CHAPTER ONE

*BOOMM* an explosion happens, and bulkheads slam down with loud bangs all across the ship in an attempt to hold in all of the precious oxegen keeping the survivors alive. The ship seems to lurch, knocking me and my sister off our feet. We were heading to the bridge to respond to the Red Alert our father had signaled. I slowly start to pick myself up.

“What the hell was that?!”

I ask moving to a display on the nearby wall. I activate the display and pull up the damage report. The whole front of the ship is greyed out, with bright red scattered throughout where the grayed out area met the normal white area. That means the front was destroyed. The bridge was in the front. Our father was on the bridge. Our father is dead.

“No…”

I let out a pained cry turning to face Amelia. She, just having gotten up as well looks past me at the screen and falls to her knees. She cries out upset. I pull up the ship's sensors. A red dot, and a blue dot. A couple scattered yellow dots moving off in random directions as well. Red means enemy suggesting that this is either a known pirate, or is the one who had fired on us. Possibly both. The blue ship isn't moving, and the red ship is approaching it. Definitely pirates, whoever they are.

I pull up a ship’s interface. We have a single missile launcher left. We had three for if pirates attacked but two were up front.The one remaining one is in the back. I set the ship to start turning around. The pirate damaged the engines too. Luckily the pirate can't damage the engines anymore or they might destroy the cargo. The pirate will likely assume we are fleeing, but due to the lack of speed, the pirate would easily catch up, no matter how far we get. The ship finishes turning on, and because of the Red Alert, the missile launcher was already armed. I select IR missiles. IR missiles are Image Recognition missiles. That means they will turn to aim themselves at a target. Which in this case I have selected the Pirate's engines. I press fire.

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The pirate, who's shields were down for docking suddenly loses his engines. I change the IR to target weapons, and hope that I can hit them before he gets a lock on us. An alert starts to go off, they have a missile lock. I fire, and the IR hits their front launcher just as a missile launches, causing a large explosion. Amelia cheers, thinking that we completely disabled our foe. When the explosion clears up it reveals that the front of the pirate's cockpit is blown apart. The pirate's body impaled on the glass that made up the cockpit window, with blood floating around nearby. I hear Amelia throwing up behind me, and I taste vomit trying to come up for me too. I turn off the display hiding the gruesome scene from us.

A hail comes in from the other ship. Not the pirate one, but the ship the pirate was moving to board.

“Thanks for saving my ass. When emergency services get us to the station, I’ll come thank you in person.”

A male voice says.

“Alright I guess, We’ll see you then”

I politely say. I then go and turn on our emergency beacon, and start the waiting game until someone notices, and comes to get us.