Excerpt: Dark Space Journey of Awesomeness

Chapter 1

An explosion rocked through the engine room of the vessel, Starship Independence.
“Emilia, what the hell is going on down there?” Captain Eddie Bollacher shouted from the bridge. Spindly streams of smoke drifted across the view port, while stars streaked across the sky. The ship spiraled, Bollacher grabbed onto a control panel to brace himself. Weightlessness came, then left. The surface of the great red planet came into view, just briefly, quickly obscured by a streak of hi energy plasma. In the vacuum of space the plasma had a sickly greenish glow, bright in the center, high precision cutting business end – darkening around the edges, which was the negative arclight builder beam, fueling the main beam and providing communication, and data feedback.
Bollacher only knew this from the greenman that they had interrogated weeks ago.
“Capt...”
Static. The voice sounded like Emilia's, high-pitched, sincere, optimistic.
Then another crash.
The captain slid across the room, as the ship tilted sideways, narrowly avoiding another hep beam. Greenman technology. In this sector of space?
“Emilia, damn it girl, are you alright?”
Static. Then another voice, dark and brooding. “How're we doing, Eddie?”
“Blake? What the crap are you doing in the propulsion room? How'd you get out of the brig.”
“Wrong again, boss. Blake's still tucked away all nice and safe-like.”
Bollacher went across the crewman's name's in his head, but then the ship dove down, shuddering as pluton force shield collided with another of equal strength. The two ships toppled sideways through space like colliding marbles.
Rolling back to his feet, Bollacher saw a block of green text suddenly pop up into the space near his head.
LOSING CONTROL OF THE AI. INTERNAL HACK. IF WE'RE GOING TO DO SOMETHING WE NEED TO DO IT NOW. ARSA OUT.
It was a coordinated attack, inside and out, there was a spy on board, but who could it be? There was no time to think, only to act, the red planet bobbed into his view for just a second. In another five, he might lose all communication capability. He pulled himself to his feet and punched the broadcast commands:
“This is Capt. Bollacher speaking. All personell, get down to the drop ships and get the hell out of here. Doors close in sixty seconds. If your---
Crackling, chittering sounds swarmed the line. His voice was cut out. Not greenmen sounds.
An enemy ship crossed the viewport. A Tracker ship. The plot fucking thickened at just the wrong time. Drop ships released in forty-five seconds. Emilia, whereever you are, get on the damn ship.
In the middle of space, the engines of the Starship Independence stalled. It drifted along its last known course, trickling over to the gravity well of the great red planet. Big Red. Captain Bollacher plopped down into his command chair, leaning back, crossed his legs, put his head back and stared at the ceiling. So this was it, huh? No redeption, no vengeance, never got a chance to tell the old man off. Whatever; Life was and would always be a bitch. The timer ticked to fifteen seconds. What awaited him beyond? A plate of metal flew off and across the view port, spinning onward into space, it caught Big Red's gravity well and got sucked down toasting up, like spittng down a well, it gave a little pop as the atmospheric heat absorbed it, swallowed it whole.
Five seconds. Four. Three. Two.
The Independence shuddered, and then the ships went, each had only a token amount of fuel, meant for exploring planets while the starship remained in upper orbit. They would have homeplanet atmosphere conditions for several weeks, maximum, had he just condemed his crew to a slow agonizing death, while he suffered nothing but a quick burn-alive in the explosion of the starship, his home? Life was a bitch, wasn't it? They didn't sign up for cheese and cake. They knew the conditions of the drop ships just as well as he. At least they had some chance of survival, some small, 1 % chance. They could make it down to Big Red, sure, but Aqua Marinus was a short hop back in the other directon, and the chances of food, fuel, and air were much higher down there, plus, Big Red was unexplored, dry, barren, but at least they were sure they'd have at least enough fuel to make it down.

And then the lights flickered on the bridge. A cleaning robot spazzed out from electromagnetic overload. Acceleration hit – the starship zipped across the sky.

Captain Bollacher sat up, pulled up the other screens. “Emilia? What's going on down there, what happened, why is our power back?”
No response.
Back on the screens, Bollacher saw the Tracker ship fade into the distance, sillouetted by the large glowing surface of the great red planet. Waves of atmospheric dust surrounded the plant, like large tentacles rising through space, clutching their glowing red pearl. One of the tentacles drifted up to the cluster of drop ships, hovering there, defenseless in the sky. One of the ships glowed red, for just a second, before shooting down to the planets surface, a falling star blinking out of existance. Bollacher put his hands up on the screen, as if it was glass, as if it was the only thing between him and his condemned crew, as if there wasn't thousands of miles of empty space between them, between him and Emilia.

… and where was he going now? What had taken hold of his ship?