She shrugged, clearly at a loss.

  “Tell me,” said Cupcake. “Who would you say is ahead in the parental challenge stakes? Pam definitely gets a point for the pop group in the bedroom, but I would never rule Derek out – when facing certain defeat against the legendary Giant Squidbeast of the Outer Seas, he famously turned the battle around, winning a great victory and a year’s supply of calamari. So which one is it? Only, I have a large bet with Bart I’d prefer not to lose.”

  “What do I care?!” Niki bristled.

  “No, really,” Cupcake persisted. “Which one of them would you rather spend your life with?”

  Niki’s mouth open and closed. If she was honest, the plan to set her parents against one another had gone awry from the start. Cupcake’s question, which she had hoped to avoid answering, now felt real and urgent – like a giant, flaming meteor hurtling towards her out of the atmosphere.

  “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Gavin said, trying to find a bright side. “I mean, they may be the most merciless rulers the galaxy has ever known, but does that mean they’re also bad parents?”

  Niki stared straight ahead. “When I was little, they gave me a cuddly toy bear. I named it Mister Bear and took it everywhere with me. When I hugged it, it would make this lovely burbling noise. I loved that bear.”

  “See,” he said. “That’s nice.”

  “I was eight when I discovered the truth.” A dark expression clouded her face. “Mister Bear was actually the ambassador from Ursa Major. His name was Auberon and he had a family of his own back on his homeworld. And that cute burbling? His vain attempts to call for help. Then there were my building blocks, fashioned from the bones of their defeated enemies. But Mister Bear and the bones were mild compared with how they came by my trampoline—”

  “OK, that’s enough!” Gavin didn’t want to hear any more. “Perhaps your mum and dad have changed. I mean, they’re really making an effort … since obliterating the supermarket.” Niki threw him a doubtful look. “Fair enough. Come on then, let’s get out of here.”

  “There you are!” It was Mercedes, emerging from the throng in the arcade. “Where are you all going?”

  “We’re leaving,” said Gavin.

  She threw up her hands in frustration. “But I just got parked!”

  Chapter 28

  During her time as a princess of the Galactic League, before Sam and Mercedes spirited her away, a number of courtiers had suggested that Niki’s impressive self-belief all too often shaded into arrogance. Not to her face, obviously, since that sort of personal criticism would have resulted in a one-way ticket to a League prison planet. No, these whispers of reproach she had picked up by way of informants and the palace’s excellent surveillance technology. It was easy for her to brush off any criticism, believing as she did in her power to shape her own destiny. However, that belief had been tested since Pam and Derek’s arrival on Earth. Despite Niki’s conviction that there was no way she would end this month being forced to live with one or other of her awful parents, events over the last few weeks had contrived to make that fate seem all but sealed.

  Until last night.

  She pedalled urgently along Church Street before swerving through the car park entrance. Gavin followed behind her on his bike, Cupcake perched on the handlebars. Bart jogged alongside them both. They reached the roof level of the multistorey where the broken-down spaceship had lain since its clash with the Gastronite Magicruiser.

  The spark and hiss of welding equipment greeted them as they wheeled through the reinstated concealment field. Mercedes knelt on the ship’s upper hull, her face behind a protective visor, busily effecting repairs. That was a good sign, but even better was the sight of a dozen or so crates filling the parking bays alongside the ship. The crates were labelled with phrases like “Top Secret” and “Highly Confidential”, as well as the logos of a dozen different organisations, ranging from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and Boeing, to Rolls-Royce and Currys. The spoils of Sam and Sunshine Starburst’s mission. They had finally returned from their scavenger hunt, pitching up in Middling late last night when Niki was asleep. She hadn’t seen them then, and they had left by the time she woke up, to commence repairs on the ship first thing that morning. Niki had wanted to duck out of school to help, but Mercedes insisted she maintain the appearance of normality in order not to provoke Pam and Derek’s suspicion. As soon as school finished, she and the others had sprinted out of the gates and made their way over.

  “Gavin!” Sunshine Starburst cantered down the ship’s ramp, leapt into his arms and wrapped its fuzzy arms around his neck. “You have no idea the terrors I was forced to face without you: giant slavering canines, contagion-carrying avians, carnivorous furniture…”

  Gavin frowned. “I’m guessing ‘big dogs’ and ‘grotty pigeons’, but you’ve got me with the last one.”

  “At the northbound services on the M6, Sam lost our petrol money down the back of a Starbucks sofa.”

  Gavin placed Sunshine back down on the ground. “But you got everything you need, right?”

  “Looks like they have enough parts to build a whole new ship,” said Cupcake, admiring the numerous crates.

  “We’re a little short on dynamic dampers,” said the unicorn, “but yes, what we couldn’t source, we have the components to fabricate.”

  Niki surveyed the damaged vessel. “Will it be ready by the end of the week?”

  Sunshine performed a rapid calculation. “I estimate a seventy-two per cent probability that repairs will be effected before the conclusion of the task you set your parents.”

  Niki felt a surge of hope. Starburst was the fastest ship in the Galactic League’s inventory; at full speed, nothing in either fleet orbiting Earth right now could touch it. For the first time in ages she allowed herself a glimmer of hope – her plan might just work.

  “Now, let me tell you about our close call with a vengeful spirit in Cirencester.” Sunshine Starburst steered Gavin off, intent on filling him in on the hairy details of its road trip adventure. Cupcake padded after them.

  “Bart, go and help Mercedes with the welding,” Niki ordered. He set off obediently and she called after him. “Remember to wear your goggles.”

  He nodded and she caught herself: why was she concerned for her spare part’s personal safety? How strange. As Niki contemplated her change of attitude, she became aware of music coming from nearby. She followed the music aboard the spaceship, to find Sam alone in the damaged cockpit.

  The effects of the Gastronite attack were evident in the scorched control console and the tangle of wires that tumbled from broken panels in the bulkhead. Sam was hunched over his electric guitar and singing to himself in a croaky voice. It was a sad song about nothing lasting forever and tryin’ to kill the pain, ooh yeah, and the cold November rain. Having been in bed when he returned last night, this was the first time she’d seen him in several weeks. Happiness swept over her, the feeling taking her by surprise. Arching his back, he tipped his head and shook his great mane of frizzy hair, wringing every note of emotion from the song. As the last notes died, he saw her standing there.

  “Princess!” A smile split his face and for a moment she was sure he was about to wrap her in a giant hug, which would have been a gross breach of protocol. So why was she disappointed when he stopped himself? Instead, he propped his guitar against the bulkhead.

  “Can’t fly, but she still has an awesome speaker system.”

  “Why the sad song?” she asked. “We’ve a fighting chance to repair the ship and escape in time. That should make you happy.”

  He swiped the bobble-head figure from the console and flopped down in the forward seat. “That’s just it, Your Highness. I’m sad to be leaving Earth. I like living among these people. And I truly believed we could make a life here.” He looked at her. “All of us.”

  Niki felt a guilty pang – after all, it was her broadcast that had led her mum and dad to their front door. Quite literally.

  “Are you feeling well?” he asked. “You seem shaken.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied, and pretended to be fascinated by the battle-scarred console. Dented in places and blackened in others, nonetheless it remained partially operational. At that moment a section lit up and an automated voice bleated, “Intruder alert!” An external camera blinked on, displaying an image of the parking bay where a small cylindrical object had burst through the concealment field and was flying towards the ship. Sam sprang into action, grabbing the nearest object to use as a weapon, which happened to be his guitar.

  “Stay here, Princess!” he ordered, racing from the cockpit.

  Ignoring him, Niki followed him along the gangway and down the ramp. She spotted the flying cylinder immediately. It was the size of a kitchen dustbin, jet black, with no obvious means of propulsion. A pair of dazzling red dots twinkled from halfway up the casing. The others watched it from a distance.

  “What is it?” asked Gavin.

  “Skerlon attack drone,” replied Sam, raising the guitar in readiness.

  The drone darted past him, bearing down on the ship.

  “Look out!” yelled Mercedes.

  There was the flash and whine of pulse weapons as the attack drone laid waste to the crates, blasting their contents so that the precious repair materials were reduced to a series of molten metal puddles. The strike was over in seconds. The drone powered down and settled into a silent hover. There was a faint whirring noise as a small hatch slid open in its top casing and an arm extended. Cupcake aimed its gauntlets and Sam brandished his guitar like a club, ready to take a swipe, but Mercedes stalled them with a raised hand.

  “Wait!” she cried. “It’s not a weapon.”

  Warily, the bounty hunter retracted its claws and Sam lowered his guitar. The arm articulated towards the group and the tip lit up, projecting a holographic image of Pam and Derek.

  “We bring you greetings from forty-six Park Street, Middling,” said Derek.

  “First, allow me to applaud your deception, Princess,” said Pam.

  Niki was suddenly aware of an awkward tingling sensation on her scalp, and it wasn’t from her fire-hair.

  Pam continued. “I suspected that you would attempt to double-cross us and escape Earth on the Starburst vessel.”

  “A suspicion confirmed by this.” Derek held up what appeared to be a photograph of a large concrete structure, and began to read. “Greetings from Preston Central Bus Station.”

  It was a postcard from Sam and Sunshine, presumably intercepted by her parents’ spy network. Niki muttered a silent curse – she knew they should’ve gone with carrier pigeons.

  “Now you know that we know about your thrillingly duplicitous nature and also that we have stopped your plan before it even got off the ground,” said Pam, “I will get to the true purpose of this drone message.” She addressed the wider group. “We invite you –”

  At this point her voice was replaced by the oddly flat tone of a computer-synthesised voice. It was like one of those form letters where to make it seem personal they shove in your name.

  “– treacherous conspirators and human collaborator –”

  Pam picked up again from there. “– to a celebration marking a historic moment in our hatchling’s life.”

  “Cheese and wine will be mandatory,” added Derek.

  “It’s not an attack,” said Sam. “It’s a party.”

  Its message delivered, the drone retracted its arm, spun round and whizzed off out of the car park, leaving Niki and the others to survey the devastation it had wreaked. Thick braids of smoke swirled from the blasted remains of the equipment and an acrid tang stung the back of Niki’s throat. It was the taste of defeat. The drone strike had ended any hopes she clung to of escaping the planet – and her parents. For a moment she felt overwhelmed with sadness, but that was swept away by an altogether more urgent emotion.

  Anger surged within her. Anger such as she hadn’t felt since her days as a princess of the Galactic League. Back then she had been taught one thing above all else – those with the power are always right. If something went wrong, it was always someone else’s fault. Her mum and dad had caused this; they were the source of her misery and frustration. But they weren’t here. She rounded on Mercedes and Sam.

  “We’ll think of something, Princess—” he began.

  “Silence!” She cut a hand through the air, her hair igniting with her fury. “You brought me to this planet to get away from my parents, but they’re here anyway.”

  The Apples absorbed her rage in deferential silence, but Gavin was aghast. “You were the one who led them here.”

  His words met her incandescent anger and boiled away into nothing.

  “You promised to protect me. But you failed.” She continued to berate them, her flame-hair leaping ever higher. “This is all your fault. Not mine. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

  “Niki, what are you saying?” Gavin yelled at her. “Stop it!”

  But she didn’t want to stop. In fact, it was a relief to unleash this aspect of her nature, something she had been forced to bottle up during her time on Earth. “You’re pathetic, all of you. And even if we had run from my parents again, where would we have gone, hmm? You would have dragged me to another mind-numbing world –” She turned her baleful gaze on Gavin – “full of tediously forgettable inhabitants.” She could tell that he and the Apples were reeling, but she had one last swipe to deliver. What on Earth they called the coup de grâce – the killer blow. “At least if I go with my real mum or dad, I’ll be rich and powerful – and I won’t have to look at any of your loser faces for one more Galactic minute.”

  Her tirade over, she let that sink in, and though the eyes of her guardians were turned to the floor she could see their stricken expressions. Only Gavin met her gaze, disappointment and incomprehension etched in his features. The elation that had powered her anger subsided and she was struck briefly by another, unwelcome feeling. Remorse. She shrugged it off; a galactic princess did not entertain such weakness. This was who she was and no amount of time spent in Middling with these beings could change that. Though what did it matter anyway? Her time here, with all of them, was almost at an end. Niki hardened her heart and marched off.

  Chapter 29

  For the first time since they had met on the steps of Middling High School, Gavin was the one pursuing Niki. She hadn’t been at school all week and when he cornered Bart in maths to ask how she was doing, he just shrugged, saying that he didn’t know and, what’s more, he didn’t care.

  “Let it go, kid,” said Cupcake after school one day towards the end of the week. They were in what was for now still Gavin’s bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed he glanced across the floor to where the Tiny Horror lay on its back, gurgling happily, as Cupcake dangled what he hoped was not an alien weapon system above the baby’s head.

  “You’ll never understand her. She’s galactic royalty – they’re different from normal beings like you and me.”

  Let it go. It was the kind of smart, sensible advice Gavin would’ve followed in the past. Wherever he’d lived, there was always the occasional kid who’d invite him over to play video games, or at school ask to sit with him at lunch, but he’d always shun them. Making friends was risky when you didn’t know how long you were staying in one place. However, with Niki it had been different. She hadn’t given him any say in the matter, just blazed into his life and now, whether he liked it or not, he realised that they were friends. Gavin couldn’t let it go.

  “I’ll be back in five minutes. You OK if I leave you two here?”

  “Relax, I’ll take care of everything,” said Cupcake, circling the Tiny Horror, green eyes fixed on its chubby little body. “OK, Tony, time for din-dins.” The bounty hunter licked one of its gauntlets and levitated a bottle of formula, which pivoted horizontally and shot into the baby’s mouth. “Drink up, kid.”

  “That’s just formula, right?” Gavin asked nervously.

  Cupcake threw him an admonishing look.

  Gavin slipped out of the house and made his way along Park Street. In preparation for her departure, Niki had been spending all her time with Pam and Derek at number forty-six. So for the last week he had gone round every day after school intending to talk to her. However, each time he rang the bell Pam or Derek would answer and insist that she wasn’t home. Which he knew was a lie. Partly because they would say things like “She’s busy with her live firing practice” or “She’s just dropping off a parcel on Saturn”, but mostly because he could see her at her bedroom window, staring out with big, round eyes and sighing a lot.

  He could see here there now, gazing forlornly into the distance. And idly picking her nose. Her window was open, so he called her name and waved his arms above his head, like a shipwrecked sailor trying to attract the attention of a passing plane. But after a full minute of calling out her name and some desperate flapping, during which he was sure she had to have noticed him, Niki tugged at the latch, closing the window with a thud, before retreating swiftly into the shadows of her room.

  Disconsolate, Gavin lowered his arms and slunk off back home, knowing that the next opportunity he’d get to talk to her would be the night of her going-away party. It would also be the last.

  Gavin lay on his bed in his room, poring over Derek’s book. He was hoping to unearth some overlooked detail about the galactic tyrant that might provide him and the Apples with a last-gasp way out of what was becoming an increasingly dire situation. He searched the pages for a hint that Derek and Pam weren’t as invulnerable as they seemed. Surely there had to be some kind of weakness that he and the Apples could exploit to turn defeat into victory. But if the galactic tyrant had a kryptonite, he had made a point not to catalogue it in his book. Instead, Gavin was given an insight into what Niki’s future would hold. He read the passage with a sinking heart.

  When I first set out on my unstoppable quest for galactic power, kids weren’t on my radar. I didn’t want to be tripping over a pram in the hallway of my Fortress of Chaos. But then I met the being who was to become the dark love of my life. She didn’t want kids either, but you’ve got to have someone to inherit all that power, right? Is being a dad the best thing to happen in my life? No. Not even close. I’m the ruler of the flipping galaxy! But since having a hatchling of my own I’ve thought of myself less as a ruthless tyrant and more as father to the whole galaxy. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned as Supreme Daddy, it is the importance of making your offspring compete for your affection. Keep them at arm’s length, withhold your approval and, above all, never remember their birthday.

 

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