Overrun: Project Hideaway (34 page)

"Hold him!" Cranden
yelled at Tuttle as he struggled to keep from being thrown to the side.

Parker's legs kicked up at the
air when Cranden shifted his weight to get a better look at the bursts of
energy flowing down his spine.

Tuttle grappled with Parker's
head and just struggled to hang on.

"What the fuck?!"
Samuel's angry voice sounded over the loud cries and thrashing limbs at the
rear of the small cockpit.

A yellow light began to flash on
the copilot’s command console. An electronic voice spoke softly from a
transmitter in the ceiling. It was barely audible over the chaos in the back of
the cockpit.

The ship continued to buck and
roll as Samuel struggled to evade the pursing J.G.U. ship.

"Planet approach not
approved," the voice reported. The loudest yet of Parker’s gut-wrenching
screams quickly followed.

"Radiation control caplet
leak commencing. Course set not approved."

"Course set not approved?"
Samuel repeated questioningly. "What the fucking hell?"

"Planet landing not
authorized…," the soft voice said again. "…and will not be allowed.
Pilot pacification system activated."

"Tuttle get up here!"
Samuel screamed while rocketing the ship through the cluster of green laser
attacks coming from the rear. "Check the nukes! Check the nukes! See if
there’s any sign of them arming themselves in the back!"

Tuttle tore a large piece of
fabric from the arm of his uniform and stuffed it roughly into Parker's jaw. He
tucked Parker’s arms beneath his chest. Cranden stretched himself facedown
across the length of Parker’s body so that he could hold him with both his legs
and arms.

Parker’s body began to tire, and
his seizure slowly lessened in strength. Sprawled out across his back, Cranden
was able to control him enough to allow Tuttle to release his grip.

Tuttle moved quickly on his
knees to the front of the cockpit and crawled back into his seat beneath the
flashing warning lights.

Behind him, Cranden held a light
in one hand and inspected the object at the base of Parker’s neck.

Tuttle scrolled through the data
coming across the console.

"Radiation control caplet
activation complete,” appeared across the screen.

Tuttle paged through the ship's
active status files to check the extent its protective programming was working
to prevent unauthorized return to the planet.

"I don’t see an energy
increase from the back!" Tuttle yelled.

He hit another sequence of
numbers on the control pad to confirm his assessment. Another quick run of the
ship's readiness system showed that the ship and all of its automatic controls
were running normally.

"I can't find anything!” he
yelled at Samuel while quickly sliding from his seat to help Cranden hold
Parker. “No signs of a nuclear self-destruct!"

"We're going to breach
planetary atmosphere any second now!" Samuel replied his muscles becoming
more tense across the controls.

Fierce agonized shrieks came
again from Parker's lips.

Cranden drove his elbows into
Parker's shoulder blades to hold him across the floor until Tuttle was able to
reach them. When Tuttle got there and pressed his large hands down into the
small of Parker’s back, Cranden rolled off and knelt beside him.

Tuttle fought hard to hang on.

"Keep him breathing!"
Samuel yelled at them. "There's no telling how closely his life signs are
registered into the ship controls. If there's still a ship booby trap working
on him now, there’s a good chance it might arm the nukes if it doesn’t sense
his life signs."

Parker's legs kicked out at the
back of Samuel's seat. Some of the blows landed across Samuel’s neck and jammed
into his arms.

"Corn, you've got to do
something right now!" Samuel yelled throwing around the ship's controls.

The planet before them was no
longer a visible sphere. It had grown into a single giant mass spanning the
entire area of the viewport.

Atmospheric reentry was shortly
becoming close.

Still trying to hold Parker with
one arm, Cranden reached into his gear and pulled out a large black object. He
pressed a spring release and a large blade appeared from inside. Tuttle looked
over at the resounding click it made even over the chaotic din of the room.

Tuttle tightened his grip around
Parker’s midsection and tried to control his flailing legs with the tips of his
own knees.

"Hold him," Cranden
said softly to Tuttle.

Tuttle pressed his palms hard
against the back of Parker's neck trapping his arms beneath his chest and
flattening his face into the ground.

With one quick swooping slice,
Cranden slid the blade into Parker’s skin.

Parker howled in agonizing pain
through the cloth stuffed between his teeth.

Blood sprayed into the air and
splashed across Cranden’s face. Tuttle clung desperately to Parker who now
struggled more fiercely for release from his grip.

Cranden pawed at the wound with
his free hand trying to move some of the blood and skin away. He pushed the
blade through blackened dead tissue trying to get it under the radiation
caplet.

Parker twisted violently
side-to-side causing Cranden’s blade to go deeper into his skin.

Cranden did his best to steady
his hand and keep it from slicing all the way through Parker’s neck. But, the
wound was quickly becoming dangerously severe.

"Did you get it?!" Tuttle
yelled at him.

Parker's body was then overtaken
again with fresh bursts of violent spasms. Vomit shot from his mouth and
splashed across the deck.

"Just about!" Cranden
said trying to ignore the screams. “I’m close.”

The blood cleared from the wound
momentarily allowing Cranden a chance to see better inside. He worked the knife
carefully towards the small pulsating device. Parker’s body calmed a bit as his
stomach emptied itself again onto the floor.

Blood again rushed freely down
the back of Parker’s neck. The stench of it along with vomit filled the air.

Bringing one last tortured
scream from Parkers’ lips, Cranden popped the caplet loose. It made a sickening
sound of moisture and suction letting go. When Cranden had worked it completely
out, it fell across Parker’s shoulder and onto the cockpit deck.

Parker shrieked one last time
and then laid still. The device pulsated on the floor next to his knees.

"Don't touch it!"
Cranden yelled.

Tuttle had already stepped back
and tried to roll Parker away from it. His body had settled down and was mostly
still.

Cranden flicked the device out
of the cockpit with the tip of his blade. It bounced lightly away and came to a
stop just a few feet from the hole ripped in the deck.

Cranden stood and picked up a
piece of the twisted metal lying at his feet. Holding the metal piece at his
waist, he used it to push the device past RadCom’s body into the flaming pit in
the middle of the corridor.

"Here we go," Samuel
said from back in the cockpit. His grip was tight across the controls, and his
attention was riveted on the view of the Earth filling the observation window.

Additional J.G.U. assault cannon
bursts chased them from behind. They impacted across the top of the ship and
sailed off into the protective atmosphere of the planet where they dispersed
into blinding flashes of light.

Samuel, Cranden, and Tuttle
squinted and covered their eyes. Parker remained motionless along the floor.

The Hideaway lurched sharply
when it made its first contact with the outer atmosphere and began its dive in.

"General, I need you back
up here now!" Samuel yelled over the additional noise of the energy
discharge.

Releasing his grip across
Parker, Tuttle quickly crawled the short distance back to the copilot's seat.

“Beginning descent,” Samuel
reported.

"Corn!" Samuel yelled.
His voice was barely able to be heard as they dove further into the Earth, and
the ship started to more violently shake.

"Corn! You need to keep him
alive back there. We need him to confirm or command the ship to disarm itself.
This would really be a shit trip if we get back only to have the whole fucking
thing go the minute we touch down.”

Tuttle pulled himself back up
into the copilot's seat. The cabin shook to the point Tuttle could feel his
teeth bouncing inside his head. He tasted blood from a wound he bit into the
side of his cheek.

"Corn!" Samuel looked
around the quaking cabin. Green energy bursts still chased them from behind ripping
at the Hideaway’s sides and exploding in front of them.

"He's still breathing!”
Cranden screamed back at him. “That's all I know!"

Cranden held onto the side of
the wall with one hand to keep from being thrown about the cockpit. With the
other, he pressed pieces of fabric he had ripped from his shirt into the wound
across the back of Parker’s neck. He continued to hold Parker to the ground
with his knee.

Two more powerful blasts
pummeled the rear of the Hideaway smashing it towards the planet.

And then the viewport glowed
brightly orange as the ship immersed itself completely into the planet's outer
atmosphere.

The battered ship shook even
harder. Samuel worked furiously at the controls.

"They shouldn't be able to
follow us after reentry," Samuel stammered turning to Tuttle. Their seats
vibrated so hard it was almost impossible for either of them to speak.
"Once we're through, we'll break for the rendezvous. If any of them make
it through, we'll be gone before they can bring up sensors to track us."

Tuttle pulled a small black
rectangular device from the side of his jacket and jabbed it into the
navigation console hovering over his lap.

"Tracer set!" he
yelled back. "The ship will break for the coordinates once we're
clear."

The Hideaway bucked again. More
alarms sounded through the cabin. A faint blue glow began to replace the orange
fires outside the viewport.

"You're going to need to
control rear thrusters once we're through," Samuel said pushing buttons to
silence the alarms and scowling at the information appearing on the screens in
front of him. "The whole fucking thing is shaking apart. There's not much
holding us anymore to the cargo area. You're going to have to steer it with
us."

"Firing up cargo reserve
engines now!" Tuttle responded.

More lights activated across his
own console.

"Coordinates set and
received!" he yelled again.

The Hideaway lurched one last
time.

Behind them, Cranden lost his
grip against the wall. Both he and Parker, who was now lying unconscious on the
ground, smashed against the back of the command seats.

Blood spurted from a freshly
ripped cut over Cranden’s eye.

The fires of the atmospheric
entry were replaced by the color of sky and ground.

The Hideaway had finally broken
completely through.

"You've got to revive
him!" Samuel yelled pulling wildly at the navigation controls.

"Rendezvous destination in
sixty seconds!" Tuttle yelled wrestling with his own equipment.

The weapons bombardment from the
ship chasing them had stopped.

"Thirty seconds before we
make the descent. Forty-five to the landing run."

The pitch of the Hideaway
leveled out. The turmoil within the cockpit for the moment had settled.

"How's he doing?"
Samuel asked again. For the first time since they had taken control of the ship,
he didn't have to scream.

Tuttle watched the sandy grit of
the Earth's surface streak towards them.

The mammoth domes looked like
small dots along its charred dark terrain. They grew quickly in size as the
Hideaway made its descent. Many were in flames, victims of the Dome War still
being waged across the soil.

The Hideaway zoomed towards the
coordinates entering themselves into its navigation system.

Tuttle felt sick watching the
ruined planet coming at them. Guilt and shame for what he had done to
contribute to what he saw below rushed through his head.

The flaming domes and destroyed
cities began to fall behind them as the ship banked to the secret location of
the presidential retreat.

While the ship flew itself
without their command, Samuel and Tuttle turned around to see Cranden slowly
roll off of Parker's back.

The seizures had stopped, and
his breathing had returned to a normal pace.

Cranden continued to apply
pressure and change bandages across the back of Parker’s neck.

With his cheek resting against
the floor, Parker groggily opened his eyes. Without speaking, he crawled weakly
the short distance to the front of the cockpit.

Cranden readjusted the position
of his arm and maintained the pressure across his wound. He moved with Parker
along the ground as he pulled himself up to the back of Tuttle’s seat and
reached towards the command consoles.

Tuttle was about to move to
allow Parker to sit in the command seat when a fresh burst of energy pounded
across the nose of their ship. A second burst ripped to the right of the
observation area and tore into the Hideaway’s side.

Metal broke away and exploded
with a scream into the open air.

A third bolt ripped at the
Hideaway’s midsection and tossed all four men violently around inside the
cramped cockpit.

"Rear thruster power is
gone!" Tuttle screamed over the wail of new alarms. “I’ve got no control!”

Below the speeding ship,
wreckage ripped loose from its underside tore huge craters into the ground.
Some of the twisted metal was swallowed whole by the earth. Other parts of the
debris were lost in the still-smoldering flames of the destroyed domes and
scorched countryside.

Cranden and Parker pressed their
faces against the viewport to get a better look at what was happening at the
rear of the Hideaway.