“Shut up you little prick,” said Sam. She seemed fully recovered except she was obviously avoiding Barraclough's eyes.
“Let's go,” Barraclough said.
“What about Drukk?” Wayne asked.
“What about her?” said Barraclough.
“Him,” said Drukk.
“She hasn't got anywhere to go,” said Wayne.
“He,” said Drukk.
“Not my problem,” said Barraclough.
“But it's not fair,” said Wayne. “Drukk risked her life to save us all.” With a sigh, Drukk gave up the struggle to have his true gender recognised. “She got us all out of the ship. It was only ten minutes ago, Sam. Even you can't have forgotten that quickly.”
Sam, glad of the chance not to talk about what just happened between her and Barraclough, said, “Drukk can just go back to the ship. No one knows she helped us. She'll be all right.”
“The ship knows,” said Drukk. “I don't want to go back there.”
Sam shrugged. “Well, the other ship then. They'll take you.”
“I don't want to go back to Vingg.”
“We should get going,” said Barraclough again, still not seeing how a stray alien's problems were anything to do with him.
Wayne stepped up to Drukk and took his delicate, beautifully manicured hand in his own. “We owe her, Sam. And, besides...” His chin went up and a defensive determination firmed his lips. “...This is the woman I love. I can't hide my feelings any more.” He turned to Drukk. “When this is over, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Oh, for God's sake!” Barraclough said and set off into the rubble to find what was left of the air base.
Sam watched him leaving, anxious to follow. Wayne continued to look into Drukk's big, beautiful eyes, while Drukk looked back into Wayne's misty ones with his usual mixture of confusion and incomprehension.
“Wayne...” Sam wanted to tell him what an idiot he was. She wanted to tell him what a fool he was making of himself. She wanted to clip him across the ear and send him home to somewhere safe. But, seeing his proud, happy, anxious expression, all she had the heart to say was, “Come on, you two. We'll talk about this later.”
She set off after Barraclough, and Wayne and Drukk followed behind, hand in hand.
-oOo-
The Super Hornets of 1 Squadron were making individual attacks on Chuwar's ship now, having quickly realised that the alien gunners were so inept that, as long as they didn't fly in a straight line for more than a moment, the only real danger was a lucky shot. Their own shots were far more accurate, but they were armed only with air-to-air missiles and machine guns, neither of which made the slightest dent in the ship's armour. It was a stalemate, but at least they were drawing fire away from the buildings, which were big enough and still enough even for the aliens to hit most of the time.
Air Commodore Braby watched the twisting, gut-wrenching aerobatics of his fighters and said a silent thank you to the pilots. He dragged himself to his feet, checking himself out. No broken bones.
“Braby, is that you?”
He turned to find Group Captain Aspen who was sitting among the ruins not far away. “Ross! Are you all right?”
“Leg's a bit crook.” His right leg was twisted at an odd angle and was probably broken. Braby inspected it quickly but could find no bleeding or protruding bones. “Haven't spotted the general yet.”
Braby looked around. A few more survivors were moving about, some of them quite a long way away, but the general was not among them. What he did see though, standing proud and beautiful, far away among the wreckage, was the alien woman in her wedding dress along with her scantily-clad, identical entourage. None of them seemed to have been harmed. Not one had a hair out of place. That had been in the briefing material too, he recollected. Personal force fields that made them invulnerable to gun-fire, and, it now seemed, to being blown up.
A burning rage consumed him. Let's see if they're invulnerable to having their necks squeezed, he thought. He staggered towards them through the shattered remains of his office building, so focused on the Vinggans that he didn't even see the group of kangaroos hopping by in the distance with an army major running behind them, waving his arms and shouting.
Smoke stung his eyes and hid the Vinggans. He almost tripped over a sign that had once hung in reception. Beneath a layer of dust, it said, “Customer Service Centre”. He picked up a piece of pipe that was lying beside it. “Fucking aliens,” he said, hefting it.
“Oof!” the rubble said from beneath him.
He looked down to find he was standing on a man's stomach.
“For God's sake, get off me you idiot.”
Braby blinked at the white eyes bulging at him from a dusty face. “General?”
“Braby, you fuckwit, get your bloody foot off me.”
“Yes, sir!” He jumped back, almost falling over. His first reaction was to stand to attention, but then common sense prevailed and he bent down to help his fallen comrade.
“Are you injured, sir.”
“Well, I think my stomach's crushed, but apart from that –” He winced as Braby helped him into a sitting position. There was blood on the general's arm and more on the side of his head. “I think I'll be all right,” he said, climbing to his feet with considerable help. “You?”
“Not a scratch, sir.” Which wasn't quite true, but close enough.
“The others?”
“Aspen's over there. Broken leg. There are a few others too. Considering the state of the building, it's a bloody miracle any of us made it. The ladies all seem fine.” He nodded towards Braxx and the others and Treasure followed his gaze, but all they could see was smoke.
“Well, I feel so much better knowing they're safe.”
“I was just on my way to see if I could change that,” said Braby, realising at once how stupid that was. “Do you feel up to another round of guess what the fuck is going on, sir?”
Treasure looked grim. Perhaps he was hurt worse than he was letting on, Braby thought. “Yeah, let's see what our celebrity overlords have to say for themselves.”
-oOo-
Braxx was fuming. He was going to have that oversized Pakka grub stuffed and roasted and served at the Pebbles' next compulsory bring-and-buy barbecue fundraiser. And his scabby little black pet. And every one of those hideous troll things that infested his palace.
“Drukk!” he shouted, using the communicator. “Drukk! Open fire on that damned idiot.”
Drukk, who at that moment was just out of sight behind a burning building, walking along with his human friends, took a while to respond. When he did speak, it was hesitantly. “Er, is that you, Braxx.”
“Of course it's me! Who else would I be?”
“Right. Yes, of course. Only I can't see your clothing, you see.”
“It's white. White, you fool. Now do as I said.”
“What was that again?”
“Shoot that great, stupid buffoon!”
“Ah, yes. Right. And which great stupid buffoon would that be? There are rather a lot of them about.”
“Chuwar, you fool. Chuwar. Shoot his ship. I want it reduced to slag right now.”
Again Drukk hesitated. “I don't think I can do it.”
“What? As Acting Governor of this crap heap, let me remind you that you have complete authority to kill whoever you like within a light year of the planet. And as your spiritual adviser, according to Imperial Law, I get to pick the targets.”
“Yes, yes. I mean I don't think my hand weapon would have much effect on it. The ship's only non-Vinggan tech, but it looks pretty solid. The human missiles aren't even making a dent in it.”
“Then use the terajoule lasers. No, wait. Use the petajule laser. Let's really fry his scaly, green hide.”
“I'd love to, Braxx, but I'd have to be aboard the ship to fire it.”
“But you are on the ship.”
“Well, actually, no, I'm not.”
“But yo
u're our only space corps member. You have to be in the ship to shoot down our enemies.”
Drukk didn't want to point out that the ship seemed quite capable of doing everything – including that – without any help from the space corps. “But isn't Chuwar your friend? I thought you said he was going to let you convert his dominions or something. Has he changed his mind?”
“No, but he tried to kill me. As a loyal soldier of Vingg, you should defend its citizens against alien attacks. Especially me. So get back to the spaceship and blow him to pieces right now. What are you doing out here anyway? This is no time to be strolling about sightseeing. Besides, there's nothing much to see apart from some piles of rubble.”
Drukk steeled himself. Now was the time to break the news to Braxx that he wasn't going home with them. He tried a few phrases in his mind. Braxx, I don't want to live a lie any more. No, not that. It would only lead to complicated explanations. I've decided to make my home here with the humans. Spirit no! He didn't want to sound like a halfwit. He had almost decided on, Braxx, I have a hideous wasting disease and I can't come back for fear of infecting you all, when Braxx shouted, “Ship?”
“Yes, Braxx?”
“Can you shoot that To'eghan ship without Drukk at the controls?”
“Yes, Braxx.”
“And destroy it utterly?”
“Of course.”
“Then please do so.”
A blinding flash of light, followed by a mighty shock wave, knocked Braxx and his followers and everything else within a half-kilometre radius flat.
One by one, heads began to pop up among the ruins to see what had happened. Braxx himself was one of the last, having been wedged by the blast between two concrete slabs and having had to cut his way out with his blaster. He turned to look at the To'eghan yacht, expecting to see little remaining. But Chuwar's ship was intact and undamaged. Instead, the remains of his own ship – a few half-molten struts reaching up from a blackened mass of cinders beneath a large, slowly-rising mushroom of black smoke – bore mute witness to something having gone terribly wrong.
-oOo-
Standing between Chuwar's ship and the ruins of the Vinggan's was a tall, black, humanoid figure, unseen beneath its invisibility dome. The figure's grey eyes scanned the rubble. They came to rest on Braxx.
Ah, there you are, thought the Agent.
Chapter 40: Convergence (Remix)
All eyes were on the smouldering wreckage of the Vinggan ship. From the ruins of the air base buildings, Air Commodore Braby and General Treasure held onto one another and watched. From near the base's main entrance, John and Marcus and their many charges looked back at the mushroom cloud rising from where the Vinggan spaceship had been. Sam and Wayne, Barraclough and Drukk, climbed a hill of broken concrete to get a better view. All of them struck dumb by what they saw. And, from where the hangars of 2 Squadron had once been, Shorty and her gang gazed in horror at the wreckage of what should have been their ride home.
“Don't move!”
The roos all turned to look. A human woman in a fitted blue dress, sensible shoes, and a corporal's stripes on her epaulettes, stood with a hand-gun pointed at them. “You so much as twitch your noses and I'll blow them off,” the woman said.
“It's only a human,” Shorty said, and they all turned back to stare at the destruction on the tarmac.
Corporal Emily Brownlowe, slightly concussed from several blows on the head sustained during the past few minutes, had hardly credited the memos regarding enemy forces disguised as kangaroos, but now, here they were, as real as the throbbing in her temples, roaming loose on the base and no doubt responsible for whatever the hell was going on.
“Hey! You lot. I want you back in your cage at the double.”
Mostly the kangaroos ignored her, although one big buck turned it's little head towards her and said, “Piss off.”
“Did you hear me?” she yelled. “Get moving now or I shoot.”
Nobody moved. She took aim at the biggest of them. Her eyes kept sliding off the target and her gun was swaying in a way that was quite hypnotic. All the same, she thought she could hardly fail to hit one of them.
She fired. Not a single roo twitched jumped or fell to the ground. She fired again. How could she possibly miss? She fired again, and again. By the time she had emptied a full clip, a man was standing next to her. He was dressed in the uniform of an Army Major, which was pretty weird. “Hang on,” she said, and pulled another clip from the pocket of her dress. “I keep missing,” she told the man. “Can't understand it.” She fumbled with the magazine, but finally got it into the gun. She turned back to to the roos and raised her gun again.
He introduced himself as Les Totterdell and put a hand on her shoulder. “There's no point shooting at them. They have shields of some sort. You'll never get through.”
“My aim's a bit off. That's all.” She squinted down the barrel, trying to force it to stop moving for a moment.
“Come on,” the Major said. “You need to sit down.” He led her over to a low wall and she let him without objection.
“What about the roos?” she said.
“Buggered if I know,” said Totterdell. “My orders were to stop them being stolen by other aliens. Bloody stupid orders I reckon.”
Medics had begun to appear among the ruins, searching for the injured and helping them to safety. “I'll grab one of those fellas and see if we can't get you checked out,” Totterdell said, peering into her eyes and frowning at what he saw there.
Brownlowe was touched by his kindness. “You've got a kind face,” she said. “What's a nice army boy like you doing in a place like this?”
Totterdell had caught the attention of one of the medics and had waved him over. “Wrong place, wrong time,” he said with a wry smile.
“Nice smile too,” she said. “My name's Emily. Do you want to get a drink when this is all over?”
He laughed and she liked his laugh too. “You really have got a bad concussion!” he said. “Tell you what, if you'd still like that drink when you're feeling better, I'd be honoured.”
There was another man pulling at her eyelids and shining a torch in her eyes. Now where the hell had he come from? “Oh yes,” she said. “The medic.”
The two men helped her to her feet. For a moment she panicked, having lost her firearm. She would be is so much trouble if she couldn't find it. But Totterdell said, “No worries. I've got it here.” She reached for it but he held it away from her. “It's all right,” he said. “I'll look after it.”
“You're such a lovely man,” she said. And he was. She just couldn't get over how lovely he was. She waved to him as the medic led her to the waiting ambulances and he waved back in that lovely way of his.
-oOo-
“What did you do? What did you do?” Werpot was goggling in turns at the wreckage of the Vinggan ship and at Chuwar who still had the gun controls in his gigantic claws.
“I didn't do anything, honest. It just blew up.”
“Ships like that don't just blow up! Do you know how sophisticated the systems are in a thing like that? No, of course you don't, but let me tell you, nothing happens by accident, nothing goes wrong without ten self-repairing backups and an army of maintenance bots jumping in to fix it. And if that all goes wrong, it fails safe. It doesn't just nuke itself.”
Werpot tried to keep himself under control, tried to keep his mouth shut, but this was too much. The great galumphing idiot had blown up the Vinggan ship, and if the Vinggans ever found out about this, there would be nowhere in the whole sector that would be safe for them. The Vinggan space corps was well known for being almost robotic in its single-minded pursuit of its enemies. “We're doomed,” he said. “Doomed.”
“But I didn't do anything. I was just shooting at those little gnat things the humans sent.”
Of course he was. Werpot had watched the great buffoon's attempts to shoot down the human jet planes with amused contempt, wondering if he should mention the computer as
sisted targeting systems that would have had them all out of the skies in five seconds flat. But he had kept quiet, enjoying the warlord's frustration.
So, if Chuwar hadn't blown up the Vinggans, who had?
He raced over to the navigation console and scanned the skies. The systems were simple, by N'oid standards, although Chuwar had been impressed by all the pretty colours and whirling holograms when the salesman demonstrated it. A modern cloaked ship would be completely invisible to the primitive sensors the warlord's yacht sported. However, if something had struck at the Vinggans from space...
Werpot wound back through the sensor recordings to the point where the ship exploded and, yes, there it was, a massive energy spike. What it was exactly, the N'oid could not tell, but a particle beam of stupendous power had reached down from space and destroyed the Vinggan ship, like the Tentacle of God squashing a marsh bug.
Chuwar was still prattling on. “Anyway, with the Vinggans gone,” he was saying, “doesn't that mean that the Mechazoid Hoard is all mine now?”
“Huh!” The idea was so audacious that it hit Werpot like a slap on the tertiary brain stalk. Yes, there was a mysterious killer in orbit, who definitely didn't like Vinggans, but he, she, or it was up there. Not down here. And a quick-witted N'oid who acted with speed and resolve might find and claim the hoard before anyone else realised what was happening.
“Yes! You're a genius. Grab your biggest gun and meet me at the ramp. I'll organise a few trolls in case there's trouble.”
He glanced at Chuwar, to check he was on his way, only to find the enormous creature standing over him with a menacing look. He immediately realised his mistake.
“Er, of course, what I meant to say was, that is an excellent idea, Your Magnificence, and may I please be permitted to fetch a troop of trolls and await your pleasure by the exit ramp?”
“I think I've changed my mind.”
What mind? Werpot fought down the words and, instead, said, “As is your prerogative, O Mighty Chuwar. If you don't want to go out there and snatch the Mechazoid Hoard for yourself while everyone else is still confused by being blown up in one way or another, I am, as always, ready to accept the profound and subtle wisdom of your choice.”
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