phil jones2 (42 page)

'Suggestions, that man?' Darwin said, crossing and uncrossing his legs in a manner that elicited many a wince from those unfortunate enough to look in his direction.

'I don't know sir, I fear we're all going to die!'

'Settle down Ensign. We can't die, I'm on board. Well, you could probably die, given that you're one of the little people and all. Me on the other hand, I'm pretty damn safe.'

He stared down at the glove with a smile on his face, damn safe indeed. Now, how exactly did one turn this thing on? He gave it an experimental shake but nothing happened... well, that wasn't good then.

'Aren't you the reason the Voravians are chasing us in the first place, sir?' his Lieutenant informed him.

Darwin shrugged, still transfixed by the glove. 'I couldn't tell any of them apart, I'm sure they're much the same when it comes to us. They'll just pick the first bold, heroic and chiselled character they get their claws on, should they end up boarding.'

With that pesky question dealt with, he continued to wiggle his fingers in the hope that there was some kind of weird gesture or hand signal he had to make in order to activate the glove's powers and save the day.

The communications went off again. 'Sir, they've taken us out of our hyperwarp bubble again!'

'Engage the hyperwarp then!' the Captain bellowed, waving his hand about in multiple patterns.

The darkness of space was replaced once again with the judder and squeal of the Scavanger's hull as it launched itself into the bluey-purple of hyperwarp for a sixth time.

Well, that's easy enough then. All they needed to do was keep re-engaging the hyperwarp while he tried to figure out how this contraption worked. He vaguely remembered that the folks at the research station may have mentioned a few things about its function, but he had far too much on his mind at the time to really follow.

'We have one more attempt at this and then the engines will be cooked. I can't promise you that we'll be able to manage even that if they take us out of it again.'

'Engineer, you can and will find a way to make it happen.' Darwin informed him, pointing at the communications speaker with his sparkling hand as if it had offended him. 'Now where's my egg-nog?'

'Sir, it's very difficult to carry egg-nog from the replicators when the ship is pitching and yawing from exiting and entering hyperdrive.' a chatty and somewhat frightened officer said as he handed him a half-spilt mug.

'Dunno why I have a taste for the stuff, but that's the crazy consequences of space for you.' Darwin replied, slurping from the mug with gusto. Not that he would be the sort of man to know he was doing it with gusto, or quite frankly ask gusto's permission to do so.

The Scavanger let out another unwanted shudder and the blackness of space began to flicker through the hyperwarp bubble, they were mere moments away from discovering whether they had one more jump left in them or the Voravians had a session of target practice ahead.

'Engineer, keep us in that hyperwarp bubble thing!'

The reply in the speaker came over a series of alarms and screeches. 'Captain, I cannot deny the laws of thermodynamics! These engines are overheating and will come apart long before we get to Star Command unless you do something fast.'

The Captain rolled up his sleeves. 'Time to get to work then. Ensign?'

'Yes, Captain Darwin?' the Ensign looked up at him, the briefest flicker of hope in his eyes at the authoritative tone.

'Steady as she goes.'

The crew groaned as one, then the slow realisation that they were all doomed slowed their frenetic working pace.

Darwin dusted off his hands and leaned back into the seat. 'That should do it, now we just wait for the pace to pick up and we'll be back to Earth before we know it.'

A beam of light shot out and was immediately the subject of the viewscreen's attention, soaring through the narrowing gap between the Scavanger and their Voravian foes and exploding in a blinding conflagration. Darwin and his crew instinctively shielded their eyes but the viewscreen had already compensated, though there was little it could do about the figure that now stood in front of it.

The speaker came back to life. 'Captain, the hyperwarp bubble remains stable, and the Voravian fleet have withdrawn somewhat. I don't know what you did up there, but it worked.'

'All in a day's work, Engineer.' he replied with a smug face. 'Well done Ensign, excellent work with the whole going steady thing, I knew it would... who the devil are you?'

This last part was addressed to the lithe figure that crossed the bridge to stand face to face with Darwin, a look of utter contempt written plainly upon her features.

'I have kept the Voravians at bay for now, see to it that you don't ruin our chances any further, Captain.' the way she spat out the last word suggested to Darwin that she didn't entirely think much of his ranking. Without any further word she passed out through the double doors, security did nothing to stop her.

Having now gone out of Darwin's immediate range, the Captain promptly lost interest in her and instead shifted his focus to the damnable pink glove that was wrapped about his hand. Why in blazes hadn't it leapt to his aid when he had most needed it? He'd been chugging pints of this damnable egg-nog and still there was nothing. He'd done everything that woman had asked of him and still there was no change, was it supposed to start talking to him or something?

Come to think of it, the woman who had just appeared on the bridge did look awfully like the one he had been forced to deal with in the transmission. Strange that this far into space everyone started looking the same to him. Funny thing, space.

'Captain, there's someone down here in Engineering who calls herself Anne, say she wants to repair our engine systems. Do you know anything about this?'

Anne. Yes, that had been the name of the girl in the transmissions, hadn't it? Strange how this one had the same name, perhaps these deep space trader folks weren't as imaginative with their names as the ones back home. Unless...

'Captain Darwin.' an agitated and distinctly familiar female voice came over the communications speaker. 'If you don't give me access to the Scavanger's Engineering systems I shall be taking command of the entire vessel, is that clear?'

The damnable woman was on his ship! He vaguely recalled that she had said something along those lines, but at the time he hadn't really been listening as there were too many other things occupying his mind. Like that young Ensign from...

'Darwin, this is your last chance, respond or be stripped of your rank.'

Stripped eh? Well, that sounded agreeable enough.

'Very well then!' Darwin replied. 'Let her have at it, Engineer. I'm sure she knows her way around many systems.'

There was a disgusted groan at the sleaze and then the transmission cut out, modern women these days were so hard to please. Why, a fine young filly getting attention from her Captain back in the day...

Darwin sank into reminiscence once again, back into a half-imagined time where things were more simple and he wasn't constantly accosted by people who thought they knew better than he did.

'Captain, are you there?'

He stared up at the speaker and wondered how much time had passed. 'I'm here, Engineer. What is it?'

'Well... we let Anne take a look at our systems, and they're now running at ninety percent efficiency. I don't know what she did or how she did it, but the hyperwarp fluctuations shouldn't happen any more no matter how much the Voravians catch up.'

The Lieutenant to his right had started excitedly tapping upon his console. 'Captain, that means we will make it to Earth before the Voravian fleet catches us!'

'Jolly good show!' Darwin exclaimed, waving his glove before him as if conducting an orchestra in a particularly vigorous suite. 'Now we can get ourselves back to base and lick these Voravians once and for all.'

'Don't you mean the Human Genome Station?' a hesistant Ensign asked in spite of the Lieutenant waving at him to not do so.

'What? Oh, yes, that. There. We're going there, that's right.'

The speaker was getting quite used to interrupting Darwin's already haphazard thought processes, it chose to do so once more. 'Captain Darwin.' came Anne's voice. 'I'd like to see you in your quarters.'

Darwin smirked up at the speaker and narrowed his eyes. 'I'm sure you would... I'll see if I can pencil you in. What's your name and rank?'

The barely audible static of the silence wasn't an encouraging sign. It really was hard to find a decent female these days.

'Just go to your quarters.' came Anne's voice once again, the stern tone eventually reminding him of who he was dealing with.

He looked about, but none of the crew caught his eye, all conveniently working hard at their consoles. Good, none of them would notice if he were to depart then.

Rising from his seat, he stretched his legs out and flexed the glove a little before making his way over to the turboshaft that would take him down to the crew quarters. Steadily does it, nobody need know that he was at the beck and call of a woma...

'Captain? Where are you going?' the Commander asked.

'I... er... I am going to...' Darwin struggled, itching at invisible needles that were digging into his neck all of a sudden. 'I'm... going to make love to a beautiful woman, that's it.'

The Commander gave him a look of disgust before reluctantly taking Darwin's sweaty seat. 'As you wish, sir.'

He made a speedy exit then, not looking back to see if the crew had noticed his haste. Let them think whatever they pleased, he was a master of deception and they would fall foul of any number of his meticulous plots should he wish them to.

It was then that it struck him he was heading from one high pressure scenario to another. He had no doubt in his mind that this contemptuous filly would force his abdication should he say or do the wrong things. If they were already on their way to Earth as planned why in the seven galaxies did she need to see him now? Alone. In his quarters.

Thoughts begin to circle in Darwin's mind. Thoughts that would have been outrageous or dismissed as farcical by anyone without the libido the size of a small planet. That these very thoughts had nestled in Darwin's addled mind suggested that they had found a very fertile ground upon which to flourish. The prudish and authoritarian Anne was transformed in his mind, after all she was a woman. Women had needs, wants, desires. When forced to stride up that close to Darwin in the bridge, was there not a certain allure to his entrenchment firmly in command of the flag ship? His lantern-like jaw and physical prowess must have screamed out to her with the heat of a thousand suns, and in spite of her complaints she clearly must have felt the need to excuse herself before the stern front slipped in the face of this.

The thoughts would go on like this for the majority of Darwin's brief walk to his quarters, upon which he bumped into or walked through four separate officers on his way. Most of the senior crew had long since learned to avoid him when his face had that glazed look, but clearly there were still a few unfortunate uninformed that had to experience the man's heft come into contact with them without so much as an apology.

'What the devil are you doing down there?' he asked an Ensign who was inexplicably staring up at him from the deck plating and rubbing her head.

Her head.

'Why hello there.' Darwin crooned, offering her a sweaty hand and helping this particularly attractive young lady to her feet. 'Captain Darwin, at your service.'

The unnamed Ensign shifted uncomfortably, not willing to meet him in the eye. Clearly she couldn't handle his animal magnitude, fortunately she wouldn't be the one to experience it... yet. He had bigger fish to fry. Now that she had his name she could contact him at her leisure, which would be when she lay awake at night thinking of him of course.

One wink later and a firm palm across her backside and he was departing at a steadily increasing jaunt, now he had to go and see what this delightful Anne character had in store for him. Knowing the type he fully expected her to have taken over his quarters... well that was certainly something he could remedy given enough time.

The doors of his room shot up to greet him as if they were the ones travelling and not he. Time to lay on the good old Darwin charm.

'Why hello there.' he crooned, stepping through the door and into his love nest.

And directly into a right hook.

'Enough of this!' snapped Anne at his curiously prostrate form. 'we have work to do before you get back to Earth. The rebels are still out there and I don't think the Voravians are going to finish the job for us.'

Darwin rolled a thick tongue around his swollen lips and tasted copper. Had she... had she hit him?

'Yes... mam.' he said with great care, rising from the floor and noting the civility that had returned to her voice. All business then. 'What is it you wish me to learn?'

She crossed over to the seating and settled herself, her gloved hand none the worse for having felled him. 'The Human Genome station has been receiving rather odd telemetry from your glove since your wearing it. We're not entirely sure what to make of it, but your efforts so far to harness its powers show a remarkable lack of understanding on your part, which is easy to interpret given your current display.' she gave him a hard look then, which indicated that he was not welcome to sit beside her. 'It is clear to me that you didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to Professor Hanniman's detailed instructions, even a child would have mastered rudimentary functions of the glove by now.'

Darwin bit back a retort, running a hand over his bruised jaw. It wasn't his fault that the Professor hadn't been clear enough! As a Captain of Star Command he had to juggle innumerable issues in his mind at all times, and as a result of that certain things just didn't stick. Yes, that's right, the Professor had just been too narrow-sighted to realise that and subsequently the information he had tried to impart to Darwin had been lost in translation. Not the fault of Darwin at all really when you looked at it with such sensible deduction.