Earthfall: Retribution (14 page)

The Servant raised a single hand as she approached the massive, intricately decorated black slab that barred the entrance to the Mothership’s central control room. The elliptical patterns on its surface lit up with yellow light as the slab split into triangular sections and slid into the walls and floor.

The control room was quiet and the pedestal upon which the Voidborn consciousness had once rested, while in its dormant state, stood empty. Mason strode over to the windows that looked out over the abandoned city and shook his head.

‘I’m still not sure I believe it even now I’ve seen it with my own eyes,’ he said. ‘It’s exactly what we need.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stirling asked with a frown.

‘Illuminate, I am detecting another aircraft on approach,’ the Servant said. ‘It appears to be identical to the one in which you returned.’

‘You keep calling him that,’ Mason said, slowly turning towards the Servant. ‘He is not the Illuminate, but
I am.
’

A moment later Mason’s entire body seemed to flare with blue light and his appearance began to shift. His military uniform morphed into a suit of interlocking white armoured panels. Seconds later an eight-foot-tall pale-skinned humanoid creature with glowing blue veins of light running back over the bald skin of its crested skull stood looming over them, looking down at their shocked faces with a sneer.

‘This vessel does not belong to you, human,’ the creature said, pointing at Sam. ‘You will return control of it to me.’

‘Who . . . who are you?’ Sam asked, his eyes wide with astonishment.

‘I am Talon, last warrior of the Illuminate, and you will do as I command,’ the creature said, taking a single step towards Sam.

The Servant moved with impossible speed, dissolving into her cloud form and sweeping in front of Sam before re-forming in front of him, both of her hands morphing into vicious outstretched claws.

‘I will not allow you to harm the Illuminate,’ the Servant said as behind her Sam, Rachel and Stirling slowly backed away.

‘I have no intention of harming the human,’ Talon replied. ‘In fact, I need him, for now at least. Besides, I believe he will give me control of this vessel quite voluntarily.’

‘Now why would I do that?’ Sam asked. Behind him, several of the larger black-skinned Hunters guarding the control room rose from the pit below the Voidborn control pedestal. The energy weapons mounted in their gleaming carapaces were aimed squarely at the giant armoured creature.

‘Because if you don’t I will release the creatures you call Vore into the city below,’ Talon replied, his eyes narrowing.

‘Good God, the second helicopter! You’re bringing those creatures into the city,’ Stirling said. ‘You can’t do that – millions will die.’

‘A small price to pay to defeat the Voidborn,’ Talon replied. ‘You pathetic humans have no idea what is at stake. You have one minute to make your decision, boy, before the countdown on the electronic locks sealing the Vore cage expires. The only thing that can prevent it is me transmitting the disarm code. The choice is yours.’

Sam’s mind whirled. Who was this creature, where had he come from and what was he truly intending to do with the Mothership? Too many questions, no time for answers. Sam felt a pit open in his stomach as he had a sudden horrific vision of millions of ravenous Vore swarming through the streets below them. The creatures that Talon had transported to London would only need to reach one group of Sleepers and their numbers would begin to expand geometrically. There would be no hope of stopping them. In that instant he knew that he had no choice. Talon might be bluffing, but some gut instinct told him that this creature was more than prepared to carry through on his threat. That was not a possibility he could contemplate.

‘It’s OK,’ Sam said, putting his hand on the Servant’s shoulder before stepping in front of her and looking up at the towering armoured warrior. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Let me in,’ Talon said, raising his massive gloved hand and pressing it to the side of Sam’s head. Sam felt a moment of disorientation and then he could sense Talon’s presence inside his mind as the light around him faded to nothingness. It wasn’t the horrific invasive feeling that he had felt when the Voidborn had entered his mind during their final confrontation. Instead he felt a sense of disembodiment, as if he were floating weightless in a black void. The voice that suddenly rang out seemed to come from all around him.

‘Control cannot be taken, it must be given,’ the voice said. It sounded like thousands of individuals speaking in perfect, uncanny unison. ‘That is the way of things.’

The voice sounded calm, soothing even, and yet something about it filled him with a mixture of awe and dread.

‘What do I have to do?’ Sam asked.

‘Simply exercise your will,’ the voice replied. ‘Grant us control.’

Sam thought for a moment about the idea of granting control of the massive vessel to Talon and that was it. His senses returned in a flood, the control room around him seeming impossibly bright for a moment as he collapsed to the floor unconscious.

‘Excellent,’ Talon said with a smile, turning to the Servant. ‘Your services are no longer required.’

The Servant gave a sudden horrible digitised shriek and her eyes flared with bright yellow light before she disintegrated, a cloud of dirty yellow dust falling to the floor where she had once stood. Rachel ran to Sam, picking his head up from the floor and cradling his limp body.

‘What have you done to him?’ she snapped at Talon as he looked down at them.

‘The boy was overwhelmed by his union with the Illuminate,’ Talon said. ‘It is not unusual for the experience to be too much for the fragile minds of unelevated species. He will recover in time.’

‘If you’ve hurt him I’ll –’

‘Do what, girl?’ Talon said with a sneer. ‘I have faced armies of Voidborn and seen civilisation after civilisation fall before them like grass before the scythe. What do I have to fear from one such as you?’

Stirling suddenly felt the mechanical tendrils of the Hunter behind him wrap around his arms, locking his limbs in their vice-like grip. Instinctively, he struggled for a moment, but he knew it was no use. The machine’s inhuman strength was far greater than his own.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Stirling asked, staring at Talon. ‘You want to destroy the Voidborn – so do we. We can work together.’

‘I do not need your assistance,’ Talon said as another Hunter moved towards Rachel, pulling her away from Sam’s unconscious body and restraining her also, despite her fruitless struggling. Talon moved towards the central control pedestal as the final Hunter looped its black tentacles beneath Sam’s armpits and hoisted his unconscious body into the air, the toes of his boots dangling just a few centimetres off the ground. The Hunters’ skin now throbbed with a pale blue light instead of yellow, a change reflected in the patterns of light that pulsed through the walls around them.

‘You will be detained for now,’ Talon said, and the cables that surrounded the control platform rose up and began to snake around him, slipping in between the plates of his armour and locking in place as they too began to throb with blue light. ‘Be thankful that you have been spared the fate of your companions below.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stirling yelled as the Hunters dragged them from the room. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’

‘That rather depends on whether they somehow manage to escape the Vore,’ Talon replied.

‘My God,’ Stirling said, ‘you can’t mean . . .’

‘I can’t risk the Voidborn recapturing the drilling site once the Mothership departs,’ Talon replied, glancing down at the glowing display mounted in the forearm of his armour. ‘I released the Vore five minutes ago.’

7

Mag glared down at the soldiers guarding the large metal container in the middle of the road beneath her. They scanned their surroundings, the bright beams of the torches mounted beneath the barrels of their weapons cutting through the darkness. A moment later one of the soldiers’ radios crackled, the message inaudible from Mag’s position. He gave a quick nod and then spoke briefly to his companion. They both jogged back down the road to the broad junction where the helicopter that had delivered the crate just a few minutes earlier waited, its rotors slowly spinning.

Mag watched them climb on board before she dropped silently to the slush-covered pavement five metres below. She sniffed the air as she approached the crate, the stench of the Vore inside stronger than ever. She was still exhausted from the first stage of the journey. It had been two nerve-shredding and exhausting hours hanging on for dear life to the steel box as they had flown low and fast over the English countryside. Just when she had started to feel that the freezing temperatures and battering winds might prove too much for even her unnatural strength and stamina, the helicopter and its disturbing cargo had touched down at the abandoned airfield outside the city. Mag had been grateful for the few hours of rest that the break in the journey had provided, but she could not allow herself to sleep. She had to make sure that she stayed with the crate, no matter what. This second leg of the trip was much shorter as the helicopter completed its journey into London. She had leapt from the crate on to a nearby rooftop as the crate was dropped on to the street, waiting and watching as the soldiers stood guard.

‘What are you doing, Mag?’ she whispered to herself as she walked up to the crate. As she touched the cool metal sides of the box, a sudden insistent electronic beeping came from one end of the crate, startling her. She instinctively backed away, eyeing the box with suspicion. Without warning, the explosive bolts on the hatch sealing one end of the crate fired and the door swung downwards, hitting the road with a loud metallic clang. Mag watched in horror as a Vore slowly slunk out of the box, sniffing the air. Slimy black drool trickled from its monstrous jaws as its senses were overwhelmed by the overpowering smell of the boundless quantities of sleeping prey that filled the buildings around it. Mag took a single step backwards and the Vore rounded on her with a growl. Mag braced herself as the creature leapt, pivoting as it slammed into her, gasping in pain as its claws raked her shoulder and slinging it away across the street, using its own momentum against it. The creature sprang back to its feet, preparing to leap again.

Mag saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye as a second Vore from inside the box leapt at her. She dived to one side and the creature missed with its first pounce, sliding across the slushy street before regaining its balance and joining its pack-mate in circling Mag with an angry hiss. The two creatures prowled around her, hissing and snapping their razor-filled jaws as they picked their moment to strike. She felt a moment of fear as she desperately tried to keep watching both creatures at once, feeling like a mouse being played with by a pair of cats.

Suddenly one of the creatures launched itself at her again and she drove the blade-tipped claws of her hand upwards into the creature’s exposed throat as it hit her, knocking her off her feet. She felt a warm gush of blood spilling over her hand as the Vore gave a gurgling howl of pain, its jaws still snapping just centimetres from her face despite the mortal wound she had inflicted. She pushed with all her strength, rolling the thrashing creature off her and climbing to her feet just as the second Vore slammed into her back, knocking the wind from her and pinning her face down on the ground. She tried to push herself up, but the creature’s weight on her exhausted back was too great and she felt its hot, fetid breath on the back of her neck as it opened its jaws to deliver a final killing bite to its prey.

From somewhere nearby there was a sudden loud bang and the Vore’s head seemed to just vanish in a black mist of blood, its limp body collapsing on top of her, now just dead weight. She rolled the creature off her back and staggered to her feet to see a boy with bright red hair walking towards her, a massive rifle shouldered and levelled straight at her.

‘Wait!’ Mag yelled, raising her hands in the air. ‘I’m not one of these things.’

The boy hesitated for a moment and then there was the sudden sound of rifle fire from the other end of the street and the ground around Mag almost seemed to explode as the pair of soldiers who had been guarding the Vore just a couple of minutes before opened fire. Mag leapt behind the armoured metal crate as the hail of bullets pinged off its surface. The red-haired boy ran towards her as the soldiers laid down more fire, and he threw himself down on the ground beside her. For a moment he stared at her pitch-black eyes and the jet-black veins that ran just beneath the surface of her paper-white skin.

‘Sorry, don’t mean to stare,’ the boy said after a moment. ‘I’m Jack. I don’t suppose you know what the hell those guys at the other end of the street were doing releasing these things, do you?’

‘I have no idea,’ Mag replied. It seemed an act of utter madness.

‘Are there any others?’ Jack asked, bobbing his head quickly round the corner of the crate and spotting the two soldiers advancing down the road towards them, ducking back into cover just as they opened fire again. They were pinned down.

The soldiers were only twenty metres from the crate when a puff of blood erupted from the lead man’s thigh and he collapsed to the ground with a scream of pain, his rifle scattering away across the road as his hands flew to staunch the flow of blood from the fresh gunshot wound. The second soldier spun around to see Jay standing ten metres behind him with his rifle levelled at the man’s chest.