by Rob May
‘Well, you can get the internet on it. Not here, of course. And it has GPS … it can show you a map, although that probably won’t work here either. Too much tree cover, even if it could connect to alien satellites.’
‘The jungle always defeats technology,’ Doo said proudly. ‘That’s why the zelfs haven’t been able to completely wipe us out. Their laser guns are useless amongst all the mists and trees, and their armour can’t keep out the poisons and corrosive gases that the jungle produces. Much as they would like to rule the whole planet, they are struck in that walled city.’
‘We heard the zelfs enslaved the balaks,’ Jason said.
‘Trickery!’ Doo said. He heard the sound of her spitting. ‘After the disastrous plague that killed millions of us, the zelfs opened their doors and offered a truce. But after our king left the planet and got himself killed, the Arch Predicant imprisoned almost all of us. Only the princess and a small band of rebels now hold out against his rule.’
Jason had been intrigued at the thought of a balak princess. In his head she was nowhere near as ugly as Doo and the other brutes. ‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ he said dryly. ‘So, do you balaks all live in a treetop village and swing about on vines all day?’
Doo gave a guttural laugh. ‘Don’t be silly. If we lived up in the trees, we would be easy prey to the villaxx. They would come and rip off our arms to feed to their chicks!’
* * *
Eventually, Doo tore away Jason’s blindfold. He blinked and looked around. Brandon, Kat and the two hundred or so other refugees from Earth were all standing nearby, and all they looked battered and tired but unhurt. Jason turned his attention to the structure in front of them.
A fortress!
In the centre of a large deforested clearing loomed a massive cylindrical stone turret. It was so tall that its top disappeared into the misty canopy above. The light from thousands of flickering torches shone from little round windows, and a great archway at ground level was so roughly-hewn that it looked like a jagged maw that threatened to devour anyone trying to enter.
Jason was impressed. ‘I built a castle that looked like that out of Lego once!’
Doo laughed. ‘We didn’t exactly build it.’
Jason looked closer. She was right—the castle couldn’t have been built. ‘There are no joins … no bricks. Did you carve it out of solid rock?’
‘We didn’t,’ Doo said. ‘Rock termites did. Don’t worry, they’re extinct now, but the walls of this stronghold are the only thing that can withstand attacks by the biggest jungle beasts. Even dragons can’t breach them.’
Jason was incredulous. ‘Dragons?’
‘Yes. We imitated the dragon’s cry to scare off the catrons. Dragons are actually vegetarians, but they’re so big and clumsy that they’ll trample anyone who gets in their way, and any structure that’s not made of stone.’
This jungle was the craziest place Jason had ever been. ‘Well, let’s get inside then!’ he said urgently. ‘Take me to my cell! Or better yet, take me to these battle pits you mentioned. I’ll take you on, Doo. It will be perfect—I’ll get to give you a whupping, and impress the princess at the same time!’
Doo smiled and shook her head. ‘Not yet! You can’t come inside until the princess is ready to receive you. In the meantime, you’ll stay in a tree cage, remember.’
And right on cue, a collection of cages of various sizes were winched down out of the mists above. They appeared to be made of bone, and were suspended by twisted ropes of vine and creeper.
‘Doo!’ Jason shouted as he was manhandled into a cage by two big balak guards. She turned back to look at him.
‘This princess? Is she hot?’
Doo laughed and turned away.
* * *
Five hours later, Jason woke up. It was quite comfortable lying on the cage’s carpet of earth, leaves and general mulch. The gentle movement as the cage swung to and fro had rocked him to sleep. He had dreamed happy dreams, of jungles twinkling with alien fireflies, and beautiful green-skinned princesses.
‘I can’t believe that you can sleep at a time like this!’ Kat said. She was sitting by the bars, her legs dangling out over the edge. ‘We should be thinking up an escape plan.’
‘A soldier can’t operate at full functionality without rest and recuperation,’ Jason said. ‘Anyway, I do have an escape plan, but we need to wait until the right moment to execute it. Did you come up with anything?’
‘Yes!’ Kat said. ‘I thought we could start rocking the cage back and forth, until it swings up at this angle’—she flipped her fingers horizontal—‘and then we grab onto the bottom of one of the other cages and … um, that’s as far as I planned.’
Brandon was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cage. He looked like he was meditating. ‘The cages seem to be made of bone. I could use the bionoids to break down the calcium and carbon structures, then the cages would dissolve.’
Jason stuck his head out between the bars and looked down. They were so high up he couldn’t even see the jungle floor. ‘Forget both your crazy plans,’ he said. ‘Our best bet is to get onside with these balaks.’
‘Yeah, because your negotiations went so well last time,’ Kat said archly.
‘Not to mention the fact that we’ve brought along the very thing that wiped out half their population twenty years ago,’ Brandon said. ‘They’re going to want to destroy it, and maybe us as well.’
‘Just give me one last shot with this balak princess,’ Jason said. ‘She’s got to be the least ugly of all these creatures, right? I’ll just turn on the Jason Brown charm and she’ll be putty in my hands!
* * *
After a few more hours of (literally) hanging around, the cages were lowered to the jungle floor, and everyone was herded up and funnelled towards the fortress entrance. They were nudged along a twisted path that led past spiked pits, bubbling pools of pink swamp water, and bare patches of dirt that didn’t look particularly dangerous, but Jason guessed they were rigged with some nasty booby traps designed to surprise invaders.
Once through the open mouth of the main entrance, they found themselves in a maze of twisting tunnels. The ancient rock termites had burrowed in all directions, and the path twisted up and down—sometimes almost vertically—as well as seemingly round in circles.
Jason was trying to remember the route for later, but he was distracted when the President fell in beside him.
‘Jake!’
‘It’s Jason,’ he muttered.
‘Jason. I’m sorry. You’d think I’d be able to remember the names of every human left alive. After all, there are only a couple hundred of us.’
‘Yep,’ Jason agreed as they walked. ‘Extinction is breathing down our necks. I bet this is how the last dinosaurs felt as the cavemen lured them towards the cooking fires.’
Behind him, he heard Brandon frantically coughing for some reason.
The President didn’t seem to notice. ‘We’ll get through this, I promise. You did a good job talking to them earlier, Jason, but let me handle it from here. I’ve met hundreds of heads of state, including your queen when I visited the UK. I know how to deal with royalty.’
The President ran his hand through his hair and smoothed down his suit. It was creased and crumpled after a night spent sleeping in a cage. His left hand was bandaged up from where he had picked up a cut in the jungle.
‘I’ll deal with the princess,’ Jason insisted. ‘You see Brandon about that cut. The plants are poisonous here, remember.’
‘I will,’ the President said. ‘Just as soon as I’ve made sure that we’re not going to be treated to a royal beheading. That would be much worse than a cut.’
‘Fine,’ Jason said, relenting. ‘It’s your turn then. But I’m telling you—smooth talking isn’t going to work here. These balaks respect only one thing: strength and war!’
They emerged from the tunnels into a vast open space at the centre of the fort. The rock termite nest must have be
en hollow, like a cylinder, because there was no roof above them. Green stuff like ivy covered the walls, sprouting glowing yellow plants. They appeared to have caught and absorbed sunlight high above them and were now emitting it down here, way below the jungle canopy.
The light lit up a crowd of hundreds of balaks. They filled stone terraces and gathered around tunnel entrances that surrounded the space like boxes at a theatre. They looked like a crowd filled with eager expectation for a show.
The humans stood in a huddle in the very centre of the balak lair, facing a stone dais that was furnished with just one thing: a blocky black granite throne.
The balaks made them wait a while longer. Jason kicked his heels and examined the ground in order to avoid catching the curious gazes of the spectators. He turned up something that looked like a clod of blood that had been hidden under fresh dirt.
This wasn’t a throne room.
It was an arena!
Harsh, ugly horns sounded, and somewhere within the tunnels a great booming drum began to beat. A group of a dozen massive balaks piled out, dressed from head to toe in plate mail armour and carrying massive battle axes. They lined up either side of the throne and, as one, bellowed out an introduction:
‘All kneel for our ruler, daughter of King Grook, High Priestess of the great god Zaal, and Defender of the Endless Jungle … Her Royal Highness Princess Doogla!’
The woman who stepped out and sat on the throne was also wearing armour, and a fearsome headdress decorated with violently coloured bird feathers.
But it was still the same girl Jason had promised to wrestle into submission in the battle pits. It was Doo.
05—DIPLOMACY
Jason was furious. There was nothing that angered him more, or that was more likely to send his brain spinning in confusion, than being duped. It went against every belief and value he held onto in life: namely, dealing with people and problems in a straightforward (some might say simple) and upfront way. He tried to think of some reason why Doo—or Princess Doogla, as she now seemed to be called—would want to keep her identity hidden from them at first. To avoid making herself a target, he figured, when she wasn’t surrounded by walls and guards. Yeah, Jason could accept that; he could respect that.
‘Prisoners of the balaks,’ Doo intoned in a serious voice. ‘You have crashed your starship in our jungle, destroying ancient trees that are sacred to our god Zaal. But as well as this, you have brought with you the terrible weapon that was responsible for the deaths of millions of balaks. Such crimes are not even worthy of trial; judgement will be swift and final: you will all be executed in the name of Za—’
The President stepped forward quickly to interject, but Brandon was even faster—he presented himself to the princess with a sword in his hand. It took Jason a moment to work out that he had made it out of the bionoids; the billions of nanoscopic robots had the power to coalesce and form solid objects.
Brandon tossed the sword at Doo’s feet, then knelt down in front of her. ‘You want Catron’s Claw?’ he said to her. ‘Take it then. Pick it up, and then go ahead and execute me already.’
Jason caught his sister’s eye. She was trying to hide a smile. Jason rolled his eyes at her. More trickery! Brandon was just as bad as Doo.
She fell for it, however. The princess rose from her throne and picked up the sword. Brandon didn’t risk waiting for her to take a swing (although that would have been quite cool, Jason thought); he just raised his head and stared down the princess as the sword dissolved into thin air in her hands.
The hundreds of balaks surrounding the arena were hooting and cheering. Either they were simply enjoying the show, or they liked to see their princess challenged.
The sword reformed in Brandon’s hand. ‘Only I can wield this,’ he told the princess. ‘And I won’t let you—’
He fell to the ground senseless as a big balak guard came up behind him and knocked on his skull with the flat of an axe blade. The crowd whooped even louder as Doo picked up the sword once more and raised it above her head in triumph.
Jason started to get worried. With Brandon senseless, they lost the advantage that the bionoids gave them in any situation. Oh well, it was all down to him now …
Kat was at Brandon’s side. ‘How dare you blame us for all your woes!’ she shouted at the princess. ‘Never mind your precious jungle; we were millions of light years away, minding our own business, until your king came and laid waste to our whole planet. Well, Brandon killed him, and if you do anything to Brandon then I’ll kill you!’
The princess swished Catron’s Claw in an arc in front of her. ‘Choose your weapon then,’ she said. ‘I have mine!’
Jason was about to jump forward and sock Doo with his bionic fist, but the President put a hand on his shoulder. ‘My turn, remember?’ he said, before putting himself between Doo and Kat.
‘What’s your weapon, human?’ Doo asked him.
‘Words,’ the President said.
The audience laughed. Doo swished her sword again. ‘This should be a fun fight then.’
‘It will be a bloodless one,’ the President said. ‘Back on my home planet, I instigated diplomatic relations with some of my country’s most fearsome historic adversaries. Iran, Cuba … oh, you won’t have heard of them, and they’re all so much dust now, but the point that if you try, then you can get along with even your worst enemies. You don’t have to fight us; you don’t even have to fight the zelfs.’
The princess looked put out. ‘We’ve been fighting the zelfs for thousands of years. We enjoy fighting them!’
‘And you can be at peace within a generation,’ the President promised. ‘Talk to the zelfs. I’ll advise you on what to say. After years of fighting, I guarantee you’ll surprise them, if nothing else. You have the resources of the jungle to offer them, in exchange for the technology of their city.’
‘They already have balak slaves burning the jungle and digging up the mountains,’ Doo grumbled. ‘They don’t need our permission. They’d never go along with anything that made it look like we were equal to them in the eyes of Zaal. And talking makes us look weak.’
‘Negotiation is definitely not a weak response,’ the President insisted. ‘Especially if you ratchet up the pressure on the zelfs with threat of unleashing Catron’s Claw.’
‘Bran would never agree to that!’ Kat said.
‘I know that,’ the President said, ‘but the zelfs don’t.’
Even more trickery! Jason was itching to cut through all this nonsense with a simpler solution. But there was something that had been bugging him for a while now. ‘Why aren’t you queen?’ he asked, interrupting the intellectual discussion.
Doo turned to him. ‘What?’
‘Why aren’t you queen? Your dad, the balak king, got squished after falling from the top of his spaceship to the bottom. So doesn’t that mean you get upgraded from princess to queen?’
Doo shook her head. ‘My brother was the heir. He is now king.’
Jason looked around. ‘So where is he?’
‘The Arch Predicant has him held hostage.’
Jason made an incredulous face. ‘So what are we all doing hanging around chatting? If you let us off the hook for crashing into your jungle and all that business with the bionoids—so not our fault, by the way—then we can help you break into the city, rescue your bro and take down the Arch Predicant at the same time. Come on, Doo, the zelfs are the common enemy here, and if we combine all our skills and equipment then we have a pretty good shot.’
The President shook his head. ‘An extraction mission would severely undermine negotiations. And an assassination mission would destroy negotiations for good. Let me go and talk to the Arch Predicant. I’ll get him to release your brother. In exchange, we can turn the threat of the bionoids into an offer of aid. Brandon’s powers can benefit everybody on this planet, just like he always wanted.’
It was Kat who objected to this plan. ‘Bran wanted the bionoids to help those who deserve it,
not some jumped up tyrant like this Arch Predicant! I’m with Jase. I say we take the fight to the city—to Perazim!’
The President waited a few moments before replying. He was too skilled a politician to get drawn into an argument. Instead, he turned back to the princess and simply said, ‘Talk. Fewer people will die.’
‘Fight!’ Jason countered. ‘Balaks are still going to die out in the jungle while you are sitting on your arses banging out peace treaties.’
He held Doo’s gaze. He could see she was struck by his words. The only question was, would her pride let her be swayed by either him or the President when she had already passed judgement on them?
She sat back down on her throne. ‘Neither talking nor secret missions have been the balak way,’ she said. ‘Only all-out war. But our numbers are dwindling; we are being slowly worn down by the zelfs, and our jungles are being eroded. Perhaps we do need to find a new path …’
Jason could tell she was laying this out for the benefit of the balaks watching, rather than the humans standing nervously before her. The balak audience had fallen silent, and now everyone in the arena was waiting on the decision of the princess.
How old was she, anyway? Jason couldn’t see past the tough skin and the ugly, alien features … but there was something about the way she moved and talked. He guessed she was barely out of her teens, or whatever the alien equivalent was on this planet.
And she had no advisors or courtiers either. The grim, armoured guards didn’t look like they’d be much help in matters of state and the running of the realm. Jason started to wonder how she managed to rule her people without her father and brother’s help. He almost started to feel a little sorry for her.
‘This is a choice that I cannot make alone,’ she admitted. ‘It is true that sooner or later, even our home here in the heart of the jungle will no longer be safe from the zelfs. We need to do something, and it is possible that Zaal himself sent these creatures … these humans … to show us the way.’
