Author's Note:

Thank you all for the excellent reviews! And thanks again to Whisperwings for betaing.

Chapter 28: A Back Door

Captain Amelia's condition worsened every moment she remained without expertise medical aid and sufficient medicine.

Soon the two men in BEN's hovel, still waiting for Ariah's return, sat by the injured captain's side, as the planet grew dark from its evening cycle.

The feline winced in pain as she tired to form some words to command the two sailing neophytes. "Gentlemen..." Her paws balled up from the pain that talking gave her. "We must stay together and- and- oh." The captain sat back against the rock wall, weakly closing her eyes halfway.

"And what? What?" Doctor Doppler feverishly demanded to the red-haired woman. "We must stay together and what?" He pulled of his spectacles and looked Captain Amelia hard in the eye.

"Doctor," Captain Amelia opened her light blue eyes drowsily. "You have… wonderful eyes." She smiled faintly as if delusional.

"She's lost her mind!" Doctor Doppler exclaimed, clutching his head.

"What?" Ariah gasped as she climbed back over the half wall into the cavern.

"Well," Jim looked at the dog-man. "You gotta help her."

"Dang it, Jim… I'm an astronomer, not a doctor." The frustrated canine-human hybrid stated blatantly. "I mean, I am a doctor, but I'm not that kind of doctor." He tried to explain the matter to the confused teenager. "I have a doctorate." Doctor Doppler paced on the spot angrily. "It's not the same thing. You can't help people with a doctorate. You just sit there, and you're useless." He exhaled forcefully; his arms were limp at his sides, hopeless from the situation.

"It's OK, Doc." The young man patted Doctor Doppler reassuringly on the shoulder. "It's all right." Jim looked up at Ariah who gave him an odd look.

Then the brunette teenager noticed Silver's locket –of sorts- dangling around Ariah's neck, next to her makeshift necklace.

Ariah gulped slightly, sensing Jim's stare. She gripped the locket nervously, wondering if she should yet reveal what she had figured out –only moments before- to Jim.

Jim turned away, brooding over the main situation rather than clues to Ariah's past.

Ariah sighed with relief and fully entered the cavern.

"Yeah, Doc! Jimmy knows exactly how to get out of this." BEN exclaimed enthusiastically. "It's just… Jimmy has this knowledge of things." The robot turned to the young man. "Jim, any thoughts at all?" He whispered to Jim.

Jim sighed hopelessly. "Without the map, we're dead." He looked out from the entrance of the rock fortress. "If we try to leave, we're dead. If we stay here-" The exasperated adolescent ran his fingers through his brunette hair.

"We're dead! We're dead! We're dead!" Morph stated the obvious answer.

A feeling of dread overcastted the small group like a stifling storm.

Ben chuckled nervously, breaking a bit of the tension. "Well, I think that Jimmy could use a little quiet time." He cleared his throat. "So I'll just slip out the back door."

"Back door?" Jim's head snapped up and he followed the rusty robot towards the back of the dark cave.

Ariah quickly ran over to BEN's side, hoping that they could finally have a sliver of luck.

"Oh, yeah." BEN strained against a sphere-like dome, opening up a hatch. "I get this delightful breeze through here..." A beam of light rose from the opened hatch. "Which I think is important... because ventilation among friends-"

"Whoa…" Jim and Ariah exhaled simultaneously. They looked down the hatch at an endless expanse of wires, pipes and general machinery.

"What is all this stuff?" Jim asked.

"You mean the miles and miles of machinery that run through the entire course of the inside of this planet?" BEN asked. "Not a clue." He shrugged, unbeknownst that he had already answered Jim's question with his own rhetorical question.

"That makes sense then." Ariah looked deeper into the hatch. "Flint wanted this planet to store his treasure, because the Forefathers had advanced technology like nothing that anyone had ever seen in Flint's time."

"But if this goes through the entire planet…" Jim thought aloud, his pale blue eyes widened in realization. "Hey, Doc! Doc!" Jim climbed up onto the hatch. "I think I found a way out of here!"

"No, no. Jim, wait." Doctor Doppler looked up from his patient. "The captain ordered us to stay-" He exclaimed.

"I'll be back." Jim reassured evenly as he dropped down through the hatch into the depths of the planet.

"Cannonball!" BEN hollered enthusiastically as he dove behind Jim through the hatch.

Ariah giggled, climbing up to the mouth of the hatch. "I'll see you later, Doc…." She smiled warmly at the two hybrids. "You and the Captain should get some shut-eye. It's the only way that you're going to calm down and that the Captain's going to heal." Ariah shrugged. "Besides, we need someone with a lick of commonsense with those two and you need to stay with the Captain." She winked and dropped down through the hatch.

Morph immediately followed the black-haired teenager; because where the excitement was, was where he wanted to be.

"Woof."

Jim, Ariah, Morph and BEN scoured the interior of the mechanical planet, searching for the path to the base of the aforementioned robot's hovel, where the pirates were undoubtedly camping.

After opening hatches along the mountainside, the quartet located the pirates' campsite.

The pirates slept soundly, menacing even in there slumber. Because if any of them woke one of the bloodthirsty buccaneers...

"So, what's the plan?" BEN exclaimed loudly.

"Shh. BEN, quiet." Jim reprimanded the noisy robot, covering BEN's mouth as he pulled them back down the hatch.

Ariah double-checked to make sure that none of the pirates had noticed their disruptive companion's shout.

A few members of the crew stirred slightly in their sleep, but none of them fully woke up.

Ariah nodded, indicating that the coast was finally cleared.

"OK, here it is..." Jim kept his hands over BEN's mouth and he spoke of his plan in a calm, paced voice. "We sneak back to the Legacy, disable the laser cannons... and bring back the map."

"That's a good plan." BEN's voice stated, muffled by Jim's lingering fingers. "I like that plan." The robot gulped. "The only thing is... I'm wondering…" He cleared his throat, preparing to deliver a valid point. "How do we get there?"

Jim carefully removed his hands from BEN's mouth to point at the hovering longboat outside the clearing of pirates. "On that."

"We'll have to silence the engine." Ariah stated shakily. "So we don't get caught." She cleared her throat gently. "Besides… it probably won't go so quickly anyways because of the lack of solar energy."

Jim nodded in agreement and cautiously pushed the fern-concealed hatch fully open. He pulled himself from the hole, quietly rolling into the surrounding foliage. Ariah left the hatch next, with Morph floating at her shoulder. Soon after, BEN left the hatch, as quietly as he could muster.

The quartet soundlessly replaced the mechanical hatch's cover and turned to the slumbering pirates. The last of the RLS Legacy's functioning longboats was only about twenty feet from them. The dilemma was simply that there were a good dozen of deadly pirates between them and the longboat.

Hardly breathing, Ariah and Jim slowly started the trek around legs and tentacles of sleeping sailors. BEN followed their footsteps exactly and Morph simply stayed cowering at Ariah's shoulder. Jim's body was rigid from concentration as he tiptoed upon the few gaps of cleared space in the encampment.

Suddenly, when they were almost at the side of the longboat, BEN stumbled over a pirate's foot. Ariah quickly turned around, catching the robot in her arms and clamping her hands over his mouth before he could make another sound.

The trio of two-legged companions froze in place and watched the disturbed pirate with held breaths. A moment before the pirate could open his eyes to see the robot and the young woman at his feet, Morph quickly zoomed over the pirate's ear. The blob rapidly transformed into a music box and managed to effectively lull the pirate back to sleep.

They sighed, Ariah gently set BEN back onto his feet wordlessly and they climbed aboard the hovering longboat.

Jim turned the engine's silencer on and shifted it into drive.

Ariah soundlessly unlashed the longboat from its temporary anchor and double-checked to make sure that none of the other pirates had noticed the disturbance.

BEN prodded Jim in the arm and pointed to a patch of ferns, it was slightly outlined and rose a bit higher from the ground.

Jim slapped his forehead… there -of all places- was another hatch; which likely would've saved them the trouble of creeping through the pirate-filled clearing and prevented them from nearly getting caught.

The young man glared at BEN, who shrugged innocently. Jim duly noted the location of the new escape hatch and then he steadied the longboat into a silent drive. They slowly left the mushroom jungle, heading towards the RLS Legacy.

Moments after the quartet left, Silver opened his eyes. He –out of the entirety of the crew- had certainly noticed the slip up, but hadn't drawn any attention to the intruders.

The pirate captain had a keen eye for details and could cleverly connect events, which was the main reason why he was captain. Silver knew that the appearance of Morph during the parley meant that Flint's map was still on the RLS Legacy.

Now the cyborg could've simply obtained the treasure map and still gotten his way, but he knew that if Jim had the main bargaining chip that the boy was more likely to live.

One by one, Silver ordered his crew to wake up and prepare to ambush the likely abandoned hovel. If anyone were there, they wouldn't put up much of a match against the entire band of pirates.

But something dawned on the cyborg during his invasion preparations…

Scroop was still on the Legacy.

Jim steadied the longboat into the dock house. He was surprised that the lower hatch on the hull of the RLS Legacy had been opened.

Once they had secured the longboat, Jim climbed out of it and looked around.

"OK, I'll get the map. You wait here." He ordered.

"Roger, Jimmy." BEN leapt out of the longboat with surprising agility. "I'll neutralize the laser cannons, sir!" The rusty robot saluted formally to the brunette teenager.

BEN's legs converted at the knees to wheels and the robot quickly sped out of the dock house to the main control panel.

"BEN! BEN!" The two teenagers yelled at the troublesome android.

"Yo-ho… yo-ho. A pirate's life for me…" The oblivious robot sung out. He hummed to the tune of the song as he wheeled out of sight.

Jim sighed and Ariah chuckled lightly. She pulled off her solar glider, leaving it in the bottom of the longboat, and hopped onto the dock.

The two teenagers then they began searching the darkened room for the coil of ropes.

"Disable a few laser cannons."

BEN hopped back onto his feet as he entered the RLS Legacy's control room.

"What is the big deal?" He located the main control panel. "All we gotta do is find that one little wire."

The android wrenched the door from the control panel and his luminous eyes widened as his jaw simultaneously dropped.

"Oh, mama." BEN gasped at the horrendous amount of coloured wires webbed together in the compact control panel.

After a few minutes of thorough searching, Jim located the coil of ropes and his hand brushed against the smooth surface of the map.

"Yes…" He sighed victoriously.

The young man stood back up with the map clenched tightly in his palm.

"Ariah." Jim called across the dock house. "I found it." He waved around the very real treasure map to prove his finding.

"Great." Ariah smiled warmly.

She walked over to Jim's side and looked curiously at the spherical treasure map, then back at the young man.

"Looks like all we've got to do is disable those cannons." The young woman stated.

"Yeah." Jim smiled.

The two teenager locked eyes and smiled mischievously at each other.

'Well since BEN isn't here…' They seemed to read each other's thoughts and leaned towards each other for a kiss.

Suddenly, before either of the teenagers' lips could touch, the RLS Legacy's main alarm system was activated.

The sirens blared loudly and a bright red light filled the lower decks.

"Bad, BEN." The short robot scolded his self. "Bad!"

The previously marooned robot held the culprit wire between his fingers as he tried to locate its appropriate plug on the control panel.

"OK, fixing..." He winced and replaced the plug.

Scroop heard the ship's sirens go off and rushed towards the entrance to the lower decks.

Someone had actually dared to intrude on his watch…

Jim shoved the map into his trouser pocket and ran towards the main control area with Morph and Ariah in tow.

"That stupid robot's gonna get us all..." Jim's eyes widened and his heart plummeted to his stomach as he saw what was obstructing their way to the control room. "…Killed."

"Cabin boy." Scroop's eyes glowed a molten gold colour and his entire body tensed up.

Silver wasn't here to order him not to kill the intruders, which left the crimson arachnid with the leeway to do whatever he wished. Perfect.

Author's Note:

Ooh… Showdown time!

MG#6