Lethal Combat (2 page)

They hadn’t come so far and escaped so many dangers just to be reeled in like a helpless fish. There had to be
something
he could do.

Chapter 2

Come on
,
Peri said to himself.
You can do it.

He nudged Selene aside.

‘Hey!’ Selene said. ‘What are you –’

Peri’s hand touched a small lever at the bottom of the control panel. He didn’t know what it did. But his bionic half seemed pretty sure it was the right one.

He pulled it.

The ship juddered with a horrible, shrieking, grinding noise.

Peri, Selene, Otto and Diesel were flung back across the Bridge. They landed in a heap against the far wall.

‘
Ch’açh
!
’
Diesel shouted. ‘What did you do?’

‘Look!’ Peri said. He got to his feet. The purple mist was thinning. Soon there were only a few wisps of it left.

Through the 360-monitor, Peri saw the stars zooming away from them.

Away
from them?

Suddenly, Peri realised what he’d done.

He laughed. ‘I put us into reverse.’

‘That was a genius idea,’ Selene said as she got to her feet.

Peri felt a crackling in his cheeks. Bionic blushing. ‘Oh, well – you know . . .’

‘So the purple tracking beam overshot us?’ Diesel asked.

‘Yes – but I’d better cancel that Boomerang message,’ Selene said. ‘Or they’ll lock on to us again.’ She pressed a few buttons, her hands a blur even to Peri.

The purple haze had completely disappeared. The
Phoenix
was getting back to normal. Not that Peri knew anything about normal any more. The ship’s crew had been sucked through a vortex right into the middle of an intergalactic war, accidently kidnapped Prince Onix, rescued Selene from planet Meigwor and survived a crash landing on a moon-planet.

‘The sooner we drop Prince Onix back on Xion, the sooner we can go home,’ Peri said.

Otto had tricked Peri and Diesel. They thought they had rescued a Meigwor prince, not kidnapped a Xion one. Returning Prince Onix had turned out to be harder than they’d expected. He was sedated in the Med Centre now because he couldn’t remember who he was.

‘If there is a home to go back to,’ Selene said. ‘I never got a reply to my Boomerang messages. Xion blew up the IF Space Station. Maybe Earth’s been destroyed too.’

‘And Mars,’ Diesel said.

‘Maybe the whole solar system – the whole galaxy is gone,’ Selene said.

‘But we don’t
know
that,’ Peri said. He felt a hollow sensation in his belly, when he thought of Earth no longer existing. ‘We have to hope.’

‘It’s worse for me than for you lot!’ Otto said. ‘I can never go home to Meigwor! I’d be arrested as soon as I touched down. And it’s all thanks to you Milky Way monkeys!’

‘Who are you calling a monkey, you massive . . . lumpy-necked . . .’ Diesel was so angry, he couldn’t even finish his insult.

Peri heard a sound like two Jovian nose flutes playing a duet. Three lights were winking on the control panel.

‘That’s the Ultrawave responding,’ Selene said. ‘We’ve got messages. They could be from the Milky Way.’

She reached for the control panel. Peri grabbed her wrist.

‘Wait!’ he said. ‘It might not be the Milky Way – it could be our enemies, trying to trick us . . . Better scramble our signal, so they can’t pinpoint us again.’

‘Good thinking,’ Selene said. ‘I’ll use the Twister. Kind of old school, but it works.’ She pulled two long rubbery strings, like Martian sandworms, from a cavity next to the screen and knotted them together. ‘Now if they try to get a fix on us they’ll only get each other’s coordinates.’

She touched each of the winking lights.

One whole side of the 360-monitor filled up with the face of a Xion in full battle gear. Two spikes protruded from the mouth area of the black helmet, like insect jaws. A crown of some dull grey metal sat on top of the helmet, two antennae springing out from it. It was the king of Xion.

The other 180 degrees of the monitor were taken up with the huge head of Meigwor General Rouwgim. His thick, wrinkled crimson neck was curved like a letter S. His beady black eyes gleamed with anger.

‘Not messages from the Milky Way, then,’ Peri muttered.

The two giant heads began shouting at the top of their voices. Peri struggled to separate what each one was saying.

‘You evil space pirates –’

‘– double-crossing devils –’

‘– what have you done with –’

‘– do you really think you –’

‘– my son?’

‘– can get away with this?’

‘– if my son’s been harmed –’

Peri faced the Xion king. ‘Your son is fine. He was just – well, knocked out, that’s all.’

‘Who knocked him out?’ roared the king. ‘You will suffer for this!’

In the background, Peri heard Otto trying to calm General Rouwgim. ‘I didn’t mean it to turn out like this –’

‘Last time, I saw you, Otto,’ said General Rouwgim, ‘you insulted me! You told me to stick my head under my armpit and take a deep breath!’

‘No, that was a lie. I was imprisoned –’

‘You, a Meigwor bounty hunter, imprisoned by those inferior life forms? I don’t believe it!’

On the other side of the Bridge, the Xion king leaned in close, his nose and eyes nearly filling his half of the screen. ‘Who’s that?’ he said. ‘Is it that Meigwor pile of snake-dung, Rouwgim?’

‘What?’ Rouwgim boomed. ‘Did I hear the squeaky voice of that crawling Xion king of the insects?’

‘I’m going to obliterate you and all your kind!’ the Xion king said.

‘I’ll squash you like a bug!’ General Rouwgim shouted.

‘Enough!’ Diesel cried. He jumped forward and pulled out the two long rubbery strings, which created Selene’s Twister. Instantly the voices stopped. The faces disappeared. The 360-monitor was once again blank.

‘There’s no point talking to them,’ Diesel said. ‘The Xions won’t believe the prince is OK until we drop him on their doorstep. And the Meigwors will never listen to reason – they’re just a bunch of dumboids. Let’s dump the prince on Xion.’ He jerked his thumb at Otto. ‘We’ll maroon this loser on an empty moon somewhere, then head back to the Milky Way and see what’s left of it.’

Peri nodded. Diesel had spoken sense for once. ‘I’ll reset the course for Xion.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Otto said, very slowly, and very loudly. ‘You lot wouldn’t be alive without me!’

Peri noticed the black splotches around his mouth and eyes spreading over his face – a sure sign that Otto was getting angry. ‘I can’t go back to my own world, thanks to you – and now you want to maroon me?’

Otto shoved Diesel and Diesel shoved him right back. Otto’s long tongue shot out and gripped Diesel by the arm. Diesel yelled in pain.

‘Should we stop them?’ Peri asked Selene.

‘Let them get on with it,’ Selene said. ‘If we try to break it up we’ll probably only get an elbow in the face.’

‘Or Otto will give us a death bite,’ Peri said. ‘Or get us with his tongue.’

‘Eee-ew!’ Selene said.

The Bridge door slid open. Prince Onix came in, accompanied by a smell of Saturnian squid. He walked slowly, his eyes unfocused, as if he was sleepwalking. He was carrying a long red and white weapon.

‘Look what I found,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

Peri looked at the weapon more closely. His heart did a somersault and a couple of cartwheels. It was an Orgmelter. He remembered it from weapons training at the IFA.
One of the deadliest weapons ever invented
, the instructor had said.
A one-second blast from this and your heart, liver, lungs and kidneys melt into porridge
.

‘Just put it down, Prince Onix,’ Peri said, backing away from the prince.

‘Who’s Prince Onix?’ said Prince Onix.

‘Where did he get it?’ Peri whispered to Selene.

‘Who cares?’ Selene said. ‘We just have  to stop him using it.’

The prince fiddled with the controls on the side of the Orgmelter. It lit up, shining silver and crimson.

Diesel and Otto stopped fighting. Otto’s neck craned round to stare at the prince. His eyes bulged as he saw the Orgmelter. ‘No, you don’t!’ He lunged at Prince Onix, trying to swipe the weapon from his grasp.

Prince Onix pressed the trigger.

A laser beam fizzed just past Otto’s head. It hit one of the captain’s chairs. The chair melted into a green puddle.

Otto held up his long, double-jointed arms in surrender.

Prince Onix inspected the Orgmelter curiously. Then he pointed it at Peri. ‘I want to go home.’

Chapter 3

Prince Onix looked puzzled. He kept the Orgmelter pointing at Peri, although his finger came off the trigger. ‘But how can I go home when I don’t know where I come from?’

‘You come from a planet called Xion,’ Selene said. ‘We’ll take you there.’

Prince Onix turned to look at Selene. His eyes widened. His mouth dropped open, then curved into a foolish smile. ‘Who are you?’