Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet (20 page)

“You must admit,” said Green, “their advancements in
technology are rather astounding.”

“Admit it while you get our shields back up,” growled
Shepherd.

“What’s the worry?” asked Jack.  “I mean, yeah, it sucks
they’re on our tail and all, but they’re just following us.  It’s not like they
can fire on us or anything, right?  We’re moving at the freakin’ speed of
light.  Nothing can go any faster than that, can it?”

“Normally, you’d be correct,” said Green as he went to work
directing the ship to fix its generator and bring its shields back online. 
“But I need to remind you… we’re only moving at 99% the speed of light.”

“And plasma fire doesn’t need to worry about converting to
pure energy,” grumbled Shepherd.

A shiver ran down Jack’s spine.  He looked up at the holo-image
in front of him as red bolts emanated from the tips of the six shards behind
them.  The blaster fire began to move toward them, ever so slowly, as if it were
a worm crawling along through space.

“You gotta be
kidding
me,” said Jack.

“The shards have opened fire,” said Anna.  “We’ve got six plasma
blasts heading toward us.”

“Time to impact?” asked Shepherd.

“Four, maybe five minutes,” said Anna.

“It’s not enough time,” whined Green.  “The shield generator
isn’t even fully repaired yet!”

“Maybe I can change course…” said Jack, “…maneuver the ship
out of the way.”

“You can’t maneuver us while in lightspeed, Jack,” said
Anna.  “We’re going so fast, the slightest shift in course could angle us into
a collision with something.”

“What about dropping out of lightspeed?” asked Jack.

“With six plasma blasts and shards that close behind us?”
said Shepherd.  “We’d be smashed to pieces the minute we slowed down.”

“Well… can we do
anything?
” asked Jack.

The silence that came from his party let him know his
answer.  Jack looked up at the screen as the plasma bolts inched closer.

“Screw it,” he said.  “I’m moving the ship.”

“Jack, you can’t!” insisted Anna.

“It’s either take our chances with a course adjustment or
get slammed into by those blasts with no shields,” said Jack.  “I, for one, am
willing to take that chance.”

Anna looked at Shepherd, who grimaced.  Jack looked over his
shoulder at the man.

“I know I can do this,” said Jack.

Something about the tone of Jack’s voice gave Shepherd some
hope.  Maybe it was bravado, or maybe just ignorance of the dangers involved in
the maneuver.  Regardless, Shepherd didn’t see much of a choice.

“Do it,” he said.

Jack turned his attention back to the ship’s controls. 
“Everyone hold onto something,” he said as he began the maneuver.

The ship started to move, but it did so slowly.  Jack
strained against the controls of the ship, pushing it to keep moving.  It
continued to drift to the right, but it felt to Jack like he was trying to
change course while swimming upstream in a river.

Behind him the Deathlord plasma blasts kept on course,
continuing to inch forward unrelentingly.

Jack kept pushing the ship.  Alarms and alerts began to pop
up on the screen before him, letting him know they were off course, but he
ignored them.  He needed to get clear of the blasts.

The ship continued to veer more and more to the right as the
deadly energy bolts got closer.

“C’mon, c’mon…” mumbled Jack.  He could feel sweat starting
to bead on his brow as he kept trying to force the ship out of the way of the
incoming fire.

The blasts were almost upon them.  He had cleared most of
them, but one on the far edge was still en route to impact.

He could feel the ship shiver and whine as he continued to
turn it within the confines of lightspeed.
 Just a little more
, he
thought. 
Please, God, just a little more…

But it wasn’t enough.  The blaster bolt caught up with them
and struck their left engine.  The entire ship began to shake and rumble as
alerts sounded.

“We’re hit!” screamed Jack.

“Port side engine is damaged,” called out Green.  “It was a
direct hit!”

“I gotta drop us out of lightspeed!” said Jack.  “The ship’s
about to tear apart!”

Indeed, the stress of the damaged engine trying to keep them
at their current speed was causing the vessel to rattle violently, and the ship
even went so far as to communicate to Jack it’s displeasure with the current
situation.

“Do it!” said Shepherd.

Without a moment to lose, Jack powered down the lightspeed
engines.  The brilliant blue tunnel around them evaporated as the strange
mirror image of hyperspace came back into view… except in front of them was no
white space... 

Just a massive wall of solid black.

A loud alarm blared and warnings popped up on the holoscreen
that impact was imminent.  It
would seem Jack’s lightspeed maneuver put them on a direct course into
something very, very big.

“Gravitational contact, directly ahead!” squealed Green.

“Jack!  Get us out of hyperspace! NOW!” screamed Shepherd.

Jack engaged the Brane Accelerator and a window back into
the normal universe tore open in front of them just in time to avoid the
impending collision.

The ship barreled through, coming out the other side.  Jack
tried to turn the ship, but the port engine finally gave out.  Behind them, the
six shards that had been following came out of hyperspace as well, their
momentum carrying them past Jack’s ship.

“We’re out,” said Jack.  “So are the shards.”

“Keep as much distance from them as possible,” said
Shepherd.  “Professor, do we have any weapons? Shields?  Anything?”

“We barely have an engine,” grumbled Green.

“I’m reading a strange contact out here,” said Anna, looking
at her console.  “It’s massive!”

Jack looked at the screen, but other than a rather beautiful
nebula not too far away, Jack didn’t see anything except the darkness of space.

Then, Jack’s brain tingled in alarm.  He should have been able
to see some stars, or something – but in front of them, there was just a wall
of solid black.

“Where are we?” asked Jack.

“Our maneuver took us off course,” said Anna.  “I have no
idea what our current location is.”

Jack glanced at his radar.  “The shards are coming around,”
he said.  “They’re locking onto us!”

“Put everything you can into the engines,” said Shepherd.

“I’m trying,” said Jack.  “But we can barely outrun them
when we have both engines working.”

Shepherd gritted his teeth as he looked at the holoscreen. 
The Deathlord shards converged on the ship, raining plasma fire down on it. 
The ship shuttered from the impacts as the shards flew past in their strafing
run.

“They’ve taken out our engines,” said Green.

Jack tried to maneuver, but it was no use.  They had no way
to accelerate, or even move at all for that matter.  Now they were being
carried strictly by their momentum; they were helpless in every sense of the
word.

“They’re coming back around,” said Anna, looking at her console.

“They mean to board us,” said Shepherd.  “Jack, out of the
seat.  Anna, to me.  We’ll have to fight them off.”

“No, wait!” said Anna.  “Something is happening…”

Jack called up the sensor readings on his holoscreen.  Sure
enough, he saw the shards suddenly start to scramble on their turn to intercept
them.

“Whoa,” said Jack.  “What’s going on?”

“Something… something’s
out there
…” said Anna.

Jack magnified the image on the holoscreen.  Suddenly, he
could see something… it looked like a black cloud that was moving through
space, chasing the Deathlords as their ships tried to maneuver away from it.

Tendrils from the cloud caught one of the shards.  The cloud
swarmed over the vessel, disintegrating it before Jack’s very eyes.

“What is that thing?” asked Jack.  “It looks like… it’s
eating the shards!”

“Where did it come from?” asked Anna.

Green’s console beeped.  “It’s part of that massive
gravitational contact we saw in hyperspace,” said Green.

Jack adjusted the ship’s viewscreen.  Sure enough, the part of
space with no stars that he had noticed was now swirling and bubbling, alive
with what looked like lightening, almost as though it contained storm clouds. 
Pieces of it broke off and shot forth, chasing after the Deathlord shards, as
if their very presence awakened the cloud and made it angry.

As nimbly as the shards were able to maneuver, they were
eventually caught by the dark clouds, and when they were, nothing remained of
them.

“Dude,” said Jack.  “It’s destroying the shards!  Way to go
space cloud!  WOOT!”

“It’s not a cloud… it’s swarming them,” said Anna.  “Like…
insects.”

“Jack,” said Shepherd.  “Can you get in closer on whatever
it is?”

Jack pulled up the sensor display of the ship and zoomed in
on the massive wall of darkness in front of them.  As it magnified, Jack could
begin to make out tiny movements.  He adjusted the filters on the readings, and
suddenly, shapes began to appear.

The clouds were made up of trillions and trillions of tiny
insect-like things.  They had long bodies and large mouths with many sharp
edges, along with pincers on their sides and barbs on their tails.  They looked
like a strange cross between a worm and a scorpion.

“They’re alive?” asked Anna, amazed.

“Incredible,” breathed Green.  “How many of them must there
be, that combined they could create such a huge gravitational anomaly?

“You mean, you guys have never seen these things before?”
asked Jack.  For some reason, running into something his friends – who were way
more experienced in space travel than he was – had never seen before was kind
of scary to him.

“A space faring organism which seems to be able to consume
solid matter almost instantly?” chuckled Green.  “No, I can’t say I have. 
Though it gives me yet another great subject for a paper to write for the
Valghanah Journal of Science!”

Jack watched his screen as the swarm consumed the last
Deathlord shard.

“So… um… you don’t know if they’re friendly or not?” he
asked.

“No clue!” said Green cheerily.

“My guess would be, not,” said Shepherd dourly.

Jack looked at his sensor readings and saw the clouds that
had consumed the shards converge and begin heading toward them.  Suddenly, he
found himself missing the Deathlords.

“Uh-oh,” said Jack.

Shepherd looked at the readout, as well, and saw the swarm
coming toward them.  “Professor, do we have engines yet?” he asked urgently.

“Still being repaired,” said Green. 

Shepherd cursed.  “Jack,” he said.  “The Entanglement
Engine… can we use it?”

Jack’s eyes lit up.  He had completely forgotten about the
Entanglement Engine.  It was a separate engine from the thrusters, and last he had
checked, it was almost online.  Jack pulled it up through the ship’s readouts. 
Sure enough, it read:  “good to go.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Jack.  “It’s ready again!  I can jump us
out of here!”

A small glimmer of hope sparked in Shepherd’s eye.  “Do it!”
he ordered.

The swarm cloud was getting closer, rushing headlong toward
the ship as Jack called up the Entanglement Engine display.  It asked for
coordinates again.

“I don’t know what the coordinates mean,” said Jack.  “It
could take us anywhere!”

“Anywhere is better than here,” said Shepherd.  “Do it NOW!”

Jack looked at the list of previous coordinates and glanced
at the viewscreen to see the swarm rushing up to him.  He had to choose a
destination, and he had to choose one right that second.

Jack knew the first entry would take them exactly where
they’d jumped to the first time, and he certainly didn’t want to go back to what
remained of Earth.  And since he didn’t really have time to consider any of the
other coordinates, he was left with the second option on the list.

The string of numbers flashed as Jack made his decision and
moved into the destination field.  The familiar hum returned as the
Entanglement Engine charged up, and Jack felt it getting ready to engage.

Suddenly, the swarm cloud rushing toward them was replaced
with a bright light, and when that light cleared, the cloud was gone.  Now,
there was just the comforting sight of empty space.

Jack breathed a sigh of relief.  “We did it,” he said.  “We
jumped.”

“Where to?” asked Shepherd.

“Checking the computer now,” said Anna.  “I’ll see if I can
pull up any star charts that might match…”

Jack looked to the side of the bridge’s viewscreen, and his
heart sank.

“Don’t bother,” said Jack.  “I know where we are.”

Outside, Jack could see the unmistakable image of Saturn,
and past that, the familiar yellow sun he’d woken to every day of his life.

Just as Shepherd, Green, and Anna saw it, too, alerts beeped
on Jack’s radar.  There was a large contact directly behind them.  Jack called
it up on the viewscreen and saw a Deathlord mothership towering over them, as
though it were getting ready to swallow them up.

“Oh… crap,” murmured Jack.

He’d jumped them right back into the clutches of the
Deathlord fleet. 

And this time, there was no escape.