Ryogan's

Prologue

The sea was crystal clear and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Seagulls and more colourful creatures fluttered and wheeled in the air.

Warm sun bathed a mid-sized and thoroughly beautiful tropical island. Roughly elliptical, with a large mountain protruding from its middle, it was ringed with lush green jungle and then white sands. On a day like today it looked as fabulous as it ever did. It resembled Paradise.

Perched on the side of the mountain just above the treeline was a largish house. A villa, a mansion, maybe, there was a swimming pool visible on top and palm trees planted outside the large bay window on the front of the building that looked out over the ocean and caught the sun nearly all day.

The seagull wheeled again and turned back towards the island.

A devastating explosion - red and smoky with a fiery yellow heart - removed the villa, a huge amount of jungle, six hundred yards of beach, a quarter of the mountain, and the seagull, from the map.

As a huge thick plume of smoke rose from the blackened crater, the boom echoed across the ocean. Debris rained down into the water and the parts of the jungle that hadn't been disintegrated caught fire. The smoke gradually cleared, revealing that, where there had been the north side of a tropical island and a pleasant holiday villa, there was now a rocky brown crater set into the side of the mountain, and about a kilometre across.

"DANG it! Not again!"

Episode 1

“Welcome to PDC!

“Perfect Dark Central is an autonomous, semi-independent anti-terrorism organisation formed in 1983 after an executive order by the United Nations. Perfect Dark Central (hereafter referred to as “PDC”) was created in order to independently seek out and prevent major crimes such as drug trafficking, terrorism, breaches of human rights and threats to world safety. In recent years PDC has prevented no less than four organisations from taking over or destroying the world by various means, and as such the reputation of the force has grown in international circles, though not (thankfully) in the public eye.

“Only one of the original four members of PDC are still alive – ‘Rare’, the current Commander and supreme chief of PDC, who formerly sat on the UN Security Council. Below him in the hierarchy are three or four senior officers, followed by the PDC troops, totalling around 25 PDC members, both at base and overseas, at any given point in time.

“PDC troops are considered to be the best soldiers and spies in the world, and this reputation is one we maintain. You will undergo an extremely rigorous training process at Perfect Dark Central itself, which is based at a secret location in central England. Here, you will be taught in the use of extensive selections of firearms, lethal and non-lethal weapons, vehicles, and many forms of martial arts including (uniquely) sword-fighting, as well as espionage skills such as infiltration, shadowing, lip-reading and hacking. Recruits are also often privileged to receive genetic enhancements to their natural skills, improving strength, speed, awareness or agility in a combat environment.

“PDC is an equal opportunities environment, but we do discriminate very strongly on the grounds of ability. Only the very best of the best are permitted to graduate from new recruit to fully-fledged trooper after passing a strenuous final examination.

“You will be met by another recruit as you arrive, and shown around the grounds. Please feel free to take advantage of the site’s facilities before your training begins – you won’t have much time to do so later..."

"We're here."

Thrillhouse shut the pamphlet and stuffed it back into his pocket. He fished some money out of his other pocket to pay the taxi driver. Then he stepped out onto the pavement with his holdall slung across his back.

The taxi drove off.

During the last fifteen miles of the taxi ride, there had been nothing to see but rolling green hills. This place was really in the middle of nowhere. Best place, really.

He looked up at the wrought-iron gates. A discreet brass nameplate on one of the white pillars to the side listed it as the private residence of a rich, middle-aged man known as Rare. But Thrillhouse knew it was actually the base for PDC. And today was his first day on the job.

Through the gates he could see a young man in a suit, running down the tree-lined gravel path towards him. The man stopped at a distance – Thrillhouse couldn’t see his face.

“What is your name?” asked the man.

“Thrillhouse,” replied Thrillhouse. The man moved to the side and operated a control on the wall. Invisible sensors built into the gates scanned and correlated Thrillhouse’s facial image, voice pattern, thermal signature and retinal scan. They were matched successfully with those on file. A confirmation message was sent. The gates swung open automatically.

“Come inside,” he was ordered, and he did so. The man stepped out. He was incredibly young, maybe even younger than Thrillhouse, and shorter too. He had a pleasant boyish face. He stuck his hand out. “Name of Scissors. Pleased to meet you.”

“You’re the person who’ll be showing me around?” said Thrillhouse, shaking his hand. He’d been expecting some kind of huge bulky wrestler-type. This kid looked like anything but a crack commando.

“Yup. I used to be the newest member here until you showed up, which means you get to do all the dirty jobs now. Don’t worry, it’s not too bad. Much better than any army-style regime, certainly. You’ll think it’s a piece of cake by comparison. Where were you before, anyway? A lot of our recruits come from military backgrounds.”

“British SAS.” They started walking up the tree-lined path towards a huge, stately red brick mansion at the other end.

“Softies,” remarked Scissors casually.

Thrillhouse grabbed him by the throat and lifted Scissors off the ground with one hand. “You say that again, I’ll kill you. The SAS are the best fighting force on the planet, punk.”

Scissors rolled his eyes, then swung a foot around into Thrillhouse’s face. He kicked him back a full one-eighty degrees in mid-air, somersaulted gracefully and landed crouched on Thrillhouse's back, with one of his arms in an armlock.

“Gaah!”

“No offence, dude,” said Scissors, “There’s a lot of superior fighting forces out there and the SAS is one of them. But seriously, compared to us, pretty much everyone is a wuss and a wimp. I could take down three at once with just my left hand.” He released his grip on Thrillhouse and stood up. “Sorry about that. Just making the point.”

“What’s so special about your left hand?” asked Thrillhouse, spitting some gravel out and climbing to his feet, unhurt.

Scissors showed him.

Thrillhouse leapt back. “What the—?”

“I know, scared the pants off me the first time I did it too,” said Scissors, calmly morphing the huge silver blade back into a human hand. “But that’s why they call me Scissors, and that’s why we are the best soldiers. Genetic enhancements, dude. We have some seriously good scientists working for us here. The last guy, Bloober, he was a biotech god. Could do things you wouldn’t believe.”

“He did your hand up like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Does everyone have enhancements?”

“Only some. Mostly vision enhancements, strength, stamina and stuff. Rarely something so outrageous as this scissor morph. But Bloober wanted a volunteer so I put my hand up. This is what I got. You’ll get something too. They give you a list, you pick what you like. It’s like Christmas.”

They had arrived at the mansion. “Drop your bag here,” said Scissors. “I want to show you the grounds.”

***

Elsewhere, in a part of the PDC grounds that was hidden by dark green conifers, there was a small glade where the trees had been cleared away. It was a place of rest and contemplation. It was currently empty.

A faint and unnatural rustle of wind run through leaves. A blue light lit them softly.

A pair of bare feet stepped out of nowhere onto the ground in the centre of the glade. There was a whisper of a “Goodbye”. Then the blue light faded, and the wind stopped. There was silence again in the trees. The newcomer breathed the fresh air in, and let it out gently through her nostrils.

It felt good to be back in the real world.

Sal tossed her long blonde hair back over her shoulders, gathered her saffron robes around her and strode out of the glade.

Episode 2

The sound of gunfire was not an uncommon one in the PDC grounds. The indoor firing range, situated to the east, was occupied when Scissors and Thrillhouse arrived.

A man with a cigarette in his mouth was cradling a large, nasty-looking black machine gun in his hands. He was overseeing a trio of men in combat uniforms, who were firing identical guns at an array of targets positioned fifty yards away.

Scissors led Thrillhouse over to the overseer. “This is the Doctor,” he said.

“Doctor who?”

“Just Doctor. He’s one of four senior officers on the PDC force. He’s been with us almost since the beginning. Seen a lot of combat.”

The Doctor was very intimidating when you got near him. He was tall for a start, and his head was completely bald. He wasn’t wearing a shirt of any kind, just a baggy pair of dark red trousers tied with a gold belt. Very muscular. He wore darkened, reflective glasses and had a faint sneer on his face as Thrillhouse approached him.

“This the newbie?” he drawled. American accent.

“Yes, sir, this is agent Thrillhouse, arrived about ten minutes ago,” said Scissors.

The Doctor shifted his gun and held a hand out. Thrillhouse shook it. “Welcome aboard, soldier.”

“Thank you sir. Is that a Panther Mk 2?” he asked, pointing at the gun.

“Mk 2A, actually, a modified PDC-only model,” said the Doctor. “Accurate up to a hundred yards, grenade launcher fitted below the barrel, laser sights. This is your standard-issue machine gun, you’ll be seeing it a lot, so get used to it.”

“Can I have a go?”

***

Sal walked calmly through the thin forest on the outskirts of the grounds. No alarms had been triggered by her entry. The automated security cameras had seen her, of course. But her image was on file, classified as “friend”.

She came to a bench, on its own in the middle of the forest. There was a man sitting on it, dark-skinned, cropped white hair, muscular. He wore a black vest and trousers, and on a strap over his back was a short sword in a sheath. He also wore sunglasses, and a black scarf wrapped over his mouth. He was doing nothing, just sitting there, his arms spread over the back of the bench.

He looked up as she approached, put his hand briefly on his sword’s hilt, then relaxed.

“Hi,” said Sal. “I haven’t seen you before. What’s your name?”

The man said nothing. There was a long pause.

Sal tilted her head to one side. “You don’t talk, then. …I can’t say I blame you. Sometimes words are just too clumsy for what you want to say,” she said.

He stared at her face, and then for a long moment at her waist. Sal felt like he was concentrating on something. Then he was looking questioningly back at her.

“Yes,” she said simply.

The man smiled broadly. Sal walked on. “See you later, DQ,” she called back.

***

“You drive much?” asked Scissors. They were arriving at the motor pool.

“A bit.”

“Jez is our resident vehicle guru.” The garage door rolled upwards. "Tell Thriller about yourself, Jez."

Jez rolled out from underneath a quite astoundingly large Russian tank. “If it has two or more wheels, I can drive it, fix it, turbo-charge it, or attach a rocket launcher. Less keen on boats. Hi.” He stood up, removing his oily gloves, and shook Thrillhouse’s hand. He was a short, fairly young-looking whizz-kid, wearing blue jeans and t-shirt, plus a pair of welder's goggles.

“That’s a Russian tank,” said Thrillhouse.

“Best kind of tank in the world,” said Jez.

“I saw you using American machine guns earlier.”

“So? Hey, we use the best stuff only. Who cares where it comes from?”

“Tell him about your life’s philosophy,” said Scissors, as Thrillhouse wandered around the garage inspecting tools and unidentifiable pieces of electronic machinery.

“I believe that there is only one thing in life worth living for. Speed. If you can still make out individual lamp-posts then you aren’t going fast enough. My life is devoted to moving from one place to another in a very short space of time, then beating that time by a hundredth of a second. I can make anything go fast if you give me long enough. I once got fifty miles per hour out of a Lego set.”

“A Lego set?”

“A standard Lego set. The guys gave it to me for my birthday as a joke. But it was hella worth it. You should’ve seen that model Porsche move. Uh, don’t touch that.”

Thrillhouse had been inspecting a sleek-looking convertible Beamer in the corner. Jez explained: “I, uh, accidentally primed the self-destruct mechanism on that thing. There’s one button you have to press to defuse it, press anything else and it’ll blow up. But I forgot which button exactly.”

Thrillhouse looked questioningly at Scissors. Scissors stared at Jez, equally surprised. “Are you serious? How long has it been like that?” he asked.

“About a week. I keep forgetting to ask S about it. If he doesn’t know then I guess we’re gonna have to take it somewhere and perform a controlled detonation,” said Jez. “Real shame, it’s a nice car.”

“Who’s S?” asked Thrillhouse.

“Scientist-stroke-gadget dude,” said Scissors. “Come on, we’ll check his lab, it’s just next door.”

“He’s not in,” said Jez as Scissors started for the door marked “Laboratory” at the back of the garage.

“Where is he?”

“Overseeing the Amazon mission with Rare and Valkyrie. They’ll be tied up for a good couple of hours yet.”

“Ah yes. I forgot about that. Wonder how it’s going.”

“Valkyrie?” asked Thrillhouse.

“Rare’s secretary,” said Jez and Scissors simultaneously. Scissors continued, “Don’t even think about getting on the wrong side of her, or you’re a dead man. She cuts flies in half with her sword. Live ones. Flying around and everything. Schwing. Falls out of the sky, cut in half.”

“And she’s a secretary?”

“A ninja secretary. Best kind.”

Episode 3

Amazon river basin, Western Brazil

0344 hours local time

Dark night hung thickly over the horribly dense South American rainforest. Dawn was not due for three hours, and though the moon was bright and a grey light illuminated the horizon to the East, the trees were deep, deep black.

Cloaked, stealthed, and to human eyes and ears impossible to perceive, a PDC jumpship glided softly over the tops of the trees. Onboard were a quartet of agents, readying themselves for a mission. This was an exploration and reconnaissance job. Straight in, straight out.

Armando was flying the ship a scant ten metres above the treetops. He banked lazily left and right to avoid emergent trees protruding above the uppermost leaf canopy. They were highlighted in red on the heads-up display that was projected on the inside of the cockpit bubble. The bubble was a three-sixty degree immersion VR environment. Heat-sensitive cameras affixed to six points on the jumpship recorded live video data which was used for the projection, and allowed the pilot to see everything around the ship, far more than any jet or helicopter. In case of camera failure the ship’s cockpit still provided nearly full all-around vision.

In the smallish seating area in the back were Brent, who was the senior officer for this mission, and the two agents who would be accompanying him. They were receiving their final briefing from Rare, who was monitoring the jumpship from the Situation Room at PD Central.

“Here’s the deal, guys,” he said. “We’ve been keeping tabs on hardware movements in Brazil for some time now, not just weaponry, but generalised machinery. Logging equipment and mining equipment, mainly, because we’re trying to prevent illegal deforestation in the heart of South America, but also for unexpected threats. We came up with a number of anomalies.”

The image on the wall screen in the jumpship shifted, then became a close-up map of the Jurua tributary that they were flying over. A couple of pink dots blinked on the screen, then slowly began to move inwards towards a roughly circular area above the forest that was highlighted with red diagonal bars. A different voice spoke this time – it was S. “The pink dots are truck convoys of military equipment and miscellaneous heavy industrial machinery. They were purchased on the other side of Brazil, by a company called Glare Industrial. The company might or might not be a front for someone, we haven’t checked out yet, but that’s not it. I’m going to wind the video forward. Watch what happens to the convoys as they enter the red area.”

The pink dots moved in, and vanished. The map zoomed in, displaying recorded GPS footage of the convoy itself. As they reached the red zone, the trucks weren’t blown up or destroyed. They simply disappeared.

“A cloak field?” guessed Brent, chewing a toothpick. He was a tall, rugged, bald-headed veteran, heavy with weight of experience (and muscle). There wasn’t a lot you could tell him that he didn’t already know, there weren’t many countries in the world he’d never been to, and there were few bones he’d never had broken in combat at some point. He was legendary in PDC – not for amazing skill or dexterity or strength, but just for being plainly and simply unkillable.

“Yes,” said S, “a big one. The rainforest you see from above is some kind of hologram. Somebody doesn’t want us to find out what’s happening underneath…”

In the cockpit, radar showed Armando that they were nearing their destination. A blue square highlighted a section of the forest that had been matched to GPS target coordinates. Armando headed towards it, pulling back on the thrusters to effortlessly halt the ship directly over a clearing that was just large enough to allow the machine to land vertically. Gently he eased it down through over forty metres of trees and the ship landed with a whisper on the leaf-lined forest floor, where he switched off the engines and stealth technology.

Rare continued. “The convoys didn’t appear on the other side of the red area afterwards, so we can only assume that a large amount of machinery is being used to construct something inside. Maybe an army, maybe a fortress, maybe a doomsday weapon. Anyway, it’s the usual drill. Armando has landed you in a clearing to the south. He will remain on the jumpship while you three head north into the zone and find out what’s going on. Your head-mounted cameras will send everything you see back to us on a live feed, and we’ll be in constant communication. When we think you’ve got enough information, you’ll pull back and we’ll plan what to do next.”

Vixen flexed her fingers. She was a tall woman, with wild brown hair, very long nails and canines rather larger than you might expect on a normal human. She was, of course, genetically modified. Her genome had been merged partially with that of a fox, allowing her excellent hearing and night vision, and an above-average sense of smell.

She was an aggressive individual, preferring gruesome hand-to-hand combat to any kind of weapon. Although rumours that she was capable of turning into a fox were unconfirmed, when you witnessed Vixen on her berserk slashing, tearing rampage for the first time, it was sometimes hard to believe there was still a woman under there.

“As long as I get to kill somebody,” she growled.

“Unlikely, Vixen, this is recon. Unless there’s a threat in there that we think you should take down, there will be zero body count, understand?”

“Yes sir,” said Vixen.

“Munky, this means you too. I know you’ve got a grenade launcher, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

“Aww,” said Munky. He was a short, mischievous kid, with a perpetual grin on his face and a fondness for mass destruction by means of extremely bulky weapons.

“Any questions?” asked Rare. Brent, Munky and Vixen shook their heads. “Move out. Good luck.”

Brent stood up and activated the jumpship sliding door. The troopers adjusted their black combat outfits and zipped on their helmets, then, with a Black Panther Mk 2A over each shoulder and a hefty amount of ammo, they stepped out of the ship and sprinted off into the jungle.

Armando watched the red heat signatures of the three PDC agents disappear into the undergrowth. Then he sighed, picked up a magazine from the floor, and settled back for the long wait.

***
There were four senior officers in PDC. The Doctor was one of them, Brent another.

In yet another peaceful part of the PDC grounds, Sal came across the remaining two.

Echoes was lounging with infinite coolness by a small carp pond. He had sunglasses over his eyes, one stereo headphone plugged into his ear, and faint smile on his face as he lay flat on the grass lawn, gazing at the sky. Next to him, sitting up on the grass, was Stevez, who was strumming along on his electric guitar to the tune that was coming into his ear through the other headphone.

He was jamming like a monster. The guitar was making notes Sal had never even heard before, when she emerged from the trees behind them. She stood behind them, listening to the amazing chords for nearly five minutes, then, as the last note died away, she strode up and tapped Stevez on the shoulder. “Nice tune.”

Stevez looked up, then sprang to his feet, dislodging the phone from his ear. “Sal!” They embraced. “How’ve you been? Been with Dlong for all this time?”

“Yes,” said Sal. “I’m going back to him soon. I just came back to pay a quick visit. You’re looking well, Stevez. Better than when I last saw you.”

“I’ve reformed. I came off the drink. It was doing bad things to me. I was depressed, I was lonely, and most importantly I couldn’t jam to save my life.”

“And now you play like an angel. Isn’t that the Doc’s old axe?”

“Yeah. He gave it to me, went into martial arts instead. He said… he said he’d played every note he could. I didn’t understand what he meant. I dunno, there’s something about it. It has a spirit. Or something.”

“Do you think Echoes is awake?”

“Yes,” said Echoes, without moving.

“Well, aren’t you going to say hello to me?” said Sal.

“I’m alive, you’re alive. What more is there to say?” murmured Echoes.

Sal paused. “Deep,” she said eventually.

“Ignore him,” said Stevez. “Come on, let’s go find Rare. He’ll be glad to see you.”

Episode 4

The Situation Room, buried deep inside the main building of PD Central, was quiet, dark, and tense.

Covering all of one large wall were six live video feeds – one from each of the head-mounted cameras of Brent, Vixen, Munky, and Armando, a fifth showing a live aerial satellite feed with a heat-signature and radar overlay, and the sixth hooked to external cameras on the jumpship. In the centre of the room was a large table covered with charts and computers. Seated next to the table were S and Rare, who were carefully monitoring events onscreen, and hovering discreetly behind them was Valkyrie, Rare’s personal secretary.

The first of the pink dots representing the agents vanished.

“You’re now entering the cloaked area,” said S into his headset mike, as Brent led the team quickly through the forest. Brent responded by slowing his pace slightly, and the other two did likewise. “We’ve no idea whether to expect any kind of hostiles or automated defences, so be on high alert.”

Brent silently tapped the “affirmative” button on his glove.

The team continued to trek onwards for another fifteen minutes in total silence, covering another mile of thick jungle under the cloak. Then, suddenly, Brent dropped to the ground and held up a hand. The jungle had been cleared up ahead. The texture of the darkness had changed from thick leaves to empty black air. But more importantly, there was a hint of artificial light and a faint hum of machinery.

Brent, Vixen and Munky crawled forward slowly, until finally they reached the edge of the forest. They lurked in the shadows while Munky used his camera to systematically record what they were seeing.

“Are you copying this?” hissed Brent into his radio.

“We copy,” said Rare.

There wasn’t any more jungle. Just a deep, kilometre-wide basin excavated out of the ground. There were no more trees, just brown clay. Right in the centre of the basin, pointing upwards at an angle of sixty degrees, was a gigantic laser. It was at least eighty metres high. It was illuminated from below by pale white lights. At high magnification, Munky could make out power cables entering its base, focusing grids at the top, and the complicated machinery that allowed the laser to elevate and rotate.

Clustered around the lower end of the laser were a number of squat buildings. Immediately below it was a control building. A group of four identical to the northwest were radiating faint infrared beams upwards into the sky – these, Munky guessed, were the cloak generators. To the northeast was a three-storey building which looked very much like a power plant. To the west, a large collection of trucks and lorries were parked near the road leading into the base. To the south, near the PDC agents’ hiding place, were a trio of long, low buildings – barracks? At all four compass points were tall, heavily-armoured watchtowers, and bolted to the top of most of the buildings were automated mechanical drone guns armed with chain guns and rockets. It was a veritable fortress.

The base was ghostly lit at night. There seemed to be nobody around.

“This smells weird,” said Vixen.

“I know,” said Munky. “Why isn’t there a perimeter fence? I mean, nobody would find strolling in easy, but it makes no sense, a fence should be your first line of defence. I’d have put one a good fifty metres behind us, if it was me.”

“No,” said Vixen. “It smells. It smells funny.”

“That’s just the jungle.”

“No,” said Vixen, and Munky shut up.

Brent radioed in. “Alpha Team to PDC, Alpha Team to PDC. We’ve got a classic doomsday weapon get-up. More proficient than most, good defence layout, likely fifty to a hundred human hostiles plus autonomous defences. Doesn’t look like they’re ready to fire yet, or even preparing. Estimate forty-eight hours minimum until the laser is operational. Recommend pulling back and making a planned attack. Over.”

“PDC to Alpha Team, yeah, we copy that,” said Rare. “Planned attack will probably be it. Anything to add, S?”

“Munky, could you focus on that laser again?” asked S.

The video feed moved and came to rest on the green power cable that was running into the laser’s base.

“Zoom in some more, please. Rare, do you see that?”

“The connection seems to be faulty.”

“No, it’s not leaking, it’s supposed to be like that. Look, they use the fluid as some kind of waxy sealant like glue, keep the two connected. That’s normal, it’s what I’d expect. No, look at the pipe.”

Rare looked.

“Is it… is it my imagination, or does it have—”

“Munky, get me a close-up on one of the roof bots.”

Munky swivelled the camera again. The bot looked like any drone gun, maybe a little less metallic, a little more curvy and organic-looking than usual. In fact, more than organic. In fact…

“Are those feelers?” said Valkyrie, standing up and pointing to a pair of tiny blue tendrils that were waving above the main barrel of the drone gun. “The base is all wrong too – no bolts, no screws. Just a smooth connection. And the barrel is the same as the pipe. It’s got scales. The thing looks like it just grew out of the ground. The whole place is biological!”

“I said something smelled wrong,” said Vixen on the radio.

Rare picked up the mike again. “Okay, Alpha Team, pull back to the jumpship and return to base. You can’t do anything on your own, we need to plan a full-scale attack.”

“Roger that,” said Brent. “Let’s go.”

The three head cameras swivelled away from the base and began to head back into the jungle. “I still don’t get why they don’t have a perimeter fence,” said Munky. “Whoever the criminal genius is who’s behind this, and he must be some kind of genius, I mean, look at the cloaking technology for a start, he’s a bit loopy not to have a first line of defence. But then I guess all criminal geniuses are a bit loopy.”

“Shut up, Munky.”

Which was about when they hit the perimeter fence.
From the wrong side. It was fifteen feet tall and electrified.

Brent cursed, and looked at the base of the wire fencing. “Trenches. Raise and lower at will, of course! I saw that little dip on the way here, didn’t think about it. Stupid!”

“So what is this? A trap?” asked Munky.

“Yes,” said Brent. “They know we’re here and if they’re not here already they’re definitely on the way. There’s no time to get through the fencing, we have to run.”

“Where?”

“Make for the inroad, there’s probably a gatehouse, we might be able to shoot our way through. Go!”

They ran.

Episode 5

“Armando, we’re gonna need a pickup,” said Vixen on the radio. “Radar’s no good under the cloak but you can track our heat sigs. Hurry!”

Where are they? thought Brent as a faint confirmation crackled through from Armando. They know we’re here. They know where we are. Why aren’t they coming to get us?

A infrared blip flashed momentarily to the right of his field of vision. He turned, but it was gone. He carried on running. He could hear Vixen hurrying behind him. He knew Munky was covering them from behind with his grenade launcher.

If they have mile-wide cloaks, do they have personal ones too?

“Stop,” called Vixen. She was standing still, ears twitching. Brent stopped and turned, gun in hand, alert.

“We’re surrounded,” she said, pulling her Black Panther out. “Range twenty metres.”

“Suppression fire,” commanded Brent, as red infrared shapes began to bloom all over his vision. They were close. He aimed a volley at three he could see in the shadows to his left. They lurched back a bit but stayed standing. They didn’t appear to be carrying weapons. “Body armour, huh?” He switched the Panther to grenade launch mode and fired a round at their feet. He turned and fired another two over the heads of Munky and Vixen, taking out a couple more, or so he thought.

“They’re still coming,” said Vixen.

“They’re still standing!” complained Munky. The Alpha Team moved closer in until they were back to back. “They take a round to the head and don’t even moan! Is this what biotech does to you? Because I’d really like some. In fact, I could use some right about now.”

Gunfire flared in the darkness. The team moved, reloaded, carried on firing. “It’s useless,” growled Vixen. “They’re just playing with us!” She threw her gun down and flexed her claws. “Hand to hand, is it?” She leapt forward at a red shape, and bore it to the ground, with her hands around its neck. They tumbled in the dark – Brent couldn’t see what was happening.

“Vixen, no!” he shouted as his Panther clicked empty. It was hopeless. “Who are these guys?” he screamed, slamming another clip in.

There was a whip and a sizzle and his gun was flicked out of his hands. Then he was on his back, one of the inhuman enemies standing over him. Others joined him. They looked down at him menacingly.

In the dark, all Brent could see were four humanoid shapes, their heat signatures highlighted in glowing red. “We are your enemies,” said one of them. He couldn’t tell which. “We have come to destroy you. We could have destroyed you before you even landed here.” Behind him, Brent heard a lupine scream. Vixen. “But we wished you to see the instrument of your destruction. And you will help in your own destruction, also.”

“You’ll get nothing out of me,” spat Brent.

“You do not have a choice in the matter,” said one of the shapes, and everything went black.

***

“Armando, get out of there as fast as you can,” said Rare. “Brent’s down, Vixen’s probably dead, Munky can’t be reached, and if these guys are serious there’s probably a surface-to-air missile winging its way your way as I speak. Engage all stealth devices and go.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” said Armando. The ship was already braking and banking in a wide arc away from the danger zone. He fired the main thrusters and began to accelerate out of the Amazon basin, gaining height as he did so.

Rare was worried. All three video feeds had gone dead within a couple of seconds of each other, but not before Brent had received that final warning. And not before the last thing Vixen had ever seen had lingered on the screen for a few seconds that had seemed like an eternity. “We need to call an emergency meeting. Valkyrie, would you fetch Echoes and Stevez from the garden, please. They never respond when paged.”

“Yes, sir,” said Valkyrie.

***

Munky hurtled through the jungle. He didn’t have a clue where he was going. The enemy had cut him off from the inroad, herding him back the way he came. He knew there weren’t any other exits in the perimeter fence. He knew he was trapped, and some kind of localised jamming field was blocking his radio communications. They were going to catch him eventually. But still he ran – anything to prolong the inevitable.

Red shapes flared to his left. He veered right, towards the fence. More shapes to the right, he turned left.

A shape lunged out of the bushes directly under him. He kicked the man in the face, put a foot on his shoulder and jumped over. A hand came around and grabbed his ankle, bringing him crashing to the ground. Munky kicked viciously, and scrambled to his feet.

As he kept running he felt a strange wet sensation around his ankle. He didn’t have time to look, but it felt like mud. There was more on his boot. The biologically enhanced enemies were covered in slime. Eww.

More hostiles. He fired a volley of grenades in their direction, skidded and veered right again. Then he nearly ran headfirst into the fence again. Sensors in his combat suit detected the high electric charge and bleeped a warning in his ear just in time. Munky turned, wild-eyed, grenade launcher at the ready. There were red shapes everywhere. Surrounding him.

Grenade rounds flew. The jungle lit up red and brown and rumbled with the echo of explosions. White light blinded Munky temporarily but he kept firing. He fired until his launcher clicked empty, and there was nothing but black smoke and charred greenery within a thirty metre radius. He dropped the gun, panting. If that wasn’t enough to finish them off, he was done for.

He waited, and watched.

Red shapes began to pick themselves up off the ground.

“You want a piece of me?” challenged Munky, throwing his Mk 2A to the ground as well. The shapes regarded him silently, then began to close in again. Munky took his handgun from its holster and dropped it on the heap. “Come on, then. Hand to hand. Come on!”

The first shape ducked his first swipe and was instantly at his throat, pushing Munky back and against the electric fence. A jolt of electricity leapt through both their bodies, sending them flying back. Munky convulsed on the ground in agony. His heart had stopped beating. He didn’t need the suit alarm to tell him that, he could tell by the burning in his chest. It felt like his blood was turning to stone.

They were going to kill him. He knew it. He reached down to a tiny keypad attached to his equipment belt, as the red shapes gathered over him. “He is not worth keeping alive,” said one of them.

He tapped out a six digit code, a code he’d hoped fervently he’d never have to use. But this was his last option. And it didn’t even count as an option. He’d never wanted it to end this way. He was never one for famous last words, and he couldn’t have taken another breath if he’d tried, so all he did was lie in the foetal position and say nothing.

A shape reached down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck.

All six high-explosive grenades strapped to Munky’s waist detonated simultaneously. The explosion took out the eight hostiles surrounding him, a sizeable chunk of perimeter fence, and a hundred-metre circle of jungle.

Episode 6

The situation was no longer so tense, but that didn’t mean the atmosphere had improved at all. S – a young man with glasses, brown spiky hair, and a leather jacket – and Rare – a man in his early forties but who looked much younger, with immaculately gelled hair and a suit and tie – sat opposite each other at the table, mentally trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

“I can’t believe it,” said Rare. “We lost three of our best agents in the space of a few seconds. They really got the drop on us. Why weren’t we more careful?”

“There was nothing we could have done,” said S. “It was a huge trap. Their technology is obviously far superior to ours. Brent’s squad was outclassed.”

“That doesn’t make it any less of a shock. We never lose agents. Never. They always pull through.”

“We’ve lost agents before,” said S. “Three of the four founding members, for starters.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Rare darkly.

There was a knock on the door, and Valkyrie entered, with Stevez and Echoes in tow. They descended the stairs and assembled around the table. “What’s up?” asked Stevez.

Rare reset the video footage and began to play it through from the beginning. “Brent’s team ran into trouble investigating the influx of materials into the Jurua area up the Amazon river. We think there’s a new enemy.” He fast-forwarded through most of the footage until the squad reached the base, then the group watched in increasingly shocked silence as the rest of the recording played.

***

There was a long pause once the video had finished.

“They might not be dead,” said Stevez eventually. “The lead figure said Brent was going to be used to help in our destruction, whatever form that’s gonna take. At best they’ll keep him alive and pump him for information. At worst, they’ll hijack his body with biotech and use him as a soldier against us. We didn’t see Vixen take any kind of bullet or damage when her video feed failed, and Munky’s camera failed at exactly the same instant, so I think we can take that as proof that signal jamming was in operation from that point on. In which case, either or both of them might have escaped. Failing that, they might have been captured alive for the same reason they got Brent.”

“Okay, I agree with that,” said Rare. “When we do launch an assault we’ll be on the look-out for prisoners. Now, what do you think of their laser get-up? S, rewind to Munky’s footage.”

S punched a command into the console on the table. “That’s the laser,” he said as Munky panned over it.

“That’s not a laser,” said Stevez. “Lasers shoot light, sometimes infrared or UV. That’s a gamma ray maser, much more high-powered, much more dangerous to humans.”

“Good call,” agreed S. “Check the focusing grid, and the oscillators. No way you could work with low-energy wavelengths with that thing. Gamma rays for sure.”

“But why build a laser at all?” said Echoes. Echoes was deceptively short, surprisingly sprightly, and incredibly young-looking, with long hair down his back. He wore a black Dark Side Of The Moon t-shirt. He rarely spoke – when he did, it was worth listening.

“Blow the world up, of course,” said Rare.

“No, no. Why build a laser – sorry, maser – on the ground? We’ve never encountered a doomsday weapon scenario like that before.”

“Of course we have,” scoffed Rare. “Cuba. Mozambique. Nevada. Remember?”

“With all due respect, sir, the laser-resembling devices we encountered during those missions weren’t weapons as such. They were communications lasers. At the relevant moment, they were set up to transmit a signal to an orbiting weapon of mass destruction. In Cuba it was a nuclear orbit-to-surface missile targeted on New York, in Mozambique a global EMP pulse, and in Nevada a capsule full of concentrated biological contaminants aimed at western Europe. (All three of which are still up there lying dormant, as far as I know.) The weapon was always in the air, and triggered on the ground. So why is it different this time? What do they plan to shoot out of the sky?” wondered Echoes.

“We can assume from their threat that the target is either PDC or the Earth as a whole. So maybe it’s some of our satellite network,” suggested S.

“Or the Moon,” said Rare.

“Too little power to even knock a chunk out of the Moon,” said Echoes. “S, pull up a list of official and classified satellites that are due to orbit through the maser’s current line of fire during the next forty-eight hours. Get the satellite network to run a scan for unknown orbiting bodies, too.”

A graphic of the Earth-Moon system and a tangled web of concentric circular orbits flashed up on the main screen. S hit a few keys and the orbits began to disappear one by one. “This is a diagram of all the known orbits. The computer’s checking them systematically, as each one is checked it disappears…” The last orbit vanished. The search had come up negative. “Well, it’s a small patch of sky to be aiming for, I guess.”

“Have the satellites found any unknown bodies yet?”

“Still scanning. None so far. Wait… one. Plotting orbit… confirmation! That’s our baby,” said S. A blue elliptical orbit appeared on screen, with a small dot marking the object’s position. “It’s a large space station. Visual feed coming through now.”

The screen changed once again to a dark green grid-like thing suspended against a starry background. It was a thousand times bigger than the International Space Station, and looked like a tangle of vines and fruits: a network of green tunnels connecting much larger, bulbous nodes in a confusing arrangement. The whole thing looked like it had been grown from a seed of some kind – just like the base near the Jurua tributary. Except one part. Facing the Earth was an incredibly large silver dish that dominated all of one side of the space station, and that looked wholly mechanical.

“A receiver,” said S. “No! A reflector. Of course! When the orbits intersect and the angle is right, the maser fires. The beam hits the dish and is bounced back, spreading the gamma rays all over the Earth. In an instant, the whole Western Hemisphere is irradiated, every man, woman, child, animal and plant is killed instantaneously, and the planet is theirs for the taking. Absolutely ingenious.”

“How long until zero hour?” asked Rare.

The computer plotted orbits and calculated a figure. S read it off the screen.

“Just under thirty-six hours. If we don’t stop the beam before then, two billion people will die.”

There was silence.

“Then we need to work fast,” said Rare. “In my opinion the best course of action is to launch a double-headed attack. We’re up against some seriously dangerous enemies here. Echoes, you’ll head up a team of our best agents. I mean the best. Take Cyanide, at least one sniper, and two others. We can’t afford to take chances. You’ll be going into the laser complex on foot, in order to plant explosives on the laser and bring it down before it fires. There’s a limited chance of success on that front, so at the same time Stevez will take a squad on the Alto and try to steer the space station away from its current orbital trajectory by whatever means necessary.”

“The Alto?” asked Stevez, raising a surprised eyebrow.

“It’s spaceworthy,” said S, “I’d stake my life on it. And DQ’s been practicing in the simulator almost non-stop since it was built, he can fly it. I can have it ready for launch in six hours.”

“There’s a better than fifty percent chance one of you will succeed,” said Rare. “But equally there’s a chance some of you won’t come back. I wish we had more time to prepare, or we knew more about our adversaries and their biotech, but time is too short to worry about such things. We only have one shot at this. Can I depend on you?”

“Was there ever a time you couldn’t?” smiled Echoes.

“Stevez?”

“It’s gotta be done,” said Stevez. “I’m up for it. And I bet all my men will be happy to go too.”

“Good men. Go and get ready for departure. You leave as soon as the Alto is ready. And good luck.”

Episode 7

Stevez and Echoes left to prepare for the mission. Rare, Valkyrie and S were left in the Situation Room.

“Valkyrie, S and I will tie up the loose ends here. I want to run through the video one last time, and we have to make sure Armando reaches base safely. I’d like you to go and investigate the company that was responsible for those truck convoys – Glare Corporation. See if they meant to lose those trucks or if they’re genuine.”

“Yes, sir,” said Valkyrie. She rose and climbed the stairs out of the room. Rare watched her go and waited until the door closed.

“Good-looking woman,” he remarked casually from his seat.

S looked up from his notes, and raised an eyebrow. “She is, yes. But don’t forget she’s attached. She’s been hooked up with Stevez for a good six months now.”

“I know, I know. A casual comment, is all,” said Rare in his defence.

S punched a button and the recordings sprang back up onscreen. “I particularly want to review the parts of the video when there were biotech enemies visible,” he said as the recordings began to play through for a third time. “I want to analyse them and see if we can find anything out about them that might lead to a weakness.”

“Well, we saw that Vixen managed to take the head off one of them with a claw swipe. That seemed to have much greater effectiveness than projectile weapons, so I’ll issue the squads with blade weapons.”

“Agreed. Wait a minute,” said S, as the videos all froze.
“What happened?”

“I programmed it to stop automatically if an infrared signature was detected that matched a biotech enemy. But I don’t see any on Munky’s screen, Vixen’s or Brent’s.”

“Then why did it stop?”

S gasped, then silently pointed at the fourth agent’s screen, Armando’s. Armando had spent most of the mission slouched in the cockpit bubble leafing through Guns and Ammo, until everything went wrong. But this was much earlier than that – Brent’s squad had just left. Armando’s screen showed the magazine, the jumpship controls, and a thin line of dark rainforest at the top. But just off to the top right, visible through the cockpit screen… was a red blob.

S rewound and played. A few seconds passed. The blob appeared very briefly onscreen – an arm or a leg, moving right. Armando’s head snapped up to look at it, but it had already vanished off screen, either cloaking or hiding. Armando apparently shrugged and went back to studying his magazine.

“Egad!” said Rare. “There were men surrounding the jumpship just moments after he landed. Where’s Armando now?”

“Atlantic Ocean, inbound. ETA forty-five minutes.”

“I wondered how he’d escaped. With their technology, like they said, he could have been killed seconds into the mission. I see what they plan to do now – there must be an enemy or enemies hidden on the jumpship with Armando. When he lands back here, they attack the base,” said Rare. “Can he take them on alone?”

***

Armando gingerly set the controls for the autopilot to keep flying the ship, pulled his combat knife out of his boot and put a hand on the handle of the door separating the cockpit from the cabin. If the enemy was anywhere on the ship, it had to be in the cabin. There was nowhere to hide, and at 30,000 feet, clinging to the outside simply wasn’t an option. Unless you were superhuman. Which, he conceded, was pretty standard in this day and age.

He tensed himself, threw the door open, and there, swinging a fist towards him, was the alien.

It had to be an alien. There was no way it had ever been human. It was vaguely humanoid – humanoid enough that in the darkness and twisty undergrowth of a rainforest at night, its infrared silhouette could be easily mistaken for such – but there all similarities ended. It was taller than he was, spindly and a lucid green colour, and seemed to be slicked with a shiny slime. But it was translucent. Light was coming through it from the other side of the thing’s body. It hardly had a body to speak of. Just a vertical thin green pipe. Two spindly long legs. Two wide shoulders with incredibly long, bulbous arms ending in big lumps the size of bowling balls, no fingers. A head that just looked like an extra flap of green – too small to hold a brain of any size, with no facial features of any kind. Its skin was rippling slightly as it swung one fist down towards Armando’s head. It looked very much like a stick figure made out of jelly. Like it was partially liquid.

Armando took all this in within a fraction of a second, then he was ducking the punch. It whirled over his head. He gritted his teeth and clutched the knife, bringing searing over his head and through the creature’s arm. It was severed instantly. A splash of green goo sprayed over Armando’s face as the arm fell to the ground. Please, he thought. Please let it not be the kind of alien that regenerates instantly.

It didn’t seem to be. The alien howled unintelligibly, and whirled its other fist around. Armando dived forward under the blow and rose up in front of its “face”, bringing his knife around towards its neck.

The thing was fast. It already had an amorphous slimy hand around his neck and was hurling him face-first against the cabin interior. Armando spun instantly, caught a massive fist in the chest, then another in the face. He still had a grip on his knife. The third punch came towards his face again, and as it did he brought the knife around in a weird downward arc that sawed it off at the “elbow”. Then Armando plunged the knife into the alien’s chest.

The alien staggered backwards. Armando grabbed at an overhead rail and hoisted himself up to kick the thing in the face. It went back further, slammed itself against the landing ramp.

Inspiration hit Armando. The rail was designed for agents to clip themselves to it for safety while other agents made parachute jumps. Armando grabbed a hook attached to the rail and clipped it to one of his belt loops. Then, as the alien got to its feet again, he lunged left and smacked a button on the wall, and the landing ramp began to open. Air pressure began to equalise. Rushing wind sucked at both of them but while Armando was securely anchored, the alien had no hands to even grab onto something with. It was quickly pulled over backwards, and tumbled out into the open sky.

Armando dimly saw this, but lack of air and the incredibly intense cold at this altitude wasn’t doing him any good. He closed his eyes against the stinging wind and smacked the landing ramp release button again. Slowly it began to fold up. “Oldest trick in the book,” he muttered, huddling against the cold. He radioed in. “The alien’s gone. It’ll land in the Atlantic somewhere. This nightmare is over.”

“For you, maybe,” said Rare.

Episode 8

S and Rare emerged blinking from the Situation Room. “I’m off to the landing pad,” said S. “Armando’s bringing the alien corpse in soon. Uh, I think there’s somebody to see you there.”

Rare saw the orange-clothed figure sitting a short distance down the corridor. He squinted. “Is that… Sal? Sal!”

Sal jumped up and ran over to the veteran agent. “Yes, it’s me,” she said, and hugged him exuberantly.

“You’ve been in Dlong’s world for so long now, I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“I came back to visit, and share some news. But it looks like I arrived in the middle of a crisis.”

“I agree, this isn’t the best of moments, but I can spare you a few minutes. Would you care to step into my office? S, would you… uh…” Rare looked around. S had vanished. “Ah well, never mind. Come with me.”

***

Rare’s office was expansive and overlooked the grounds of PDC. He sat behind his desk and Sal lounged comfortably in a leather armchair.

“What news?”

Sal held out her right hand. Rare glanced at it, puzzled, then looked closer. He gasped. “You’re engaged!”

“Married, actually. Dlong proposed to me, and we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“That’s fantastic! I wish you’d come and told us sooner. How recent was it?”

“A few weeks ago. We decided we wanted a private wedding.”

“Private, I see. Well, I quite understand. There’s a whole gaggle of, shall we say, unsavoury individuals at PDC, whom I wouldn’t have wanted at my wedding, either. Top agents, yes, but they take alcohol seriously. But Dlong… isn’t he… uh… forbidden to do that kind of thing? Don’t Buddhist monks take… celibacy vows?”

“Just because he’s bald monk who wears saffron robes and knows more about the universe than you or I can ever hope to in our lifetimes doesn’t make him a Buddhist. He’s no ascetic, he eats chocolate, and if it becomes absolutely necessary he’s quite prepared to kill someone.”

Rare raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’d like to witness that.”

“Nor would anyone, least of all Dlong. But let’s not talk about that. What is this crisis you’re facing? Maybe I can help.”

“We lost three top agents in the Amazon rainforest. Classic doomsday weapon scenario, with a quite unpleasant twist. If S and Armando are to be believed, it’s some kind of alien invasion. They have very impressive biotech.” Rare explained the nature of the aliens’ invasion strategy, and PDC’s planned retaliation. Sal nodded.

“In that case, I’d like ask if I could join PDC temporarily. I have a great deal of medical expertise that Dlong taught me, and would be prepared to act as a medic on either mission. I also have some additional martial arts training since I left, and am now proficient with a short dagger, a throwing knife or a katana. I’m also more happy about killing things than Dlong,” she added with a smile.

“Can you still run a hundred metres in ten seconds, speak four languages and fly a helicopter, like in your training?”

“Nine seconds, six languages, and blindfolded,” said Sal, without flinching.

“Good. You can join Stevez’s team. You’re going into space on the Alto.”

***

Armando’s jumpship landed on the roof helipad with all the fuss of a falling leaf. Armando killed the thrusters and opened the cockpit bubble as S ran across the roof to meet him. S stopped at a distance. “How much did you get?”

“Not much,” said Armando, opening the cabin door. “Two arms and a lot of goop, the rest fell in the ocean. There’s some slime around my neck. It feels slimy, but not painful or anything.” He wiped his collar with his hand.

“Hey, be careful there,” said S. “I don’t know what those aliens are made from yet, but if they’re really from another planet then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be pure poison of some kind. You’ll probably be fine, but you’d best get down to sickbay. Get that thing sterilised, take some antitoxins. Zoid’ll sort you out. Try not to touch anyone on the way down.”

“I still think Zoid is a dumb codename,” muttered Armando as he walked away. “What does it mean, anyway?”

“He chose it,” said S. He was carrying a heavy insulated steel refrigerated box, which he set down inside the jumpship. He pulled on some gloves and goggles and picked up a large pair of tongs. Then he picked the first arm up and carefully placed it in the box.

***

Mission Overview. Codename: Helios
This document to be issued to: all operatives
Classification: Top Secret 1A

Situation
Item one, a large maser cannon, was discovered at 0948hrs today on the Jurua tributary in Brazil. It is believed to be of alien origin. Item two, an unauthorised space station, (“the mirror”, “the node cluster”), was discovered shortly afterwards in orbit around the Earth. At zero hour (2211hrs tomorrow) the positions of items one and two will be such that the maser will be able to fire directly at the mirror. The beam will reflect back and irradiate the Western Hemisphere, killing all two billion inhabitants. This must not be allowed to happen.

Operation Icarus
Group leader: Stevez
Group members: DQPA2 (pilot), Sal (medic), X, Nman, Scissors, Thrillhouse
Objective: To destroy or otherwise divert the path of the mirror. Group Icarus will take the PDC space shuttle the Alto to rendezvous with the mirror in orbit. The Alto will attack the mirror with missiles. If no damage is dealt, the Alto will dock with the mirror and Group Icarus will enter the space station to effect a manual course correction.

Operation Daedalus
Group leader: Echoes
Group members: Jackal (sniper), Red (sniper), Zoid (medic), Cyanide
Objective: To destroy or otherwise disable the maser cannon on the ground. Group Daedalus will fly to the Jurua tributary by jumpship and land at a safe distance. They will proceed with extreme caution to the maser complex and fire a heavy projectile weapon at its most vulnerable point, the power cable. If the cable is not then severed, the group will descend into the crater in which the complex is situated, and sever it by hand, or else destroy the maser itself.

Notes
The aliens are resilient to bullets from handguns and SMGs, because their gelatinous composition enables projectile weapons to travel directly through them. They are, however, vulnerable to blades and high explosives. All operatives will be issued with a six-inch combat knife, and those certified to use them will be issued a forty-inch katana in addition. These are to be used in preference to projectile weapons during combat with the enemy. Additionally, Black Panther Mk 2A ammunition clips will be 2 of standard and 8 of HE, as opposed to the usual 8 of standard and 2 of HE.
Operatives are again advised to exercise extreme caution when dealing with the enemy in any way. Do not in any way underestimate their intelligence.
Operation Helios commences at 1600hrs today.

Episode 9

When Thrillhouse and Scissors arrived at the sick bay, it was already occupied. The lead medic at PDC was treating Armando for the potentially detrimental effects of contacting the alien.

“Hey, Zoid, what’s going on?” asked Scissors. “Hi Armando.”

Zoid was a mid-sized man in a white doctor’s coat. He had extremely wild hair and thick glasses. He didn’t appear suited to combat and his facial expressions gave the impression that he was somewhat unhinged.

“Just making sure Mandy here hasn’t been poisoned. Not to worry. It looks like he’ll be okay.”

“How did the Amazon mission go?” asked Scissors. “What happened, poisonous plant?”

“An alien,” said Armando.

“A what?” chorused Thrillhouse and Scissors.

“Haven’t you heard?” asked Zoid. “The mission went badly wrong. Munky, Vixen and Brent are all either dead or captured.”

Scissors stood still, stunned. His mouth opened and closed. “All three of them?”

“I was the only one who made it out alive,” said Armando. “And it was a close call, I can tell you.”

Scissors looked at Thrillhouse, with shock in his eyes. “Let me put it in perspective for you, Thriller. On average, we lose one or two agents every year. And that’s always in a mission where there was an error cascade and something went badly, badly wrong. And it’s always a combat mission, never on recon or espionage. This was a recon mission. Recon, you hear me? And Brent is the toughest soldier I’ve ever seen, nothing slows that guy down. To lose three agents on one mission is absolutely impossible. Armando, what happened down there? What could do this to a PDC squad?”

“Aliens. Like I said. I got a good look at one of them, there’s no way it could’ve been a genetically modified human or anything. It was like it was made of jelly. I took an arm off one of them which S is analysing for weaknesses. Slapped me on the neck and I got some kind of goop on me, which is harmless as it turns out. But these aliens are fast. I’m telling you, be careful when you go up against them. They can easily take on a pair of boosted agents like you two. Use your wits as well as your skills, use the environment.”

“What do you mean ‘when we go up against them’?” asked Thrillhouse. “This is all going too fast! Is there some crisis I’ve just arrived in the middle of?”

Armando handed over a printout of the latest mission. “You must have missed this while you were showing the rookie around,” he said to Scissors.

Thrillhouse read it. He passed it to Scissors, and Scissors read it too. They both looked at Zoid and Armando. “They’re going to launch the Alto? Do they even know it works?” asked Scissors.

“S said he was fairly sure,” said Zoid. “I trust him. Tell you what, though, I feel sorry for you, rookie. You get to go on your first mission less than eight hours after you showed up—”

“Yeah, you think?!” exclaimed Thrillhouse. “I’ve just got here! I don’t know my way around, I don’t know anybody, I haven’t got a clue how anything works, and on my first day on the job they’re sending me into space to fight against some kind of aliens who wiped out three-quarters of the best squad in the world in the space of a few minutes! And to cap it all I haven’t had any training! I’ll be dead before sixty seconds have gone past. They’ll slaughter me. And you keep going on about boosted agents and I haven’t even been boosted yet!”

There was an uneasy silence. Thrillhouse was clearly used to being the best agent in his class or squad or regiment. Discovering how inferior he was, compared to the rest of PDC and their newly-discovered enemies, was taking a toll on his ego.

“Then perhaps we’d better see to that now,” said Zoid quietly.

***

The balcony on the main PDC building had a relatively poor view. It was basically a vast expanse of dull grassland and heather that formed the majority of the land that PDC owned. It was good terrain for training exercises or testing weapons and vehicles, but not for sight-seeing.

“Is the shuttle ready to be moved to launch position?” asked Rare. He, along with the Doctor and DQPA2 had gathered on the balcony to watch. S was linked to them via radio – he was in the Alto’s underground hangar, making final pre-flight preparations.

“Roger,” said S. “The last of the fuel is being transferred in. I’m going to shift it to the launch pad now. Everybody ready? This should be quite impressive.”

S gazed out over the halogen lamp-lit expanse of the hangar. The Alto lay in the middle, a silver NASA space shuttle with an extensive customisation job. The engines had been converted to non-radioactive fusion drives, eliminating the need for a vast piggy-back rocket to lift it into space. A bank of programmable homing missiles called Wasps had been fitted underneath the cockpit. The payload bay had been reduced in size and partially converted to crew space instead. The heat shielding and computerised guidance systems had been replaced with enhanced PDC models, and on top of that S had installed light armour and a cloak device. S had also significantly revamped the appearance of the shuttle, turning it from a fat white aeroplane into a thin, silver bird that looked the illegitimate offspring of Concorde and a Porsche 900.

S pushed a button on the control panel in front of him. He was standing on a platform facing the Alto’s nose, and the extensive arrays of scaffolding surrounding the silver bird disconnected themselves and swung away. Above him, a crack in the ceiling widened, letting in pure sunlight. The ground above him was shifting sideways to allow the Alto to move.

The gantries were stowed against the hangar walls. Hydraulic machinery activated under the bird. The nose slowly began to elevate itself. Ten degrees. Twenty degrees.

From the balcony, Rare and the others could see the hillside that had moved aside. Then the silver dart was rising slowly out of the ground. Smoke billowed out of the hole and then settled. The shuttle reached a vertical position and bolts locked themselves into place. The Alto was left silhouetted against the sky, two hundred feet tall.

“First stage preparation confirmed,” said S. “Preparatory checks completed. Coolant, fuel, systems, subsystems check out as nominal. T minus one hour to launch. It’s three o’clock, folks.”

“Good job, S,” said Rare. “I’m sending DQ down now. He’s been spending a few hours in the simulator for last-minute practice. Tell him anything that he needs to know.”

“Gotcha,” said S. “Signing off.”

“Pretty good show,” the Doc remarked to Rare as DQ was leaving. “I sure wish I was going too. Hey listen, Rare, why’d you send Echoes and Stevez, but not me? I could show those aliens no problem. Just gimme a shot…”
Rare looked to make sure that DQ had left. Then he took the Doc aside. He lowered his voice. “I don’t think you quite understand the seriousness of this situation,” he said. “You’ve underestimated the enemy, the same as Brent and I did. It’s because we haven’t faced a proper challenge in a good long while that we get sloppy and assume we’ll always be successful. We lost three good agents today through overconfidence. We have to cut out that attitude. We’re not infallible, and we have weaknesses. We need to understand that and address those weaknesses.”

“I’ve always said that confidence is one of our strengths,” said the Doc.

“That’s what I’ve thought. But there’s a line between being confident when you know you’re going to succeed, and being arrogant when you merely assume you will. I’ve decided not to take any chances. I sent out our very best agents with Echoes, because we need every break we can get, and I think they have the best chance of success. I chose Stevez because he hasn’t been on a mission in a while, you got a problem with that?”

“No problem, sir,” said the Doctor. “Just one more thing. Why send that rookie out so soon?”

“Stevez needs all the help he can get,” winked Rare.

Episode 10

The anaesthetic was wearing off. Thrillhouse groggily forced his eyes open. Blurry shapes loomed over him. He let his eyelids fall shut again, and relaxed. He was too tired and comfortable to move.

“Welcome back, Thriller,” said Zoid, who was standing by the bed. “You now have all the regular PDC implants: In your cerebrum, pain limitation systems, conscious respiratory control, dynamic eyeball-implanted target designation HUD. In your body, your muscles have been augmented extensively and your bones have been strengthened, particularly your skull to withstand knocks and your ribcage to withstand g-forces. You have a boosted immune system, accelerated blood clotting, improved combat instinct responses and near-instantaneous reaction speeds thanks to implanted superconducting nerve endings. That’s about it as many as I can remember. If there’s any I forgot about, I’m sure you’ll find them in due course.”

Thrillhouse couldn’t find the strength to wrench his eyes open, but said “Am I ready to go on the mission yet?”

“You’re twice the commando you used to be,” said another voice, Scissors. “But you’re still a generic PDC soldier by our standards, and you haven’t had any training. After this is over you’ll be given a choice of more specialised augmentations, like my scissor morph, or Vixen’s lupine DNA merge. Then you’ll being the proper training. But for now, you’re good enough to go.”

Thrillhouse lay happily in the bed. “I’m a PDC agent now,” he burbled happily. Scissors reached over and closed the morphine drip that had been reviving Thrillhouse, before anything worse came of it. He checked his watch.

“Running late. Zoid, give him some wake-up juice. We need to prep him for combat. We’re leaving in forty-five minutes.”

***

Rare stared out of his office’s window. In the grounds below, he could see four PDC agent, clothed in their black combat outfits, practicing last-minute sword training with Valkyrie. DQ, Sal, Echoes and Jackal were the ones being taught. Interesting, he thought, that PDC’s five swordsmen and women were the five most given to meditation and silent contemplation. For some reason, skill with a katana and peace of mind went hand in hand.

The five figures jumped, stabbed and landed. They whirled on one foot, slashed twice, whirled again, then jumped again, all in perfect unison. Then, after the long and complex routine, they stopped as still as statues, then stood up and sheathed their swords.

Perfect.

But Valkyrie, though. She hadn’t bothered to change into a combat outfit since she wasn’t going on the mission, so she was still wearing her skirt and blouse, with her long hair tied back out of the way. And when she was fighting…

She’s taken, thought Rare.

***

Scissors led Thrillhouse into the locker room, which was already occupied by three more agents in combat gear. Scissors opened a locker and chucked an identical black suit at Thrillhouse. “Most of these guys you don’t know yet,” explained Scissors, “but these are the folks you’ll be sharing a space shuttle with so you might as well get to know them. This here is Stevez, he’s the senior officer for this mission.” Stevez was a medium-sized, solidly-built man with spiky brown hair and reflective blue sunglasses. He nodded passively at Thrillhouse.

Beside him there was a red and white electric guitar. When he saw Thrillhouse looking at it he said, “It’s not coming with us.”

Scissors moved on. “This gentleman here is Nman. The N stand for Nuke. He likes big, big explosions, dirty jokes, and Rare’s secretary, although so far he’s only had success with two out of three. He’ll be handling the heavy explosives if we need them.” Nman was a short, cheeky-looking character with a manic grin. Thrillhouse was instantly wary of giving him anything bigger than a hand grenade, for fear of what he might do with it.

“And finally, this is X,” said Scissors, stopping next to a large, broad-shouldered man who was sitting in the corner. He had faint stubble and a blank expression on his face. “A bit of a silent giant is our X, but a great fighter all the same.” X seemed to be busy, studying a crumpled piece of paper held in his hands. He quickly put it away when Scissors approached. Thrillhouse wondered vaguely what it was.

“Hi,” said Thrillhouse.

“Hi,” said X.

“Now X does talk sometimes,” said Scissors. “Unlike our shuttle pilot DQPA2, who has never said a word as long as anybody has know him. He’ll turn up in a bit along with Sal, they’ve been out sword training. DQ is an ace pilot, there’s nothing to worry about on that score. If anyone can get us out of a trouble spot, it’ll be him. Sal, on the other hand, just turned up on the grounds a couple of hours ago, having not been seen in months, so what she’s doing on the mission, I don’t know…”

“I’m the medic,” said Sal, walking in the door. “Hello there. Thrillhouse, isn’t it?”

She was tall, she had long blonde hair, and the black combat outfit fitted her rather well; Thrillhouse’s world had gone swimmy the moment he saw her. He stammered and stared, entranced. “Yes,” he managed to say, and shook her offered hand.

“Sal, this is the gents’ locker room,” said Scissors.

“You all seem fully clothed to me,” said Sal. “And besides, I am a married woman, you can’t show me anything I haven’t seen already.”

Thrillhouse’s heart fell, but the reaction of the rest of the room was one of astonishment. “You’re married?” exclaimed Stevez. “You didn’t tell me!”

“Nice one!”

“Congratulations!”

Sal blushed. “A few weeks ago, private ceremony. We’re both very happy,” she said.

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Thrillhouse.

“Dlong, Buddhist monk. Long story, tell you another time,” said Scissors quickly. “Oh, and DQ’s here as well. DQ, Thrillhouse. Thrillhouse, DQ.”

DQ had arrived behind Sal. He and Thrillhouse exchanged respectful nods.

“That makes the full set,” said Stevez. “Thriller, knife-boy, get changed in a cubicle and meet us at the launch pad in five minutes. Don’t forget your helmets.”

“Yessir.”

Episode 11

“So this thing’s completely automated?”

“Yep,” said S as he and Valkyrie hurried up the stairs to the control room. “No need for a whole panel of technicians like at NASA. Basically I’ve got a single A.I. running the show. It’s pretty good at fixing basic stuff on its own, and it tells me if something goes badly wrong. It’s not properly self-aware or anything like that, so don’t worry about it trying to kill us all or anything. At least, not for another year or two.”

“So what do you call it?” asked Valkyrie.

S held open the door to the control room. “What makes you think it has a name?”

“All computer scientists give their computers names,” said Valkyrie.

“If you say so.” They walked in.

The room was mainly filled with computer screens, and a wide bay window overlooked the launch pad. A raised platform in the centre of the room had a row of the most vital readouts, and waiting around the place were the members of PDC who weren’t part of Operation Icarus; Rare, Jez, the Doctor and Echoes. Echoes’ Daedalus team of Red, Jackal, Cyanide, and Zoid was also waiting, already in combat gear.

“Hal, what’s the status of the Alto?” said S aloud.

“All systems nominal,” said a well-measured male voice through overhead speakers.

“Fuel loading completed?”

“Affirmative.”

“Crew status?”

The main screen in the room flickered to show a video camera inside the Alto. Most of the crew were reclining on acceleration couches which were arranged in two rows facing forwards. They had their helmets on, meaning their faces weren’t visible. The camera flicked again and showed DQPA2, alone in the cockpit.

“DQ, our systems show a go for launch, can you confirm that?” asked S as he climbed onto the central platform and began tapping controls. DQ responded by giving him a cheery thumbs-up. “That’s an affirmative, then. Okay, all crew stand by for launch.”

S turned to address the room. “Well, this is it, folks. I’m not one for big speeches, so Jez, if you wouldn’t mind going to that console behind you and pressing the space bar, we can get this thing going with minimal fuss. Should be a good show.”

“This console?” asked Jez nervously. He was worried what would happen if he got the wrong button.

“Yeah, that one, whatever,” said S, not looking. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Don’t worry, nothing’s going to explode. Except the things that are supposed to.”

Jez hit the space bar.

Far away, visible clearly through the bay window, the Alto’s primary engines ignited. Smoke flooded out of the escape ports in the launch gantry and rushed out across the hills. Yellow flame roared out of the exhaust.

“Primary ignition,” said Hal.

The support gantries that were holding the shuttle in place juddered, then small white explosive charges triggered and they disconnected, folding away against the launch tower, one after the other. Coolant sprayed from tubes that disconnected from the belly of the craft. A loud roar built as the huge flame seared upwards from yellow to white.

The Alto began to rise.

“Lift-off,” said Hal. The shuttle continued to accelerate and cleared the top of the launch tower.

“Brace for acceleration,” said S into a microphone, his voice relayed to the PDC agents onboard. Then S hit a square red button on the console in front of him. Over a thousand feet above him, small drives attached to the Alto’s two main engines began to whirr. The engines moves slowly apart on short tracks, and a third, much larger rocket engine emerged from the gap. There was a whine as it powered up, then it burst into a scintillating white flame over a hundred feet long, and brighter than the Sun.

The fusion drive accelerated the rocket up at six gees into the stratosphere. Cockpit cameras showed the agents squashed into their acceleration couches, squirming against the punishing force.

On the ground, the engine’s flame illuminated the PDC grounds a bright white. PDC agents watching through the windows winced and shielded their eyes. It was no longer possible to look directly at the Alto without burning your eyes, even though it was already a mile up in the air. “Secondary ignition,” said Hal.

“They’re on their way to an orbital insertion,” said S. “They can rendezvous with the node cluster in two hours. They’ll have the chance for one long fly-by to bomb it, and if that doesn’t work DQ will circle around and dock. Although we will be monitoring the status of the agents as best we can, the only communication we have is through the Alto’s high-power antenna. When they leave the shuttle, we’ll have no way of knowing what’s going on. So they’re more or less on their own. Any questions?” The assembled PDC ranks shook their heads. “Okay, Rare?”

Rare took the stage. “I don’t have much to add, except to say that Echoes: if we lose contact with Icarus team, or their operation fails, this whole mission hinges on you. You cannot afford to fail. Billions of lives are at stake. Understand?”

“Yes sir, we do not intend to fail, sir,” said Echoes.

“Then you leave immediately.”

***

Team Daedalus had assembled on the roof and was preparing to depart. It was going to take at least three hours to reach the Amazon basin – by the time they got there, they’d probably know if Icarus had been successful or not. They were taking the best equipment that Echoes had been able to find in the stores – including the prototype personal cloaking devices which S hadn’t even revealed to Rare yet. Echoes wondered how S would react when he found that they were missing…

Jackal was a tall man of oriental extraction. He had shoulder-length dark straight hair, and wore a pair of pink sunglasses. He was a sniper and had a long-barrelled sniper rifle slung over his back in addition to the Mk 2A he was carrying. He had a very philosophical outlook on life and death, and was always one for a deep, meaningful comment. He always seemed to be smiling – and he had no qualms about dishing out extreme violence when it was necessary.

Red was another sniper, but where Jackal was tall and thin, he was short and bulky. He was almost entirely muscle – a bullet shot through the chest wouldn’t slow him down. He had dark red hair. He and Jackal would be responsible for covering the team as they descended into the crater.

Zoid was the team’s medic, having the best medical brain in all of PDC. He had crazy hair and, as a scientist, wasn’t really given to fighting. But he could still defend himself. His backpack contained enough medical gear to reattach a severed limb.

Cyanide was the cool guy. Tall, blond, with dark sunglasses and a fixed, determined expression, Cyanide was capable of decapitating a man with his right hand. He was a master of most forms of combat, and ready to do his duty.

Cyanide, Jackal, Red and Zoid were all top in their specialised fields. Between them, they probably make the best team of agents that PDC has ever put together, thought Echoes. But I can’t help wondering if it’ll be enough.

“Listen up, everybody,” said Echoes aloud to his team. “You’ve all heard the rumours about who I am, where I came from – some say I was a genetic anomaly, others say that I was created as a baby by the first great PDC scientist, Ryoga. That’s all lies. All I have is a bit more talent than the average PDC member, and a heck of a lot more training. Someone has to be the best in PDC. If it wasn’t me, it’d be somebody else. So basically, I’m just like you guys.

“I know you’ve never worked with me before. As a matter of fact I’ve never even been on a mission before. But I know the routines and I am able to put the theory into practice, so this is to be a mission like any other. Do what I tell you and use your initiative. Do not underestimate the aliens. They are fast, and hard to stop. Use your knives. Stay alert, stay on your toes. Keep in constant contact. Look out for anomalies. As long as we’re all performing at peak, we can do this. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” said the agents.

“Right, then let’s go,” said Echoes. “I’m driving.”

***

The jumpship took off for the Amazon shortly afterwards, with Daedalus Team onboard. From the launch pad window, Rare, Valkyrie, S, Jez and the Doctor watched them leave.

Operation Helios had begun.

Episode 12

Brent woke up.

It wasn’t something he’d expected to do.

He didn’t open his eyes or try to move, in case someone was waiting for him to wake up. He explored. He was spread-eagled against a wall, ankles and wrists were clamped against it. The wall felt warm and kind of squishy. There was a weird numb feeling at the back of his neck, and he had a headache too. He felt dizzy.

He listened, and heard a faint vibration in the wall. The air he was breathing was warm. He could faintly hear another person’s breathing.

Gingerly he opened his eyes. The room was small, a prison cell of sorts. The walls were dark green and glistened. To his left was a doorway with metal bars across. In front of him, suspended from the opposite wall and still apparently unconscious, was Vixen. The rest of the cell was empty.

He tried to move his head. It, too, was somehow restrained.

“Vixen!” Brent hissed. She didn’t react. “Vixen! Wake up!”

She began to stir. As she lifted her head up, Brent suddenly spotted the strange thing attached to the back of her neck. A thick bundle of cables, knitted with her spinal column and running away through a hole behind her head. Brent shifted his head slightly. It felt disconcertingly like there was something similar attached to his head too.

So they were wired in. At least they had the humanity to use anaesthetic, thought Brent. “Vixen!” he hissed again.

Vixen looked up, opened her eyes, and looked around. “Where are we?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re still in Jurua, inside one of the buildings we saw,” said Brent.

“But you don’t think we are?”

“No. Look at your hair. Feel that dizziness?” said Brent. Vixen’s brown hair was moving slowly through the air in front of her, defying gravity, and her head was spinning too. “We’re in zero-gee. Probably in a space station of some kind.”

“Space station? Brent, what were those things? They can’t have been human, they were like jelly or something—”

You are awake.

Brent’s head jerked up. There was a presence in his mind. An alien presence. “Did you hear that?” he asked. Vixen nodded.

Your friends are trying to rescue you, said the voice in their heads. Look.

A flash. Brent’s field of vision was replaced with a long-range sensor image of a heavily modified space shuttle, closing in. Brent tried to move his head but the image stayed. They were projecting it straight into his brain.

“They’ll succeed,” said Brent aloud. “And they’ll stop whatever plan it is you’ve got. They know who you are. They’ll know your weaknesses and they’ll exploit them.”

The image vanished. We doubt it. Using our biological technology we have circumvented the usual routines of torture that your species seems to take pleasure in employing, and we have been able to simply download everything you know about us directly from your brain. An altogether more elegant interrogation method. And it’s painfully clear from what’s stored in your minds that you two don’t know anything about us. As usual, a lot of vital information has been withheld…

“So that’s why you captured us?” asked Vixen. “To get information from our heads?”

That, and as a bargaining chip. If they come any closer we’ll threaten to torture you. We don’t think it’ll stop them from attempting to board the space station and trying to prevent our plan coming to fruition, but it might delay them a little, and it’ll certainly add to the guilt on their minds when they do arrive, making the job of killing them all a little easier. We’ve been planning this for a very long time, all factors are taken into account, there is no chance of failure.

“What plan? What is your plan?” asked Brent.

Oh, please, said the alien, and it vanished from their minds as suddenly as it had arrived.

***

Alto was just clearing the atmosphere. DQ had shut off the engines and the ship was coasting into a perfectly-calculated orbital trajectory. The orbit would take them on one swift pass of the node cluster, then, if that wasn’t enough, they would have a second chance ninety minutes later on the next orbit. The third time, DQ would attempt to dock.

They had about an hour until the first pass, so Team Icarus opened their safety harnesses and took the time to drift around in freefall for a while. Thrillhouse stumbled across another of Zoid’s improvements – middle-ear enhancements, meaning no dizziness or vertigo in zero-gee. He was handling the new environment pretty well.

He swam over to X, who was still anchored in his chair. He hovered behind his head for a while. X was looking at the piece of paper again. It was an ancient, badly crumpled photograph, a photo of a woman in a combat outfit. She was standing smiling in a small desert village of some kind, her head on one side. She seemed cute but the picture seemed so old, it was hard to tell.

“Who’s the chick?” asked Thrillhouse.

X started guiltily and thrust the photo back into his pocket. “Who wants to know?” he growled angrily as he turned around in his seat.

Thrillhouse moved backwards slightly. “Hey, I’m just asking. Hi, I’m Thrillhouse. The newbie.” He held a hand out. X batted it away, sending Thrillhouse into a slow spin which he stopped by grabbing a handle fixed to the interior of the cabin. “Hey, I’m just trying to be friendly.”

“Then don’t intrude into my personal affairs,” said X bluntly, and sat back down.

Thrillhouse was undeterred. “I’m just asking,” he said again. “Is she PDC? Wife, girlfriend?”

X turned around again, much angrier this time. He grabbed Thrillhouse by the scruff of the neck and pulled him so they were nose to nose. “None… of your… business…” he snarled, and headbutted Thrillhouse right in the nose.

Or tried to, at least. As he threw his head back somebody grabbed a clump of his hair, yanking his head to a halt. X yelped and twisted around to see who it was. It was Stevez, with an unimpressed expression on his face. “X, sit down, shut up. Thrillhouse, come with me…”
“’S okay, chief, I’ve got him,” said Scissors, floating up behind Thrillhouse and taking him by the arm.

“Explain things to him,” said Stevez.

X slowly released Thrillhouse and sat back down in his chair. Scissors pulled Thrillhouse away to a distant corner of the shuttle, and sat him down. “What did you think you were doing?”

“I wanted to see—”

“Shut up. At Perfect Dark Central, we take on a lot people from a lot of different backgrounds. Most of these people are ex-military or from espionage organisations, and almost all of them have seen a great deal of combat when they arrive here. We all have a past, we all have history. The history can be long or short and we often have things – things which happen during combat – that we’d really rather forget about. I do, and I’m sure you do, as well. Some of us are quite open about our pasts, but there are those of us who don’t care to reveal this information to other people, and X is one of them. He’s never told us anything about himself apart from his age. Only Rare has access to his file. All we know about him is what’s important: that he’s a very skilful agent.

“So nobody knows what’s on his photograph…”

“You don’t? It was—”

“…and nobody cares either. I certainly don’t. X’s past is his and his alone. If he wants to share it, then when the time comes, he will. In the meantime, let him have his privacy. He may well be covering your backside when we get to that space station, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Thrillhouse glumly.

There was a bleeping sound from the other end of the shuttle. “What is it?” asked Scissors.

“It’s a transmission from the space station,” said Stevez, turning on the wall screen.

The screen flickered, flecked with static, and then it was replaced with a crystal0clear image. It was Brent.

Episode 13

“Brent!” said Stevez. “You’re alive! Where are you?”

“I’m being held prisoner on the space station you’re headed for. I don’t know why they kept us alive. Vixen’s here too, we don’t know what happened to Munky or Armando.”

“Armando made it home safely, but we don’t know about Munky either. He’s MIA. Brent, listen to me. The station you’re on is a giant mirror. The laser you saw is actually a maser – when it fires, the beam will be reflected and annihilate the entire western hemisphere. We’ve got about 29 hours until the predicted firing time.”

“Then what are you gonna do? Blow the station up?”

“Bearing in mind that I can’t tell you anything that the aliens don’t already know, Brent; yes.”

Brent lowered his head. “I understand. If it’s just us two against billions of people, how can we complain?” Then Brent’s expression changed. He seemed to be listening to a voice that Stevez couldn’t hear.

“Brent… what’s that attached to your neck?”

“I’m wired into the alien computer systems, or whatever biological analogue they’re using. Vixen is too. It’s her eyes that you’re seeing me through. There’s no camera in here. Don’t even think about trying to rescue us. The aliens have total control over our nerve endings, they can inflict any amount pain they wish, they haven’t tried it on us yet, but they say they will do if you attack, or you get any closer.”

“They’ll torture you?”

“Yes.”

Stevez floated in front of the screen and stared at Brent’s face for a long moment. “Brent… no…”

“Vixen wants to say something,” said Brent. The screen flipped, now showing Vixen viewed from Brent’s eyes.

“Stevez, listen,” she said. “You are a PDC agent. The world is in your hands. Nothing else matters. You have to try to overrule your emotions. Forget about us. Think about the big picture. You have to do what you have to do. The quicker you do it, the quicker it will all be over. Destroy the station. Do it now.”

“But Vixen… will you be able to stand the pain?”
“That is not relevant,” said Vixen. “End the transmission.”

The screen turned black.

Stevez turned around in the cabin and faced the assembled PDC agents as they floated, watching him silently. All of them were waiting for him to tell them what to do. He closed his eyes and tried to marshal his thoughts. Either his friends would die or they would be subjected to unimaginable suffering.

There had to be a way to rescue Vixen and Brent. What do we have? Four agents, one newbie, one pilot, and me. A spacesuit each, a rack of grenades and grenade launchers. The most heavily-armed space vehicle mankind ever built.

His eyes flicked open. “I’ve got a plan.”

***

Alto drifted slowly along its orbital path, behind the node cluster, maintaining distance. Brent found that if he closed his eyes and concentrated, he was able to monitor the shuttle through the cluster’s external cameras. He knew that they must be planning something. He just hoped they’d get it over with fast.

He spotted a panel sliding open in the underbelly of the craft. Then a trio of Wasp programmable missiles leapt away from their launch cradles, miniature fusion drives igniting and firing them straight towards the node cluster at eighteen gees.

Brent didn’t know what the Wasps had been armed with, but his suspicions were confirmed ten seconds later when the Wasps curved around and impacted directly on the centre of the giant mirror at nearly 1800 metres per second, and detonated. All three were kiloton nukes. The node cluster’s external cameras suffered whiteout for a fraction of a second before being sheared away by the energy from the explosions. Brent saw only static, and then, like a bolt of lightning driven directly into his spinal cord, his world exploded into pain.

He yelped involuntarily. It was like his entire body had been set on fire. He could barely open his eyes to see Vixen writhing across from him. Brent realised that his cranial pain-limitation systems had been circumvented by the aliens. There was nothing he could do to make it go away. He closed his eyes and tried to force back the tears, and then heard Vixen muttering something across from him. She repeated the sentences over and over. “Pain is just a message. It can be ignored. Pain is just a message. It can be ignored. Ignored. Ignored. Ignored—”

***

Fifteen more seconds passed while replacement cameras slid out of their recesses and focused on the mirror. It was still there, but it had been fractured into two big pieces and one small one. But the node cluster was biological, a living creature like a tree – and so was the mirror. Sap was being secreted from underneath the surface, and flowing out over the cracks, then hardening. The mirror was repairing itself. After another minute, the mirror was entirely in one piece again.

***

The pain began to fade. Brent groaned.

“Where’s the Alto gone?” asked Vixen suddenly.

Brent closed his eyes again.

It had disappeared.

Episode 14

DQPA2 was silent as the craft slowly moved closer to the node cluster. Even though the cloaking systems had been activated there was still the possibility that the aliens’ radar could penetrate it. But as they got closer and closer, nothing happened.

Finally, the Alto was positioned perfectly inside the cluster, motionless in between the tubes linking the giant space station together. DQ killed the last of the ship’s rotation, and they floated silently in place – invisible.

“Good work, DQ,” said Stevez, clapping him on the shoulder and turning back to his crew. “Now listen guys. The external defence turrets aren’t manoeuvrable enough to turn around and shoot into the cluster itself. So the Alto is pretty much safe from attack until the aliens realise that we’re here.

“Here’s the plan. We’re gonna go EVA with manoeuvring packs and use cutting torches to hack our way inside one of these pipes. Then we move through the tunnels killing everything in our path until we find Brent and Vixen and disconnect them. After that we make for the control room and try to steer the cluster into a different orbital trajectory, preferably re-entry. Then we get back to the ship and blast our way outa here.

“When the jellies realise we’re coming they’ll most likely go EVA too and try to destroy the ship, since they can’t target us with their turret defences. So DQPA2 will stay here with Nman to protect it from attack using the onboard cannon. That shouldn’t be too hard. The rest of us will come with me. We stay together as ONE GROUP, understand? ‘Divide and conquer’. They split us up, we’re done for. We’re aiming for superior firepower here.

“Keep your helmets on and spacesuits pressurised at all times. We’ll be hurling grenades in every direction. The hull might be tough, but there’s no telling when we might rupture it and cause an atmosphere leak. We’ll take beacons so DQ can track our position and tell us how best to cover the ground.”

“What if we break the hull while we’re near Brent and Vixen?” asked Sal.

Stevez thought for a moment. “They know the vacuum survival drill. They can survive for up to one minute conscious and a further four at most after they pass out. If an area of space station becomes depressurised, we search it as fast as possible for our agents, then move on. We move fast on this mission. The longer we stay in one place the easier we are to corner. Shoot first, don’t ask questions at all. If an alien gets up close use your knife, go for the head and arms, not torso. Any questions?”

The assembled ranks were silent. Stevez clipped his helmet on. “Then let’s go.” He slapped a button on the wall and the ventilators began to suck all the air out of the room. Then he opened the airlock and led the team out into open space.

***

Thrillhouse nervously fingered the control pad on his wrist. He’d never used one of these things before, he was uncertain in open space, he was about to face combat for the first time, and everyone was just expecting him to already know everything. In short, he was worried he was going to die.

He pushed the control lever forward and followed the cold gas trails of the others towards the nearest large connecting tunnel. It looked kind of like a fat metal tube that had had an oak tree grow up around it. In some places there was sheer metal, elsewhere there were twisted vines that replaced the hull. All over the tube were small pinpoints of green light.

Thrillhouse realised he was moving too fast, and there was no “decelerate” button. He’d have to turn around and fire in the opposite direction to slow down.

He realised this too late, and smashed into the tube’s outer layer, hard. As he reeled backwards and hand grabbed his leg and pulled him back. He grabbed on with the sticky pads on his hands and knees, and grunted “thanks”.

“No problem,” said Sal on the radio. “Just remember your high school physics. You start moving, you won’t stop until you hit something.” She pulled a pen-sized object from her pocket and placed its end against the hull. She pushed a button on the pen and a bright orange light burst from the end, melting away at the outer casing of the alien structure. “Laser pen,” she explained.

Within a few minutes, the five of them had cut a hole big enough for a human to walk through. Stevez kicked the weakened panel a few times and it exploded off into the void, with the weight of all the compressed air inside behind it. The PDC troops waited until the air finished escaping, then headed inwards.

It was like being inside a living tree, or an impossibly dense jungle. The corridor was about ten metres wide. The walls were green and overgrown with vines. Here and there pure, glistening dark green squishy areas showed, like moist moss. There were flittering coloured lights everywhere inside the vines that ran along the length of the tunnel.

Thrillhouse was amazed, but the rest of the team seemed to be ignoring the beauty of their surroundings. “This way,” said Stevez, hurrying off in one direction. “X, rear guard.”

Thrillhouse ran with them. He hardly had time to glance at the scenery as he ran, but caught glimpses. Periodically they ran past very large dark green areas, with strange raised patterns on them, like 3D posters. No, he thought, more like something was buried beneath the surface.

***

Slumped in one of the shuttle seats, Nman was getting bored. He drummed his heels on the deck and watched disinterestedly as the little red dots signifying Icarus Team crept through the alien structure. DQPA2 had put some music on.

“I wish those aliens would attack sometime,” he muttered out loud. “I’m getting restless. Came to shoot something. Need to shoot something.”

DQ, still in the pilot seat, but visible through the door between the cockpit and the cabin, turned around. Nman caught his eye. “What?” DQ said nothing, but Nman caught the meaning in his expression. Be careful what you wish for.

Nman looked at the radar. No incoming missiles or armed aliens. “So much for dramatic timing,” he remarked.

***

“Hostiles,” came Stevez’s voice into his earpiece. Thrillhouse stopped and knelt, aiming his gun directly between the shoulders of Stevez and Scissors in front of him. They had reached a junction – a large, round room with a balcony and several tubes leading off. There was a barricade across the balcony and there were jellies waiting for them, spread evenly across the room. They did not appear to be armed: they simply advanced on the agents.
Thrillhouse opened fire as soon as he heard the others do the same thing. Bullets weren’t doing much more than knocking the jellies back, so he quickly switched to grenade function and began firing at their feet. Charred corpses were flung backwards against the wall. The others quickly got the idea and did the same – after only a few seconds, the room was empty except for a pile of burning jelly. Thrillhouse was glad his suit filters were scrubbing the smell from the air he was breathing.

“That wasn’t too hard,” he remarked casually.

“That was far, far too easy,” said Scissors.

“We go left,” commanded Stevez. They followed him. This corridor was shorter and led to a gigantically tall, narrow cavern with glass walls. To the left and right, it looked like the room was some kind of aquarium. But all the unidentifiable objects in the semitransparent whitish fluid that filled the windows seemed to be motionless. Perhaps frozen in solid marble?

Thrillhouse noticed that Sal and X behind him were both looking upwards. Checking the ceiling in case there were automated defences attached, or higher levels from which the aliens could ambush them. The walls seemed sheer and featureless. Thrillhouse glanced upwards briefly. “It looks like there’s loads of stuff frozen in here,” he said.

“Cryogenic storage of some kind, maybe,” said Sal. “I can see lots of biological matter. Perhaps the aliens visited other worlds before ours, and took specimens.”

“Yeah. Like Brent and Vixen,” said Stevez. “Come on. I don’t like to imagine know what’s happening to them, but it can’t be pleasant.”

Episode 15

“Hey, we’ve got something here,” said Nman. The radar map of the node cluster had pulled back from being centred on the group of agents, to reveal another two flashing dots. DQ came and looked. Two additional PDC agent transponder signals were being registered.

DQ raised his eyebrows in a “That’s interesting” kind of way.

“Yeah, I know,” said Nman. “I thought Brent and Vixen’s bugs had been deactivated or blocked somehow. Looks like they’re still functioning. Hey Stevez, boss, can you hear me?”

“Go ahead, Nman,” said Stevez as he led his crew across a narrow bridge that passed through a huge, echoing spherical chasm. He stopped at the centre of the room where another bridge crossed it at right angles, and glanced around the vast expanse of the room. He wondered idly what it was used for, besides looking very impressive.

“Well, we got a positive reading from the under-the-skin transponders that Brent and Vixen were carrying. They’re not far from where you are, right next to each other.”

“Why couldn’t we see them before?”

“I dunno. Your suit sensors are scanning as well as the Alto’s, so maybe the signal was being blocked by part of the space station’s hull and you guys just came out of the shadow.”

“Maybe this spherical room is amplifying the signal too,” suggested Thrillhouse.

“Good call, Thriller,” said Nman. “So anyway, go left at the crossroads you’re at now, and head straight along the tube and you’ll find them. I’d tread carefully, if I were you, though. DQ seems to think something about this smells wrong.”

“Affirmative,” said Stevez. He motioned with his hand and led the team towards the wall of the sphere.

***

Vixen groggily raised his head to look at Brent, but he wasn’t there. She blinked again. What just happened? They knocked her out for a few minutes, then moved him? She felt an anaesthetic receding from her bloodstream, and gritted her teeth angrily at the power the aliens had over her.

She wasn’t in the cell anymore. This was different, she was suspended high in mid-air by some invisible force. Closing her eyes and feeling around, she could tell he was actually still tied against the damp, dark green wall in the cell, and when she inhaled she could still catch the scent of Brent. So the jellies were just feeding her the input from a video camera again.

She looked around. Large, crystalline structure, predominantly green, but with many more metallic surfaces. A sheer wall behind her rose and arched over to the far wall, which was vertical. In the wall ahead of her, a large, circular airlock. It seemed to be the only entrance to the room.

Vixen saw her reflection in one of the crystals embedded in the far wall. Wait, that couldn’t be right. Her reflection? She closed her eyes and spoke. “Brent, am I still here? I can see a different room.”

“You’re still in the cell with me,” said Brent. “What do you see?”
“I see myself. I’m a holographic projection in another room…”

***

“Is this it?” said Stevez into the radio.

“Yes,” said Nman. “It’s a dead-end. Sensor scans indicate the presence of a large empty room. Vixen’s transponder is suspended in the middle of it. Use caution.”

Stevez reached for the control to the side of the massive airlock, and activated it. The agents crouched against the side of the corridor aiming their weapons into the space as it slid open.

All of them saw what was inside – Vixen spread-eagled against the back wall far above them, tied at the wrists and ankles. Looking down at them.

“Vixen!” shouted Stevez. “Where’s Brent?”

“Stevez,” she shouted back, her voice echoing around the room. “I’m just a hologram. I’m not here. This is a dead end! The aliens are probably already heading down the corridor towards you. You walked right into a trap. Get out of here!”

“We got hostiles,” said X almost simultaneously. Echoes of rapid grenade fire from his Mk 2A rebounded around the large room. X took out the first three aliens instantly, but through the smoke he could see that there were dozens more pouring into the corridor. He emptied his grenade clip and slammed another one in.

“Get out of the corridor,” said Stevez. He leapt over the airlock ridge and rapidly looked around. There were several biological machine gun drones fixed to the ceiling – he spotted these and sniped two of them with the first two bullets from his gun. Sal took care of the last one as she sprang through after him.

X and Thrillhouse, covering the corridor, were beginning to fall back. X kept landing grenades at the feet of the approaching aliens while Thrillhouse sent high volleys over to the back, taking the forces out before they got close. But sheer weight of numbers was pushing them back, every time they reloaded they had to step backwards one pace.

X grunted suddenly and turned aside. Thrillhouse looked out of the corner of his eye but couldn’t catch what he was doing. Then he realised that the airlock door was closing, and X had deserted him. “Hey!” he yelled, turning, but suddenly an alien was on top of him, a hand in his face suffocating him with the greenish goop they were made of. Thrillhouse tried not to scream, and his hand instinctively went to his combat knife. In one move which came to him as easily as breathing, he hacked the hand off and kicked the alien’s corpse backwards against two of its cohorts. Then he sprang to his feet and leapt through airlock a second before it closed completely.

The door control on this side had already been shot out by Scissors when he landed, panting, on the floor. He levered himself upward and glared at X. “Thanks for nothing,” he said. “You could’ve told me before you decided to run.”

A high-pitched whine began to sound, rising in pitch and volume. “It’s useless to try and fight when you know you can’t win,” said X levelly. “What’s that sound? Sounds like a weapon charging up…”

All the PDC members looked upwards. The mushroom-shaped light source on the ceiling was throbbing, becoming darker and lighter as the whine became louder and louder.

“Is—” began Stevez, and then an impossible, blinding white light bathed the room, as bright as a nuclear whiteout. Before they could do anything, Stevez, X, Sal, Scissors and Thrillhouse collapsed, knocked unconscious by the strange alien weapon.

Episode 16

Rare was kissing her.

Valkyrie leaned back against the wall for several seconds while the thought sunk in. It was pleasant, yes, but… Then she reacted with a start, and pushed him away. He stood back a few paces. Valkyrie wiped her mouth and ran through the last few minutes in her head. She had been researching Glare Industrial at her terminal at the other end of Rare’s office… he had come up behind her to see how she was doing… put his hands on her shoulders… and she had foolishly tried not to think about what was happening until it was too late…

“No, no, no,” she said. “Rare, no. I can’t do this.”

“Why not?” said Rare.

“Because I’m in love with Stevez, alright? I can’t do that to him, especially not while he’s away.”

“You were perfectly happy when we were in Japan.”

“That was twelve months ago!!” shrieked Valkyrie. “I was single back then. And we’d just survived that nightmare of a fancy-dress party. Sure, I enjoyed it, I needed it just to get over the crazy mind-job that Pdark was pulling on all of us, but it never meant anything to me. I love Stevez now. He’s cleaned up his act, and underneath it all he’s a nice guy. I love him. Not you. Can’t you see that?”

Rare was silent.

Valkyrie straightened up. “And I think you’ve got a lot of nerve trying it on like that while he’s on a mission. You really think—”

A beeping noise began to sound. It was an incoming transmission. Rare and Valkyrie looked at the screen on the wall; Nman’s face, contorted with fear, appeared. He was hunched over the communications screen in the Alto’s cockpit. There was a hammering noise in the background – someone was banging on the airlock behind him.

“Nman to PDC, Nman to PDC, this is an emergency. Someone respond! Nman to—”

“We read you, Nman,” said Rare, accepting the transmission.

“Operation Icarus has failed,” said Nman, maintaining a respectable amount of calm given the circumstances. He was shaking very slightly. “We lost contact with Stevez’s team a few minutes ago when they went to investigate a rogue transponder signal. It must have been a trap, they’re probably all dead or captured by now. Then they started coming…” Nman glanced back at the airlock. Small dents were beginning to show in it.

“Who, Nman?” asked Valkyrie.

“Aliens!” shouted Nman. “Jellies with EVA packs, there were friggin’ millions of them. Even with me and DQ both on the guns there was no way we could handle them all, they reached the ship, smashed their way through the first airlock, DQ got taken, I don’t know what they’re gonna do with him, but whatever it is they’re gonna get me too as soon as the airlock gives way. I’m sending the communications logs on a tight beam now.” Nman pushed a button on the control panel. He bolted his helmet on and sealed the rim, hefting a 1MW laser in his other hand. “If I don’t make it, and I don’t expect to,” said Nman as the dents in the airlock got larger and larger, “tell Echoes he’s our last hope. I’ve got about a dozen shots in this thing, that might be enough. Signing off.”

“Nman, wait!” shouted Rare as Nman ended the transmission. When the screen turned blank he sank backwards into a leather chair and tried to think. They’d lost the entire team. Did Echoes really stand a chance?

He looked up at Valkyrie, whose eyes were filled with tears. “Is that it?” she croaked. “You sent Stevez on a doomed mission just so you could get to me?”

“What? No! No, I did it because– because– Valkyrie, wait!”

She had picked up the pile of notes she had been working on and was making for the door. “Don’t talk to me,” she said as she left.

Rare sighed and sat silent for a long time, trying to rationalise his thoughts. He knew he hadn’t done it on purpose. At least, he told himself that. Was he telling himself the truth? He certainly wasn’t being completely open and honest with everyone else.

He stood up and opened an audio channel to Echoes.

“Sir?”

“Operation Icarus has failed.”

“…I understand. I’m sorry to hear that. Especially the new recruit.”

“Good luck, Echoes. You’re going to need it.,” said Rare, and closed the channel. Then he headed out of his office. He needed to find S. There was a great deal he needed to tell him.

Episode 17

The motor pool seemed empty. The Russian tank stood silent in the middle, to the left of the up-and-under door was the primed BMW, and to the right was Jez’s work table, with piles of paper, a computer terminal and racks and racks of tools.

“Jez? Jez, are you here?”

“Hey, Valkyrie,” said Jez.

“Where are you?”

“Under the tank. Trying get these manoeuvring jet control circuits functional.”

“Do you mind if I use your PC to do some work?”

“What’s the matter, Rare kick you out of his office?”

“You might say that,” grumbled Valkyrie, sitting down on the office chair and dumping her files on top of the paper that was already there. The pile, already precarious, toppled over towards the floor, but she caught it under one foot and flipped it back.

“Good catch,” said Jez. He slid out from underneath the tank holding a small fusion jet and a wodge of circuitry. He walked over to a space of empty workbench and pulled a bundle of diagnostic tools out of his pocket. “What happened?”

“He came onto me.”

Pause.

“Like what? He groped you?”

“He kissed me.”

“On the lips?”

“Yeah. I was… I was all confused, and it all happened so fast, I didn’t know what was happening. The nerve of that guy. He thinks he can get back together with me. He hasn’t forgotten about that one week in Japan.”

“Have you?” asked Jez.

Valkyrie stared at him. “What sort of question is that? You’re no better than him!”

“Wait, wait, wait. That slipped out by accident. What I meant to say was: do you really know Rare? What he’s thinking?”

“It’s pretty obvious what that pervert is thinking, Jez.”

“Well, it might seem obvious to you but I’ve known Rare a bit longer than you have. I knew him before I even joined PDC. He used to bring his car to me for servicing now and then. Did you know he was married once?”

“No,” said Valkyrie. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“He has a picture in his desk that he probably hasn’t ever shown to you. Rare was married to Spriggosh, another of the four founding members of PDC. He really loved her. When she was killed in action eighteen years ago he was heartbroken, absolutely devastated. He never really recovered. He still has his picture of her and he still mourns for her. Now I never met Spriggosh myself, she died when I would’ve been about three years old, but that was the story Rare told me. And he showed me the picture.”

“And?”

“Pull up the PDC agent listings on the computer there,” said Jez. “Search for Spriggosh, find her biog.” While Valkyrie was tapping at the computer, Jez connected a pair of wires and the jet flared into life. He grinned, sealed the wires in place and came to look at the screen just as the reference came up, along with Spriggosh’s picture.

Valkyrie slumped backwards in shock. “She looks just like me!”

Centre-left on the monitor was a large full-face picture of Spriggosh. She was extremely beautiful, with large blue eyes, long reddish hair and a snub nose. “Yes,” said Jez. “In that picture she was thirty-six, about fifteen years older than you are now. She’s obviously aged a little, and the hair’s a slightly different colour but she does bear a striking resemblance. It’s the eyes, I think. You see what I mean, then?”

Valkyrie could only stare. “He just wants his wife back…”

“Poor guy misses her. You’re the same as Spriggosh was back when they first met. What else is he going to do?”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did.”

“It does explain it a little, though,” said Jez, sliding under the tank again.

Valkyrie stared at the picture a while longer. “How did she die?” she asked eventually.

“Dunno,” said Jez, from under the tank. “What does it say in the biography?”

“It’s classified Top Secret G7," said Valkyrie. “All I have is the date she went missing...”

Episode 18

Echoes, Zoid, Jackal, Cyanide and Red jogged silently through the undergrowth. The sun was high overhead. Green light filtered down to the forest floor.

They had landed in a different location from the previous team. As they crossed the perimeter fence, Zoid placed explosive charges so that if necessary they could be detonated to create an escape route later.

They soon reached a precipice overlooking the crater from the opposite direction. They were to the north, looking south.

“Hey,” said Echoes. “I don’t remember seeing that before.” He pointed to a large, circular hole in the ground to the east, ringed with metal and flashing lights. Like a missile silo.

“Wasn’t it on Munky’s video report?” asked Red.

“It wasn’t on anybody’s. It sprang up in the last eight hours.”

“Unless it was hidden,” suggested Zoid.

“Okay,” said Echoes. “Here’s the plan. It’s 1345 hours now. The scheduled firing will take place tomorrow at 2211. Our goal is to destroy the maser, or at least damage it enough that critical repairs will take too long for it to be fixed in time.

“We will load our Panthers with self-propelled heavy grenades, rockets. At a synchronised time, we fire four shots – one to take out each of the perimeter guard towers. This should knock out at least a few of their alarms systems and prevent Cyanide, Zoid and me from being picked off while we descend from our position here into the crater. Red and Jackal will remain up here, sniping hostiles that move to attack or intercept us using high-velocity rounds.

“We’ll be going in all guns blazing, grenades flying in every direction. The mission once we get inside there is threefold. Zoid will head right, towards what Munky suggested were probably cloak generators. He will attempt to deactivate them by whatever means necessary so that the crater area shows up on sat-scans. Meanwhile Cyanide will go left, towards the power generator buildings. Same objective: sever the power linkage to the maser by as destructive a method as possible. There is a thick cable running from an outlet near the generator to the base of the laser, which we can only assume is carrying power. Severing that will require the aliens to fix it, which might just delay the firing long enough for the critical moment to pass.

“While that’s happening, I’ll be running straight down the middle towards the laser itself. I’ll hide as many remote-detonated grenades as I can at critical points near the base of the laser – preferably the supporting struts. Once that’s completed, I’ll call you on the radio. At that point, regardless of what you’ve been doing, you withdraw. Understand? We head back to the rendezvous point here, then we’re through the rainforest as fast as possible to the jumpship.

“Are you all clear?”

“Wait up, dude,” said Jackal, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Those barracks are right behind the maser at the opposite end of the complex. When we start the attack, the alarms will go off and the jellies will start pouring out towards you. What if they get to the maser before you do?”

“I’ll run faster than them,” said Echoes.

“And what about the drone sentry guns on the roof?”

“We can take them out as we go. Any more questions? Then it’s moment of truth time…”

***

The alien sentry tower looked like an angry, metal-plated oak tree. It was well-camouflaged and well-armoured, as well as being well-armed; three chain guns were positioned in it, operated by alien grunts.

There was a distant flash, and a 4-centimetre explosive missile hurtled out of the rainforest nearby. It flew in a straight line across the crater, guided by a tiny electronic brain, and detonated instantly as it impacted halfway up the trunk of the tower. It was instantly sheared through; the top half tilted sideways and smashed into the ground, hard.

Around the base, three more towers fell simultaneously. Then red explosions began to illuminate the muddy walls of the crater to the north as Echoes, Cyanide and Zoid descended.

Cyanide broke left. The power generator building had an invitingly large, open entrance which he sprinted towards. He fired a pair of grenades through it, then leapt through the smoke, glancing around the giant hall.

Through his dark glasses he could see large, humming chunks of turquoise machinery dominated. Overhead there were large catwalks. There were aliens tending the machines, which looked a lot like the electrical generators that powered the PDC circuits back home.

“I guess there’s only one way to build a fusion generator,” thought Cyanide, aiming a volley of eight grenades in a blanket formation to cause as much chaos as possible.

“Behind you!” yelled a voice in his ear. Cyanide spun at Red’s warning just in time to see a high-velocity round completely remove the head of a gelatinous alien which had been about to take his head off with a hammer. He glanced up at the crater lip, still just visible through the entry archway, and could just make out the glint of Red’s rifle.

Cyanide dodged right, aiming more grenades at a cluster of aliens which was gathering ahead of him. He ran sideways into a control panel. It looked like a critical control point of some kind, so he dropped a timed grenade next to it and spun around to climb a ladder onto the top of the nearest generator machine.

He practically ran up the ladder and stood at the top, raining down more explosive rounds. There was carnage below. He felt the judder as the control panel below him exploded. One by one, the generators began to switch off. Now he just had to get out of here.

There were four of the tall, square generators in the room, cross-linked by catwalks. As Cyanide looked down he could see a steady stream of fresh aliens arriving. They were practically crawling out of the woodwork. They were crawling up the sides of the generators. All the sides. It was like an ant invasion, there were so many of them. How was he going to take them all out? Every time he blew a cluster up, four more aliens filled the gap before the smoke cleared.

Cyanide slammed another grenade round in. He heard a scuffle of hostiles scaling the generator behind him. He spun around, backing away and firing. One of his shots hit an alien square in the chest, and stayed there, bobbing up and down inside the thing’s body, for a fraction of a second, then detonated, splattering jelly all over the walls.

Cyanide backed away along a catwalk, trying to contain the flow of jellies, but it was no good. He walked straight into the arms of an alien coming up the catwalk in the opposite direction. The alien grabbed him around the chest and held his arms against his sides.

Cyanide struggled, but couldn’t get free. He raised a foot and kicked away an alien that was coming at him from ahead. He fumbled one-handed with his Panther and aimed two rounds almost straight up into the air. The first round landed almost directly behind him, and the second straight ahead. The middle part of the catwalk began to fall. Still trapped in the arms of his adversary, surrounded by green enemies, almost incapacitated but still firing, Cyanide plummeted backwards towards the distant concrete floor.

Episode 19

Zoid broke right as he ran into the crater. There were three cloak generators. They were white and cylindrical with domed tops, each one about the size of a cement truck standing on its end. They were guarded by a pair of biological drone guns fixed to the tops of two of them, and surrounded by fifteen-foot-tall, electrified wire fencing.

As Zoid got in range, the drone guns swivelled to look at him, and began to fire. Zoid jumped as he reached the fence, planting an insulated boot halfway up a fencepost and propelling him further up. He put his other foot on the top of the fence, kicked upwards and fired two expertly-aimed grenades at the drone guns as he reached the top of his jump. He fell, landed between two generators and reloaded as the drone guns exploded. He straightened up, and wiped a fleck of dirt from his glasses.

A green alien lunged around a corner at him, swinging a massive fist around towards his face. He ducked, spun and kicked the alien against the nearest generator. He followed up by stabbing his combat knife through the alien’s gelatinous neck, all the way through to the generator shell, effectively pinning it.

Zoid turned and pulled a selection of timed mines from his belt. As he primed one with his left hand he aimed a burst of normal fire at a second alien which was coming towards him. The alien was knocked backwards on its back. Zoid flung a mine underneath each cloak generator and fired a grenade round at his attacker just as it got back to its feet. The explosion disintegrated the creature instantly.

Zoid turned back towards the perimeter fence just as the first alien, still pinned to the metal wall by a knife stabbed through its neck, flung out a free hand backwards as far as it could. It grabbed him around the neck unexpectedly, and slammed him backwards against the wall next to the alien. Zoid struggled as the creature’s bulky hand pushed him up backwards against the metal. Choking him. He tried to get a grip on its arm but it was too slippery. Even half-dead, the creature was incredibly strong.

“Die…” it hissed faintly. Zoid could feel his circulation being cut off, but he knew even before the thing managed to strangle him, the timed mines he’d laid would go off. He had less than thirty seconds to think of something, and lack of blood to the brain was stopping him from coming up with an idea.

Twenty seconds, and he was almost unconscious.

Ten.

***

Echoes hurtled down the crater wall at incredibly high speed, and ran straight between two rows of military buildings. He was firing grenades in all directions, blowing up obstructions that lined the route between the snipers’ vantage point and the maser. Above him, Jackal was efficiently taking out jellies left, right and centre as they ran out in front of him. Ahead of him, mounted on the roofs of the buildings, chain guns rattled as they traced his route between them. Echoes was just too fast for them to catch. He dodged left and right, almost as if he was seeing the bullets before they came. He leap-frogged parked vehicles and piles of barrels.

He heard the alarm begin to go off just as he passed the halfway mark. Squinting ahead he could see the barracks behind the dominant shape of the maser. Only a few seconds passed before their doors were flung open and green hordes poured out towards him.

Echoes opened a radio channel. “Red, Jackal, I need you both to cover me. I have to get to the maser before they do.”

Two confirmation signals sounded in his ear as he pulled his Mk 2A strap over his head and primed the machine gun for three-second proximity detonation. Ahead of him, at the next crossroads, a mass of aliens was gathering, waiting for him. Behind them he could see a pyramid of yellow barrels. He hurled the gun over their heads to land behind them, against the barrels. As he reached the foremost alien, he jumped, pushed himself upwards off one of their heads, and landed on the top barrel with both feet. He jumped again, pushing the barrel backwards and hurling himself forwards, just as the proximity charges detonated, sending the entire stack and all the aliens up in flames.

Echoes landed, thrown forwards by the blast, rolled over forwards to extinguish some flames on his armour, and continued to run. There was almost a clear run ahead of him. Obstacles disappeared almost as they appeared, vaporised by well-aimed high-velocity rounds from Red and Jackal.

He wasn’t going to make it, he realised as he passed the last building and set out across the final expanse of brown earth that separated him from the maser. The reinforcements were already swarming around it and homing in on him. Though the snipers were taking them out as fast as they could, there were just too many. They’d be all over him before he got close.

Echoes put a hand over his shoulder and unsheathed his sword. There were eight jellies right at the front, coming towards him. Echoes readied himself, then spun on one foot just as he got in range of the first alien. He brought the sword around in a devastating arc which removed the heads of all eight aliens in a single slice. He kept moving forwards and kept spinning, gripping the sword with both hands as he ploughed through more and more hostiles. He could feel the spin slowing, despite all the power he was giving it.

He put one hand down to his waist and snatched up his clutch of remote mines. As he finally spun to a halt, he hurled all four of them upwards at the maser above him. They spread out and landed, attached magnetically at four points along the length of the maser barrel. Then the aliens were all over Echoes, pulling him down.

Episode 20

Ten seconds.

Zoid’s eyes widened. He had an idea. And it might just work. He swung a foot sideways and kicked at the alien who was strangling him. It was a powerful kick, and it knocked the alien’s feet out from under it. All of the weight of the alien’s body was suddenly put on the creature’s neck, pinned to the wall by a combat knife. It was a terrible thing to happen to a jelly-like being. The weight of its body pulled at the neck, stretching it and finally snapping. The body fell limp onto the floor, and Zoid slumped down, clutching his neck.

Five seconds.

He ran for the perimeter fence, vaulted over it and bit the dirt just as all three timed mines detonated in quick succession. Rolling over he saw the three cloak generators explode, hurling shrapnel in every direction. For a fraction of a second, the sky over the crater flickered like static, then returned to normal. The crater was exposed.

Zoid radioed the snipers. “The generators have been destroyed. If all else fails we can call an airstrike and nuke this sucker. How did Echoes’ run go?”

“Un-groovy things are happening,” replied Jackal. “You need to get back up here, Zoid, and see what’s going on. And be ready to run.”

***

Echoes was lifted up and held against the concrete base of the maser by a pair of aliens. One held each arm. Although he tried, he found he couldn’t move his arms even a millimetre.

The remaining aliens gathered in a wide semicircle around him. Echoes glanced up and could see the bulk of the maser above him, aimed skywards, and he could make out the four winking remote mines still attached directly above him.

The aliens shuffled aside to let through another, larger alien. Now that was a sight to behold. It had completely enclosed Cyanide inside its humanoid form. The agent was inside, seemingly perfectly unharmed, but trapped inside the body of the green thing, and forced to move whenever it moved. It was an unorthodox but effective method of keeping him under control.

“You okay, Cyanide?” asked Echoes. Cyanide nodded, as, inside his green exoskeleton, he moved over to the side of the semicircle and waited with the other aliens. The circle parted again, and a new alien came through. This one was different.

Where the green soldiers were tall, with long, spindly limbs ending in bulbous fists and feet, the newcomer was short. It was slightly bluer than the soldiers, squat, and generally thicker. Its anatomy was almost human, with the exception of the larger-than-average head and the fact that it was, of course, made of translucent jelly.

It approached Echoes and stood in front of him. “Your attack has failed,” it said. “We knew what was coming and we were prepared. We know more about you than even you do. There is no way you could have been successful.”

“This isn’t over,” spat Echoes. “We’re just the advance party. There are more of us coming. Hundreds more. We’ll slaughter you. We’ll protect our planet.”

“Liar,” said the alien leader. “There are no more of you. You are the last that PDC had to offer. The last and the best. And you were overwhelmed easily. Soon we will attack PDC itself and then the Earth will be defenceless and ours for the taking.”

“And what of the Icarus crew?” asked Echoes. “They’ll take down the node cluster, destroy the mirror. Even as I speak the cluster has probably been destroyed.”

A bleep sounded in Echoes’ ear. It was Rare, requesting a channel be opened.

“Answer,” said the bluish creature. Echoes’ left hand was released slightly, letting him touch the comms link button on his ear.

“Sir?”

“Operation Icarus has failed,” said Rare.

“…I understand,” said Echoes, staring in horror at the blue alien.

***

Jackal, Red and Zoid lay on the precipice watching events unfold through binoculars.

“What’s happening?” asked Zoid.

“The jellies got the drop on Echoes and Cyanide. Looks like the little blue one is their leader. He’s interrogating Echoes,” said Red.

“What are they saying?”

“Can’t tell from here,” said Jackal.

***

“It’s over,” said the blue creature as Echoes hung his head in disbelief. “You lose! We can grow new cloak generators in a matter of minutes, the power plant will be repaired, and all will be ready well before the firing time. And that’s not the best part. Would you like to know how it is that we foresaw your every move? How we know all the standard PDC operations, your tactics, your protocols?”

“You took Brent and Vixen hostage,” spat Echoes. “You hijacked their brains, took everything you needed. It was in the last data burst we received from the Alto before their attack began.”

“Then how did I know that Rare was calling you just now? The signal only sounded in your ear. Nobody else’s. How is it that I know you’re prepared to blow up the maser along with yourself, if necessary?”

Echoes stared.

He stabbed the comms link. “Red, Jackal, Zoid, get out of here, NOW! They know where you are, and they’ll be coming for you, you have to get out! Forget sniping the leader, if you do that another will replace him. Go now, and never come back. Radio our coordinates to Rare and tell him to nuke this hellhole. Nuke it down to the bedrock. It’s the only way. Goodbye…”

“Let them go,” said the blue alien as the three agents far behind him grabbed their weapons and began to scramble for the forest. “They won’t get far, and a nuclear strike won’t do them any good at this stage.”

He looked up, into Cyanide’s eyes. Cyanide floated helplessly inside his green prison, and returned a hard, emotionless stare. “It has to be done,” he said. Echoes nodded.

He kicked his right foot up, hard. His combat knife flew out of it and upwards. Echoes followed the arc. Taking all his weight on the aliens holding his arms, he raised both feet and caught the knife by the handle. He slashed clumsily left and then right, shearing the torsos of his two captors in half. They dropped to the ground, half-dead, and released Echoes’ arms. He grabbed the knife with one hand and snatched the remote mine detonator from his belt, and held it aloft as the other aliens ran forward to attack him.
He glanced upwards at the four HE mines, winking above him. He closed his eyes and pressed the trigger.

Episode 21

Greenery sped past underfoot. Red was leading the remains of Team Daedalus back to the jumpship.

“Why’d we have to ditch them, dudes?” wailed Jackal, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “We could’ve taken them down!”

“Don’t be stupid,” grunted Red. “We were outnumbered. Echoes was at their mercy. So was Cyanide. We couldn’t get two shots off between us before they’d kill them both.”

“But they’ll kill them both anyway!”

“They took Brent and Vixen hostage. They might take Echoes and Cyanide too. It might be too much to hope for, but there’s a chance. They both have valuable information which they might try to extract. In the meantime we have to escape and get word to Rare. Here’s the perimeter fence,” said Red, holding up a hand. He put a hand to his belt and detonated the charges they’d placed there on the way in. A four-foot section of fence fell flat on the rainforest floor. The three agents bolted through.

“Zoid to PDC, copy,” said Zoid on the radio.

“I copy, Zoid,” said Rare.

“The mission… has failed. We shut down the cloaking generators, but the aliens got Echoes and Cyanide, and the maser is intact. Tell Stevez it all hangs on him now, you got that?” There was a long, heavy pause at the other end. “Rare?”

“Didn’t Echoes tell you, Zoid? Icarus failed too.”

“What?” gasped Zoid, stopping dead in his tracks. Jackal and Red heard him and turned around. “Icarus Team failed too,” whispered Zoid. “Both missions failed.”

“NO!” grunted Red. He gritted his teeth and kicked angrily at a nearby tree, fracturing the trunk. He leaned against it with his forehead on his arm. “This can’t be happening. Rare, are you reading me?”

“Go ahead, Red.”

“I’m now the commanding officer on Daedalus Team. In accordance with Echoes’ wishes we’re pulling out now. I hereby request a precision low-yield nuclear strike on the maser crater. Coordinates follow.” Red motioned for the team to continue to move. They were nearly at their landing site.

“You know I can’t do that,” said Rare. “There’s no way we can cover up the radiation. If Brazil thinks somebody has declared war on them, there’ll be chaos.”

“We don’t have a choice,” said Red. “If it sparks off a third world war, so be it. It’s better than total extinction at the hands of an extraterrestrial invasion.”

“I’ll use that as a last resort,” said Rare. “Only at the very last possible moment, understand me?”

“A cruise missile attack, then. We have to at least try. A precision hit with a cloaked missile, nobody’s the wiser.”

“I’ll launch three missiles now, they should get there in twenty-five minutes,” said Rare. “Now get out of there.” Red closed the channel.

***

They jogged for another eight minutes until they reached what was left of their jumpship. It had been left with automated defences primed, programmed to shoot hostiles who came near with its onboard cannon. Despite this, the aliens had got close enough to penetrate its defences and destroy it. There was nothing left of the jumpship but a twenty-foot clearing of burnt vegetation, and scattered panels armour in the surrounding jungle.

Red and the others stepped out into the clearing, cursing. It was hardly unexpected; there was no reason why the aliens shouldn't have known their landing site, they had, after all, managed to find Armando. And leaving the machine unguarded except for some (admittedly very strong) automatic defences was asking for trouble. But even so, it was a big blow to the team.

Red turned around. “All right, cool down, you guys. This just means we’ll have to follow the contingency plan. We head north towards the Jurua itself, build a raft and float downstream to a suitable pickup point. I know it sucks, we’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Dudes,” said Jackal, pushing his red glasses up his nose. “What is that mushroom-looking thing?” He pointed to the middle of the crater. Sure enough, a small, low, blue-white mushroom about the size of a plate had grown out of the centre.
“Be careful,” said Red, as Jackal stepped closer.

“I think it’s glowing,” said Jackal.

“Glowing?”

“Like it has an internal ligh— GET DOWN!”

Light brighter than the sun bathed the clearing.

***

Twelve minutes later, three stealthed cruise missiles closed in on the coordinates of the maser. Slipping effortlessly under local military radar, they hurtled low across the treetops at slightly under Mach 2, spreading out in formation and then closing in on the crater from three different directions.

They were a quarter of a mile of the crater when the EMP beams hit them. All three detonated simultaneously. Debris rained down on the rainforest below. The explosions echoed across the plains.

Episode 22

Starscape rotated gently past the window. Familiar stars. Occasionally, once every five-minute revolution, the light of the Earth brightened the inner edge of the window frame, but the angle was such that Cyanide couldn’t see the planet itself. And trapped inside his gelatinous alien shell, he couldn’t move to look.

He was the only one of the five people in the tiny, cramped, cylindrical shuttle pod that was conscious. Zoid, Jackal and Red were slumped at the far end of the tube, where they had been brought aboard a few minutes before launch. Meanwhile, Echoes lay comatose opposite him, the Earthlight playing across his face which was tilted towards the window.

There was no pilot on the shuttle, and the five alien bodies that the PDC agents were trapped in were completely inert. Cyanide could just about shift his limbs and look from side to side.

Now and then, Echoes would move his lips as if he was talking to someone. His muscles bunched occasionally as if he was trying to move and lash out at someone, but his living prison held him still during his nightmares.

***

Echoes’ life was flashing before his eyes.

There was so little of it. He was only eighteen years old. All of his life that he could remember, he had spent at PDC, cared for and watched over by his superiors as his skills grew. Astonishing his teachers as he excelled at all tests. Learning combat manuals. Tactics and martial arts. Skills of the mind and the psyche. Every weapon imaginable, never to be put to the test. Until today. The day when everything had gone wrong.

Things were coming back to him that he’d never remembered before. That were unfamiliar. Being a very tiny child. Among unfamiliar adults, not the friendly faces of Rare and Spriggosh. Not at PDC, at a village. A primitive village.

Echoes could tell something was wrong. He tried to order his thoughts, which were being thrown into confusion somehow. Maybe by the aliens themselves. But their minds were strong. More images floated by – the Jurua mission –

it’s gonna be okay

“The maser!” shouted Echoes, suddenly sitting bolt upright. He glanced wildly around. “I… I’m alive. What happened? Where are we? Why am I— the mines!”

“Calm down, Echoes,” said Cyanide.

“I pulled the trigger.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I swear to you, I pulled the trigger.”

“No, you didn’t, Echoes. You held the detonator up, then you collapsed on the ground and they took us prisoner. The mines were removed and disposed of. You failed.”

“I watched with my own eyes as my own finger pulled that trigger back as far as it would go. The red confirmation light lit on the detonator. There was an instantaneous explosion of orange and yellow, a flash of burning pain, and then there was blackness and I died.”

“False memories, dreams,” said Cyanide. “You’ve been having nightmares, I could tell by watching you.”
“The maser is still intact?”

“Yes. I saw the missile strike from the air, just as we took off from the crater. It failed. And I know that Icarus failed too.”

“Took off?” Echoes looked out of the window, back down at planet Earth. It dominated the view behind the shuttle. South America was clearly visible underneath them. “Where are we headed?”

“The node cluster. We’re gonna meet with Brent and Vixen, and the survivors from Icarus. Assuming they’re still alive. Then, we’ll have our minds scanned for tactical data, and then the aliens will attack Perfect Dark Central.”

“ ‘Soon we will attack PDC itself and then the Earth will be defenceless and ours for the taking,’ ” quoted Echoes. “I understand now. After we five have been assimilated, they’ll know the entire structure of every system and subsystem that PD Central has ever implemented. And they’ll know the codes and the tricks to get around them. They can shut off the generators, take out the autoguns, knock out the alarm systems before our people can even get to a weapon. That’s why we were being taken alive. To gain intel. And there’s no way we can warn them?”

“We’ve been out of range for hours. We’re nearly in orbit now.”

Echoes rested his head back against the hull. There was a pause while he rolled his head sideways and stared at the bright Earth below.

“How did they know?” he murmured. To his right, Zoid, Jackal and Red were beginning to stir.

“Know what?” asked Cyanide.

“The blue alien leader. He knew what I was thinking.”

“Like you said, anyone in your place would be thinking the same thing.”

“But he knew that Rare was contacting me. The comms bleep in your ear, when another agent calls in. Nobody hears it but you, in case you’re given away in a combat situation. And yet he knew.”

“They have biological structures a half-mile wide in orbit, and they grow drone guns out of the ground. I don’t think a little mind-control is beyond them.”

“No,” conceded Echoes. “But they weren’t jacked into my spinal cord like Brent. They weren’t even touching—” He broke off suddenly.

“…What? What is it?” asked Cyanide.

Someone was speaking to Echoes.

Episode 23

Slowly, the shuttle drifted across the starscape, matching orbital velocity with the node cluster as it approached. Echoes felt someone extending his perception to encompass cameras mounted on the space station, as they watched the capsule come in to dock.

“Welcome, Echoes,” said the telepathic voice.

Echoes did not respond. “Well?” it prompted. “Aren’t you surprised, or scared? Aren’t you going to say something?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m partly a sum of all my subordinates’ experiences, and partly the mind of their leader. Basically, I run this node cluster. I am in charge of the invasion.”

“And how are you inside my mind? How can you know what I’m thinking? Surely even your biotech cannot extend to telepathy like that.”

“Your body is even now completely enclosed by a soldier drone,” said the leader. “He is merged with you until I decide to let you go. How hard do you think it is?”

“But you’re not hooked into my brain tissue, my nervous system. Not like you were with our first two agents. It’s just skin contact.”

The telepathic voice was silent for a moment. “No, I don’t want to ruin it for you,” it said. “You’ll figure it out, one way or another.”

***

Lurking in the dark shadows between the mirror and the triangular struts holding it in place, invisible to surveillance cameras, Nman watched the tiny star get brighter. He had sixteen shots left in his pulse laser, and half a tank of air. He was working on a plan to get inside.

The shuttle was getting close now. It coasted across the surface of the mirror, towards a docking ring on the far side. The ring extended, enclosed the shuttle whole, and pulled it inside. Air filled the chamber, and Echoes and his team were marched off by their alien captors. Through the docking bay window, Nman could see and identify his colleagues, but there was no way they could even know he was there, which was how he liked it. Now if only he could figure out how he, on his own, was gonna bust in there, kill all the aliens, rescue all ten hostages, destroy the mirror, get to the Alto and escape, all using only a partially-charged military laser.

***

Echoes tried not to gawp at the incredible scenery, but it was impossible. He was marching down the same deep white marble canyon that Stevez had come down, and was staring at the same frozen creatures buried behind the glass. He was coming to the same conclusions.

“These creatures have been to a lot of different planets,” he said aloud.

“Look ahead on your left, up a bit,” said Zoid. “What do you reckon that is?”

Echoes squinted, looking deep into the marble. At that depth there were only very faint variations in shadow. But there was definitely something in there, something that registered in Echoes’ mind.

“It looks like a human hand,” he said, looking closer. “But I can’t make it out.”

They silently left the other end of the canyon and changed direction. Another few small corridors led them to an expansive, low, dark green room. This was one that none of the previous teams had seen before. The circular wall was covered in thick, luxurious dark green moss, inlaid with vines and threads and lights. They looked like living cushions built into the wall. At the other end was another bulkhead, which they were heading for.

“Wait a minute,” said Jackal. “This looks like the same moss stuff that Brent and Vixen were hooked into during the video.”

“That would make this their prison area,” suggested Red. “The brig.”

The room wasn’t wholly empty. Clearly, several different alien creatures had been strung up for so long that they had died, and the moss had grown to enclose them completely. The agents could see at least three different species: some vaguely humanoid four-armed creatures with large heads; a kind of giant starfish; a raptor variant.

Echoes motioned to a patch of moss as they walked past it. “Wait a minute,” he said. “That’s definitely a human under there.” And it was. Spread-eagled against the moss, almost completely engulfed from neck to toe, only a few fingers and his closed eyes, but he clearly was (or had been) a human being. Underneath the biological restraint, most of his clothes had been eaten away but there were still the remains of some armour around his shoulders and chest. His head was tilted sideways against the wall, held in place. Everything up to his nose was covered.

“How long do you think he’s been there?” asked Cyanide.

“A long time,” said Zoid. “Maybe even years.”

“Guys, close-up on his ribcage,” said Echoes. “He’s still breathing.”

The man’s eyes shot open. Echoes jumped as they swivelled sideways and stared directly at him, unblinking.

Echoes stared back, open-mouthed.

“S— Slink?”

Episode 24

9:45pm GMT

Time to maser firing: 24 hours 26 minutes

S was in the laboratory. A fragment of alien arm was sitting in a petri dish in front of him. There were tools and instruments arranged around him in a rough circle, but he wasn’t using any of them. He was just staring at the dish.

The door swished open. S looked up. “Hey, Rare,” he said glumly.

“Have you heard the news?” asked the commander, sitting down on nearby lab chair.
“Yeah. Fifteen agents have been lost now. At least one of them is definitely dead. Both missions failed.”

“Then you know that you’re our last hope, S,” said Rare. “You’ve been analysing the alien’s arm fragment for the last eight hours. They must have a weakness. How can we beat them?”

“I don’t know,” said S.

Rare was silent.

Something snapped. “I DON’T KNOW!” shouted S, angrily bringing his hand down on the workbench. “I need a complete, undamaged alien corpse, and six months to run tests. I’m sorry, I really am, but after eight hours of work all I know about the aliens is a bunch of useless, academic trivia that any kid could’ve guessed.”

“Then tell me that.”

S sighed. “They’re mainly water. They’re like giant bacteria, goopy inside with a slightly more solid membrane surrounding them. Ordinarily the membrane is floppy and permeable, meaning you can push your finger through it without damaging it. But by passing a mild electric current through the membrane, parts of it become solid. Which enables them to stand upright, walk around, pick things up, punch people. They probably have a central nervous system somewhere in the head, so decapitation is fatal. But beyond that… their genes, how they generate the current, how they sense light or sound, or communicate, I don’t know.”

“They don’t even have anything resembling DNA,” said Rare.

S looked up at Rare. “That’s right. How did you know that?” he asked.

Rare looked back. “We knew about the aliens eighteen years ago, S.”

S blinked. “Say that again,” he said, trying to keep his voice level.

“We knew—”

S lunged forward with incredible speed, grabbing Rare’s wrist. In a fraction of a second, Rare was up against the wall, and S was standing behind him with a gun pressed to the back of Rare’s neck.

“Talk very, very fast,” he growled.

***

Rare led S through the lowest PDC sub-basement to the cryogenics vault. The vault was a long, narrow, and blue-lit corridor. Both walls were lined with heavy metal doors of various sizes, ranging from six-inch squares to gigantic slabs of metal fifteen feet on a side. S kept his gun aimed at Rare’s head the entire time.

Cryogenics was a technology whose possibilities had been long explored before S took over the post of PDC scientist; the vault had been in existence for many years, and there was a great deal of material stored in it. Ranging from various vital organs kept on ice for emergency transplant, through custom-grown genetic enhancements (some of them interesting, some of them horrifying, some of them far too grotesque to see the light of day), to stupefyingly dangerous biological and chemical agents, radioactive isotopes, and the frozen dead bodies of at least two ex-PDC agents.

There were also a large number of locked, unopened chambers. Some of them S had access to, the rest were available to Rare alone. Secrecy was something that PDC agents got used to pretty quickly; S had never bothered to ask pointless questions.

“This is it?” he asked as Rare stopped at the very last cryo chamber in the vault. It was three feet square.

“Yes,” said Rare. He went to the keypad in the centre of the door and tapped out an eleven digit number. Blue lights lit up. The keypad sank into the metal and the door swung open on its hinges. Dry ice poured out, lit by the neon light within. A large cylinder about the size of a coffin slid out of the vault on rails, and came to rest between Rare and S.

S wiped the condensation off the container with his sleeve, and peered inside.

It was an intact alien corpse.

Episode 25

April 13th, 1985

Somewhere in the Brazilian rainforest

Rare – thirty-five-year-old Rare – couldn’t sleep, because someone was shouting at him. He groaned, and rolled over on his camp bed, rubbing his eyes. He was exhausted, he had been working all day and he wanted nothing more than to sleep.

There was a man in doorway of the hut. He was an Amazonian warrior, with black hair, dark skin and face-paint. He was carrying a spear and he was shouting urgently in a language that Rare didn’t understand.

Rare levered himself up onto his elbows and looked around the tiny wooden hut. Beside him on the floor, Spriggosh, Ryoga and their leader, Slink, were gradually stirring. The four agents had come to the Amazon on a two-month expedition, seeking adventure. They had arrived in the Kanamari Indians’ settlement a week ago. They had shared some food, chopped some logs, built themselves a hut. Tomorrow they were hoping to leave.

Rare shook his wife. “Wake up, Sprig,” he said. The warrior was still shouting. Rare had quickly learnt that it was useless to try to communicate with them in English, but Spriggosh knew the lingo. “What’s he saying?” he asked as she groaned and clutched her pillow, a sack filled with clothes.

“Something about a light in the sky,” grunted Spriggosh, screwing up her eyes. “What time is it?”

“Two-twenty in the morning,” said Rare, checking his watch. “So much for – quote – ‘resting well this evening and making a fresh start west tomorrow’. Slink! ‘yoga! Get up!” He was getting to his feet and pulling on some warmer, waterproof clothing. It was raining heavily outside.

Spriggosh got up and talked briefly with the Kanamari while the others got dressed. Spriggosh was tall and athletic, with long chestnut hair. She was thirty-six years old and had married Rare only a couple of years before. “He says he was standing guard on the north edge of the village, and he saw a bright light passing overhead. It wasn’t a regular aeroplane, it was low and left a trail of flame. I can still see the smoke trail outside.”

“A missile, perhaps?” suggested Slink. Slink was by far the tallest PDC agent, suave, sophisticated and highly intelligent. He held the rank of commander over the other three. PDC had been founded a little less than two years ago, and he had already led them to several victories, overseen by his superiors at the United Nations.

“That’s what I’m thinking. Or a meteor,” replied Spriggosh.

“Could our cover have been blown?” suggested Ryoga. He was small and fast-moving, and underneath his mop of brown hair was a brilliantly incisive scientific mind. He held the post of PDC scientist and gadget master.

“Won’t know until we look,” said Rare. "Bring the video camera, Ryoga."

***

Slink, Rare, Ryoga and Spriggosh followed the trail of burning devastation that had been carved through the rainforest. Pieces of burning debris – metal – littered the area. Ryoga stooped to pick one up, but it burned his hands, even through his jacket.

Finally they came to the crater. The PDC agent shone their torches over the thing buried at the bottom. Spriggosh gasped. “Great Scott!” exclaimed Slink.

There was some doubt at first, about what it was. If the huge piece of machinery just happened to be a super-secret, ultra-stealthed high-tech experimental aircraft, then that would explain its weirdly angular design, which was something like a cross between a stealth bomber, a space shuttle, and an oak tree. But there was more to it than that. The odd blue-glowing engines to the rear. The fact that it had actual tree roots visible in places. The fact that an alien was climbing out of the airlock.

They all stared at the green, humanoid blob. It appeared to stare back at them. There was silence. Ryoga filmed it all.

Slink stepped forward. “Hi,” he said. “Can we help you?”

The alien regarded him emotionlessly. Then it turned to climb back into its spacecraft. “Hey, wait!” called Slink, but it ignored him. The airlock shut. There were sounds of the ship warming up. The blue engines flared briefly.

A hatch opened up in the top of the ship and a small turret swung up out of it. It was fitted with a number of nozzles and sensors. It turned to face the PDC crew. Slink put one hand on his gun.

“I may know nothing about alien culture,” said Ryoga, slowly, “but I know a rocket turret when I see it.” He was backing away. “We should get out of here. Get away from the ship. Get away from it. Slink. Slink!”

Slink was beginning to raise his gun just as the turret fired.

Episode 26

Rare hit the ground just as white light exploded outwards from the turret. Beside him, Spriggosh and Ryoga were both down and rolling. The Kanamari warrior was nowhere to be seen. Rare kept his head down until someone prodded his arm. He raised his head; Slink was standing in front of him, smoking gun in his right hand. “Get up! Everybody up and move!”

“What happened?” gasped Spriggosh.

“I shot the rocket just as it was launched,” said Slink. “The explosion took out the turret. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more weapons on that thing. We have to get out of here, get to the village, get some weapons. Get down!” Slink spun around again. Now the ship had rotated to face them, and more rockets on the underside of its wings were revealing themselves. Two more had launched towards them. Slink shot them both within a second of being launched. Smoke and flame filled the clearing.

The agents finally got the idea and scrambled to their feet. Ryoga led the way through the darkened undergrowth back to the village, followed by Spriggosh, Rare, and Slink covering their rear. Behind them, the ship gained height and moved slowly forwards, knocking trees out of the way to pursue them. The resistance of the forest was holding it back. The agents quickly put distance between themselves and the ship, arriving back at the village with a full minute to spare.

Slink began shouting. “Spriggosh, we have to get these natives out of here. Wake them up and get them to the river as fast as possible, women and children take priority. I don’t know how many boats they’ve got. Find out. Rare, get me all the firearms and ammunition we’ve got. And one obsidian knife. Ryoga, stay here, keep filming.”

Rare and Spriggosh scattered away from Slink in different directions. Immediately the settlement was filled with a huge number of shouting voices, most of them in the native Kanamari tongue. Slink stood on the perimeter of the village watching the trees for the first sign that the aggressor was approaching. He was thinking very fast indeed.

Ryoga filmed him. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m gonna hold the thing off as long as possible, to give the villagers a chance to escape,” said Slink.

Rare returned. “All we have is two SOCOM pistols and five clips of ammunition. The Kanamari have bows and arrows, spears, and obsidian knives. There is no way we can take down an alien spacecraft with what we have.”

Slink grabbed both pistols and all the ammunition, wrapping them around his waist. He put the knife in his boot. “I know.” A distant crashing in the undergrowth came to their ears. “And I didn’t say ‘we’. I said ‘I’. Ryoga, Rare, get Spriggosh, get to the river, get to civilisation. Get to a radio. Quickly. Then come back with all the firepower you can get.”

“We won’t be back for at least a week. You’ll be dead by then, guaranteed. Slink, what you’re suggesting is suicide,” said Rare.

“If someone doesn’t stay behind to hold them off, it’s certain death for all of us. There’s no time,” said Slink, pushing them away, towards the other end of the village, towards the mud track that led to the river. “Rare, you’re in command now,” he said. “Get everyone out of harm’s way, then come back and hit this ship with everything you’ve got. Go! Now!”

Rare and Ryoga ran for it. Rare turned back once just as the ship crashed through the tree-line. He saw Slink dropping from a tree branch onto the roof of the ship, a knife in his hand, and start to grapple, upside-down, with the airlock hatch controls. Slink looked up for a second. Then a turret swivelled to face Rare, and he ducked and ran for his life as it seared over his head and exploded.

***

The tape flicked to static, then ended. S stared at the blank screen, dumbstruck.

“Ryoga and I came back by hovercraft, six days later,” said Rare. “The village was still there, almost exactly how we remembered it. The ship had vanished. Slink’s body was never found, so there, technically, the possibility that he might, against all odds, turn up alive again. Such things have been known to happen, so his file was marked Missing Presumed Dead and the rank I held after that day was and always has been Acting Commander.

“We hunted around for clues or wreckage. The first thing was obvious; right in the middle of the clearing was a decapitated alien corpse. Ryoga picked it up and took back to base with us. He spent the next year dissecting it, studying it. He found out huge amounts about their biology, and their physical weaknesses. He even came up with some prototype designs for weapons that might be effective against them. We had the weapons built, anticipating that the aliens – which he named the Ryogans – would soon return will a full-fledged attack after what had clearly been a reconnaissance mission. But it never happened. Years passed and nothing came of it. The Ryogan corpse was placed in permanent storage. Ryoga himself was tragically killed in action six years ago, leaving me as the only person who knew about the aliens.

“PDC grew larger and stronger. More members joined, agents who never knew about the Ryogan encounter. Eighteen years passed, and now they’re back. Back, with a vengeance. They want Earth, and only we can stop them.”

“And there are only five of us left,” said S.

“Ryoga’s records are still in the databanks,” said Rare. “I’ve unlocked them for you to view. Make the most of what you can find. Come up with a weapon we can use to stop them. Everything rests on you now.”

“Rare?”

“Yes?”

“You said the first thing was the alien corpse. What was the other thing you found?”

“It was a baby,” said Rare. “A Kanamari child.”

Episode 27

S picked up the inch-thick wodge of print-outs that formed Ryoga’s preliminary studies, and flipped through it. There was a huge quantity of data from the old Ryogan corpse. Much of it was academic. Turned out that the aliens did have a DNA-equivalent, but it was encoded into their structure in a much weirder way than it was in humans, and using different chemicals. Their neural structure was recorded – S was slightly surprised and, in a way, flattered to find that it broadly resembled the layout that he had chosen for the pathways of Hal, his supercomputer.

S looked up “Possible weapons” in the index, then flipped to the relevant page. Ryoga had begun work on weapons, then given up when it became clear that they weren’t coming back.

“The subject is 99.1% water, wrapped in a flexible membrane and laced with the traces of chemicals required to make the creature sapient and capable of reacting to external stimuli. For this reason I suggest that regular PDC chemical-tip bullets loaded with our most powerful dehydrating agents would prove instantly fatal to a Ryogan, or at least badly cripple it. A sample of the subject’s skin was taken and vat-grown into a full limb. When shot with the DH bullets, the limb was instantaneously reduced to dust, like a vampire showered with holy water. I am given to wonder how far this is from the truth…

[…]

“Another technique is to flash-boil the water by use of thermal induction pulses or good old-fashioned napalm. A heavy beam laser does the trick just as well; experimental results follow…”

Lasers and dehydrating chemicals. Good old Ryoga, thought S as he sat down at his computer terminal. I wish you were still here. We could really use your expertise right now.

“Hal,” he said aloud.

“Good evening,” said an overhead speaker.

“Download the whole of Ryoga’s notes concerning the captured Ryogan corpse into this terminal. I’m told he made at least a few prototype weapons for use against the aliens. These will be somewhere in cold storage. Send a drone to bring them up here for research and augmentation.”

“Done,” said Hal.

S checked his watch. Less than 23 hours left.

***

Thrillhouse groaned. He didn’t want to get up yet. It was too early. He wrenched his eyes open and tried to focus. Where was he? Oh man, did he oversleep? What about the job at PDC? He’d be late for work on his first day! Oh no!

More came back to him. The mission against the alien node cluster. The space shuttle journey, with Stevez, X, Sal, and Scissors. DQ and Nman being left behind to guard the Alto. Looking for Vixen and Brent. The weird glowing mushroom in the ceiling.

Uh-oh.

He was splayed against a furry dark green wall of moss, ankles and wrists strapped to it, just like he’d seen Brent and Vixen in their hostage video. He’d been captured just like them. What a great day this was turning out to be. This morning, he’d been wandering through the grounds of a luxurious mansion, about to begin a dream spy job. Now he was strung up inside an alien space station, later to witness the destruction of half of humanity by gamma ray maser, assuming they let him live.

The man opposite him was wearing PDC armour, but Thrillhouse didn’t recognise him. He was blond and wore darkened red sunglasses. He was fully conscious, and asked “Who are you?” before Thrillhouse could open his mouth.

“Thrillhouse,” said Thrillhouse.

“Oh,” said the stranger dismissively. “The rookie. I’m Cyanide.”

“You were on the Jurua follow-up mission with Echoes?”

“Well remembered. I guess both our operations failed pretty badly,” said Cyanide.

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Thrillhouse. “There was this mushroom thing…”

“Yeah, same thing got us,” said Cyanide. They swapped details on their various adventures until both of them knew the whole picture.

“The most insane bit was just before we were strung up here,” said Cyanide finally. “Echoes swears he saw Slink.”

“I don’t know who Slink is,” said Thrillhouse.

“You don’t know Slink? One of the four founders, PDC’s first and greatest commander? The man who single-handedly turned Ecuador back into a democracy? The legend himself?”

“I’ve only been a member for eighteen hours,” pointed out Thrillhouse.

“Slink was our commander for two and a half years. He was killed in action eighteen years ago,” said Cyanide. “The files on how it happened are closed, nobody knows what happened, except, presumably, Rare. But if what Echoes is saying is right, alien abduction might not be totally out of the question.”

“That’s crazy! Why’d they do that?”

“Because they knew that if they wanted to colonize the Earth, PDC would be the only organization to stand against them, so they kidnapped him to learn all our weaknesses and kept him alive to force him to plan the invasion for them?” suggested Cyanide.

As Thrillhouse stared, Cyanide continued, “Slink was the one man who knew everything about PDC operations. He invented them, after all. He was a genius. The aliens know everything he knows, and that was enough to capture us all. Now they have plenty of fresh agents under their control, they also know all the newest developments, all the latest entry codes. As soon as all the data has been snatched from our heads, and they’ve updated their plan, they can sweep down and knock the place flat, along with all five remaining agents.”

“Any idea when that’ll happen?”

“Almost certainly sometime tonight. Because the maser fires at 10:11pm tomorrow, and PDC will be destroyed before then.”

Episode 28

“Cyanide?”

“Yeah?”

“You know X?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think about him?”

“Uh, well. He’s one of my closest friends in the PDC unit. Great agent, better with a grenade launcher than a sniper rifle, prefers confrontations to stealth. Ruthlessly efficient, quick to make difficult decisions. Occasionally doesn’t communicate as much as he should. Quiet.”

“Yeah. I guessed a lot of that myself,” said Thrillhouse. “But he’s got history of some kind, hasn’t he?”

“We all have history, Thriller. Including me and you, but you see – has someone already had this talk with you?”

“Yes, Scissors has,” sighed Thrillhouse, hanging his head. “But, see, the reason I ask is, the picture he carries around with him, I caught a glimpse of it, and I’m sure I’ve met the girl before. I just wanted to know who she is. Do you know?”

“…Yes, for your information I do,” said Cyanide. “I know exactly who she is. X confided in me once. But what makes you think I’ll tell you anything? I don’t know you.”

“I don’t expect you to just give me all the details. But I have a hunch. If I ask you just one simple yes or no question, will you answer truthfully? After that I promise I’ll shut up,” said Thrillhouse.

“All right.”

“Does she have anything to with the Sudan?”

Cyanide stared, a little taken aback. “Yes,” he answered, surprised. A look of horror had come over Thrillhouse’s face.

He was about to ask him what was up, when something in his head suddenly woke up and started moving out of its own accord. It was like having a second personality in his brain. This one was after information. It was searching him for every minute detail pertaining to the PDC base and its defences.

He was dimly aware of a consternated Thrillhouse talking to him, but all he could concentrate on was the horrible alien presence in his head, ripping information straight out of it without consulting him or even acknowledging his existence. It tore through his brain for what seemed like half an hour, then left as suddenly as it had come.

“What happened?” asked Thrillhouse.

Cyanide was panting and his face was covered in sweat. “They just read my mind,” he said. “I’m guessing it’ll be your turn next.”

It was.

***

~The analysis is completed. We have all the information we require.

~Very well. Begin the cross-referencing the data with that which we obtained from their commander. Start him working on an attack plan. He cannot disobey. We have complete control over him.

~The plan will be complete in one hour.

***

S checked his watch. 2am. Behind him, a computerised production line was running, spitting out and endless supply of dehydration bullets into a large hopper. The bullets were compatible with existing PDC weapons, meaning no new guns need be created. With any luck they’d be fully stocked by dawn.

He yawned and rubbed his eyes, moving onto the next section of the data. There was still a lot to read. Maybe there could be more clues buried in Ryoga’s decade-old data.

Ryogan Genetic Analysis. Section 10: Surprising parallels between Ryogan DNA and that of PDC agents

S blinked. What on Earth?

Episode 29

There were a total of sixty insectoid tank-creatures arranged around the edge of the PDC base, just outside the main perimeter. Behind them were nearly five thousand Ryogan troops. Behind them were several banks of missile launchers. Overhead, a swarm of Ryogan aircraft were converging with full payloads of bombs at the ready.

The last of the data was fed into the hive mind that was controlling the battle. The plan was complete.

~It’s time.

A single Ryogan soldier stepped forward to the main gate. It held up a small electronic device in one of its hands, just as the retinal scanner in the iron gates swept its body. The scanner found the device and probed it through a small glass window in the front.

“What is your name?” it asked.

The Ryogan let out a burst of noise, sounding like modem static. A viral program. The audio sensors picked it up and tried to analyse it, with disastrous consequences. They dropped immediately out of the network.

Within a millionth of a second, the server, a mid-range AI that S had affectionately named Hal, noticed that the audio sensors had registered an error. Hal isolated the microphone circuits and took over control of the normally autonomous entry protocols. A sixtieth of a second passed while Hal recorded one frame of data from the optical sensors. The content was analysed and instantly flagged as a top-level alert. Hal then had time to send a single instruction to the base-wide alarm systems before the microphone systems requested to be let back onto the network.

Hal was smart enough not to do this in case the audio system had been infected, but it was too late. The virus had been embedded into the reconnection request itself. It was powerful and intensely virulent, corrupting all of Hal’s high-level systems almost instantaneously, reducing it from an intelligent machine to a simple supercomputer. Hal’s mid-level brain didn’t even have time to perform an emergency crash-backup before it was completely taken over half a second later.

The first thing that the invading software did was to override the alarm systems and restore them to nominal status. The second thing was to cut the power to the entire PDC base. The third thing was to deactivate the perimeter defences.

After one second, the main gates were swinging open.

***

Jez and Valkyrie were still working in the motor pool at 1am. Jez was a bit of a night owl anyway, and was finishing up the final modifications on the tank. Valkyrie was at the PC terminal in the corner, still probing deeper into the origins of the material that had been used to construct the Jurua maser. They both looked up as S walked in from the weapons lab. He was carrying three heavy machine guns and several belts of ammo.

“Got a special treat for you two,” said S, handing them each a weapon and a belt of ammunition. “This is a standard issue Panther Mk 2A, it works just like a regular Panther. The bullets, on the other hand, are newly-developed thermal-dehydration rounds. On impact with Ryogan tissue they detonate instantly spreading a thin layer of drying agent and a flash of heat around itself. The Ryogan in question is simultaneously boiled and reduced to dust within a hundredth of a second. One bullet, one alien.”

“Nice work, S,” said Valkyrie, test-aiming the gun across the motor pool.

“Finally back on a level playing field,” said Jez.

“The plan for now is to sleep,” said S. “I’ll get the machines manufacturing more weapons overnight. At nine tomorrow we get together and formulate a plan.”

“Just the five of us against the entire maser complex?” asked Valkyrie.

“We’ll sort it out, Val, don’t worry. Million-to-one long shots are what PDC is all about. There’s still time to pull back.”

The three of them heard a single “blip” as the alarms switched on for a fraction of a second and then died. All the active computers in the room switched off simultaneously. Then all the lights went out.

S looked around and turned on the flashlight mounted on his gun. Jez and Valkyrie followed suit. “We have three power generators and they’re not linked to each other directly,” he said. “It’s impossible that they’d fail all at the same time. The emergency lighting hasn’t come on and nor has the battery backup power supply in all the computers…”

Valkyrie picked up her sword from by the chair and strapped it around her waist. They clustered together in the centre of the motor pool.

There was a rumble far above them, as the first rocket impacted the upper floor windows of Rare’s mansion. All three of them looked up as the vibration shook a tiny bit of dust free from the ceiling. Then a whirring sound signalled that the up-and-under door at the entrance to the garage was opening itself. S, Valkyrie and Jez turned and aimed at the entrance.

There were a dozen Ryogans standing in a row behind the door. All three agents opened fire instinctively. As the first rank of aliens was exploding into a shower of greyish powder, then the second row ran through and launched themselves forwards at the agents. Meanwhile more aliens were swarming over the walls and even onto the ceiling, crawling like geckos at ridiculously high speed all across the inside of the room.

“Retreat!” called S. They ran back towards the stairs at the back of the garage, which led up to the main body of the mansion, pursued on all sides by the swarm of green gelatinous creatures.

Valkyrie got to the door first. She dragged it shut and locked it tightly behind Jez and S, but it was just a flimsy wooden thing, it wouldn’t hold for long. She followed them up the stairs to the East Hall of Rare’s mansion.

S and Jez checked around the place as they stepped out of the stairwell into the pitch darkness of the hallway. It was long and luxuriously decorated like any other stately home, with chandeliers high overhead, deep carpet underfoot, and statues and portraits on the walls. In the dark it held many shadows, and both ends of the hall were hidden in blackness. As far as S and Jez could make out, it was empty.

There were hurrying footsteps to their right. Jez swung his torch beam around and aimed it in the faces of Rare and the Doctor, who were running towards them down the corridor. Rare was still in his suit, the Doctor was wearing a leather jacket but no shirt. He was sweating, having been working out in the gym.

“Okay,” panted Rare as he drew to a halt. He quickly regained his breath, and spoke quickly. “The mansion is surrounded by Ryogan tanks and foot soldiers. There’s obviously a virus in the computer system that’s holding down the power and possibly other things. Valkyrie, give the Doc your gun but keep your sword. Jez and S are armed, I am not. Suggestions?”

Another rocket impacted above them, and the floor shook.

“Back down to the motor pool and get out via tank,” said Jez.

“Helipad,” said S.

“We should take the underground exit,” said the Doctor. “They won’t have covered that.”

There was a crashing noise from the other end of the hall. With bright headlights on the front, a tank had crashed through the window at the end and was hurtling down the hallway towards them, crushing ornaments and decorations in its path.

“We go underground,” said Rare. “Move!”

The five remaining PDC agents ran.

Episode 30

On six legs the size of tree trunks, the tank – which looked more like a beetle – charged along the corridor. It was fast.

“Don’t shoot!” hollered S as they ran ahead of it. “Don’t waste ammo! DH bullets are no good against Ryogan hardware!”

Despite their speed, the agents had difficulty outrunning the thing. By the time they passed the turn that led towards the underground passageway, the tank had caught up with Jez, who had hooked one arm around a horn on its carapace and was being carried ahead of it. He dived off and rolled when they got to the end of the corridor, and ran after the others as the tank stampeded through another window. Ahead of them, Rare had reached the reinforced steel bulkhead and was unlocking it. S and the Doctor were quickly winding the manual hand crank to force the door open.

Behind them, the tank cornered incredibly fast and reappeared at the other end of the corridor. It shone its headlights at them. It seemed to be an intelligent creature in its own right – no pilot. On the top of its carapace, a biological turret swivelled to face them. It spat a rocket at them.

PDC agents have superhuman reactions. Jez and Valkyrie leapt clear of its path, and Rare ducked as it shot over his head into the tunnel. It went all the way down to the end and collided with a second bulkhead further down. An explosion of flame licked out of the tunnel.

“Get in!” yelled Rare as the tank lined up for a second shot. Jez, Valkyrie, S and the Doctor managed to get inside and Rare begin to heave the heavy door closed behind them. As it shut, there was a faint whump as the rocket impacted on heavy steel.

***

The emergency escape tunnel from PDC was over a mile long. It started right underneath Rare’s mansion ended far outside the boundaries of the base, on the edge of a fishing lake to the south. The tunnel was a wide, steel-clad tube which was divided into sections every hundred yards by additional bulkheads. It was ventilated by small tubes leading up to the surface. Ordinarily it would be fluorescent lit and the doors would operate electronically, but today it was pitch-black except for the three flashlights that S, the Doctor and Jez wielded, and each door had to be cranked open manually. It was also dead silent. As the five agents headed downhill into the darkness, all that could be heard were their own footsteps on the steel floor.

“How long will that door hold?” asked Jez.

“Probably at least an hour,” said Rare. “Maybe longer. Around half an hour for each extra bulkhead we lock behind us. We can be at the lake before they catch up, no worries.”

“What do we do when we get there?” asked S. “If PDC is taken over, then that’s all our assets. We have nothing left to mobilise, just ourselves and a handful of guns.”

“Once we get to the lake we’ll be moving overland to the nearest village,” said Rare. “If we evade the Ryogan troops and make it to a phone we can get the British government in on the act.”

Even the Doctor was shocked at this. “The British government doesn’t even know PDC exists,” he said.

“The time for espionage is over,” said Rare. “Our secrets are being reduced to rubble even as I speak. We can’t afford to mess around anymore. It’s war now.”

***

“Do you hear that?” asked Valkyrie.

They were three-quarters of the way to the exit, and the echoing noises that they had initially assumed to be Ryogans attacking the far end of the tunnel were beginning to get louder. Occasionally the floor shook very slightly. “It sounds like somebody’s digging.”

“They must be catching up. We should move faster,” said Rare.

“No. The sound is coming from up ahead,” said Valkyrie. “I’m certain.”

They walked as far as the next bulkhead and listened. There were banging and clanging noises coming from behind it.

“Do we open it?”

“Just a crack, Jez,” said Rare. “S, cover him.”

Jez opened the door.

A Ryogan tentacle licked around the frame and grabbed Jez’s wrist. Jez lurched backwards instinctively, pulling it taut. Rare quickly grabbed the door and slammed it shut on the tentacle, severing it. The loose end fell from Jez’s wrist, and S stepped up and put a bullet through it, vaporizing it.

The door clanged. It clanged again. The Ryogans were trying to get through.

“Rock and a hard place,” said S. “Stuck in a steel prison, aliens digging down from above, more aliens tunnelling up from below. This is an obscenely bad situation. How on Earth did they know? Nobody knows about this tunnel!”

“PDC agents do,” said Rare. “The aliens have all our data on file. All our operations manuals. They can predict exactly what we will do in any given situation and they move to take advantage of it. We’re just too predictable, we’re stuck in a rut.”

“So what do we do?”

“…We break the cycle. Do what nobody would expect, even ourselves. What are they expecting us to do?”

“To push through, try to make it to the lake,” said S. “That’s where they’ll be waiting.”

“Then we turn back. Head for PDC. We can evade the tank.”

“And then what?”

There was the sound of something small falling to the floor. Three beams of light focused on a small brown thing that had fallen out of the ceiling. It was a beetle. It had crawled through the ventilation ducts. It rolled over and straightened up. Then it raised its shell began hissing at them. Green gas spilled out from under its shell.

“Gas grenade,” said S. “A living gas bomb. Whatever we’re doing, do it fast,” he said, backing away as another beetle landed on the floor.

“We turn back now,” said Rare. “Now! Move!”

Episode 31

Rare’s mansion was much, much tougher than it looked. Underneath a stately exterior was a strong diamond-steel infrastructure running through the entire building, making it proof against everything short of a small nuclear explosion. It rocked and shook as missile after missile pounded into the windows of the upper floors of the building, but it took the beating and it stayed standing.

Most of the décor and furnishings in the mansion had been laid over the top of the functional, sparse military framework that the building had started out as. Inside, the constant barrage was shaking plaster from the ceiling and paintings from the walls.

The PDC agents crawled like ants out from under the pile of rubble that had collapsed over the entrance to the escape tunnel. They had been shocked to discover that there were no Ryogans digging down from above. The whole Ryogan strategy had hinged on Rare leading them to the lake. The tank had gone. The hallway was deserted while above them the concerted effort to demolish the building continued.

Valkyrie was out first. It was heading towards dawn. A dim grey light was visible on the horizon but it was still very black inside the mansion.

“If the base is as totally surrounded as it was last time we looked, it’ll be no use trying to escape via tank,” said S. “If we make our way to the roof we can take the jump-jet out of here.”

“What if it’s been destroyed? What about the rockets?” asked Jez.

“You got a better idea?”

“S’s plan will have to do,” said Rare. “Head for the main stair—” he broke off suddenly. The continuous booming of rockets above them had ceased. All five of them looked up.

“Why did they stop?” asked Valkyrie.

The Doctor spun and nailed the first five aliens as they hurtled around the corner towards them. They exploded into showers of grey-green dust, blasted backwards. “They know we’re here. They’ll figure out what we plan to do. They’re adapting their tactics.”

They heard the distant sound of thousands of feet sprinting through the mansion towards them. A torrent of fresh alien soldiers poured around the corner into the maw of the Doc’s gunfire, but were held at bay.

“Get to the stairs!” screamed Rare over the noise. “We have to fight our way through!”

Jez, S and the Doc fired into the swarm as Valkyrie dashed ahead of them, sword held aloft, screaming defiance at the aliens. She launched into the horde and began to carve a path through, leaving a trail of decapitated aliens in her wake.

***

The stairs above them were completely clear of aliens, but the PDC agents were hotly pursued as they climbed. The Doctor stayed towards the rear, keeping the enemies at bay, but he was rapidly expending ammunition. By the time the agents got to the third floor he had run out of ammo. The gun clicked empty and he hurled it aside, snatching Jez’s weapon out of his hands instead.

By the time Rare kicked open the door to the helipad and they scattered across it towards the jumpship, the Doc had emptied Jez’s gun as well. Jez reached the jumpship first and began emergency power-up as Doc and Valkyrie stemmed the flow of aliens coming from the stairwell. S and Rare scanned the grounds below them, where shining lights revealed the huge numbers of tanks surrounding the mansion, turrets aimed upwards. On the horizon, a group of Ryogan fighters were circling. Further away, a dull orange glow indicated the slowly rising sun.

Below them, green Ryogans were beginning to crawl up the walls.

“They knew that rockets wouldn’t damage the mansion,” said S. “Why did they bother?”

“To weaken it,” said Rare. “A heavy barrage is enough to send a few hairline cracks through the structure. Then they place charges at strategic points on the ground floor, and detonate.”

“How do you know all this?” said S.

“Because it’s what I’d do,” said Rare. “Jez, how long?” he shouted over the rising whine of the jumpship’s engines.

“We’re go!” replied Jez. “Come on!”

As the agents ran towards the jumpship it rose slightly into the air and swivelled to face the stairwell. Jez fired a pair of rockets at the aliens who were coming after them, raking the survivors with the jumpship’s chainguns.

A rocket flew up over the mansion at a low angle, fired by one of the ground tanks. It slammed into the jumpship, which exploded in a ball of flame. Rare, S, Valkyrie and the Doctor were hurled on their backs by the blast, as burning armour plating clattered to the ground around them. The wrecked machine crashed down in the middle of the helipad, utterly destroyed.

“JEZ!”

The last four agents stared in disbelief at the wreckage, and each other. As they got to their feet, the first Ryogan head rose above the side of the helipad. Then another. Then they were completely surrounded.

The Doc’s gun clicked empty. He threw it away and assumed a fighting stance. Rare and S rolled up their sleeves. Valkyrie held her sword in front of her, and they gathered in the centre of the helipad, back to back, encircled by alien soldiers, about to be completely and utterly crushed. There was no way out. There was no Plan B.

Far away in the distance, a Ryogan fighter began to tumble from its flight path, and crash-landed. S looked up, squinting, into the morning sun. He heard a distant echo of the explosion.

“This is what it comes down to,” said Rare, speaking fast and quietly to his subordinates. “Valkyrie is the only one with a weapon and she is the most proficient with it. Therefore she must escape. Nobody else has a chance. Nobody else matters.”

“Me?” asked Valkyrie, shocked. “There’s no way. It’s impossible, even for us!”

“What’s that?” asked the Doc, pointing into the sun and shading his eyes. A dark shape was swooping out of the sky, but where the Ryogan aircraft were segmented and shaped like bugs, this one was clearly of a different manufacture. It was blue and white, smoothly curved, and bore a huge array of armaments under its wings. It shot overhead firing rockets in all directions, most of them spreading out into the distance to target individual tanks and aircraft. The Ryogan forces turned their fire on the blue-white ship but it rolled lazily, dodging all their rockets – it gave off no heat for them to seek. It looped around above the agents and turned back, spraying a rapid hail of computer-targeted machine-gun fire all over the helipad as it passed.

But none of it hit the agents. The reams of Ryogan foot soldiers were riddled with bullets and instantaneously and spectacularly reduced to inanimate green jelly. Rare, S, Valkyrie and the Doctor were left dumbfounded in a spreading pool of Ryogan corpses.

They stared at the miraculous ship as it turned once again and drew to a stop alongside them, as softly and quietly as a cloud. A side-ramp unfolded, revealing its spacious interior, and the hunched, hooded figure who was manning the controls. It waved a tentacle at them.

“You are LATE, squid!” shouted Rare.

“Lucky thing I still keep tabs on you, bipeds!” shouted Bloober gleefully. “Get in, free ride to my place! But make it quick, they’re about to blow the place out from under you!”

Even as he spoke, they felt the shock of the explosions underneath them. They ran forward and jumped safely into the ship as the helipad rumbled, cracked and began to sink beneath them. Bloober closed the door behind them and the ship rolled and accelerated away from the PDC base.

End of Part One

State of Play


It is currently 3am GMT on the second day of the Ryogan Crisis.

Following up a reconnaissance mission eighteen years ago, in which PDC commander Slink was abducted, the race of aliens known as the Ryogans have returned to the Earth with the hostile intentions. The Ryogans have had a long time to prepare and have had the complete, though unwilling, cooperation of Slink in planning the attack.

Their plan is this: At 10:11pm tonight, a gigantic gamma-ray maser placed in western Brazil will be aiming directly at a Ryogan space station in orbit around Earth. At this point the maser will fire a gamma-ray pulse. The pulse will reach a giant mirror attached to the underside of the space station, reflecting back over the entire western hemisphere, instantly exterminating all human life.

Thanks to Slink’s unwillingly leaked tactical secrets and the alien’s superior technology, Brent, Cyanide, DQPA2, Echoes, Jackal, Red, Sal, Scissors, Stevez, Thrillhouse, Vixen, X and Zoid have all been captured by the Ryogans during various missions to avert this event. They are currently imprisoned on the space station along with what Echoes claims (correctly) is the half-decayed body of Slink.

Slink is still alive.

Echoes, incarcerated in the Ryogan prison, is constantly being assailed by strange dreams and hallucinations of his past, of places he has never been and of people he has never known.

Recent recruit Thrillhouse is puzzled about the mysterious past of his team-mate X. The woman in the photo that X never seems to stop looking at is familiar to him. But where from? And how are they all connected to the Sudan?

Nman, the only man to have escaped Ryogan capture, is lurking behind the mirror dish on the space station, out of range of security drones. He is scavenging air from a nearby supply line to fill his tank, and planning how to take down the entire station armed with only a half-charged heavy laser.

Having analysed further data from the brains of the newly-captured agents, the Ryogans planned and pulled off an attack on PDC’s central England base, in which the entire mansion was destroyed along with all of the accumulated PDC files on the Ryogans themselves. Rare, the Doctor, S and Valkyrie only narrowly escaped death when they were rescued by the genetically modified squid Bloober, who had served as PDC scientist and surgeon a long time ago before retiring to pursue his own interests. They are currently headed for Bloober’s secret base in the western Pacific, named Remote Tropical Island.

Episode 32

“So that’s what you know,” said Bloober as his ship hurtled across the ocean at well over twice the speed of sound, though trailing no sonic boom. “Now let me tell you what I know.”

He left the controls of the machine on autopilot and sat with the Doctor, Rare, S and Valkyrie. Bloober was a genetically engineered squid, and a big one. He had ten tentacles, of which three were usually being used to walk on and the rest as arms. His upper body was half-mechanoid and bullet-proof. A transparent bubble helmet covered his head, revealing a cone-shaped skull and two dinner-plate sized eyes. He was eight feet tall when stood up straight, and the ship had been built on the same scale, in order to suit him better. For the four humans, it was extremely spacious.

Rare had recruited Bloober into PDC while holidaying in the Caribbean. Bloober had simply strode out of the sea, sat next to Rare at a beach bar and ordered a drink. After a lengthy conversation, Rare recognised Bloober’s above-average intelligence. He signed the squid on as PDC’s new scientist/surgeon, filling a post that had been vacant since the death of Ryoga the previous year. Bloober’s insane ability with genetic engineering and cyborg technology quickly revealed itself, often via improvements which Bloober would make upon himself, but also through enhancements which he gave to PDC agents. Bloober never seemed to be really working for PDC; he just used it as a quiet place to work, while the agents used him as an incidental source of medical care and genetic modifications. After twelve years he had, among other things, nearly tripled his own intelligence and greatly improved the efficiency of PDC operations.

Two years ago Bloober had expressed an interest to leave PDC. Having trained S as his successor in the technology department and instructed Zoid with all his medical knowledge, Bloober upped and left for parts unknown, leaving no forwarding address. That had been the last that Rare or anyone else had ever seen of him.

“I wandered around for a bit, and then found this cool remote tropical island which I thought would make an awesome base. So I called it Remote Tropical Island and built a base on it,” explained Bloober. “I’ve been working in my labs ever since then, doing experiments and stuff. But I didn’t forget about you guys. I left a few bugs in your base, microscopic bacteria that you’d never be able to find, just to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid. And of course I’m still hooked into your spy satellite net, watching the rest of the planet for crazy goings-on. I spotted the maser in Jurua and the node cluster like you did. Usually you sort these things out pretty fast, so when it all went icky I suddenly got worried. By the time the massed ranks of the Ryogan army made their move on PD Central I was already halfway the globe to rescue you. I only wish I could’ve made it faster. I’m very sorry to hear about Jez. He sounded like a smart guy.”

“So you knew about the Ryogans from the start?” asked S.

“Nope,” said Bloober. “Rare never told me, nor anyone. But when he gave you the pass codes last night, my bugs were listening, and I was finally able to crack the encryption on your files. So I know everything you know now. And I also have backups of any files you might have lost during the attack, so there’s nothing to worry about on that score.”

“Can you help us fight the aliens?” asked Valkyrie.

“Boo, yeah,” said Bloober. “You scientists may be smart, but you’re needing my wisdoms bad. I’ve had over fourteen years to do my research, and I’ve got some weaponry you could seriously use.”

A faint bleep at the console signalled that they were approaching Remote Tropical Island. Rare looked out the window.

“Uh, Bloober, there’s a hole in your island.”

Bloober coughed, slightly embarrassed. “Yeah. That was an accident. Mmm. Not good.”

“What happened?” asked S, coming to look. “The hole’s a half-mile wide!”

“High-storage battery I was trying to manufacture,” said Bloober. “Got one of the formulae a bit wrong and there was a catastrophic cationic overload.”

“Oh, a CCO,” said S, nodding. “You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”

“Well, it did, actually.”

Rare frowned. “Say that again?”

“Risky business, my line of work. Of course I have clone bodies ready to go. Don’t you? I’m… uh, number 3, I think.”

The blue-white ship curved gracefully across the sky like a winged dolphin, settling down at water level. Then it sank beneath the ocean. White lights were visible below them. They illuminated a huge complex that Bloober had constructed underwater, clinging like coral around the base of the mountaintop that formed his island. The ship entered an airlock that opened for them, then the water was pumped out.

***

Bloober led them through the web of tunnels that had been bored out of the mountain, towards what he said was his main control centre. They entered a large freight elevator and began to descend. Glowing red lights flashed from the bottom of the elevator to the top, indicating how fast they were descending, which was very fast indeed. “There’s a large hangar bay down here where I keep my really big hardware,” said Bloober. “I’ve never had a chance to use them yet, so I’m pretty eager to take them for a spin.”

Then the red lights vanished and the view outside the elevator was replaced with a vast cavern, roughly a kilometre on each side. Suddenly they appeared to be descending at a snail’s pace through the huge room. Valkyrie gasped and ran to the window. “What are those things?” she squealed.

They were four of them, standing serenely in a row against the back wall of the hangar, facing forwards. They were heavily armoured, heavily armed humanoid robots, and each one was about as tall as a skyscraper. Attached to the right arm of each one was a gigantic weapon which looked like a beam laser.

“Evangelions,” said Bloober.

Episode 33

"Of course, when I say 'Evangelions' I mean 'they sure look like Evangelions'," said Bloober. "Actually, they're just run-of-the-mill gigantic robot mechs. Completely mechanical, no organic technology is involved at all, and no crazy psychotic brains to worry about. Just pure firepower. Started out when I wanted to build some kind of thing to carry a railgun into battle. Those things are heavy, needed a nuclear power source for starters, so it'd have to be one massive tank. Then I thought, tanks suck. No manoeuvrability. So I stuck a pair of legs on it and the idea kind of snowballed from there."

"These things are nuclear?" asked Rare.

"Cold fusion," said Bloober. "The worst that could happen if one gets destroyed is a splash of cold water in your face."

"You have cold fusion…" breathed S.

"Hella. Powers my jet as well. I'll slip you the designs once this is all over. But we have more important matters to attend to before that, i.e. the second maser, which we need to find and destroy fast, fast, fast."

"The second maser?"

"Well think about it," said Bloober. "One beam of light can only cover one hemisphere, am I right?"

S stared straight ahead. "I… I can't… why didn't I think of that? WHY?"

"We all make mistakes," smiled Bloober, resting a friendly tentacle on S's shoulder.

***

With no immediate threats around them, the PDC agents were able to take a few hours' rest in Bloober's extensive, luxurious guest quarters. It had been a very long night. Unfortunately, thanks to the twelve-hour time zone change, the night over Remote Tropical Island was just beginning. When Rare, S and the Doctor were woken again by Valkyrie, it had just gone midnight. Again.

Bloober's briefing room looked like it had been built from the same templates as the now-destroyed one back in England. Same comfy chairs. Same huge wall screen. Same computer interface, with the same data that Valkyrie had been working on.

"What time is it?" asked Rare as he, the Doctor, S, and Bloober filed in. S checked his watch, which had adjusted itself automatically to account for the time zone changes.

"Midnight," said S. "Time until first maser firing - ten hours, eleven minutes. Time until second maser firing, I have no idea. Maybe Val can fill us in."

"We don't know where the second maser is, exactly," said Valkyrie, once everyone was seated. She punched up a diagram of the Earth on the wall screen. "But we can take a rough guess. It's got to be somewhere in the western Pacific - diametrically opposite the first maser. And, it's got to be positioned to take advantage of the space mirror as it comes around on its elliptical orbit. So that narrows it down to about a hundred-kilometre circle."

"That's a big area," said the Doctor.

"Also, it's mostly water," said Valkyrie. "Only a relatively small number of islands are within that circle and big enough to build the maser on. However, I don't think it was built on an island. It's waterborne.

"As you know, the Jurua base was built using components that were originally manufactured by the Glare Corporation. Back at base, before the Ryogans attacked, I was researching the background of the company. After comparing with Bloober's independent reports, I've come up with an anomaly."

Valkyrie pushed another button and the screen flipped to an image of a skyscraper in the middle of a busy city. "Glare Corporation is definitely a front," she said. "I don't know if it was a Ryogan venture right from the start, or whether the aliens just stepped in and took over, but their component factories are doing a lot more than just making customised computer hardware, vehicle parts and bodywork. They have also, in the last year, built a ship in a harbour in India. A big ship. An oil supertanker - the Santraginus. And in the four months since it was completed, it hasn't moved a single drop of oil - supposedly, it has remained in dock in Calcutta for all that time due to engine troubles."

The screen flicked again, to a colour satellite photograph of a huge red tanker nosing its way East. According to the scale, it was nearly a kilometre long. "Two days ago, it started moving, heading directly for the centre of the area we marked for the location of the maser. As you can see, it's easily large enough to contain the weapon, plus a great deal more besides. It is currently in transit, and will reach the rendezvous point within the next hour. According to Bloober's calculations, it'll reach the optimum position at six o'clock this morning, and fire at dawn precisely - 6:02am."

"But the Jurua maser fires at 10:11am," said S. "After we destroy the oil tanker, we'll have to cross an entire hemisphere to get back to the Amazon basin. In four hours. That's not a good time window."

"What's with the negativity? You're PDC," said Bloober. "PDC laughs at small windows. 'Seconds to spare' is our middle name."

"I guess…"

"Borp."

"What?"

"Ah, it's Joe. Everybody, meet Joe," said Bloober, reaching down to the ground and picking up an eyeball. A foot-high eyeball. With a single foot, with which it hopped around on the table. Everyone stared. It stared back. It was particularly good at it.

"This is one of my genetic engineering experiments," explained Bloober. "He's called Joe, the hopping borping eyeball. Joe, go and show the nice people how to operate my weapons of mass destruction."

"Borp."

Episode 34

The four mechs in Bloober's hangar - black, white, red and blue - had large, armoured heads that were tilted forwards slightly, revealing a crack in the armour just behind the neck. Here, a cylindrical entry tube entered the round airlock at the back of the head.

The Doctor slid down the tube into the cockpit of the black mech, and was dumped directly into the pilot seat. Arrayed in a bank around his seat were all the controls necessary to pilot the machine - all of them were where he intuitively expected them to be. In his right hand was a joystick that adjusted the direction that the mech's head and the cannons mounted alongside it were pointing. His feet were positioned near some pedals that controlled the machine's speed, pitch and yaw. Under his left hand was a throttle control with additional buttons for use while the machine was in flight.

Yes, according to the manual, this thing had heavy-duty rockets under its shoulderblades, and it could fly. There was no other way to reach the Santraginus except by boat, and that would take much too long.

Beyond the bank of controls was a holographic environment, fed into the cockpit by external video cameras. The Doctor had nearly 360-degree vision just by turning his head slightly. Targeting graphics flicked up on the screen, highlighting notable objects within viewing range, such as the other three mechs, and Bloober and Rare, standing on a gantry far below him, watching.

A small pair of lasers built into the console were permanently locked onto the Doctor's eyes around as he scanned the room, analysing the direction in which his pupils were aimed and registering the direction he was looking in. This was fed back into the targeting computer, so that whatever he was currently focusing on was overlaid with an unobtrusive crosshair on the holographic screen, and was simultaneously being targeted by small, fast-rotating chain guns flanking the face. He only had to move his targeting joystick slightly to bring the mech's arsenal of larger weapons to bear on it.

The Doctor smiled, and shrugged off his jacket, hanging it over the back of the chair. His hand controls were layered in two tiers, a set on the inside and a larger, more complex array of gadgetry on the outside. By moving his arms outwards he could slip them into a black grid of motion sensors and directly manipulate the mech's shoulders, elbows, hands and fingers as he saw fit. Similar controls under his feet let him do the same with the mech's legs, turning the mech from a glorified tank into a highly dextrous puppet, able to do anything a human could.

The Doctor prodded the foot controls experimentally, and his black mech took a step forward into the hangar.

Bloober activated a microphone implant in his bubble helmet, and his voice came through, crystal clear, into the Doctor's cockpit. "Up and to your left you'll see a small computer terminal with a keyboard and access the more advanced functions," he said. "I think you can probably afford to not bother with them…"

" 'Pulse laser frequency harmonic synchronizer'? 'Level 2 missile guidance interrupt settings'? 'Cold fusion containment override'? 'Emergency/Auxiliary ammunition feeds'?"

"The mech will handle everything automatically, Doc. It's only customisation freaks like me or your pal S who want to mess around with that stuff. If I were you I'd stick to factory settings."

The Doctor piloted the mech forwards another few steps and played with the hand controls. He swung his right fist a few times, then tried a few martial arts moves. The mech was surprisingly responsive.

Behind him, S slid down another entry tube into cockpit of the white mech, and Valkyrie powered up the red one. They were all practicing with their weapons after a few minutes, and then Bloober decided it was time to go.

***

A large portion of Remote Tropical Island slid apart revealing a cavernous shaft into the mountain. A black metallic blur soared out of it, surfing on a pillar of blue flame. Then a red one with a yellow flame. Then a white mech, powered by a searing red flame. They hovered in a cluster above the island, listening to their final instructions.

"I'll stay back here," said Bloober. "I can oversee the battle using satellites and your onboard cameras. Together we can take this thing down. Just don't lose your cool. And don't underestimate the Ryogans. And don't get cocky. Good luck, kiddos."

The three mechs rotated to face the spot on the horizon which their onboard guidance systems had picked out as the direction of the Santraginus oil supertanker. It was 4am, and the predawn was just beginning to glow on the horizon.

S, the Doctor and Valkyrie kicked over and began accelerating towards their target. They had two hours to save the world.
 

Episode 35

Nman had been lurking in the shadow behind the mirror for what seemed like a whole day. He was tired, he was fidgety, and the recycled air he was leaching from the oxygen lines underneath him tasted foul. He'd only managed to catch a few hours of sleep since his entire team had been captured and assimilated into the alien data net.

Nman, of course, didn't know that Rare had encountered the Ryogans before, or that PDC had been destroyed, that Slink was alive, or that there was a second maser. But as for what he did know…

Using a marble-sized remote-controlled camera drone, he had been able to spy at nearly every window in the complex, unobserved. He had ascertained the location of the prisoners, who all seemed to be alive, and the status of the Alto, which had been towed to a docking point on an outer node of the node cluster, and was apparently still spaceworthy.

He had also located the cluster's control room. Here, a taller, more humanoid alien which appeared to be slightly bluer than the other aliens, could be seen giving orders to his subordinates. Seemingly the aliens communicated via telepathy.

Which was dumb. Nman didn't believe in telepathy, and his suspicions were confirmed minutes later when his suit radio successfully located the waveband that the aliens were using to communicate.

And thus was born his plan.

***

Nman vaulted over the edge of the biotech girders he had been hiding behind and fired his manoeuvring pack at full thrust, accelerating on a straight line down the middle of the cluster. Six separate cameras had already caught him in their sites before more than a second had passed, and began tracking his path, plotting, calculating.

Nman sped between struts at high velocity, and raised the cannibalised military-grade laser that he had wrenched from the forward gun position of the Alto before it had been overrun. He had six full-power shots left in it. He turned to his right and drew a bead on the large, imposing spherical structure that he was currently hurtling past. This, he had decided, was the power plant for the whole node cluster.

He closed one eye and aimed at the bundle of three thick cables wrapped around the sole tunnel which connected the power plant node with the rest of the structure. These were the supply cables.

He fired once, twice, three times. All three cables exploded apart, slashed by the laser light. They untwisted and began to flail about, unwinding from the tunnel which they were wrapped around. As they did so, every light in the node cluster flickered and went out. The cluster was plunged into half-darkness, lit only from a single angle by the distant Sun.

Having completed his power plant flyby, Nman thumbed his jetpack controls and aimed off in a new direction. He saw Ryogans with manoeuvring packs of their own begin to rise over the edge of the node he was aiming at, coming straight for him.

Phase two. Nman reached for his suit radio and switched to the Ryogan comms band. He turned the amplifier up to maximum and began to broadcast high-volume static.

The effect was exactly as he'd expected. The aliens suddenly switched off, cut off from their guiding intelligence. They were on their own now, and useless, like dumb terminals disconnected from their server. Nman didn't even waste any of his three remaining laser shots on the swarm of aliens as they drifted past him in the opposite direction, inert.

He was now closing fast on his target, the control room. Through the huge, circular window he could see the bluish alien leader standing up and turning around to look at him. There was now no other way for the alien to sense him - his cameras and drones were being drowned out by noise emanated from Nman's radio. Now it was just him, and Nman.

Hurtling towards the window at incredible speed, Nman raised his laser again. Mentally, he viewed the window as a compass. North, south, east, west.

Nman fired at a point to the east. A circle of glass one foot in diameter was vaporised instantly. The glass began to crack and air started to rush out of the gap. He put another laser shot through to the north, and the glass cracked more. A crack found its way from the first hole to the second, and the window began to rip away under force of pressure from the air within. The glass shattered, and as Nman had hoped, most of it ripped off in one piece to the southwest, where is would do him no damage, while the remaining small shards went in all directions except straight at him.

Now the window was open, and coming straight at Nman was the leader, carried helplessly into space by the impossible wind. Nman took his time aiming, and grunted with satisfaction as he vaporised the leader into a flash of atomic dust.

***

Nman landed in the airless control room and threw away his spent laser. It took all his strength to crank open the exit airlock manually, fight his way through the rushing air, and close it behind him. But now he was on the space station, the aliens were largely incapacitated and their leader was dead.

It was time to rescue his friends.
 

Episode 36

Slink had long ago lost track of his time spent in the Ryogan data net. If asked, he would be unable to guess whether it was a year or a hundred. He knew his muscles had atrophied to the point that he was hardly as strong as an infant, and his senses were so dulled that he could barely see or hear. The Ryogans weren't concerned with that. As long as his vital organs were functioning and his mind was sustained, they were able to make use of his tactical genius to plot their assault on planet Earth. That was all that mattered.

He had been kept prisoner for so long that his body and nervous system were completely enmeshed with the Ryogan net. There was no simple way in which they could be separated - it would not surprise him to learn that he could not survive without it anymore.

Eighteen years ago he had gone head-to-head with that flying saucer, to give sixty villagers and Rare, Ryoga and Spriggosh the chance to escape. If only he'd known what else was at stake, he would have run with the rest of them. He'd thought it was a recon mission, but it wasn't. They had come to get him. He'd decapitated the pilot with ease, that was no problem, but the machine had been under remote control. The airlock locked and sealed itself, and the saucer fled up into orbit with him onboard.

Still not knowing what the aliens wanted with him, he had been taken prisoner on the mothership. Months passed as he was flown across an unimaginable distance to the glorious Ryogan homeworld. And there, faced with the horrifying truth that he was nothing more than a pawn in a plot to annihilate humanity, he had felt more alone than ever before.

But he had never lost hope.

The invasion force had set out for Earth with him on board. He had orbited for some unknowable length of time, watching the seeds of their plan spread and begin to take root, all the while being pumped for information and unwillingly giving it to them, helping them cover their tracks, ensuring that there was no way that the agency to which he had once belonged would discover what was happening; until it was too late, and they had already been destroyed. He tried to allow flaws to enter his plans, but he knew that the aliens would never let them slip by. All he could do was scream silently at his agents. Surely they would realise. Surely they would find the unwitting mole in their organisation.

***

And then came the wildcard. The thing that nobody could ever have planned for. Bloober. A person who had joined PDC four years after Slink had been abducted, and had left a year before he returned. An individual with the power to tip the balance. Slink knew about the two masers, and he knew Bloober had the ability to stop them from firing. But just as the three mechs began to head across the ocean towards the Santraginus-

Everything had gone black. The pressure of dim green light through his usually-closed eyes had vanished. Plus, he was receiving no stimuli from the alien network. The fuzzed messages that were always flying back and forth between the creatures had ceased, replaced with monstrously loud static which he had immediately blocked out.

After a while, he heard (through his right ear - his left one was pressed against the mossy wall he was connected to) a faint tapping sound. Someone was coming. Someone had cut the power and overloaded the alien communications frequencies. Someone, therefore, might be about to rescue him.

Slink tried to open his eyes. Under brighter light conditions he could never have completely opened them without blinding himself, but in the darkness he was just about able to see. He had difficulty focusing.

Someone plodded through the door, shining a white torch beam ahead of him from his wrist. He swung the beam across the walls and ceiling a few times to check for hostiles as he crossed the room. The light shone for a fraction of a second into Slink's eyes, but the man didn't seem to notice him.

Slink couldn't tell who it was. It was a white blur with brown hair. Human, probably male. He crossed the room to the far door. Slink could see the far door from where he was. With his back to Slink, the man began to crank the bulkhead open.

Slink wriggled his fingers and tried ineffectually to speak. To make noise. To get the man's attention. He could barely remember how to talk English, it had been so long since he last spoke to a human being.

His jaw muscles had atrophied. He could barely inhale and exhale. Come on. Listen to me, curse you. Don't you see me? I'm a human being, over here in the webbing, I'm Slink. Help me. Help me! Salvation was so close.

Nman finished opening the door and strolled into the dark corridor beyond. He pulled a lever on the other side, and the bulkhead rolled closed. It slammed shut with a whump of air.

Slink clawed at the green moss.

"…hhh…"

Episode 37

“We’ve got a visual on the tanker,” said the Doc as they were fifty kilometres out, and closing. From this height, the kilometre-long structure of the Santraginus looked like a short, fat red blob slowly nosing its way towards them through the ocean. It had taken twenty minutes for them to get this far. One hour forty remaining.

As they approached, Bloober radioed in. “Sat scans show movement on the deck. Can you take a look?”

S zoomed in on the image. The tanker was unfolding.

An oil tanker is basically a huge half-cylinder, floating in water with the flat side up. The huge storage cells for the oil are capped by flat plates of metal. Usually these are just for protection against the weather, not for walking on – steel gantries down the centre and sides of the ship provide access in that case.

These storage plates were unfolding like flowers. Brilliant spots of light at each corner showed that miniature rockets were firing to lift the inside edge of each plate upwards and outwards. At the peak, the rockets dimmed and the plate disconnected, pinwheeling sideways into the ocean where they sank without trace. The dark interior of the ship was now completely open. And out of it flew a dark swarm of shapes, buzzing angrily towards the approaching mechs.

The three mechs spread apart into a combat formation.

“Those don’t look like normal fighter planes,” said Valkyrie. “Or mechs.”

“They’re bees,” said S. “Black bees. Look to be partially metallic – jet engines, fibreglass wings, machine guns. Ten feet long. One bee can’t do us a lot of damage but there’s an awful lot of them.”

“Do we stop and fight?”

“No, just try to get through the swarm,” said the Doc. “We have to destroy the maser. Or sink the tanker. Or push it off course.”

“That won’t work, the thing weighs half a million tonnes,” said S. “Okay, here we go…”

The bees were coming. At least they were large enough to lock onto, thought S as he twisted and dived down, raising his main machine guns and pulling sixteen drones out of the sky in a series of red and yellow detonations before they got within a thousand yards. And at least Bloober made an accurate machine gun.

S levelled out fifteen feet from the ocean and cruised above it, rolling the mech onto its back and firing indiscriminately into the maelstrom above him. “How you doing, guys?” he radioed to the others.

Valkyrie was carving a swathe through the bees. They were fast but dumb, just coming down far within range of her weapons for a shooting run, then rolling away. Taking them out as they came in was the easiest thing in the world. “No problems.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I beat a swarm of mechanized insects, using nothing but sixty Uzi rounds and my sword?” asked the Doc.

“Yeah,” said S. “If I recall correctly, you had Scrutman helping out with his chaingun though, God rest his soul…”

“Man, we owned those critters. Bloober, I’m in range of the tanker, gimme a target.”

“Try putting a hole in the bows,” said Bloober. “Use your railgun, but make sure the shot doesn’t ricochet in your face.”

The Doc flipped some switches and his cockpit juddered as the huge cannon mounted on the mech’s right arm began powering up. An orange light lit up on his console. “Why would it ricochet? What can stop a depleted uranium slug moving at a tenth of the speed of light?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” said Bloober.

A green confirmation light lit up next to the orange one. Behind the Doc, Valkyrie swooped past, defending him from the bee swarm as he lined up for an accurate shot.

PKRAAAAAAAAAAAAOWWWWW went the shot as it leapt from the black mech’s railgun.

The motion of the slug was too fast for any kind radar to follow, but the instantaneous bright white trail of ionised air that it left behind was enough to reveal what had happened. The slug had impacted on the Santraginus’ lower forward hull, then bounced off and into the sea, tearing a boiling shaft of vapour over a mile into the ocean before it stopped moving. Bubbles rose from the location where the slug had come to rest, while yellow concentric rings over the surface of the Santraginus’ hull rippled and faded away.

An electromagnetic shield.

“Great holy jalapeno!” exclaimed Bloober. “It actually works!”

“What, the railgun?”

“No, the shield! I was fooling around with EM shields like that nearly a decade ago. But I could never stabilise the field high enough to stop anything faster-moving than a baseball. I figured it was just a flawed concept, junked all my research notes. Must’ve just missed something.”

“Bloober,” said S as he dispatched two more of the mechanical bees. Only a few dozen were left. The wave had been almost completely destroyed.

“Crazy aliens, I’m all angry now. Ripped off my idea…”

The second maser, just under a quarter of the length of the oil tanker, was beginning to rise slowly out of the depths of the ship’s storage areas. It was exactly identical to the one in Brazil. From a low vantage point behind the ship, S aimed a volley of standard chaingun fire in its general direction – a ripple of the yellow shield saw all the bullets repelled effortlessly.

“Bloober!”

“What?”

“If a railgun can’t penetrate their shields, what can?”

“Uh… I’m working on it…”

Ninety minutes.

Episode 38

“Walla! I still have my old archived shield tech notes,” declared Bloober. He, Rare and Joe the hopping borping eyeball were in Remote Tropical Island’s main control room – a large darkened hall filled with screens and control panels, with a conference table in the centre. Bloober waggled a few tentacles triumphantly as he printed the half-inch bundle of notes out and carried them over to where Rare was sitting and regarding the monocular creature with more than a little unease.

“So we can find a weakness in the system?”

“Unlikely. It’d be a pretty dumb shield if the generators weren’t placed inside it, so that’s pretty much given. We have to find something capable of penetrating the shield and deactivating the generator, wherever it may be. Or find a way to circumvent the shield altogether.”

“We can see the oil tanker inside, so visible light can pass through,” said Rare. “Maybe a laser blast?”

Bloober touched a button on his mechanical armour. “Guys, can one of you try aiming a high-power 500nm laser pulse directly at the maser, please?”

“Roger that,” said S on the radio. Bloober and Rare watched the satellite pictures on the wall screen as the white mech moved into position, lined up and fired.

“No effect. The pulse was reflected,” said S.

“Right. S, are you listening? I want you to take the frequency and polarisation controls that are down and to your right on the control panel. Mess around with those and try to find a laser beam configuration that can penetrate the shield. We reckon there’s gotta be something that can get through, if ordinary light can.”

“I’m on it,” crackled S’s voice. Bloober closed the channel.

“Wait a second,” said Rare. “Does that shield extend all the way around the hull?”

“Borp,” said Joe.

“Joe says yeah,” said Bloober.

“Then the tanker isn’t touching the water?”

“I… would guess not,” said Bloober.

“Then how is it moving? There aren’t any rockets or anything.”

“Propellers. Wait! I see where you’re going. If the ship is moving, then it must be reacting against something. It can’t be propelling itself forward if the propellers aren’t touching the water! So there must be a gap in the shield! Brilliant! Doc, Doc, can you hear me?”

“I read you, squid,” said the Doctor.

“How’s S doing?”

“Nothing yet. What’s up?”

“We think there might be a chink in their armour. Go to the rear of the ship and check out the propellers; our schematics indicate that there should be three of them.”

“I’m there,” said the Doc. “Can’t see the props through the waves, but millimetre-wave radar’s giving me a good outline.”

“Now shoot them. Use heavy ordnance, we want to break them off.”

***

The Doc’s black mech unfolded two racks of rockets and fired one from each shoulder. The rockets tore forwards and down, disappearing under the water a fraction of a second before they impacted. The underwater explosion flung water and a few shards of metal nearly a hundred feet in the air.

“Did it work?” crackled Bloober’s voice on the radio.

“The propellers are gone,” said the Doc. “Just a pair of spinning drive shafts left. But the shield’s closed up around it like a wound healing itself. Is the ship decelerating?”

There was a pause while Bloober checked his instruments. A faint “Borp” was heard in the background.

“I can’t tell directly from the sat scans,” replied the mecha-squid, “but instruments are recording a definite decrease in speed. But the Santraginus has half a million tonnes of inertia behind it. Even pushing against all that water, it won’t stop completely for another half an hour.”

“Will it stop outside of the danger zone?”

Another pause.

“No,” said Bloober. “No, you’re still gonna have to get inside and shut down the maser.”

“Not good!”

S radioed in. “I’ve systematically tried every combination I can think of,” he said. “Nothing’s getting through. The shield’s too smart, it reacts too fast. Help me out, Bloober. You know the system. You know its weaknesses.”

Bloober made depressed noises. “The only way to get through a shield like this is to cancel it out with another shield of opposing frequency. But your mechs aren’t equipped with that of harmonic generator. Nothing is.”

“Don’t you have one?”

“N— what?“

“Borp. Borp!”

“Joe says there’s an old generator in the basement. It hasn’t worked in years, but…”

“I’m on my way back now,” said the Doc, as his mech rolled and began to track back towards Remote Tropical Island. “You’ve got until I get back to turn that heap of junk into a working harmonic generator.”

“I’m on it.”

Eighty minutes.

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