phil jones2 (21 page)

Shielding his mouth, he watched RJ do the same and approach the substance with Annika following swiftly. Judging from her quickness to reach the matter, this differed greatly from what she had been expecting to see.

'This is the chamber I escaped from, where I was forced to leave Agent Smith.'

RJ nodded, pointing at the doorway the black treacle-like ooze it had come from. 'You said there was a forcefield in place, presumably to prevent your escape. Why would this goop spill on out into the corridor if it had been activated the whole time you left?'

Hope flickered in Annika's eyes. 'RJ, you're right!' Then she subsided into coughing.

'Looks like both Captain Jones and Agent Smith might be giving these varmints more than they reckoned for.'

Trigger didn't feel their wild surge of joy at that though, as they were still hopelessly far away from the ship and he had just begun to hear the tapping sounds of many scaled feet heading toward them.

Chapter 25

Throne! Bowling! Wires!

T
he door he had just been coerced through led out onto a large concourse that Phil gazed briefly at before being dragged further into the depths of this huge ship and its strange simulations.

He passed down corridors that twisted and turned, never once meeting a Voravian aggressor. He vaguely hoped that he had the glove to thank for that, one minute it pulled him through one corridor and the next he had found himself doubling back to avoid trouble. That or it had a very poor sense of humour and this was all a giant practical joke on its part.

As if sensing the thought, the glove gave him a disapproving squeeze, it had yet to verbally or mentally communicate its disapproval of him. In spite of this Phil thought that with the painful squeezing and tugging it seemed to be doing a fine job of conveying it to him.

There came the noises of scaled feet ahead, the glove didn't even need to tell Phil to turn and go back the other way. The only problem with this was that there were scaled feet coming from behind him as well.

Phil searched frantically for a passageway out of here or anything to prevent him from dying a terrible and painful death at the hands of the Voravians. Judging by the inactivity from the glove there was no such thing, he was cornered.

He reached down to his belt for his blaster, before realising that he had been stripped if it by the Voravians before being placed into that room with the boxes. He was trapped, with no possible way of defending himself.

The Voravians from either side appeared simultaneously, as if it had all been planned with some kind of clockwork efficiency.

Phil threw his hands up in the air and they raised their weapons, causing him to shout in alarm. The head Voravian refused to fire though, peering at him as if wondering what the silly human was doing with his arms raised.

They clearly didn't know the signal for surrender, or 'don't shoot'. This was going to end badly.

Except that it didn't do that at all. The Voravians fired precisely nothing, instead standing there as if waiting for something to happen. Except nothing happened at all, which prompted the Voravians to call Phil's arm-raising bluff and press their guns into his back, leading him at the centre of a marching square to some unknown part of the ship.

The pink glove didn't seem to complain about this inconvenience either, Phil found himself oddly surprised to be alive. He had assumed that they'd just shoot him, why wouldn't the just shoot him? He suppressed the thought, hoping that the creatures weren't overly telepathic. They could have something far worse in store for him yet.

Indeed, when the large cargo doors opened and revealed a giant toad of a creature sitting upon an equally giant throne, Phil Jones realised that there was indeed far worse in store for him.

With a strange croaking noise, the creature beckoned his warriors to bring Phil closer so that he may inspect him. Or at least, that's what he hoped the thing was saying, he wasn't overly fluent in croak.

Seeing as it was pointless to resist, Phil gave little resistance as they dragged him closer to the horrid creature, though not so close as to allow him to somehow break free of the hold and attack. Not that he was exactly planning on doing that any time soon. He may have the weight advantage on these lizard things but their painful grip suggested there was nothing but muscle underneath the green-skinned hides of those guarding him.

With another beckoning of the creature's hand, the far bay doors opened and revealed several more guards, ushering in another captive that hung limply from their arms. Ushering was Phil's polite substitution for 'dragging semi-consciously across the floor'.

As the lights flickered over him, Phil realised it was Smith, that was a very bad sign indeed. If the creatures could capture and incapacitate his head of security then it certainly didn't bode well for the rest of the crew. Presumably they were locked away somewhere too, the thought only crossed his mind briefly as he was more concerned with not dying right now.

They seated the obviously-drugged Smith at the foot of the creature's chair between his large flabby legs, this prompted the presumed leader of the Voravians to slap his hands down over the man's head, almost engulfing it entirely. Phil hoped that Smith could breathe under all that lizard flesh.

His security officer's head sprang up as if suddenly alert and a glimmer of hope passed through Phil, only to be replaced with emptiness when he began to speak.

'You are the large one of your crew. You are the enemy.'

It was definitely Smith making these noises, but Phil had no doubt that they weren't of his own volition. It sounded all wrong as the Voravian used him as a mouth-piece to translate his own croaking.

'I am the large one of my crew.' Phil heard himself saying, without even realising he'd opened his mouth to speak. Was he merely a mouth-piece for an entirely different form of control? The glove on his hand tightened, silencing the thought in such a crucial situation.

'You will surrender to us, or be destroyed.' the leader replied, clearly not a master at the subtle art of diplomacy.

'No.' Phil found himself saying, then waited for the crucial words to come pouring out that would convince this large creature to cease all hostilities.

The silence seemed to lie heavy on the room as the single word echoed away, Phil waited patiently for the follow-up but it appeared that the glove was trying to outdo his opponent in brevity.

Phil hadn't known of the word brevity until that point in time, apparently this was the glove's way of explaining what it was doing to him.

'Then you shall die.' the corpulent Voravian informed him, releasing its hands from Smith's head and letting the man slump unconsciously to the floor.

He should have been terrified, or at least wetting himself in trepidation of what was to come, instead he found a confident smile had slowly crawled its way across his face.

His foe croaked something to the soldiers and they raised their weapons menacingly at him, surely there was no escaping at this range?

The glove tugged at him violently and he went with the insistent movement, flying directly at the guard on the right and bowling into him just as he got his shot off.

A roar from the other side of the room indicated that the shot had left a fatal mark on one of the other guards as the room erupted into a chorus of blaster fire.

Rolling clear of the scorched body that had protected him from the initial bolts, Phil tangled with two other Voravians in a heap, like a bowling ball attempting to ask multiple pins for a spot of debauchery. They didn't seem overly enamoured with his efforts but had little time to complain as shots aimed at Phil's tumbling body went wide of their mark and blasted a hole in them.

Captain Jones righted himself just in time to see the giant Voravian pull a small pistol from his throne. Taking no time to think of the comical difference in the size of weaponry, Phil scooped up Smith and dove clear of the blast. The guards may have been wayward with their fire but they didn't dare aim for him now that their leader was directly behind should they miss.

Taking advantage of this, Phil bodily threw Smith at the remaining soldiers, his mind comically adding the sound of multiple pins falling as they collapsed into a heap. Before any of them had the presence of mind to right themselves, he had picked up his burden once again and was sprinting through the cargo doors and away from the bellowing Voravian leader.

An alarm sounded on the ship, Phil assumed it was on account of his escape and tried to quicken his pace. His body grumbled but took into account the life-or-death situation he had been placed into and somehow continued to wobble its way to wherever the glove was leading them.

They reached an intersection and took a right, then a left, then another right. Phil dizzyingly followed these unspoken directions from the none-too-gentle tugging of the glove in the hopes that somehow it knew where it was going and what he was supposed to do.

The doors ahead led only one way, and as they opened Phil realised that the glove was finally playing to his strengths.

A large pulsing coil of energy was surrounded by an array of wires, near them stood a group of spindly Voravian technicians that looked nothing like the brutish counterparts he had previously encountered. The glove had taken him to the main engine room, and apparently the creatures within were involved in some terribly delicate and complicated activity. They barely noticed the obese man barrelling toward them until it was much too late.

Bodies went flying everywhere and there was a series of sparks and explosions that Phil silently hoped hadn't killed Smith, who he had set down by the door. He vaguely heard a number of jabbering high-pitched croaking noises but they were soon drowned out by the alarms as he tumbled face-first into the wiring with a massive grin on his face. If he was going out, then he was going to take the entire Voravian mothership with him.

The lights flickered wildly as Phil crushed and wound innumerable coils of wires about him. Some of them were soft and pulsing with a strange fluid that burst out of them upon pressure and others were the more standard sparking and dangerous variety. Even though he didn't know the specifics of their function, he had quite hastily determined that having a man of his size rolling about in them like a kid's paddle-pool was detrimental to the system.

A crackle of energy far too close to Phil's head caused him to jump, and the glove concurred with this motion, somehow throwing him clear of the tangled web he'd woven. The unarmed Voravians stared at him aghast as he righted himself, none of them were armed and all of them started panicking at once, flying about in multiple directions like so many marbles inside a cardboard box. A cardboard box that was now set to self-destruct, very soon.

Phil made for the exit and hauled Smith back up onto his shoulders, his back screaming in protest and determined to make him pay for it later when this was all over.

Wincing as he ran and sucking in great gulps of the strangely-flavoured air, Phil ran where the glove directed him to without a second thought. Well, except for wondering what kind of sticky ooze he was now coated in and whether it was corrosive.

The sound of heavy scaled feet rapped on the metallic plating of the corridor behind him, growing louder by the very second. Then the blasting began, flitting past his ear and marking the side of the wall ahead with a darkened smoking wound. Phil had already determined that he didn't want his head to take one of those energy bolts, thanks.

That was when one hit him square in the back, sending him sprawling to the floor and meeting the hard panel face-first.

Fortunately, Phil's ample proportions cushioned him from the fall, the same could not be said about Smith, whose head cracked off it with a sound that made his Captain wince.

Staggering to his feet, he picked up Smith once more and slung him over his shoulder, bounding down the corridor again.

That was when he briefly wondered why he wasn't dead. Come to think of it... why wasn't he dead? He'd been hit square in the back by one of those blasters and nothing had happened, surely that was reason enough for him to be a smouldering corpse, right?

The glove tightened around his hand, and the thought vanished. He needed to get to safety instead of wondering how or why he was alive, that was the main priority here.

Ploughing onward and trying his best to ignore the pursuit, Phil was suddenly jerked to his right and into a large, round entrance.

Before him were a series of bright buttons and a large chair, some kind of alien console that he didn't know how to operate. He slung Smith into the seat and the glove took over, tapping wildly at the panel on the side of the wall and sealing him in here just as the Voravians made it to his position. He could hear them banging upon the door but they may as well have been a million miles away now that the thick hatch had slammed shut.

Turning toward the console he thrust his gloved hand out and waited for it to do all the work.

Nothing happened.

A large screen popped up and a great big red sign started flashing at him. In spite of its strange and indecipherable text, there was no mistaking that something very bad was happening when the countdown aligned itself to all the same digits.

Phil shrugged, he had made it this far. It was time to trust in himself one last time.

Building up to it, he threw himself at the keys and hoped that one of the hundreds he hit would prevent him from dying.

It was only then that he realised the glove had been telling him to do the opposite.

Oh dear.

Chapter 26

Concourse! YouwantedtoseemeLieutenant! Bottleneck!

C
aptain Darwin stormed forward, with Ensign Trigger Hawkins keeping pace at his side and RJ with Annika both armed and bringing up the rear, waiting for the first sight of their Voravian foes.

'You seem very confident, Captain!' Trigger said, sincerely hoping that they weren't about to run into another horde of Voravian enemies.