Alien Disaster (24 page)

‘Time to die,’ Gem told him.

The king screamed in agony. ‘Do it then!’ he wailed. ‘Put me out of my misery.’

Gem feinted at the king as if she were jabbing with a rapier. He stumbled backwards and rolled around on the floor pathetically.

‘Wait. Let’s not be hasty,’ Dravid cautioned. ‘Perhaps there will be a good spot for a fearsome balak leader at our side when we return home.’

‘You bastard, Karkor!’ the king spat. ‘You wanted this weapon for yourself all along. You never intended to destroy it.’

‘That was the plan at first,’ Karkor lied smoothly, ‘but really, it would have been such a waste, especially now that we’ve got this girl on our side who can wield it effectively.’

‘I’d rather die than be enslaved by you!’ the king grunted.

‘Fine by me,’ Gem said. She jabbed forward with the cylinder again, her eyes squeezed shut as she concentrated on sending the deadly bionoids deeper into the king’s fat body.

The king delivered a colourful balak swear word, and then braced himself for death.

Nothing happened.

The cylinder dissolved in Gem’s hand.

Brandon stepped out into view. He gave Gem a wry smile and a shrug of his shoulders. The cylinder was now in
his
hand. He didn’t want Gem running off with it again.

‘Brandon?’ Dravid said in disbelief. ‘How did you get here?’

The king gave a rasping laugh as he hauled himself to his feet. ‘You were too busy trying to kill me to notice that Brandon Walker and the humans got on board just after you did.’

Brandon was finding it easier all the time to concentrate on controlling the bionoids and talking at the same time. He made sure he held them in check so that Gem couldn’t launch another attack, and then he delivered his ultimatum: ‘It’s over, Karkor. Gem and I are leaving, and then I’m taking the cylinder far from here where you’ll never find us. If you ever try to follow us, we’ll kill you before you even know it.’ He glared at Karkor. ‘That’s if the balaks ever let you free, or even let you live …’

The king laughed again at this. Two balaks stepped up either side of Karkor, who was unarmed and defenceless. He looked furious.

Brandon turned to the king. ‘Will you agree to leave this world and just forget all about us? I’ll be taking the cylinder somewhere else anyway. I promise you that it will never be used as a weapon against your people ever again.’

‘Brandon!’ Gem pleaded. ‘You can’t just let them go! They’ve killed thousands!’

‘They were tricked into coming here by Karkor,’ Brandon said. ‘He’s the one who should be punished, and maybe the balaks should be the ones to do it.’

The king nodded slowly, like this was the wisest thing he had ever heard. ‘Go. Get out of here then!’ he barked. ‘Zaal doesn’t care what you humans get up to anyway. This whole thing can be settled with Karkor’s execution instead. Har har har. We’ll make sure that it’s a nice long slow one. Zaal
loves
those!’

‘Brandon, we’ve got a problem!’

It seemed like it wasn’t over yet then. ‘Jason, where are you?’

‘The reactor shaft! I don’t think I can hold off—argh!’

Brandon turned and ran to the inner curve of the flight deck, where the glass wall overlooked the central shaft. Far below him he could see two figures struggling on a walkway that extended over the top of the reactor itself. They were almost silhouetted against the reactor’s glow, but Brandon could just about see that they were Jason and the Chief of Joint Operations, locked in a wrestle.

‘What are they fighting over?’ Gem asked.

‘The other guy’s got a nuke,’ Brandon explained.

Karkor laughed as he slowly moved towards the window to see. ‘Oh dear,’ he said sarcastically. ‘That’s unfortunate. Have you any idea what effect dropping a nuclear device into the star reactor would have? You wouldn’t just blow up this ship—you’d take a pretty big chunk out of your planet too.’

‘Talk him down, Jason!’ Brandon shouted over the mic. ‘If the nuke ends up in the reactor, it’ll destroy the Earth!’

He could hear Jason talking to the chief over his earpiece: ‘The plan’s changed, Chief … the explosion will be too big … it’ll destroy the whole world…’

‘I don’t care!’ the chief screamed. ‘There’s nothing left back there for me anyway!’ He elbowed Jason in the face and pushed him away. ‘They killed my wife when they destroyed London! And all of my family!
My entire family!
’

The chief made a dash for the end of the walkway. Brandon stared down from above and quickly mustered the bionoids. The entire cylinder dissolved again, and all the tiny robots swarmed over Brandon’s shoulder, passed through the molecules in the glass of the window and out into the empty space of the reactor shaft. They caught up with the chief just as he was on the brink of jumping in. He stopped mid-stride and stiffened as Brandon mentally took control of the chief’s body from within.

Brandon held him there, frozen in space, seconds from disaster.

Then Karkor made his move. Surprising his guards, he leaped back to the control console. He slammed a few buttons with his palm, then pushed a lever upwards. The whole mothership tilted suddenly, throwing everyone to the floor…

… and also pitching the chief over the edge of the walkway and down into the glowing reactor. Karkor hit another button and the airlock at the bottom of the reactor shaft snapped open. The star reactor itself then launched out into space and the airlock snapped shut behind it.

The whole thing took seconds. The artificial gravity reasserted itself, and Brandon quickly jumped to his feet. With the power source ripped out of the saucer, the flight deck had been plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by blue emergency lighting. He could see shapes and shadows of people around him, but his attention was caught by the bright glow of the reactor. It could be seen out in space speeding away from the mothership towards …

‘The Moon!’ Brandon shouted. Then the nuke went off and the reactor detonated so brightly that they all had to turn away. The mothership was rocked again. When they opened their eyes, they looked out to see the Moon crumbling away like a chunk of ash.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry about that!’ Karkor apologised. ‘Better leave this planet before someone down there notices and comes to complain.’ He quickly moved to the starmap and activated what could only be the superluminal drive. Protective shutters slammed down over the external windows, and the saucer shuddered once more as it used the last of its back-up power to fling itself halfway across the galaxy to Corroza. As the flight deck was plunged into absolute darkness, Karkor grabbed Gem by the wrist and fled.

Brandon’s alien irises widened to let in as much light as possible. After a few seconds he could make sense of his surroundings again. He was alone; the balaks had all vanished in pursuit of Karkor. Alone! In a dark spaceship, drifting without power in a distant corner of the galaxy. Brandon slumped exhausted against a console: what the hell was he going to do? Getting back to Earth and Kat with the bionoids wasn’t looking very likely now.

The bionoids! Brandon could feel them tickling the edges of his consciousness. They were still here; he had thought they had been shot out into space with the chief and the nuke. They must have somehow decided themselves to stay aboard the mothership. Brandon turned to the inner window that overlooked the central shaft of the saucer. Hanging in the air on the other side of the glass was the swarm of nanoscopic robots, each one now faintly glowing with a soft blue light.

Brandon went up and put his hands against the glass. ‘Hey, guys,’ he said to them. Had they developed their own consciousness now, or were they just an extension of his?

He was snapped out of his thoughts by flashes of gunfire and lasers coming from below in the reactor shaft. Jason, Hewson, Tank and Lucky were still down there in the darkness, huddled in a group and surrounded by advancing balaks. Lucky was holding her arm, which hung limply and looked like it had been scorched by laser fire. Tank looked even worse off: his body was lying prone and was actually smoking. Balaks were approaching from all sides, and Hewson was desperately trying to hold them at bay, firing in all directions with his automatic machine gun.

Brandon could have easily sent the swarm of bionoids to take out all the balaks. He certainly wouldn’t hesitate to kill them to save his friends. But what had he promised his father? That he’d never use the bionoids as a weapon. It was a tough situation, but Brandon quickly found a solution.

He sent the bionoids to Lucky and Tank instead, closing his eyes as he imagined them seeking out burned flesh and repairing it, imagined them suppressing pain … and even fear. It worked, because when Brandon opened his eyes, Tank and Lucky were both back on their feet, blasting away at the aliens, quickly turning the tide of the battle.

Brandon put his finger to his earpiece to check that it was still there. ‘Jason, are you okay?’

‘We’re alright,’ came the reply. ‘Brandon, did you get the bionoids? Was it you who fixed up Tank and Lucky?’

‘Yep. I told you that I wouldn’t kill any balaks with them. But I don’t mind giving someone else the chance.’

Jason laughed. ‘Cool! Now let’s get the hell out of here!’

‘Stay there,’ Brandon said. ‘I’m coming down. Then we need to get back to
Discord
if we want to get back to Earth and save Kat.’

He looked around the flight deck and saw stairs leading up to the dome at the top of the saucer. He remembered from last time they were here that there was a way down to the central shaft from the corridor that went around the dome. He ran for the stairs.

No sooner had Brandon made it to the top though, he was grabbed from behind and flung to the ground. Then he was kicked hard and sent reeling a few more metres. He found himself sprawled on the floor of the dome, with the balak king himself looming over him. But that wasn’t the only frightening thing: the dome above them was on fire.

Flames were whipping across the transparent surface of the dome. The saucer must have been pulled in by Corroza’s gravitational field, and was now burning up as it cut through the atmosphere. The balak king seemed oblivious though, and Brandon had to cover his face as the fat alien kicked him in the side of the head.

‘I should be grateful,’ the king said, ‘that you stopped your crazy sister from killing me. But I’m not so grateful that I’m going to let you live.’

Brandon groaned. ‘I’m not going to—’ he began.

The king reached down and picked Brandon up by the neck, then slammed him down on the floor in the centre of the circular room. ‘Not going to what? Kill me with your deadly tube? I know you’re not. That’s so very noble of you. But so long as you’re alive, then others like Karkor will be trying to get their hands on your secrets. So … you die!’

‘You’re right.’ Brandon spluttered, getting to his feet. ‘I’m not going to kill you…at least
not with my deadly tube
.’

The king laughed and punched Brandon in the face, cracking his jaw. Brandon fell and tried to roll away, but the king brought his foot down and pinned Brandon to the floor. ‘You’ll barely have a chance to squeak out one last word before I crush the life out of you.’

So Brandon made his final word count: ‘
Krabba
!’

The king’s foot paused on the brink of breaking through Brandon’s ribcage, and he raised an eyebrow slightly. But he was too slow to react; the floor gave way, and Brandon and the king slid through the hole and into the dark reactor shaft. All Brandon was aware of was the air rushing past his face, the flaming dome receding above him and a sense of empty open space around him. The deadly furnace of the star reactor itself was no longer there, but instead there was a three hundred metre drop down the central shaft of the mothership.

The king was screaming in terror as they fell. Brandon just closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He could sense the bionoids all around him, so he drew them to him, feeling them cloud around him.
Lift me up!
he commanded. He could feel the air around him get denser. His descent was starting to slow as the tiny motors that powered the bionoids battled against the downwards momentum of his fall …

He opened his eyes and saw the amazed expression on Jason and the others’ faces as he stepped out of the air and joined them on the walkway at the edge of the reactor shaft. They all then looked out over the edge in time to see the balak king hit the bottom of the reactor shaft. He exploded like a balloon full of red custard.

Brandon turned to the others. ‘He made the ultimate sacrifice to Zaal,’ he croaked through his broken jaw. Jason smiled and even gave Brandon a matey slap on the shoulder. Hewson, Tank and Lucky were looking at Brandon in stunned awe.

‘Where’s Gem?’ Jason asked urgently. ‘We have to get out of here fast.’

‘Still with Karkor; I don’t know where,’ Brandon said as he absorbed some of the bionoids to fix his jaw.

‘So, what—are we going to just leave her?’

‘We don’t have a choice. Right now we have to get off this ship before it crash lands on an alien planet. Dravid and Gem have probably already left.’

‘Follow me,’ Lucky said. ‘I remember the way back.’ She tossed her giant gun away and sprinted off, holding up her portable light-source. Brandon, Jason, Hewson and Tank followed her. They left the reactor shaft and hurried through the bio-engineering labs. Brandon saw dead monsters and dead marines everywhere. There wasn’t a glass tank or piece of computer equipment left in one piece after the battle.

When they reached the lift shaft, they had to stop: the power was out and the lift was stuck three floors below them. Lucky started to climb down.

‘No, wait,’ Brandon said. He massed the bionoids in a semi-solid cloud below them. ‘Now jump,’ he said, and one-by-one the marines dropped off the edge and were caught by the cushion he had laid down to slow their fall. Jason went last and dive-bombed into the cloud.

They climbed down into the lift, levered the doors open, and exited into a corridor that ran straight on in the direction they wanted to go: towards the rim of the mothership. Down side corridors they could see balaks running back and forth hysterically; the aliens were in a panic and they ignored the humans.