Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  Taylor was puzzled; he could not seem to open the hatchway. He tried to key in the correct sequence of buttons again just to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake and then stood back, scratching his head. He had a terrible feeling this was a serious problem.

  “Err, anyone any good at hot wiring door mechanisms,” he suggested.

  Eli came over to the door with him. “What’s the problem? Is it stuck?”

  “I don’t think it’s stuck. I think it has been tampered with.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Look at the access panel underneath the door mechanism.” Eli looked down and could see what Taylor meant. The panel was loose and he could see that someone had been doing a bit of rewiring within.

  “What does this mean?” Eli could not see what had happened.

  Taylor thought he knew only too well. “It means, I think we have walked straight into a trap.”

  “The alien?”

  “Who else?” Taylor was trying to keep his voice down; he didn’t want the others to know just yet.

  “It probably found this and didn’t want us to use it to get off the planet if we managed to escape from the base.”

  “Which is exactly what we were trying to do. It’s not stupid is it?”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s not. And I’m afraid it is almost certainly on its way by now.” Eli ran to the panel of switches, which he guessed must control the ships engines. These, too, had recently been damaged and he doubted the ship would be able to take off let alone achieve orbit. Taylor cursed his luck, the situation had been looking very good and now they were out of the frying pan and back in the fire again.

  Eli walked back to Taylor, keen to stop the rest of the team from finding out until they could come up with a plan. Already, Chris Maxwell was moaning to Alan about the time it was taking to get the ship off the surface. Eli found that to be strange behaviour for a man who would be put in prison on reaching Earth and wondered if Taylor may have made a mistake.

  Still they had other, more pressing problems to contend with, and he spoke quietly to his friend. “Why not blow the ship up? It would have been much easier for it.”

  Taylor knew the answer to that, it was a matter of tactics. “If it did that, we’d run somewhere else and it would have to track us down. This way it’s got us right where it wants us.” It was not a nice thought. Taylor knew he was probably going to regret the way he had tricked the Alien in the corridor of the base, unless he could find a way out of an impossible situation for the second time in an hour. He set his mind to work.

  Chapter Eleven

  Answers

  It had not been long when the rest of the team realised that something was not as it should be. Taylor had been thinking hard about how he was going to escape from another forced confinement, his third that day, for twenty minutes when patience began to wear thin. Chris Maxwell had, not surprisingly been the first one to comment on the amount of time it was taking for the engines to be activated and the ship to leave the planet. Eli had tried to reassure the big man that all was well, but he had taken matters into his own hands and tried to start the engines himself.

  This had unfortunate consequences, as Taylor suspected it would have. Before he or Eli could get to Chris to stop him or warn him that it was probably not a good idea, the burly man had tried to fire the engines starter jets. The panel on which those switches were located sparked and sent an electric current through the brusque scientist, knocking him to the floor. He sat stunned and dazed by the current, and Taylor had thought that was lucky not to be killed by the booby trap.

  He reasoned that the alien Warrior had merely set the trap as a deterrent to try to prevent further attempts at escape, it would be no fun for it to kill its prey before it could get there in person. Taylor had set his mind back to the formulation and cultivation of the embryonic plan that he was developing. Eli had been left to try and explain their situation to the other four. All things considered Taylor thought they had taken the news that they were trapped and awaiting the arrival of their executioner fairly well.

  Now they sat on the floor of the ship, morose and despondent. There are limits to how often a person can be thrust into a life threatening situation and still avoid getting depressed about it, especially when the solution is far from apparent. Taylor was, however, confident that a solution did exist. In a similar way to the escape from the station through the venting system, he could think of two ways out of the ship, but had not yet figured out how to take them without their very nature killing the escapees.

  He pondered the first route, through the engines. Even with the ship totally sealed and ready for take-off, he knew that the engines had intakes and outlets to provide air to the engine cooling systems in an atmosphere and to dispense with harmful gases which were the by-product of the kind of temperatures the engines reached. He could think of no way that a person could get through this system of vents, however, as it led directly through the engine itself and this was territory impassable if one didn’t want to be diced and torn to shreds.

  Taylor did not think anyone in the ship wanted that to happen to him or her, so started to think exclusively about the seemingly more sensible option. All spaceships had to be airtight for the vacuums of space, this much was obvious and Taylor knew he would be unable to breech the hull of the ship. Therefore he had to find a route through one of the openings in the hull. The doorways were all tampered with, and very successfully too. They were just as impossible to get through as the engines.

  But there were another set of openings in the ship’s hull, where objects were sent from inside the ship to outside. The trouble was they were sent in a rather more explosive way and at a rather higher speed than he was comfortable with; as they were the missile ports. Every ship of this class had missile ports that could fire missiles at a given target. The ships weapon systems would automatically load a warhead into the missile bay, direct it through into the air locked section of the missile tube that was outside the hulls integrity but not out of the ship, and then fire it out of the ship.

  These systems would not be able to do that at the moment however, as they had been extensively and comprehensively dismantled and altered by Taylor West. With a little help from Eli and Alan, Taylor had been fiddling with the firing sequence of the system for some time now, and was struggling to see how his desired end could be achieved. “Damn it,” he cursed.

  Eli turned from his conversation with Sara, “What is it?”

  “I can’t get these connections to hold,” Taylor moaned before setting himself up to try again. He took a deep breath and set to work once more, trying to re-secure connections he had severed, into different databanks and circuit boards.

  Lana still didn’t understand what the strange man was trying to do anyway and approached Eli, Sara scowling possessively as she did, “What is he trying to do? Is he mad?”

  Eli laughed, “Probably. He’s trying to lower the pre-set charge which the weapons system loads the missile bay with.”

  “Oh. Is that good then?” she could see no reason for him to be doing that. “Surely, we need as many weapons on as high a charge as possible for when that monster gets here.”

  “We hope to be gone before it gets here,” Eli said and left the conversation at that. He walked over to where Taylor sat in a pile of wires, circuits and diodes. “Anything I can do to help?”

  Taylor shook his head without answering and Eli knew well enough that he should leave him alone now. He went back to Sara, who understood a little about what it was that Taylor was trying to achieve. This was at least, Eli thought, more than Chris, who was still dazed from his shock and Alan could seem to understand. Alan was helping with technical wiring solutions as best he could but could not see the purpose. He was merely content to let others do the thinking and let him do as they said.

  Sara, on the other hand, wanted to understand the whole idea. “So when he reduced the charge, how is he going to stop us getting blown up by the m
issile when we land?” Sara understood the plan, she thought. Taylor was proposing that they open the missile bays and load themselves into the firing tubes, reduce the charge to prevent them being blown to pieces on firing and then fire them out of the ship to freedom. She couldn’t see how he was suggesting they combat the simple notion that the missile would fire with them and, on landing, would blow them sky high.

  Eli tried to explain the workings of the ship to her. “Look, at the moment the ship has a preloaded missile in the bay. Yes?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, we’ll empty the bay of that missile.”

  “OK. How will you do that?”

  “We’ll fire it,” said Eli simply. Chris snorted his derision and muttered a comment that neither Eli nor Sara could hear, but Eli was fairly sure it consisted of derogatory statements about Sara’s intelligence. This Eli found laughable coming from a person like Chris, but he decided little could be achieved by a display of bravado and macho posturing, so returned his thoughts to their conversation.

  Sara was asking him another question. “But the ship will just reload another missile when the bay is empty. How are you going to get around that?”

  “Taylor thinks he has cut the circuit to the reload function.”

  “He thinks?” Sara repeated.

  Eli smiled. “Don’t worry, he’s very good.”

  Taylor looked up from his work. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Eli before returning to Sara. “So with the reload cut, the bay will stay empty, one of us can get in there, we fire them out with a soft charge and they land outside the ship.”

  Sara did not look convinced. “The last time we propelled ourselves through the air I nearly broke my leg. But I suppose it’s better than sitting around waiting for the creature to come for us.”

  Lana was sat with Chris and could not resist joining in the conversation. “This sounds like a lot of fun,” her sarcasm was evident for all to hear and Alan chastised her for her negative attitude.

  “We could do without you at the moment,” he said.

  Chris raised his head. “Shut your mouth, I’ll knock your head off.”

  Alan took a step back in fear, Eli walked in between the frightened scientist and the big man who was slowly trying to get to his feet. “Come on. Let’s all get a grip. Sit down and calm yourselves. Fighting each other is not going to help,” Eli tried to soothe the situation.

  At that moment, a loud bang and a shower of sparks erupted from where Taylor sat, making everyone jump and causing Eli to forget about Chris and Alan and run over to his friend. He was relieved to see that Taylor looked a little worn around the edges, but other than that seemed fine. “Are you alright? What happened there?” Eli said.

  Taylor shook his head as if to try and focus again. “‘Yes’ and ‘I burnt out the charge coupling’ are the answers to your questions.” Taylor coughed.

  Eli’s heart sank, he knew that with no charge coupling the flow of charge could not be regulated and if it could not be regulated then it could not be reduced. “What are we going to do?” he said, his confidence ebbing away from him. He was also starting to get the feeling that the Alien Warrior would now be on its way to them and time was running out.

  Taylor thought for a moment, adapting his plan to try and compensate for the setback before responding cheerfully. “I’ll just have to drain all the charge out of the system with the first missile.”

  “How do you propose you do that with no charge coupling circuit?”

  “I’ll get under the floor, into the firing mechanism and release all the resistors. The first missile will use up all the ship’s charge and I’ll disconnect the recharge mechanism to stop it building up again.”

  “What about the missile bay outer hatches, you’ll need ships power to get them to open, unless you were thinking of going through them.”

  “Different circuit, not a problem,” Taylor responded and got back on with his work mumbling under his breath, “It’ll probably work better this way. Good job that happened.”

  Eli thought about the new idea, instead of firing the team out of the missile bay and away from the ship, Taylor was now wiring the system to simply open the bay doors and let them slip out of their own accord. This would make the whole process slower and more demanding but would have the advantage of being safer, besides which their options were not vast.

  Within ten minutes, Taylor had got the missile system prepared and was aiming the targeting scanners to get rid of the missile already in the bay, he smiled, he had the perfect target to aim for. He launched the missile and it rocketed away at tremendous speed, far in excess of what missiles usually flew at. He had used all the charge in the missile bay and the flying bomb flew to the shattered remains of the research station in a matter of seconds.

  Taylor reasoned that if he was lucky, he would catch the Warrior while it was just emerging from the wreckage and bury it once more, buying them more time. If the Warrior was already on its way across the plains, as he feared was probably the case, then at least a missile passing it would give it food for thought and may even slow its approach a little. Taylor got to work as the reload mechanism failed to apply itself, and opened up the missile bay to prepare it for a human passenger.

  ***

  In the plains of Graves’ world, the Warrior had seen the missile pass within a couple of metres of it, but had not slowed for a second. It had seen the primitive weapon leave the stranded ship and had calculated it was not going to hit it. It thought that his prey was at least making a fight of it, but felt the firing of the ships missiles at it to be a waste of their time. It would not be damaged by the missile even if he were to suffer a direct hit from it. He thought his prey would be better served using their final few moments to ready themselves for death rather than making futile aggressive gestures. It calculated that at its present speed of approach it would be at the ship in two minutes and began to charge its weapon.

  ***

  Eli was the first to get into the missile bay. He squeezed his frame into the open topped tube and tucked his legs and arms tight to his sides. He felt a moments claustrophobia as he saw Taylor seal the top of the tube above his face. Then he felt himself slide slowly into position as the ships missile system, fooled into thinking he was a projectile, moved him in preparation for firing. He hoped that his friend had got his sums right and closed his eyes.

  A loud noise made him open them as he was propelled through the shaft, he saw the outer door approach and was greatly relieved to see it open at the last moment once the door behind him had closed to maintain the ships atmospheric integrity.

  Seconds later, he was outside the ship, falling the short distance to the ground. He got to his feet and sought cover, he didn’t know if he was vulnerable to attack but he felt like he was. He crouched behind the landing struts of the ship and waited to see who would be next through the missile launcher. He almost laughed as he saw Sara spat out of the front of the ship, it looked comical to say the least.

  He called her over and together they watched as Lana, Chris and Alan all came out of the ship the same way. Eli had no idea how Taylor was going to fire the mechanism and be in the tube at the same time but was fairly sure his friend had a way around that. When he saw Taylor exit the missile bay, legs first he was relieved but not surprised. Men like Taylor do not let a little thing like not being able to be in two places at one time stop them from staying alive.

  Taylor ran over to join them. “I suggest we make a move quickly, I think we’re about to have a visitor.” They ran out into the desert, trying to stay as low as they could.

  ***

  The Warrior had not seen them, it had been preoccupied with its preparations for its blasting open the human vessel and killing all inside. It knew it had its prey trapped and saw no reason why it should approach them with either excessive speed or stealth. If it had activated its tactical overview which was a built in visual aid to see in infra-red and detect movement
, then it would have seen six figures creeping away from the ship as it approached.

  It may even have seen the small humans escaping out of the front of the ship. It had, however, decided not to apply the battle vision element of its armoury until it arrived and this meant that when the Warrior finally got to the ship and tore open the hatchway, ready to slaughter, there was no one in it to be seen. It felt a huge surge of rage, it was not used to this kind of elusive behaviour from its prey, usually they either stood and tried to fight or they ran blindly and could be tracked or trapped easily.

  This particular prey was proving to both clever and wily, it knew it would have to rely on more traditional means of disposal. It decided to leave its tactical visual acuity activated until its prey was destroyed and felt itself calm down. After all, there really wasn’t anywhere for them to run. It made up its mind that it would proceed to sweep the locality to see if its prey was hiding nearby waiting for it to leave the area. It paced the surroundings of the crippled ship, and found nothing.

  There were signs of the prey being in the area recently but it could find no sign of them now. They were far enough away from the Warrior to be untrackable by the infra –red sensor, but it knew it would be able to locate them eventually. It walked back to the ship and laid a tiny device on the front of the fuselage. As it walked away into the desert, the ship exploded in a small, yet violent eruption of fire.

  When the flames died down, the Warrior was already half a mile away and there was very little of the ship left standing. The Warrior knew it could not waste any more time looking for its current prey, they would have to wait. It had more pressing affairs to take care of and headed for the primary site of disturbance.

  ***

  “Admit it, we’re lost aren’t we!” shouted Chris. They had made their way some distance into the desert and had come to a halt. Nothing could be seen in any direction and the only sign of life they could detect was the explosion which they had heard a couple of moments earlier. Eli had a feeling that was the end for the ship they had recently been trapped in. If that was the case, then he knew the Warrior was nearby and felt they should keep moving.