Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  “But there’s something more to the Deathlords that we haven’t figured out yet,” continued Green, “something that separates them from merely being machines.”

  “They have some type of power we’ve yet to understand,” said Shepherd, “some ability that gives them control over life itself.”

  “Huh?” asked Jack.

  “You saw how the Deathlord was able to fire those balls of energy and control a wave of ground-spikes with the flick of his hand,” said Shepherd. “They seem to be able to control energy somehow. That includes whatever life force exists in most living beings.”

  “Whoa,” said Jack, a chill running up his spine. “You mean they can make you blow up or something?”

  “More like they can rip your soul out of you,” said Shepherd.

  The gravity of the Deathlord threat was starting to settle in on Jack. The idea of an army that could not be killed seemed incredibly terrifying, but one that also had the power to suck the life out of you and become stronger by doing so... that brought it into pure nightmare territory.

  “But this weapon you guys talked about… it can stop them, right?” asked Jack hopefully.

  “We came here to find an Ancient artifact alluded to in our historical records,” said Anna. “It spoke of a weapon of great power created long ago by our ancestors – a weapon which may help us defeat the Deathlords.”

  “Um… I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty sure my ancestors never built anything that could take down a tank,” said Jack. “Seriously, why would you be looking for an old weapon instead of trying to invent a new one?”

  “You’ve read about the Dark Ages in history class, right?” said Anna.

  “Yeah, that time with the kings and knights and stuff,” said Jack.

  “It was also a time of regression after the fall of your Roman Empire,” she said. “After a period in your history where incredible technological marvels were pioneered, your society forgot much of what had been created, and actually reverted to more primitive means of living.”

  “So you’re saying you guys are going through a Dark Age?”

  “About fifty thousand years ago, something happened that wiped out almost all life in the universe,” said Anna. “We refer to it as The Scourge. Few historical records have survived from that time – but enough to tell us of the Ancients and the marvels they were able to create. Since then, our civilization – and many others – have had to rebuild themselves, and even now, we are far away from being at the point where we can hope to match the technology of our ancestors.”

  “Wow,” said Jack. “That really sucks.”

  “You have no idea,” said Anna.

  Suddenly, loud thumping sounds emanated from the temple door.

  “They have begun their assault on the entrance,” growled Shepherd. “This history lesson will have to wait until later.”

  “Jack, can you turn on the lights?” Anna asked.

  “Yeah, I can try,” said Jack. He had a lot more questions, but he figured they could wait until they weren’t in danger of being killed. He touched the wall panel again, this time imagining a lightbulb coming on.

  The darkness around them quickly retreated as illumination seeped into the room. The group stood on a small platform before the entrance, with walkways branching off its sides and circling downward.

  The enclosure they were in was massive – much bigger than it looked from the outside. Jack followed the group as they slowly walked toward the edge of the platform, which overlooked the chasm before it.

  Beneath the massive arched ceiling above was a pit that was so deep, the light Jack had turned on almost didn’t reach the bottom, allowing a pool of darkness to settle there. Jack could see the walls of the huge room slope and converge down below, almost as if the whole thing were shaped like the inside of an egg.

  But the sheer size of the room wasn’t the most incredible thing about it. No, that honor belonged to what was actually within it.

  There, docked silently in the middle of the temple, was an honest-to-goodness spaceship.

  Jack marveled at it. The vessel must have been at least five stories tall, and the length of a football field. Two massive engines jutted out from the sides, angled toward the back, gracefully melding into something that resembled wings. The body of the ship was curved and oblong, almost like a football, but sleeker. The hull was made up of a metal that was almost white – much like the platform on which they had arrived in the temple. But this metal seemed to glow as if it were feeding off the light around it. The beauty and majesty which the ship seemed to radiate struck those looking at it like a bolt of lightning.

  “Incredible,” gasped Green.

  “Amazing…” marveled Anna.

  “Dude…” said Jack.

  Unfortunately, the magic of the moment was interrupted by a loud screeching sound. The group turned to the entrance of the temple as it began to vibrate.

  “They’re trying to cut through the door,” said Shepherd. “Quickly, to the ship. Let’s hope she can still fly.”

  Anna took off first, moving down the side walkway toward the spacecraft. Jack and Green followed, with the rear covered by Shepherd. A long stone causeway led up to the side of the ship at the front of the right wing, but when they approached it, there was no door visible, only smooth metal.

  Anna reached up and touched the ship, running her hands across the brilliant white exterior. “I don’t see a way in,” she said.

  Shepherd’s faceplate closed up again. “Scanning,” he said in his armored voice. “I’m not reading any anomalies in the ship’s hull. No sign of an entrance. The casing isn’t like anything I’ve seen before.”

  “Perhaps… perhaps it’s not really a ship?” ventured Green. “Maybe it’s not meant to carry passengers?”

  “What else could it be?” asked Anna.

  Jack sighed and walked up beside her. “Man, things are never easy with you guys, are they?” he said, leaning up against the ship’s hull.

  No sooner had his hand made contact than the hull peeled back like an iris, with Jack falling through, into the ship and onto the floor.

  “M’okay…” mumbled Jack as he lumbered back onto his feet. Shepherd’s mask retracted again, and he gave Jack a curious look.

  “Why is this Ancient technology only responding to him?” Shepherd asked.

  “If the Professor is right, that the Earthlings were created as an outgrowth of this temple’s influence, it could be that they are specifically attuned to the technology in it,” said Anna.

  “But you’re of the royal bloodline,” said Shepherd. “You should be able to interface with all Ancient technology.”

  “Unless this technology was not meant to be used by the Ancients!” said Green.

  “What are you saying, Professor?” asked Anna.

  Green walked up to Jack, who was gazing around the small decompression chamber he was in and slapped his large green hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  “Perhaps the Ancients meant for this ship only to be used by Earthmen,” he said. “Perhaps life on this planet wasn’t a fluke! Maybe it was engineered for the specific purpose of one day finding and using… well… this!”

  Green gestured to the ship around him.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa – lemme get this straight…” said Jack. “Are you saying I have my own personal spaceship?”

  “Well,” said Green, “most likely any native Earthling would be able to interface with this technology—”

  “No way,” said Jack quickly. “I call dibs!”

  “Need I remind all of you that an army of Deathlords is still trying to break in here?” grumbled Shepherd.

  “Ah, yes,” said Green, as though he really did need to be reminded. “I suppose we should continue on to the bridge with haste then, hmmmm?”

  Anna and Shepherd entered the decompression chamber, and the hull sealed back shut. The room glowed blue for an instant and then was illuminated in a bright white light. Another doo
r leading into the ship opened and more lights lit up as the ship slowly came to life.

  Jack looked around in awe as he and the others gingerly stepped into the hallway before them. It was made up of shiny silver panels, and the floor beneath them was glowing, leading toward a large circular room with a floor made of smooth, white metal.

  “Hey,” said Jack as he stepped into the room. “This floor looks just like that thing we landed on when we came from the cornfield.”

  The others studied the floor, too. “Portgates are used for traveling long distances,” said Shepherd. “You need static locations to use them. They wouldn’t work on a ship.”

  “Maybe it’s not a portgate?” ventured Green. “Perhaps a derivative? Something like it?”

  Anna looked around. “Whatever it is, I don’t see any controls,” she said. “No interface panel, nothing.”

  “What about your keypad thingy?” Jack asked Anna. “The thing you used to get us down here in the first place?”

  “It’s called an Imperius,” said Anna taking it out of her pocket. “It’s kind of like a universal remote control for all Ancient technology.”

  “Yeah,” said Jack, not really caring. “Will it work?”

  Anna tapped on it for a moment and shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to be responding to anything in here.”

  “Well, there must be someway to get to the bridge,” said Green.

  Suddenly, Green disappeared in a flash of light. Anna shrieked.

  “Where’d he go?” asked Jack, startled.

  Shepherd looked around, as if he were expecting some sort of attack. He tapped the side of his helmet to activate his communicator.

  “Professor,” he said. “Do you read me?”

  After a moment’s pause, Green’s cheery voice emanated from a speaker in Shepherd’s helmet.

  “I’m okay!” he said.

  “Where are you?” asked Shepherd.

  “I’m on what I believe to be the bridge,” Green responded. “It would seem the platform is voice activated, based on where you want to go.”

  Anna and Shepherd looked at each other.

  “Bridge,” they both said in unison. And with a flash, they disappeared, leaving Jack alone.

  Jack smiled to himself. I’m about to teleport, he thought. This is so cool.

  “Bridge!” he said.

  It was as if Jack had blinked his eyes, and he was now somewhere else. There were no weird feelings of dizziness or nausea like there were when he portgated. The whole thing was quick and painless.

  He stepped off a platform made of the same white metal and into a huge, oval shaped room that was divided into four tiers. The top tier was fenced in by smooth guardrails and made up entirely of the teleportation material. The third tier jutted out in a half circle, leading around to two door hatches at the back of the room, one on either side. Beneath that was a tier that contained various control panels and comfortable looking bucket seats. Finally, the last tier stretched out and met the smooth walls of the room, with a circular platform that contained a large silver chair hovering above it. The chair had a high back and two wide armrests with clear, glass-like domes at the end of them.

  Anna and Shepherd gazed around in awe. It was obvious that they’d never seen anything like this before. Professor Green was excitedly rushing from one part of the bridge to the other, looking at all the controls and doohickeys he could find.

  “Amazing!” he muttered. “Fascinating! Hmmm… I wonder what this does?”

  Jack’s eyes focused in on the chair at the lowest tier. He felt a weird tingle in the back of his head and suddenly had the urge to go to it. As he stepped down to the second tier, the chair turned to face him. He stopped and looked at it hesitantly. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him.

  “I think it wants you to sit in it,” said Anna.

  The super-awesome spaceship wanted him to sit in the super-awesome floating chair? Jack didn’t need to be told twice.

  He climbed in and laid his hands on top of the two clear domes on the armrests. They instantly lit up with bright light. The chair turned back toward the front of the room, and suddenly, the smooth white walls of the bridge flickered and were replaced with an almost 360 degree view of the outside.

  “This is so much better than Nova Commander,” Jack joked to himself.

  “Ah-ha!” said Green, standing behind one of the control panels on the second tier. “These controls have just booted up. Jack must have activated them when he sat in the chair.”

  Shepherd walked to Green’s side. “Can it still fly?” he asked.

  “Best I can tell, everything seems to be in working order. This appears to be a navigation panel,” said Green. “These things look like star maps…” Green tapped on the control panel and the screens in front of him lit up. “That panel over there seems to be for communications,” he said, pointing to the panel next to him. “That one would appear to be weapons, and the far one for the ship’s systems,” he continued, pointing to the far panels on the other side of the second platform.

  “Where are the flight controls?” asked Shepherd.

  “Ask Jack,” smiled Green. “He seems to be sitting in the pilot’s seat.”

  Jack grinned. “Now we’re talking!” he said.

  Anna walked up to him. “Jack, if this ship is like other Ancient technology we’ve encountered, it works by interfacing directly with your thoughts,” she said. “Just think about something, and the ship will follow your commands.”

  “Okay,” said Jack. “What should I think about?”

  Then, on the viewscreen in front of them, the door to the temple exploded, and in rushed a flood of Deathlord soldiers.

  “Shields would probably be a good start,” said Shepherd dryly.

  Jack tried to think about raising shields, like the golden energy thing Shepherd had created when fighting the Deathlords, but nothing happened. Outside, the Deathlords began to fire at the ship, their red plasma lasers streaking across the chasm and impacting the gleaming white metal of its hull.

  A strange sensation washed over Jack, as though he could actually feel the impacts of the blasts himself. They didn’t hurt, but he instinctively knew where they were hitting, and how much damage they were causing.

  “Anytime, Jack,” said Shepherd more insistently.

  “I’m trying,” said Jack. “Nothing’s working!”

  Green rushed over to the ship’s system control panel and started typing furiously. “I think the ship is still powering up,” he said.

  “How long before we can raise the shields?” asked Shepherd.

  “I don’t know,” said Green. “All the data is in ancient Old Solar, I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with it. Old Solar, I know, but the ancient form…”

  Shepherd cursed under his breath and moved to the panel Green had pointed out for weapons. He tried accessing it for a moment before the archaic language on the screens forced him into giving up on it as well. “Jack!” he barked. “Can you get us out of here?”

  Jack tried imagining everything possible he could think of for the ship to do, including growing two legs and dancing out of there, but nothing was working. He looked at the army of Deathlords as they streamed in from the open temple door. Just my luck, he thought. I actually get my own spaceship, and it’s about to be destroyed by evil aliens.

  “Jack,” insisted Anna, “you have to focus…”

  “I know, okay?” hissed Jack. For some reason this wasn’t as easy as it was when he had accessed the door or the lights to the temple. This was different somehow – the ship was different. He kept trying to picture what it would look like for the shields to raise or the engines to start up, but no matter what Jack thought of, nothing was happening. There were too many distractions – the Deathlords were invading, Professor Green, Shepherd, and Anna were all yelling at him, and he still had that weird feeling in the back of his head…

  “Jack!” yelled Shepherd. “Can you work this thing or not?”
<
br />   “Maybe if people would stop yelling at me…” he hollered back.

  Then, two massive balls of ghostly energy screamed forth from the exit and rocked the ship. An alarm began to sound and suddenly the lights on the bridge turned red. Jack looked up to see two Deathlords on the entrance platform, hurling balls of death energy at them.

  “They’re trying to cripple the ship,” warned Shepherd.

  “Oh, dear,” moaned Green. “That would not be good.”

  Anna climbed up on the platform by Jack’s seat and leaned in toward him. “Jack, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “I’m trying to work it the way you told me to, but it’s not… I don’t even know how we’re going to get out of here! There’s no opening anywhere, and even if there were, we’re in the Earth’s core surrounded by a ton of freakin’ magma! How’d they even get this thing here in the first place?”

  Anna placed a hand on his arm. “Calm down,” she said.

  Jack looked at her. His heart was racing a mile a minute, but somehow, her blue eyes made him get control of himself. He took a deep breath.

  “I’m calm,” he said.

  “Now,” continued Anna. “Close your eyes, and listen.”

  “Listen to what?” asked Jack.

  “The ship,” she said. “It’s trying to talk to you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” smiled Anna. “That’s how it works with me.”

  Jack nodded. He closed his eyes and listened. He heard the sound of the alarms. He heard Professor Green and Shepherd talking. He heard the thuds against the hull as more energy bolts made their impact. He didn’t know what he was listening for, and that buzzing in the back of his head was starting to get really annoying…

  Wait a minute… thought Jack.

  There was a buzzing, wasn’t there? It was the same weird sensation he’d had when he first approached the pilot’s chair. But it wasn’t really a sound; it was more like a feeling.

  Jack focused on that feeling. The buzzing got more intense. Then, things began to flash into his mind.

  He remembered something from when he was interfacing with the access orb – a bunch of images, almost like instructions on how to operate something… a spaceship! That’s what it was, instructions on how to operate a spaceship! But there was so much information… what did it all mean? None of it made a whole lot of sense.