Into the Void (The Dungeoneers) (3 page)

Quivering evilly, like a venomous spider crouching in the midst of the gold and gems, was the severed hand of the barrow wight. Gerald stared down in shock. Before he could react, the hand sprang into frightful life and leapt at the youth’s throat.

Gerald flung himself backward as the talons snapped within inches of his windpipe. He fell to the metal deck with a clatter, and the withered claw thumped down on his chest. He stared cross-eyed as the thing came scuttling up towards his face.

‘Get it off me!’ he bellowed. The shout galvanised his companions, till now frozen in horror. They scrambled forward, blast guns at the ready.

Gerald threw himself to one side, spilling the reanimated hand onto the deck, where it lay for a moment, clenching and unclenching. With Percy and Norman’s help, Gerald staggered his feet.

He glared at the hand in horror. So its hideous life remained even when severed from its body! He remembered how the barrow wight had reformed again and again, no matter how many times they had dismembered it.

Brian aimed his blast gun at the thing. The claw sprang to one side as the beam lanced down. Brian’s energy bolt danced dangerously round the chamber, causing the youths to duck and dive out of its ricochet. The severed hand bounded forward, and flung itself at the control console.

Percy opened fire from a crouch, hitting the console dead on. Sparks showered the chamber. Undeterred, the withered claw seized a lever and yanked it. As the adventurers rushed the console, the entire ship lurched to the right; the deck tipped at a forty-degree angle, and the four youths went crashing into a bulkhead, showered by a rain of objects from their pile of equipment and plunder. Brian dropped his blast gun, and it clattered off into the shadows.

‘Get that hand!’ Gerald bawled.

The deck tipped again, to the left this time, sending them stumbling past the console. Percy aimed a wild blast at the sinister claw as they passed. The console exploded again, and Percy’s energy beam ricocheted. The main lights went out, leaving the chamber illuminated only by a glimmer from the visi-screen.

The ship screamed into a dive. Stars whirled past the visi-screen. The treasure chest, which had been rumbling across the chamber floor with every lurch, came slamming into the instrument bank. It showered the youths with all their ill-gotten gains. The adventurers were flung across the console.

Gerald cried out in fear as he felt something skeletal scamper across him. It clattered down onto the deck.

‘There it goes!’ Percy shouted, seeing the barrow wight’s hand scuttling in the glow of the instrument bank.

Brian sprang down onto the deck, his axe whirling. The blade glittered once in the green light. Above the whine of the out-of-control craft, Gerald heard a final crunch.

‘That’s done for that,’ Brian gloated, gazing down at the mangled, unmoving claw.

The other adventurers climbed down from the console. Gold and jewels jingled beneath their feet as they picked their way up the sloping deck.

‘All very well!’ Gerald muttered tersely. He turned, and stared at the visi-screen, where the yellow orb of an alien planet was rapidly growing in the distance. ‘But thanks to that thing, this ship is out of control.’

He looked wildly at the others. ‘The fight wrecked our controls!’ he said. ‘There’s no knowing where we’ll end up.’ The others returned his gaze unspeaking.

Silence filled the control room, split only by the increasing whine of the engines as the spacecraft hurtled towards the misty surface of the mysterious planet.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The story continues in The Rocketeers 1: Marooned On A Savage Planet (Publication date: 5 July 2013).

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