Angry Jasper: Fifty-one

Kate just couldn’t hold on any longer. Only by the grace of god had she managed to keep from being thrown to her end when the boulder struck. She couldn’t see Jazz and figured he either didn’t make it and had high-tailed it off the planet while he still could. She didn’t blame him, and actually felt a certain relief that one of them would survive.

Skull boy was slipping away. She might have been able to hold on and save herself by letting go of the kid, but it just wasn’t something she could do. She looked at Buzz. There was this sort of spiraling terror in his electric blue eyes.

“I’m gonna miss you, partner,” she said solemnly.

“You too, kiddo,” said Buzz. With that her fingers slipped from the beam, and with the boy fell helplessly. Buzz watched until she disappeared from view, swallowed in a billowing cloud of dust.

Jazz had steered the ship under them, hiding beneath the dust cloud. He thought it would be funny and could only imagine the look on their faces when they landed on top of the ship. He felt the double thump as they hit the fuselage and almost pissed himself laughing.

Kate and Skull boy landed on their feet, surprised to be standing on the hull of the ship. Kate knew in an instant Jazz’ signature sort of schoolboy humor and cherished the thought of getting even somehow. She pulled the boy over to the canopy and could see Jazz shoving crap out of the way in the cluttered cockpit, making room for the others. Buzz dropped onto the hull a moment later, his mechanical eyes blinking hard at disbelief. He looked up at Kate.

“I have never been so happy to see that gruff bastard in I don’t know how long,” said the robot of Jazz.

“You and me both,” Kate replied.

Jazz opened the cockpit. The planet was coming apart rapidly now. One by one everyone scrambled into the ship. It was a tight fit, but somehow they all managed to cram inside. Buzz was already at the controls, the ship racing skyward. he hoped the ship would pressurize in time before the humans lost consciousness or worse. It was a moment in which he could feel their fragileness.

Buzz gunned the engines, pushing them to the limit. Below them the planet tore itself to pieces. Great jets of pulverized rock and flame shot into space, chasing, and even blasting past the ship. The planet was still more or less a sphere, but of a hundred monstrous pieces smashing and grinding against one another.

“Come on, baby,” Jazz said as he pushed Buzz out of the seat and slid in behind the controls, as though he could coax another few hundred miles an hour out of the ship. Suddenly, free of the atmosphere the ship lurched hard. At better than twelve hundred miles per second, the fastest he had ever gone this close to a planet, it would still take the better part of five minutes to reach the moon. He doubted it would be enough to save them.

. The planet’s core exploded, signaling the ultimate demise of the planet. Realizing there was no chance to outrun the titanic chunks of earth rushing towards him jazz turned the ship hard. He figured one of two things would happen. Either they smashed like a bug on a windshield or they would make some sort of landing, however hard, that might protect them from the worst of the shock and debris. Instead they plunged into what remained of Pacific Ocean still clinging to a chunk of earth.

The ship plowed through six thousand feet of ocean at blinding speed. They hit the floor with a teeth noshing bang, in what should have been catastrophic. The horrendous sloshing of the ocean, as the jagged planetoid shuddered, dulled the impact enough that it was at least for the moment, survivable.

They had barely come to a stop when seals suddenly began popping all over the ship. Kate, Buzz, jazz and Skull boy could do little more than watch in horror as icy cold sea water seeped in through a dozen hidden ruptures.

“Now we’re gonna drown?” Kate bitched.

But Jazz wasn’t out of fight yet. He hadn’t survived this long to just lay down and die. He had one last card left to play, and if that didn’t cut it, well then maybe then he’d call it quits.

“The storage lockers,” he pointed to a half dozen pressurized containers at the back of the ship. The water was at their knees already It would be tight, but there was just enough room in each to hold a person. He turned to Buzz. “Can you fly us out of here, tin man?”

Buzz rolled his eyes. He was just about to answer when they broke through the surface and out into space again. Without an atmosphere the ocean was quickly boiling away. Air rushed through the busted seals out into space. With it the pressure dropped quickly. Jazz popped open the first locker and was already fighting to fill his lungs. In minute or so each of them would lose consciousness. Death would follow quickly.

“Quick, no time to lose!.” Jazz was already shoving Kate and the boy to the lockers. The ship groaned terribly. Buzz pushed the engines to the limits, using the planetoid to shield them from the biggest chunks of debris. Behind hime the others stumbled towards the lockers, gasping for any air.