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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 18: Cooper 78
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 256
Drifting as quickly as they could between the hulls, the Lunarian brought them to a door into the inner hull. Opening it, the alien manling poked his head in, and then out.
“Two pirates in the compartment.”
“Can you dart them?” Cooper asked, pulling out his dart pistol.
“We use inertial shields. Fast moving objects don’t impact. Only slow objects can pass through them,” Angle said.
Weary, Cooper thought, and then asked, “All the time? Even if you’re just waiting and not in battle?”
“Well--” The Lunarian took the dart pistol awkwardly, and tried to line up his eye for the shot through the slightly open door. He pulled, and grunted in dismay, pulled again, and again, and said ‘yah, got one.’ The other has his shield up, and--”
“Open the door fully,” Cooper said and shoved himself forward with shaking arms and, like diving into a swimming pool in a low dive, into the next room. He bounced off a bulkhead, and came back toward the other alien. This green skinned creature pulled out his own axe. The first attack was beaten aside by the alien, and they separated. The two bounced back toward each other, and then Angle dove in and stabbed the pirate in the shoulder with his broken sword so that cursing the pirate spun away shedding spurts of yellow blood all across the room.
An exhausted Cooper let Angle take him to the next hatch. Opening it and looking in, Angle came back with a grin. They entered into a hall which led into the main staging area where the pirates had been waiting on the far side, and where he had met the angelic wheel of eyes. Now there were only dead pirates, with the rest having fled from the room. Or perhaps they were still breaking into the reactor room to try to get him.
“Get us to the exit tube,” Brian said, and Angle did. They moved down the tube smoothly only to see on the far side the pirates being pressed back against the burnt impromptu hatch through outer and inner hulls of Cooper’s spaceship du jour.
“We attack,” Cooper said breathing hard, and activating his strength boost again. Suddenly he felt as strong as he normally did on a weak day. Angle beside him, with a broken sword that had been blooded once already, he crashed into the back line of the pirates. Bouncing off, they came back again on the rebound, and got two more before the pirates became aware of the danger to their rear. This only heightened their losses to the front.
Fighting madly, Cooper and Angle stabbed and swung, kicked and shoved, as they floated in the tunnel between the spaceships at the door to the merchant ship. Meanwhile, the large purple Jupiterian to their front--the pirate’s leader--tried to yell, but their own Jupiterian giant crashed into him with a roar.
“Take them now! No holding back.” The crew of Cooper’s ship du jour suddenly cast off caution and crashed into the enemies, and within tens of seconds all the pirates were down. Cooper wobbled, and his Sword fell from his weakened grasp. With that, his strength failed him. He had boosted his strength greatly already for cutting through the hull, and now again, before he was ready, for the last fight. Looking down, he saw a dagger sticking out of his stomach.
The situation appeared dire.
Quickly, he and some others were flown up the spaceship through corridors. He faded out a bit, and came to again as one of the more wounded was pulled off a bed. To his surprise, the yellow or gold Saturnian looked cheerful. A doctor placed him on a bed with straps to keep him in place. Then a light was arranged on a flexible pole over him, and the warm yellow light beamed down over his whole body.
Suddenly he felt warm; after that, woozy. Then he found himself laughing lightly. The doctor, a very pale pink short manling took that moment to pull the dagger from his stomach. Ow. That hurt--but not really that badly, he noted, and giggled which hurt again, but not as harsh as he had expected after a gut strike.
“Your body is depleted of vital energies. We can fix that with sleep. Others need the healing ray now.” He was pulled off the bed, and feeling quite cheerful too so he smiled up at the aliens who were carrying him.
“Hey, guys, I have a lot of questions for you. Where are you from?” The pale green manling smiled.
“I’m a Titanian, Terri. One of the moons of Jupiter. My companion is one of the varied races of Venus. Is this your first trip off planet?”
“It's complicated. I’m a dimensional traveler--unless this is just a simulation in a computer database.”
The two carried him farther using only their fingers (it was still zero gravity), and he saw them give each other a look, like ‘oh, crazy man’. He wanted to argue he was not, but honestly he was so tired, and feeling so good.
“Did we win?” he asked as they got to the door of a room.
“Yes, Terri, we did.” They put him in a small room on a bunk that folded down from a wall. After loosely tying him in so he ‘would not bump his head when he floated about’ they left.
“Whooooo.” he said, waving his fingers and watching them move. Sleep came quickly.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #525: Character Battles. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
