Sophia McDougall - Mars Evacuees

I was, I suddenly realised, getting slightly hysterical.

‘Alice,’ said Mum, sounding completely in control again. ‘Slow down. Now, these Vshomu. Would they be anything to do with the swarm of small flying objects coming up behind you?’

‘What? YES!’ I screamed, absurdly looking over my shoulder as if I’d be able to see them.

Mum’s ship pounced straight over ours like a cat and I saw the flash of her torpedoes light up the windows. ‘Squadron!’ I heard her saying over the channel. ‘Concentrate all firepower on the small incoming creatures! Do not attack the Morror vessels. Repeat, do not attack the Morror vessels. ’

She always did understand things quickly. It had been so long; I’d forgotten that about her.

‘Mum, don’t let them touch you! They’ll eat right through your ship!’

I turned anxiously. Dr Muldoon was propping herself up on her elbows and groaning and Josephine was dabbing at a cut on her head with a Morror skirt. Carl and Noel were already pressed to the windows. I ran and joined them.

I could only see bits and pieces of the battle, but there was one ship that moved just beautifully – that was the only word for it – like a bird of prey sweeping through a flock of sparrows, and I was sure that was Mum’s.

I suddenly really wished I had a Flarehawk of my own. I felt sure I could have picked off a reasonable number of Vshomu given the chance; I was trained for this and it would have felt better than just sitting there waiting to see if Mum won or not. But I couldn’t have done a thing with the Morror ship, which seemed to be fairly broken anyway. And so was my arm, come to that.

Her ship was out of sight now. Some debris that might have been fragments of exploded Space Locust floated past the window. I ran back to the communicator. ‘Mum, Mum – are you all right?’

‘Well,’ said Mum’s voice, sounding slightly out of breath. ‘That was exciting.’

Swarasee- ee plucked the communicator from my head. ‘Good afternoon,’ they said, sounding for all the world like the kind of automated helpline my parents used to complain about back on Earth. ‘Am I right in thinking this is Captain Stephanie Dare?’

‘Who is this?’ asked my mum.

‘My name is Swarasee- ee. ’

‘What…? A Morror. You don’t… sound like a Morror.’

‘I have a special knack for languages.’

‘You know who I am.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Swarasee- ee , rather grimly. ‘We know who you are.’ And there was a pause in which the atmosphere of the ship seemed even more icy than it had done before, with both of them just listening to each other’s silence and to the memory of fifteen years of war. ‘Our ship is damaged,’ said Swarasee- ee finally. ‘I doubt we can reach Earth without help.’

‘We can tow you in,’ said Mum. ‘But I can see there’s a whole fleet behind you; I can’t be responsible for escorting that many down to Earth.’

‘What do you mean you can see them… ?’ began Swarasee- ee, sounding faintly scandalised, but then shook it off. ‘It is of no importance. I agree the other ships can wait in orbit until terms are agreed.’

‘Off we go, then,’ said Mum briskly. And there was an odd feeling as if something was squeezing the ship, and then we were moving again, faster and faster.

Earth came rushing to meet us.

I was warm. I’d more or less forgotten what that was like.

I also felt as if someone had placed a large piece of furniture, possibly a chest of drawers or a big desk, on top of my chest. I groaned.

‘Alice. How do you feel?’

‘Urgh.’ I lifted one arm and watched it drop back on to the blankets in disgust. ‘… Heavy. ’

Mum laughed. ‘Yes, shifting gravity that suddenly is a pain, isn’t it?’

‘Where are we?’

‘Earth.’

‘I know that , I mean which country?’

‘Oh. America. New York.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I said. ‘Can we see the Statue of Liberty? It is still there, isn’t it?’

The main thing I remembered from landing was being knocked flat by the gravity, and a lot of people gasping at their first sight of visible Morrors. Then we’d been scooped into ambulances and whizzed off to hospital. Someone had put a cast on my arm, although by that time I’d had trouble keeping my eyes open, and after that I couldn’t remember a thing, except it had clearly involved going to bed.

‘It’s still there.’

I looked at Mum properly. She looked smaller and more ordinary than I remembered. I’d been finding it harder and harder to picture anything when I thought of her except that bloody poster.

‘Alice, you’ve had such a terrible time, and I nearly killed you.’

‘I’ve been being nearly killed all week,’ I said grandly. ‘Doesn’t bother me that much now.’

‘That is not a reassuring thing to say to your mother ,’ Mum said, and crawled half on to the bed so as to hug me.

A very tiny, spiteful part of me thought it was only fair if she had to do some worrying now; I’d been doing it long enough. But mainly it was just wonderful to curl up against her and not have to pretend I wasn’t bothered about where she was or what she might be doing, because she was there and alive and not going anywhere for a bit, hopefully. And her arms were warm and her hair smelled of the coconut shampoo she always used, which I’d completely forgotten about but now I remembered.

‘It wasn’t all terrible,’ I said. ‘And I’m not dead. And I’m glad I got the chance to watch you fight. I mean, I can’t say I enjoyed it at the time , but still, you really are amazing at it.’

Mum sniffed a little. ‘You’ve done these incredible things.’

‘Oh, those,’ I said, trying to sit up. ‘What’s going on? Is the war over?’

‘Not quite, but—’

‘Why not ?!’ I burst out, indignant.

‘It takes a long time to finish a war.’

‘I don’t see why . Everyone just has to stop fighting each other and start fighting the Vshomu. It’s not complicated.’

‘It is complicated,’ said Mum. ‘There’s the status of the territory the Morrors have occupied, the climate, the invisibility shield… a lot of loose ends. But there’s a ceasefire. The EEC president’s flown in; and there’s a Morror delegation in the UN now.’

‘So…’ I felt better for hearing the word ‘ceasefire’. ‘Do you think it will be OK?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Mum. ‘At least, as OK as it can be when the solar system’s infested with planet-eating bugs. It’ll have to be OK. There’s no real choice, for humans or Morrors.’

‘No, that’s exactly it,’ I said. And I flopped back on to the pillows, but the wave of tiredness eased off sooner than I expected.

‘I don’t need to be in hospital,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing particularly wrong with me.’

‘You’ve got burns, cuts, a broken arm, hypothermia, gravitational readjustment syndrome and dehydration.’

‘Like I say,’ I said, waving a hand and feeling I could milk this grizzled old veteran act for a while yet: ‘ Nothing. ’ And this time I did succeed in making Mum laugh. ‘So, what about everyone else? The kids from Beagle…’

‘They’ve only just landed. Some of them will probably be turning up here later. Things got pretty bad out there, from what I hear…’

‘But…?’

‘But no fatalities, no.’

‘Oh.’ I’d known the news wouldn’t be any better than that, really, but it still wasn’t good. I thought about Kayleigh and Chinenye and everyone else, and how I had no real idea what they’d been through. And even though I knew I couldn’t have done anything useful, I started to feel bad about leaving them. I never even said goodbye.