Remember the Starfighter
Read Remember the Starfighter Online
Authors: Michael Kan
Remember the Starfighter.
Copyrigh
t
© 2015 by Michael Kan. All rights reserved.
Cover art by Yunior Guerra.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9964204-0-2
Michael Kan
www.rememberthestarfighter.com
To my parents
The emergency sirens blared across the station.
He awoke feeling the onset of a headache. The station continued to sound off.
“Alert,” the computerized voice shouted over the comm channel. “Alert, all non-essential personnel evacuate the station.”
Julian groaned, covering his ears with his pillow. “Fuck”, he said, finally pushing himself off the bed. “Is this a drill?”
As he rose, he could feel the entire room tremble. Then it convulsed. Julian lost his balance and fell down to the hard cold floor.
The room rocked again. And again, the metal around him crashing and twisting. Julian held on to the ground, hearing the painful sounds of the hull. The alert sounded off once more. “Evacuate the station,” the voice droned. “Please reach the nearest escape shuttles.”
Julian attempted to stand. But as he did, he could feel something smash into the hull. Collision after collision came, the impacts intensifying. Cringing in fear, he could hear the walls around him quake. Whatever was happening was going to tear the station apart. He braced for the worst, closing his eyes, his heartbeat racing. Sudden death, however, was not at hand — the station steadying, the alarms still sounding. Julian could only assume that the station’s protective energy shields were holding. He threw on his shoes and ran toward the door, still clothed in his flight suit. The adrenaline had begun to run into his system; somehow, he would have to survive this.
Outside in the hallway, the alarms rang even louder, repeating the call to abandon the station. The area was bathed in red emergency lights, the feeling of battle in the air. Holographic images, beaming in neon yellow light, projected themselves across the hallway walls.
“Nearest emergency escape shuttles: Alpha Wing.”
He ran through the vacant hallways, the ground shaking as more weapons fire bombarded the station. With each blast, a giant hammer seemed to fall over the place, straining the station’s energy shields and shaking its armor. Against those weapons, the structure’s systems wouldn’t hold much longer and Julian knew it. Up ahead, he could see other station workers running down the hall. A man, dressed in an engineer’s uniform, yelled to him: “Come on! Over here.” Harder, he ran, with nothing to analyze, an instinct to survive coursing through his body.
Trailing the engineer, Julian came into sight of Alpha Wing. A circular door at the far end of the hallway was opened, with three other crew members walking into the entrance. The emergency shuttle had to be on the other end. Julian breathed a sigh of relief.
A second later, he found himself knocked to the ground. A massive tremor, far fiercer than the previous, had hit the station. The hallway viciously shook as if sliding off into a cliff. Julian gripped the wall as he could hear the roar of weapons fire hitting the hull. The buckling of gears echoed in the confines, followed by a terrible screech. Something was on the verge of breaking.
Then he felt the fire.
Up ahead, the entrance to Alpha Wing had exploded, a burst of flames nearly blinding Julian’s vision. Screams and then silence. The three crew members who had stepped into the entrance were surely dead. Julian could see the engineer he had been trailing. The man had collapsed on his back, hit by the shockwave from the explosion. Julian pushed himself up from the floor, running toward him.
“System failure on Deck 4,” sounded the automated alarm. “Hull breach detected.”
Only a few steps in front of him, a metallic door came dropping down. It sealed shut, blocking off the rest of hallway. “Emergency” it read on its surface, the letters red and large. Julian glanced through a window in the door, the fallen engineer on the other side. He looked at the man, and saw that he was probably only in his twenties and likely younger than himself. The engineer stared back as he clung to the ground.
The confusion on the man’s face turned into sheer horror. The air around him had vanished; his hair was pulled over his face. Desperately the engineer screamed, but not a sound could be heard. Julian cowered away from the window, knowing what was to come. Seconds later, he looked back. The man was nowhere in sight, a breach into the beating blackness the only thing left.
It was outer space, the emptiness sucking the man’s life away.
Julian turned and ran.
Nevertheless, he was moving. Julian found himself laying upright on his back, dragged across the floor. As he coughed, the movement stopped.
“Are you all right?”
The arms around him let go. Julian grabbed his stomach, feeling the tender break in his ribs. On his head was hair caked in drying blood. He wanted to speak, but he could only cough. A long wheeze cut through his words.
“Come on, we can make it,” the voice said again. “We’re almost there.”
It was a woman. She came up to his side, helping to pull him up. Painfully, Julian closed his eyes as he tried to stand.
“Can you walk?” the woman asked.
His abdomen was heavy, his joints locked in ache. Julian was a beaten lump of flesh, his mind still reeling from the blow. His legs, however, had come away unscathed. Taking a few steps forward, he forced himself through the pain. “Yeah, it’s okay. My legs seem to be fine,” he said.
Julian patted the side of his stomach, cradling his body like it was on the brink of falling apart. Saliva, mixed with blood, carelessly drooled from his mouth. He wiped it across his sleeve, smearing the bodily fluids across his clothes. Coughing some more, Julian slowly began to regain his senses. He could recall it. An emergency door had sealed off the hull breach. Frantically, he had tried to find another shuttle, only to be blindsided by an explosion on the deck. “Fuck,” he uttered.
“Come on, the ship is just right around the corner,” the woman said.
Julian leaned on the wall, forcing himself to walk through the sting in his sides. He noticed the woman, her body fitted in a gray officer’s uniform.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
The woman squinted at him, and came close to his side to help him walk.
“Took a big hit to the head didn’t you?” she joked.
“The Endervars attacked. It was a complete surprise. We detected about 30 ships entering the system, all of which went on an immediate intercept course with Meridian station,” she said. “The rest, well, you can just take a look.”
Around him, Julian could see and hear it. The abandon station order shrieked through the hallway; shards of blasted metal lay upon the floor. Temperatures on board were humid and hot, the smell of fire and smoke in the air. Amazingly, artificial gravity and life-support were still online.
“Nearly half of the station was destroyed, along with the command bridge. But the enemy seems to have stopped the attack and is focusing on scanning Eras below,” she said. “I stumbled across your body as I was leaving my post. Been dragging your ass all the way here.”
Julian looked at the woman’s hands, seeing his blood smeared across them.
“Thanks. I owe you one,” he said.
They continued walking, Julian trying to hurry as he felt the station walls quaver in its destruction. He felt no fear, just a burning anger to rid himself of the situation — in a few more minutes, this place would all go to hell. With each breath, he labored to move his body, forcing himself to endure, feeling the pinch of pain nag at his every step. Arriving at the entrance to Gamma Wing, he let out a long exhale, and read the words “Hanger bay” flicker in a holo image above the entryway.
“Access to all other emergency shuttles was cut off,” the woman said. “This is how we leave.”
The two pulled at the door, cranking it open manually with their bare hands. On the other end was not a shuttle, but a battle cruiser.
Though it was small compared to other military ships, the vessel seemed large to them, taking up most of the area in the cavernous hanger room. It was an older Type II Venture-class ship, and built with the long body of a rocket. Ships like these served as escorts and generally carried about 40 crew members. However, the vessel in front of them looked as if it were in the midst of a refit. Metal braces covered the ship’s exterior, a lattice of automated machinery draping the craft in a repair net.
“The S.C. Crusader has been in dry dock for the last week. Command was considering scraping it. But engines should be functioning,” she said.
Julian looked over at the woman.
She was tall and slender, with long brown hair tied together behind her head. Like him, she had also endured hell. Smoke and soot covered her face while a small cut left a line of blood across her cheek. Julian could see the woman’s exhaustion, her slumped shoulders and limp eyes.
Still, she managed to muster a smile.
“Damn,” she said in a laugh. “I hope they didn’t disable the automated systems or else we’re really screwed. I haven’t flown in years.”
Staring at the ship, Julian knew he needed to act.
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “Leave this to me.”