Zach was more nervous than he had ever been in his life, and he had a lot of scary moments to choose from. There was the one time he tried his hands at ivory poaching, only to have the park rangers try to mow him down with bullets. There was also the time he helped Gourmond harvest Green Turtle eggs and Greenpeace rammed and sank their boat. Not to mention the countless times the Kratt brothers ruined his plans.
But in this moment, none of the past events seemed all that terrifying. Not when you have to explain to Donita Donata why her pet Kratt was currently in a comatose state, and it's mostly your fault.
The designer in question was currently standing at the foot of the chaise lounge chair, staring down at the prone body of Martin Kratt. Zach really wished he had done a better job programming his robots as he watched the unconscious man drooling on the expensive fabric. They had gotten him in to the room and unceremoniously dumped him there. Would Donita have been as angry if they had laid him peacefully in the bed?
"What happened here, Zachary?" She asked calmly without looking at him.
"This looks bad Donita, but it's not totally my fault. He tricked me!" Zach answered quickly, crossing his arms. As she turned and glared at him, he imagined she was picturing different ways to skin him and incorporate him into one of her designs. "He told me he had the okay from you, alright? Then we ran into the Wild Rats, and he disappeared during the fight."
"You lost track of him while his brother and their friends were there? They could have kidnapped him!" Donita growled. Martin mumbled in his sleep, so she sat down and swept the hair from his face. She then ran her hand down his back, smoothing out the wrinkles in his designer shirt, and frowning when she found a tear in the fabric from wrestling with the gharials.
"Green Guy… I mean, Chris Kratt wasn't even there, it was just the rest of them and trust me when say they were not a challenge to deal with." Zach smirked, obviously proud of himself. He left out the fact that the Zachbots, as usual, took care of everything.
"If Chrisangelo wasn't there, it didn't occur to you that it could be a trap?"
"Well, no, but things worked out okay anyways! After the fight I came looking for Martin and found him with his brother in the ship. I'm not sure what happened, but Green Guy didn't look so good. Martin was passed out on the floor, I think his brain crossed wires. It was like he was between normal and brainwashed. Either way, I got him out and that should be all that matters. Plus, I also managed to kidnap the others, so there is no one to help Chris. He'll probably die on his own." Zach added, trying to calm the situation down.
With a snap of the fingers, two Zachbots marched Aviva and Koki into the room. They were gagged and their arms were tied behind their back. Donita laughed as she stood up to survey them. Koki stared daggers at her, but the effect was a little diminished by her roughed up appearance. She had obviously put up a fight, and now had a black eye forming for show. Aviva, however, didn't bother to make eye contact. She was looking over Donitas shoulder at Martin, sad at what she witnessed.
"There is only two here. Where is the third one? The poorly dressed, scruffy one?" Donita spun on her heel and glared at Zach.
"Oh. Right. He must have gotten away. It doesn't matter, from what I understand he's only the pilot." he said, waving his hand. "Martin and I destroyed their power source and now with the Tortuga down for the count, he's pretty much useless." The two captive girls gasped at the news.
"You idiot! He'll just run back and try to help Chrisangelo…" She balanced one arm on the other and tapped her chin. "This could work in our favour though. Alright Zachary, you're forgiven, but first you need to wake him up."
"And these two?" Zach pointed at Koki and Aviva. Donita laughed and pulled out the remote control for the pose beam.
"I'll need some ushers for my fashion show."
Jimmy felt bad that he couldn't help his friends when they were kidnapped by Zach. There wasn't anything he could have done though. At least that's what he was trying to convince himself.
The three of them had raced to save the animals and were surprised by Martins presence. They didn't expect to see him, especially as an enemy. He had been so awful to them and seemed like he genuinely hated them. It was almost a god-send when he disappeared during the fight. Jimmy didn't think they could have handled fighting him, regardless of how he had acted toward them.
Thankfully the gharials had gotten free during the scuffle, but Koki and Aviva were captured by the Zachbots. No one seemed to notice him. Maybe Martin hadn't been so far off when he implied he was useless? They didn't even want to kidnap him.
The girls kicked and screamed but it was no use. Zach dragged them on board his giant jet. He didn't follow them in though. Instead he set out with a few of the bots to find Martin most likely. Jimmy tried to get in to the jet, but it was no use, with the cargo doors closed there was no way in.
Now he was headed back to the Tortuga. Chris would know what to do. When he got there he discovered the poor girl had been powered down. It was a bad sign and Jimmy couldn't push down the panic as he climbed aboard. Everything was dark and quiet, except for some very angry voices coming from downstairs.
He ducked in to the shadows just in time for a Zachbot dragging Martin to roll by, followed closely behind by Zach. Martin didn't look so good; he was dazed and limp in the robots grip. What on earth was happening? Wasn't Evil Martin a friend of Zach's now? Why would the robots be dragging him away like that?
Jimmy was tempted to follow, but he knew he was very under prepared, and Chris was probably somewhere in here still. Once the coast was clear, he climbed downstairs and in to the power core room where he almost stepped on top of an unconscious Chris. Jimmy yelped and fell backwards.
Chris looked worse than when they had left the Tortuga earlier. His breathing was slow and shallow, and he looked awfully pale. Jimmy momentarily fought with himself. Chris needed help and looked close to death, but Zach had murdered all those animals, and who knew what he would do with Koki and Aviva.
He had to hold hope that the girls would be okay. Chris would know what to do.
After the last tellurium crystal scare, Kiki had installed a backup power system. It acted like a pilot light and would only hold for a few hours. All the tellurium crystals had been shattered except a very small shard. It would be just enough to get some standby power. Once the Tortuga hummed back to life, he ran down the hall to the storage area.
They had started a bit of a museum collection of various minerals and metal ores. It started with one of the brothers bringing home a really cool Titanite crystal from an adventure in Pakistan, and it sort of snowballed from there. At first it seemed like a waste of space in Jimmy's opinion, but he had to admit the collection had been handy over the years. Aviva used some of the samples in her inventions, and Koki often used some of the ores in repairs. The brothers had even been experimenting with various minerals in the diets of animals.
Today the collection was going to save the Tortuga. He dug through the different boxes and drawers until he found a few lumps of selenium. It was chemically related to tellurium, and would hopefully help keep the ship running until they could find more tellurium crystals. Jimmy shook his head, wondering why whoever designed the ship decided to use one of the rarest forms of fuel.
The problem with this plan was that one element was a metalloid, and the other was a non-metal. Would he ruin the ship completely, as though putting diesel in a gasoline engine? He didn't have much of an option at this point. It was either ruin the engine now, or have a complete shut-down in a few hours regardless.
The gamble paid off, and the Tortuga chugged back to life. The hum of the engine sounded a little more strained, but it would hold for now. Jimmy was sure there would be consequences to mixing fuel sources, but he would figure it out later. Right now he had to take care of Chris.
Jimmy moved him to Martins room and laid him in the bed as that seemed to be where he had been spending most of his time lately. He was unresponsive, and his fever was really high. The blood on his lips and hand made Jimmy think he had been coughing up blood. It was obvious he had some sort of infection, but they were miles away from the nearest town and Jimmy didn't want to chance flying the Tortuga in case the selenium gave out and they crashed.
Chris needed antibiotics and bed rest, Jimmy decided, but he could only help with one of those options. He remembered reading an article online about making your own penicillin in the case of an apocalypse, but it took weeks to grow. He dug through the lab in hopes of finding something, but came up empty. Finally, he aimlessly wandered the various rooms of the Tortuga trying to come up with some sort of idea.
It was when he was standing in the brothers' animal lab that he had an idea. On one of the shelves above an empty fish tank sat different supplies for taking care of aquatic animals. Martin once had a tank of juvenile brook trout he had reared from eggs. They started to show signs of fin rot and had to be given fish mox, a form of penicillin for fish. Eventually they were released back in to the stream they came from, but there was still supplies from the tank laying around, including half a bottle of the fish mox. Chris would kill him if he found out, but he might die if not.
Jimmy really hoped he wasn't about to kill his friend, but he hoped for the best and administered a dose.
Notes:
If any of the science in this chapter (or any of the others for that matter) doesn't make sense, it's because I have no idea what I'm talking about. Google can only tell me so much!
