phil jones2 (55 page)

No, let them think he was a hard man, a man of justice without mercy. A man who had a continent bladder in high-pressure situations and wasn't quivering from his boots up at the thought of a fiery death when they collided.

'No. You deserve what you get now.' Phil informed him, trying to keep his voice steady with a hint of menace and a dollop of resolve and not knowing how well he was doing any of it.

Apparently it worked, as Darwin chose that moment to break down into tears.

'Please Jones, please! I'll do anything! Just let me live!'

The woman next to him looked utterly disgusted and took over proceedings.

'Mr. Jones, I was your neighbour for three long months, and I know that not even your stupidity is capable of killing us both.'

Phil squinted at the screen. 'You were my neighbour?'

The woman sighed. 'Cease this pointless exercise and return to Star Command for judgement.'

The way she phrased the process of judgement made dying in a fireball deep in the vacuum of space sound a much more compelling option.

'I think I'll just ram your vessel instead, if that's alright with you.' Phil replied shakily, barely managing it over the increasing flavour of egg nog that pervaded his throat. What was wrong with him?

The transmission terminated. Apparently this woman had heard enough.

'It has been an honour serving under you, Captain.' Annika's soft voice floated over to him. 'Permission to spend my final hours in sick bay with the rest of the crew?'

Phil nodded. 'We'll both go, there's nothing left for us here.'

With that, they both abandoned the cockpit to Semaj's mad devices.

'Their vessel is closing Captain, estimated time of impact is one minute and thirty-five seconds.'

Darwin looked up from the glove on his hand, as if noticing the man for the first time. 'Very good Lieutenant, you may leave the con and do whatever last preparations you see fit before the collision.'

He stood then, staring at the rest of the crew with an expansive sweep of his gaze. 'That applies to all of you, abandon your posts and spend the next minute as you please.'

Whether it was a credit to their incredible courage or more the fact that they only had a few seconds to spend, none of the crew left.

'None of you leaving then?' Darwin asked his silent crew as they stared back at him. 'Very well, prepare your blindfolds... this could get messy.'

The communications officer piped up then. 'Sir, incoming transmission from Grand Admiral Burroughs. Shall I patch it through before donning my blindfold?'

'Belay that suggestion. I don't feel like talking to the insufferable old windbag right now.'

He half-expected gasps of outrage from the crew at such an insubordinate display of emotion from their Captain, but from the looks of things they were in agreement and quite resentful of the Grand Admiral for letting them get into this most likely fatal situation in the first place.

'You're just going to sit there blindfolded until the ship collides?' Anne asked him, only now deigning to accept that Darwin existed.

He shifted his blindfold slightly and rubbed his eyes. 'If you have any better ideas then by all means let me know.'

Anne fell silent, there were no other options. She was out of sprinting distance from any of the escape pods. In her certainty that the final barrage would nail the ship she had cost herself the one chance of escape.

'I guess this is it then. It's a shame we only have a few seconds left before the collision.'

Anne looked down at him as he sat firmly in his chair, no longer lost or out of control. A confident and firm commanding officer that was no doubt the best candidate for the flag ship of Star Command.

'Why do you say that, Captain Darwin?'

He flashed a smile at her then, displaying pearly whites underneath his sweat-streaked face. 'Because my dear, I would most certainly have asked you to join me in my quarters for a time.'

The sharp crack of the slap was loud enough to make several nearby crew men jump and shout as if the ship had struck them. Upon realising that the vessel hadn't hit a few of them tentatively raised their blindfolds in confusion.

'Twenty seconds until impact, Captain.' the Lieutenant informed him.

Darwin's smile was still etched on his face, if anything it had broadened. 'I like feisty women... a real shame we won't be getting better acquainted my dear.'

The second slap was followed by a pistol raised at Darwin's head. 'I may not have the satisfaction of surviving this collision, but I can damn sure have the joy of killing you beforehand.'

'Five seconds, Captain.'

The charming smile had gone now, but it had been replaced by a grin. Realisation had dawned on the Captain that this woman genuinely wanted him dead, and that it didn't matter in the slightest. 'Go on then, shoot me.'

Darwin waited as the gun remained pressed firmly against his skull. Any second now and the ship would explode into a million fragments and they'd all die. Then that would be it, no more stupid orders from Burroughs, no more insane ramblings from Hanniman and no more femme fatales with the wrong attitude.

This was an awfully long five seconds, then again he had heard that high pressure situations did funny things to a human mind including but not limited to the expansion of time itself.

He was getting oddly scientific now that the end was drawing near, and he wasn't overly pleased about it either.

'Lieutenant, is it my imagination or have five seconds passed already?'

The exasperated man tapped at the computer console but nothing happened. 'I can't tell Captain, this console has gone dead.'

'Well try the other one then!' Darwin said, voice rising and in his irritation momentarily forgetting his would-be murderer and the gun pressed to his head.

The Lieutenant – it was pointless trying to learn his name now they had mere moments to live – ran over to the next console and started tapping away at it to no avail.

'Perhaps the systems have been compromised by the excessive energy use.' the security officer suggested under his flowery blindfold.

Whatever it was, they were dead in the water.

'How is he holding up?' Annika asked Trigger as they came through the double doors of the sick bay.

The nervous Ensign blinked, as if wondering why she had aimed the question at him and not RJ. 'I... er... which one?'

She cursed herself for being so distracted as to forget that Engineer Stevens had taken serious injury. 'How are they holding up?' she amended.

'RJ has done his best at stabilising Engineer Stevens, I haven't been much use though.'

With the impending collision with the Scavanger, Annika didn't feel the need to coddle Trigger's sense of self-worth. 'What about Agent Smith? Where is he?'

'I'm here, Lieutenant.' the familiar monotone of Smith came. 'It would appear we are about to collide with the Scavanger and have been locked out of our own computer systems by the good doctor.'

She stared at him and her heart fluttered, he was all business and looked none the worse for wear. 'How are you standing?'

'My injuries were not... severe.' Smith tersely informed her, trying to get her off the topic. 'We need to find a way to re-appropriate the ship off our wayward doctor.'

Annika felt a bout of dizziness hit her, then RJ was at her side. 'I don't understand... How could he recover so quickly?'

RJ opened his mouth, but Smith cut in before he could voice a probably explanation for the man's recuperative powers. 'We need to focus on getting the ship back, we have less than a minute before impact.'

He was right of course, he was always right. They needed to take charge of the ship somehow.

Now if only everything wasn't so hazy.

'There are much worse places to pass out.' RJ quipped as he observed Annika laying in a deep sleep upon one of the sick bay beds. 'I'm surprised she stayed conscious as long as she did.'

'Lieutenant Annika is a woman of remarkable...fortitude.' Smith said. 'Is there any way to revive her? She is the only member of this crew with the capabilities to wrest the system from the Doctor.'

RJ shook his head. 'I don't know enough about the medical systems to possibly administer the correct cocktail of drugs to wake her. We'll just have to come up with a plan without her.'

Smith fell silent for a moment, staring at him with those ominous shades of his. 'You will revive her.'

'No. I won't.'

Phil pushed himself between the two men before they came to blows. 'We're not reviving the Lieutenant. I don't believe that Doctor Semaj would simply destroy us all, no matter how hair-brained his scheme.'

'And if he destroys us by accident? Does that make it better?' Smith countered.

He had a point. They had to find some way of communicating with the Doctor to ensure that he wouldn't destroy them all, and according to the medical bay's display they had less than a minute to figure out how.

'Computer, this is Phil Jones.' he stated into space.

There was a lengthy pause, and just as he was giving up on a response the computer offered him one. 'Yes, Phil Jones?'

Well, that was odd. It usually called him Captain.

'I command you to open communications with Doctor Semaj.'

Another pause made him painfully aware of the clock ticking down the time until impact. 'Captain Semaj is unavailable at this time. Would you like to leave a message?'

'Yes I would like to... actually, never mind. By the time he gets it we'll be dead.'

RJ stood beside him now, even though his placement was irrelevant in terms of communicating with the computer. 'Computer, the crew is under threat. Initiate safety program.'

'Negative.' the computer responded rather unhelpfully. 'You do not have the appropriate clearance level.'

Phil knew where this was going. Captain Semaj had taken over the ship and the computer commands were now locked only to him. All that was left was to sit and wait for impact.

And impact came.

There was a brief grinding above their heads and this caused Anne to lower her gun from Darwin's head. An action which he was rather grateful for given that they hadn't died on schedule. What the blazes was going on?

'Sir, my panel just told me I have an incoming transmission and then died.' the communications officer said. 'I have no way of accepting the...'

'Hello there!' boomed the comical voice, hurting their ears with both its pitch and its effect on the speakers. 'I am the Semaj!'

The view screen winked on and before them sat a slightly pixelated man with a pink afro and a lab coat. At this point Darwin gave up on trying to understand anything going on around him and just went with it.

'I am broadcasting simultaneously to the crew of the Scavanger and my own ship. I have taken control of the computers on both ships and linked them, just as I have linked the ships together.'

Without the consoles working, Darwin's crew had no way of confirming whether this was truth or not, but given that the consoles weren't working there was a fairly safe assumption to make here.

'I shall be taking the ship and docking it in Star Command now...'

Could it be? Could the rogue ship have a double crosser within their ranks? Had Doctor Semaj served him Jones on a silver platter? The image of Jones with an apple in his mouth being served by such a suspect cook was an unwanted one.

'...In order to re-charge the weapons on this new conglomerate ship.'

Conglomerate ship? What the devil was the man talking about? You couldn't just smash two ships together and form a more powerful ship.

'So yeah, I'm going to do that right now, as the Voravians are coming back any minute now and they don't look very pleased according to my sensors. Here fishy fishy fish fish!'

With that, the communique winked out and they set course as suggested to Star Command, who had doubtless received every word of the simulcast transmission too.

'It would appear that my assumptions about the good Doctor were mistaken.' Agent Smith said as they continued to stare at the screen. 'Through either sheer dumb luck or coincidence he has managed to keep us alive thus far.'

Phil couldn't argue with that, regardless of whether Semaj had meant it or not they were still here. One minute they had been on the verge of colliding with the Scavanger and the next they were in control of it. As if someone had grabbed physics by the scruff of its collar, shaken it down for all its lunch money and then told it not to turn up in these parts again.

He didn't have to be happy about it though. This was his ship, and Semaj had gone and taken it from him without even asking.

Then again, they did leave him abandoned in an asteroid field all by himself. None of them had even considered Semaj for the teams that were sent to the Voravian mothership or the Human Genome station. Could Phil really blame him for taking action when he woke and found that everyone else had abandoned him?

In fact, come to think of it, without the Doctor's intervention things probably wouldn't have turned out anywhere near as well as they had so far. Maybe they owed it to the man to play along and see where he went with this.

A hyperwarp tunnel opened up in the space before them as they docked with Star Command. Phil expected swarms of officers to come out and start shooting at them but instead the station did as was requested and the technical crews came out to re-charge the depleted Scavanger.

The tunnel resolved into a single vessel of what looked to be Voravian make, smaller than the mothership that they had previously encountered. Was this the modest beginning of the second wave that Semaj was so concerned about?

'This is Star Command dock.' a deep accented voice spoke over the communication system. 'Er... we're not sure which ship to send this to, so you're all getting it. The recharge of the Scavanger will be complete in five minutes.'

Five minutes. In the grand scheme of things that wasn't too long to wait, but if more Voravian ships came out of the darkness then they were going to have problems.