by Steve Voake
As the juices began to gather into a pool and spread towards them like an olive-coloured tide, Skipper grabbed Sam by the arm and pulled him further into the back of the hornet.
‘Don’t let it touch you!’ she shouted at him through the smoke. ‘It’s digestive fluid – it’ll eat away your skin!’
They huddled together against the crates at the back of the hornet and as the spider continued to pump in the vile, putrid-smelling liquid, Sam pulled out the CRB, pointed it in front of him and pressed the button. In a flash of blue, a hole opened up in the floor and the soupy fluids poured through it like floodwater down a drain. He turned round to find that Skipper had pulled the lid off one of the crates and was clutching a small detonator in her left hand.
‘I swear,’ she said grimly, ‘that if we make it out of here, Mump will never want for a drink again in his life.’
Then she snatched the CRB from Sam’s hand, opened up a new hole in the floor and pulled a knife from inside her jacket. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘here’s what we’re gonna do.’
Noticing that green liquid was pouring from the base of the hornet, Odoursin angrily turned off the pumps and clamped the spider’s front legs tightly around his prey.
So that was how they wanted to play it…
They wanted to prolong the agony.
Well that was fine.
If he couldn’t kill them with the poison, he would simply open up the hornet like a tin can and slice them into tiny pieces.
Pulling back on the central lever, Odoursin waited until the spider had reared up on its hind legs as far as it would go, then he switched it into attack mode. Powering forward and down with the whole weight of the spider behind them, the sharp fangs tore into the centre of the hornet and split it down the middle like a ripe peapod.
‘Go!’ shouted Skipper as the roof ripped open and the spider’s poison-coated fangs sliced through the air on either side of them. For a brief second, Sam was unable to move, transfixed by the sight of the white-faced Odoursin clearly visible behind the gleaming eyes of the monstrous spider.
He saw the look of hatred on his face, a look of such bitterness and loathing that he knew he had glimpsed a place of unending horror, a place where love had been extinguished for ever.
Then they pulled the tabs from the detonators, threw their arms around one another and jumped through the hole in the base of the hornet.
It seemed to Sam as though they would fall for ever, the cool air rushing past them and the smell of damp earth rising up from below. But then, just as it seemed that they would hit the ground, the strand of web that Skipper had wrapped around her waist reached the end of its length and pulled them up with a jolt, leaving them bouncing gently a couple of metres from the ground.
‘OK?’ said Skipper.
‘OK,’ said Sam.
Pulling out her knife, Skipper sliced through the silvery strand above her head and they fell to the ground with a thump that knocked the wind out of them. Rolling over onto his back, Sam saw the spider in the centre of the web was attacking the hornet with a new ferocity.
Any second now…
Using the spider’s razor-sharp fangs, Odoursin slashed the hornet wide open.
Where had they gone to? He had seen the boy’s terrified eyes, knew he was hiding here somewhere… they both were… there was nowhere for them to run to now… no escape… yes, oh yes, he would kill them, tear their hearts out, make them finally see that he was the One, the saviour of everything, and they would know in their agony that his was the only way, the only way, the only way…
The detonator’s red light blinked faster, faster, faster, and then went out.
… the only way…
Sam covered his face as the massive explosion tore through the hornet and ripped the spider apart in a maelstrom of smoke and flame, hurling tiny fragments high into the night air.
Something crashed, exploding behind him.
Odoursin’s mouth opened in a scream of terror as the explosion howled crimson fury, splitting and vaporising him into a billion flaming atoms.
ahhhhhhh…
bright bright bright
so bright
so bright
so bright…
Embers fell to the ground like stars from another world, settling and cooling on the dew-covered grass, their fires going out one by one, crumbling, becoming dust…
As Sam lowered his hands and felt the warm wind on his face, he saw the flames spread from the heart of the spider’s web and watched its delicate strands curl and crumble in the fierce heat. Smoke drifted across the wet grass and the light from the moon momentarily disappeared behind its dark veil.
He felt a small arm slip inside his own and felt Skipper’s cheek resting against his shoulder.
‘Is that it?’ she whispered, as the smoke swirled around them in thick clouds. ‘Do you think it’s finally over?’
But before he could answer, there was a loud buzzing of insect wings overhead and as he watched the shape of a huge hornet land on the grass in front of them Sam knew that it would soon be over for ever.
Krazni had finally caught up with them.
Exhausted to the point of near collapse, he summoned the last of his strength and stepped in front of Skipper, spreading his arms wide to protect her.
‘Run,’ he whispered. ‘Run away and don’t look back.’
But Skipper just stepped right up beside him and shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Never.’
And then as they stood together, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for their world to end, the smoke cleared and there – standing beneath the hornet in full uniform – was Commander Firebrand.
Sam stared in awe at the man who had struggled through Vahlzi’s darkest hours to come to their aid and said:
‘We thought you were Krazni!’
The Commander smiled then, and shook his head.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘Krazni is dead. I have come to take you home.’
Turning slowly, Sam looked over his shoulder and through the gloom he could just make out the charred wreckage of Krazni’s hornet smouldering behind him.
Then, as Firebrand walked through the smoke and Skipper ran and flung her arms around him, Sam saw at once that this was a new beginning, and that everything would be different from now on.
Thirty
Seizing the advantage of their air superiority, the Vahlzian hornet squadrons were quick to inflict heavy losses on the enemy robber flies over Vahlzi, and soon the fields and woods around the city were littered with the wreckage of insects that had been torn from the skies.
Once the threat of robber flies had been removed, the hornets moved swiftly to attack Vermian supply lines, leaving its soldiers cut off and surrounded by an army of well-organised Resistance fighters.
Thousands of leaflets were dropped over the city, informing Vermian soldiers of the death of their Emperor and encouraging them to surrender. The leaflets assured them that if they laid down their weapons and gave themselves up, they would be well treated and reunited with their families once the war was over.
Weakened by lack of food and constant air attacks, many soldiers surrendered almost immediately. A handful of troops from the Vermian Special Forces continued to fight fiercely among the ruins for several weeks, but in the end even they were defeated by the newly formed Flea Battalion which, in a daring attack, leapt through the ruins at dawn and blew apart the last of their defences.
For the people of Vahlzi it was a time of renewal; a time for slowly rebuilding the homes and lives that the war had torn apart. The cruel years of Vermian rule had taken their toll, but for the most part their spirits had been bruised, not broken. Like children shut indoors on a summer’s day, they had caught glimpses of sunshine and longed for its warmth; now, at last, they were able to walk from the shadows and out into the bright lanes of freedom. Although war against the last remnants of Odoursin’s regime still continued to be waged in the streets and underground tunnels of Ve
rmia, the hornets had control of the skies and – with Odoursin gone and the Vermian leadership in disarray – the end was now in sight.
The winter snow was melting, and as the first green shoots pushed their way up through the earth, so a new energy began to stir in the streets and alleyways of Vahlzi. From their shattered houses, their brick-built hovels and their underground shelters, the people came together, a community of survivors working to raise a new city from the dust. Together they shared a vision of a future without tyranny or oppression; a vision of a life where, at last, they could be free.
The Vahlzian airbase which had been destroyed early on in the war was rebuilt upon the site of the original, reconstructed using materials salvaged from the ruins and rubble of the old one. It was designed not only as a home for the hornet squadrons, but also as a centre of excellence where the best young pilots would come and train to be the air aces of the future. When the war ended they would ensure that the people’s hard-won freedom would not be easily relinquished.
Standing at the window of her room in the plush, newly built officers’ quarters, Skipper looked out at the lights of the city, twinkling in the distance. She watched a large transporter moth take off from the landing zone, bound for the airfields of Vermia which had recently been secured by Vahlzian Special Forces. There was no doubt about it; since they had started using the hornet squadrons to attack Vermian positions in the city, the enemy’s resistance had quickly crumbled. They simply had no weapons that could match the overwhelming superiority of the hornets.
And so, generally, life was good and getting better. The feeling was that if things went according to plan, the war would soon be over and an air of optimism now permeated the whole of Vahlzia, a belief that it was safe to look beyond tomorrow, to plan for a future built on the firm foundations of hope and faith.
But Skipper was uneasy. She knew that Sam was unhappy, and she knew why. He had told her yesterday as they sat beneath one of the hornets, drinking coffee and watching the spring sunshine burn off the skirts of mist that covered the lower slopes of the mountains.
‘I know we succeeded,’ he said. ‘We fought for what we believed in and against all the odds, we won. We actually did all the things we set out to do.’
‘So… that’s good then, isn’t it?’ Skipper had asked. ‘We did it, Sam. We made things better. Doesn’t that make you happy?’
‘Yes, it does,’ replied Sam. ‘Of course it does. But still … I just can’t get away from the fact that I’ve left something behind. That somehow I’ve let people down. That I’ve let down the people who need me.’
‘You’d never do that, Sam,’ said Skipper. ‘You’d never let anyone down.’
‘Last time I was here,’ Sam continued, ‘I got back didn’t I? I went home to my life on Earth, to my family. But now – now it doesn’t feel like it did before. I can’t see them. I can’t even picture their faces any more. Something’s different, and I feel so sad about it. It feels as though something’s changed for ever. Skipper, do you think I’ll ever get back?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But maybe something has changed. Perhaps you don’t belong there any more, Sam. Perhaps this is your home now.’
‘But it doesn’t feel like it,’ Sam replied. ‘It doesn’t feel right. I feel like I need to go back and find them, to help them somehow.’
He stared at the distant mountains and Skipper saw that there were tears in his eyes.
‘But I don’t know how to, Skipper. I don’t know how.’
Skipper had said nothing then, partly because she knew that silence was sometimes the only answer, and partly because she did not want to say goodbye.
But now, as she looked at the three coloured moons rising over Vahlzi, she felt a great sadness in her heart, as though she had lost something important too.
Somewhere, far away, something was calling to her.
And so, without quite knowing why, she made her way silently down to the runway where the moonlight threw strange, secret shadows beneath her waiting moth.
It had been a long time, but she remembered the route as though it were yesterday. She flew east for several hours, crossing the open plains and the marshlands of Mazria before turning north-east over Vermia. Several times she was approached by hornet night patrols operating a nofly zone in the area, but her identification beacon quickly provided the authorisation needed and she was allowed to continue her journey unhindered.
Morning was just breaking as she finally located the fabric gap and flew up into the bright folded clouds, aided by the air currents that rose from the sun-warmed slopes of the eastern mountains. She rode the turbulent air through mysterious corridors woven with streams of silver light until at length she was caught in an irresistible force that sucked her away into a different sky. Pulling back hard on the joystick, she spiralled down from the fabric gap before levelling out once more above the valleys and farms of an English countryside. The sun was rising above the hedgerows and the music of birdsong filled Skipper’s ears as she flew the moth along the quiet lanes of the small village, fluttering past field mice and early morning rabbits until at last she came to a large, redbrick Edwardian house.
Sam’s house.
In truth, now that she was here she could not remember exactly why she had come, but as she flew across the overgrown garden and saw the little blue slide and the rusted swing, a feeling of longing grew within her that she did not understand.
A ‘For Sale’ sign stood at an angle in the middle of the lawn, with the word ‘Sold’ plastered diagonally across it.
Skipper landed on the top of the sign and remembered the first time she had seen Sam here all those years ago, kicking a tennis ball against the garden wall while his mother potted up seedlings and his father dug over the vegetable patch. Unknown to him, she had been piloting a wasp, circling high above as part of a mission to protect him from Vermian forces that were trying to kidnap him. Despite their best efforts, however, the Vermian Empire had succeeded and brought Sam to Aurobon. But then at the end of it all he had returned to Earth again; back to his family and his other life.
So why not this time?
Why was he still in Aurobon?
Determined to find some answers, Skipper flew around the house to try to find another way in, an open window perhaps, or a gap under a door. Finding neither, she searched around for another route and her eyes fell upon the chimney pots at the top of the house. Of course! Pulling back on the joystick she lifted the moth up over the tiles and then as she approached the chimney pot at the far end of the house she put the wings into reverse thrust, hovered briefly, and then dropped down into it.
Applying the air brakes to slow her rate of descent, Skipper kept her eyes fixed on the square of light below her until, a short while later, she emerged into the brightness of a small bedroom.
She flew one circuit of the room to check that all systems were still functioning properly and then brought the moth smoothly in to land on the wooden bedpost. Looking around, she saw that all the bedclothes had been stripped off the bed and the room itself was empty save for several large cardboard boxes, most of which had been sealed up with brown parcel tape.
Staring out through the moth’s eyes, she noticed that one of the packing cases was still open on the far side of the room, and lying on the top of it were what appeared to be a handful of photographs. Intrigued, Skipper took off again and flew across the room, skilfully manoeuvring the moth so that it fluttered and hovered just a little way above the box.
Tilting the head of the moth forward, she leaned across the instrument panel and peered out. There in the very middle of the box was a photograph of Sam, smiling and waving at the camera.
There were other photographs too. Sam’s mother and father, hand in hand, holding up a fork and a spade and laughing, Sam on his bike and his father standing next to him with a spanner.
She looked down at the other pictures: Sam on a skateboard (she smiled at this), Sam’s mother, sitting on a
tartan rug in summer, cuddling a small baby, Sam… Skipper was surprised by the sudden ache that she felt in her heart as she looked back at the picture of Sam’s mother holding the baby.
What was it about this particular picture that affected her so?
She looked across at another photograph – half hidden beneath a flap of cardboard – and saw that it was of a little blonde-haired girl aged about three or four. She was smiling shyly, standing next to a snowman and her coat was buttoned up to her chin.
She was wearing bright yellow mittens and on her feet were a pair of shiny red shoes.
Then Skipper remembered.
‘No!’ she cried, ‘no, no, no, no, no!’ And she lifted the moth away out through the chimney pot and up into the blue, blue sky, high above the fields and the valleys and the little farms with their tiny sheep and horses until finally, when the tears blurred her vision and she could no longer see, she came to rest in the long grass that grew tall beside the old stone church.
Stumbling from the moth out into the morning sunshine, she leant against the stalk of a primrose, buried her face in her hands and cried as she had never cried before.
After a time, she became aware that she was not alone. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked up and saw that a man was standing a little way away from her, leaning against the churchyard wall that towered high above them both. He seemed to be gazing at something in the distance.
As Skipper watched, he turned to look at her and she saw that it was Salus, Guardian of Worlds. She remembered the last time that she had seen him, and how they had walked together by Lake Orceia.
