Chapter Eleven - Bump in the Road
Jak woke up after a couple of hours of sleep to a sound of crashing he could only imagine was coming from Cyan’s efforts in reorganizing her new quarters. He had turned in for a bit of rest, leaving Baxter up front to man the ship. Jak found that he couldn’t stay in the cockpit for an extended length of time when they were on a long journey because it made him drowsy. He figured that if you are going to fall asleep anyway, it might as well be in your bed.
A couple of times the noises seemed like they would cease and Jak would start to doze off, only to be reawakened by the next unexpected bump. When he accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, he got up and got dressed and made his way back to the cockpit.
At some point on the way up, he decided to stop at Cyan’s room first. When he got to her door and it didn’t open, he realized she had changed the automatic door opening system to manual mode. The fact that she had changed it didn’t bother him as much as the fact that Jak himself would have had no idea how to change this function on his own ship. He snarled to himself and knocked three times.
“What is it?” Cyan’s voice was muffled from inside. What did she think it was? He wanted in.
“It’s me ... Jak.” He wasn’t about to ask for permission to come into a room which up until a few hours ago had belonged to him.
The door slid aside with a slight squeak, revealing her in the entrance with an unyielding pose as if to say, ‘I’ll answer the door, but you aren’t coming in here.’ She had obviously brought a change of clothes with her. The skin tight black pants and soft grey tank top she wore made it clear she had not been on a ship with men for any length of time in the past.
Jak just barged his way into her makeshift quarters. “So, how are you doing?” he asked on his way in. She rolled her eyes in dismay as she was forced to buckle and let him pass.
Jak tried to bite his tongue as he spotted the modifications which had already been made to his precious room of all purposes. She had tacked up some fabric on to the lighting in the room to act as a shade, which resulted in a softer and warmer light throughout the room. Most of Jak’s stuff was clearly missing. His bar was spotless and the thermal tub was no longer storing the precious engine parts, but had been emptied and cleaned. Two of the equal sized couches had been pushed together to form what looked like a comfortable bed, with blankets properly laid out. Jak briefly pondered the question of where she had found all of these sheets and blankets.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked him.
Jak thought about the answer. How dare she take over his bar? How dare she do this to his ship? Of course he would like nothing more than to have a drink with a beautiful girl wearing skin tight clothes. It was clear she wanted to get under his skin. He decided to play along.
“What have you got?” he asked while he finished analyzing the room.
Smiling, Cyan walked behind his bar. She quickly plopped down two clean cups on the counter and brought out a bottle from the display cabinet.
She held it up and read the label. “Shalen ale,” she said as she popped the top and put a small amount in each cup. Jak took his drink.
“So, are you comfortable in here?” asked Jak. He hoped the answer would be an unfaltering no.
She maintained eye contact with Jak as she sipped her drink. “Yeah, it’s coming along. Don’t worry, I won’t make too many changes.”
“You better not,” said Jak, only half joking. “How do you like your drink?”
“Actually, it’s terrible,” she answered.
“Yeah, I know,” agreed Jak. He put his drink back on the bar. Cyan laughed and did the same.
Jak felt a slight clunk in the ship and looked to Cyan who with her eyes verified that she had felt the same thing.
Baxter’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Jak, you’d better get up here.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“Where else would you be?” Baxter’s voice on the loud intercom clicked off and left only an awkward silence behind.
Jak smiled nervously at Cyan and walked to the door.
He hit the button to open the door and turned to face her. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” was her reply as she turned and continued her work as if Jak had never come into the room. It sounded an awful lot like ‘whatever’ to Jak.
Once the door was fully closed, Jak rushed through the hallway toward the cockpit, knowing that Baxter didn’t usually bother calling him unless he really thought there may be a serious issue. He thought about the exchange with Cyan as he walked. She was trying to get his guard down with her pretend friendliness and the drinks, so he’d make a stupid move and she’d have something against him. Something in addition to his episode of drunkenly hitting on her the first moment he had met her. He’d have to be careful.
Jak joined Baxter and dropped himself down into the flight chair.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Baxter pointed to a few statistics on his screen. “What do you make of this?”
“Engine trouble again?” asked Jak.
Baxter wasn’t sure if Jak understood the readout on the screen and thought he may have just made a good guess, being that engine trouble was the most common type of trouble they usually had.
“Main engines are fine, but the system’s showing a huge static build up in the FTL system. Could be a bad dispersion filter. We probably should have tested it a little further before gunning it out here.”
“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time.”
“We might just want to drop out of faster-than-light and go on the regular engines for a while,” said Baxter.
“Have you looked at where we are?” asked Jak. He motioned with his head toward the screen currently displaying a star chart.
Baxter made a quick review of the coordinates and made a noise of displeasure as he realized they were in an area where no one intentionally stopped or even slowed down.
“Well, never mind that then,” said Baxter. “Computer, what is the status of the faster-than-light drive system?”
“System is operating at ninety percent efficiency ... No issues detected.”
The loud bang and sounding alarm quickly eliminated whatever confidence they may have had in the ship’s answer. Jak grabbed the controls to steady the ship as its faster-than-light propulsion was lost and replaced clumsily by the uneven start up of its regular heavy engines.
“Remind me to junk that computer as soon as possible,” yelled Jak over the disorienting volume of the ringing alarm. “Bax, kill that alarm!”
Cyan rushed her way into the cockpit and braced herself with a hand on each of the two chairs. “What’s going on?”
Baxter was first to explain. “We just lost the FTL engines and got dropped here in the middle of the Zeldok Sector.”
“Is that bad?” asked Cyan, truly not in sync with their feelings on the seriousness of the situation.
“Yeah, it’s bad,” said Jak. He was busy watching sensors and looking out the cockpit window.
Baxter explained further while monitoring his screens. “This sector is full of Zeldok mercenaries and pirates. They’ll go after anything that moves. Anyone who accidentally enters this area does not make it out. Unless you count the people who float out of here, after they get boarded and thrown out of their ships.”
“Wait, aren’t you two pirates?” asked Cyan.
“Merchants,” corrected Baxter. He hated being called a pirate.
“But isn’t Jak here the type of guy who is friends with everyone? Can’t you just call up one of your buddies to help us out?”
“I don’t have any friends in the Zeldok sector. This is the wrong side of town and Zeldoks don’t exactly enjoy socializing.”
As the Tempest moved forward, Cyan caught a glimpse of a group of asteroids coming into view on the left side of the ship, encircled in floating debris and garbage. Not far from the rocks were two derelict ships, missing the
ir doors and hatches and encrusted with black burn residue from the fulmination of lost battles. Sparkles of light flickered occasionally as the light from the stars glinted off miniscule shards of metal peppering this dangerous corridor of space.
“I’m sure the great Jak Phoenix can make his way through this wasteland,” said Cyan. She did not attempt to disguise her laugh or her tone of sarcasm.
“Look, I don’t have time to debate the technicalities right now.” Jak tried to remain focused on his piloting while countering Cyan’s interruptions. “These guys will kill anyone for anything of value. And, they’re known to do freelance work for Cartrite. We barely made it away from a gang of them on Scoparia, so it’s best we all shut up and move along.”
“Well, luckily we don’t have anything of value,” said Cyan.
“We’ve got you, honey. And I’m sure they’d love your little outfit.”
“Maybe we’ll just get through this without any hassle,” said Baxter, attempting to kill their conversation and interject some positivity.
“Why would you jinx us like that?” asked Jak.
A blip sounded and a dot appeared on the proximity sensor.
“Of course,” said Jak, raising his hands in defeat.
Baxter saw the stress building in Jak. “It’s just one small ship.”
A second blip sounded indicating the presence of another ship.
Even though he knew they were traveling at the highest speed they could, Jak forced the throttle forward just to see if it had even a fraction of an inch of extra room to move. It did not.
A third blip sounded, followed by a series of jumbled blips which made the readout’s attempt at assistance irrelevant. Two attacking Zeldok ships were a problem. A cluster of them was a death sentence.
The small triangular Zeldok ships swarmed and followed the Tempest like a cloud of mosquitoes chasing their next living meal through a forest. They were tiny crafts, nearly all identical in design as they were likely originally stolen as a bulk load from some kind of transport ship. The pointy ships were in terrible condition and sloppily painted with markings and colors representing what many figured were their different clans.
Jak looked at the aft viewer screen and noted the presence of one larger ship amongst the swarm of fighters. “Their boarding ship is coming up behind us.”
“What’s that?” asked Cyan.
“Typical Zeldok tactics,” said Baxter. “The fighters can’t really do anything except knock around your ship, so the boarding ship comes in behind them and docks up with their target. Then they basically board your ship and take everything and kill you.”
“Just like the name says,” added Jak, as he tried to remain focused on the task at hand.
A thud shook the ship as the small enemy ships began their routine of disabling their quarry. Jak recognized it as a low spectrum laser blast. Good for draining the energy from a ship and confusing its systems. They didn’t want to destroy the ship. They wanted to strip it down.
A dirty triangular ship darted across the front of the ship, flying within inches of the clear cockpit window. All three passengers could not resist the reflex to flinch.
Cyan quickly understood the danger of the situation. “I’ll fix the engines. Throw your intercom on, Baxter.” She turned and raced to the back of the ship to get a start on the task.
“Ready?” asked Jak, looking over at Baxter.
Baxter nodded. Jak grabbed on to the controls and switched the ship into manual flight mode, to give him absolute control.
He swung the ship around to get a clear view of their opponents and slowed down to a crawl. A quick calculation revealed at least a couple of dozen fighters, plus the larger ship. Evading them would be impossible and would lead to a quick defeat. There was really only one choice.
Jak brought the ship up to a high speed and flew directly into the cloud of gnats. Laser blasts hammered the ship as Jak made a path into the center of the problem. The pilots of the small fighters fought to renegotiate their flight paths and create a new strategy on-the-fly. They were accustomed to ships flying away from them and were not expecting someone dumb enough to come right at them.
The small pointed ships whizzed by the cockpit of the Tempest with Jak steering at the last minute to nearly avoid collision with the crafts. He twisted the ship’s path upwards, causing a little fighter to veer to the left and into one of its clan mates, creating a temporary double blast of fire which quickly petered out in the black void.
Jak figured he was doing them a favour. They seemed to like junk floating everywhere, so he figured he would contribute a bit before he left.
“Bax, I want you to reset our course to continue on the same route we were on before we stopped. As soon as the engines are ready, we’ll jump right back on course.” Jak banked the ship hard to the left to avoid enemy fire.
“Confidence. I like it,” said Baxter.
Jak let a few laser blasts go from the new cannons, blowing away two more of the fighters as they twisted along.
Baxter worked with Cyan over the intercom, changing settings and relaying information back and forth, in hopes of whipping the ship back into shape. Baxter searched through the operating system, and gave Cyan the information she needed to do whatever it was she was doing in the back. From the intercom speaker Jak heard the sounds of grinding and banging coming from the engine room. For a moment he was truly glad she was there with them.
Jak made his way at top speed toward the large boarding ship. He brought several of the Zeldok ships along for the ride on a snake path. He executed a barrel roll to add confusion and circled the docking ship with the string of enemies behind him. Jak caught a flash in the rear view, confirming the loss of at least another ship that ploughed into its mother ship.
Jak disintegrated a few more of the triangles on his way back around to make another pass at the boarding ship. He loved the feel and deep sound of the cannons Rusty had installed. Aside from the warning alarms popping up all over the dash panel to tell him the ship was getting scuffed up, he was having a great time.
The enemies came at him with more intensity as he approached the large ship again. They were getting tired of being out-flown and it was clear their mission had gone from scavenging to destruction. As Jak neared the boarding ship again he saw a jet of flame streaming out of a hole in it, burning up their oxygen. The lights were out on half the ship and it was beginning to take on a slightly crooked orientation.
Jak blasted away two more Zeldok ships as he flew in close to the boarding ship for another pass. Before they had a chance to react, Jak let out a stream of high intensity laser blasts into the front of its hull, penetrating and severing a large section of the ship off in a burst of metal shards and short lived sparks. There would be no boarding of any kind. The main ship was ruined.
Jak flew the ship at top speed around the perimeter of the Zeldok’s attack zone, amongst the jagged asteroid formations. The remaining fighters lurched around to pursue the Tempest on its psychotic path. More and more ships joined the long tail as Jak shifted the ship’s path and squeezed between two giant rocks. He saw the red hue behind him as at least a couple of the ships either collided against each other or into the field of space junk and lost control, their paths ending in detonation.
“How’s the engine coming?” asked Jak. “Is she gonna be able to fix it?” He could feel the aggression building in the attacking ships. The Tempest was holding its own, but the pummelling from the abundance of ships was taking its toll. Jak figured they had only a couple of minutes left.
Baxter conversed with Cyan over the intercom and came to the conclusion that she also only needed a couple of minutes.
Jak swirled the ship around and through a cluster of floating shipwrecks, losing another Zeldok pilot who had lost his focus in his anger and made a stupid move in following Jak. He turned the ship around to face toward their original heading.
Jak’s heart nearly quit as he saw at least fifty fighters in fro
nt of them. The ships had snuck in and were now standing in between them and escape.
Another dozen irate pilots were behind them.
Their options were dwindling.
“Tell her to hurry or we’re done!” yelled Jak. Baxter didn’t need to relay the message, she could hear it. A moment later, Cyan was running toward the cockpit.
She simply said, “Go.” She was out of breath and filthy.
Jak pondered his escape routes as ships started to close in above and below. Tricky manoeuvres wouldn’t work here.
“Are you absolutely positive those engines are going to work?” asked Jak in a calm manner that didn’t seem to fit the situation.
“They’ll work,” said Cyan. “Trust me.”
Blasts started to hit the ship as they coasted along toward the battalion.
Jak flicked a switch on the dash and release two concussion missiles, which rocketed off toward the crowd of ships directly ahead of them.
Jak delayed for a moment and timed it in his head, knowing they were dead if it wasn’t perfect or if Cyan had not solved the technical problems. He pushed the control forward and activated the faster than light engines, shooting the ship forward and into its maniacally fast form of travel.
The two missiles met a pair of Zeldok ships blocking their path, connected and disintegrated them into bursts of energy. Only a fraction of a second passed before the Tempest and its crew shot through the sparkling remains, out the newly created hole in the offence, and into the freedom of the black star field ahead.