Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

‘How long do you think before they get here?’ I asked.

‘The horizon’s only a mile and a half away,’ Josephine whispered. ‘All that’s slowing them is what they’re eating… Maybe ten minutes, if we’re lucky.’

‘Right,’ I said. And for what seemed like far too long in the circumstances, we all stayed put in a heap on the ground.

‘We need weapons,’ said Carl. ‘At least this is a good place to look for them.’

‘OK,’ I said, getting up. ‘Three minutes. We’ll look for anything that might hurt them or anywhere we can hide. Meet back at the dome.’ And we ran.

There had to be an armoury around somewhere, but after the first panicky minute I didn’t think I was going to find it. I decided I’d focus on looking for shelter, so I ran from the barracks towards the back of the base because maybe there’d be fortifications built into the mountainside itself. Sure enough, I found a trench leading to a heavy door set into a huge slab of grey concrete amid the red Martian stone. On the other side of the door, there was a tunnel and stairs leading up into the mountain, and for a wild moment I thought maybe I’d find a whole underground base, with all the soldiers missing from the surface who would know exactly what to do about the Space Locusts. But I only found a little control room looking out over Tharsis, and empty rooms behind with a poured-concrete floor extending into natural caves.

I glanced at the bank of controls beneath a band of windows of thick glass. It did not strike me as a moment for being sensible about not pressing strange buttons, so I did some brief experiments and found I’d fired some sort of energy cannon. The blast went off westwards in the general direction of the Space Locust swarm, though I’d be surprised if I’d hit any part of it. Still, it was a satisfying thing to have found.

I must be already out of time. I ran back down to the heart of the base, yelling, ‘I’ve found somewhere to hide!’

‘I assume you were responsible for the fireworks,’ Josephine’s voice rang back to me.

‘Yes, but I hope someone’s got something more portable.’

Carl, thankfully, had come back with armfuls of energy guns. Noel, on the other hand, was just pitifully dragging the Goldfish along the ground by its tail, and Josephine didn’t seem to have found anything except a couple of canisters of some kind of liquid. She was crouched over her oxygen tank, doing something to it.

‘What are you up to?’ I asked.

Josephine looked up. ‘Making some adjustments,’ she said. She’d taken the mask off the oxygen hose, which she now pointed into the air. She released a glorious spray of red fire, arching a good twenty feet, and laughed. And as laughs go it sounded pretty crazy, but it was so good to hear.

‘Nice,’ I said.

‘Maybe it’ll keep them off.’ She shouldered the improvised flame-thrower.

Around us, the first few Space Locusts smashed into Zond Station ahead of the swarm: ploughing through the soil; into the farm dome; churning up the algae pools.

‘RUN,’ shouted Carl, tossing me an energy gun.

‘We can’t just leave the Goldfish,’ whimpered Noel.

I looked down at it. Maybe it wasn’t exactly rational; taking it with us would have to slow us down a little, but I thought it deserved better than being left to be eaten by Space Locusts too. ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘We can’t.’

We could hardly hear each other by now; the sky was growing darker and darker, and the buzzing was a booming roar that seemed to come from everywhere. Streams of dust coursed across Zond and we could feel a strange wind on our skin.

Carl and I carried the Goldfish – it wasn’t heavy, just bulky and awkward with no good handholds. Behind us Josephine ignited pretty much everything even vaguely flammable, leaving walls of fire between us and the oncoming Space Locusts. It did make me feel a little less defenceless, but it also made me think: Even if they don’t get us, even if they pass on and we’re not eaten – what’s going to be left of Zond Station? Where will we look for food and oxygen and shelter next?

There really isn’t any more hope. Even though everyone’s being so brave and brilliant, there just isn’t.

But I couldn’t stop what I was doing now, for everyone else’s sakes, and they couldn’t stop, for each others’ and mine. We just couldn’t. And I thought stupidly, Well, you never know, maybe something good will still happen.

So we kept on trying to do the impossible.

We slammed the door to the tunnels behind us and ran gasping up the steps. We weren’t doing that brilliantly for oxygen now – we shared a few puffs from Carl’s tank and left Noel and the Goldfish towards the back of the cave. You could barely see out for the clouds of dust and the boiling mass of the swarm itself. Carl bagsied the big gun and fired off an energy blast into that oncoming wall of darkness and made a sizeable hole in it.

We cheered. But the gap closed up again at once, and then the Space Locusts truly fell upon Zond Station, and were devouring it within seconds.

Had they seen us? Could they smell us? Had those first few at the Jeromiana Waterlands somehow passed on a curiosity for the taste of humans? I don’t know. But it felt as if the Space Locusts were as desperate to get to us as we were to get away from them. Even with all that Carl could throw at them, there were just so many coming in from everywhere and there wasn’t any barrier thick enough to keep them out.

A little hole opened at the edge of the window, glass dust spilling down the bank of controls. A single Space Locust’s head squeezed through, then more, gnawing and worrying at the gap so that it spread and spread. ‘Get away from there, Carl,’ Josephine screamed. He scrambled back and Josephine jumped forwards, and swept flame across the opening. The effect wasn’t instantaneous; a few of the Space Locusts simply swooped through the fire into the chamber, but some of the ones behind weren’t so fast or lucky and they blackened and dropped to the ground like lumps of coal.

But there was a handful of the creatures inside with us now. I had a vague memory of promising Miss Clatworthy, I’ll try to kill lots of aliens, and aimed and fired and aimed and fired again, while Josephine kept hosing fire on to the widening hole in the wall like a firefighter in reverse. But step by step, the Space Locusts forced her back as more of them wormed through. One of them took a slice out of my scalp before Carl shot it, and I met Josephine’s eyes for a fraction of a second and felt sure we were thinking the same thing: We’re not going to last much longer.

Then there was the sound of an explosion. Possibly more than one – with all the noise and fire, I think I might actually have missed the first one.

‘What is that?’ I said, to no one in particular.

A torpedo burst against the control centre. Dead Space Locusts and debris showered inwards. We were all knocked off our feet. If the Space Locusts hadn’t already forced us so far back from the window, we’d have been killed.

‘ Huuuuumans !’ wailed an unearthly voice.

‘It’s Thsaaa !’ screamed Noel, jumping to his feet.

The windows had been blasted in completely, leaving a ragged hole behind. Outside, a shape bobbed against the daylight in a cloud of dust.

‘Are you all aliiiiive ?’ keened Th saaa into the ruins.

We rushed for the gap in the wall. The Flying Fox was hovering outside, the hatch open, Th saaa ’s tentacles waving from within and changing colour madly.

The silhouette of the Flying Fox abruptly lurched away. ‘I cannot fly this ship very well!’ Th saaa ’s voice called, from somewhere below.