Avery Trent - Chapter 6 (Pit Stop)

The silver can flew through space, the armored figure dubbed Dorothy still clinging to its side.

“So, what do we do about him?” Avery asked, watching Dorothy with an anxious eye. Jason fumbled with some controls, then spun around in his chair.

“Easy,” he said. “We flick him off.” With that, Jason turned back to the controls and sped the can along. Avery wasn’t sure what Jason meant by “flick him off”.

“Er, how?” he asked.

“Again, easy, we just gotta find a nice moon or asteroid,” Jason replied, not turning his eyes from the front window. Avery was slowly catching on to what Jason meant.

“We’re gonna scrape him against a moon?” the man questioned.

“That’s another way to put it, yes,” the spaceman confirmed.

“Oh…” Avery leaned back in his seat, leaving everything up to Jason. He did, however, keep a wary eye on Dorothy who was fiercely glaring at him through the window.

The can flew on, passing by debris and small meteorites. Whenever they passed by such a meteorite Avery would ask why they didn’t use one of them to get rid of Dorothy, to which Jason would reply that they weren’t dramatic enough.

“Not dramatic enough?” Avery asked, watching another perfectly fine meteorite - another chance to scrape Dorothy off the can - slip away outside the window.

“Well, yeah. What, you want to waste this opportunity and use a small rock?” Jason asked back, sounding almost disgusted. “It’s not every day that you get to flick someone off your ship with a meteor.” Avery shrugged and the can slipped back into silence once again.

A while later, outside, Dorothy began pounding his fist on the window. His motions were slow, as if he were underwater, but the force could be felt as the can rumbled slightly with each hit.

“Um, Jason,” Avery spoke up from the back.

“Yeah, yes, yeah, I can feel it.” Jason stood from his chair and walked to the back of the can, past Avery. He opened a long, thin compartment, pulled something out, and approached the window. Tapping the glass with a finger to get Dorothy’s attention, he waved, grinning. Then he lifted the thing he’d pulled from the compartment, something resembling a large black hammer, and struck the window with it. The glass shattered instantly and Avery jolted to his feet, screaming at Jason and calling him insane, a madman, and all sorts of ruder things.

Jason waved a hand at Avery, dismissing his panicked shouts, and tossed the hammer over his shoulder. Dorothy quickly recovered from the shock of having a window smashed in your face and thrust an arm through the window.

The moment he did that a large metal door swung down from the top of the window, lopping off his arm and locking him out of sight.

Avery screamed again, this time from the shock of having your window lop off a person’s limb. He expected blood, bits of flesh, perhaps, just a gory mess to clean up. What he found when he approached the arm, though, was a sparking, metallic prosthetic. He picked it up hesitantly and turned back to Jason, who had seated himself in the pilot’s chair again.

“What’s this?”

“That,” Jason replied,” is an arm.”

“Well, yeah, I get that, but…” He inspected the arm closely, looking it over. “It’s metal.”

“Yup,” Jason said simply.

“And there’s sparks, well, sparking from it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So… What, is he a robot?” Avery gestured to the locked window, using the arm as a pointer.

“Nope.” Jason tapped a small screen and studied it.

“Are you going to elaborate or should I just…?”

“Sit down, Avery,” Jason said. “And shut up, please.”

Avery took his seat again and crossed his arms, glaring at the back of Jason’s head frustratedly.

* * *

Avery never liked long car rides, and can rides were no different. Sure, he could be looking at all the galactic sights outside, but those galactic sights weren’t much. Everything was either a distant star or a drifting meteorite. They hadn’t found a meteor big enough or dramatic enough to scrape Dorothy off with and the stowaway had started attacking the can again, this time with his foot, as shown by the security screens.

“Ah, dammit!” Jason slammed a fist on his armrest and leaned back, staring at a flashing red gauge.

“What is it?” Avery asked, leaning forward in his seat. Jason muttered and tossed an arm up in the gauge’s direction.

“We’re nearly out of fuel!” He jumped to his feet and kicked his chair. It was bolted to the floor of the can and, so, stood its ground against the oncoming foot. A loud thud and quiet cracking, followed by Jason’s screaming and rude hand gestures at the chair, proved the pain he’d experienced.

Collapsing back into the chair and holding his foot tightly, Jason muttered curses, both at the chair and gauge.

“We’re gonna have to find a place to land and fuel up-- Dammit!”

Avery wasn’t sure how to reply and decided to keep quiet. After a while Jason took hold of the controls again and they continued on their way, slower than before.

After quite a while of slowly drifting through space, Jason cursing, and Dorothy kicking the side of the can, they approached an inhabited planet.

“Not a planet, Avery,” Jason said when Avery asked about it.

“What is it, then?” Avery asked, simply overflowing with questions that day.

“What else would it be?” Jason replied. Avery shrugged. “It’s a moon, obviously!”

“Ah…” Avery nodded and looked out the window to his left, the one Jason hadn’t smashed, and watched as the surface of the moon drew nearer. They were landing slowly and Jason was growing more and more fearful that the fuel would give out before they were low enough to the landing platform.

Avery kept up with his new trend and kept quiet, hoping for the best as the can dropped lower and lower.

“Nearly there,” Jason said. “Almost,” he egged the can on. “There we go! That’s right, baby!” He spun around in his chair to face Avery. “That’s what I’m talking about!” He fist pumped as he walked to the back of the can and pressed a panel, opening the entrance hatch.

“Come on, Avery,” he said. “And bring that hammer,” he added before jumping out.

Avery rose from his chair, stretching and groaning, then grabbed the black hammer from the floor and jumped through the hatch too.

Landing softly on the edge of the can’s top, Avery found Jason at the base of the can, arms raised, surrounded by ugly, scaly men. Well, most of them were ugly, Avery changed his mind as he noticed a woman amongst them. She wasn’t scaly like the others, and she definitely wasn’t ugly. Avery found himself holding his breath as he looked at her.

She noticed him atop the can, grabbed a gun from her waist, and aimed it at his head.

“Hey, you, drop your weapon,” she ordered as several of the scaly men grabbed Jason by the arms.

“Okay,” Avery sighed infatuatedly, and tossed the hammer down. It caught Dorothy, who had been walking around the side of the can, on the head and knocked him out instantly.

The woman kept her weapon aimed at Avery’s head. “Get down here, and don’t try anything funny.”

“If you say so,” Avery agreed, hopping down from the can and surrendering himself to the scaly men, despite Jason’s loud shouts to take them out with the hammer. One of the scaly men got tired of Jason’s screaming and whacked him on the head with his rifle, causing Jason to fall to the floor, limp.

Avery paid no attention as he admired the woman, still threatening him with a gun.

“Come along,” she ordered. Two scaly men hefted Jason up and carried him off. Two others approached Avery, expecting a struggle, and were surprised to find him following after the others quite willingly, glancing back at the woman over and over until she was completely out of sight.