The radio crackled. "MACKIEE!! Was that gunshots? What the bloody hell is going on?" Lily's voice came out of the speakers.
McCall put a hand on his forehead and spoke into the communicator, „We just met a stowaway. Hold on."
They moved closer. The creature began twitching but made no attempt to attack them again.
"What the hell?" Rosen pointed at the chest of the thing, "do you see that?"
There was a name tag on the ant-spider or spider-ant, or whatever it was. "Matthias" was engraved on its army-style tag.
"I believe we found your mysterious passenger, Henry." McCall said.
"Oui, but what is it, and how did it get on our ship?" Rosen shook his head.
McCall spoke into his com, "Captain Lerille, are you sure no passengers came on board at the military installment? Or, did you maybe load any boxes, containers, anything of that kind?"
There was a long pause before Lerille answered.
"There were some containers with mail and some diplomatic luggage. That's it. You know what our cargo usually is. Nothing else though."
"Sure, but this time it was more like a Trojan horse than a mailbox. We just shot a creature dead at the entrance to your bridge. Six legs, by the way. We'll get back to you guys later."
He looked grimly at Rosen. They both raised their weapons again, keeping the creature in view as they slowly and carefully advanced toward the bridge, having to move around the creature in the process.
After entering through the door to the bridge, they noticed the relatively large flight deck was empty.
Rosen pointed to a console and said, "Put it on that one."
McCall rushed over to the console and took the device Beaumont had given him out of his pocket. He found a port to plug it in and activated it. A heavy thump jolted the La Fleur. Through the windshields they could see her dipping downward toward the planet.
"Oh crap!" McCall yelled and activated his com. "Lily, Lerille, are you guys seeing what we're seeing?"
Lily's voice answered right away, "Yes, we're going down fast! What did you do?"
"Nothing other than activate Beaumont's device to clean the system. Apparently it doesn't like that."
Rosen checked the readings on the screens to see if he could get a clue. Then he pulled the switches to start the engines. Nothing. He lifted his arms up in exasperation. "It's useless. It's on full auto. I can't do anything."
"Twenty minutes. Do we have that much time?" McCall almost yelled.
"Barely! The ship is big and sluggish. It'll take some time to get it started up again. Can we slow it down somehow?"
"Good idea." McCall looked around. "Do you have breakers?"
"Commander?" Rosen didn't understand at first.
"Fucking Hell, I mean the switches that cut off the power. A manual switch, or an OFF button for christ sake!"
"There!" Rosen ran towards the pilot's seat and pulled a few switches.
The rumble of the retro-jets died down slowly. But the ship was still falling fast. McCall spoke into his com, "Lily, this is serious. Detach the Tin Lizzy and push off to a safe distance. I think the La Fleur is gonna enter the atmosphere pretty soon."
"Affirmative, but how will you two get out?" Lily's voice came back.
"We're still working on saving the ship, but just in case, get away from us, now!"
"Ok! Detaching!"
McCall and Rosen felt the jolt when the Tin Lizzy unlocked and they were hoping the crew was flying the Tin Lizzy away. Then they saw through the windows that it was moving up and into a safe orbit above them, while the La Fleur still floated down toward the atmosphere of the planet.
"What now?" Rosen asked.
"I think I saw some rescue pods left over on this ship.“
„Yes, I know which ones you mean. It would take about three minutes to get to them."
"But after the virus is neutralized, we have to get it back into safe orbit. And I'm sure the pods won't release when it's burning up during re-entry." McCall said and looked at the clock. Ten more minutes to shutdown of the computer.
Lily Spector followed the flight path of the La Fleur, maintaining a safe distance in orbit. The crew looked on as the sparks flew when the La Fleur hit the outer atmosphere. Parts of its hull started to glow in a deep orange.
Captain Lerille was grinding his teeth, watching his life's work burn up in the atmosphere. "My life, my work, all in vain! Goddamn robots!" he grunted.
Lily sucked in her breath, watching the incredulous scene that was unfolding before their eyes. "I hope they can bail out in time!"
She started sobbing. Lerille put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.
"Look!" He started suddenly and pointed.
The main engines of the La Fleur had fired up and seemed to be on full thrust. Together with the lifting engines on the bottom of the ship, the La Fleur slowly came out of the dive and steered upward.
"Oui, Oui, OUI!" Lerille exclaimed and grabbed Lily's shoulder even harder.
"OUCH! That's enough, Frenchy!"
"Oh, excuses moi!" Lerille let go of his hold and smiled as his ship came out of the dangerous dive. The La Fleur was gaining speed and returning up to a safe orbit.
Then the com sounded, "McCall to Tin Lizzy. I think we made it. Get the Champagne out Captain Lerille. Over."
"Roger that! It's in the fridge below your feet. Over!"
"Copy that. Good place. The La Fleur is stable now. So far it's staying on standard autopilot and the flight system is still inoperative. But we'll make it. You can come on board. And we're gonna have to talk about your stowaway. McCall off."
Lily waited until the La Fleur was in a stable orbit. Then she guided the Tin Lizzy toward it and docked on. After she and Lerille had entered the codes into the keypad and had made their way in, McCall and Rosen showed them their attacker.
"Friend of yours? " asked McCall, "I asked your first officer before but you're the captain of this ship. New pet?"
Lerille was circling the dead, giant bug with a look of bewilderment and shock. Lily just put her hand over her mouth in astonishment and disgust. Lerille was pale and said nothing at first, as he studied the grotesque creature.
"I", he hesitated, "have never seen such a thing before. What is it?"
McCall shrugged: "I was hoping you could enlighten us. Could it be from the military station you visited?"
Lerille looked hesitant but nodded. "Where else? Henry, let's check the mail containers and the other cargo they gave us. " He gestured for them to follow.
McCall reloaded his Smith & Wesson as they all walked back towards the cargo bay. McCall gave Lerille a brief look as they walked. "Did you see the name tag on him?"
Lerille nodded.
"There was a passenger on your manifest named Matthias. It looks like we found out who this mysterious Matthias is. Maybe he never left the ship with a rescue pod after all."
Lerille frowned and countered, "But someone has to be on board the pods for them to eject. Their system is completely independent from the main flight system."
McCall thought a few seconds and then cursed. He grabbed his communicator. "Julien, this is Mac, copy s'il vous plaît. Urgent!"
Beaumont was instantly on the com. "Reçu. What is it? Did you burn her up? We saw some pretty cool light effects from the ground?"
"Nope. Everything's under control, orbit stable. But..." McCall took a deep breath before he continued, "there might be some trouble down at the colony. It looks like the third rescue pod was occupied when it went down."
Silence on the other end.
"Julien? Do you copy?"
After a few seconds Beaumont's voice came back. "Copy that. What are you trying to tell me? I don't like that sound in your voice."
"Ah, just something about five to six feet tall, six legs and a bit jumpy. And clever..."
Before Beaumont could say anything, St. Johns voice came over the com. "Dear God, why didn't you tell us earlier?"
McCall jus
t sighed: "Because we just found out, dammit! We thought the empty pod was triggered by a computer failure. But we've got something very dangerous up here.“ McCall was feeling jumpy himself and added, „Could kill everyone and possibly impregnate all of your women."
McCall saw Lily's eyes grow big.
"Haha, Sorry, Hon!"
"You read to much Wyndham, you Twat!" She yelled.
"Don't worry, it won't be blond. It'll be a read-head like its mother..."
McCall ducked to avoid her punch, as St. Johns voice came on again, "Stop joking around, kids! I will notify my people, MacGill out."
"Alright Mac," Beaumont came back, "I'm almost through with the sanitation of our Lady. When are you coming back?"
"We just have to check the cargo from the military station. We're on our way to the cargo bay now."
"Roger that. Anything else?"
McCall was listening to the communication between St. John and the constable on the com when he picked up the word „aerial search“ and became alarmed. "WAIT! Tell St. John, St. John, NO AERIAL SEARCH!"
Obviously, he had heard McCall because St. John came suddenly back on the com.
"What? Why not, Mac?"
"You'd be using the shuttles. And they might be infected by this bug. When you guys were all knocked out I noticed they were all plugged in. Don't use them, it might be catastrophic!"
"Ok. And what about our nice, old style choppers?" St. John said. "Good old offline, manually controlled helicopters."
McCall let out a long breath. "Good job, laddy! Just take care, I'll be back soon."
Hopefully, he thought.
"Here we are!" Rosen announced.
They had reached a big bulkhead at the end of the long corridor. Silently they looked at each other and raised their guns. Rosen nodded to them. They confirmed by nodding back and he typed the entrance code in. The heavy steel door lifted up automatically into the ship's hull.
Nothing happened. Silence. It was completely dark in the cargo hold.
Rosen activated the lights, so they could see. The cargo hold of the La Fleur was immense. Nothing jumped them, nothing hissed. Medium sized containers, pallets wrapped in foil and secured by strong nets stood there silently.
Captain Lerille pulled his digital paper out of his pocket and uploaded the cargo manifest onto it. „Let's see what we've got here." He said and entered the the room.
The others followed, keeping a close watch of the perimeters and their backs.
Captain Lerille continued further into the cargo bay, looking at his cargo manifest until he was out of sight for the others.
McCall was the first to notice that they had lost sight of Lerille and gestured to the others. "Where is he?"
Lily looked scared and was whispering something. Rosen opened his mouth to shout out to Lerille but McCall stopped him before he could. They had a strong hold on their weapons as they advanced in the direction where they had last seen Lerille moving. Since the cargo hold was so very large, a person could easily go unseen in the depths.
A loud thud and a much louder voice cursing in french made them jump and Rosen almost fired his gun.
"Sacre bleu! Merde! That hurts."
They ran towards the sound, came around a large stack of pallets and stopped.
Captain Lerille had stumbled over a container hatch laying on the floor. The hatch had obviously been ripped off of something as it was bent and laying askew on the floor. Captain Lerille was spread out on the floor, cursing in french and holding his shin.
While the others were still deciding whether they should be worried or relieved, Lerille was pointing to a spot behind them.
McCall could feel the adrenaline churning again. He turned around slowly to see one of the containers ripped open. The door to the container was missing. He aimed his gun at the dark opening and peeked carefully inside. After a look in all directions he lowered his gun.
"Nothing, just mailbags, but...yuck!" he covered his nose, "They must have pooped in there!"
Just in that moment all hell broke loose. A dark shadow flew through the air towards them. McCall jumped sideways to dodge it, as the others took cover behind the containers. There it stood, spider-ant number two. It focused on McCall alone and approached him slowly.
"Guys! I could use some help here." McCall spoke intently.
The creature kept moving toward him. He decided the only way out would be the offense. He let out a low bellied yell and raised his Smith & Wesson in preparation for his attack.
The creature was also just about to jump towards him, when just in that moment three shots were fired from somewhere in between the containers, ripping a few big holes in the torso of the spider-ant. McCall rolled away to avoiding the body falling on him and got sprayed with a good amount of blood and other goo in the process.
He struggled to come to his feet, slipping on the gooey fluids on the floor, and looked around at the creature and the mess.
They were all still in shock when suddenly something lunged out of the shadows and jumped in McCall's direction. This time it was able to sling its arms and feet around him. He felt Lily's weight on his left side and felt of the pressure of the weapon she was holding.
She had jumped up onto his left side and was clinging to him, her arms around his shoulders. Breathless and wide-eyed, she stammered, "Are you ok? Did it hurt you?"
"No, but please keep your smoldering barrel away from my back!"
"Uups, sorry!" She held the gun away from him, but managed to keep her grip, hanging entirely from his left side.
"You shot! Thanks!" He kissed her on her right cheek.
She was purring enjoyment from the compliment and got back on her own feet, but was still leaning on McCall.
Lerille and Rosen came out of their hideouts.
McCall whooped, "Yo, Messieurs, ladies night eh?"
"Sorry Captain, but we were at the wrong angle, you were in the line of fire. We couldn't get a shot." Lerille said.
Rosen just nodded, looking a bit embarrassed.
McCall felt shaky and laughed uneasily, "Ah, I was just teasing a bit. My girl here got the sucker for good." He hugged her with his left arm, which made her giggle.
Lerille stepped forward to look at the remains of the spider-ant. The body was still twitching, but appeared to be dead. "Look, the same name tag, but a different number on it, 89."
McCall moved closer to the body and inspected the tag. "Another 'Matthias'. So maybe that's not the name of a person. Maybe it's the name of a project or something."
"Wait, what's that?" Lerille pointed to the hole in the upper torso of the thing where Lily's bullets had ripped it open. A shiny little chip glinted in the light. It was connected to tissue with several fragile wires.
"A bugged bug. And it's icky and it stinks!" Lily declared, still holding onto McCall, who looked over at Lerille.
"There could be more on your ship." McCall said.
Lerille was looking from the container to the creatures back and forth. He shrugged and shook his head. "If there are more I doubt they're in there. Look at it. There's just barely enough space for the two of them in that container. Unless we find another container holding more...let's hope not. " He looked at his cargo manifest and pointed to the container next to the damaged one. "We only took these two containers inside the ship. The other stuff, the waste, was already sent to the sun to be vaporized."
"Then we should check the other container, just to be sure." McCall said.
"Sure, I'll have to enter the code to open it." Lerille walked to the hatch, hesitated a moment and then typed in the code. The hatch popped out and opened automatically. But nothing jumped out. A look inside showed that it held mailbags, small packages and other innocent looking things.
McCall had another question for Lerille. "You have a motion tracking system, I mean something that tracks all movement onboard, don't you?"
Lerille nodded, "Oui, of course. But it's part of the main flight system."
"That's what I was afraid of. " McCall activated his com again.
"Julien, do you copy?"
"Yes, what's going on up there?"
"How much longer until the flight system on the Buster K. is cleaned and reset?"
There was a short pause: "Expect about a half hour till everything boots up again."
"Thanks Buddy, McCall out." He turned to the others and suggested, "Maybe we should go back to the the bridge and wait this out." He looked at his watch. „It'll be a a half hour until the Buster K. is rebooted and probably longer until the La Fleur is rebooted.“
"Bien sûr, come on my friends, I think we could all use a drink anyway." Lerille led them out of the cargo bay.
After they returned to the bridge, Lerille pulled the Champagne out of the hatch that nobody had noticed before. And First Officer Rosen made some authentic French champagne glasses appear out of nowhere. Lerille filled them all and raised his glass.
"Now, in a decent manner, welcome to the La Fleur! Merci for your help. Santé!"
They all toasted to that and drank.
They had time to kill.
"Hah! Got it, we are back, mon dieux!" Beaumont called out.
St. John had almost fallen asleep and jumped up dizzily. "Holy mother of god! Do you have to holler like a drunken sailor?"
"Sorry, my friend. But we cleaned up the mess on this ship. I was right, the bug was in that useless voice control system."
St. John came closer and looked at the screens Beaumont was pointing to. "You mean that is the weakness? Are you sure?"
"Yes, this useless, annoying crap with its update routine was open like a barn. No thanks to the authorities. Merde, I always hated this damn automation!"
St. John put a hand on Beaumont's shoulder and grinned. "That's why a lot of people prefer to live out here, laddy."
Beaumont smiled back at St. John. He knew. He was a hacker, a computer geek and a master cracker, but he felt and lived his life as a human being. He pointed to one of the switches. Beaumont put the doohickey back into its place, and then flipped the switch.
"HELLO FLIGHT CREW OF THE BUSTER K, AWAITING YOUR ORDERS!"
Jinks on Sirius 4 Page 8