Chapter Seventeen: A Gas Attack
Lisa couldn't bear the thought of Luke and the Doctor staying behind. What made it worse was that she couldn't communicate with them. None of the telepathy that was stolen had come back yet.
Still, Lisa and the guys scrambled through the service duct, following Data, who had memorized the route to engineering.
Not that they were exactly sure what they were going to do when they got there. It wouldn't be as heavily protected as the bridge, but the Warlords knew they'd escaped, so it wasn't going to be easy.
All they knew was that they had to incapacitate every Warlord on the ship, and Lisa had figured the nerve gas the guys had told her about would do the trick.
After many twists and turns, Data finally signaled that they'd arrived. Lisa could hear the Warlords talking about them, but it didn't sound like they knew they were inside the duct. Yet.
Clark tried to use his x-ray vision to see into the room, but that hadn't returned yet, either, so they just had to take a leap of faith.
Together, they burst through the hatch and started shooting, except Adam, who took cover.
Luckily, the Kryptonite weapons hadn't reached here yet, so Clark was unharmed for the most part. He was shot in the arm, but all it did was hurt, so at least he knew that his invulnerability was back to a point.
With Clark to protect them, they knocked out most of the Warlords. A few escaped, but Data started working on taking over the controls for the nerve gas.
"I have altered the circuitry to release the gas into the air of the ship," he finally said. "I can program it so the gas does not flow into here."
"But what about Luke and the Doctor?" Lisa asked.
Open the door, we're right outside, came the voice of the Eighth Doctor inside Lisa's head.
"What?" she said, but didn't hesitate. She went straight for the door and told Data to open it just enough so they could slip underneath, then to slam it down again.
Luke and the Eighth Doctor crawled under the door and found themselves almost immediately tackled by Lisa, who was relieved that they were okay.
"How did you speak telepathically?" Lisa asked the Doctor. That hadn't yet returned to him as far as she knew.
"We hooked the Warlords that came inside to the extractor," Luke explained. "That gave him back his telepathy and some of my Jedi powers."
"Great! Data's gonna let the gas loose so we can gather everyone up and fix everything."
Data worked at the console. "I am preparing to activate the controls."
There was a bleep, a hiss and the panel blinked as the gas was blown throughout the ship.
Now, all they had to do was wait.
End chapter seventeen.