I wasn’t the greatest engineer but I was a damn good pilot.
But no matter how many buttons I initiated and switches I flicked, nothing worked.
“Hey,” I said. “Where’s the power?”
“It’s been disengaged,” the smarter guard said.
“So re-engage it. I need to check she still works.”
“As I said, she works. Have you seen enough?”
He motioned for me to come out of the shuttlecraft but I couldn’t do that.
Not yet.
I’d come down to my final and least-preferred option.
I was going to have to fight my way out of there.
But I’d need a weapon to do that.
“All right,” I said. “Let me check one last thing.”
I approached the front of the cockpit.
Under the pilot’s console was a button that worked independently of the main power system.
It was the distress beacon.
As this shuttlecraft belonged to my ship, it would receive the transmission first and be compelled to investigate.
I leaned under the console and said a quick prayer to the God of Small Chances that these industrious creatures hadn’t thought to disable the distress beacon too.
I licked my lips nervously and pressed the button.
The light flashed in time to the signal it sent into space.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
But that wasn’t all the distress beacon was capable of.
I’d asked my engineer to install a small cubby hole where I could store a single phaser in case I should ever fall into a situation such as this.
I reached for it and said another prayer—he was going to get a bunch of messages in his inbox from me today.
I felt at the tiny hole and slipped my finger inside.
I wiggled it around until I felt something hard, round, and narrow.
I think that’s it…
Isn’t it?
I yanked it free.
It fell and was going to clatter to the floor, getting the guards’ attention for sure.
I adjusted the angle of my arm and caught it.
“What are you doing down there?” the guard with the itchy trigger finger said, edging further into the ship, his gun trained on me.
“I had to check the engines still work,” I said. “You won’t put the power back on, remember?”
I pushed myself up onto my feet and randomly pressed a few of the other buttons.
Hopefully, they weren’t anything too important.
“Yep,” I said. “I think I’m pretty much done here.”
The guard eyed me suspiciously.
He was too dumb to realize what I’d done.
Too dumb by half.
“Why are you standing like that?” he said.
“Standing like what?” I said, keeping my hand tucked behind my back.
“Like that. With your hand behind your back.”
Yikes. Not so dumb after all.
“I’m not standing here with my hand behind my back,” I quipped.
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Where’s your buddy?” I said. “The smart one. Let him do the thinking for you, huh? You’re not making any sense.”
The guard pursed his lips and if I didn’t know any better, he had either summoned the memory of the taste of the sour fruit lemdox or he was growing even more suspicious.
Or he was constipated.
One of those for sure.
“Show me your hand,” he said.
I extended my hand to him.
“Not that one. The other one.”
“Okay.”
I tucked my first back behind my back, pretended to drop the phaser into it, and then brought out my other hand that still held the phaser.
“You just switched hands!” he said.
“No I didn’t, look,” I said.
I opened the hand facing him.
A small dexterous action and the phaser was suddenly in my fingers.
“Oh,” the guard said.
Then, belatedly realizing what it was, his eyes bulged in surprise.
I fired at his chest at point-blank range.
Even for a phaser, this distance could be dangerous.
His arms flew to either side and his body jittered on the spot before collapsing to the floor.
His buddy rounded the back of the shuttlecraft, still in the process of tucking himself in from his restroom break, when his eyes fell to his buddy on the floor.
His eyes bulged in realization and he reached for the plasma rifle slung across his shoulders on a strap.
The beauty of the miniature phaser was it wasn’t powerful enough to knock you off your feet when you fired it, unlike a plasma rifle.
It saved valuable seconds.
The drawback was it only had a few good shots, and every one counted.
I caught the guard in the foot and he screamed as he went down.
Great, I thought. Now all his buddies are going to come investigate.
This time my target wasn’t moving and I shot him in the chest.
The shot hit him cleanly but didn’t have half the effect it did when it struck his buddy a moment ago.
Crap.
The phaser was out of juice already.
At the blow, the guard’s arms flew out and his rifle struck a fine collection of ancient helmets from some forgotten tribe.
It wouldn’t delay him for long.
I dropped to the floor on the other side of his buddy’s still-writhing body.
I reached for his plasma rifle and pulled it to me.
Out the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the second guard bringing his rifle around.
Uh-uh.
I yanked his buddy’s slumped figure over to use as a shield, confident he wouldn’t open fire on his own friend.
I was wrong.
I heard the sharp “zing-pop!” of the plasma rifle, akin to the sound of scraping shards of glass against each other.
The guy on the floor shuddered even harder, spooning me and gyrating with his cock at full mast, attempting to pierce the fabric of my pants.
“Dude!” I snapped.
The guy couldn’t help it—as the froth raging from his mouth could attest.
I eased the rifle around the shuddering guy but another blast of enemy fire slammed into the shuttlecraft controls above my head.
“Quit blowing holes in my ship!” I yelled.
I needed to hurry.
Not only was Agatha upstairs with King Pig but the other guards would soon show up.
If they got here before I managed to vamoose…
I’d be locked up in solitary confinement before you could say, “To hell with you, God of Small Chances.”
I analyzed my options.
I could either try and fire around the flailing figure on
