Jack Strong and the Prisoner of Haa'drath, page 15
part #2 of Jack Strong Chronicles Series
He peered into a gigantic arena-sized room, half metal, half living material. At the far end of the room five pink spouts bulged from a rippling, squirming wall like elephant trunks, as a succession of long black pods popped-out and rolled onto a soft, squidgy floor. Further along, Jack spied rows and grids of these pods laid out along the floor. There looked to be hundreds of them, thousands even. Several dark figures patrolled the area, loading them onto floating platforms that hummed and buzzed as they sped along.
Jack stared in disbelief as one by one the eggs split open, revealing one horrid, scrunched face after another, their claws flailing, their voices hissing, all of them Xenti.
Chapter 28: The Hidden Door
Jack watched in silence as pod after pod popped out of the huge pink sacks, before being arranged into never ending lines by legions of Xenti soldiers. Once in place, these would then zoom forward on the floating platforms to the front of the birthing room, where they would then explode, smashed into gooey bits by the emerging Xenti, claws scything, teeth gnashing.
As soon as the screeching Xenti were free of their pods, the attendants attached some sort of metal device to their heads, quietening them instantly. After this they were then sent to the other side of the room, disappearing soon after down a long dark tunnel.
“That was how you knew it was called the Haa'drath,” said Jack. “You heard the Xenti soldiers talking.”
“Yes… and I've been keeping my distance ever since. I don't want any uninvited guests to show up. It would complicate things. Come on, we should go now.”
“What? We've just gotten here.”
“I don’t care. It’s dangerous. We could be noticed any minute.”
“No wait. Where does that lead to?” asked Jack, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. “Can we go down there?”
“What do you want to do that for? What do you care?”
“I want to see what happens of course. Maybe there's something we can use to get off this planet.”
“There is no escape, Jack. There never was. We’re stuck here.”
Jack couldn't believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean there's no escape? How would you know?”
“Because I've been down there time and time again and I never found anything, except perhaps more despair.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's nothing Jack, just leave it alone.”
“No, I won't leave it alone, Grunt. We've got to get out of here. And soon.”
“Why? Why do WE have to get out of here? I've managed to survive just fine down here ON MY OWN.”
“You mean before I came - is that it?”
“Well, if you want me to be honest, then YES – I've been getting on very well without you Jack… and… and I can carry on doing fine without you too.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes!”
“Well perhaps you can eat your way to survival Grunt – but I can't.”
“That's not exactly my fault is it?”
“No, but WE are a TEAM Grunt. We stand by each other and we always help each other out. No matter what.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, how do you explain this,” said Grunt, pointing at himself.
“What do you mean?”
“I'm talking about the fact that I got to this size precisely because you guys left me down here all by myself and I did what I had to do to survive. Now that you've come back you expect me to be just as I was before and do whatever you say when you say it. Well, I've got news for you Jack, I don't need you any more, I can do things for myself, so why don't you just go away and leave me alone.”
“Leave you alone? Listen to yourself, Grunt. Do you even know why I'm down here?”
“No, why should I?”
“The Xenti shot me, Grunt. Twice. The same Xenti that are down there sending legion after legion of infant Xenti down that tunnel to do who knows what to any number of planets in our galaxy and the same Xenti that will one day realise who you are and what you're doing right before they storm up to where you’re hiding, guns blazing. You might be a giant but all it does is make you a bigger target in their eyes and believe me when I say that they are very good shots.”
Grunt said nothing at first, his face set like a stone, his arms folded like a pair of pythons. “Okay,” he said after a while. “You might have a point but even so why should I listen to you now?”
“Because we're running out of time. We have to try something and that corridor might be our only chance.”
“I've already told you,” said Grunt, “there's nothing down there we can use, only...”
“What were you going to say?”
“It doesn't matter. We can't use it to escape.”
“Let me be the judge of that. We've got to at least take the chance. Look, if you're not going to do it for my sake then at least do it for your own. Just ask yourself how long do you think you've got?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean how long before the Xenti show up on your doorstep and take you prisoner or worse? A year? Six months? A month? A week? Days? Hours? Because they will come eventually - you know it. It’s what they do. They hunt. They hound. They chase. They kill.”
“Yes, but...”
“But nothing. At least this way you can do something about it Grunt, and if we fail and we don't find anything – well then at least we tried and died fighting.”
“But what if they catch us?”
“Then,” said Jack, his face as hard as rock, “we take some of them with us and make them regret the day they messed with us. Before I came aboard the spaceship Grunt, all the kids at my school used to laugh at me and tease me and bully me and make me the object of their stupid jokes and silly schemes. Well, I've had enough of that – and when it comes down to it that's all the Xenti are – bullies. And what do you do to a bully Grunt?”
“I don't know.”
“Knock ‘em down!” said Jack.
“Knock ‘em down,” nodded Grunt a few moments later, before he slung Jack over his shoulder and ran off down the winding corridor.
They had got about a hundred feet further on when the metal corridor they were in merged into a long glass tunnel which overran the tunnel they had seen earlier. A constant procession of newly hatched Xenti babies streamed along beneath their feet for miles, accompanied by squad loads of soldiers and various device-holding attendants.
They followed them for what felt like hours – their presence going unnoticed - until they suddenly veered off to the left, the corridor tapering-off into an oval-shaped room as big as a football pitch, a large green rectangle floating a few feet off the floor in its centre. The platforms disappeared one by one down its throat, taking the baby Xenti with them, as yet more guards and attendants walked around, checking readouts, nodding heads, tapping consoles.
“Where are they going to?” asked Jack.
“I don't know. I never asked to find out,” said Grunt. “Perhaps to Xenti school ha ha!”
“You might not be far wrong there Grunt. As far as I can tell the Xenti have a massive army and so they must need a LOT of soldiers. Perhaps they are going to some kind of army school. I can't imagine they are being sent off somewhere to be eaten, although I wouldn't put it past them. If only I could get down there somehow to find out...”
“Ssstop don't move,” screeched a voice behind them.
Jack and Grunt turned around just in time to see several gun-toting Xenti soldiers aim their weapons and fire, a succession of little red darts arcing towards their heads like a swarm of angry wasps.
Chapter 29: Fire and Blood Part Two
The spaceship arced and swiveled through the asteroid field, shattering dome after dome with sonic canon fire. Cities of steel and glass crumpled and burned, as millions of people were sucked out into space like a great big vacuum cleaner had hoovered them all up.
“Why don't you leave them alone?” shouted Vyleria. “You've already destroyed most of their fleet. They were no threat to you. They wanted to surrender. They wanted peace.”
“NEVER!” screeched the General, as he ducked and dove among the debris, firing as he went, searching here and there for an escape pod, or for some of the isolated domes further off into the asteroid field. All of them ended in the same way: a desperate plea for mercy, before the world around them erupted in a spout of fire and blood.
So far Vyleria had seen him destroy five whole fleets and five entire planets. The words 'mercy' and 'surrender' were not in his vocabulary. He had ignored her pleas and protests every time, laughing as he continued his reign of terror. How many had he killed altogether? Millions? Billions? Trillions? More? She’d had no idea that their spaceship was capable of such carnage, such genocide. What horrors had they unleashed upon the galaxy?
As soon as the last air-filled dome was punctured by a hail of red darts, the General stepped coolly out of the pilot's control and stomped towards Vyleria.
She tried to run. The guards stopped her, clawed hands gripping her arms, shoulders, ribs and thighs. Pain lanced her body.
His hot, rancid breath in her face, the General ran a long claw all the way down from her left eye to her chin, a purple river flowing behind. Then he twirled his bloody claw before her eyes, thin, purple streaks dribbling down his outstretched palm.
“We kill, we conquer,” he hissed, “because of THISSS!”
“Because of what?” asked Vyleria, terrified that he was going to poke her eyes out like he had the last prisoner that had been brought aboard.
“Because of BLOOD!”
“Blood? What's that got to do with it?”
“Everything,” he rasped, pointing at his armour. “We weren't alwaysss thisss sssize. We usssed to be sssmaller.”
“Really?” asked Vyleria, her eyes still fixed on his murder claw.
“Onccce we were thisss big,” he rasped, his claws scrunching up to form a small 'c'.
“Well then what happened?” asked Vyleria.
“A gravity anomaly. After it appeared it allowed us to grow bigger, ssstronger. To go where no Xenti had gone before.”
“What, you mean to say that it appeared out of nowhere, just like that?”
“Yesss!”
“Well then where did it come from?”
“The Haa’drath.”
“The Haa'drath? You mentioned that before. What is it?”
“Our GOD!”
“Sounds like nonsense to me. It's far more likely to have a rational, scientific explanation such as a meteor impact or some sort of unknown energy particle left over from a neutron star explosion or something else like that.”
“No it wasss the Haa’drath!” he screeched, his murder claw swiveling up towards her left eye like a great white shark attacking a seal.
“Okay, have it your way then,” said Vyleria, not wanting to lose her eye for science. “So Haa'drath the great and unmerciful performed a nifty bit of magic and gave you your own gravity anomaly and then what?”
“Over thousssandsss of yearsss we evolved, grew larger, more powerful, the Haa’drath too but…
“But what?”
“But the anomaly was too sssmall. We couldn't go beyond it.”
“Wait a second, I thought you said the Haa'drath was your God?”
“Yesss SHE is!”
“It’s a she? I'm sorry, I don't understand.”
“We come from the Haa’drath WE ARE the Haa’drath!”
“Oh so this Haa’drath, whatever it is, gives birth to you, is that it?”
“Yesss!”
Vyleria was going to say that this wasn't at all God-like, but mindful of her eye she decided not to mention it. “Then there must be millions of you, billions...”
“Trillionsss!”
“Well then how big is this Haa'drath? It must be...”
“As big as the whole planet,” hissed the General.
“But that's...”
Vyleria was going to say impossible, but with all the things she’d seen since coming aboard the spaceship, the list of things that were in this category were getting smaller and smaller with every passing day. “Well then what happened? How did you escape from the anomaly?”
“Progresss!”
“What do you mean?”
“For thousandsss of yearsss they oppresssed us, enssslaved us.”
“Who did?”
“The othersss. The huntersss. The killersss. Until…”
“Until what?”
“Until these,” he rasped, pointing at his blood-speckled armour. “These sssuitsss allow us to walk in normal gravity.”
“I see,” said Vyleria, trying not to look at the blood on his arms and chest. “So after you invented your gravity suits you could go on the offensive and take the war to them.”
“Yesss!”
“And then?”
“We dessstroyed them.”
“What? How many?”
“ALL OF THEM!”
“You mean… you killed them all?”
“Yesss! FIRE AND BLOOD!”
“But that's… genocide.”
“NO… it'sss sssurvival.”
“And so that's how you fight your wars now – no prisoners? Just kill them all?”
“Alwaysss,” hissed the General, a huge smirk stretching across his face. “Not even you can ssstop us now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Vyleria.
Then the General smirked his biggest smile yet - a smile of blood and a lust for violence - and then it dawned on her.
Her planet was next.
Chapter 30: A New Enemy
“Please,” said Vyleria, dropping to her knees. “We are a peaceful people, we like to explore, to commit ourselves to science, we have no weapons, no army, please you have to stop.”
“Ssstop?” rasped the General, teeth bared like rocks. “NEVER!”
“But what did Elaria ever do to you? You were at war with the others, but we've never even had contact with your people, what could we have possibly done to deserve this?”
“YOU EXISSST!”
Her heart hammered like thunder, like lightning. They didn’t stand a chance. No one did.
“Unlesss,” he hissed, a huge smirk spread across his face.
“Unless what?” begged Vyleria. “Please. I'll do anything. You name it.”
“You become our ssslavesss.”
“Your what?”
“Our ssslavesss,” he grinned. “Ssslavery for our mercccy. Tell your people to sssurrender, to not resissst.”
Elaria didn't have a hope and Vyleria knew it. It was true that they didn't have any weapons, though she thought that at a push some of their technologies could be converted to fight the Xenti. If they attacked in their normal bulky battleships then they might just have a chance, but if they came in this spaceship with all its weapons then like all the other races there was nothing they could do about it. They would be destroyed, annihilated. What was she going to do?
The General glowered down at her – seven snarling feet of tentacles and armour. He'd won and he knew it. He was taunting her, laughing at her, bullying her. But if Jack could face up to his tormentors then so could she.
She stumbled to her feet, wiped the purple streaks from her cheeks, looked the General square in the eyes and shouted “NO!”
“What?” he hissed.
“You heard me. Weren't you listening? Or are you too used to having everybody scuttle in fear around you. Well, I’m not scared of you. Not now. Not ever.”
“Then you can DIE!” he screeched. “All of you!”
“Go ahead,” she said. “But my people will never be slaves, NEVER!”
“I'll make you watch,” he rasped. “The lassst thing you sssee will be your occceans boiling and your cccitiesss burning.”
“No, I won't!” she shouted, as she lunged towards him with all the force she could muster.
She felt his fist come crashing down into her mouth the moment she tried to grab his pistol. The next thing she knew her battered face was falling onto the cold, hard floor. Warm liquid gushed between her lips.
Her last thought was of not giving in, she would resist till the bitter end now.
When Vyleria awoke her head felt like it had been repeatedly hit with a space mallet and then jumped on a couple of hundred times by a squad of Xenti soldiers. She could taste blood in her mouth. A couple of her front teeth were gone. She looked around the room. A white fuzziness peered back. Where was she? Four tall shadows stalked towards her, their faces blank and indistinct. They grabbed her roughly under her arm-pits, their claws digging into her flesh, and yanked her to her feet.
Dragged and shoved down a white snake of a corridor she struggled to stay awake as her head pounded and throbbed.
Minutes – or was it hours? - later she was thrust into a small white room. Then one of the shadows spoke into some kind of metal box and before she knew it the room she was in flew upwards at an astonishing speed. She closed her eyes and vomited on one of the guards’ feet, which earned her another slap across the face. When she opened them her eyesight had returned to normal. She was now in an even larger room, staring at their huge, silver teardrop of a spaceship, as it hovered silently above the cold, metal floor.
With the rough jab of a muzzle in her back she was moving again, down a long, winding corridor that jutted this way and that like a vast and unnavigable labyrinth. Where were they taking her?
She walked for what felt like hours, her head still pounding away, the occasional fist colliding with her kidneys and shoulders, until eventually they came to a stop outside a huge pair of metal doors.
Then one of the Xenti soldiers marched forward and thumped a round grey button, the doors opening with a loud scraping sound. She was then shoved forward, the metal teeth grinding shut behind her.
As soon as they entered, the metal coffin they were in began to creak and whine steadily upwards.
Seconds later, the doors whooshed open and Vyleria was jostled into a large room full of all manner of blinking lights and noisy instruments. One of her guards then croaked something to another of the Xenti soldiers on her right and the next thing she knew something warm and moist was placed onto her forehead. It slithered and slimed from one temple to the other, her skin tingling. In a flash her head stopped pounding, the pain in her mouth reduced to little more than a tickle.
