Chapter 6
Andrea
“Sir, our ship’s systems have rebooted. Shall I turn on the power?” Maggie, the computer girl asks Jake in that quiet, almost whisper-like voice of hers. She annoys the heck out of me. She acts so important all the time, I can’t stand it! To tell you the truth, I can’t stand a lot of people in this big mother ship of scrap metal. Besides Jake, that is.
“Go ahead Maggie,” Jake says, preoccupied with whatever task he’s doing.
“Sir, shall I disconnect our intervention with the earthling’s home power?”
“It’s called electricity, idiot. You don’t have to use fancy-shmancy explanations to impress me, Maggie. Just use the terms normal people would use. And yes, disconnect,” Jake says, dripping with sarcasm.
“Talking about human terms, sir, we’re anything but normal to them,” Maggie says, getting all hot-headed and indignant. Like always. Did I mention I hate her guts?
Jake thinks about this for a few seconds and says:
“You don’t have to call me sir all the time, Mags.”
“Did you even hear what I said?!” Maggie sputters. Jake ignores her. I think he hates her as much as I do. I know he would very much like to get rid of her, but she’s too useful with her machinery “specialty”.
“Just disconnect the power, ma’am,” Jake says mockingly to Maggie. She scowls darkly at him and turns back to her computer screen. Jake motions for me to follow him out of the room.
“When are we ever going to throw her out into space?” he whispers once out of earshot of Maggie.
“Maybe she’ll be eaten up by a black hole,” I smile. I can tell Jake likes my smiles. Once I smiled at one of his officers as a test and Jake didn’t speak to me for a week. That sounds childish, I know, but he eventually came around when I smiled at him and him only.
He thinks he’s so special, but Jake really is just a spoiled child. But I like him anyway.
“So anyways, Andrea, how close are we to the earthling’s solar system?”
“Based on the heat of their main star, I’d say it’d take about two to three more months if traveling at maximum speed.”
“What?!? But that’s half a year on Earth!” Jake explodes when he hears the bad news I was trying to keep away from him.
I nod my head sympathetically. Jake storms back to the command room.
“WHO HERE KNOWS A PLACE WHERE WE CAN SWAP SHIPS?” Jake yells so loud I’m sure the people in the mess hall on the other side of the ship could hear him. I sigh and shake my head. He’s so impatient.
Of course, Maggie chooses this moment to speak up.
“Sir-“
“STOP CALLING ME SIR YOU ANNOYING BRAT!”
“-there’s another ship in our path. We seem to have shifted onto a crash course, aside of the original route.”
Jake pivots on his heels and directs his fury at her.
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” he yells. I can see some officers near Jake visibly cringe from his continuous screaming.
“What I mean, sir,” Maggie says slowly, as if speaking to a child, “is there is another ship coming full speed towards us and we can’t get out of the way.”
“WELL, WHY NOT?”
“Because they’re coming full speed, sir.”
“WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?”
“I’m assuming in the few minutes while I was restarting the navigational-computer-“
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU! WHY DID YOU RESTART IT?!” Jake looks ready to explode. I pick this time to step in.
“Maggie, what type of ship is it? Enemies?”
“Actually, yes it is,” she says in her matter-of-fact voice. I turn to Jake.
“Have someone gather up all the fire- and metal- powers in this rocket. We’ll need all the power we can get.”
It dawns on Jake what I am going to do. He cools off quickly and composes himself to address a nearby officer.
“Send out emergency messages to the fire and metal squadrons. Tell them to come now.”
“Yes sir!” the officer replies. He runs off to a computer screen and quickly taps some buttons.
No way are we going down. Not if I can help it.
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Stormy Skies (On Hold)
Science FictionThis story is being put on hold in order to be edited and rewritten. Feel free to read it anyway.
