Читать книгу Adventures of Space Cadets 101: Space Pirates, Allies and Aliens - Darryl Dean Wright - Страница 9

Radar said, “Here they come, Captain.”

Captain Oron bellowed, “It’s about time! Ahead full, load the forward two guns!” They had several armaments fused to the outside of their ship with oxygen tents encompassing all the barrels so that the guns would fire in space.

The ship started to move ahead slowly at first, but it was picking up more speed. The captain did not want to use his rocket fuel, so he only used his fission engine. He then ordered his helm, “Get in front of them!”

Captain Derek ordered Tim to lower the ship and keep the Cross up top when the pirate ship was in front of them. “Z-minus fifty-five feet once we figure out what their Z-axis is.” Kirk was doing the calculations next to his dad.

“Aye, Captain,” Tim responded.

Once they figured out exactly where the pirate ship was coming from, and it wasn’t easy, Tim lowered the ship fifty-five feet below the pirate ship’s plane. The pirate ship was painted with black reflective paint, very hard to see.

“Captain, we are directly in their path at a distance of twelve hundred kilometers and closing fast,” Radar said excitedly!

The captain ordered, “Fire! Reload and fire again!” One of the crewmates yelled, firing and reloaded.

“So far, so good, Sirs,” Tim Johnson said. Austen mentioned that the bad guys were probably riddling the Cross with more holes. Everybody held their breath hoping no bullet holes would enter through the front window.

Kirk was in the fifth seat in front of JR’s seat and he asked the adults, “What about the dead bodies? Salvage rights means we are responsible to do something with them.” He was looking to his father mostly for a response.

Derek answered his son, “We are responsible for everyone on this ship … except for your Uncle JR. We are not dragging those bodies to our ship, but when we launch the Cross at the pirate ship, trust me, everyone there will be cremated!” Kirk seemed satisfied with that plan although he was feeling sad about the situation.

As the two ships were on a chicken course and getting closer quickly, it was getting pretty intense on the flight deck of the One-Oh-One. Austen ordered the release of the Cross when they were only ten and a half miles from the Beowulf. JR flew to the back to release the locking mechanics at the airlock. Austen was sweating. “Now, kick in our rockets and change course twenty degrees to starboard! Give it an eight second count and kill it!” He crossed his fingers for luck.

“Captain, I am reading two separate signals now,” Radar said.

“What?” The Beowulf's captain demanded! “That’s my fuel they’re burning; why didn’t you tell me that derelict had moved?” He was spewing and furious with this surprise!

Radar trembled and stuttered, “I, I was focusing on our target, Sir. It took so long before it moved that I forgot about the other ship that was out there. I’m so sorry Sir.”

The captain was furious, but he liked Radar so he told him he’d kill him later. Radar thanked him for not killing him then, but he knew his time was limited.

The pirate at the helm of the Beowulf yelled out, “Eighteen seconds till collision, Sir.”

“Forty-five degrees to starboard, burn port rocket for three seconds, now!” The captain roared and held his breath. How did this backfire on him? He held on tightly to his seat because this was going to be close.

The Cross was going to barely miss the Beowulf, and as Tim was explaining that to the captains, all of a sudden the Cross exploded into tiny pieces, and the blast knocked out the power on the Beowulf to send it spinning into space! The captains turned to JR instantly as he showed them his remote detonator. “Just in case,” he said. Austen asked him when the heck he had had time to plant a bomb on the Cross. “When everyone was asleep last night and I was getting bored,” was his reply. They just looked at their older brother like he had just grown an extra head or something.

Tim drew their attention and let them know that the Beowulf had sent out a distress signal for help. Derek said, after he stopped laughing, “Let E.D. rescue them. We are not stopping again; we can’t keep burning fuel like this!”

Tim asked, “Do we notify E.D.?”

Austen asked him if he was kidding, then when he saw the look on Tim’s face, Austen said, “They would just order us to turn around and stop to help, so no!” Tim turned back around, and he was pleased with the answer.

Derek said, “Speak of the devil, they’re hailing us now. It’s a shame our radio is broke again.”

Austen agreed and said, “Yep, a terrible shame.”

Tim said, “At least our radio is working again now.” It wasn’t jammed anymore is what he meant.

Captain Oron was hanging onto his seat for dear life; he thought to himself that the next upgrades would be safety harnesses for the chairs on the bridge. He could barely lift his neck and when he did, he saw Radar flopping around the ship. His neck was broken. He huffed and swore he would hunt down the One-Oh-One and have his revenge, although he had planned on killing Radar anyway. Now he just wanted to kill this Captain Austen of the One-Oh-One!

It took the One-Oh-One two and a half weeks to navigate the asteroid belt. They were just about to clear it, but they had one more course correction to make, and then they would just let their momentum carry them the rest of the way to “Deep Space Station Jupiter.”

JR was sitting in his chair; he had come back from the hidden false panel. Derek said to him, “You know that’s not the bathroom, right.” JR’s brothers knew what he was doing; his eyes were glazed over and his pupils were contracted to a pin. He shot Derek the bird, and as soon as he did, Derek, Austen, and Tim fell over forward. If it hadn’t been for the safety harnesses, the three would be laid out on the floor. Everybody but JR was unconscious on the ship for some reason unknown.

JR just stared at them and laughed. They must be pulling his leg. He threatened Derek, but Derek never moved, so he shouted at the top of his lungs. He sat there wondering if he was just imagining all of it and if he had brought dementia on himself. When he realized it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him, he thought something else was going on - a bad something!

He lurched forward to check on life-support, but as far as he could tell, everything seemed OK. Then it slowly dawned on him that if something was wrong with life-support, he would be affected too. He turned around and went to the doorway to check on the passengers. Sure enough, everybody appeared to be sleeping.

He saw the wall glowing on the port-side of the ship. “What the …?” JR said, as a line went up and down, and another line began going side to side. Then the wall opened horizontally and vertically until there was a squared opening, three feet long and seven feet wide. JR could only see a bright light from the other side of the portal.

He quickly closed the cabin door and spied through the portal. He saw, blocking some of the light, a few short, bug-ugly looking aliens with big eyes coming into view, but not into the ship.

He reached over to check his younger brothers’ pulses and leaned over Derek to look out the window, but he saw nothing. Weird, he thought and went back to the door. When he looked back out, his nephew, Kirk, was levitating and slowly started floating towards the light. JR was just about to go charging in, but he thought that maybe E.T. had weapons. He didn’t want to chance Kirk getting hurt. He said to himself, Pull myself together, man!

The android’s remote control was lying in the fifth seat where Kirkie had set it earlier. JR looked at it, picked it up, and studied it quickly. He figured out how to make the android stand up and walked it over to where Kirk was floating forward to cut him off. It intercepted the teenager, stuck its arms out, curled Kirk into its arms, and walked away from the portal. ET didn’t know what to do or why this "person" wasn’t unconscious.

Then JR had the android walking his way bringing Kirk to him. A couple of E.T.s jumped into the One-Oh-One to go after Kirk, but they only made it a couple of feet when one of them noticed JR looking out the window. It pointed at JR with one of its long fingers, and they both ran back and jumped into the light and disappeared leaving as quickly as they had appeared. The portal slowly closed behind them until it was gone like it had never even happened.

JR opened the door and grabbed Kirk and placed him back in the seat he was in before the nightmare. Then he made the android sit back down. As JR sat down himself on the bridge, everybody started to wake up like they had never missed a beat. Derek was looking at him shaking his head in disgust.

JR figured that nobody would believe him if he said anything. They would just believe he was in a drug induced state, so he kept it to himself. He gave Derek a dirty look. He noticed that he was still holding the remote, so he set it back on the seat next to him and closed his eyes. This incident shook him up more than he would admit.

It was three months exactly from the date of the launch that they all saw Jupiter Station. They were so close that Jupiter was filling up the whole screen. What an awesome sight the gas-planet was!

To some, space is just black and white. To some, it’s all shades of grey, but to the Space Cadets, this area was every color of the rainbow and then some, due to Jupiter taking up the entire screen. They were all speechless staring out the window in front.

Derek touched his radio button by his chair and tried to contact the station. “This is Captain Derek of the One-Oh-One; come in.” Nothing … Derek noticed the few on the bridge were all staring at him so he told them that he had forgotten to say “over.” “This is Captain Derek of the N.A.S.A. ship One-Oh-One; come in … over.” Nothing …

Tim said, “Maybe there’s no one home?” Austen asked Tim if he thought they were at the neighbors and Tim laughed.