Bug Wars

  For Joe, rebalancing the odds.

  Contents

  Chapter One: Total Chaos

  Chapter Two: Close Encounter

  Chapter Three: Orange Slime

  Chapter Four: Special Mission

  Chapter Five: Tricky Situation

  Chapter Six: Hostile Fighters

  Chapter Seven: Hissy Fits

  Chapter Eight: Someone Scary

  Chapter One

  Total Chaos

  ‘There is absolutely no way you’re going to beat me next time, Luke Riley,’ snarled Yasmin, her eyes narrowed as she stared at him across the table. ‘Not unless you cheat, of course. But then I wouldn’t put that past you, either.’

  ‘I don’t need to cheat, Yasmin,’ Luke said, shrugging and smiling at her. ‘And even if I did, you’d never know. I’d be the best cheat in the galaxy.’

  ‘Huh, there’s a fine line between being confident and being a big-head,’ muttered Yuri. ‘Mind you, I’m not surprised you keep winning, Luke. It’s not easy to concentrate in here. I can hardly think straight with all this noise.’

  Luke winced as something landed with a CRASH! on the deck behind him. He looked up from his computer at the total chaos around them. Clarke, their teacher, had slipped out for a moment to talk to the teacher in the classroom next door. And of course, the instant he’d gone, the kids of Primary One had stopped doing the work he had set them and had started having fun instead.

  For Luke and his two friends, that had meant playing computer games. Yuri had quickly plugged his trusty laptop into their table’s data input socket. Then he had networked their terminals so they could compete with each other in a classic flight simulator called War Beyond the Stars. But just about everyone else seemed to think their freedom was a perfect opportunity to misbehave.

  Some kids were playing wild games of chase, two boys were play-fighting and had knocked over a chair (hence the CRASH!), and a girl was pretending to be their teacher at his desk and making her friends scream with laughter.

  ‘Well, the noise doesn’t bother me,’ said Luke, turning back to his friends, brown-skinned Yasmin with her jet-black hair in a neat ponytail, and the flame-haired, freckle-faced Yuri. ‘So I’m up for another game…if you are, that is.’

  ‘Hah, you bet!’ said Yasmin. ‘Come on, Yuri. Let’s thrash this big-head!’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ laughed Luke, and soon they were deeply immersed in the game. Each player was the pilot of a super-cool combat craft armed with laser cannons and space torpedoes, the goal being to get through your opponent’s defences and destroy their base. Yuri and Yasmin worked together and made things pretty difficult for Luke – but he was still sure he could beat them.

  After all, he had spent a lot of time playing computer games since they’d left Earth. There wasn’t much else to do on the spaceship Buzz Aldrin, with its small cargo of humanity searching for a new home somewhere among the stars. Luke often thought that if it weren’t for computer games and having a couple of great friends like Yuri and Yasmin he would have gone barmy a long time ago.

  ‘Hey, that’s not fair!’ squealed Yasmin suddenly. ‘I told you he’d cheat!’

  ‘Yeah, Luke, you’re only supposed to have one combat craft, not hundreds!’ groaned Yuri. ‘How did you manage to create a whole fleet for yourself?’

  Luke stopped tapping at his keyboard and peered at his screen, where a swarm of small spaceships had appeared. He’d never seen anything quite like them in any game he’d played. They were strange and spiky and menacing.

  ‘But I didn’t!’ said Luke. ‘They’ve got nothing to do with me, I swear!’

  Just then the classroom door hissed open and Luke glanced up, expecting to see Clarke – but it was Captain Riley, commander of the Buzz Aldrin. She was also Luke’s mum, and he could see she wasn’t happy. She scanned the chaos with a look on her face that could have frozen an exploding super-nova.

  ‘QUIET!’ she yelled. ‘I was heading to the bridge and I could hear the racket you’re making three corridors away! What is going on? And where in space is your teacher? Stop misbehaving and get back to your seats immediately!’

  ‘Whoa, your mum is one scary lady,’ said Yasmin, admiration in her voice. ‘I bet she could get anybody to stop what they’re doing and behave themselves.’

  ‘You got that right,’ said Luke. ‘So we don’t want her to catch us playing games in class when we should be working. Er… over to you, Yuri.’

  ‘I’m already on it, Luke,’ said Yuri. Within a few seconds War Beyond the Stars had been replaced on their screens by the work they should have been doing. The class had quickly settled down too. All the other children were now back at their tables, concentrating on their screens and trying to look like little angels.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Captain Riley, taking down her glare a notch. She came over and stood beside Luke’s table. ‘And what were you three rogues up to? You were suspiciously quiet – I can’t believe you were actually working.’

  ‘Hey, that’s so unfair!’ said Luke, putting on his best expression of outraged innocence. ‘I think you’d be pretty surprised at just how hard we can work!’

  Little did he know they were all in for a very big surprise indeed.

  Chapter Two

  Close Encounter

  The door hissed open again and Clarke hurried in. He was a hologram, but he looked human. To be more precise, he was the spitting image of Albert Einstein, right down to his shock of white hair and his droopy moustache.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Captain Riley!’ he murmured, frowning. ‘Er… I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I do hope the children were behaving themselves.’

  Captain Riley opened her mouth to reply, but she didn’t get the chance. A BLEEP! BLEEP! noise came from the communicator screen on the wall.

  ‘Bridge calling Captain Riley!’ said a voice Luke recognised. It belonged to Lieutenant Chung, one of the ship’s officers. Mum walked over and touched the screen and Chung’s face appeared, her eyes worried beneath her dark fringe.

  ‘What can I do for you, Lieutenant?’ said Mum. ‘Do we have a problem?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Captain,’ said Chung. ‘But I think you should see this.’

  The picture on the screen changed to show the deep blackness of space. A large star was shining in the far distance with a trio of dark, shadowy planets circling it. Luke’s gaze, however, was drawn to something else – a swarm of strange, spiky – and familiar – spaceships heading towards the Buzz Aldrin.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ whispered Yasmin. ‘We saw those ships in the game!’

  ‘Yeah, we did,’ murmured Luke. ‘I don’t get how that can happen.’

  ‘Beats me too,’ said Yuri, tapping at his laptop. ‘Interesting, though…’

  ‘We’ve tried communicating with them, Captain, but they haven’t responded to us yet,’ Chung was saying. ‘And we just can’t scan them, either. They seem to have the same kind of force field round them as two of the planets.’

  Unlike the rest of the class, Luke knew what Chung was talking about because Mum had told him at dinner the night before – being the captain’s son did have advantages. They had arrived in this star system a few days previously and had immediately begun to survey all three planets. One was a barren rock, but they hadn’t been able to find out anything about the other two. Both were surrounded by force fields the Buzz Aldrin’s scanners couldn’t penetrate.

  ‘I can see that they’re on an interception course with us,’ said Mum, scowling at the screen, her arms folded. ‘What kind of speed are they doing?’

  ‘They’re moving pretty fast,’ said Chung, tapping at the panel again. ‘At this rate we could be having a close encounter with them in the next few minutes.’

  �
��Right, I’m on my way to the bridge,’ Mum said grimly, turning to leave.

  ‘Oh dear, that all sounds rather serious, Captain,’ said Clarke. ‘I hope they turn out to be nice, whoever they are. Er… is there anything I should do?’

  Luke suddenly realised that Clarke and everyone else in the classroom had been listening intently to the conversation between Mum and Chung too. Clarke looked anxious, and most of the children were wide-eyed with worry as well.

  ‘Not really,’ snapped Mum. ‘Apart from staying with your class and keeping them under control, that is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be elsewhere.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Captain,’ Clarke spluttered. ‘I didn’t realise they’d – ’

  ‘Hang on, Captain,’ Chung said. ‘One of the ships has broken away from the rest. It’s moving incredibly quickly – and heading for us on a collision course!’

  ‘What?!’ said Mum, turning back to her. ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘Seconds at the most!’ Chung yelled. ‘Too late for evasive action…’

  ‘Go to red alert, Chung!’ said Mum, glancing over her shoulder at Luke. He nodded to her, then looked at Yuri and Yasmin, and they moved closer together. Yuri unplugged his precious laptop and held it against his chest to protect it.

  ‘Aye aye, Captain!’ Chung replied, and Luke saw her hit a big red button on the panel in front of her. A WHOOP-WHOOP sound instantly filled the ship, red lights on the ceiling started flashing, and some of the children screamed.

  ‘WARNING! WARNING!’ intoned a computerised voice. ‘COLLISION IMPACT IN TEN SECONDS AND COUNTING. NINE, EIGHT…’

  ‘Brace yourselves, everybody!’ yelled Mum. ‘Hang on to something!’

  ‘Er… I’d just like to say it’s been good knowing you two,’ said Luke.

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ said Yasmin, and rolled her eyes. ‘We’re not dead yet.’

  ‘Ah, but we might be soon,’ Yuri said brightly. ‘A collision at the kind of speed that ship is going will do a lot of damage to the Buzz…’

  ‘JUST SHUT UP, YURI!’ Yasmin and Luke yelled at their geeky friend.

  ‘THREE… TWO… ONE…’ intoned the computer. ‘IMPACT!’ And then there was a terrific CLANG! of metal hitting metal, the two hulls crashing together. Luke felt the deck judder beneath his feet – and watched horrified as a white dot appeared on the wall beside him and quickly became a fizzing, smoking line.

  Someone was cutting right through the ship’s hull – from the outside.

  Chapter Three

  Orange Slime

  The white dot quickly traced a curve in the hull, cutting a ragged circle two metres across, molten metal dribbling down the bulkhead. Luke was hypnotised and couldn’t tear his eyes away, although behind him he could hear Mum yelling at the children to get out. Everything seemed to have gone into slow motion too. Yuri and Yasmin just managed to drag him back as a huge slab of hull-plating fell inwards and crushed their table with a mighty CLANG!

  There was a brief silence, and Luke wondered why they hadn’t been sucked into the vacuum of space. Then suddenly several creatures that looked like giant insects skittered out of the hole in the hull. They had huge heads with antennae, enormous bug eyes and clacking jaws, long, narrow bodies made of some dark red, shiny shell-like substance, and lots of thin, spidery limbs. And each one was holding a serious-looking weapon too, some kind of laser rifle.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from nearly everyone in the classroom – and then most of the kids screamed, including Luke, Yasmin and Yuri.

  ‘Run, Luke!’ yelled Mum. But it was too late. One of the alien bugs opened its mouth wide and spat out a stream of sticky orange slime that covered the three friends. Luke tried to shake it off, but the ooze hardened and he found himself trapped in a rigid cocoon. Luckily his eyes weren’t covered so he could still see what was happening. The giant bugs grabbed the cocooned forms of Yuri and Yasmin and threw them out of the hole, and did the same to Luke.

  He travelled a short distance and hit some kind of wall that yielded slightly, then fell onto a floor with a loud SQUELCH! He realised he was in the alien spaceship which had been on a collision course with the Buzz Aldrin – it must have somehow locked onto their hull. He looked round, but there was no sign of Yasmin and Yuri. The hole they had come through was beginning to close as well, at least on this side. Then he felt another hole opening beneath him…

  Luke screamed as he was sucked head-first into a dark, slimy tube that held him tight and pulsed like some living thing, pushing him downwards. He closed his eyes, convinced he was about to be digested in the stomach of some colossal alien creature – but seconds later he shot out of the tube and landed on the floor of another chamber with a THUD! that drove the breath clean out of his lungs.

  ‘Are you OK, Luke?’ said a familiar voice, and Yasmin’s face appeared above his. She had slime on her hair and cheeks, but she seemed able to move.

  ‘I think so,’ said Luke, trying to sit up and succeeding. His own cocoon was softening, most of the slime falling off him. ‘What about you and Yuri?’

  ‘I’m fine, although I don’t think my hair will ever be the same again,’ said Yasmin, scowling. ‘And Yuri couldn’t be happier. He’s in geek heaven.’

  Luke stood up and saw that Yuri was studying their surroundings, his precious laptop tucked under one arm. ‘Fascinating…’ Yuri murmured. They were in a circular chamber seemingly made of the same shell-like substance as the aliens themselves. But part of the wall was transparent, and through it Luke could see the Buzz Aldrin growing smaller as the ship they were in flew away.

  ‘Do you think they’re OK with the hull breached like that?’ said Luke.

  ‘Probably,’ said Yuri, coming over to stand beside Luke. ‘The emergency force fields are designed to seal a breach like that almost immediately.’

  ‘Almost immediately?’ squeaked Luke. ‘But what if they were too late?’

  Yuri shook his head and sighed at Luke’s sad lack of knowledge. Then he started explaining the Buzz Aldrin’s emergency force field system in detail.

  ‘Could we talk about something else, guys?’ Yasmin said crossly. ‘Like what is happening, and, I don’t know, maybe how we could save ourselves?’

  ‘We’ve been kidnapped,’ said Luke, shrugging. ‘I’ve got no idea why.’

  ‘If you ask me, we’ll find out down there,’ said Yuri, nodding at the large planet that was just coming into view. ‘At this speed we’ll be there soon.’

  But they were about to arrive on the planet even more quickly than Yuri thought. Suddenly the floor softened and swallowed them. They screamed, fearing the worst, but found themselves in a cramped, transparent bubble which was immediately fired out of the spaceship. It zoomed past the alien fleet then hurtled towards the planet, fizzing and sparking briefly as it shot through what seemed to be a gigantic energy field, all crackling lines of light and power.

  The planet’s surface loomed in front of them. Luke gaped at vast oceans and steaming jungles, and a huge column like an enormous termite nest dead ahead.

  ‘Oh wow,’ murmured Yuri, his eyes wide. ‘Look at that – it’s fantastic.’

  ‘Not to me, it isn’t,’ said Yasmin. ‘If there’s one thing I hate, it’s bugs.’

  Luke didn’t say anything. He wasn’t too keen on them himself.

  Chapter Four

  Special Mission

  It soon became obvious their destination was the huge column. The bubble eventually came to a halt and hovered directly over the great tower of rock, the three friends peering nervously into the hollow interior below them. But they could see only a few metres down – below was utter darkness.

  ‘So what happens now?’ muttered Yasmin, scowling as she pulled orange gunge out of her hair. ‘I hope they don’t keep us hanging around like this.’

  ‘Er… I don’t think they’re going to,’ murmured Luke, an edge of panic in his voice. He and Yuri were staring into the giant column with their eyes
wide.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Yasmin, following their gaze. Then her eyes grew wide too, and her mouth fell open. ‘I don’t believe I’m seeing that.’

  An incredibly long pink tendril was snaking up and out of the column. It rose above them and seized the bubble, curling round it like a frog’s tongue lazily catching a fly in mid-air. Then the tendril whipped back, and the children screamed as they were plunged into darkness and rapidly pulled down the column’s entire length. Luke felt sick and closed his eyes tight, convinced they were about to be swallowed for real this time… but that didn’t happen.

  Suddenly he felt the bubble being dropped. It rolled across a bumpy surface, the three friends tumbling over each other like rag dolls in a washing machine. They came to rest at last, and Luke dared to open his eyes just in time to see the bubble begin to soften, then vanish with a soft PLOP! The three friends were left sprawled on the floor of a colossal chamber, its roof fifty metres above, its walls full of large, shadowy holes. The only light was an eerie green glow that came from some kind of alien moss growing in patches on the rock.

  But even in the poor light Luke could see they weren’t alone. The whole chamber was full of giant alien insects like the ones that had grabbed them on the Buzz Aldrin. They scuttled in and out of the holes and scurried across the floor of the chamber, all of them making strange clicking and buzzing noises.

  ‘Welcome to Bug Central,’ muttered Yasmin. ‘What a nightmare!’

  ‘Huh, you can say that again,’ whispered Luke, getting to his feet. ‘Well, what do we do now? Any suggestions, you guys?’

  ‘We should try to communicate, of course!’ said Yuri. ‘You know, tell them we’re peaceful explorers and we want to be their friends, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Yasmin. ‘I had a different kind of communication in mind. I’d like to find whoever’s in charge down here and give him such a hard time!’