Chapter Six

“STOP!”

The word sprang from Jimmy’s lips with such force, his vision blurred and his head swam. The ringing in his head brought his hands instinctively to his ears, covering them and pressing in as if his head might explode. The last thing Jimmy remembered was the cool stone of the hangar floor on the skin of his face and Julz calling his name.

What Jimmy never saw was the effect his single word had had on the situation. The blaster rifles carried by the nano-tech troopers burst into a dozen pieces, the energy chambers exploding in perfectly contained balls of red flame. The troopers themselves found themselves suddenly pinned to the hangar walls, unable to move, unable to continue the fight as their armor fell to the floor in pieces underneath them.

Julz and Hima retreated to where Jimmy had collapsed to the floor. Mul-Rok was not far behind them. Hima scooped Jimmy up off the floor, casting a wary eye toward the pinned down troopers.

“He’ll hold them there until we’re safely away. Get him on-board, Hima, into the med-unit, now.” Julz started to follow Hima onto the ship, but Mul-Rok stopped her. “Help me finish. It will do none of us any good to leave unprepared.” Julz hesitated, her desire to tend to Jimmy painfully obvious on her face. “There is nothing you can do for him, Julz.”

She turned to her father, “I can be the first thing he sees when his eyes open again.”

“If we don’t leave this place now, he will never open his eyes again.”

Julz knew her father, knew his love for their world, their way of life. Something had changed him. Something awful forced him to forsake all he had ever known. She could see the anguish in his eyes, but knew the resolve she heard in his voice. Mul-Rok believed this was the only chance any of them had at survival. She couldn’t see deep enough into his thoughts to understand the danger he sensed or see what it was they needed to survive, but her father’s heart and mind were true. She had no choice but to follow his lead.

Without another lost second, fuel cells slammed home while crates and provisions found their way into cargo holds along the underside of the vessel. Julz worked quick, finishing the work the four of them had been doing before the troopers arrived in minutes, and without ever moving from where Jimmy had fallen to the floor. When she’d finished, Julz followed her father onto the ship, the hatch lifting from the hangar floor and sealing itself seamlessly into the ship’s exterior.

Mul-Rok tapped the com-link on his wrist as he strode through the ship’s corridors toward the command center. “Hima.”

“Ay, captain, still getting our boy strapped into your wee incubators, sir. Gonna need a few more minutes here.” Came the Nevarian’s reply in the best impression of Star Trek’s Scotty he could muster.

“Julz is on her way. I need you in the command center before I get there.”

“On my way, Captain.” The alien had a gift for Earth-based dialects. It was uncanny. Hima spent hours in the Terraling’s vast multi-media library of information learning everything he could about American Pop Culture, especially when it came to science fiction. Hima found Earth’s idea of alien life amusing.

Hima sat patiently at the helm when Mul-Rok entered the command center, his massive hands dancing across the control panel in front of him with practiced confidence.

“How come we’re still on this planet, Hima?”

“Thought ya might like to sit down first, Captain, this ain’t gonna be no pleasure cruise.”

Mul-Rok found his chair and sat. “Hima, you’re the last of the Nevarrian Royal Family. Earth slang does not become you.”

“You liked the Scotty impression better, I get it.” Hima stroked the throttle keys and the cruiser shot into the moisture rich, night sky of the planet Terra. Within seconds the cruiser cleared the planet’s atmosphere and raced into space.