by Barry Kirwan
A sizzling slash of electric blue fizzed through the cockpit in front of Micah. The pilot’s body transformed into a flaming corpse. Micah panicked as the jet pitched downwards, a forest looming ahead. His hands groped around his seat, desperately seeking the eject lever. Just as the jet began a somersault, he found it and pulled hard. There was a roar of noise as his head was squeezed down by the sudden wind, pile-driving his head into his shoulders. He gripped the edges of the seat as he shot upwards, and then sickeningly downwards, cart-wheeling through a dizzying alternating vista of trees and sky, until the parachute opened and his chair righted itself. He watched as another blue arc sliced through the jet, cleaving it in two. It disintegrated into myriad fireballs hurtling into the forest.
He rocked under the parachute, and caught sight of the Q’Roth ship passing overhead – resembling a helicopter but moving parallel with him. He was close to the tree-line and made the decision. He had no idea where the courage came from – he just knew he had only seconds to escape. He held his breath and thumped the parachute release buckle on his chest strap, and launched himself towards the tree canopy.
***
Kat’s face was incredulous. "Are you seeing what I’m seeing?"
Rashid re-checked his instruments. "It cannot be! There are low level fighter jets down there!"
"I’m picking up radio transmissions," she said, "but they’re still garbled. Probably short-wave radio, or XHF – military!"
Although Kat was still shaken-up from the chase, she worked furiously on the comms console to try and break through. "Come on!" she said, punching the panel with her fist. "I can’t make it out, Rashid, but I heard something, and I’d swear it was English." She glanced over at Zack who still hadn’t come round despite the stims injected into him five minutes earlier. Please, wake up Zack!
"We must dock," Rashid said. "Then we will have more chance of communicating from orbit."
"How long till then?"
"Fifteen minutes," Rashid said, but Kat could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
She was staring at her comms screen when black dots began to appear. She tried to speak to Rashid but her own voice sounded far away. She shouted, louder, as her vision blackened, and all the noise in the cockpit became muffled. She heard a faint voice, that of Rashid, as if from another room, growing fainter.
"Kat! Can you hear me?"
She had the sensation of floating, barely aware of her body. She realized it must be the node, but it felt different this time. Rashid’s voice was gone, but another voice, somehow familiar, was growing louder. What was it saying? She tried to figure it out. Then it cleared.
"Open your eyes!"
Yes, she thought, my eyes are closed. With a supreme effort of will she opened her eyes, and saw not Rashid, but Blake. The image was very clear – Blake was standing in front of her and Pierre lay unconscious, in odd surroundings. He was talking directly to her.
"… hope you can hear me, there’s not much time. Kat – repeat this to Rashid and Zack. I’m communicating through a Hohash connection. I can see through your eyes, and you’re seeing via the Hohash; it’s here in this craft. Pierre and I are both alive. We’re in a spider ship. You must tell Earth that invasion is imminent. Nano-weapons and nukes are the only defense – I know we have almost none of the former and the latter doesn’t help Earth either, but it’s that or nothing. Stay in orbit for now, this place is swarming with Q’Roth. Tell them Kat. And tell Zack Omega Kappa. Repeat it all now, say it out loud so Rashid can hear!"
She recited everything to Rashid, dully, listlessly, like a poem she didn’t understand. Blake nodded throughout, and at the end seemed to relax. Then he said he was going to break the connection. Kat didn’t react, just continued to float. She closed her eyes again, and began to fall, hearing a noise like an aircraft landing on her head.
She snapped awake, gasping for breath, standing straight up, nearly hitting the ceiling. "Bloody hell, that was weird!" She leant against the bulkhead behind her console, her head throbbing, her body tingling all over.
"Easy, my friend," Rashid said, re-taking the pilot’s chair. "Calm yourself. That was quite an experience you just had. You saw Blake, did you not?"
She felt as if she’d been possessed. It reminded her of some of the bad trips she’d initially had with the node. "Yes. Blake, and Pierre too, unconscious. Looked in pretty bad shape." She dropped back down into her chair.
"They were in some kind of ship, a small one. And – oh shit, I remember now. There was a human skeleton there, laid out on the floor, and…" She appreciated the value of the detached node state, as the scene flooded back to her.
Zack coughed and swiveled his chair around to face Kat.
"Goddammed difficult to get any sleep around here. I’ve been listening, Kat, most of it, anyways. What was the rest?"
She was relieved to have Zack back. "I could also see past Blake outside the ship. There were Q’Roth, hundreds of them, streaming past. A few were trying to break in."
She watched the blood flow back into Zack’s face, the former sleepy facial tone setting into an iron-hard grimace. With a grunt he heaved himself out of the Captain’s chair, poised above Rashid.
"Out," he commanded.
"Zack," Rashid protested, "you are not fit, and the maneuvering thruster is damaged… We could all die!"
"Then we die. This is taking too fucking long. You’re an okay pilot, but this is war. I’m going to show you emergency docking like you’ve never seen before."
Rashid acquiesced under Zack’s intense stare. Zack fell into the chair, and strapped himself in. "Hang on to something, this is going to be rough."
Rashid got in Blake’s chair just in time. Kat felt herself thrust backwards as Zack fired the engines at full power. After a minute of fast, silent running, automatic collision warnings began to shriek. Zack’s good foot permanently disabled the auditory alarm system. He shrugged. "It was getting on my nerves."
Kat trusted Zack, but as they spotted the bright dot that was the mother ship, and it quickly mushroomed in size before her eyes, she began to wonder just how late he would leave it to apply the brakes.
***
Jennifer ran all the way, thinking of her new mission and mantle passed onto her by Cheveyo: return to Earth, pick up people, and head to the stars. Everything was moving so quickly, she felt breathless. Was the demise of Earth so likely, resistance so futile now that the only recourse was escape? She had only met Cheveyo yesterday, she realized, and her world was already spinning out of control. And yet she’d seen a Q’Roth warrior, traveled in their ship to Eden in the blink of an eye – they were clearly way ahead technologically, and they had the Alicians on their side, presumably ready to tear Earth down from within. She needed Dimitri’s counsel, to anchor her. He would know what to do – especially now she had learned that he’d been genetically advanced. But Cheveyo had told her that she was the one to lead. He clearly had more faith in her than she did.
She arrived at the four-crate perimeter to see a lone figure there. "Yori – Cheveyo is dead," she said, short of breath. "Do we have radio link to the control room?"
The scarecrow-thin Japanese looked at her suspiciously, then, seeing the nanosword tucked in her belt, appeared to come to a decision. He nodded, holding up a small hand-held device. She took it, and pressed the call button, causing a brief crackle.
"Hello? This is Jennifer. Hand me over to…" she paused as she thought about it. "Give me Hendriks, quickly."
A gruff voice came on at the other end of the line. "Come inside, we’ll close –"
"Listen to me very carefully," she interrupted, almost shouting. "They’re coming. Now. Have you figured out the navigation system?"
"Well, yes, in a limited way. For Earth at least, we can select destinations, roughly."
"Set it for Ireland, Dublin if possible."
"But Dublin –"
"Is irradiated, I know, but it means they won’t follow us there. Set it now. We’re t
iming the nukes to go off in three minutes." She nodded to Yori, who pulled out a pad and started tapping into it.
"I’m coming up with the key to start the engines."
"Nukes? Now you just wait a goddamned minute!" Hendriks shouted.
Yori showed her the pad.
"The nukes are set, Hendriks, and they can’t be unset. Fix coordinates for Dublin. Do it or we all die! And close the outer doors, I don’t want to take back any uninvited guests!"
She clicked off the transmitter, turned to Yori, and they bolted inside, seconds before the doors began to close. She wondered if they could reach the control room, seven floors up and inside the central part of the ship, in three minutes, when Yori headed left towards an electric buggy.
"One of the engineers brought it along," he said, with a wafer-thin smile.
As they jumped inside, the tires screeched and they sprang forward, zipping across the lower floor towards the ramp. They careened up the spiral walkway at speed, so she had to hang on for fear of being thrown out, with one hand clutching the ankh. Yori at one point grabbed her waist to haul her inside. Abruptly they shrieked to a halt. Hendriks, along with some other men, stood in her path.
She noticed some kind of artifact that looked like a large antique mirror, now propped up against the wall. Kostakis was staring at it, and then turned to catch her eye. He flicked his head with an expression of concern toward Hendriks and his men.
"Who put you in charge?" Hendriks demanded.
She knew she had to do this right. She thought of Cheveyo. What would he do?
"Listen, there’s two minutes till the nukes go off. I have the key to get us out of here."
Hendriks unfolded his arms and wagged his finger close to her face. "Who gave you the right? Give me the key!" He spat the words.
"Stand down, Hendriks. I called you just now because you’re a man of decision and logic. Don’t prove me wrong."
A man called out from behind Hendriks. "Sir, there’s something approaching us on our perimeter radar."
Jennifer held her ground. Blink, you bastard. Still he blocked her path.
"Sir," the radar operator said. "There’s one ahead of the rest. It’s… he’s human, Sir, no doubt about it. The others aren’t, and are closing fast."
Shit!
Hendriks’ lips warped into a crooked smile. She noticed her new associate, Yori, draw away from her, leaving her standing alone.
"So," Hendriks said, "you want us to leave him to die here? Playing Miss God today, are we?"
She stopped trying to play Cheveyo – he’d told her it was her time, so she had to be herself. "Listen, you idiot, if we wait, they’ll get in, and we’ll all die!"
Hendriks spoke to the two heavy-set engineers next to him. "Hold her, and take the key. Open the –"
He didn’t finish the sentence. As the two men went to grab Jennifer, she reached for the nanosword to find it was gone. She stared in disbelief as a blue line sliced through Hendriks’ neck. His eyes registered surprise, then his head toppled forward off his collapsing body.
Everyone froze, staring from Hendriks’ cauterized headless corpse to the young Japanese man holding the nanosword, its blue blade pulsing. "Your instructions, Jennifer?" Yori said.
She swallowed. Hendriks’ two men retreated inside the room. She called over to the radar operator. "Will he make it? How close behind are they?"
"He’s ninety seconds away but they’re closing on him, and the doors open and close on a thirty-second cycle."
Everyone stared in her direction, while she focused only on Dimitri, who was looking at her as if he had just worked out that he did not really know her at all. She realized the feeling was mutual, given what Cheveyo had just told her. She parked it.
"Do you trust me, Dimitri?"
"With my life," he answered.
She threw the key across the room to him. "Everyone take a deep breath." She nodded to Dimitri. "Do it."
***
Micah sprinted for the ship, trying to ignore the pain in his legs and lungs. The creatures weren’t that far behind – he didn’t know exactly how far, and he didn’t want to know. He had a gash across his face and his left arm was badly sprained, but he’d been lucky with the fall.
Through the trees he caught tantalizing glimpses of the huge black metallic ship in the early sunlight, and at one point saw the huge open doors at its base. His heart raced, and he ran faster – he was going to make it! He didn’t shout, he was too breathless from running. He reached the edge and burst through a thick patch of bushes, the monstrous ship looming up in front of him. But the doors were sealed.
"No! No! Wait, wait for me, damn you!" he yelled, and sprinted across the last hundred meters of the clearing towards the towering ship. He heard a rumbling sound. "God, no, please God, no, don’t do this to me!" But half way across, there was an ear-splitting thunderclap and he was whisked off his feet, sucked towards where the ship had been a second before.
He landed on the hard ground in a sirocco of dust, and then the roar of wind and random static discharges dissipated. He looked up, and struggled to his feet. He could hear a growing noise, a stampede in the bushes behind him, and then a shrill screaming of alien rage. He glared up at the empty sky in disbelief. "Bastards! You fucking bastards!" He stared around as if drunk. It was then he noticed the nuclear devices. He ran over to one and read the digital timer: fifty-eight seconds. He wanted to punch the sky, but all he could do was squat down, put his fingers in his hair and pull hard. "Fuck! Oh fuck!" He looked back to where he had come from, and saw the leaders of the herd of Q’Roth burst into the clearing behind him. He turned and ran blindly into the sliver of forest at the other side of the clearing, toward the desert, sweat streaming down his face and back.
Chapter 47
Battle for Eden
Blake recoiled into a defensive stance as a young Q’Roth warrior whip-lashed two legs, praying-mantis-style, at one of the craft’s port-holes. But the thud sounded distant, and the ship did not rock, nor was the window even scratched. Blake forced himself to relax. The freshly-hatched Q’Roth from the upper cavern had tried to break inside, but Blake had sealed the hatch after he’d brought the skeleton in – he didn’t know why, he just didn’t want to leave it where it had been in this God-forsaken place.
Since entering the single-room, saucer-shaped ship, the trickle of warriors had grown into a stampede of thousands pouring past like horizontal metallic rain with claws. The young Q’Roth raced along like pack-animals driven by the need for food, following their instincts towards the huge underground ship he knew would take them to Earth, where they would feed.
After enabling him to contact Kat and the others, the Hohash had remained inert. Blake therefore tried to read the faint ink on the parchment journal written by the dead man. Thankfully, he had written in English – even if it was a little archaic. Blake presumed he had churned out the whole thing in the last days of his life.
It confirmed most of what he already knew about the Q’Roth. The man had belonged to a sect calling themselves "Sentinels", and had travelled there alone in one of the large ships. What had stunned Blake had been the apparent instantaneity of the voyage.
"Copernicus was right, after all. The stars slid beneath me as I was bathed in a silver liquid that left no trace. I have spent the past twelve days traversing Hades, seeing not another soul, except when I see myself in a mirror which shows me horrors worse than I can imagine. I have tried to break the devil’s eggs, but I grow weak and cannot inflict even a scratch on their surface. Alessia was indeed evil to deal with these creatures. I have seen one, atop the hill. My only solace as death approaches is that I will not see one again. It is difficult not to feel that we are doomed to feed these monsters, and that God has forsaken us. I pray that when the time comes, there are those who can rise above our petty human failings and unite to defeat such a gruesome enemy."
Blake closed the book, and held his thoughts silent for a moment, in memory of this
Sentinel, yet another fallen unknown soldier.
Pierre had been right about the terraforming, because according to the journal, when the Sentinel had arrived in 1756, the volcanic land was still settling, with violent purple dust storms, and no vegetation. It meant no food and, more importantly, water too alkaline to drink, so the man had died as soon as his supplies ran out. He’d had neither a way to take the large ship back to Earth, nor a way to open the Hohash craft. This raised the question for Blake of how Pierre got it open.
The new information Blake got from the journal concerned the secret order known then as the Pentangle of Alessia, and the conflict between them and the Sentinels. Blake had to stop reading several times, as the impact of the brief journal weighed heavy upon him – the discovery of a secret war enduring for centuries, the plotting to sell out Earth as a bio-electric supply – it was unbearable. He gazed at the skeleton, wondering how many Sentinels had met equally unknown, unacknowledged fates – and wondered if any still lived.
Pierre stirred, his eyes flickering open. Blake sat on his haunches next to him. "Pierre, can you hear me?"
Pierre grunted, and then coughed, holding his arms over his chest and ribs to limit the pain.
"Pierre – how did you get in, and how do we get out of here?" He propped Pierre up against the inner wall.
Pierre looked out of the window. Blake followed his gaze – the number of Q’Roth ebbed, and the stragglers no longer seemed interested in them, probably for fear of being left behind.
"They can’t get in," Pierre said. "The spiders, the masters of the Hohash mirrors, were cleverer than believed."
Blake nodded, but added "What’s going on, Pierre. You never avoid direct questions. Tell me, before you…" Blake didn’t want to finish sentence. He had committed himself to saving Pierre, but he seemed in bad shape, and now he assumed they would both die, joining the Sentinel on the floor.
