As if sensing the last thought, the scorpion proceeded toward him, having made the floor now and completely ignoring RJ who was stood prone behind it.
'Come on Ensign, you can do it.' the man offered in scant encouragement.
Trigger looked down at his sweaty palms and then back up at the small hatch that RJ was stood underneath with his arms braced. He refused to look at the creature any further, an amorphous white blob in his peripheral vision that slowly grew larger with each passing moment.
With a desperate shout, Ensign Trigger Hawkins launched himself forward at high speed, his legs somehow pumping him in the right direction instead of caving in underneath him. He vaguely heard RJ shouting encouragement as he grew closer, or was it a shout of warning?
He made it to the man's clasped arms and used them as a stepping stone, propelling himself high into the air and directly toward the hatch with a scream.
A white tail streaked out and he could feel the air hissing around his trailing leg. Tucking it in as he rolled at the last minute, he felt the burning sting of venom splashing against his calf, then collided with the hatch and was free of the pit.
He turned in the small shaft and wiped the venom clear of his leg before it could eat its way through to his skin. Then he sat for a time, wondering what to do now, where was RJ?
A set of fingertips punched their way through the flap of the grate and then slipped away, causing Trigger to jump and smack his head painfully on the low ceiling.
Crawling forward, he saw the fingers grasp the edges again and struggle in vain to haul the body they were attached to up to their route of escape.
Pushing his head out of the hatch, Trigger spotted a frustrated-looking RJ attempting to leap up and join him.
'Need a hand?' Trigger asked hesitantly as the man crashed to the floor of the pit once more.
'No, I'm good. You carry on down the shaft and see where it leads, I'll join you shortly.'
He watched as RJ jumped up and caught the lip of the edge once more, struggling mightily to haul himself up with what little purchase he had on on the strange material. Why would he tell Trigger to go on without him if he clearly couldn't follow?
'RJ, you really need my help.' Hawkins observed as the man slipped back down to the floor of the pit once again.
'I said I'm good. Okay? Now get moving Ensign, that's an order.'
But Trigger wouldn't move, RJ clearly couldn't make it up on his own steam and he wasn't going to leave him here, especially after he had been directly responsible for saving him from that scorpion.
That was when Trigger realised that the scorpion had vanished.
'RJ, where did the scorpion go?'
This caused the man to look about him and then shrug his shoulders. 'Beats me, probably didn't sense any fear and crawled off elsewhere.' He took another leap at the hatch but this time was several inches short of the lip, cursing in frustration as he landed.
'Ensign...' he said slowly, as if with great difficulty. 'I believe I may need your... help.'
Trigger nodded and dangled his arms over the edge as RJ took another leap. The man's weight was considerable as he grasped his arms, he didn't know how long he could hold him.
He expected RJ to kick up but instead the man was staring up, eyes wide in fear.
'Ensign, whatever you do, don't turn around.'
Trigger had a bad feeling about this.
Inclining his head slightly, he noticed a white shape clinging vertically to the wall above the hatch.
With a jerk of his arms and a combination of frantic legs kicking off the surface of the pit wall, they fell directly into the shaft.
A white tail shot through the hatch, embedding itself on the walls with a series of merciless strikes that leaked venom everywhere, hissing and bubbling against the walls.
'Let's get the hell out of here.' RJ muttered.
Trigger was quick to comply.
Chapter 21
Wharghzfmmmna! Field! Barrel!
Agent Smith roused himself immediately as he came back into consciousness, he was lying uncomfortably on cold white tiles in an illuminated room. Lieutenant Annika lay nearby in a similar state of repose, yet to shake off the effects of the gassing they had both received.
He surveyed the situation logically with the calculated calm of a professional trained for all situations. They had last been awake in their vessel as it had been dragged toward the gaping hole in the mothership they had been trying to evade.
The gas had knocked them unconscious and as a result they had presumably entered the heart of the Voravian ship and subsequently been imprisoned against their will while they were out of it.
It seemed reasonable, but it did not account as to why they had been segregated, or why he had been left with Lieutenant Annika of all people.
As much as he disliked the other members of the crew thus far, with the exception of the pair of inexplicably fortunate Captains, their skills were all above reproach. So this was not a case of isolating the only members of the crew that they considered threatening, but for all intents and purposes he couldn't figure why he had been paired off with Annika.
Lieutenant Annika.
'Lieutenant, are you conscious?' Smith asked, without receiving a response of any kind.
He scanned the tiled room once more for hidden surveillance devices and found none. Tentatively he placed his hand on her shoulder and shook her.
'Lieutenant, you must wake, we are in captivity.'
A groggy moan of complaint came from the cat-suited woman which conjured images that Smith wasn't ready to admit to.
'Wharghzfmmmna?' she asked pertinently, if somewhat cryptically. Smith decided that a stern nod would be the best response.
Shaking her own head, she slowly sat up and regained her bearings. 'Where are we?' She looked around some more. 'Where are the rest of the crew?'
'Questions I have been asking myself, Lieutenant. The rest of the crew's whereabouts remain unknown, my educated guesses would place us somewhere within the Voravian sphere under their captivity and I would suspect they are in not too dissimilar circumstances.'
It seemed to take a moment for Annika to digest all this, then she was up and about and observing the cold tiling of their prison as if it were the most natural thing ever.
'It seems that the exit to our prison is already apparent.'
Smith offered the green forcefield a cursory glance in recognition of this. He suspected that bypassing such a system without detection would be problematic to say the least.
'I suspect that bypassing such a system without detection would be... problematic, to say the least.' he observed.
'We can't just wait here to see what these Voravian devils have in store for us, surely?' she replied, tapping at the tiles near the force field experimentally with her knuckles, as if searching for something.
He went to the other side of the field and started his own probing. 'I have no intention to go down without a fight, Lieutenant. They appear to have us at quite the disadvantage though.'
Annika nodded back at him, one professional to another in the realisation of slim odds. 'The sooner we reduce said disadvantage the better, as far as I'm concerned. We need to find the Captain and the rest of the crew.'
Smith refused to bristle at her unintelligible obsession with the man and his supposed destiny. She was a sensible woman of sound scientific background, why had she bought in to the series of flukes that had catapulted Phil Jones from a human genome oddity to Captain of a starship? As improbable as the man's achievements had been, none of them were supernatural or worthy of the praise she lavished upon him.
He shook his head and focused on the task at hand, there was no sense in trying to divine her reasoning currently, if there truly was any.
The wall offered no hollow echoes from his insistent tapping, apparently the mechanism powering the forcefield was elsewhere and he told Lieutenant Annika as much.
She didn't offer him a response, and conti
nued to probe the wall while pressing her ear up against it.
'Have you discovered something, Lieutenant?'
A single finger crept its way between her lips, Smith tried not to focus on it overly long.
'Yes.' she finally said. 'I believe I have found something on the other side of this tiling, now we just need to find a way through to it.'
Smith smiled, adjusting his shades and limbering up. 'Allow me.'
She smiled back at him with surprising warmth and tapped the spot on the wall.
Taking a running start, Smith came crashing toward it and hefted a vicious kick at the spot.
The tiling was unimpressed by the impact, the Agent shook his leg with a wince and repeated the feat without so much as a scratch on the surface of the alien substance that comprised the offending tile.
'Perhaps I should give it a go.' Annika offered, matching Smith's previous run-up and aiming a kick at the offending tile.
Visible cracks appeared upon the surface, the second kick shattered it entirely.
Smith arched an eyebrow in surprise and the Lieutenant offered him a bright smile, patting him on the shoulder. 'I guess you must have softened it up for me Agent, thank you.'
He didn't believe that for a minute, but the important matter was that they had broken their way into the wall and were one step further toward disabling the security field. It would appear that the noise had not attracted any nearby guards, confident as they were in the capabilities of their technical security system.
Annika was certainly more familiar with wiring than he was, so he watched on patiently as she inspected the damage she had applied to the circuitry within the wall. It would seem apparent that they hadn't done enough to disrupt the pulsing forcefield in their path.
'What's your prognosis, Lieutenant?'
The Lieutenant took some time before responding, peering at the hole in the wall almost as if she hadn't heard him. She eventually replied to him just as he was about to repeat himself.
'There's something very odd about this alien technology sir, I can't quite put my finger on it but given enough time I could discern what it is.'
Smith realised that due to the negligence of their captors that time was something they had a fortunate degree of. 'Well, it would appear from the negligence of our captors that we have a fortunate degree of time on our hands with which to attempt to figure out their wiring.' he observed, peering into the hole Annika had punched through and also failing to ascertain the function of the wiring inside.
That was, of course, until he noticed the black substance seeping in through the far wall.
Calling Annika's attention to it, they watched as the liquid started to pool underneath the wall and slowly spread its way across the tiles of the room toward them. Experimentally, Smith tore a fragment of his uniform sleeve and tossed it into the darkness. A purple flame ignited around it and then the fabric disappeared entirely.
'Our uniforms are tailored to withstand all but the most corrosive of acids, I believe it would unfortunate if we came into contact with that seeping mass.'
Annika nodded quickly and resumed her work on discerning the wires that powered the forcefield, time was no longer on their side.
Smith watched as the blackened substance continued to crawl over the tiles, none of which appeared to suffer from it doing so. It would appear that this strange room had been constructed entirely for this purpose, and that they had been placed in captivity to die here. Why then had the whole crew not been present for such a treatment? The question still burned within him, the actions of their captors didn't make any logical sense.
'Agent Smith.' Annika spoke to him softly after a time, panic on the edges of her voice. 'I don't believe I'll be able to know which wire disables the forcefield in time. I'm going to have to take a guess.'
The acidic compound was a metre away from them now, judging from its progress they had about two minutes until it reached them.
'Take your best educated guess, Lieutenant. I shall not hold it against you long if it is an incorrect one.'
Smith's deadpan attempt at humour fell flat on its face in the situation as Annika only registered the order. 'Yes sir.' She replied to him, and stepped out toward the approaching acidic sludge.
'Lieutenant Annika, what is it you're doing?'
She broke into a run and levelled a kick at the panel, severing multiple wires and sending sparks flying from the hole. The forcefield sputtered and then went out entirely.
'Best educated guess, sir.'
Smith frowned gravely. 'I see.'
Annika stepped through the now open door without any signs of resistance on its part, Smith followed in short order.
Only to run head-first into the reactivated security field.
He stumbled backward at the impact, temporarily stunned and losing his balance. He thought he heard Annika cry out his name and then recalled that he was about to tumble into the creeping black death that awaited his landing.
Twisting sharply he pivoted, using the momentum of the forcefield to aid him in staying upright. He then proceeded to swiftly move back to where Annika was gazing at him hopelessly through the transparent green haze.
'It would appear that I am trapped once again.' Smith said, his voice sounding much more confident than he felt. 'Have you any suggestions, Lieutenant? I'm running out of time.'
He watched her pace about the corridor outside, patiently waiting for some kind of response or answer from her. She was racking her brains in an attempt to save him but under pressure it looked as if there was very little she could come up with.
'I don't have any idea sir, I'm sorry!' she wailed, finally losing all her composure.
In terms of dealing with women, Smith's skills wouldn't so much be bottom of the barrel as scowling a hole through the base of the barrel into new and unexplored depths.
'Snap out of it Lieutenant, you have a job to do!' he scowled, angry more at being helpless than any mistake on Annika's part.
She sniffed and composed herself, and to his surprise an icy determination took the place of her previous melodrama.
'You're right sir, and I'm not leaving you behind.'
'Damn it Lieutenant, can't you see that I'm done for here? I demand, no, I order you to find the rest of the crew and mount some kind of rescue!'
She shook her head resolutely. 'Not without you sir, I'm not leaving you behind.'
In any other time and place, those words would have touched Smith in ways that he would have found difficult to describe. As it stood he had no time for sentiment and knew that the best hope of the crew was to unleash Annika's capabilities such as they were in rescuing them.
'That is a direct order from your superior, Lieutenant. To disagree with me would result in a court-martial.' he said, failing to mention the unlikelihood of his escaping this cell in order to inform Star Command of her insubordination.
'You cannot court-martial me if you're dead, Agent Smith. I think I'll be staying right here.'
Damnation, she had seen right through him.
'Annika.' he finally said with some reluctance as the blackness drew inexorably closer. 'You are the only hope to save Captain Jones, you must leave me.'
She shook briefly, as if standing upon the precipice of choice was causing her entire body to sway. 'I...' she started, as if searching for the words against some force demanding secession.
'Go.' Smith said with grave finality, and she slowly turned away from him and refused to look back.
Chapter 22
Waaaahrghrghhhhoooooohno! Ostrich! Box!
Phil Jones found himself in a most unfamiliar place. Well, unfamiliar in certain ways and entirely homely in others as he would soon discover.
It was a long corridor with a series of strange looking devices clamped down by darkened claws that seemed to grow out of the walls. Experimentally he took a step forward and nearly fell over when with a crackling sound the claws on his right side began to unfurl, exposing the device inside to his
senses.
It was a large dark cube that seemed to pulse gently with a reassuring chime, and for reasons unknown to him he did not flee from its presence. If anything, he felt oddly drawn to it when on a purely rational level he knew to stay away from technology that didn't belong to him at all cost lest he manage to break it somehow. Again. Repeatedly.
Two small pads slowly detached from here-to-unseen crevices within the box and floated toward him, pressing themselves insistently into his palms.
There was a moment of tactile resistance from the glove that should have warned him, then he had left the corridor altogether.
Fat men, or the gravitationally challenged as they prefer to be called, tend not to fare overly well when catapulted into the air. Phil Jones was no exception to this most golden of rules, so when he discovered that he was hovering approximately one thousand feet above the snow-capped peaks of some unknown mountain, his reaction was thus:
'Waaaahrghrghhhhoooooohno!'
After flailing wildly at the air for a time, Phil noticed that his descent was about as rapid as an Ostrich racing team entering a downhill bob-sleigh event. It should have been comically fast but ultimately it never happened.
Taking this factor into account, he gently pushed his arms forward in a swimming motion. The effect of which was to send him hurtling through the air above the mountain with a scream of terror that slowly morphed into one of joy.
'I'm flying!' Phil yelled to the mountains, who seemed largely indifferent to the corpulent avian's progress on account of their limited emotional reception.
'Woooooo!' was Phil's reaction to his conversational landscape, entirely heedless to the rocky surface's lack of grace or social propriety.
It all seemed entirely real, or at least how he'd imagine soaring over the mountains at high speed would feel like.
He passed over great lakes, through teeming mists and down long-forgotten valleys. He zoomed past giant forests that carpeted the distant ground beneath him, staring at the endless natural beauty that surrounded him and letting the cool breeze tickle his chest.
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