Galactic Keegan Read online

  ‘Gerry,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Tell my lads I’ll never forget—’

  I never got the chance to finish that thought. Mere moments before it reached the spot upon which I was standing, I found myself hoisted painfully into the air. My arm was almost ripped from its socket, but then that was the least I could’ve expected had the space bear got to me first. I opened one eye and looked up – hanging from the mercifully sturdy bough above was Barrington12, one strong metal hand clasped firmly around the branch. Hanging from his other was Gerry and gripping Gerry’s other hand (painfully tightly, if her strained pink face was anything to go by) was Gillian, who had hooked her free arm around mine and plucked me from the ground. We now swung in the air, a human-robot daisy chain, tantalisingly out of reach of the space bear as it spat and hissed in fury below us, occasionally swiping one of its great paws at my feet – and coming perilously close, too.

  ‘Barrington12!’ Gillian groaned. ‘Pull us up!’

  With remarkably little effort on his part, Barrington12 clambered back up onto the widest expanse of the branch and pulled us all up as though removing the plug from a bath. We flopped onto the flat of the bough and clung on for dear life to steady ourselves. Once I’d got my breath back, and with the beast still mithering several feet below, circling the trunk of the tree purposefully, I flopped over onto my back and stared up at the whitening sky through the green expanse of leaves above.

  ‘I thought I was a dead man,’ I whispered.

  ‘You almost were!’ Gerry gasped, swinging his arm in his socket uncomfortably. ‘It was Gillian’s quick thinking that saved the day.’

  I looked over at her, sitting almost in Barrington12’s lap, her brow shining with sweat.

  ‘Thank you, Gillian,’ I said. ‘Man alive, I don’t know where you got muscles like that but I’m bloody glad you have.’

  ‘Two hours’ boxing in the training ground after you softies have gone home, five nights a week,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘We all need our hobbies.’

  I was quietly impressed – I didn’t even realise our training ground had a gym. Mind you, I’m not the most observant of people. I once phoned up 5 Live to give my views on the chaos in Italian football only to be told, eventually, that the discussion was about Syria, not Serie A.

  ‘You saved my life,’ I said, still not entirely sure how I was still drawing breath.

  ‘Don’t make me regret it,’ she replied, putting her head between her knees to gather herself.

  Once we felt like ourselves again, we realised our new predicament. We were out of the frying pan and into the fire – there was simply no way to climb down to ground level without the space bear gobbling us up. Gerry suggested we leap from tree to tree, but realising that the nearest outstretched branch was about twenty feet away soon put the skids on that idea.

  ‘There’s really no way,’ he said miserably. ‘We’re stuck.’

  ‘Until the creature leaves, I fear you’re right,’ Gillian agreed with a sigh. ‘Our best hope is that it gets bored and wanders off. I suggest we sit here and wait.’

  ‘Rodway can’t wait,’ I replied in a quiet voice. If the digestive habits of Winged Terrors had been estimated correctly, he had until first thing tomorrow morning before those flapping prats got peckish – and that was if we were being optimistic. There was every chance they’d get stuck in by nightfall.

  ‘We have no choice,’ Gillian said, and although she annoyed me by saying it, I knew that she was right.

  I looked down at the space bear below and its yellow eyes looked right back. That bugger was going nowhere.

  Five hours later, so it proved. The four of us were sitting cramped together, leaning against the thick tree with nowhere to go. It was like that scene in that film where the dinosaurs escape in that theme park and the man has to take refuge in a tree with the two kids – I forget what it was called. Notting Hill, I think. The infernal bear was now sitting back on its haunches, looking up at us with its black tongue lolling out like a hungry dog waiting for scraps from the dinner table. It had already completely decimated our small campsite and had ripped my guitar to pieces. This was a painful blow – it had been a birthday gift from Nick Knowles.

  Gerry was asleep, his head resting against Barrington12’s upper arm, using his sweater as a balled-up pillow. The robot was in low-power mode to save his remaining battery life. He’d had a full charge before we left so should’ve been fine to last the duration of our expedition, but it was best not to push our luck. If the sodding bear didn’t sling its hook soon, we’d never make it to the foot of Great Strombago by nightfall and Rodway would be doomed.

  ‘He’s dead to the world,’ Gillian observed in a tired voice, looking over at Gerry.

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded. ‘He never was cut out for life on the road. He used to hate travelling to away games – Spurs had to hire a lookalike for some of their matches because he couldn’t be bothered with the aggro of making the trip. And imagine how hard it is to find someone else with hair like that.’

  ‘Little wonder he’s nodded off; he was tossing and turning for much of the night. I think he was having night terrors at one point – I could hear him even from inside my tent.’

  ‘Yeah, he’ll do that,’ I said. Personally I hadn’t heard a thing from the comfort of my sleeping bag. I’d slept like a log – which is, coincidentally, what Gerry had ended up using as a pillow. There was quiet for a few moments. I munched one of the Toblerone triangles I’d been rationed – it was the only part of Gerry’s food that was usable. I was just grateful he’d had wits enough to lug his bag up into the tree with him before the bear attacked. His tins of soup, beans and spaghetti hoops were rendered mostly useless by him buying the cheaper old-style ones without a ring-pull lid, coupled with his failure to bring a tin-opener.

  Far off in the distance, I heard a faint screeching sound, the ghastly echoes floating through the trees.

  ‘Winged Terrors,’ Gillian muttered. ‘They’re stirring. Probably not the same group that took Rodway; those should be satiated for a little while longer.’

  ‘This planet really is a waste of time,’ I said impatiently. ‘We never had this kind of aggro on Earth. I used to gripe about stuff all the time back then, but now… Christ alive, I really miss it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Gillian said. ‘Every day.’

  ‘It’s the little things, mostly,’ I went on. ‘A quiet pint in a country pub. Pottering around in the garden and listening to 5 Live. Driving out to a National Trust property on a Sunday afternoon. Most of all, I miss watching the seasons change.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Gillian agreed sombrely. ‘I’m the same; I used to love seeing the leaves turn brown and fall and then return again in the spring.’

  ‘Oh – I was talking about football seasons, but yeah,’ I said. I looked over at her – she looked incredibly sad.

  ‘You’re not the spy, are you, Gillian?’ I asked hopefully. ‘You wouldn’t do something like that.’

  ‘Absolutely I wouldn’t,’ she agreed. ‘And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly disappointed that you’d assume I was.’

  I felt a little stung by that but said nothing.

  ‘But I don’t blame you really,’ she continued. ‘This traitor, whoever they are, has turned friends and family alike against one another. What better way to assess your enemies’ strengths and weaknesses than when they’re in complete disarray?’

  Something did still trouble me though, and I decided I had to ask.

  ‘Gillian… who are the people in the photos on your desk? When I’d decided that you were the spy, I assumed they were spooks created to support your make-believe backstory. But if you’re the real deal, then… who are they?’

  For a long time she said nothing and I almost began to wonder whether she’d heard a word I’d just said, very much like my England lads while I was giving my pre-match team talk.

  ‘They’re not fake,’ she said at last, in such a small voice that I h
ad to lean in a little to hear. She was staring straight down at her feet as she sat opposite me on the bough. ‘They’re my family.’

  I could already tell I’d put my foot right in it. I remembered with a wince how I’d sarcastically remarked that Gillian’s family would be so proud of her after Palangonia FC got the chop and the look on her face as the words left my lips had been like a punch in the gut.

  ‘It’s just that… I’ve never seen them around,’ I said delicately. ‘I know I mostly see you within the work environment but I’ve caught you out and about around the Compound from time to time and you’re always… very much alone.’

  ‘I am alone,’ she said. ‘Quite alone, much of the time.’

  ‘What happened to them?’ I asked. ‘I’d understand if you told me to keep my beak out.’

  ‘They never made it,’ she said, looking up at me for the first time. There was a faint sheen of tears around her eyes. ‘They never got out. It was just me.’

  I reflected on my doubts about the photographs on Gillian’s desk, of my assumption that they couldn’t have been her family. My thinking had clearly been affected by the disagreement we had been having at that time, by my frustrations with the closure of the football club. Perhaps a part of me didn’t want to accept that she was a survivor just like everyone else, that she, too, had lost people she loved. The L’zuhl invasion of Earth had claimed a catastrophic number of lives – around 80% of all humans were believed to have perished as their warships laid waste to the planet. It was only my having been the former manager of our national team that saw me given priority access to the evacuation shuttles, to be escorted by the Alliance into various pockets of deep space to rebuild and start again. On signing my contract with the FA in 1999, they’d made it clear in a number of clauses that I would be guaranteed preferential treatment in the event of any hostile encounter between mankind and an extra-terrestrial race and, to be fair to them, those guys were absolutely true to their word – the ones that weren’t incinerated in the first wave of attacks, that is. I’d been given the chance to begin again. As had Gillian – but at what cost?

  ‘We got separated early on,’ she said. ‘David and the girls, Jessica and Amelia – it’s painful even saying those names, but not doing so is somehow even worse.’

  I nodded but kept quiet. I never know what to say in these kinds of situations. I almost chipped in to empathise by saying I’d lost almost all of my Beach Boys vinyl records during the evacuation but I decided it probably wouldn’t help.

  ‘That’s why I took up the boxing. Silly, really. I guess I just… I needed somewhere to put all that energy. That anger, that pure rage. God, I miss them, every day I miss them. Now they’re gone and I’m still here. Trying to carry on living in a universe that seems to have a one-way ticket to oblivion.’

  ‘You can’t think like that, Gillian,’ I said. ‘They may be gone but at the end of the day, there’s still everything to play for and we have to fancy our chances against the L’zuhl.’

  I realised I’d slipped into football-speak cliché but that was instinct more than anything.

  ‘If this spy gets their way, it’ll all have been for nothing,’ she said, dabbing her eyes defiantly with the back of her hand. ‘The L’zuhl will find us and will raze the Compound to the ground. I may as well have died on Earth with my family.’

  ‘Then we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,’ I said firmly. ‘Once we have Rodway home and recovering, we’ll find that Keycard and the arsehole who nicked it. And they’ll rue the day they tried to sell out the human race. We survived the L’zuhl invasion, Gillian, we can bloody well survive this.’

  She smiled then – not a full beamer, but enough. It was enough.

  I sighed and looked down at the space bear; it snarled up at me as our eyes met.

  ‘No sign of this mangy old brute getting the hump and going home,’ I said in dismay. ‘As far as this rescue mission goes, our goose may well be cooked.’

  ‘Rodway’s will be, that’s for sure,’ Gillian added.

  ‘Even if… the worst has happened,’ I said. ‘This trip cannot have been in vain. We bring back whatever is left of that boy. He deserves a proper burial, not being left out here in the wilderness, forgotten about for all eternity. It’s not right.’

  ‘I agree, Kevin,’ Gillian said. ‘One way or another—’

  There was a piercing whistle from somewhere below us and I whirled back around and stared down. The space bear was no longer sitting there looking up at us. It couldn’t, even if it wanted to. It only had one eye. The other had been entirely obliterated by an enormous wooden spear which now protruded from its socket as the creature flailed wildly about in a mad panic.

  SLASABO-TIK

  ‘Who are they?’ Gerry asked in a hushed voice, now sitting bolt upright and awake, as we watched the startling scene play out far below us. We were looking down as though we were up in the posh boxes at the Royal Variety Performance (only without Darren Anderton having one too many bottles of Sunny Delight on the drive in and shouting across to the Queen that she was ‘a right sort’).

  The space bear was stumbling around half-blind and making a cacophonous racket, the thick green wooden spear wedged right into its skull. It swiped its enormous claws at thin air, as though suspecting its assailant had the power of invisibility. And, in a way, it would have been right – I didn’t even spot them until they slowly closed in around the ailing creature, by now limping heavily from the arrows sprayed across its legs and belly. The native tribespeople surrounded the bear and for just a moment, with its one good eye, it glanced up at the four of us with an almost pleading expression. I had to fight the urge to feel sorry for the damn thing. And then, with a final volley of spears and arrows, it was defeated, tumbling over with a gurgling growl and falling still.

  ‘Flipping heck,’ I whispered. They knew how to take care of themselves and no mistake. I hadn’t seen such a ruthless finish since Les Ferdinand in his prime. They barked at each other in guttural voices, speaking a language I didn’t understand (mainly because it wasn’t English or very, very basic German). They were grey-skinned and humanoid, with massive eyes and tiny antennae-like nubs poking out from just above each brow. They wore only a loincloth, or in some cases a kind of swimsuit-style fur. Their ears were FA Cup handles in proportion and their arms and legs were thin and puny in appearance, which belied just how expertly they had dispatched of the monstrous bear, which they were now in the stomach-churning process of skinning. The sound and smell of it all was completely nauseating.

  Gillian put her index finger to her lips and looked at me. I nodded warily. We’d outlasted the bear. Now we just needed to let these lads and lasses do their thing and then we could be on our way, back on the path to Great Strombago. I put my finger to my own lips in kind and looked at Gerry. He too nodded (eventually – it took him a solid thirty seconds to twig exactly the message I was trying to communicate to him) and he turned to Barrington12 and gave the same gesture.

  ‘DON’T WORRY, GERRY FRANCIS,’ he said in a voice that seemed to blare out even more loudly than usual in the stillness of the forest, ‘BARRINGTON12 CAN CONFIRM THAT THERE ARE NO CRUMBS ON YOUR LIPS, NOR ANY OTHER TRACES OF FOOD-RELATED DETRITUS.’

  ‘Shhh!’ implored Gillian, Gerry and I in unison.

  ‘I AM SORRY,’ Barrington12 said, looking crestfallen and confused. ‘I SOUGHT ONLY TO REASSURE YOU.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, son!’ I hissed angrily. Then I sighed. Barrington12 could undoubtedly be a bit of a liability but at the same time, I found myself feeling oddly affected in some intangible way. The idea that a supposedly emotionless machine would have any inclination to want to comfort others in a time of strife… it was behaviour which, for me, was only to be encouraged. The galaxy was a bleak enough place already; we surely had to take kindness and compassion wherever we could find it.

  There was a strangled cry from the ground below as one of the tribespeople turned and saw Gillian and me pe
eking over the edge of our little cubbyhole. The others whirled round and immediately drew back their bows, nocking arrows ready to fly. We ducked back quickly.

  ‘Stay here,’ I hissed to Gerry and Barrington12, who were far enough back to be out of sight from the ground. ‘I’ll handle this.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Gillian insisted.

  ‘There’s really no need,’ I replied.

  ‘Of course there is,’ she said. ‘No disrespect, Kevin, but you’ll almost certainly say the wrong thing and get us all killed.’

  It was a fair cop.

  Tentatively, I extended my arms out in front of me to show that I was not armed and wanted to negotiate a peaceful descent.

  ‘Look, no knives, no guns!’ I called down in a loud, slow voice. The one who’d spotted us shouted something again.

  ‘Didn’t catch that, son,’ I said, shrugging theatrically so they’d realise that I didn’t understand. ‘Hu-mans. From Earth. But we’re not the same ones who sit up on the machine-gun turrets and take pot shots at you lot, I promise you that.’

  ‘Probably best not to remind them of that,’ Gillian said in annoyance.

  ‘Down,’ I said, pointing from me and Gillian to the ground. ‘Coming down! Don’t hurt us. We are no threat.’

  One, who was a few inches taller than the others and whom I took to be the leader (I’d often hand the club captaincy to the tallest player, where possible), said something else, more quietly to his associates. They didn’t lower their bows or spears but they also didn’t loose anything sharp at us. So that was something.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, I inched down the tree, Gillian just above me. Fortunately the branch spacing was bang on and it was a relatively easy journey – sometimes you just have to give Mother Nature credit where it’s due; she designed that tree faultlessly, I really mean that.

  Once back on the ground – and desperately resisting the urge to put my jacket sleeve over my nose in an attempt to stifle the odious stench from the half-skinned space bear – I raised my arms above my head in the internationally recognised symbol for ‘I’m not armed, please don’t attack me’ and turned round to face them. They looked even uglier close up and I was dismayed to see that the leader’s meat and veg were poking out slightly from beneath his tiny loincloth. That was poor from him, frankly. There’s never any call for that. Gillian joined me – I could only hope she wouldn’t spot it too.