Alien Velocity (7 page)

She tilted her metal hood up to reveal the bottom half of her soft face. “What would you like to know?”

“Why are we here? What force brought us here?” Why hadn’t he asked her that before?

“No one really knows exactly why we were brought here.” She paused to scratch an itch on her neck with one of her tentacles. “I am not sure how much it is wise to tell you…yet.”

“What? What’s going on?” He stopped her with a hand on her metal shoulder joint. He winced as it scorched him. White hot! “Are you all right? That’s molten!”

“We may need to rest soon.”

“No kidding. You sure you don’t want a sip of my energy drink?”

“No, thank you. You need it more than we do. Let us go on a little farther, then I will tell you what you want to know.”

“You’d better,” he said, “or I’m gone.”

They both knew he was bluffing—soon he would need food and water, and he didn’t know how to get either. There was no choice in the matter. They were mutually bound to each other’s survival. Charlie rolled his eyes when Marley prodded him on with an insistent bionic arm.

The climb began smoothly enough. Whatever corborilium was, it didn’t affect Charlie at all, but the moment Marley stepped onto the first orange stone slab, her green eyes faded out.

“The one hundred and fifteenth has something she would like to say to you, Charlie,” Marley announced.

“Yeah?”

The tone of the voice speaking into his ear didn’t alter in the slightest, yet he could tell right away it was not the same person. The youngest child said, “I like the story of Saint Christopher. Can I be the little girl whom he carries across the river?”

He didn’t know why he knew, instinctively, what she wanted. It could have been a crafty way to boost his ego by bestowing sainthood upon him. They were a hyper-intelligent species but he heard only a child’s call for help. As he jogged to the back of the line and saw how much her tiny frame trembled and laboured from her exertions, the urge he’d contested earlier, to gather each of them up and carry them over any obstacles, won him over completely.

“All right, little one, up you come.” She felt shockingly light when he hoisted her up onto his shoulders and held her steady. “That better? You okay up there?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I suppose I’ll have to name you as well.” He thought for a moment, raising her while her metal legs cooled off. “You like Saint Christopher, eh? You can be Christina, then.”

No reply. He smiled. The little one had got what she wanted, and that was that.

Christina didn’t make a sound as he carried her to the head of the line and gave Marley precise instructions on how to cross the next angled rock. He stayed with her inch by inch, saying things like, “Reach for two o’clock with your right arm. You’re about twenty steps from an overhang. Head for eleven o’clock. Sidestep twice, then it’s a two-foot drop. You can drop that far, can’t you? Good, ’cause I don’t fancy lifting all of you down every goddamn step.”

Painstaking and monotonous. The one saving grace was that Marley relayed her instructions to her siblings precisely, so Charlie had only to guide her. Hours of meticulous planning—a combination of maze puzzles, scouting ahead to find the easiest route, and the minutiae of talking the walk—left him with a pounding headache.

By far the toughest part of the journey was the climb itself. Instructing cumbersome creatures to reach for handholds and how high to pull themselves up reminded Charlie of the crude robotic toys he’d programmed as a teenager. The parallels between blindness and those self-correcting mechanisms of his youth seemed eerily strong. He didn’t think he could cope without sight. He admired his students’ pluck all the more.

After another sunset and two conquered peaks, the orange rock flattened into a vast, volcanic plateau. Charlie traced the ancient lava flow back to a caldera half a mile wide to the north. A large chunk was missing from its rim, which suggested a powerful eruption had blasted it apart, devastating the surrounding area. He tried to imagine a pyroclastic cloud filling the tranquil citrus sky. Everything on Baccarat appeared so calm, so uneventful. The storm clouds had dissipated quietly.

What was it about this planet that had attracted all those alien vessels in orbit? What underlying secret powered the phenomenon? He remembered Marley’s promise to tell him what he wanted to know, and this seemed as good a time as any. He set Christina down on a flat rock overlooking the plateau and made himself comfortable on another, sloping rock.

Marley stood beside him, while the others had no choice but to remain in line, exactly where they were.

“You can spill the beans now.” He tongued the last drops from his Lucozade container, then lay down and yawned, crossing his arms behind his head.

Marley didn’t waste any time. “Planet Baccarat used to be a friendly place, Charlie. Its inhabitants sent avatar messengers out to the far reaches of the universe and invited civilizations back here to share knowledge. They used wormhole technology to cross vast distances. This was one of several planets in a cosmopolitan system known and loved by all. Until the current rulers of Baccarat arrived. They were invited here in good faith. Their technology was profoundly advanced, and that almost always indicates a benevolent nature. For once a species learns how to overcome its technological adolescence, that wisdom becomes the foundation for serenity and, ultimately, the curiosity to seek out others in the cosmos.”

“You said almost always benevolent.”

“No one knows why this particular species turned hostile, but at the heart of their technology was a weapon so powerful it rendered all others impotent. They systematically wiped out entire planets and enslaved millions. Having turned the original wormhole network to their own ends, they now ensnare distant spacecraft and bring them here. Those with the means to warp space-time can escape, but for the rest, there is only one option—to reach the planet’s surface. No one has ever left here alive.”

Charlie sat up. “Why not? What the hell are these things?”

“Occasionally we catch a glimpse of one, an exile wandering the wastelands. But they quickly choose suicide. No other creature has ever made it out of their city alive.”

“Where’s this city?”

“You know where it is. I have observed you are constantly drawn by its summons.”

“The lighthouse?”

“Yes. It is the perfect means to lure interstellar castaways to their deaths, a beacon of hope. It is not even a matter of trust. The marooned ships have no choice but to head for that sign of civilization and, from there, none make it back.”

Mantraps began to snap at the thick of his stomach, gnawing at his resolve. The hunger joined in. He’d been so distracted all day, nothing ultimate had reared its head. He’d had a task to perform, a means to an end he hadn’t envisaged. Surviving was an end in itself. No shape to it, no personality. But this—this was slam-bang, guillotine focus. It had a shape and personality. Evil.

“So what do we do once we reach your parents?” He hoped like hell to hear the word
escape.

“Our parents have been in direct contact with us all this time. Remember we are all linked. When we reach them they will tell us exactly what must be done. They have met with the aboriginal species of Baccarat, the kind race of old who now dwell in the forest realm. Not even the usurpers dare interfere with the equilibrium of the forest. Its roots go deep, and it gives the planet its air. The aboriginals have promised to send you back to Earth, Charlie.”

His heart lifted.

“With one caveat,” she added.

“Oh?”

“You must destroy the great city beneath the lighthouse. That is the only way the aboriginals will be able to reclaim their planet and control the wormhole technology to send you home.”

Charlie leapt to his feet, almost fell backward. “Then why don’t you just throw me to the goddamn lions while you’re at it! All the technology in the universe…and you want me to walk up and knock? Wow, I have to hand it to you guys, you’re every bit as dumb as you look. Listen, I had to run on a goddamn treadmill to get here. I’m just a hamster in a tin shithouse. Christ! As if things aren’t bad enough, I have to do your dirty work for you as well. You want me to die. Wow, that’s gratitude. I tell you what, as soon as I get you there, you’re gonna show me how to get food and water for myself and then I’m gone. Sayonara. I’ll live in a cave somewhere. I don’t care. There’s no way I’m risking my neck for someone else’s beef. No fear.”

“Are you finished?” Marley asked.

He shrugged sulkily.

“Maybe you did not hear me,” she said. “You have the opportunity to destroy one of the most evil regimes known anywhere in existence and, if successful, you will get to go home. Not to mention all the countless lives you would spare from now on. If that is not enough to convince you, maybe this is.” He looked up as she removed her metal hood to reveal a bald head with three bare patches in the skin showing her skull.

Perhaps the eyes used to be there, eons ago.

“The evil ones are us. We are them. A long time ago, we shared the same planet and we alone know how to defeat them.”

Intrigued, Charlie cocked his head to one side.

“So you will help us?” she asked.

“What would I have to do?”

“You would have to enter the city.”

“How do I do that?”

“You will have to be captured.”

“You what—” He spluttered into a cough and slid off the sloping stone. He wiped orange dust off his leg and the sleeve of his T-shirt and shook his head. “For a species on the verge of extinction, you sure have a sense of humour.”

He spat the phlegm from his mouth. Rising to resume the trek, he held his arms out ready to lift Christina onto his shoulders. Strangely, she was not there. He checked the nearby rocks in case she had fallen. No sign.

“Marley, what’s happened to her? Christina. The little one. I left her right—”

The plateau below was desolate, the only distinct features being five or six narrow but deep fissures a mile or so from the caldera. Halfway there, Christina was stumbling about in the open dust, looking lost, as though her circuits had completely malfunctioned.

Marley couldn’t explain how the link between them had become severed. The corborilium perhaps?

Charlie tore down the slope before she had chance to ruminate.

Beyond the fissures, another figure was approaching. He didn’t know who or what it was or what it wanted. All he knew was it was running for Christina, and she was his responsibility. Each leap hiked his adrenaline. He didn’t know if he could reach her in time. As soon as he set foot on the plateau and kicked into a full sprint, his first since being inverted in the
Bluebird,
he felt a drive in his legs he’d never felt before, not even in the Tonne. For the next half a mile, he ran faster than any human had ever run.

“Son of a bitch is quick,” he said, two-thirds of the way there. Could he reach Christina before the brown runner? It would be a close call, even with his newfound agility. Charlie was by far the quicker of the two, but his opponent had had such a massive head start.

He called out to Christina, “Run toward me, run to my voice.”

No use. Had something interfered with her hearing as well as her communal link and navigation? The brown figure kept low, dipped as though it were finishing a sprint race. A biped with short legs and six flailing arms, it moved clumsily yet powerfully, and with frightening urgency. Charlie could hear its loud wheezing from a hundred yards away. For a split second he considered giving up. The creature sounded insane, looked a hard bastard and was probably going to get there first. The thought of little Christina so lost and helpless, being snatched from his care after personally asking for his help, drove him on. The thing was almost upon her. He made ready to leap…

“Drop-kick him in the head, Charlie,” the voice in his ear said.

The timing proved superb. He sprinted a few more seconds, went ahead with his leap, and needed only a slight adjustment to meet the creature feet-first.
Thud!
His left trainer caught the side of its bowed head, while his right planted firmly on its shoulder.

The fleshy brute spun backward through the air. It gave off an unearthly screech before holding its shoulder with all six tentacles. Two of them had a set of three fingers. Charlie also noticed three dark, sunken eyes in the creature’s turtle-like head. Its wide mouth quivered but didn’t open. He got to his feet and squared up against it, protecting Christina.

Closer to, the thing appeared gangly, less powerful. He yelled, “Get away from her!”

It stepped back on wrinkled legs with cross-shaped feet, but still seemed determined to claim its quarry. Taut with adrenaline, Charlie wished he had a weapon of some kind. The brute was bigger than him by at least twelve inches. His dropkick had hurt it but, strength-wise, how would he fare in a fight? It circled, every few seconds nodding into a lunge that didn’t come. Behind him, Christina didn’t make a sound. The standoff was all twitches and steel, and alien dick-measuring, neither willing to attack first nor back down. The orange sand kicked up by the race now settled about them. An extraordinary smell of liquorice stung Charlie’s flared nostrils.

He sneezed.

The brute seized the opportunity and leapt at Christina. Charlie caught one of its rear tentacles and spun it away. Incensed, it bowed its head and rammed him shoulder-first. He took the impact on his right arm, and it hurt.

“Son of a—”

He saw red and opened with a flurry of hard fists to the brute’s head. It felt like hitting a big prune—there was some give, then a goddamn rock under the flesh. Tentacles grabbed his arms, lessening the force of his blows. The creature rammed him with its other shoulder. He careered backward off his feet. With a huge lunge, it went to snatch Christina. Charlie kicked the brute’s legs from under it. Scrabbling through slaps from its tentacles, he pummelled its stomach and head. It finally desisted when he spat saliva and the words, “I’ll kill you,” into its eyes.

Exhausted, Charlie watched the thing flee, its tentacles flapping, its right side crouched low, until it vanished behind a rocky rise. The last sound it gave was an ear-splitting screech. He figured it was heading for the lighthouse.