Out of This World Read online

  On the other side of the cockpit, a small screen crackled into life. General Kara appeared there, standing in front of the brown, smoky landscape of Braxis Prime as she had been before.

  “Citizens of the Nexus. I hope you have enjoyed this time of panic, contemplating your imminent destruction, wondering which planet will be the unfortunate subject of our great demonstration of power. Let me ease your minds now. The Mechanics are merciful masters, and they do not like to waste good resources. Therefore our target is the only planet in the Nexus so riddled with disease that even the Kernel does not want it. Witness now the destruction of Earth!”

  The broadcast changed to a split screen, with Kara on the left and a live feed of Earth on the right, taken from some distant satellite that the Earthers probably did not even know was there.

  Gradius glanced up at the timer counting down to zero. Twenty-three seconds left. The DESTINATION screen flicked back to show Earth as the Firehawk reset its thirty-second cycle. Gradius hunched over the keyboard, ready to type in the coordinates for Arcturus Prime again.

  He stopped. He looked over at Kara, smirking on the screen in anticipation of what was to come. And suddenly he was struck by a better idea.

  He entered a new set of coordinates. Ten seconds left. He sat back in his seat as the Firehawk hit the rift gate. Everything stretched …

  … and snapped back into place. Outside the viewscreen lay a landscape of brown pipes and rusted junk piles, covered by a poisonous haze. Factories sent plumes of flames into the air, and sludgy, toxic rivers oozed. Down there, a million tiny figures worked, half metal and half flesh, picking over the skin of the Kernel.

  Braxis Prime. The home of the Mechanics. The brain of the Mechanics.

  Five seconds left. On the screen, Kara’s smug expression faltered as alarms sounded in the background. The human side of her face fell as she looked up into the sky.

  “Oh,” she said faintly. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

  Gradius, his feet up on the console, gave her a little salute and smiled to himself. It was good to be a hero.

  Two seconds left.

  One.

  “In the wake of the shocking destruction of Braxis Prime, homeworld of the Mechanics, Allied Planet forces have invaded both Rakkan and the mysterious moon where the Firehawk came from. Initial reports say the Mechanics are confused and disorganized without the Kernel to guide them and are offering little resistance. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances that led to the fall of the Mechanics, and it is still unknown who sent the broadcast that alerted the governments of the Nexus to the whereabouts of the Mechanics’ secret base, but it is strongly rumored that this was the work of the elusive superspy Gradius Clench.”

  “I wonder who told them that?” said Jack, looking sideways at Mazzy.

  Mazzy whistled innocently.

  It was evening on Gallia, and the sun was setting over an ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. They sat in deck chairs with their backs to the Epsilon, relaxing on a clifftop on a tiny green island, listening to the cries of distant whales and the screech of circling birds. Boston struggled with a flint and tinder, trying to light the campfire, while Ilara watched with barely concealed amusement. Dunk was over by the cliff edge, lobbing boulders at birds.

  Mazzy took off her goggles, and the holographic news broadcast, which she had been projecting into the air, disappeared. “Well,” she said. “He did it.”

  “We did it,” said Jack.

  Mazzy nodded to herself. “Yeah. I suppose we did.”

  Jack watched her for a moment. She seemed far away. “You think you’ll ever go back to Rakkan?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it will ever be the same after what happened.” She shifted uneasily in her chair. “How about you? You miss your Guardians?”

  “Yeah,” said Jack sadly. “It’s funny, but … no matter how weird they were, and even though they weren’t my parents … they were my parents. Y’know?”

  “I miss my mom,” said Thomas, becoming doleful for a moment. Then he brightened. “Wait, no, I don’t.”

  “Really?”

  Thomas shrugged. “It’s just better out here.”

  Jack scratched his hair lazily, basking in the last of the day’s warmth. “You know, all this started because you brought me a birthday cake,” he told Thomas.

  “You seemed lonely,” Thomas said.

  “Wonder if the Ezy-Mart guy knew that cake they were selling you would set off a chain of events that would end up with us taking down an evil empire?”

  “Probably not,” said Thomas. “They would’ve charged more.”

  Jack smiled faintly at that. “We’re not those kids anymore,” he said.

  Thomas nodded. “I guess we’re not.”

  Boston cursed under his breath as he tried once again to strike sparks with a bandaged hand.

  “I’ve decided I’m quite pleased I chose to honor you with my company, Boston,” Ilara told him. “This has been an interesting time, all in all.”

  “I’m glad we could amuse you for a while, princess,” said Boston sarcastically. He threw down the flint, drew his blaster, and fired several times into the campfire until it burst into flames. “There,” he said, with his hands on his hips. He looked over at Jack and Thomas. “So what’s next for you two?”

  “Er …” Thomas said.

  “I mean, you’re not fugitives anymore. There’s the whole of the Nexus out there for you. What do you want to do? I can drop you anywhere.”

  Jack and Thomas looked at each other uncertainly. “Drop us?” Jack said.

  “Yeah. Like, take you home or something.”

  Jack was aware that everyone was watching him expectantly, awaiting his reply. “But we are home,” he said.

  Thomas grinned. So did Mazzy. Ilara raised an eyebrow at Boston.

  “Well,” said Boston. “As it happens, I do have space for a couple of gofers on the Epsilon. The pay is terrible and the company is worse, but thanks to Dunk we have awesome tea. You boys in?”

  “You bet!” Thomas cried. He looked at Jack. “Wait, are we in?”

  Jack smiled at Boston. “Yeah. We’re in.”

  “Does that mean they get to do all the grunt work from now on?” Dunk called from over near the cliff edge.

  “No, that’s still you,” Boston called back.

  Dunk muttered and threw another rock into the sea.

  “Now that that’s settled,” said Boston, brandishing a bunch of toasting forks, “who wants marshmallows?”

  They sat by the fire as the sun went down on an alien world, with the sticky-sweet taste of marshmallows in their mouths, and they talked about this and that and things to come. To Jack, who’d never known anything but tests and training and being uprooted over and over, it felt more right than anywhere he’d ever been. Here, with these people, was where he belonged. The thought of that warmed him more than the campfire ever could.

  “Hey,” said Mazzy. “You know there’s a lot of people out there who know your face. Not to mention that shady Hexagram bunch who cloned you in the first place. What are you going to say if they come looking for the new Gradius Clench?”

  Jack put his feet up on a spare deck chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head. “I’ll tell them they’re mistaken,” he said. “I’m not Gradius Clench. I’m Jack.” He grinned. “Jack from Earth.”

  Chris Wooding is the author of more than two dozen books, which have been translated into twenty languages, have won awards including the Nestlé Smarties Silver Award and the Bram Stoker Award, and have been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. He also writes for TV and film. Visit him at chriswooding.com.

  Copyright © 2020 by Chris Wooding

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, August 2020

  Jacket art © 2020 by Chris Danger

  Jacket design by Christopher Stengel

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-28935-0

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