Destination Alpha Four - Chapter 1

1 - All Tyrannosauruses Can’t Clap Normally

"Iss not the same without Ant and Cleo", complained Porsh, staring distrustfully at her micro-espresso as if it might make her overweight just by existing in close proximity. "They provoided the firm leadership our group needs, loike."
"Porsche Red Chardonnay Essence de Femme Catchpole", said Harjit, "are you suggesting there is something wrong with my firm leadership?"
Porsh turned paler than steamed milk. "Oh, no, Arjit. Your leadership's foine."
"Firm but fair, loike", agreed Armand.
"You're loike, you know, Stalin arfter Lenin", said Cubic Zirc.
"Or Jenny Frost out of Atomic Kitten arfter Kerry Katona out of Atomic Kitten weren't in Atomic Kitten no more", said Porsh.
"Are you suggesting" said Harjit suspiciously, "that I would send millions of my own people to their deaths in a freezing Siberian wasteland?"
"If that's what Jenny Frost out of Atomic Kitten done", said Zirc loyally.
This early on a Saturday morning, the Caffè Hyperactivo was almost empty - nothing but sour-faced market traders buying lattes to fuel themselves up for a hard day's shouting, and depressed-looking people who had so little to do on a Friday night that they got up extra early on Saturday morning.
Harjit banged her lump of Nazi spaceship wreckage hard on the tabletop.
"Okay, okay, I call this meeting of the Ground Crew to order. Mr. Jeffries, please activate the anti-snooping device."
Solemnly, Armand produced a heavy object the size of a paperweight, topped by a toy Dutch windmill bearing the words A PRESENT FROM HOLLAND. Armand flicked a switch at the base of the windmill. The windmill sails began to whirl. In all the room’s speakers, the sound of the Caffè Hyperactivo radio DJ - Mellow Rich Roasted Sound Brought To You By MC Barney Flange, Your Morning Pick-Me-Up - was blissfully transformed into static. The mystified baristas began fiddling with the machine; the Ground Crew, watched them smugly. The Ground Crew had formerly been known as Team Salami. Their core membership consisted of Porsh, Cubic Zirc, Harjit, Harjit’s sisters Sukhbir and Narinder, and Armand.
Harjit's eyes searched the room. "Okay - cockpit drill. No suspiciously inoffensive little old ladies whose hearing is better than they let on, CHECK. No large cars parked outside aiming gun microphones in through the windows, CHECK." She peered out and upwards through the window looking out on the street. "No suspicious spacecraft hovering over the building, CHECK."
"This is well excitin Arjit", said Cubic Zirconia, sitting in front of a massive Super Mostrissimo Chocogodzillatte loaded with squirty cream and marshmallow. "Iss loike Mission Impossible. We'll be loike flying the wrong way down the Channel Tunnel in a Nelicopter an pretendin to be ourselves pretendin to be sumwun pretendin to be us an stuff."
Harjit cast a menacing glare at Zirc and said: "Right. Agenda item one." She squinted painfully at the translucent paper she was holding. "Sukh, I can hardly read this."
"I wrote it on rice paper with cochineal dye", said Sukhbir. "So you could eat it after we'd finished the meeting."
Harjit grimaced at the paper. "Isn't cochineal made from beetles?"
"Lots and lots of tiny squashed red beetles, yes, Harjit."
"I'm not being party to multiple beetle murder. I'll burn it if it's all the same to you."
"But you eat lamb korma."
"That's different. Lamb korma tastes nice, and I'm prepared to bet lots and lots of tiny squashed beetles don't. I am not Cleopatra. I am in favour of saving fluffy animals if and only if they do not taste nice with pilau rice." Harjit cast her eyes down to the paper again. "Agenda item one. Espionage. I say we go after the biggest target of all. The Shadow Ministry. Ant and Cleo told us where the Ministry is through the Mail Drop yesterday."
Armand nodded; Cubic Zirc blanched; this now left her several shades whiter than steamed milk.
"Ent that dangerous, Arjit?" she said.
"Gondolin needs all the information we can give it. All the decisions on what British ships and soldiers do in space get taken in the Shadow Ministry. If we can get in there and plant a discreet listening device", said Harjit, "we will know their every move."
"Ave we got a discreet listenin devoice, then, Arjit?" said Cubic Zirc.
"We have", said Harjit, and put the listening device down on the table.
The Ground Crew stared at it.
"Issa a noice colour", said Zirc.
"It's Anemone Magenta", said Porsh. "An it's the C model wiv specially long battery loife. Peaches Geldof's got wun."
"So the plan is", said Zirc carefully, "for us to get in to the Shadow Ministry, an -"
"- duct tape it underneath a desk", finished Harjit triumphantly. "With a call open to my own mobile phone. It'll be a good few hours before the battery runs down."
"What if they dun't say nothin important in them few hours?" said Porsh.
"Then I'm afraid Armand will have risked his life for nothing."
Armand looked at Harjit in alarm.
“Come again, Arjit?” he said.
***
“Okay, Mr. Stevens. When you’re ready, I would like you to leave the boat dock under power.”
The voice sounded tinny in Ant’s headphones. He suspected he could have bought better headphones at Dixon’s in Northampton high street; they were huge and hemispherical, and stuck out of both sides of his flight helmet like the bells of an alarm clock.
The palms of his hands were sweating. His heart was thumping like a thrash metal solo. He actually felt physically sick.
Which control released the docking clamps? He’d been over this sequence a thousand times in his head. He knew which page of the badly-photocopied manual it was printed on. He knew there was a grey smudge down the left hand side of the paper where he’d left his thumb under the copier top.
That control there. What was the memory jogger Captain Farthing had taught him? Just remember the names of the first five Roman Emperors, Anthony. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero. A for All Lights Green, T for Turbine Quiet, C for Canopy Airtight, N for Nitro Thrusters –
No, wait. Wasn’t it Augustus, Caligula, Tiberius, then Nero?
Don’t they teach you history at all on Earth, Anthony? ‘First in Rome to be imperious, was Augustus, then Tiberius. Next, Caligula of course – made a consul of his horse –‘
“Any time you’re ready, Mr. Stevens.”
Ant held his flight helmet in actual physical pain. What was the other rhyme? The one Richard Turpin had taught him? All Tyrannosauruses Can’t Clap Normally.
He’d stared back at Turpin open-mouthed.
Because of their tiny little arms, Turpin had explained.
Which meant the correct sequence was –
All cockpit safety indicators green – check. The Forellen turbine wasn’t activated – he’d have known if it had been, from the faint feeling of his brains being gently sucked out through the back of his skull. The canopy was airtight – the miniature anemometer mounted on the console wasn’t turning.
He reached down with his left hand and unhooked the restraint clamps, and cold fear flooded the pit of his stomach as the ship drifted gently away from its mooring. Within mere seconds, he was whole millimetres away from the deck, rising gently above the rows of parked training ships.
Don’t throw the turbine switch inside the carrier – don’t throw the turbine switch inside the carrier – don’t throw –
He threw back the shield on the nitro control, and gave a brief puff on the thrusters, settling the ship in the air. Then, with more caution than a man defusing a bomb, he turned it round delicately till its prow was pointing towards the open doors of the boat dock, wide enough, he kept telling himself, to drive four trucks down abreast. Down below him on the hangar floor, he could see the spacesuited figure of the Flight Examiner, standing anchored to the deck by magnetic boots, a clipboard and pencil in his gloved hands.
The examiner stepped over the groove through which the massive lithium steel door of the boat dock travelled. He made a note on his clipboard. “And into the boat dock...”
Gritting his teeth, Ant pushed the nitro control forward; the ship drifted forwards until it was swallowed by the massive steel box of the boat dock, an airlock large enough to swallow a corvette. The green WAIT light came on on the wall, indicating that his ship was fully inside the boat dock; he cancelled the forward motion and could hear the airlock doors rumbling down behind him, separating the dock from the hangar. At the same time, he heard the hiss of pumps removing all the air from the dock, equalizing the pressure between it and what lay outside.
The wait was unbearable. He could not let himself relax, though at the same time, there was nothing to occupy his time. He was acutely aware of the Examiner still standing, anchored by his magnetic boots, to the boat dock floor below him. Eventually, the doors at the far end of the dock unclamped and rolled open over a letterbox of stars in the carrier’s hull that was the way out to outer space.
“Bravo, Mr. Stevens. Any time today, if you’d like to leave the ship?”
Ant nudged the nitro stick again. The letterbox grew in size, taking in further constellations; the steel maw of the hangar doorway glided over him leaving all the protruding parts of his ship untouched, and he was out in space. Stars thousands of times brighter than any in a night sky on Earth beamed fiercely out of a ribbon of brilliance that circled the dark bulk of the carrier. Ant had never seen the Milky Way with his own eyes on Earth. Out here, between the stars, it was bright enough to read by.
He’d done it. A successful manual in-flight launch. He had his first set of wings. Confidence rising in his voice, he licked his lips and said: “Uh, sir? Permission to engage Forellen turbine in free space, sir?” His hand hovered over the button he had so far never been allowed to press; the button that could punch his ship out into the dark at a thousand miles a second.
“I’m afraid not, Stevens. You didn’t use the atomic clock in the cockpit to check whether the turbine was engaged before performing dock egress.”
His blood ran cold. “But Lieutenant Turpin never uses the atomic clock in the cockpit -” he started.
“Lieutenant Turpin is a reckless flier and a jackass”, said the Flight Examiner. “Bring the ship back in to the dock if you feel up to it; I will re-park it personally. You may try for your basic low speed manoeuvring certificate in another month’s time, if your instructors recommend it.”
Furious, Ant span the ship round its vertical axis in under a second, shunted it back in to the boat dock, waited until the green light flickered, and slammed it down on the deck in a flurry of frozen nitrogen crystals. The landing gear’s shock absorbers protested as the ship’s own magnetic feet clanged onto the metal.
“I think pique of that sort is a clear indication of why you still haven’t passed your basic, Mr. Stevens. You just played fast and loose with over a million crusz worth of US Zee property. I’m going to recommend two months more of training. I will see you back inside the ship. Your classmates, I'm pleased to say, don't exhibit nearly as much joie de vivre. Cadet Shakespeare, cadet von Spitzenburg, and cadet Ilyushina have all passed Basic. You, however, Mr. Stevens, present me with a problem. You have spirit, Mr. Stevens. You have élan. And whilst many people think spirit is a good thing, I do not. Out here, spirit can get a man killed. Spirit can make you turn on your C+ system while you are still inside a carrier and blast your way out of her leaving a hole a freighter could be parked in. Spirit can make you jet your way round a landing bay as if your highly expensive interstellar vessel were a dodgem car. Logic, Mr. Stevens. Logic is the key. Leave your spirit behind on planet Earth."
The letterbox out to space had closed. Amber lights were flashing on the walls, indicating repressurisation. Water vapour was condensing into freezing fog in the air gushing back into the boat dock. Within minutes, it would be safe to walk around inside the dock with his helmet open, and regulations insisted he remain in the cockpit and wait for this to happen before leaving. He popped the top off the cockpit canopy regardless, swung his legs out into space, and let himself fall featherlight to the deck under the slight false gravity of the Levi Morgan's thrust. His own magnetic boots clamped onto the metal, making the impact hurt more than he had expected it to. Lifting each foot with difficulty, he stomped off in the direction of the tiny maintenance door in one corner of the boat dock, his boots making a sound like a blacksmith hammering iron
.***
"Cheer up Ant, it's only a first test. We were all just lucky enough to pass it." Cleo put her hand on top of Ant’s reassuringly.
"I was not lucky", said Vladlena in between mouthfuls of New Salem Processed Beef Surprise. "I follow yinstructions. I pass tyest. Yis easy."
"Stow it, Vladlena", said Glenn Bob Linklater, sitting in the middle of them all, already wearing two sets of wings on his uniform lapels, having been a cadet two years longer. "You ain't helpin none there.” Truman J. Slughound, sitting on a nearby metal stool catching tiddlywinks being flicked onto his radula by Glenn Bob, went a pale crimson and popped out several extra eyes to look sternly at Vladlena.
"He will pyass tyest when ready to pyass tyest", grumbled Vladlena.
"He did pass the test!" said Cleo, throwing her arms round Ant defensively. "Flight Examiner Pargiter is King Poo of the Poo People. Everyone knows when the Forellen Turbine is running on a ship. You can feel it."
"Some folk kin, some folk kint", cautioned Glenn Bob. "It's like bein able to hear when an old TV set's turned on. That's the reason checkin the atomic clock's in the manual."
"Don't worry, Kamerad", said Jochen von Spitzenburg, clapping a hand on Ant's other shoulder. "We will be flying wing to wing soon enough."
Ant tried to smile, and failed miserably. "But that means that when you lot get to go out on gunnery training and hyperspace navigation, I won't be with you. I'm still going to be crawling across the hangar at ten kilometres an hour."
The canteen on the Levi Morgan was huge, much larger than the tiny communal eating area of the civilian Gondolin settlement. Gigantic USZ zodiac wheels dominated all the walls. The USZ - the United States of the Zodiac - were thirteen colonies in space that had been secretly established by the United States and United Kingdom over forty years earlier. Now they had declared independence, and their mother countries were prepared to go to war to get them back.
Ant’s fellow cadets were a mixed bunch. Vladlena, a Russian from the destroyed Soviet colony at Krasnaya Zvezda, now lived on the USZ world of Novaya Alyaska, populated by Russian exiles. Glenn Bob, an American from the USA’s colony at New Dixie, now lived on another USZ world, Gondolin. Both cadets had lost parents to a mysterious parasitic life form that had attacked both their original homeworlds, and spent a great deal of time together as a consequence, pretending they loathed each other. Ant, who considered himself a good judge of human nature, was pretty sure where that was going to end up. Ant, Tamora, Jochen and Cleo were from Earth, but had all been forced to leave after Earth had become too dangerous for them. They were all on Wanted lists circulated by Alastair Drague’s Special Operations Section of the British Shadow Ministry. Ant, Cleo and Tamora were from Britain, Jochen from Germany, and all four now also lived on Gondolin. Charity, meanwhile, had been born on Gondolin, and was a year older than the rest of the cadets. She should, in theory, have had friends of her own age on Gondolin, but for some reason, no Gondoliers seemed to want to mix with her. This might have had something to do with the fact that she had spent the last eight years on another world, with her mind infected by the same alien mind parasite that had attacked Krasnaya Three and New Dixie. Despite already being able to pilot and navigate spacecraft, she was having to sit all her USZ pilot’s exams, and was currently in the same class as Glenn Bob.
At one end of the room, technicians were putting up a metal plaque with a short list of names; the USZ dead from the recent Battle of Gondolin, fought between Britain and the USZ. The USZ president, Elizabeth Ortega, had, Ant knew, wanted a rather smaller plaque with the names picked out massively in gold letters big enough to read with a telescope from passing spacecraft. Admiral Drummond had insisted on a larger one with a tiny list of names inscribed in its top left hand corner. "With lots of space for the future", he had said pointedly. The message was clear. If we continue with this war, we will fill up that plaque and many more like it. Make peace now.
"The Yankees hit another merchant convoy yesterday", said Glenn Bob. "Frozen dessert shipment outa Laputa. When the patrol ships caught up, there was naught but raspberry ripple spread out over a million miles."
"In space", Ant said, "no-one can hear ice cream."
Glenn Bob looked at Ant oddly.
"That there Aurora's death with stars and stripes sprayed on", he continued. "The Yankees' new front line space fighter.”
“Yankees?” said Charity. “You’re an American, Glenn Bob.”
“I”, said Glenn Bob haughtily, “am a Dixielander and a citizen of the US Zee. As such, I am twice as entitled to call a Yankee a Yankee as you are, missy. Anyhoo, there was three Cicero-class escort corvettes runnin with that convoy. All three was found shot so fulla holes Jesus Christ coulda used em to fish fer men. The skippers of our escort carriers are frit to death of the Aurora, on account of how it don’t show up on radar, so respondin to a distress call is like walkin inta a dark room fulla hostile megafauna. They say there's a Yankee carrier out there, a big long range one, Richard M. Nixon class - some say it's the Tricky Dick herself. She's just pickin off our merchantmen like it was open merchantman season in a big ole barrel plumb full of merchantmen."
"Our own latest fighter will even things out", said Jochen. "Special Prototype X-1, the Rat - it is invisible to radar, just like the Aurora, and it is just as fast. And the Rat can go to lightspeed without having to hitch a lift on a carrier. The Aurora cannot."
"But we only got us an experimental flight of five", said Glenn Bob. "An they're real expensive to build, an slippery as a greased Yankee to fly. An the Aurora's got itself an onboard missile system there that responds instantly to the pilot's every thought. They tested it over a small town in the Mid West of America, an the pilot wuz flyin over his home town and happened to think about his granmaw's love. Cleanup crew only ever found one runner of the old gal's rockin chair, a half a mile away. Course, now it's been refined and made perfectly safe."
"I yam glad yis now perfectly safe", said Vladlena sourly. "If I yever face one in combyat, I will know I have nothing to fear."
"ADMIRAL ON DECK." Ant shot to his feet, nearly knocking the bench over.
"ADMIRAL ON DECK." Jochen rose like a jackinabox.
"ADMIRAL ON DECK THERE."
"YADMIRAL ON DYECK."
All seven cadets stood to attention, eyes rigidly ahead. All around them, conversation in the canteen had ceased, though no-one else had stood up. Behind Ant, the only sound that could be heard was an arrhythmic CLICK-click. CLICK-click.
Commodore Drummond was wearing his parade legs.
"Bless you all, I'm no Admiral any more, at ease, cadets. Void Command thought I looked bad in black and silver, bless 'em." Commodore Bentley Drummond, Mayor of and Senator for Gondolin, strode between the rows of tables. His walking legs, made of burnished titanium, struck sparks off the ceramic tile. The Commodore had lost both legs his many years before, and had a set of artificial limbs for every occasion. Rows of eyes glared at him as he entered; the Commodore was not popular. He had won the Battle of Gondolin for the USZ as Commander in Chief, but had failed to exploit his victory by pursuing and annihilating the beaten British fleet - and the Commodore, like the rest of the population of Gondolin, was British. It was muttered among the USZ cadets that he had been unprepared to fire on his own former countrymen.
There was a loud, deliberate sound of someone spitting, and of the spit dripping heavily onto the tiles.
Almost instantly, a massive, bull-necked astronavigation instructor shot up from his seat and bellowed:
"HOODID DAT? ONE OF YOU DIRTY ORTEGAS BETTER OWN UP OR YOU'LL ALL BE CLEANIN RELIEF TUBES NOW THRU SUNDAY! SPEAK UP! HOODID DAT?"
Commodore Drummond stiffened slightly, but maintained his smile. Ant marvelled that this was humanly possible. He wheeled on his parade legs, making a loud SQUEAK like the chalking of a snooker cue, and clicked up the rows of benches, looking down each aisle with a big friendly smile at everyone he passed. Eventually, he seemed to find what he was looking for, and tap-tap-tapped up the aisle until he was standing directly behind the only cadet in the row who was facing away from him staring sullenly at his soup. Behind the cadet, a rich white splat of spit sat on the tile.
Still smiling, he said:
"Budge up, soldier."
Looking as if he would rather be testing a new set of experimental giant-spider-proof underpants, the cadet moved wordlessly aside. The Commodore leaned forward and flipped himself off his legs onto the bench, leaving the legs wobbling behind him on the tiles.
"SALUTE WHEN YOU BUDGE UP FOR AN OFFICER", yelled the astronavigator into the cadet's ear.
"Thank you, Sergeant", said the Commodore. He turned to the cadet, who saluted rigidly.
"At this point, cadet, I am supposed to say WHERE YOU FROM, SON? And you are supposed to say Ah’m from Peckerwood, Lapoota, Commodore Drummond, sir. And then I'm supposed to say, ARE YOU SCARED TO DIE, CADET? And you say something brave and untrue like Not in the service of freedom, sir."
Commodore Drummond sat back on his stumps, arms folded in thought.
"But what I'm actually going to ask is this. What is the purpose of war?"
The cadet looked back at the Commodore, as stumped as the Commodore was.
"Out with it, cadet", said Drummond. "It's not a trick question." He wagged a finger at the younger man. "And I don't expect an answer like War has no purpose. We should only ever shoot each other with flower guns that shoot flowers. What is the purpose of war?"
The cadet shook his head dumbly, eyes boggling.
"CADET!" bawled the astronavigator, his face millimetres from the cadet's. "ANSWER THE QUESTION POSED YOU BY A SUPERIOR OFFICER!"
"His head's gonna come loose an fly off round the room any time now", whispered Glenn Bob to Ant. "The guvnor has this effect on folks."
"SIR! THE CADET DOES NOT KNOW THE PURPOSE OF WAR, SIR!"
"The purpose of war", said Drummond, smiling sadly, "is to restore peace. Enjoy your meal."
He pushed his weight back onto his arms, rocked himself backward onto his legs, and used the shoulders of the two cadets on either side of him to push himself back up upright. Then, whistling tunelessly, he clicked away, followed by the eyes of every flight trainee in the canteen.
"Not sure I want my meal any more", said a cadet forlornly, looking down into a bowl of soup that had just had an artificial leg next to it.
At the door, Commodore Drummond turned, as if suddenly remembering something.
"Oh yes - that's why I was here. Gondolin training flight - wanted to congratulate you all. Splendid performance. See me in my office for drinky poos at six p.m. local. Particularly", he said, nodding at Ant, "you, Mr. Stevens."
It was a measure of the Commodore's 'effect on folks' that the conversation only started up again a full ten seconds after he had left the room.
"Drinky poos", said a voice from several tables away in disgust.
"Limey A-hole", muttered another voice.
The rest of the canteen turned back to their phytoplankton chowder.
"The Commodore", said Cleo, "never calls anything 'drinky poos'."
"That was a coded message right there", agreed Glenn Bob. "Though it was coded real well, an I'm not right sure what the message was."
"He thinks I passed my basic manoeuvring", said Ant.
"No he doesn't", said Cleo. "That was a sign that he wants to see us about something different."