Arthur and the Andarran Rescue

by Craig Speakes

  Arthur had found out that Luca and Sava had been sent to make contact with the Rossa division. Based in the Kempin mountain range, which ran from the north-eastern shores of the Spice Sea into the extreme northern zones, the division was made up of fighters from each of the different Andarran regions. It formed the core of the Northern Defence Front. Since its fighters were hardened in snow and mountain warfare, Insuro had requested their help when he’d first arrived in Andarra to look for Arthur and the others. When the division leaders had learned that his group were making for the Northern Plateau, they’d agreed to send two hundred fighters to meet them at the Anka pass. Luca and Sava would now link up with those fighters and redirect them to the Elizian glacier.

  ‘You look troubled, lad,’ said the Major, noticing he was not sleeping.

  ‘I was thinking about Earth.’

  ‘And that makes you sad, thinking about home?’

  ‘No – I was wondering: if the Solarians really do know where Earth is, then what chance would we have against them?’

  The Major pursed his lips together tightly. ‘I think that depends on how well they do their homework.’

  ‘Homework? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that if they take the time to study us and look for our weaknesses, they can probably force us to surrender without firing a shot.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Margot, opening her eyes.

  ‘Yes, sadly, it’s true,’ pitched in the Captain. ‘Think about it: what are the things that we need to survive?’

  ‘Food and water,’ she replied. ‘Oh, and air of course, that’s pretty useful,’ she joked.

  ‘That’s right. And if you are sitting in your cloaked spaceship, which is heaving with advanced plasma weaponry and who knows what else, it’s not going to be hard to work it out.’

  Sky sat up. ’My father told me that countries like Russia and America have secret advanced weapons they don’t tell anyone about.’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ replied the Major, ‘but I have my doubts whether they’ll be overly effective against star cruisers. We cannot target what we cannot see. But if we can get them on the ground, then I think we can cause them some headaches.

  ‘I know it’s not what you all want to hear,’ he added, ‘but it’s the reality of the situation. We need the help of the Treskans now.’

  ‘And we will do what we can to help, Major,’ said Insuro. ‘Now, if none of you are sleeping, free your minds of fears that are yet to be, and let us acquaint ourselves better with the Solarian base. The Gorkan has discovered its location and this storm has permitted us to receive details of it without much risk of our signals being tracked.’

  Vello placed the round object on the ice floor. As it flashed open, a three-dimensional, holographic map of the base and its surroundings appeared in front of them. Arthur recognised the mountain from his vision in the tower.

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Margot.

  ‘Here,’ answered Vello. He pointed to the edge of the glacier where it met the mountain wall and to a semi-circular opening in the rock. ‘It is large enough for several Strike class attack ships.’

  ‘Disappointing,’ commented the Major. ‘If they can get them off the ground before we have a chance to put them out of action, they’ll have control of the skies, and that’s going to be bad for us.’

  Vello nodded. ‘It is so. Unless we maintain the element of surprise, this battle may be lost before it has even begun.’

  16

  Separated

  By the time the storm had eased slightly, there was a real sense of urgency amongst the group. They had lost too much time already and it was still snowing heavily when Insuro made the decision to move out, even though it was clearly still very dangerous to do so. Several days of ferocious blizzards had filled the floor of the crevasse with fresh snow, making it tough going. They found themselves having to wade through drifts that were knee deep, or worse. To compound the problem, the massive amount of new snow had caused the roof to collapse in places, blocking their path and requiring them to climb out of the crevasse and around.

  Suddenly there came a shout from the front of the line, followed immediately by everyone lurching forwards. Captain Schmidt, who was ‘on point’, had plunged through the crevasse floor. Bracing themselves to prevent him falling further and pulling everyone in with him, the Major and Sezan proceeded to haul him out. The area he had fallen through revealed a chasm small enough for them not to need to climb out and go around, but still too wide to jump. They were going to have to pull themselves across. This was something they had practised numerous times during training but had never done for real or without a safety net.

  The Captain was the first to go, followed by Vello. Arthur was up next. Kneeling down and clipping himself on to the guide rope, he heard a sound from inside his backpack. It was the cat suddenly deciding to pray, and it was really off-putting.

  ‘Cat, cut it out!’ He said, edging closer to the precipice.

  ‘Our heavenly cat father, who art in cat heaven…’ prayed the cat even louder.

  ‘Cat!’

  ‘Lead us not into bad places and don’t let us fall into crevasses, especially deep, dark ones where I cannot land on my feet.’

  Doing his best to ignore the cat, and not to look down at the light stick far below which the Major had tossed in, Arthur swung down under the rope and began to pull himself across. By this point, the cat had gone very quiet, and for half a moment Arthur really wondered if he might have fallen out. The rope sagged under his weight as he reached the middle.

  Halfway! He thought. Don’t look down! Don’t look down!

  Looking back in the direction he’d come, he could see Sky getting ready to go next. The Major was talking to her and appeared to be telling a joke, but Sky wasn’t laughing. Feeling a hand unexpectedly grip his shoulder, he reached up and took the hand of the Captain, who pulled him over the edge. Unclipping himself, he took off his pack and opened it.

  ‘Since when do cats pray?’ He asked, seeing the cat was all right.

  ‘Since God first appeared as a cat, thousands of years ago, near the ancient city of Manchester… obviously.’

  ‘A cat? Manchester!?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Well, I guess,’ was all he could think of to say, and he turned his attention to how Sky was getting on.

  Once safely across, they pressed on as quickly as the going underfoot allowed. When night fell, there was no letting up and no resting. Wearing night vision when there was no roof and using their plasma rifle lights when there was, they battled through the relentless snow.

  ‘I’m exhausted!’ said Sky as she and Arthur waited at the back of the line for the others to start scaling up another roof collapse.

  ‘And some,’ he groaned.

  ‘By the time we get there, we’re going to be too tired to fight. The Solarians will discover we’ve surrounded them and then fallen asleep!’

  Arthur grinned. In that moment he really was able to imagine it.

  ‘Ooh. Can you feel that?’ He asked. ‘It’s that tremor again. It’s been coming ever since we got over that last collapse.’

  ‘Yes – maybe this section is becoming unstable or something.’

  ‘The whole glacier is unstable, if you ask me,’ interrupted Yan, who was in front of them. ‘These tremors mean the ice is shifting. By my calculations, there is a two percent chance of us being caught in a roof collapse or something even more nasty. So, not high, but still there.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Sky sounding relieved.

  ‘Wait!’ said Arthur as lumps of snow and ice began thudding into the ground around them. ‘It’s the roof!’

  ‘Yes, the roof,’ muttered Yan, absent-mindedly tapping on some kind of electronic device. Since th
e episode with the sword, Yan had not returned entirely to his old self. He had become more ‘vacant’, as Margot described it. As though whatever it was that had possessed him had left him changed.

  ‘You said two percent!’ said Sky.

  ‘Two percent, yes… that’s right, two percent. Perhaps thirty-five percent,’ he said, nodding repeatedly to himself as lumps of roof continued to fall, one landing very close to him. Still he didn’t seemed to notice.

  ‘Thirty-five percent now?’ cried Sky at the exact moment the Major shouted, ‘Roof!’

  Arthur grabbed Yan and pushed him towards the wall before checking to make sure Sky had already moved. He pointed his rifle upwards, illuminating a section of the roof. A large crack had appeared in the middle and was spreading quickly.

  ‘I think that looks like one hundred percent,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Well, yes, seventy-five – eighty,’ replied Yan, not really watching.

  ‘Keep your heads down and keep to the wall!’ shouted the Major as a loud cracking sound sent the roof crashing down on top of them.

  Cutting the rope between himself and Yan, Arthur dived on top of Sky, covering her with his body, and closed his eyes.

  Although the core of the roof-fall missed the two of them, it caused the floor to shatter. Before they knew what was happening or had time to get out of the way, it disintegrated, sending them tumbling downwards into the darkness. As they fell, the weight of the snow and the ice forced Arthur to let go of Sky. Everything that followed after that was a blur. Only when he finally came to a halt did Arthur find himself on his knees, coughing and spitting out snow. The fall had winded him badly. Unable to see anything, he groped about to find his plasma rifle, but all he could feel was snow.

  I’ve been buried! was his first thought. But it can’t be much, or I’d have been crushed.

  Trying not to panic, he pushed hard with his back upwards.

  ‘Ouch! I was still alive until you did that!’ cried the cat.

  ‘Sorry, Cat! I’m trying to find out if we’re buried or not. I can’t see anything. Hold on!’ Arthur pushed upwards again with all his strength. This time the pressure on his back suddenly eased, and he felt himself break free.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He asked, standing up unsteadily and holding his hands out into the darkness, trying to feel something.

  ‘I think thinner,’ meowed the cat.

  He stood and listened. There was no light and no sound of any sort. He felt around his waist for the rope – it was still there. He pulled on it; there was nothing but the feeling of pulling air. The ropes holding he and Sky together had been sliced through. The terrible feeling that they might be trapped swept over him. Something must have happened to the others or I would surely be able to hear them searching.

  ‘Sky,’ he called out, getting back onto his knees and scrabbling about for his rifle. It was the only way he would ever be able to see anything.

  ‘Sky, can you hear me? Is anyone else here?’ He called, wondering if any of the others had fallen in. He strained hard to listen, but there was only silence.

  ‘Sky must be here somewhere, Cat,’ he said, as much to himself as to the cat. ‘I know I landed on her when the roof started to fall.’

  He had no idea how long it took him to find it. It could have been an hour, it could have been minutes. In the pitch darkness, his senses felt confused. Finally, after he’d cleared a lot of snow around him with his fingers, they struck something solid.

  ‘I’ve got it, Cat!’ He said, powering up the rifle as quickly as he could and turning on the torch-like lamp on the front. What he saw made his heart stop. Sky was lying motionless on her back a dozen or so metres away from him. Huge, jagged shards of ice stood embedded in the snow all around her. From where he was standing, it looked clearly as though one of the shards had passed right through her chest. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open. Certain she was dead, Arthur slumped to his knees and stared at her lifeless body.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ asked the cat, sounding vaguely amused by it. ‘I know it doesn’t look good, but we have been in scrapes before. Anyway, I’m still alive, so look on the bright side… phh! Humans!’

  ‘What bright side,’ said Arthur mournfully.

  ‘What? Did you hit your head or something?’

  ‘Cat! Sky is dead!’

  ‘What?’ Mused the cat.

  ‘Look! Look at her! She’s been killed by one of those shards… can’t you see?’

  ‘That’s what all this fuss is about? All I see is a girl who is forever getting herself knocked out.’

  ‘What!?’ cried Arthur. He jumped to his feet, sending the cat flying. ‘God, how could I have been so stupid – I didn’t even check! Idiot!’ He shouted.

  The cat was right: she hadn’t been spiked at all. A few more centimetres in either direction and she would have been for sure, but the ice shard had passed right between her ribcage and the inside of her arm.

  ‘Sky!’ He cried, holding her head gently in his hands. ‘Sky, wake up!’

  17

  When Two Hands Meet

  Sky slowly opened her eyes and breathed deeply.

  ‘What happened?’ She asked croakily.

  ‘The floor collapsed and you got knocked unconscious,’ Arthur said, helping her lift her head up slightly and sip some water. He felt relieved to see her open her eyes.

  ‘Knocked out again?’ She said, smiling weakly.

  ‘Yes, you’re getting good at it. But honestly, I thought you were a goner.’ He nodded towards the jagged ice shard.

  ‘Oooh – a bit close!’ said Sky, her eyes widening in relief and horror as she looked at the solid spike of ice poking out from under her armpit.

  ‘Very!’

  ‘Still, you should be so lucky… You’re not going to get rid of me that easily,’ she said, and tried to prop herself up on her elbows, the strain making her wince.

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t move for a while?’

  ‘I’ll be okay. Is there a way out of here?’

  Arthur shone the lamp up at the collapsed roof. The entire crevasse above had caved in, sealing them in. The roof above them glittered and shone with hundreds of ice shards of varying thicknesses and sizes.

  ‘I think if we try to get up there, or try to blast through it, it might bring the whole lot down on us. We should probably try that way,’ he said and pointed the light to what looked like a way out. Arthur looked at her softly. ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and held out her hand for Arthur to help her up. ‘My head hurts like hell, like someone’s pounding on it, but it’s not going to get any better sitting here waiting to become Swiss cheese if those things decide to fall on us!’

  Sky picked up her rifle, which she found nearby, and, checking that her pack was okay, held on to Arthur’s arm for support.

  ‘What about the others – do you think they’re okay?’ She asked. ‘Don’t you think they’ll look for us?’

  ‘Yes, if they made it, I guess,’ he said solemnly.

  ‘Oh – you don’t really think they could’ve been… I can’t even say it.’

  ‘Well, I…’

  ‘No, I don’t believe it!’ She interrupted before he could finish. ‘We’ve come too far… No, we’re like one big crazy family! You know, there’s the mad Major,’ she grinned, ‘and Margot, she’s so funny, she reminds me a bit of my mum. Don’t you have a radio we can use to call them?’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘I gave it to Yan to fix the other day.’

  ‘Well, we could wait to see if they try to find us. There aren’t any ice shards here,’ she said, scanning the roof above where they were walking.

  ‘I have an idea. Give me an item of clothing that you don’t need,’ he said, opening his pack and pulling out a scruffy-looking t-shirt covered in cat hairs. Whil
e he waited for Sky, he stuck his t-shirt on to a jagged part of the wall where it would be easily seen. Sky handed him a small pink sock. Grinning, he secured it next to his t-shirt.

  ‘Right. They’ll know we’re still alive and that we went this way, as it’s the only way out,’ he said.

  Unlike the crevasse above, the one below was much narrower, rising and falling constantly, often with barely enough room to crawl between the floor and the roof. As they tried to find a way back up, they talked a lot about the others. It felt as if talking about them somehow meant that they were still okay, somewhere above them.

  ‘What will you do when you see your father?’ asked Sky after a while.

  ‘I don’t know… I’m afraid to think about it. It’s as if letting myself think about seeing him again makes it less likely to happen. Don’t you think that sounds weird?’

  ‘No, not at all. I remember once being certain that the only way to pass my maths exam was to make sure that every time I passed by two stones on the way to school, I had to cycle between them or I was definitely going to fail.’

  ‘Yes, I guess like that,’ he said. ‘It’s just, you know, anything can happen, can’t it? I mean, look at Captain Hawk and Vijay, Sergeant Davis… they’re all gone. I’m afraid that if I think about him for too long, or let myself believe that everything’s going to be okay, then it’ll jinx everything and make something bad happen to him. I guess I’m being stupid.’

  Sky slipped her hand into his. ‘No. You’re not being stupid,’ she said.

  Even though they were wearing gloves, he could still feel the shape and pressure of her fingers intertwining with his. He could also feel his heart beating noticeably faster, and suddenly he had no idea what to say or do next. So he said nothing and did nothing, and pretended everything was normal. They continued hand in hand down the middle of the crevasse, without talking, and Arthur observed that it felt nice and it felt a little bit awkward, and he felt a strange kind of calmness sweep over him.