Battle for Earth (41 page)

Louise followed suit, positioning herself at the opposite end of the loop from Johnny. The gray world below was rushing toward them horribly quickly, the walls of a steep-sided
crater looming larger on every rotation. Johnny maneuvered his Starfighter directly under Sol's bridge. It looked massive in comparison to his tiny ship. He edged his minute craft closer to the
Spirit of London's
nosecone until he heard the grating sound of contact. He thought,
Full power, upward
, and straightaway realized his mistake. With a horrible crunching sound the Starfighter was batted out into the middle of the fighting at incredible speed. It was a miracle he didn't collide with any other spacecraft. He hoped his compact ship hadn't been damaged, but it still appeared to be working as he blitzed half a dozen of the smaller Krun pods before arcing around toward the
Spirit of London
again.

Miss Harutunian said, “Thanks, Johnny,” through the comm. system, but Kovac was going ballistic.

“I shall be splattered halfway across the lunar surface, all because some buffoon can't follow instructions that any simpleton would understand.”

Beside the
Spirit of London
, Louise's fighter was spiraling ever closer to the pockmarked surface. “Johnny,” she said, “I think it's too late.”

“I'm not abandoning them,” he said, as much to himself as to her. In a single revolution he'd matched his velocity with that of his beloved spaceship. Gently this time, he fired thrusters to send him upward. It sounded as though the Starfighter would be torn apart.

“Careful, Johnny,” screamed Louise, but he kept going. They were still falling, but his trajectory was beginning to level out and it was becoming easier to steady the great ship above. His sensors told him that their pitch was minus thirty degrees … minus twenty degrees, minus five, but then plus three. He'd overcorrected.

“Hang on,” said Louise, calmer now. “I'm coming.”

Johnny could tell she'd retaken her position at the
Spirit of
London
's tail because they leveled out. “It worked,” he said, disbelieving.

“You're too late, you blithering idiot,” said the voice in his wristcom. “Impact in ten …”

“Louise,” shouted Johnny, “full upward thrusters on my mark.”

“Nine …” said Kovac. Somewhere in the background, dogs were barking.

“Mark,” said Johnny, but they kept falling.

“Your tin can of a spaceship has too much momentum,” said Kovac. “Didn't you learn anything at that school of yours? We're all going to die in four …”

“Louise—get out of here,” said Johnny.

“Three …”

“I'm not leaving you, Johnny.”

“Two …”

He could see the steep sides of the crater they were plunging into, the great mass of the
Spirit of London
forcing them ever downward.

“Save yourself,” said Johnny. “I have a plan”

“Well, that is reassuring,” said Kovac. “Superbrain's going to somehow save us all.”

As the quantum computer muttered on and the bottom of the crater came into view, Johnny trained his blasters straight down and fired at low intensity. If it didn't work, his own beautiful spaceship would crush him and the Starfighter to death. He hoped Louise had gotten away in time.

Splashdown!

The Imperial fighter hit … not moonrock, but water, melted by Johnny firing into the well of a deep crater where the Sun's rays never reached. The
Spirit of London
forced him down under the surface into darkness, but Johnny guided his ship up and out to see the crippled spacecraft bobbing up and down on the surface of a lake that was rapidly boiling away.

A great shadow passed overhead. He looked upward to see the Krun Queen's massive ship speeding toward Earth. Inside his head the Queen was laughing at him, but he ignored her. He had to find Clara and see what had happened to Sol. The impact had burst open her shuttle bay doors and Johnny flew the Starfighter straight inside.

Louise's voice came through the comm. system. “I can't believe you did it, but you have to stop the Krun. Something's happened. Something bad.”

“You go,” he said. “I have to see Clara.”

“The Corporation ships … they've joined the Krun,” said Louise. “We need you.”

“Right now, Clara needs me,” said Johnny.

Louise's reply was lost as Johnny climbed out of the cockpit into a scene of devastation, illuminated only by the twin beams of the Starfighter's lights. Both the
Piccadilly
and the
Bakerloo
had been tossed around as if a tornado had ripped through the deck. Wreckage was strewn everywhere yet, at the most basic level of her being, Sol must still be alive. The emergency force fields were intact and there was air to breathe.

From out of the chaos, barking and shaking rubble out of his hair, came Bentley, followed by Rusty. The two dogs looked very sorry for themselves but otherwise OK. Johnny patted Rusty on the head and knelt down face to face with Bentley, but after touching noses he stood and ran for the elevators, raising the wristcom to his lips to say, “Kovac—where are you?”

From under a nearby pile of girders, a heavily dust-covered, very battered hyperbox lifted into the air. “It would appear I underestimated you,” said Kovac. “Doubtless the result of the same thing happening to me so often that even I'm losing count.”

“You can still fly?” Johnny asked.

“Then again, perhaps not,” Kovac continued. “Unless you
were blinded in the heat of battle, so are without the evidence of your own eyes.”

“Shut up and take me to Clara,” said Johnny, adding, “please,” as he was so desperate.

“Pretty please?”

“Kovac …” said Johnny, growling.

“Oh, jump on then,” said the quantum computer, settling on top of the rubble in front of him. “Not that it will do any good. I've been unable to raise anyone since the torpedoes struck.”

Johnny stepped onto the box and crouched down as Kovac climbed into the air, heading in the direction of the elevators. It would have been pitch black inside the shaft so he let the computer underneath him mutter on in order to light the way. They turned down the empty corridor toward sickbay, and finally inside. The dim glow of Earthlight through the walls of the ship filled the room, but there was also the faintest flickering pink haze still surrounding Clara's bed. A figure lay slumped on the floor. Johnny thought the gravimetric charges must have affected the android's circuitry, until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he saw Alf's chest open with some sort of organic cable snaking out of it, connected to where his sister lay.

He understood. To try to save Clara, the android had used his own energy source, maintaining the tachyon field for as long as possible. But now that power had run out. The pink aura flickered off for the final time. To see better, Johnny didn't need Kovac to talk to shed light in the room. He willed it, and the electrons bound into the very molecules of the air became excited, glowing green like the aurora. Any other time the luminescence would have been a thing of wonder, but now it was purely functional. Clara was thrashing about on the bed. Johnny slid off Kovac's casing and ran across.

Before he could take his sister's hand, she grabbed hold
of his wrist, gripping him so tightly that his arm burned. Then she opened her frighteningly oily black eyes and said, “I don't want to go.” The darkness spread like spidery veins, across her face and through her body. It reached the hand grabbing his. Johnny felt the power of it trying to repel him, but his sister was hanging on too tightly. Her body floated off the bed and the green glow in the room was extinguished by bolts of lightning arcing from Clara's torso.

Johnny held Zeta's words in his mind—that the only way to save his sister was to graft a portion of his own soul onto hers. He knew it must be possible. It was on his very first day in space that the Hundra had released a speck of its soul—a shining sliver of light—which separated from the whole and floated into Johnny. He recalled Bram long ago, on the moon where Sol had been born, turning from him. The Emperor had somehow placed a portion of his soul into Johnny's locket. If only Bram had let him see how it was done.

“Don't let go,” said Johnny. “Remember your garden. Remember Mum and Dad. Remember Nicky—we're going to find him again. We'll be a family. I promise.”

The crystals set within Clara's locket blazed, like lasers, lilac lines burning through Johnny's tunic, cutting through the stars of the “W” on his front. It felt as if someone had grabbed hold of his insides, twisting his organs. He remembered every bad thing he'd ever done as it rose to the top of his consciousness, like slag in a blast furnace. These were the things he was ashamed of—that he'd buried, hidden away so he wouldn't have to face the thought of them again … until now. The times he'd wanted to speak up, when he saw something wrong, but had kept quiet. Or when he'd joined in with his friends so they'd think he was cool or funny, but he'd known it was a cowardly way to behave. And how he'd abandoned his friends
now—his whole planet even—selfishly to save his sister just as he'd flown to Titan before when people were disappearing and being processed into food. There with it, being skimmed off and thrown away, he could see something else that disgusted him. It began in the shape of a flying insect, like the little moth that had forced its way down his ear on Mars, but swollen. Slowly it transformed, melting into the hundreds of eyes of the Krun Queen staring at him, outraged, before dissolving in the crystal heat. He knew his soul was being purified, making it ready for Clara, and it hurt like he'd never hurt before. He finally understood where the voices in his head had been coming from—how the Queen too had contaminated him. Bent double with pain, he vaguely heard another voice in the background. It was Louise.

“Johnny, where are you? Didn't you hear me? Our ships are going over to the Krun.” She sounded far away, as if shouting down a long tunnel. She faded into nothingness and was lost.

Johnny's mind was full of light and satisfaction and the desire to do good things, but the sensation was leaving him, slowly ebbing along the lines of laser light toward his sister who, Johnny knew, was being held within this universe only by the bonds of her locket, anchoring her to him while it drew on his strength … his inner being … his soul. He ached as a portion of him ebbed away.

The oily veins retreated up Clara's arms and disappeared from her face. Johnny looked into his sister's eyes and the blackness was leaving them, replaced by a shimmering silver. Mirrored within, he saw himself and his own matching sparkling silver eyes for the first time. The bond broke and Clara fell back onto the bed. She sighed, the sound of someone at peace, smiled contentedly at Johnny and, exhausted, fell sound asleep.

Johnny collapsed. He felt weak … incomplete … as though everything he truly was had been sucked out of him and he longed for what had been taken.

“Professor Bond to Johnny Mackintosh—are you receiving me?”

The surprise at hearing the voice brought Johnny to his senses.

“Professor Bond?” said Johnny, disbelieving. “Where are you?”

“With the Krun Queen,” came the reply. “There are lots of us. We were going to be eaten, but broke out. I know how to destroy it, but you have to come save the others first. And hurry.”

Johnny looked at his sister, finally whole and at peace. He had lost something he couldn't put his finger on, but seeing Clara he knew it was worth it. Also, there was silence in his head and he realized that for the first time in days he was free of the Queen's presence. Back on Mars, what he'd thought was simply a horrid bug must have been part of her—maybe even a piece of her soul. The idea made him feel sick. He gazed around at his broken ship and knew there was nothing he could do for her right now. The crescent Earth hung in the sky above, and it was his homeworld that demanded him. He fell onto Kovac's casing and said, “Take me to the shuttle bay.”

“Even ‘please' is out of the question this time, I suppose?” said the computer.

Johnny didn't have the energy to respond. He clung on as Kovac glided up the corridor and along the horizontal elevator shaft, emerging into the shuttle bay on deck 2. They were met by barking. Johnny rolled off the computer onto the floor, and found himself unable to stand. A rough, wet tongue slopped
across his face, over and over until, hands on Bentley's neck, he managed to make it to his feet. The cockpit of his Starfighter opened, but this time he couldn't prevent the Old English sheepdog from jumping onto the sleek wing and climbing inside. Somehow, Johnny found the strength to follow, leaving Rusty behind barking over the sound of Kovac grumbling at being abandoned again.

The Imperial ship streaked out of the open shuttle bay and lifted upward toward what was left of the battle. He'd not expected this—very few fighters remained, none in formation, and his scanners showed none of Earth's Battlecruisers or Colonel Hartman's ship. Instead they were dominated by one giant vessel—a slightly irregular ovoid, studded black and holding the Krun Queen—that was speeding unmolested toward Earth. According to Johnny's computer, it would enter the atmosphere in less than twenty minutes. He started a countdown timer on his wristcom.

“Louise? … Dave? … Ash? … Miss Harutunian? … Anyone?” The words were met by silence. He couldn't believe it.

He checked the comm. system, desperate, but the diagnostics claimed it was working perfectly. They couldn't
all
be dead. He knew how inexperienced they were, yet he'd gone missing when they needed him most.

Ahead was a swirling cloud of single-Krun pods. Johnny fired a full spread, sending a series of explosions cascading through the swarm. It was easy without the Queen in his head. From the side he spotted one of the Earth ships with blue markings, part of Miss Harutunian's squadron, turning toward him. Relieved, Johnny hailed the incoming vessel. There was no response. An alarm chimed and the next moment the Earth ship rained fire on his Starfighter. The cockpit blazed with golden light until automatic systems cut in to reduce the glare.
The fighter was gone and Johnny's shields had held … just. They wouldn't take another hit.