Scrapyard Ship 3 Space Vengeance (33 page)

“
Don’t touch her.”

Stalls froze. Quietly, almost soothingly, he said, “I should have figured you’d be around here somewhere, Mollie.”

“
Stand up, slowly! I have a gun and I know how to use it.”

Stalls slowly got up, trying to straighten his body, but having difficulty. He brought both hands up.

“
I’m sure you do, Mollie. Don’t do anything crazy, little girl. Look, I’m not armed,” he said, his words sounding somewhat slurred.

He turned to face her. “I didn’t come here to hurt you, or your mother. You have to believe me.”

Mollie was surprised to see that the big pirate had taken numerous shots to his face. Two large black scorch marks pocked his skin, one almost severing part of his lower lip, which hung loose, looking ready to fall off at any moment. A continuous stream of bloody drool flowed down onto his ruffled shirt.

Her mother groaned, then stirred. Mollie turned in time to see that her mother’s eyes were open and she was trying to say something. She tried again, and the words were inaudible, but Mollie knew what she said.

“
Shoot him.”

Mollie understood. She looked back to Stalls, but he was already moving. In a blur, he slapped the gun from her hands and reached for her neck. Mollie ducked below his outstretched arms and ran, quickly getting tangled up in her mother’s outstretched legs. Stalls came at her with surprising speed, and only by crab-walking backward was she able to avoid his grasping hands.

In quick pursuit Stalls too tripped over Nan’s legs. Mollie got to her feet and walked backward toward the broken back windows. From behind her came a strange sound: flipflap, flipflap.

Stalls was no longer hurrying to catch her. Mollie took a glance back and realized she could probably outrun him. He was an adult, but he was injured. She hesitated too long.

“
Why don’t you leave us alone?” Mollie asked, tears coming to her eyes.

“
Leave you alone? Why would I do that? No, you will soon come to think of me as your father. You will be a princess in my castle. Your mother … a queen.” Stalls smiled, causing the dangling section of his lip to finally fall free. He brought his fingers to his mouth and said, with a wet slur, “Shit.”

Flipflop, flipflop.

Stalls heard the sound and looked beyond Mollie to the porch outside. Mollie’s eyes grew wide as she watched her mother rise up behind Stalls, holding the pirate’s energy rifle. She shot him in the back and watched as he fell to the floor. She smiled reassuringly toward Mollie, but quickly wavered, then crumpled to the floor herself.

Mollie jumped over Stalls to her mother’s side. Not knowing what to do, she pried open an eyelid with two fingers. Her mother brushed Mollie’s hand away, looked up at her and said something in a whisper.

“
What, Mom? I’m scared.”

Barely conscious, Nan said, “Get help, Mollie. Hurry.” Her eyes shut as she lost consciousness.

Flipflop, flipflop.

Mollie stood. How do I get help? “Hello, Bag End? Are you there?” She waited for a response, but heard nothing.

Flipflop, flipflop.

Annoyed, she spun around. “What is that stupid sound?” she asked aloud.

It was coming from outside … at the edge of the porch? No! In the pool. Mollie ran out through the ruined sliding doors and onto the deck. The pool was littered with bits and pieces of the house’s framework and shingles from the roof. Then she saw it: a claw slapping at the water trying to grasp the edge of the pool.

“
Teardrop!”

Down on her knees at the pool’s edge, Mollie reached under the water until she felt the drone’s metal arm. She pulled it up toward the surface. Using both hands now, she put her back into it and pulled harder. Teardrop was just too heavy to pull free from the pool. Frustrated, she looked around for anything that could possibly help. Teardrop’s claw was opening and closing, as if trying to grab at something, at anything. Scooting back, Mollie pulled again; this time she brought the claw right to the pool’s edge, where it immediately clamped down on the rim. Teardrop then rose up out of the water and hung there, between the pool and the deck for several moments. The muzzle of a weapon hung limply out of a cavity in its chest. Faint at first, sounds emanated from the battered, one-armed drone, but were too garbled for Mollie to understand. She wondered if it had shut itself off. Then Teardrop began talking much more clearly.

“
Mollie Reynolds, intruder alert, intruder alert—”

“
It’s too late for that. He’s already dead. My mom … She’s hurt. She needs a doctor.”

Teardrop, seeming to come back to life more and more by the second, hovered above the pool. The drone spun around once and moved forward into the house.

Mollie watched it as it hovered above Stalls’ body, then over her mother’s.

“
Immediate MediPod attention is required. Death is imminent.”

“
My mother’s dying?”

“
Yes. Your mother and the intruder require immediate MediPod attention.”

“
No, no, no … Can’t you help her? Wait, what do you mean the intruder?”

Teardrop hovered back over Stalls’ inert body. Stalls’ hand twitched once, then a leg. Mollie’s eyes widened.

“
What’s wrong with him? For heaven’s sake, why won’t he just hurry up and die?”

Frantic, Molly hurried inside and helped Teardrop lift, or more like drag, her mother. It was awkward; Mollie was off balance and nearly dropped her.

“
Hurry! We need to get her away from him. Can’t you see he’s waking up?”

Stepping around his not-fully-conscious body, Mollie paused. Remembering what Orion had taught her in self-defense class, she pulled back her leg and let loose the kick of all kicks straight at his face. Stalls fell back on the floor.

Teardrop and Mollie hurried out the back of the house and headed to the side yard. “We need to get her to The Lilly. You need to take us to my father, to The Lilly.”

Teardrop lowered Nan and then hovered over the pool for several seconds.

“
What are you doing? We need to go!”

Teardrop was back in the pool and heading toward the bottom. Mollie stayed at her mother’s side. Her eyes were fluttering again; at least she was still alive. There was movement in the house. This was a nightmare, like the movies she’d seen where the bad guy unbelievably kept coming back to life long after he should have been dead. She squinted her eyes. Was he …? Oh no, he’s getting to his feet.

Teardrop was back, hovering over the pool.

“
Where were you? You need to help me, right now!” Mollie screamed in the drone’s direction. Teardrop had reclaimed his other arm from the pool. It wasn’t working perfectly, but at least it was attached.

Back at Mollie’s side, Teardrop lifted Nan’s body into the air on his own. “We must proceed to the subterranean base.” The drone headed off into the scrapyard. Before following, Mollie took one more glance toward the house. Her heart stopped. Teardrop’s distant voice was now harder to hear: “Mollie Reynolds, we must proceed to the subterranean base.”

Stalls was not only standing, but he was holding his rifle. Appearing to have problems walking, Stalls leaned against the doorframe. He smiled down at Mollie—his lower teeth showing through the ragged gap along his lower lip. Then the smile was gone.

“
You little bitch.” His gun came up, the muzzle pointed at her head.

“
Please don’t kill me?” she said, slowly getting to her feet.

“
Sorry, but if you’re this much trouble as an eight-year-old—”

His words were drowned out by a low-frequency rumble. Then a vibration—a vibration so intense the ground shook. Mollie lost her balance and fell to the ground. An earthquake? Then she saw it coming from above. Yellow, and as big as a barn, it was falling fast toward Earth.

Screaming, Mollie scooted backward, trying to escape an unidentified falling object she was sure would end her life. Then, in the blink of an eye, the ground shuddered and the new house, along with Captain Stalls, was flattened into something no thicker than a pancake. The huge ensuing dust cloud rose high into the air, making it impossible to see anything. Mollie, unsteady, got to her feet and wiped at her eyes. As the air cleared, she now saw what was towering above her. It was some kind of monstrous-looking vehicle, with tires the size of a man and a big, blue container-like thing behind it. A hatchway opened in its glass-paneled cab area. A man swung out, precariously holding on with one arm. He looked down at her.

“
Mollie? Is that you?”

“
Uncle Brian?”

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

“
I thought we weren’t using that thing,” Jason said, hovering over Ricket’s shoulder.

The white communications cube seemed dissimilar to the one installed by the Caldurians on The Lilly’s bridge. Just opening it required special tools brought down from Deck 4B. With its cover off and its sides hanging loosely open, Ricket’s focus was on modifying the main circuit board.

Jason asked again, “What is it you’re doing?”

“
Even with the formulaic precepts figured out, we still need to contact the interchange, provide it with in and out coordinates, and spool the wormhole into existence,” Ricket replied, now looking up at Jason. “This cube, like all the others installed within the outpost fleet, was configured to talk to the Caldurians, not the interchange. But it still utilizes a highly advanced, remarkably fast communications technology to which I’m surmising the interchange will be receptive.”

“
So you don’t really know if this is going to work. I thought we were past that, Ricket?”

“
We will know soon enough, Captain. It is ready.” Ricket moved to his right and started to type something on that station’s console.

“
So you’re just going to leave it open like that?” Jason questioned him, looking down at the opened box with its ripped contents of tangled wiring harnesses and added components, some parts precariously dangling over the sides of the box.

“
For now, Captain.”

“
But this looks like a hobbyist’s experiment gone bad. We’re entrusting people’s lives with this … whatever it is.”

“
Yes, Captain. It is important we test it and ensure it actually does what it is intended to do. Although I have done virtual modeling of it on a smaller scale on 4B, I am ready to initiate contact to the interchange to request the spooling of a full-sized wormhole. As an added benefit, our communications to the outpost fleet will no longer require FTL transmissions. Through this device, they will be instantaneous.”

With time quickly running out before the Craing commenced an attack on the Meganaught, or perhaps even split up their forces and sent warships to deal with the unprepared Allied fleet, Jason knew he needed to get things hurried along.

As much as this was a test, as Ricket put it, once they commenced spooling wormholes, all hell would break out. They would be committed.

Jason had selected Lieutenant Wilson to pilot the Pacesetter and Lieutenant Grimes to pilot the Epcot shuttle. Both were prepped and ready within The Lilly’s flight deck. The five other fighters would be phase-shifting the Mau warships into open space. With their three-mile phase-shift limitation, this part of the plan was dangerous. The Mau vessels would need to come out fighting and make their way to their predetermined outer perimeter positions.

Ricket stood and turned, backing away from the station, and said, “We’re ready, Captain.”

“
AI, sound general quarters,” Jason ordered. “Contact the interchange, Ricket.”

Ricket, who’d prepared a data script ahead of time, tapped only one virtual key at the station.

All eyes went to the overhead wraparound display. It started with a distortion, a blurring effect two thousand miles off the Meganaught’s port side. A kaleidoscope of colors, in prismatic flares, emanated out from a growing black void. Jason didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until he and the rest of the bridge crew collectively exhaled.

“
Wormhole’s stable, Captain,” Ricket said.

Seaman Gordon excitedly added, “I have confirmation from the Independence; the wormhole is there, sir.”