Lethal Planet (2 page)

A pair of great double doors had opened in the wall that was now the floor. Jason joined a squad of armed marines who, led my Lieutenant Hewson, were heading out on a recce mission. Hewson seemed happy to have Jason come along, after first making sure he was fitted with a Kevlar vest and helmet.

The squad dropped down a few metres onto he hard scorched ground. It was misty in the alien jungle, and there were strange phosphorescent lights floating out in the dark. Jason shone a torch back over the
Majestic
. He noticed that vines and creepers were already twisting through the superstructure. Weird hooting and croaking noises came from all directions. There was a strange smell in the air.

‘This is just too weird,’ Jason said. Every one of his five senses was being subjected to entirely new sensations: alien sensations. ‘There’s nothing to shoot. Let’s just get back inside and wait until morning.’

‘Yeah …’ Hewson agreed. But he seemed more interested in examining the ground. ‘This isn’t the jungle floor,’ he said. ‘This is a giant tree trunk. The
Majestic
is still stuck up in the canopy.’

As if to confirm this fact, there was a long drawn-out wail as one of the marines slipped and fell to his death. From out in the mist there was another cry, a clatter of gunfire, then silence as the cry was suddenly cut short.

‘Fall back!’ Hewson shouted into this helmet headset. Jason scanned the gloom. He couldn’t see any of the rest of the squad.

Then something appeared out of the mist.

At first Jason thought it was one of the marines coming back, but it was taller, slimmer, with legs and arm jointed in all the wrong places. When it revealed itself, less than five metres away, Jason could see that it was a bird …

… a featherless bird, with dangling metre-long claws where you would have expected to see wings. Its sinewy body was black, with strange ripples of glowing blue. Its beak, like its claws, was long and thin, and it snip-snapped open and closed like a pair of giant scissors.

Jason was rooted to the spot in horror. The creature stepped up and wrapped its claws around him like a cage.

Then, with a deft snip of its beak, it severed Jason’s right arm at the shoulder.

03—
CYBORG

Jason almost rolled off the bed when the
Majestic
lurched suddenly. The ship dropped around five metres, then rocked back and forth for a good thirty seconds.

Jason tried to remember where he was. Brandon and Kat were looming over him. His sister was trying to lay him on his back again. He shrugged her away and sat up. He recognised the retro wooden panels and funky light fittings of the Chrysler Building’s nineteen-thirties interior.

‘Why are we still on the ship!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re hanging in the treetops. If we don’t get off, we’re all going to crash to the ground. And I’ve had enough of crashing for one lifetime!’

Kat tried again to push him down. ‘We’ll get off in a minute. Just lie still, would you. Brandon is trying to perform an operation.’

Jason tried to bat his sister away with his arm …

… but it wasn’t there.

Then he remembered the horrific bird thing. Jason howled in wordless frustration, anger and rage.

‘Keep still, will you!’ Brandon urged. ‘I’m trying to use the bionoids to get this arm to stay on.’

Suddenly there was hope after all. ‘You can put my arm back on?’

Jason saw Kat and Brandon exchange a worried glance.

‘Well …’ Brandon began. ‘Sort of. It’s not exactly
your
arm.’

‘After you fainted,’ Kat elaborated, ‘the bird alien thing picked up your arm in its beak and ran off with it!’

‘What?!’ Jason’s anger surged again. He turned his head to see what Bandon was messing around with. Attached to his right shoulder was a new arm … a robot arm.

‘Wait a minute!’ Jason said. ‘That’s …’

‘Saoirse’s arm,’ Brandon confirmed. ‘It’s amazing. The circuitry maps almost perfectly onto the neural network of the zelfs. I can used the bionoids databases of zelf and human DNA to translate the appropriate—’

‘I’m not having Saoirse’s arm!’ Jason shouted. ‘She killed Gem. Brandon, how can you do this?
She killed your sister!
’

‘I’m
doing
it,’ Brandon said with a scowl. ‘Shut up and be grateful.’

Jason flopped down on the bed. How could he be grateful, when all he felt was pain and guilt? The strange alien’s glowing body had somehow hypnotised him; he hadn’t been able to even raise his gun, let alone fire it.

Then he remembered. ‘The squad! What happened to everyone else?’

‘All dead!’ Kat said. ‘The birds took the heads off some, and the legs off others. They bled to death before Brandon could save them.’

‘Ah damn it, Brandon, you’re just as useless as I am. What about Hewson?’

‘Alive,’ Brandon said. ‘He lost his right arm too, though.’

Jason thought about this for a second. ‘Okay, so hold on: why are you giving me the robot arm. Give it to Hewson! He’s best soldier we’ve got! He’ll need it more than me.’

‘Stop being so noble,’ Brandon said. ‘I chose to give it to you. So live with it!’

* * *

The convoy rumbled along the great wide road of the alien tree branch. Jason drove the leading MTV—
Multi Terrain Vehicle
—a big, green six-wheeled truck, with a V-shaped hull that was designed to deflect head-on blasts and break through obstructions. He held the wheel steady with his robotic hand; the new limb felt strong, and wasn’t aching or cramping up like his old one often did when driving. Jason was quite pleased with it after all.

Kat was sitting beside him. ‘When we reach the end of this branch, how are we going to get down the trunk?’

Jason shrugged. ‘No idea.’

Beneath them, the tree shuddered as the
Majestic
shifted in its cradle of branches. There had been no choice but to abandon ship.

‘No idea? This was
your
plan, to drive to Perazim, Jase!’

‘Strategy and tactics, Kat!’ Jason said. ‘Do you know the difference?’

‘Of course! Well … erm, nope …’

‘The strategy is the
overall
plan,’ he explained. ‘We drive to Perazim through the jungle, and hopefully the Arch Predicant won’t see us coming. Tactics, on the other hand, are the solutions to the problems that we’ll encounter along the way. When we get to the end of this branch,
then
we’ll think about how to get down. Why worry about a problem that hasn’t appeared yet?’

Jason was pleased to have his thought process justified: they were able to escape the branch they were travelling along by way of a knot the size of a football stadium, then drop down onto one of the giant tree’s exposed feeder roots. The trucks and tanks were then able to roll off onto the jungle floor.

It was dark down here, and the headlights of the MTV’s bounced off the mist, illuminating almost nothing. The ground was muddy and wet, and rain gushed off leaves and boughs like waterfalls. The only things that provided any kind of reference point were large glowing purple flowers that seemed to be everywhere, sprouting from twisting tendrils than snaked around and between the trees. As the MTVs trundled over the tendrils, the flowers would move, turning to watch the invaders as they passed by.

‘I don’t like this,’ Jason muttered. ‘Where’s Brandon anyway? Maybe he can turn his bionoids into some kind of pesticide.’

‘He’s in the back,’ Kat said, ‘talking
diplomacy
with the President; telling him how he won’t ever use the bionoids as a weapon, blah blah blah …’

She sighed and shook her head.

Jason glanced across at her. His sister looked a little dishevelled. Her cropped hair, that Gem had cut back when they had stopped at the castle in France, was growing out in messy, mousey tangles. She had also taken to wearing her black plastic specs again: the fix Brandon’s father had administered with the bionoids had proved only temporary. ‘Everything all right between you two?’

‘Not really,’ Kat said. ‘Bran has these amazing powers, but they’ve changed him. Instead of being this incredible superhero with all these cool tricks, it’s like he’s taken all the responsibility too seriously. I think he sees himself as some guardian of morality, whose life is devoted to serving the bionoids.’

‘While we grunts do all the dirty work when battles need to be fought,’ Jason added.

‘Yeah,’ Kat agreed glumly. She suddenly switched moods. ‘Oh well! Maybe when this is all over, we’ll have chance to be a proper boyfriend and girlfriend again. Until then, I’m going to make sure I look out for you, Bro. Brandon can take care of himself.’

Jason grinned. ‘Twins against the world. Just like old times!’

* * *

Lieutenant Hewson ducked into the cabin. He looked different too: he was happy now to wear a baggy fisherman’s sweater and jeans, rather than his regulation black MI Zero combat threads, and he had started growing a very non-regulation beard. It had grey speckles in it, which seemed to sparkle against his dark skin.

He seemed less authoritative, too—less soldierly and tough than he used to be. Jason knew that all the fighting men and women had taken a knock in confidence since the strange bird alien attack. It had been the final straw, added to the chaos of the robot, thanamorph and balak triple-whammy back on Earth.

‘How’s your arm?’ Jason asked.

Hewson gave a sad smile. ‘At military dances, I used to say I had two left feet. Now I know how it feels to have two left arms.’

Brandon had attached Saoirse’s left arm to Hewson’s right shoulder, but the operation hadn’t been a complete success. ‘It feels odd, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Hopefully when it’s not too late.’

He leaned in between the two front seats and peered out of the window. ‘Anyway, rearguard report that there are some creatures following us. Large tiger-like animals, they say.’

Hewson had one of the two working radios. To conserve battery power, they had rationed out the use of all equipment.

‘Well, let’s just ignore them,’ Jason said. ‘I’d like to see a tiger trouble the armour plating of these—HOLY HELL!’

Something stepped out of the jungle and into the streambed that the convoy was following. It looked like a tiger, alright, except that it was at least five times as large, and had claws like great curved lawnmower blades that splayed out from all four paws.

Jason knew instantly what it was. ‘Catron!’ he said, as he applied the brakes. ‘We had better hope they can’t use those claws as a can opener. They’re poisonous—one touch is death.’

‘Remember the balak king,’ Kat said. ‘He wanted to make a sword out of the bionoids, and call it Catron’s Claw. They’re probably the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy!’

‘Don’t sound so excited,’ Jason grumbled.

The MTV shook suddenly as something heavy landed on top of it. Then four sharp claws punctured the armour plating above them like it was paper. Jason, Hewson and Kat all jerked aside at the same time.

Instinctively, Jason reached out with his bionic hand, grabbed the end of a claw and snapped off the end. The other claws retreated from the cab.

‘Now who’s the most dangerous creature in the galaxy?’ he asked triumphantly.

The smile was wiped off his face as the vehicle was rocked back and forth by creatures on either side.

Brandon appeared from the back. ‘Drive, Jason!’ he shouted. ‘I’m trying to keep them at bay with a shield of bionoids, but their claws can just poke right through it!’

Jason felt the panic hit him, manifesting itself as a dribble of sweat that trickled down his back. ‘I’m not driving at full tilt into the jungle!’ he said. ‘Even if we outrun them, we’ll probably crash into a river or a tree seconds later.’

Hewson looked defeated already. ‘We’re not prepared for any of this. None of us are. We shouldn’t have come here.’

He pulled a pistol from his belt. Jason felt a chill of despair. He doubted that Hewson planned to use it on the catrons.

A loud, penetrating wail cut through the air. After a brief pause, the catrons all bounded off into the jungle.

‘Oh great,’ Kat said. ‘Something’s coming that frightens off even the universe’s most deadliest predators!’

Silence descended on the convoy. Everyone waited in grim apprehension. Brandon had his eyes closed, seeing and sensing through the bionoids.

‘Someone’s coming … People! … Lots of people. And I can sense them, which means they must be human, zelf or … or balak! They’re balaks!’

And sure enough, a group of aliens stepped out of the foliage and into the streambed. There were about twenty of them: greeny-grey skinned, muscley brutes, dressed in leathers and scraps of metal armour. Most of them were carrying machetes. One of them was armed with a trumpet, presumably for scaring away catrons.

The President squeezed into the cab. He looked out the window at the tribe of balaks, then checked his tie in the rear view mirror.

‘Sir,’ Jason said. ‘Before you go out there and get all diplomatic on those guys, why don’t you let me talk to them first. I’ve dealt with balaks before.’

I’ve shot their heads off with laser rifles, mostly.

‘Sure,’ the President said, after a moment’s consideration. ‘I need a new Secretary of State. You can try out for it.’

Jason opened the door and hopped down into the shallow stream. He was unarmed, and he knew the balaks were a warlike race who liked to fight.

Well, he was going to give them a fight to remember …

One of the aliens stepped forward to meet him. If it was the leader, it was shorter than the rest of them, but no less ugly; Jason was faced with evil red eyes and a grin of twisted teeth.

It spoke to him: ‘Grabba gut wrak wron? Shrik turg!’

Jason had forgotten that without alien technology, there was no way to translate what everyone was saying. He raised his palms and said, ‘Me no zelf. Me human. Me come in peace. Take me to your leader.’

The balak gave a croaking laugh. ‘Brogga zork hud hud—’ It fiddled with a bangle on its wrist ‘—can see you’re no zelf. You’d already be dead if you were. What are you doing in our territory
, human
?’

Oh good, Jason thought. We can talk properly. But even if they hadn’t been able to, he knew there was another common language between them …

‘We come to fight!’ he said, slamming his robot fist into his left palm. He tried to control a grimace—that had hurt!

The balak tensed. Its companions all reached for their weapons. Jason noticed that there were more of the aliens lurking in the jungle, behind the giant leaves and roots. This could get messy if he said the wrong thing.

‘Well, we like to fight, too!’ the balak leader said with a horrible grin, ‘So you’ve come to the right place.’

Jason returned the grin, and made his next move: