of a camera to welcome him back.
He groaned. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
Riley led the prisoners along the walkway, trying to remain as quiet as possible. She needn’t have bothered. The six… what? Men? Aliens? One of those. The six of them laughed and jeered, patting each other on their backs and taking it in turns to shout things at her, before they all broke into loud guffaws of laughter. She had no idea what they were saying, but the way they were saying it made her cheeks burn red with embarrassment.
There was a cinder block on the walkway ahead of them. It took Riley a moment to understand its significance.
“Oh… bum. Everyone be careful,” she said, motioning for quiet. “There might be a guy around here somewhere who…”
The guard appeared from an alcove ahead of them, one arm slung across his chest as if holding himself together, the other pointing his gun at the group. It wasn’t aiming at Riley specifically, but more in the general direction of the prisoners behind her.
“Yep, that’s him,” Riley said. She raised her hands in a calming gesture. “Look, it’s OK. It’s OK. Relax.” She took a deep breath and tried to follow her own advice. “These men are with me, and I’m sorry, but I’m taking them out of here. I’m sure you’re a nice person deep down, and I really don’t want to hit you with another brick, so if you could…”
The guard screamed, then gargled, as his ribs collapsed into his fleshier parts. Riley stared, wide-eyed, as blood vomited out of his mouth and cascaded down his front.
“Uh, what’s happening right now?” she whimpered, then she jumped aside as the guard shot past her like a fish on an invisible line.
He jerked to a stop when one of the prisoners caught him by the throat. The former convict studied the gargling specimen like a cruel child might examine a fly right before they ripped its wings off. Behind him, the other men cackled and bellowed and stamped their feet in approval.
“We should… You should let him go,” said Riley.
There was a snickt of breaking bone. Holding Riley’s gaze, the prisoner let the guard go. The lifeless body slumped to the walkway, then oozed limply through a gap at the side that it had no business fitting through. Two and a half seconds later, the corpse thacked onto the tiles.
Riley felt her cheeks burn hotter.
“Turrem ta. Bup,” said the prisoner, no longer laughing. “Bup.”
Riley’s mouth was suddenly dry. It made a clicking sound as she spoke. “Bup. Gotcha,” she whispered, then she turned the partially assembled wall into a staircase and led her increasingly unlikeable companions toward the surface.
Twenty-Eight
Riley bounced from foot to foot, watching the prisoners file in through Yufo’s open door, and quietly dreading the journey ahead. Daryl stood beside her, nodding and smiling at each of the hulking aliens as they filed by.
When the last one was aboard, Daryl made to follow, but Riley caught him by the arm and dropped her voice to a whisper. “They’re not very nice.”
Daryl glanced into the ship, then back to the girl. “They aren’t? In what way?”
“In every way,” Riley told him. “They killed a guard.”
Daryl frowned. “They did? Why?”
“Well, I mean, he was pointing a gun at them,” Riley admitted. “But it was the way they did it. Grumpy just sort of, I don’t know, crushed him, then broke his neck.”
“Grumpy?”
“Hmm? Oh! Yes. I named them after the Seven Dwarves.”
Daryl’s eyes darted back to the ship for a moment. “There’s only six of them.”
“Yeah. None of them are Bashful,” Riley said. “In any sense. That comment works on different levels.”
“Well done.”
“Thanks. I’m quite pleased with it.” She regarded the open door of the ship, adjusted her hat, then puffed out her cheeks. “Just be careful, OK? I don’t like them.”
Daryl smiled, as if to laugh it off, but the expression on Riley’s face stopped him. “It’ll be fine,” he told her. “They’ve been locked up for a while. They’re bound to be angry. And they’re friends of Hath, so they can’t be that bad. I’m sure when you get to know them they’re…”
The ship’s door slid closed. Daryl took a step toward it.
“Hey wai—”
There was a sound like an inside-out thunderclap and Yufo rocketed away, leaving Daryl and Riley in a spiraling cloud of dust. They both coughed and blinked the mini sandstorm away, then stared off in the direction the ship had gone.
“OK, I reckon I’m getting to know them,” said Riley. “And they’re total dicks.”
“Hath?” said Daryl. “Hath? Your friends took the ship. They took Yufo. Can you hear me?”
“Wait, who took the ship?” came the reply. It wasn’t Hath’s voice, though, but Ash’s.
“The prisoners Riley rescued,” Daryl told him.
“What? Oh, way to go, Riley!” Ash spat.
“It wasn’t her fault!”
Ash tutted. “Fine. It was both your faults. So, now what, Superbrain?”
Daryl could feel Riley watching him. He didn’t turn to look. He could sense her rising panic, too. They were a long way from home on an alien planet and suddenly things were in danger of falling apart.
“We stick to the plan,” said Daryl.
“Uh, hello?” Ash snorted. “They took the ship.”
“We don’t need the ship,” said Daryl. “We’ve got the suits. We’ll meet up with Hath at the rendezvous point, and figure it out from there.”
“Oh, awesome plan!” Ash scoffed. “Seriously. That’s epic.”
Riley jumped in before Daryl could. “Do you have a better one?”
The only sound was the faint hiss of background static.
“Then shut up,” Riley concluded.
Ash sighed theatrically. “Fine. How do I get to wherever we’re supposed to be going?”
“Use the suit to fly there,” said Daryl.
“Well, duh. I meant how do I find it?”
Daryl raised a fist and mimed punching thin air. He took a moment to compose himself before replying. “I know where you are. We’ll come get you. I think I can find it.”
“You think you can find it?” Ash spat, but Riley cut him off with a series of crackles and static noises.
“You’re… psshk… king up. Ssshukt… there soon.”
“I know you’re making those noises with your mouth,” Ash told her.
“Shhhhk. Can’t hear you. Bye!” She lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned closer to Daryl “How do we shut him up?”
“I heard that,” Ash muttered. “Just hurry the hell up so we don’t miss the action.”
“Fine. Don’t do anything stupid before we get there,” Daryl told him.
H
e smiled a little awkwardly at Riley, then gestured to the sky. “Ladies first.”
“Oh, great,” said Riley. Then, with a tap on her shoulder, the meat suit formed into a suit of flying battle armor and she rose, quite shakily, into the air.
By Daryl’s calculation, it took fifty-three minutes to collect Ash, put up with his complaints about how long they’d taken to get there, and then continue on to Hath’s rendezvous point.
One of the first things they spotted as they came in for a series of varyingly controlled landings was Yufo. The ship stood just outside a town-sized gathering of tall towers and spires, the edges of which had been partly reclaimed by the desert.
A quick check of the ship revealed it to be empty. Daryl wasted a few seconds trying to interrogate the artificial intelligence for information, but everything he asked came back with the same response:
“Information classified.”
“What does that mean?” Ash asked.
“It means… What do you mean, ‘What does that mean?’” Daryl asked. “It means the information is classified.”
“But why isn’t she telling us anything?”
“Because it’s classified,” said Riley. “See previous answer.”
Ash tutted. “But why is it classified? Why aren’t we allowed to know what’s going on? We’re supposed to be saving the world. We need to be kept in the loop.”
Daryl couldn’t really argue with that. They’d all done their parts, and Hath hadn’t said anything about them being locked out of the big finale.
“Maybe he’s trying to keep us safe,” said Riley, as if reading his mind. “Maybe him and his Six Dwarves are going to handle it now.”
Ash blinked. “Wait. What? Hath has dwarves?”
“They’re not actually dwarves,” Daryl said.
“Oh.” Ash looked a little disappointed by this. “Shame.”
“They’re metaphorical dwarves,” Riley explained.
Ash took a moment to process this new information. He was going to ask Riley to clarify, but decided to try Daryl instead. “What the hell is she talking about? Are you saying the ship was stolen by metaphorical dwarves? What’s a metaphorical dwarf?”
“Not a lot!” said Riley, grinning broadly. “What’s a metaphorical dwarf with you?”
The boys looked at her in silence. She quietly cleared her throat. “I realize now, that joke doesn’t make sense. It sounded alright in my head.”
Stepping out of the ship, they regarded the tightly-packed collection of buildings ahead of them. Smoke rose between several of the towers, and Daryl could hear the bloop, ptchow, pew of what he assumed was laser-gun fire somewhere near the center of town.
“It’s not what I expected,” said Riley.
“What isn’t?” Ash asked.
“This. All of it,” Riley replied. “I thought it’d be tougher. It’s like they weren’t even ready, or something. Like we caught them off guard.”
Ash shrugged. “Maybe we did.”
“But they flew their whole planet here,” Riley pointed out. “They sent a message telling us they were going to invade. You’d think they’d have been more prepared.”
Daryl nodded in agreement. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, so we caught the big bad guys off guard. Boo-hoo,” said Ash. “Just point me at them, and let’s finish them off.”
He deactivated the helmet and gloves of his suit, leaving the rest of the armor in place. “So, where are they?”
An explosion rocked the ground beneath them. A column of thick black smoke and fire bloomed into the air near one of the taller spires.
“Forget it,” said Ash, setting off at a run. “I got it.”
“Should we follow him?” Riley wondered, fidgeting with her hands. “We should… We should probably follow him, right?”
“Or we could let him get himself killed,” Daryl said. He raised his eyebrows hopefully, then sighed. “No. We should definitely follow him.”
Their helmets and gloves retracted back into their armor as they gave chase. Almost immediately, Daryl pulled ahead. When he slowed to let Riley catch up, she ushered him on.
“Just go. I’ll be right behind you,” she said. She watched him while he dithered for a moment, then turned and bounded off after Ash. “Like, waaaaay behind you,” Riley added, as Daryl vaulted a low wall and followed Ash into a passageway between two of the huddled-together towers.
Skidding from the other end of the alley, Daryl slammed into Ash’s back, and both boys went sprawling onto a narrow street made of shiny black cobbles. Ash yelped in fright and brought his arms around, palms open. Daryl dodged in time to avoid an arcing power blast that blew out a multi-colored window in one of the nearby towers.
“Watch it!” he protested.
“You watch it,” Ash spat. “You’re the one who crashed into me!”
“I didn’t know you’d stopped,” Daryl said, getting up and dusting himself down. “Why did you… Oh.”
He knew then, why Ash had stopped. The street ahead of them looked like the sort of image you’d see on the evening news after some foreign despot had rained death and destruction on their own unsuspecting citizens. Corpses lay strewn along it, each of them probably only recognizable from their dental records. Assuming aliens had dental records. A bus-sized vehicle was partially buried in the side of a building, flames steadily consuming its insides. Two smaller vehicles were mangled together, one atop the other. An arm stuck out from the vehicle below, unmoving.
“What the hell happened?” Daryl wondered, then he stepped aside when he heard Riley’s footsteps approaching down the alleyway.
She collided hard with Ash. Daryl managed to catch one of them before they could fall. It was no real surprise which one.
“Jesus!” Ash spat, picking himself up again. “Can you both please stop doing that?”
“Sorry! Didn’t expect you to…” Her jaw dropped. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” said Daryl.
“What happened?”
“We don’t know,” Daryl admitted.
“Sure we do,” said Ash. “Hath’s guys tore through here, kicked all the ass, then kept going.”
Riley forced herself to look at a few of the scattered bodies. “They don’t look like soldiers,” she pointed out. “I mean, it’s hard to tell the way they’re all caved in, but they just look like, I don’t know, regular people. They’re not wearing uniforms.”
“And no weapons,” Daryl pointed out.
“Hath’s guys probably took them,” Ash guessed.
“Why? If they can do this without guns, why would they bother?” Daryl asked.
“How the hell should I know? What am I, their PR guy?” Ash replied. He set off running again. “Now come on, or it’s all going to be over before we get there.”
Daryl heard the crack of the weapon from a doorway across the street and the whistle of a projectile as it streaked through the air. He saw it as a flash of silver, moving too fast for even him to do anything about.
It hit Ash’s armor with a thunderous clang, snapping him sideways and smashing him against the same wall the bus had smashed into. Daryl spun before the gunman could take aim again, wrenching the weapon from him with a grabbing motion, then sending it clattering along the street with a wave.
The stone mantle of the building’s door swung down, striking the now unarmed man in the center of the back and staggering him into the street. He was babbling something in his alien tongue, too low and too fast for Daryl to make much sense of.
“He’s saying… invasion. Something about an invasion,” Daryl said, concentrating so hard he didn’t hear the clanking of Ash’s armor as he pulled himself upright for the third time in as many minutes.
“Yeah, we know all about your invasion, asshole!” Ash said, grimacing with the pain his movements brought. “Consider it officially stopped.”
Ash’s attacker thrust one hand into the opposite sleeve and wrenched a device from inside it. “Get down!” Dary
l warned, but too late. The alien’s thumb pushed down on a switch. His muttering became a high-pitched sob.
And then, to everyone’s surprise, he exploded.
Daryl, Ash, and Riley covered their heads as chunks of burning flesh rained down around them. This continued for several seconds before they decided the coast was probably clear.
“Whoa,” Ash muttered, peering around at the smoldering remains. “Wow. Well… I mean… that was…”
“Horrifying,” said Riley.
“Is it wrong that I kind of want to say ‘awesome’?” asked Ash.
“Yes. Yes, it is,” said Daryl.
“Very much so,” Riley agreed.
Ash shrugged. “Then sure, let’s go with yours.”
He poked a lump of chargrilled alien flesh with his foot. “Some invasion force.”
“I don’t think that’s what he was saying,” Daryl told them. “I don’t know for sure, but I think he said we were the invaders.”
“Well, technically we are, I suppose,” said Riley.
“Bullshit,” said Ash. “They’re the invaders. We’re just defending ourselves.”
“Right,” agreed Riley. “By invading their planet.”
“Exactly,” said Ash, missing the point. He moved to run on, then stopped and looked back at Daryl. “Is the coast clear?”
Daryl listened for a moment. “Think so.”
“OK, then!” Ash said, shouting like an overcaffeinated sports coach and shaking his fists at nothing in particular. “You two ready to save the world?”
Riley and Daryl exchanged glances.
“Uh, sure,” said Daryl.
Riley shrugged. “I mean, we did come all this way.”
“Alright! Then let’s do it!”
Turning, he charged ahead, leaving Riley and Daryl to watch him go.
Riley whistled quietly through her teeth. “Well, that was embarrassing.”
“Yep,” Daryl agreed. “No argument there.”
Twenty-Nine
Finding Hath’s allies wasn’t very difficult, and largely just involved following a clearly-marked trail of corpses and burning objects.
World Killer: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure Novel Page 19