Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  “Um… I think we have two missiles honing in on us,” said Jack.

  “Uh-oh,” muttered Scallywag.

  “You must have passed by one of those hidden weapon platforms,” sighed Heckubus.

  Jack gritted his teeth and poured on the engines, kicking the ship into high gear, hoping to outrun the new threat.

  “Scally, try to shoot those things,” said Jack.

  “Shoot ‘em?” frowned Scallywag. “I can’t even see ‘em!”

  “Then just keep firing and hope you hit something!”

  Scallywag began firing the ship’s rear plasma cannon blindly, strafing it behind them as best he could.

  Jack banked the ship, sharply turning to miss another mine in their path. Jack glanced at his sensor readout. One of the missiles was starting to get really close.

  “Scally, one of them is closing in!” Jack said.

  “I don’t bloody see it!” the pirate yelled, continuing his pattern of firing. His eyes were glued to his targeting readout, but all he saw was blue and purple dust and gas.

  Jack glanced at his sensors again. The missile was almost to them.

  “Here it comes!” said Jack.

  Scallywag focused intently on his screen and saw a small, slender shadow in the nebula, coming up at them fast. In the split second it took for his eyes to register the movement, Scallywag aimed the cannon and fired.

  The ship’s blasts streaked all around the shadow as it rocketed forward. Small enough to evade the cannon fire, the missile barreled directly toward them. Alarms blared incessantly throughout the bridge, signaling the impending approach of the weapon.

  Scallywag had just enough time to recognize the thin, pointed warhead of the light blue missile as it closed in directly behind them before one of his blasts finally caught it, mere feet away from impact.

  The missile exploded, causing the ship to shake violently as the instruments on the bridge flickered on and off in protest. Jack groaned trying to get back control and straighten out their course as the ship banked and weaved because of the explosion. He checked his readings and saw the shields had absorbed most of the blast, but it was clear they weren’t going to survive a direct hit.

  “Got it!” smiled Scallywag, quite pleased with himself.

  “Don’t celebrate yet, there’s another one out there, and it’s coming our way!” said Jack, checking the readouts again and seeing the second red dot heading right for them.

  Scallywag’s smile disappeared. “I swear, can’t even have one bloody victory…” he mumbled as he went back to searching his screen for impending doom, part two.

  Jack checked his trajectory. They were coming up on the coordinates Heckubus had laid out before entering the cloud. “We are all set for the hyperspace maneuver,” said Jack. “You ready Heckubus?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Heckubus, sounding rather bored. “Prepare for jump to hyperspace in approximately 90 seconds…”

  Jack looked at his viewscreen as the nebula cloud before them started to thin. In the breaks within the cloud, Jack saw a litany of red plasma fire lighting up the sky. Planetkillers surrounding the Ghost Planet were all firing wildly in every direction, some of them breaking apart while doing so.

  Black tendrils swarmed through the air. Some followed tiny Deathlord shards while others focused on tearing through the larger vessels. From what little Jack could make out, the entire scene was one of pure chaos.

  But the closer they got to the edge of the cloud, the more it became clear that something wasn’t right.

  Jack checked his sensor readings and sure enough, he saw a group of close to twenty Deathlord shards heading straight for them. And to make matters worse, right behind them was a large, angry cloud of space bugs.

  “Oh, crap,” said Jack. The shards must be heading into the nebula cloud to try to escape the bugs, he thought.

  Then, the proximity alarm sounded, and Jack noticed the second missile was closing in fast.

  “Oh, crap!” he said again.

  “Sixty seconds,” said the robot.

  Jack was looking at his readings. He was heading right into a wall of Deathlord shards, and if he could somehow get past them, he’d be running right into the space bug swarm chasing the fighters. And if that weren’t bad enough, any minute a deadly missile could hit them from behind.

  “Heckubus, adjust your calculations!” screamed Jack.

  “Huh?” perked up the robot. “For what?”

  “For this!” yelled Jack as he corkscrewed the ship, punching up the acceleration and maneuvering through the tangle of fleeing shards as they entered the nebula cloud.

  “Blast it!” Heckubus cursed as Jack sent the ship into a dive, narrowly missing the pursuing swarm of space bugs before pulling up in an attempt to get back to their original trajectory. “You’re off course!”

  “Deal with it!” said Jack, frantically trying to steer the ship as his missile alerts blared. The menacing red blip on his sensor screens was getting closer and closer.

  “We’re going to be too close to the planet!” said Heckubus.

  “DEAL WITH IT!!!” screamed Jack and Scallywag.

  By the time they had reached the edge of the nebula cloud, Jack had fixed the ship’s trajectory. However, as soon as they exited, the ominous missile that was dogging them followed.

  “I can’t hit it!” screamed Scallywag, frantically trying to shoot down the encroaching projectile.

  “DO IT!” cried Jack. “HYPERSPACE! NOW!!!”

  After a quick re-calculation, Heckubus activated the Earthship’s Brane Accelerator to open the hyperspace window.

  Now, this was the tricky part – the plan was to enter hyperspace and then exit behind the shield surrounding the Ghost Planet, effectively bypassing it, since the shield itself had no gravitational presence in hyperspace.

  However, in order to do so at this close of range to the planet, the exit window would have to be nearly on top of the entrance window, and as most hyperspace engineers know, a typical Brane Accelerator is not built to do that type of thing.

  Of course, after some adjustments to the Earthship, Heckubus was able to account for its limitations and push the Brane Accelerator to pull off this rather admirable feat – even though Heckubus himself would have to handle the bulk of the navigational calculations and timing for the execution of the maneuver (a feat he boasted was mere child’s play to one as brilliant as him).

  No sooner had the hyperspace window opened than Heckubus immediately called up the exit, materializing it an impressive 20 micrometers away from the initial opening – about the diameter of the average human hair - just as Jack barreled the Earthship through.

  But even though this maneuver was very impressive and successfully executed, there were a few things Heckubus did not count on occurring.

  The first was that the strain from opening two hyperspace windows almost simultaneously so close to each other effectively shorted out the Brane Accelerator, causing it to stop functioning completely.

  The second was that the missile from the minefield was close enough to the ship to successfully follow it though the hyperspace windows before they closed.

  The third, and probably the most worrisome, was that because they had to make the jump outside the very edge of the nebula cloud, they exited from hyperspace far closer to the ground of the Ghost Planet than anyone had anticipated.

  Thus, they found themselves speeding directly toward impending doom, followed closely behind by even more impending doom.

  “PULL UP!” squeaked Scallywag. “PULL UP!!!!!”

  Jack braced himself and frantically pulled on his ship to correct its flight path as warning alarms blared and the pale, unforgiving surface of the planet rushed up to meet him in the viewscreen.

  The ship groaned and shook as Jack pulled it in a tight arc, the maneuver leaving his stomach behind him like the most intense roller-coaster ride he had ever experienced. He managed to level out the ship mere feet above the surface, the energ
y from the Earthship’s engines flaying up a sharp cloud of dust and an angry bombardment of pebbles as it rocketed across the landscape.

  No sooner had the Earthship narrowly missed crashing, than the missile following it through its hyperspace jump slammed into the ground behind it, helped along by the accelerated force of its hyperspace maneuver.

  A raging cloud of fire and smoke erupted from the point of impact, the explosion rippling out a circular shockwave which was close enough to hit the rear of the Earthship, knocking it off-kilter and sending it skidding across the ground.

  The ship rumbled as its belly met the surface below, causing the entire bridge to shake and vibrate as alarms blared, and its occupants held on for dear life. Jack gripped the ship’s control orbs, doing everything he could to keep the ship from spinning out of control.

  In the viewscreen, a small outcropping of tall rock formations was rushing up to meet them. Jack threw his thrusters into reverse, slowing the ship and causing his stomach to lurch forward so intensely he thought he might throw up.

  The ship skidded to a slow halt, stopping mere inches away from the sharp, cold rocks waiting patiently to impale it.

  * * *

  “Warlord Abraxas,” called out the Acolyte from his control panel.

  Abraxas approached the Acolyte, his heavy footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous control room of the Deathlord Mothership.

  “What?” the Deathlord growled.

  “Our scans have picked up an explosion, a few miles to the east of the ship,” the Acolyte reported.

  “An explosion?” mumbled Abraxas to himself. “On screen.”

  The bridge’s viewscreen switched to an image of the planet’s surface. In the distance, a plume of smoke billowed out from the ground, twisting up into the sky. Abraxas squinted at it, wondering if it were some type of unknown defense measure the Heretics had hidden on the planet.

  “Should we report it to the Supreme, Warlord?” the Acolyte asked.

  “No,” replied Abraxas. “The Supreme is en route to the central chamber with the girl. His task is too important to be disturbed with something like this.”

  “Then what are your orders, Warlord?”

  Abraxas glared at the smoke of the explosion for a moment, mulling over his options.

  “Send a patrol to investigate,” he said finally.

  “Right away, Warlord,” the Acolyte replied.

  “And tell them after they send in their report… they’re to destroy anything they find.”

  Chapter 39

  Jack blinked his eyes open, his mind still hazy from the rough landing, and looked around the bridge. Nothing looked too terribly damaged from what he could tell… at least, not compared to what the ship had been through before. As his companions began to stir, Jack called up a systems report on his holoscreen in order to get a better sense of how damaged his spaceship might be.

  “Great landing, lad,” said Scallywag, picking himself out of his chair and giving his back a nice crack. “Very smooth. Couldn’t a done it better meself. Oh, and in case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t mean any of that.”

  “Hey, we’re alive aren’t we?” grumbled Jack. “What more do you want?”

  “Some bloody certainty for one thing,” Scallywag replied. “The Ancients could create a sodding planet, you’d think they could invent shields that wouldn’t die on ya every five minutes.”

  “Considering everything we just went though,” said Jack after seeing the ship had sustained only minimal damage during the landing, “I think the shields we had held up just fine.”

  “Frankly, I think we’re doing splendidly,” piped up Heckubus as he picked himself up off the floor. “I fully expected at least one of you to have died by now. By my estimation, we’re ahead of the game!”

  The group all squinted at Heckubus.

  “What?” asked the robot. “That was meant to be encouraging!”

  Grohm lumbered up beside Jack. “Location?” the Rognok inquired.

  “Good question,” said Jack as he called up his sensor readings on the main viewscreen of the bridge so everyone could get a look. A 3D map grid appeared, marking the location of their ship and the location of the Deathlord Mothership some distance away. The group all looked at the readout and grumbled.

  “Hmmmm…” said Heckubus. “It appears we’re a couple miles away from our target.”

  “Can we still teleport down to where they have the Princess?” asked Scallywag.

  “No, the sensors aren’t picking up anything below the surface. We’re too far out of range to see where she might be,” said Jack.

  “Well, could you fly us into range?”

  Jack shook his head. “The ship’s thrusters took a bit of a beating from the missile explosion. We can’t go anywhere for now.”

  “Fan-tastic,” muttered the pirate. “Anyone care to take a stroll on the life-sucking dirt?”

  “Could be worse,” said Grohm.

  “Really?” said Scallywag. “We just crash landed on an inescapable planet, with an army of Deathlords all around, a swarm of omnivorous space bugs in the sky, and magical-mystical ground that’s supposed to kill ya the moment ya touch it between us and our target. What, in the name of Jerrimour the White, could be worse than that?”

  “Having a whining Visini around who doesn’t stop complaining,” grumbled Grohm.

  Scallywag’s eyes narrowed. “I liked ya better when ya didn’t talk so much.”

  “Don’t worry, Scally,” said Jack as he tapped on a few of the buttons on his command chair. “Plan B is in full effect.”

  “Plan B? What’s Plan B?”

  “The plan where we use the ship’s ability to make anything we want to help us get across the death-dirt and rescue the Princess,” said Jack as he hopped out of the chair and turned to Heckubus. “Try to get as much repaired as you can while we’re gone. When we come back with Anna, I expect we’ll have to make a hasty getaway.”

  “But of course,” drawled the robot.

  “And no trying to reprogram the ship into an evil death machine,” said Jack as he walked up to the teleportation platform. “Save the schemes for after we’re out of danger, yeah?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” replied Heckubus, sounding only slightly disappointed.

  “Oy, how come the rustbucket ain’t coming?” grumbled Scallywag.

  “What’s he gonna do?” asked Jack. “Condescend the bad guys into submission? It’s better to have him here repairing things and prepping for our getaway.”

  Scallywag scowled at Heckubus, who gave him a cheery wave good-bye. “Toodles!” sang the robot. “Have fun storming the Death Planet!”

  * * *

  Jack, Scallywag, and Grohm appeared on the teleportation platform of a large room, facing an even larger door taking up the entire wall before them. A large diagonal crevice slashed across its face where the two ends of the door met.

  “Where’s this now?” asked Scallywag.

  “The cargo bay,” said Jack. “At least, I think that’s what it is. What do you call the bay where you store a bunch of cargo?”

  “Seriously, why am I following ya into battle again?” asked Scallywag.

  “Don’t be hating,” smiled Jack. “Especially once you see what we’ve got behind door number one…”

  Jack gave the command to the ship to open the door, the back of his head tingling in response. A dull KLANK heralded its unlocking as the two sides of it began to slide away, revealing a large room beyond.

  The room was oval shaped, with catwalks and rafters with cranes attached for picking up cargo. In the center of the room was a selection of small vehicles that resembled motorcycles, only these had no wheels. Instead, they had small discs that faced the ground, two in the front, and one in the back, and heavy engines on their tails that looked like something that had been transplanted from a fighter jet.

  Grohm grunted when he saw them and Scallywag gave a low whistle. “What be these funny lookin’ things?�
�� he asked.

  “Hoverbikes!” said Jack with more than a hint of pride. They were based on one of the racing games Jack had for his Gamerbox 3000. He’d asked the ship if it could make something like that, and he was excited to see it could. “Fast, maneuverable, and best yet, they don’t touch the ground! Totally sweet, huh?”

  “Grohm can eat them?” asked the Rognok.

  “Uh, no,” said Jack. “I just meant they’re really neat, right?”

  “I guess they’ll do,” said Scallywag. “Woulda liked something with a bit more protection on it.”

  “I figured speed was more important for this stage of the rescue,” said Jack. “Here’s where protection comes in…”

  He pointed at the wall beside them where metal panels flipped around, revealing racks of weapons and armor of all shapes and sizes. Plasma guns, plasma rifles, thermal grenades, and various other gadgets and doohickeys abounded.

  “Now that’s more like it!” said Scallywag, who immediately grabbed two new blaster pistols from the rack and gave them a twirl.

  Grohm grunted in approval as well and went about collecting his arsenal. Each of them put on armored breastplates, along with shoulder pads, knee pads, and guards for their forearms and shins. The armor was lightweight but was made of what appeared to be metal. Jack could only assume it was totally awesome, though he hoped he didn’t have to test it.

  Grohm picked up a large club of smooth white steel, with three black rings circling around its head. When he gripped it, the rings sprung to life with a crackle of electricity. He grunted in approval and slung the club across his back before picking up a massive shotgun the size of his arm. He slung that across his back as well.

  Jack grabbed a blaster pistol and several grenades, which he strapped to his belt. They were small cylinders, so he was able to fit a lot of them on his person. Finally, he grabbed a communications unit, with an accompanying earpiece, and strapped it to his forearm.

  “Heckubus, can you hear me?” asked Jack into the headset.

  “Yes, yes, loud and clear,” replied the robot.

  Scallywag and Grohm both activated their headsets as Jack hopped on his hoverbike and hit the ignition button. The bike came to life with a slight vibration and a low hum as it lifted a good three inches above the ground.