~BEEP BEEP BEEP~
The cockpit of the exploratory vessel Xplor filled with alarm noises from the control panel.
Colrin Aeden sneered at the panel that was beeping. The glass screens that usually displayed status messages were now filled with errors and warnings. A large screen over the viewport had this little spaceship on its trajectory to the surface of a blue planet, the fact that the ship database lacked any information about the planet reflected on the screen. It only visualized a few live analysis of the planet's atmosphere, and the data gave Colrin a slight comfort as well as a headache.
'Great, another surprise.'
The planet was habitable, but the Higgs field anomalies reported on the planet surface had created a huge spike in the graph and a few popups have come up with this information.
Colrin had no option but to change his orbital trajectory and aim for the next planet in the system. The computer readings classified it as a Habitable planet, but rated the danger level high, he'd have to get closer to get a detailed reading, but what are the chances of it too having an anomalous Higgs radiation, Colrin mused as he prepared to change trajectory.
"Seems like I used up all my luck entering this forbidden zone safely"
He had been running from the empire for the last two days in his small spaceship. An armada of frigates and attack vessels of the empire were on his tail. The moment he decided to request help from the Alliance of democratic planets, he knew the Empire would do whatever it takes to kill him, but yet he did it, unwaveringly. And now he had to pay the price.
Colrin's hand gestured in the air and the two-foot wide miniature model of Xplor in front of him rotated. The light projection or hologram of the ship was much easier to understand than the many different screens of the ship that spewed out nonsense readings. The vivid projection that had some random light glimmers showed the sorry state this vessel was in.
One of the two engines that propelled the ship was gone, the other one was tattered and falling apart, it was sure that the quantum fields that shielded the ship were gone and Xplor had taken a heavy beating.
Well safely if you count out the broken reactor, ripped off the engine, and almost all the offline systems, Colrin stared blankly at the dim red emergency lights at the ceiling that came up when the main power went down.
~~~Incoming torpedo detected, 20 seconds to impact~~~
The voice of a woman came from the sound system, except the fact that the voice lacked any emotion, one wouldn't be able to say that this was a computer-generated voice.
How the hell did they send in a missile through that warped space?
"These motherf-" Colrin's anger at his hunters were interrupted by the system starting to countdown.
~19~
~18~
"Shit, Activate evasive maneuvers, pattern auto! " Colrin shouted as his hands gestured and the ship in the holographic screen reduced in size, now showing a red dot chasing its tail at a distance. And the red dot was closing in quickly.
~Negetive, primary computer and engines down, cannot execute the request.~
~17~
~16~
Colrin sighed, the ship's engines were gone, along with it went the Spacial-drive, now all he had were the thrusters but they were of no use in going anywhere fast. The energy weapon system and point defense lasers were also gone with the main reactor.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Colrin looked through to see what remaining armaments he had in the ship. He had 4 more missiles, low yield, and one high yield quantum missile.
"I won't let you guys kill me!" Colrin programmed the smaller missiles to intercept the incoming torpedo and entered a code to self-destruct the ship in 14 seconds.
The missiles will intercept the torpedo, but the chances were that the torpedo would have its own countermeasures and the missiles would fail. Colrin didn't want his enemies to kill him, he'd rather commit suicide.
He still remembered how all of this started.
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"Ariel.."
Tears flowed down his face and dripped down into the keyboard in front of him.
"What did she do to deserve this?"
His fist slammed down the table with a loud bang. The fragile looking glass table didn't even shake, but his right hand was swollen red. Colrin didn't feel a thing. His eyes filled with tears, he couldn't see anything. He felt choked up.
"Goddamn it,." Colrin just lets himself go, his forehead crashed into the table, another drop of tear fell down, his mouth dried up. Colrin lay there.
The screen in front of him played a news video, five people, wearing orange jumpsuits were kneeling in front of a wall, head covered by a black cloth, each had a nameplate hung around their neck. Gunshots from laser rifles rang out, one by one, each of their lifeless bodies fell to the ground. One of the lifeless bodies had long blonde hair visible under the head covering cloth, and her nametag read 'Ariel Aeden'
the banner at the bottom of the newscast had a title,
'5 executed for treason'
Colrin let out a deep breath, his steamy breath fogged up the glass table. He remembered his little sister's face as she went out for a protest outside the administrative office this morning, all she wanted was to stand with the cause for the people. He had heard there were some mishaps there and had turned on the news stream to see what it was about.
He knew his little sister very well, and he was sure that she wouldn't even hurt a fly, let alone treason or conspiring against the empire.
Colrin pulled himself up from the table, his eyes still filled with tears, but his face emotionless.
"Call Tyler," he said to the computer, softly.
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Colrin had keyed in the commands and were about to press the enter key when something in the display screen changed.
Life!
The ship was now close enough to the planet that it had picked up life signs from the surface, it turned out this planet had human-like lifeforms in it. Colrin currently couldn't think up a reason on how life would exist in such an anomalous Higgs field, but he felt hope.
"Live! or die trying." Colrin who was just about to give away his life found a lifeline, he didn't confirm the command to self-destruct. Instead, he altered the trajectory of the ship, so it would head directly to the planet surface. the ship that would have flown by the planet earlier was now on a collision course with it. He also launched the final high yield missile.
~8~
~7~
.
.
.
~4~
The Ship flew through the planets atmosphere, its nose in flames. From a distance it looked like a flaming meteor.
~2 minutes to impact~
The computer voice came again.
The threat of the missile was now gone, these anti-ship missiles were not made for atmospheric entry, also he has left a nasty surprise on its way.
What troubled Colrin was the fact that his ship was also not something that can enter into the atmosphere, his front shields can protect him, but there was no way he could slow the ship down with just the navigational thrusters. He wanted to increase the area of the shields, making them effective in slowing the ship in an atmosphere, but there was no way to increase shield size without the main reactor.
if only the teleporter was working!
The ships' teleporter was able to transport a person to a range of 500 kilometers but was now inoperable due to the lack of energy.
An idea flashed through his mind, but the chances of this working were extremely low. He pulled up a terminal. He had about a minute to code something, overriding the original transporter program.
import BioSensor as biosensor
import MedicalLibrary.Remote as medicallibrary
import Teleporter as teleporter
foreach humans in BioSensor.ReadBioSigns()
{
.....
}
He wrote a crude code, in just under two minutes, he didn't care about the execution time as the ships quantum computer will do everything in a split second.
This is it, his life or death.
He walked into the teleporter booth, staggering in his steps as the spaceship that had been steady all this while had begun to vibrate and jerk violently.
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Another handful of soil fell on the simple wooden coffin. A girl, about seventeen or eighteen years of age walked away from the coffin, with tears in her eyes. four boys walked forward, three with a shovel and one empty handed, their faces were gloomy.
They started to shovel in soil into the grave, the small number of onlookers which was just about 3 people except the boys were all gone.
The one boy without shovel waved his hands and he was able to levitate and move the soil into the top of the coffin.
Although none of them dared to say it out loud, in their mind they repeated,
"Down with The Empire"