Excerpt from - The Interstell Chronicles

The level of destruction surrounding Leiutennant Stephen Cope, also known as Panther 4, was massive.
"This is Panther 4, I'm in position."
Stephen looked around himself. He was on the flat surface of the primary colonies spaceport. It had been abandoned by the invading Minion forces because of the level of damage it had sustained during an orbital bombardment. He looked down the rifle scope at his target. The back of Panther squad leader. Moving to a wider and less powerful magnification he scanned the streets ahead of the group. Noting but bombed out buildings with energy scarred walls. The occasional pile of soot, or charred limb of a once innocent civilian.
Stephen moved his angle to scan the layout of the area surrounding him. The center of the colony had been laid out in a standard fashion. With the spaceport on one side of the colony, some industrial buildings surrounding that, a marketplace, administrative buildings, and finally recreational, educational and residential buildings. There were millions of other colonies like this one. The Interstell
Colony Board had established a standard arrangement of beginning colonies decades ago. Each colony had built for it by a team of engineers a standard town capable of supporting a thousand people. Once the colony had become firmly established, it was allowed to expand and design it's own street plan, and even rebuild the original colony site to fit their choice of architecture. But this colony was fairly new. It
had been established six years ago, and had grown at an exponential rate. It had soon become a center for education in this sector, with some of the best schools in the quadrant. Many families had sent their children to boarding school here to be taught in a traditional fashion in a class of twenty students. The children could live here peacefully, surrounded by friends in a loving and safe environment. The first building that had been constructed after the original settlement had been a school. A junior boarding
school.
Stephen's scope ranged over the schools. Holes had been blasted into the sides of the ornate stone buildings. He could see a collection of badly charred bodies, some still recognizable, that had been caught in the backwash of a plasma cannon. At one point, a heavy disruptor, had been turned on a
classroom full of young girls, about nine or ten. Enhancing his magnification, he saw a young girl sitting at her desk. Or at least half a young girl. The breeze that indicated an incoming weather-front caused some debris to fall and hit the desk. The girl was flung to the floor. Half of her body was missing! She
had ben caught on the edge of the disruptor field. Only part of her body had been vaporized.
Stephen took his eyes away from the scope. An acrid taste leaped up through his throat and into his mouth and finally spilled out, over the edge of the building and down to the street below.
A voice over his intercom enquired as to his condition. He replied he was fine, though he did not feel fine. He relayed the report of what he had seen to his commanding officer. He, a battle hardened vetenaran only swore under his breath.
This was Stephen's first time out. He had only graduated from the Academy at the end of the last semester. He thought back, to just over, how long was it? One and a half months ago! He had then been assigned some light duties as a guard at a sector patrol base. But then dozens of squads had been mobilized for the war effort, and he had been transferred to replace 'losses' in Panther squad after
their last classified mission. Apparently they had been the second squad to engage the Minions after the now semi-famous Avalanche Squad had infiltrated an enemy planet and blasted out with no losses and only minor casualties. They had been lucky. As far as he knew, every mission into enemy territory since then had either taken substantial losses, or had been totally destroyed. The war was not going well for
Interstell. But the last bulletin was that the fifth fleet had rallied the defences in this sector, and was going to engage the enemies forces in this area.
Stephen continued to scan the street ahead, ensuring that his squad would not be ambushed by Minion troops hidden in buildings that they had to pass.
"Arghh!"
The noise had lanced into his ears from the small speaker in the headset he was wearing.
Stephen swung his scope around to track a sudden eruption of energy fire. The squad had been
ambushed! Their troops had suddenly beamed in! Obviously the colonies site to site transporter had been commandeered by the occupying forces. Now they were pilling a whole legion into the streets around his comrades in arms.
"Shit!"
Cope saw several of his companions go down. One was vaporized by several enemy beams
striking him at once. But the rest of the team had dived behind the four foot high jagged remains of a mid-road market stall that had had its roof blown off. Dragging the other downed members of the squad with them. They began to give sporadic return fire, while the team medic attempted to patch up the commanders arm that had been blown clean off.
"Four, clear us a path out of here! Then move out as soon as possible!"
The executive officer had given him those orders, moments before a heavy particle cannon
punctured the wall he was leaning against and removed his torso from the rest of his body.
In anger and fury, Stephen tracked the gunner that had killed his XO, and returned the favor. His sniper rifle punctured the aliens protective chest plate, and blew a hole the size of a human fist out its back. The alien fell to the ground, but Stephen had already shifted his aim. Another alien fell, and another, another, more, more. Then, a glint of metal caught his attention.
Then he was almost blinded by the energy discharge given off by the heavy weapons fire form
an armored enemy vehicle. Stephen looked away from his scope for a moment, blinked his eyes to
remove the dazzle there and then fished into his bag for an attachment to his rifle.
Dragging out a twenty centimeter long cylinder with a smaller secondary cylinder attached to it, running parallel on the base of the larger cylinder. He stuck the smaller cylinder onto the emitter nozzle of his rifle, and took a small round device from the equipment bag and loaded it into the larger cylinder,
now running partway along the top of his rifle's barrel. Lining up on his target, he pulled the trigger.
The weapon discharge that would normally make a tight bolt of deadly energy was instead re-focused into a capacitor that then released that energy into the second larger cylinder, causing the small ball inside to be thrown out the end.
Stephen watched as the ball impacted on the side of the armored vehicle. The explosion that resulted caused a large blackened pit in the side of the vehicle, and in the footpath around it. The tank slipped sideways into the maw in the pavement and was buried up to its main body, unable to get out.
Training his scope back to the rest of the squad, he saw only one member still firing their weapon. Delayan was their Tinkerian technology specialist. He had obtained the nickname Lucky with the rest of the squad because of his uncanny ability to win at games of chance. In fact, just before they had left for their current assignment, Lucky had gambled with the squads last credit payment and won
them twice as much back. Then, trying to get some more, he placed all of his own personal winnings back in, and lost, leaving him nothing. His luck had run out! As Stephen watched him, ten troopers rushed his position. Lucky managed to take out two as they ran, Stephen knocked out three, but the rest fired at him at point blank range. The remains were not a pretty sight.
A computerised voice had been sounding in his ear, one by one it had announced the deaths of
his team mates, and now he listened as it declared the last one killed in action.
Stephen switched his rifle to rapid fire and poured coherent energy into the area. He saw a dozen of the enemy soldiers drop, even at the distance without looking down his scope. Then, the return fire began tracking in his direction. Green beams sliced through the remains of buildings between Stephen and the area that had just become the site of a slaughter. Packing up his stuff, as much as he could carry, he ran
back to the location where the squad had hidden a small distress beacon. Sticking his hand into a crack in a wall, Stephen rapped his fingers around a rectangular device. He pushed the only button on it, then, leaving it where it was, he ran.

Far above, a micro satellite picked up the small distress beacon from the planet below and boosted the transmission to enable it to cross the vast distances between the stars.

Leiutennant SenDhimin lay on his bunk in the dark looking at the underneath of the bunk above him. Lying above him was his comrade in arms Franchesca Vilidan. A human female pilot designated as Eagle 4.1. Most of the other crew stationed here called her 'Loopy'. Mainly because she was an excellent pilot and could pull of some stunts and loops that put many of the other pilots to shame.
SenDhimin knew that he also was a good pilot, but he had excelled more at weaponry than 'Loopy' his
flight partner. They were good friends, but SenDhimin occasionally lay awake at night wondering about more. He was a Veloxi, and was not very knowledgeable about human females. Or any sort of female really. But that was not his fault, but part of the inherent nature of his people. He turned his attention back to the datapad in his hand and began to access the library files on human biology. His mind began
to wonder as he began to read about the standard biological facts.
One Heart.... One Brain.... Two Lungs....
The Veloxi were born to a queen. She was the only female in the colony, and as such the only producer of offspring. Each Veloxi was born and due to the type of genetics they possessed were suited to specific tasks. There were workers, they provided the majority of labour, then there were the academics. They were as close to the royalty as many Veloxi would get to. They became the engineers, doctors, architects, diplomats and other skilled professionals of the Veloxi Emperium. Then there were the fertile males that spent much of their time with the queen. He was a warrior, as such he had little knowledge of matters outside of fighting. As a youngster he had trained to be a typical warrior, but unlike the vast majority of his colleagues, he did not join the armed forces of his own civilization.
Instead, he had been attracted by space and flying. So he had joined the Interstell pilots core and learnt to fly.
It was during his training that he became ever more curios as to other races. Yet he had little time to study them while he was trying to master the finer points of navigation, piloting and space tactics. Since he had passed his exams though, and especially since he had become stationed here, he had picked up his curiosity and tried to develop it. He had though about asking some of the human males how they went about attracting their mates, but thought better of it, at least until he had obtained some frame of reference from which to work.
Ah, here it was. He began to read the passage on the Human courtship rituals and reproductive ability.
"Most interesting...." he mumble to himself as he poured over the text.
Overhead, the lights that had been dimmed for the rest period suddenly turned red. Hidden
speakers began relaying commands to the crew in the barracks. Sen was up out of his bed in no time, running across the room to the wall opposite his billet, he opened his locker and adorned his flight gear.
A body suit, specially designed to cope with his body form, with extra sleeves, padding in crucial areas, and self sealing slits to allow him to deploy his retracted wings. Then he adorned his gloves, that covered his hands, but left his warriors pincers exposed. Then he placed his custom helmet under his upper left arm and began jogging behind his squadron mates towards the hangar.
The hangar consisted of a large central chamber with half a dozen smaller chambers off the east and west walls, that housed the workshops where the squadrons fighters were serviced. The service crew were currently crawling all over the ships. Sen split form the group with Franchesca and headed to
their fighter.
"Morning Loopy, Sen!"
Both Loopy and Sen nodded to their crew chief as he took their helmets off of them to allow them both 'hands' to enter their cockpit. Their ship was an Iowa class Fighter bomber. It was not a sleek ship compared to the space superiority fighters, but it 'packed one hell of a whollop' as Loopy liked to put it. The ships front was a flattened, rising to the main cockpit where Franchesca sat one meter from the tip of the nose. The outline then leveled off till it reached Sen's cockpit one meter behind
Franchesca's. Then, a meter behind that, The ship widened where the main weapons bay was. Off either side were two wings, tipped with smaller weapons pods. Behind the main weapons bay were the main engines, with the warp nacelles mounted on the bottom outer edge of the weapons pod. A single vertical wing rose from the top of the weapons pod, and Sen watched as a Plasma Torpedo was lowered onto a bracket on the top of the wing.
Climbing up onto the wing, Sen lowered himself into his seat and activated the controls by inputting the activation code. The touch sensitive panels around him allowed him to control every aspect of the ship, even piloting, should the need arise. The main console in front of him automatically displayed the weapons and tactical controls, while panels to his left monitored the engines, and the panel to his right were displaying piloting data. A dedicated set of controls was set into a small panel across
the top of his view port, constantly monitoring life support. The communications equipment was
controlled by a sub division of the main panel to the left, while the configuration listings were in the bottom right of the main panel.
"Sen, you on line?"
Sen reached froward and activated the internal communications and locked them on.
"Affirmative. Running weapons inventory now!"
He reached forward again and activated the weapons diagnostic and began reading off their
payload and the state of activation.
"Custom arms.... Plasma torpedo, 1, off.... Micro Missiles, 20, off.... Buzz bombs, 2, off.... Fixed arms.... Plasma Cannon, port and starboard energized, and green.... Phaser arrays, energized, and green."
Franchesca began to run through the engine stats, followed by life support, sensors, and other critical systems and relayed the crucial data back to Sen.
"This is control to E-FB-1004-04, report for launch."
"This is E-FB-1004-04 to tower, Status is Green, repeat Green."
"Coded mission briefing transmitting now! Launch in sequence, starting in 10. Good luck!"
"Roger, Leiutennant Vilidan out!"
One after another, the ships lifted off the deck on an invisible cushion of anti-gravity and glided into the main hanger. Then they ignited their main engines and rocketed off through the vast hangar doors, accelerating till they reached escape velocity, and rocketed into orbit. Then, the encoded navigation data for the mission activated and downloaded into the computers, automatically angling the ships to there destination and activating their warp drives.
In formation, the fighter bombers engines glowed slightly then they disappeared into the void and headed straight for Lawrence V, and the source of the distress beacon picked up barely ten minutes ago.

Stephen ran. He ran for all he was worth. He knew they were following him. Minion shock troops were normally covered in protective gear that restricted their movements. But on this planet, they had to wear environmental suits to protect them from the atmosphere that was poisonous to them.
So he had a speed advantage, at least on foot. In the past ten minutes since he had sent the distress beacon, he had destroyed two repulsor sleds loaded with troops that had been bearing down on him. Twice he had tried to hide. Twice, troops had closed in on his position. Now, he gave up all pretence at hiding, and just ran through the streets to the spaceport. He remembered that, according to the plans of this colony, there had been an old shelter under the fighter hangar. So he ran there.
Turning left, then right in a vain attempt to loose his pursuit. He had done so twice, but they had easily found him, leaving him barely a seconds respite before the assault began again. Though his training had put him in top physical performance, his legs began to burn under the exertion. The adrenalin pumping into his blood was not sufficient. He began to slow, resigned to the fact that he too, like his squad, was now dead. But he was relieved that facts depressing nature by the knowledge that,
in five minutes, the air attack he had called by activating the distress beacon would hit this planet with enough firepower to vaporize the entire colony from the face of the planet. Then, other people would rise from the colonies to join the ranks of Interstell, and they would stop the minions dead in their tracks and force them to sue for peace.
Bursting through a doorway, he suddenly found himself falling. Hitting the ground on his feet, that too suddenly gave way underneath him. Then he was in darkness.
A minion soldier looked through the doorway. Stephen tried to hold still, but he could see almost the entire creature, and he was sure it could see him. It was clad in a camouflaged body suit, bulging in places where armor plates had been built in. At occasional positions over its main body and upper legs, small devices punctured the clothing, with small lights flashing in a seemingly random order.
A helmet, also in camouflage colors, with a thin green line running across the middle of the face. Every two seconds, the light pulsated and dimmed. Tubes extending from the helmet ran into a backpack that consisted of a central rectangular unit with a recessed control panel, an antenna on top, and running down one side a cylinder that was connected to the helmet by the tubes. The outfit was completed by a large weapon held in the soldiers hands, not only with an energy beam emitter mounted on top, but a
partly retracted blade on one side, a small grenade launcher on the base, and a stun gun opposite the blade.
Stephen realised it was looking almost directly at him and so he tried to move deeper into the shadows, causing some rubble to dislodge and rain down on him.
The Myrridon soldier was staring at a deformed Terran corpse hanging on a spike in midair. The body appeared to twitch
momentarily in the breeze, and some rubble fell down into the darkness of a small hole, so the trooper fired several shots into the humans back, causing chunks of charred flesh to explode over the floor. Then, the trooper just moved off.
The energy discharges fired by the trooper passed straight through the body, and blasted through the floor. The result was that Stephen could feel the heat of the beams, and was impaled by hundreds of tiny splinters of building materials as the energy beams shattered a support beam.

The fighter bombers blasted out of warp into close orbit of a beautiful blue green planet, partly obscured by white clouds. It resembled Earth in so many ways. The ships began an immediate dive into the colony below. The flight leader broadcast instructions to the following ships.
"Beginning attack pattern Bravo 9"
"Acknowledged. Sen, bring up the systems!"
Sen ran his hands over various controls and called out his progress.
"Shields up, reading at 100%, torpedo armed, missiles armed, bombs armed, cannons activated, phasers activated, all weapons hot!"
Sen brought up the sensors and scanned the colony. He relayed the data to the lead ship,
including target references. Suddenly, one reading caught his attention. Fran had just begun to level the ship ready to drop the buzz bombs when Sen activated the comm. unit.
"Abort, repeat abort, code 19034. There is a friendly in the area!"
The flight leaders voice came over the speaker.
"Acknowledged, pull up, swing around for another pass, have your tactical computers light him up!"
The ships raised their noses and leveled their flight and accelerated out away from the colony. Swinging round by 180 degrees, the group began their target run again. As they approached, the tactical computers reprogrammed the buzz bombs so that their detonations caused as much damage as possible, but that they stayed away from the single friendly lifeform on the planet.
"Four B to leader.... How long till the evac. transport arrives?"
"Unknown. They had to come from Filigar II, but not more than another ten minutes."
Then they were over the target and the time for talk had to end as Sen worked his controls. At a precisely calculated moment, two flattened spherical shapes dropped out of each ship. As they began falling, away, from around the equator, a series of triangles emerged, slowing the bombs, and causing them to side slip in the air, creating a buzz sound. They hit the ground and erupted, spewing plasma over a hundred meter radius. Almost everything inside the radius was destroyed. Buildings were blasted into microscopic rubble, meatle vaporized instantly, and flammable materials burned into cinders in micro seconds.

Stephen felt the impact. He thought he was dead. But luck was riding in his seat today.
Despite his firm belief that any second, he would become superheated ashes blowing around the planet,he stayed in one piece.
"Amazing! I'm alive!"
He was of course speaking to himself. But even just that was a small reassurance. Stephen climbed out of the hole and back into the room. Apart from some more of the roof being on the ground floor, the building was still intact. Not mentioning the large holes in the walls where directed energy weapons had hit! He heard the roar of high powered impulse engines high overhead, and looked up. What he saw was the welcome sight of a squadron of Interstell Fighter Bombers.
Stephen pulled off his headset and switched the frequency so as to pick up the squadrons channel, and replaced the set. Instantly his ears were immersed in the audio chatter of the ships flying above him.
"Two Flight, low sweep over target zone. Scan for hostile survivors and Interstell technology signatures."
"This is Four, acknowledged. Two Flight, Spread wing formation, height at 100 feet."
Stephen watched as three of the vessels dropped away from the main formation towards the
ground, before pulling up and leveling off at 100 feet. They then systematically flew over the remains of the colony.
Stephen stepped out from under the remains of the building he had sheltered in and began waving at the approaching ships with both arms. The ship at the head of the formation waggled its wings in return. A wave of relief spread over him, cushioning him from the loss of his comrades in arms. Then and there he swore to himself that the Minions would pay for picking with him.
He activated his microphone and called out to his saviours.
"This is Leiutennant Stephen Cope to Interstell ships. I owe you lot a drink and the Minions a hole in their heads!"
"This is Leiutennant SenDhimin, acknowledged. Your ride is on its way, and I'll have a double!"

Then, green light filled the sky. One of the ships flying with the main formation suddenly
exploded and plummeted towards the ground. More green flashses and another of the ships dropped
like a stone, crashing into the ground and erupting in a ball of fire. The rest of the ships up high broke in a precision order and scrambled to gain altitude to allow them to maneuver. The ships that were flying low accelerated and began a gradual climb, with erratic course changes every few seconds. Stephen
pulled out his sniper rifle and activated the scope. Pointing it straight up, he switched it to maximum magnification and gasped when he saw a blurry outline of a Minion attack ship with its main weapons pointing down at the planet. As he watched, he saw one of the turrets fire, releasing green streams of energy. The effect
temporarily blinded him, but he still heard the explosion.
"SenDhimin to Cope! Standby, we have an idea to get you out of here!"
Stephen realised he still had the communications channel open and he could hear the edge in the chatter between the Interstell ships.

Sen worked his controls frantically trying to locate the source of the attack.
"Nothing on sensors. All im getting is the two second warning of an energy discharge!"
Another one of the flight was hit and the shell of their ship flashed past the view port. The image made both Loopy and Sen jump. Loopy pulled reflexively back on the control stick, causing the ship to do a dramatic arch and end by flying upside down along the course it had just flown.
"Ok, I have a transporter lock!"
"Do you think he'll fit?"
"He had better. Engaging transport!"

Down on the ground, Stephen watched as one by one, the small fighter bombers were hit by
the ship in orbit. Then, suddenly, all of his surrounding shimmered with a pale blue haze. Then
everything went black. He realised he was curled up in a small space on a moving object. The
vibrations of the walls around him told him that much. He also had a rebreather mounted on his chest. He toggled the comm. unit....
"What the hell!"
"Listen Cope. You are in the bomb bay of my ship. We are currently attempting to get away. Don't obstruct the frequency!"
Stephen waited silently for agonizingly long moments. The gravity compensators built into the ship that protected the pilots form the high gravity maneuvers was not as strong here and during some of the maneuvers he nearly blacked out. At one point, the ship shuddered violently under what he suspected was a hit by the enemy. Eventually however, the flight leveled off, and cope listened to the engines stain as they were pushed to their very limits to obtain as much speed as possible.
"Cope? You still with us?"
"I'm here. What's the situation?"
"We are out of the planets gravity influence, but the Stealth system is broken. So we are currently visible to the Minion attack ship that is closing on us!"
"Just another day at the office then!"
"Something like that! We are currently heading back to our base. They have a Guardian class starship in orbit and a three squadrons of fighters on the ground. Just hang on, we'll try and get you home in one piece!"
"How many of you managed to get out?"
"Three."
The Veloxi's voice sounded sorry and very faint. Stephen had seen four of the ships go down, but having only three out of twelve of the best fighter bombers Interstell had ever made survive was appalling.
"For what it's worth, im sorry."
No reply. It was after all his fault that they were there. He could have just transmitted the sensor readings instead of requesting a rescue. He had called in eighteen beings to their deaths. On top of the eleven others of his squad. He could have just died back there and left these pilots to live. His
orders had however stated that a first person account of the situation was required to asses the threat to the countless other Interstell colonies.
Sen deactivated the comm. channel to Stephen and concentrated on his task at hand.
"Fran, i've just performed a damage check and correlated with the others."
"What's it look like?"
"Not good! We have ion damage to our port engine, our plasma torpedo has it's firing
mechanism jammed and there is no port phaser array. Plus there is a small plasma leak into the shield projector, so the shields are at 20% effectiveness."
"All of that from a near miss?"
"They actually grazed the shields with enough energy to cause a feedback loop through the
system. It blew out the breakers and jumped from system to system. Additionally none of us has an
operable long range communications array. We are going to arrive home with an attack ship in tow and won't be able to tell them anything about it till we're right on top of them!"
"No chance of one of us repairing it enough to make a transmission?"
"Negative, its not all our fault. Some of the circuits were damaged by the near hits we took, plus we're being jammed!"
"Ok, so what about boosting the power to the comm. system, trying to combine the power of
the three beams into one?"
"No, with enough equipment it could be done, but I would have to be able to access the
transmitter array."
"How about sending another type of message?"
"Like what? We are traveling at high warp. Most other forms of communication will take too long!"
"Wait! What about our torpedo!"
"Like i said, jammed. There is no way of firing it without... direct access to the firing
computer.... of course, Cope!"
The realization hit Sen like a brick wall. Any strange object entering a solar system with an Interstell outpost had to be scanned. An armed torpedo under powered flight would alert the base to something being wrong and they would activate their deep space scanners along the course the torpedo had come and detect any oncoming threat.
"...isten up! We need you to access the firing computer and fire our plasma torpedo manually!"
Stephen perked up from his depressed doze. The realization of what had happened to him had settled in on his mind, giving it a partial haze like a fog setting in.
"What?"
"Directly above you there should be a removable panel. Push it in the top corners and it should slide back."
Stephen maneuvered himself so he lay on his back staring up at the roof of the cramped space. He reached up and pressed. A panel the size of a standard monitor opened up above him, revealing a complex set of circuits and a small panel of controls with a small built in display. The controls lit up as the panel opened and the display activated and showed the Interstell icon.
Over the next ten minutes, he followed the Veloxi's instructions to the letter, pulling out this processing chip, swapping it for another from a different panel from a different hatch to this side or that, and inputting commands on the small panel.
Finally, all but one control darkened on the panel. The one that didn't was slowly flashing red, with the word fire in black in the middle.
"Ok, we are one minute from the system."said Fran
"Fire now!"
Stephen pushed the little button and the display lit up with red text. The ship vibrated for the briefest moment as the torpedo launched. A clock appeared and counted down from 100.
"There is a countdown in progress."
"That's aright Cope. Its just telling you how much drive energy it has remaining."

The Guardian class starship ISS Defence hung in orbit around Alten IV. It consisted of a
central saucer studded with phaser arrays. Running out the back of the saucer were two vertical wings. On the outside of each wing were large warp nacelles, glowing slightly with the immense power contained in them. Joining the vertical wings was a module that contained additional weaponry. It reorientated towards a small ovoid shape entering the system. It activated more sensors and scanned the area. As soon as it detected the closing minion ship, it went to battle stations, and alerted the planet
below.
"Scramble all fighters.... Repeat. Scramble all fighters...."
Within minutes, three squadrons, a total of thirty six fighters were launching. Two squadrons from the planet and one from the Guardian class starship.

The small group of fighters sped into their home system, heading towards the fourth planet. The minion ship continued to gain on them, sporadically firing its main forward armaments at its targets.

"This is E-FB-1004-04 to control, we are closing fast, request emergency landing and
immediate scramble of defense forces."
"Confirmed, steer course 132 mark 238."
Another blast rocked the ship. Sen glanced to his left and watched as the ship framed in his view port slowed. Plasma leaking from one of its nacelles.
"Hoden, what's wrong?"
"We are loosing propulsion. Our speed is falling. We're not going to make the planet."
"Hold on, the forces from the planet are scrambling now, they should intercept in a minute."
Another green flash and the trailing fighter blew itself apart. Debris from the port propulsion unit separated from the bulk of the ship as it disintegrated. The unit accelerated as it consumed itself and the energy it had absorbed from the explosion. Then, as Sen watched, the unit plowed into the rear
shield of the other remaining fighter. Another explosion blossomed, consuming the ship. The remains, still under the influence of the warp field careened towards the last remaining fighter.
"Evasive maneuvers!"
"NOOOOO!"
The fighter crashed into the front of its wingman causing them both to veer off course. Sen
watched as the ship tore through the front of the cockpit, exposing it to the vacuum of space, and
sucking Franchesca out the small hole. From his vantage, he watched as she rapidly spun around, a look of sheer horror on her face. She was then caught in the backwash of the impulse engines and Sen watched a beautiful, intelligent young woman burnt alive in seconds by the hot exhaust.
Sen's mind went blank. His friend had just died. All of his friends had just died. The small ship vibrated as it continued spinning through space. Half of the controls in the cockpit were flickering on and off.
"SenDhimin? You ok?"
"Cope?"
"What happened?"
"Hit. Err, we were hit."
"Can we make planetfall?"
"Negative, there's too much damage. The stress of landing in an atmosphere will tear the ship apart."
"How about the starship you told me about?"
"Its moving to intercept the Minion attack ship. It will pass us in one minute!"
Sen began working the failing consoles in order to establish some form of control over the
critically damaged ship. It slowly began to stop, before Sen forced it to move towards the Guardian class starship heading towards them.
"This is E-FB-1004-04 to ISS Defence. Request emergency permission to land."
"Acknowledged. We will pull you in on tractor beam, standby by."
Suddenly the small ship lurched. Grabbed by an invisible force it began to move towards the
starship, and safety.

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More stories from the Interstell chronicles will become available as I finish them.