by Rob May
The mothership—it was too big to be anything but a mothership—was almost a kilometre wide. It was a saucer with a spherical middle, making it look like a gleaming chrome version of Saturn and its rings. Rotating slowly, it lowered itself into position over the sea, about a kilometre offshore. The sunlight sparkled off it.
‘Would now be a good time to get to the boat?’ Jason asked.
‘Uh, yeah,’ Brandon decided. As one they hurled themselves over the safety barrier and slid down the south side of the dome. Jason led them down the ladder that led to the jetty beneath the pier.
Brandon looked up and out to sea to see what the saucer was doing. An opening had appeared under the central sphere. From inside came a ominous blue glow. Brandon looked down at the boat.
‘Jason, this isn’t a boat!’
‘Get in, you idiot!’
‘It’s a pedalo!’
‘Then get in and start peddling!’
Brandon hopped aboard—what choice did he have?—and he and Jason took to the pedals while Kat perched between them. ‘Hold on to this,’ Brandon told her, handing over the laptop case. Then with agonising slowness they began to put some distance between themselves and the pier. The cold dirty seawater splashed around them.
Hewson’s men hadn’t followed them down to the jetty. Brandon glanced back and saw them running back down the length of the pier.
Then the giant alien saucer fired its weapon.
There was no noise, no beam of light, just a horrible hum in the air that battered Brandon’s eardrums. Then the water around their tiny craft swelled up and suddenly they were hurtling towards the shore.
‘What’s going on?’ Kat cried, trying to find a stable position between the pedalo seats.
‘Electro-magnetic beam!’ Brandon guessed. He noticed that the pier that they had just left was shaking violently. ‘They’re inducing an earthquake under the sea!’
Jason swore. ‘We’re going to get smashed against the promenade.’
Brandon, though, was looking back out to sea. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re not. Turn the boat around. Quick!’
Their forward momentum slowed, and now they found themselves being dragged back away from the shore as the powerful drawback sucked all the water from Brighton beach. At the moment that the pier was completely exposed, its supports collapsed and it smashed down on to the seabed.
Brandon had stopped peddling, and Jason was working twice as hard in order to turn them around. When he saw what they were now facing he swore again. And again.
An enormous wave crest was looming over them. Forty metres high and topped with churning froth, it advanced on Brighton with devastating potential.
Jason started to peddle madly in panic. Kat looked like she was about to jump off and into the sea. Brandon held his nerve though. His brain seemed to focus under pressure, and he knew what they had to do.
‘Jason, stop peddling! We’ve got to hit this thing head on and bust through!’ He was thinking back to last summer: a beach in Devon, a hot day, a wetsuit and a surfboard. To get further out to sea to catch a wave that was even further out, you had to know how to bust through the waves that were in your way.
He crouched low in his seat, leaning forward. Jason looked terrified, but copied the position. ‘When we’re almost at the crest, tip the weight forward!’ Brandon ordered.
The small pedalo began to climb the giant wave. Their entire world became a solid wall of grey water that blocked out the sun, creating a wet and scary world of cold shadow. Brandon judged the moment when their upward velocity peaked, then shouted, ‘Now!’
The three of them tipped their weight forward as far as they could over the front of the pedalo, gripping the bottom of the seats as tightly as they could. The tiny vessel cut into the wave, taking a short cut through the apex, and avoiding the deadly crest. They burst out the other side onto the back of the wave.
‘Well, that was gnarly,’ Jason said flatly. He spat out a mouthful of saltwater. They were all soaking. Kat wiped her glasses clean and then pulled a small fish out of her jacket pocket and flung it away.
The immediate danger was over, but they were still being carried along behind the wave, heading for the town. The water broke on the esplanade, lifting cars and smashing shop windows with its incredible force. The white-fronted hotels were surrounded by rushing water that pushed through the third floor windows and flushed the contents of the rooms out through the other side.
Brandon, Jason and Kat had no control over the pedalo now. Luck alone saved them from being smacked against the buildings. They were funnelled up a gap between them instead, following the leading edge of the tsunami as it flooded Brighton’s roundabouts, roads and parks.
They were heading towards Brighton’s Royal Pavilion: a long oriental-looking palace that wouldn’t have looked out of place next to the Taj Mahal. The wave reached it first, swamping the palace’s domes. Only the top of a tall minaret was left above the waterline, and as the pedalo passed it, Brandon and the twins jumped out and onto the small gallery.
They collapsed in a pile behind the stone parapet. Kat looked exhilarated as usual, but there was a wild look behind her eyes that Brandon hadn’t seen before. Jason looked angry. ‘Why?’ he complained. ‘Why are aliens trying to kill us?’
Brandon tried to explain briefly. ‘You might not believe this,’ he sighed, ‘but my mum met an alien twenty or so years ago and they’ve been working on some kind of new technology ever since. Now a whole load more aliens seem to have come to wipe out their efforts completely.’
‘Brandon,’ Kat said. ‘After what I’ve seen today, I’d believe you if you told us that you were an alien.’
He laughed, then looked out over the edge of the wall to see what was happening. It was chaos out there.
Out to sea, the mothership was still hovering above the water, malevolently rotating as it appeared to watch the devastation that its tidal wave had caused. Two fighter jets—Tornados, Brandon guessed—their wings heavy with missiles, flew in close to the saucer and circled around it, presumably looking for weak spots to target. But before they could fire, the saucer zapped them with lasers—spidery thin blue lines that effortlessly found their targets despite the Tornados’ speed.
One of the jets went into a spin and exploded against the hull of the saucer, disintegrating completely, but leaving no mark on the shiny alien craft. The pilot of the second tornado ejected, but he was in the air for less than a second before another laser spat out and vaporised him.
Across the city, Brandon saw that only a handful of Brighton’s tallest buildings were above sea-level. One of the Chinook helicopters was hovering over the roof of a hotel in order to collect some stranded soldiers. Brandon couldn’t see Hewson’s secret black-clad team though. He wondered if the regular army even knew that they were here.
Hundreds of small pleasure boats from the nearby marina were bobbing around with all the rest of the floating debris between the surviving buildings. On the outskirts of the city, the wave had swept away the army’s mobile barricades and had sloshed across the golf courses, only coming to a halt at the line of hills four kilometres north of the city.
The waters began to slowly recede, but the destruction wasn’t over yet: the mothership’s seismic weapon was glowing again, gearing up to generate another wave. Brandon was looking around desperately for a way to escape: a jet ski, a handy speedboat, a path made up of conveniently placed floating boxes …
There was nothing. This wasn’t a movie.
The world shuddered and the minaret shook violently. The wave that was approaching this time was sixty metres high and would engulf even the tallest block of council flats in Brighton. Brandon knew then that they were finished. He should have told all he knew to Lieutenant Hewson, he realised that now.
‘Look!’ Kat shouted.
There was a helicopter approaching from the north, just as the killer wave approached from the south. Brandon recognised it: a bright yellow Bell 206 JetRanger.
&nbs
p; It was James and Gem. Brandon and the twins leaned out and waved and shouted frantically, and eventually caught the chopper’s attention.
The snub-nosed five-seater helicopter hovered over the minaret and let down a rope ladder. Jason made Kat hurry up it first, then he and Brandon simultaneously hooked their arms and legs around the lower rungs, just as the helicopter started to climb at a fast—but maybe not fast enough—seven metres a second.
Brandon and Jason clung to each other tighter than Brandon had ever clung to anyone in his life.
‘It’s probably safer for me to stay down there,’ Jason roared in Brandon’s ear, ‘than to follow you wherever you’re going next!’
Brandon just laughed out loud in relief and exultation as the new onslaught of water passed just metres beneath them.
Gem grabbed Brandon’s hand and pulled him up into the heli. ‘Hi, Bro,’ she smiled. She was still wearing her running trainers, but had now teamed them up with grey skinny jeans and a soft grey hoodie. Brandon went to hug her, but she directed his dirty wet body down into a seat next to Jason and Kat, and then threw a blanket over him.
‘How did you—I mean, thanks, Gem. But how did you find us?’
Gem nodded over to James, who was concentrating on flying clear of the town. He gave Brandon the thumbs up. ‘James is MI Zero,’ Gem explained, shouting over the noise of the rotors. ‘It’s a secret agency! They found out that you were here in Brighton and sent us to pick you up!’
MI Zero?
‘Wait, what?’ Brandon spluttered. ‘MI? As in Military Intelligence?’
Gem nodded.
‘I thought you were joking when you said you worked in Military Intelligence!’ Brandon shouted to James. The divisions of the British secret services also included MI5 (homeland security) and MI6 (foreign intelligence). MI Zero was a new one to Brandon though; it must be the secret secret division that Lieutenant Hewson had mentioned.
‘It was the best cover story I could come up with,’ James explained. His eyes didn’t leave the heli controls as he concentrated on their escape. ‘I knew no one would ever believe that I actually was a spy!’
Brandon frowned. ‘Are Hewson and those other guys MI Zero too?’
‘The Lieutenant? Yeah, he’s our top field agent. I’ve got more of a desk-bound supporting role. Well … had. There aren’t many desks left at the office anymore.’
Brandon turned to look at Kat. ‘Are you MI Zero?’ he joked.
‘Licensed to chill … in front of the TV,’ she quipped. Jason and Gem laughed. ‘Not really,’ Kat added, in case anyone had taken her seriously.
‘I don’t know if there’s anyone left but me now,’ James said. ‘The head of MI Zero was killed on the London to Brighton train.’
The man with the newspaper, Brandon recalled.
‘So, what are you going to do with us now that you’ve found us?’ he asked James.
It was Gem who replied: ‘Don’t know yet. We heard that you’ve got something from Mum’s lab. Let’s talk about that once we’ve shaken this massive bogie on our six.’
Six o’clock position, Brandon guessed. He tried to see what was behind them by looking out of the side window.
It was the alien mothership, so close that it was blocking out the sky.
‘James, we can’t outrun this thing,’ Gem said. ‘We need to land and find some cover.’
‘Right. On it,’ James replied, wrestling with the joystick.
‘Let’s hope they’ve not got a tractor beam!’ Kat said.
‘I doubt it,’ Brandon told her. ‘Tractor beams only work in the vacuum of space, on an atomic scale; they’re the stuff of, uh, science fiction …’
He tailed off as he realised what he was saying. This whole weekend had been the stuff of science fiction.
There was a sudden grinding noise as the rotors were forced to a stop and the engine jammed. The navigation instruments went haywire and James lost his grip on the joystick as it jerked about spasmodically.
Everyone’s eyes looked upwards. The cabin of the heli was cast into shadow as the saucer loomed over them.
James’ voice cracked in panic. ‘We’re stuck! I can’t move us!’
Jason shook his head. ‘We’ve got MI Zero chance of getting out of this one.’
A thirty metre-wide letterbox-shaped slot opened in the outer rim of the giant saucer. Behind the slot, a long barrel-like chamber was rotating on its horizontal axis like a kind of side-on revolving door. Brandon stared in fascination as the helicopter was dragged in. It must be some sort of airlock, one that Brandon guessed would operate in the vacuum of space too. It was like being inside a massive tombola, and the helicopter shook as the tractor beam’s pull was weakened by the walls of the chamber. The rotor blades were snapped off in the confined space.
Then they were out the other side and into the mothership’s hangar. Brandon was both scared and awed at the same time. He looked around at his companions: Kat seemed just awed; Jason was quietly furious; Gem looked curious—nothing ever seemed to faze her though—and James looked …
James looked like he was terrified. Not a good look for a secret agent.
A whole platoon of muscled alien brutes was lining up to greet them. They tried to arrange themselves in ranks and files, but their discipline and co-ordination failed, and they ended up milling around beneath the hovering helicopter like a pack of hungry dogs.
The tractor beam brought the helicopter down to the floor of the hangar with an inelegant crash, as if it had lost its grip just at the last moment. One of the brutes stepped forward and ripped the door away with its bare hands. It growled at the cringing occupants, until some of its friends pulled it back to allow Brandon and the others to get out.
Brandon stepped out first. There didn’t seem to be any point in staying in the chopper, which certainly wouldn’t be airborne again anytime soon. Gem and the others followed his lead. James seemed to summon up some courage and pushed his way through the group to stand in front of Brandon and address the circling pack of aliens.
‘You’re not allowed to harm us,’ He told them. ‘Do you understand? It’s in the Geneva Convention! You can’t hurt prisoners. My name is James Bentley and I am on Her Majesty’s Secret Service—’
The nearest alien lashed out with a giant paw and sent James sprawling to the ground with a broken nose.
Jason and Gem helped him back to his feet. ‘Take it easy, man,’ Jason cautioned James. ‘I don’t think that dude’s read the Geneva thingy.’ Gem wiped the blood from James’ face with the sleeve of her hoodie.
The crowd of aliens moved in closer, almost forcing Brandon and the others back into the helicopter. Then suddenly the brutes backed off and made a clumsy effort to stand to attention. A new alien was marching through the ranks, sometimes having to push the others out of the way to make a path. This one was clearly in charge. It was bigger, and was wearing a strange combination of armour: some medieval-looking metal plate mixed with sinuous purple webbing of a more futuristic kind. On its head was a crude metal crown.
An alien king?
The king was taller and fatter than any of the other aliens, and twice as ugly. It staggered slightly when it stopped, as if it was drunk. In its hand was something fleshy and bloody which it popped into its mouth and crunched down on.
It spat on the floor, pointed at the laptop case that Brandon was holding, and then spoke, in English:
‘Give me that!’
The nearest alien soldier stepped forward and tore the case from Brandon’s grasp. The king pulled out a laser pistol and shot the clasps off. The cylinder, phone and hard drive all fell to the floor. The king gingerly picked up the cylinder and held it up to examine it. The other aliens all took a few steps away. They looked nervous.
The king tossed it into the hands of the nearest alien, who nearly dropped it in fright. ‘Take this and destroy it,’ the king ordered. ‘Throw it into the star reactor. And take these creatures and lock them away somewhere. We’ll
give them to Zaal later.’
Who or what was Zaal?
‘Wait, no!’ Kat spoke up. ‘Can’t we talk about this? We want to talk to you! Why won’t you talk to us?’
Brandon put a hand on her shoulder to restrain her. He didn’t want her to get a smashed face like James.
The alien king didn’t even bother looking at her. Instead it grabbed the cylinder back from the other alien. ‘On second thoughts, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll take this myself and make sure that it gets destroyed. I can’t have you fools getting mixed up, vaporising these hoomunz, and then handing me back the most dangerous thing in the entire universe!’
They were dragged, each of them by a brute soldier, down a long corridor that curved slightly to the left. Brandon guessed that it was following the curvature of the ship’s circumference. Despite their terrible situation, he couldn’t help but take an interest in their surroundings. The hangar and the corridor were plain and functional, and not particularly alien-looking. But what had he expected? Organic walls and dark creepy passageways?
The group halted beside a hatch in the inner wall. One of the aliens opened it and before Brandon could think, he was hurled through and found himself skidding down a steep metal chute. His hyper-awareness kicked in and he managed to cover his face with his arms just in time to cushion his landing as he shot out of the chute and onto a hard metal floor.
He rolled to the side as the others came tumbling down. When they had all picked themselves up off the floor, they examined their new surroundings. They were in a small, very cold room with metal walls and a solid door. There was one dim light recessed into the ceiling.
Jason got to his feet and went and tried the door. There wasn’t any kind of opening mechanism.
‘Well, here we are,’ Kat said, a bit too cheerfully considering their situation, ‘prisoners of the alien king! I wonder who this Zaal is that we’re going to meet next.’
‘Whoever or whatever it is,’ Jason said, ‘I’m guessing it’s going to be the last alien creature we ever meet!’ He banged his fist against the wall in frustration.
