Star Blaze (5 page)

With Kovac in a far better mood than the last time they'd spoken, Johnny tentatively asked him to send a message to Sol. The computer agreed, but stressed there was no guarantee any signal would be received. That would depend on the precise whereabouts of the spaceship.

It had to be worth a try. Kovac ran a search and determined that the huge radio telescope at Jodrell Bank was aligned in almost the right direction so, after a slight tweak, Johnny prepared to record a message. He'd never been so far from his ship and it was odd that any communication wouldn't be instant. It reminded Johnny of when he was little, dreaming he was commander of the first ever Mars base. Then he'd pretend to record messages to send to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, updating Earth with the colony's progress. Johnny smiled to himself. He'd still not taken the
Spirit of London
to the red planet and really should do that soon.

Finding the right words was difficult. In the end, he simply said that he'd received an unidentified transmission, but one he believed to be friendly, and was going to investigate. He gave them the coordinates and the time, but made clear he didn't expect them to come back because of it. He knew he wasn't being especially brave—the message wouldn't reach Pluto till midafternoon Johnny's time anyway so, when he went to meet the mysterious stranger, he would do so on his own.

He returned to his bedroom and roused Bentley. The
sheepdog was always reluctant to leave the comfort of the radiator, but he made Johnny feel safer and had often helped him out of a tight spot. Three times the big gray and white dog had saved him from the evil Krun, when without his friend's heroic efforts Johnny was sure to have been killed. Even when Bents had been shot and gravely wounded, he'd fought on and been the bravest companion anyone could wish for. Together, under a gray autumnal sky, they sneaked across the carpark, avoiding Spencer's football match, and reached the
Jubilee
which was covered in golden leaves from some overhanging branches. Johnny opened the door and Bentley jumped inside.

Piloting the shuttle was such a relief after a day at Halader House. Johnny was back in the real world, the one where he belonged—a place with aliens, faster-than-light spacecraft, hollowed-out moons and a vast galactic empire. He tried to recall the coordinates he'd been given the night before and concentrated hard on the memory—it was like speaking them out loud. The
Jubilee
responded, at first driving north on a road leading away from the station, but turning into a side street with no traffic and no CCTV. The small ship's sensors had become Johnny's own eyes and ears and, once he was sure no one was watching, he thought,
Shields on
. The walls of the taxi began to fade until they disappeared completely. For a fraction of a second it must have looked as if Johnny and Bentley were somehow flying side by side, just above the road, but then they, too, vanished. As the
Jubilee
lifted skyward, Johnny felt as though it was his own disembodied mind rising above the clouds. It was like being free of everything—his mountain of homework, Mr. Wilkins, growing up in a children's home and missing his dead parents and brother so much he sometimes ached.

The rendezvous point proved further than Johnny expected. He was determined to be there before noon, so pushed the
shuttle to near maximum sub-orbital speed. Far below, green and brown postage-stamp fields flew by in a blur while Bentley barked joyfully beside him. They flew on, over motorways and past towns and villages. Within a few minutes the
Jubilee
was circling above a patch of recently cleared land bordered by terrace homes on one side and a factory and railway sidings on the other. It looked an odd choice for a meeting place.

The
Jubilee
landed within ten meters of the appointed spot, surrounded by building rubble, and remained invisible. Johnny could watch and wait from the security of his cloaked shuttle. Not that there was anything to see apart from a few brown puddles and some small piles of bricks, half-heartedly covered by muddy tarpaulins. He probed further out, using the
Jubilee
's sensors, straining for a sign of anyone approaching, noting the street names around the building site: Shaftsbury Crescent, Vulcan Street, Colombo Street. Nothing about them was familiar. He reached further out still, finding road signs and municipal buildings. This was Derby. It was the town where Johnny had been born—where he'd spent the first two years of his life.

Before he could make sense of this revelation, space itself wobbled and collapsed nearby. Something was unfolding very close, a little above the shuttle, but it was a tiny opening. A figure emerged in mid-air with some difficulty, as though the opening was only just large enough to climb through, and then fell four or five meters to the ground. He got up and dusted himself down. His hair was long, black and straggly and he wore a uniform of black rubber, skin-tight, with his chest and stomach muscles showing through. There was a large black ring on his right hand, while a sapphire blue band at the top of his left arm carried an insignia of three stars, almost in a line but with the right-hand one slightly too low. The strangest thing about him, though, was his face. The right side was covered by a
black mask, while the other half looked strikingly familiar. Bentley went berserk, the noise of frantic barking mingled with scratching at the
Jubilee
's invisible door.

“Bents—stop it!” shouted Johnny. For a moment the barks were replaced with a plaintive whine before the passenger door sprang open and the shuttle and its occupants rematerialized. Johnny could not believe it. Bentley must have wanted to get out so badly that the
Jubilee
had picked up the sheepdog's thoughts and opened the door. Johnny sat exposed in the pilot's seat, feeling like a total lemon. Bentley rushed up to the mysterious figure and stood on his hind legs, engulfed in the man's arms while he licked the exposed half of the stranger's face.

Johnny thought his own door open and stepped out onto the rough ground. Hesitantly he walked toward the figure. The man looked at Johnny coming toward him and said, “Down, Bents … down.” Reluctantly the Old English sheepdog fell onto all fours. The man walked forward to meet Johnny halfway, smiling broadly. He nodded toward the shuttlecraft and said, “Nice motor, little bro'.”

The blood drained from Johnny's face, making him even paler than usual, and there was a buzzing in his ears as the world seemed to have been blotted out. Bentley was now circling the two of them, jumping in the air and barking, but the noise sounded far in the distance. Johnny heard the words, “But you're dead,” and he knew they must have come from his own mouth, though he hadn't consciously spoken them. A million thoughts flashed through his mind and he wondered how he could have been so stupid. The picture he'd been carrying in his locket for the past six months showed a third figure beside him and Clara. It wasn't the photo of a ten year old boy—the age Nicky had been when supposedly murdered. It showed a man—Johnny's brother as he was now. He knew this was Nicky and
Bentley's reaction only confirmed it. The locket tucked beneath his tunic top did too. As Johnny stood there, he could feel the warmth of the strange metal against his chest, flowing out of the gift from his mother.

“Not dead,” replied Nicky. “Just a long way away.”

“Where? What happened to you?”

“I was being trained,” Nicky replied. “You see, I'm special and, by the look of your transportation, you're kind of special yourself. Guess it runs in the family.”

“Why here? Why now?” Johnny didn't know what to ask first.

“I used to come here as a boy,” Nicky replied. “Dad brought me. You even came on the last day. It was a bit different then—a football ground. You wouldn't remember.”

“Dad … and Mum—they're kind of … dead,” said Johnny. He thought Nicky should be told, but he didn't know how to explain it properly. It was hard to look at his brother as he said the words, but he knew it was the right thing to do. It wasn't something he and Clara ever spoke about and, doing so now, he felt small and awkward—his arms suddenly seemed too long for him and he didn't know what to do with them or where to put his hands.

“I know,” said Nicky softly. “I felt it. I've come back for you. To protect you. To ask you to join me. With you by my side, we could rule the galaxy.” He reached out and pulled Johnny into his arms, lifting him into the air and squeezing all the breath out of his lungs in a huge bear hug.

Johnny's face brushed Nicky's mask and suddenly he felt as if he was on fire. He pushed himself away, holding his burning left cheek as he fell to the ground. “I don't want to rule the galaxy,” he said, before the pain welled up as though Mr. Wilkins had rammed a kitchen knife in there. “What's that?” Johnny managed to ask, pointing at Nicky's mask while wondering how to stop the needles shooting through his own nerve ends.

“You've woken him,” said Nicky. “He's coming.” Johnny's brother looked as scared as he had the day before.

“Who? Who's coming?” Johnny asked, as waves of pain washed over him while he looked around, joining in Nicky's panic.

“Not now … no!” shouted Nicky. A beam of brilliant white light shot from the mask where Nicky's right eye should have been, before flickering out. He reached down to Johnny, desperate, and grabbed his left arm. “Your communicator,” he said, struggling to get the words out as the light behind the mask flickered on and off. “Give it to me.”

Johnny hadn't a clue what was happening, but undid the Velcro strap on his arm and handed the wristcom to his brother.

Nicky took it in his left palm while, from his right hand he produced a miniature, metallic spidery-looking machine, like nothing Johnny had ever seen. It scuttled onto the face of the wristcom, as red and green lights pulsed across its body. Stopping in the middle, it tapped its spindly legs on the circular screen, and then simply melted inside.

“I made this for you,” said Nicky hurriedly, as he strapped the device loosely around Johnny's arm. “Just in case. When the lights are green I'm alone and it's safe. When they're red, he is with me. Red for danger. He mustn't know. The Nameless One must never know.”

“Who?” Johnny asked again. “Who are you talking about?”

“Go!” shouted Nicky. “I'll find you again. I promise. When the lights are green. Now run!”

Nicky staggered backward clutching his face, screaming like a wounded animal. Johnny grabbed Bentley's collar and hauled the dog into the
Jubilee
, jumping in after him. Nicky was kneeling on the ground in front of them. Through his fingers, the brilliant white light became constant. There was a buzzing noise coming from inside the
Jubilee
. Johnny thought,
Shields
on
. He saw something—a little mosquito—land on his arm, just as some circular lights around the face of his wristcom changed from green to red. Then the shuttle, the communicator, the mosquito and he and Bentley faded away.

From his invisible hideaway, Johnny watched as Nicky fell silent, got slowly to his feet and surveyed the scene. Something about him was different. He looked taller than before, and more powerful as he puffed out his chest. The smile had gone, replaced by a cruel, arrogant sneer, and from the masked half of his face blazed a brilliant lone star. He raised the back of his hand to his mouth and spoke into a black circle below his wrist. Having calmed down a little, Johnny wondered whether he should get out of the shuttle again, but something stopped him. This wasn't right. Instead, he closed his eyes and fought against the pain in his cheek, driving the electric signals away from his brain. What had felt like a thousand needles stabbing his face repeatedly was reduced to a bearable handful, and finally none, until a different pain flared, this time in his arm. The mossie had drawn blood. Johnny opened his eyes, but saw nothing. He tried to swat the invisible insect with an invisible hand, but only succeeded in slapping himself and making it worse. Meanwhile, having drunk its fill, the insect started buzzing around the insides of the shuttle. Johnny heard it bang several times against the windscreen it couldn't see.

His eyes went beyond the invisible barrier. A large black sphere had landed beside his brother. It couldn't be, but it looked just like a Krun shuttle—the only feature breaking up the smooth hull was the indecipherable black on black hieroglyphics scattered across it. This changed everything. He wanted to shout out, to open the doors and drag Nicky away, but instead he sat paralyzed and invisible within the
Jubilee
. Three tall men in dark suits burst out of the Krun ship—aliens, masquerading in human form. Nicky was in terrible danger—Johnny
couldn't let his brother be taken. He prepared to drive the
Jubilee
into the aliens but, before he could act, each of the Krun knelt in the rubble in front of Nicky and said, “My Lord.” One of the three was Stevens—or
a
Stevens anyway. This was the Krun who had kidnapped Johnny and Clara, and shot dead their father. Once, Johnny believed he had seen this particular alien die, but now he knew there had been nine, each identical, apparently hatched from a single egg.

Nicky shouted at the Krun in their own language, but Johnny could understand. Spread thinly across the Milky Way were ancient, noble creatures called Hundra that acted as the galaxy's translators. The first one Johnny met had given him a unique gift—a tiny fragment of its own soul—which now lived inside Johnny. It meant he could translate anything he heard spoken and make himself understood in whatever language he chose. Right now he half-wished he couldn't tell what his brother was saying.

“Tell me,” sneered Nicky. “Who is the most important being in this wretched galaxy?”

“You, my Lord,” mumbled the three aliens in unison, their heads bowed.