Chapter 33: Minerva
Everyone was silent as they slowly milled around their temporary base. After making sure that they were fully out of the asteroid belt, Libby had located a nearby planet for them to land on to regroup and perform repairs. Cindy, Nick, and Jimmy had touched down upon it and ushered everyone out of the rockets. They all watched as the three of them inspected the damage to the rockets.
Cindy and Nick exchanged glances as they noticed how slow Jimmy was working. He kept wiping his nose and eyes while looking away from them. They could also hear Libby occasionally crying lightly and sniffing. They weren't proud of the decision that they had made.
"Extensive hull damage," Jimmy summed up for everyone. "Libby, I'm not in the mood to run a manual diagnostic procedure. The tracer chips should be sending you location signals as well as status reports. Read them and summarize them for us."
Libby nodded on her end. She pointed at Carl and Ike, and they quickly began typing on their keyboards. "It will take a minute."
"Roger that," Jimmy quietly answered. He had never felt closer to Libby than he did today. He turned his attention to Nick and Cindy. "Cindy, do some triage for me. Get the wounded to a separate area for me to check out later. Have Butch, Betty, and Brittany help you carry off the unconscious." Cindy nodded and gave him a quick salute before running off.
"Nick," Jimmy continued while facing his general, "I need you to tally our supplies once again. I'm seriously hoping that at least a few people were smart enough to grab some supplies before they hopped on these rockets. Once you're done, help Cindy."
"Yes sir," Nick answered while giving a crisp salute as well. He started to walk away, but stopped and froze for a moment. "I'm sorry about," he started to explain while turning around.
"Just do your job, soldier," Jimmy interrupted while turning away from him to stare at the rockets. Nick nodded and set off.
"Status reports coming in," Libby told Jimmy.
"Go," Jimmy instructed.
"Nick's rocket is in the worst condition. Average operational capacity of all the major subsystems is twenty-three percent. Cindy's is thirty-five, and yours is forty-three."
Jimmy was in no mood to calculate what that all meant. "Can we make it to our parents?" Oh, that's nice. Like she's in a much better mood, you jackass.
"I've run some simulations. With some luck, which you're damn well due, all three rockets should be able to reach the planet. But I'm not seeing how you could fly back to Earth. Besides, you wouldn't be able to fit all of the parents in your three rockets anyway. You'll have to continue with your plan of hijacking a Yolkian ship."
Jimmy nodded as he took this in. His ships were in the condition he needed. Once they got to the Yolkian planet he wouldn't need them any longer. He would just have to hope that luck would be on their side for once and that nothing else would go wrong.
"Thank you, Libby. Take a break. You deserve it," he sadly told her.
Libby attempted to smile, but she only managed to release a few more tears from her eyes. "Thank you, Jimmy. You deserve one too."
Jimmy's lips curled into his trademark smile, but quickly drooped down again. "Neutron out."
"Folfax out." Both of them clicked their headsets off.
Jimmy took his headset off and clipped it onto the loop in his jeans. He rubbed his two sweaty hands through his hair, closed his eyes, and let out a deep sigh. "Back to work. As always," he muttered while staring at the rockets.
"Jimmy?" a meek voice asked from behind him.
Jimmy frowned deeper as he recognized the voice. It hurt him to hear Cindy sound so weak. He turned around and faced her. "Is everyone ok?"
Cindy nodded while walking closer to him. "Most of the ones who were unconscious have woken up. The few who are still out of it haven't lost too much blood and have fair pulses. It looks like we'll get out of this with just one casual…" her voice trailed off.
"Good work," he told her, ignoring her last sentence. He heard her feet hit the ground as she turned around and began to walk away. "Cindy?" he whispered. She didn't hear him and continued walking. He quickly cleared his throat. "Cindy?" he asked louder.
She immediately spun around and stared at him. He noticed that her eyes were glistening. It appeared that she had been crying too. "Jimmy?"
Jimmy took a deep breath and walked up to her. "I, I want to thank you," he whispered.
Cindy took a step back, confusion etched across her face. "For what?"
Jimmy looked away from her; it was the only way he could do this. "For making me realize the…" he struggled to find the right word, "impetuosity of my decision to go after Sheen. I would have put too many lives in danger."
Cindy stepped closer to him and reached for his hand, but he pulled away. "I thought you were going to hate me."
Jimmy sniffed and rubbed his eyes once more. "I can't say that I'm not mad at you, even if you did do the right thing."
Cindy was a little hurt, but she hid it. "I can't blame you."
Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "I just can't help but feel that, just maybe, he's alive. And that maybe we should have gone back to save him."
Cindy stared at him pitifully. She wished she could tell him that she knew how he felt, but she had no idea.
"I know it hurts," Nick's voice interrupted their conversation as he walked up to them, "but we did the right thing. There's nothing more that we can do. When we get back to Earth you can grieve. But for now, we all need you to focus, Jimmy."
Jimmy nodded and ran a hand through his hair. "Ok, you're right. How many supplies do we have?"
Nick pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and struggled to read his handwriting. "We've got almost no food and water. Some of the kids brought their bags full of clothes. There are a few boxes of Band-Aids. And," he paused to lift his gaze up from the list, "seven guns."
Jimmy shook his head and sadly laughed. "Seven. Unbelievable."
Nick crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it onto the ground. "Five pistols and two shotguns. The guns were fully loaded. Thank god we finished the loading process after you won that game of capture the flag, huh?"
Jimmy nodded while pacing around in a circle. "Cindy and Nick, go gather all of the conscious kids and have them meet back here. I'm going to check on the wounded. We're going to have a little powwow.
Cindy and Nick saluted him and ran off to find the other kids, who were off exploring the strange planet. The ground was deep purple, and green mountains towered in the distance. Various orange plants stuck up out of the ground. The gravity was roughly the same as Earth's. Jimmy thought that under different circumstances, he would find this place quite peaceful.
At any rate, he unclipped the headset from his jeans and put it back on his head. "Folfax," he began while turning his headset on, "Folfax, can you hear me? Neutron requesting Libby Folfax."
There was a moment of silence and then Mike answered. "Mike here. Hang on, I'll get Libby."
Jimmy waited as Mike got Libby and she put her headset back on. "What is it, Jimmy?"
Jimmy pushed the microphone closer to his mouth as he walked up to the three unconscious children. "Do you know what planet we're on? Is it on my map?"
Libby silently reprimanded herself. She should have already looked up some basic information on the planet that Jimmy was on. Sheen's death was taking an expected toll on her, but she needed to be strong for everyone else.
"Checking," Libby answered while pulling up Jimmy's map. She focused in on the area where the rockets' tracer signals were being sent from. "Yes, this planet is on here. Says you examined it from an observational station that you had set up on Pluto a year ago."
Jimmy smiled slightly at the memory of setting up that station. It was nothing fancy, just a few high-powered telescopes in a makeshift observatory. It was one of the few trips that he had gone on alone. It had taken the majority of his spring vacation.
"You named it Minerva." She stopped talking and
leaned back in her chair. "That name's nice. Why'd you call it that?"
"Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom. But there are more important things right now. Is there any way that you can tell me if there is water on this planet?"
Libby chewed on her lower lip as she pondered this task. "Let me pull up the images you have of its surface." She tapped a few keys, and several dozen high-resolution pictures came up. "I'm seeing something that may be a spring of some sort. I have to zoom in a lot, and the image is fuzzy. I think it's around four kilometers from your rocket's position. I'll send the images to the monitor in your rocket. It will take a few minutes for you to receive them."
"That's fine. I have some stuff to take care of here. Neutron out." He clicked his headset off and clipped it onto his jeans once more. He then bent down and examined an unconscious girl that appeared to be a year older than him.
"How are you feeling?" he whispered while looking her over. There were no serious injuries, but many minor cuts across her arms and face. He put two fingers to her neck and checked her pulse as he stared down at his watch. It seems like just yesterday it was fried by my EMP.
"How is she?" Cindy asked as she strolled up to Jimmy and knelt down beside him.
"Pulse is a little weak, but nothing life-threatening." He moved on to the next two kids, two identical twin brothers who he recognized from his sixth-grade gym class. "Theirs is alright as well. I'll let them rest."
"Everyone's ready and rather anxious to hear how we'll continue from here," Cindy said while standing up and extending her hand.
Jimmy grabbed it and she yanked him off of the ground. "Well, then let's go," he said while shoving his hands into his pockets.
The murmuring of the crowd died down as Jimmy came back from the hospitalization zone. Jimmy was always amazed at how quickly everyone submitted to his authority. "Alright, we've got a lot to cover and time is always against us, so let me jump right into it."
"We've had innumerable setbacks so far. Before we even got into space, we lost half of our troops and supplies. Our training was cut short. We've lost one of our best shots and one of my best friends. Virtually all of our guns and supplies are now gone. We've lost thirty-seven more rockets, and the three that we have are in bad condition. And to top it all off, we lost our major weapon, Little Boy. If anyone has some good news that they want to share, I'd be pretty grateful to hear it."
The crowd was silent. They all knew that they had been unlucky in this trip. And that was putting it lightly. But when Jimmy summed up all of the disasters that had occurred thus far, it was incredibly frightening and intimidating. And the worst part was yet to come.
Jimmy waited a moment, but nobody answered him. "But we're not giving up. If we turn back now, we won't be able to build a new fleet of ships and get back to our parents in time. And this is about more than a rescue for me, and I assume that the same goes for most of you. I want to finish this. I want to kill Goobot and see that they don't go after us again. I want them to know, once and for all, that you don't mess with Earthlings!"
"Hooah!" came the unanimous response from the crowd.
"Alright, so we're going to press on. It's an approximately thirty-six hour ride to the Yolkian home world. We're going to set off in twenty-four hours. Cindy, Nick, I want you to finish training these grunts. This is our last training session before we fight the Yolkians, so you better make it count. Do I make myself clear?"
"Sir yes sir!" Cindy and Nick shouted while standing straight up and giving Jimmy a crisp salute.
Jimmy nodded, but a scowl was etched across his face. "I am going to fix the rockets and head out four kilometers west of here. Libby's found a source of water. I also think that some of these plants might be edible, "he explained while reaching out and stroking a red shrub popping out of the ground. "I need everyone to leave their backpacks, water bottles, and anything else that I can use to put food and water in."
He paused for a minute and looked out at his platoon. They were bloody, hungry, thirsty, and seemed scared. But Jimmy saw an intense anger in their eyes, a need to finish this fight once and for all. That was good. Anger was quickly becoming their only weapon.
"Move out! I want…" he started to explain, but he heard a voice in the distance and saw Cindy hold up her hand, signaling for him to wait.
"Jimmy, put on your headset!" She shouted from the middle of the crowd.
Jimmy unclipped the device from his jeans and put it on his head. He motioned for everyone else to do the same, and those with headsets did. "This is Jimmy," he said after turning his headset on. "Libby, what's up?"
"Jimmy, I've got some interesting new data. It's, um, bad news."
Jimmy clenched his hands into fists. "Of course it is."