Nate Armstrong and the Death Ray of Sultron

by Mark Lawson

  Nate stood up to confront the barrel of the remaining pirate’s gun. The weapon was leveled strait at his head. As quick as he was he couldn’t outrun a blast from a laser rifle.

  “I’ll splatter your brains all over this cargo bay,” shouted the pirate, “I’ll kill you first and then I’ll kill your friend.”

  Nate looked down the barrel of the gun. He half closed his eyes and turned his head away expecting the weapon to discharge at any time.

  The pirate’s wrinkled finger gripped the trigger and began to squeeze, just as Turg’s large fist came down upon the back of the pirate’s head, knocking him, unconscious, to the floor.

  “Do you think a head like this couldn’t take a few light blows?” he smiled at Nate. “Just so you know, I could have taken them myself.”

  Nate smiled back.

  As Nate and Turg made their way back to the bridge in apparent triumph, far below on the planet Sultron a pair of red eyes stared at a bright green monitor. “General Dargon, an object is approaching the planet. It appears large enough to be a ship.”

  “Destroy it,” came the immediate response, “we can’t afford to take any chances.”

  “Yes Sir,” hissed the obedient soldier. “Firing energy torpedo now.”

  A bright red streak of light flashed through Sultron’s atmosphere on its way towards the Hope.

  Chapter 9: Out of the frying pan

  Nate and Turg chatted casually for the first time since they had met. Turg, in spite of his boast that he could have handled the pirates without Nate’s help, was quite grateful that he had been on board to assist. In fact, Turg was beginning to warm to his new acquaintance, a remarkable accomplishment for someone with Turg’s demeanor.

  “I will leave them where they are until I reach Coretan,” declared Turg as they walked passed the pirate that Nate has strung up from the overhead pipes near the ship’s bridge.

  “Don’t forget the one in the magnetic thingy, he should be feeling quite sick by the time you reach your destination,” Nate reminded Turg. Nate brimmed with pride when he reflected upon the fact that he had taken down a hoard of pirates almost single handedly. If only his friend Sam was here to enjoy the moment with him or to give him a congratulatory slap on the back. Nate savoured the victory for a moment longer before returning his thoughts to his mission. “How long until we reach Sultron?”

  “Not long now,” replied Turg as they stepped onto the bridge.

  Just as Turg settled into the commander’s chair a warning light sounded on his instrument panel. “Brace yourself, we’ve been spotted,” he warned. “We have a torpedo coming our way.”

  Turg spun around in his chair as the holographic image of the great gun appeared before him yet again. Turg reached out for his gloves and slipped them over his huge hands. Nate saw a distant speck grow bigger and bigger at the back of the room. As the object got closer Nate could just make out the shape of a red, glowing missile-like object that was headed straight towards Turg.

  “Reduce magnification,” shouted Turg, and the missile again became a speck at the back of the room.

  “Almost within range, almost there ….. almost there,” Turg muttered to himself.

  “No,” shouted Nate. “Stop, we can use this to our advantage. Can you send all of the power to the shields on the port side and spin the ship so that the pirates’ vessel is between us and the torpedo?”

  “Yes, I can do that,” exclaimed Turg, suddenly realising what Nate had in mind.

  Turg dropped the handles of the huge gun and swung back towards his instrument panel. He quickly waved his hands over the sensors. Nate heard a low hum and felt a gentle burst of energy as the Hope rotated through 90 degrees.

  “Brace yourself!” shouted Turg just moments before the torpedo slammed into the far side of the pirate’s ship, blowing it into millions of pieces. The Hope shook with the impact, but the hull remained intact.

  “We survived, the shield’s held,” shouted Turg triumphantly.

  “Now,” Nate ordered, “head straight for Sultron as fast as you can. Don’t stop until the very last minute, then land.”

  Turg did as he was told. He was not used to following orders, so when he received a directive like the one that Nate had just issued he obeyed without a moment’s thought.

  The Hope plummeted towards the surface of Sultron.

  As the ship entered Sultron’s atmosphere the owner of the eyes that had first detected Nate’s and Turg’s presence reported the result of the torpedo strike. “A direct hit General. A large piece of the craft is falling to the planet’s surface, but confirming the target has been destroyed. Shall I organise a team to investigate the wreckage?”

  “No point if the target has been destroyed,” hissed the General in response.

  Just as Nate had hoped, those who had launched the attack on Turg’s ship from the surface of the planet had mistaken the two ships for a single vessel.

  Continuing their rapid descent towards Sultron, Turg sat calmly in the pilot’s seat. Nate squeezed his hands tight until his fingernails cut into his palms. Through the front visor Nate could see the barren surface of the planet rushing towards the ship. Impact looked inevitable. With what must have only been seconds to spare Turg reached towards the control panel before him and rapidly slowed their descent, leveling out the Hope for a perfect landing.

  “Not bad, hey,” Turg said, congratulating himself.

  “Not bad at all,” confirmed Nate.

  “We’re a bit far from the drop off point and about an hour behind schedule,” confessed Turg. “Do you have time to make it to the facility from here?”

  Nate checked his holograph compass.

  “Five hours until sunrise. We should have been here about an hour ago. If I can run fast enough …. , and the plan reaches to the cliff ….” Nate’s voice trailed off as he muttered to himself. He fixed his eyes on the ceiling for a moment as if performing some complicated mental arithmetic.

  “Yes,” declared Nate. “I still have plenty of time. But how will you escape? We’re here later than we expected, they’ll be scanning the surface. How will I get back to the Hope before sunrise?”

  Turg looked resigned to his fate. “At least we got you to Sultron. You have a chance to complete your mission.”

  Nate looked down in despair. Then he had an idea. “Wait, there is a way that you can get off this planet and avoid the scanners. The Lisuarians will have to turn them off just before sunrise. If you leave it till the last minute you will be able to escape when the scanners are down, but you’ll have to fly against the sunrise and stay on the dark side of the planet as you escape the system.”

  Nate looked pleased with himself for thinking up such a clever plan.

  But his elation did not last too long. Nate looked out of the windows of the Hope at the unforgiving surface of Sultron. If anything, it was even more uninviting than Farden had described. The whole of the surface was bathed in a kind of eerie twilight. The barren surface was pocked with small craters. Every now and then a blast of steam would blow high into the air. Nate spotted a somewhat larger crater. “Its diameter must be about ten or fifteen metres,” thought Nate to himself. Just as he was about to turn his attention to another of the planet’s features, a great burst of steam and liquid blew out of the large hole. Molten rock splashed the window only inches away from Nate’s face. Nate watched closely as it dripped down the pane, cutting a deep gorge in its wake. “Acid,” remarked Turg. “I had better be going before it cuts through the hull.”

  “Yes, you had better go,” responded Nate. He approached the hatch with trepidation. “I have to go out there. How will I survive?” he wondered.

  Chapter 10: The Planet Sultron

  Nate stood in front of the Hope and briefly glanced back at Turg, whose silhouette he could just make out through the darkened window. He thought he saw Turg raise his hand in a farewell gesture, but the glass was dark and it was hard to make out too much detail in the twilight. Whether or
not Turg bade him farewell, Nate raised a gloved hand and waved goodbye to his new friend.

  Nate scanned the barren surface of the planet upon which he now found himself. It was bathed in a kind of dim twilight, still there was sufficient light for Nate to make out the features around him. The surface of the planet looked like melted tar. The ground was black, flat and almost featureless, but for the irregularly sized craters that dotted its surface.

  As Nate studied the barren scenery before him he observed that the plain was pock-marked with craters. The craters were tiny, only 10 or 15 centimetres across, but he could see quite a number of them now that his eyes had adjusted to the low light. Nate bent down to take a closer look at one of the nearby craters. As he did so a narrow stream of gas blew out of the hole and into the planet’s atmosphere. Nate reeled backwards, just avoiding the thin column as it shot past his surprised face.

  “That must be the acidic gasses that Farden warned me about,” he thought as he rolled away to escape the spray that fell from above.

  After picking himself up, Nate scanned the horizon in an effort to get his bearings.

  “Head towards the mountain range,” Nate recalled Farden’s directions. “The facility is on the plateau just beyond the peak.” Nate squinted through the twilight, he was barely able to make out the hazy outline of the distant mountains. He quickly retrieved his holograph compass from his pocket and turned to face the green line that highlighted the path that he was to take. Confident that he knew where he was to go, Nate closed the compass.

  “I only have 4 hours to make it inside the complex before sunrise. Well, no sense in standing here taking in the scenery!”

  Nate checked his watch, both to confirm the time that remained before sunrise and to assure himself that he still had the explosive device that Farden had given him. Its presence strengthened his resolve to complete the mission. Nate cautiously set out towards the looming mountain range.

  “No need to hurry,” he declared to himself. “Just take it easy. Farden says that I can get to the entrance within 3 hours if I just go at a steady pace.”

  The peaks looked to Nate a lot further than 3 hours away, but he reminded himself that he did have the benefit of the suit, which would help him make better time that he would otherwise be able to achieve.

  As Nate took one cautious step after another, Farden’s briefing echoed in his ears: acidic gases from beneath the planet’s surface can burst out of the many geysers that litter the plain at any time. Nate shuddered as he thought of the painful death that he would suffer if he was not careful.

  Nate felt a sudden urge to step to his left. He did so just in time to avoid a narrow jet of acid gas as it blew a fresh, circular crater in the surface of the planet. Acid rain fell to the ground around the fresh crater cutting small, droplet-sized holes in the charred surface.

  Nate stopped, frozen to the surface of Sultron as fear took hold of him. At any time he could be caught by one of the geysers. Even a drop of the deadly acid could cut right though his suit and his body. Nate tried not to imagine himself standing on Sultron with a hole running from the crown of his head, through his chest and out through his stomach. But the images broke into his mind in spite of his efforts to repel them. Nate shuddered.

  “I must go on. I am in as much danger if I stand here as I would be walking towards the compound,” reasoned Nate, in an effort to compel himself to move forward.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Nate took another cautious step towards the mountain range ahead of him. He took another, and then another.

  “Must concentrate,” he muttered to himself, “must concentrate. Watch for geysers, keep away from the acid.”

  As Nate began to move towards his destination his confidence grew. Gradually, he picked up his pace until he was walking quite briskly across the landscape. Nate suddenly stepped sideways to his right, leaving the path that he was following, as if evading an obstacle immediately in front of him. A fresh geyser opened up along the path that he had previously been taking, just where Nate would be had he continued walking in a straight line. Acid sprayed high into the atmosphere.

  Nate was quick, but evidently not quick enough. Spray from the geyser splashed Nate’s suit just as he was taking evasive action.

  Nate felt the suit wince in pain.

  Fortunately for Nate, the spray had only caught a small portion of the suit just at the edge of Nate’s left glove. The acid gases cut right through the glove, leaving a gaping hole where the tip of the little finger had been. Fortunately, the acid hadn’t touched Nate’s skin. The spray had ripped through the glove with such explosive force that it had not been able to adhere to any of the surfaces with which it had come into contact.

  Nate looked at his glove just in time to see the metallic suit move to close the gap left by the spray. Nate shivered. A second later and he would have been vapourised in an instant. This planet was as frightening as it was barren.

  Determined to continue with his mission, Nate steeled himself against the dangers that lay ahead. He glanced at his watch, only three and a half hours left before sunrise, he had to pick up the pace. Nate moved off in the direction of the distant mountains, carefully scanning his path for any sign of danger.

  As he regained some of his confidence, Nate broke into a jog, propelling himself effortlessly across the plain. He was running at a speed that he had never run at before. He focused intently on the surface of the planet, looking for any clue as to where the next stream of acid gases might come. He looked for any movement in the melted rocks that formed the solid surface. He listened for any noises that might give the location of the next geyser away. But mostly, Nate focused all of his efforts on trying to see in his mind’s eye where the next deadly jet might cut through the planet’s crust.

  Expertly, Nate side-stepped to the left and to the right as he escaped jet after deady jet. His movement across the surface of the planet was both deft and frightening. His escapes were becoming narrower and narrower as he picked up his pace from a jog to a run, then to a sprint.

  No human had ever run as fast as Nathaniel Armstrong was now running over the surface of Sultron. The rocks around him became a blur, but still he kept running. Nate was focused on the terrain and what was about to happen around him. His senses were heightened, he could hear the geysers bubbling below the rock, he could hear the crack of the rock as the pressure began to build below him and he could see the rock split and the gases spew into the atmosphere before they actually burst out from the deep, acid reservoirs below.

  Nate had never experienced anything like this before. He was now convinced that Commander Arl was right when he had said that Nate possessed an ability that allowed him to foresee what was about to happen to him before it happened. His mind flashed back to when he was playing soccer in the school yard, he had seen his opponents’ moves before they had executed them. He now knew too that he had heard the school bell signaling lunch in his head moments before the bell had actually sounded. His attention was now so focused, and his senses so attuned to the geysers forming beneath the surface of the planet, that Nate was actually beginning to see them earlier and earlier, giving himself greater warning of where they would erupt and when.

  As he ran along the plains of Sultron, Nate glanced again at his watch. Three hours before sunrise.

  Nate was concentrating so hard on the geysers as he ran along the surface of Sultron that he forgot to pay attention to what other hazards lay in his path. As Nate approached the foot of the mountain range he failed to notice the yawning chasm that had opened up immediately in front of him.

  Suddenly, Nate experienced such a feeling of impending doom that he was shaken from his focus on the geysers and the pools of acid gasses beneath his feet. His stomach leapt into his throat as he looked up and saw the chasm that lay directly ahead. It was at least 25 metres across, and it stretched across the whole of Nate’s field of vision. There was no way around it and, it seemed to Nate, there was no way across it. He peer
ed over the edge and into the darkness. Plumes of thick, acidic smoke swirled around as though it were being stirred by a great, unseen force. Nate realised in an instant that anything falling into that pit would never escape alive. Even if he survived the fall, the sides of the pit towards the bottom were sheer and smooth, worn away by the plumes of smoke that rose from its depths. He could not possibly hope to climb his way out.

  Nate briefly thought about stopping, but there was insufficient time and distance available for him to pull himself up. He was only a matter of metres – a fraction of a second – from the edge of the yawning chasm. If he tried to stop, he would surely skid over the edge and die a very painful death.

  Nate gulped down what he thought might be his final breath and leapt as high as he could into the air.

  He looked down into the acrid smoke as he soared high above the pit. The smoke’s gentle motion seemed almost hypnotic. For all its dangers, it had a certain beauty and calming quality about it.

  Nate lifted his head to look at the other side of the chasm. It was too far away, he couldn’t possibly make it. He strained within his suit to reach the distant edge. Nate’s hands clawed at the air in an effort to propel himself forward. He thrust his legs in front of him hoping to plant them on the other side.

  Time seemed to stop for Nate as he sailed through the air. His glance alternated between the pit beneath him and safety of the other side. “I won’t make it. I won’t make it,” echoed in his head.

  In an effort to reduce the drag of the atmosphere on his body Nate thrust his arms in front of him and tucked his legs behind him. As he flew though the air like a diver falling towards the water he began to hope that perhaps he might now reach the other side. “I might make it after all,” he realised. “I might just make it.”

  As he soared over the lip on the other side of the pit Nate almost leapt for joy within his suit. He tucked his body up like a ball, rolled his head under his legs and sprang to his feet without missing a stride. His landing displayed the same dexterity that he had shown after falling down the stairs at his home just one day earlier.