Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet (15 page)

“Princess, can you read it?” asked Shepherd.

“No,” said Anna.  “It’s a really, really old form of Old
Solar, I can’t make sense of it.”

“Blast it,” lamented Green, who was also looking at the
holographic display.  “I knew I should have taken that class in pre-formal Ancient
linguistics when I had the chance.  Who knew it would come in handy?”

“It’s asking for coordinates,” said Jack.

“You can read it?” asked Anna, shocked.

To his surprise, Jack
could
read it.  The language on
the screen wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before, but for some reason, he just
instinctually knew what it said.

“Yeah,” said Jack, “but it just asks for coordinates. Then there’s
just a big list of numbers that don’t make any sense.”

“Curious,” said Green.  “I’ve never seen number patterns
like that before.  Perhaps those are coordinates to previous destinations?  Maybe
places the Ancients want us to visit?”

“Whatever they are, pick one!” growled Shepherd.

“But… what happens when I do?” asked Jack.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Shepherd barked.  “Do it!  NOW!”

Jack focused in on the first line of numbers in the list,
and it began to glow.  The numbers moved to the top of the screen, and a word
that meant “Destination Accepted” flashed before the whole thing disappeared.

A hum rose in the room.  Jack could feel something stirring
inside him… no, it was inside the ship – and instantly he knew what was about
to happen.

“Everybody – hold onto something!” he screamed.

The entire bridge began to fill up with a brilliant white
light…

Outside, the Deathlords continued their assault against the
ship, advancing toward it, when a flash of light erupted, filling the entire
temple…

And when the light cleared, the ship was gone.

When the bridge returned to normal,
Jack blinked his eyes.  On the viewscreen in front of him, there was no longer
an Ancient underground temple swarming with deadly aliens.  Instead, there was
nothing but blue sky and white clouds in the bright sunlight of day.

Before it had a chance to register in Jack’s brain that only
moments ago it had been nighttime in River Heights, a strange sensation
assaulted his stomach, as if he were suspended in mid air.

Suddenly the entire ship began to rumble, and Anna,
Shepherd, and Green were tossed violently up to the roof of the bridge.  They
were pinned there, unable to move.  Jack had no seatbelt on, yet for some
reason he stayed firmly in the pilot’s seat – though that did nothing to quash
the feeling of sheer panic he was experiencing.

On the viewscreen, clouds began to shoot toward them, and
Jack felt himself being squashed into his seat with sickening force as the ship
started to spin.  The clouds broke, and there rushing up toward them was a
massive wall of water.

Holy crap!
 thought Jack. 
We’re falling!

Indeed, it would appear that wherever they were, they had
rematerialized somewhere high in the air and were now dropping like a stone,
plummeting with frightening speed directly toward a large ocean.

“Jack!” yelled Shepherd.  “Start the engines!”

The bridge was shaking violently now, the alarm was still
blaring, and impact with the water was rapidly approaching — all of which failed
to help Jack concentrate on anything except being scared out of his pants.  He
felt dizzy, he felt sick, and he had utterly no idea how to keep from crashing
to certain death.

“Jack!” Shepherd yelled.

Jack tried to pull himself together.  He gripped the domes
on his seat so tightly he thought he might break them.

“Jack!” yelled Anna, with Shepherd joining in for good
measure.

The ocean was rushing up at them, getting closer…

Jack focused on the tingle in the back of his brain.  He
thought about all his times playing
Nova Commander IV
and how the
controls of that game worked.

Closer…

“JACK!” screamed Anna, Shepherd, and Green, all in unison.

Suddenly, Jack sensed an electrical sensation run from his
hands into the domes on his chair again.  He could feel the engines of the ship
spring to life and the rumble they made as they fired.

The ocean was just about to greet them when Jack pulled the
ship up out of its free fall, causing it to shoot forward with force so great,
the water beneath them parted and sprayed as the ship skimmed its surface.

Anna, Shepherd, and Green all fell from the ceiling and hit
the floor, only to be thrust backwards as the ship accelerated.

“Wooooooooooo-HOOOOOOOO!!!!!” cheered Jack as he increased
the ship’s speed and started to climb back into the air.  He was having so much
fun, he almost didn’t notice his three companions plastered to the back walls of
the cabin.

“Jack—” screamed Green.  “Inertial… dampeners…”

“What?” hollered Jack.

“Inertial dampeners!” they all yelled back.

Jack had no idea what those were, let alone how to turn them
on.  Then, he felt a tingle on his hands again, like the ship was passing a
current through him, and instantly he knew how to activate them.

Once the inertial dampeners had engaged, Anna, Shepherd, and
Green all collapsed to the floor.  The feeling in the cabin changed – they were
still accelerating and climbing into the air, but it didn’t feel like it
anymore.  In fact, it felt like the room wasn’t moving at all.  Jack guessed
that whatever inertial dampeners were, they kept the group from getting tossed
around while the ship moved.

“Hey!” Jack laughed.  “I think I’m getting the hang of
this!”

The others got up, obviously not as cheerful as Jack was. 
“Where are we?” growled Shepherd.

Jack wondered the same thing.  As if on cue, the holographic
screen he had seen before popped up.  This time it showed an image of the
planet Earth, and it outlined an area of ocean in the Pacific.

 “I think we’re somewhere over the Pacific Ocean,” said
Jack.

“Fascinating!” said Professor Green as he gingerly rubbed
the back of his bruised noggin.  “Instantaneous travel!  Why, I’ve never seen
anything like it!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Jack.  “What about the
portgate? Or the way those Deathlords just teleport in out of nowhere?”

“Oh, those are very different things,” explained Green.  “To
teleport an entire ship – especially one that could be moving – across vast
distances… why, the power requirements alone are astronomical!  Not to mention
the sheer number of calculations that would have to be made…”

“Can you jump us again?” asked Shepherd, obviously not
interested in the science behind their fantastic journey.  “Somewhere away from
the planet?”

“I think so,” said Jack.  “Except…”

“What?” asked Shepherd.

“I think… I think the ship needs time to power up the
Entanglement Engine thing again.”

Green and Shepherd exchanged a surprised look.

“Did you say… Entanglement Engine?” asked Green.

“Yeah,” said Jack.  “That’s what the thing that jumped us
out of the temple is called, according to the ship.  It’s like a separate
engine from the thrusters.  Why?”

Green looked at Shepherd.  “Is that even possible?” he
asked.

“Anything is possible,” said Shepherd.

“Yes, but… for a machine to be able to—”

“Figure it out later, Professor,” said Shepherd.  “Jack, how
much time before we’re ready to jump again?”

“Um… the ship’s saying it’s going to be around an hour,”
replied Jack.

“Do we have any other method of travel?” asked Shepherd. 
“Does the ship have hyperspace capabilities?”

“Uh… hyperspace?” asked Jack.

Shepherd slammed his fist down on a console.  “Blast it,
Jack!  Must we explain everything?”

“Well
excuse me
for not knowing stuff!” snapped Jack
back.  “It’s not like I grew up learning about Deathlords and teleportation and
inertial-whatevers, you know?  And considering the fact that I just figured out
how to fly a fifty thousand year old spaceship with no prior experience, I
think I’m doing pretty freakin’ good here!”

“No one’s saying you aren’t,” said Anna diplomatically,
giving Shepherd a look telling him to take it easy.  “But the longer we stay
within range of the Deathlord fleet, the more danger we’re in.”

“If only I could read these control panels,” said Green,
typing away at the ship’s systems interface.  “I might be able to get a better
idea of how the ship works.”

Suddenly, an idea popped into Jack’s head.

“Does this help?” he asked.

The language on Green’s console abruptly changed from the
ancient language it was using to a language that was a little more familiar.

“Ah!” said Green.  “English!  Wouldn’t have been my first
choice, but I suppose it will do.”

Anna looked at Jack in surprise.  “You changed the
computer’s language?” she asked.

“Yeah,” smiled Jack.  “I just thought it would be cool if
the Professor could read the console and the ship went ahead and did it.”

“So... the ship is actually able to adjust to what you
want?” she asked in amazement.

“I guess,” replied Jack.  “I mean, when we were falling I
started thinking about how I used to play this video game where you flew a
spaceship, and suddenly it started to control just like the game.”

“Amazing.  It sounds like the ship is able to adapt to you!”
said Anna.

“Is that, like, normal?” asked Jack.

“It would appear nothing about this ship is what you’d call ‘normal,’
” said Green in awe as he scanned through the ship’s systems on his console. 
“I’ve never seen anything like this!  Did you know the ship is able to repair
itself when damaged?”

“Really?” said Jack.  “How?”

“Well—” started Green before Shepherd interrupted.

“Professor –
hyperspace
?” he growled.

“Oh, uh… yes… it does appear to have hyperspace
capabilities,” Green replied.

“Good,” said Shepherd.  “Open a window and get us out of
here.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to be possible
right now,” said Green.

“What?” barked Shepherd.  “Why not?”

“The navigational charts,” said Green.  “They’re tens of thousands
of years old.  Nothing on here is named the same as things are now.  Not to
mention if we were to open a hyperspace window using this data, we could very
well fly into a sun, or a planet, or who knows what else?”

Jack listened to Green and Shepherd’s conversation and
couldn’t help but wonder what exactly they were talking about.  Ever since the
Deathlords had first shown up, Jack’d had the same feeling coursing through his
brain that was usually reserved for pop-quizzes for which he was woefully
unprepared.

As he found himself wishing he knew exactly what this
“hyperspace” was and how it worked, the back of his head began to buzz again,
and suddenly he had his answers.

Hyperspace is, in fact, another dimension – one that allows for
faster than light travel.  The way it works struck Jack as actually being quite
cool, since the hyperspace dimension is exactly like our own, containing the
same stars, planets, black holes, moons, and every other celestial body one
might find in this great big galaxy.  Except, instead of being solid matter as
they are in our dimension, things in hyperspace are like shadows of what they are
here.  They have the same gravity and the same mass, but that’s it.  There is
no life in hyperspace, no water, no air, no gas – just impressions of the really
big stuff that exists in the universe.

However, what makes hyperspace even stranger is the fact
that it is much, much smaller than the reality we all know and love so well.  Whereas
the dimension in which we live is a universe that is constantly expanding and
growing, the universe of hyperspace is doing the exact opposite – it is
contracting and shrinking. 

That means things are actually closer in hyperspace than
they are in our dimension.  So by entering the hyperspace dimension and
traveling at the speed of light, one is able to cross thousands of light-years in
our dimension in a matter of hours.  And because it is the same universe – just
in a different dimension – the moment a traveler exits it, he’ll be exactly at
the destination he arrived at when in hyperspace.

Of course, because hyperspace travel still requires moving
at the speed of light to cover the necessary distances, exact navigation is needed
if one hopes to survive the journey.  Due to the fact that things are spatially
different in the hyperspace dimension, it is imperative to know exact distances
in one’s own dimension to properly calculate them – because even though things
exist in hyperspace simply by their gravity and mass, if a ship were to fly
into them at the speed of light, it would be obliterated into dust.

Jack scratched his head.  For a kid who had a hard time
grasping simple high school physics like Newton’s Laws of Motion, he sure was
able to understand the concept of multi-dimensional space travel pretty
quickly.  In fact, ever since he tried to disconnect Anna from that glowing orb
thing, he found lots of things were coming to him more easily than they ever
had before.  He couldn’t help but wonder what other information he had in his
head that he didn’t know was there.

“Are you sure we can’t use the charts?” Shepherd asked Green. 
“Can we make an approximation?  Do a blind jump?”

“Well, it would be risky,” replied Green.  “Since these
charts were created, the universe has expanded - planets have moved, new stars
have formed and old ones have died – who knows how many changes have happened
since this database was last updated?  Because of the differences in the distances
of hyperspace, without the proper charts, we’d never be able to calculate our
exact course.  If we were off even by couple of feet, it could be disastrous.”

Suddenly, Jack heard a series of alert beeps and a
holographic radar screen popped up in front of him.  He saw three large, red
dots on the exterior edge of the radar moving toward them quite fast.

“Uh-oh,” said Jack.

Shepherd looked at him, alarmed.  “What?” he asked.

Jack asked the ship what the dots on the radar were, and on
the holoscreen in front of him an image popped up showing three small, triangular-shaped
ships.  The base of the ships contained their engines, leaving a trail of
putrid green exhaust behind them, and their tips were narrow and twisted, aiming
right for Jack’s ship.  Their edges gnarled into sharp, blade-like wings, and
their hulls were made of a black, obsidian material.  Jack instantly had them
pegged as Deathlord shards.

“We’ve, uh… got company…” said Jack.

Shepherd grimaced at the dark shards on the holoscreen. 
“Professor,” he said, “keep working on a way to get us out of here.  Princess,”
he turned to Anna, “man the engineering panel and see if you can get the
shields up.  I’ll take the weapons.  Jack…”

“Yeah?” asked Jack.

“Try not to get us killed,” he said, like he was assigning
homework.

“Great idea.  I’ll get right on that,” said Jack dryly.

Anna and Shepherd rushed to the control panels on the second
tier of the bridge to man their stations while Green began typing, furiously
muttering things about “vectors” and “calculations.”  Jack focused on the
holographic displays before him.

The shards were coming up behind them fast.  Jack increased
the ship’s speed to try to outrun them, but the shards were smaller and more
agile.  It would only be a matter of time before they’d catch up.

Jack’s instincts were to fire at the ships before they had a
chance to attack, but without shields or working weapons at this point, options
were limited.  He had to keep the shards at bay long enough to give Anna and
Shepherd the time they needed to get the ship working properly.