Warlord's Revenge (10 page)

Authors: Zac Harrison

BOOK: Warlord's Revenge

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“That’s far enough,” Emmie said, once they had finally put the ship behind them. “Time to try some fancy stuff. Hold on tight!”

Emmie put the little t-dart through its paces, throwing it into barrel rolls, swift zigzag turns, and finishing with a starfire flip – spinning the dart back to face the other way and using the main thrusters as a brake. It was like riding the best roller coaster in the universe.

Emmie finally slowed the t-dart back down to a steady cruise. “I think this model gets the Emmie Tarz seal of approval,” she said, patting the console affectionately. “Want to take the controls?”

“You bet!” John said.

Emmie switched the input to John’s set of controls. She selected an iced Brucko juice from the drinks dispenser and plugged it into her helmet, then lay back in the sumptuous seat watching the stars go by and sipping through the helmet straw.

John fired up the hyperdrive, sending the little t-dart thundering through the gulfs of space. He felt weightless, joyful, and free, with all the promise of deep space open before him. He could skim the surface of a gas giant or watch a supernova engulf the skies. John grinned to himself.
There might be some drawbacks to studying here at Hyperspace High,
he thought,
like not being able to tell Mum and Dad where I really am... but I wouldn’t swap it for the world. At a boarding school on Earth, I would never get to fly through space with a cool girl from a different planet!

He glanced over at Emmie. Just when he’d been feeling miserable and homesick, she’d turned up and taken his mind right off it.
I’m lucky to have her as a friend
, he thought.
There aren’t that many people who can tell when you’re bottling sadness up inside you – and then do something about it.

From their studies of Galactic Geography, John knew there was an abandoned planet nearby that looked a bit like Earth. John flew the t-dart over the ruins of an alien city that glittered in the pale light from the sun, then out over a frozen sea.

“Cool!” Emmie said with a whistle. “We’d better take her home now, though, or we’ll be late.”

“I just want to get a better look – it reminds me a bit of home,” said John, flying closer to the shining world. He steered the t-dart on a quick game of thread-the-needle with a derelict ring-shaped space station, flying the craft dead centre through the hole in the middle without even needing to use the computer assist. Emmie was right – the ship did handle like a dream.

“Let’s get going, John,” Emmie said, a little nervously. “We don’t want to be late.”

Another short blast on the hyperdrive brought them back alongside Hyperspace High in no time. John brought the t-dart around in a sweeping arc, past the colossal bridge section at the front of the massive vessel and back towards the hangar. Soon after, they gently touched down inside it.

Emmie pulled off her helmet and shook her hair free. “Phew. We must have been out there for ages!”

“Can’t have been more than half an hour, surely?” said John, but he felt a little uneasy. He’d lost all sense of time while flying the t-dart.

As they tried to leave the hangar, the smooth white form of an Examiner moved to block their way. John felt more than uneasy now. There was something faintly sinister about the faceless, hovering robots. They were frighteningly efficient at their job, which was to enforce the school’s many rules. Most of the time they would leave you alone, but if you stepped out of line, they had ways of setting you straight.

Emmie gulped. “Is... everything OK? We were just leaving—”

“NEGATIVE,” the Examiner said in a flat electronic voice, glaring at them with its single red digital eye. “STUDENTS RILEY AND TARZ HAVE VIOLATED RULES.”

“What did we do?” John asked nervously.

“STUDENTS WERE INSTRUCTED TO BE PRESENT IN THE CENTRE AT TWELVE SHARP. CURRENT TIME: TWELVE ZERO SEVEN.”

“Oh no!” Emmie groaned. “This doesn’t sound good.”

“I’m so sorry I made us late, Emmie,” John said, feeling more miserable than ever.

“TEACHER PERMISSION NOT DETECTED. EMERGENCY NOT DETECTED. CONCLUSION: ABSENCE WAS WILFUL.”

John braced himself.

“PUNISHMENT WILL BE DETENTION.”

Read Galactic Battle to find out what happens next!

Other titles from the Hyperspace High series –
Crash Landing

When John Riley catches the wrong bus, he ends up on Hyperspace High – an amazing school on a space ship!

Light-years from home, John makes friends with aliens, struggles through Galactic Geography lessons, and eats gross Martian food in the canteen. But John needs to get up to speed fast, or he’ll be booted back to Earth. Will an asteroid storm on a school trip give him a chance to prove that you don’t have to be top of the class to be a hero?