He wasn’t sure what had blocked the door on the other side, as the man who’d shot the blasts from his hands had flipped tanks, collapsed roofs, and caused landslides. Any of those could’ve been pinning the door in place now.
Communications systems had gone down before they’d had a chance to call for help, and the only light in the bunker, now came from a few dozen emergency glow sticks that lay scattered around on the floor. They cast an eerie green glow over the place, and some of the less experienced men had already started jumping at shadows.
With the power out, the air processing units were all down. Nuth could already taste a dry, coppery tang at the back of his tongue. It reminded him of blood and told him they didn’t have a lot of time left until clean air was in dangerously short supply.
“Stop,” he said, gesturing for the soldiers to step back from the door. “It’s no use. We have to find another way.”
“There is no other way, Commodore,” a female Guardian replied. “The other exits are worse than this one. This is our best chance. It is our only chance.”
That was Keerosh, one of the newer recruits. She had offspring, he recalled. Two younglings, living off-world with their father. He didn’t blame her for sending them away. Skalgorth’s history was not an easy one to make peace with.
“We shall check again,” Nuth told her. “Split up. Groups of four. Check the other doors. We may have missed something.”
“With all due respect, sir, we missed nothing,” said Keerosh. “There is no other way out. We are trapped in here. I suggest we use munitions to blast—”
“And risk a total collapse? No,” said Nuth. “We would be buried.”
“We’re already buried,” said Keerosh, adding the “sir,” so emphatically it sounded almost like an insult.
Nuth had barely formulated the beginnings of what was to be a loud and lengthy response when the ground rumbled beneath his feet.
He stepped back just as a split appeared in the stone, and joined the rest of the Guardians in retreating as the crack widened into a crevice that ran across the floor and under the door.
There was a deafening roar of collapsing rock and grinding metal. The door, part of the wall, and whatever was on the outside, tumbled into the hole in the floor, creating a gap at the top that looked just wide enough for a fully grown adult to squeeze through.
“Uh… what just happened?” asked Keerosh.
Nuth looked from the hole to the crack in the floor. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Looks like we Guardians have our own guardian angel.”
This was getting him nowhere.
Daryl wiped his tears on his meat suit sleeve, pulled himself together, then spent an enjoyable few seconds slapping Ash on the face to bring him round.
“Wha—?! Quit that!” Ash protested, pushing Daryl’s hands away. He folded upright, glanced around in wide-eyed terror, then relaxed a little. “What happened?”
“You passed out,” Daryl said, getting to his feet. “It was pretty embarrassing, really.”
“Yeah, yeah. Screw you,” Ash told him.
He stretched as he stood up, then took a less panicky look at their surroundings. They were in a small courtyard surrounded by several tall buildings that blocked out all but a rectangle of sky overhead. Stars glimmered in the darkness, winking down at them.
They were too far from the sun for the planet to be habitable, Daryl knew, yet the air was stiflingly warm. The heat rose up from the ground beneath them, generated somewhere deep in the planet’s core.
“Can anyone see us?” Ash asked. “From Earth, I mean?”
Daryl snorted at the absurdity of it, then realized Ash was being serious. “No. We’re still too far away. They’ll be able to see the planet, I guess, but not us.”
Ash nodded slowly. “Is it up there?” he asked, gesturing to the rectangle they could see.
The calculation happened in Daryl’s brain without him really thinking about it. “No, it’s that way,” he said, pointing at the building on their left. “A long way that way.”
Ash stared at the building for a while, as if he could somehow see straight through it. He nodded again, then turned to Daryl.
“What now?”
Daryl shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well figure it out, brainbox,” Ash told him. “He’s going to attack Earth. We’ve helped make it happen. We’re stuck here, right?”
“Maybe,” Daryl conceded.
“Exactly, so we may as well… Wait. What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”
“There’s Yufo,” Daryl said. “I think I could fly us home.”
“You could?” Ash said, trying unsuccessfully to contain the excitement in his voice. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get out of here! We can warn the PPA, or whoever, and they can fight back.”
“Against a whole planet?”
“There’s nothing here!” Ash pointed out. “You heard him. They’re coming to scavenge everything from us so they can rebuild. We can nuke them before they do. Blow this whole place to pieces.”
“Pretty sure nukes don’t work like that,” Daryl reasoned.
“Well, whatever!” Ash said. “The PPA can storm this place and kick ass. We can even help them!”
Daryl shook his head. “It would take years to get even a probe this far out,” he said. “We don’t have a space military.”
“Fine! Then we’ll fight them when they come to Earth,” Ash said. He looked angry for a moment, but it quickly faded. “I just… We should go home.”
Daryl hesitated, but then nodded his agreement. “OK.”
“What? I mean… Really?” said Ash, brightening. “Alright!” He held his hand up for a high-five, but Daryl ignored it and walked past him.
“Yufo’s this way,” he said. “We should go before Hath and the others catch up.”
Ash quickly fell into step and followed Daryl through the empty streets of the town. If Hath was to be believed, the whole place was one giant command center. It must’ve been impressive in its day, but now it was a ghost town. Daryl glanced at the buildings as he passed them, wondering if Hath had been telling the truth about all those suffocated people inside. He daren’t believe it. If he’d killed all those people, even unwittingly…
No. He pressed on, pushing the thought down, and they soon reached the final building before the town became a mostly featureless expanse of sand and rocks.
Yufo stood in the same spot she’d been when the three of them had arrived at the town’s outskirts. That was good. They hurried over to the ship, and Daryl was relieved when the door slid open and that familiar voice chimed out to them again.
“Welcome back, Daryl Elliot and Ash Stone.”
Ash jumped at the sound, and brought both arms up in front of him, ready to fire. Daryl batted them down, then headed for the front where the control terminal shimmered in the air.
“OK, let’s get the hell out of here,” Ash instructed, lowering himself into a seat that bloomed up beneath him.
Daryl reached for the controls and began bringing the ship’s systems online. The complex series of gestures this required were second nature to him now, and his hands carried out the work all by themselves.
As he fired Yufo up, Daryl’s eyes searched for the sculpted rock that Riley had given him. The plinth it had sat on was gone, retracted back into the fabric of the ship. Daryl craned his neck, searching the floor until he found the chunk of stone.
It lay on the floor in three or four pieces, shattered by the force of some impact. It had been barely recognizable as a face to begin with, but now it was just fragments of rock, too damaged to suggest it had ever been anything more.
Abandoning the controls, Daryl retrieved the pieces and tried to slot them back together.
“What are you doing?” Ash demanded. “Go! Jesus.”
“They broke it,” Daryl muttered. “They just… They broke it.”
“So? They’ll break us, too, if they catch us. Let’s hit the gas.”
Daryl tapped the meat suit on the shoulder and thought himself a pocket. He placed the broken rock into it, then approached the controls again.
He raised his hands like a conductor, but they refused to resume their swoops and waves.
“What now?” Ash asked.
“Yufo, what will Hath do? He says he’s going to attack Earth. How?”
“Information classified.”
Daryl tutted and tapped furiously at the air, creating flashes where his fingers tapped against the empty space. With another gesture, he commanded Yufo to unfold one of her keyboards, and the clacking of keys soon filled the inside of the ship.
“Can we go, already?!” said Ash. “What are you doing?”
“Just… wait,” Daryl said. “I think I can override the security.”
“Well, how long is that going to take?” Ash demanded.
“Two more seconds.”
Daryl finished with a flurry of key taps. “Yufo, how will Hath attack Earth?”
A flickering image appeared between Daryl and Ash. Daryl realized immediately that it was a simplified image of the solar system, with Skalgorth looming out past Pluto. As they watched, hundreds of blips rose from the surface of Skalgorth, traveled in a wide arc around the other planets, then slammed into various locations around the third planet from the sun. The US. China. Europe. Africa. Russia. The projectiles hammered them from coast to coast.
“He’s going to wipe it out,” Daryl whispered.
Ash wrestled himself free of his chair and stood across from Daryl, watching him through the projection. “No. He said he was going to steal our resources. He can’t do that if he blows the place up.”
“Yufo, what are those things?” Daryl asked. “The missiles? What do they do?”
“Footage of prior usage available, Daryl Elliot,” the ship replied. “Would you like to see?”
Daryl and Ash exchanged glances. “Yes,” Daryl said.
The simulated solar system vanished, replaced by a much more detailed image of an alien city. It hung between them like a screen, each side showing a mirror image of the other. Humanoid creatures with wide eyes and long, skinny arms strolled on glass walkways. They spoke excitedly in a strange chirping tongue that reminded Daryl of birdsong.
“Where the hell is this?” Ash wondered. A set of coordinates appeared in the top right corner of the image, but they meant nothing to Ash, and not a lot more to Daryl. ‘Somewhere far away’ was about as accurate as he could guess.
Daryl was in the process of telling Ash he didn’t know when the relative tranquillity of the scene was shattered in a rain of liquid fire. It fell as a drizzle at first, spattering down on a handful of the unluckier creatures and immediately making their flesh sizzle.
In moments, it became a tsunami, crashing down on the walkways and the people on them. Their screams were loud and agonizing, but mercifully brief. Daryl and Ash both stared in horror as the fire covered everyone, pulling them down into a boiling morass of lava and melting flesh.
The walkways themselves, and the buildings they were attached to, emerged mostly unscathed. In seconds, the fire had cooled, becoming a thick layer of ash that blanketed the ground like black snow.
The people were gone. Everything else was exactly as it had been.
“Jesus,” Ash whispered. He looked through the screen at Daryl. “But that’s not… He won’t do that to Earth. Will he?”
Daryl didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Ash buried his face in his hands for a moment, swore loudly several times, then stepped through the screen so he couldn’t see that image anymore.
“He’ll do that first,” Daryl said. “Then move in. Him, his guards, whoever else they’ve got on their side. They’ll burn the place, then go take what they want.”
Ash clicked his fingers, an idea striking him. “We could tell everyone to get inside!”
“I somehow doubt that’s going to work. We have to stop them,” Daryl said. “You and me. Here. We have to stop them.”
Ash snorted the beginnings of a laugh, but it quickly died away. “Wait, you’re serious? You saw those guys. They’ll destroy us!”
“Maybe they aren’t as tough as they look,” said Daryl, although he didn’t sound particularly convinced.
“They’ve got powers, like us. And what about Hath?” Ash demanded. “We fought his ‘World Killer’ back home, remember? He handed us our asses.”
“That was a simulation. He could’ve done that deliberately to make us afraid of him.”
“Well, good for him, because it worked,” said Ash. “We can’t take them on alone. Not just the two of us. You’re smart, right? Figure out our odds.”
Daryl didn’t have to calculate to know their chances of survival were slim. But what other choice did they…?
“The World’s Killer’s Royal Guard approaches,” announced Yufo. “Action required.”
“What? Damn it!” Ash yelped. He bounced from foot to foot, ran in small circles for a few seconds, then stopped, his eyes wide with panic. “What do we do? Does this ship have weapons? Can we shoot them?”
“Negative, Ash Stone,” said Yufo.
“Then fly. Take off. Get us out of here!” Ash said.
“Wait,” said Daryl. He spun and stared at a spot on the wall like he was somehow seeing through it. “Oh… shit.”
“What now?” Ash asked, his voice cracking. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I mean… no. A lot, obviously,” Daryl said. He flashed the other boy a grim smile. “But I think I have an idea.”
Thirty-One
Commodore Nuth couldn’t quite work out how he and the other Skalgorth High Guardians had escaped the complex, but he wasn’t going to complain. Whoever had destroyed the place must’ve triggered a weakness in some sort of fault line, he guessed, which in turn caused a fracture in exactly the right place for them to…
He chose not to dwell on the improbability of it. Whatever the reason, they were out, and that was what mattered.
The attackers had done a real number on the place. The above-ground vehicles were fiery wrecks, twisted beyond all recognition. Luckily, they couldn’t have been aware of the below-ground arsenal. The vast circular hatch remained closed, hidden beneath the sand.
That was the good news. The bad news was, with the power out, the only way of opening the hatch was with the manual crank, and it was currently buried under half a tank and a miniature mountain of collapsed rock.
“You all know the drill,” Nuth barked. “We have to get down there to those ships, and we have to get there fast. I want all hands working on moving the debris. Priority one is to clear access to the hatch beneath that tank. Priority two is—”
The ground trembled. The rocks which the upturned tank wreckage had been resting against slid sideways. Commodore Nuth and the Skalgorth High Guardians watched in amazement as the remains of the vehicle toppled over, revealing a raised hatch poking up from the sand.
The crank housing.
Nuth sucked in his bottom lip and eyed it suspiciously for a while, gesturing for nobody to make a move. He paced around it, examining it from every direction, before eventually shrugging his broad shoulders.
“Looks like it is our lucky day.”
He gestured to the crank housing. “Three units, take it in turns, open the hatch. Quick as you can. We have no time to lose.”
“What is it?” asked one of the newer recruits. “What is happening?”
“You know what is happening. We all do. It can be only one thing,” Nuth said, addressing it not just to the newbie, but the other Guardians, too.
“It is what we have been training for,” he declared. “The World Killer has returned.”
The collective intake of breath from the others perfectly punctuated the silence.
“How?” asked Keerosh. “How is that possible?”
“The how is not our concern. The why is all that matters. He has returned to retake Skalgorth. To steer it—and us—back onto its
once-dark path.”
He pointed to the crank. “So, let’s get it open, get into those ships, and let’s go show him that Skalgorth isn’t going to take his shit.”
“You’re sure about this?” Ash whispered.
Daryl shook his head. “Not really.”
“What?!” Ash exclaimed, then he dropped his voice again. “I thought you had it all figured out?”
“I have a plan,” said Daryl. “I just don’t know if it’s going to work.”
They had opened a door on the opposite side of Yufo to the one in which Hath’s guards were approaching, and were taking cover behind the ship. Daryl could hear their footsteps crunching closer across the rough terrain. Unhurried. Unconcerned.
“Run it by me again,” Ash said.
Daryl tutted. “OK. We take out the guards—”
“That’s step one?” Ash asked.
“Yes.”
“How is that step one? Shouldn’t step one be, like, ‘get a load of guns and reinforcements?’”
“Ideally, but we can’t, so step one is us taking out all the guards,” Daryl said.
“This is a terrible plan,” Ash groaned.
“If it helps any, everything after step one is harder,” said Daryl.
“How would that help?” Ash hissed. “Why are you even telling me that?”
“Because you only need to be involved for step one,” Daryl told him. “After that, it’s all down to me, and this.”
He patted a little bag on his front that had grown from the meat suit.
“They’re getting close,” Daryl whispered. “Stay quiet.”
They both held their breath and listened to the footsteps drawing closer. They stopped on the other side of Yufo, then one of them barked at the ship to open up.
Daryl heard a doorway opening in the ship’s liquid metal surface. He closed his eyes and concentrated, tracking the sound of feet switching from gravel to metal. Two inside. Three.
He waited. He could feel Ash watching him, waiting for him to make a decision.
No more. Three it was, then.
“Yufo, now!” he cried.
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