Battle for Earth (3 page)

“Welcome back,” came the ship's reassuring voice.

“Hi, Sol,” said Johnny, before turning to his sister and asking, “What happened?”

Clara was busy rebooting the prone android. “It was weird, wasn't it?” she said, adding, “What was that thing? How do you think it knew my name? And who was that awful woman who knew yours?”

Alf sat up looking thoroughly confused.

“Colonel Bobbi Hartman,” Johnny replied. “Sorry I didn't get to introduce you.”

The last time Johnny had seen the colonel, she'd been testifying against him during his trial for High Treason on Melania, the planet most of the spacefaring population of the Milky Way galaxy knew as its capital. Bobbi Hartman worked for the mysterious Corporation, a secret organization prepared to go to any lengths to acquire alien technology.

“I do not think either Colonel Hartman or the amphibious creature is the issue here,” said Alf, fixing Clara with a hard stare.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I suspect you know very well what I am talking about, Miss Clara,” said the android. “Time and again I have warned you of the dangers of too much folding. You lost control.”

“How dare you?” Clara replied, her face turning pink. “I've never folded accidentally. It was that thing—the amphibian. It did something to the pavement.”

“And conveniently brought us back to the ship?” said Alf.

“I don't have to listen to this,” said Clara. The silver flecks in her normally pale blue eyes sparkled with power and she disappeared in a point of light, having folded herself elsewhere.

Tossing and turning in the bed that pulled down from a wall in his quarters, Johnny chewed over the strange events of the day. How could the alien creature possibly know Clara? How did Colonel Hartman know about the amphibian? As if running into the colonel hadn't been bad enough, Johnny was far more worried at seeing a Krun shuttlecraft right here, on Earth, bold as brass above the streets of London. These were the parasites who'd killed his dad. He supposed it was too much to hope that the horrible insect-like scavengers from the rim of the galaxy were gone for good, but so much had happened in the last year that anything had seemed possible.

Six months ago, at the time the Krun had gone into hiding, Johnny had destroyed the entire fleet of the aliens' one-time allies, the invaders from the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, but there had been a terrible price to pay. General Nymac, the fearsome Andromedan leader, had proved to be none other than Johnny and Clara's much older brother, Nicky Mackintosh,
thought dead for ten years. To stop the Andromedans, Johnny had been forced to destroy Nicky's own ship and, almost certainly, Nicky with it.

With “Nymac” gone, the Emperor of the Milky Way (and Johnny's friend) Bram Khari had returned from self-imposed exile. Bram had been able to restore order, throwing out the corrupt officials who'd been running the galaxy in his absence. A whole century of neglect was being swept aside, but it didn't alter the fact that Nicky had probably been blown up with his ship and Johnny didn't have answers to all Clara's questions about him. She'd changed after that, often picking fights. And Alf accusing her of accidentally folding them away didn't help. Johnny hated the pair arguing—there'd been a bad atmosphere on the ship all evening.

“Wakey wakey, rise and shine. Some of us have been awake for hours, you know—I calculate precisely nine thousand, five hundred and fifteen, as someone didn't bother to program me so that I could sleep in the first place. I can't think who that might have been.”

“Kovac,” said Johnny sleepily. It was very rare for the quantum computer and not Sol to wake him up. “What's going on? What time is it?”

“Good morning, Johnny,” said the ship. “It is 5:38 a.m.”

“What?” said Johnny. “It's Saturday.”

“I told you he wouldn't like it,” said Sol, presumably to Kovac.

“It's hardly a matter of likes or dislikes,” said the computer. “I have information I deem important enough to pass on at the earliest opportunity—whatever time it is.”

“What is it then?” said Johnny, his eyes still shut and his quilt held over his head to block out the slowly brightening room that was doing its best to rouse him gradually.

“I have discovered I am not alone in monitoring the security forces for indications of alien activity.” Johnny lowered the quilt. This could be interesting. “I have detected another tracer program at work—with a rather unexpected origin.” The computer sounded even more self-satisfied than normal.

“Where?” asked Johnny, suddenly awake and alert.

“Halader House itself.”

“Kovac,” said Johnny, frustrated. Halader House was the children's home where he had been brought up and still lived much of the time. It was also where Johnny had first programmed Kovac, and to where the computer's four-dimensional casing was cleverly and continuously linked. “You woke me up for that? That's the residual echo from your box, durr-brain. Go back to sleep—or at least let me.” With that he pulled the quilt cover over his head and said, “Lights out.” The room immediately obliged.

As he lay in the dark, drifting back to sleep, Johnny resolved to return to Halader House later that day. If Clara and Alf were still arguing it would be good to be somewhere else, and at least he might be able to get a night's peace. There was another reason to spend time at the children's home. In Johnny's attic bedroom was a Wormhole that linked directly to the Imperial Palace on Melania. Kovac was tasked with monitoring any communications through it, but it made sense for Johnny to have a proper catch-up with Bram. It was only one sphere, but it might be wise to tell the Emperor that the Krun had returned.

When Johnny finally surfaced it was late morning. Straightaway he asked for news reports from the previous night. An alien climbing Nelson's Column before ending up right outside Parliament was surely headline material—the Prime Minister
had probably already made a statement. Yet it turned out there had been no mention of the incident anywhere.

At least the arguments from yesterday had stopped. Alf was so engrossed in his efforts to trace the amphibian that he seemed to have forgotten to be cross with Clara. Having gathered together the results, the android had called a meeting in the strategy room on deck 14.

Everyone was standing on the mezzanine level, overlooking the space into which Sol had projected a gigantic map of southern England, a collage of satellite images with other features and labels superimposed. As Bentley dozed against Johnny's feet, Alf traced out the route the creature had taken since yesterday evening, occasional thin streaks of red highlighting its journey west out of London.

“Why can't we follow him all the time?” Johnny asked. Currently no signal was visible and it looked as if the trail had gone cold.

“The tracker only works above ground,” said the android. “If you observe closely, you will see the absence of a trace occurs when the amphibian is in his natural element, namely water.”

Kovac took up the story. “Within the river systems, the creature's speed is impressive—up to a hundred knots. Several boats were dispatched to trawl the Thames yesterday evening, but it would have been long gone.”

“Can we tell where he's going?” Johnny asked.

“Although an extrapolation of the amphibian's movements cannot be a hundred percent accurate,” the computer replied, “I am certain it is attempting to reach the Severn Estuary and, from there, the open sea.”

“You're wrong,” said Clara.

“Excuse me,” said Kovac. “I have performed more than forty-seven quintillion calculations on the subject over the last few hours. How many have you done?”

“If he'd wanted to reach the ocean, why didn't he just swim down the Thames?”

“Unhappily, I am shackled within this tedious box and not able to ask him directly. I hypothesize he was afraid the Thames would be blocked in an attempt to capture him. If you're so much cleverer than I've previously been led to conclude, what's your theory?”

“He's not thinking—he's acting on instinct,” Clara replied. “He's from the Proteus Institute. That's why he recognized me—he wants to go home.”

It was like a lightbulb being switched on inside Johnny's head. The Proteus Institute for the Gifted was the “school” from where he'd rescued Clara, over a year before. Run by the Krun, and once linked directly to Earth orbit by a secret space elevator, it was an institution where the foul aliens experimented on human children. “Of course—those things in the tanks,” he said.

“What things? What tanks?” asked Kovac. “How can I be expected to reach a sensible conclusion if I am not party to all the relevant information? Sometimes I wish I hadn't been cursed with my quantum upgrade—I could have existed quite happily as a humble, extremely crude, operating system.”

Johnny often wished that, though he hardly would have described Kovac's original programming as crude. The letters stood for Keyboard- Or Voice-Activated Computer, which was, in Johnny's opinion, a very impressive piece of coding. It was when Sol designed the quantum processor to enhance Johnny's original design that the personality problems had started.

“Beneath the Proteus Institute we found tanks filled with water,” said Clara. “There were pupils inside, floating upside down, their bodies turning green. I thought they must be dead. Then one opened his eyes.” Johnny remembered how Clara had fled the horrible room and he'd had to go after her, leaving
another girl, Louise, behind. Clara went on, “The Krun were creating monsters, human-alien hybrids. I might have been next.”

“That's why they were there yesterday,” Johnny added. “Seeing what had happened to their experiment.”

“The Krun were there, Master Johnny?” Alf sounded apoplectic.

“I saw a Krun sphere in Trafalgar Square,” Johnny replied. “It followed us down to the river.”

“Why did you not say?”

“You were too busy arguing with Clara,” said Johnny.

“I was making a very important point,” said the android. “Miss Clara does far too much folding.”

“Can we just drop it?” said Clara. “We know where he's heading. Let's go to the Proteus Institute and pick him up before anyone else does.”

Just then something started to beep on the map below. Everybody turned and looked for the source of the noise. A thin red line was tracing out a path across the countryside from the end of the River Parrett down toward Yarnton Hill, the town where the Proteus Institute was located. Clara had an “I told you so” smirk across her face. “Everybody ready?” she asked as one of her trademark arches began to form beside her.

“Miss Clara—I must insist,” said Alf, “this time, we are flying.”