by Carl Derham
*
Oli kept the flashing crosshair in the middle of the screen until he could see the Throgloid ship. They'd seen the plasma weapon lighting up but they had been too far away from the Throgloid ship to do anything. When it failed to fire, he assumed that somehow, Robbie had disabled it and a wry grin formed in the corner of his mouth. The drone had activated the I.R.S, so Oli was able to pull up within one hundred metres of the Throgloid ship without them spotting Cranus.
“I just want to disable them,” said Oli as he fiddled with one of the pulse rifles that the Throgloids had taken, “not blow them out of the sky.”
They couldn't use the Graviton weapon with Robbie still on board, so they had to come up with another plan. The drone adjusted the setting on the rifle and brought up a diagram of the Throgloid vessel on the main screen. A red flashing light indicated where the sensors for the ship were situated. They were located at the front of the ship in a bulb that looked like the knobbly head of a humpback whale. Oli activated the Go-ring and went through a door at the side of the bridge that led to the observation deck.
Meanwhile, the Throgloid Captain was preparing to fire with all the other weaponry at his disposal. He wouldn't be able to completely eradicate the city, but he could certainly kill a few hundred thousand of the pointless little creatures.
Oli walked into the circular glass-domed room and, as he stood in the middle, the floor floated up, placing him just below the dome, looking out over the front of Cranus. Then the glass dome split in the middle, and the two sides folded into the ship. He was now standing on top of the great ship, with the distant Throgloid ship directly in front of him. He shouldered the rifle and the screen on the side of it automatically zoomed in on the target, giving him a clear view of the superstructure. He instantly remembered the time that he had won a goldfish at the fair, for hitting three of the four playing cards with darts. He’d called the goldfish Frog and it had lived for only two days. His mother had suggested, following an honourable toilet funeral, that it would probably have lasted longer if he had taken it out of the plastic bag and put it in a bowl. He started to chuckle and had to lower the rifle while he regained his composure.
Come on Oli, come on Oli, he silently chanted, breaking himself from his reverie.
Commander Grrghracksh was now targeting all the remaining weapons on Mumbai. The console in front of him became an explosion of activity as all the weapons charged, ready to fire. His huge, calloused finger was hovering over the fire button which would launch their full complement of fusion missiles and all thirty banks of beam weapons at the unsuspecting inhabitants below.
Right concentrate now, Oli meditated. Deep breaths, calm…
He centred the crosshairs on the bulb and pulled the trigger. There was a flash as the entire bulb and all of the sensor equipment contained within was vaporised, leaving a jagged hole in the roof of the ship. He punched the vacuum with his fist and let out a little “He shoots, he scores!”
The dome folded back over his head and the floor descended into the room.
“What in the name of Krachtach was that?” shouted the Throgloid Captain, as the ship shuddered and the image of Earth disappeared from the screen.
“We’ve lost all our sensors, Captain sir, your foulness,” said the Second-in-Command. “I think something took a shot at us.”
“Return fire now!”
“We can’t, we’re blind.”
“Move us away from here!”
“We can’t, we’re blind.”
“Arggghhhxxrash!”
There was a defined absence in volunteers for the newly vacated post of second in command. As the Captain stood in the middle of the bridge, clutching his blood-soaked Grax, then the screen came to life and there, looking very smug indeed, was the ugly creature.
“Hello again,” said Oli. “Release the little ship now and you can go. Continue to be a nob and I’m afraid that I’m going to have to finish you off.”
The Throgloid Captain slumped back in his chair, allowing his Grax to fall to the floor, despairing at the hopeless situation. Oli was watching him on the screen. Suddenly, the Captain looked straight into the screen with a new kind of madness in his evil eyes. They had taken on a strange kind of red glow. He pushed himself out of his chair and without a word walked to one of the consoles. He hurled the operator out of his way and began frantically tapping in commands.
“Uh-oh!” said Oli. “Plot, lost.”
The drone wrote a message that appeared on Oli’s screen.
He's setting the ship’s auto destruct. We can't let the Graviton Generator explode this close to Earth.’
A loud claxon began to wail throughout the Throgloid ship, and Oli saw a series of symbols flashing red across the Captain’s screen. Oli watched as two Throgloids, who sensing the Captain's weakness, had drawn their mini Graxes and approached him from behind. Unfortunately for them, the Captain had seen their reflection in the main screen. But the two of them kept him busy for a full two minutes, giving Oli a chance to put his plan into action. He moved Cranus closer to the Throgloid vessel and instructed the drone to activate the towing beam.
“How long do we have?”
The reply; three minutes, appeared on the main screen. Oli pushed the stick hard over and watched as the Earth swung out of view. The screen was showing the position of the nearest star, so he carried on turning the ship until the sun filled the screen. Then ignoring all the warnings about faster than light travel within a solar system, he punched in the light drive and accelerated to Light 5.
“Where are we going?” asked the drone.
“We’re going to dump some rubbish,” said Oli.
The idea of killing anything was abhorrent to Oli, but he realised that there was no other way. They knew the location of Earth, they knew about Cranus and they were the biggest bunch of hat stands that he’d ever met. The sun grew in the viewer and the outer edge of the shield began to glow and crackle.
“Can Robbie survive a Graviton explosion inside the sun?” Oli asked.
A row of question marks appeared on the screen, followed by, never been tried before.
