Kat took out the key card she’d swiped from a guard a few hours ago. Invisibility was not without its advantages. Hopefully the alarm hadn’t been raised and the codes changed. She was screwed otherwise. She needed to escape the ore mines in order to make it back to Labour Camp Flaxen and the Extractor. But not for revenge this time – she had had enough of that to last a lifetime – the homing beacon was what she was looking for now, the extractor had taken it off her soon after she was taken prisoner. If she had that then she could contact Jack and get the spaceship to come and rescue her. She could see no other way, it was either that or a lifetime of slavery, then death.
Kat approached the ten-inch thick iron doors and gulped. This was it, the moment of truth, if the codes hadn’t been changed then she was free, if not then the sabre-dogs would be waiting. Hungrily.
She waved the card over the scanner. A green light flashed for a second, then the huge black doors opened with a pig-like squeal. It worked…
Kat strode through the door and into one of the exit tunnels. She heard the alarm start to wail, then began to run.
Chapter Eight: Butcher’s Bill
Grunt killed gladly and with abandon. Hundreds of Xenti died at his hands and from his sword. He was a reaper of death in an arena of pain.
But it wasn’t enough, it never was. His revenge felt empty, hollow. How could the genocide of an entire race, of a whole planet, be equalized through simple torture? He needed to kill. For real. The Xenti had to be denied a rebirth. It was the only way…
But how? Re-animation was his father’s domain and that meant getting access to his cell. He didn’t even know what to look for, never mind how to interfere with the process…
YOU WERE OUTSTANDING TODAY GRUNT. ANIMALS CAN SCARCELY DREAM OF SUCH SAVAGERY.
Grunt looked up at the man-mountain before him, the blood-red sun resting on his father’s shoulders. “I killed them for our people,” he said. “For Ba’dorbia. That is the true source of my rage, nothing more.”
BELIEVE THAT IF YOU WISH, BUT THERE IS A WILDNESS IN YOU THAT THIS TRAGEDY HAS BROUGHT OUT. YOU SHOULD EMBRACE IT, LET IT MASTER YOU AS IT DOES ME. HATE ONLY MAKES US STRONGER.
“Let me kill them then,” said Grunt. “Let me kill all of them.”
AND YOU ARE. EVERY DAY IN THE ARENA.
“No, I mean for real; they shouldn’t be allowed to come back. The re-animations should stop, they are a perversion.”
THE RE-ANIMATION PROCESS IS THEIR ONE TRUE TORTURE. WITHOUT IT DEATH IS JUST AN END. THE FINAL NOTE IN AN OTHERWISE DISAPPOINTING SYMPHONY. THEY MUST KNOW REAL PAIN, REAL SUFFERING FOR THIS TO HAVE ANY MEANING.
“But it’s not fair, not justice…”
DO NOT FORGET YOUR PLACE GRUNT. I WILL NOT TOLERATE REBELLION. CHAMPIONS OF THE ARENA RISE AND FALL ALL THE TIME.
“Are you threatening me?”
I DO NOT THREATEN GRUNT. I ACT. DON’T MAKE ME DESTROY YOU LIKE ALL THE OTHERS.
“The others? Who are you talking about?”
IT IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE TO YOU. GO. NOW. BEFORE I LOSE MY TEMPER. BEFORE I DO SOMETHING I MIGHT REGRET.
“Of course,” said Grunt, shrinking from his father’s helmeted glare. “I was only thinking…”
DON’T THINK, OBEY!
Grunt stomped down the dark, dank corridor like a sewer rat; fear and death were in the air, the only other sounds were the shrill hiss of the wind and the pathetic trickling of a burst water pipe.
Grunt fumed, seethed. How dare his father not give him his revenge. Couldn’t he see that this was the only way his people could have justice? The continued existence of the Xenti was a stain upon the universe, a mockery to what befell their planet.
Grunt kicked open the door of his cell and slouched down upon his cold stone bed. Thoughts whizzed and whirred around his head; his insides felt awful, on fire. He dug out a small black pebble from a bundle in the corner. He rubbed it with his giant-sized fingers. Its surface shimmered with blue light. All he had to do was say the words and Jack would come hurtling to this planet; the spaceship would put an end to the Xenti in a matter of moments, whether his father liked it or not. Then he would have his revenge, his justice, his…
But would Jack believe him? Doubts ricocheted around his mind like billiard balls. He wanted you to form an alliance with the Xenti, not annihilate them! He didn’t send you here so that you could engage in a personal vendetta! Remember the Scourge, the dreadnuts, remember your promise to Jack!
Grunt looked at the contacting device again. It could be so easy, one flick of his fingers and all this would just end, disappear…
There was an explosion of sparks as the black pebble-like device crashed against the wall, lost forever.
No, he thought, his hands balling into fists. It couldn’t end like that. Not now, not after all he’d gone through. He had come too far down the road to turn back now. Jack and the others could wait, forever if necessary.
Grunt got up off his stone bed, the wrought-iron door slamming behind him as he stomped down the corridor, eyes fixed on the distance.
In a matter of minutes, he was outside his father’s cell. He rapped angrily on the door three times. What would he say to him? Whatever he had to. He had to be made to understand the validity of his argument, of his crusade.
The door didn’t budge.
He banged on the door again. Louder this time. Like a battering ram. Still nothing.
What was he doing in there? Sleeping? Come to think about it he hadn’t seen him rest once. Or any of the others for that matter. They just seemed to… carry on. And the only nutrition that passed their lips was the occasional diced Xenti. Grunt shuddered at the thought of it; even he refrained from such butchery. It still felt unholy, sacrilegious in some way.
He hammered on the door again. Nothing but the cold wind uncoiling itself through the catacombs. Strange…
Grunt grasped the rusty handle and tried the door. It gave at once.
Grunt pulled the door open the rest of the way and gingerly crossed the threshold into his father’s cell. He expected him to lunge out at him any moment, that this was some sort of loyalty test that he had so obviously failed. Nothing happened. The room was populated only by shadows and a cold, lingering draught. He was alone.
Grunt lurched forward hesitatingly, temptation leading him on. He began by checking his father’s things, for what they were. He didn’t seem to possess much of anything, no mementos of home, no belongings, no spare clothes. He was more spartan than the Spartans. Thoughts nagged way at him, but he chased them away. He looked under the bed. Nothing. He didn’t even know what he was looking for, just some kind of device that could be used to re-animate the Xenti. But so far there was nothing, the only other thing in his father’s room other than the bed was the monitor...
Grunt rushed over to it immediately. This was it. It had to be. Why hide something in a secret place when you can do it in plain sight, where no one will suspect its true function?
He jabbed away at the screen, heart hammering away in his chest like a sledgehammer. It seemed to take forever to load. His father could come back at any second. Then what would he say? It was too late to think about that now, he just had to keep moving, keep making decisions like Jack always said.
The home screen fizzed into life with a flurry of light. Several icons appeared before him. He clicked on each one in turn, with every heartbeat expecting his father to storm into the room.
The first one – a strange hieroglyph-like letter – led to the computer’s core functions. Thoughts whirred again like razorblades. Again, he brushed them way. The second icon was an image of their planet, behind which was a history of their entire civilisation: population, relative strength of their military, planets visited, likely rates of technological progress. Again, something nagged at him, but he forced it away. No time for that now, got to keep moving, searching, running out of time…
Next, he stumbled on a series of video files. He recognised one of them straight away. It was a
recording of the original Xenti attack, when they deployed the solar shield to trigger a snowball effect on his home planet. Immediately below that was another video file that seemed to show the exact same thing. That’s odd… His finger hovered over it for a few seconds, then he pressed play.
Grunt watched as a huge diamond-shaped craft came into view. Its hull was coated with what looked like flesh and eviscerated organs. Nausea bubbled away in his stomach like lava. He had seen that ship before, above Earth and on the surface of Europa. That was Lava man’s ship… the Scourge.
Grunt continued watching as the ship destroyed the planet’s orbital defences, before it deployed the solar shield in an unreachable orbit. Then it left, the damage done. The planet changed before his eyes, ice scouring the surface like a spider’s web; cities, towns and villages succumb in days.
He switched the screen off. He felt sick, ill. What had he done? What had they all done? He had to put a stop to it… the Scourge… he had to tell the others. His father…
He felt a cold draught tickling his neck. He shivered and turned around. His father’s fist collided with his face, knocking him to the floor. He tried to get up, only to get a boot to the chest, teeth, stomach, each blow feeling like a burst of thunder. The breath whooshed from his lungs, blood bubbled from his lips and nose. He staggered to his feet like a town drunk, swaying madly.
Then his father took out a pistol and shot him straight between the eyes, his brains decorating the monitor behind him.
Chapter Nine: Fight or Flight
Kat heard the sabre-dogs snapping behind her.
The dark tunnel flashed with lightning, thunder.
She carried on running, kept telling herself that the guards couldn’t see her. If she could just escape the dogs, then everything would be alright.
More firing, the sounds of shouting voices filling the air. Heart beating faster, faster, faster.
She ran out of the tunnel and across a wide muddy field. Streaks of light carved through the darkness. Voices shouting from the watchtowers. A few warning shots. The mud and dirt slowed her down, made her stumble, slip. The barks and yells rose to a crescendo. Panicking now. She didn’t want it to end like this, ripped to death on a cold, muddy field, billions of light years from home.
She felt tired, hungry, and her mouth was rock-dry with thirst. She couldn’t last much longer. She could feel the sabre-dogs’ hot rancid breath on the back of her thighs. Desperation now.
One of the search lights glittered in front of her like a seam of diamonds, illuminating a fence. Could she make it?
She picked up her pace, finding the energy from some dark corner of her soul and sprinted as fast as she could.
She launched herself at the metal lattice, digging her nails into the steel. She yanked herself up the fence, chain link by chain link, the sound of the sabre dogs fading away to a low rumble behind her.
She scaled the top seconds later and began the long climb down, only to slip half way and fall to the ground.
Pain shot up her right ankle immediately. She tried to put weight on it. Slithers of electricity twisted up her leg from her ankle to her knee. She cried out in pain. Her voice was met with the shrill whine of metal being wrenched apart. She turned around and glimpsed several dogs yapping and tearing at the metal fence, claws digging furiously at the ground. One metal beam snapped away, then another. Oh God, they’re coming through…
Kat turned around and half-ran half-hobbled down a rocky slope, pain lancing her leg like a samurai sword.
She had staggered perhaps one hundred feet when she heard a loud snapping sound behind her, followed by an explosion of barks. They were through…
Still she carried on running, though her pace was slackening now, her leg a chaos of pain. All alone in the night.
And then suddenly she was falling, falling, her leg erupting as she fell face down into a long narrow ditch. She spat out a mouthful of dirt, then turned around.
She saw two fireballs arc towards her, beneath them a mouthful of long sharp teeth.
The sabre-dog leapt through the air, its fangs aiming directly for her jugular. She raised her hands to protect herself.
Its salivating jaw was almost at her throat when the night sky exploded with shadows, the sabre-dog barreled out of her way.
When the sabre-dog landed it turned around in a snarl and prepared to leap again, only for it to collapse under a heap of bodies. Kat heard tearing flesh, snapping bones and rough swallowing sounds, before the sabre-dog expired with a final yelp, guts and intestines flung in all directions.
Then one of the creatures turned towards her. It looked like one of the living dead. It had a thin gaunt face, with holes where its cheeks should have been, two black eyeless sockets and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth.
Mutes.
Where there was one there was a thousand. Kat began to inch back up the steep slope, dimly aware of the battle that was going on around her.
The mute followed her, eyes locked on her like heat seeker missiles, blood and drool frothing from the shriveled husk of its lips. Then it began to wail and moan, its pace quickening, claws stabbing at her ankles.
Her fingers closed round the rough cold surface of a rock. She flung it at its head immediately.
Missed.
It lunged for her then, all snapping teeth and scratching claws, its head eclipsed by a huge cavernous shadow.
The sabre-dog took its head off in one pus-filled bite, and then suddenly there were other mutes, other sabre-dogs. It was a tornado of limbs, claws and gnashing teeth.
Kat scrambled and hobbled her way up the steep incline, the hurricane of death receding behind her.
She looked behind her once, twice, kept on going, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and her. Only the stars now for company. That and a body wracked with pain.
Chapter Ten: Awakening
“I know you’re awake; you have been for some time.”
“You… you shot me,” said Grunt.
The giant at the end of the bed nodded. “You found out the truth. About us, about them,” he said, glancing at the Xenti in the cells opposite.
“Us?”
The giant grinned. Only then did Grunt realise that his father wasn’t wearing his helmet, his ghostly pale face half hidden by an unkempt lock of black, shaggy hair. His bright orange eyes burned with the intensity of a supernova. “All in good time.”
“You brought me back?” said Grunt. “Why?”
“Why not? I want to prolong the pain, the suffering, the anguish.”
“But you’re my father; we are the same race, the same people.”
Again, that grin. Like a serial killer’s. “Are we?”
“Yes… I…”
“What is it Grunt?”
“Your face.”
“What about it?”
“It’s… it’s… on fire.”
Grunt looked at his father as his skin started to melt and steam, layers of tissue oozing from his cheeks, nose, chin. Then his skull burst into flames, smoke spouting towards the low ceiling, filling the cell with its rotten stench. It fizzed out of existence in a matter of moments, replaced by a head of pumice, two pits of lava burning away in the middle.
Lava man.
Grunt stared at his cracked skin, what looked like magma rippling away underneath it. “But that doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?” His mouth looked like a collapsed crater, flames sparking with every breath.
“All of this,” said Grunt, gesticulating towards the Xenti. They were looking directly at them, their eyes probing the nebulous space between.
“You want to know our motives, is that it?” said the lava man, eyes like hot coals.
Grunt nodded feebly.
“Unfortunately, there is no grand mission, no holy crusade. The Xenti attacked our ships on several occasions, whilst the Ba’doberans rejected our offer of an alliance, of an outpost on their planet. For that they must suffer, totally
and absolutely. We will accept no rejections, tolerate no rivals. Their example will force others to tow the line and accept our dominion. There can be only one power in the universe.”
“I’ll tell the others.”
Lava man laughed, face creased with fire. “Others? Down here it’s only me.”
“But what about the rest of the Ba’doberans?”
“Oh, there were others at first. On the escape ship. But one by one they suspected the truth – like you – and became my prey, until there was nothing left of them. You look shocked. You should be thanking me for putting your insignificant little species out of its misery.”
“And my father?” squeaked Grunt, all the fight, all the anger gone from his system.
“Didn’t even make it off the planet,” said Lava man, ash flaking from his body. “I exterminated him personally; if it wasn’t for me getting his DNA I’d never have known that you were his son. Funny how revenge works…”
“You’re a murderer,” said Grunt, some of the old venom returning.
“Yes, I am,” said Lava man, eyes going supernova. “And you’re my next victim; enjoy your life… while it lasts.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
“To watch the show of course! Look around Grunt, look where you are, look what you’ve become, what you’ve always been in fact.”
Grunt looked down at his hands and legs then for the first time. His vision was weirdly segmented, and his tongue could strangely taste the heat in the air. His skin looked like a lobster that had been left in the pan too long, his body covered in bloody red blisters. He tried to scream, but all that came out between his mandibles and his razor-sharp teeth was a long-pronounced hiss.
Jack Strong and The Last Battle Page 3
