phil jones2 (51 page)

'Jump. The Captain and I will catch you!'

Trigger felt like he would have better luck taking his chances with the jet pack. It was shortly after this that the idea struck him, possibly brought on by all the current ideas being tumbled about in his head from the constant spinning. 'Tell the computer to turn the gravity off in the room!'

RJ didn't ask questions, and the next thing Trigger knew he was watching the two men below him floating slightly off the ground. He let go of the still-spinning jet pack and launched himself toward the ground.

That was when he heard the computer's voice again. 'Error, gravity has been disabled, reenabling in three... two... one...'

No. No. No. No. No.

The ground came rushing up to meet him and he knew no more.

Chapter 48

! ! !

T
hey were sprawled out on the same greenish deck plating that the whole ship seemed to consist of, the only difference being that this was most certainly a cell of some kind as evidenced by the force field that was keeping them there.

Terry shook his head groggily and tried to collect his thoughts. He vaguely remembered running from the Voravians in the hope that somehow he'd come into contact with the other members of this fateful expedition. He'd certainly come into contact with something, as evidenced by his aching head and wobbly limbs.

To make matters worse, it seemed that Agent Smith was coming to nearby, just the sort of conversational partner he required when feeling like this.

Slowly rising, Engineer Stevens resumed his previous role by investigating the force field for any inherent weaknesses. It was as good an excuse as any not to have to deal with Smith, even if he found absolutely nothing to suggest they could escape.

'Engineer... a word if you please.' Smith's drawl came from across the small room, forcing him to suppress an audible sigh. That excuse didn't last very long then, now to find out how he was to blame for them ending up in here.

'Yes sir?' he asked, trying to keep his tone as even as possible.

Smith had not risen to his feet, instead electing to crawl a little closer to the wall and prop himself into a seated position. It looked as if the Voravians had really done a number on him, and given how painful Terry felt he couldn't imagine what his superior must be feeling to show such a sign of weakness.

'Engineer Stevens, I want you to know that it pains me to say this... but I owe you an apology.'

Terry rounded on the man. 'Now look here, I did almost everything that was asked of me and you can't go blaming me and asking for an apology from me when it wasn't my fault that we're in this... wait, what?'

A faint smile played across the cold lips of the man before vanishing swiftly. 'Clearly not what you were expecting. I... owe you an apology for my actions earlier.'

Terry shook his head, trying his best to convince himself that he wasn't hearing things or in the grip of a very strange dream. 'What do you need to apologise for?' he finally asked.

A slight cough indicated that Smith was a lot worse off than he was trying to let on. 'When the Voravians came I shot anything that moved. You were one of my accidental targets.'

He touched the aching in his chest. 'You shot me?'

Smith nodded slowly, not trusting his voice at that moment. 'A glancing blow.' he finally admitted. 'It still warrants an apology as it was enough to incapacitate you and the Voravians got the better of me for it.'

Terry tried to picture heroic Agent Smith swimming his way through a sea of charred Voravian flesh to get to his fallen colleague and had great difficulty doing so. Still, there was no harm in taking the man at his word given their current situation, was there?

'My head.' groaned Annika from the other side of the room. 'Oh no.' she added upon realisation of where she was.

'We have been imprisoned.' Smith supplied, doing his application to the department of redundancy department no harm.

Terry watched her stagger to her feet and began to ponder to himself. Even if they somehow devised a way to get out of here, how were they going to be in any fit state to deal with the Voravians beyond and get to the off switch? It seemed to him that he was the only one of the group in any fit state to do something about it. Which meant unfortunately through process of excruciating deduction that he was going to have to save the day.

He really wasn't that good at saving the day, and the fact that he was imbued with the knowledge of several universities' worth of Engineering meant that he most likely could figure a way out of this cell and into further peril.

Then again, doing so was probably better than sitting here and waiting to be destroyed by the weapon if the other team had failed just as spectacularly.

He tapped his heel against the floor of the cell and the reassuring thunk told him everything he needed to know. Divesting himself of the shoe in question he clicked it open and slid out the secreted miniature scanner he had hidden away in case of emergencies like this. Apparently it had been all the rage with Engineering officers going on away missions, or so the computer had told him.

'You have a scanner?' Annika said, her voice perking up at this faint glimmer of hope.

Terry nodded, and promptly started the device, running it across the walls of the cell and searching for some way out that his own eyes couldn't catch. To her credit, Annika just watched, letting the Engineer do his thing even though she had more experience with such matters.

'It looks as if there's some kind of computer device buried within the walls, these systems seem remarkably like...'

'...The Star Command issue computers.' she finished for him. 'I noticed that earlier, don't you find that really odd?'

He nodded again, it wasn't like they could just go to some big space port that supplied the same type of computer and bulk order it regardless of whether they were aliens or not. As far as he knew there was no Computers 'r' us store out here that would sell Star Command down the river. Had smugglers stolen the technology and armed the Voravians accordingly? Why then was the panel buried into the wall in the first place?

Probably to keep people like Terry from getting to it.

The problem now was that even though he had located a panel to disable the force field, there was no way of activating said panel without blasting the wall. His scanner wasn't very good at doing that on account of it being a scanner, not a gun.

Annika hobbled over to join him. 'Mind if I take a look at that scanner?'

Terry handed it over to his superior without question, and waited for the magic to happen.

Her stiff fingers had troubled pressing all the buttons required but eventually she was able to get the desired effect. There was a muffled bang followed by the deactivation of the forcefield.

'What did you do?' Terry asked.

Annika shrugged. 'An old spacer trick to overload these Star Command consoles. I told it to formulate the perfect cup of tea.'

He didn't begin to question how that made the slightest bit of sense to anyone.

Now there was the small matter of getting Agent Smith mobile. The man remained propped up in the corner, that same strange smile back on his face as if he found something mildly amusing but wasn't going to share what it was.

'Come on Agent Smith.' Annika said. 'We need to get up and moving if we're to disable this switch before they discover we're out of captivity.'

Smith said nothing, and fended off his subordinate's attempts at lifting him to his feet.

'Commander.' she said, the tension ratcheting up in her voice now. 'We're not leaving here without you.'

Smith stared up at her through those dark shades that the Voravians had refused to confiscate for some reason. 'You can't carry me through the whole mothership and hope to deactivate it.'

The words seem to make Annika slump, her efforts at rousing Smith went limp and she slid down the wall beside him. 'I know, but I'm not leaving you.'

Smith watched her slide down the wall into a sitting position beside him. 'You are to take the Engineer and disable the switch on the Voravian mothership, more lives than mine depend upon your actions now. That's an order Lieutenant.' he looked now to Terry as he said these final words, as if beseeching him to pull Annika away from him and depart this cell.

Terry had other ideas, and he wasn't going to wait any longer to implement them.

'What do you think you're doing, Engineer?' Smith asked as Terry crossed the room and squatted down beside him.

'I'm saving you.' he replied with a grunt as he bodily lifted the dead weight of the man and slung him over his shoulder in spite of the protestations. 'Feel free to lead the way Lieutenant, we're not done for yet.'

Annika flashed him a grateful smile and wiped at the wetness in her eyes before she was all business once again. 'The switch is still some distance from these cells, we're going to have to be very careful as we make our way through the structure this time.'

Engineer Stevens nodded as professionally as he could given that he had his superior slung over his shoulder against the man's will. 'Lead the way, I'll follow and try not to make too much noise.'

The last part of the sentence was aimed at Smith, and whether it was from shock or obedience the man's protestations died down. Clearly the man realised that his complaints would only draw the Voravians upon them if he were to continue. Terry didn't like to think what would happen to him for that little quip if they ever made it off this ship alive.

They had managed to escape their cell and had to make their way to the off switch whilst somehow evading the entire Voravian crew who would be wary thanks to their previous foiled attempt and will no doubt have doubled security around the target. They were weaponless and all three of them for all intents and purposes were close to useless should it come down to a physical confrontation. Not exactly the odds that Terry would have chosen to go with, but marginally better than being locked up in a cell awaiting his inevitable doom.

'How are we going to get to the switch without their stopping us this time?' he asked Annika, who was limping forward in a distinctly frail position of command.

She looked back at him as if the answer should have been obvious. 'We hide in the vents, then use the scanner to determine which of them leads to the room with the switch in it.'

It was a good plan, but Terry already saw a hole in it. 'And when we get to the room?'

'I will determine what needs to be done when we make it there.' she said primly, her brittle positivity hiding the possibility that they may well not make it that far at all in their current shape.

It wasn't the most thought-out of plans but it would have to do, Terry was at a loss as to how to... then it came to him.

'If their systems are Star Command based, I can wirelessly interface with them using the scanner and override the switch manually.'

Annika shook her head. 'I got as far as trying that before, it still required I interface with the main computer in the room. That same computer is going to be swarming with Voravians.'

'And if I told you that we didn't need to go to the room at all?' Terry asked, a glimmer in his eye.

This gave the Lieutenant pause, she clearly wasn't used to being stumped by anything technical. If Smith had any opinion on the matter he refused to offer it.

'You're going to use the scanner as a remote access point to the main computer, but I don't see how you can allow it to do so wirelessly.'

'Who said we needed the computer to know it was a wireless connection?' Trigger said. 'If we boost the output signal to the correct modulation we can mask the wireless signal and fool these older systems into thinking that it's a routine terminal command from inside the room.'

Annika blinked in response, but didn't offer a reply.

'Commander, I'm going to have to set you down for a moment.' Terry told Smith as he lowered him carefully to the floor. 'If you'll give me that scanner I'll make sure that the Voravians won't know what hit them.'

She handed over the scanner with a moment's hesitation, then all her attention was on Smith instead of the small computational device on which rested the hope of a planet.

Terry ignored them all, so wrapped up was he in his own ideas. His fingers danced across the device, and it was an electronic ballet to the trained eye. A dance that probed and pressed and courted the system in the other room into acquiescence. Yes, he was part of the mainframe. No, he wasn't a wireless connection, what a silly thought. The coercions and deceptions continued until eventually he gained the access required, he only hoped that none of the Voravians were paying close scrutiny to the systems within as they merrily chirped away.

With a final flurry of fingers, Terry activated the switch.

Everything went dark, and not the assuring darkness of a comfortable sleep to come. It was the frightening darkness that swarms over you like an angry cloud of bees after you had torched their nest repeatedly because you really liked honey.

Terry rubbed his arms, that wasn't a particularly fun memory to relive. He still cringed when anyone said the word buzz. At least the Voravians didn't keep bees on-board. He hoped.

Of said Voravians there was no sign, clearly they had been as flabbergasted by the immediate darkness as his colleagues were. Not a word had been spoken since the lights had gone out, but for the breathing he would have suspected he was alone.

'I managed to flip their switch, and they won't be able to get it back on again without first running a complete diagnostic routine. We should be able to make it out of here if we can just get back to our ship.' mercifully the scanner still worked after the previous abuse he had put it through, and he clearly located the signature of their escape pod. These devices were only designed for a one way journey but given that he had shut everything down there was nothing to stop him from pulling the pod directly out of the mother ship’s hull.

Granted, by doing so he'd be condemning an awful lot of Voravians to their deaths, but given their general disposition toward him his conscience wasn't particularly troubled.