Jeff stretched out and lifted his feet as far as he could. Then he writhed around until he was lying half on his side. The shackles cut into his skin and he cried out in pain. Then he tilted his feet and kicked.
“What are you doing?” the demon asked reprovingly. “You’ll only hurt yourself and you won’t achieve anything.”
Jeff kicked as hard as his bound legs would allow. The diamond tips of his boots struck the window full force.
A loud crunching noise penetrated his ear, as if a hundred demons were dragging their fingers across slates. Then there was an almighty crash as the window shattered into thousands of pieces. A storm raged through the cabin and began to suck them out.
Joanne’s body was ripped into the air. For a moment the demon tried to cling to Jeff’s seat, but the vacuum was too strong. With a silent scream, the demon was sucked out of the window into the eternity of space. It was the last thing Jeff saw before he fell unconscious.
The first thing he felt was amazement that he had awoken.
Shouldn’t he be dead? Suffocated and frozen by the vacuum of space?
When he opened his eyes, he realized he was still sitting in the escape pod, tied to his chair.
The window?
There was no more window. A big, metal plate covered the hole where it had been.
An emergency cover!
Like on the ships of the Imperial fleet—the aliens had also provided their windows with emergency covers that were activated automatically when the windows were damaged. Unlucky for the demon that it hadn’t closed faster.
Jeff managed to wriggle his hands out of the shackles, which seemed to have been loosened slightly by the storm in the cabin. Once he had freed his hands, it was easy for him to remove the other restraints.
Jeff stood up with a groan. His head was throbbing. He looked at the undamaged window to his right. Countless stars studded the sky.
The demon was dead—and this time for good. For all eternity, he would drift through space in Joanne’s body as a dried, frozen corpse.
Jeff stood up and searched the cabin for anything that might be useful. He found a packet of some green substance that might be alien food, but he didn’t feel like trying it. His suit would have to keep him alive; he reached down to the switch on his chest that activated the life-support system. A beep confirmed that it was on.
Jeff went to the back of the cabin and stood in front of one of the open cryogenic pods. The bottom of the container was filled with a greenish liquid. If he got into it, he would sleep the whole way back to Earth. But he only toyed with the idea for a second. He couldn’t bring himself to lie down in one of those alien pods that had already caused so much misery and misfortune. He would manage to while away the hundred days back to Earth.
Instead, he simply lay down on the floor next to the hatch. And suddenly he had a thought. What would happen when he left hyperspace in a few months and entered Earth’s Solar System? He no longer had Irons’ handheld with the authorization codes. In the worst-case scenario, the Orbital Space Guard would shoot him down as he approached Earth.
Or had Jerry transferred the correct code to the onboard computer of the escape pod? He had no idea.
Overwhelmed by tiredness, Jeff closed his eyes.
He would find out soon enough.
Also available by Phillip P. Peterson:
“Transport? Transport to where, Sir?” — “Possibly straight to hell!”
An extraterrestrial object is discovered off the coast of California; a sphere that transports humans to other solar systems. Death-row inmate Russell Harris and nine other convicts are given the chance to save their lives by agreeing to travel as test subjects on the transporter. But when the first volunteer dies a gruesome death, it becomes clear to Russell and his comrades that the venture is little more than a merciless death mission on which they will all perish. Their only chance of survival is to uncover the secret of the mysterious object, but that too seems hopeless—because no trace of the transporter’s constructors can be found
Stargate meets The Fly meets The Dirty Dozen—a suspense-packed science-fiction thriller from Storyteller Award winning author Phillip P. Peterson
Copyright
The Dark Ship
June 2019
All rights reserved
First published in German as Das dunkle Schiff
October 2018
Author:
Phillip P. Peterson
Publisher:
Peter Bourauel
Auelswiese 2
53783 Eitorf
German editors:
Anke Höhl-Kayser
Andrea Weil
Translator:
Jenny Piening
English editor:
Laura Radosh
Cover:
Rafido/99designs