The Light Blue Jumper Page 22

  91. The Worried Major

  I had almost sent word to Headquarters. Thankfully, the General’s return had pre-empted such insanity on my part.

  “Are we still locked out of Weapons Control?” she asked.

  “Yes, General,” I told her, forlornly.

  “Set up a secure frequency to the rebel ship. I can get the new password by using the hostage as leverage,” the General commanded.

  “Lethal is one of ours though, isn’t he?” I asked.

  “But they don’t know that,” she said, smiling.

  I forgot myself for a second and attempted to smile back. “Stop grinning like an oaf and patch me through to the rebel ship.” It was such a relief to have her back.

  I patched her in immediately and settled down to watch her turn their victory into dust.

  “Rebel ship, this is the General. Who is authorised to speak with me on your behalf?” she asked.

  “I am.” Salaar stepped forward. We should have had him as a hostage, such a fine specimen of an officer; a pity he was recruited by them straight out of school, I thought, as I looked at him standing tall in his white uniform against the backdrop of brilliant white unmarked walls. They had pretty much copied everything down to the last detail from our IPF uniforms, except for the insignia and the gold buttons, which they probably couldn’t afford, and the Second Light was simply a standard-issue black IPF vessel with a paint job.

  “Lieutenant, I have your comrade. Give me the new password and he shall be released unharmed. You have my word,” she said.

  “You can have him. He is more yours than ours in any case,” Dinaara said as she stepped forward to flank Salaar.

  “He would have been terminated for sheer uselessness a long time ago if he belonged to us. It is the rebels who are a refuge for mediocrity,” the General replied.

  “We have tightened things up around here, so he is out of a job,” Madam joined the conversation.

  “How unfortunate for him. We will just have to dispose of him, I suppose,” the General said nonchalantly. “Major, get rid of Commander Lethalwulf,” she tossed over her shoulder at me. Was she bluffing? Should I do it? I hesitated for a second and then decided to fetch him while I deliberated further on the true meaning of the General’s words.

  “Commander, you are to come with me,” I opened the shuttle door and motioned to him.

  “Is each party claiming me as theirs already?” he asked, winking. “Usual scenario, I’m afraid, when you’re a double agent; quite in demand.”

  “It appears your career might be in a bit of a slump,” I said kindly, showing him into the General’s command quarters.

  92. Madam X

  I always knew when the time came for the curtain to drop, I would be the one calling the shots.

  “Even if Lethal is one of ours, no one is more precious than control of the weapons, General,” I spat out the last word. Her memories had come flooding back awfully fast, that damned machine hadn’t even malfunctioned properly.

  “If you want to see your friend and comrade alive, hand over the password. I will not ask again,” the General said with finality.

  “We will do one better, we won’t just give you the weapons password, we’ll give you the weapons!” If she thought she could outmanoeuvre me, she was sadly mistaken. “Take a wild guess where they will be pointing,” I threatened.

  “Judging by the general success rate of your plans, I’ll hazard an educated guess, and say that they will be pointing at you,” the General said condescendingly.

  I moved away from the console for a minute and punched in the password, followed by the executable codes Zaaro had provided, returning triumphant. “I have launched the weapons, they are directed towards you,” I confirmed, “and they will begin the countdown in,” I looked down carefully at the readings printed from the remote device, “twenty-four seconds?” I looked up to see everyone looking at me, horrified. “Oh, er, one minute, I mean second…”

  “Abort, abort,” I signalled to The Good Doctor with a wave of my hand. He waved back, rooted to the spot. “Extend the time,” I motioned to him with expansive hand gestures. He finally nodded in understanding, and rushed over with the new readings.

  “There was a slight error there, what I meant to say was that the missiles are primed for launch in,” I paused for effect, “twenty-four hours!” That was quite a bit of time. At least history would record that we were fair-minded people. Salaar nudged me, pointing towards the readings and making unintelligible gestures. I clucked in irritation and looked down again at the numbers. “Sorry there is a slight correction. What I actually meant to say was that the missiles will be launched in, twenty-four days.” At this point I walked away from the camera, stamped my feet, and jumped up and down in silence for a while. On calming down, I returned to see that the conversation was continuing, with the The Good Doctor standing in for me, “You have been given some time so that you may evacuate the planet. As you are already aware, it is not yours, so pack up your things and get out,” he said. Everyone burst into cheers and applause.

  The Major was whispering quite audibly to the General, “They aborted a scheduled launch, the missiles will now auto-destruct in twenty-four hours!”

  “Prepare for evacuation, all troops must be removed from the planet immediately,” the General directed.

  “And the civilians?”

  “The G-Sectors are probably far enough from Weapons Control not to suffer too much damage. Anyway, that is not our concern, just ensure the Warrawns are evacuated,” the General said, terminating the exchange.

  I put on a crestfallen face to keep the others company when the screen went blank, and offered equally dim-witted suggestions for ways in which we could abort the self-destruct, but I exulted inside. This was my chance to serve the greater good and bring lasting peace to the Universe.

  I was going to let the weapons self-destruct on Zaaron and pretend that the General had authorised it.

  93. The Worried Major

  I finally sent in my report to Headquarters. It read thus:

  The General bravely attempted to wrest the new password from the rebels, while using one of our own officers as leverage. Of course, they did not know that. There was a lot of witty repartee, in which the General excelled, decimating the rebels with her words. We were at a standoff when Madam engineered the missiles to self-destruct by performing a complicated series of time changes and launch aborts, with inside help, one may presume (Colonel Bob, heading the elite security team being a prime suspect in this regard). We were able to evacuate all our troops from the planet within a brief period of twelve hours. The General, however, stayed behind to attempt one last foray to move the missiles away from Weapons Control in order to save our weapons labs and the prototypes contained there. The Zaaronian weapons developers were returned to the G-Sectors, which are considered to be a safe distance from the expected explosion. The Warrawns were offered safe passage in a weapons carrier to another peaceful planet where they may settle by subduing the locals; they have agreed to do so. A ship carrying the Warrawns is currently en route to Tephron, which it will reach in approximately three days. I remain with the General. Awaiting further instructions, yours sincerely, Major Fred.

  94. Zaaro Nian

  I had missed all the excitement. Anya had apparently been the General all along. She had made a desperate bid for the new password, but Madam had outsmarted her and made her evacuate all IPF troops from Zaaron. The only hiccup in our version of the liberation of Zaaron remained the fact that the IPF missiles were set to self-destruct in twelve hours, while Lethal remained on the planet. One morning, I had decided to sleep in and we had won our greatest victory and were about to suffer our greatest defeat.

  We landed freely on Zaaron, using the landing bay at Weapons Control without a single IPF officer to stop us, and strolled over to the inner sanctum. Salaar was in the lead, Dinaara brought up the rear, while I was ensconced firmly in the middle. The heavy steel security doo
rs opened easily. They hadn’t bothered locking up behind them.

  I tinkered around with the missiles for a couple of hours, but the countdown continued. Plan A was to override self-destruct and if that didn’t work, Plan B was to make a jump for it. Then I had a brilliant idea. I could get help, lots of it, from the G-Sectors. The entire team of weapons developers was holed up there until the missiles went off.

  “Salaar, Dinaara, I need you to round up the team of weapons developers from the G-Sectors and bring them here.”

  “All right, but how will we know which ones they are?” Salaar wanted to know.

  “Just ask them,” I said.

  “Why would they tell us the truth, Zaaro? To them we are the enemy,” Dinaara said.

  “Zaaronians do not lie, Princess, to anyone, under any circumstances.” I was offended they hadn’t figured this out after spending so much time with me.

  Thankfully, there were no more inane questions and both of them headed over to the G-Sectors in the shuttle. No matter what I did, I couldn’t interfere with the self-destruct. It appeared that I was a tad out of touch with the latest upgrades. Based solely on their technological superiority, the IPF had probably earned the right to rule the world. I looked around uncomfortably as the errant thought surfaced in my head. Thankfully there were no Charnooks in the room and my thoughts remained my own.

  In my exploration of the triggering device, I had discovered two wires, one red and one blue. One of them would have to be cut to disarm the circuit. Normally it was the red, but they may have changed it to blue to confuse people, or there might be a double bluff; in that case, they would have left it red. As I was grappling with this conundrum, Salaar and Dinaara trooped back in with a handful of Zaaronians. They could only fit so many, along with themselves, inside the rebel shuttle. We greeted each other with the customary tweaking of noses and I introduced myself.

  “I am Zaaro III, of the house Nian.”

  “Billy II of the house Ruben.” He was second cousin to the royal family. And so it went on until the last one, “Lady I of the house Killer.” Salaar and Dinaara seemed particularly proud at having brought him along. Personally I didn’t see what the fuss was about. The Killers were known to be amongst the nouveau riche, one of his cousins had apparently even tried to get himself dyed a darker blue once, in an attempt to pass himself off as Zaaronian royalty.

  “We need to disarm the triggering device. Do I cut the blue wire or the red one?” I asked Billy Ruben.

  “It’s the blue wire, most certainly.”

  “Are you sure?” Salaar asked.

  “Yes, yes, absolutely sure.” Billy nodded, with a subtle hint of displeasure. I was about to follow his instructions, when Lady interrupted. “You are supposed to cut the red wire, cousin,” he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  “Excuse me? Whom did you call cousin?” I balked at the imposition. “We are not related in any way,” I told each person in turn, in case anyone present had believed the imposter, while picking up my clippers and moving to clip the blue wire.

  “No! Zaaro wait!” Dinaara wailed.

  “It’s all right, he was exaggerating, as I’ve clarified, obviously a misunderstanding on his part, pay no attention to him. We are not related,” I explained with my customary patience. “Now may I continue?”

  “But you have to listen to him!” Dinaara seemed to be completely taken in by the presumptuous fellow.

  “I am perfectly within my rights to ignore the fellow, or if he continues with his false claims, I will report him to the Department of Lineage,” I said, shooting a disapproving look his way. “Now where was I?” I moved towards the blue wire again.

  “Wait!” Salaar shouted.

  “Salaar, pay no heed to the impertinence, I told you he is not my cousin,” I said.

  “The wire! You have to cut the red one!”

  “Why would I do that?” I was beginning to get a little irked by the deference being shown to Lady and his opinions, especially when I had told them enough times that he was not related to me in any way.

  “Look at his name tag. He’s the Head of Weapons Safety and Bomb Defusal,” Salaar continued.

  “That may be so,” I said begrudgingly, “but he has directly contradicted Billy. To give him precedence would be the greatest insult imaginable to the House Ruben, other than asking them if they are sure about something, which I believe you have already done.” I exhaled slowly. I was disappointed in my friends and their utter lack of good manners.

  “You would risk our lives rather than risk offending Billy?” Dinaara was incredulous.

  “Well, not exactly. If I listen to Billy and cut the blue wire, there is a fifty per cent chance that we will survive and Billy will have been given due respect. But if I don’t listen to him and cut the red wire, there is still a fifty per cent chance that we will survive but a one hundred per cent certainty that Billy will have been mortified. So the only logical option is obviously to go with the former rather than the latter,” I explained and, confident of their agreement, moved towards the blue wire.

  After that everything was a bit of a blur. Salaar jumped on me, followed by Dinaara, or maybe it was the other way around. They tried to wrestle the clippers from my grasp, but I had the blades firmly locked on the blue wire and in the struggle, they descended on the blue wire and did their job. I was not at all surprised when the missiles did not explode. I gave a thumbs-up sign to Billy, and looked down to marvel at my handiwork, when I noticed that the red wire was also in pieces. Horror-struck, I saw Lady, standing next to it, clippers in hand, arms akimbo, as if he was expecting applause.

  “Tsk tsk, appalling behaviour.” I made my disapproval clear to everyone.

  95. Commander Lethalwulf

  We used the narrow, cramped secret tunnel that connected the General’s command quarters to Weapons Control and emerged in a rather undignified fashion from a trapdoor in the floor of the inner sanctum. The General had decided to call Madam’s bluff and see first-hand whether the weapons were actually going to self-destruct.

  “Dinaara, Salaar, Zaaro,” I greeted each in turn and nodded at the gaggle of Zaaronians, making sure I didn’t wink. The titter that ran through them, though, told me I had probably committed another monumental faux pas.

  “Glad to see you’re in one piece, Lethal,” Salaar said, his gun swinging from the General to the Major, “and by the way, you just told them you have piles. Push them to the wall!” Both Salaar and the General commanded in unison.

  “I’ll just sit this one out, I think,” I mumbled, trying to remember where I had drawn my last pay cheque from, Rebels or IPF, IPF or rebels?

  The rebels charged forward while I was still thinking, so I ended up with my back against the wall, along with the Major and the General. “Sorry, I’m with them,” I said to my fellow captives and inched away from the wall.

  “Thanks for joining us Lethal, we were beginning to wonder where your true loyalties lay,” Salaar said.

  “Always with the captors, Salaar,” Dinaara mocked me.

  “I speak for all the Zaaronians here,” Zaaro said, tapping Salaar on the shoulder and signalling towards all the other blue creatures, “We want to know what is going to happen, now that the rebels have liberated Zaaron.”

  “You will all be free to live your lives safe from oppression and exploitation,” Salaar answered kindly.

  “I am confused. We were already free, so how is this any different?” Another Zaaronian spoke up.

  “Billy, your people were enslaved by the IPF, kicked out of your homes, forced to live in G-Sectors, need I go on?” Salaar tried to explain.

  “I wasn’t a slave though, and I didn’t live in the G-Sectors, I was living in a special and very exclusive settlement on Zaaron. I’m related to royalty, you see,” the Zaaronian said.

  “Who will be in charge of running things?” A Zaaronian I didn’t recognise asked plaintively.

  “You will,” Salaar said.

&nbs
p; “What?” Zaaro and Billy both asked, offended.

  “I didn’t mean him literally, I meant the Zaaronian people in general,” Salaar seemed to be panicking a little.

  “We need specifics,” Zaaro continued, “who will be running the weapons labs? We need to know where to send in our job applications.”

  “We haven’t figured that out yet,” Salaar said, “we will all decide together on the best course of action!”

  Billy turned towards the General, “Does the IPF have any other weapons installations we could be transferred to?” he asked.

  “Why, yes of course,” the General said, smiling at the Major.

  “Wait. Billy, I know you’re royalty and it would be impolite to disagree with you, but hear me out,” Zaaro finally spoke. “I have seen the true and evil face of the IPF. I was almost murdered in cold blood on the orders of the General,” he said staring reproachfully at the tiny blonde. “The IPF steal our land, our skills, and use them to arm themselves against innocent people. They punish us at their whim, bombing the G-Sectors to test their weapons; the same weapons they make us develop for them. I also have it on good authority that they have taken our natural gifts of submissiveness and docility and turned those into a weapon as well. Stinking gas, which in its concentrated form makes people lose the will to live, is a direct product of our noble Zaaronian heritage. The IPF have been extracting it from G-Sector bombing survivors, which is why they never return. The IPF has deprived us of our right to self-rule, our freedom…” Zaaro’s voice trailed off as the other Zaaronians began muttering to each other, clearly bored.

  “I would like to add that the rebels will keep the weapons labs open for a short while to act as a deterrent for anyone else who has an eye on our planet,” he resumed loudly, changing tack.

  “Does that mean I can come to work tomorrow, same time as usual?” One of the Zaaronians in the back row ventured.