Please keep in mind, I have not read though this completely. About all I have done so far as editing was spell check.
Thank you!
Escape
The tow ship pulled the T.S. Herald up to the docking platform on the planet surface. It wasn’t actually on the ground. In fact, nothing and Beta Centauri actually touched the ground. It was quickly discovered that, whatever new element this alien planet was made of, it ate metal. So, with the use of the fairly recent anti-gravity technology, everything was about a mile up in the air. And with the shuttle tubes stretching across the planet, and the city populations steadily growing, the orange and grey rock planet would soon be crawling with metal and plastic cities.
The passengers began to unload the ship. Armaria snuck into the middle of the group. Jason just followed quietly. A group of heavy-set uniformed men helped off the elderly and disabled and led everybody to a holding room. Armaria saw Captain Ekkers enter the room. He began to address the people. Armaria told Jason she needed to talk to him and she pulled him over to the restroom in the back of the room. She shut the door and locked it.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Jason asked.
“Getting out of here before they can arrest us,” she said as she searched for a duct or something to escape through. She kicked open the storage room door that was on one wall. She disappeared into the dark room and cursed.
“We aren’t going to escape form here. You even said yourself that we weren’t going to steal a ship!”
“Yes. That is what I said,” she came back out of the room. “But I never said I was going to let myself be arrested,” she crossed back over to the bathroom door and put her ear to the crack.
“But that –“
Armaria shushed him. “Ekkers is still talking,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“What?” But Armaria had already opened the door and crossed to the other door in the back. Jason just watched as she walked through and started down the hallway behind it. He finally decided to follow her. As he shut the door quietly behind him, he took one last look at Captain Ekkers. They made eye contact and Ekkers’ eyes grew wide. He turned to a man behind him and whispered something to him. Jason shut the door finally, and he ran after Armaria. Ekkers took some of the burly men with him as he ran for the door in the back of the room.
Jason ran down the gently curving hallway. The small windows on the side flashed orange onto the walls from the glow of the planet below. “Armaria!” he shouted. A hand reached out and pulled him into a room off the side of the hallway. He collapsed onto a rubber-matted floor. A door shut behind him with the “pop” of an airtight door. Armaria came back over and covered his mouth. He went to complain but all that came out were muffled sounds. He went quiet though as the unvarying click of security officers’ boots passed the door.
Armaria took her hand off his mouth. “So you decided to come.”
Jason knew it wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “No, I… well I don’t know what I was doing. Trying to stop you maybe. I dunno.”
He did look confused and a bit angry as he stood up. “Well, are you going to come or not then?” Armaria asked. She had suddenly turned very sunny and happy. Jason just looked more confused.
Armaria led him across the particularly long room. There was a sign next to the door at the other end, and a plastic safe. The sign read, “Remove all metal objects here and place them in the safe. Seal valve, and enter pin number.”
“Hmm.” Armaria said as she read the sign.
“There’s obviously going to be Eonite in there,” Jason said.
“Well, duh. Put in the pin number,” Armaria said.
“What about your watch, and your jewelry, and –“
“Do we really need any of it?”
Jason looked Armaria over. She had a watch on, it could easily be replaced. Then she had two rings and a necklace. Surely, she wasn’t the type of girl who needed to have jewelry and pretty things. Then he looked himself over. He wasn’t wearing any metal. He was glad. “No,” he finally said.
“Now that we’re finished with that. Are you going to put in the pin number yet?”
“But mine won’t work,” Jason complained.
“Oh you’d be surprised,” Armaria said.
So Jason put in his flight attendant’s pin number, and the door slid open. A pressure blast hit them making them both take a step back. “Ah!” Armaria gasped as her hand went to her neck. Her necklace, which was a small chain and pendant seemed to turn into black dust and it blew away. A plastic strap fell off her wrist with other small, odd pieces. They used to be her watch. The ring on her left hand also was disintegrated. Then she screamed.
“Armaria!” Jason shouted. She clutched her right hand and a bright orange light radiated from between her fingers. It died down and they were both left on their knees. “What happened?! Are you okay?” Jason asked.
Armaria shakily took her hand away. The silver band on her right hand had turned orange. Also, the skin around her finger seemed to have been tattooed black. It gradually faded out to her normal skin tone about an inch away from the ring. “What happened to it?”
“I don’t know,” Jason said. “But what’s that ring made of? I though Eonite was supposed to eat all metal a certain distance away from it.”
“It’s titanium,” she said staring at her hand.
“It must not be affected by Eonite,” Jason said. “Does it still hurt?” he asked, tenderly taking her hand and examining it.
She yanked it back. “No. Let’s see what’s in here now.” She stood and walked through the door. Jason, a little hurt, followed her in. His jaw dropped.
Orange dust and grey rocks were sprawled across the massive counter that bordered the edge of the room. Jason walked down a wall. And he discovered that the grey rocks were actually made of two materials. A smooth white stone flecked with many bits of black. Further down the counter, the rock had been separated. There was a bowl of white powder, and a bowl of black powder.
“Hey, look at this,” Armaria said. In the very center of the room, a sword was balanced on a pedestal. It was the same color as Armaria’s ring. “It must be titanium too,” she said.
“Yeah,” Jason said as he picked it up. “Wow, this is high quality.”
“How would you know, Mr. Flight Attendant,” she mocked.
He frowned at her. “Martial Arts was a hobby of mine before I got this job,” he said.
“But I though martial arts was all using your hands and such,” Armaria stated.
“It is, but if you’re good enough, you get to use weapons. And this is just like a samurai sword,” he explained.
“Samurai sword?”
“It’s an ancient kind of sword that a certain race used on Earth. It was very well made back then, and the people knew what they were doing. So even today, it remains very much unchanged.”
“Cool,” Armaria said as she took the sword from him. She swung it in a circle. A loud ‘PING’ filled the room. Armaria cursed as she examined the sword thinking she had damaged it. It looked the same. Then she noticed the gash in the rubber-padded floor. It even went down through some cement.
“Damn,” Armaria and Jason said together. They both laughed.
Just then, a shout came from a uniformed guard down the long room. Armaria cursed again and she dragged Jason through another door at the opposite end of the room. It lead to an elevator.
“Shit. I hope this goes somewhere good,” Armaria said. All that there was in the elevator was a lever. She took it and shoved it all the way down.
The elevator doors finally opened and she knew immediately that she was on a ship. A nice ship. “Oh man. Oh man. Oh man,” Jason ranted.
“Come on!” Armaria shouted. “We have to go!”
“We’re being chased,” Jason said looking quite dumbfounded. “But I went on my own. I’ve broken the law.”
“That’s right. Now, come on!” she yelled at him. He dumbly followed. She ran into the control room and began starting things up, until she realized that the sword was still in her hand. She set it down carefully on the pilot’s chair and went back to work.
Once she got the engines started, she could hear the banging on the hatch of the elevator. She had fortunately already though ahead and bolted it shut. That wouldn’t hold for too long though. The government had some nice weaponry that could break through almost anything.
Jason was pacing in the back of the cockpit. “Come here Jason,” Armaria said a bit more calmly. “I need your pin number again.”
Jason just nodded and put it in. This time Armaria watched. 67413. A crash came from the back, and then a ‘pop’ of a seal closing. She hit the ‘launch’ button. The ship jolted and took off. Armaria changed Jason’s pin to her own on the ship settings and then she went to investigate the crashing noise that happened just before launch.
“I thought you were stealing something,” a familiar voice said. Armaria turned. The child was standing in the doorway.
Gender:
Points: 1254
Reviews: 387