phil jones2 (22 page)

'Confidence maketh the man, Cadet!' he bellowed, as if his voice alone would ward danger away from them. 'I'm certain if we just keep going then we'll find a way back to the ship and get out of here.'

He looked back at Annika for a moment and addressed the comment at her. 'Besides, don't those scaly pipsqueaks have a greater crisis on their hands?'

She nodded at him, trying her best to latch on to his optimistic nature. 'You're right Captain, that black acid wasn't meant to spill clear of the forcefield and as a result it seems to have eaten its way through into some vital systems. Hence the alarm.'

'Precisely!' Darwin roared, undoubtedly failing to understand but increasing his speed all the same. 'Now we just have to make it to the ship before this whole place blows to pieces.'

'What about Captain Jones, sir?' RJ asked, looking back more often now that the pursuit was getting louder.

'He can meet us at the ship, I'm sure that's where he'd be headed if he's capable of getting free of the Voravians with Smith.'

RJ didn't look so certain, but he didn't voice anything to that effect, they were all far too intent on saving themselves first than to go on some hopeless search and rescue mission. Clearly Captain Jones had been made a Captain for a reason and if he couldn't fight his way to the ship he would undoubtedly want them to escape without him.

They hurtled on down the corridor and for a moment Trigger genuinely thought that they'd escape, there had been no sign of their pursuit and nothing up ahead but open space and their way out of here.

Open space.

They careened through into a huge concourse area and stopped dead.

Fanned out in a giant semi-circle were rows upon rows of Voravian soldiers, all of them armed to the teeth and looking extremely angry at having been interrupted. Their guns were trained upon them, there was no escape. Just ahead of them lay the ship, tantalisingly out of reach.

'Any suggestions, Captain?' Annika asked with impossible optimism, her voice sounding very quiet as it echoed out into the silence of the concourse.

To Trigger's bafflement, Captain Darwin turned to face Annika with a sleazy smile and an aura of confidence that seemed completely uncalled for.

'Lieutenant, I want you to take the rest of the crew back into the corridor and fight off the Voravians pursuing you. I'll deal with the ones blocking our way to the ship.'

Ensign Hawkins briefly looked around at the other faces surrounding him and realised that his view of how stupendously stupid that order was seemed to be the general consensus.

'Sir, there's nothing to be gained from you sacrificing yourself against the Voravians.' RJ pointed out quite sensibly, which meant that Darwin would have none of it.

Darwin was having none of it, silencing the man and waving away his complaints. 'My decision is final and that's an order. You're just going to have to assume that the Captain knows what he's doing best.'

The overarching silence and lack of any response suggested that the remnants of the crew didn't share this opinion but weren't going to fight him any further on the point.

'Don't you at least want a gun, sir?' Annika asked, eyeing the stock-still Voravians ahead of them and wondering why the lizards hadn't fried them all with their blasters.

As if to further heap astonishment and incredulity upon Trigger's present bafflement, the Captain rolled up his sleeves and looked ready to engage the armed Voravian forces in fisticuffs.

'Captain that'd be darn foolish to go out there to give 'em a boxing, sir.' RJ pleaded to the man's non-existent sense of rationality.

'You have your orders.' Darwin stated under his breath, shooing the man away from his side. He then opened up a small pocket of his uniform that had been hither-to unseen. A small white tablet jumped out and landed on his tongue, followed by the expulsion of eye-wear that Trigger had seen Smith sporting.

Donning these, Darwin gave the crew one last look. 'It's time to kick some tail.'

Trigger watched the Captain swagger forward and enter the concourse.

'You heard the Captain!' RJ said, grabbing Trigger's shoulder and ushering him back through the corridor so he need not see the fight. 'I don't claim to understand the man but we've gotta get moving and blast those Voravians behind us.'

With that, he and Annika led the way grimly as the sound of blaster fire erupted behind them, refusing to stare back at the conflagration and finally turning a corner.

Trigger had a bad feeling that they'd soon hear legions of scaled feet signalling the end of their escape attempt. One that looked entirely futile the moment he had seen that concourse packed with fully armed death lizards.

RJ threw himself into a rolling crouch as the first of the creatures came around the bend in the corridor, blasting it square in the chest with his pistol. Annika was armed with the plasma rifle and saved her fire, relying instead of on the swift sharp shots of her companion to take out the Voravians.

Trigger flinched each time he saw a green-skinned monster troop its way round the corner, but each time RJ was quicker off the mark and killed it before it could get a shot away at their prone position.

Eight bodies now lay sprawled and unmoving on the floor of the curved corridor, any more and future Voravians would begin to spot the pile before they rounded the corner. Except that for all intents and purposes, there didn't appear to be any more Voravians coming around the corner.

It was then that Trigger's heart sank, there wasn't much of anything, not even blaster fire. He watched as the reality dawned on each of the crew member's faces, they had to go back and try to blast their way through the Voravians in the concourse.

'Well, this looks like the end for us folks.' RJ stated simply and honestly. 'So Annika, I want you to set your plasma rifle to wide-beam dispersal and take as many of those reptiles as you can with us.'

Hawkins saw that RJ was looking at him now, and the flicker of sorrow and understanding in the man's gaze made his lip tremble slightly.

'Hawkins, I want you to sprint as fast as you can to the ship and get inside. Prep the engines for take off after gunning down every last lizard you can.'

He nodded silently, for lack of anything better to say. The more he listened to the man talk, the more his confidence seemed to grow within him and the more the plan seemed to stand a chance, albeit an infinitesimally small one.

They didn't race back to the concourse where the ship lay, instead RJ continued to have his blaster trained on the space ahead of them where the Voravians could suddenly come marching through. Trigger realised that they'd probably make a lot of noise in doing so and that there had been none yet, but perhaps there were stealthy ones too, that made him feel much worse.

He tried to stop frightening himself with the image of a hulking Voravian soldier silently creeping toward them, but couldn't shake it. The intense feeling of wanting to run screaming in the opposite direction rose up, but the small logical part of his brain told him that if he were to run away from his only means of escape he'd end up dead anyway.

The corridor leading back to the concourse seemed to stretch endlessly at this slower pace, and Trigger could never remember it being this long before. Or was it his imagination that was lengthening and shortening things rather than the altering structure of the sphere itself?

His question was answered as they rounded a corner and stood once more within plain sight of the ship. RJ eased forward with trepidation clear on his features and briefly stuck his blaster out into the open space.

Nothing happened.

'Folks, I think you better see this.' RJ said hesitantly, beckoning them forward with a wave of his hand.

Standing stock-still, surrounded by a ring of Voravian bodies, stood the blackened form of Captain Darwin. He didn't appear to acknowledge the crew as they slowly picked their way to him through the numerous Voravian bodies sprawled about.

From his fists there dripped a strange green fluid that pooled on the floor on either side of his charred boots. It took a moment for Trigger to realise that it was Voravian blood.

The man had punched his way through the entire force standing in their way.

'C...Captain?' Trigger asked, expecting the man to keel over into ash, on account of the smoking Voravian rifles that lay at his side. They had clearly discharged a great number of shots at the man, and it looked like a great number of that great number had greatly impacted upon the man.

'Captain Darwin, can you hear me sir?' RJ spoke directly into the man's ear.

The Captain's eyes flicked open briefly, but they had a far-away look that seemed fractured from the reality that he had somehow brought about.

'Get to the ship.' he croaked at them, then fell forward to the floor with a clunk, his hazard suit turning into a cloud of dust upon impact.

Between RJ and Annika they managed to haul him to his feet. Trigger had found he had sprinted over to the ship and was banging on the open hatch.

'Computer.' RJ shouted. 'Let us in!'

'Voice pattern recognised.' the computer chimed in happily. 'Have a nice day.'

The ramp descended and Trigger passed through the threshold and into the safety of the ship, he had made it!

He watched as Annika and RJ hauled what was left of Darwin up the ramp and onto the ship.

He then promptly screamed as he turned and found himself face to face with the wrong end of a plasma rifle.

'Calm down man, I was just making sure you weren't one of those nasty lizards come to take the ship!' Hanniman yelled at him, before promptly handing him what was his second plasma rifle of the day.

'Now guard the entrance like a good lad, in case any of those nasties come back and try to board.'

Trigger rapped a salute, without even knowing what rank this angry older man was. Then realised the job he'd been lumped with as they dragged Darwin off in the direction of the sick bay.

He stared out the ramp and back into the light of the concourse, waiting for the swarm of green to wash over the huge room and envelop them.

Nothing happened.

He had been expecting explosions and nightmarish creatures, even the sirens and alarms going off that had terrified him previously had seemed to fall into the background.

Where were the Voravians? Were they not on a huge mothership supposedly swarming with them? It all seemed to easy for his pessimistic self to take.

The ramp slowly started to close, then a crackling noise came from above which startled him.

'Trigger, we need you in the cockpit immediately.' Annika said over the comm system.

Moving from one place to another very quickly was Trigger's speciality, and his whirlwind gait soon brought him hammering down the corridors and into the cockpit.

'youwantedtoseemeLieutenant?' he said breathlessly, all at once.

Annika blinked at him. 'Could you repeat that, Ensign?'

Ensign. She actually called him Ensign! That was three people now that had finally got his rank right!

'You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?' he asked, beaming from ear to ear.

She looked at him strangely, then offered him a hesitant smile. 'With Smith absent and Hanniman otherwise occupied, we need you to take the pilot's position while RJ handles the engines and weaponry.'

She had got his rank right and she also wanted him to pilot? If they weren't deep in the bowels of some alien ship on the brink of destruction, he'd actually be really pleased right now.

It was when his shaking hand took the throttle that he realised they'd still probably all die, even though they had done the impossible and made it to the ship. What was stopping the Voravians from sucking them right back in like last time?

The Captain's chair lay empty, with Captains Jones and Darwin both unavailable it would appear that nobody had taken command, were they just going to operate without orders?

As if reading his mind, Annika responded. 'Although I'm not sitting in the chair, I'll be taking command in an attempt to get us out of here. Are there any complaints?'

Silence from RJ, completed by silence from him. Apparently there were no objections.

'Good. Ensign Hawkins I want you to turn to ship about in this concourse and head directly for the far wall. RJ, target weapons at said wall and blast it before we collide.'

'Aye mam.' they both replied instantaneously, Trigger refusing to complain about the difficulty of the task she had set him. The concourse may have been large but it still didn't give him much room to manoeuvre in, and aiming the ship straight for one of the walls didn't fill him with confidence either. Oh well, here goes nothing.

The ship's engines were primed and ready he noticed, and the smaller ship seemed to respond to his slightest of touches much more smoothly as he took it airborne. RJ had a really good set up, even if Trigger didn't have time to tell him so right now.

The ship glided gently as he turned it to face the far wall, compensating just enough for the dimensions of the room. He simply imagined he was turning it on the spot in open space, rather than being crushed by the all-too-near walls of the concourse.

His hand slipped slightly at the thought and one of the wings clipped the far wall, then he swiftly righted it, but not after a brief look of concern from RJ.

'Fire all weapons!' Annika suddenly shouted, causing both of them to look around in shock at her.

'What? I've always wanted to shout that.'

RJ gave her a brief nod and punched a few buttons, sending lasers arcing out and into the far wall of the concourse.

'Maximum speed ahead Ensign, let's bust through that wall!'

The ship soared forward through the debris of the far wall and smoking craters with a grind as their shields impacted with the remnants. Trigger fought with the controls in panicky fashion, attempting to straighten their flight and get some idea of where they were headed.

'Keep going straight Ensign.' Annika replied in what would have been a calming voice but for the undercurrent of tension he felt from it.