Kirk was telling Qworn what to say to his dad. Will was in awe of the new ship. SSSaa said something to one of his crew, and that lizard stood up quickly and shook his head no for some reason. Austen thought he knew why.
The two lizards were getting into an argument that brought the body guard around the captain to stand in the middle of the two. SSSaa never seemed to show any emotion. He had closed his eyes, and Austen thought that he was talking to his ship then.
Austen thought, Great, the ship is going to catch me in a lie because Deana was the one who knew where that ship was, and SSSaa’s ship knew this. When he was much younger Captain Austen had thought space was simply just space.
SSSaa’s eyes opened and he hissed some orders at the helms lizard. He pointed his finger at Austen, and then at the comm. lizard. That lizard gave the humans and Qworn a mean look and then sat back down. As soon as he did, the body guard took a step forward, and slapped the back of his head.
Qworn laughed and explained, “My father was upset that a young earthling caught a glimpse of a signal from the alien ship, and his well-trained radio master had missed it. Of course the radio master said that the earthling must be lying, because if there were a signal he would’ve picked it up. Everything is all right now, and my father will forgo killing the radio master this time. I think he is my cousin, so I’m glad Father won’t put him down.”
Kirk said, “And I thought my captains were tough!”
Austen felt a little guilty about the lie, and he was glad no one had to die, or he would have come clean.
Qworn said, “We are headed to the moon now. We have no information about this alien ship, but we know our weapons can’t hurt the antibodies. We know that they can walk through walls." Will recited everything Qworn had just said for his father.
Austen thought it was weird hearing an alien say "alien ship." He said, “We need a plan.”
Qworn said to his father to ask the ship for a plan. SSSaa’s eyes opened, and as he told Qworn the plan, he relayed it to Kirk who in turn told Austen. The ship had said, “All eight worms will forfeit their lives, but if they make it out alive with the Queen then they will be worm hunters. One from Earth ship will go with eight.”
Austen was just about to volunteer when Kirk said, “Kester.”
Austen said, “No way in hell! Here’s what we do. We take that derelict ship, set the star drive for overload, and ram it up that alien ship!” Everything became quiet for a moment. Austen knew SSSaa's ship just wanted to get Deana out of the way.
The Queen was dead, and Austen wasn’t going to sacrifice Deana. Derek would kill him. He noticed that everybody was staring at him, but he didn’t care, and that was that! Finally, Qworn told Kirk that his father agreed with Captain Austen.
Chapter 3
PAYBACK
SSSaa was disturbed by the fact that his ship wanted to kill some of the good guys, but he was stuck with his ship for life, and he would make the best of it. It was the first time that SSSaa had gone against the ship’s orders.
Austen knew SSSaa’s ship had a dampening field because Deana lost her powers when it was turned on. So he knew the other lizard ship had one too. That way it could approach the antibody ship undetected. As soon as the derelict ship was on its way, SSSaa punched it, and his star-drive pulled his and the Houstons' Earth ship out of dodge. Simple?
As the two ships were under way, they received another distress signal, so SSSaa slowed down to rescue more survivors. This new Lizardian ship had fought hard and to the death but lost. It was Derek’s shift at that time. Derek had JR, Tammy and Faith go to the far ship and stitch the new crew back together. JR didn’t take anything with him for pain, only alcohol and bandages. He was impressed by the lizard hunters. As badly as they were cut up they didn’t even moan. The nurses went through many needles on their tough hides.
SSSaa made the "worms" watch what had happened on the other ship so they would know what to do next time. SSSaa saw that they had fought valiantly, but their Queen was captured anyway.
They were still trying to outrun the inevitable shockwave that was sure to hit them, when one of the new lizards came to the bridge to demand the rescue of his Queen. When he heard that she would not be rescued but be dead in moments, the new lizard leaped at SSSaa. The captain’s body guard was quicker, and he unsheathed his knife, jumped in front of his captain and cut the newcomer’s throat from ear to ear. This was normal in their society, but it didn’t happen often.
JR and the nurses saw that go down on their way back to their ship. JR said to the body guard, “You know I can’t fix that one, right?” The guard smiled at JR and thought, I like these Earthers; they make me laugh. Tammy and Faith were getting sick at what they saw as the guard wiped the blood off his knife on the dead body and told a worm to clean up the mess.
SSSaa wasn’t mad at the dead hunter. He was honorable, but SSSaa was angry with his ship. His ship was different from other lizard ships, because his ship came with a Centurion nobody knew about. It was critical information that he had never revealed to anyone. He scratched behind his ear where a tiny implant had been inserted. He was thinking that not all bravery was lost. The hunter that had just died would have died a hundred times over to keep his Queen alive.
SSSaa thought that there was no way to fight the demons that walked through walls, and he was hoping that his ship would be far enough away when the demon ship exploded. If his ship wasn’t far enough away, his star drive would shut down and the Earth ship would have to tow him for a while to get out of the blast radius. That was an embarrassment he wanted to avoid.
The comm. Lizard said that they had just passed another distress signal, but SSSaa told his crew to ignore it if they wanted to live, because they were in a race to get to a safe distance. Truth be told, the lizard crew had been holding their breaths hoping their captain would say just that instead of stopping. They would have to be at least a parsec away to avoid engine shut-down.
A month later they had all put the incident behind them and it was recorded only in their logs. But Austen would never forget what SSSaa’s ship had wanted to do to the eight lizards and Deana. That ship was a manipulator, Austen thought, and he had almost volunteered for the mission. He hadn’t known that it was a suicide mission. He owed SSSaa his life, but he wouldn’t throw it away blindly, or on a whim.
SSSaa was upset with his ship too, and he would certainly have a talk with it. He was not looking forward to it, but it needed to be done.
Austen was in the gym working out and thinking about the mission SSSaa was on. He thought that even if they’d turn to go home, that he and his ship had been gone from Earth too long. Maybe he should’ve elaborated on what "gone too long" meant to SSSaa. He was thinking that so far, though, nobody wanted to go home, and he was fine with that.
He went to a different exercise and began to realize that even with Deana being herself again, and for a while, that Derek still wasn’t knocking on her door. Austen wasn’t on their shift, but the few times he was around the two, Derek never flirted with her, which was in itself weird. His brother had always flirted with her, for twenty years.
Austen was lifting weights with Tim as his spotter. He was reminiscing about being surrounded by space pirates. We had just escaped, and as Derek reached for Deana, she thought he was going to kiss her, but all he gave her was a hug. He even asked Kim to join in the hug. Austen knew Deana wanted to kiss Derek more than anything.
I still do, was said in his mind.
He said, “Girl, get out of my mind; I’ve got naked pictures of you in here somewhere." Tim didn’t know what to think about what Austen had just said, but he figured out that it was Deana he was talking about because Austen said "Girl."
Deana said, No you don’t.
He said, Aren’t you asleep?
She answered, Yes I am.
He said, Well do