Darwin's Soldiers by Ste Sharp

Author:Ste Sharp [Sharp, Ste]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912618118
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2018-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

***

John’s head was pounding. He was tired, his mouth was dry and his stomach growled with hunger. Had he banged his head? It felt like he’d been asleep for a week and strange dreams were swimming before him: Joe; kind nurses; men playing cricket; Crossley’s smile; Rosie’s eyes; lights and… what was that smell? It was worse than Jess’s stable.

Cautiously, John stretched his dry eyelids open and focused on a small square of light. A window? He was lying on his back and he could see shadows and silhouettes but nothing held any colour or shape. A closed door. Was he in an operating theatre? The doctor hadn’t said they would operate, but Crossley had taken him to find Joe and… yes it was coming back now. They’d walked away from the field hospital, out of the woods. Why Joe had been at a field hospital, John had no idea – or why he and Crossley had travelled on a metal contraption like the tanks the army had started to use. Only this one was driven by what looked like a blue lobster… and there John’s memory stopped.

He heard a sound from another room, so dropped his head and closed his eyes. With no memory of how he got here, John knew he was in danger.

‘…they have what?’ A deep voice growled in anger.

‘Steeds, General. Animals to carry them across the plain of battles,’ a higher-pitched voice replied.

‘Their main army will grow in number unless we…’ the first voice trailed off.

John tried to move his legs but something was holding them at the knee. His left arm felt the same while his right arm… clicked when he tensed his fingers. His gun-arm. John visualised his fingers inside the gun, as he’d done before, and could feel shapes forming.

The door burst open to reveal a tall, navy-blue creature.

‘It wakes.’ A mouth of bizarre mandibles snapped in the centre of a face that reminded John of a fish he’d seen at Billingsgate market. The rest of its body was scorpion-like.

‘Please join me.’ The huge beast talked to a smaller, grey scorpion-like animal that scuttled into a dark corner, leaving a trail of electric-blue light in the air.

‘Our first human.’

The blue animal’s legs scraped and clicked against the floor as it walked over and leant over John.

Without warning, a claw punched the table and flipped John up to a standing position. His body tensed against the ties that held him. He was face to face with this thing, whose enormous creaking shell glistened and pulsated before him.

Stay strong, John told himself.

‘And I sense I am your first Brakari?’ the creature asked.

So this was the enemy they would face, John thought. He nodded, trying not to show his fear.

‘What’s this? He bares his teeth… anger? Defence?’

Stay calm, John told himself, no point in angering it.

‘A smile perhaps?’ The Brakari rocked back on its legs. ‘I amuse you, do I?’ It turned to the smaller creature. ‘Do I look amusing to you, Captain Millok?’

‘No, General.’

It snapped back to John.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.