by Rob May
‘Don’t come any closer, Brandon, or try to activate the bionoids,’ Gem warned him, ‘or I swear that I’ll shoot Kat.’
‘You wouldn’t!’ Brandon scoffed in disbelief.
Gem ignored him and pulled open the hatch beneath her. The dark hold was partially-lit by sunlight. Brandon could see the rocky ground of the plain rushing past underneath.
His sister was keeping half an eye on her watch. Brandon guessed that she was waiting for a signal from Karkor.
‘Don’t go to him!’ he begged her. ‘Whatever he’s promised you, it’s all a lie. He’s only after power and control: over the balaks, over the cylinder, over you!’
Brandon could see Kat wriggling one of her legs loose. Gem didn’t seem to have noticed though.
‘Nobody’s going to control me, Brandon,’ she replied. ‘Not him, not you, nobody!’
A change in light and noise indicated that a fast-moving ship had suddenly rushed in underneath Discord. Karkor’s ship! Gem swung her legs through the hatch and prepared to drop.
‘See ya, Bro,’ she said by way of goodbye.
She dropped down to the ship below. At the last moment, Kat kicked out suddenly with her free leg and knocked the gun and cylinder out of Gem’s hand. Brandon lunged forward to grab it.
Except that not only was the cylinder taped to the gun … but the gun was taped to Gem.
A loud hot blast echoed through the hold, causing Brandon to hit the floor in shock and disorientation; he wasn’t sure that he hadn’t been shot.
When he got his senses back he realised that he hadn’t.
But Kat had.
Brandon rushed forward to hold her as Karkor’s ship dropped away behind them. Kat’s blood was everywhere, gushing from a puncture in her stomach. Before Brandon could say or do anything though, the ship was rocked by an explosion at the rear. Dravid must have fired off a parting shot.
With the main thrusters damaged or destroyed, Brandon saw the ground through the hatch getting closer and closer. He put his arms around Kat and braced for the crash.
Discord hit the ground at a low angle and rattled across rocky moorland for several hundred metres, barely slowing until it smashed against a rock, turned almost ninety degrees to the left, and then started rolling. If Kat wasn’t tied to the bodywork, and Brandon clinging to her, then they both would have been thrown around until all their bones broke.
When the chaos ended, Brandon desperately tried to free Kat. He was still trying when Jason, bruised and bleeding himself, found them. He quickly cut his sister loose with the army knife from his boot. ‘What the hell happened, Brandon?’ he asked. ‘One minute we’re flying along and then—’ He saw Kat’s wound. ‘Oh no, Kat!’
Together they pulled her out of the upside-down ship and onto the plain, laying her out on the wet grass. Jason pulled up Kat’s T-shirt and mopped the wound clean with rainwater. Brandon looked around for help: one of the Typhoons was circling; the other had perhaps gone off in pursuit of Karkor. Brandon hoped that the jet had radioed in some ground forces to come and pick them up.
They weren’t completely in the middle of nowhere though. A faded wooden sign stood atop a nearby rise. There was a logo: an eagle flying beneath a crown, and in bold lettering: ROYAL AIR FORCE KEEVIL.
Jason was kneeling over Kat with tears in his eyes. ‘Brandon? What happened? Where’s Gem?’
‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Dravid came back for her and she decided to go with him. She took the cylinder and shot Kat … it was an accident … I think…’
Jason’s expression turned from shock and confusion to pure hatred. He got up and advanced on Brandon. ‘You should have killed him when you had the chance, the minute he turned up on board at Stonehenge, you stupid, stupid idiot!’
Brandon saw the punch coming a mile off, but he just stood there and took it anyway.
A truck pulled up, and army medics lifted both Kat and Brandon onto stretchers—he was dazed from Jason’s punch—and then drove them to the base. Jason sat between them, and all three of them were watched over by a giant armed soldier who had the word TANK scrawled on his helmet under the dagger logo of the Royal Marines. He gave them a blank, disinterested stare. Finding three teenagers fighting in the wreckage of a futuristic spaceship was obviously not the most interesting thing that he had seen recently.
The base consisted of some temporary portable shacks set up next to some crumbling old buildings from the nineteen thirties. There was no fence or barricade protecting the runways; there had clearly been no time to construct one. The airfield was crowded with planes: some Brandon recognised—RAF stalwarts like the Typhoon and Tornado—and one he thought he recognised, but wasn’t quite sure: hidden amongst the other jets, he thought he could see the jagged black silhouette of a B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. He almost rolled off the stretcher as he twisted to look.
They were rushed into a white medical tent. Brandon managed to sit up and swing his legs off his stretcher as most of the medics gathered around Kat first. Jason hopped about impatiently. ‘Is she okay?’ he asked.
Please let her be alright, Brandon thought. He didn’t know how he’d be able to face Jason if anything happened to Kat.
The medics looked concerned. ‘Severe rupturing to the abdominal aorta. She’s lost a lot of blood.’ Kat’s face was frozen in shock and pain, her skin pale and slick with sweat. ‘We can set up an ICU and monitor her, but …’ The head medic spread her hands and shook her head.
One of the medics came to examine the cut above Brandon’s eye, but Jason came over and swatted his arm away. ‘He’s fine,’ Jason said. ‘He’s just putting it on. Take us to your leader!’
The medic looked indecisive, but the marine called Tank seem to agree with Jason. ‘I’ll take them,’ he said. ‘It’ll save dragging the chief over here.’
They made to leave, but Kat suddenly made a noise from her bed. ‘Jason …’ she gasped.
‘I’m here,’ he said.
‘Get Brandon!’
Brandon went back to stand over her. ‘Don’t try to speak,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be okay. The doctors are doing everything they can!’
‘I’m fine, really!’ she croaked, trying to smile. ‘Just give me a few minutes … then we’ll go … up into space … together …’
She drifted into unconsciousness. ‘Come on,’ Jason said to Brandon. ‘We need to get going after your magic cylinder.’
Tank led them across the courtyard to the brick-built HQ. ‘Don’t worry about your little friend,’ he said, seeing Brandon looking back over his shoulder. ‘She’ll be fine. The doctors here are the best in the forces, even if we don’t have as much equipment as we would like right now.’
‘She’d better be,’ Jason fumed. He looked like he was looking out for someone else to punch.
They entered the HQ and walked down a wood-panelled corridor lined with large black and white photos of old World War Two pilots. At the end of the corridor, a pretty female officer guarded a door with a temporary sign that read: Chief of Joint Operations. She gave Tank a friendly smile. ‘Hey, Lucky,’ he greeted her. ‘Is the chief in?’
An authoritative voice spoke from behind the door: ‘Yes he is. Come in.’
They went in. The Chief of Joint Operations—the head of all combined army, navy and air force ventures—was a big bearded man in his fifties who looked like the sort whose orders you wouldn’t want to question. He put down the framed photo of his family that he had been studying. His desk was clear except for that and a closed metal briefcase. ‘Report, Sergeant.’ he said to Tank.
‘Found these kids at the crash site, Sir,’ Tank explained. ‘Three of them; the other is in the med tent, hurt pretty bad.’
‘Too bad for them,’ the chief said, ‘but my office isn’t a creche: put them somewhere out of the way, or find a job for them washing dishes in the mess.’
‘No, Sir, you don’t understand,’ Tank went on. ‘Number Nine Squadron has confirmed that these kids were flying t
he spaceship before it was shot down.’
The chief turned his attention to Brandon and Jason at last. ‘You don’t look much like aliens,’ he said.
Brandon bit his tongue. Jason tried to explain as quickly as he could: ‘We know why the aliens are here. They’re after a new super weapon that one of their kind brought to Earth. They’ve got it now, but we need it back cos we can use it to cure my sister.’ He took a deep breath. ‘We heard you’re planning to get on board the mothership; we need to come with you!’
‘We have plenty enough soldiers and jets,’ the chief countered. ‘What have a couple of teenagers got to offer?’
‘We’ve been aboard the mothership!’ Brandon cut in. ‘We know what you’ll face if you get any soldiers aboard. And we know where the weak spot is!’
He wasn’t sure that he did know, but it was all he could think of to convince the chief.
The chief raised an eyebrow. ‘What were you kids doing on board that ship?’
‘We’re MI Zero spies!’ Jason answered instantly. ‘We have pictures to prove it,’ he said, showing the chief a slideshow on Kat’s phone. ‘These are hidden access tunnels: good for sneaking up on aliens. This is the hangar: you’ll want to take out as many of their fighters as you can. And this is an alien. Look at his gun—it’s a laser rifle. I can show your troops how to fire one of those. I have plenty of experience!’
‘Stop,’ the chief said, holding up a hand. ‘That’s enough.’ He nodded to Tank, who took the phone off Jason.
Brandon knew instantly that they had pushed too hard. Their story must sound ridiculous.
‘Maybe what you’re saying is the truth, I don’t know,’ the chief said. ‘We will have to verify these pictures of course. But there’s no time now. The strike is imminent. We already have a strategy that is … almost guaranteed to succeed once we get aboard the enemy craft. There’s no time to rethink the whole thing now.’
‘But—’ Jason began.
‘Lock these two down in the rec room,’ the chief ordered. ‘We don’t want them underfoot during final preparations.’
Tank looked almost disappointed, but he nodded.
‘Don’t worry,’ the chief said to Brandon and Jason. ‘You’ll be quite safe here. I promise.’
Outside, a siren began to wail.
Tank marched Brandon and Jason across the airfield with a hand firmly on each of their shoulders. The activity around them had intensified, and Tank stopped a marine he recognised to ask him what was going on.
‘Wolf Squadron took out the saucer’s quake beam, but then most of them got wiped out by laser fire. The saucer’s on its way here now. Are you part of this last-ditch mission they’ve got planned, Tank?’
‘Operation Tempest? Yep,’ Tank replied. ‘And it looks like it’s going to be sooner rather than later. We were hoping for some support from the US Air Force, but it looks like they left it too late.’
Brandon wondered if Karkor and Gem had gotten to the saucer yet, and what would happen when they did. Would the saucer, under Karkor’s control, call off its attacks? Whatever, he had to get up there somehow. He was watching the activity on the airfield. Under the wing of the stealth bomber, a familiar figure was making final checks.
‘Meet you at that bomber,’ Brandon said to Jason, and took off at a run before Tank could stop him. He dodged past groups of pilots and ducked under the noses of their jets. He ran up to the man under the stealth bomber and caught his arm.
Lieutenant Hewson turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘I had a feeling that I might see you again, Brandon,’ he said. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘I did,’ Brandon replied, breathing heavily after his run. ‘Long story, but now the aliens have it and I need to get it back. What about you? We last saw you driving south trying to outrun an earthquake.’
Hewson gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘When this is over, I’m going to write a book about all the crazy things that have happened to me this weekend.’
‘MI Zero has a secret cliff-top fighter base on the south coast that I managed to reach,’ he said. ‘Well, they did have until the aliens levelled it. But I managed to get out in this beauty’—he slapped the hull of the bomber—‘and bring it back here.’
‘Is it loaded?’ Brandon asked.
‘With a nuclear bomb? It will be.’
‘The saucer’s bomb-proof,’ Brandon told him. ‘You said so yourself that they’d tried to nuke it.’
‘That’s true,’ Hewson agreed. ‘The saucer’s impenetrable … from the outside.’
Brandon looked around him, at the masses of fighter jets surrounding the stealth bomber, all being readied for take-off. There was a hush over the entire base though, despite all the activity. The pilots prepared quietly.
‘This is a suicide mission,’ Brandon realised. ‘All these jets are going to soak up the saucer’s firepower while you try and land this stealth bomber inside it and then set off the bomb!’
Hewson smiled sadly. ‘You weren’t hoping for a ride, were you?.’
Jason arrived at the scene with Tank hot on his heels. Jason was amazed to see Hewson, and he jumped to attention with a crisp salute. ‘Private Brown reporting for duty, Sir!’ he quipped. Tank laughed.
‘We need to be on this mission,’ Brandon said seriously. ‘It doesn’t have to be a one-way trip.’
Hewson considered for only a moment. He went up the ramp at the back of the bomber and brought back a black fire-resistant Nomex suit and helmet. ‘I could do with a co-pilot,’ he said.
‘You go,’ Jason told Brandon. ‘But listen, no messing around this time. When you get close to your alien cylinder, you use it to bring down the bad guys. Then it’s straight back here to save Kat.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Brandon assured him. Then he noticed something on the far side of the airfield: Discord had been brought inside the base on the back of a long tank transporter. Although one of the rear thrusters was completely destroyed, now that the ship was upright again the damage didn’t look as bad as he had first thought. Could he get Discord flying again? He would have to get back into the ship’s computer and run a diagnostic.
‘You go with Hewson,’ he told Jason. ‘I’ll follow.’
Hewson looked across at Discord. ‘In that? It looks like its next trip should be to the scrapheap.’
‘Hey, that’s my ship you’re talking about,’ Brandon said as he headed off on his own.
Discord really was Brandon’s ship now—in fact it was the only thing he had left he could call his own. He had lost his home and all his possessions—not that a collection of computer games and Lego sets seemed important right now—and of course he had lost his entire family. Gem was as good as lost to him too. He wondered if he could ever bring her back from whatever dark place her thirst for revenge had taken her. Words and negotiation weren’t exactly his strong point.
What exactly was his strong point? A clear head and a logical mind? Hardly the stuff that heroes were made of. Sitting alone in Discord’s cockpit, he studied the computer analysis of the ship’s state of repair: with one of the four main boosters out, as well as the rest of the damage that the ship had suffered in its adventures, the diagnosis was that Discord was operating at fifty-two percent functionality. Well, it could have been worse; Brandon still reckoned that he could fly it. Dravid’s parting shot hadn’t completely crippled the ship, and it was probably only because Jason had lost control that they had crashed.
From out of the cockpit window, Brandon could see a team gathering around Hewson’s bomber. The Chief of Joint Operations was there, carrying the metal case that Brandon had seen earlier. Tank, Lucky and six other armed marines were there too. The smallest soldier—Lucky—had the largest weapon: a metre-long minigun, fed by lengths of linked ammunition that she wore wrapped around her in bandoliers. Jason, dressed in black, and faceless in his helmet, stood beside Hewson for the team’s final briefing. Then everyone boarded the bomber via a ramp at the back.
B
randon searched Discord’s systems until he found the communications interface. There were hundreds of channels open around the base, but Brandon took a chance on one labelled MI0B2SSB and tuned in. ‘Testing one two three,’ he said out loud.
‘Is that you, Brandon?’ Hewson answered. ‘This is supposed to be a secure line.’
‘You need to update your security if you want to be alien-proof,’ Brandon joked. ‘Are you about to take off?’
‘As soon as we can. Jason’s sat right beside me. The chief and the rest of the team are in the back. I’ll patch you through so you can listen in to what they’re planning.’
The bomber started to roll towards the runway, joining a queue of jets hurrying to get airborne. Brandon engaged the smaller thrusters beneath Discord and slowly began to rotate the ship into position. If anyone noticed, it would be too late to stop him. As his hands worked the controls, he listened in on the conversation in the back of the bomber.
‘Don’t look so terrified,’ the chief was saying. ‘I’ve got my hands on some new intel that could swing this mission for us.’ He must be showing them the pics on Kat’s phone. ‘These configurations here are the hangar bay airlocks, and here … here are the weakest points of the opening mechanism. A precise tactical missile should be enough to knock them out and get us inside.’
The bomber’s engines fired up and the menacing black aircraft shot down the runway. Brandon hit the thrusters of his own ship and took to the skies. There were almost a hundred jets in the air above the base—more than there was room for on the airfield below. He could never hope to fly among them unnoticed. Brandon pushed a button on the flight console.
‘Brandon?’ Jason’s voice came through. ‘You just vanished? Did you crash?’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic,’ Brandon said. ‘I’ve engaged active camouflage, that’s all I’m the fast-moving rain cloud just behind you!’
Hewson was impressed. ‘Whatever technology that ship is packing, it’s obviously a lot more effective than the anti-reflective paint that this bird is smothered in. Stealth bombers are not as invisible as people think.’
