Passage to Paradise

by J. J. Green

  Chapter Thirty-Three – Rogue’s Rescue

  The door opened was opened by a man in a business suit. His mouth fell open, and he hastily slammed the door shut again.

  Dave struggled to his feet. “Great, just great. Gavin got his coordinates wrong. God knows where we’re on our way to. Thank goodness he didn’t put us under the train.”

  Fear replaced Carrie’s shock, clutching at her heart and banishing concerns about how they had ended up there. “We have to get off. I have to get home. Rogue’s going to get away.” She threw open the door and bowled over the waiting businessman as she ran into the nearest carriage. “Please,” she said to a woman sitting with a young child. “Where’s this train going? What’s the next stop?”

  “Birmingham New Street,” replied the woman, placing an arm around her child and drawing it closer.

  “Birmingham,” blurted Carrie, turning to Dave, who had followed her. “We’re on our way to Birmingham. It’ll take hours to get home. Hours.” Her chin trembled and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dave. “He’s got his tag on, hasn’t he? With your phone number? Even if he does go wandering off, someone’s bound to catch him and call you.”

  The train was packed, and Carrie and Dave were forced to stand in the corridor next to the businessman who had surprised them in the toilet. The man opened a newspaper and held it in front of his face, every so often lowering it and peering at them over the top. Carrie clutched her phone, ready to answer it the minute there was a call. She stared bleakly out the window at the British countryside rushing past. Dave tried to engage her in conversation about how they had ended up on the train, but she couldn’t say a word. At Birmingham, they changed trains, catching the next service back to Northampton.

  No call came for Carrie in all the time it took them to return to her flat. As soon as the taxi drew up outside the building, she leapt out and ran down the street, calling Rogue’s name. When she didn’t see him anywhere down one end of the street, she ran down the other end, shouting the whole time. She was about to try the adjoining streets when she noticed her phone was ringing. It was Dave. “Hello?” she answered breathlessly. “Have you found him?”

  “He’s here, Carrie. At your flat. I think he’s been here all along. You better get back, quickly.”

  “Is he hurt? What’s wrong?” She was already running, teary-eyed.

  “He isn’t hurt, don’t worry. But someone might be if you don’t get back here soon.” She barely heard his final sentence. He’d said her dog wasn’t hurt. Everything was going to be okay. As she entered the building, she heard Rogue barking and growling above. Climbing the stairs, she saw Dave standing outside the door to her flat. His arms were folded and he was wearing a bemused look.

  “I’m glad you’ve arrived,” he said. “He won’t take any notice of me.”

  The door to her flat was open, and Rogue was in the doorway, his body stiff and his tail erect. Cowering just inside the flat were Apate and Notos.

  “Make your horrible animal stop. We’ll go back, we promise,” said Apate. “Oh, please make it stop.”

  “Rogue, come here.” The dog immediately ran to meet Carrie as she reached the top of the stairs, and he leapt up to lick her face. As Apate set a foot outside the flat, however, Rogue gave a loud bark. She quickly withdrew it.

  “Please arrange a gateway to Dandrobia,” said Notos. “We’ve learned our lesson. We’ll go quietly.”

  “You two aren’t going anywhere, not for a little while anyway,” said Carrie.

  “What?” said Dave.

  Carrie motioned everyone inside and closed the door. Rogue ran to his water bowl and began slurping. He must have been barking and growling for hours, for all the time it took them to get home. But before she sent the dandrobians back to their home planet, Carrie wanted some answers. She made the aliens go into her living room and sit down on the sofa. Standing in front of them, her hands on her hips, she said, “Tell me, what did you do?”

  “What does it matter, darling? We’re very sorry and we promise we won’t try to escape again.”

  “Cut the crap,” said Carrie.

  Apate and Notos exchanged glances. The male dandrobian lowered his head. “I left your home but Apate remained, hiding in your bedroom. I didn’t make it far before your animal caught up with me, and forced me to return.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. When Dave and I were returned to Earth, we ended up on a train to Birmingham. My guess is it was the same train we took down to London, and one of you two did something to it while you were alone in the toilet. Something that confused the Transgalactic Council coordinates.” She rubbed her chin. “And that’s why you stayed here, too, isn’t it? Why you never left even though you easily could, and why you tried to confuse us into thinking you had left, so that we’d run after you and leave Apate here alone. It’s something to do with gateway entrances.”

  The two dandrobians did not answer. Apate’s eyes were hooded, and Notos’ expression was uncharacteristically grim. Rogue returned from his water bowl and gave a sharp bark. Both dandrobians flinched.

  Carrie was about to pursue questioning the dandrobians while they were still in fear of her dog, but she changed her mind. Too many questions might alert them to how much she knew, and that maybe the Transgalactic Council knew of their invasion plan. Better to keep them in ignorance. She drew out her translator. “Gavin, I have two dandrobians here, very keen to return home.”

  Gavin answered immediately. “I am exceedingly pleased to hear that. Well done, Carrie. Standby.”

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Carrie added. “I need a bigger uniform.”

  ***

  Carrie exhaled and slumped into a chair as Notos followed Apate through the cupboard underneath her kitchen sink. The door swung closed and the green light faded. She didn’t know what would happen to the two dandrobians when they arrived back in their prison paradise, and for the moment she didn’t care. She stretched and rubbed her neck. She had been on an ocean voyage, turned down the opportunity of a lifetime, taken a ride on a flying horse, and exposed another element in the placktoid conspiracy, and it wasn’t even midday.

  “Have some tea,” said Dave, placing a steaming mug in front of her.

  “What a good idea.” She reached for the sugar bowl, and added a spoonful of sugar to the mug. She was about to take another spoonful but changed her mind. She sighed and stirred her drink.

  “Biscuit?” Dave lifted the lid from her biscuit tin.

  “No, better not,” said Carrie, patting her stomach.

  Her friend looked inside the tin. “Oh.” He replaced the lid.

  “You’ve eaten them all, haven’t you?”

  “I don’t think so. I thought I left at least one or two.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes. A thought struck her, and she began looking around the kitchen, taking a mental inventory.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Dave.

  “Nothing.” Carrie continued to swivel her head round.

  Dave tutted. “I haven’t taken anything.”

  Carrie redirected her attention to her tea. “I didn’t think you had.”

  “Huh!”

  Carrie rubbed her eyes. She frowned. “Those dandrobians must have been pretty keen on convincing me they were under threat. They let the squashpumps invade their brains. You should have seen it. It was terrible.”

  “Maybe they had volunteers, or maybe it was all fake, like the fake me you saw agreeing to the makeover.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’ll ask Gavin later. He might know more by then.”

  “So you’re carrying on with it then?”

  “The Transgalactic Council job? Of course.”

  “Seems a bit dangerous to me. I mean, travelling across the galaxy, fighting with dangerous aliens, flying around hundreds of metres above the ground?” He gave a shudder. “You wouldn’t catch me doing it.”

  “Dave, you just did all thos
e things.”

  Her friend paused, his mug at his lips. He grinned sheepishly. “Oh, yeah.” He took a sip. “Well, you won’t catch me doing anything else risky like that again.”

  Carrie had other ideas, but she was keeping quiet about them for now. She stole a glance out of the corner of her eye. Her silver salt cellar seemed to have gone missing.

  Thanks for reading!

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  TRANSGALACTIC ANTICS

  Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer #3

  (Scroll ahead for a sneak preview)

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  ALSO BY J.J. Green

  mission improbable

  Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer #1

  DEATH SWITCH

  DAWN FALCON

  A FANTASY COLLECTION

  THERE COMES A TIME

  A SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION

  TRANSGALACTIC ANTICS

  Carrie Hatchett, Space Adventurer #3

  Chapter One – Carrie the Maverick

  Carrie Hatchett silently wished she had put on her thermal underwear. She had been crouching for hours in a cold, damp, trench dug by Unity troops, while the siege of the squashpump city dragged on.

  ‘City’ was a loose word to describe the squashpump municipality. It was in fact a massive mound of moist, brown organic matter on a bare, boggy plain. Try as she might, Carrie couldn’t help but see it as a huge manure pile and the squashpumps as large, intelligent, civilised slugs.

  “Ma bairns, ma bairns.” Nearby—close enough for Carrie’s translator to pick up its squeaks and transform them into Scottish-accented English in her mind—a squashpump official sat, or lay. At the beginning of the negotiations several days earlier, this squashpump, who went by the name of MacDougal, had been calm and professional, but over time it had weakened under stress and concern for its family. According to official estimates, roughly 236,000 squashpumps were being held hostage by the placktoids, a mechanical alien species intent on taking over the galaxy.

  Wincing as she moved her cramped muscles, Carrie went over to the distressed squashpump and sat beside it. “I’m sure there’ll be some progress soon. We’ll get your children out. How many do you have?”

  The squashpump reared up, lifting its upper end five or six centimetres off the ground, and sprouted multi-coloured soft tentacles. “One thousand and seventy-eight, give or take one or two. I can ne’er keep count of the wee rascals. Oh, and three hundred and twelve eggs.” Its tentacles flopped. “What’s t’ become o’ them?”

  “One thousand and seventy-eight? That is a large family.” Carrie tried to imagine what it must be like to be a parent to so many offspring. “We haven’t heard from the placktoids for a while. They must be about to agree to surrender. With Unity or Transgalactic Council presence on every habitable planet across the galaxy, they don’t have anywhere to go. They might be hostile, but they aren’t stupid.”

  “Och, that’s what I mean. It’s taking too long. Yon evil machines are trying t’ figure a way oot. They’ve a trick or two up their sleeves yet, I warn ye.”

  Carrie rubbed her chilled arms and blew into her hands. MacDougal was right. The placktoids were extremely devious. When she had been the first to uncover their illegal activities, they had fooled the Council into believing they were the victims in a dispute with the yellow liquid known as the oootoon, when in fact they had been the aggressors. But their latest plan of invading the squashpump planet had failed. Unity soldiers had driven them from every area to this final refuge. Surely they had no way out? They had no alternative but to surrender.

  “How are the tunnels coming along? They must be nearly finished now,” Carrie asked MacDougal.

  “This evening, they say.”

  “I’ll go and see if there have been any developments,” Carrie said, hoping to find some news to calm the anxious squashpump. MacDougal collapsed limply to the ground as she left.

  Not far down the trench, she found her Transgalactic Council Intercultural Community Crisis Liaison Manager, Gavin, speaking to some Unity soldiers. In their combat gear and helmets with opaque visors, Carrie found the soldiers creepy. Not because they were alien—some were human, or at least humanoid—but their uniforms took on the appearance of their surroundings, like chameleons, which made them hard to spot. She was sure one or two of them had deliberately snuck up on her to make her jump.

  She waited while her huge insectoid manager finished his conversation. A cold wind circulated, and she hugged herself, looking up into the thick, grey clouds that constantly covered the sky. After a few moments the soldiers nodded at her and went away. “Any news, Gavin?”

  “I am afraid we have received no further communications from the placktoids since their most recent expression of defiance. The general consensus seems to be that positive action is required.”

  “What kind of positive action? Not an assault?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  Carrie gasped. “But there are hundreds of thousands of squashpumps in there, and they’re so small. How will the soldiers be able to avoid hitting them? Can’t we wait until the squashpumps have finished digging the tunnels? At least then we can sneak up on them.”

  “We cannot afford to wait, unfortunately. We have not heard from a single hostage since this morning, and the placktoids are fully aware of the squashpumps’ ability to tunnel quickly and efficiently. They know we would not use tunnelling machines because they would detect the vibrations, but that the squashpumps will dig tunnels manually to allow troops to approach the city. We are sure they can also estimate the time it would take and know the tunnels will be completed soon. A crisis point is approaching and we must be decisive.”

  Carrie bit her lip. On her previous assignment she had been in charge of negotiations between the squashpumps and the former tyrants of the galaxy, the dandrobians. While on Dandrobia the squashpump delegation had attacked the dandrobians, and it had taken Carrie too long to discover the real reason—that the placktoids were forcing them to by holding their families hostage on their home planet, and that the dandrobians had been in on the plot from the very beginning, for reasons no one yet understood.

  “I wish I’d spoken to the squashpump delegation earlier and not allowed myself to be hoodwinked by the dandrobians, Gavin. I feel like this is partly my fault. We might have had more time to act against the placktoids and avoided this whole situation.”

  “Your feelings of guilt are irrational and non-beneficial. Please focus on the matter at hand.”

  But Gavin’s news about the proposed assault was not what she wanted to take back to MacDougal. “There must be something else we can do. Can’t we allow some of the placktoids’ demands? Can’t we just confine them to their planet, like we did with the dandrobians?”

  “The placktoids’ ability to create transgalactic gateways makes this impossible. We must be certain no placktoid can escape. It is confinement within the oootoon or nothing.”

  The mysterious, yellow oootoon, through which transgalactic gateways would not operate. Carrie well understood the placktoids’ refusal to give up their only bargaining tool, the squashpump hostages. Living in air pockets within the oootoon for the foreseeable future was not a fate she would resign herself to easily, either. Her heart sank. When it came down to it, a violent end to the siege seemed inevitable. But she could not, would not, allow squashpumps to come to harm. “Gavin, we can’t just let the Unity storm the compost, I mean city. We have to do something. I have to do something.”

  “I appreciate that you are concerned about squashpump safety. Such a sentiment
is natural and admirable. But you must understand you are only one Transgalactic Council Officer within a large team of Council and Unity staff. You cannot and must not act as an individual in this matter. We must all obey the joint decisions made, for our own safety and that of the squashpumps.”

  “But I’ve had personal experience of dealing with the placktoids. I know them. I’m sure if I could speak to them face-to-face I could reason with them.” Though Carrie had been the one to expose the mechanical aliens’ devious plot, she hadn’t been allowed much input into the negotiation process. This was probably because the Council was aware that taking part in long, detailed discussions was not one of her strengths, but being excluded annoyed her, and she was tired of sitting on the sidelines, distant from the action. She itched to take part and be useful.

  “A face-to-face meeting would be far too dangerous,” Gavin replied, “even if you were to possess the authority, which you do not. Please do not even consider such an action. It would be suicide to leave this protected position, and in the event that you did survive to approach the placktoid commander, you could seriously destabilise the negotiation process.”

  Carrie clenched her fists at her sides. “The negotiation process is going to be seriously destablised the moment those troops storm the manure pile. I mean city. There are squashpump babies and eggs in there. Goodness knows what the placktoids will do when the Unity starts to attack.”

  “It is precisely to protect the squashpumps that the Unity must attack, and soon.”

  Frowning at her ten-legged, bronze-carapaced manager, Carrie struggled for an answer, but she couldn’t think of a suitable response. She stalked away without a word. There had to be a better way than a frontal assault. There had to be. Avoiding returning to MacDougal, she went in the other direction, towards the area where the squashpumps were constructing tunnels for the Unity soldiers.