Jack’s eyes brightened. “Really?” he said in disbelief. “They’re giving me my ship back? Just like that?”
“It would seem so, sir,” Dan replied. “Now, please, walk with me. There is no time to waste.”
“But… that doesn’t make any sense,” Jack said to himself as he hurried alongside Dan. “Why go through all that trouble to steal it just to turn around and hand it back to me? Why can’t I sense my ship anymore? And why are your eyes glowing red?”
“My eyes? I’m afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. My eyes are always this color,” Dan said as he ushered Jack onto the teleportation platform.
“Pretty sure they’re not,” replied Jack as Dan broke open the touchscreen interface to the teleporter and attached a strange device to the circuit board underneath. “What the heck are you doing?”
“I am hacking into the teleporter control panel.”
“Um… why?”
“Not only am I required to hide the log of where we’re going,” Dan said, “but I am teleporting us to an unauthorized location outside of the approved network of this platform.”
An uneasy feeling came over Jack. “Dan… are you, like, kidnapping me?”
“My apologies, sir,” said Dan as he closed the control panel and hit the activation sequence. “I’m afraid I have no choice in the matter.”
Before Jack could do anything, he and Dan had been teleported to a dark room, filled with hanging cables and cobbled-together computers. It was lit by the flickering of a multitude of salvaged visual displays, showing surveillance feeds from throughout the city, all mounted around a high-backed swivel chair. Jack looked around the room, unnerved.
“Dan, where are we?” Jack asked.
“Welcome…” said Heckubus as he swiveled around in the chair, stroking what appeared to be a rather agitated looking sewer-ferragut. “…to my diabolical den of deviousness!”
Just then, a thunder sound effect played, and there was a strobe of light, imitating the flash of lightning.
“Oy, really?” said Scallywag, stepping up from behind Jack. “As if tha name weren’t lame enough, ya add effects ta go with it?”
“Excuse me,” sneered Heckubus. “When you have your own secret evil lair, you can do what you choose to with it! I happen to prefer thunder and lightning. It has an appropriately ominous effect, in my opinion.”
“Heckubus? Scallywag?” Jack said, looking at the two of them in surprise. “What’s going on?”
“Short version,” said Scallywag with a frown. “There be Deathlords in tha capitol, and they’re tryin’ ta kill us all.”
More thunder and lightning.
“See what I mean about appropriately ominous?” said Heckubus.
Jack blinked at Scallywag in disbelief. “Deathlords? Here?” he said. “Whoa, waitaminute… would someone please explain this to me like I have no clue what anyone is talking about?”
“With pleasure,” said Heckubus, getting to his feet as the sewer-ferragut he was holding screeched angrily and ran off. “But before we begin, I’d just like to say that I am glad we were able to get to you before any undo harm befell your person. I was worried you might have been in similar peril to our dim-witted red friend here.”
“What’s he talking about?” Jack asked Scallywag.
“Rust-bucket saved me jimmies,” Scallywag admitted, begrudgingly. “Group o’ Royal Guards had me dead ta rights. If he hadn’t shown up when he did, I’d be right proper room temperature by now.”
“Royal Guards tried to murder you?” said Jack, shocked.
“Indeed,” stated Heckubus, calling up Scallywag’s Peacekeeper alert on one of the many visual displays in the room. “They’ve branded him Imperial Enemy #1 and have every law enforcement agency in the city looking for him. All former warrants and charges against our pirate compatriot have been re-instated, and his status has now been upgraded to ‘wanted: dead or alive.’ I assume the emphasis there is on the ‘dead’ part. But it goes beyond than just him. An IIA agent was sent to track me down and destroy me. The Professor has been arrested for treason and he, along with Grohm, are scheduled to be exiled to the Nexus. “
Jack was rendered speechless by the news. “The Professor?” he said when he finally recovered. “Treason?”
“Yes, and espionage, and a host of other ludicrous charges,” Heckubus said. “So you can see why I thought you might be in grave peril, considering you were the only member of our little group who seemed to be walking around freely at the moment. From here I was able to monitor your movements through my hack of the city’s surveillance network. Since neither Scallywag nor I could attempt to contact you without being noticed, I had to take control of your attaché android.” Heckubus approached Dan and looked at him with approval. “By the way, excellent work, minion. You please me greatly.”
“It is my pleasure to serve, Lord and Master Heckubus,” Dan replied.
“Heckubus!” Jack shrieked. “Did you seriously reprogram my robotic best friend into your lackey?”
“Certainly,” said Heckubus. “After all, I needed some way to bring you to us safely.”
“But you don’t need to enslave Dan! He’s already on our side!”
“Well, of course I don’t need to enslave him,” Heckubus replied.
“Un-minion him,” Jack demanded. “You un-minion Dan right this instant.”
“But—”
“Heckubus!”
Heckubus sighed. “Very well,” he said, before muttering, “I finally find a competent minion and have to give him up. I can never catch a break.”
Dan’s eyes suddenly changed back to their original color and his body jerked as his programming returned to normal. “Oh, my,” he said. “I must say, that was a rather uncomfortable experience. I’ve never had my programming completely by-passed before.”
“Yes, my enslavement virus is quite diabolical, is it not?” said Heckubus, proudly.
“A most impressive feat of programming, sir,” Dan replied. “I was completely powerless against it.”
“Oh, stop,” said Heckubus, coyly. “But seriously, tell me more about how impressive it is...”
“Can we feed your ego later, dude?” asked Jack. “Just, please, tell me what the heck is going on? Why has the whole Empire turned against us?”
“That is the question, isn’t it?” replied Heckubus. “And it would seem the pirate may have stumbled upon that answer.”
Jack turned to Scallywag. “You found something out?” he asked.
“I discovered who was behind those assassins ya asked me ta look into,” Scallywag said. “It were tha Maguffyn Corporation.”
Jack’s eyes widened in shock. “You gotta be kidding me!”
“They’ve been rounding up prisoners and turning them inta killers using some freaky kind o’ Deathlord technology,” Scallywag said. “I found a secret lab where they were breeding these worm things that burrow inta people’s skulls and take control o’ them.”
“Worms?” Jack said. “Holy crap! You’re telling me the Deathlords are the ones behind the brain worms?”
“Oy, ya knew about this?” asked Scallywag.
“I’ve been seeing them everywhere! But I didn’t know anything about them other than they seemed to be controlling people against their will,” Jack replied. “But now it all makes sense! The Deathlords have been using these worms to infect people and make them carry out their bidding! That’s why everyone is turning against us! While the actual Deathlords divert people’s attention with their attacks, they have a secret army trying to bring the Empire down from the inside. And now that they’ve infected Anna, they’re poised to strike the killing blow that’ll put an end to the only thing in this universe big enough to stop them!”
“Wait… come again?” said Scallywag. “The Princess has worms?”
“Well, now,” said Heckubus, “that is a rather unexpected development. Yet it explains so much. Zarrod did something to her which gave him contro
l over her actions on the Ghost Planet. We never did figure out what that was. If he infected her with one of these worms, that may have been how he forced her to cooperate with him.”
“So that’s why Anna instituted that Protocol 13 thing when we got back,” Jack said. “She must have thought something could be wrong with her, but she wasn’t sure what.”
“Indeed,” said Heckubus. “Now that we’re aware of how the Deathlords are operating, we must assume the Princess, Director Casgor, and the Maguffyn Corporation have been compromised, along with the Royal Guards and the Peacekeepers. In fact, it’s probably best just to assume everyone is against us. Luckily, I’m quite used to that exact scenario!”
“Wait, so… you’re helping?” asked Jack. “I thought you were too busy trying to take over whatever?”
“Yes, well, my plans have changed,” replied Heckubus. “For my own reasons, which I shall not get into at the moment, let us just say our interests have become aligned. You asked me to join you? Well, congratulations, Earthman. Consider me ‘joined.’”
“Awesome!” said Jack, brightening up at the first bit of good news he’d heard all day. “I’m going to need your help if we’re going to pull this off.”
Scallywag raised an eyebrow. “Pull what off?” he asked, looking like he was afraid of what the answer might be.
“We’re going to kidnap Anna,” Jack replied.
Scallywag laughed, until he saw Jack was serious. “Are ya daft?” Scallywag asked. “Ya can’t just kidnap the Princess of the bloody Regalus Empire! Discounting the fact that it’s impossible ta get even close enough to her ta do so, ya’d still have ta get past the Royal bloody Vanguard!”
“We don’t have to get close to her,” Jack said. “We just need to get my ship back! It has her tagged, remember? We can just teleport her on board and then fly away. None of the orbital defenses are going to shoot at us as long as she’s on the ship.”
“Yes, that is a good plan, Earthman,” Heckubus said. “Unfortunately, it may be more difficult to get to your ship than it is to get to the Princess at the moment.”
Heckubus called up a security camera feed from the hangar housing Jack’s ship. For the first time, Jack saw the cannons that were ravaging it. “Oh, no!” he cried. “What are they doing to my ship?”
“It is unclear,” Heckubus said. “But I can only assume that whatever it is, it’s not good.”
That must be what’s keeping me from mentally connecting with it, Jack thought as he studied the screen.
“The ship is also being guarded by the Maguffyn Corporation’s latest security-bot models, which I have not devised a way to remotely control yet, and all locks and encryption in the hangar are through their proprietary algorithms. I can, of course, figure out ways to hack them, but it will take some time.”
“We don’t have time,” said Jack. “Anna is going to break the Great Seal of the portgate network today. And if the Deathlords want her to do that, that means we have to do everything in our power to stop it from happening. We have to get my ship back before she’s able to portgate away.”
“Hmmmmm,” said Heckubus. “There is another possibility.”
“What?”
“The Professor,” Heckubus said. “He was a Maguffyn employee. He may be able to give me the information I need to quickly get us past the safeguards put in place around your ship.”
“Oy, in case ya forgot, robot, the Professor is currently in secure lock-up in the bloody Peacekeeper Tower,” Scallywag said. “There’s no gettin’ near him.”
“Peacekeeper Tower? Pah! Mere child’s play,” said Heckubus, dismissively.
“Ya really expect me ta believe ya got a plan ta break tha Professor out o’ one of the most secure supertowers in the bloody capitol?”
“As a matter of fact, I have eight of them,” replied Heckubus. “What self-respecting evil genius doesn’t have multiple brilliant plans for breaking out of prison?”
“Sounds good to me!” said Jack. “So, how do we get started?”
“Oh, no,” said Scallywag. “I want no bloody part of this insanity!”
“Dude, don’t get all ‘I want no part of this’ on me now,” said Jack. “We need you! We’re a team!”
“We ain’t no bloody team!” snapped Scallywag. “Fer once in me life, I had a clean slate! Now I’m even more wanted than I was before, all because I agreed ta go against me better judgment and help you out! I’m sick and tired of gettin’ dragged inta these crazy suicidal plans o’ yours! Ya want ta break inta the Peacekeeper Tower and kidnap the bloody Regalus Princess? Fine. But ya can do it without me!”
Jack scowled at Scallywag. “Scally, whether you like it or not, you’re going to help us do this,” Jack insisted. “If you want any hope of getting off this planet alive, anyway.”
Scallywag snorted. “Was that a threat, lad?”
“At this very moment, your only option to make it out of this city without being captured or killed is with the help of Heckubus and me,” said Jack. “How long can you evade a city-wide manhunt without Heckubus’s help? How do you expect to get off the planet without my ship? If there’s one thing you excel at, Scally, it’s saving your own butt. So you tell me – what are your odds like if you go it alone right now?”
Scallywag frowned.
“And if I have to threaten you, just in case all that other stuff wasn’t convincing enough, then let me put it this way…” continued Jack. “Either you join the team, or I’ll turn you in to the Peacekeepers myself and leave you here on Omnicron to rot. So what’s it gonna be?”
“I gotta say,” grumbled Scallywag. “I don’t like this ruthless side o’ you, lad.”
“And I don’t like having to always force you into doing the right thing,” Jack replied. “So for once, stop being such a selfish jerk and be there for your friends when they need you!”
Scallywag’s face softened before he rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he muttered. “Let’s go stage a prison break and kidnap a Princess. Why not?”
“Oh, goodie!” cried Heckubus as he clapped his hands together. “Neither is going to be quite as satisfying as blowing up a small planet, but still, prison breaks and kidnappings are the type of things evil geniuses live for!”
“Right,” replied Scallywag. “So out o’ these eight plans o’ yours, which one is the least stupidly awful?”
“I can assure you, they are all equally brilliant, you twit,” Heckubus replied. “But they all have the same challenge facing them, which is that once the guards discover the Professor is not in his cell, they will institute a lock-down which will impede our escape. I’m going to need to devise a way to trick the prison security into thinking the Professor is still locked up so that we do not raise any alarms until we are well on our way to recapturing Jack’s ship.”
Jack’s face brightened. “Holy crap!” he said. “I think I might know a way to do that!” Jack immediately dug into his pocket and pulled out his datapad, calling up his contact list. When Heckubus peeked over his shoulder to see whom Jack was calling, the robot nodded his head with approval.
“Hmmmm. Interesting,” Heckubus mused. “I think I see where you’re going with this…”
“Come on, pickuppickuppickuppickup…” muttered Jack as he waited for his call to be answered. Then, the video image of Fabu appeared on his screen.
“’Allo?” answered Fabu.
“Fabu! Thank God!” said Jack. “I need your help! It's an emergency!”
“A fashion emergency?” Fabu asked.
Jack and Heckubus glanced at each other. “Yes,” they both lied.
“Say no more!” said Fabu. “Fabulousness is to the rescue!”
Chapter 54
Scallywag glared at the entrance to the Peacekeeper Tower like one would a snarling beast set to tear him to shreds. “This is the worst plan ever,” he grumbled.
“C’mon, dude,” said Jack over Scallywag’s hidden ear communicator. “You say that about all our plans.”
“Silence, fool!” came Heckubus’s voice. “Have you not yet learned to appreciate my genius?”
“Kinda hard ta appreciate a plan where I’m the stinkin’ bait,” Scallywag growled.
“I wouldn’t have saved your worthless life if I did not intend to use it!” said Heckubus. “Now get on with it! We haven’t much time.”
Scallywag sighed before taking his earpiece out and tossing it away. He walked into the lobby of the tower, looking around with apprehension at all the uniformed officers and security-bots roaming around. He slowly forced himself to walk toward the Sergeant of the Watch’s desk. The Sergeant barely glanced up from his console. “Are you here to turn yourself in?” the Sergeant asked with a chuckle.
“Actually,” muttered Scallywag. “That’s exactly what I’m here for.”
The Sergeant looked back up, his eyes growing wide when he realized who was standing before him. As though he couldn’t trust his own memory, the Sergeant looked back at the alert notice on his screen containing Scallywag’s picture, the words Imperial Enemy #1 flashing in bright red letters at the bottom of it. The Sergeant slowly turned back and looked at Scallywag, looked back to his screen, and then back at Scallywag.
“Oh, fer tha love of…” said Scallywag with exasperation. “Yes, I’m that bloke. Now get on with it!”
The Sergeant immediately hit a button on his console. The scanner from his desk emerged, scanning Scallywag and causing an alarm to blare as Scallywag’s image popped up on every monitor and holo-display in the lobby. All the Peacekeepers in the room stopped what they were doing and surrounded Scallywag, their weapons aimed right for him. Scallywag raised his hands in surrender.
“Easy now, gents,” Scallywag said as a Peacekeeper came up behind him and cuffed his hands with electro-restraints. “I’m here ta play nice.”
“Scallywag the Red, you are under arrest for breaking and entering, destruction of government property, domestic terrorism, and murder of members of the Royal Guard,” the Sergeant said angrily. “Your Imperial citizenship has been revoked, granting you no rights within Imperial Space. You are to be held in a secure cell until such time as your punishment is determined by a Royal Judiciary. Do you understand these charges?”
Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army (Earthman Jack Space Saga Book 2) Page 61
