Crystal Starbrite watched the narrow strip of coastal land fall away as the helicopter sped south. Below, she could see the Rata turn-off, the police car and the collection of army vehicles. She thought she could even see the stroppy sergeant. She’d have waved if she was sure he could see her.
The pilot suddenly checked the machine’s speed. They stopped moving forward and settled in a hover three hundred metres up.
‘Sorry,’ he tapped the comms switch and his voice sounded in her headphones. ‘Just had a message to say that we’re approaching restricted airspace. This is a far as we can go.’
‘Have you acknowledged it?’ Crystal said.
‘Not yet.’
‘Well you wouldn’t, would you? Not if you’d never heard it.’ She reached over and snapped off the radio.
The pilot stared at her, shocked.
‘We’ll double your fee,’ she said.
He hesitated.
‘Triple it.’
He half grinned, suspecting a joke, then saw she was deadly serious.
‘I mean it.’
He nodded, eased the control stick forward and the helicopter moved on.
‘Jeez Crystal!’ Eric called from the back seat where he’d been readying his camera.
‘What?’ She glared at him.
‘Don’t ... don’t do that, eh?’
‘Do what?’
‘Go turning things off at random. The ground’s a long way down, you know.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘You did. That’s the radio over there!’
* * *
Time slowed. Ludokrus swam against it. For long moments it seemed he was in a race with a mass of tumbling rocks and boulders, sprinting ahead as they came up behind him with the sound of a thousand pounding feet. He even seemed to be winning. Then small stones skittered past on either side and he felt the brush of something huge directly behind. He couldn’t, daren’t, change direction now. The slightest hesitation would see him squashed like a bug under a shoe. He ran and ran for all he was worth.
‘Go!’ Coral screamed, leaping from cover as she watched a tidal wave of debris sweep towards him. He almost reached the valley floor before a rolling cloud of dust obscured her view. From deep in its midst, she saw a single stab of red light followed by an answering explosion near the back of the hovering spaceship. She paid it no attention. She was on her feet, racing towards the spot she’d last seen him. But as she drew closer and the dust began to clear, it became obvious that Ludokrus was gone.
* * *
‘Steady! Hold her steady!’
‘I can’t. The stabiliser’s gone.’
‘Wretched monkey people!’
‘You should have let me shoot them.’
‘Forget shooting. Cease fire and trigger the gully destructors.’
* * *
‘Ooo, pretty!’ Norman said, pointing back towards the gully.
Tim turned to see a line of blue explosive flashes light up along each side, each one corresponding to the mouth of a mineshaft.
‘What the hell ...?’
But something else was happening too. Something more profound. It started as a rumble deep within the earth and he felt it first as a jangling in his bones. A disconcerting shudder. Then the shock wave reached the surface. A tremor that went on and on, rolling across the ground, shaking the earth as if it was a tray of loose sand. Tim could see the surface ripple and dance. Small stones sunk into the loosened earth. His own feet did likewise. It suddenly felt like he was wading through deep mud.
‘Keep moving!’ he yelled at Norman. The pair of them staggered like drunks.
Beside them, some of the concrete piles the hut sat on sank below the surface. The sudden shift tore the rest of it apart as if it had been made of matchsticks. The whole structure collapsed on top of the bikes parked around the side.
‘Oh no!’ Norman cried. The sight of the bikes seemed shake him from his daze. He turned and started back towards them. Tim reached out to try to stop him, but it was all he could do to keep his feet as another shockwave hit.