Web of Fire Bind-up (52 page)

And then, as suddenly as the battle had started, it stopped. Where seconds before the air had been filled with the chatter of bullets and the roar of wings, now there was only the sporadic shouts of officers barking orders at their men. As the smoke cleared, Sam was astounded to discover that not a single robber fly was left standing. In all directions, huge hornets crouched above the smoking remains of robber flies which had obviously been no match for their powerful jaws and fearsome stings. Mixed up with the debris was the tangled wreckage of Brindle's wasp squadron which had been destroyed during the first assault, and scattered all around were tiny fragments of the robber flies' compound eyes that had exploded from shattered cockpits. As the sunlight caught them, they flashed and glittered like diamonds and Sam found it strangely uplifting to find beauty in such an unexpected place.

From somewhere nearby, a frightened cry cut through the air. Sam jumped to his feet and saw a woman calling to him from the wreckage of a robber fly. The fly's eye-screen had been blown out by an explosion, pinning her to the ground beneath its heavy, reinforced metal frame. Now smoke billowed from a hole in the fly's thorax and the woman was trapped behind a wall of orange flame.

‘Help me,' she cried. ‘Please, help me!'

‘Hang on!' Sam shouted. He sprinted across the snow as fast as he could, ducking down beneath the fly's shattered wing until he was standing only a few metres away from where she lay. The heat from the flames was so intense that he had to shield his face with his arms. But as he peered frantically through them in an effort to find a way through, he suddenly caught sight of the woman's frightened face.

It was Alya.

Alya Blin.

Sam stopped and took a step backwards.

This was the woman who had betrayed him. The woman who had cared nothing for the lives of him or his friends.

Why should he risk his life to save her now?

‘Please!' The voice was desperate now.

Staring into the flames, Sam saw her terrified, pleading eyes and knew in his heart that he could not leave her to die.

Cupping his hands, he scooped up some snow and rubbed it over his hair and face. Ignoring the freezing
water that trickled down his back, he pulled his tunic over his head and ran forwards into the flames. There was a scorching roar of heat all around him and then seconds later he was stumbling out beyond the fire.

‘My legs,' whimpered Alya, ‘they're trapped.'

Sam noticed that her hair was beginning to smoke and, tearing off his damp tunic, he threw it over her head.

‘Put that over your face,' he urged. ‘It'll protect you from the flames.'

Feeling the heat searing the back of his neck, Sam grasped the solid frame with both hands and pulled. As his muscles strained against the weight and the hot metal burned into his palms he cried out in pain and frustration, but it was no good. The screen was too heavy. He had barely moved it a centimetre.

‘All right, listen to me,' he said. ‘I'm going to try and lift this thing up again, OK? And when I do, you've got to swing your legs out of there first chance you get. Because I don't think we're going to get two goes at this. All right? You ready?'

Alya wrapped the now steaming tunic around her face so that only her eyes were showing and then nodded.

‘OK. Here we go.'

Spitting on his hands, Sam thrust them beneath the frame again and heard the sizzle of hot metal on flesh. He screwed up his eyes and directed all his strength away from the pain and into his arms. With an anguished cry he pushed with all his might, but despite his best efforts it still wouldn't move. Suddenly he became aware of
someone standing next to him. There was a loud creak and Sam felt the metal frame move upwards. Alya swung her legs free, staggered to her feet and gave him a look of utter relief and gratitude.

‘Run!' he shouted, and as she disappeared through the flames, he dropped the frame with a loud crash.

‘Careful,' said a small voice beside him, ‘that nearly landed on my foot.'

Sam turned to find a small blonde girl standing next to him, wiping her hands on the front of her jacket. She grinned. ‘Looked as though you were struggling a bit. Thought I'd come and give you a hand.'

Sam stared at her with delight and amazement.

‘Skipper!' he cried, throwing his arms around her. ‘You're safe!'

Skipper peered over his shoulder at the fire that raged all around them and raised an eyebrow.

‘Is that what you call it?' she said.

And then, as she stepped back, she noticed the bruises on his face for the first time.

‘Oh, Sam,' she whispered, stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers. ‘Look what they did to you.'

She leaned forward and, just for a moment, rested her forehead against his.

Then she took him by the hand and together they ran through the flames.

Sam pressed a handful of snow against the burns on his neck and stared at the lines of Vermian prisoners, cuffed
and lined up against the rocks ready to be taken down to the secure areas below ground. He estimated there were at least two hundred of them, possibly more. There was no sign of Krazni, however, and Sam guessed he was probably among the fallen; grey blankets covered the silent forms of those for whom this battlefield would be a final resting place.

He was heartened to see that Firebrand was already taking control of the situation, barking orders and organising everyone as if he had never been away. Six hornets patrolled the skies overhead while the others returned to their underground hangars for repairs and refuelling.

‘Are you all right?' Skipper asked, brushing the top of Sam's head with her hand. ‘Your hair looks a bit singed.' She took a step backward and put her head on one side. ‘It quite suits you, actually. Gives you a sort of… rugged look.'

‘Well, you know. Some of us have it…' He squinted over at the line of prisoners and noticed Alya on the end of it. She had taken the tunic from around her face, her wrists were cuffed, and she was shivering. Immediately, Sam's tone changed.

‘If that one had her way, we'd all be dead. You know that, don't you? Maybe I should have just left her to it.'

‘Who?' asked Skipper.

‘Her,' said Sam. ‘Over there.'

Skipper followed Sam's gaze and stared at Alya for a few seconds before suddenly letting out a loud squeal.
Then, to Sam's amazement, she ran across to where Alya was standing and proceeded to fling her arms around her. Sam could hear the sound of their happy, excited voices floating back to him through the cold air and he watched in stunned silence as Skipper pulled out her knife and cut through Alya's plasticuffs. Then, arm in arm, they walked back across the melting snow towards him.

As he watched them approach, Sam's anger intensified with every step that they took until, when they were only a short way off, he could contain himself no longer.

‘Skipper!' he shouted. ‘What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea who that is?'

‘Yes, of course,' replied Skipper evenly. ‘It's Alya.'

‘That's right,' said Sam, staring angrily at the two of them. ‘It's
Alya
. The one who betrayed me. The one who tried to kill us all!'

Skipper shook her head. ‘No, Sam,' she said gently, ‘don't you see? It was Alya who saved you.'

After a short debriefing session with Vahlzian Intelligence officers, where he told them everything he could remember about the layout of the Vermian Military Airbase, Sam made his way past lines of prisoners to the officers' mess where he found Skipper and Alya sitting at a table, sipping from mugs of steaming hot chocolate. While Skipper went to fetch him a cup, Sam stared at Alya in disbelief.

‘I know what you're thinking,' she said after a while. ‘But you know, things aren't always as they seem.'

‘I just don't get it,' he said. ‘If you were trying to help us, then why did you tell Krazni the location of the Resistance base?'

Alya sighed and as she pushed back her hair with one hand, Sam noticed how the ends had shrivelled in the heat of the fire.

‘Believe me, Sam, that was never the original plan.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Well… once you'd told me where the airbase was, I flew out to Vahlzi on the pretext of checking over the ant squadrons. I knew some of them were still infected so it was the perfect cover, no questions asked. Once I got to Vahlzi, I was able to make contact with the Resistance people and tell them what I knew. They were suspicious at first, but once I told them all about you and showed them that I knew the exact co-ordinates of the airbase, they began to take me seriously. Next thing I knew, they had bundled me into the back of a stolen beetle and brought me here.'

‘And that's how we first met,' said Skipper as she sat down again and passed Sam a mug of hot chocolate. ‘But let's just go back a bit. After I left you in the forest, I saw the robber fly arrive and guessed it had probably come looking for us. But as I was halfway up the tree, there wasn't much I could do about it. When I got back and found you gone, I realised they must have taken you away. But I knew you would have tried to leave the egg, so I searched around and found it pretty quickly. My main priority was then to get it back here so that the engineers could develop the hornets as fast as possible. The idea was that if we could get them quickly enough, we might be able to stage a surprise raid on the prison and get you out of there. But then Alya turned up.'

‘Yes, and by the time I got here, the hornets were almost ready,' Alya went on. ‘The engineers had used a new heating process to speed up the hornets' development and the results were incredible. As soon as I saw
them I thought they had an excellent chance of pulling off a successful raid. I knew the layout of the prison and I was able to give Skipper and the others a detailed plan of where they were keeping you and Commander Firebrand. It was all looking very promising.'

‘Problem was,' said Skipper, ‘one of our operatives from Vahlzi then turned up with news of some radio transmissions they had intercepted. Apparently Alya had been seen “talking to known Vahlzian sympathisers” and was now officially reported as missing. We realised then that her cover was blown. We knew that if she returned to Vermia, Krazni's secret police would be on to her.'

Sam turned to Alya. ‘So why did you go back?'

‘I knew it was risky,' said Alya, ‘but when I actually thought about it logically, I realised it was our best chance of success.'

‘How come?'

‘I guessed Krazni would be waiting for me, so with Skipper's help I took pictures of the area surrounding the airbase. Then when I got back, I was able to tell Krazni that I had tricked you into telling me the location of the airbase and that I had gone to check that the information was correct before bothering anyone with it. I was then able to show him the photographs. But I knew he was still suspicious, so then I had to play my trump card.'

‘Which was?' asked Sam.

‘To make Krazni believe that I had betrayed you. Unfortunately, in order for it to appear convincing, I had
to make you believe it too. I'm sorry about that, Sam. If it's any consolation, I felt dreadful about it.'

‘I still don't understand why you had to come back,' said Sam.

Alya shrugged. ‘Two reasons, really: one, to set the trap; two, to get you and the Commander out. You see, I knew that once they had swallowed the other stuff, it would be relatively easy to convince them that they needed your eye and fingerprint scan to get into the secure areas. And knowing Krazni as I do, I knew he wouldn't be able to resist bringing Firebrand along and showing him what he assumed would be the final destruction of his forces.'

‘So the trap was set,' said Skipper. ‘Before Alya left, we agreed that she would try and persuade the Vermian Council to put together a large force of robber flies to attack the base. For our part, we arranged to put our wasp squadron out on the mountaintop in order to lure as many robber flies down as we could. And then, when they had all landed, we unleashed the hornets.' She grinned. ‘It worked like a charm!'

‘So there you have it,' said Alya. ‘The story so far.'

‘How we stuck it to Mad Major Krazni,' added Skipper helpfully, ‘by Alya Blin.'

Alya smiled and held her hand up in the air for Skipper to smack. ‘Read it and weep, Major,' she said. ‘Read it and weep.'

‘I don't know what to say,' said Sam. ‘I'm so sorry, Alya.'

Alya looked at him in surprise.

‘Whatever for, Sam?'

‘You know. For not believing in you. For thinking you were betraying me, when you were saving my life.'

‘No, Sam,' said Alya, suddenly serious again. ‘I'm the one who should apologise. That was a horrible thing that I had to do. And anyway,' she added, ‘despite everything you've been through, you still managed to save me from a fire this afternoon. So I guess that pretty much makes us even, doesn't it?'

Sam rested his chin on his hand and wondered at the courage of this brave young woman who had risked her life to save them all.

‘Yeah,' he said with a smile, ‘I guess it does.'

He lifted his mug of hot chocolate and held it up above the table. Skipper clinked her own mug against it. ‘Here's to sticking it to the rest of 'em,' she said. Then they all clinked their mugs together and Alya beamed happily.

‘I'll drink to that,' she said.

‘Hey, get off me,' said Sergeant Brindle, unable to keep the smile from his lips – lips that were not generally accustomed to such undisciplined shows of emotion. ‘You don't know where I've been.'

‘Oh, but I do,' said Skipper, releasing the burly sergeant from an enthusiastic hug. ‘You've been hiking through blizzards haven't you?'