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Starjacked Part 2
Posted By: Dispraiser<dispraiser@netzero.com>
Date: 5 January 2003, 5:52 am


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      STELLULATE 42STELLULATE 42            LUNAR 4 ETA – 4 DAYS 0 HOURS 37 MINUTES
      I floated into the gravity generator room, and was surprised at the roar of the engine. It hummed louder than even the ships, and was probably consuming more power. I could survive without gravity, and we could probably chalk up the saved power to add onto our profit… But now wasn’t the time for that, I cocked the gun and drifted into the center of the room to the controls. I pressed the power button, no results. Checking beneath the control panel I found the pathogen, a clipped power cable. I really was dealing with amateurs here. I grabbed the rubber key cover (the nerds down at engine room just had to have them… Thank you nerds…) used to keep dust out of the keyboard. Grabbing the two halves of the wire, I waved one in the air. It left a glowing streak of electricity. Cool… I connected the two wires and watched as all the display screens and monitors activated. I left the two wires and stepped to the console unite beside the gigantic cylinder, which contained everything needed to create the gravity that a decent sized planet produces. I hit a few buttons on the screen and drew up another more complex screen. I looked up and down the screen. There was some text printed too little for me to even read. I stared for a second, trying to read it and eventually decided to just randomly hit buttons. I got lucky, and the gravity quickly activated. I fell to the floor hitting my chin on the keyboard unit. It snapped off and dangled by a few cords, but it would do. Stood back up and checked my chin. It wasn’t broken, but it was bleeding. Wiping the blood from the open wound I readied my rifle. If the gravity was as crucial to their operation as I thought it was, they would be here soon. I took a small claymore type weapon that I had grabbed from one of the soldiers I had killed, and stuck it underneath the keyboard. It was set to a proximity circuit, so if anyone dared to attempt to reactivate it, they would be blasted along with the gravity generator. Stepping out the door I carefully checked the hallway before progressing. I was glad to have gravity back, it was nice to be able to shoot a gun and not fly backwards as a result.
      Stepping cautiously around the corner I was suddenly alerted by a noise. Stopping my motion completely I readied the rifle and peered around the corner. It was another tight cramped hallway, as many on the ship were, and was not longer than ten feet to the other door, which led to a hallway leading parallel to mine along the belly of the ship. Suddenly I heard it again, another squeak. I slowly turned around the corner and stepped into the next hallway. Pressing my back against the wall I slowly progressed closer to the other hallway. I aimed my gun for about the height that someone’s chest would be at and spun around the corner, ready to kill them. There was nothing there at all. I looked up and down the hallway confused and suddenly saw movement at my feet. It was my pet rat, sitting at my feet; he probably floated out of his cage and down all these hallways when the gravity was out. I knelt over and lifted him up, after slinging the gun around my neck of course. I raised him up to a level where we were eye to eye. “Hey Peneke. Yer gonna be a hero today.”
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      STELLULATE 42STELLULATE 42            LUNAR 4 ETA – 3 DAYS 23 HOURS 28 MINUTES
      I nervously checked my watch. I t should have happened by now, what was taking him so long? Despite that I didn’t know what the real time was, it was great to have a watch to keep track of time. I had set the time release for eight minutes, I was pretty sure I had. Suddenly I heard a loud pop off in the distance that sounded like gunfire. It was happening. One of the zealots ran over the vent I was hiding in to investigate, and in the distance I could hear disgruntled shouts that it was coming from Kelly’s sector, and that I had caught her. I couldn’t believe how well this was working. I sat and watched my watch, another six seconds and another loud bang will ring out. I listened as it popped. One more in thirty more seconds and I would come out of the vent. Suddenly I heard a distant scream, “You shot me!” I was confused after hearing this. Another scream, but one that was of shock, not pain, “Sorry, I didn’t know it was you!” I now understood. It was a little friendly fire accident, someone accidentally shot their friend! I chuckled as another pop rang out. I slid the cover off the vent and popped my eyes p out of the vent. No one was visible, perfect. Pulling myself out of the vent I stepped into the hallway and ran noisily towards the cargo hold. Pressing my back against the sturdy door I twisted the circular handle a half dozen times and pushed the door open sharply. Again I saw four prisoners, a few crates and the large vent which I had watched them from before. A few rifles were lain out on a table in the center of the room that I recognized as our poker table. I ran up to the prisoners to free them. The one facing me, who was previously hunched over raised his head. He weakly stared at me.
      “Anderson? You were the one that got away? They kept talking about you. I can’t believe it was you!” he said. All things considering he had bountiful energy. I slipped the Swiss army knife out of my boot and flipped it open.
      “What? You don’t remember? I was a Marine for ten years before I was decommissioned. I have plenty of experience in this kind of crap. Go get a gun, you’re coming with me.” I said.
      “Look out!” he shouted suddenly. I spun around as a chair cracked over the back of my head.
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      STELLULATE 42            LUNAR 4 ETA – 5 HOURS 22 MINUTES
      “Oh my god.” I woke up. A splitting headache coursed through my skull as I rolled over and vomited on the floor. A puddle of my blood lie where I had previously had my head resting, probably a pretty large cut. The blood puddle was dry, the wound probably had already clotted, which was good, it was probably aided by my hair. I quickly glanced at my watch. I had been unconscious for three days and eighteen hours now. The dark room was small, probably a storage closet of some sort. He had longer blonde hair, but not even halfway to shoulder length. He wore the standard green jacket of most his crew, and wore baggy green and tan army pants. Despite the very militaristic clothes, he looked untrained, and if he was here to torture me, he would do a bad job. He was scrawny, and had skinny arms. He was probably better suited for typing than killing. I got lucky, or their numbers were to thin for them to spare anyone else. He sharpened a knife as he saw me awaken. What is it that they hoped to get from me?
      “So, got anything you would like to tell me before we begin?” he said, stopping his sharpening, probably to cut me once to scare me in hopes that I would talk.
      “Yeah, I do. My name, is Jack Anderson. My rank, is civilian, and you can have my serial barcode if you want, but I doubt you will need it. If you did, you would have already taken it. I won’t be telling you any more, so do your worst.” I was hoping to catch him off guard, and maybe scare him into letting me live. Unless he knew what he was doing, I will probably live. He stood up and paced over to me. He grabbed me and threw me into a chair with surprising strength, and tie me to it. I wondered why they had waited.
      “Are you sure there is nothing that you can tell me? I think you know more.” He said with a snake like tone. He was a good actor if nothing else.
      “I don’t even know what you want me to tell you! I mean, what do you want! I am just an average shipping employee! What do you want, I have a kid, his name John, and a wife, who is dead now, my favorite color is green, I am a blood type O, what the hell more do you need to know!” I had lost my cool.
      “I want to know where the Spartan 3 training facility! Tell me where it is!”
      “I don’t know where it is! But are those Spartans for real?” I asked
      “Yes, they are, the abominations of society, and the potential destroyer of mankind! They live somewhere on Lunar 4! Tell me where you were going with this ship, tell me where they are!”
      “So what are you all called? The ‘Terrorists against Spartans organization’?”
      “No. We are called the Neo Covenant.”
      I laughed. “Neo Covenant!?! Real original! Let me see, didn’t we use that name somewhere… Oh yeah, the horrible aliens that are killing us! I almost--”
      He hit me in the face drawing a tiny bit of blood. I spat at him. “No, we are a merger of three independent factions with similar goals. A covenant.”
      “Then why does Kelly get to boss you all around? You should be the one giving the orders around here.” And now I would play with his loyalties.
      “Nice try Jack.”
      “Oh, a first name basis… Well at least you don’t refer to me as ‘the fallen’.” I put on a fake scary voice for when I said the fallen… It was fun to make fun of his religion…
      “You are among the fallen as well.”
      “Well, so much for that… But listen, who made Kelly the leader?”
      A short pause. “Well, she did.”
      “Did you want her to be the leader?”
      “No.”
      “Who would you have picked?”
      “I would have chosen me.” I secretly praised this moment. It was now personal for him to despise Kelly, maybe I could get him to turn on her.
      “Well, who said you weren’t the leader?”
      Another short pause. “Kelly did.”
      “Let me ask you this, is your faction a minority in this group?”
      “No, we have greater numbers than any of the other factions, we had four members.”
      “Well, that means that you should get to have the leader be among your faction. Well, that is if Kelly is not from your faction.”
      “She is not. She is the only one of her faction.”
      “See, she is the minority. You should be the leader.” I was having lots of fun now…
      “I know what you are trying to do Jack. It won’t work. I am one hundred percent loyal to Kelly, or whoever leads a campaign against the Spartans.”
      “What if I told you that I was leading a campaign against them?”
      “You are?”
      “Well, yeah, of course. No one like clones.” I lied through my teeth. He would never know. Most of his crew was completely brain dead, and trusted anyone, even me, the one who had killed half of their members.
      “I can’t believe it. Wait a second, is this a trick?”
      I couldn’t lie, I had to get his trust, my cover would be blown eventually anyway. “Well, I can’t lie to you, no, but I am not for them. I don’t go and support them! At least I don’t mean to.”
      “So then you won’t mind telling me where you were going.”
      “Well, I was going to the starport.”
      “The starport!” he hit the wall near to my head, “Do you think that the UNSC would put a top secret base at a spaceport!”
      “I don’t know, but check the flight log, it would tell you! We are going to the starport!”
      “We tried to do that. We did, but we couldn’t decode it. Now tell me, why would you encode something that you could give up so easily. You are lying.”
      “Dammit, we are going to the starport, look, do you want me to decode it?”
      “No, I want you to tell me, where are you taking this cargo!”
      “The starport!” he slashed my leg with the knife. Some blood seeped upwards from the cut.
      “You try my patience! Well, I want you to tell me something else. Why--”
      “Why are you here? We don’t have what you want. Will you just leave now?” I said, maybe peace was the way to go.
      “We can’t leave! We are here to stop the Spartans, and we will.”
      “How do you even know you aren’t opening a crate of candy or something? Have you seen a Spartan here?”
      “We haven’t seen a Spartan, we were not hoping to. We saw, however, their armor.”
      “So why not just blow that out the airlock and leave?”
      “Because of something you did.”
      “What did I do? How did I hurt you?”
      “You reactivated the gravity generators. We have one of our guys going down to fix it now though, you see, we cannot move the crate until that is complete, it is too heavy.”
      “All eight of you couldn’t get it out? Or rather, all four of you?”
      “It weighs 16 tons. (Authors note: 32 armors… Hmmm… TAKING TRITUS CAMEO!!!)”
      “Oh. So, how much longer till your buddy fixes up the generator?”
      “Well, the only guy who knows how to fix it got shot. He woke up about the same time you did, and he should have it--” Suddenly a distant explosion echoed through the hallways as suddenly the gravity disappeared. Seizing the opportunity I kicked my feet, which were tied together off the floor, pain coursing through my body from the cut. I flew backwards into my captor, the chair hitting him in the stomach. I twisted my body causing the chair to spin, one of the legs hitting him in the face and splintering off into the wall. I saw some orbs of blood float by. I flipped my chest forward and spun around, kicking off his chest. I flew at the wall, as he mirrored my movement. I hit the wall and the chair shattered on impact, freeing me from it, though my legs and arms were still bound. He recoiled in shock, but quickly grabbed the splintered leg of the chair. I pulled my legs up to slip them over the rope which bound my arms. He hit off the wall and flung at me as soon as he could and clubbed me with the leg of the chair. I hit the wall hard again, and used it to kick him in the stomach again. He floated backwards towards his wall holding his stomach.
      I grabbed onto a nearby shelf and hurled it at him. The metal creation hit him in the arm though he easily batted it off to the side. It’s contents however showered him in debris. He flapped his arms, slapping cardboard boxes and random other objects out of his path. I pulled on my binding, though it was to no avail, they had done a good job. He grabbed an apple, which was floating as part of the shelves contents nearby him and threw it at me. It hit me in the back, though it caused me relatively no damage. I saw a sharp piece of the chair nearby. I moved towards it as he grabbed another piece of food, a pineapple and threw it at me. It hit me in the side, and caused some pain, though it was nothing compared to he pain in my leg. I pushed the piece of the chair into the corner of the room. Wedging it against the wall I pressed the rope binding my arms against it. Suddenly springing into action, he jumped behind me and got me into a headlock. I continued to try to break the binds on my wrists as He pulled back on my neck. The fraying rope finally snapped, and I quickly threw my arms back, pushing off the wall as well and flipped behind him. Suddenly attempting to rotate, he had no traction. I kicked him in the back, sending both of us careening against opposite walls. He dropped the leg of the chair, and I watched as it began to float out to the center of the room. Realizing he had dropped it he pushed off of the wall, but he was too slow. I had already grabbed it, and we rammed each other as we passed. He rolled to a stop near the wall and searched for a weapon, finding his fairly quickly, his knife. He snatched it out of the air and waved it at me. I readied for his attack, preparing the leg of the chair. He sprung at me, and as he came near I struck him over the head with the leg of the chair, splintering it, the many shards floating in space. He, however, continued toward me with an unaltered resolve. He thrust the knife at me, though because of our drifting from the leg of the chair colliding with his head, I had drifted to the right and him to the left, so he missed, hitting off the metal wall. After the knife, followed his face, also hitting the wall at a high speed.
      My legs, which were bound, inconvenienced my motion, so while he was temporarily stunned I reached for them trying to unravel them. He was too fast though, and quickly recovered, springing at me again. I was defenseless, and attempted to maneuver out of the way. He was able to jab the knife into the extreme left of the abdomen, and his face which again followed, rammed my gunshot wound. I yelped in pain as old wounds were reawakened. He grinned as he ripped the knife to my left and pulled it out of my side. I peered down at the wound, and through the orbs of blood I could clearly see that it was a large wound, bigger than my gunshot wound from before. He pinned me against the wall, but I grabbed a small shard of the leg of the chair, no longer than two inches and stabbed it into his eye. Screaming he released me, as well as his knife, floating backwards while swatting wildly trying to make the pain go away. I did that for him, stabbing his neck and dragging the knife back into his brain stem, severing his life as well as most of his neck. Crimson spheres of blood floated in the room, filling it like the universe is of stars. I grabbed his face and his shirt and ripped off his shirt, rolling it up into a ball. I ripped off the arms of the shirt to use on my leg and stuck the body of it gingerly over my wound. I took a deep breath as I prepared to apply pressure. Pressing on the shirt over the wound, I searched for something to hold it down with, finding his shoelaces. Pulling off one of his boots I ripped the shoelace from it, and began to wrap it around myself to hold my homemade gauze in place. I grabbed one of the arms of his shirt and wrapped it around my leg wound, tying it into place. Slipping the other over the rest of the cut I tied it as well. I spun his body, searching for a rifle, though I figured that he didn’t have one. His leader, Kelly was too smart to do something like that. If I were to piss him off, he might shoot me, and they wanted my knowledge, not my dead body. I grabbed his knife, which was coated in a mixture of or blood and wiped it off on the leg of his pants. That wasn’t too bad of an interrogation…
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      STELLULATE 42            LUNAR 4 ETA – 4 HOURS 42 MINUTES
      I drifted to a familiar door in the cargo bay area, the one where I had first spotted the ‘Neo Covenant’. What a crappy name. I floated to the small round window to see two stressed people. One I identified as Kelly, and the other was the Italian man who I had seen earlier. If he had a name that I had known at one time, I had forgotten it now though. Kelly sat trying to pry open the tall crate. They were trying to open it rather than to throw it out into space, which confused me. If they pulled it open, then how would they put it into the airlock chute to blast into space? I pushed off the floor and into my familiar duct. There were bullet holes inside it, something new since my last visit, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. Kelly pulled on the crowbar again, and the box lurched forward. The Italian man spun around watching all the doors for me to enter, rifle in hand. Kelly pulled on the crowbar once more, and the box popped open. A pressure seal cracked as it opened, causing it to hiss acutely. The interior of the box was chilled, ice fragments coating the walls. Inside was a rack of thirty two green armors.





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