Lethal Combat (3 page)

‘I’m Selene, don’t you remember?’

‘If I’d met you before, I’m sure I’d remember,’ the prince said.

‘Yeah, right,’ Selene said, shuddering. She clearly hated the prince’s attention. ‘Listen, will you do me a favour?’

‘Anything for you, sweet Celery!’

Selene growled. ‘It’s Selene, not Celery,’ she said. ‘Give me that Orgmelter.’

As if in a trance, the prince handed over the weapon. Selene placed her free hand on the wall. ‘Bits and bobs,’ she said to the
Phoenix
. A drawer popped out. It held all kinds of useful things. Selene popped the Orgmelter into the bits and bobs drawer. ‘Lock it,’ she said and the drawer disappeared into the smooth wall of the Bridge. The prince grabbed her hand and bent low, as if to kiss it. Selene snatched her hand away.

Peri saw her take an adhesive patch out of her pocket. The Sleepez! She’d already knocked the prince out once with it.

‘No!’ Peri said. ‘If we’re taking him home, you can’t knock him out.’

Selene shrugged and put the Sleepez back in her pocket.

‘You’ve already knocked me out,’ the prince said adoringly.

Selene turned away and mimed being sick. Peri gave her a warning glare. He touched a button on the control panel and zoomed in on Xion. It was still a few million miles away, but it came up bright and clear, filling one side of the 360-monitor. The huge twisting orange ribbon of the space highway curled around it. In between its coils glistened the deadly blue Cos-Moat. Peri had hoped the sight might trigger memories for the prince. But he didn’t even look at it. He only had eyes for Selene.

‘Hey, Prince,’ Peri said. ‘Don’t you want to see your home planet?’

The prince continued to gaze into Selene’s eyes. ‘Could I hold your hand?’

‘Why don’t you hold your own hand and pretend it’s mine?’ Selene said and tried to hide a smile.

Obediently, Prince Onix clasped his own hands together.

‘I’m sick of this messing about,’ Diesel said. He grabbed the prince’s arm and pulled him round so he was facing the monitor. ‘That’s your planet. How do we get on it without being stopped on the space highway or caught in the Cos-Moat and chewed up by space-sharks?’

The prince’s eyes flitted over the screen for a couple of nanoseconds. ‘Rubbish,’ he said. Then he stared at Selene again.

‘What?’ Diesel’s strip of hair was turning red and sticking up like the bristles of an angry porcupine. ‘How dare you –’

Selene stepped in between the prince and Diesel. ‘Don’t you see? He’s solved the problem.’

Peri looked at her, baffled.

She went over to the control panel. The prince trotted behind her like a puppy at her heels. She twiddled a dial on the monitor controls. She’d switched it to infrared vision – that meant the monitor picked up heat traces. In this new view, the space highway and the Cos-Moat were hardly visible, because they gave off little heat. But a giant red column could be seen clearly, spewing out flame, smoke and ashes from the planet.

‘Xion incinerates all its rubbish and blows it out into space,’ Selene said.

‘What’s so great about that?’ Otto said. ‘We do it on Meigwor; everybody does it.’

‘They did it on Earth, way back,’ Selene said. ‘Until they banned it with the Clean Space Act of 2098. It had got so polluted they could hardly see the Moon.’

‘Get to the point,’ Diesel said impatiently.

‘Instead of going down the rubbish chute, we go up it,’ Selene said. ‘Top marks to Onix.’

The prince grinned at her. ‘I live to serve you.’

‘I think that sonic dart must have frazzled his brain,’ Diesel muttered. ‘And, if we try and go up the chute, we’ll be burnt to a crisp,’ Diesel said.

Peri watched a column of flame erupt. The fiery red glow faded. ‘See how it comes and goes?’ he said. ‘If we time it just right, we can zoom to the planet in between the bursts.’

‘If it’s like the one on Meigwor, there’ll be lots of smaller chutes joining into a giant one,’ Otto said. ‘One of the chutes will lead directly to the incinerator. We don’t want to go down that!’

Peri studied the column of flames as they powered up again. ‘Twenty-three seconds, sixteen micro-seconds and five nanoseconds between blasts,’ he said. Somehow, his bionic brain knew the exact time. ‘I hope that will be long enough.’

They set a direct course and were soon hovering a few hundred miles above Xion. Peri wiped the sweat from his forehead. The Bridge had grown hot. Even with the
Phoenix
’s thermo-dials turned all the way to ‘Arctic’, the heat from the Xion rubbish incinerator was stifling. Diesel was gasping for breath.

‘I reckon we’re close enough,’ Peri said. ‘Time to start the descent.’

‘OK – you take the Nav-wheel,’ Selene said. ‘I’ll count us down. Diesel, can you man the Space Cannon? Blast any bits of debris that look like they’re going to hit us.’

‘Oh yeah!’ Diesel took his place at the gunnery station.

‘What am I going to do?’ Otto said.

‘And me!’ the prince said. ‘What about me?’

‘You two just hold tight,’ Peri said.

He turned the Nav-wheel until the column of flame, soot and ash was directly ahead. It licked out towards them hungrily – the tip of the flames only a few miles away.

‘I’m counting down from five,’ Selene said. ‘At zero the flames will drop and we go. Five, four, three . . .’

Peri gripped the Nav-wheel.

‘. . . two, one, zero!’

Peri pulled the booster levers.

The
Phoenix
dive-bombed.

The flames dropped away. Ahead, Peri saw the mouth of the metal chute, still glowing red.

It widened rapidly.

Darkness fell as they entered the chute. Peri flicked on the outboard lights. The walls of the chute rushed by, curving one way and then the other. Desperately, Peri tried to keep the ship in the middle of the tunnel, without slowing down. Any miscalculation and they’d hit the side of the chute. At this speed, that would be the end of them.

Peri felt a tingling in his arms and legs. His bionic abilities were firing up. His reactions became super-fast. He threw the Nav-wheel from side to side as he followed the twists and turns of the chute.

‘Fifteen seconds till incinerator powers up!’ shouted Selene.

Peri saw chunks of rubbish explode and disintegrate into fragments as Diesel’s missiles hit them.

‘Nice shooting, Diesel!’ he called.

‘Ten seconds until it fires up!’ Selene yelled.

Then Peri saw three black holes rushing towards them. It was a junction – the chute split three ways. He eased up on the boosters.

‘What are you doing?’ screamed Selene. ‘Five seconds to go!’

‘One of those must be the incinerator!’ Otto said. ‘Choose the wrong one and we’re grilled.’

‘Go left!’ shouted Diesel.

‘Go for the middle!’ boomed Otto.

‘Go right!’ screamed Selene.

‘What’s happening?’ said Prince Onix.

Peri made his choice.

Chapter 4

The
Phoenix
zoomed into the left-hand chute.

Peri heard a roar. A wave of red light lit up the Bridge.

But the light was behind them.

He’d guessed right.

‘
Klûu’ah
!
’
Diesel said shakily. ‘That was close.’

Prince Onix tried to hug Selene, but she dodged.

As the Bridge cooled, Peri’s muscles relaxed. The tingling in his limbs stopped. He slowed the ship to a few hundred miles an hour. It would be silly to crash into anything now, after avoiding the incinerator.

The chute widened. And straightened. The outboard lights lit up what looked like a mountain. A mountain of sludgy brown and muddy red and sickly green and radioactive blue. Peri reached for the boosters, to try slowing the
Phoenix
, but he reacted too late – they hit the mountain with a soft thump, the ship burying itself in the mountain.

A mountain of rubbish.

The 360-monitor showed slimy, decaying food, old bandages and various bits of rusting Xion mining machinery. There were also bits of broken-up battlecruisers, and other piles of bubbling slime.

‘We need to get moving. We’ll have to go through this mess,’ Selene said.

‘Why can’t we fly in like we did before?’ Diesel asked.

‘Xion’s defence systems will be on red alert this time,’ Peri explained. ‘If we take the ship in closer to the palace, we’re bound to be spotted.’

He tapped the nano-button implanted in his ribs, coughed and felt his lungs expand. The hydro-bubble had kicked in; now he’d be able to breathe freely in Xion’s carbon-rich atmosphere. Selene and Diesel did the same. Robot arms shot out from the wall and replaced the thick magnetic soles of their space boots with thinner soles, suitable for Xion gravity.

‘Prince – do you know the way to the palace from here?’

‘What palace?’ the prince asked.

Selene rolled her eyes. ‘Better use the Quikmap.’

Peri engaged the Quikmap 7000 touchpad on the control panel. ‘Palace of the Xion royal family, please.’