Battle for Earth (37 page)

For the first time ever Johnny piloted the
Bakerloo
to a bumpy landing, hard on a country lane not far from Wittonbury Station. He wondered if Alf had been right and he was simply too tired, though it also felt odd flying beside his social worker
in the shuttle—almost as if he was back at school. Louise had insisted on taking the back seat so she could keep an eye on the American. She even pretended she was carrying a blaster.

Johnny had overflown the old location of St. Catharine's Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but there was no evidence of the complex from the air. He hadn't expected there to be—in the past it had only been visible at ground level, but as his fatigue mounted, he couldn't afford to make any stupid mistakes. Miss Harutunian's gravitational-wave detector had registered a spike as they drove along the narrow road with hedgerow either side—an idyllic section of English countryside that tomorrow might not even exist. The somber mood in the shuttle suggested they were all thinking the same. The voice inside Johnny's skull—the Krun Queen—was getting louder, clamoring for her ships. He did his best to ignore it, but began warning the others of the dangers they might face if those Krun trapped within their old base had found a way out. The aliens were heavily armed. Silently he recalled that their weapons had killed his dad. For safety, Alf had tried to insist that Johnny took his sister's locket—her personal shield—arguing that she was perfectly safe aboard the
Spirit of London
, but Johnny would never have dreamed of removing it from around her neck.

He had been sure St. Catharine's was sealed forever, effectively within its own Klein fold. The only creature Johnny had ever seen undo such a thing was the Nameless One when freeing Clara. If the being from Andromeda could suspend gravity and slow the speed of light to walking pace, it was entirely possible that he had come here. Just as he'd told no one about the voice in his head, Johnny decided not to tell the others that either. There were some things they were better off not knowing.

He stopped the
Bakerloo
by a brick footbridge over a narrow
brook, with steep grassy banks sloping down to the babbling water. Beyond, long grass gave way to the patchwork fields of the Sussex countryside. Miss Harutunian, who said she'd visited the site since what she termed “the hospital's bizarre disappearance,” whisked a device like a cell phone from her pocket and held it up in the air, slowly waving it around to target any ripples in space. Johnny knew she would find some. He'd already spotted that the water in the stream was running uphill—a sure sign that space had been folded nearby. He plunked himself down on the exact spot of the very bank where he had once sat beside Clara, with Bentley there too, after the most dreadful day he could remember.

“You OK?” Louise asked, joining him where Clara had once been.

He nodded, the lump in his throat making it impossible to speak. Being so close to the place where he lost them made the memories of his parents stronger.

“I think I've found something,” said Miss Harutunian. “What now? You're the boss, Johnny.”

“If there's a gap, I might be able to close it,” he said, turning to look where the social worker was pointing.

“But I can see it,” said Louise. “I don't believe it—there's a line in space.” She leapt up, as though to cross the long grass, but stopped. “Where's it gone? It was there a second ago.”

“Are you sure?” Johnny asked. “I can't see a thing.” He had to stifle another yawn.

“No, I made it up for a laugh,” said Louise. “Of course I'm sure.” Defeated, she sat back down on the bank and her eyes widened. “It's there again.” She grabbed Johnny's arm and pointed, but all he saw was fields of green and yellow, planted on gentle slopes, rolling into the distance.

“You're in the right ballpark,” said Miss Harutunian, holding up her device, “but I can't see anything.”

“It's just to your left,” said Louise, standing again. “No, I've lost it.” She sat back down, screwing her eyes up, and found it again. “No—not that far. A bit right.”

“Stay there,” said Johnny, patting her arm and standing up. He bounced on his toes to try to give himself a bit of extra energy and jogged toward the social worker. Again he would have to fold space, but it didn't come naturally. He tried to imagine the whole area as completely flat, mentally pushing the trees, electricity pylons, river bank and even the blades of grass down so far that they had no height at all, and then he saw it. There was a hump in space-time, right in front of where he was standing. It affected everything around it, very subtly, but it seemed suddenly obvious why the brook had to flow ever so slightly uphill.

He couldn't understand how a Klein fold might have such an effect on real space. He reached out an arm, wondering what it would find on the other side and almost laughed in surprise. Here, at the boundary where normal space and time met its hyperspatial equivalent, Johnny's fingers closed upon a doorknob. It definitely wasn't St. Catharine's. Could this be an entrance to the corridor Zeta had shown him in his dreams? He turned the handle, wondering if he might be about to see the princess again.

He was dimly aware that Miss Harutunian had dropped her detector, before Louise shouted, “You did it, Johnny.” She was off the bank in a shot and ran past him, only to vanish into thin air.

“Wherever your hand's disappeared to, keep it right there,” said the American. She picked up the device and brushed past Johnny's arm, before disappearing too. Johnny followed.

Into the distance, as far as the eye could see and set against an angry purple and black sky, were spaceships. Johnny knew they were each over thirty thousand years old, but they gleamed as
if they'd been built yesterday. This was where Clara had folded the Atlantean fleet, but it was to the foreground that Johnny looked. Here was a simple, circular pool, but one that could never have existed within normal space and time. A stream ran out from one side and along a regular channel, before flowing back into the pond on the other side in perpetual motion. Between the stream and the pool were beds of brightly colored flowers.

In his half-awake, half-asleep state, Johnny understood, as if he could think clearly for the first time. Here was the garden Clara had written about in her diary—the one she'd created. Its only connection to St. Catharine's was that it had been built nearby, within just a membrane of hyperspace, because his sister had felt the same powerful draw of their parents in this place. Louise had seen the slit where it intersected real space because she'd been sitting in exactly the same spot on the bank where Clara had been on that horrible day. When Clara needed somewhere to move the Atlantean ships, the obvious place had been this infinitely expandable bubble of hyperspace that only she knew. Johnny walked forward, not toward the sleek Starfighters but to the flowers, planted for his parents and brother Nicky, and knelt down beside them.

“Johnny,” Louise shouted, “can we get these ships out? I know I can fly one. Maybe Katherine too?”

“Maybe? Are you kidding? Try stopping me,” said the American. “These are awesome.”

“Aren't they just?” said another American voice. “Very well done, Johnny.”

A dog barked—it was a voice Johnny knew so well. He turned to see Bentley straining toward him, the sheepdog's lead stretching into Colonel Hartman's hand. Either side of her, armed troops wearing camouflage clothing began fanning through the opening. Instinctively Johnny shut the door with
his mind—almost. He left the narrowest sliver open, but knew that neither the Colonel nor her men would ever find it again without him. Bentley was barking continuously, straining at the leash to join him. The smile on Colonel Hartman's face wavered and she looked over her shoulder, wondering why more Corporation soldiers weren't joining her in this most unusual garden.

“I've closed the door,” said Johnny. “It was getting a bit crowded.”

“Open it or the dog dies,” said the Colonel. She reached inside the jacket of her regular blue suit, pulled out a pistol and cocked it, pointing it straight at the Old English sheepdog's shaggy head.

“Kill Bentley and you and your men never leave this place. Not just for your natural lives—for eternity.” The steel in Johnny's voice looked to have surprised her, but he meant every word. “Leave them alone,” he said to the soldiers who had reached Louise and Miss Harutunian, machine guns pointing at head height. They looked, uncertain, toward Colonel Hartman, who nodded, and the weapons were lowered.

“Katherine,” said Colonel Hartman with fake warmth.

“Bobbi,” came the terse response.

“I see you have yourself a girlfriend, Johnny,” said the Colonel. Louise blushed.

“We're wasting time,” said Miss Harutunian. “The aliens will be here in a few hours.”

“You don't think they're already among us?” said the Colonel, raising an eyebrow. “You obviously don't know Johnny like I know Johnny—or the company he keeps.”

“You're wrong, Bobbi,” said the social worker. “Johnny's not the threat—he never was. He's one of us. We're all on the same side.”

“If that's true, then he'll open this door and let my pilots
fly these fighters right out of here. Earth's future depends on it.”

“You have to be kidding,” said Johnny.

“See,” said Colonel Hartman. “He'd rather his alien friends took the planet over than give us a chance to defend ourselves.”

“How dare you?” said Johnny, slowly standing, careful not to trigger a firefight.

“Why not, Johnny?” It was Louise who'd spoken. “The Krun have a thousand ships and we have no pilots. Even with Katherine's people that makes just a handful. We can't win this war on our own.”

“We can't just give
them
… the Corporation … this technology. You don't know what they're like. It can't be so easily won—it has to be earned.”

“You've seen us fight, and beat, the Krun, Johnny,” said the Colonel. “Humanity's future is at stake. Together we can save it, or is that what you're afraid of?”

He wasn't about to rise to her bait. Colonel Hartman had always tried to goad him into some ridiculous admission that he wasn't human, when he felt nothing but. If only he wasn't so tired he could think clearly. There had to be a way out of this.

“How about it, Johnny?” Miss Harutunian had joined him by a flower bed. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Johnny wasn't at all sure she was right, or that this was anything other than a terrible idea, but there were only a few hours to prepare a defense.

“I guess there's no choice,” he said, hardly believing the words had come out of his own mouth.

“We have a deal?” asked the Colonel.

Johnny nodded and she released Bentley's lead. The Old English sheepdog bounded across and slid a warm, wet tongue all across his face.

Preparations were in full swing. Johnny had been forced to stay in Clara's garden, holding the fold wide open until the last of the Starfighters and Battlecruisers had been removed. A succession of near-silent military men and women with close-cropped hair and bulging muscles had marched through the opening, trampling over Clara's garden before each took charge of one of the galaxy's most fearsome fighting machines. Seeing each of the ships lift silently into the air and then streak out into the English countryside was beyond words. All his life, Johnny had longed for Earth to have its own fleet of spacecraft. He just hoped they'd survive for more than a single day.

Miss Harutunian had been on the phone constantly, and several familiar faces from Halader House, and even Dave Spedding, Ashvin Gupta and others from Johnny's soccer team, had also appeared. The social worker said she'd begun recruitment after their visit to the children's home. Johnny was worried they weren't taking things seriously enough—that they didn't appreciate the threat. The whole thing was crazy. Louise, herself a complete novice, was teaching them to fly. Miss Harutunian was really frustrated she couldn't find more people, but said many of her contacts had disappeared over the past few weeks. He knew things were desperate, but it felt wrong to be asking people to risk their lives this way.

Colonel Hartman commandeered the massive Starcruiser, a colossus of a ship for which Johnny had to stretch the entrance to breaking point. It took all his strength, but would be worth it in the battle to come. He took a last look across the now empty garden with its trampled flower beds and then checked his wristcom—time was running out and the Krun fleet must be almost here. He didn't trust the colonel as far as he could fold her, but he'd made his decision. There could be no going back.

Louise and Miss Harutunian were gone. They had flown back separately, and apparently successfully, to the
Spirit of London
, so only Bentley was present to notice as Johnny skidded the
Bakerloo
along the shuttle bay floor. He stepped out, surprised to see Alf emerge from the shadows of one of the Atlantean ships.