phil jones2 (47 page)

Then the beeping stopped and Smith tore off another bit of his uniform. 'Let's see if that has worked.' he said to nobody in particular, throwing the second part of the worst striptease show in history across the corridor and within range of the turrets.

Nothing happened. You could say the second throwing was a bit of spit take. Not that Terry would say such a thing out loud for fear of getting shot on the spot.

'It would appear that my plan has been successful.' Smith said to them, more than a hint of smugness in his tone.

'What was it you did? How did you disable those guns?'

'The grenade in question is a type 7 Ionic Resonator, custom built by yours truly for situations such as this.

Of course! This was where Terry's new-found Engineering skills came in handy. An Ionic field would completely disable any electronics in the area without an explosion or any collateral damage to organic life. He had no idea how Smith had got his hands on the materials necessary to custom build a portable one and he knew better than to ask at this juncture.

'The switch is just a little further down this corridor, though I suspect it'll be guarded heavily.' Annika said, staring down at the scanner which continued to beep at her.

'Any sign of Voravians in pursuit of us?' Smith asked.

'Yes, but they're too far away to cause any problems yet.'

'Very well.' the Agent replied, senses still alert to any potential threat.

A faint humming sound came from ahead, causing him to stiffen and nod wordlessly in the direction of Annika.

'It's... duck!' she cried.

Terry briefly considered that none of the birds at the pond had ever given him trouble in exchange for his bread, then realised as the flashing lasers arced out that this was far more lethal than your average billed mallard.

The lasers singed the top of his head as he flung himself to the ground late, proceeding to light the corridor and embed themselves upon the wall. He came to the conclusion that if they were hit by the next blast it wasn't going to be very pretty at all.

'We need to keep moving forward!' Smith shouted at him.

Forward? Wasn't that the location of the fatal laser discharges that were aimed at their current location? He didn't put voice to these thoughts as Annika and Smith were already sprinting ahead and leaving him behind. Not to be outdone, Terry's legs sprang into action and propelled him down the corridor after them.

The humming noise grew in volume, a helpful reminder that he was indeed running directly at the lasers and they were quite happy to oblige his efforts at making himself a sitting duck. What was it with canards in the heat of danger?

He could clearly see Smith and Annika now, they were heading right in the direction of the laser. Had they some ingenious plan to disarm it or was there simply no other direction to go?

This second mental query was answered when both of them split, Smith going left and Annika right, leaving Terry alone with a fully charged laser about to fire at him. He came to a halt and realised he wasn't going to get to this junction in time.

That was when he spotted it, a small grate to the left of his position, if he could just get that open then he might stand a chance!

His fingers desperately wrapped around the edges of the grill that surrounded the duct and he yanked at it with all his strength, causing him to fly back into the wall. Apparently he hadn't needed anywhere near as much force as he had used.

Scrambling into a crouch, he dove for the duct and hurtled into it at a speed that left a severe bruise on his forehead.

Nothing happened.

He waited for the inevitable explosion of laser fire, for the sounds of clawed feet patrolling the area and the inevitable screams of his ship mates as they were apprehended. Instead there was nothing.

Crawling through the duct he found it led to another grill that mirrored the previous on he had pulled away. Peering out of it rewarded him with a distinctly uninteresting view of green-tinged deck plating and little else. At least there weren't any Voravians around then.

It was then that the realisation dawned upon him: he was alone.

Trapped on an alien vessel with absolutely no help and no way of getting off it and no idea where to go or what to do beyond search for companions he couldn't guarantee he'd find before being blasted into a million pieces. Yeah, it was fair to say that this day had taken a turn for the worst.

Crawling forward on his elbows, Terry placed his hands gently upon the grill and gave it the slightest of pushes. It went flying away and crashed into the wall with a clang that reverberated in its own inimitable way of saying 'hey everyone, look, someone is over here!'

Terry cursed silently under his breath, and that was when he heard the sound of clawed feet scraping their way toward him. The Voravians had evidently decided that the place where all the noise was coming from was most likely the place that the intruders would be. Shrewd minds indeed.

The sound of laser discharge was enough to startle him into life, sprinting once more down an all-too familiar looking corridor that couldn't lead to anywhere but more trouble. It was no worse than trying to stand still and hoping that the Voravians would waltz past him. Then again, that would be a terrific idea if their vision was movement-based. A bit late for trying that unfortunately, given that something had already tried shooting at him.

His feet continued to pound on the deck plating and the thudding resounded about the corridor and in his ears far too loud for his liking. How was he going to avoid pursuit if he sounded like a great big elephant clomping along? Second guessing himself once more, he reminded the disagreeing part of Terry that taking a leisurely stroll down these corridors was probably not going to help when it came to eluding the fast-paced pursuit of claws that were definitely growing more prominent alongside his own clod-hopping.

Then he heard the discharges coming from ahead, they distinctly sounded like more laser fire to his ears, a less than preferable scenario to be running into given he was trying to avoid it in the first place.

Oh well, lasers in front and lasers behind. He just had to keep going. Except that the sounds of clawed feet were growing in volume, the lizards with lasers were gaining on his position even when he was at full sprint.

He stared about him, and it hit like a tonne of bricks. He wasn't moving at all, the walls were completely stationary and his flailing away from them was doing nothing. The very deck plating itself was moving on the spot like some devious treadmill that he had been completely oblivious to. He hopped off the offending piece of rolling deck and carefully edged his way along the immobile sides before taking off at a much more effective sprint this time.

Well at least that was one danger out of the way! If he had stayed there any longer he would have been blasted in no time at all!

He rounded the corner and was promptly blasted in no time at all.

Agent Smith was not being promptly blasted any time soon, not if he continued to remain vigilant. Unfortunately for him he had reached a rather difficult quandary to negotiate. The Voravians kept coming at him and he kept blasting them with unmatched precision, but for every smouldering body he left in his wake more replaced them, which in turn could not afford him the time to reconvene with Annika, who presumably was heading in the direction of the switch in spite of the absence of her compatriots.

The state of his weapon informed him in no uncertain terms that it couldn't continue to function in its current capacity without burning a hole in his hand. It would be required that he formulate some kind of plan to divert the attention of the Voravians so that he could give them the slip as the insufferable RJ would have said.

The fifteenth Voravian croaked its last as Smith rammed the butt of his gun against its nasal cavity before discharging the weapon in its face. There were only a handful left before he could make a break for it out of cover, he need just stem this endless tide of green-skinned mercilessness before embarking on a search for Annika.

The footsteps came around the corner and he let out a shot, catching the target square in the jaw and sending its scaled form in a heap with the rest of them.

Only this form wasn't scaled.

He rose and crept over to the prone figure of Mr. Terrance Stevens, checking for a pulse and determining that the man was still alive in spite of the blast. Apparently his collegue was made of sterner stuff than Smith would have given him credit for. He silenced the niggling voice that took a decidedly large portion of pleasure from blasting the insufferable man. Now was neither the time nor place to indulge such fripperies.

The laser bolt shot out and caught Smith on the shoulder, sending him sprawling to the floor and disarming him.

She stared at the console and found herself shaking her head involuntarily, how could this be?

When she had found that neither Smith nor Stevens had followed her charge past the lasers, Annika had slowed her approach, checked her scanners and searched for the nearest computerised outlet she could find. She had thought there was some vague hope that she could gain access to the systems powering this Voravian vessel and have them aid her in accessing the switch and tying it to her system.

What she had instead found was that the computer systems were not only similar in nature to Star Command's own specifications, like the wiring previously had been behind the bulkheads, they were identical. There was no mistake here, for some reason the Voravians were running on Star Command computational systems. Systems that Annika knew like the back of her hand and was able to bypass with relative ease.

Unfortunately, staring at this screen for the short time she could afford to leave herself exposed did not allow her to divine how to tie the switch into her scanner. She kept having to duck away into one of the handy vents nearby as soon as she heard the passing of clawed feet, and shutting down the console each time before re-doing whatever she had previously been doing was beginning to get grating.

Progress may have been slow but it was progress nonetheless, she was able to determine that there were precisely twenty-seven Voravians between her and the switch that she would need to bypass somehow without causing detection. As simple as that really. It always seemed so much easier in numbers than in practice, one of the many reasons why she preferred a console screen to her own sight.

Twenty-seven. Somehow she was going to have to get past twenty-seven Voravians while Terry and Smith kept the rest of the crew at bay, assuming they didn't bring even more of them down on top of them. Though neither of the men were blessed with her scanner and likely didn't know the location of the switch, she could not count out their resourcefulness in finding their way there. Especially Smith, the man had shown he was capable of things she thought weren't even possible.

Crawling out of the duct, she made her way back to the computer for a final rummage through the system to glean whatever she could from it. The resulting scan through the reams of data revealed that the very duct she had crawled out of was part of a network of tunnels that led throughout the base.

She captured an image of the schematics on her scanner and hastily shut down the console, crawling into the vent and pressing down it with the details in one hand. It was a maze of sorts, and there was superimposing of her current position onto it. She would need to rely upon her memory to guide her into the room with the switch. Dealing with the Voravians when she got there was a problem that could wait.

The grey shafts were much the same, occasionally merging with other junctions and varying in substantiality. The solid thunk of a main tube was no different than that of the deck plating, but the suspended tubes were conspicuously loud and felt like they could barely support her weight. She tried her best not to rush through these but the temptation was usually overpowering. It wouldn't do to fall out on top of the guttural voices she heard beneath.

She halted twice in her journey, once to get her bearings and a second time when the Voravian voices ceased speaking beneath her. Her heart froze in that instance, thinking they had overheard the crawling form above them. Fortunately she had been mistaken, and within an hour she had crawled her way steadily through to the main power room that contained the switch in question. All she need do was manually override the switch and transfer the main ignition key to her own scanner. With that in place she could then set it on a timer with the hyperwarp and as soon as the Voravian mothership dropped out of it their whole fleet would be disabled.

Provided nobody caught her and destroyed her equipment that is.

This was all working under the assumption that she could somehow overpower the six Voravians that were already present in the room without their raising any alarm.

She set her scanner to search for any outlet that would let her access it wirelessly, and discovered to her delight that every system there was available. Apparently the Voravian Engineers preferred usability over security, which was about to become a very shocking decision indeed.

A series of gurgling and grunts came from the room beyond her, then the alarm sounded and the scraping of claws indicated that the Engineers were worth their salt and knew they had to leave the room and fix the fatal overload remotely instead of attending to it in person. Volts were nasty things irrespective of whether you were a human or a lizard.

What the fleeing Voravians didn't know was that they were in no immediate danger of being shocked, while Annika had triggered the alarm and the indicator that things were very bad indeed she had neglected to actually cause any harm to the systems in question. She afforded herself a grin whilst sliding out of the duct and quickly pacing her way over to the largest-looking console available to her. Now she just had to insert her scanner into the console and transfer the sequence for the off switch, simple really given that the systems were akin, but not something she could have done wirelessly given the sensitivity of the data.