phil jones2 (54 page)

'Lieutenant, charge the...'

'Captain!' the same Lieutenant cut him off. 'Look!'

The view screen winked into a closer angle and Darwin peered at it. 'What is it, Lieutenant?'

For the benefit of Darwin's eyesight, the view screen silently magnified the image, struggling to follow the action as the single craft evaded hundreds of laser blasts that instead found their mark on Voravian targets.

'I don't believe it.' Anne murmured next to him.

'He's...' he stared at the image and blinked again. 'The crazy fool is actually attacking them!'

True to his words, the traitor vessel let out a barrage of fire that disabled one of the engines on a minor Voravian ship before swiftly moving on to the next ship in question. Any of the vessels looking to overwhelm the ship with their own fire power ended up missing by the slightest of margins and instead damaging other vessels that were close to a clear shot. Within minute the entire fleet was ablaze and in retreat.

'I... I don't believe it.' the Lieutenant at the con offered. 'I've never seen piloting like that.'

Darwin shook his head, uncharacteristically speechless. That impudent twerp, that pink-haired nobody had gone and saved his life! The gall, the absolute nerve!

'Lieutenant!' he bellowed. 'Fire all weapons at the traitor ship!'

'Captain...are you sure that's such a wise idea? After all, they did just...' his Commander started, but it was no use.

'Silence!' Darwin boomed, and for once he got it. 'This vessel is an enemy combatant and we have been ordered to take it after the Voravian threat was neutralised. It has been, so now we shall!'

The crew reluctantly carried out his orders, sending a series of blasts at the ship but to no avail. It dodged these cumbersome shots as easily as the previous efforts from the Voravians.

'How does it keep doing that?' he yelled as the ship seemed to blink out of existence with a swift thruster movement to the left of where they were aiming.

'Remarkable piloting...' Anne breathed, transfixed by the image on the screen.

'Sir!' the Lieutenant piped up again, only causing Darwin to get even angrier. 'The escape pod and shuttle are both headed for the traitor ship!'

'Destoy them!'

'Belay that order.' came the voice of Hanniman over the intercom. 'Captain Darwin, you are to capture those vessels at all cost, there is an important ambassador on-board the shuttle that has been kidnapped by these vile traitors.'

Darwin winced at the sound of the Professor's voice, he hated taking orders from anyone, especially a man who technically didn't out-rank him and wasn't even from the same organisation.

'As you wish.' he replied through gritted teeth before taking out all his anger on the unfortunate Lieutenant in front of him. 'Full speed ahead, or I'll have your guts for garters!'

Despite not wishing to become an extremely impractical item of clothing, the Lieutenant nevertheless had to protest the action. 'Sir, the engine room reports that even the sub-light engines have been burnt out from evading the Voravians for so long.'

'Target the shuttle's engines then!' Anne shouted at him, clearly intimidated by the Professor's dire warning.

The security officer on the receiving end of this didn't look to Darwin before accepting the order, plotting in a course for the fire so that it didn't destroy the shuttle, merely crippled its engines.

'We have enough energy left for a few shots, sir. That should be enough to take the shuttle out at this range. Firing now.'

Darwin scowled at him, unhappy that things were proceeding without his say-so. 'This had better work, or you'll not step foot on my bridge again.'

The lasers shot out into space and scored a direct hit on the vessel in question, slowing it considerably and preventing it from reaching the rogue vessel.

'Excellent!' the Captain crowed. 'Now we just need to...'

'Captain!' yelped the Lieutenant, cutting him off.

'What now?' Darwin seethed, spinning round in his chair and nearly falling over.

'The rogue vessel sir, it's moving to intercept the prone shuttle!'

'Fire all weapons!'

The security guard gave him a rather sour look. 'Sir, I just told you that we have expended our energy with those final shots.'

Darwin stared helplessly out at the ship in question, grinding his teeth together. 'We can't just sit here and do nothing!' he turned to Anne then. 'Are there no other ships nearby that could aid us?'

It was Anne's turn to scowl. 'You were warned, Captain Darwin. All of this hinges upon you, there are no ships that can return quickly enough to prevent what will happen now.' she addressed the security officer then, almost as if the Captain had ceased to exist since becoming beneath her recognition. 'You will divert energy from life support to sustain a final blast at the enemy.'

The usually stern-faced officer blinked. 'You can't be serious... that will kill almost all the crew!'

Anne stared at him, patting the pistol on the side of her hip.

'Very well then.' the mollified officer coughed. 'Preparing for one final assault on the rogue vessel.'

Darwin watched on, completely forgotten about and totally out of control. The damn ship had docked with both the shuttle and the escape pod that had shot back into it.

Now it turned.

Now it was heading toward him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

'Their ship is dead in the water, and the crew are safely onboard, Captain Semaj.' the floating cheesecake gurgled at him. 'What are your orders?'

The Captain looked as if he was coming out of doing a rather odd yoga stretch, his eyes still transfixed by the fishing game that constituted the ship's entire system. 'Very good. Now watch this!' he replied, sounding as if he was about to pull off a particularly difficult trick in front of a nearby friend rather than the omnipresent computing system.

'Weeeeeeeeeeee!' Semaj squealed as he dove forward into the viewscreen that displayed the game, vanishing from sight.

'Captain... what are you...? Captain?'

'Yes computer, what is it?' came the sound of Phil Jones on the intercom.

The computer ran a quick diagnostic to assure itself that its systems weren't malfunctioning, then quickly dissimulated the cheesecake facsimile before any of the crew witnessed it.

'I think you had better come to the cockpit immediately.' it finally said. 'I'm not sure what has happened.'

The communications system crackled off in a burst of static that caused Annika to raise her head in groggy surprise.

'That sounded distinctly ominous.' Phil said, still at a loss as to why the ship was here at all but not complaining. The crew had reconvened just outside the airlocks and Smith and Terry had immediately been sent to the medical bay in the arms of RJ and Trigger. That left him in conference with a wounded but surprisingly stubborn Annika.

'I guess we should get to the cockpit and see what's going on.' he prompted to his Lieutenant, who was swaying unsteadily on her feet. 'Are you sure you don't want to join the rest of them in sick bay?'

Annika shook her head. 'You need more than one person to run this ship, Captain. I will be fine.'

Phil knew he didn't have time to argue, and they made their way to the cockpit to find it much as they had left it.

Except for the bubbling pond that was on the viewscreen.

'Computer, what is that?' Annika asked, sinking gratefully into her seat behind the communications desk.

'A generated integration facsimile for the operation of this ship.' the sweet voice chimed.

Phil stared at the bubbling pool. It really didn't look very operational. 'What is it making the ship do?'

'As far as I can tell, the ship is currently on target to collide with the SC Scavanger.'

'What do you mean, as far as you can tell?' Annika pressed, clearly surprised at the computer not being the font of all knowledge.

'The actions of the individual designing and running the facsimile can only be interpreted so much without asking him directly.'

'The individual? What do you mean?' Phil said, voicing the question already on Annika's lips.

'Acting-Captain Semaj designed this program so that he may better interface with the computer, it suits his... sensibilities.'

Semaj. They had forgotten about Semaj. None of them had even thought to ask about what to do with the Doctor while they were gone, they had all either forgotten about him or silently assumed that he would loiter around doing nothing in his medical bay.

Apparently they had been very, very wrong.

'Acting-Captain Semaj?' Annika asked, finding the man's title almost too inexplicable to voice.

'Affirmative.' the computer said. 'In light of there being no other members of the crew on the ship, the power to become Acting-Captain fell upon Doctor Semaj.'

'So you're telling me that this whole thing was Semaj's idea? Flying here to rescue us? Fending off the Voravian fleet? All of it?'

'Affirmative.'

Phil shook his head. It was far-fetched, but then was it any further-fetched than his rise to Captain?

Right now they had other priorities, they needed to get in contact with their missing Doctor and determine both where he was and what he was doing by flying the ship directly into Darwin's vessel.

'Computer, open up a link to wherever the Doctor is now.' Annika demanded, tapping away furiously at her console.

'Huh? What?' the confused voice spluttered out of the intercom.

Annika nodded at Phil, apparently he was supposed to handle this.

'Doctor Semaj, this is Captain Jones. Just what do you think you're doing?'

A pause and further bursts of static.

'You will have to give this some time, Captain.' the computer informed him. 'Transmitting your words to the Doctor requires some complicated processing.'

Phil nodded and steepled his fingers, trying to picture what the other Captains would do in this particular situation.

'You're just going to have to trust me, Captain.' came the comical sound of the medical officer's voice.

Then there was nothing.

'Computer, have you any idea what he's doing yet?' Annika asked.

'Negative.'

'Switch the view screen to forward. I'd rather see what we're crashing into instead of waiting blindly for it to happen.' Phil said.

The bubbling waters were replaced with space, and Earth glowed before them like a huge fluorescent marble in the darkness. It would have been beautiful but for the Human Genome station and the large ship they were heading directly toward.

Oh, and the lasers that were flying in their direction.

'Computer, evasive manoeuvres!' they shouted in unison.

'Negative.' the computer informed them. 'Piloting controls are locked out.'

Doctor Semaj had doomed them all.

Captain Darwin watched as the lasers shot out, and the rogue vessel made no effort to dodge the incoming blast. The taste of egg nog was thick in his mouth now and the glove felt heavy on his clammy hand. Soon it would all be over though, soon they would be rid of Jones and his insipid crew. Then the Scavanger would be repaired and restaffed and those Voravians that remained would get a damn good thrashing. Yes, he would show them all.

'Five seconds until impact!' the security officer informed them, breathing heavily due to the life support that had been sacrificed not only from the ship as a whole but the bridge too.

Then in an instant the ship blinked out of existence, causing the lasers to fly harmlessly through their target and out into the vast emptiness behind them.

'I... I don't understand.' the baffled officer reported. 'They just... vanished!'

As he spoke that final word the ship in question re-materialised, this time much closer to them than before. Still they withheld weaponry. Had they also burned out with their savaging of the Voravian fleet?

Still the ship grew closer, and Darwin was at a loss for words. They couldn't move, they couldn't shoot, they were running out of oxygen and their arch nemesis was fast approaching.

In fact it almost looked as if they were...

'Sir, at their rate of approach it looks as if they are planning to ram us!' the Lieutenant shouted, losing his composure whilst simultaneously voicing Darwin's own suspicions.

'Evasive... oh, yeah.' he said, realising that they were dead in space. 'Shields?'

'Negative sir, we sacrificed all the shield power we had left in that final blast.' the security officer told him.

'Don't just sit there!' Anne screamed, levelling the pistol at his head. 'Do something!'

Darwin looked down at the glove for some inspiration, for some way out of this dire situation. For anything.

The glove remained silent, and all that was left was the strange taste of egg nog in his mouth.

'Open hailing frequencies, Lieutenant.' he said, causing the pistol to lower from his head. Not that he had been paying it much attention given that he was about to die anyway. 'Let's see if we can't talk to Jones one last time.'

'Incoming hail, Captain.' Annika said, sounding reassured at being able to say something routine in such a crazy situation.

'From the Scavanger?' Phil asked, licking his tongue about the inside of his mouth and trying to get the taste of egg nog out of it.

'Yes Captain, it looks like Darwin wants to speak to us before we ram his ship.'

'On screen.'

Time had not been kind to his fellow Captain. The lights were dimmed to a lurid red glow and he was sweating heavily underneath them and struggling for breath as he lay slumped in his chair.

'Jones...' he slurred, fighting for breath. 'It is useless to kill us both, you will accomplish nothing...'

He paused and lifted up a shaking hand upon which the pink glove was still resting. 'I still have the glove, Jones... You cannot best me!'

Phil looked on at the sad state of the man and the wilted crew that surrounded him. They were no threat to anyone right now. He didn't want to tell them that his Doctor had taken control of the ship and he couldn't stop it.