Echo-1 The Whale

43: Back to the Magus

The Magus drifted in space but the two parts were pulled next to each other. The lower thrusters were being attached to the triangular top part of the ship. There were a good ten functioning decks and the entire ship was covered in furiously working repair robots.

Mox instructed the Sentinel to wake up the Professor. The robot reached into its chest and yanked out the cuttlefish mad scientist.

"Your little robots have been busy." Mox leaned back in his seat. "Mister Blunt, would you please demonstrate to the Professor what we are going to do if he doesn't cooperate."

Blunt worked the navigation controls. We accelerated with blinding speed. The three remaining Vedma fighters fired at us, got in our path, then quickly thought better and moved aside.

"Hold on."

We hit the lower sections just above the thrusters. The viewscreen was filled with white light and the explosion was incredible. We swung wide and turned back toward the ship. All the remaining thrusters were destroyed and the bottom of the ship broke off completely. It was now in three pieces. Fire spit out the bottom and quickly vanished.

Nidi stopped Blunt from taking a second pass. "Wait. I want to go aboard the bottom section."

Everyone turned to look at her. She stood in the back of the room as tall as the Sentinel and soft furry white in stark comparison.

"I want to go to Mildabbar's nursery and rescue the pups. There's no reason they should die because of him." She growled at the squid man in the lab coat, who retracted away from her toward his rusty guardian.

Mox seemed to be thinking it over and X took his arm.

"We can do it. The Mega Therion aren't an evil race. We have to save the puppies."

Mox was reluctant. He looked to his first mate.

"You know what I think."

Blunt spoke in Varan and he spoke for me too. He stopped the Brick and we sat off the bow of the Magus and watched the repair bots scrambling over her surface. Mox raised his arms above his head, stretched, and let out a loud throaty croak. I'd heard similar croaks deep in the jungles of southeast Asia made by monitor lizards in the night. It made me think of what Earth must have sounded like during the reign of the dinosaurs.

"Let it never be said that I don't take into account the feelings of my crew. And what a conscientious group you are." He folded his arms and shot out his tongue. "Maybe I've been spending too much time with these militaristic types. I'm not one for war."

He stood up, spun around, reached down under his seat, and grabbed his belt with his pirate sword and his stun gun. He took a few steps to the center of the control room and put it on. He loved the theatrics of it all. That much was for sure. He cleared his throat again.

"This is what we're going to do." He made a point of turning around a complete 360 degrees, making eye contact with each one of us and especially Mildabbar. "Because the Professor here will not help us and he is hell-bent on our destruction, we will board the Magus once again and raid his lab for any useful technology we can find to help remove this virus. Then to his nursery. We'll liberate as many Mega Therions as possible, especially the puppies."

He shot two of his maniacal grins, one for X and one for Nidi. X's big smile in return was only surpassed by the toothy gaping tongue hanging out grin of the big bad wolf herself.

"And on our way out we'll give the lower half of the ship a big dose from the Veltearrik Acid Blasters. How does that grab you, Professor?"

Mildabbar did not comment.