Battle for Earth (5 page)

Johnny hadn't the heart to separate Bentley and Rusty when they were so pleased to see each other again. He left the two dogs on the garden deck, stepped into the elevator shaft, said, “Deck zero,” and floated on air all the way to the foot of the
Spirit of London
. It was dark outside, but the ship looked magnificent lit up as a pretend skyscraper. Nearby, another van was about to take more apparently over-eager tourists away. Johnny saw a policeman slam the rear door and then look up surprised to
see him standing alone in the little square. Not wanting to be arrested, he turned away and walked quickly up the steps into the waiting
Bakerloo
.

Halader House stood at 33 Barnard Way in Castle Dudbury, a grim new town to the northeast of London that remained permanently gray, whether from the constant rain or ubiquitous concrete. The children's home itself was across the parking lot from the local train station, so Johnny left the shuttlecraft in the taxi stand beside a telephone booth and marched across the pavement toward the back gate.

Away from the big city at least the stars were brighter, and he smiled to see the wonky “W” of Cassiopeia twinkling above—it had always been Johnny's special constellation. Although his skin was unusually pale and blemish free, along the inside of his left forearm were five large freckles that mirrored the pattern in the sky above. The Emperor had told Johnny that this was his Starmark, an imprint from the Milky Way itself. The constellation indicated where he was born—the number of stars it contained revealed how many others like him there were in the galaxy, with special gifts.

Johnny had never felt very special. Growing up, the only things that distinguished him from other people were not living with his parents and the weird effect he had on most things electrical. No one wanted to talk to him about his mom and dad, which was fine as far as Johnny was concerned, but occasionally he was with someone else when a streetlight went out as he walked underneath and, however often the music system in his bedroom was repaired or replaced, it never worked for more than a few days. Things like that used to be a pain, but in the last year he'd gained some control and begun to understand how he was making them happen. It wasn't as cool as Clara's ability to fold space—something he'd managed to do only once, to save his life when in a blind panic—but being able
to direct electric currents at will did sometimes come in handy.

Halader House had recently fitted keyless locks, opened by electronic RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. As Johnny entered the backyard he passed the wooden kennel where Bentley was occasionally forced to sleep and reached a wood-framed glass door. Hardly even having to think about it, he waved his hand to send the electrons inside the lock whizzing to their new locations before turning the handle and letting himself in.

Of course Johnny had been given his own key fob, but the system was programmed not to allow fourteen-year-old residents to come and go as they pleased at this time on a Sunday night. If following procedures, he'd have had to walk around to the main entrance, ring the doorbell and explain his late arrival to Mrs. Irvine. From past experience, he knew the Scottish Manager of the home would be distinctly unimpressed to be woken up in the middle of the night. He could still picture her in her tartan dressing gown giving him a severe tongue-lashing the only time he'd done it. This way worked better and Kovac could hack the Halader House records to show Johnny had been safely inside all day.

The lights were out, but having lived in the children's home since he was two Johnny could have walked its corridors blindfold. Silently, he made his way past the computer room, Kovac's original home, and the kitchen–dining room. Happily there was no sign of the huge cook, Mr. Wilkins, whose favorite pastime seemed to revolve around making Johnny's life as miserable as possible. He climbed the main staircase to the first floor, tiptoed along the entire length of the corridor, turned a corner and came to the small spiral staircase that led only to Johnny's attic bedroom. At the top he pulled down the trapdoor onto which he'd screwed a “No Entry” sign a year or so earlier and carried on up inside.

Johnny hated being away from the
Spirit of London
, but there was something here in this poky room in deepest Essex that made it all worthwhile. He sat down on his bed and stared at two twinkling patches of light in front of him. It looked as though dust was glinting in moonlight, but tonight there was no Moon—only stars were visible through the big box window. Johnny leaned forward and placed his head into one of these hazy splotches; when he opened his eyes he found himself staring at a bustling scene at the heart of the Imperial Palace on Melania.

It was the middle of the day on this world at the center of the galaxy, and the two red giant suns, Arros and Deynar, were both high in the sky. Self-propelled containers, brimful of exotic-looking contents and overseen by four-winged, near-transparent, slender aliens known as Hapchicks, were flying this way and that. Johnny had never seen the central courtyard so busy.

An elegant woman, golden robes flowing behind her, appeared to glide toward Johnny. As she came closer, he saw her eyes, beneath close-cropped dark hair, were huge and she was smiling warmly in his direction—she must have spotted his floating head in the midst of all the activity.

“Johnny Mackintosh, I presume,” she said in perfect English.

Taken aback not to hear Universal (the standard language for interspecies communication within the Imperial Court and across most of the spacefaring galaxy), Johnny was momentarily flummoxed. “You speak English? How? Sorry—I don't know who you are.” He could feel his face turning redder and redder.

The woman smiled and let out a beautiful, gentle laugh. “My name is Ophia,” she said, “and I believe we have something in common—I speak all languages.”

Dotted throughout the Milky Way were ancient creatures called Hundra who worked as intergalactic interpreters, ingesting the words of one speaker and excreting the language
of the listener. The very first time Johnny had encountered one it had splintered off a tiny fragment of its own soul and placed it within him. Effectively it meant he could speak or translate anything, but he'd believed this was a secret known only to himself and the Emperor. The woman standing before Johnny couldn't be a Hundra—they looked like floating, slightly flat, soccerballs. Warily he said, “I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

The woman laughed again—it was impossible not to warm to her. “I apologize if what I said made you uncomfortable, Johnny Mackintosh. Sometimes I forget myself. Why don't I fetch Bram to speak with you?”

“That'd be great,” Johnny replied. “If you don't mind … thanks.”

“Please remember that the Emperor is especially busy, today of all days,” said Ophia. “Try not to detain him long.”

It was good to hear someone else on Melania refer to the Emperor as “Bram.” Normally they'd use some ridiculous title like “His Divine Imperial Majesty.” As the tall woman turned and glided away, Johnny couldn't help thinking there was something more than a little odd about her—it might have been that he didn't remember seeing her blink once.

“Johnny—it's good to see you face to face. That is, if a Cornicula Wormhole really counts.” Close up, the Emperor's face looked worn and lined, as though a spider had woven its web directly onto it, but his blue eyes were as piercing and alert as ever, and his silver hair still sparkled with a life of its own. “Is this a purely social call, or is something troubling you?”

“Well,” said Johnny, not sure where to begin. He didn't want to make Bram think he was frightened by diving straight into a story about one Krun sphere. After all, he'd been in far worse situations and survived. Deciding to build up to that slowly, he said, “Social, I suppose. Clara's not very well, but I'm sure she'll be fine.”

“Perhaps it is good, then, that I am coming to see you,” said the Emperor. “I had thought of making it a surprise visit, but I'd hate you to be out gallivanting and have us end up missing each other.”

“Great,” said Johnny, buoyed by this unexpected news. “When are you coming?”

“I was wondering about Tuesday.” Bram laughed at the evident shock written across Johnny's face. “I hope you can fit me into your busy schedule.”

“Of course … yeah … that'll be great.”

“Then it is decided,” said the Emperor. “If you will excuse me, you'll be aware I have preparations to make.” Bram stepped back and bowed, allowing Johnny to glimpse the activity going on around him.

“Bye,” shouted Johnny. “See you soon.” With a faint plop he pulled his head out of the Wormhole and caught sight of his reflection in the window, blond hair sticking up all over the place—he'd have to wash it before Bram arrived. He could tell the Emperor about the Krun then. He fell asleep under twinkling starlight—the streetlamp beneath Johnny's window had long ago stopped working.

Breakfast at Halader House was to be endured rather than enjoyed. It made Johnny long for the kippers or bacon and eggs that Alf would rustle up in the
Spirit of London
's galley. Mr. Wilkins's porridge was watery and full of salt, and included the odd crunchy black bit he didn't dare think about. The huge bearded man ladled an especially large portion into Johnny's bowl, as though relishing extra suffering he could inflict. It was too much to expect the cook's beady black eyes to look anywhere else before Johnny had scraped every last spoonful of the gray sludge into his mouth.

To make matters worse, Miss Harutunian, Johnny's red-haired social worker, came over to sit beside him. He liked the American, who always seemed genuinely interested in him, but found it impossible to speak to anyone so early in the morning.

“Everything OK, Johnny?” she asked, beaming at him and showing off two rows of dazzling white teeth.

“Fine,” he grunted.

“I've been thinking about your care plan,” she said, clearly not about to be put off. “Remember when we last went to see your mom at St. Catharine's?” Johnny froze, his spoon halfway between bowl and mouth. This didn't sound good. “There was that nice doctor at the hospital … tall guy … Carrington, wasn't it?” Johnny nodded. “Well, he phoned yesterday asking to come talk to you. But I've been thinking—it's so long since you last went to see your mom, why don't we go there instead?”

Johnny shook his head, probably a little too violently. He had no desire whatsoever to see the mysterious Dr. Carrington, the man who'd performed Colonel Hartman's DNA tests on him and Clara. They'd surprised everyone, not least Johnny, when the results showed he and his sister were only half human. At least Johnny didn't think for a moment that the doctor realized his mom had been the Diaquant of Atlantis, perhaps the most powerful alien in the whole galaxy. It was true that Carrington had helped them escape the Corporation's clutches, but Johnny was keen to keep him at a very safe distance.

Miss Harutunian, on the other hand, still thought Johnny's mom was in a coma at St. Catharine's Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and there were so many things wrong with that belief he hardly knew where to begin.

For one, it turned out that there wasn't even any such place. The supposed mental hospital had been a secret Krun base, accessed through a portal into hyperspace. Now that portal
was sealed, creating a self-contained “Klein fold.” The Krun trapped inside were cut off from their queen and stranded forever. Before the gateway had closed, Johnny and Clara's dad had died there, as had their mom, at least in her human form. However, given that she was some kind of trans-dimensional alien superbeing, she had shortly reappeared from another place and time, revealing her true identity to Johnny and Clara and reviving their dead father, transforming him, like her, into a creature of pure energy. But they left together to “go on,” with seemingly no prospect of ever being able to return.

At this time of morning it made Johnny's brain hurt just thinking about it, but one thing was clear—taking his social worker to this fictitious place to visit his kind-of dead alien mother would be an especially bad idea. “I think it's better if Dr. Carrington came here,” he said, forcing down the last mouthful of porridge.

“Well, if you're sure,” said the American, “but we'll have to visit your mom soon. Your care plan says at least twice a year.”

“Gotta go,” said Johnny, pushing the thankfully empty bowl away from him. “Sorry, but I'll be late for school.” He walked quickly away from the table before Miss Harutunian could call him back.