Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Far Beyond the World
Part XI - Kill or be Killed
Right now...
"You said it was going to work! You said they wouldn't see us!"
The angry voice of Captain William 'Buck' Rogers echoed across the box-shaped cockpit of the shuttle transport as it hurtled downwards toward Earth like a stone, trailing atmosphere and smoke from a half-dozen breaches in it's fuselage.
Inside, Buck was at the controls, grasping the stick with a white-knuckled grip as the shuttle plunged toward destruction.
"The error is not my mine, Captain!" snapped back the tall robot manning the starboard Engineering controls, "I told you, we were only invisible to the Draconian Scanners, not from the naked eye! You strayed too close to that patrol!"
"You mean they strayed to close to us, Crichton!" Buck growled as he fought to keep them from going into a spiral which he knew would tear them to pieces. He glanced side-long at the scientist strapped into the co-pilot's chair, "What happened to your distraction?"
"Impossible to say, my boy!" replied Dr. Goodfellow as he stared out through the canopy at the grey-white clouds rushing up to meet them at a fantastic rate, "Perhaps the Colonel had a problem deploying the beacon-" he was cut-off by blaster beams impacting their dorsal hull! Sparks rained down from above like angry purple gnats and a port console blew, the shuttle banked against Buck's will and they fell into that spiral he'd been doing his damndest to prevent.
"Dammit!" Rogers grit his teeth as the Marauder that had just blasted them rocketed overtop them and soared past the canopy, it's rear thrust tubes glowing like twin suns, forcing him to squint to avoid going blind, "This is not how this was supposed to go! The Cloaking Field was supposed to hide us!"
He shook his head in fury, Cloaking Field? Seriously, leaving my fate in Crichton's hands, what was I thinking?
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Ten hours earlier...
"A cloaking field?" Buck gaped across the conference room table at the robot, "Have you gone bonkers, you talking trash can? How are we supposed to build something like that?"
"Actually, I have been working on just such a modification to Searcher's Defense Shield for close to a year now, Captain, it's just been a question of channelling enough power to conceal a ship as large as ours. The Plasma Reactor's output isn't great enough to properly support the mathematics of the required disruption potential." replied Crichton, his indicator lights flashing back-and-forth in fury at the slight, "And I am much more then a 'talking trash can'. Please refrain from using insults. They accomplish nothing."
"They prevent me from beating on you with a crowbar, metal-head." glared Buck, "Because every plan you have offered up from that supposed superior intellect of yours has been one of escape, not one that will give us a tactical advantage against the armada of Draconian Star Fortresses ringing Earth."
"Logic dictates that our best and wisest course of action is to retreat, Captain." said the robot.
"No!" broke-in Hawk from his chair, "That streak of cowardice running through your ionized circuits dictate us running away, Crichton, not logic. You're scared."
"Hardly," sniffed the robot, "quite the opposite in fact. It's just that it will be too much of a risk to attempt to take the fight to the Draconians."
"Of course it is a risk." frowned Colonel Deering from her seat at the foot of the table, "But we can't just leave all those people down there, as slaves to Draconian Dynasty. We have to do something!"
"And we are gonna do something, Wilma." replied Buck and he returned his glare to the telescope-necked automaton, "You say our Plasma Reactor doesn't put out enough power to support this cloaking field of yours?"
"No. It does not."
"Howsabout a fighter? It uses a micro-Plasma Core to power engines and weapons."
Crichton paused a moment for calculations, "...No, it would not work on a Thunder-Class starfighter."
Buck cocked his head, "What about the shuttle?"
The indicator lights pulsed for another long second, then "...Yes. The modifications would work on the shuttle. It's Plasma Core has three times the output then a Thunder-Class, due to the needs of a long-range scouting vessel, for multi-being life-support requirements and extended use of the-"
"We don't need to know all that, Crichton." scowled Admiral Asimov from the head of the conference table, "How long will it take for you to make the necessary modifications?"
"Five point six three seven hours, Admiral." replied the robot, "But there is another issue."
"Which is?" demanded Asimov.
"I am hesitant to mention it-"
"Just spit it out, scrap-bucket!" growled Buck. I so wanna just pull out my pulsar pistol and blast a hole through his arrogant head!
The robot retracted his neck and sighed in annoyance he wasn't supposed to be capable of, "The Cloaking Field will be fragile, it's output will constantly be fluctuating while active, and unless an able technician is there to compensate manually the shuttle will most certainly be detected by the Draconian's Scanners."
Asimov frowned, "I have many able technicians amongst my crew, surely one of them can handle it."
The imperious artificial being sniffed, "I highly doubt any human in the known Universe can perform compensations at a thousand alterations a second."
"But you can," Hawk said to Crichton, "can you not?"
"Yes, a robot could."
"Oh dear god..." moaned Buck as he rubbed at his forehead, "Please tell me, please, that this is not going in the direction I think it's going."
"Indeed it is, my boy, indeed it is." grinned Dr. Goodfellow across the table at him, "Crichton will have to go with you to Earth."
"What?" gaped Wilma, "He will?"
"What?" the robot in question strobed, "I will?"
"He will." muttered Buck as he slumped back in his chair, "Yipee..."
"I am NOT going with Captain Rogers to Earth!" objected Crichton, his head telescoping to it's greatest height in defiance, "That is out of the question! The risk is far too great! If the Draconians were to capture an intelligence as fantastically-advanced as my own, the results could be catastrophic!"
"You're going!" snapped the Admiral, "End of story!"
And Crichton's head descended back into his body.
Buck's pained gaze flicked back to Dr. Goodfellow, who was chuckling softly, clearly amused by the entire situation.
"Quit your laughin, Doc. You're coming too."
The scientist gaped at him, "I am?"
"Yep." nodded Rogers, "Before you signed aboard Searcher, you were the head of the Energy Directorate, right?"
"Yes."
"And the Energy Directorate controls Earth's Defense Shield?"
"Indeed." replied Goodfellow, "While the Defense Shield projectors themselves are based around the outskirts of New Chicago, the actual control apparatus for them is located inside the Energy Directorate Building."
Buck grinned, "Then there's nobody better to get them up and running again, so as to send those Draconian Star Fortresses packing."
And Dr. Goodfellow swallowed hard, "I guess there isn't, my boy, I guess there isn't."
He wasn't chuckling anymore...
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
Right now again...
"This is not how this was supposed to go!" raged Buck Rogers, "The Cloaking Field was supposed to hide us!"
He stared at the Hatchet-Fighter that had just blasted the top of their shuttle, nearly breaching it's hull again, as it vanished down into the clouds in the distance.
"I know, I know, Captain, it should have worked." Dr. Goodfellow clung to his flight chair and sent a silent plea to the Gods.
"Need I remind you, I advised against this course of action." said Crichton from his console.
"What the heck are you talking about?" raged Buck as he blasted the remaining thrusters against their spiral in an attempt to break free of it, "You were the one who came up with this crazy plan to begin with!"
"Yes, that is true, Captain, but I suggested it as a method to facilitate our proper escape from the Sol System, not as a misguided and ill-advised plan to invade the Draconian-conquered home of your birth!"
"Bidi-bidi-bidi!" snapped Twiki from the chair opposite the other robot, "You're a meat-head!"
"Crichton!" cautioned Dr. Goodfellow, his white-haired creator, "You should be coming up with a solution to this, not wasting our time by chastising us for getting into the current predicament!
"I am attempting to come up with a solution to this. In fact, I have one." replied the robot as he disengaged from the Engineering console and headed across the lurching deck to the aft of the cockpit, "Once again you have forgotten that I am able to carry on a complete conversation without causing a hindrance to my internal calculations. Unlike weaker organic life-forms, I have the ability to multitask."
"I can multitask, you rusting mass of stuck-up circuits!" snarled Buck as with a wrench of the control stick he finally pulled them out of the corkscrew. He gasped in relief, "Yeah! That's cooking with gas!"
"Well done, my boy!" Dr. Goodfellow patted his arm.
"Bidi-bidi-bidi!" thrilled Twiki, "Way ta go, Buck!"
"It ain't over yet though." Buck glared out through the canopy at the expanding dot of the Marauder, "He's coming back for another strafing run."
"What shall we do?" asked Goodfellow.
"Only one thing I can think of." and Buck sent them into a nosedive.
"Won't this cause us to crash? You said the landing repulsors were destroyed!" the Scientist gaped as they plunged into the clouds and soared downwards like a shooting star.
"Better then being blown to bits high in the sky!"
"Perhaps we won't have to do either," and Goodfellow looked back over his shoulder to the back of the cockpit, "if Crichton was telling the truth about having a solution-Crichton! What are you doing?"
"Implementing my solution, Doctor." replied the robot as he rolled into the airlock and sealed himself in.
Buck's eyes went wide as the shuttle lurched and a warning light blazed up at him from his flight board, "What the devil is that idiot doing-he...he just launched away in the escape pod!"
"Crichton abandoned us!" gaped Twiki.
And Buck blinked in shock, "But...but that's what we were going to do. There was room in the pod for all three of us!"
"We could not have survived a descent in the pod from his height, my boy." advised Dr. Goodfellow.
"Yeah, that's why I was gonna level us out with the last of the power once we reached fifteen thousand feet."
"Oh..." blinked Goodfellow, "Why, that would have been a marvellous plan, Captain."
"Yeah," Buck replied with an expression pulsating with rage, "it woulda been. But now..." they burst from the clouds and dropped into the azure sky below, "...now we're gonna die."
And Goodfellow saw what he saw: the Marauder dropping from cloudcover three klicks dead-ahead. With a burst of thrusters in matched their Azimuth and soared toward them, blaster cannons spitting twin beams of death!
To be continued...