Alien Disaster (23 page)

The rear hatch of the downed stealth bomber had opened, revealing a deadly array of automated weaponry. Two machine guns had pivoted out on multi-jointed metal arms and were making short work of the enemy. Between them, a wicked-looking MK19 40 millimetre grenade launcher scanned the hangar slowly and deliberately, then lobbed explosives at the densest groups of balaks. Finally the marines emerged, and Lucky’s minigun led the way in mopping up the remaining aliens.

When the chaos finally died down, Brandon walked across the now silent hangar to join the squad. Jason was standing with them all, pulling off his helmet. Brandon was conscious of the fact that everyone else was wearing military garb, and he was still in his dirty, ripped T-shirt and jeans. The chief looked up and noticed them both for the first time; his expression turned hard for a moment, and then softened.

‘Did you get bored of our hospitality back at the base then?’

Jason shrugged. ‘I just remembered that I left my wallet here last time we came.’

The chief turned back to his troops ‘I’m not going to ask who let this pair join the mission.’ He stared at Tank. ‘They’re here now and there’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s just get on with things.’ He took a deep breath and launched into the speech he must have been rehearsing in his head on the flight over: ‘Alright, this is it, marines! One final push to the reactor and we turn this alien frisbee into a new sun. You’ll be heroes to your families. The bastards killed all my family, so I guess that I’m nobody’s hero. Let’s hope that what’s left of the planet appreciates what we do today. Move out!’

He leaned over to Brandon and Jason. ‘You kids say you’ve been here before, so make yourselves useful and lead the way.’

They moved cautiously down the wide, straight corridor that led deep into the mothership: twelve intruders, most of them trained soldiers with readied weapons. The enemy had wisely withdrawn, but to make life difficult for the invaders they had killed the lights. A low blue glow emanated from floor-level grating, but that was all: the light didn’t reach as far as the ceiling. Brandon glanced apprehensively upwards as they moved. The marines switched on their mobile LED light sources. The shadows that they threw up were just as scary as the darkness.

Jason walked close beside him, toting a laser rifle that he had looted from a dead balak. ‘Are you getting any sort of feeling?’

He was referring to Brandon’s mental awareness of the bionoids. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I think I’m going to have to split from these guys if I’m going to find Gem and the cylinder before they nuke the ship.’ He handed Jason a bundle of wires. ‘Here, take this.’

‘What is it?’

‘I ripped the ear-pieces and mics out of two of
Discord’s
flight helmets. We can use them to talk. You stay with the group and let me know what they’re doing. You might have to stall them if they get to the reactor before I can get to the cylinder.’

Jason grunted, which Brandon took to mean that he agreed with the plan, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. They both shoved the ear-pieces down their external auditory canals. ‘I’ll test it,’ Jason said, falling back to the end of the line of soldiers.

A few seconds later: ‘You getting this?’

‘Loud and clear,’ Brandon whispered.

‘Okay, well I’m right behind the chief. I take it that the nuke is in the metal case he’s carrying?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Well, just so you know: he’s chained himself to the case with metal handcuffs.’

Not for the first time, Brandon wished that Hewson was leading the mission instead. As if reading his mind, the MI Zero agent fell in beside Brandon. ‘When do you think that there will be a chance to regain control of your alien technology?’ Hewson asked.

‘Probably when we get closer to the centre of the saucer,’ Brandon replied. ‘Karkor and Gem will go straight for the alien king to take him out, I reckon.’

‘Well, let me know if you need
Operation Tempest
to suddenly fail. I am rather fond of your idea of leaving this ship alive.’

Brandon nodded. Hewson went on to clarify his point: ‘Brandon, trust me. I’m on your side. There are no shadowy MI Zero bosses pulling my strings anymore; if I’m working for anyone now, it’s you.’

‘I trust you,’ Brandon said. ‘You’ve got us out of some sticky spots more than a few times now. We wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for you!’ Brandon paused. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—’

They both laughed at the same time. ‘It’s okay,’ Hewson said. ‘I know what you mean. However we got here, however it ends, we’re in this together now.’

They briefly grasped each others’ wrists in a macho handshake. ‘What’s your full name?’ Brandon asked.

‘Lieutenant Richard Hewson.’

They had arrived at a T-junction: to the left and right a curved corridor took off around the circumference of the ship. The soldiers spread out to cover all directions that the enemy might attack from. Hewson peered off into the darkness with his night-vision goggles. ‘Nothing,’ he reported. ‘We’re clear—’

The suspense was shattered as the corridor that they had just come down suddenly shot off to the left as the whole outer disc of the saucer spun around anticlockwise. In the next instant, a new corridor slotted into its place: similar to the last one except that this one was full of aliens with laser guns. Two marines were killed before the others could return fire. Lucky’s minigun quickly mowed down the brutes. They had no cover to hide behind; their whole plan must have been simply to cause as much damage as they could before they lost the initiative.

Brandon patted himself down, half expecting to find laser holes somewhere on his body. That attack had been so random and deadly that it made him shake when he realised how close he had come to being killed.

‘Brandon, come on!’ Hewson said, pulling him out of his daze. Rather than going left or right, the team had found a hatch that led to one of the narrow service corridors that led them straight towards the centre of the ship. Soon the squad was creeping in single file down a cramped tunnel that was even darker than before.

‘How many did you kill?’ Lucky was asking Tank.

‘Five, I think.’

‘Is that all? I got twenty-six in the hangar, and about thirteen just now.’

‘I got the five most important ones!’

A shoot-out in the tight corridor never happened, thankfully, and the team made it to another hatch that opened into a small circular room. They all crouched under the low ceiling. ‘Dead end!’ the chief stated, giving Brandon and Jason an accusatory glare.

‘No, it’s not!’ Jason countered. He reached up and pulled down a panel above him. ‘Bottom of the lift shaft!’

The squad climbed up into the lift one by one. Brandon hit the button that he guessed would take them to the very top. The lift shot up … and then almost immediately began to slow down, coming to a halt a few floors below where they wanted to go. The doors opened and they were faced with another shifting sequence of scenes flashing by as the separate rings of the saucer once more rotated.

The marines all aimed their weapons, expecting enemies to appear in front of them at any second. But when the rotation slowed, it was a dark empty space that faced them. Hewson stepped out into it. ‘Stay alert,’ he ordered. ‘They wanted us to come this way. No doubt there’s some surprise in store.’

‘So let’s see what it is,’ the chief said impatiently. He unclipped a mobile LED block from his belt and tossed it into the void. It skidded across a vast expanse of floor and came to a halt by a wall of glass. The other marines all turned their lights back on and slowly spread out into the room. Brandon started to get a sense of their surroundings. He heard Jason’s nervous voice in his ear: ‘This is going to be fun.’

They were in the same section of the saucer that they had passed through on their previous visit: the bio-engineering zone. It was a different room this time—a bigger space—but contained the same sort of glass tanks filled with greenish fluid. Jason approached the biggest tank. Brandon followed him and they peered into the thick opaque gunk that filled it. There was something in there: a dead thin creature that looked as if it had wasted away.

The squad had spread out about the room. They identified exits to the left and right. They really needed to go straight ahead though to reach the star reactor. ‘Floor’s wet here,’ Lucky pointed out. Hewson knelt to examine it: ‘Sticky,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his trousers. The chief split the squad and ordered them to check both exits. Brandon and Jason followed Hewson as he opened the door on the right. The next room was similar, but the floor was flooded and the tank in the centre …

‘Broken,’ Jason said, ‘like something smashed its way out.’

Brandon was getting anxious.
I haven’t got time for this
, he thought. He had to get to Gem fast, and preferably before the marines reached the reactor. He remembered from last time that they had to climb upwards in order to find the control room. Maybe there was a way up the banks of computer equipment here. He clambered up onto a wheeled cage of glowing machines. Above him, but over nearer the centre of the room, he could make out a service panel in the ceiling. ‘Push me over there,’ he instructed Jason.

Jason started to push, but had to leap out of the way suddenly when something big came crashing into the room. Brandon was too busy hurtling out of control on his ride to see what it was. He concentrated on the ceiling above him, and as he passed under the panel he leaped upwards and grabbed some cabling that was running alongside it. Kicking up with his feet, he kicked the panel open and swung up into the crawlspace above.

Below him, something large, greenish and reptilian was charging about on four legs. A dinosaur? Some kind of alien beast? He heard mad gunfire and shouting and what sounded like the creature slamming into a wall and groaning in pain. Brandon scurried down a tight access tunnel and left the chaos behind.

Except … here in the near-darkness, in a maze of tunnels that ran directly above the strange alien breeding labs … he discovered that he wasn’t alone. Turning a corner, he came face-to-face with a pair of horrible red eyes. Twenty metres away, crouched in the tight space, was the most alien thing he had seen yet: a dinosaur with a humanoid form, possibly a velociraptor crossed with a balak—who could say?—leering at him with a dumb hunger, licking its long red tongue over its finger-sized teeth.

Brandon froze in horror. He was looking at his death. Turning around would be pointless. ‘Help,’ he gasped.

Jason’s voice came over his earpiece. ‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘We just took down the biggest, ugliest mother—’

‘Is the girl with the big gun there?’ Brandon asked, his brain thankfully keeping pace with his terror.

‘Lucky? Yeah, she’s right here!’

‘Tell her to fire at a spot’—Brandon quickly worked it out—‘forty metres from where I went up into the ceiling, towards the centre of the ship. Hurry!’

Jason didn’t waste words with a reply. Seconds later, a storm of bullets hammered up underneath the hybrid alien, turning it to pulp before it had even taken a step in Brandon’s direction.

‘Did she get it?’ Jason asked.

‘Yeah, she got it,’ Brandon replied, making his way over the sticky remains. ‘Look out for—’ he began, but his warning was cut off by the sounds of renewed battle below. Over his earpiece he could hear Jason’s running commentary of the action: ‘Eat this! And this! Tank, behind you! Taste hot lasers, you Jurassic Park rejects!’

The wires and pipes that lined the narrow tunnels were soon replaced by hot banks of computer equipment. Brandon guessed that he was in the main server space of the mothership, somewhere near the control room. He could feel the bionoids brushing at the edges of his awareness. He couldn’t quite reach out to take control of them, but he knew that Gem must be close.

He climbed a narrow metal ladder that was warm from all the surrounding electronics. At the top was a hatch. Brandon listened. It was quiet beyond, so he flipped the hatch and climbed out and stretched his legs. He was in a wide hall that curved sharply off to the left and right; it was obviously very near the centre of the mothership. He was surrounded by large navigation screens and consoles with hundreds of buttons, lights and switches. When he stepped out from among them he drew his breath sharply.

The outer curve of the hall was transparent from floor to ceiling, and was tilted towards him. Brandon realised that he was on the flight deck in the top ring of the saucer: outside he could see the curved silver hull sloping away from him. And beyond that the view was taken up with something that he had never seen before with his own eyes: Earth.

They were in space. He could see almost the entire world hanging in front of him. England, looking beautiful and unspoiled, was a small green shape in a clear blue sea. Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa were spread out in all their glory. He stood absorbed in the scene for almost a minute. Then he turned around.

Crossing to the inner curve of the flight deck, Brandon found another glass wall, this time tilting away from him and overlooking the central shaft of the mothership. He could see the star reactor burning away, surrounded by the maze of walkways and gantries that they had climbed the last time they were here. Directly above the reactor, at the very top of the ship, would be the domed room where they had encountered the king on their last visit. Brandon had been guessing that Gem and Karkor would be there, but then he heard voices from somewhere on the flight deck.

They were here!

Moving from cover to cover—crouching behind consoles, screens and desks—Brandon headed in the direction of the voices. He followed the curvature of the flight deck until he was almost at the opposite side to where he had entered. Then he stopped, and from the cover of a bank of electronics, looked out and tried to make sense of the tense stand-off that was before him.

A semicircle of around twenty armed balaks stood aiming their laser guns at Gem and Karkor, who were standing with their backs to what Brandon guessed was the main navigation console. Dravid Karkor was standing beside Gem, one hand on her shoulder, and one hand resting over a panel of controls on the console. Had they caught him trying to fly the saucer? Gem herself was holding out the cylinder in the direction of the balak king, who was kneeling on the floor in front of them. She flicked her wrist slightly and the king convulsed in pain.