phil jones2 (11 page)

Hanniman gaped at him. 'Captain, how in blazes did you do that?'

He slowly picked himself off the floor, feeling a few bruises that hadn't been there but a moment ago. Should he tell his Engineer that he had no idea? That this had all been some massive fluke? Or would the man rather believe that the fate of the entire ship was resting on his gloved hand?

Instead of answering, Phil shrugged the question off and tried to get his bearings, he felt like a very battered and somewhat disorientated peach that had just been dropped out of a basket. He wondered briefly whether peaches really could feel disorientated before shaking the thought clear. He had to focus now, there was no time for idle musings.

Finally rising to his feet, he ordered Hanniman to put one of those force field thingies around the tangled mess that he called cabling in the hopes that it would stay intact for whatever the universe had to throw at them next. After this he made his way back up to the cockpit, where he found Agent Smith back in his position in spite of a lack of order to resume his post.

'You're back in one piece!' Annika smiled at him, a look of relief spreading across her face.

Phil offered her a nervous smile back and greeted the rest of the crew, even Smith. 'Yeah, but most importantly our engines are still fully functional.' he stared out at the bluey purpleness of the viewscreen and realised that his statement had been rather redundant.

'How long until we reach the planet that the Scavanger was picked up near?' he asked, feeling oddly like there were marbles in his mouth as he stumbled over the sentence. Being a Captain wasn't as easy as they made it sound.

RJ swivelled round in his pilot chair after briefly looking at a readout.'I'd say another twenty minutes at the speed we're going, Captain. Whatever you did to those engines not only seems to have fixed them, it's boosted their efficiency.'

Phil stared down at the glove in his hand and flexed it experimentally, if gloves could smile this one would be giving him a knowing wink with it.

So much for avoiding idle musing.

He had twenty minutes to prepare for that which he couldn't prepare for, it was time to turn his attention to his least favourite member of the crew.

'Agent Smith?'

The man turned slowly and deliberately. 'Yes, Captain Jones?'

Well, at least it was better than 'Mr. Jones.' Phil thought to himself, wondering why there was a change in Smith's attitude. Had he won him over by repairing the engines? No, he knew it would take much more than that to change this man's opinion on him.

'What can we expect when we reach the planet? I need your tactical analysis!'

Smith smiled back at him coolly, was that a hint of positivity at being used correctly?

'The planet is known as Vardell VIII, a dense jungle world with many predators and no known inhabitants as of yet. It has regularly been subjected to much debate by the terraforming committee due to the bountiful natural resources it possesses, the general consensus as of this time is that it's simply too dangerous to cultivate.'

Smith tapped on his holoboard and brought up a screen in front of Phil's face, forcing him to edge back in his seat slightly.

'Judging by the projected coordinates of the Scavanger with the actual mission detail, it is most likely that they engaged the Voravians over the planet and were blown to smithereens. We're likely to encounter a debris field as soon as we jump out of hyperwarp, I suggest utmost caution as the Voravian threat may still be present in the sector.'

The screen flickered to a spaceship hurtling down toward the planet.

'It may be possible that the Scavanger was shot down and crashed onto the planet below or chose to escape into the atmosphere, if that were the case then our search detail becomes far more difficult. Assuming that the atmospheric compensator of the vessel wasn't fried there could be potential survivors fighting for their life on the planet's surface. As a result there may also be Voravians down there too.'

The screen blinked off and Phil found himself face to face with Smith once more, the situation looked grim indeed, and entirely too dangerous for his liking.

'Thank you for the threat assessment, number one.'

Smith nodded and turned back to his console, apparently there was nothing more to say.

He watched the computer silently count down the amount of time to their arrival, none of the crew felt that talkative now. They were all assuming the worst and there was a collective nervousness about them that seemed to escalate the closer they got to their destination. Everyone except Smith of course, who remained as cool and disinterested as always.

Then RJ uttered the words Phil had been dreading to hear. 'We're about to leave hyperwarp Captain, in three...two... one...Oh crap.'

Then all hell broke loose.

Chapter 13

Thumming! Compensating! Puffy!

T
he darkened expanse of space was no longer that dark, on account of it being lit up by giant lasers streaking their way toward the ship.

Phil stared at the view screen in horror, trying his best not to wet himself and at a complete loss for words. In his peripheral vision he spotted Smith and Annika hammering furiously at a series of holographic buttons like some kind of insanely athletic dance from the future. RJ was yanking the ship this way and that to dodge the barrage and everyone seemed to be doing their best to avoid getting destroyed. While waiting for him to give the orders. The future was a very scary place indeed, definitely more like Alien than Spaceballs.

Except the future he was seeing was actually here and now, and the thing firing the lasers was very real indeed.

It was vast in size, he could already tell that because it took up the entire view screen of the cockpit and that was already zoomed out as much as possible. He was vaguely reminded of the Dyson Sphere from Star Trek, a structure so large that they only ever showed small portions of it close up. Was this the reason that the Scavanger had crash-landed upon the planet? Were they trying to get away from this monstrosity?

A laser finally hit its mark and he was thrown out of his seat. Cursing the lack of safety belts on such an advanced ship he picked himself up and felt the glove on his hand tighten in recognition of the danger they faced.

Punching what he hoped was the intercom, Phil yelled at Hanniman. 'We need to get down to the planet before this thing destroys us, can you beam us all down, Engineer?'

For what felt like the longest time, there was simply no reply. Phil began to wonder if their communication systems had been damaged in the previous barrage they had withstood.

'Captain, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by beam down. Do you have time to explain?'

He suddenly found his palm running its way up his forehead, this wasn't an episode of Star Trek, they didn't have all the technology he expected them to.

'Never mind Hanniman, Jones out.'

He leaned forward as if to speak to RJ when the intercom crackled open once again. 'What is it you're out of, sir?'

Phil punched the communications panel in the hopes that it would shut up, all he managed to do was to hurt his flabby fist.

'RJ!' he yelled through the pain. 'Take us down into the planet's atmosphere, try and land us as near to the Scavanger as you can!'

'Aye sir, setting shields to full reverse and high-tailing it down to the planet.'

Annika looked over at him in wonder. 'You calculated that a vessel that size couldn't follow us into the planet's atmosphere because its primary thrusters couldn't compensate for the effect the gravitational pull would have upon its mass.'

Phil nodded sagely, clearly this was exactly what he had been thinking.

'I believe that you are giving Mr. Jones entirely too much credit for this manoeuvre.' Smith replied through gritted teeth. 'nevertheless it does appear to be the correct course of action.'

The man hammered a series of buttons and the thumming of their own lasers broke through the conflagration, suddenly ceasing the onslaught they had faced up until now.

'Judging from the trajectory I have calculated the positioning of their primary weapons systems and disabled them with what was left of our own paltry arsenal. We may now “high tail it down” as our delightful pilot suggested to us.'

RJ scowled at him but didn't say anything in response, Smith offered a cold grin in return.

Phil sat in his Captain's chair and pondered over the sad reality that in spite of all this technology, a transporter system had yet to be invented.

'Won't the journey down the planet be a bumpy ride?' he asked Annika, who still seemed engrossed in button pressing on her holo-terminal.

She offered him a warm smile and swivelled her chair away from the console, as if she had nothing better in the world to do than address him personally.

'The journey will be a turbulent one certainly but thanks to our harnesses that shouldn't be a problem.'

Phil gazed down at his paunch as it lay in the chair, there remained a distinct lack of any sort of harness that his eyes could spot, he looked up to find Annika giggling at him. He didn't think that was very becoming of a junior officer. 'what?' he said, irritably.

'Oh you'll see when we cut through the planet's atmosphere.' she beamed back at him.

The huge green globe swirled up to greet them on the view screen, leaving the sight of the vast mothership behind. There were no retaliatory shots to Smith's bombardment so for the time being it appeared as if they had got out of dodge.

'What do our sensors say about the planet's surface?' Phil asked. 'It looks very...green.'

Annika nodded. 'It's a verdant jungle world with a highly carnivorous population, judging from the trajectory of the Scavanger they landed in one of the less-populated clearings. Hopefully it was their communications system that was knocked out of joint and they all survived the crash.'

Smith let out a scoff. 'Your wildly optimistic interpretation of the events that transpired is quaint and entirely unlikely. My guess is that their communication system was knocked out by that mother ship and the remnants of the Scavanger crashed on the planet. I expect no survivors as the few that made it down there will likely have met a grisly end as a result of the aforementioned proliferate carnivorous inhabitants of the planet's surface.'

The hidden speakers crackled into life in the cockpit, apparently Hanniman had been listening. 'You honestly believe that the flagship of the entire fleet is so incapable that they can't survive crashing upon a hostile world?'

Smith slowly lowered his face into the palm of his hand and sighed. 'My dear, misguided Engineer. You have not met the indomitable buffoon that is Captain Darwin. The man once collapsed an entire solar system into a black hole, and that was on a humanitarian mission.'

'How could he get the position if he's so useless at his job?' RJ rounded on him.

The tactical officer didn't deign to look at the pilot, instead he had eyes only for Phil. 'It seems that Star Command lets any idiot sit in the Captain's chair these days.'

Phil ignored him, he'd deal with Smith's rampant insubordination later. Their main priority was landing on this strange jungle planet and discovering if there were any survivors left. Or at least that was what the glove seemed to be telling him, he didn't know where his thoughts ended and the glove's began when it came to sitting in the big chair.

Regardless of the legitimacy of his command, the entire crew with the exception of Smith seemed impressed with his orders thus far. Perhaps if he just continued to give them out he may find a way back to Earth without being blown to smithereens by the Voravians.

The first jolt of the planet's atmosphere nearly threw him out of his chair, the computer sounded over the intercom in response. 'Warning, entering planetary atmosphere, engaging harnesses.'

A faint blue beam that looked like a flourescent tube of toothpaste shot out from underneath the arm of his chair and prodded him none-too-gently.

'Compensating.' the sweet voice of the computer rang out over the intercom, jabbing him once more with the beam. 'Compensating.' again the beam poked him in the stomach, causing it to grumble in dissatisfaction. 'Compensating.'

Finally the beam arced over his bulge and secured itself to the other side of the command chair with a little chime of approval as it reached its destination. It didn't come a moment too soon, as they were buffeted by the entry into the planet.

'Hang tight Captain, looks like this is going to be a bumpy one, the gravitational pull is playing havoc with the systems.'

'I fully understand the gravity of the situation, RJ.' Phil replied, waiting for him to crack a smile. Instead Smith groaned at him.

'Is it necessary for all Captains to use such facile humour?'

Phil smiled back at him, refusing to give in to his jibes. 'I find facile humour the easiest to work with, number one.'

The ship shot forward through numerous puffy clouds and soon their descent eased somewhat, apparently with RJ at the helm there was no such thing as a crash landing.

'Scanning for the Scavanger now with visual sensors, Captain.' Annika supplied, treating Phil to a dizzying view on a screen that popped up from his command chair.

Finally the wreck of the ship also popped up, looking like a metallic cigar that had seen one too many magnets. Annika gasped in dismay and in spite of his being right about this frightful sight being brought to light, Smith did not goad what was presumably the Lieutenant about her previous misconceptions.

RJ angled them down toward the craft with calm skill now that he no longer needed to wrestle against the controls, it would appear that the landing would probably be the safest part of this whole mission.

The roaring engines slowed significantly as Phil began to pick out details of the surrounding foliage.

'Extending landing thruster pads.' RJ said, as if expecting Phil to know what landing thruster pads were.

There was a slight bump, no more than an average commercial jet touching down, then the engines cut out completely. They had arrived, and Vardell VIII awaited them.