Alien Disaster (25 page)

Lucky suddenly pulled up short. ‘Stop—this is pointless!’

‘What?’ Tank said. ‘Keep going; we’re almost there!’

‘No—I mean, we could be going in completely the wrong direction! The outer rings of the saucer spun round twice on our way in, remember. The hangar we landed in could be anywhere now!’

They all stood silent for a few moments. The mothership was shaking as it rattled through the ionosphere at a low angle.
How long until it hit the ground?

‘Can’t we just fly one of the alien mini-saucers out of here?’ Hewson suggested.

‘Only
Discord
can hyper-jump, or whatever you call it, back to Earth,’ Jason said. ‘Right?’ he asked, looking at Brandon.

Brandon thought fast. ‘I’ll find
Discord
. I think I know how.’ He held up the cylinder and let it dissolve into the air. Then he sent the bionoids away in all directions, exploring the ship and sending visual images directly back into his brain, bypassing his eyes. In his mind he built up a three-dimensional map of the immediate area: the gloomy darkness wasn’t a problem for the bionoids, whose sensors could take in the entire spectrum of light.

When the bionoids were about a hundred metres out, Brandon ran into problems. His skull was doing too good a job of dampening the electromagnetic signals from his brain that were needed to talk to the bionoids. But he quickly hit on a workaround: he held some bionoids back and sent the rest further out, passing information back and forth between each other. The map in his head expanded rapidly …

‘I’ve found it!’ he said suddenly. ‘Come on.’ They all started running again, this time following Brandon. They took a short cut through a balak refectory, down a wide staircase, through an armoury and shooting gallery, down a long straight corridor … and finally out into the hangar where
Discord
was waiting for them.

The airlock was open and a muted sun in an alien sky cast the hangar in a weird light. Two balaks were at the ship’s hatch, trying to work out how to open it. Tank swiftly and silently moved up behind them and smashed their heads together, knocking them out cold. Brandon opened the hatch—you had to give it a good shove where the panel was dented—and stood to one side to let everyone in.

He was just about to step up the ramp himself when he paused. The bionoids were still exploring the mothership, and they had found something …

‘Gem!’ Brandon said aloud. She was still aboard the saucer. He closed his eyes and concentrated on what the bionoids were telling him. An image appeared in his mind: somewhere in the dark lower decks of the saucer, Dravid Karkor and Gem were standing in a pool of light beneath Karkor’s ship. Cables were running from the ship to a console and video screen nearby, as if Dravid was diverting power to them from his ship. The video on the screen was of Brandon and the balak king fighting under the dome, and then falling out of shot. Gem was sat on a metal crate in tears as Karkor made her watch the scene over and over again.

‘But I’m not dead!’ he cried.

‘You will be, if you don’t get on board fast!’ Jason shouted.

Brandon agonised for a split second, then made up his mind.

‘I’m going back for Gem,’ he told Jason. ‘You can fly
Discord
. Follow the saucer—be ready to pick us up!’

‘Hell, Brandon,’ Jason fumed. ‘What about Kat?’ But Brandon was already running back across the hangar. As he ran breathlessly back down the long corridor, he was aware of Karkor doing something else now: he was looking at a cross-sectional blueprint of the mothership on the screen. Gem had walked away from the console; Karkor looked around furtively and brought up a small window showing a live feed of Brandon running down the corridor. Brandon instinctively looked up. Karkor noticed and his mouth twisted in a thin smile.

‘I’m sorry, Brandon,’ he said under his breath. ‘I’m afraid that this is where your story ends.’ Karkor swiped his fingers down over the saucer’s outer ring on the blueprint. At the same time, Brandon felt the ground tilt beneath him.

‘Jason! Take off now!’ he shouted over the mic. ‘The outer ring is being jettisoned!’

Jason swore, but Brandon could sense
Discord
turning in the air and leaving the hangar. He concentrated on running, but the corridor was now an upward slope, and a widening breach had appeared in front of him, open to the air: the outer ring was splitting into sectors and falling away from the mothership. Brandon desperately pulled the bionoids back to him. They flooded in from all directions and he willed them to enter his body, to power his legs and lungs. He motored up the slope with renewed strength, and on reaching the edge of the gap launched himself into the air. He sailed across the twenty metre void and landed hard on the other side.

He looked back. The rest of the outer ring fell out of view, revealing an unexpected vista. The mothership was speeding over an alien desert, at an altitude of perhaps ten kilometres—although that was falling rapidly. They obviously were not anywhere near the jungles around Perazim. Brandon idly wondered if it was better to crash land in a jungle or a desert. Then he turned his back on the view and went to find his sister.

It was dark in the bowels of the mothership. Enormous engines, pipes and cooling fans filled the cavernous chambers, dormant now that the star reactor was gone. Brandon navigated around them using the bionoids instead of his senses. They were part of him now; an extension of his will and his awareness. He felt super-human—or super-alien—with them at his command. Their power and potential far exceeded the limits of either medicine or war. Brandon had an idea how to use them to get the best of Dravid Karkor.

He found Karkor and Gem at their dimly-lit control station, beneath Karkor’s menacing ship. Karkor was absorbed in a panel of hundreds of switches. Gem paced around in the small circle that was defined by an overhead spotlight. ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘How long is this going to take?’

Karkor looked flustered. ‘A few more minutes. The saucer’s only being kept up by the emergency boosters, and even that’s not enough. If I can lose some more sections, or divert some more emergency power, then that should be enough to avoid a crash landing.’

‘Alright,’ Gem said. ‘Spare me the details; just do it.’

‘Then we can search for Brandon’s cylinder. We’ll avenge his death, Gem. I promise. This ship and the bionoids: you and me: that’s all we need to return to Perazim as heroes … conquering heroes!’

‘Dravid,’ she said, ‘stop daydreaming. Concentrate on getting us out of this mess!’

Good
, Brandon thought, Karkor was getting desperate. Perfect for what he had in mind. Brandon breathed in deeply, marshalling the bionoids, then he stepped out into the light.

Karkor looked as if he had seen a ghost. His face froze in horror. ‘You!’ he gasped.

‘Hey, I thought
you
were dead,’ Gem said. They both looked perplexed.

‘You
are
dead,’ Karkor insisted.

‘Maybe I am,’ Brandon said, advancing on Karkor. ‘Maybe I’m a ghost. Or maybe I’m your conscience finally making a stand after all you’ve done, all the people you’ve killed.’

Karkor looked shell-shocked. ‘I’ve never, ever killed anyone …’

‘Really?’ Brandon stood face-to-face with the tall alien. ‘You’ll even lie to yourself to justify what you’ve done. Never killed anyone? You left your best friend in a coma after using the mindslice machine—’

‘Left alive! Not dead!’

‘You set a pack of deadly aliens on him to finish him off.’

Karkor was on the brink of tears now. ‘I told them just to take the cylinder, not to kill anyone!’

‘And what about your own wife. Turn around.’

Karkor slowly turned. Instead of seeing Gem standing behind him, he found himself looking into the eyes of his wife, Paran. ‘No,’ he moaned.

‘You killed your wife shooting down her ship as she tried to escape your control over her. But your worst act was your deliberate attempt to kill their son—the son of the two people you loved the most.’

‘You tried to kill Brandon?’ Paran exclaimed.

‘I’m sorry!’ Dravid wailed, putting his face in his hands and breaking down completely. ‘I had to do it. I saw that he survived the fight with the king and I had to try and finish him off. I couldn’t let him live to take control of the bionoids.’

Paran exploded in a fury of kicks and punches. She let loose all of her martial arts moves in the space of ten seconds, pummelling Dravid backwards and continuing to batter his body with her fists when she managed to corner him against a metal wall of pipes. ‘You promised me!’ she raged. ‘You promised that no harm would ever come to him!’ As she punished Karkor, the bionoids fell away from her face, revealing Gem’s features behind the disguise. Dravid looked up in shock, and Gem finished him off by bringing her right foot straight up to his chin and smashing his head back. His skull clanged against the pipes and he collapsed to the floor.

Brandon let his own disguise dissolve too. To bamboozle Dravid, he had altered his own features to look like Talem’s. When Gem saw that he was still alive, she sobbed with relief and ran to his arms. ‘Oh Brandon, I’m so sorry I ever went with that piece of shit!’

‘It’s alright. He tricked everyone. His whole life is just one big tangled lie.’

Karkor, barely conscious in a heap on the floor, pulled out a laser pistol and raised it at the reunited pair.

Brandon froze. His world slowed as he prepared once more to try and dodge imminent death.

Then Jason appeared out the shadows and put a laser bolt clean between Dravid Karkor’s eyes.

‘Come on, you guys,’ he said. ‘You know that it’s not over until the bad guy bites the dust.’

‘It’s not over until we get out of here,’ Brandon said. ‘Come on.’

Then Hewson spoke over Brandon’s earpiece. ‘Brandon? You there?’

‘I’m here,’ he replied.

‘You’d better hurry back so we can pick you up. There’s a city on the horizon and it looks like the saucer is due to smack down right in the middle of it.’

A city!
No.
Brandon couldn’t bear any more death and carnage. There had to be a way to stop the saucer. He thought for a second. There
was
a way!

‘Hewson,’ he said. ‘Send Tank and Lucky to the hatch with laser rifles. Dravid mentioned some emergency boosters. Find them and get Tank and Lucky to take them out: they’re the only thing keeping the saucer up!’

‘But Brandon … What about you?’

‘Millions could die!’ Brandon shouted. ‘Bring this thing down!’ He tore out his earpiece and crushed it underfoot. He turned to Gem and Jason. ‘Come here,’ he said. They all gathered around with worried faces and put their arms around each others’ shoulders. Brandon opened his mouth to say something to his sister and his friend, but he couldn’t find the words. They could feel multiple explosions tearing through the underside of the saucer. Their shallow descent suddenly turned into a dive. They all held on tight to one another.

Brandon opened his eyes. He was alive. That was good. The weak orange glow that he could see must be the sunset. There was sand and rock, metal and rubble everywhere. He pulled himself to his feet and looked around. A broken landscape of wreckage and smoke stretched out in all directions. But on the horizon was an incredible alien city, shining in the late afternoon light. Pyramids and curved glass sky-scrapers that were lit up in all different colours towered over the landscape. One tall structure seemed to hold no other purpose than to raise a giant golden ball high over the city.

Brandon shuddered. He remembered the darkness of the mothership, holding on to his friends and pulling the bionoids around them all in a protective sphere. He could just about remember the crash, but it was all noise and colour and pain. ‘Jason!’ he yelled. ‘Gem!’

Someone was striding towards him: a grey humanoid figure with flaky dusty skin. Brandon panicked and took a step backwards. Another of the creatures was approaching from his left. Brandon fell over as the first figure reached him.

Then the creature wiped the dust from its face with the back of its hand. It was Jason.

‘We need to get back!’ he said urgently. ‘Get back to Earth and save Kat!’

Brandon looked about. The sky was heavy with clouds and the air was hard to breath.
Discord
was circling overhead. When it saw them, it descended awkwardly as Hewson attempted to land an alien spaceship for the first time.

Gem was digging at something in the rubble with her foot. ‘There’s what looks like a road sign here,’ she said. They all gathered round to look.

The sign read: A
CTAHA
30.

‘It’s written in English,’ Gem said, puzzled.

‘A
CTAHA
?’ Brandon frowned. ‘Then we’re still on Earth! That style of lettering looks Russian. A
CTAHA
must be … Astana—the capital of Kazakhstan!’ He had seen pictures of the incredible modern city on the internet.

The superluminal drive must have failed when Dravid tried to take the mothership back to Corroza. But Earth looked different, and it wasn’t just the unfamiliar country that they had crash landed in. Brandon realised what it was: the heavy sky was laden with dust from the shattered Moon.

Gem was smiling in relief though. Jason looked hopeful. ‘Can you send the bionoids to save Kat?’

‘It’s a long way!’ Brandon said. ‘They can’t go any faster than we could fly back, even if I could control them over that distance.’

‘Have you tried?’ Jason challenged.

Brandon shrugged and closed his eyes. He was dead beat, but he somehow found the will to pull the cloud of bionoids towards him. Each tiny robot had an even tinier motor powered by stored energy that the bionoids pulled from sources around them: light, heat, electrical systems, even wasted body energy. The motors wouldn’t get the robots to England individually … but as they coalesced in his hand in the familiar cylindrical shape, he hit on the solution. He could order the bionoids to combine and remake their motor on a larger scale. The cylinder in his hand contorted and stretched until it was shaped like a small missile, complete with dorsal fins to help direct its flight.