Moon Dust (Alien Disaster Trilogy, Book 2) Read online

  08—PROTEUS

  They decided they had to risk it. There was human life aboard the boats in the flotilla—over a thousand people, according to Brandon, and all in a relatively calm state of mind. He assured Kat that if they were being terrorised by aliens, then he was sure he would be able to sense their panic.

  Nevertheless, Kat gripped the rail of the yacht nervously as they approached the mass of vessels. At the centre of the flotilla, a giant transatlantic liner loomed out of the darkness. With its white superstructure on top of a black hull, it looked like a city on a cliff. Flags flying from the bow and the stern only added to the fortress-like appearance.

  We might even be safe up there, at last, Kat thought.

  Jason, supervised by Gem, piloted the yacht slowly through the smaller boats that surrounded the liner. They were all tied up, side-by-side, and arranged in rows that extended out from the larger ship like spokes. Lights were on in some of the vessels, but most were dark, their owners perhaps asleep or aboard the bigger ship.

  ‘I just want to see a real person,’ Kat said. ‘It’s been a week since we left England; a week since we last saw a friendly face.’

  Saoirse opened her mouth to speak. ‘You don’t count,’ Kat said. ‘You come under the heading of strange alien creatures.’

  Saoirse took the jibe well. She laughed and went back to checking on her laser rifle, which she had managed to get charging up from one of the yacht’s power outlets. So long as there was diesel in the tank, she could zap thanamorphs.

  The dust cloud was coming down, obscuring the top half of the liner. Kat pulled her hood up and snapped on her ski goggles. The hull was now like a black wall of steel in front of them: almost half a kilometre long, and fifty metres high. The name of the liner was painted on the side in giant ten-metre-high white lettering: PROTEUS.

  They set their course by a rectangular glow that was cut out of the hull, the only bright spot in the deepening gloom. It was a service hatch about halfway up the hull, and a steel-wire, metal-runged ladder descended to a walkway of decking, supported by pontoons, that floated alongside the ship’s waterline.

  There was a humanoid silhouette in the hatch. It was crouched at the opening, a red glow emanating from its head. Jason killed the engines, and swung the wheel around so that the yacht drifted sideways up to the decking. Instinctively, Kat jumped out and ran to the foot of the ladder, grabbing hold of it just as it left the ground and started to rise.

  ‘Kat, no!’ Gem shouted. ‘Damn it!’

  Kat was already ten metres in the air; too high to jump down safely. She saw Saoirse pull out her laser rifle and aim it upwards. Kat hoped that the alien girl was just covering her, and wasn’t going to shoot the ladder down.

  ‘It’s alright!’ Kat shouted back at her. ‘It’s not an alien!’

  She was met at the hatch by a young guy with long hair, who was kneeling down in order to operate the winch that pulled the ladder up. The glowing cigarette dropped from his mouth when he saw Kat appear out of nowhere. He jumped back in surprise as she clambered in.

  ‘Whoa! Stop! Arrêtez!’ he said, picking up a heavy wrench and hefting it defensively.

  Kat pulled off her goggles and hood, revealing her pixie-crop and smiling face. ‘Bonjour!’ she said.

  He relaxed slightly, but he didn’t lower the wrench. Kat noticed that they were in the liner’s engine room. The young guy was wearing a dusty white crew jacket over denim overalls. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, with floppy brown hair and stubble. ‘Er … je ne sais pas pourquoi?’ he said.

  Kat laughed. ‘It’s okay, I’m English too. Can we come aboard?’ She looked down at the winch mechanism that the crewman had just moved clear of; she kicked the release lever and sent the ladder clattering back down to the decking.

  The young guy jabbed a thumb at a round enamel badge on his jacket: a white star on a red background. ‘You don’t have a badge,’ he tried to explain. ‘You can’t come aboard unless you have a badge.’

  ‘We’re not gonna turn into thanamorphs, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Kat said. ‘Who do we have to talk to if we want one of your nice shiny badges?’

  ‘Thanamorphs?’ he said. ‘What the hell are—’ Then he stopped as Gem appeared at the top of the ladder. She shook her long black hair out of her hood and advanced on him with a confident glare in her eyes. Gem was almost two metres tall, and had the height advantage over her adversary. ‘Gem Walker, MI Zero,’ she snapped. ‘Take us to your leader.’

  ———

  The engine room was dark and dirty, but it felt warm and safe. They gathered around their new friend—whose name turned out to be Liam—while he tried to explain the set-up.

  ‘We were turned away from Southampton cos of some unspecified emergency. Dieppe seemed safe enough to drop in for supplies and fuel, and to let off those who wanted to get back on the mainland. Most of the crew, including the captain, were in town when the … creatures swarmed in and attacked. Now we’re running on a skeleton crew, most of whom are unqualified to sail a monster like the Proteus. It’s one of the biggest cruise liners in the world!’

  Jason was staring up in awe at the engines: there were four, and each one was five metres high and fifteen metres long. ‘This ship is amazing. How much fuel do these things guzzle?’

  ‘We can carry six thousand tonnes of heavy fuel, but even that’s only about twelve days’ worth. I’ve been organising the refuel—we’ve ransacked pretty much every abandoned boat and maritime store in Dieppe, but we’re only about three quarters full.’

  ‘Jason—stop perving over the machinery,’ Gem snapped. ‘Liam—what were you saying about the badges?’

  ‘Oh yeah, sorry. The captain hands them out. There are so many people wanting on board that we need to have a pretty brutal selection process. You only get a badge if the Captain deems you a valuable addition to the crew.’

  Kat spotted something that didn’t make sense. ‘You just said the aliens got the captain when he went ashore?’

  ‘The real captain, yeah. The new guy in charge calls himself the Captain, but I think he used to be the head chef or something. Anyway, he has a loud voice and is good as bossing people around, so …’

  ‘Alright, we need to go and see him,’ Gem said. ‘Do you know what kind of communications system this ship uses? We need to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world.’ She glanced over at Kat. ‘And we need to find some people. My friends’ parents.’

  Kat anxiously waited, while Liam rubbed at his stubble. ‘I know we use satellite radio, but the network’s been getting worse and worse as the satellites get knocked out of the sky by chunks of the freakin’ Moon! I do know though that everyone is taking to the sea to escape these aliens that have come out of nowhere, and I’m pretty sure that we’ve been swapping passenger logs with other ships. Everyone is supposed to be heading to some rendezvous point out in the Atlantic.’

  He shrugged. ‘But what do I know? I’m just a grease monkey who spends twenty-three hours a day down here.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, man,’ Jason said. ‘Hey, if we have to work for our passage and you need an apprentice …’

  Brandon nodded. ‘I can help with any medical work. We can all make ourselves useful. Come on, let’s go see this Captain person.’

  ‘Okay,’ Liam said. ‘I’ll take you to his cabin. But one last thing.’ He opened up a metal locker on the wall. ‘No weapons allowed aboard the ship. You’re gonna have to leave your rifle and any guns and knives here.’

  Kat decided on the spot that she wasn’t going to give up her Bowie knife. She kept quiet, but Saoirse handed over her rifle without a second thought. She unclipped a pair of laser pistols from the back of her belt and threw them in the locker too. Finally, she pulled two vicious-looking stiletto blades out of each of her boots.

  ‘I feel better naked, anyway,’ she said.

  ———

  Kat wasn’t a stranger to wealth and ostentation
. Her parents were rich city bankers (though she tried to pretend they were normal), and Kat regularly hung around in West London shopping centres that would almost put the Palace of Versailles to shame. But after weeks covered in moon dust and dirt, the interior of the Proteus still took her breath away.

  The corridors were all painted white with gold trim, and the open spaces were hung with crystal chandeliers. They walked on plush red carpets, and passed by gold-framed original artwork. There were people going about their business too—and although they didn’t act like they were on holiday, they didn’t seem particularly panicked or frightened either.

  Kat walked alongside Liam, chatting away. He was easy to talk to, and didn’t seem to mind her relentless questions.

  ‘No, I don’t have a girl in every port! I’m usually too busy prepping the ship to bother exploring.’

  ‘Where were you when the moon blew up?’

  ‘In the middle of the Atlantic. We were returning from New York. It was a bright sunny morning one minute, then suddenly: BANG! The whole world shakes. The sky turned grey almost straight away, and then there was the tidal wave …’

  ‘Tidal wave?’

  ‘I swear it was fifty metres high—and that was out at sea. I dread to think how big it got when it reached New York! We were okay; we hit it head on and sailed up one side and down the other, but what a ride that was!’

  Brandon, walking and talking with Saoirse behind them, couldn’t resist butting in. ‘That would have been caused by the oceans suddenly being released from the grip of the Moon, and being pulled towards the Sun instead. When we were at the RAF base they were talking about terrible flooding on America’s eastern seaboard, remember?’

  ‘That and a million other crazy things,’ Kat said. ‘Hey, who’s this? Neptune?’

  They were in a giant atrium, where glass lifts ascended to the higher decks. Between the lifts, a statue rose out of a bubbling water feature: a bearded man with a naked torso and the body of a serpent. He was holding a trident above his head.

  ‘Close enough,’ Liam said. ‘That’s Proteus. He’s Poseidon’s son. Poseidon and Neptune are the same guy, depending on whether you’re talking about Greek or Roman gods. Don’t ask me how I know these things!’

  Kat turned to Saoirse as they rode the elevator upwards. ‘What does your god, Zuul, look like?’

  ‘Zaal,’ she corrected. ‘He’s a big, ripped guy, but with the head of a vilaxx and the claws of a catron.’

  ‘He sounds badass. What’s a vilaxx?’

  ‘Something you don’t ever want to meet.’

  The party got out of the lift and headed towards the bow of the ship. More and more luxury revealed itself as they went: restaurants, cinemas and coffee shops; signs that directed passengers to swimming pools, saunas and health spas. Liam led them to some heavy wooden swing doors under a sign that said, Captain’s Lounge. Through mottled glass windows they could get a sense of a large open space beyond.

  ‘This is the Captain’s cabin?’ Gem said. ‘Looks more like a nightclub.’

  ‘It is,’ Liam said. ‘It was, I mean. The new captain decided the old captain’s cabin was too small, and too out of the way. So he set up shop here.’ Liam knocked three times on the door.

  ‘Enter,’ a voice said from within.

  Liam pushed the doors open and waved them through. They entered a large, dimly-lit, dark-wood-panelled room with massive glass windows opposite. The dust cloud blocked out the view of what Kat imagined would be the prow of the ship. The polished wooden floor had been cleared of furniture, save for a single broad table and leather chair. The table had two large computer monitors on it, as well as a lot of paperwork and general clutter. The leather chair was empty.

  The Captain was standing at the bar off to one side, pouring himself a large tumbler of some clear liquid from a bottle. Rum? Vodka? Kat wasn’t familiar with spirit labels. They waited while the Captain used a pair of chrome tongs to grab two large ice cubes and splash them in his glass. Then he turned to face them.

  He was huge. Not fat, and not muscular even, but tall and thick. He was in his forties, maybe, with closely-cropped greying hair and a round face, in which was set two small, glimmering dark eyes. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a black shirt that was open almost halfway down his chest.

  Kat felt herself tense up involuntarily as the man approached them. ‘So what have we got here then?’ he asked in a friendly voice that was undercut with a mocking challenge. He went straight to Kat—as if he could tell that she was trying to avoid his glare—and cupped her chin in one large meaty hand.

  He forced her to look him in the eye. ‘Well, you’re not infected,’ he said. ‘That’s one thing in your favour. But that’s not enough to earn you your passage on the Proteus. So, before I make you all walk the plank … what have a filthy bunch of tearaways like you lot got to offer me?’

  09—CARDIAC

  Kat didn’t bother attempting to speak so long as the Captain held her in his grip. She didn’t want to do anything that would add to her humiliation. So she said nothing, and stared back at the man until Gem stepped in to try to intervene.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ she said, putting a hand on Kat’s shoulder. ‘I’m a government agent. You’re legally bound to assist us.’ To back up her claim, Gem pulled out an old battered Secret Service visitor’s pass from the days when she was dating her boyfriend, James. This time though, the gambit failed: the Captain wasn’t impressed.

  He snatched the pass with his free hand. ‘This is your London HQ then?’ he said, looking at the photo of the Service’s Lego-style Vauxhall Cross headquarters. ‘If I’m not wrong, your government is now sitting around chewing their knuckles in an asteroid crater the size of Godzilla’s arse. Haven’t you noticed that the world has gone to hell? Governments have no authority anymore anywhere, let alone here. The only law on this ship is my law. If you want to join the crew, you have to impress me: so, what can you do?’

  Gem frowned. ‘I can kick your ass. I’m a green belt in karate.’

  The Captain laughed. ‘Great! Let’s see you prove it then!’ To Kat’s relief, he let go of her, spread his arms and presented the broad expanse of his belly to Gem. ‘Hit me as hard as you can, girly!’

  Gem lifted her right leg and twisted her hips, then fired the ball of her foot into the Captain’s stomach.

  He barely budged. What looked like a beer gut was actually a solid wall of meaty flesh. But Kat saw him grimace, and a tear formed at the corner of his eye. ‘Not bad,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe you can teach some of the lads to do that. We have a fully-equipped gym for training.’

  Gem shrugged.

  The Captain turned to Brandon. ‘What about you, Pink Eyes? Got any useful skills?’

  ‘I can control …’

  Brandon paused, to rethink his answer. ‘I’m a medical student. I can help with injuries and illness.’

  ‘Can you cure people who have been bitten by those monsters?’

  ‘Er, no, I …’ Brandon trailed off.

  ‘Fat lot of use you’ll be then,’ the Captain said. He turned to Jason. ‘You look pretty tough. I’m always looking for new security detail.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jason said cautiously. ‘I could do that.’

  ‘Good man. If you want the job, your first task will be to escort the rest of these losers off my ship.’

  Jason uttered an expletive. The Captain grinned cruelly. Kat saw Brandon sigh and close his eyes.

  All of a sudden, the Captain gasped and his hand shot up to the centre of his chest. He wobbled and fell to his knees.

  ‘I don’t feel … too good,’ he stuttered.

  ‘You’re having a heart attack,’ Brandon said coolly. ‘Your coronary arteries are clogged with fatty clumps. One of those clumps just burst, and now you have a clot that’s stopping blood getting to your heart. You’ll probably die in a few minutes.’

  The Captain went as white as a sheet. ‘Get help … you idiots. Get Doctor …’
<
br />   Liam had scrambled out of the door, but Brandon shook his head. ‘It will be too late by the time the doctor gets here. But I could help you. I know a simple fix for emergencies like this.’

  The Captain’s eyes bulged. ‘Then do it!’ he ordered.

  ‘Will you give us passage on this ship? Safe passage?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Alright then,’ Brandon said. ‘Kat, punch him in the chest.’

  Kat was momentarily taken aback. Punch him in the chest? Then she realised: Brandon needed a cover story to hide what mischief he was actually getting up to with the bionoids. It was a cruel trick he was playing on the Captain, but right now she didn’t have any choice but to go along with it.

  She pulled her fist back, then stepped in and thumped the Captain squarely on the breastbone. He crumbled to the floor in front of her. Lying flat on his back, he started breathing normally again, taking deep gulps of air.

  Liam rushed back in, followed by a Chinese woman wearing a smart grey suit. ‘Are you alright, Captain?’ she said.

  The Captain hauled himself to his feet. He actually laughed. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘In fact, I feel pretty good! Doctor Chow, I’d like you to meet your new assistant.’ He went over and gripped Brandon’s shoulder firmly. Kat noticed Brandon flinch under the powerful grip. ‘Liam, take our new friends up to the top deck and find them some empty cabins.’

  ———

  Kat woke up the next morning to the sound of gulls crying. She could feel the soft far-off thrum of the ship’s engines, and guessed they were on the move again. Gem was still asleep in the bed next to her, so Kat slipped out from under the covers and crossed to the window. Their cabin was huge with a minimalist decor. When the spotlights were on, everything was white—the carpet, the bed linen, wardrobes and furniture.

  Under the natural light of the morning though, everything was grey.

  Kat threw on a dressing gown and stepped out onto the balcony. The dust cloud was high in the sky, and sunlight was making an effort to break through. She could see the coast sliding past as they headed west through the English Channel. The landscape was grey; plumes of grey smoke rose from devastated towns and villages; the calm sea was slate-grey. The gulls that wheeled around above the ship were grey.