phil jones2

by J. R. Karlsson

  'Very well then, we'll send down an Engineering team to assess the damage. Get back to your post.'

  The bundle of clothes decided to return to its previously inanimate silence and Phil realised that the alarms had ceased blaring at them. RJ had just bought them some valuable time, hopefully enough for them to retrieve Trigger from wherever he had crawled off to. He stared at the vent and waited, expecting a squadron of operatives to come bursting around the corner any second now.

  'What's taking him so long?' he asked with some trepidation to the operative wearing RJ's hat.

  He raised his pistol and the man smiled at him, raising his arms. 'Don't shoot, it's me, RJ!'

  Phil looked under the hat with suspicion, gun raised, but the man was right. The easy Texan grin and mischievous sparkle in the eyes could only come from one person.

  'Why are you wearing an operative's uniform?'

  'Look out behind you!' called a high-pitched voice from the vent as Trigger Hawkins came hurtling out with weapon raised and posterior planted on the deck plating.

  'Trigger, it's me, RJ.'

  Trigger blinked, lowering his gun. 'Why are you wearing an...'

  'I already asked him.' Phil cut in. 'Are you going to tell us what it is you're planning?'

  'To be honest folks I hadn't got that far ahead. I just assume that they'll be less likely to shoot at someone immediately if they're wearing their uniform than not.'

  'Wouldn't taking off the hat make for a better disguise?' Trigger asked.

  RJ looked at him as if he had suggested that space was rainbow coloured and Darwin was chaste. 'I'm not leaving my hat behind.'

  The Ensign wilted. 'Right you are sir.'

  'It's RJ.'

  'Yes sir, you can keep your hat RJ... sir.'

  'Darn right I can, Ensign. Now let's get moving!'

  The pilot crept forward with a feline grace that belied his booted uniform. Trigger and Phil followed behind him in their best approximation of the strange walk he was doing, occasionally stumbling in their attempts to keep the balance and poise exhibited before them.

  RJ turned shortly after, eyeing them with an odd expression playing upon his face. 'Is that really the best you guys can do?'

  Phil and Trigger looked at each other, noting how they were caught in a motion that looked nothing like RJ's.

  'I... Er... Isn't this what you were doing?' Phil asked, somewhat defensive.

  'Yeah! You were doing this funny walk thing and we were just copying that!' Trigger added, though Phil could tell from the look he had been given that the Ensign didn't make much of his attempts. A bold thought coming from a man who currently looked like a startled flamingo.

  RJ eventually smiled, but it was a long time in coming. 'You two look absolutely ridiculous.'

  Trigger lowered his leg. 'Do not.'

  'You do!' Phil told him. 'At least my efforts looked vaguely like his.'

  'Captain, if your arms flailed any more for balance the operatives would mistake you for a windmill. It looks like a stealthy approach is off the cards then.'

  'So if we're not going to creep our way to the weapon, what's your plan?'

  RJ shrugged. 'I don't have a plan Captain, that's up to you. I'm just going to get us as close to the weapon as we possibly can without being detected again.'

  Phil stared, aghast in the realisation that his pilot didn't have any better notion of what to do in this situation than he did. 'You mean to tell me that you expect one of us to come up with the solution?'

  Trigger waved his arms frantically behind Phil's shoulder in mute agreement, apparently the thought of walking their way through a station full of lethal operatives was quite a foolish one to him too.

  'You're the Captain here boss, I can only take us as far as I can, the big decisions were always going to be up to you.'

  Phil stared down the winding corridor and wondered when they'd next come into contact with some lethal entanglement. He was willing to bet that they wouldn't be so lucky the second time around either. Just what was RJ thinking? It was one thing to expect the Captain to make decisions in the comfort of his command chair, but one look at Phil should have been confirmation enough that he wasn't a specialised field Agent and thinking on his feet most certainly wasn't his thing.

  Yet still RJ had placed his trust in Phil's judgement, fully expecting him to come up with some masterpiece of a plan to save the day and disable the weapon. The man's inexplicable faith was forcing him to try and think of ways to fix this, ways to make this work. Unfortunately nothing came to mind, and if it continued that way and Trigger couldn't think of anything better...

  'I think I hear something.' Trigger moaned, subconsciously shuffling behind Phil and using him as a shield. 'Up ahead, just around the bend of that corridor.'

  'Gotcha.' RJ whispered back at him, now crouched low and peering ahead. 'I'll scout alone for a few paces and see if I can figure out what we're dealing with, you and Phil stay here and cover me.'

  Even Phil knew the concept of covering someone, having done so enough in the various games he had played over the years. It was one thing to do so while wielding a keyboard and mouse and an entirely different prospect when awkwardly holding a gun at the air in case it moved in a suspicious manner.

  Once this musing had come to a close, RJ had vanished further down the corridor, the bend unhelpful in its attempts to obscure everything that was about to unfold. Were they seconds away from being alone together without the help of the experienced pilot? Or was this the next brilliant stroke in their steadily unfolding plan to disable the weapon? Phil certainly knew which it felt like anyway.

  Several blasts of laser rifles later and Phil knew that a master stroke it was not. RJ came hurtling down the corridor and planted himself in the bend, shooting back blindly at whatever it was he had encountered.

  'Don't just stand there folks!' he yelled between shots. 'It's the operatives! Help me out here!'

  A blast narrowly missed his head and impacted on the bulkhead beside him, causing it to blacken and fall away in what suggested to Phil would be a bad idea should the blast come into contact with anything human.

  He dashed forward as quickly as he could and joined RJ's side, still refusing to peer over the corner for fear of having his face blown off. Trigger was nowhere near them, electing to utilise distance to his strategic advantage, though also not firing upon any of their assailants while doing so.

  'They've got us pinned down, Captain.' RJ said. 'Any attempt to flee and they'll just shoot us in the back.' he stared down at his disguise, which had been ineffective so far. 'I guess they didn't like my hat.'

  Phil hadn't thought of how useless running would prove, they really were trapped here unless he could muster up some kind of idea to get rid of them.

  'Have you any grenades or explosives handy?'

  RJ looked at him as if he were mad. 'If we had taken those onboard the escape pod they would most likely have detonated upon impact.'

  'Ah.'

  'Any other ideas, Captain?'

  Phil thought as long and as hard as he could given the distraction of the near-death experiences that shot past his head every second. 'No. Sorry.'

  'Well...' RJ mused, firing a blind shot again and temporarily halting the fire of their opponents. 'That isn't good. Any ideas Ensign?'

  He had addressed this at Trigger, but it appeared that the latest round of strategy from the man was transforming into a curled-up ball and weeping, possibly to lure his opponents into a false sense of security before taking them by surprise. Probably not.

  'I'll take that as a no then.' RJ replied to the wordless gibbering that he had elicited from the trembling ball that constituted Trigger Hawkins. 'Looks like it's just you and me Captain, what say we get out of cover and give them everything we've got?'

  Phil nodded at him and watched as RJ reached over and set the guns for a full beam spread and cranked them up to a level that would most certainly be unsafe for anything that got in its path.


  'Well Captain, if we ain't getting through this it's been a pleasure high-tailing it around the galaxy in your star wagon together.'

  Phil tilted his head in acknowledgement. 'You too... partner.'

  The word brought a large grin from the pilot's face, but his eyes spoke of a resolute determination even if their death seemed inevitable. 'On the count of three then. One, two...'

  'Wahahahahahaha!' was an approximation of the sound that came from Trigger Hawkins as he went dashing around the corner, a mix between laughter and crying that was as unnerving for his allies as it was for his foes. They heard a series of flashes and then silence.

  'Three.' RJ finished, and they sprinted out of cover themselves and raised their weapons for their final stand.

  Only there wasn't anything left to stand again, assuming that the panting Ensign wasn't going to level his weapon at them after turning.

  'Well I'll be a varmint's uncle. You shot them all!'

  Phil stared at the scene before him, there wasn't any darkened patches on the deck plate, just four bodies slumped out of cover with sizzling holes pumped into their extremities. Not a single wayward shot, not a single non-lethal effort, it was as if a trained assassin had swept out of nowhere and delivered them from harm.

  'Ensign... you did this?' he asked, hoping against hope that the man hadn't cracked and would turn on them next.

  Trigger's response wasn't intelligible, and there was more snot then words, but he did end up dropping the gun to the relief of his compatriots. Whatever thought process had, for lack of a better word, triggered this response in Ensign Hawkins, Phil was grateful for it.

  'We've got to keep moving, Captain.' RJ reminded him over the sound of alarms that Phil hadn't noticed before.

  'I'll just pick up this gun and then...' he dropped it, it had been like grasping a boiling kettle.

  There was a shot, and the alarms stopped immediately to be replaced by a placating voice that addressed anyone who would listen.

  'Alarm in Sector 7G was a false positive, normal systems have been restored. Have a nice day.'

  Phil stared up at the sparking wiring that the discharge had hit and couldn't believe his ears. Had his accidental blast just reprogrammed the computer into shutting off the alarms? How was that even possible?

  'We got lucky, Captain.' RJ replied, answering his unspoken question. 'We've got to keep moving though, there's no telling when we'll next bump into someone else.'

  He nodded, and they turned back to the Ensign in the hopes that he had recovered his marbles enough to join them.

  'Judging from the readings I'm getting it looks like we'll need to take three rights and then a left in order to reach the main weapon's room.' Trigger informed them, staring fervently at the scanning device he held. 'The repair crews will most likely be here soon, we had better get moving.'

  Phil blinked, but didn't question the polar shift in the Ensign's demeanour, anything was preferable to the cold-hearted killer or sobbing ball he had witnessed previously. He suspected that when this was all said and done they'd need a lot more than just a lie down to get over it.

  As he stood staring at the bodies of the operatives with nowhere to hide them, it came to him.

  'Ensign Hawkins, strip one of those bodies of its uniform and stick it on like RJ has.'

  'What about you, sir?'

  'Never mind about me, I have a plan for that.'

  After Trigger looked suitably like an operative he set the pace and tried not to envision hordes of operatives swarming around the corner with guns raised. He needed to keep thinking positively, the fact that Trigger had got them out of this situation was promising, they weren't entirely dependent upon his coming up with brilliant plans. He just hoped that his plan worked, otherwise it would be RJ's turn to think of something to save them.

  They trudged on through the well-lit corridors, feeling exposed by the luminescence and distinct lack of cover now that the bend was beginning to straighten. To their surprise they didn't come into contact with any other operatives and therefore their disguise wasn't required. A few personnel passed them but averted their eyes as soon as they saw the black uniforms. They overheard a group of scientists talking about a collision of some kind and how the investigation was ongoing. Still no alarms sounded, and all was unbearably serene. They couldn't simply walk their way into the room where the weapon was contained, could they?

  'Halt.' came a voice from ahead, clearly indicating to them that no, no they couldn't. They stopped dead in their tracks as the officious-looking man goose-stepped his way forward to them. He bore the same sort of uniform as theirs but with distinctly more gold trim, and there was no question that he didn't strike nearly as mean a figure as the operatives they had dealt with thus far.

  'Who is this man and where are you taking him?' he addressed RJ.

  'Who this?' RJ replied, poking Phil as if he were some kind of inflatable toy. 'This is just a prisoner, we were taking him to holding.'

  The man arched an eyebrow. 'A prisoner? On board a scientific research platform? May I see your papers?'

  'Sure.' RJ shrugged, reaching down for his belt.

  The shot was instantaneous, and the man looked down at the burning hole in his chest as if it were a strange nuisance.

  'There's your papers.' the Texan replied, pushing him down to the deck plating with his palm.

  'You shot him!' Phil said, staring down at the now-lifeless body of the man.

  RJ nodded. 'Didn't have chance to adjust the settings on my gun, and it was a boring conversation anyway.'

  They marched on, having nowhere to hide the body and no reason to stick around and get caught with it, according to Trigger's scans the door to the room that the weapon was being held in was straight through two other rooms. It was one thing to wander down a corridor but Phil suspected that each room had a specific purpose, and their flimsy excuses weren't going to cut it if they just went wandering in there.

  He intimated as much to RJ and the Texan scratched his chin, giving the issue some serious thought before continuing. 'Well sir, looks to me like our last attempt at deception didn't work so well. I say we head in there and whatever excuse I can think up will be good enough.'

  'I think I'm ready to try my plan.' Phil told him, heart pounding at the prospect of being blasted into a million pieces. He placed his arms behind his back as if manacled and started to step forward. Understanding dawned upon RJ and he followed his Captain's lead as the three of them marched into the room.

  A scientist in a white lab coat looked up with a face that was half puzzled and half terrified at the arrival of the dark uniformed figures. 'Can... can I help you?'

  'We have a prisoner here for the detention centre.' RJ informed him, switching from his southern drawl into something a bit more authoritative. 'We're just going to pass through to the weapon room for an... inspection.'

  The man frowned in confusion, 'what are you doing down here then? Why would you perform an inspection when we already have plenty of...'

  'Silence!' RJ roared, pushing his way into the room and intimidating the wiry little man. 'You will let me pass and that's the end of that.'

  The scientist was clearly out of his depth, and wasn't the sort to stand up to authority even when surrounded by his equally frightened peers. 'As you wish sir, as you wish.'

  Phil and Trigger both waited for the scientists to pull out their guns and start shooting, but judging from the expressions surrounding them the researchers were just as terrified.

  Their progress was slow but deliberate, they just needed to get through the next room and then the weapon would be within their sight. As to how they were going to get it disabled, Phil hadn't a clue.

  The large cargo bay doors slid open to reveal their final obstacle and Phil's heart sank, more operatives turned to greet them and judging from their expressions they weren't too pleased with their arrival.

  'What is your business here? Who is that?' said the lead guard, there were
three of them in total and they were armed and more importantly had weapons raised.

  'Prisoner for the detention centre. We were told to leave him here with you, we'll take your post.'

  The guard furrowed his brows. 'This is highly irregular, I was not informed of this. On whose authority do you act?'

  Phil chose that moment to tumble forward and collide with both guards, sending them sprawling into a heap on the floor. He heard the sound of blaster fire and felt the heat of lasers passing all too close to his form, he only hoped that RJ and Trigger had taken advantage of the situation.

  Rising with some care from the floor, he realised that he was shrugging off the unconscious forms of operatives rather than the corpses of his friends. Well, that was a relief.

  A speaker blared into life. 'What's going on out there?' demanded a voice. 'The computer detected a discharge in your vicinity, are you under attack?'

  'Negative! Situation normal!' RJ hedged. 'It was a weapons malfunction, nothing to see out here. Carry on.'

  There was a pause, as if the speaker was considering the words with great care. 'You don't sound like anyone on duty, who is this?'

  'Negative. Situation critical. Er... very bad things happening out here. It's not safe to come out, you are in quarantine.'

  'If we are in quarantine, why are the doors not in lockdown?' asked an increasingly angry voice.

  'The doors are malfunctioning.' Trigger supplied.

  'The doors are malfunctioning by working perfectly?' countered the voice.

  'Er... yes, it's very bad out here.' he coughed, feigning illness.

  'We're sending a detachment of troops out, if you fire upon us you will be killed. Is that understood?'

  'Perfectly.' squeaked the Ensign.

  They raised their weapons, and Phil commandeered one of the pistols from a stunned officer. So this was it then, their final stand against the operatives of the Human Genome research station. It was strange, he didn't feel that worried about it at all, if anything he felt quite happy to finally be doing something of worth and value. Light-headed at the prospect of going into battle but ready nonetheless, in fact, he was almost giddy at the idea. Yeah! Bring it on! He would take his chances against these foes and deal with the weapon. Even if they were captured or killed they owed it to the other members of the crew blasting away into the Voravian mothership to get this weapon disabled.