Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  Jack eased the ship up as it reached the bottom of its descent and skimmed the surface of the ocean. He had an idea and punched up the speed as much as he could, hoping it would give him enough time to pull off what he had planned.

  “You ready with those weapons yet?” asked Jack, keeping his eye on the steadily gaining shards.

  “We have a rear plasma battery,” said Shepherd. “Firing it up now.”

  “All right,” said Jack. “Do we have a forward laser, too?”

  “We have two of them,” said Shepherd.

  “You’re going to want to get those ready, also.”

  “Why?” asked Shepherd suspiciously.

  “I’m gonna try something,” said Jack. “Just be ready, okay?”

  Shepherd grumbled but didn’t argue. He opened fire on the incoming shards as they dove into position behind them.

  “Hold on,” said Jack, as he suddenly cut the acceleration of the ship.

  The sudden drop in speed caused the shards to overshoot their intended position on their tail. Shepherd nailed one of them as it screamed by overhead, causing it to explode in a puff of black dust and green fire.

  No sooner had the shards made their pass than Jack kicked the ship back into gear. He felt the boom of the engines as the sudden burst jacked up their acceleration, and they were now on the heels of the shards.

  “NOW!” yelled Jack.

  Shepherd let loose with the forward plasma cannons. The two shards tried to turn in opposite directions to avoid the blasts, but one of them wasn’t fast enough, and it got caught in Shepherd’s crosshairs and exploded.

  Jack turned the ship in pursuit of the last shard. It banked and weaved as Shepherd kept firing at it, but Jack kept on its tail.

  “Yeah, not so much fun when you’re the one getting shot at, huh?” mumbled Jack as he tried to keep pace with the smaller vessel. For a rather big ship, Jack was surprised he was able to maneuver as well as he was.

  The shard pulled up into a climb and began flying toward the sun. Jack followed, pushing the thrusters to keep his prey from escaping him. The direct sunlight from the viewscreen blinded him, and he lost sight of his target.

  Jack glanced back at his radar display. A red dot signified the remaining shard was still there, but it was quickly moving out of range. Just as Jack was going to try another burst of speed to keep up, three new dots emerged in front of him, and the radar beeped a warning about new enemy contacts.

  “Crap!” exclaimed Jack as he banked the ship hard to the right. No sooner had he done so then more enemy blaster fire shot by on the trajectory of their previous course. The sun had blinded him to the arrival of enemy backup, and that last shard had tried to lure him into an ambush.

  As the three newcomers shot by, the original shard had come around and was now on Jack’s tail. Plasma fire began to assault the rear shields, and the ship complained to Jack in protest.

  Jack tried to bank and weave the ship, but he could not shake the shard, even with Shepherd firing at it. It was just too small and maneuverable. And once his Deathlord friends came back around, they were all going to be in trouble.

  “Jack,” yelled Anna. “We need to get out of Earth’s atmosphere! We can maneuver better in space!”

  “Are you serious?” asked Jack.

  “The ship is too big to out-fly the shards in the atmosphere,” said Anna. “Without the wind resistance and gravity, we should be maneuverable enough to escape their fire.”

  “No, I mean… I’ve like, never been in space before…” said Jack.

  “Have you ever been obliterated into a million pieces before?” asked Shepherd. “Because that’s what’s going to happen if our shields keep taking this pounding!”

  “Space it is,” said Jack meekly.

  Jack banked the ship, took it into a climb, and felt his breath catch in his throat. In the sky was a hazy image of a massive monstrosity he had not noticed in the commotion of the dogfight. It was still far away, but even from this distance, Jack could tell it was gigantic, possibly the size of a city one would see when flying over in an airplane.

  At its center was a round disk-shaped vessel, with six humongous, long, curled spikes jutting from its sides, making it look like a massive, hideous spider of some type, ready to descend upon the planet. The outer casing was a dark, shining obsidian, littered with veins of green and purple light, and at the bottom of the disk was a large circle which glowed white hot with energy, like a soulless eye gazing out from beneath it.

  Jack felt the pit of his stomach curl in on itself. He could only assume that thing was the Deathlord mothership, and if that were indeed the case, heading toward it was probably not the best idea.

  Then, in the instant it took him to wonder about where he should adjust course to, the ship responded with a long-range sensor reading of their immediate area. What Jack saw chilled him to his core. There wasn’t just one Deathlord mothership in orbit above Earth; there were literally hundreds of them. In his mind’s eye, the ship fed him the location of the entire enemy fleet. He saw how they’d encircled the planet, each one staring down at the surface with its horrible white eye, blazing ever hotter and brighter with each passing second.

  The reality of their situation suddenly settled in on Jack. The ordeals at the Burger Shack and in the temple were scary, but they all seemed like something isolated, as though once the military found out about it, they could send in troops and tanks and airplanes to the rescue. But now Jack could see that aliens hadn’t just invaded River Heights; they had surrounded the entire planet with ships full of an army that couldn’t die.

  The ship was rocked again as more plasma fire assaulted its shields. The radar in front of Jack whined with alarm as more contacts appeared on it – ten more shards, all coming from the mothership in the distance. If the shards closing in from behind didn’t get them, those surely would.

  “Shepherd…” Jack said. “We’ve got incoming!”

  Jack heard Shepherd curse under his breath as he checked his console and saw the newly approaching shards. More thuds echoed in Jack’s mind as the rear shields were hit again. He pulled up a rear image from the ship on the holoscreen and saw the four shards had locked onto his tail. Suddenly, Jack found himself wishing he could fire the forward plasma cannons while Shepherd focused his attention on their tag-alongs.

  The ship responded instantly by materializing a new holoscreen in front of Jack with targeting reticules and energy readouts. The display looked just like it did on Nova Commander IV, and Jack inherently knew he now had control over the forward cannons.

  “I’m taking control of the forward lasers,” Jack told Shepherd. “You focus on the guys behind us.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Shepherd.

  “Me, too,” mumbled Jack.

  The new Deathlord shards were closing the distance quickly from the front. Jack’s ship was still climbing. If he could exit the Earth’s atmosphere before they were in firing range, he might be able to pull something off.

  Jack wondered if he could take control of the shields as easily as he did the plasma cannons. Sure enough, the computer granted him access. He quickly lowered the forward shields and used some of that energy to reinforce the rear shields, while diverting the rest to his engines to give him a boost of speed.

  “We’ve lost forward shields!” shrieked Anna. “It won’t let me raise them!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jack. “I did that.”

  “You lowered our shields?” yelled Shepherd.

  “Trust me, I know what I’m doing!” Jack yelled back. “Anna, get me all the power you can to the engines!”

  Anna and Shepherd exchanged worried looks, but Anna did as she was told, and Shepherd went back to trying to keep the fighters off their tail.

  The sky was darkening as the ship kept climbing and the blue mist of the atmosphere began to bleed away around them. Jack wished he had time to appreciate how cool it was that he was the first kid ever in t
he history of River Heights – and probably the world – to actually make it into outer space, but the oncoming Deathlord shards had just reached firing range.

  Jack instantly dumped power into his forward shields and rolled the ship, looping around in a corkscrew motion and firing as he did so.

  The wall of shards heading his way scrambled, returning fire as they swerved. Jack caught two of them in his maneuver, signaled by a brief flash of green flame. One of the shards did not bank away fast enough and rammed into one of the shards that had been chasing Jack’s ship. Another two down; now just ten more to go.

  “Great Scott!” exclaimed Professor Green. “We made it past them!”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Jack glancing at his radar readout. “They’re coming back around.”

  “Get us away from the fleet,” said Shepherd. “Move us out into open space as much as you can. If we can take them down far enough away from reinforcements, it might give us time to make the jump to hyperspace.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jack as he increased acceleration. As they began to move away, he glanced out the viewscreen at the massive Deathlord mothership to the side of them and marveled at it. Jack didn’t have much time to ponder the size of the enemy fleet before his proximity alarm warned him that the shards were now back in range and quickly gaining on him.

  “The bad guys are back,” he warned everybody.

  “You fly,” said Shepherd. “I’ll take care of them.”

  Unencumbered by gravity or wind resistance, Jack banked the ship and took it in a wide arc, veering away as Shepherd fired on the pursuers who had adjusted their course to follow. Jack immediately noticed a difference in the way the ship handled now that they were out in space. Indeed, it moved like a much smaller ship, able to turn much more easily and more quickly than it had in the atmosphere.

  Red bolts of death screamed by as Jack banked and weaved his ship. Some landed on the rear shields, but most were missing their mark. Shepherd was able to tag a few of the shards with return fire, causing some to break off the ship’s tail.

  Jack turned the ship and chased after some of the shards that had broken off and opened fire with the forward plasma cannons. Two more shards exploded thanks to his efforts.

  Jack glanced at the radar screen. He saw six more dots buzzing around on the readout. Jack cut all power to the thrusters and brought the ship to a standstill.

  “What are you doing?” asked Shepherd with alarm. “Why have we stopped?”

  “Just giving them a chance to regroup,” said Jack casually.

  “You’re what?” said Shepherd, Anna, and Green in unison.

  “I’ve noticed they tend to like to attack in formation,” said Jack.

  “Jack,” growled Shepherd. “Get us moving again!”

  “Relax,” said Jack. “I spent most of my freshman year perfecting this maneuver.”

  Jack called up his holoscreen and sure enough, the remaining six shards had joined up into a “V” formation and were turning in unison to make a pass at Jack’s location.

  Jack diverted all the power to the forward shields and reversed the thrusters to start moving the ship backwards as the shards closed in on them from the front, effectively slowing their approach.

  The shards opened fire, their plasma bolts impacting the forward shields rapidly.

  “Blast it, Jack!” yelled Shepherd. “Return fire!”

  Jack ignored Shepherd and kept letting the shards close in, keeping a careful eye on the strength of the forward shields, which were getting hammered by the Deathlords’ blasts.

  Then, just as the shards got close enough, Jack engaged the ship’s side thrusters, jutting his craft horizontally away from the trajectory of the Deathlord shards. As he did so, he rotated the ship to keep in line with the enemy formation and opened fire. His first blast impacted the lead shard, and the momentum of the formation allowed the other two shards on its wing to fly into his blaster fire, destroying them both.

  The remaining three shards scrambled, but not before Jack re-engaged his thrusters and tagged one of them before he could get out of range.

  Now there were only two.

  Jack redistributed his shields and punched the acceleration, locking onto the tail of one of the remaining shards. It was weaving about evasively, but in space, Jack’s ship was able to keep up with it. It was only a matter of time before Jack got the fighter in his crosshairs and obliterated it.

  Plasma bolts impacted the side of the ship as the last remaining shard made a strafing run. Jack rolled away from the blasts and came around onto the tail of the enemy fighter.

  “Game over, dip-wad,” said Jack as he opened fire.

  One final explosion marked the last of the Deathlord shards. Jack had no doubt they’d be sending more the first chance they got, so he turned and began accelerating away from the Deathlord fleet as fast as he could.

  Once they were far enough away from the fleet, Jack allowed himself to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

  “Wow,” he said. “That was intense.”

  He turned his chair and looked at his companions. Green and Anna were smiling. Even Shepherd looked relieved.

  “I’ve got to admit,” breathed Shepherd. “That was some good flying, Jack.”

  Did Mr. Shepherd just give him a compliment? Jack’s chest welled up with a bit of pride.

  “That? Ah, that was nothin’,” lied Jack. “Give me something harder next time.”

  “You’d think you’ve been flying a spaceship your entire life,” smiled Anna. “I don’t think a trained Imperial pilot could have done any better.”

  “Who knew playing all that Nova Commander would come in handy?” said Jack as he leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. “And they say video games are a waste of time. Pft.”

  “Well, I think I’ve done it!” cheered Green. “I believe I’ve found us a hyperspace trajectory that can get us into friendly space.”

  “Good,” said Shepherd, sounding uncharacteristically upbeat. “Input it into the computer.”

  “I just need to compare it to the ship’s star charts and do a few more calculations to adjust for universal expansion over the past fifty thousand years or so,” said Green.

  “Do it,” said Shepherd. “The sooner we’re out of site of the Deathlord fleet, the better.”

  Jack sat up in the captain’s chair. “Wait,” he said. “We can’t just, like, leave.”

  “We have to,” said Shepherd.

  “But what about all the people on Earth?” asked Jack. “I can’t leave my mom and friends down there with the Deathlords all over the place.”

  Shepherd, Anna, and Green all exchanged worried looks.

  “We have to go back for them,” insisted Jack.

  “Jack,” said Shepherd. “This ship is impressive. But it cannot take on an entire Deathlord fleet by itself.”

  “How do you know?” asked Jack. “Maybe there’s some super-weapon on here we haven’t found yet. This is supposed to be the thing that defeats them, right? The Ancient artifact you guys were looking for?”

  “We need time to study it, Jack,” said Anna, “to figure out its mysteries, what it’s capable of. Now is not the time to go rushing back into battle, especially considering our narrow escape.”

  Jack frowned. She was correct, of course. Jack had picked up enough about the ship to get them past the Deathlords alive, but he had a feeling he hadn’t even scratched the surface of what the ship could do. And dealing with more Deathlord shards again wasn’t very appealing either.

  “But we’ll come back for them, right?” asked Jack. “When I get you home, you’ll raise your army and come back and save the Earth, right?”

  Everyone was quiet.

  “Right?” insisted Jack.

  Shepherd looked at Anna, as though he were waiting for her cue to say something.

  “If you can get us back home,” said Anna carefully. “I will do everything in my power to help you.”


  “Promise me,” said Jack.

  Anna straightened and looked Jack in the eye. “I promise,” she said.

  Jack relaxed. He trusted Anna. He just hoped that the Deathlords wouldn’t enslave everybody before they had a chance to return and beat them down.

  “Okeydokey,” said Green. “That should do it! I’ve calculated a hyperspace route to Kelmar Uropa. We should be able to dock at the Imperial outpost there and get updated star maps for our journey home.”

  “Punch it in,” ordered Shepherd. “Jack, get ready to take us to hyperspace.”

  “Okay,” said Jack. “Just give me a minute to figure out how that works.”

  “Make it fast,” said Shepherd.

  Jack turned his chair back around to the viewscreen and asked the ship about how it’s hyperspace drive worked. The computer buzzed the information right into his brain.

  Once the hyperspace route was input into the computer, a special engine on board called a Brane Accelerator would create a window into the hyperspace dimension by sending out a wave of energy. This energy would vibrate a bunch of little things called p-branes, which were tiny particles that acted like a membrane separating different dimensions. The window would be open long enough for the ship to pass through, at which point its engines would kick into lightspeed until the ship reached its destination. Then they could open another window back into the previous dimension.

  It seemed easy enough to do, but something still felt wrong about all this. Jack didn’t like the idea of leaving his friends and family behind – especially not with a bunch of deadly aliens all over the place. He’d never left River Heights in his life, and now he was getting ready to head to another planet! He hadn’t even packed a toothbrush. The whole thing was more than a little scary.

  “The coordinates have been input into the computer,” said Green. “We are ready to make the jump to hyperspace!”

  “Jack,” said Shepherd. “Get us out of here.”

  “Okay,” said Jack.

  Jack was getting ready to activate the Brane Accelerator when he called up the holoscreen for one last look at Earth.

  He sighed. I’ll come back, mom, he thought. I promise.