Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  “All that means is that it will take a little longer for the planet to blow up after we fire it,” said Heckubus. “Which, all things considered, might not be a bad thing.”

  “Not a bad thing at all,” came another voice over the comms. Green and Scallywag immediately perked up.

  “Earthman?” said Scallywag with just a hint of amazement. “Is that you?”

  “The one and only,” said Jack. “Mission accomplished, fellas. Anna is safe, the Great Seal is broken, and the Deathlord Supreme’s butt has officially been kicked. So fire that baby off, and let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

  Green and Scallywag shared a look communicating that the mention of a so-called “popsicle stand” was the least confusing thing about what Jack had just said.

  “Jack, my boy… that’s amazing!” said Green. “How did you—”

  “It’s a long story Professor – and I mean that this time. I’ll fill you in once we’ve made our escape. Right now Grohm and I are on our way back to where we stashed the hoverbikes. Just do what you need to and meet us back at the ship.”

  “Smartest blasted thing I’ve heard all day,” said Scallywag, turning to the Professor. “You heard the lad, Trundle. Engage that weapon and let’s skirt out o’ here before this pop-cycle thing explodes, whatever that means.”

  Green continued to type furiously at the control panel. “I’m engaging the sequence now. We’ll have a few minutes before the weapon is charged up enough to fire. I just hope your robot friend’s algorithm can keep the Deathlords locked out of their systems long enough to keep them from shutting it down.”

  “Pah! Ye of little faith,” squawked the robot over the comms. “It would take more than a few mindless Deathlords to unravel my brilliant—”

  Scallywag shut off his comms. “Guess we’ll just haveta hope our luck holds out. Ya all done?”

  Green tapped a few final keys triumphantly. “Indeed,” he replied. “Firing sequence initiated.”

  “Good,” said Scallywag as he backed Green away from the Deathlord console and unholstered one of his blasters, promptly firing at it to ensure it couldn’t be accessed again. “Now get a move on.”

  The Professor didn’t need to be told again. He immediately followed Scallywag out of the control room, bounding down the stairs two and three at a time on the trek to the hangar bay floor.

  No sooner had they touched down at their destination than an explosion rocked a nearby door.

  “Blast!” swore Scallywag as he grabbed Green by the arm urgently. “RUN!”

  The two sprinted off, making directly for the hovervehicle on which they had arrived, still parked in its alcove awaiting their return.

  Two more loud explosions echoed throughout the massive hangar bay. The last one was followed by the whine of bending metal as the entrance door flew off its hinges and blew apart.

  Scallywag glanced up briefly from the controls of the hovervehicle just long enough to see eight Dark Soldiers rush in, led by a particularly nasty looking Deathlord whose elongated head was wrapped in dark cloth, shrouding his face.

  Scallywag grabbed the control stick to their vessel with one hand and a blaster pistol with his other, firing at the group as he clumsily backed the hovercraft out of its alcove. The Deathlords responded in kind, with their leader creating a glowing white orb of death energy in his hand.

  Anticipating the attack, Scallywag banked the craft sharply to the side as the Deathlord unleashed his orb, which rocketed right toward them, narrowly missing. Green stumbled from the abrupt maneuver and hit the rail of the craft, nearly toppling over it. Scallywag was sure if the Deathlord’s attack had made contact, the hovercraft would have been rendered useless. He quickly holstered his weapon and focused on getting the heck out of there.

  “KILL THEM!” raged the head Deathlord. “Do not let them escape!”

  Obediently, the Dark Soldiers all opened fire, sending a barrage of plasma blasts toward the hovercraft. Green and Scallywag ducked as the pirate continued to maneuver the hovercraft toward the exit. Some plasma blasts sparked off the craft’s sides as they hit their mark.

  “Oh, dear,” cried Green. “I do so hate being shot at!”

  “Shoulda thought about that before hatching this bloody brilliant scheme of yours,” muttered the Visini.

  “No plan is perfect, my dear fellow,” the Professor replied.

  “Well, buck up,” said the pirate. “‘Cause I’ve got a feeling things are gonna get a lot less perfect real soon.”

  Scallywag punched up the hovercraft’s engine and dropped out of the hangar bay into the tunnel below. No sooner had they exited than Abraxas rushed up to the ledge of the hanger, watching his prey make their escape.

  “Jetpacks!” he ordered. “Strap up! NOW!”

  The second Scallywag was clear of the hangar bay, he banked the hovercraft hard to the right and started to make for open ground, away from the mothership and toward the Earth vessel. Sure, the Deathlords would more than likely follow them, but the hovercraft they were on seemed plenty speedy for their purposes, and they would more than likely be able to make it back to their ship before any of the Dark Soldiers could catch up with them.

  Of course, if Jack and Grohm weren’t back before them, that would be their problem, not his.

  However, what was his problem were the two full squads of jetpacked Deathlords that suddenly appeared from the lip of the mothership, effectively cutting off his escape route and charging toward him, guns blazing.

  “Blast it!” Scallywag growled as he turned the hovercraft sharply, avoiding the angry red plasma fire that streaked toward them. As he made his maneuver, he glanced around, looking for another way to escape. The mothership loomed over them ominously, a sickly white glow pulsing from its center, giving Scallywag flashbacks to the pillar at the core of the Pit. Twelve Deathlords were on their tail, and the hovercraft didn’t offer much in the way of cover from those blasters. If it came down to a straight up chase, he and the Professor were dangerously exposed. All in all, Scallywag did not like his options.

  In fact, he liked them even less when he saw more Dark Soldiers drop from the hanger bay he’d just exited, their jetpacks roaring to life the second they saw their prey. One of them, with the bandaged head, threw a ball of energy at them almost immediately.

  Scallywag turned the hovercraft and barely missed getting hit by the ball of death that screamed by. Green stumbled from the sharp maneuver and collapsed, grabbing onto the rail of the hovercraft and holding on tightly.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered like a scared little mouse.

  Scallywag gritted his teeth as he punched up the acceleration of the hovercraft and turned away from their new arrivals. The original squads of Dark Soldiers kept firing behind them, and there was no sign they were going to let up anytime soon. Finally, Scallywag had an idea, though he didn’t like it anymore than he was sure the Professor would.

  “Hold on tight, Trundle,” said Scallywag. He glanced down at the scaly, flat-headed alien whose large eyes stared up at him, wide and fearful. “This ain’t gonna be pleasant.”

  No sooner had Green wrapped his arms as tightly as he could around the hovercraft’s railings than Scallywag pointed the ship downward, hitting the acceleration as much as he was able. Even bracing against the control panel of the craft as tightly as he could, it was all Scallywag could do to keep from floating away as the hovercraft shot down into the massive tunnel below them.

  Scallywag could feel the sickening sensation of his stomach being left behind as they rocketed downward. Somewhere in the distance, he heard one of the Deathlords scream something along the lines of, “Follow them!”

  He looked up as he saw the army of Deathlords above him engage their jetpacks, charging down in pursuit. Further back, he saw the central eye of the mothership, swirling chaotically with ghostly white energy, growing brighter and brighter by the second.

  “Oy, Greenskin,” shouted Scally over the blasting of air as they con
tinued their descent. “Keep an eye on that mothership weapon, let me know the second it’s about ta fire.”

  Green glanced up at the seemingly shrinking mothership, the energy rumbling about its center swirling even more chaotically as he and Scallywag continued to plummet down the tunnel, the Deathlords in hot pursuit directly behind them.

  “I say,” cried out the Professor. “How am I to know that?”

  “Yer supposed to be smart, ain’t ya?” replied Scallywag.

  “Being smart doesn’t make one an expert on knowing when a massive death ray is about to engage.”

  “If ya don’t keep an eye out, we’re gonna be caught in that blast,” barked Scallywag. “And I, for one, wouldn’t care for that at all.”

  “Then should you not simply stay away from the blast radius? Perhaps stick to the edges of the tunnel?”

  “If I did that, me plan wouldn’t work.”

  “You have a plan?” the Professor blinked, confused.

  Scallywag looked over at the Professor and smirked. “What? Ya think you and the Earthman are the only ones who can come up with terrible ideas?”

  Scallywag’s moment of levity was short-lived; plasma blasts started raining down around them as the Deathlords above opened fire. Scallywag adjusted their descent, spiraling away from their attackers as he continued to corkscrew down the massive planetary tunnel.

  Professor Green squeaked at the maneuver and hugged the rail tightly, burying his head into his shoulders.

  “Oy!” yelled Scallywag. “Eyes topside, remember?”

  Green looked up at the twenty Deathlords looming over them. A small group was following closely behind, while others fanned out trying to get a drop on their position. Green squinted his eyes as some of the Deathlords became tiny black specs against the ever growing light from the mothership’s central weapon.

  “Um… dear fellow… Mr. Pirate?”

  “Name’s Scallywag.”

  “Indeed. You know how you told me to tell you when the weapon was about to fire?”

  “Yeah.”

  Green gazed up as tendrils of energy started to snake out from the glowing chaos of the mothership’s center, like worms bursting forth from a rotten apple.

  “I think it’s about to happen…” Green said.

  Without a word, Scallywag abruptly turned the hovercraft, shooting toward the wall of the tunnel. The adjustment was so abrupt, Green was afraid he’d spill his stomach contents (but considering he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, there probably wasn’t much danger of that happening).

  High above them, the Deathlords scrambled to adjust to their prey’s new course, just as the mothership unleashed its fury.

  A solid pillar of sickly white light rocketed downward, enveloping fourteen unlucky Deathlords in its path.

  Scallywag reached the edge of the tunnel just as the death beam shot by. The pirate recoiled slightly as the energy blasted past them, with only a few feet between it and their vessel. No heat came off the beam, but an emotional wave of fear and despair hit Scallywag like a truck. He glanced over and saw the swirling beam of light, churning chaotically, its sound like the screams of a million beings crying out in agony.

  Within the beam, it was almost as if he could see images. Faces of people he wanted to forget. Memories of deeds he wished he could take back. Emotions he never wanted to experience – they all flooded over him like a cresting tidal wave.

  “And here… I thought you loved me…” came the voice he never wanted to hear again, from the memory he so desperately wanted to forget.

  For a moment, time seemed to stand still as events from so long ago flashed into his mind. The memory came back so vividly, that for an instant, it felt to Scallywag as though he were there, actually reliving the incident that changed his life forever.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, salty tears blurring the edge of his vision.

  Then, he heard Professor Green scream, snapping him out of his trance and back into the urgency of their current situation.

  “Look out!” cried the Professor, mere seconds before blaster fire rained down around them.

  Scallywag moved the hovercraft, but they were boxed in between the death beam and the edge of the tunnel, with almost no room to maneuver. Scally glanced behind them and saw six Dark Soldiers, including the one with his head wrapped in rags. He held a ball of death energy in his hands, waiting to unleash it.

  The pirate looked back down at the control panel. The readout on the display showed they were getting close to their destination. Scallywag just hoped they could survive that long.

  “Hold on tight, Trundle,” said Scallywag.

  “I’m already holding on tight!”

  “Hold on tighter…” said the pirate.

  Scallywag could see the half-moon opening coming up before them quickly. One last glance behind him revealed the lead Deathlord unleashing his ball of death energy. Scallywag hit the reverse on the hovercraft’s engine and angled the circular vehicle toward the wall, bringing its side up at a forty-five degree angle.

  He punched the acceleration just as they came to the opening to the Great Seal’s tunnel, shooting the hovercraft toward it. Their momentum brought them crashing up hard against the side of the hallway’s wall, but the angle at which Scallywag had brought the vehicle in had allowed the brunt of the impact to be distributed evenly across the bottom of the craft. It scraped against the wall with a screech of metal on stone, and the entire hovercraft shook in protest.

  The death energy blast from the Deathlord hit the side of the entrance, knocking off a chunk of the wall before the Deathlords followed the craft into the tunnel. One Dark Soldier, however, couldn’t adjust to the angle in time and evaporated in a puff of dust as he slammed into the wall of the entrance, his jetpack exploding, shooting a fireball of ignited rocket fuel down the tunnel.

  Scallywag straightened out the hovercraft as he looked at the explosion behind him. Much to his dismay, he saw the five remaining Deathlords emerge from the ball of fire, angry smoke trails billowing off of them as they raced after their prey.

  He glanced down at the Professor, who was looking even more green than usual.

  “Cheer up, Trundle,” smiled Scallywag. “At least we ain’t dead!”

  Scally increased their acceleration as blaster fire erupted behind them, rocketing faster down the hallway.

  “Not yet, anyway…” muttered the pirate.

  Chapter 44

  "Anna? Anna, wake up…”

  Anna’s eyes fluttered open. Jack’s face slowly came into focus as it hovered above her. She gazed at him a moment, the numbness in her mind morphing into a tingling feeling of disbelief. Was this a dream? How was this even real?

  “Jack?” she said hoarsely.

  “Hey,” he responded with a smile. “How you feeling?”

  Anna reached out with a shaky hand and cupped Jack’s face, as if to reassure herself he was truly there. She gazed into his deep green eyes and felt her heart race, beating with a sense of joy, excitement, and relief all balled up in an explosion of emotion that coursed through her body. She sat up with a start, wrapping her arms around Jack’s neck and hugging him like a drowning person would a life preserver.

  “You’re real,” she gasped, choking back a sob of pure happiness. “I can’t believe it!”

  Jack held her gently in his arms while patting her back reassuringly. “Not that this isn’t awesome,” he said, “but could you relax the kung fu grip? I kinda like being able to breathe…”

  Anna pulled back, a nervous giggle escaping from her lips, which she quickly covered shyly with her palm. Her brain was still buzzing with disbelief. She had been on death’s doorstep, at the mercy of a foe she was sure would kill her. One moment, she had been facing her own mortality, defeated by her enemy, shrouded in the shame of failure – and now, from what she could tell, she was safe! The feeling threatened to completely overwhelm her.

  “Wow,” said Jack rubbing his neck.
“You know, if the whole Princess thing doesn’t work out, you could totally have a career as a professional wrestler.”

  Anna couldn’t keep herself from grinning; she was smiling so hard her cheeks were hurting. Tears blurred the edge of her vision as she grabbed Jack’s hands tightly in her own, as though he could siphon away some of the emotion that was causing her to feel as though she were making a complete fool of herself.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Despite what some people might think,” said Jack, casting a wry stare in Grohm’s direction, “I totally saved the day.”

  Grohm grunted. Anna looked over at the hulking alien as he went back to unstrapping a large weapon from the back of a massive hoverbike and holstering it across his back.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Jack. “He gets kinda grumpy when there’s nothing around to smash.”

  Anna looked back at Jack, noticing for the first time that he was wearing body armor and had a blaster gun strapped to his side.

  “You… you came back for me…” she said.

  “Of course,” Jack replied. “I’d never leave you behind.”

  Anna bit her lower lip. She still couldn’t believe it. Jack had always been an interesting boy. She’d never met someone who could make her laugh or have a good time quite like him. He’d shown astounding bravery and resourcefulness during their time on the Deathlord ship, which was amazing in-and-of itself. But now, as she looked at him, Anna saw him as something more. Something she never would have suspected from the boy she’d always catch shyly staring at her in homeroom.

  He was a hero.

  “Thank you,” Anna said, meaning it with every fiber of her being.

  “No problem,” replied Jack, completely missing the weight with which Anna had said the words. “But now we really need to get out of here before the planet blows up.”

  Anna blinked at Jack, as though she didn’t comprehend what he’d just said. “Wait… what?” she asked.

  “Long story short,” explained Jack, “we have to blow up the planet to save the universe, and we don’t have a lot of time left before it happens. So I need you to get on the bike so we can get back to the ship and jump out of here before everything goes boom. Cool?”