Post by acclue lockheart on Jan 10, 2008 23:46:46 GMT -5
heheh, you'll see what he is. It was originally supposed to be revealed in this chapter, but I decided it'd be more dramatic this way
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Chapter VII: Marooned
The S2 Miracle was a ship past it's prime. The S-class ships weren't even in circulation anymore and it was a fairly early model. Most ships had been outfitted with military grade weaponry to help with the issue of space pirate ships, but the S-classes were made before that time, before ship to ship guns were legalized, before they had developed a working auto-pilot, before the starship engine was perfected. In lamens terms, it was a big flying target with no way to fight back or operate in an emergency. But the captain of The S2 Miracle loved that ship more than anything else he had seen in the colossal portion of the universe he had been to. He loved it until that day. The day The Miracle was finally put out of commission.
"Alright, what's going on up here?!" Jack shouted, running into the control center of the ship "What did we just hit?!"
"We... don't know sir." one of the pilots piped up.
"What?"
"Seriously, we've got nothing."
"D***, and we're that close to Earth!" Jack slammed his fist on the table.
Earth was no longer anything but a spaceship supply dock. It had been abandoned long ago by humans and was slowly becoming a naturalist's paradise. With the exception of a few small ports, Earth was nothing but a rampant, desolate forest.
"Should we jump sir?" the pilot asked.
"No, this is a mandatory stop on the route, they'll think we're dodging it if we do." the ship shook again. He could think of only one person who would want to attack them. "Contact the ship, 'M13 Orion'."
"What? Why?" the pilot seemed frantic.
"Just do it." Jack was getting impatient.
The pilot complied, and surely enough, Zelan's face showed up on the screen, smiling as before.
"Zelack." Jack said.
"It's Zelan!" Zelan exploded into the mic, leaving a loud squealing feedback. He looked as if he were surprised by his own anger, then calmly backed away again. He cleared his throat "So, I suppose you are ready to give it to us?"
Jack sincerely thought about it for a moment, then said "Y'know, I might have if you weren't a schizo raving lunatic."
Zelan frowned "You're making a mistake you know."
"I know." Jack said, reaching over the navigator and closing the line himself. "Everyone get to the escape pods." nobody did anything "Now! Go!" the room cleared pretty quickly with that and he was soon on the bridge alone. "Oh, Alex!" he ran out after the others.
The infirmary door flew open "Alex! You-" he was surprised to see Iie standing on the swivel chair in a white lab coat that went down by the floor anyway.
Iie grinned "I'm a doctor!"
"I don't even want to know." Jack shook his head "Where's Alex?"
"The doctor had to use the bathroom." Iie hopped down to the ground and dropped the lab coat behind him "Why, what's wrong?"
"Get to an escape pod."
"Where's that?"
Jack put his hands in the air, gesturing that he was about to say something, then dropped them and said "Just... follow me!"
He led Iie to the restroom where they found Alex leaving with Melissa waiting in line behind her.
"If you wanted everyone on the ship to come, why didn't you just use the PA system?" Alex complained as she dragged Iie down the hall by the hand.
"Cause..." he stopped at a terminal and yelled into it "All personnel abandon ship!" everything shook around again "Now!" he added. He caught up to the others again, running "Happy?"
"Ecstatic!" Alex said.
"Now, by chance are you two brother and sister?" Melissa asked.
"No." they both said at once.
"I think I wanna see a DNA test or something." Melissa directed to Iie, who laughed.
"Get in!" Jack motioned toward one of the detachable capsules, with only one passenger already on board, a pilot. Jack hit a button on the outside of the pod.
"What're you doing?!" Alex yelled.
"A captain always goes down with his ship." he saluted.
Alex hit the open button and dragged him in by the front of his shirt "Get in here you idiot!" she punched the inside launch button and the doors closed again.
"Are you crazy?!" Alex yelled in his face "You always said you wanted to do that, but I didn't think you would actually do it! Hey! Are you listening to me?!"
Jack turned around with wide eyes to see his ship being torn apart by the vastly superior Orion. He sighed "Just kill me now."
"It's just a ship." the pilot shrugged his shoulders.
Jack turned around and gave him a weird look "Who... are you?!"
"Sir, Jason Brown, specialist first class pilot, sir!" he saluted Jack.
"Put your friggin' hand down." Jack said "You're not in the military anymore. Individual ships mean something to captains here because they're actually ours!" he sat down on the floor with his hands over his head. A loud explosion came from behind "Oh god, just get us set down on Earth, will you!"
The pilot jumped onto the controls and began to set a place to land.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Miracle was practically a fireworks display from the ground, and few parts fell to the ground, all that did burned up harmlessly. Even after making their crash landing on Earth, Jack still lied down in the escape pod, refusing to leave.
They had landed several miles from the intended outpost, so they would need to hike back, but not without Jack.
"Alex?" Jack said from the floor, looking up at the ceiling.
Alex was the only one that was still staying to watch him "Yeah?"
"Do you think I evacuated the ship too early?" Jack at up to look at her "Maybe I could've... done... something."
"If you'd waited any longer, we'd all be dead." Alex dropped down to the floor next to him "You saved everyone on that ship, you're a hero."
"Yeah..." Jack lied back down "But I lost the ship."
"Oh get over it!" Alex stormed past him out of the capsule, for a minute she thought she was getting through to him.
Jack sat alone in the room while everyone else slept in the forest outside, they wanted to let their captain be for awhile.
"Jack."
Jack looked up and had to let out a small chuckle. "You b******." he casually lifted his sidearm from his belt and pointed it right at Zelan's chest.
Zelan, however, didn't even flinch "You brought the weapon with you." he said at first indifferently, then instantly turned to anger, but still quiet as not to wake the others "Do you think I would not notice?!"
Jack sat up, then got to his feet all while still aiming at Zelan "You're talking about that kid, aren't you?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Zelan looked amused.
"Who the hell are you?" Jack pointed the gun at his head this time.
"I'm willing to compensate you for your ship and it's cargo. Just tell me of the weapon's location."
"Go to hell." a bullet made direct contact with Zelan's forehead. His head was thrown back and blood fell behind his back.
His head leaned back down in the correct place and his face had a scowl on it.
"The frig?!" Jack fired two more shots, one missed, the other hit Zelan's arm, but all he did was respond to the kick and continue to stare.
"Pity." Zelan turned around and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
Jack couldn't believe what he just saw. He continued to hold the gun out in front of him with a shaky hand long after Zelan left. He sat down on one of the escape pod's benches, never dropping his hand.
Melissa, Alex, Iie, and Jason all showed up, one after another, at the escape pod, wondering what had happened. Jack was mostly unresponsive, but when Iie walked in with Alex, he dropped his gun. "A-Alex, would you mind taking a blood sample from Iie?"
"What? Why?" Alex asked "What's going on, Jack?"
Jack closed his eyes for a moment and tried to shake off his shock "It's-it's nothing. How close is the outpost now?"
"It's... a few miles, but it's dangerous at night." Alex looked concerned.
"Doctor?" Iie was holding his knee and looked to be in pain "I tripped over something before, do you have a bandage?" blood was leaking out between Iie's fingers.
"Oh, good, he's bleeding." Jack relaxed some, but everyone looked at him "What?"
Alex turned back to Iie "Oh my god, you might be hemophilic!" she pulled a drawer behind her open and pulled a first-aid kit out. "Alright, this might sting a little bit." she popped open a bottle of rubbing alcohol, wiped the wound clean, and dumped a bit of the alcohol over it. Iie whined in pain, trying to put his hand down to it "Don't touch, that'll go away in a sec." she put a styptic patch over his knee and wound the bandage around it. "Alright, that fixes that wound, but you've bled an awful lot. We need to get him to a better medical environment soon, he might even need a blood transfusion. Losing that much blood from a scraped knee has to be hemophilia though."
"I-I'm not going to die from that, will I?" Iie muttered, starting to cry from the earlier pain.
"No, not unless we can't get to the outpost, you just have to make sure not to get cut up anymore. The less blood loss you have, the better off you'll be."
The five walked through the forest toward the outpost in pure blackness, the only thing leading them along were some stick emergency flares from the first-aid kit.
Even with Alex leading him along, it wasn't ;long before Iie collapsed. Alex yelled "Iie!" no response.
"He's lookin' pretty pale." Melissa said.
"He's breathing, he's just unconscious." Alex picked him up in front of her "We have to keep going."
"You're a good doctor, Al." Melissa said, running alongside her.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
They looked into the outpost through a link fence. "D***ed electric fences." Alex growled "C'mon, we gotta find the way around."
It took them nearly an hour to find and go through the gate, by then Iie had broken into a fever and was panting in his sleep.
Alex grabbed an armed guard at the gate by the shirt collar and growled at him "If you don't tell me where the nearest hospital is right now, I swear I'm going to kill you, revive you, then kill you again."
The man shakily pointed to a large building nearby.
"Thank you." she dropped the man to the ground and picked Iie up again in a sprint.
Melissa was stunned "What the- Where'd the sweet and sensitive doc go?!" she complained "She usually only does stuff like that to you, Jack."
Jack, however, wasn't caught off guard at all "When someone's life is in danger, Alex tends to put the safety of herself and others behind the patient's. Usually the death threats come more detailed than that though."
"Maybe we should follow?"
Normally, Jack would've found the nearest place with a liquor license to drown himself in alcohol and avoid his doctor's wrath, but finding out if Zelan was telling the truth about Iie seemed like a higher priority.
The hospital was mostly empty, so it was easy for the doctor to get Iie a room, where she immediately demanded an emergency blood transfusion.
The hospital's staff gladly helped set up to help bring around a sample test and bring the appropriate type around in a big plastic bag. Alex hooked Iie up to a machine and as soon as she flipped the switch, a loud long beep came from it, drawing a flat line across the screen. Alex's arms dropped down beside her in defeat.
A nurse ran into the room, then came to a stop "Umm, ma'am? Please disconnect him, it's-"
"What?!" Alex was crying "How can you be so insensitive?!"
"Ma'am, that EKG is broken." the nurse said "You would flat line too."
Alex looked up again, wiping her eyes "Oh... oh, thank god!" she smiled.
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I feel as if I should put something where Zelan and Jack's conversation cuts out, just to make it less obvious
I love the next chapter
Next Chapter: Betrayal
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Chapter VII: Marooned
The S2 Miracle was a ship past it's prime. The S-class ships weren't even in circulation anymore and it was a fairly early model. Most ships had been outfitted with military grade weaponry to help with the issue of space pirate ships, but the S-classes were made before that time, before ship to ship guns were legalized, before they had developed a working auto-pilot, before the starship engine was perfected. In lamens terms, it was a big flying target with no way to fight back or operate in an emergency. But the captain of The S2 Miracle loved that ship more than anything else he had seen in the colossal portion of the universe he had been to. He loved it until that day. The day The Miracle was finally put out of commission.
"Alright, what's going on up here?!" Jack shouted, running into the control center of the ship "What did we just hit?!"
"We... don't know sir." one of the pilots piped up.
"What?"
"Seriously, we've got nothing."
"D***, and we're that close to Earth!" Jack slammed his fist on the table.
Earth was no longer anything but a spaceship supply dock. It had been abandoned long ago by humans and was slowly becoming a naturalist's paradise. With the exception of a few small ports, Earth was nothing but a rampant, desolate forest.
"Should we jump sir?" the pilot asked.
"No, this is a mandatory stop on the route, they'll think we're dodging it if we do." the ship shook again. He could think of only one person who would want to attack them. "Contact the ship, 'M13 Orion'."
"What? Why?" the pilot seemed frantic.
"Just do it." Jack was getting impatient.
The pilot complied, and surely enough, Zelan's face showed up on the screen, smiling as before.
"Zelack." Jack said.
"It's Zelan!" Zelan exploded into the mic, leaving a loud squealing feedback. He looked as if he were surprised by his own anger, then calmly backed away again. He cleared his throat "So, I suppose you are ready to give it to us?"
Jack sincerely thought about it for a moment, then said "Y'know, I might have if you weren't a schizo raving lunatic."
Zelan frowned "You're making a mistake you know."
"I know." Jack said, reaching over the navigator and closing the line himself. "Everyone get to the escape pods." nobody did anything "Now! Go!" the room cleared pretty quickly with that and he was soon on the bridge alone. "Oh, Alex!" he ran out after the others.
The infirmary door flew open "Alex! You-" he was surprised to see Iie standing on the swivel chair in a white lab coat that went down by the floor anyway.
Iie grinned "I'm a doctor!"
"I don't even want to know." Jack shook his head "Where's Alex?"
"The doctor had to use the bathroom." Iie hopped down to the ground and dropped the lab coat behind him "Why, what's wrong?"
"Get to an escape pod."
"Where's that?"
Jack put his hands in the air, gesturing that he was about to say something, then dropped them and said "Just... follow me!"
He led Iie to the restroom where they found Alex leaving with Melissa waiting in line behind her.
"If you wanted everyone on the ship to come, why didn't you just use the PA system?" Alex complained as she dragged Iie down the hall by the hand.
"Cause..." he stopped at a terminal and yelled into it "All personnel abandon ship!" everything shook around again "Now!" he added. He caught up to the others again, running "Happy?"
"Ecstatic!" Alex said.
"Now, by chance are you two brother and sister?" Melissa asked.
"No." they both said at once.
"I think I wanna see a DNA test or something." Melissa directed to Iie, who laughed.
"Get in!" Jack motioned toward one of the detachable capsules, with only one passenger already on board, a pilot. Jack hit a button on the outside of the pod.
"What're you doing?!" Alex yelled.
"A captain always goes down with his ship." he saluted.
Alex hit the open button and dragged him in by the front of his shirt "Get in here you idiot!" she punched the inside launch button and the doors closed again.
"Are you crazy?!" Alex yelled in his face "You always said you wanted to do that, but I didn't think you would actually do it! Hey! Are you listening to me?!"
Jack turned around with wide eyes to see his ship being torn apart by the vastly superior Orion. He sighed "Just kill me now."
"It's just a ship." the pilot shrugged his shoulders.
Jack turned around and gave him a weird look "Who... are you?!"
"Sir, Jason Brown, specialist first class pilot, sir!" he saluted Jack.
"Put your friggin' hand down." Jack said "You're not in the military anymore. Individual ships mean something to captains here because they're actually ours!" he sat down on the floor with his hands over his head. A loud explosion came from behind "Oh god, just get us set down on Earth, will you!"
The pilot jumped onto the controls and began to set a place to land.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Miracle was practically a fireworks display from the ground, and few parts fell to the ground, all that did burned up harmlessly. Even after making their crash landing on Earth, Jack still lied down in the escape pod, refusing to leave.
They had landed several miles from the intended outpost, so they would need to hike back, but not without Jack.
"Alex?" Jack said from the floor, looking up at the ceiling.
Alex was the only one that was still staying to watch him "Yeah?"
"Do you think I evacuated the ship too early?" Jack at up to look at her "Maybe I could've... done... something."
"If you'd waited any longer, we'd all be dead." Alex dropped down to the floor next to him "You saved everyone on that ship, you're a hero."
"Yeah..." Jack lied back down "But I lost the ship."
"Oh get over it!" Alex stormed past him out of the capsule, for a minute she thought she was getting through to him.
Jack sat alone in the room while everyone else slept in the forest outside, they wanted to let their captain be for awhile.
"Jack."
Jack looked up and had to let out a small chuckle. "You b******." he casually lifted his sidearm from his belt and pointed it right at Zelan's chest.
Zelan, however, didn't even flinch "You brought the weapon with you." he said at first indifferently, then instantly turned to anger, but still quiet as not to wake the others "Do you think I would not notice?!"
Jack sat up, then got to his feet all while still aiming at Zelan "You're talking about that kid, aren't you?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Zelan looked amused.
"Who the hell are you?" Jack pointed the gun at his head this time.
"I'm willing to compensate you for your ship and it's cargo. Just tell me of the weapon's location."
"Go to hell." a bullet made direct contact with Zelan's forehead. His head was thrown back and blood fell behind his back.
His head leaned back down in the correct place and his face had a scowl on it.
"The frig?!" Jack fired two more shots, one missed, the other hit Zelan's arm, but all he did was respond to the kick and continue to stare.
"Pity." Zelan turned around and disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
Jack couldn't believe what he just saw. He continued to hold the gun out in front of him with a shaky hand long after Zelan left. He sat down on one of the escape pod's benches, never dropping his hand.
Melissa, Alex, Iie, and Jason all showed up, one after another, at the escape pod, wondering what had happened. Jack was mostly unresponsive, but when Iie walked in with Alex, he dropped his gun. "A-Alex, would you mind taking a blood sample from Iie?"
"What? Why?" Alex asked "What's going on, Jack?"
Jack closed his eyes for a moment and tried to shake off his shock "It's-it's nothing. How close is the outpost now?"
"It's... a few miles, but it's dangerous at night." Alex looked concerned.
"Doctor?" Iie was holding his knee and looked to be in pain "I tripped over something before, do you have a bandage?" blood was leaking out between Iie's fingers.
"Oh, good, he's bleeding." Jack relaxed some, but everyone looked at him "What?"
Alex turned back to Iie "Oh my god, you might be hemophilic!" she pulled a drawer behind her open and pulled a first-aid kit out. "Alright, this might sting a little bit." she popped open a bottle of rubbing alcohol, wiped the wound clean, and dumped a bit of the alcohol over it. Iie whined in pain, trying to put his hand down to it "Don't touch, that'll go away in a sec." she put a styptic patch over his knee and wound the bandage around it. "Alright, that fixes that wound, but you've bled an awful lot. We need to get him to a better medical environment soon, he might even need a blood transfusion. Losing that much blood from a scraped knee has to be hemophilia though."
"I-I'm not going to die from that, will I?" Iie muttered, starting to cry from the earlier pain.
"No, not unless we can't get to the outpost, you just have to make sure not to get cut up anymore. The less blood loss you have, the better off you'll be."
The five walked through the forest toward the outpost in pure blackness, the only thing leading them along were some stick emergency flares from the first-aid kit.
Even with Alex leading him along, it wasn't ;long before Iie collapsed. Alex yelled "Iie!" no response.
"He's lookin' pretty pale." Melissa said.
"He's breathing, he's just unconscious." Alex picked him up in front of her "We have to keep going."
"You're a good doctor, Al." Melissa said, running alongside her.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
They looked into the outpost through a link fence. "D***ed electric fences." Alex growled "C'mon, we gotta find the way around."
It took them nearly an hour to find and go through the gate, by then Iie had broken into a fever and was panting in his sleep.
Alex grabbed an armed guard at the gate by the shirt collar and growled at him "If you don't tell me where the nearest hospital is right now, I swear I'm going to kill you, revive you, then kill you again."
The man shakily pointed to a large building nearby.
"Thank you." she dropped the man to the ground and picked Iie up again in a sprint.
Melissa was stunned "What the- Where'd the sweet and sensitive doc go?!" she complained "She usually only does stuff like that to you, Jack."
Jack, however, wasn't caught off guard at all "When someone's life is in danger, Alex tends to put the safety of herself and others behind the patient's. Usually the death threats come more detailed than that though."
"Maybe we should follow?"
Normally, Jack would've found the nearest place with a liquor license to drown himself in alcohol and avoid his doctor's wrath, but finding out if Zelan was telling the truth about Iie seemed like a higher priority.
The hospital was mostly empty, so it was easy for the doctor to get Iie a room, where she immediately demanded an emergency blood transfusion.
The hospital's staff gladly helped set up to help bring around a sample test and bring the appropriate type around in a big plastic bag. Alex hooked Iie up to a machine and as soon as she flipped the switch, a loud long beep came from it, drawing a flat line across the screen. Alex's arms dropped down beside her in defeat.
A nurse ran into the room, then came to a stop "Umm, ma'am? Please disconnect him, it's-"
"What?!" Alex was crying "How can you be so insensitive?!"
"Ma'am, that EKG is broken." the nurse said "You would flat line too."
Alex looked up again, wiping her eyes "Oh... oh, thank god!" she smiled.
--------------------------
I feel as if I should put something where Zelan and Jack's conversation cuts out, just to make it less obvious
I love the next chapter
Next Chapter: Betrayal