by Tom Bradman
‘I think you’re about to get your chance,’ said Luke. ‘Check out the big bug.’
A large alien had emerged from a hole on the far side of the chamber and was scuttling towards them. Another half dozen aliens were close behind, all armed with laser rifles like the bugs that had burst onto the Buzz Aldrin. The large alien stopped at last in front of the children, and now Luke could see he was wearing a tight, shiny uniform covered in small pieces of metal, like medals. The alien looked uncomfortable, his body bulging out of the uniform in several places.
‘I bid you welcome,’ the alien said in a squeaky voice. ‘I am Prime Admiral K’Klem-Tek, leader of the mightiest race in the universe…the P’tush-faar!’
‘WE ARE THE P’TUSH-FAAR!’ the bugs behind him squeaked loudly. Then they clicked and buzzed like mad and waved their laser rifles over their heads.
‘Never heard of you,’ said Yasmin. The clicking and buzzing grew louder, but Yasmin stood her ground. ‘And I’d like to know why you think it’s OK to attack our spaceship and bring us down here to this nest, or whatever it is.’
‘Ah… I regret your presence, and that of the pale skinny one,’ said the Prime Admiral. ‘I gave strict orders that only The-Amazing-Super-Space-Combat-Pilot-Luke-Riley was to be taken, but my soldiers couldn’t tell you apart.’
‘Amazing-Super-Space-Combat-Pilot-Luke-Riley?’ said Yasmin, laughing. ‘Where in space did you get that? Luke isn’t amazing or super or even a…’
‘They probably got it from me,’ Luke murmured, blushing, a strange thought starting to take shape in his mind. ‘It’s how I sign myself in for War Beyond the Stars. I think they’ve somehow managed to hack into the Buzz’s computers.’
‘Ah, Luke Riley!’ said Admiral K’Klem-Tek, turning to him and clicking with excitement, the others doing the same. ‘Your skills as a combat pilot are truly incredible! We have studied all your campaigns and brought you here to take on a great task, a special mission that can only end in death or glory!’
‘DEATH OR GLORY!’ squeaked the soldier bugs behind him, and soon hundreds more gathered round the children and joined in. ‘DEATH OR GLORY, DEATH OR GLORY!’ they chanted. ‘LUKE RILEY, DEATH OR GLORY!’
Luke stood there in the sea of noise, wishing he could be anywhere else.
Chapter Five
Tricky Situation
The aliens quietened down eventually, and Luke got the Admiral to do some more explaining. It turned out the P’Tush-faar had started scanning the Buzz Aldrin as soon as it had arrived in the star system. They had hacked into the ship’s computer – and seen something that interested them.
‘We saw immediately that the mighty Luke Riley was the one to help us defeat the C’Haaf-shaar and destroy them forever!’ squeaked the Admiral.
Apparently the C’Haaf-shaar were a species of lizards that lived on the other planet the Buzz Aldrin hadn’t been able to scan, and the P’Tush-faar had been at war with them for thousands of years. Nobody could remember why the war had started in the first place, although the admiral did have a lot of nasty things to say about the enemy, and called them some very unpleasant names.
Recently the P’Tush-faar had developed a mega-bomb to destroy the C’Haaf-shaar’s planet. But both sides had long ago devised defences their pilots weren’t skilful enough to penetrate. Then suddenly the Buzz Aldrin had appeared, and the P’Tush-faar believed they had found someone who could do the job for them – The-Amazing-Super-Space-Combat-Pilot-Luke-Riley.
‘Oh, I get it now!’ said Yasmin. ‘You thought what you saw us doing was real and that Luke here is a brilliant pilot. I mean, just how dumb is that?’
‘Actually, Yasmin, you’re being a bit unfair – War Beyond the Stars is a particularly realistic game,’ said Yuri. Then he smiled and turned to address the Admiral. ‘And may I say that entering the game in disguise was a nice touch?’
‘And may I say that you can be a real creep sometimes?’ hissed Yasmin.
‘Game?’ said the Admiral with a flurry of confused clicking. ‘What is a… game? I do not understand. This is something we have never heard of.’
‘Huh, why am I not surprised by that?’ said Yasmin with a snort. ‘You’d better give him the bad news, Luke. Then we can get them to take us home.’
All eyes swivelled to stare at Luke expectantly now, alien and human. He cleared his throat, and wondered what he should say in such a tricky situation.
‘Well… I’m sorry to be a disappointment, Admiral,’ he said at last. ‘I just don’t think I’ll be able to help you. I’m sure I could probably do the job, but…’
Yasmin snorted and rolled her eyes, and Luke stuck his tongue out at her.
‘Of course you can!’ said the Admiral. ‘We have seen how you defeated many powerful enemies – the Ishtreen Alliance, the Zofari Entity, the Vark…’
‘But none of those are real,’ said Luke. The Admiral looked at him blankly, so Luke tried explaining to him what ‘playing a game’ meant, and Yuri and Yasmin joined in.
The Admiral listened, occasionally making clicking noises. Luke began to think that he was getting through to him. He stopped talking after a while and waited for the Admiral to speak. There was a long pause, almost as if the Admiral was processing it all in his brain.
‘No, I’m afraid I still don’t understand,’ the Admiral said at last. ‘Now, if you’d care to come with me I’ll explain the attack plan to you in detail.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Luke groaned, exasperated. ‘Listen, I’m going to make this really easy for you. I wouldn’t do what you want me to even if I could. I won’t help you destroy a whole planet! Your war’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘Yeah, you tell him, Luke!’ said Yasmin. ‘We don’t blow up planets!’
‘Well, that’s not strictly true, Yasmin,’ said Yuri with a stern look. ‘If you remember, our adventure with Alpha ended in the destruction of a planet…’
‘OK, then, fussy boots,’ sighed Yasmin, rolling her eyes. ‘We don’t usually blow up planets deliberately, and we certainly don’t get involved in wars.’
‘So that’s it, then,’ said Luke, smiling at the Admiral. ‘Sorry about the misunderstanding, but maybe next time you won’t hack into the computers of complete strangers! And my advice would be to try and make friends with these lizards. Er… you should all just try to… get… along…’
Luke let his voice fade into silence. The Admiral was staring at him, and Luke could tell that his mood had changed. He looked cross in the way that only a giant alien bugeyed monster in a tight-fitting uniform can.
‘So, you refuse to fight for the P’Tush-faar in our hour of need?’ he said. ‘I’m afraid that is not acceptable. Either you do as we ask – or we kill you!’
The Admiral snapped out an order to the soldier bugs behind him, and the three friends found themselves staring down the silver barrels of half a dozen laser rifles. They looked at each other – and slowly raised their hands.
‘Well, if you put it like that…’ murmured Luke. ‘Amazing-Super-Space-Combat-Pilot-Luke-Riley reporting for duty, Admiral!’
The situation seemed to be even trickier than he had thought.
Chapter Six
Hostile Fighters
Luke, Yasmin and Yuri were hustled along to another part of the nest. At first Luke felt nervous, wondering if they were going to be cocooned in orange slime again and grabbed by the giant pink tendril. But the aliens merely hurried them down long, dark, narrow tunnels, clicking and buzzing, the Admiral in the lead.
Eventually they came to another large chamber – and the three friends were amazed at what they saw. Standing in the centre of the chamber was a space-fighter – Luke’s space-fighter. It looked exactly the same as the ship he always flew in the game. The same bullet-shaped central hull, the same tail-fins, the same weapons modules on either wing.
‘That is so… cool,’ he whispered.
‘Except for that ugly great thing hanging under it,’ said Yasmin.<
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Luke saw what Yasmin was talking about. An evil-looking cylinder made of black metal was attached to the underside of the fighter – the mega-bomb.
‘As you can see, we’ve even built you a replica of your own ship,’ said the Prime Admiral. The children were ushered up a ladder by the Admiral’s guards and took their places in the cockpit. Luke sat in the pilot’s seat, with Yuri and Yasmin in seats just behind him. The aliens left, and immediately the roof of the chamber began to open, a pair of massive doors slowly sliding apart.
The cockpit radio buzzed and the Admiral’s voice came out of the speakers. ‘I’m sending you the battle plan now,’ he said. ‘All you have to do is drop the mega-bomb anywhere on the planet’s surface.’
Graphics showing the other planet appeared on one of the screens in front of Luke. It was surrounded by thousands of heavily armed satellites and space-fighters. Every inch of space for hundreds of kilometres was covered by some kind of deadly weapon. ‘Then we will be victorious! DEATH OR GLORY!’ the Admiral chanted. ‘DEATH OR – ’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ muttered Luke, cutting him off with an electronic squawk. He was already studying the fighter’s controls. They looked pretty simple – a joystick, firing buttons for weapons, tactical data scanners, sensors. Luke smiled. They were in an awful situation – but he couldn’t help feeling that this part was a dream come true.
‘Right, seat belts on, you two,’ he said. ‘Time to see whether they’ve built this thing properly.’
He fired up the engines and the fighter rose gently from the floor. Then he hit the main thrusters and they blasted off on a pillar of fire, the g-force pushing them back into their seats. Seconds later they were in space, shooting away from the planet of the P’Tush-faar and cruising along at speed. The aliens had built the fighter properly. It was incredibly fast and nippy, a real joy to fly.
‘Hey, the scanners are showing the Buzz!’ said Yuri. He had managed to plug his laptop into the fighter’s computer. ‘It looks OK, and it’s not that far away.’
‘What a relief!’ said Yasmin. ‘Come on, Luke – let’s just make a run for it.’
‘That could be tricky,’ Luke said, nodding at the screen showing the fighter’s reverse view. The whole P’Tush-faar fleet was very close behind them. ‘They’ll probably shoot us down if we try to escape, and they might even take out the Buzz, too. No, I think we ought to go along with it for the time being. Once we get through the other aliens’ defences we can tell them about the megabomb and ask them to protect us from this nasty lot. Then we can contact my mum.’
‘That sounds far too complicated,’ said Yasmin. ‘And way too dangerous!’
‘Watch out, Luke!’ Yuri said suddenly. ‘Hostile fighters heading for us.’
‘I see them,’ muttered Luke. A crowd of fighters from the other planet swept in towards them, firing their laser cannons, the glittering beams scorching past. Luke threw his fighter to one side, then the other, and soon he’d got through the first line of defence. But he soon realised that had just been the easy part.
‘Seven, eight… no, fourteen enemy ships on our tail!’ Yuri yelled. ‘They’re firing missiles!’ Explosions blossomed around the fighter, but Luke kept going, dodging through fields of space mines, plunging through an energy field – and at last they saw the planet below, its dark, ominous bulk looming up at them.
Luke eased up on the speed and took the fighter in low, skimming across the brown, rocky surface, looking for a place to set the fighter down. He spotted a flat area near a cluster of dome-like structures, and seconds later they landed with a slight bump, their view through the cockpit obscured by a cloud of dust.
‘Not bad, Riley,’ said Yasmin. ‘But I still think I’m a better pilot than you.’
‘No way!’ said Luke. ‘I was awesome, even if I do say so myself.’
‘Careful, now!’ said Yasmin. ‘If your head gets any bigger it might pop.’
‘Er… guys?’ said Yuri. ‘Could you stop arguing? We’ve got company.’
Luke and Yasmin turned to look out of the cockpit. The dust had settled, and they were surrounded by hundreds of giant lizards pointing weapons at them.
They all seemed pretty angry.
Chapter Seven
Hissy Fits
When Luke had set off for school that morning, he had never thought he would end up meeting an alien leader, let alone two – and on separate planets, come to that. But oddly enough, even though they were from different species, Supreme General G’Gral-Harg and Prime Admiral K’Klem-Tek had a lot in common.
They both wore tight uniforms, the General’s body bulging out of his, just like the Admiral’s. They both had squeaky voices. And they were both rather dim.
‘No, I don’t understand,’ the Supreme General said, and shook his giant lizard head. The C’Haaf-shaar were about the same size as the P’Tush-faar, but were scarier to look at. They bore a strong resemblance to an ancient Earth dinosaur species – T-Rex. ‘I have never heard of this thing you call a game.’
Luke sighed. After they’d landed, he and Yasmin and Yuri had been dragged off to see the General in one of the dome-like structures. The General had sat there, surrounded by soldiers armed with lasers, listening as Luke had tried to explain about being kidnapped by the P’Tush-faar and the Admiral’s plan.
The General had got very angry when he’d heard about the mega-bomb, and the soldiers had all had hissy fits too. Then they had said the same kind of unpleasant stuff about the P’Tush-faar as the Admiral had said about them.
‘This isn’t going very well, is it, guys?’ Yasmin whispered. ‘I think we should just give them the mega-bomb and high-tail it back to the Buzz.’
‘I heard that!’ squeaked the General. ‘And it would not be acceptable! I have a much better idea. We will turn the P’Tush-faar’s treachery on them. You, Luke Riley, will fly their own mega-bomb back to their planet and destroy our enemies forever! We are the mighty C’Haaf-shaar! DEATH OR GLORY!’
‘The mighty C’Haaf-shaar!’ yelled the soldiers. ‘DEATH OR GLORY!’
‘You know, I’m getting so bored with hearing that,’ muttered Yasmin.
‘Excuse me, General,’ said Yuri, raising his hand as though he were in class. ‘I’d like to be absolutely clear on this. What happens if we refuse to do it?’
‘Then we will slaughter all three of you,’ squeaked the General, staring at them with his yellow reptilian eyes. ‘And destroy your home ship as well.’
‘Oh, right, thanks,’ said Yuri. ‘I had a feeling that’s what you might say.’
Five minutes later, the three friends were sitting glumly in their fighter again. Outside Luke could see C’Haaf-shaar fighters taking off, their fleet beginning to gather for the attack on the P’Tush-faar’s planet. The General was climbing into his ship too, and gestured angrily at Luke as if to say, Get on with it, human!
‘Well, that didn’t go quite as I planned,’ said Luke when they were in space. He checked the rear-view screen – the C’Haaf-shaar fleet was close behind.
‘OK,’ said Yasmin. ‘What’s your plan now, Amazing-Super-Space-Combat-Pilot-Luke-Riley? Assuming of course that you do actually have a plan?’
‘I do, as it happens,’ said Luke. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t listen before, Yasmin. You were dead right. We should just get away from here and head for the Buzz.’
‘But what about the mega-bomb?’ said Yasmin. ‘Suppose it goes off? And that big lizard said he’d destroy us and the Buzz Aldrin if we tried to escape.’
‘Simple,’ said Luke, shrugging. ‘We’ll dump the bomb and radio ahead to my mum. If we give her enough warning, the Buzz can be ready to make a run for deep space as soon as we arrive. Can you work out how to do all that, Yuri?
‘No problem!’ said Yuri, already tapping away furiously at his keyboard.
‘Great!’ said Luke. He checked the view-screens once more and gripped the joystick tightly. ‘Time we showed these aliens a clean pair of exhaust tubes.’
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He hit the main thrusters and the fighter shot off, speeding away from the C’Haaf-shaar fleet. The General wasn’t slow to react, though. The fleet chased after the fighter, each ship firing its laser cannons. Luke had to use every bit of his skill to dodge through a crazy, glittering neon web of hot, deadly beams.
Suddenly Admiral K’Klem-Tek appeared on the screen in front of him.
‘You have betrayed us, Luke Riley,’ the Admiral squeaked. ‘Prepare to be destroyed!’
‘I’d been hoping they’d gone home,’ muttered Luke, his heart sinking as he saw that the P’Tush-faar fleet was blocking their way out of the star system.
‘They’re firing missiles at us, Luke!’ said Yuri. ‘Impact in seconds!’
‘Oh, terrific!’ said Yasmin. ‘We’re really dead this time.’
‘I don’t think so…’ said Luke, eyes fixed on his viewscreens. He’d just remembered the map of the star system Mum had shown him, and it had given him an idea. It was definitely their last chance, and a pretty slim one at that – but it was a chance. ‘Plot us a course for the third planet, Yuri. We’re going to swing round behind it and shake off both fleets!’
Chapter Eight
Someone Scary
Luke’s idea seemed to be working. Soon they were heading for the third planet, and most of the missiles whizzed past harmlessly. But one stuck with them, getting closer and closer, and nothing Luke could do shook it off. Suddenly there was a terrific BANG! and the fighter lurched off course. ‘Oh no, we’ve been hit!’ Luke yelled, wrestling with the joystick, trying to keep control.
‘I don’t think we can make it round the planet!’ said Yuri, tapping away at his keyboard, an edge of panic in his voice. ‘You’ll just have to land on it instead!’
‘I’d already worked that out for myself!’ muttered Luke. ‘OK, here we go…’
They plunged into the planet’s atmosphere, and within seconds the whole front of the fighter was glowing a hot, deep red. ‘Nice colour,’ said Yasmin. ‘But doesn’t it mean we’re coming in too steeply and that we’re burning up?’
