Into the Void (The Dungeoneers) (2 page)

‘Well, you can carry that thing,’ he said wearily, indicating the chest. ‘It’s heavy!’

‘Gladly,’ Gerald replied with a grand gesture. ‘It’s heavy because it’s full of loot.’ He grabbed one end, motioning Norman to take the other. ‘When we get this back to civilisation, we’ll have it made - food, drink, women... everything we’ve ever wanted. No more sleeping out in the cold, wet woods.’

He straightened up, struggling under the weight of the chest. Percy was right - it was heavy. But he was right, too. They had it made. Nothing could go wrong this time.

‘Let’s get back to the camp,’ he wheezed. ‘We can bed down there for the rest of the night, then head on down to Cosht in the morning.’

***

The Mountains of Morning seemed a sinister prospect at high noon; gnarled, tree-swathed crags brooded above the vale and mist hung like steam from the cauldrons of a thousand witches, eternally brewing evil for the peaceful rustic villages below. At blackest midnight it was a truly perilous place. The four young adventurers trod the muddy path beneath the looming oaks with considerable circumspection.

As he staggered under the weight of the chest, Gerald reflected that they had come a long way from King Rat and his thieves’ kitchen in Rats’ Alley. Well, as soon as they got down to the plains, they could pay a farmer for the loan of a cart to transport the loot back to the city that had become their base for adventuring. But it wouldn’t be a good idea to advertise their fortune. Despite their attack on the rival Shipgate Runners, a few of the dandy rogues still lurked in the alleyways of Cosht.

As the adventurers neared their camp, a green shooting star passed low overhead.

‘Look!’ said Percy idly, pointing up. ‘Think it’ll bring us luck?’

Gerald grunted. His mind was still on the heavy chest he was carrying. ‘Just get back to the camp,’ he said. ‘Then we can discuss our good fortune.’

Soon afterwards they reached the stand of fir trees beside the winding Cosht road. Their tents still stood there, beside the cold ashes of their fire. Gratefully, Gerald and Norman slumped down with the rusty chest. Percy and Brian joined them, and they sat in silence for a while. Percy poked at the dead embers with a stick.

He yawned. ‘I’m knackered,’ he said. ‘Think I’ll turn in.’

‘No you don’t,’ said Gerald nastily. ‘You didn’t carry the chest all the way down here. Don’t forget, these hills are still dangerous - especially now we’ve got the treasure. We’ll have to keep watch. And I’ve just voted you to go first.’

Percy shrugged, amused by Gerald’s outburst. ‘Fine, fine,’ he replied. ‘I’ll wake Brian in two hours - unless something happens.’

Grumpily, Gerald scrambled into the tent, and got into his sleeping bag. Brian and Norman followed him. Exhausted, Gerald dozed off.

He was woken from deep, dreamless sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder.

‘Warr-aggh!!!’ he said blearily, looking up to see Percy leaning in through the open tent-flap. ‘Eh, wassup? You’re suppose’ to be on watch!’

Percy’s eyes were wide.

‘Something’s going on,’ he hissed. ‘In the forest nearby. Weird lights and noises.’

By now, the other two were also awake. ‘Lights?’ Norman asked. ‘What kind?’

‘Weird ones,’ Percy replied shortly. ‘Come and take a look.’

Outside the tent, they could all see what he was talking about. The nearby trees glowed eerily, backlit by a ghastly green glow. Odd bleeps and whirrs were audible in the distance, drifting across on the still night air.

‘What is it?’ Brian asked. ‘We should attack it!’

Gerald scowled at him, although his expression was invisible in the dark. ‘Not till we know what it is,’ he said firmly.

‘I reckon we get a bit closer,’ Percy suggested, emboldened by company.

The four youths crept through the tangled briars and bracken. The rank smell of rotting earth and fallen leaves hung heavy in the unmoving air. In the distance, the green lights still glowed.

They reached the top of a small rise, and gazed down into the dell below. Gerald gasped.

In the centre of the open space was a large metal object, about twenty feet across and shaped like an upturned bowl or saucer. It stood on three metal legs, while a gleaming metal ramp ran from a circular hatch in the hull down to the forest floor below. The green light they had seen spilled from the open hatch.

The dell was busy with oddly shaped reptilian figures going about enigmatic, scientific-seeming tasks: investigating shrubs, taking soil samples, studying bark. Another reptilian creature stood on guard at the base of the ramp.

‘Aliens!’ Brian said.

‘But what are they doing here?’ Norman demanded, clutching his sword hilt firmly.

Gerald smirked. ‘What are aliens usually doing? Probing things. Right, Percy?’

Percy nodded. ‘Right up the chockie starfish,’ he said.

The four youths watched the bizarre scene for a few moments longer.

‘I reckon we nick their ship,’ Brian said.

Gerald glared at him in irritation, then did a double take. Occasionally the lad’s crazy ideas had some merit. ‘It would save walking,’ he replied thoughtfully. He had worn out a fair few boot soles since they had been so mysteriously transported from their own world to this planet. Momentarily, his heart was stirred by the notion of journeying beyond the farthest stars, to visit strange new worlds, to seek out new civilisations and new life - and rob them.

Norman’s voice broke in on his thoughts. ‘Does anyone know how to drive a spaceship?’ he asked peevishly. ‘Anyway, it would be stealing!’

‘We’re thieves, aren’t we?’ said Gerald, suddenly filled with decision. ‘Let’s do it!’

Commando-like, the adventurers raced through the undergrowth, flitting between the trees one by one, dashing behind the massive bole of an oak before rolling into the cover of a hawthorn thicket. They circled round the reptilian scientists, still intent about their alien business, before reaching the rear of the craft. The metal hull throbbed and hummed with power.

Brian peered round the side, and then dodged back into cover. ‘There’s still a guard on the ramp,’ he hissed.

Gerald nodded silently. He signed to Norman and Percy to circle round the far side of the saucer-like craft, with a further gesture to suggest surprising the alien guard. The instant the two adventurers had vanished round the far side of the saucer, Gerald led Brian at a crouching run.

They reached the shadows beside the ramp. The alien guard stood at attention, cradling some kind of futuristic-looking hair dryer, possibly a ray-gun. The guard was surveying the scientists in the green-lit clearing. Gerald crept up toward it, followed by Brian.

He glimpsed Norman and Percy sneaking up on the far side, flattening themselves against the hull. Norman was still looking peeved.

The two groups converged. The throbbing of the spacecraft’s engines drowned out a muffled grunt which was followed by the thud of a body falling to the leaf-covered earth. Casting cautious glances at the alien scientists, the four youths leapt over the guard’s supine body, sprinted up the ramp and flung themselves through the glowing hatch.

They staggered to a halt in an eerie, green-lit corridor.

The passage opened out into a chamber packed with mysterious machines of an alien technology. To the left and right, hatches led deeper into the ship.

As they walked nervously towards the control console, a klaxon blared into life, and the green lights began to flash on and off. Something resembling a disco-ball revolved on the console while a computerised voice shrieked gibberish inside their heads. The noise of the klaxon grew louder.

‘We’ve set off an alarm!’ Brian shouted, never afraid to state the obvious.

‘Those aliens will hear!’ Percy shouted back.

Gerald tore out his sword and sprinted back towards the main hatch.

Streaming across the clearing and up the ramp, leaping over the fallen body of the guard with angry expressions on their unearthly faces, were the alien scientists. All bore smaller versions of the hair-dryer the guard had held, and as he watched their advance, Gerald cursed his lack of foresight in not looting the corpse.

The aliens - nine or ten of them - surged up the ramp, firing energy bolts as they came. Gerald met them in the hatchway, his sword glowing strangely in the eerie green light.

He dodged a sizzling energy bolt from the first alien, whirled round with his sword, and sent its scaled, reptilian head spinning off into the darkness. Gushing green ichor, the body stumbled and fell back down the ramp. Then the three other adventurers were at Gerald’s side, Brian and Percy and Norman with their weapons at the ready. The remaining aliens bore down upon them. Energy blasts sparked and ricocheted off the fuselage. Steel glittered in eerie light. Aliens scattered across the deck, spouting ichor. The air grew rank with a smell of ozone.

Norman fell back, nursing a scorched shoulder.

Suddenly the struggle was over, as quickly as it had begun. The members of the alien expedition lay in sticky pools of ichor, scattered down the ramp and across the clearing. Brian, Percy and Gerald rooted among their corpses while Norman tended to his wound. The victorious adventurers seized the aliens’ weapons as trophies.

Percy turned to Gerald. ‘With these ray-guns we could zap any barrow wight back to the hell it came from!’ he exclaimed.

Gerald shook his head. ‘Why waste our time with this planet?’ he asked. He was heartily sick of donjons and dragons, taverns and trulls. ‘There’s a whole universe out there. And if these pussies are anything to go by, it’ll be a pushover!

‘Come on, back to camp. We’ll grab the treasure and all our equipment. Then we pilot this flying saucer to the nth dimension. After that…’ He laughed maniacally. ‘We’ll see!’

The four adventurers staggered back up the ramp, weighed down with tents, bedding, backpacks, the treasure chest, and an assortment of swords and axes, ropes and grapnels, lanterns and iron spikes, ten-foot poles and assorted adventuring trash. Slinging this into a pile at the back of the control room, they slouched down on the weirdly shaped chairs and tried to puzzle out the controls.

Percy found the lever that opened and closed the hatch, and amused himself with it until Gerald snapped at him.

‘What’s this do?’ asked Brian, pressing a button. A visi-screen clicked on, showing a 360º view of the surrounding forest. Blast cannons mounted on the central dome rotated. Brian jabbed his thumb down on another button and a barrage of energy beams lit up the night.

‘Dakka-dakka-dakkka!’ he jabbered fanatically.

‘Stop that,’ Gerald said, as two trees went up like Roman candles. Sulkily, Brian obeyed.

Gerald yanked a lever, and a star-map blossomed out to cover the visi-screen. A cursor glowed over the third planet of a star located near the top right of the map. Joggling a joystick, Gerald moved the cursor over onto a neighbouring planet, and pressed a button.

A computerised voice echoed in their heads: ‘This vessel is now en route for Planet Aku.’

Without warning, the engines rumbled into life. The deck shook. Smoke and exhaust fumes billowed up from beneath the craft. Gerald whooped.

‘We’re on our way!’ he bellowed. The spaceship took off, soaring into the black skies above the mist-tapestried forest, its retro-rockets gleefully belching pollution into the hitherto unsullied environment.

As the autopilot guided them through the swirling clouds of the planet’s stratosphere, the four adventurers gathered around the glyph-inscribed chest.

‘Fuck knows where we’re going,’ Gerald muttered, fumbling with the catch, ‘but wherever we end up, they’re bound to appreciate hard cash.’ He flung open the chest, and abruptly gulped in horror.