The End Result... (Chapter 18 - Infiltrated)

[dragondream]

The End Result

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Chapter 18 – Infiltrated

Robert’s eyes widened at the astonishing answer that Harold had given to the death of one of his best friends. His mouth opened wide open, leaving a gaping hole where his lips were only moments ago.

“Unfortunate?” Robert repeated. “Unfortunate! Harold, what is going on?”

Harold twitched his lips bizarrely. “Well, he lived a good life, and he was a good friend – I will miss him much.”

Robert could not believe Harold’s word and stepped back in an unnatural fear of his own friend. First Terry, and now Harold, he thought to himself. Harold glanced away and strolled through the hangar doorway as if nothing spectacular or odd had happened. Robert shook his head in disbelief and ran back to the Jumpdrive Generator room of the Savior and found Terry completely vanished from his last position and the mess and jumble of broken tools and wires to have been cleared up. The dead guards had been taken away as well. A woman dressed in a white overall came into the room and looked surprised to Robert standing, looking around the room curiously.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked pleasantly, but with an underlying tone of nervousness in her voice.

“Um, do you happen to know where they took Terry – I mean the intruder too?” he stammered.

She hesitated. “He and the guards have been taken to the medical room to be examined for clues. Wait a minute; you are Robert Fender, aren’t you? Platinum Awards?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Robert said proudly.

The woman smiled briefly. “You are a very brave pilot.” Then she turned away and began inspecting the Jumpdrive.

“Do you suspect any sabotage on the Jumpdrive?”

“Well, from what I could see from the system scan, the Jumpdrive seems to be untouched, but that’s what bothers me. Why would a person break into the Jumpdrive Generator room, kill the guards and then not tamper with the device? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Robert nodded his head understandingly. “No, it doesn’t.”

The woman ignored Robert and seemed completely focussed on her job, leaving him standing silently in the room, wondering what the point of a break-in in the Generator room would be other than sabotage the Jumpdrive. But then again, he thought, Terry was not the kind of person to do such a thing in the first place. Something really odd was happening on the Savior.

Robert left the room and started towards the medical room, where – as the woman had predicted – Terry had been taken away to. The glass door of the medical room revealed the astounded doctors and nurses gathered in a ring, one of them holding something hard and metallic in his right hand. The doctor holding the metallic object, adjusted his glasses as if his sight had been impaired on what he had found. Robert chapped the door hard, which had been locked and the doctors hurriedly hid the item and ordered one of the nurses to send Robert away, but Robert persisted in him being let in. The nurse looked back at the doctors for approval and then slowly opened the door to the newcomer.

“Can I help you, sir?” the nurse asked patiently.

“Yes, I’d like to find out if you have made any discoveries or found any clues as to what happened to my friend,” said Robert, pointing in Terry’s direction.

The doctor that had the mysterious object hidden in his pocket hesitated and then said: “We haven’t found any solid evidence yet, but we think we might have found something to imply other motives this man had for breaking into the Jumpdrive room.”

Robert gave the man a cold stare caused the doctor to immediately lose eye contact with him. “Show it to me, now.”

The doctor’s hand withdrew into his right pocket and slowly retracted a mechanical chip, very odd in design, but definitely not unfamiliar. Robert paced forwards and jerked the chip out of the doctor’s tight grip. He held it closely and examined it. He looked back up at the doctor and then at Terry.

“It’s Xenon,” Robert declared, “I’m sure of it.”

“We found it attached to his cervical vertebrae,” the doctor said and then added, “it’s the near the base of his neck.”

Robert leaned over Terry and pulled down the back of his collar, revealing a massive wound in his neck where the chip had been inserted. Robert looked away in horror and his teeth were bared in fierce rage.

“A mind chip,” announced Robert, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of Terry being under artificial control. “I should have known – I did know. My instinct told me the whole time that it could not have been Terry himself that did that, at least not willingly.”

“Well, sir. If this man was with others through the entirety of your voyage, then the chances are –“

“– that there are more,” Robert said finishing the sentence, only him knowing the truth behind those words. “I think I know who else.”

The doctor looked compassionately at Robert. “Then it will not be long before they try and pull a stunt like that again. Who would have ever thought that the Xenon themselves could infiltrate the Savior like this?”

“I have to confess, doctor, it hasn’t escaped my consideration before.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Robert could feel cold drops of sweat trickling over his face and the Polarized Weapon that he had swapped for the H-PAD was gripped hard by his hands as he walked into the hangar. His heavy breathing slowed down when he saw that Harold had again vanished from sight. He climbed cautiously into his Thor and opened the ship’s Jumpdrive enclosure, revealing the entire system to his eyes. Carefully examining the jumble of wires, microchips, circuit boards and mini-generator he soon found something that definitely did not belong where it was. He pulled it out and looked at it in astonishment. It was a hard chip that was definitely not of Terran design.

“Found something interesting?” asked a cold voice from behind him.

Robert swung round and held the weapon at point-blank range to the man’s chest. But he ceased to fire when he saw the man’s face.

“Harold, please, don’t make me do this,” pleaded Robert, in a desperate attempt to spare his friend. “I don’t want to kill you, but I have no choice if you put everyone on this ship in danger.”

Harold –or at least, his artificially controlled body – stepped darkly forward, his eyes showing no emotion or affection. His face registered no signs of humanity in it; his limbs were loosely controlled, almost an unnecessary addition to Harold’s silhouetted figure. His eyes showed the only sign of emotion, or rather a deep, cold hatred for Robert. Harold’s arm slowly withdrew to his holster and began to retrieve his weapon while still glaring harshly at Robert. Robert warningly charged his weapon, the deep whirring sound of electrically charged projectiles implying that Robert was serious about his statement.

“Would you kill your best friend, Robert?” Harold tormented with his artificial heartless voice, his hand still cautiously raising his weapon from its holster.

“Right now, you’re not Harold, you’re not my friend, you’re just what is left of him. An emotionless robot controlling my friend, and I’d kill you if I had to.”

Harold’s eyes turned slightly, as if pondering for a response. “But killing me would result in killing your friend, would it not?”

Robert made no reply. Deep in his heart, he knew he could never bring himself to kill Harold, mind controlled or not. Robert could still see Harold raising his weapon until it was levelled with his own chest. Harold began to slowly squeeze the trigger. Robert could feel his heart beating more rapidly.

“You leave me with no choice,” Robert said miserably.

He could feel himself pulling the trigger, against his best of will. However, before the projectile could leave either weapon, Harold’s eyes rolled unnaturally skywards, then shut closed and he dropped unconsciously to the ground, revealing another man standing behind breathing heavily, clutching a long metal spanner.

“Sgt. Banks!” cried out Robert, half in rejoice, half in complete and utter astonishment.

Sgt. Banks smiled proudly. “Rule number one for any soldier or pilot: take out the enemy before he takes out you.”

“That was incredible! If it wasn’t for you, one of use would be dead now for sure.”

“Something felt all wrong about what happened to Terry,” he explained. “He was too good a pilot to do something crazy like try and sabotage the Savior’s Jumpdrive. I headed to the medical room and found exactly what the doctors showed you only minutes before. I figured out the whole thing and realised that there must be more. Naturally, I came to inspect the Fighters’ Jumpdrives to see if anything had happened to them. That’s when I heard voices come from your Thor.”

“Well, what timing, sir. You came just at the right time.” Robert then handed the Sergeant the Xenon microchip. “I found this attached to my Jumpdrive’s circuit board. I’m absolutely confident that this would have caused something pretty nasty if I had activated my Jumpdrive while flying.”

Sgt. Banks looked worried. “If Harry did this to your ship, Terry would have done it to the Savior’s Jumpdrive. There’s no other logical explanation as to why he would break into the Generator room.”

“They ran a check on the Jumpdrive’s system; they found nothing.”

Sgt. Banks plugged the chip back into the circuit board and walked over to the ship’s controls. He activated several systems and ran a complete scan on the ship’s system. When the scan was complete he leaned back uncomfortably, his face making no effort to conceal his concern. His eyes widened after examining the results of the search.

“Nothing. Your ship didn’t pick up the chip either. It’s probably because it hasn’t been activated yet – the microchip I mean.”

Robert’s mouth opened slowly at the full understanding of the meaning of Sgt. Bank’s words. “That means –”

“That means that they wouldn’t have picked up any sabotage on the Savior’s Jumpdrive.”

Robert glanced briefly at Sgt. Banks. Both minds were overwhelmed by the thought of the Savior’s Jumpdrive being deliberately sabotaged and being overlooked up by the ship’s systems and supposedly intelligent analysts. The thoughts sped up even more so when an announcement could be heard throughout the whole ship that the Savior was about to go into Jump-mode shortly.

“We’ve got to warn the Captain,” Robert said.

Sgt. Banks nodded and both jumped out the Thor and sprinted to the main deck to try and warn the Captain in time. Robert and the Sergeant both knew that if the Savior jumped before they could reach the Captain, that it would a very short jump and would be a sure way to end the day very quickly. The countdown began and the deep whirring and gentle vibrations of the Generator could be felt throughout the entire spacecraft. The thought of them being incinerated in seconds quite disturbed Robert and gave him the extra boost to get to the Captain before they jumped to their death.

Robert and Sgt.Banks charged into the main deck with all their might and yelled out in desperation to stop the crew from jumping the ship. The Captain looked at their deeply disturbed faces and quickly asked what was wrong. Robert started saying to the Captain that they had to cancel the jump just as he could hear the final numbers of the countdown. He could feel his skin disintegrate and the blinding flash that engulfed the entire room temporarily stunned him as the faces around him could vaguely be seen disappearing. The flash of light was followed by a sudden and quite abrupt flash of darkness.

-- this is not the end --

[Technojerk36]

ARGH!! CLIFFHANGERS!!

[dragondream]

Next Chapter posted.