PEGASUS (FARSIDE SAGA: BOOK TWO)

"Follow that planet!!" Jason ordered, but before anyone could move, Pegasus appeared next to the helmsman, placing a hand on his shoulder, staring at the view screen.

"Wait!" he said gently, everyone's intercom picking it up.

The majority had already started leaving in pursuit of the planet, leaving the ones that heard Pegasus's message.

He cocked his head to the left as he looked into the star filled void.

"There." He said as he pointed.

Everyone looked at the screen but it was Vira who saw it first.

"Is that a....?" She started but couldn't finish, not believing what she was seeing.

"Shit!" Jason said aloud as he finally saw what Vira was looking at. "How close is it?"

His answer came quicker than expected when the first three ships in front of him suddenly elongated and disappeared.

What everyone stared at was what looked to be in the distance at first, was a sphere of rippling space. The rippling was not the concern, but rather, what caused the ripples. In the center, was another sphere. A sphere so common, that it was every scientist nightmarish fascination back home. A micro black hole had begun to grow in the planet's wake.

"Back us off!" Jason ordered.

He was on the verge of telling everyone that didn't already do it to clear the area, but what stopped him was the fact that there was no strong pull of gravity. Although it continued to grow, it's speed increasing, there was no gathering of dust, no event horizon, not even the collapse of stars. Just objects being elongated and pulled in on contact. It quickly continued to grow until it reached the inner edge of the Sialus Rings, just as everyone but a few made it to the outer edge.

"Noooo...he tricked me!! He had this planned from the very beginning." John yelled frantically, bursting on to the bridge from the lift.

He staggered over to Jason and gripped his uniform jacket tightly, making his Captain's insignia, pinned to his chest, fall to the floor.

"The gate...you are all the key to this!!" He finished as he looked Jason in his eyes, his third eye unblinking, then collapsed into his arms.

Confused and bewildered, Jason gently lowered him to the ground and watched, as his third eye went from an ambered yellow to a voidish black, before closing with the other two. No one had time to be sad because suddenly....

"FFFFRREEEEEEEEEeee" a whispered voice came so strong and forceful that it repelled everything around it a few decades away.

Just as the voice ended, the sphere shrunk down so small so fast that everything that was repelled, returned back to their original position. The sphere was no longer there. Jason returned to where the planet was, only to find a void so empty that he almost thought he flew into the blackhole. Everything inside the Sialus Rings that didn't make it out, was gone. The others emerged out of subspace alongside him.

"What the fuck was that?!!" Samantha and Vanessa asked simultaneously, then looked at each other wide eyed.

"I have...no...idea!! AT'Gru, who had stepped on to the bridge after John, said in shocked amazement.

"Whatever it was, it's gone for the moment, but I dont think that will be the last we'll see of it." Pegasus said as he stared at the empty void.

AT'Gru walked over to John, without taking his eyes off the screen, and slowly knelt down. Finally peeling his eyes away from the empty void, he slowly looked at John with pitiful sorrow.

"Gremlet's going to be devastated." Was all he said before picking him up and slowly walking back towards the lift.

"AT'Gru..." The captain called out sadly as he reached out an arm, grabbing his feathered shoulder. "...If you take him to sickbay, they can put him in cryostasis until we can give him a proper burial."

AT'Gru nodded his head in acknowledgment, shed a single silver tear, then continued his walk, never turning to look back as the lift illuminated and descended down the shaft. Just then, an unknown voice crackled across the intercom.

"Umm...Herion...umm...Jason?...Did I say that right?" The voice said, the last to someone else in the background.

"Anyway, this thing is a little tougher than we thought. Detok is hurt, our ship is damaged, actually, a lot of us need your help....oh, I'm Onik by the way." Onik said as he sent the coordinates through.

Danny received the transmission and keyed it into the lightdrive. Informing the rest of the ships, Jason led them to the rendezvous point.

Upon arrival, the planet had just shot another beam, destroying one of AT'Gru's bird-like ships, then jumped into a slipstream. Everyone followed behind. After a few seconds, they entered normal space. The planet spun around in different directions as if it was searching for something, fired a few beams, then reentered it's slipstream. This went on about three more times until, just like with the dragon ship, the Impala was met head on with the purple beam as soon as it came out of slipstream.

"We're definitely going to have to do something about that." Jason said, irritated as the Impala was stopped dead in its tracks.

"No damage. Absorption rate....point eighty-seven percent. Definitely stronger than that dragon thing." The operations officer said.

Pegasus looked at Danny and the captain, then smiled as he disappeared from the bridge. Danny raised an eyebrow, wondering what he was up to. He scanned his systems, then smiled himself.

"You're gonna like this one." He told the captain.

The lightstrips along the edge of the Impala began to glow bright blue as the turbine began spinning. The ship angled the canon directly in the beams path and fired. The round blue energy discharge traveled along the beam until it reached its source, blowing the glowing chunk of the shiny surface out into space. The floating chunk started heading back towards the planet, but the canon then fired a beam that attached itself to it and pushed it out of sight. The planet rotated around as the beam began forming on a different part of the surface. The canon fired again before the purple beam was fully charged, repeating the process with the first chunk. The planet rotated again, only this time, the beam came as projectiles and the source was angled just out of sight.

"Fast learner I see." The captain said as he watched the whole event take place.

Suddenly, small objects started leaving the planet's surface. Danny zoomed in on one as it headed straight towards them. The pink and purplish fleshy looking orbs all headed towards the ships, some ramming through hulls while others made their way in through airlocks and shielded openings. Alien screams where heard over the intercom as the ships were slowly taken over. Nano, too overwhelmed by the screams, burst into a dark cloud and left the Impala and headed towards the closest ship, an almost pinwheel shaped craft. After a few seconds, electrical discharges began arcing off the ship, striking other nearby orbs, causing them to explode in a gory mess. Nano went from ship to ship repeating the process.

Too busy watching Nano, no one payed attention to the approaching orb until the proximity alarms went off.

The lightstrips along the edge of the Impala began to glow bright. The tips of the nodes arched across each other as a plasma disc began to form in front of the canon. The canon lit up, made one quick turn, and pushed the disc out at incredible speeds. The orb simply rose above its trajectory as the disc passed under it.

"I could've dodged that one WITHOUT an evosuit." Jason said with a slight chuckle but irritated at the obviously failed attempt.

Danny simply looked back with a smile. The disc flipped vertical as it came to a stop and headed back towards the orb. It turned into a squared wall as small diamond shaped holes began to form, giving the disc a screen-like appearance. It caught the orb and wrapped around it, continuing its path into open space before exploding in a brilliant light show. The nanite shielding along the Impala started vibrating as they began to string off and join with Nano in pursuit of another orb that tried to take off into open space. The rest of the ships lay adrift for a few seconds before a disc like ship lit up and made its way to the Impala.

"A human?..." An amoeba like creature said once on screen.

Jason almost burst out laughing had it not been for the seriousness of the situation. He had almost forgotten it's been a while since they saw a human.

"...Anyway, thank you stranger, but what do we do about that?" He asked, indicating the planet, which hadn't moved since releasing the orbs.

"Jaaasooon...." An almost angelic voice said in the air, tauntingly.

The bridge lights suddenly went dim as everyone began to see smoke from there breathing, but without the chill.

"Behind me Satan!" one of the crewmen said as he got up brandishing his necklace with a cross holding the figure of Jesus.

Frightened, he slowly backed his way to the lift, looking around wide eyed, only to be thrown across the bridge by an unseen force. The rest of the bridge crew jumped up as everyone took arms.

"Holy shit we got a poltergeist!!" Samantha said surprised, at both the event and that her right hand somehow had a pistol in it.

Nano floated outside the ship looking through the view screen as if it were a window, unable to enter the ship.

Danny had disappeared and operations shut down.

Suddenly the doors to the captain's quarters opened and the thing that used to be Cassia floated out. Everyone opened fire instantly but to no avail. The projectiled weapons were simply absorbed by some type of shielding. Leafy appendages began lashing out through the hail of laser fire, as a purplish black vortex opened in place of the view screen. Cassia grabbed a few of the crew members and tossed them in.

"Look out!! Mike shouted as a leafy tentacle almost struck Vanessa before he pushed her out the way.

The tentacle wrapped around Mike's head and squeezed tightly, jerking him around wildly. Jason thought for sure Mike was about to loose his head as he watched him get jerked about. Just as he got up to help, he was knocked back down by a smaller fleshy orb from the back. He looked around and saw three more had emerged from the vortex. One attached itself to a crew member and started absorbing him. Pelik and Vira ran over to save him, barely managing to pull it off. Udar ran to Mike's aid only to get knocked back by Mike's flailing feet. Jason looked up to see Kurie jumping off the operations tier railing towards him with an ion blade extended from his wrists. He landed blade first into the orb above Jason just as he rolled out the way. The force of the impact made the orb bounce off the floor and wobble trying to shake Kurie off. Mike was finally tossed towards the vortex, but before entering, he regained orientation and engaged his thrusters, stopping his momentum just as he reached the threshold of the vortex. Quickly mapping out his trajectory, Mike flew straight at Cassia, dodging the other two orbs and laser fire. His own blades extended, he was just about to strike when suddenly, everything froze.

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