Space Wars! (3 page)

They ran to the portals. Peri jumped feet first down one of the frictionless tubes. He zipped through in seconds and dropped into his own mini-pod with a
huurrupt.
As an astro-harness snaked around him, the pod’s shell turned transparent. He had a 360-degree view of space.

A control panel slipped below his hands and an earpiece sprang from his collar and slotted in his ear. ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked.

‘Loud and clear,’ Selene replied. ‘The
Phoenix
will hover here and remain cloaked but it can only cloak our pods for two minutes. Once we detach from the ship, we must get inside the Extractor before the cloak stops working.’

‘W-w-what if we d-d-on’t?’ Prince Onix asked.

‘The Meigwors will destroy us first, and then planet Xion.’ Peri wiped the sweat from his hands and studied the small radar screen in the control panel. ‘Everyone follow me, V-formation. We fly full throttle to the ventilation grate. I’ll blow off the cover, then we all dive into the shaft and land. Understood?’

‘Bring it on!’ Diesel shouted.

Peri took a deep breath. ‘Launch in three, two, one . . .
Go
!’

Chapter 3

Peri’s pod hurtled through space faster than a shooting star. He moved his Nav-wheel left and right, dodging and swooping around the enemy craft flocking to the Extractor. His crew kept in perfect V-formation behind him.

Another Meigwor viper-ship swung in front of him. The two massive red eye-like scanners stared past the mini-pods without blinking. The
Phoenix
’s limited cloak was still working.

Peri pulled the Nav-wheel hard, sending his pod close over the twisting segments of another viper-ship. He checked the radar screen, seeing that his crew was matching his course without hesitation. He heard Selene’s voice, faint and crackly over the radio: ‘One minute fifteen seconds of cloak left.’

Beeeaakkk. Beeeeaak.
The collision alarm sounded. Another Meigwor vessel was smashing towards them from the right. Peri slammed on the boosters and his pod surged forward. G-forces threw him against his flight chair. As they shot forward out of the way of the viper-ship, he whooped with exhilaration. ‘We’ve got a clear run at the Extractor,’ he shouted.

Diesel laughed. ‘Those stupid Meigwors don’t even know we’re here.’

‘Thirty seconds,’ Selene said.

Peri pushed the Nav-wheel down, hurtling towards the surface of the Extractor. Its armour-plating was so black it was hard to see where he was flying. Peri activated ARAP – the Augmented-Reality Attack Program. The computer traced green lines over his view of the Extractor’s hull so he could see the antennae and observation towers jutting from the surface. A line of red glowing spots appeared, guiding him to the ventilation shaft. He skimmed towards it, dodging radar dishes and deep-space waste chutes.

‘Twelve seconds,’ Selene warned. ‘Eleven . . . ten . . .’

‘Preparing to dislodge vent cover,’ shouted Peri. ‘Firing sonic pulse . . . Now!’

The shockwave blasted the vent panel into space. Peri’s pod wobbled from the explosion, but he wrestled the Nav-wheel to keep it steady.

‘Five seconds . . . four . . . three . . .’

Peri hit the hyper-brakes. The pod curved around into the ventilation shaft like the winning goal in a spaceball game. But the shaft was shorter than he imagined. There was barely enough room for all the pods before it narrowed into smaller ventilation ducts. ‘Emergency brakes!’ he screamed.

Peri slammed into his astro-harness as the pod halted an atom’s breadth from the end of the main ventilation compartment. Diesel, Selene and Prince Onix followed a nanosecond behind him. Otto’s pod had just cleared the opening when the computer announced, ‘Cloak failure.’

‘We made it!’ Peri gasped over the radio, releasing his astro-harness. ‘The Meigwors mustn’t discover we’re here, so we need to be quiet, super-stealthy!’

‘The Meigwors are always stealthy!’ Otto’s voice growled back.

‘Let’s go!’ Peri said and pressed his hand against the wall of his. A silver light spun around the inside surface, then the pod cracked in half.

Hiiiissssss.
Two things hit Peri as the pod opened. First, a wave of noise flooded his ears – machinery thumped angrily as turbines whined and rattled. Above the sound of clashing metal, the tannoy blared computerised commands and warnings. Second, a foul stench assaulted his nose. The hot damp air reeked of rotten, nasty animal odours.

The other pods all began to crack. The
Phoenix
crew exited them and huddled around Peri. Diesel slipped a wad of Eterni-chew up his nose to block out the smell. ‘What was that about making no noise?’ Diesel shouted. ‘We could have a space-rock concert and no one would hear us!’

Peri led the crew down one of the smaller ventilation shafts. It was a circular tunnel made from overlapping segments of a strange pink and silver metal. The walls were covered in a thick layer of dust and grime.

‘What is this stuff?’ he asked.

Selene pulled a scanner from her belt and aimed it at the wall. ‘Meigwor skin cells, crushed bugs and . . .’ Selene dry-heaved as she hastily put the scanner away. ‘You don’t want to know what else.’

As they moved further down the ventilation duct, the shafts got narrower and narrower. Otto was the first to have to crawl on his hands and knees, but soon everyone was shuffling through the grime. Ahead, light streamed through the narrow slits of a vent cover in the shaft floor. Peri peered down between the gaps into a dimly lit corridor. He signalled to the others to stop. ‘I’ll see if the coast is clear,’ he said.

Selene passed him a Swizaser and Peri vaporised the rivets around the cover. He pushed the cover aside and ducked his head down.

The stench was almost unbearable. The long circular corridor was dingy and hot. It was big enough for four Meigwors to walk side by side, but it was also filthy. The walls were blackened with slime. Strands of a glow-in-the-dark green moss hung everywhere with tiny little crab-like creatures clinging to its surface. Their glowing red eyes added to the corridor’s eeriness. But there was no sign of any Meigwor soldiers or guards.

‘All clear,’ Peri said, stuffing a wad of Eterni-chew in his mouth. It did nothing to hide the reek as he jumped down into the corridor, brushing past the thick strands of rotting moss. His boots crunched unpleasantly as he landed on the bugs feeding off the dirt.

He took up the cosmic-combat position and watched the corridor for Meigwor guards. The others dropped down one by one. Otto was last. He stretched and twisted, then took a deep breath. ‘Ah!’ he boomed, ‘Fresh air!’

‘Which way, Otto?’ Peri asked.

Otto splayed his elbows out in a Meigwor shrug. ‘The vipers have reconfigured themselves to create the Extractor, but I’m not sure how they all fit together.’

‘Let’s keep moving,’ Peri said. ‘Otto, scout ahead. Diesel, follow up at the rear.’

Peri went after Otto. They kept as close to the walls as they dared, but the small crabs living in the moss snapped their claws at them if they got too close. It was slow going, waiting at the end of every corridor while Otto went ahead to stop them stumbling across a battalion of Meigwor guards.

‘This way,’ Otto said. ‘Quick! There are guards coming from the other direction.’

Halfway down the corridor, they found a large rectangular box. Masses of bugs swarmed inside and batted against the clear windows. Otto licked his lips.

‘What the
prrrip’chiq
is that?’ Diesel gasped.

‘A bug-o-matic!’ Otto replied. ‘Our brave warriors need fresh bugs! You can’t fight on more than one empty stomach!’

‘Gross,’ Diesel muttered.

‘Look!’ hissed Selene, before Otto could respond to Diesel’s taunt.

On the wall beside the bug-o-matic was a large touch-screen map of the Extractor. Peri’s fingers darted over it, scrolling the map one way, then another. It was covered in bizarre symbols and strange pictograms. None of it made sense.

‘Otto, I need a little translation,’ Peri said, pointing to the map.

‘We’re here,’ Otto said, pointing to a symbol. ‘Sector ß-õ-8-ð-Þ.’

‘Hurry up,’ Diesel said, motioning down the corridor towards the sound of insects being trampled.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
‘We’re going to have company.’

‘The control room is located three sectors over,’ Otto said, pointing to the nerve centre.

Peri traced the route across the Extractor. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to get to.’

The
crunch, crunch, crunch,
was getting louder. At least three guards were heading their way!

‘Come on!’ Peri ordered. They raced away from the approaching guards, turning blindly around one corner and then the next. ‘We need to turn left at the junction.’

‘No, we need to turn right,’ Otto boomed. He was about to say something else, when a strange noise echoed down the tunnel.

Clunk. Clunk-Clunk. Clunk-Clunk-beep-beep-whoooo-beep.

‘Peri!’ Diesel screamed.

Peri spun around and gasped. Plodding across the ceiling towards them were two gigantic crab-like robot-guards. The crab-bots had two clawed arms that swung down in front of their six metallic legs and gripped massive laserpulses. At the end of five antennae dangled the robot’s illuminated eyes. They swept purple beams of light across the corridor ahead of them. Peri didn’t want to find out what happened when the beams finally saw something that shouldn’t have been there.

‘W-w-what d-d-do we do n-n-now?’ Prince Onix stuttered.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Peri said. ‘Run!’