Chapter 6

A Door And Death

Julianne and I quietly made our way onto bridge without being seen. I grabbed an intercom box that was sitting on a chair and we hid behind a vacant console. I began to fiddle with the box, seeing if I could get it to work. Flipping a switch on the side resulted in a whirring sound and blinking lights, but nobody took any notice of it. I held the radio attached to the box up to my mouth and said, almost muttering, “Intruders in the hangar. Repeat, intruders in the hangar. Five. With guns. Lots of guns. And a grenade launcher.” All of the soldiers on the bridge looked up at the loudspeaker in contemplation. “Intercept them!” The soldiers still did not move. “Everyone run for the hangar before they put a hole in our hull.” Still they did nothing. “Or in the package.” Men and women leapt from their seats and bolted to the door in a violent frenzy.

“These people are crazy,” I said to Julianne. “They value you more than their own lives.” She glared at me as soon as the words left my mouth. “I didn’t mean it that way, Julianne,” I sighed.

“How did you mean it?” She asked sarcastically.

“They didn’t move an inch when I said that they could all be sucked out into space, but when they heard that you were going to die, they ran to your rescue. That’s not like Turanors.”

“Yeah? Well they seem nicer than you, maybe I should walk down that hall right now and tell them to come back!” At that point she was yelling her head off, and if the Turanors heard it, she would’ve effectively laughed mine off as well.

“Quiet down! We can have this talk when we’re safely on a shuttle,” I whispered. I stood up and looked at the console that we had been hiding behind.

“So what do we do?”

“Well, I’ll see if I can find a PLSS here. That should get us started.” Julianne looked at me like I was crazy. That’s ironic, because she was a little “off” herself, if you catch my drift…

“What are you talking about?”

“PLSS is a Personal Locator Scanner System. Everyone onboard a ship, Turanor and Alexandrian alike have a microchip implanted in their brains. It allows you to keep track of the crew, among other things.”

“What other things?” Julianne asked curiously.

“Some systems can control the crew’s entire central nervous system, essentially giving the captain of a ship control of a crew of human robots.”

“Or it could allow a general to take control of everyone outfitted with a chip in his enemy’s army…”

“No, that’s not possible. Every chip has its own serial code that its commanding officer knows. There’s no way you could get that serial code.”

“Yes, because no one has ever committed treason in the history of the universe.”

Frowning, I replied: “You really should breathe between sarcastic comments. Anyway, I have to find the PLSS so that I can make sure everyone is in the hangar before starting my plan. Oh, there it is.” One of the many computer screens had PLSS written on the side in bold letters. I sat down on a chair in front of it and began to type away at the keyboard.

“So what now?”

“Now,” I said while the keyboard was clacking, “I pull up the ship’s schematics and find where the crew is on it. They should appear as red dots.” A blue picture with white crisscrossing lines popped onto the screen. “There. Now where is the hangar?” I typed “hangar” into the search window, and the screen relocated the picture instantly, showing a large blue square on the schematics symbolizing the hangar.

“Now, checking the number of crew members. If we’re lucky, they’ll all be in there.” I counted the red dots and compared it to the number of people on board, listed somewhere else in the computer. “Okay, they’re all there. Julianne, keep watch on this computer, and if you see any red dots about to leave it, tell me. Okay?” She nodded. “Good.”

I ran to the other side of the room to another console and started typing.

“Jonathon, what is so better about that computer. Is this computer not just as good?”

“No, they just have different capabilities. This one controls all of the doors, and that one monitors life support and the PSSL. And why do you talk that way?”

“What way?”

“You have an accent,” I mumbled absent-mindedly while typing.

“What? If anything, you are the one with the accent.”

“Well, it would seem that way. You are from another planet. You were only conquered last week, so—wait!” I stood up and looked at Julianne in awe.

“What is it this time? Do I move incorrectly? Or perhaps my clothes displease you. Well, if we get out of this, I’ll remember to pack an extra set of clothes when a totalitarian empire kidnaps me again, okay?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. The Alexandrian language is very difficult to learn. The only reason the Turanors knew it is because they used to speak it before they began left our society so that they could be space pirates. It takes most people more than a few weeks to learn it. It can take them years. God, I should’ve noticed it earlier.”

Obviously trying to get off an uncomfortable topic, Julianne said, “You better hurry with the doors. Some of the red dots are heading for the exit.” I took the hint and began to type again.

“You’re doing something right, though.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked while typing rapidly.

“They’re all running for the door…”

“Okay, okay, we can handle this.” I started to hyperventilate.

“How hard can it be to close a door, for God’s sake?”

“Very hard if Turanors happen to put passwords on their control computers and set up excellent firewalls.”

“Oh Lord! Fire!”

“Um, no. It’s a metaphor, so don’t worry.”

“Oh. I knew that.”

“I am now beginning to wonder why we had so much trouble beating your planet.”

“Less talk, more door-closing! They’re within ten meters of the door! But I must admit, that is one big hangar.”

“How could you tell how many meters they are from the door? The schematics can’t tell you that.”

“No, but I simply used a scale factor of eight-point-six and the length and width of the hangar on the computer to find the true length and width, which are eighty-six meters and twenty-five meters, respectively. Then I separated the screen into different sections that I labeled a, b, c, d, and e, and found their specific lengths.”

“Let’s make a deal. I don’t talk to you about hacking, and you don’t talk to me about your little adventures in math and guns, okay? Anyway, I’ve almost closed the door. Just one last firewall to pass before the opening is too small for a mouse to get through.”

“That is not very comforting.”

“Why?” I asked, my eyes still on the screen.

“Because you forgot one other mouse, mister.” I turned in my chair and saw Mary, the formerly incapacitated soldier, and she was holding two guns, one pointed at my head, the other at Julianne’s.

“I told you we should’ve killed her,” I said without moving my gaze from the gun barrel pointed at my forehead.

“You love to point out the obvious, don’t you Jonathon?” Julianne asked while also staring at the gun trained on her.

“An unhealthy habit.”

“Okay, both of you shut up!” Mary yelled, and we obeyed. “Good. Now, you are going to undo whatever you did to the hangar door, and you both might just live. Actually, to tell the truth, you, sir, won’t, while this young woman will. So, undo it.”

“Me?” Julianne asked, amazed.

“Yes. You are the one who bypassed the firewalls, correct?”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I am an excellent hacker. I hack for breakfast every morning. Hacking is my life.”

“Okay, then get on the computer and do something!”

I had no idea what she was going to do, but I hoped it would be something helpful.

“Let’s see…yes. I remember this part of the computer. Because I hack a lot!”

“Yes, we’ve established that,” Mary muttered. I couldn’t detect a hint of suspicion in her voice. I thought that she was either a wonderful bluffer, or she was incredibly gullible. I wished for the latter.

Julianne put on quite a show, pressing random buttons very quickly, making it seem as if she was actually typing something important. I almost thought it was going to work and that Mary would leave until a siren rang through the ship. Startled, Mary looked behind her into the hallway. Julianne took that chance to try to wrestle the guns from her, but Mary had a very tight grip on both pistols and reacted…badly when Julianne tried to pry them from her hands.

Mary turned around and hit Julianne across the face with the back of the gun. Is that the butt of it? Or the bud? My Lord, if only we had books these days. Perhaps there might’ve been something on the anatomy of a gun. Well, Julianne crumpled to the floor and Mary advanced on me with one gun pointed at my heart and the other at my head. And I thought at that moment, God, this woman is gullible! Any half-wit would’ve been able to see how fake Julianne’s fall was. She was a kind woman, but not a very good actress I’m afraid. It was by pure luck that Mary herself had never seen someone act, let alone lie.

Julianne stood up slowly so that Mary would not hear her.

“I’ve been waiting for some action today.”

“Wasn’t being knocked out by a little girl enough action for one day?” I asked recklessly. Mary’s mouth grew into a sinister smile as she put the barrel of her gun into my mouth, just as Julianne’s foot was about to slam into the back of the woman’s head.

“You—“ Mary’s voice was cut off by a loud bang. From what I’m told, when Julianne kicked Mary in the back of the head, Mary dropped the gun aimed at my heart and accidentally pulled the trigger of the other one, shooting a small bullet into my mouth at two-hundred-seventy miles an hour. It flew through my mouth, missing my tongue and the roof of my mouth and diving straight into my spine. I could feel my vertebra shatter into a million pieces that dug into my lungs and brain. Any textbook will tell you that a death like mine is completely instantaneous. Well, it is for the people watching. For the person dying, time slows down and you can feel every bit of the pain, and it seems to go on for hours. I felt a wave of cold flow down my body as my heat generating muscles stopped getting the blood they needed from my heart. Although my heart didn’t get hit by either a bullet or a piece of my spine, my brain was badly damaged and could no longer control the flow of blood from my heart.

After what seemed like hours upon hours of unbearable pain, I began to fall. I don’t remember there being a hole, I thought vaguely. But when I had fallen far enough, I saw my own body above me. I tried to move back to it, but being dead and not having a body, it was a little difficult. And instead of falling through the floor onto another level, I found myself floating in a complete blackness. I felt like I had been turned into air, and I was spread out all over the place. It was ultimate relaxation, and nothing could compare. In that place, it didn’t matter how many sins I had committed or how many good deeds I had done. I was there. It was peaceful, and I began to forget how I had gotten there. Who I was and what I had done no longer mattered. All that I needed to know was that I was there. That I was dead.