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  SHROOM RAIDER

  Book One of the Vertical War Saga

  By Andrew Murray

  For Ivy, Lauren and Robert

  Are you going to make the world a better place?

  A Diary for Timothy

  Contents

  Andrew’s Readers Club

  1 – New London Can Take It

  2 – Strangleshroom

  3 – Shroom Recruits

  4 – A.W.O.L.

  5 – Ashes

  6 – Shroom-Shooters

  7 – Shroombiosis

  8 – A Thousand Deaths

  9 - FSO

  10 – Sgt Gus

  11 – D-Hour

  12 – LZ

  13 – 72 Hours

  14 – ‘Protection’

  15 – Descent

  16 - Victor

  17 – Brigadier Augustus

  18 – Secret Weapons

  19 – Flight

  20 – Devourer of Worlds

  21 – Columna Proxima

  22 – World’s End

  23 - vVv for Victory

  Map of New London

  About the Author

  Reviews and Links

  Sherlock: Prisoner 221B

  Seven Heavens

  Fear Rescue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Andrew’s Readers Club

  Join Andrew’s Reader’s Club and get free books at www.andrewmurray.info.

  Sign up for Andrew’s no-spam newsletter for free ebooks, exclusive extras and sneak peeks of what’s in the pipeline…

  Cover art © Andrew Murray and others

  1 – New London Can Take It

  General Willard D. Earthstar peered down through the telescope, across the mile of empty space that separated New London from the Enemy below. He could clearly make out the Enemy, the Neufundlanders, thousands of them, scurrying like ants to build machines, engines, platforms, ladders, weapons, and all to a single purpose: to bridge the gap between them and New London. To invade…

  General Willard D. Earthstar’s eyes smarted as a gust of toxic smoke caught him full-face. The high cool cave air rippled with plumes of poisonous gases from Neufundland – smoke that scorched your lungs, clouds that stung your eyes, fumes that made your head spin, vapours that made your stomach lurch… For fourteen long years the Vertical War had raged. For fourteen years Neufundland’s chimneys had worked morning, noon and night, burning whatever they burned in their furnaces – and rumour on the New London streets had no shortage of speculation about what horrible things Neufundland might be burning…

  New London had no chimneys that could burn morning, noon and night. New London was too small. Neufundland was too…

  The clock chimed the hour, and the General and his senior staff listened to the hourly broadcast on the wireless:

 
  New London can take it.

  Another day, and the Enemy burns valuable resources, to send up another cloud of poisonous gas. But to what effect? Every man, woman and child in New London now has a gas mask, and knows how to use it. Life goes on in New London, as it always has, and always will. We can take a few miserable stink bombs from below. We can take whatever the Enemy throws at us. New London can take it…>

  “Can we take it?” sighed the General. “We’re outnumbered. We’re outgunned. The Enemy has more resources than us, more rock, more mineral ore – so much that they can afford to send some of it up in poisonous smoke. They can build more and bigger engines of war...”

  His general staff were gathered gloomily around him. One cleared his throat.

  “And General, we are hearing rumours, worrying rumours. Word has it that Neufundland is developing some kind of super-weapon…”

  The General took his eye from the telescope and sighed again.

  “Gentlemen”, he said, “Give me some good news for a change. Name me one thing, one thing that we have on our side…”

  All his officers frowned, shuffled their feet, glanced at each other as they tried to think of one thing that New London had to its advantage over the Enemy.

  General Willard D. Earthstar peered down through the telescope again.

  He thought.

  He frowned.

  Then General Willard D. Earthstar leaned over the balcony of New London Command, and spat… As his gob of spit floated downwards, his grey face flickered with the faintest shadow of a smile.

  “Gravity, gentlemen”, he said. “We have gravity…”

  2 – Strangleshroom

  Icarus D. Earthstar felt the strangleshroom bouncing about in his pack as he ran with his friends, Biff and Arla, through the batshroom orchard, thick with the heavy aroma of bat-beef. The Mark I strangleshroom that he had half-inched from his father’s Armoury and was carrying on his back just, you know, to be on the safe side. In case anything went wrong. Not that anything was going to go wrong…

  They were down Blackchapel way, celebrating Icarus’s fourteenth birthday by scrumping shroom-steaks from Farmer Blewit’s batshroom orchard, jumping up to pluck and cut the thick juicy fruits that hung heavily from the towering fungi, and smelled uncannily like real bat-beef...

  “Mmm…” sighed Biff as he breathed in the rich meaty smell, “My folks will be quids in tonight. Prime shroom-steaks all round, fried up a treat, with some crispy toad-potatoes and just a dash of hot moss-mustard…”

  “Biff, you greedy slug”, said Arla, “If you get any fatter on prime shroom-steaks you’ll be a perfect sphere, and me and Icarus are going to have to roll you around like a sweaty, meaty bowling ball…”

  “Hey!” said Biff, reaching up with his pocket knife to cut down yet another juicy, dripping shroom-steak and shove it in his sack, “It’s not my fault I’m big-boned. All my folks are like that, you’ve seen ‘em, Arla.”

  “They’re like that because you shove enough scrumped, stolen, pick-pocketed and black-market grub down their gobs to feed half of New London. I, on the other hand, show some self-control with my eatings. I’m not greedy like you, Biff, and I’m not rich like Mister Moneybags over there. I’m going to turn these steaks into hard cash, instead of flab and number twos – ain’t that right, Ick? Ick?”

  Icarus had stopped. His eye was caught by something on the trunk of one of the batshrooms. Someone had carved it into the rubbery trunk with a knife, and the pale flesh exposed by the cuts was only starting to brown over. It hadn’t been cut long ago then.

  Icarus was standing there, wondering what it meant, when he heard Arla shout –

  “MPs! We’re going to cop it!”

  Icarus looked round, just long enough to see them – three Military Policemen, two of them with Salamanders snapping and straining at their leashes. Then he ran – with Arla close behind him, Arla who was lean and quick and held back only by her falling-apart boots. But Biff was always the slowest, and now his big bones struggled to keep up with Icarus and Arla as they fled.

  “Don’t even think about running!” came the MP’s voice. “I’ve seen your faces. I know who you are – and I mean you, Icarus D. Earthstar!”

  Icarus recognised that voice. Heard his name. And all the strength drained from his legs.

  No! Noooo! Of all the coppers in New London, why did it have to be him?

  And Icarus stood there for what seemed an age, though it was really a moment, with confusion roaring in his head – until Arla’s firm grip shoved him on again.

  “I don’t care if he is your brother, Ick”, she snarled, “He’s a copper and we ain’t getting caught. Now move it!”

  So they ran, and Icarus heard his brother’s command –

  “All right, they leave us no option. Loose the Manders!�
�

  His men let the Salamanders off their leashes, and on they raced with a slither and snarl. Icarus tried to keep up with Arla, but all he could think about was sharp Salamander fangs sinking into his calves, any moment now…

  “Ditch the steaks!” said Arla, as she swung her sack off her back, pulled out one shroom-steak after another, and scattered them behind her. Icarus did the same – though Biff, who was now as red from the running as a Ruby Deathcap, could only whine,

  “But that’s our dinner, that’s our dinner…”

  And just as they had hoped, they glanced behind to see the Manders distracted by the steaks, stopping to devour a couple… But then, hunger satisfied, the Manders came on again, slithering, snapping, closing the distance on the three friends…

  “Ick!” wailed Biff, “I’m not going to make it, they’re going to get me…”

  Icarus turned to see that the Manders would be all over Biff in moments. And then he knew he had no choice…

  Icarus stopped and reached into his pack for the Mark I strangleshroom that would do just the job, right here, right now. Just enough strangling, not too little, not too much… He found the blister-pack of pollen attached to the side of the Shroom and popped the blister, allowing the pollen to pierce the Shroom and bring it to life. Quickly he turned and threw the Shroom straight at the Manders – too quickly to notice that the label stamped on the side read ‘New London Army Issue strangleshroom Mark II’… Mark II… He also realised too late that Biff was in the way…

  “Biff, duck!”

  And Biff, who always did what he was told, fell to the ground just as the strangleshroom looped over him and hit the first Mander right in its broad snout.

  The pollen had done its job. The strangleshroom came to life as it flew, and exploded in a mass of twisting, grasping tendrils that engulfed the first Mander in a choking, strangling embrace. Then a long flailing tendril caught the second Mander by the leg, and no matter how it writhed and twisted and bit at the tendril, it was drawn into the growing ball of fungal fury. Biff was still lying there – and Icarus saw another tendril come reaching for his ankle.

  “Biff, run!”

  And somehow Biff managed to scrabble to his chubby feet – and Icarus could swear the tendril brushed his trousers, and grasped like a hand just a second too late – and came running on. As he joined his friends, all three took a moment to savour the scene. The Manders were completely hidden in the flailing mass. Arla laughed.

  “Nice bit of kit you nicked, Ick!”

  “Does the job, doesn’t it?” said Icarus. “Gives us time to get out of here, then dies and wilts and crumbles and leaves our two Salamander friends shaken, stirred, angry but unhurt. Mark I strangleshroom, does exactly what it says on the label!”

  But that wasn’t what it said on the label…

  As the three friends paused to enjoy the sight of the strangleshroom at work on the Manders, with the Military Policemen still in the distance, running hard to catch up – Icarus saw that something strange was happening. A Mark I strangleshroom was only supposed to stop an enemy for a minute or two. By now it should have been slowing down, turning black and brittle as it rapidly died… but instead the strangleshroom began to grow, with new and longer and stronger tendrils sprouting with astonishing speed, tendrils that were now whipping and lashing in all directions…

  Arla just had time to say,

  “You sure you got the right shroom there, Ick?”

  When Icarus cried, “Runnnn!”

  And Biff and Arla ran… But Icarus lingered. He could see that the tendrils were lashing in the direction of the Military Policemen as they came racing up, the two Mander handlers concerned for their animals, and their Captain - Captain Ethan Earthstar, Icarus’s brother - staring through the writhing mass, staring Icarus straight in the eye. Icarus and his brother had had a thousand arguments, a thousand fights, in their time - but Icarus had never seen quite that look in Ethan’s eyes before. Gazing into those eyes, Icarus felt that his brother truly wanted him dead... Then, one after another, Icarus saw the Mander handlers go down, caught in the tendrils, and there was just time to see the hatred in Ethan’s eyes turn to fear as a grasping shoot reared over him…

  … when Icarus sensed, rather than saw, the tendril that was coming after him…

  He ducked to one side as the tip of the tendril snatched at where his neck had just been, and Icarus ran, ran as he had never run before, in a feverish fear of that grasping thing touching his flesh –

  - and he blundered into the soft, squelchy trunk of a batshroom and bounced off –

  - and he saw that Biff and Arla had come back to help him, but were caught themselves –

  - and he saw the tendril looming over him, slipped, nearly fell, ran on, not looking where he was going –

  - and then the ground disappeared from under him and he was falling out into space…

  Icarus D. Earthstar looked down, and saw twenty miles of thin air beneath him, a twenty mile drop that would leave his body smashing upon Neufundland’s rocks, or splashing into the boiling acid waters of the Great Sea… And in one bright dazzling instant, Icarus D. Earthstar knew with complete certainty that this was the last thing he would ever see. The air whistled in his ears like a death-lullaby as he began to fall…

  Then the tendril grasped his ankle. Stopped his fall. Held him there, dangling, like a fat ripe fruit. And then the vertigo hit him, and the world spun round and round in a sickening blur. Then, slowly, the tendril began to haul him back up…

  General Willard D. Earthstar’s jaw swivelled over Icarus like a gun turret.

  “My useless, good-for-nothing second son, who seems to have been sent into this world for the sole purpose of embarrassing me. Here am I, General of the New London Army, tasked with the fighting of the Enemy below – and the greatest pain in my backside, time and again, is my own son. Why can’t Icarus be more like Ethan?”

  General Earthstar watched the fire-fighters and rescue teams hacking away the last of the strangleshroom tendrils, dousing them with weed-killer, stamping on any stalk that refused to die. Just beyond, medics were attending to Biff and Arla, sitting sheepishly under police supervision. They were also trying to treat Captain Ethan Earthstar, who was struggling to his feet and waving them away, and one of his two Mander handlers. The other was nowhere to be seen.

  The General swung that great howitzer of a jaw back to his son. Part of him wanted to spit – but then he thought,

  “One act of spitting in a day is enough for a General’s dignity...”

  The General opened his mouth – and Icarus, still dizzy from the fall, expected a blast of warm cigar-scented breath, sprinkled with spittle, accompanied by an A-Z of the choicest insults in the New London lexicon. But instead his father spoke calmly. Too calmly.

  “I’ve just been on the telephone to the hospital. Corporal Hollis was badly strangled, his windpipe partially crushed – but they say he’s going to pull through. If it hadn’t been for your brother’s quick actions, dousing the strangleshroom with fungicidal spray…”

  They heard a footstep, and turned to find Ethan standing there, uniform torn, red angry welts across his cheek and neck. He was shaking. Ethan glanced once at Icarus, then turned his attention to his father. At last, he said –

  “Stan?”

  His father nodded.

  “Stan’s going to make it, son. He’s a good man and he’ll be back in uniform in no time.”

  Ethan paused a moment, gave a slight nod, then turned and went to see how his other man was doing. Icarus was left with the memory of his glance. Ethan hadn’t looked at Icarus as if he’d wanted to kill him. He’d looked at him as if he was already dead.

  “So Icarus, what’s it to be?”

  “Father, I’m really sorry, truly I am, we were just messing about in the orchard and…”

  His father’s granite face leaned close to his. But still his voice was quiet. Dangerously so.

  “I’m not inter
ested, Icarus. I’ve heard too many excuses, too many sorrys… and from you, I know they mean as much as spit in the wind…”

  The General sighed.

  “You came so close to being up on a murder charge. As it is, it’s three counts of attempted murder of servicemen of the New London Army. Theft of a Grade A weapon from a New London Army facility. Trespass on aforementioned Army property. Use of aforementioned weapon in the aforementioned three attempted murders. Not to mention trespass on property used to produce food, and theft of such food, in a time of war…”

  The General leaned close to Icarus.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Icarus? I’m merely a General. I don’t make the Law, and this time I couldn’t protect you from the Law. Even if I wanted to…”

  The General smiled, a dry smile without any joy or humour.

  “And you know what, Icarus? I don’t want to. This time you are going to take your medicine.”

  Icarus frowned. He was used to the hot rage, the rants and raves, the threatening and cajoling… But this was different. He had never seen his father behave like this before – and suddenly he felt like a helpless cave newt, sensing the shadow of the great bat above…

  “Look Father, I’ll do whatever you want to make amends, I promise…”

  “Oh yes”, said the General. “I assure you, you will. For this time, Icarus, making amends means making a choice. A simple choice:

  A – you can go to prison. For a very long time. It’s only your age that saves you from the hangman’s noose. Believe me, Icarus, you will have grey hairs in your beard before you get out of there.

  Or B – you can join the Shroom Raiders. You and your chums, all three of you.