“We found a spot,” the controller announced in a celebratory manner.
The navigator said, “Let me mark it off and send the coordinates and we are a go.”
The wave of excitement rushing through the room was drowning Whitney. She had hoped they wouldn’t find a spot to shoot the laser or that they would have been stopped by space pirates.
Roxelle announced the two words Whitney had anticipated, but feared. “It’s showtime.”
Whitney’s hand waved left and right, inching ever closer to the computer screen. She tapped the launch button.
Roxelle screamed, “Let’s go. Hit the fucking red button.”
Whitney’s hand slid down and her index and middle finger brushed over the button. The computer screen flashed and an error code popped up. Whitney exited out of the screen before anyone saw.
To call it a laser would be incorrect. A door slid open and a rectangular black object extended from the compartment on the outside of the craft. Six beams sprang from the black object and hurtled toward the shield. They prodded and probed, trying to weaken the rectangular area in the shield.
The lasers traced the area, over and over, before retreating into space. The brilliant beams bent and broke, consolidating their strength and forming into a compact square of pure energy and power. Everyone waited with open jaws for the laser to rush back toward the shield and create the opening.
The rainbow-colored mass of lasers did something wholly unexpected. They zipped off into the dark void, disappearing from eyesight within a blink. The crew looked around at each other aghast, except for one person. Whitney was smiling on the inside.
“What the fuck happened?” Roxelle bellowed.
Whitney played along. “I don’t know. I didn’t change anything, I swear.” She tried her best, but couldn’t contain herself any longer and unleashed a sneaky smile.
Roxelle instantly picked up on it and drew her blaster. “You fucking bitch. I trusted you.”
The alien took four long steps and was on Whitney. She shoved the barrel of the gun in her face. “I ought to fucking blast you.”
Mimick called from behind her. “Roxelle, you do it and we all die. We can escape on the breakaway ship with the diamonds if we hurry.”
Roxelle pulled the gun back and Whitney’s facial features curved up. The alien brought the butt of the gun down on Whitney’s forehead, erasing her brief smile and causing an immediate lump on her head. Whitney couldn’t tell if she was looking out the viewport or if the streaking stars were just strange visions.
The leader holstered her gun, curled her right fingers into a fist, and rained down two punches that connected with Whitney’s cheek and nose. Blood spurted from her nostrils as Roxelle wound up again. A silver, robotic arm grabbed Roxelle’s shoulder and spun her around before she could unleash another punch.
Mimick said, “We have to go. Now.”
Roxelle stared at Whitney, her dark, alien eyes squinting. “I will kill you. That much, I can promise you.”
Mimick and Roxelle took off with the navigator and controller. Whitney fell out of her chair, dizzy. She planted her arm on the floor and braced herself as a rush of colors streaked into her vision and her balance threatened to give out. She waited a few moments. The shrill whistle of an alarm went off. Red lights flashed on the walls and Whitney finally made it back to her feet.
The automatic door sensed her body weight and opened. She stepped into a cabin that had been turned upside down. The table had been knocked on its side and the chairs were thrown about, with hardly any still upright. Red lights flashed on the cabin walls too as she searched for her husband.
Whitney had the crazy thought run into her head and camp out. She thought that Trent had been nabbed by the crew and forced to go with them. Two more beings ran by, presumably headed for the back of the ship.
Whitney searched hopelessly around the room in vain. It was like checking the same special hiding spot numerous times, expecting something to appear magically. She collapsed to the ground as the totality of the situation hit her like a sledgehammer.
Panicked, incomplete ideas streaked through her head. Could she shift into a dragon and fly home from here? Could she take control of the spaceship and get them home? Could Trent overtake the crew and come back and save her?
Nothing formed into a well-reasoned idea. The most logical thought kept creeping back in, uninvited.
She was going to die alone, a thousand light years away from home. That was it. No parties or parades this time, unless it was in memoriam. She gave in and images of her friends and family flooded into her mind.
A voice rang out. “Whitney. Is that you?” It was deeper than you would expect from an angel, but angelic none-the-less.
She scrambled to her feet and rushed over to her husband. She almost knocked him over with a giant bear hug. She had finally found her man, but the problems had just begun as she focused on the blinking red lights.
He inspected her battered, lumpy face with a look of horror. “What happened to you?”
“I got into a little scrap with Roxelle. You should see her.”
The sirens started ringing and added to the chaos as the space vessel unexpectedly rocked back and forth. Whitney and Trent tumbled to the ground and a chair slid across the floor and smacked into the couple. The rocking stopped but the alarms were still going crazy.
Whitney scrambled back to her feet and tried to formulate a plan. “Let’s go to the control room. See if we can figure something out.”
She and Trent raced up front and entered the navigation room. Every control unit was flashing with lights of multiple colors and the computer screens read, ‘System Error.’ She hadn’t a clue where to begin. It didn’t seem likely that her knowledge of coding would save them now.
She entertained the thought of shifting into a dragon again and soon realized it wouldn’t work. Without any protection from the deep space elements, even the mighty dragon would die immediately. She turned to her man, “Any ideas?” She saw an expression on Trent’s face that she hadn’t seen. Ever. Fear. He was normally calm and collected during high-pressure situations. Perhaps he was coming to grips with the fact that they might be lost in space. “Honey?”
“Huh. Sorry. My brain is churning right now but I’m not making any butter. Sorry.”
Whitney sat down in the navigation unit. She attempted to get into the software coding. No dice. She couldn’t figure out how to get the keyboard unlocked without the passcode. She wanted to create a quick program to run a multitude of codes, but needed to unlock the keyboard. Time and luck seemed to have run out. Whitney tried to take solace in the fact that she had prevented her ghostly friends on Soro Exxo from being enslaved by a murderous group of rebels.
Trent stood like a statue with his mouth sealed shut. Whitney wanted to say something to reassure him, anything, but nothing came to mind. Just when all hope seemed lost, she felt a buzzing sensation in her left forearm.
She pulled up her sleeve, peeled back the protective layer of dead skin. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets. The screen read, ‘OZZIE.’
She hurriedly swiped the screen and heard a familiar voice. “Whitney? Do you copy?”
She moved the screen close to her mouth. “Yes. Yes. Trent and I are still alive.”
“Where are you?”
“We are still on the spaceship, Cavum Nigrum.”
“Which part?”
“Which part, what do you mean?”
“The craft has broken into two pieces. The front end is still just outside Soro Exxo and the back end rushed off into space.”
“I can see Soro Exxo and we feel like we aren’t moving.”
“Great. That means we can get to you fast. I can hear the alarms in the background so we will make haste. Give me just a little bit of time to get a rescue party together. Fret not, we will get you out of there safely.”
“Thank you.”
Ozzie must have hung up because the signal went dead.
Whitney turned to Trent and wrapped her arms around him. “We’re going to be alright.”
She noticed the blood working its way back into Trent’s pale face. He said, “I love you.”
“I love you more than anything.” The adrenaline had started to wear off and she felt throbbing pain in her jaw, forehead and nose. She hoped the doctors on Soro Exxo would be able to help her.
They waited for what seemed like an eternity. Actually, it was only about ten minutes.
Whitney watched as a rectangular section of the shield slid open and a small silver space shuttle cruised through the opening. Whitney’s armScreen buzzed again.
She swiped it to answer the call from Ozzie. He said, “We are on the way. We are going to need you to find an exit door in the cabin. Once we locate that, we can secure the SpaceWalk apparatus. After we attach that to your craft, you can walk from your vessel to ours.”
“Sounds simple enough.” As soon as she said it, Whitney thought she had jinxed herself. They ran into the cabin and found an exit door. She relayed the information back to Ozzie.
Her nails dug into Trent’s bicep as the couple watched the shuttle get into position. The white SpaceWalk sprang out of the side of the shuttle and looked like an accordion unfolding. The rectangular safety tunnel made contact with the Cavum Nigrum and Whitney felt the slight bump to the left.
Ozzie gave the signal that it was safe to enter and Trent put his shoulder to the door to thrust it open. The damn thing didn’t even budge.
A monotone voice came over the intercom speakers. “The breathing vessel will cease working in two dantamores. Please exit for maximum safety.”
“What the hell is a dantamore?” Whitney started punching away on her armScreen and did a few quick calculations. “Holy shit, that’s a little more than four minutes. Less now.”
Trent kept using his body as a battering ram and Whitney started to get angry. She said, “Call me a bitch.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Whitney explained, “Make me mad and I can get that door open. Tell me something you don’t like about me.”
“You’re almost perfect. But when you chew your food with your mouth open, it’s kind of gross.”
The internal fire sparked. “I don’t chew with my mouth open.”
“Oh wait, that’s right. That’s not you. That’s my other girlfriend on the side.”
She cocked her head to the side in a defensive manner. “What the fuck are you talking about?” The embers stoked and blue flames gathered.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, and since we are about to die, I’ll have a clean conscience.”
The monotone voice came over the speaker again. “Point five dantamores until the breathing chamber is empty. Evacuate now.”
“I should kill you right now. Who’s the bitch? Say her name. It’s fucking Tara, isn’t it?” She felt the scales start forming on her right hand and a wake cascaded up to her shoulder in a silver wave of reptilian fury. “I know you two have had something going on since I saved you two helpless babies in Dreamland.”
The space suit stretched as Whitney’s body expanded, cutting off circulation. Her legs widened and threatened to tear the suit to shreds, but the amazing material kept stretching. The suit was about to kill her if expanded any more. She angled her body a touch to the left and raised her leg. She planted the bottom of her powerful dragon foot against the door.
The door launched into the SpaceWalk, but Whitney kept expanding into dragon form. She worried that she might bust out one of the viewports or the suit would choke her to death. She knew one thing, she definitely couldn’t fit into the walkway. She tried to calm down.
“Were you serious about that stuff?” She had to know.
Trent smirked and looked at the floor. “No. I knew I had to get you riled up. I knew what you were doing so I played into it.”
The fire still burned. It was much harder to get it to go away once it had been started. She thought about frosty waterfalls and the Atlantic Ocean in winter, replete with iceberg caps. Several more alarms went off and didn’t help Whitney to relax.
She sucked in a chill through her nose and the magical breath filtered through her body, slowly extinguishing the fire. But would it take too long? She felt her body reverting to human size, but not fast enough.
She turned to Trent. “Go now. I’ll meet you if I get small enough, but we shouldn’t both die. Just go.”
Trent objected, “I can’t leave you. If you’re going to die, then so am I.”
“There’s only like twenty seconds or so left and I don’t want my son to grow up without parents. You’ll be fine as a single dad. Just go.”
“I love you.” Trent stood still, staring at his wife. She could tell he didn’t want to leave her, but he hesitantly turned his back and entered the walkway.
Whitney closed her eyes and focused on her son. His calm face. His soft skin. His bright blue eyes. Putting his winter jacket on as the little boy shivered. Coldness streaked through her body as the monotone voice sounded again. “Evacuate Immediately. Evacuate immediately.”
She opened her eyes, and much to her surprise, she was in full human form. She ran and dove for the opening and crawled frantically as fast as she could to get to the other shuttle. She crawled through the darkness and rammed her head into a solid object.
She heard a voice, “What the hell?”
She recognized the voice and stood up. She reached out and caressed the face. She kissed the man who had been coming back to rescue her. Luckily, Whitney was no damsel in distress and could handle her own. She kissed his dry lips in the dark tunnel. They shared a brief moment together and continued moving through the SpaceWalk.
Colors began to form as Whitney broke through the end of the tunnel and emerged into the rescue shuttle. Ozzie stood in front of her with a slight smirk on his face. He looked like a proud father who didn’t want to let on exactly how proud he was.
His tightened lips opened. “Congratulations. Not for the bumps and bruises on your face, don’t worry we will take care of that, but for achieving success on the mission. When we saw that awful, terrible spacecraft show up, we assumed you two had failed.”
“How come you didn’t send us a message to find out what was going on until the very end?”
“I didn’t want to blow your cover, so to speak. I assumed they might be monitoring your devices. Once I saw the craft breakaway into two pieces, I knew I had to try to get a hold of you.”
“Why didn’t you just text? Nobody would have heard.”
“Because, as I said, I thought they might be monitoring your devices to see who you were in contact with.”
Whitney realized it was a stupid question, but her scrambled mind wasn’t making very much sense right now. “Luckily for us, they never checked our screens.” The totality of the entire experience hadn’t fully hit Whitney yet. She was still running on artificial energy and a delirious mind.
She hugged Ozzie. “Thank you for getting us out of there. What are you going to do with that thing?”
“We will probably bring it inside and study as much as we can from it. They might have some technology on that craft that we don’t know about. I’d love to be able to find out the program they ran for the laser.”
Whitney smiled. “I might be able to help you out with that. It almost cost me my life, but I have a proficient understanding of coding and programming now. Not sure how it works exactly, I just know it does.”
“Excellent. And not to worry, I’ll have someone remove those touchscreens from your bodies so you won’t look like a freak when you go home.”
“Aw, I’ve grown fond of this thing. It’s impossible to lose and when I want to know something, I just look down. Maybe we can at least keep them during winter, since it would be easier to conceal with long sleeves.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t a possibility. It’s all or nothing and I’m not sure that all is even a possibility.”
“I was only joking. Is it going to leave a big, nasty, rectangular scar on my arm?”
“It will not. Our surgical proficiency is second to none. There will be no scar whatsoever and that dull patch of dead skin will soon revive and reclaim the zest of life. You have nothing to worry about. It will only leave a mark in your memory.”
The shuttle slipped back into the opening in the shield and hurtled toward land. They landed in a different airfield than the one from which they had taken off. The grassy flatland had several ports for planes, but no terminal. Everyone deplaned, and Ozzie took them to see their friends.
Whitney wondered what had happened to Roxelle.
21
Roxelle
The damaged spacecraft entered the Delemnia Galaxy and a fog of purple gasses blotted out some of the distant stars throughout the dark expanse. Twelve crew members remained and only Roxelle, Boggle, Mimick, Harrins and Oswell had survived from the core group.
Two technicians were assessing the damage to the craft. The navigator and controller were in the Navigation Pit while everyone else paced around the cabin, restless.
Boggle limped back and forth, wincing in pain. “Anybody come up with anything?” She looked from being to being, only to be greeted by silence every time. Her look of pain had been replaced by one of worry, nervous wrinkles appearing on her forehead.
The entire crew had been pushed to the limit and they had nowhere to go. Roxelle sensed a palpable amount of resentment floating through the cabin for not having a backup plan. Backup plans were for losers and Roxelle Idris felt like a big-time loser.
At no point during her lengthy life had she been short of confidence, her pot usually brimming to the top and sometimes overflowing, but never devoid of self-esteem. She still had the diamonds in haul, but she needed to fiind a planet that would knowingly host outlaw fugitives.
The sponsors were part of the Luminary Board and they had direct lines of communication with nearly every planet in the universe. Roxelle needed to find a planet overrun by corruptness that she could exploit. She was glad Mimick had survived and outraged that she had been bested by an earth human.
Cosmic Diamonds (Whitney Powers Paranormal Adventures Book 4) Page 14
