Davron : The Universe Is Not Enough part 5

by Gary Weston

  Gosdore shook her domed head. 'Arrange for a blood test of both. Wait. This could be amusing. Bring them both here. And hurry up. I don't have all day.'

  'Just five minutes, Captain.'

  All male humans looked to the door as it opened and three guards stormed in, weapons at the ready. Patrick decided it was best not to speak, but to wait to see what would happen. One singled him out.

  'You. Follow me.'

  Patrick got to his feet, his backside numb from sitting on the hard steel floor and without looking back at the others, followed his captors to a transparent elevator which they stepped into. On forced air it rose up to one of the forty-eight levels of the mother-ship and at the topmost level they stepped out. This was home to the captain who was patiently waiting for them.

  It took only another three minutes for the door to open again to let in an armed escort and a human in restraints. He stood with his head bowed. From the side of the room, Patrick was pulled forward and he could have a good look of the man who was dressed in a simple, dirty gown, barefoot and his unkempt hair and beard was all over the place.

  'You,' snapped Gosdore. 'Hold your head up.'

  Only when the man did that could Patrick see his face.

  'Prince Patrick?'

  The hairy dishevelled man stared at Patrick. 'You bastards drugged me again. Just take me back to my cell.'

  'Prince Patrick,' said Patrick. 'I'm no illusion. I thought you were dead.'

  Closely followed by his guards, Prince Patrick shuffled forward to get a closer look at Patrick's face. 'You're real?'

  'Yes. Are you ok?'

  His response was to go to the door. 'You said you thought I was dead. I wish I was. You'll soon wish the same for yourself. Krilltok. Take me back.'

  Krilltok looked at Gosdore and gestured as if to say, "See? I was right."

  Gosdore said, 'Take him back to his cell. No. Not the other one. Leave him here with me and two guards. Go.'

  When it was just Patrick, Gosdore and the two guards, Patrick said, 'What have you done to him?'

  'I ask the questions. I see what Krilltok means, now. You two do seem very similar. Are you related? And don't lie because a blood-test will not.'

  'Our D N A is the same.'

  Gosdore said, 'And yet he did not recognise you.'

  'He's clearly in a confused state.'

  'Perhaps. But how interesting. We already knew he is a prince. We were unaware of him having a brother. Two princes. How precious is that?'

  'Captain. We really don't want to fight you and your people.'

  Gosdore scoffed. 'Fight? It takes two to make a fight. What would you fight us with? Your weapons are ineffectual against our mother-ship. Hmm. They can hardly take out a simple drone. I should thank you for demonstrating most admirably just how weak humans are.'

  'What do you intend to do to Earth?'

  Patrick thought he saw what might pass for a smile cross Gosdore's face.

  'Do?' she said. 'Oh. The possibilities are now endless, don't you think. Take him back to the others. Go.'

 

  Chapter 99

  Lieutenant Vincent Carver had spent hours stuck in the turret of his fighter. He had been forgotten about, probably deliberately he'd decided. His suit had taken care of his ablutions but he had a raging thirst and was ravenous. He wasn't prepared to die alone of starvation. From the turret, he could see that the vast hold with the fleet was deserted and with only minimal lighting. He had worked out a plan.

  It was difficult to manoeuvre in the confines of the turret, but he twisted down towards the hatch that had been locked up to contain him. He had to pull his gloves off to get his fingers into the control panel's conduit, but with much swearing he had access. He grasped a handful of wiring and pulled hard. The coated wires gave a little but didn't break. Carver let half the wires go and tried again, this time getting a result. He held a dozen live wires. With his free hand he pulled off the small cover to the hatch control servos.

  'Here goes nothing.'

  Carver rammed the bare live wires blindly at the switch gear and felt a jolt as the current burned his hand but he held on. Servos clicked and locks opened. He yanked the hatch handle and he could get out of the turret.

  Now he was free, he had to come up with a plan. To do that he needed to be on top form. Something to eat and drink and a change of clothing. One hour later he was on top of his game. Above all else he was a trained soldier who knew weapons and how to use them. Gathering a small arsenal of hand weapons, he laid them out on the galley table. Ten assorted grenades on a holster was slung over one shoulder. Two laser handguns around his hips. A pouch of smoke canisters. Two knives, one short, the other long with a vicious jagged edge, both strapped to his legs in sheaths. His personal favourite was the two-thousand shot plasma rifle fully charged and a back-up pack for the rifle.

  'Ready to rock and roll.'

  Chapter 100

  'We have to do something,' said Burns. 'As far as I'm concerned, we are all expendable if it means stopping this ship reaching Earth.'

  Patrick had told them of meeting Prince Davron. It had taken them sometime to recover from that bombshell. 'We can rule out diplomacy. This lot aren't as willing to play ball as the other lot.'

  'We must rescue the prince,' said Anglia.

  'Right,' said Akrins. 'We are locked up in here, heavily outnumbered on an alien ship with no weapons and we go saving the prince? Brilliant.'

  Matlock said, 'I agree with Anglia. It's the last thing the turkeys will expect. When they finally remember to feed us, we'll jump them, take their weapons and then the ship.'

  'We'll be killed,' said Doctor Crowe.

  'Not all of us,' said Matlock. 'Enough of us will survive. I don't see that we have any alternatives. Give it everything now or probably live and die as slaves to the aliens. Please yourselves. If you lot don't want to do it, I'll have a go on my own. I'd rather die fighting.'

  Burns said, 'You'll not do this alone. But we're not just jumping on the guards like madmen. We need to come up with a plan.'

  Patrick said, 'I'm just thinking aloud here. We need to take over this ship to free the women and try to save Prince Davron. Gosdore has her own part of the ship reached by an elevator along the corridors from here. The women are right next door to us.'

  Matlock said, 'Taking down the guards bringing us food will provide a few weapons. We'll work our way through the ship collecting more weapons.'

  A young man said, 'Getting killed in the process.'

  'You want to live forever?' snapped Matlock.

  'A few years more wouldn't hurt,' replied the man.

  Burns said, 'He's right. Surely between us we can come up with a plan less suicidal. Ok. This is what we do. We'll split up into four groups. Each group must come up with a plan of action. We know our objectives and we need to work out how to achieve those objectives with what we have. Get to work, people.'

  Chapter 101

  Carver was refreshed and ready for action but his objectives differed from those of the other human prisoners. He had been turned on by his own and no longer felt obligated to anyone but himself. The weapons were only in case he was discovered by the aliens and was forced to fight his way out. His intentions was to study the workings of the huge airlock in order to open it so he could fly his ship out and make a run for Earth. He knew the basics of flying a fighter and had often covered for Anglia as he took a break.

  Gently he dropped down like a cat onto the steel floor. No alarms were set off and no armed guards rushed in to deal with him. He crouched low and held his breath for a full minute before using the shadows cast by the entombed fighters. Still alert he studied the outer curved walls of the airlock hidden inside a space-rock. At several points along the walls were controls and symbols in the alien language. Any one of the controls could be the way to open the airlock. It was a game of roulette guessing which one would be the key to the door and freedom. Hit the wrong one and it could either set off ala
rms or blow something up.

  Carver was coming to the conclusion that using an explosive force was his way out. The cannons had been made inoperable by the aliens technology and without risking trying them out there was no way to know if the cannons had been permanently rendered useless. They would probably be his last resort, he decided.

  Continuing along the curved outer wall, he came to something that made him gasp. Above his head towards the hundred metre high roof, were row upon row of drones. Carver estimated at least three hundred of the killing machines were ready to destroy Earth. A plan was forming. Use the explosive power of the drones to blast the mother-ship apart and create a hole for him to fly the fighter out of. That dozens of his fellow humans including April Golightly would perish passed through his mind only fleetingly. This was offset by the fact that they had left him sealed up in the turret where he would eventually have starved to death. So no love lost there, then.

  Carver had to figure it all out so he returned to the fighter to go through the weapons and explosives and formulate a plan giving him the best chance of destroying the mother-ship and all those in it, both alien and human.

  Chapter 102

  'I think that's quite a creditable plan, Corporal Goldman. A lot of common sense from a promising bunch of young officers.'

  'Thank you, sir,' said Goldman 'Top of our list was minimising risk to unarmed people.'

  Burns said, 'Matlock. You are the most experienced killer here. Your opinion of this plan?'

  'It does have merit. Anticipating four guards and another one or two aliens bringing in the food, the same number of guards used to bring us to these rooms, hopefully that's a unit to them and they could stick to it. Tying a whole bunch of our underwear together as a sort of net to snare the guards is similar to what my team came up with. But I have doubts about sealing unarmed humans in these rooms to be freed later. They could end up sealed in here until they die.'

  Akrins said, 'It makes sense to me, Dale. A neat foursome of our best soldiers won't be tripping over unarmed people. We'll be able to concentrate as a unit.'

  Goldman said, 'And any weapons taken off other aliens can then be brought back here to release more of us to take out more aliens.'

  Patrick said, 'It's the best plan we have, Dale. We should run with it.'

  'Ok,' agreed Matlock. 'All we need to do is to decide who is in the armed team and who stays behind. Doctor Crowe. You stay here. Your skills may be needed patching up the wounded.'

  'I'm happy with that, not that I've anything to work with in here.'

  Burns said, 'As senior ranking officer here, I'll be going out. Matlock, obviously.'

  'I'm going,' said Patrick. 'I've had some action.'

  'Don't even think about leaving me in here,' said Akrins. 'I can handle a weapon and we already work well as a team.'

  Goldman said, 'I was hoping to go along seeing as it was mostly my idea.'

  Burns and Matlock shared a look.

  Burns said, 'Here's the deal. If when the guards come in here we have enough weapons to give you one, you'll come with us, if not you stay. If no spare weapons you'll be in the second wave when we've secured more weapons.'

  Goldman appreciated the logic. 'Thank you, sir.'

  Matlock said, 'I'd like Jazz with us. She's a formidable fighter and she'd enjoy killing a few turkeys with her bare hands.'

  'I don't want Jazz in danger without weapons,' said Patrick.

  Matlock grinned and said, 'Patrick. She is a weapon.'

  Burns said, 'Ok. They could call in here at any time. Goldman. You're in charge of making the net.'

  'Yes, sir. Come on people. Start stripping and ripping!'

  Chapter 103

  Drakov said, 'We have nothing to stop that mother-ship reaching Earth and they know it.'

  Marie Drakov had been given strict orders to keep an eye on her father from her mother so she had joined him in the command centre in the midst of organised pandemonium. Teams of technicians were watching the screens for the intermittent signals from the mother-ship. What few signals they picked up were scrupulously analysed and the results used to reveal the relentless passage of the vast ship through space.

  Marie said, 'Every country on Earth is as ready for them as possible. Every missile launcher is tracking that ship. All military and civil defence services are as ready as they can be. Hospitals are braced to deal with the injured. Dad. There's nothing more we can do.'

  'There is always more we can do. Look how easily they wiped out our fleet. I was banking on the crew of the Romulus to stop that mother-ship before they got here. Now...'

  'Dad. We need you calm. Not stressed out. We have a little over fifteen hours before they get here. Does His Excellency know our latest status?'

  Drakov said, 'Yes. I've also had four fighters stationed with rotational crews on the castle grounds. He assures me he's stocked up well in his wine cellar and if he can't get out again he'll drink himself to death.'

  'I like his style. Let me buy you a coffee.'

  Chapter 104

  Akrins had the side of his head against the door.

  'This is it,' he whispered.

  It was the signal to get in position and surprise the enemy. That had seemed like a good idea at the time. Sixteen armed aliens crashed through the opened door in twos, and when the human pyramid above that door dropped the net of less than spotless underwear onto only nine aliens, laser rifles were firing in every direction. Matlock and Burns ran with the net as planned, bowling over the rest of the guards in their wake. One Guard twisted around to point his weapon at Matlock who stomped so hard on the domed head that one eye popped out and hung obscenely on his cheek. In one smooth movement, Matlock grabbed two rifles, throwing one to Akrins who had a guard in a headlock with his legs. Patrick was exchanging punches with a guard doing more damage to his fists than his opponent. Burns intervened by severing the guards legs with his laser fire. More weapons swapped hands and the floor was a sticky mess of two species blood. Matlock jabbed his fingers deep into a guard's eye sockets before breaking his neck. Suddenly it was over. All the guards were dead and so were seven humans. Five more men had serious wounds and were rolling on the blood covered floor in agony.

  Matlock looked at Patrick and said, 'Could have been worse, I guess.'

  Alarms sounded from all over the ship.

  'I think things are about to get worse,' said Patrick. 'Now what?'

  'Well, we have more weapons than we had hoped for. We go kick ass and get the prince.'

  'That's your plan?'

  'We get Jazz and Liz out first. Listen up. Those that have a weapon come with us all but two of you. Those two protect the rest and stay put and we'll come back for you as soon as we can.'

  Matlock picked up a dead guard and hurled the body through the door. It was immediately shot to pieces from both directions in the corridor.

  'Two on the left, three on the right,' said Matlock. 'Major. I'll take right.'

  They both got on their bellies, crawled to the open doorway and with just the weapons in their hands poking into the corridor they squeezed the triggers until nothing was returning fire.

  'Is that it?' said Burns.

  'They're not big on hand to hand fighting. That's why they use drones. I was banking on that. They will be back, though. Lets go,'

  With fresh weapons they both rolled out into the corridor ready to take out anything that moved. Nothing did. Another six aliens lay in bloody untidy heaps. One was still breathing until Matlock dragged him over to the door to the room where the women were held.

  'Would you please be good enough to open this door for me?'

  The terrified guard just stared at Matlock. Matlock yanked the scrawny arm up to the sensors.

  'Now would be good.'

  The alien hand hit the sensors and the door hissed open.

  'Thank you so much,' said Matlock then broke the neck with his bare hands. More weapons for humans. Matlock said, 'Jazz. Liz. Time to make yoursel
f useful for once.'

  Danders took a rifle from Matlock before kissing him. 'Can we go kill lots of the enemy?'

  'I love it when you talk dirty.'

  Danders pushed him out of the way and shot two guards who had ventured into the corridor.

  Belle said, 'You ladies stay put. We might leave you a couple to mop up later. Patrick. Can we get out of here?'

  'Sure. We just have to rescue Prince Patrick first.'

  Chapter 105

  Unaware of the mayhem in the rest of the mother-ship, Carver was setting the charges to the rows of drones.

  'One hour from now and there'll be one humongous hole in this damn rock.'

  He climbed down to the floor. As he crossed over to the open airlock his fighter, an airlock access door opened and four shiny soccer-ball sized spheres glided in. Carver became aware of this when one opened up laser fire at him. It missed by an inch and he dropped to the floor as he fired his rifle, a bullseye at one sphere and a narrow miss at another. They were programmed not to do serious damage to the ship so their shots were timed to make the human the target as he dodged being fired at from three different directions.

  'Sorry, guys. I don't have time for this shit.'

  The smoke grenade he rolled across the floor fooled them enough to have their shots in the wrong direction. His three shots took out all the tiny drones. Two guards appeared and swore at him in their strange tongue. They ran at him firing their weapons until their legs were sliced off and they fell to the floor screaming. Head-shots shut them up.

  'I would love to stay and play, but I have a prior engagement.'

  Carver needed to buy time. He had to block off the entrance without setting off his explosives too soon. He ran past the dead aliens to the entrance where three more were running towards him. They saw the angry human with the rifle, the two dead guards and the remains of the spheres. They turned and started running away as fast as their chicken-legs could carry them.

  'Not as stupid as you look,' snarled Carver as he aimed his laser rifle at the roof just inside the corridor, bringing down several tons of scrap metal.

  With no more distractions he raced back to the fighter and dived into the airlock which closed up behind him. The small arsenal of weapons he placed around him so he could sit in the captain's chair, some of it within reach, just in case. He checked the time.