The Ship Finder: Young Adult Edition

by John Bluck

  "You two got here just in time," Raven said.

  Wilson was out of breath. "Sorry. I just got a new pistol at the armory," he said.

  Yarnell looked at Raven. "I sent Trundell over there to issue a new model pistol to Bill," Yarnell said.

  Raven nodded. "Okay, assault team, Yarnell will begin check-in," Raven said.

  Yarnell read every soldier's name.

  Each said, "Here."

  There were twenty warriors in the assault squad, each of whom wore a blue maintenance uniform and a fiber helmet. All had light packs in which they carried mini-fusion bombs. Most of the fighters were also armed with pistols as well as ray rifles with folding stocks.

  "Move out," Raven said.

  They stepped down the ramp of the partially cloaked ship and onto the fine sand on the edge of the Triodian jungle. Raven consulted his map.

  Wilson remembered that The Ghost Liner was to uncloak near the entrance of a tunnel forty feet in diameter. The tunnel had three branches, which formed the shape of the capital letter "T." The ocean lay to the north, parallel to the top of the "T." The huge water complex stood to the west, a half mile away. Emor City was a mile to the south at the bottom of the "T." The third, eastern wing of the "T" was an incomplete tunnel, which would be extended about 50 miles to the east to a new city to be constructed along the ocean.

  The relentless sun burned Wilson's back, and the muggy air was oppressive as he and the rest of Raven's team emerged from the jungle and walked north onto the beach. The smell of rotten vegetation invaded his nostrils as Wilson got his bearings, first facing the ocean to the north. The second big thing he saw was a mammoth desalinization plant to his left about half a mile west of them on the edge of the ocean. The huge, ten-story water complex also included a sewage treatment plant, fresh water wells, pumps, offices, and shops.

  Lena stepped close to Wilson. Under her breath she said, "When we get near the tunnel, I'll radio the rebel team to attack The Ghost Liner."

  Wilson nodded. He felt light-headed, and his mouth was dry even though he sucked heavy humidity into his lungs. He worried, would Raven and his soldiers plant the bombs at the water plant even after The Ghost Liner is attacked?

  The thick jungle was behind them to the south when they faced the beach. Where the jungle occasionally came close to shore, palm trees hung over the water, and waves smashed seaside rocks. The splashes were stronger than Wilson thought they should be.

  Raven first sent two scouts a short distance west to find the entrance to a big underground chamber where the three tunnels met in the shape of a "T." He soon received a radio call from the scouts, and afterward he motioned the squad to turn left and move west under the thick vegetation and palm trees along the beach.

  The team's first objective was to go into the big chamber to locate the forty-foot diameter tunnel that led west to the plant. Inside that tunnel was an eight-foot pipe that carried treated water to the city. Also within the tunnel was a four-foot pipe, which transported waste water from the city back to the treatment plant.

  Raven's plan called for his fighters to walk through the tunnel to reach the water plant, place bombs there, and then return to the junction of the "T." From there they would travel through the south tunnel for a mile inland, and place bombs beneath Emor City.

  Raven hoped to destroy not only the water system, but also much of the city and many of its people. The rebel congress and their leaders were primary targets because their House of Representatives was above the south tunnel.

  As the squad members moved forward under the cover of the jungle leaves and worked their way toward the main chamber entrance, Lena walked with Wilson. When they paused near a palm tree trunk, she whispered, "Art Terac is supposed to lead a squad to find us. I'm sending a signal to him, and he'll attack after the ship is assaulted. Run away as fast as you can when Terac hits us."

  "I'm ready," Wilson said. He scanned the jungle, but he saw no sign of Terac's squad of rebel soldiers. Wilson hoped each and every one of the rebels had studied his and Lena's pictures. He didn't want to be struck by friendly fire, even if nano meds could save him and Lena. The pain of death must be horrible, he thought.

  Sweat poured into Wilson's burning eyes. He wiped the perspiration away with his arm, but his eyes became more irritated. It was rough going because the sand was deep and soft, and their packs seemed heavier as Raven's people moved ahead.

  His raiders were about a hundred feet from the big chamber's entrance when Raven signaled them to squat beneath big tropical plants along the beach. About one minute later, one of Raven's two scouts waved them forward.

  Wilson worried, has Lena signaled the rebel team to attack The Ghost Liner yet?

  With his back to the ocean, Wilson felt coolness strike him as he walked through the entrance and into the huge cave-like room where the three tunnels and their massive pipes met. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he looked to his right and saw the bodies of two guards with their throats cut. They were lying just inside the entry of the tunnel that went a half mile west to the water plant. Blood had puddled on that tunnel's concrete floor.

  He glanced straight ahead and saw the opening of the mile-long south tunnel that led away from the beach to Emor City. Then he looked to his left and saw a big, sealed door that protected a short, new eastern tunnel, which he remembered was only about 100 feet long. It was to be extended to a new, future city.

  Lena edged up to Wilson, and whispered, "I haven't heard from Terac yet, so I hope we don’t get caught in those tunnels when he attacks."

  The scouts had attached a small video cube player to the chamber's surveillance camera cables. The player sent a recorded TV picture of a normal scene back to rebel guards who remotely monitored the video feed.

  All of a sudden, lethal, dark blue ray fire bombarded them from inside the western tunnel at Wilson's right. Two of Raven's squad members fell dead, and the rest scrambled and hit the ground.

  Wilson wondered, did the rebel attack come too late? He thought, Terac certainly should have warned Lena by now.

  "Get out of here!" Raven yelled. He turned around and stumbled out of the big chamber's entry, but he was met with a hail of ray gun fire. The enemy had also placed men in the jungle and on the beach outside the big cave-like room.

  Raven rolled back into the underground chamber as ray fire just missed him. He looked to his left at the entry to the new side tunnel, which was welded shut. The rest of Raven's fighters fired into the western tunnel at the source of the rebel ray shots.

  "Rogers, blow this door open," yelled Raven, and Rogers raced forward. He put a shaped charge along the welds, placed a detonator, and wired the set up. His hands shook. The Sunevian soldiers rolled behind the big steel water pipes to protect themselves. Rogers pushed a button on a small box. Boom! The door fell. A cloud of dirt hung in the air, and blue ray shots pierced the dust cloud.

  "Go," Raven yelled. His soldiers ran eastward into the unused, new tunnel and headed away from the plant. The short, new tunnel had no big water or sewage pipes in it. Because it was pitch dark, Raven aimed a bright spotlight forward. About a hundred feet away was the far end of the passageway. Wilson, Lena, and the rest of Raven's team sprinted towards it.

  Wilson asked himself, with no big pipes to hide behind, where will we shield ourselves if Rogers has to blow the end of the tunnel?

  But at the terminus of the tunnel, they found a pad-locked steel door. Raven shot the lock away with his ray gun. The door was stuck, so he and Yarnell kicked it and knocked it open.

  The team tumbled out of the darkness onto a blindingly bright gravel road and then ran. After a hundred yards they rolled off the lane into bushes and weeds. Lena was next to Wilson as they jumped through jungle vegetation and onto a bed of smooth, decorative gravel.

  He looked at her, wondering if the rebels had attacked the ship. If not, Raven would probably lead his team back to The Ghost Liner and flee the planet. An instant later there was a huge blast.
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  After a short delay, a big concussion from the explosion smashed the squad members down onto stones that separated the roadside and a big drainage ditch.

  Wilson bruised his knees and elbows.

  "You okay?" he gasped to Lena.

  "Yes," she whispered, as she sat up. "It just stunned me."

  Debris fell around them, but none of the ship fragments hit anyone. Raven picked up a jagged six-inch chunk of carbon nano material. He looked at it. Then he tossed it away. "It's from our ship! It's gone. Let's go, fast!" Raven screamed. His body shook. Wilson had never seen him so upset. "They'll be here soon. They must have known our plans."

  "Oh my God!" Lena muttered to Wilson in a low voice. "They never planned to assault the ship. They blew it up because it was easier!"

  "It’s not your fault, Lena," Wilson said, as they began to run after the rest of Raven’s squad.

  His team sprinted to a tall wooded hill that was spotted with massive granite boulders. Wilson squeezed the grip of his ray gun. The weapon made him feel confident as the raiders made their way upward and through the shadows of bushes and trees. He glanced at Lena and hoped to signal her that they should run away from Raven's squad. Wilson raised his eyebrows, jerked his head to the side, and nodded questioningly. She shook her head, no.

  As Raven's squad members struggled up the incline, they tried not to make themselves easy targets. They stealthily climbed the big hill, taking care not to create silhouettes against the sky.

  Wilson speculated, did Terac's squad attack us, or was it another detachment of rebels? If they don't know that Lena and I are on their side, they might kill us. He had no desire to endure the pain of death, even if he could live again.

  Corporal Remington glanced down, as a beam of light formed a red spot on his chest. An instant later his body exploded when a laser-guided grenade hit him and detonated. The rebels had a new weapon, designed to destroy each enemy soldier forever.

  Bluish smoke wafted up from the bits of rag that had been Remington's blue work shirt. Wilson smelled burned skin and cloth. All that could be gathered was the man's DNA.

  When Remington died, it was the first time the Sunevians had seen the laser-guided grenade and its terrible effects. This new weapon chilled them to their bones.

  Wilson had smashed and cut his left arm on a jagged tree branch when he hit the ground after Remington's body had exploded. Wilson bled from the gash, and his nerves sent pulses of pain throughout his arm like hammer blows. He gritted his teeth, got up, and ran twenty feet. He dove to the ground and crawled to relative safety behind a mound of dirt at the top of the hill.

  A laser beam illuminated the clay where he had been a fraction of a second before. The grenade that followed exploded and sent shrapnel out from the point of its impact. Wilson was down flat when jagged bits of metal whistled above him.

  Salty sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. They burned, and he was unable to see clearly for a few seconds. Wilson wiped the perspiration away with his shirtsleeve and peeked over the dirt pile. Two cyborgs and a clone charged up the hill, moving forward one at a time, alternatively covering one another with rifle and ray fire.

  Wilson raised his ray pistol and aimed in the direction of a rebel who was on the attack. Wilson squeezed off a shot, missing the cyborg on purpose. But Raven's ray shot cut a hole in the rebel's belly, and he collapsed and burst into flames. Black smoke bellowed up like a smoke signal from the destroyed mass that was once a living, breathing intelligent being.

  "Wilson, can you see anyone behind us, over the hill?" Raven asked. He aimed his weapon again and fired at yet another charging rebel.

  "I don't see anybody," Wilson replied. "Let's get down there and back into the jungle."

  "Okay," Raven said.

  Lena snaked part way down the hill to lush vegetation on the slope, then slipped and rolled forty feet down the rest of the steep hill. She came to a stop amid thick leaves that hid her. Wilson fired at a second enemy and pulled the shot to the side, but one of Wilson's shipmates blew off the rebel's mechanical left arm. The wounded cyborg continued to charge. Raven fired and hit the enemy soldier's left leg, and the beast-like creature buckled and fell. Even so, he still fired bullets from his mini-gun.

  A sharp pop next to Wilson's left ear caused him brief pain. A bullet from a conventional firearm had missed his head by half an inch. He wondered, why do I still aim away from the rebels, even if they're on my side?

  As more cyborgs ascended the hill, a burst of bullets and ray beams just missed him, kicking up puffs of dust. Wilson's wounded arm throbbed, and though it was painful, he dove and rolled down the hill.

  From the crest of the hill Raven tossed an old-fashioned hand grenade at a dozen cyborgs, and it exploded among them. He was the last of his party to roll down the hill and into the dark jungle leaves below. He now was Wilson's enemy, but he was a good officer, loyal to his soldiers.

  Above his heart Wilson wore a holster and the heavy, ancient pistol that Lena had given to him from the encounter with the thugs in Honolulu's Chinatown. The big silver pistol was his ace in the hole – a last resort. Maybe its metal could even deflect a death ray or a bullet with his name on it.

  Some cyborgs had old, conventional arms, so the pungent smell of cordite, primitive gun smoke, invaded Wilson's nostrils as Raven and the remainder of his squad moved deeper into the jungle. Rebels yelled and broke branches behind Raven's fleeing troops and sent a chill of fear through Wilson's body.

  Chapter 34 – Jungle Fight

  Tiny insects buzzed near Wilson's head and stuck in his eyes while the air was thick with sticky humidity. The 100-degree heat intensified his headache. His head throbbed nonstop, and sunlight flashed through breaks in the canopy of trees above, impairing his vision. Short of breath, he, Richard Raven, Ricardo Yarnell, and Lena Lavelle thrashed through the jungle while the rebels chased them. The rest of Raven's squad of twenty Sunevian soldiers was dead.

  "Hold up!" Raven said between gasps. The four stopped on the side of a hill. "I'll plant a micro-fusion bomb here. Take cover behind the next rise. Be with you in a minute. I'll set off the MFB when the enemy comes up." Raven took a marble-size bomb from his backpack. He unsnapped the radio control trigger from the explosive and began to scratch a small hole in the dirt to hide the MFB.

  "Let's go," Yarnell said. Lena and Wilson followed him. Wilson struggled forward, tripped on a root and fell. Lena stopped to help him up.

  "You good?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said.

  They resumed climbing the steep jungle hill still behind Yarnell. Wilson grabbed bushes and small trees to pull his body up the last few yards to the hilltop. Lena rolled over the top of the knoll, and Wilson skidded down beside her and Yarnell.

  "The MFB might just stop the rebels," said Yarnell, who started to catch his breath. His face was muddy from soil mixed with sweat.

  "I hope so," Wilson replied. The stomp of boots on vegetation came from above them, and Wilson aimed his ray gun toward the noise. Raven peeked over the hilltop and then slid down to his colleagues.

  "The enemy is almost to the bomb," Raven said. "I saw their scout. I don't think he saw me." Raven pushed the micro fusion bomb's radio control trigger.

  The blast rocked them. Moments later, dirt, small pebbles, shattered branches, and other plant parts pelted them.

  "Come on," Raven said. They rose and moved farther into the jungle. Even if the rebels were now his allies, Wilson hoped that they had had enough and would quit their pursuit.

  "I've got another one of those MFBs," Yarnell said. "We should plant it here, and march for an hour. Then if we detonate it from a couple of miles away, they'll think we're close to where the second bomb went off."

  "Good idea," Raven said. "We should wait about thirty minutes and then place it."

  "Okay," said Yarnell. "I'll set one up a half hour from now." He glanced at his watch. "My watch has stopped. It must have been hit."

  "We sho
uld split up," Wilson said. "It would be harder for the rebels to get us all."

  "We're better off if we stick together," said Raven. "Headquarters will send a rescue team when they get a distress signal from the ship's black box. If we're all over the place, they might not find us all."

  "I agree," said Yarnell. The four trudged through the jungle for another twenty minutes and came to a clearing, which they skirted. They didn't see rebels behind them. Big flies buzzed near Wilson's head, and some landed on Lena's face. She and Wilson had given up shooing them away.

  "I'm not sure if the black box survived the blast," said Raven, as they slogged along to put more ground between themselves and the rebel squad.

  "We'll just have to do the best we can," said Yarnell. "Each pack has a couple of ready-to-eat rations. We can hunt. There's got to be some fruit in the jungle."

  "Let's rest," said Raven. He set his pack down and sat on a high tuft of grass on the edge of a sunny glen. Yarnell sat near him while Lena and Wilson walked to a shady spot under the cool leaves of a broad-leafed tree. Yarnell and Raven were far enough away so that Lena could talk quietly with Wilson and not be heard by the two men.

  She whispered, "I received a confirmation signal that Art Terac's squad has tracked my GPS signal. Be ready to run when they find us. If he's at their front, we'll know him by his blond hair."

  "Okay," Wilson said.

  She kissed his cheek. "My Inner One tells me not to quit no matter what," she said.

  "Hang in there, Lena," Wilson said. He glanced towards Raven and Yarnell. "They’re ready to go," Wilson concluded.

  He had seen that the two men were standing and talking. Yarnell pointed to his watch, and Wilson saw that a faint red light was flashing on Yarnell's timepiece.

  Wilson stood up, and helped Lena to rise. Then they approached Yarnell and Raven. All of the sudden Yarnell trained his ray rifle at Lena and Wilson. "You have some explaining to do," Yarnell declared.

  "What?" Wilson asked. Lena put her right shoulder against the side of Wilson's chest. He felt her reach for her holster, which she wore on her back.