by John Zakour
“It’s quiet. Too quiet,” Elvin said. He paused for a tic. “I just love saying that!” he said.
“I guess we’ve given them enough of beating,” Kymm said.
K-999 took a quick head count. There were thirty-two politicians, sixteen from Earth and sixteen from Aqua. “We need to split up.” K-999 pointed with his nose to Kymm’s ship. “The ones from Earth will go with Cadet Clark.”
Kymm saluted to Ambassador Plant. “I’m sure you and your people will find the ride on my shuttle back to the Searcher acceptable,” she said.
The ambassador gave Kymm a polite bow. “I am sure my staff and I will find the ride more than acceptable,” he said.
K-999 pointed to my shuttle, leaning against the wall. “The Aquarians will ride with Scout Moon.”
A very formal looking woman with light blue hair done up in a bun looked at my beat-up shuttle. She shook her head. “Why do the Earthlings get the better shuttle?”
The princess spoke for K-999. “Ambassador Marga,” she said sternly, “I assure you Baxter Moon is a fine pilot. We could not be in better hands.”
Ambassador Marga looked at my shuttle, she looked back at me, then back at the shuttle. Finally her gaze met the princess’s gaze. She bowed deeply. You could see she knew the princess and that she didn’t have the chance of a snow ball on the sun of winning this one.
“I am not one to argue with my princess,” she said.
“Good,” the princess said. She pointed to my shuttle. “I suggest we board before the TVTrons have more time to counteract our moves.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the entire Aquarian delegation said.
The two groups split up. Kymm, her crew and the Earthlings to her shuttle; my crew, the Aquarians and I to my shuttle.
“Thanks for the compliment, Your Highness,” I said.
“I had to do it to reassure my people,” she said. She gave me a little wink. “You may call me Princess.” I took that as a good sign.
Chapter 20
I led my team and the Aquarians into my shuttle. To be on the safe side, I entered with two energy weapons ready. This way I could handle either TVTrons or any leftover zombies that we didn’t know about. The shuttle was empty, though. I wasn’t sure if the TVTrons had given up or were prepping for a new attack. Whatever, I decided it was best not to worry about it. Like GiS would always harp, worrying doesn’t help; if you’re prepared you don’t have to worry. I sort of understood that now. I was well trained and fast on my feet. I was prepared for anything the TVTrons could muster.
SC had the shuttle ready for us. The extra passenger seats were up and ready. I had to give SC credit. He might have been acting a bit odd, but he was also making good choices. “The quicker you take your seats, the quicker we’ll be out of here,” I said to the Aquarian party. “Please buckle your harnesses.”
They still weren’t exactly clear what had happened, but they knew it wasn’t pleasant and none of them wanted to hang around any longer. They hastily grabbed seats and sat down.
I looked at my crew. They were already at their stations preparing for takeoff. I couldn’t help being proud.
I headed to the pilot’s seat. I sat down and buckled myself in. This was going to be a rocky flight, but I didn’t want to say that.
The princess sat next to me and buckled in. She gave me a forced grin. “I have faith in you, Baxter, but this is going to be tricky, even for you.”
I couldn’t blame her for being scared. My shuttle didn’t look like it could fly across the street, much less across space. It wasn’t going to be easy to fly. Yet I knew my shuttle, my crew and I could do this.
“Tricky is my middle name,” I said.
“What an odd name”
“It was a joke, princess.”
“Oh, not a very good one.”
“You just don’t get Earth humor.”
The princess just looked at me. “True, I studied your greatest Earth comics — the Six Stooges — and I barely smiled… I found them to be not at all entertaining.”
“Don’t worry, princess, you’ll grow to appreciate my humor.” I told her.
“I hate to interrupt the sparkling banter,” Kymm called from her shuttle. “But we have to hightail it out of here. Since my shuttle’s still in good shape, I should lead the way out.”
“I won’t argue with you there, Kymm,” I said.
“Once you clear the Explorer I’ll give you a tow back to the Searcher. Then we’re back to good old terra firma.”
“Once again I won’t argue,” I said.
I looked over at Kymm in her shuttle and gave her a formal salute. She returned the salute with a crisp salute of her own. She fired up her shuttle and easily steered it out of the Explorer.
Now it was my turn. I fired up my engine. It complained a bit and rumbled a bit more, but it did eventually spring, well at least crawl, to life.
I touched the accelerator just enough to ease us away from the wall. We wobbled forward.
“Are you sure this ship will hold together?” Ambassador Marga asked.
“Of course he is!” Princess Amana said. Turning to me she said, “You are sure. Right, Baxter?”
“Of course I am!” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
I eased the shuttle forward. It made a slight creaking noise when it pulled away from the wall. The noise caused the entire Aquarian delegation to gasp.
“Nothing to worry about,” I said loudly so everybody could hear.
I nudged the control stick forward. The shuttle started to roll toward the bay door. We were a little off center so I realigned her a bit. The handling wasn’t as precise as it normally was but it was still acceptable. I checked my radar. Kymm had cleared the Explorer and was now hovering 500 meters above it. She was in position to catch us should we start to plummet once we made our exit. Apparently Kymm had about as much confidence as the Aquarians. I checked my boosters and engines. They were both still at 70 percent so we would have enough power. The question was, how much would I be able to control the shuttle in gravityless space?
We moved forward. The shuttle seemed fairly stable, which made me reasonably confident. We cleared the opening. We were back in space, but for once in my life I wasn’t that thrilled to be there. My shuttle had taken a lot of damage in my crash landing, but I hoped it still had enough left in it to make the trip back to the Searcher.
I pushed the acceleration button. “Come on baby! Let’s go!” I coaxed.
The shuttled rocked forward.
“Does talking to it help?” the princess asked.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I said.
I looked at my meters. Everything looked okay. Not great, but at least I should have enough power to make the quick trip over.
I pulled back on the control stick. The shuttle pulled up. It didn’t have the instant response it normally had but it was still good enough. We started to climb and pull away from the Explorer.
I pushed the throttle forward and headed toward the Searcher. The ship was shaky but controllable.
“Uh oh,” Elvin said.
“What? I don’t like Uh oh,” I said.
“We’re leaking fluids!”
“Which ones?” I asked.
Elvin looked at his console. “It would be easier to list all the ones that aren’t leaking.” Elvin squinted at his console. “Our engines and controls will be dead, in three, two, one, now.”
The shuttle jerked, sputtered, only we didn’t stop. In fact our momentum kept sending us forward, but only now I had even less (actually no) control. We were blasting forward out of control. We were like a bullet, a big ten-ton bullet. That’s the thing about flying in space, once you get moving forward you actually need your reverse thrusters to slow you down. Or else you keep going either forever or until you hit something. In this case it would be the latter and the something would be the Searcher.
“Baxter, you’re going way too fast,” Kymm called from her ship. Just in case I h
adn’t noticed. “You have to take control of your ship.”
“Elvin, you got to be able to give me reverse thrusters,” I pleaded.
Elvin studied his console. Zenna got out of her chair and moved over next to Elvin. They both stared at the console. Elvin pointed to the screen. “If we reroute this and this we should get reverse thrusters back online.”
“Baxter, you’re coming in too fast,” GiS said. “I can only assume you’ve lost your reverse thrusters and not your mind.”
“Nice to have you back in communication,” I said. “And that your instincts are just as keen as ever.”
“SC, why haven’t you been keeping us all informed?” K-999 asked.
“I’m sorry, K-999, but TVTrons are constantly attempting to infect us with a virus. It has put me a bit under the chips. I can still function, but it takes much of my capacity to keep them from overwhelming me. I have fought off over a million attempts in the last nanosecond alone.”
I looked at the screen. We were getting closer and closer to the Searcher. I looked back at Elvin and Zenna. “How you guys coming?”
“Ah, fine,” Elvin said. He moved his fingers over the console. “You have reverse thrusters now!”
We were going pretty fast. I didn’t want to slam on the reverse thrusters, but I also didn’t want to slam into the Searcher. I hit the reverse thrusters. We started to slow, but we were still heading pretty quickly toward Searcher.
“Kymm, I’m going to need you,” I said.
“I’m right above you,” Kymm called over the comm. “I’m locking on in three tics. Prepare your passengers.”
“You can’t, Kymm. Locking on to us at this speed could drag your shuttle crashing into the Searcher with us,” I shouted.
“That’s why she’s not going to lock on,” Chriz said over the comm. “I’ve rigged the tractor beam so it will throw a tractor pulse cushion around you. It will stop you but it won’t be connected to us. It will be like we’ve thrown a big soft cushy pillow around you.”
“Wow, what a great idea,” Elvin said. I detected a hint of jealousy in his voice.
“Buckle up and hold on, everybody,” I called. “This is going to be rough.”
Shuttles in space were meant to come to nice gradual stops. They weren’t really built to be going from 17,000 kilometers per hour to zero in under a tic, but in this case we didn’t have any choice. The instant stop would beat a next instant crash.
The shuttle slammed to a complete stop. All of us on board jerked forward. It wasn’t smooth by any means, but it certainly beat crashing.
“Gotcha!” Kymm said.
“Okay, maybe not a really soft pillow,” Chriz said.
“Nice shot,” I told her. “Now guide us in.”
I put my hands up on my head and relaxed. After all there was nothing I could do but sit back and relax.
“You seem very confident,” Princess Amana said to Kymm over the comm.
“I learned by watching him,” Kymm called. “You’re going to be fine.”
Within minutes we were safely docked on the Searcher.
Chapter 21
We were all ecstatic when we got off our shuttles. We had done it! We had saved the diplomats. Now we just needed to warp to Earth and tell them what had happened. War would be avoided and all would be saved.
Of course it couldn’t be that easy. Could it?
K-999 confirmed our arrival to GiS. “We are all aboard. Fire up the light-speed engines and let’s get out of here.”
“We have a problem,” GiS said.
No, of course it couldn’t be that easy.
“I need everybody to the command center stat,” GiS said.
“I demand to know what’s going on!” Ambassador Plant said.
“I also demand to know!” Ambassador Marga said.
“There is a TVTron mothership-pyramid coming at us,” GiS said curtly.
I turned to the ambassadors. “You had to ask.”
We all hurried to the command center.
* * * *
Sure enough, when we reached the command center, there on main view screen heading right for us was a huge reflective-silver giant pyramid with an old-fashioned satellite antenna on top of each of its three base points. GiS was standing in the middle of the room nervously scratching his head with his foot.
“So that’s a TVTron mothership-pyramid,” Elvin said.
“That is correct,” SC said.
“Just once why can’t something be simple…,” I sighed. Sure, it wasn’t professional to sigh, but this was a matter worth sighing over.
“It’s locked on to me with a tractor beam,” SC said.
“Fire up the light-speed engines and get out of here!” Ambassador Marga ordered.
“Yes, fire them up!” Ambassador Plant reordered.
GiS turned to them. “The engines take an hour to come online.”
Ambassador Plant looked at the TVTron Pyramid in the view screen. It certainly was an impressive sight. He pointed at the screen. “But we don’t have an hour!”
“Hence the problem,” GiS said.
UHF-1 appeared on our view screen. It was smiling.
“Thank you for such a rousing attempted escape, I am sure our viewers will enjoy it. Still we can not let you back to your planet to warn them. We need more action. We crave it. We long for it. We live for it.”
“You have to stop them!” both ambassadors said at the same time.
“Yes, I know,” GiS said.
The Searcher opened up fire with two of its laser cannons at the TVTron pyramid. The shots glanced harmlessly off the pyramid’s sides.
“Why don’t you blast them out of the sky!? Nuke ‘em!” Ambassador Marga shouted.
“Our ship is not carrying heavy weapons,” GiS said. “Remember our deal?”
“Oh that’s right,” Ambassador Marga said. “We probably should have trusted each other more…” She stopped to think for a tic. “Wait a minute, you shouldn’t even have small weapons!”
“We brought them online just to fight some TVTron attack ships,” Zenna said.
Two giant robotic crane arms rolled out of the side of the pyramid. Another popped out of the bottom. Though we were still hundreds of kilometers away, we could see the claws and arms with our naked eyes.
One of the Aquarians pointed to the claws on the screen. “They are going to rip us apart!”
UHF-1’s voice came in over our comm system. “We find viewers savor having ships ripped apart far longer than they do if we simply blow them up with fast, boring lasers or missiles.”
This didn’t look good at all. We were being drawn closer and closer to the claws of death — literally.
* * * *
“One of your shuttles could ram the pyramid,” one of the Aquarians, a short man with no eyebrows and green hair suggested. “That would allow us to escape and to warn our planets.”
Elvin did a few calculations on a console. “One of our shuttles ramming the pyramid wouldn’t do enough damage to stop it.” He did a few more calculations. “Even if we hit it with both our shuttles, we still wouldn’t stop it.”
The princess turned to me. “Baxter, do something,” she said. It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t a request. It was a statement.
A simple statement, yet somehow it made me feel good. The princess wasn’t just hoping I would think of something to save the day, she knew I would.
I had to think and I had to think hard. We needed a big weapon and we needed it fast.
“Can we radio back to our planets and tell them the situation? At least we can avoid war,” one of the aids suggested.
Both ambassadors shook their heads no. “All communication is being blacked out.” The two ambassadors looked at each other.
“We have to learn to trust each other more,” Plant said.
“I agree,” Marga said.
The two exchanged grins. They shook hands. It would have been a nice moment if we weren’t all about to die.
&n
bsp; “We should have gotten more done on the Explorer,” Plant said.
Then it hit me. Proving once again you never know where inspiration will spring from. “The Explorer!” I said.
Chriz turned to me. “No, Moon, we’re on the Searcher, try to stick with the program.”
“I know where we are, but we can use the Explorer. We can ram the mothership-pyramid with the Explorer!”
Ambassador Plant looked at me. “Son, the Explorer is a 20-billion-international-dollar piece of equipment. We can’t use it as a giant rock.”
Everybody in the room just looked at him. The ambassador sank back. “Sorry, sometimes I do politics first and think second.”
Ambassador Marga put her hand on his shoulder. “Our ship has already been destroyed, so now our planets will share an even stronger common bond.”
“Yes, good point,” Plant said.
Of course it would be a moot point if we couldn’t pull this off. I turned to my team.
“Do we have any access to Explorer?”
“We’re too far away,” Chriz said.
“That is correct,” SC said. “At this distance and under the current situation I can access the levels of their systems but not override them.”
“Let’s boost our signal.”
Lobi, Elvin and Chriz started kicking around ideas.
“We could super charge SC.”
“We could override the Explorer’s override controls…”
That’s the thing about super-brains, they may be super smart but sometimes they look for a complicated answer when the simple will do. By the time they finished sifting through all the options we’d be dead.
“We could….”
“We don’t need a lot of control. We just need to be able to ram it into a giant mothership,” I said.
The three of them looked at each other.
“We could send a single encoded-in-subspace command that basically says, fire up your engines and go this way,” Lobi said.
“Yes, if we keep the beam tight enough we could get through to them. They wouldn’t even notice.”
“How long would that take?” Kymm asked.