A Toaster on Mars (19 page)

Krodo was from Telva, a hot, wet planet, half a billion light years from Earth. He was short and reptilian-looking, with four clawed arms and round, mustard-coloured eyes. By comparison, Smelk was tall, human and would have been mistaken for Cary Grant in a previous age.

The two men had headed the interrogation team at GADO for years. If anyone could make the woman crack, Feldspar was sure they could.

‘You boys ready to apply pressure?' he asked.

‘Like a shower,' Krodo agreed. ‘It'll be good cop, bad cop all the way.'

‘Absolutely,' agreed Smelk.

‘I'm good cop,' Krodo said. ‘Smelk is bad.'

Smelk hesitated. ‘Really? Again.'

‘We've talked about this before. Good cop needs to be pretty on the eye.'

‘You don't think I'm pretty?'

‘I wasn't saying that—'

Ten minutes later, after a game of scissors, paper and rock, Krodo ended up as bad cop. He marched into the room and thumped a fist on the table.

‘Listen, you ugly tabortha—'

Astrid's reaction to being called a tabortha was immediate. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

The two agents exchanged glances. This might be easier than they'd expected. They settled into the chairs opposite Astrid and waited for her tears to subside. Smelk produced a handkerchief, as only a good cop can, and she gratefully accepted it.

‘You need to level with us, lady,' Krodo said, folding his four arms. ‘It'll go easier that way.'

‘Much easier,' Smelk agreed.

‘We're gonna ask you questions and you're gonna give us answers.'

‘That's right. Questions and answers.'

Astrid finished wiping her eyes. ‘I'll tell you everything,' she said. ‘It will be a relief to finally speak to someone.'

‘Let it all out, lady,' Krodo advised. ‘You'll feel better for it.'

Astrid nodded. ‘It's a long story,' she said. ‘But the truth needs to be told.'

The agents nodded. They both knew that criminals often wanted to confess their crimes. Guilt was a heavy burden, after all.

‘First we need to know your name,' Smelk said.

‘Eyre,' Astrid said. ‘Jane Eyre.'

The officer dutifully entered the name into his notes.

Astrid continued. ‘I began life as a doctor, but I wanted to do more than save lives. I wanted to change the very way we see life and death.' She hesitated. ‘I should warn you, I'm about to reveal some shocking details.'

Krodo waved away the objection. ‘We're unshockable,' he said. ‘We're GADO agents.'

‘It began with my obsession with cemeteries.'

‘Cemeteries?'

‘I started visiting them because I needed body parts for my research. Fresh body parts.'

‘What for?'

‘I wanted to reanimate dead tissue,' Astrid said.

‘The reanimation of dead bodies.' Krodo blinked
his mustard-coloured eyes. He had never heard anything like it. ‘That's serious sprot.'

‘Oh, my friend Elizabeth Bennet was against it. So was my fiancé, Fitzwilliam Darcy.'

‘But you still went ahead with it.'

‘I knew it wouldn't be easy, so I sought the aid of a doctor I knew.'

‘His name?'

‘Moreau.'

‘And what's his story?'

Astrid shook her head in dismay. ‘He was a sick individual,' she said. ‘I realised, too late, that he wanted to combine human and animal DNA to create a new race of which he would be master.'

Smelk let out a long breath. ‘That
is
sick. Where is he now?'

‘I don't know. He moved to some island.'

‘Don't hold back on us, lady,' Krodo warned. ‘What's the name of this island?'

‘I truly don't know. I only know he went there by submarine.'

‘And the owner of the submarine?'

‘Nemo.'

‘How do you spell that?'

‘N-E-M-O.'

‘Sounds Swedish.'

‘He's a man without a country.'

‘A loner,' Smelk said, rubbing his chin. ‘Makes sense.'

‘Moreau became convinced that an invasion was imminent.'

‘An invasion? From where?'

Astrid sat forward. ‘Mars.'

‘What?' Smelk exclaimed. ‘That's baloney! Mars and Earth have been at peace for centuries.'

‘I said the chances were a million to one.' Astrid shrugged. ‘But Moreau had another project that was equally serious.'

‘And that was?'

‘A time machine.'

Krodo slammed four fists on the table. ‘Time travel's against every rule in the book!'

‘I know!' Astrid buried her face in her hands again, weeping so hard it could have been mistaken for laughter.

Finally, she said in a strangled voice, ‘And it gets worse.' She wiped her face dry. ‘Moreau built the time machine. I used it to travel into the future. It was an era where vampires had taken over the planet. Humans were almost extinct. I got lost. Found a cabin in the woods owned by a man named Tom. Two other men turned up.'

‘Their names?'

‘Jekyll and Hyde. There was a meeting. And a decision was made.'

‘To?'

‘To journey to the centre of the Earth.'

‘Why?'

‘I'll get to that. We travelled for months through Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. On the way we met a girl
named Dorothy. She was lost, too. And broken-hearted. She'd just eaten her dog.'

‘Bad luck.'

‘It was the apocalypse.' Astrid shrugged. ‘Bad things were happening everywhere. Anyway, we got a group together. There was me, Gandalf, Poppins, Lancelot, Oliver Twist, Tom Jones—'

‘Wait a second,' Smelk interrupted. ‘Why were you putting this group together?'

‘We had to go up against the Big Bad himself.'

‘And he was?'

‘The cat,' Astrid said. ‘In the hat.'

‘He lived in a hat?' Smelk was incredulous.

‘He's a mutant.'

‘The Big Bad of the future is a mutant cat?
And he lives in a hat
?'

Before Astrid could reply, the door to the interview room flew open and Sam Feldspar stuck his head in.

‘We need to have a meeting,' he said. ‘Bring her.'

‘We're making headway,' Smelk said cautiously. ‘Can we—'

‘Sorry,' Feldspar said. ‘Something's come up.'

Krodo was disappointed. It was rare that interviews went so well. He turned to Astrid. ‘You've been very helpful, Miss Eyre.'

‘Call me Jane.'

‘Jane. We'll get the rest of your statement later.'

Astrid smiled. ‘I look forward to it.'

29

‘It's gone,' Sam Feldspar said.

The head of GADO stared at the place where the phase suit had been sitting just a few hours earlier. It had been a rather nice-looking suit. Possibly rather difficult to dry-clean with all that hardware, and the colours were a tad harsh on the eye—the blue and orange clashed—and the styling
was
awful.

Still, it was one of the most incredible devices ever constructed.

And now it was gone.

Feldspar was standing in GADO's most secure vault—or it had been, until someone had broken in by tunnelling under it. Now, there was a hole in the floor.
Through it, he could see a passage and mining equipment.

In the vault were the two PBI agents who had summoned him here. They had surrendered themselves to security, demanding to see him. Feldspar had reviewed their personnel files on the way. They were both top agents. Their last assignment had been to track down the PBI's most wanted man—Bartholomew Badde.

So why had they broken into GADO?

‘What you need to understand,' Blake Carter said, ‘is that this whole thing has been a diversion.'

Krodo turned to Astrid. ‘Is the mutant cat behind this, Jane?'

Blake wasn't sure why Astrid was being called Jane, or how a mutant cat came into it, but there was no time for that now. Lisa was being held just a short distance away. She had to be saved and Badde captured.

‘This whole day has been a diversion,' Blake said. ‘Bartholomew Badde's ransom demand has had the PBI chasing its tail. At the same time, Nicki and I, and my ex-wife Astrid, have been on a wild goose chase to steal the Maria virus—'

Feldspar stabbed a finger at them. ‘So you admit you broke into GADO,' he said. ‘And you stole Maria.'

‘Our daughter's being held hostage by Badde,' Blake explained. ‘To save her I'd break into hell.'

‘Believe me,' Nicki said, ‘he would.'

Smelk frowned. ‘But if you're here to steal Maria, how is it that the phase suit—'

‘Maria was a diversion!' Blake said. ‘Badde isn't a
terrorist. He's a thief! His real plan has always been to steal the phase suit.'

‘With the phase suit he'd be unstoppable,' Nicki agreed.

‘So why did Badde get you involved?' Feldspar asked.

Blake had been wondering that himself. He scratched his chin. ‘Maybe he knew I could catch him. Badde knew he'd be safe if he kept me busy, so he decided to kill two birds with one stone. He sent me on this quest to steal the Maria virus while he implemented the final step of his plan to steal the suit.'

‘So where is Badde now?'

‘At the other end of this tunnel. My daughter was able to get a message to me—'

‘Is she all right?' Astrid asked.

‘She's fine,' Blake said, ‘for now. But we've got to get moving if we stand any chance of saving her.'

‘The only place you're going is jail,' Feldspar said. ‘You've committed a global offence in breaking into GADO.'

‘Arresting us won't achieve anything,' Nicki said.

‘It's Badde you want,' Blake added. ‘And how do you think it's going to look if you allow an evil genius to escape and a young girl to—'

Blake's voice caught. He didn't know how he'd live if anything happened to Lisa.

‘My husband's right,' Astrid said, moving to his side. ‘You can arrest us later, but for now we need to save her.'

Feldspar clenched his jaw. Blake sounded on the level. Arresting a PBI agent while allowing a criminal mastermind to escape would look bad. And if anything happened to the girl…

‘I want the Pye building surrounded,' Feldspar said to Smelk. ‘Immediately.'

‘We need to get Lisa out,' Blake said.

‘You're not going alone,' Feldspar said. ‘Krodo, I want you to go with Blake and his robot.'

‘She's not a robot,' Blake said. ‘She's a cyborg.'

‘Noted. Let's move.'

‘One last thing,' Blake added. ‘We won't be able to grab Badde if he uses the suit. Does it have any weaknesses?'

Feldspar nodded. ‘It can phase through any solid matter, but the tech-heads were never able to stabilise its hydrogen mix.'

‘Meaning?'

‘It fails completely in water.'

Blake wasn't sure how that was going to help, but he filed away the information.

‘I'm going with you,' Astrid said.

Blake shook his head. ‘We're trained for this and you're not,' he said. ‘You'll have to trust me.'

‘I do.' She gripped his arm. ‘Get our daughter back.'

Blake followed Nicki and Krodo down the hole, dropping onto the roof of a truck below. The tunnel looked like it had been evacuated without warning. Trucks sat around with doors open and engines still
running. The conveyor belt was off, but it still had rock and dirt on it.

Blake squeezed behind the wheel and they started up the tunnel.

‘Thanks,' Nicki said, after a moment.

‘What for?'

‘Recognising that I'm not just a robot.'

Blake didn't reply.

Nicki scanned the cabin interior with her datapad. ‘I'm picking up Xebian DNA,' she said. ‘I think Xebians were the machine operators.'

‘They'll do anything for money,' Krodo said. ‘I knew one that sold his mother on gBay so she could work in a salt mine on Maboo.'

‘The Xebians must have left straight after the robbery,' Blake said. ‘Maybe Badde too.'

Badde must have had an escape plan
, he thought.
And a backup to the escape plan.

But Blake wasn't concerned about catching Badde. He just wanted Lisa back.

Reaching the Pye building, they climbed from the truck.
Where to now?
If Badde was gone, he might have taken Lisa with him. Getting offworld wouldn't be so easy, but it could be done.

Would he have killed Lisa? Badde had indiscriminately murdered people over the years. Innocent lives meant nothing to him. But Lisa had value as a hostage. Badde was smart enough to keep her as an asset—until
he decided he didn't need her anymore.

‘Where are they?' Blake growled.

‘I can tell you,' a voice said from above.

‘Who are you?' Krodo asked, blinking.

‘I am a Pantron 9001 Quadragillion Computational Hydrogian Accelerator,' the voice said. ‘But you can call me Panty.'

‘It's the building's AI,' Nicki said.

‘So you know where Badde and Lisa went?' Blake asked.

‘Yes,' Panty replied.

‘Well?'

‘Oh, well, nowhere really. He's only now leaving the building through the front entrance on the 900th level.'

‘And he has Lisa?' Blake said. ‘And she's alive?'

‘Yes and yes.'

‘Sprot!' Blake said as they raced to the elevators. ‘We need a picture of Badde.'

‘I can supply one,' Panty offered. ‘But while we're at it, I want to make it perfectly clear I never supported his evil deeds. In fact—'

‘Just give us the pictures!'

A whirring sound emanated from a chute near the elevator and half a dozen pictures slid into a recess.