Ildarim's Arrow

Ildarim's Arrow - Part 8

"Holy shit!" Robert said. "So this guy just took off?"

"Exactly," Lucien said. "You can imagine what the crew was thinking."

"They must have been concerned," Karina said.

"You should listen to the logs," Lucien continued. "There was flat out disbelief, especially from Liu. At this point there was serious regret that they hadn't locked the captain up in the first place, but there was nothing they could do. They tried to contact Ildarim on the skimmer, but he didn't respond. All they could do was track his progress and hope that he survived the flight. But Ildarim was the best skimmer pilot on the Arrow. He could fly the thing blindfolded. If he didn't make it, though, the Arrow would be without a reliable means of surface landing, and that could pose problems once they made it to TCE. Oh, my God, Karina, watch out!"

At that moment everyone turned to Karina and she froze where she sat, her hand caught in the motion of stroking the soft fur of the honey bear that was perched close to her head. When she understood that Lucien was panicked about the honey bear, she frowned. "I've been petting him for the last five minutes," she said. "He just came over and so I figured I give him a scratch behind the ears."

"Amazing," Lucien said as he eased back on his seat. He looked over at Terrence who was standing near the entry to the dining room, but Terrence was unmoved.

"I think it's fond of her," Robert said.

And sure enough, the honey bear was responding to Karina's touch with half-closed eyes and a gentle cooing.

"Well, I'll be... If I tried to touch that thing he'd scream so loud he'd send us all through the roof."

Pop!

"I need a refill," Robert said as he wrestled the cork out of another bottle of wine. "The more I drink the more interesting this story becomes."

"Well, I'm glad I'm not boring you," Lucien said.

"Care to join us, Terrence?" Robert said as he topped up empty glasses. "You're making me nervous, you see..."

"I hope this isn't disappointing you, Terrence," Lucien said. "It may be hard to hear this, but the truth is important."

But Terrence seemed unaffected where he stood: taciturn, chin out, and arms clasped behind his back. The lightning flickered through the windows and the thunder rumbled in the distance.

"So, where was I?"" Lucien said.

"Ildarim just stole the skimmer," Karina said.

"Yes," Robert said. "He was about to crash-land on that damned planet and rescue this narrative from certain death."

"Ah, yes..." Lucien said. "So the crew was watching in horror as Ildarim stole their only skimmer and headed for the planet. They traced it for a while and then a couple hours later determined that it had come down somewhere near the planet's equator. There was still no communication with the skimmer, so Liu made the decision to send down a pair of escape pods to the planet's surface (there were eight on the ship,) where they would try to apprehend and subdue the captain, retrieve the skimmer, and return to the Arrow. The pods were blunt-body entry vehicles, so landing would lack accuracy, but they really had no other option. To complicate things, there was also some news developing from their chief engineer regarding trouble with the Arrow's alignment thruster system. He was working on the problem with their 2nd engineer, but this news was compounding frustrations on the bridge. But I'll get back to that later.

"Liu was the first to volunteer to ride one of the pods to the surface, but she encountered stiff opposition from the crew. It was argued that she was needed on the Arrow and that if something happened to her it might endanger the ship. But she stood firm. She was one of the fittest and she had survival training, and ultimately she was the one who had authority to make the decision. Officer Odela, the third mate, would ride the other pod. He had weapons training and was an expert pilot.

"So, armed and lightly equipped, the two boarded their pods and ejected from the Arrow and descended quickly through TCF's atmosphere."

"Hey," Robert said. "I'm hooked."

"Ok," Karina said. "What happened next?"

"Well," Lucien said, "they pods landed more or less successfully. Liu made mention of an injured hand and Odela was in water but alive and afloat. Communications broke off later with Odela, and it was assumed he'd drowned, but Liu was alive and two days out from the skimmer's latest ping.

"In the meantime, conditions onboard the Arrow were deteriorating. Engineering was having trouble with its alignment thrusters, and without a functioning RCS (reaction control system) the ship would gradually begin to spin. In a pinch, of course, one of the fallback designs was to use the skimmer's thrusters to correct the Arrow's alignment, but without the skimmer, this wasn't possible."

"Well, Liu must have reached the captain," Robert said. "We know they both returned to Earth, right?"

"Yes," Lucien said. "They both returned to Earth, but at that point one of them would be dead."

"Just shut up and let Lucien finish," Karina said. She was still stroking the honey bear, and the small creature seemed pleased to have her attention.

"Well, I'll speed this up here so I don't lose you," Lucien said. "So Liu is hunting down Ildarim and the Arrow is starting to enter an uncontrolled spin...but let's get to Liu and Ildarim first.

"Basically, forty plus hour later Liu catches up with Ildarim and she glimpses him across a narrow canyon where he's dancing and carrying on. He's stripped naked and covered in mud and howling 'I'm king, I'm king!' in a kind of maniacal rant. 'Bow down before me and kiss my feet!' He's full-on lost it. There are actually images of this scene on the memory core from Liu's bodycam, and it isn't pretty. He's naked and running around and jumping up and down...grabbing his you-know-what and yelling with glee. Anyway, Liu gives chase and he scrambles away over a limestone ridge to some sort of large, overgrown stone temple. It's an ancient structure, from what I could tell, and the obvious product of sentient hands...but anyway. So as Liu approaches Ildarim, he starts to rant on about his kingdom and that she's trespassing. With a couple fleet steps, she closes on him and delivers a swift undercut to his jaw that knocks him out cold. She binds him up with some restraining cord and, with a broken hand, hoists him over her shoulder and carries him a mile or so back to the skimmer. There, she tosses him inside, and radios the Arrow that she has Ildarim, the skimmer, and that she's heading back."