Her Royal Madness

Her Royal Madness Part 23

That was about as much as I had ever heard Martin say at one time. But it did the trick. I was calmer and my stomach felt better. Well, less bad anyway. Martin wrapped his right arm around me and pulled us to the bridge with his left. I was surprised how gentle Martin could be, considering his size and strength. His grip on me was rock solid, but I barely felt a thing. Unlike Henry, Martin was in no hurry and used his free arm mainly for guidance and to keep our speed in check. We stopped at the end, light as a feather. 

I slipped through the hatch to find Juna in a flurry of activity. Mentally, that is. Physically, she was strapped into the pilot seat, motionless. Her T'Pauch was pulsing blue and green, brighter than I had ever seen it. She didn't acknowledge our presence by turning her head or speaking out loud to us. 

I heard her voice in my head. "Maddie, you're here now. Good. I'm sorry, but I can only spare a small compartment of my mind brain to communicate with you. Alvonis has been sabotaged, infected with a virus that has crashed her operating system and taken her completely offline. I've started the boot-up sequence to bring her back online with backups, but that will take hours. We don't have hours. We've got company. I've got to fly the ship myself. I'm going to be very busy soon, and I need you on the guns. Shoot at anything that moves. There aren't any friendly ships close enough to help us. It's a long shot, but the only chance we've got." 

There was a brief pause. I heard a clunk and the engines roared back to life. Okay, so maybe "roared" is a bit of an exaggeration, it was more of a low humming that we felt as much as we heard. But in my imagination, it was a roar. 

In my excitement, I almost forgot my stomach problems. I said, "Alright, Juna! You did - ulp!" I clamped my mouth shut and swallowed hard avoiding a messy situation, but just barely. 

"Maddie, I'm very busy right now and about to get busier. Please don't disturb me anymore. I won't be able to respond until we're out of danger." 

Slowly, we started to drift down to the floor. We were moving again. That meant we weren't quite sitting ducks anymore, but more importantly, it meant we had gravity. The queasiness in my stomach eased a bit. There wasn't a lot of gravity, maybe a tenth of what there should be, but it was enough for me to function. 

I stood up, took a deep breath to calm and steady myself, tapped into my T'Pauch for some courage, and addressed the boys. 

"Henry, remember how you're always trying to tell Daddy that these dumb video games of yours are not a complete waste of time? That you're developing skills, somehow?" 

"Seriously, your Mad-nificence, video games are important training tools in our modern world. There's been hundreds of studies showing how people who play a lot of video games have far superior hand eye coordination. Not only that, everything these days is run by computer and video games teach you how to --" 

"Yeah, whatever, Henry." I said. "I've heard it all before. Here's your chance to prove your point. I want you, Martin and Nicholas to put these on and strap yourselves into the passenger seats while I explain what you have to do." 

It was a good thing Juna had included a detailed explanation of the ship's weapons and how to use them as part of my training. I knew where to find what we needed. A hidden panel beside the passenger seats slid open and weapons control helmets flew out toward Henry, Martin and Nicholas. The helmets actually look more like goggles than helmets. Each one has a visor that wraps around your head in front of your eyes. The three boys quickly adjusted the helmets on their heads, climbed into the seats and strapped themselves in. 

"Okay, we're in our seats all snug as a bug. Now what, your Madness?" Henry said. 

"Put on these gloves." I handed a pair to each of them. "As soon as I get the gloves and helmets plugged into the ship, I'm going to go sit in the co-pilot seat. When the weapon systems are powered up, your controls will start working. Basically, the gloves sense the movement of your hands. The visors on your helmets let you see your targets and the controls. Just move naturally and the helmets take care of everything. It should be just like playing a video game. Any questions so far?" 

"Yeah, Maddie," Martin said, "Are we really going to be shooting at other ships?" 

"Yep. You ready?" 

"And they're going to be shooting back?" Nicholas said, his voice a little shaky. 

"I guess some of them will. Of course the others might just try to capture us alive." 

"If you grandmas are done your tea party, can we get started?" Henry said. "It's been a while since I whipped you guys in a video game. Let's go - what's the high score for this game anyway?" 

"Hank, can't you be serious for once? This isn't a game. It's real. We could die. For real. Quit clowning around." 

" Relax Nick. I could be serious, but then I'd get too cautious, too worried about missing. Life is all about taking chances. Go hard or go home! What are we waiting for? Is this game fired up or what?" 

"One more minute, Henry. I need to get into my seat and buckle up. Once I turn everything on, you'll find the controls simple to use. Your right hand controls the joystick to swivel the cannon around. The thumb switch is the firing button. Your left hand controls the arrow pad, which moves the cannon up and down. The view directly in front of you is the cannon sights. Each shot will be directed at whatever's in the center of the sight. If you glance down, you'll see a three dee representation of us and any other ships around us. You can rotate this view with the left\/right arrows on the arrow pad. Any ship you see will be a bad guy. There are five main cannons on the ship. Two on the front, I'll take those. One on the tail, Henry, that's yours. And there's one on each side, Martin, you've got the left and Nicholas, the right." 

I snapped the last buckle in my seat restraints and settled back. I tried to relax my body as best as I could and closed my eyes. Concentrating hard images of our ship and the bad guys' ships popped into view one at a time. This was a trick Juna had taught me. I was really glad she had pushed me so hard. I was going to need everything she had taught me, plus a lot of luck, just to survive.  

There were six ships, all coming at us from different directions. The nearest one was already in range. I needed to switch the weapons on quick. Searching with my mind, I found the weapons control room and one by one flipped the switches powering up each cannon. We were ready for action.