Skyquakers (32 page)

Ned knew he had to get out. He looked down at his stomach
and saw the cord connecting him to the machines. Biting his lip, he agonisingly
tore the tube out, along with a one-inch needle that had been lodged into his
guts. It hurt like hell. It bled a lot, but once he was free, he got to his
feet and ran.

By the time Psycho regained his breath, Ned had escaped out
the door of the clinic.

‘
Someone stop him!
’
he
screamed, and he took chase.

Captain was almost having too much fun. With a wild,
half-tonne mutant running loose in the warehouse, the laboratory quickly turned
into a circus of death. With ferocious leaps, the hybrid feline pounced from
one victim to another, too quick for them to raise their projectiles and fire.
With another pinned, it ripped off its arms and head with crushing jaws.
Captain only had to be a little faster than the crewman running behind him to
avoid being eaten. Within minutes, the whole warehouse was splattered with
blood and visceral pieces of his own kind. Captain avoided a near-miss of the
monster’s giant paw by climbing up the walls of the pods, just inches out of
its grasp. Others tried to climb as well, but when their feet slipped on a
glass shell, there was nothing but a mouth full of teeth waiting to catch them
below.

To make it even more fun, Captain found his way to the
sealed warehouse door and forced it open, unleashing the hybrid onto the rest
of the ship. On the other side of the barricade, another small army of guards
were waiting to arrest him, all dressed in chemical suits. The beast roared and
lunged at them, green sparks flying. Running and gunfire carried on. Captain
managed to slip out undetected.

The beast continued destroying everything in its path as it
thundered down the corridors ship. It crashed into walls, destroyed things with
its claws, and sucked up projectiles into its thick fur like mere stings. It
roared, and the electrical current from its fluorescent fur sparked against the
ship’s walls with bolts of green lightning.

Captain climbed the pipes into the ceiling as the carnage
carried on beneath him. He found a series of wires inside an electrical panel
and began ripping them and reconnecting them. He managed to tear his way into
the cloud
’
s PA system, and, with a handheld transmitter, he
found a way to project his voice throughout the entire ship.

Captain relayed a message entirely in the native language, a
message only meant for one.

Ned was limping through an alien spaceship with one hand
over his bleeding stomach, no shoes on his feet, no shirt, and with the blurred
vision of a patient who had stumbled out of a dentist’s chair too early. While
the enormity and spectacle of the ship left him entranced, it was the blazing
sirens and distant sounds of gunfire which kept him in motion as he urgently
ran from his captors. He stumbled down long corridors of silver and white,
through heavy doors, into sectors that housed foreign and epic technologies far
beyond the realm of human understanding. From the inside, the truth about this
entity was finally clear: the storm was,
and always
had been,
a machine. The heavenly beams were its weapons. The
spiralling shapes it made during its thunderstorms were vapour and exhaust.
Gazing upon the innards of this incredible ship made him see how humans never
stood a chance. Those days of learning how to shoot in the fields and fend for
themselves had been a waste of time. Draining water from a tree, setting fire
to a farm, even hiding in a fridge; there was no way he could have ever beat
them.

We were doomed from the beginning.

Once, during the time he spent imprisoned with the ship’s
former captain, Ned asked between beatings how many there were. Captain said
there were eight clouds just like this one, scattered across the world.
Eight
clouds
. And this was by no means the biggest.

He came to a sealed metal door at the end of the corridor.
Shit.
The door made a
ding
noise and he realised it was an
elevator. Hurriedly, he hid in a shadowy niche as six Quakers emerged from the
confines of the cubicle and ran by, armed with guns which looked to be made of
glass. They ignored him, as though there was some other more dangerous threat
to be worried about. He kept his back pinned to the wall and waited, panting,
until it was clear to move on.

A bullet then pierced the wall just above Ned’s head, making
him flinch and curse. He looked up and saw Psycho at the other end of the
corridor, armed with a small black-barrelled gun and striding directly towards
him. He stretched out his arm to fire again, but suddenly there was a voice, an
electronic voice, which blasted from the walls and ceiling and began talking to
them in English.

‘
Get to lowest platform! Get to
ze
beams!
Ze
beams!
’
It
crackled and faded in and out, but the voice was familiar.

Psycho gazed around him.
‘
How the
hell did
he
—
?
’

Ned heard the alien talking to him in his thick, Eastern
European accent.

‘
You must follow plan! You must!
’
he cried.
‘
Zhey
are
vaiting
for you! You must take her! Take her to them! Go!
Go now! Go back to Planet and save my Lo!
’

Ned knew what he meant.
The plan.

‘
Lily,
’
he panted.

The other Quakers on the cloud all paused and could not
understand the native language as it rang out across the public airwaves. Many
of the transitioned humans in silver suits could hear the words, but did not
understand their meaning. They simply shrugged to one another.

‘
Get to lowest platform! Door with circles! Go n
—’

The power went out. The PA system was cut off in order to
stop the Captain from relaying his secret message. The voice died, but by the
time they located where the Captain had hacked the system, he was gone. He had
slipped away through vents and pipes once again. The crewmen stood about,
scratching their heads, and pondered what crazy act of madness he was going to
commit next.

Then a new alarm sounded, and an electronic voice began
relaying the ominous message:
‘
Danger, danger, danger.
’

The lights went out. Darkness settled across the entire
cloud. Only the red flashing beams of muted sirens still lingered, briefly
washing corridors in red and orange, then leaving them to the shadows again.

Psycho lost track of his prey. When the red hue of the
alarms washed over the dark corner where he had cornered his prisoner a moment
before, it revealed he had vanished. All that remained were little droplets of
blood on the floor, marking his movements like breadcrumbs. The red stains
showed he had disappeared into the elevator.

‘Shit.’

A handheld radio in his suit pocket connected him directly
to Engineer.

‘They’ve escaped, both of them. Send
everyone
.
’
     

Vet arrived at the animal warehouse far too late. It was a
graveyard of dismembered bodies and blood, scattered around a sprung cage in
the centre of the experimental platforms. There was extensive damage where the
giant cat had crashed into walls, pods, computers and support beams. It was a
mess, both biologically and structurally.
 

In panic, he raced to the human warehouse, but thankfully it
remained undisturbed. A hundred million natives still slept soundly in their
tiny worlds, stacked high up along the walls in rows of tens of thousands. A
supercomputer at the far end hummed in the diminished light, but no analogue
programs were running, as per Engineer’s orders. DNA samples from these natives
had not been taken and tested for any possible matches with known species from
their own planet; these intelligent beings were instead set to be incinerated.
The pressure Vet had put on the bossy boy to alert the Captain of this
extermination had worked better than he expected: the old coot was running
wild, disrupting as many operations as possible in order to keep Engineer
preoccupied. From the sight of the bloodshed next door though, Vet could see
the captain’s actions were getting out of hand. These specimens were now in
danger; should the ship lose any integrity in relation to power, pneumatic
pressure, or general structural reliability, he could lose every single one of
them. Around him, he could hear the sirens. The
danger
signal was roaring, and Vet
began counting the remaining minutes until the ship succumbed to complete
devastation. Every so often there was a
clang
of metal, a shout, some
gunfire, more sirens and alerts.

Vet came to one of the sleeping pods and brushed away
droplets of warm condensation with his hand. He looked down onto a sleeping
face, with a tube connecting her to a machine, pumping her full of life. A
shame. Biologically and evolutionarily, they were remarkable creatures. Had
there been a way to preserve them, to integrate them into the New World as
seamlessly as the other analogues, perhaps they would have found a place
amongst them in the expanding new ecosystem.

He found something in the pocket of his robes; a glass vial.
He had forgotten about it. The vial contained a small amount of red fluid, the
life fluid of the little native dying in his clinic. Curious, he moved towards
the supercomputer. He lodged the needle end of the vial into an injection port.
He ran the program and he waited.

Ned ducked into the elevator at the first opportunity; the
lights flickered out and in a second he was gone. He sealed himself within the
metal cubicle, panting, still bleeding. He collapsed against the wall for a
moment, trying to maintain his balance and focus. The elevator was moving, even
though he hadn’t pushed any buttons yet. He was going up and he didn’t know how
to stop it. There was no way of telling where he would wind up in this
spaceship.

There was a
ding
and the steel doors slid open. Ned found himself on another floor of the ship,
an identical linear corridor, but this one was occupied by six Quakers dressed
in chemical suits, armed with black weapons. They turned their heads. They saw
him through their glossy gas masks. One pointed and shouted at him, startled by
an escaped animal. They raised their guns to fire at the wild contaminant. Ned
backed into the corner of the elevator, covered his head with his arms, and
shut his eyes.

Before they sprayed him with bullets, there was a roar. The
darkness lit up with a flash of green. A mutant tiger appeared from nowhere,
charging around the corner, horns poised and jaws pried open. It
rammed
into the army of Quakers, piercing two through their guts with its ivory horn,
while others were snapped up and crushed between bloodthirsty teeth. Ned
watched in horror as the animal tore the Quakers apart. Hurriedly, he launched
for a button inside the elevator – any button – and impatiently waited for the
doors to seal again.

Silence. Ned fell back, panting. It was too much
stimulation, too much chaos.
What the
hell was that thing?

The elevator was going down again. Ned knew he could not
keep this up, going up and down, trapping himself in a small cubicle surrounded
by gun-wielding aliens and giant, horned tigers as he slowly bled to death. He
had to get out. He had to keep his promise to Captain.
Stick to the plan.

In the silence of the descending cube, Ned noticed the long
list of buttons on the side wall. They reached higher than his head, although
at ideal heights for a two-metre Quaker. Each was labelled with a very
simplistic character which he could guess was a number or letter. It was only
the last button, at the very base of the list, which drew his attention.
Instead of an alien character, the button simply depicted a distinct
pinkish-purple glowing ring.

Door with circles
, he recalled Captain saying.
Ze
beams.

Ned pushed the button. He stood up and prepared to face
whatever stood on the other side of those doors.

I
’
m coming home, Lily.

Engineer was pacing up and down the bridge, too anxious to
sit, when the final alarms sounded and the power began to fade. He checked the
control bench in front of him. The gauges were in the red. The cloud had lost
all control of its pressure, its internal temperature, its atmosphere, and its
fail-safe systems had been manually dismantled. Captain, that maniacal parasite,
had finally wriggled into the heart of the cloud and initiated a complete and
irreparable nuclear meltdown. The radioactive core in the centre of the ship,
keeping them elevated, powering their engines, and keeping the air breathable,
was minutes away from self-destruction.

Engineer had to pause for a moment. He briefly wondered if
this was a joke, but the alarms relating to the ship
’
s power
plant were stacking up exponentially each second. He was super-charging the
generators, draining coolant, and destroying pressure detectors. The reactor
was in overdrive, and there was nothing stopping it from snowballing into a
catastrophe. The technicians were in full panic mode as they rushed to find
every possible fix, but there was not enough time. Already they could feel the
walls shaking. Hot steam was gushing out from loose crevasses in the bowels of
the cloud. Things were bursting into flames. The reactor had already passed the
point of no return; shutting it down at this stage was impossible.

Engineer had nothing more to say to his crew, so he hung up.
He sat in the commander
’
s chair for a moment and
tapped his fingers. He began making external calls to other clouds, to
different ships around the Planet, warning them of the impending disaster on
board. A rogue captain, escaped specimens, enormous structural damage, and now
a meltdown; officers of other clouds were astounded that such a desolate corner
of the Planet could spark such unruliness. He asked for their assistance, he
pleaded for it, but there was little anyone could do: this damage was internal
and Engineer had to deal with it himself. That was the role of the commander,
right?

He hung up and slammed his fists in rage. He called them
spineless bastards under his breath. The one downfall of his species was their
ruthless adherence to protocols and procedures, and in instances such as this,
they knew it was more feasible to simply cut the weakest link. If Engineer
should fall, he should fall alone.

He hung his head. He ignored all calls coming through, calls
of panic, calls for help. He required peace at this moment. He switched off the
radio bands and let the silence sink in. He paced up and down the bridge,
meandering from one side to another. He ran his hand along the glistening
silver and glass digital control benches. The cloud was a spectacular machine.
It had carried them across galaxies, costing them almost every last resource so
that their species may have a chance of surviving elsewhere. A floor-to-wall
window, spanning the entire length of the bridge, gave him a view of the world
beneath him: sand, salt, poisonous things… It was an ugly place, but Engineer
had once had great plans for it. Pity he would never see them come to fruition.

In the dimness of the vacant room, Engineer felt the lingering
presence of an intruder. He spun. He found Captain, sitting in his former
position in the cosy chair reserved for the ship
’
s
commander. Captain was dressed for a momentous occasion in his thick, navy blue
robes, draped over his shoulders and almost touching his feet. He wore boots,
black gloves, and had a headscarf neatly wrapped around his high forehead. He
was adorned in all of his badges and medals from previous space missions,
pinned across his robes. He was dressed as a captain. He sat there with the
integrity of a captain. And he grinned.

There were some final words. There was talk of treachery, of
honour, and of supremacy. They spoke of the
‘
great
vision
’
and how it had been besmirched by greed. Engineer
’
s
dream of a new paradise was, in Captain
’
s eyes, a
dark, horrible future of tyranny that he could never allow. Captain despised
his colleague for the way he treated his child, whose lust for power was now as
disturbing as his own. There was no love. There was no sympathy, no compassion.
Engineer argued, in return, that this meltdown would result in the death of
every living thing on this cloud, including the animals, his own crew and their
families, and the sleeping bodies of millions of native children, just like his
precious, little Lo. Captain understood the price, but by shutting down the
cloud, he was ridding the world of a sort of
‘
plague
’
which he believed his own species had become. They had already destroyed
one planet; what made them think they were worthy of destroying another?

Engineer admired Captain for a moment. Despite how elegantly
he spoke, he continued to question his mental faculties, because only utter
melancholic insanity could convince him to botch the entire vision
–
a vision Captain himself had helped construct decades ago. An entire
civilisation’s finances, resources, and hundreds of thousands of lives had been
risked for this journey, and yet he would blow it all for the pretty eyes of a
little girl
…

With that, Engineer drew a gun to kill him, but Captain
’
s
went off first. A back bullet went through Engineer
’
s head and
he fell back, limp and dead.

With a nuclear meltdown imminent, the cloud
’
s
occupants switched to panic. Technicians and nuclear physicists could do
nothing to calm the raging reactor as it cascaded into an uncontrollable atomic
mess. The pressure was beginning to erupt, and tanks within the clouds exploded
with gas and fire. The floating ship jerked and gradually began to tip. Fire
engulfed the ship, forcing large sections to be sealed off with heavy metal
doors in attempts to stop the spread. Running Quakers were cut off from their
exits and left trapped inside the burning compartments. Around them, the roof
began to cave in, the walls bending with the pressure. Pipes of water and
stream burst from every corner. All attempts to contact Engineer failed. The
power was cutting in and out, cutting off the lights, the PA, the breathable
air, while the engines keeping the cloud afloat began to fail one by one. The
cloud tipped, gradually losing its position in the sky. The whole thing was
going down.

When Ned emerged from the elevator a second time, he stepped
onto a floor that was gushing with hurricane-strength winds. At first he
thought it was a massive hole, blasted into the side of the ship, but when he came
to the railings, he looked down to see a circular portal cut into the base of
the platform below. The wind of the outside storm was blasting upwards at him,
blowing his ragged hair about. The torrential flow of air overpowered the
alarms, but it was fresh in his lungs and composed of the familiar balance of
gas molecules as those of planet Earth. He was now on the lowest level, the
underbelly of the ship, and that hole was his direct line back to solid ground.

‘The beams,’ he gasped.

A pink ring, running the circumference of the open void,
hummed and glowed with an incredibly bright light; the beam was already
switched on, sparking with bolts of electricity, blasting his ears with the
whirs of a hundred jet engines. It was not sucking anything up, but instead was
pushing downwards. This was Captain’s doing: he had kept the entire ship
distracted to allow Ned to escape, and he had given him his one and only path
home. Unfortunately, this meant taking a ten-thousand-foot leap of faith.

‘Shit.’

The ship jerked, and Ned grasped onto the railing to keep
from being thrown sideways. The Quakers’ ship was gently tipping over, and
there was a feeling in his bones that they were steadily losing altitude. The
cloud had taken a dramatic turn for the worst, for which he also suspected was
choreographed by the captain. He had put all this in motion so that Ned could
escape, find Lara, and fulfil Lily’s plan.