by Carl Derham
*
Commander Grrghracksh had ordered a hole to be drilled in the side of the ship so that they could pump poisonous gas into it. Unfortunately, each time the drill tip touched the hull, Robbie sent a highly localised electrical charge to that tiny point. They’d melted four drills and fried four Throgloids before the Captain changed the drill bits for non-conductive material. The drill bit bored its way into the hull and within a few minutes it was breached. The drill was quickly removed and they prepared to insert a hose into the hole. Robbie was a bit short on micro-drones once again, having used most of them to construct Roberta. He had managed to construct a few hundred during his captivity, but this amounted to fighting a rhino with a fly swat. He sent the drones to the hole. They worked quickly, and by the time the hose crew reached the hole, it was no longer there.
“Drill again!” shouted the Captain, ordering another drill team to work on the other side of the hull. He’s a clever one this Captain, thought Robbie. It was almost as though he knew that they were short of micro-drones. As the two holes appeared in the hull, the drones worked frantically to repair one, but they unfortunately couldn’t get to the other one before the hose was inserted and Cargium gas began to pour into the ship.
Cargium had been developed in the last great conflict on Throwgus and had played a great hand in the eventual victory of the Gagmazi tribe. It attacked the central nervous system of any living creature and induced paralysis within ten seconds. It could be absorbed through the skin or lungs, and would even find its way in through a germ warfare suit. The gas was an intelligent virus, and any that had failed to locate a target within ten minutes would self-destruct. Those that found a victim would remain active in the victim’s body until the deliverers of the virus dealt with the unlucky recipient. The victors would enter the area where the paralysed but fully conscious enemies were waiting for the touch of a Grax. Unfortunately, they’d made the virus a little too intelligent and it got to thinking why should I do my job and then top myself? So, on one delivery of the virus, the attackers were greeted by the same fate as the enemy. That particular piece of land was still under quarantine, and the Throgloid warriors from both sides were still lying there waiting for the relief of death. The decent thing would have been to drop a few bombs on them, but the Throgloids were never renowned for doing the decent thing.
The new virus was far more efficient and not at all likely to turn on its owners. Robbie placed a force field around Pardy’s hideaway and waited. The Captain waited for ten minutes, then, believing that the ship was now unprotected by the ugly creature, ordered a new set of directional charges to be positioned on the underside of the hull. They left the hangar and detonated the charges. There was a deafening bang that vibrated throughout the Throgloid vessel and the door slid open. If the Captain hadn’t been hanging onto a rail in the corridor, he would have been sucked into the hangar and out into space through the gaping hole in the floor, along with the other three less fortunate Throgloids. As his legs trailed horizontally towards the bay, the hurricane force wind tearing at his body, he reached out with one hand and hit the door close button. The door slid shut and the Captain fell to the floor in a most ungraceful manner. He jumped up and started kicking and punching the walls and howling in disbelief. The Throgloids hadn’t developed any form of artificial intelligence. They had only the primitive computer on the captured ship from which to learn and anyway, they would never trust their safety to a computer. So he hadn’t even considered that there might be an artificial entity on the ship that was causing all the trouble, until now. But nothing could have survived the gas, so he deduced that it must be the ship’s computer that was somehow orchestrating the mayhem. Oh, how he wanted to get his hands on that computer.
It took an hour and a half for a party of Throgloids wearing suits to seal the hole in the bay. The Captain sat in his office by the bridge, looking down at the ship through the gaping hole in the floor, now protected from the vacuum of the hangar deck by a force field. His anger was finding hitherto unexplored boundaries as he ploughed his way through a crate of Throgloid ale and brooded over the remains of his lifetime’s work, lying in pieces on the floor. He would capture the ship or destroy it.
The micro-drones had discarded the hose and sealed the hole, and Robbie waited patiently for the next barrage of abuse. Pardy was becoming a little claustrophobic in her airtight hiding place, so once the gas had all been ejected, Robbie opened the door and she flew to her perch. Anyway, it sounded as though Robbie was having all the fun and she really didn’t want to miss it.
The moon grew larger in Oli’s field of vision. He was only thirty minutes from touching down. He’d seen a distant flash emanating from the Throgloid ship and chuckled to himself, imagining the chaos that Robbie was causing. On the other side of Earth, Flameout and Pitcher were sat side by side in the capsule, which was being lifted out of the cargo bay with the robot arm. They were busying themselves running last minute checks. The shape of the capsule was a flattened ellipsoid, with a curved cockpit window recessed into the shape of the hull. It wasn’t designed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere so it didn’t need any heavy heat-shielding. The rear half of the little craft was taken up by two smaller versions of the liquid fuelled rockets used by the shuttle. Once Persius was in position, the arm lifted a tank containing the liquid hydrogen and oxygen needed to propel the craft towards the rock and three astronauts from the shuttle, attached it to the underside of the little ship. This would be jettisoned after the burn around Earth, leaving them enough fuel on board to land the craft and boost it back home, although the journey back would take considerably longer. The space-walking astronauts returned to the shuttle and Captain O’Connell used the small jet boosters to push the craft to a safe distance. When they were five hundred metres away, the computer took over and aimed the ship for the blast around Earth. This is going to be good, he thought. They were about to break the speed record for space flight, as long as you didn’t take into consideration Oli and the crew travelling at hundreds of billions of kilometres per hour over the previous week.
The computer screen in the middle of the flight deck flashed the green numbers and the two men pushed their heads firmly into the head restraints. This was going to kick a bit.
10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…