Moon Dust (Alien Disaster Trilogy, Book 2) Page 8

  ‘Alright, Sis—you have two minutes to make a move!’ Jason said. ‘Starting from three, two, one … now!’

  Saoirse came over and stood looking down at Kat’s letters, then at the board, then back at the letters. ‘TOASTER,’ she said. ‘You can use the S to link it onto BUMHOLE, and you even get a triple word score!’

  Jason cursed. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have played that!’

  ‘It wasn’t even a real word,’ Kat said to her brother as she placed her tiles on the board. ‘But you insisted. Thanks, Saoirse, I guess. You came up with that pretty quick.’

  ‘We’re pretty hot with anagrams on Corroza,’ the alien girl said. ‘We have this convention of naming our non-sentient machines by coming up with anagrams of their function. I saw this one because I used to have a friend whose toaster was called Startoe.’

  Kat furrowed her brow. ‘But … why?’

  ‘I guess it’s to help keep some kind of distance between people and machines. We have some pretty advanced biomechanical utility droids back home. Hell, even Startoe could hold a conversation for about a minute … just so long as it was about toast. Basically, giving them anagrammatic names just makes it slightly less weird than calling the machine that heats your bread Steve.’

  ‘Your planet sounds so cool,’ Jason said. ‘I still want to come. How were you thinking of getting back?’

  ‘Any space-faring vessel will do, once we fit it with Brandon’s superluminal drive. It’s the quasars in the drive that simply speed up the normal workings of the …’

  Kat tuned out. Jason seemed too enraptured with Saoirse to concentrate on the game, so Kat got up and walked around the pool to where Brandon was now sitting reading a tattered paperback. They had all been pleased to find that the activities they used to enjoy on their phones—reading and gaming—could just as easily be done without electronic assistance.

  ‘Fancy a walk?’ she asked him. Brandon snapped the book shut—it was some pulpy-looking fantasy shocker called Dragon Killer—and flung it away. They left the pool and headed up some escalators (switched off to save power) and wandered aimlessly through the shopping precinct. Other people were milling around, but they certainly weren’t browsing for designer goods or perfumes: they were hauling around crates and boxes of stolen booty from the cargo freighter and restocking the stores, which now had been turned into outlets where food, bathroom products and other essentials could be rationed among the crew. It was a slick, organised operation, and the Captain was in the middle of it all, bellowing orders and opening and inspecting boxes.

  ‘We’ve got how many cases of these? Fantastic! That’ll last us for months! Keep two hundred cases down in storage, and bring twenty up here to hand out tomorrow. Okay, what’s next? Whiskey? I don’t care if it’s single, double or triple-distilled; red, black or pink label—take it back down and lock it away in storage. This isn’t a pleasure cruise!’

  Kat and Brandon found an out-of-the-way coffee shop, and Kat chose a table by the window that provided a dramatic view of the swirling, raging dust storm outside. She guessed that the glass was toughened, remembering how no window back on the mainland could withstand the violence of the elements.

  ‘The Captain might be a bigger pirate than Blackbeard,’ Brandon said, as he worked the coffee machine, ‘but he sure runs a tight ship. I haven’t felt this safe and secure since I woke up that fateful August morning back in London.’

  Kat gave him a wry smile. ‘Then you should know better than to get too comfortable. Absolutely anything could happen at any time. How do you know we’re not moments away from some new alien saucer dropping in and sucking up the ocean with a giant vacuum cleaner!’

  ‘Better enjoy your last Grande Americano while you can then,’ Brandon joked, joining her at the table with two giant mugs that were almost spilling over with hot black coffee.

  Kat warmed her hands on the mug. It was always cold on board the ship. ‘Hey, me and Jason used to steal these mugs from the coffee shop in Westfield shopping centre.’

  Brandon laughed. ‘You’re so bad,’ he said. ‘But I like it that you were striking a blow against those big multinational corporations.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Kat said. ‘I guess I won in the end, didn’t I? Here I am drinking some of the last coffee on the planet. Can’t see many more beans growing in this weather.’

  Brandon’s face turned serious, and he stared out into the raging storm. ‘You still want to come with me, right? If I leave Earth?’

  Kat had promised she would, that was true. When it looked like Brandon would have to go on the run to protect the secret of the bionoids, she had offered to go with him. Things were different now though …

  ‘You, me and Saoirse? They say three’s a crowd, you know; I don’t want to be a gooseberry, Bran.’

  ‘You won’t be!’ he insisted. ‘I mean, Saoirse is great and everything, and I like talking to her—she’s another alien like me, of course—but she’s got nothing on you, Kat!’

  Kat waved his protests away. ‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to make you think I’m jealous or anything. I’m not. But Bran … you’ve been annoyed with yourself that you can’t do anything to save Earth, so what makes you think that you can go back to Cozz … Corroro … that alien planet and sort out all their problems?’

  Brandon shrugged. ‘Corroza isn’t ruined. There’s still hope there, if the Arch Predicant can be defeated. I’m not saying I want to take him on myself, but if I can help in some small way …’

  ‘I guess that's the same reason why I want to stay here,’ Kat said. ‘I want to do my bit to help save Earth. So long as humanity can resist the aliens and freaky weather, then there's still hope. Underwater cities, remember!’

  They regarded each other in silence for while as they sipped their coffees.

  ‘I'd stay here with you, you know,’ Brandon said, ‘if I thought that there was anything I could do. But my powers are useless against the thanamorphs and the moon dust. What if instead … what if we could kill two birds with one stone, and somehow get everyone on Earth to Corroza to help us stick it to the Arch Predicant, and then you can settle down and make a new home for humanity there.’

  ‘We’d need a big spaceship,’ Kat said after she thought over the idea for a moment. ‘Something bigger than the Proteus, that’s for sure. Although I guess it all depends on how many people are still around to come with us …’

  ‘Okay, millions and millions of people dead. Possible extinction event, I get it.’ Brandon gritted his teeth in frustration. ‘I guess we’ll find out how many survivors there are when we get to this rendezvous point.’

  Kat looked out of the windows. ‘Never mind the fact that the Moon’s gone—we haven’t seen the stars for weeks now either! How do we even know what direction we’re going in?’

  ‘If the satellites all go down, then the only thing the ship can navigate by is by radar. It’s, what, three thousand kilometres across the Atlantic? That’s only four days at this speed. Hopefully we’ll bump into other ships as we start to converge on our destination.’

  ‘We could do with an-old fashioned compass,’ Kat joked.

  ‘Good idea,’ Brandon said. ‘Hold out your hand!’

  Kat obliged, and Brandon placed her knuckles down on the table between them. Then he curled her fingers back, but lifted her middle finger vertically. Kat giggled. ‘Keep still,’ he said, and took a deep breath to focus his mind.

  Kat felt a tingle on the end of her finger, then she saw a dark shape appear in front of her. The bionoids were coalescing into the shape of a thin needle that balanced perfectly on her fingertip.

  ‘I’m sending a coil of electric current down the needle,’ Brandon explained. ‘It should—’

  ‘—induce a magnetic field!’ Kat said. She stared down at the needle, which was turning slowly on her finger. ‘Oh my god, look!’

  ‘I know! It’s working!’ Brandon said proudly.

  ‘Yeah, it’s working, but look: it’s
pointing the wrong way. We’re supposed to be going west, aren’t we? Towards America?’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ Brandon said. ‘Losing the Moon means the Earth’s poles might have started to shift.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kat said. ‘But according to this, we’re not just slightly off-course: we’re heading south-east!’

  ———

  Kat stormed up the escalators and through the gilded corridors, heading for the Captain’s Lounge. She needed to know where they were going. ‘I’m not going to spend my life sailing around singing ‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,’ she fumed. ‘It’s not a pirate’s life for me!’

  Brandon hurried along after her. ‘Kat, slow down! You can’t just barge in and demand that the Captain turns around. I’m sure he’d rather make us walk the plank!’

  Kat ignored him, and soon they were at the converted nightclub at the front of the ship where they had first met the Captain. There was a young guard at the door who perked up when he saw Kat approaching. But no sooner had he opened his mouth to challenge her, than his eyes closed and he slid down the wall to his knees, fast asleep and snoring.

  ‘Thanks, Bran,’ Kat said, pushing open the wood-panelled doors and entering the Lounge. The Captain was sitting at ease on his desk, sipping from a small tumbler. He wasn’t alone: Doctor Chow was sat in the leather chair, relaxing with a drink too. They were laughing at something, and turned to face Kat with smiles still playing on their lips.

  ‘Well, good evening, young lady,’ the Captain drawled. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Kat noticed a crate of the confiscated whiskey at the foot of the desk. ‘Where are we going?’ she snapped.

  The Captain stood and stepped forward, a consolatory expression on his face. He was a calm centre as the storm raged outside the sweeping curve of the windows. ‘Now come on, you know where we’re going. Every ship in the world is meeting up in the middle of the—’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Kat spat. ‘We changed direction sometime today.’

  The Captain stared down at Kat for a moment, sizing her up. ‘You’re quite the observant one. Maybe I should have included you on the memo.’ He laughed to himself. Kat felt Brandon hovering behind her, backing her up. She found the confidence to stare down the Captain with a challenging glare.

  ‘Alright, I’ll tell you,’ the Captain said. ‘We received a distress call this afternoon from another ship due south of here. We’re heading their way to help them out.’

  ‘Help them out?’ Kat mocked. ‘Like you helped out the people on that other ship earlier? They had a small crew and plenty of food. We have plenty of room, but you left them stranded after you stole all their fuel and supplies.’

  Doctor Chow rose from behind the desk. ‘Kat,’ she said. At least someone knew her name. ‘We couldn’t take the freighter crew on board. Those people were sick.’

  Kat swallowed her anger. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was the same sickness we saw among our own crew,’ the Captain said, ‘after they got bit by those creatures. We lost our old captain to it … the virus, or whatever it is, turns people into dopey zombies, but that’s just the start of it: after a while—’

  ‘We know,’ Kat said. ‘We’ve seen it too.’

  ‘If the passengers on this new ship we’re heading towards are infected, but are not too far gone along the process, I may be able to help them,’ Doctor Chow said. ‘Brandon, you said you’ve had medical training?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ Brandon said, ‘I won a teenage scholarship to University College London.’

  ‘Then you’re probably a better doctor than I am,’ Chow said. ‘I went to veterinary school. We could do with your help.’

  Kat looked at Brandon, and he shrugged. ‘I might be able to help infected humans,’ he whispered ‘I’m not sure until I try.’

  Kat turned to the Captain. ‘What’s this ship called that we’re racing towards?’

  ‘The Amphitrite.’

  Kat’s heart leaped in her throat.

  Mum! Dad!

  12—LEVIATHAN

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  ‘What, Dad?!’

  ‘Come on, you two—eleven o’clock is music-off time. Don’t force me to make it lights-out time too, like when you were twelve.’

  ‘Okay, but in a few minutes—this is the last track!’

  ‘Apart from the ten-minute hidden track!’

  ‘Jason, shut up!’

  ‘What! Don’t look at me like that! Whose idea was it to give us his turntable, amp, speakers and old collection of vinyl, hey, Dad? Oh yeah, that’s right—it was yours!’

  ‘Don’t try to blame this on me, Son. It just pained me to see you two listening to music on tinny laptop speakers, that’s all. It wasn’t a license to turn the house into Wembley Stadium ...’

  ———

  An hour after the confrontation with the Captain, they all gathered on the bridge as the convergence point of the two ships approached. Saoirse and Gem had joined them; Jason was below decks, preparing for action with the rest of the boarding party.

  ‘We’re almost on top of them,’ the girl at the communications desk said.

  Kat peered out into the dust. She couldn’t see a thing. How close would they need to get before the Amphitrite came into view. The Captain was sitting in his chair at the controls, carefully nudging them forwards: the Proteus was using only two of the four diesel-powered Rolls Royce Mermaid pods: propellers that could rotate almost three-hundred-and-sixty degrees for maximum manoeuvrability.

  Gem put her hand on Kat’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m sure your mum and dad are fine.’

  ‘They’d better be,’ Kat said, almost jokingly, ‘after all the trouble we’ve gone to find them. Wait … I see it!’

  She could see a faint twinkling of lights far out in the dust ahead.

  ‘Captain,’ the girl on communications said urgently, ‘something’s coming.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said patiently, ‘I see it …’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘Something else—coming in from our starboard side … fast!’

  As one, everyone ran to the right side of the semicircular viewing window. But there was nothing out there: no lights, no movement—

  ‘Under the water!’ Saoirse and Brandon said, simultaneously. Kat strained to see. Her human eyesight saw the shape several seconds after they did. Then suddenly it broke the surface of the slate-grey sea, and everyone who hadn’t spotted it already gasped in surprise.

  The creature must have been more than thirty metres long: its silvery smooth back was cutting through the water faster than a speeding car. There was only one thing on the planet that it could be … or could have once been …

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ the Captain said. ‘It’s a bloody blue whale!’

  ‘It’s too far south for this time of year,’ Doctor Chow said. ‘Unless all this dust has messed with its migratory pattern—’

  ‘It’s not a blue whale,’ Saoirse told them. ‘Not anymore.’

  As the Amphitrite loomed out of the dust in front of them, the giant thanamorph seemed to hesitate. It slowed to a halt between the two cruise liners; then, with a flick of its massive metallic-scaled tail, it surged away from the Proteus and plunged towards its sister ship. Kat yelled out something loud and incomprehensible as the full bulk of the monster reared out of the water and struck—and then entered— the port-side hull of the Amphitrite, like a bullet tearing into soft flesh. The ship listed dramatically, and all the lights flickered and died at the same moment.

  On board the Proteus, the Captain spun the wheel hard, and all everyone could do was watch the stricken Amphitrite slide out of sight to starboard.

  Kat ran off the bridge and out onto the top deck, straight into the dust storm. It whipped and tore at her, stung her eyes and caught in her throat, but she almost didn’t feel it as she ran to the starboard rail and watched the other ship sink.

  The Amphitrite had split i
n half, and now both prow and stern were tipped skywards as they were dragged down beneath the cold grey Atlantic. Kat howled in rage and frustration, but her voice was impotent—nothing but sound and fury that was snatched up and swallowed by the storm. The thanawhale splashed about the doomed vessel in manic circles, like a demented dog; then when the Amphitrite had finally sunk, the great silver monster breached and flipped in the air, its red eye glimmering in the greyness all around. Then it smacked back down in the water and headed towards the Proteus.

  Kat just gripped the rail tighter. What would be the point of running back inside? Better to face death head-on and get it over and done with as soon as possible. The thanawhale ploughed through the water at full tilt, but just at the last moment, when Kat thought it was going to leap for the hull, it submerged and slipped under the ship.

  There was a crash as alien armour met steel keel. The Proteus rocked dramatically, and Kat almost puked her heart up as the ocean rushed towards her, then fell away again. She crashed to the deck and covered her head with her arms. Any minute now she expected to be flung into the sea.

  Any second now …

  She was lifted off the deck. Not by gravity or a slop of seawater, but by a pair of strong hands. ‘It’s gone!’ Saoirse shouted in Kat’s ear. ‘The thanamorph has gone. Hell knows why. Come inside, Kat!’

  ———

  Kat spent the next twelve hours alone in her cabin, in bed. She clutched her pillow and stared at the wall, trying to cry, but no tears would come: all she felt was a horrible anger and a hollow emptiness.

  As soon as she had shut the door of the cabin, Kat had reached for the one thing she had left that held any emotional connection with her parents: an old T-shirt. She had been wearing it under her grey denim jacket the day she and Jason had gone looking for safe places in Highgate Cemetery to hide from the meteor shower. The image printed on the white cotton was the front cover of her parents’ favourite record: four young guys, dressed in baggy raincoats and silly hats, standing in a line holding out their arms to spell out a semaphore message. Kat remembered, when she was nine, sitting on a rug by the fire while the record spun, the twelve-inch-square sleeve on her left, and Wikipedia on her Nexus tablet on her right.