Hard Line

I stood a metre or so from the opened hatch. My heart pounded so loud in my ears, I thought the ‘Planters’ would sense the vibration.

The bridge of a bounty hunter’s ship isn’t small and claustrophobic – long trips in isolation require room to move – but spacious enough to pace. I reached the bulkhead near the hatch in three easy strides.

The first pirate, with fronds flared from its body, wriggled through the opening on its root-like appendages and I heard the rattle of… some things as they bounced around the pilot’s chair and off the console.

That they meant to kill me straight off was obvious; but they’d missed. Now, I had an excuse. One I hoped I wouldn’t have to use.

In the event of a catastrophic electrical fire, the best way to suppress that fire is to suck the oxygen out of the compartment. Of course, that assumed the hunter was dead and wouldn’t need oxygen.

Designed to limit the damage and for the hunter recovery team to salvage a damaged vessel and reassign it once repaired, it was a ‘final solution’ for me. Unlike the engine room with its large maintenance panels, the bridge had a series of tubes connected to air-filtration scrubbers. The system vented noxious fumes into space and recovered oxygen and nitrogen into storage tanks.

The Blue Dragon builders, wary of obviousness, routed the venting system through the bridge and engine room and one fail-safe – should your ship be captured by a bounty – within the armoury; and that was one deck below me.

As the three aliens shuffled into the room and I held absolutely still.

With no eyes, ears or visible mouth, I assumed these fern covered creatures relied on touch and/or vibrations. In the red gloom of the emergency lights, I saw the three touch fronds, then slowly approach the pilot’s chair.

I took my chance and dashed out of the bridge, thumped my fist on the access panel, and locked them in with my security code. If they had similar emotions to humans, one would start work on opening the hatch again while the other two messed with the command console.

That gave me maybe thirty seconds to sprint down the short corridor, down the grav-lift and back up the corridor to the armoury closet. All in darkness, but I knew my ship.

In my haste, I fumbled with the seven-digit access code on the armoury lock. My second attempt transposed two numbers and the count down to permanently sealing the doors glowed red above the panel.

I dragged in a deep breath to calm my nerves and punched in the correct sequence.

“Huh, only five seconds to go.” I muttered as the doors slid into the wall cavity.

The heavy counter-insurgent rifle came off the rack and I laid it on the deck, punched another five-digit code into the smaller panel and the hatch popped open. A console swung out of the cavity.

My fingers flew across the half-size keyboard, the screen lit with a view of the bridge. I was right: one creature busily tried to open the hatch, while the other two touched fronds as they leaned over the console. Did they think I’d booby-trapped it? Shame I didn’t think of that.

I didn’t want an explosive decompression on the bridge. It worked in the engine room because nothing was loose to fly about damaging vital equipment. The bridge was different. Too slow and they’d realise what I was doing and take remedial action.

I settled for venting in two minutes. Long enough they’d know, but quick enough they couldn’t do anything about it unless they opened the hatch. To make things more difficult for them, I also cut power to the gravity interface and dropped the temperature to zero Fahrenheit.

As I waited for the bridge to vent, I turned the lights to fifty percent and re-routed the airspace from the holding cells into the engine room. I did not look at the plant creatures, not yet. I didn’t know if it would work. Plants needed light to photosynthesise and air to… do whatever air did for them. Without those two elements, I’d condemned the creatures to a slow death by starvation.

I didn’t feel very good about myself for doing it; when issued with an execution warrant I did it quickly. This was torture in my book.

But would they surrender?

I shut down the console, returned everything to its rightful place. Gas didn’t work on them, projectile weaponry I reserved for the outdoors since I didn’t want holes in the hull, but the stunners might work. How did electricity affect plants? I grabbed a double holster and two stun-guns. I might have the opportunity to find out.

Outside the engine room hatch, I waited for the light to glow green. With the invaders trapped on the bridge, I didn’t need to hurry although my imagination created all manner of gruesome scenarios as to what was happening up there: exploding plants (unlikely), green gunk everywhere, wilted trunks with fronds reaching out for help, trunks with flared fronds floating, bumping into bulkheads, lifeless.

The hatch hissed open and I shut down those images. I had business with a homicidal plant.

In case something… nasty happened to the bridge, the engine room had a back-up system. Everything slaved to one console. I stood in front of it and fired up the coms.

A plant sat at the Customs desk. No surprise there but was it the same one I’d dealt with on arrival? Actually, they all looked the same to me.

“Greetings.” I said.

Fronds trembled. “Bipedal organisms are not allowed in this sector.”

“So I gathered when your thugs board my ship. Three are dead now and the others are in peril. Do you wish to barter for their lives?”

The fronds stilled, then began an agitated rippling. “You lie.”

I split the screen so it could see the three on the bridge, fronds undulating, trunks floating.

“I want them off my ship.” I said. “They can leave alive or… as mulch.”

“My people are not to be toyed with!”

“Then I suggest you call them. I’ll give them gravity, but if they even look like they’re going for the bridge controls, all negotiations will cease and I get rid of them my own way.”

The fronds on its ‘face’ flared and then settled back into place. “Agreed.”

The voice synthesizer didn’t give me any audio clues as to its truthfulness, but that was okay. If they stepped out of line, I’d find out what electricity did to foliage.

I nodded curtly and cut the connection.

I gave them gravity before heading back up to the bridge. Yes, I gave them time to make a plan, but I knew my ship. On the way, I picked up a curved riot screen and turned it on, in case my uninvited guests got feisty. At the bridge hatch, I punched in my access code and backed up.

Three frond covered tree trunks hesitantly came out. They stuck close each other as they walked towards me. I watched with the stunner raised as they went into the lift and down.

I followed head first - not recommended - but it gave me an advantage of firepower first. The screen protected me as I flipped over just above deck level and landed in a crouch behind the molybonded plas-glass.

Small nuts snapped, buzzed and roasted on the screen. I fired at the plant on the right. Blue electricity sparked through its fronds, blackening the greenery. It stiffened and fell over with a thunk.

The stench of smouldering leaves and a light blue-grey smoke cloud blew into the lift.

Guess I found what could hurt them.

“Out! Get the fuck off my ship before I turn you into kindling!”

The other two rolled the third towards the external access hatch. I watched from behind my screen.

As soon as the hatch closed behind them, I locked it with a different security sequence. Now I had another problem.

I ran back to the bridge, leaned the deactivated screen against the bulkhead, settled in my seat and watched the shuttle undock. As soon as it was clear, I activated the shield generators. They seemed like the kind of creatures who would destroy what they couldn’t capture.

While I needed to get out of here as fast as possible, I also needed to set an alert buoy for anyone else who ventured into this system. One ship alone couldn’t retake the planet.

As expected, the sods fired at me. Whatever they used melted against the shield like butter. Bigger nuts, maybe?

A ship this big easily outran the shuttle. It was dangerous to other craft for me to increase speed so quickly, but if the shuttle vaporized from expelled gases, tough. They started it.

I kept accelerating, dropped the buoy and made the jump into hyper without damage.

Feeling safe, I slumped in my seat, exhausted. I needed some sleep, some downtime, but I had all those little nuggety-nuts to clean up, though how I could find them all was going to be a major pain.

Since they were ostensibly weapons, I needed gloves, but as I looked around the console and deck for the little brown things, not one could I see.

Odd, strange, and very peculiar.

“Okay, where the hell are you all?”

“Here.” A distinctly masculine voice said just before all the systems shut down.

© Copyright Jaye Patrick 2008