Page 2 of Captured
The explosion ripples all the way up to me. It rocks my small fighter, sends it tumbling into the weightless emptiness. I grit my teeth, holding on to my control wheel, knowing full well it’s useless to fight it. When my ship finally stabilizes, I blink.
Elation fills my mouth and I hoot, all alone in my cockpit. I know I got him, I can feel it in my belly. No one can survive a direct hit like that. All I need now is to collect evidence that I shot down a royal Drakian cruiser and I’ll come back to Earth a hero.
As I maneuver the ship back into position, I frown. Where is all the debris? An explosion this large with a ship this big, space ought to be littered for a hundred thousand square miles or more. But all I see is smoke and a few pieces of metal floating idly by. Like they’re just taking a stroll or something.
Then alarm bells ring from that place deep inside my gut where I know I’m fucked.
I send my ship surging forward, my hands on the wheel, holding it so hard my knuckles scream in agony. I just know I’m going to get hit before it even happens. The explosion makes my teeth clench and the taste of blood fills my mouth, almost making me gag. My head rolls in a dizzying spell and I scream as the ship rolls around in the vacuum of space, no gravity to hold it down, to slow its maddening roller coaster into the unfeeling dark.
Panic races around in my skull like a vicious little beast baring its teeth.
Listening to my years of training, I slap on the controls, bringing power back to my ship at full strength. It won’t last long, not with the hit I took, but I have no choice. No point in being sneaky now. The cockpit comes to life, lights blaring, sounds deafening what little brain I have left into sensory overload. Still, I grit my teeth and pull on the wheel, ordering the thrust engine to stabilize my ship.
My eyes scan the emptiness of space as the ship slows its rolls and I see nothing. Nothing but the green orb of some uncharted, uninhabited planet to my right.
“Where the fuck are you?” I howl in the empty cockpit, my stomach convulsing, my brain hurling straight into panic land. He’s still out there and I’m wide open for the killing blow if I don’t act right now. Then my ship makes one last roll and I come face to face with it.
With my enemy.
The Drakian cruise ship floats, smoke rising from its starboard where my rocket hit it. It’s damaged, I can see that, but not as badly as my small fighter is.
My hands go to the controls without me even thinking about it. Instincts take over as I maneuver my light fighter into position, the cockpit filling with sounds as all systems scream failure. My brain scrambles for a plan, but there’s none to be found. I don’t have long. My thrusters are toast so I can’t escape. I can’t stay and fight, either. My enemy has ten times the fire power I have.
Fuck. I won’t make it.
I’ve been stupid and now, I’m going to die.
In a last Hail Mary for my survival, I quiet the thoughts in my brain to a dull winding sound between my ears and aim. I have only one chance to blast this asshole into oblivion where he belongs. I’m aiming for his thrusters, that tiny target just at the tip of the belly of his ship, where his fuel cells are located.
I exhale one final time and fire my two remaining sub-ionic torpedoes at the Drakian royal cruiser. This time, I don’t wait to see the result. I swiftly redirect what little power my ship still has to my computers.
A mighty explosion rocks the emptiness and a vindictive sneer lifts my lips. I might die, but at least I’ll take the reptilian motherfucker down with me. There is no way he’ll survive the direct hit from my two torpedoes. At the very least, he’s going to be drifting off in space aimlessly until someone comes for him. All I can hope is that this someone is from the Human Galactic Alliance and that they’ll blow his scaly butt into a million pieces.
A light blinks to my right. That’s it, my ship’s computer has finished its calculations. That uncharted planet I saw before is my only chance. If I want to survive, I have to act now.
I engage the emergency ejection protocols.
There is an eerie clicking sound as my cockpit disengages from the fighter, turning into a self-contained survival module. For a surreal second, I float in the vacuum of space in a tiny glass bubble, feeling so small I could be a single atom in the infinite, endless void.
Then the glass surface suddenly turns to liquid black as the polymerization cascade completes. The survival pod moves, automatically directing its trajectory to the uncharted planet. It hurls me around at an ungodly speed, blind and deaf into space. The pod shakes, the temperature inside rising to a burning degree as it penetrates the atmosphere of the uncharted planet. As the metal around me keeps heating up, fear rages on in my chest, my heart beating so hard it hurts.
As the heat turns to burning agony, I begin to scream.
Then my scream turns to a mindless animal howl as my fall stretches into infinity.
And just as the world explodes in a teeth-shattering impact, my brain finally shuts down and I’m swallowed into a blessed darkness.
