Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

Indeed, the Flying Fox was wobbling about so badly Colonel Cleaver would have given Th saaa a detention on the spot.

‘Th saaa, you bastard!’ Carl bawled. He scrambled over the rubble up to the hole and, without ceremony, jumped out. It would have been terrifying if I hadn’t already burned through my entire capacity for feeling normally scared and was now getting by on some wild fiery feeling instead. But Carl landed with a clunk on the Flying Fox’s roof and the Flying Fox wobbled even more worryingly as he climbed around the hatch to slide inside.

Almost at once the ship steadied as Carl took over the controls. Then it was hovering beside the gap with Th saaa standing in the doorway, tentacles reaching for us.

‘I am sorry,’ they said immediately.

We didn’t have time to accept apologies. ‘Alice! Down!’ Josephine yelled, and loosed a burst of fire over my head as I ducked. A cooked Space Locust dropped to the ground beside me.

‘Get in the ship!’ cried Th saaa , though it was easier said than done. Space Locusts that must have been stunned by the explosion were waking up and wriggling into the air.

‘The Goldfish…!’ Noel insisted.

‘Grab it! Throw it to Th saaa !’ I ordered. Noel dragged the Goldfish up to the hole and more dropped than threw it, but Th saaa ’s tentacles were deft and strong and the Goldfish was flipped inside. ‘Now you,’ I panted to Noel, and he jumped while Josephine and I stood back-to-back, me trying to zap any new Space Locusts that came in from outside and Josephine toasting anything that moved in the shadows.

‘Go on. Get out!’ Josephine screamed, painting fire around the room. I hesitated. ‘Go on, I’ve got to be last, I can’t jump carrying this and we need the cover. ’

I gritted my teeth and jumped for the ship. I felt Th saaa ’s tentacles lock around my arm and waist in mid-air. Then I was inside the Flying Fox yelling for Josephine, who stood right on the edge and set off one last massive torrent of fire. Then she let the flamethrower fall from her shoulder and leaped.

Th saaa caught her, flung her back into the ship beside me and slammed the door shut.

‘Kuya, go!’ Noel cried, and Carl yanked viciously on the controls, climbing so steeply that the g-force put paid to my efforts to sit up. We hurtled north around the curve of Olympus, out of the grip of the swarm. I thought about trying to get up on to one of the seats, but on the whole I decided it was too much of a bother when I could curl up on the nice comfortable floor and have a cry. Josephine, sprawled beside me, had chosen the blank staring approach for the time being.

Th saaa was standing over us in various sombre shades of navy and teal.

‘I am sorry,’ they said again, softly and formally. They patted us awkwardly with their tentacles. ‘Are you badly hurt?’

‘Still conscious,’ croaked Josephine beside me. ‘That’s a good sign.’

I couldn’t even answer at first, as I needed to think about it. I hadn’t noticed it in all the excitement, but now my left arm wanted me to know that it hurt, not horribly but in a way that felt significant. I thought I might have broken it when the explosion knocked me over. Still, I did have a left arm, and a right arm come to that, so I knew I should count myself lucky. Staggeringly lucky, in fact.

‘Th saaa ! You killed our Goldfish!’ Noel howled, before I could offer a summary of any of this.

‘I deactivated your Goldfish. Surely it can be mended,’ said Th saaa.

‘But you just ran off ,’ said Noel, who had taken it all very hard.

‘I wanted to get back to my people !’ cried Th saaa. ‘I did not want to be a prisoner or an experiment!’

‘Fair go, Noel, they came back,’ said Carl shakily from the helm.

‘And I would have sent my people to find you – I did not mean to leave you there forever. I would never, never have left you to them . When I saw their swarm in the sky… and I knew you would feel just as I would… I had to return for you.’ Th saaa ’s tentacles waved fretfully in the air and then covered their face. ‘ Ohhhhhhh , if you had not fired that cannon I might never have found you.’

I managed to get up and into a seat, hugging my arm against my chest. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Th saaa ,’ said Josephine, lifting her head from the floor. ‘You recognised the Space Locusts.’

‘“Space Locusts”?’ echoed Th saaa curiously, like they didn’t understand the word ‘locust’. But it didn’t matter. ‘I have never seen them, only heard the stories. But yes, I know them. No Morror could make a mistake.

‘They are the Vshomu.’

‘The Vshomu drift through space,’ said Th saaa . ‘They feed on whatever they find, the organic compounds in the rocks and dust, the ice of comets. But when they come to a world full of life, they feast , and their numbers…’ They made an expressive movement with their tentacles.

‘…explode,’ supplied Josephine.

‘Yes. Explode. They never stop feeding until there is nothing left. Then many of them starve, their numbers decline again, very fast, and the survivors drift on. Their sight is very keen. They are the reason we learned to make ourselves invisible. But all we learned of them – all we know, came too late to save our world. They stripped it to the core, which cooled and died and fell away from our sun. For so many years all we could do was run from them.’

‘Yeah, and you led them to us!’ said Carl.

‘It’s not their fault,’ said Noel, who was mollified by now.

‘I don’t know. The Vshomu have devoured so many worlds across the galaxies,’ said Th saaa .

‘They’ll eat Mars,’ I said.

‘At that rate, they’ll eat the solar system ,’ said Josephine.

‘We must tell my people,’ said Th saaa.

‘We have to tell everyone ,’ I said.

‘OK,’ said Carl. ‘So everyone’s had a chance to freak out back there except me. Does anyone know where the hell we’re even going?’

‘The Morror base,’ said Josephine. ‘They must have one on this planet. Don’t they, Th saaa ?’

There was a pause while we all tried to get used to the idea of running into a horde of hostile Morrors on purpose.

‘Is there a map on this ship?’ asked Th saaa .

‘Sure,’ said Carl, calling one up in the corner of the viewport. Th saaa gazed at it thoughtfully, then reached out with one tentacle and pointed to a place on the screen.

‘I think,’ they whispered, ‘we should be searching there.’

I’d stopped crying by now, so I lurched over to the helm and said, ‘I’ll fly if you want,’ so that Carl could have a fair turn at freaking out.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Josephine, scrambling off the floor. ‘You can’t pilot with one hand . I’ll do it.’

‘…Er,’ Carl and I said simultaneously, remembering the wreckage of the obstacle course back at Beagle and all that exploding.

Josephine seemed unworried, though. ‘I’ve at least had more relevant training than Th saaa has. It’s not really that hard.’

It was true, actually; seeing as we weren’t currently taking off or landing or shooting invading ships or dodging Vshomu, piloting wouldn’t be much more complicated than just telling the computer where to take us. She nudged me out of the way and took over at the controls and we carried on flying and did not blow up. Josephine gave a very small smile.