Falling Ark

by Leigh Snelson

  “What do we do now?” Julie asked.

  Alarms rang out across the ship, red lights flashed, and a robotic voice screeched.

  “Intruder Alert!”

  Chapter 17

  Who had seen us? We were being so careful. I looked at Julie and she in turn looked at Tony for ideas.

  “I have a plan but you’re not going to like it.” Tony said and nodded towards the craft that was sitting in the middle of the ships deck.

  “You aren’t serious!” Julie exclaimed.

  “Do you know how to fly?” I asked in amazement. The idea that we could just steal an aircraft was absurd.

  “Sure, I have a pilot’s licence for small aircraft, I can give it a go. Unless you have any better ideas?” He asked.

  I thought long and hard. If we get in that plane and fail to make it move, we would be trapped. On the other hand, we were already trapped on a boat out at sea.

  “No better ideas? Let’s go then!” Tony jumped to his feet and started to run out towards the egg-shaped plane.

  I stared at Julie.

  “Are we actually going to do this?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t look like we have much choice.” She replied

  We both watched as Tony ran towards the plane. Instinctively he ducked down as he approached; the same way I had seen people do around helicopters.

  The craft sat on little stubby legs which held it about a metre off the ground. I could tell that Tony was having a hard time looking for a hatch, or an entrance. He had determined that there was something underneath and was struggling crouch down low enough.

  Below the belly of the metal snail Tony started to mess with something and then he climbed up inside, into the guts of the machine, disappearing out of view.

  A moment later he re-appeared inside the big front window. His head popped out between the front two seats. Julie and I watched as he climbed in and sat down on the chair to his left.

  Julie and I didn’t need any more prompting. Together we ran as fast as we could towards Tony.

  I was nearly there when the crew started appearing on deck. They yelled at us and gesturing to get out of the plane. Thankfully they weren’t shooting at us, yet.

  We scuttled under the craft and found a small, circular opening that led into the centre of the vehicle. Julie climbed in first and I followed.

  Inside there was a small room, not much bigger than a store cupboard, barely enough room for both of us to stand up without bumping into each other or falling through the hole in the floor.

  The little room was surrounded by steel cabinets. It wasn’t the most welcoming room, two metres in diameter with harsh lights shining from above and below. Towards the front of the ship the cabinets made way and two more circular openings lead into the main cockpit. One on the floor that required crouching down and sliding through, this obviously led to the front two seats. The other, a small ladder led up to it as it was high up in the ceiling, leading to the rear three seats that were positioned above.

  At the opposite side of this round room there was another circular opening, a metre off the floor which led into the rear seating position.

  None of these hatches were large and a man like Hank would have trouble fitting through them.

  On the wall to my left a cluster of switches hung there. I pressed the one that was labelled ‘Close Hatch’ and the hole in the floor shut tight. A spiral of metal arms closed in on the centre and the cold air from outside was gone.

  “Cool, a dilating door.” I said, watching it spin closed.

  “Sure, just don’t get your foot caught in it.” Julie pointed out, kicking my feet away from the blades that closed the opening.

  She then climbed through the hatchway on the floor to join Tony at the front.

  Remembering that there were only two seats on the bottom I climbed up the ladder and into the top row.

  I popped out on the floor of the seating area and climbed up, picking the middle seat which hung above my head. If anyone else followed me they would get kicked in the head as my feet dangled above the opening. Not the best design but I am sure it was like this for a reason.

  “Now what?” Tony asked as I buckled myself into the seat.

  Looking down I could see the top of his and Julies heads. Tony was fiddling with joysticks and buttons that lay across his lap.

  “Where did you get the controls from?” I asked, knowing that he couldn’t have sat down if they were already there.

  “Pull the tab on your right armrest.” He replied.

  Looking down there was a little red cord sticking out of the armrest. I pulled it and a hissing sound started in the ceiling. Part of the roof then started to fall onto me.

  It was a slow, controlled fall and as the large metal plate passed by my head and I saw it contained a large screen with buttons. It continued to fall into my lap and clipped into the armrests. I large thick cord guided it down like a giant snake lowering the tray into my lap.

  Once it had clicked into place I was trapped in the seat but I had an array of information on the screen in front of me.

  The display was broken up into a grid of twenty different screens, five along the top, four along each side, all around the edge of the giant screen with the centre of the displaying readouts and data about the craft.

  Cameras and data readouts made up the fourteen boxes around the edge. I could see all around the ship. There was even a little box that looked like radar in the bottom right corner.

  It was a little black window with the outline of the ship in the middle and dots of surrounding it. I tapped on it and the window enlarged, swapping positions with the charts and data that were in the middle of the monitor.

  Now I could see with more detail, the little dots had been coloured in yellow, the outline of the ship was in green and there were three dots inside the ship, representing Tony, Julie and myself.

  “Hey Tony, I think they are surrounding us.” I said and kicked the back of his headrest to get his attention.

  The ceiling hissed again and another metal tray lowered itself down, this time onto Julies lap. It lowered in the same way mine had done, with a large metal snake tangling from the roof. Once it had clicked into place the metal snake retracted so it didn’t obscure my vision out of the front window. Julie had an identical set of controls to Tony. It must have been a pilot and co-pilot setup.

  “I am trying to get us out of here. Give me a moment.” Tony shouted back to me.

  “Have you tried pressing this button?” Julie asked.

  She was pointing to a glowing button on her touchscreen. They both had similar controls to me but theirs also had two joysticks which I assumed control the ship, if we could get it into the air.

  The button that Julie pointed at read ‘Manual Control’. She pressed it.

  The button changed colour from red to green.

  Nothing happened.

  Looking down at my screen I saw a group of four approach the ship from the right.

  “I think they are about to come aboard.” I yelled and leaned forward to try and see them through the front window.

  The rest of the crew were stood in front of us. They were as confused as us, just standing there not sure what to do in this situation.

  Then, without warning we lifted into the air.

  The ship jumped up, raising fifty metres above the deck of the ship in a heartbeat.

  “I’ve got this.” Julie said. She was controlling the ship with the joy sticks as Tony was still working his way through menus on his screen.

  We jerked left and right as Julie started to get a feel for the responsiveness of the ship. Then she pushed forward and we accelerated with incredible speed.

  I noticed that Tony’s joysticks were moving in unison with Julies. He was trying to catch them but Julie was moving hers around too quickly.

  “Slowdown will you!” Tony asked. “I can’t grab the controls.”

  By this time Julie had navigated us far away from the ship, half a
mile by my estimates, spun us around and set us hovering over the sea. I looked down at the waves below, instantly felt sick and decided to focus on the horizon again. I could see the ship, bobbing up and down in the distance.

  It was strange but I didn’t feel the acceleration, the twists or the turns. I expected to be thrown back into my seat, but I wasn’t. This made quite a bit of sense when I thought about it and I had predicted this behaviour months ago. The gravity drive that was powering this craft didn’t really accelerate us over the ocean like an engine, it moved space around it. Sure, it was complicated, but it turns out my hypothesis was correct.

  We hovered for an entire minute before anyone spoke again.

  “What controls do you have Dom?” Tony asked, trying to twist his head to look up behind him.

  “I seem to be communications.” I replied as I looked down at my panel.

  The radar view had zoomed out when we moved. Our craft was still in the middle of a top down view but it was much smaller and a little green dot appeared in front of us, presumably the ship.

  There was also a little arrow in the top right of the screen that pointed forward. I pressed it and the glass dome in front of us changed to have a translucent display of the radar image. Now everyone could see it.

  “Leave that there! I like that.” Julie shouted back at me.

  “Will do.” I shouted back down.

  We didn’t have to shout; this machine was silent as it hung in the air but the excitement of the moment was getting the better of us.

  “Hold on.” Tony said as pulled the toggle on his arm rest. “I’m coming up there to you.”

  Once again, a black snake appeared above our heads, slivered its way down into Tony’s lap, attached itself to the control panel and rose up, tucking the metal plate back into its gap in the ceiling.

  Tony jumped to his feet and disappeared through the hole next to Julie.

  Moments later his head appeared at my feet.

  “Make way.” He said, indicating that he wanted the seat to my right.

  I slid my legs over and he climbed up and into the seat, pulling the tab in the arm rest as he did.

  This time, instead of the snake appearing with a control panel, the wall next to him fell over onto his lap and a pair of shoulder pads grew out of the top of the chair to hold him in place.

  I could see the shock on his face as he felt the leather grab around his neck and pull him into the chair.

  His control panel was a mixture of mine and Julies. He had a large touchscreen system that displayed a range of information and a small joystick to control something.

  Dotted around his screen were numbers of different colours next to icons representing ammunition. How many bullets, missiles and flares the plane had along with battery power and a few other numbers I didn’t recognise. It was all a bit confusing and it would take time to figure out which number corresponded to which weapon.

  Tony also had a copy of my radar screen. He tapped the green dot that represented the boat and the screen read out the message ‘Target Locked’ with a five second count down.

  “Aargh!” We both screamed and Julie jumped out of her seat at the sound.

  There was another button underneath that said, ‘Manual Override’. I reached over and pressed it but the timer kept counting down.

  Behind Tony something moved. A large helmet slid itself over his head. I could just make out his shock before his face disappeared.

  Tony grasped the joystick in front of him just as the timer hit zero.

  From the right side of the craft a missile launched and zoomed past the glass dome, towards the container ship leaving a plume of smoke behind it.

  “Cool.” I heard Tony whisper from inside the headset. He moved the joystick one way, then another and I saw the trail of the missile move in the same direction. “I can control the missile.”

  Looking out of the window the missile was doing loops above the ship. I glanced back at Tony and saw that his screen was flashing ten percent and dropping fast. It was the fuel for the missile.

  “Tony, go up, your out of fuel!” I yelled into his ear.

  The missile took off, straight up into the sky, moments later it exploded into a ball of fire like a scary firework display.

  The headrest retracted and Tony’s eyes were wide with enjoyment.

  “That’s one hell of a ride!” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “I think we should figure things out before someone gets hurt.” Julie suggested.

  “Good idea!” both Tony and I replied.

  I had all kinds of screens in front of me.

  The radar was useful. Tapping on a dot I could label it as friendly or enemy and tell the computer if it was to be ‘Destroyed’ or ‘Captured’. I could also control the projection onto the glass dome and could switch to an augmented reality screen. This meant that it would outline things in either red or green and display information like the name, size and distance. Yellow targets were unknown and as I zoomed in on the container ship, I labelled the crew friendly. I didn’t want to find out what happened if they were labelled anything else.

  “Put the radar screen back up.” Julie commanded.

  “What’s wrong with this overlay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what it is, just a bunch of blobs and numbers.”

  From her point of view the information wouldn’t have made much sense I suppose. It was calibrated for my seating position, no clever eye tracking, holotable technology here.

  I put the radar view back up and then Tony interrupted my concentration. He had found the controls to the machine guns and was shooting into the waves like a mad man.

  “Tony seems to be enjoying himself, how are you doing down there?” I asked Julie.

  “Pretty good.” She replied. “Would you mind if we went for a quick spin? I have changed a few settings and I want to give them a try.”

  “Go for it!” I said, sitting back and enjoying the view out of the window. There was nothing but sea and sky.

  We zoomed forward once again, straight over the VisionTech container ship that had floated away. We moved at fantastic speeds. I had no point of reference, but we must have hit a thousand miles an hour in only a couple of seconds. Again, there were no forces on my body, nothing pushing me back. It was like being in a simulator, the machine felt static and the whole world moved around us, like the window was just another screen.

  Julie flew the ship high into the sky and then back down low to the sea, we moved slowly and then fast. We went into spins, vertical climbs and backwards at some points. She was really enjoying herself.

  Luckily for her the gravity drive kept the ship stable. I hated rollercoasters and this was pushing things to the extreme, if it wasn’t for the counter effects, Julie would have had my stomach contents over her.

  All of a sudden, my control panel zoomed out and five little dots, coloured in yellow were moving towards us at speed. A little icon appeared in the bottom left of the screen that looked like a phone. I pressed it and a face appeared on my screen.

  Frank was never a good-looking guy, he was scary with his battle-scared, muscly face, and when he suddenly appears in front of you, you naturally jump and let out a tiny scream.

  “What is it?” Julie asked.

  I pressed the button that projected the face onto the glass dome. Julie let out a small yelp too.

  “Dom! Put that bird back on the ship and get out now. You have gone far enough.” Frank said. I could see the veins in his head bulging. “I don’t want to blow up that plane, but I will.”

  “That’s impossible!” Julie exclaimed. “I watched a tree decapitate him.”

  Thinking about it, this wasn’t the first time I had seen Frank suffer a terrible fate in the past couple of days. I thought he was just lucky, or that someone in the facility was healing him. This last time his head was separated from his body, there should be no recovery from that, and yet here he was.

  “Frank. You’re alive!�
� I pointed out, confused.

  “Is that a threat?” He yelled back. “You have one minute to give that plane back otherwise we will blow you out of the sky.”

  Frank ended communication and his face was replaced with the radar image of his fleet of five planes approaching our position, quickly.

  “Do you think we can get away?” Tony asked.

  “I don’t know, but we are dead if we don’t try.” Julie responded.

  Tony looked at me and then pressed a button that put the headset back over his face.

  “Floor it!” I instructed.

  Once again we shot off at incredible pace across the ocean, kicking up spray as we glided over the waves.

  The five dots kept pace with us but weren’t catching. This went on for a few seconds then the screen filled with more dots, fifteen, three appearing out of the sides of each plane.

  “Missiles!” I yelled, not sure what to do about it.

  “Tony took control of the machine guns and started to fire behind us.

  “It’s an impossible shot!” He shouted as he tried to shoot them out of the sky. I could see the ark of bullets on my screen and through sheer luck he sliced into three of the oncoming missiles. On my screen three little red dots went black and faded away.

  I tapped on the remaining missiles and a menu appeared. There were four options, ‘Flairs’, ‘Lasers’, ‘EMP’ and ‘Jam’. Flairs and lasers were greyed out but EMP and Jam were available.

  I knew an EMP or electromagnetic pulse fired a burst of radiation into the surrounding area which could kill all electronics. I hovered my finger over that button but hesitated, if it could take out their weapons then it might also take out ours and we might need them.

  Instead I pressed the button labelled ‘Jam’.

  A loading bar appeared over the nearest missile and it quickly filled to one hundred percent at which point the missile disappeared. One of the rear facing cameras caught the action and I watched the missile dive into the ocean and explode.

  I pressed the button again and the next closest missile did the same, exploding the moment it hit the sea.

  By the time I had done the third one I realised there were too many missiles, the reload on this jamming signal took too long and the missiles were getting closer. There were nine left and a timer on the screen indicated that we had ‘Twenty seconds until impact”.