Chapter One: Garlin
"You're flying too low!" Merrix shouted at me through our headset communicators.
I tightened my jaw and straightened my posture, white-knuckle gripping the handles of my space bike as I held on for dear life. "I've got it under control," I roared back to him, tossing him a quick glance before focusing my attention back on the flying saucers barreling toward me at warp speed. "Shit!" I grimaced, stiffened, and pressed the highest gear, cranking it to full throttle as I whizzed past the saucer, skating past it by the skin of my teeth.
"What's wrong?" Merrix asked, alarm ringing in his voice.
"I almost lost control," I said.
"Do you need back up?"
"I'm alright," I advised.
"Wait for us to catch up," Shan's voice crackled through the receiver.
"If you want to catch up, then hurry the hell up," I said. "Or I'm going to have no choice but to leave you in my dust."
"Like hell you're going to leave us in your dust, Commander," Merrix chortled with amusement. "We're right behind you, anyway."
I tossed a hasty glance at them over my shoulder, grinning as I sped up, doing a couple of dives before soaring back up.
"Now isn't the time for tricks," Merrix lectured.
"Who are you? My mother?" I jeered lightly.
Merrix flew up next to me, hovering right beside me in the space lane. It was tough to see his usual careful smirk through his heavy duty power armor — the black steel suits we wore protected us with oxygen rich helmets and other life-support systems that were especially equipped to protect us in battles such as this.
"Fire a missile," Merrix suggested.
"I need to get closer to them first," I countered.
"We shouldn't get too close," Merrix argued cautiously.
"But close enough to annihilate the bastards," Shan said, flying up beside me.
I was now flanked by two of members of my dozen Space Knights crew, with me riding in the middle. Right now, it was only the three of us, as we had been unfortunately severed from the remaining nine.
I glanced over at Shan and grinned. Shan was twenty-six, the youngest, and some might argue the most reckless, member of our Space Knights crew. Most of us had taken the time to affectionately adorn our space bikes — our prized possessions, as a general consensus — with elaborate paint jobs, etching jobs, and the like. Some of them had even made technical revisions to their bikes.
Shan's space bike was vibrantly painted with vivid red and orange flames going down the sides. He was the fastest of the crew, and typically preferred to fly ahead, even without command.
That being said, Shan still respected authority, and followed my orders when it was vital. I was the undisputed leader of the Space Knights, but at the moment, we were separated from the rest — we needed to get through this battle before we could worry about where they were.
Merrix was my second in command, even though he was older than me by four years at the age of thirty-two. Believe me when I say he let me know it, too. Merrix had no trouble knocking me down a peg or two when it was warranted. We loved to give each other hell, but in the most brotherly way possible.
All kidding aside, Merrix was my closest friend. I'd take a bullet, or a missile, or anything for that matter, to save the guy.
"We're barreling right toward Earth's gravity," Merrix warned. "I don't know if we're going to be able to pull out in time."
"We can handle it," I told him, steering as close in the space lane as I could.
We had thundered into the Earth's solar system and were having to maintain sub light speeds to fight off the larger, more powerful saucers sent by the Spacing Guild. Because of this, we were vulnerable to being trapped in Earth's orbit.
"This solar gravity is a bitch," Shan grunted, gripping his handlebars tightly as he tried to veer back on course.
"You aren't lying on that one," I agreed, dodging another missile launched by a saucer.
Each saucer was robotically controlled, perhaps with one or to aliens on their force on the actual saucer. All the smaller saucers were connected to a main mothership. The saucers themselves wouldn't look daunting to the regular observer, given that they were nothing more than flying spheres, but they were relentless.
In reality, they were aggressive fighter crafts, feisty little fuckers that needed to be 'dealt with,' if you catch my drift.
"They're closing in on us fast," Merrix said with a guarded tone.
Merrix was more of a good-doer person types. He had a stable personality and a lot of common sense, something that was vital to our group of outlaws. He thought things through before he acted on them, also equally important.
There was a long list of reasons why I chose him as my second in command, but those pretty much took the cake — sitting on the top of the list. Merrix was the type that had his head screwed on straight, and I trusted him with my life. I also trusted him with the life of our entire Space Knight crew.
"But we're faster," Shan countered, cranking his engine throttle until a cannon of fire exploded from the back exhaust.
"Don't get too ahead of yourself," I warned. "They're coming at us from all angles."
We were on the run from the Spacing Guild, but we were always on the run, from everything it seemed. It was exhausting, but we couldn't stand down, or we would risk our lives, and probably the lives of our fellow crew members.
"When do you think we lost the other ones?" Merrix asked, tossing a wary glance over his shoulder.
"I think it happened when we entered the solar system," I said.
"They have to be around here somewhere," Shan said, ever the optimistic of the group. "I'm sure we'll meet up with them at some point."
Merrix and I exchanged a woeful expression. "As much as it pains me to say this, we can't wait around for them. We've already slowed down far too much."
Merrix released a heavy sigh into the communicator receiver. "It's time to fight or die."
"I'm not dying today," Shan noted with a cocky air of determination that was exactly the motivating fuel we needed right now.
"We're about to skate over dangerous territory," Merrix agreed. "But you're right. We aren't going to become space road-kill today — not on my watch, and not by these assholes."
The Spacing Guild was out for blood, that much was certain. They were made up of a powerful federation of space trade organizations, most of which controlled the spacing lanes between the inhabited worlds.
They were supposed to be politically neutral. They generally acted like your typical domineering tyrants, you know the type, high and mighty, thinking they were better than anything and anyone.
They were amoral, pursing their debtors to the grave and beyond and at any cost. The price didn't matter to them, as long as it didn't disturb them, and they got what they wanted in the end.
They were willing to accept slaves as payment for goods and services but were so vain that they avoided conflict in order to receive said slaves.
They were so high and mighty that they thought it was the debtor's responsibility to chase down the promised goods and furnish them, instead of doing the dirty work on their own accord.
This characteristic of the Spacing Guild infuriated me, but there wasn't much I could do about the self-righteous behavior that they put forth.
However, they didn't mind trying to shoot anyone down who encroached on territory that was out of the normal space lane boundary. Speaking of which, they were currently bridging the gap between us and them.
"We're still protected by the forcefield," Shan advised.
"That doesn't mean we aren't still vulnerable to being wiped off the map by these assholes," Merrix reminded him.
We had our own weapons at our disposal, and we had heavily armored bodysuits and space craft that could withstand practically anything, but there was still a risk involved when we were being fired at from all angles by the Spacing Guild's saucer rockets.
"We need to focus on this smaller cluster of saucers first," I directed my two crewmen. "Then we can focus on tearing apart the bigger one's after that."
"Sounds good to me," Shan declared. "You know I always have an itchy trigger finger."
Merrix scoffed. "That's part of the problem."
He bravely went ahead of me and Shan, if nothing else to prove a point that he was a badass like the rest of us, just the more of the level-headed type of badass.
We continued whizzing through the asteroid belt. We had already passed by the gas giant planets Saturn and Jupiter and had cleared Mars. We had better mobility with our space bikes, and we also had better tactics as a crew. This helped us exponentially and gave us favor over our enemies.
We outsmarted the little saucers, taking out as many as we could, while trying our hardest to stay in the space lane.
However, there was an unforeseen problem that we were struggling against. We'd mistakenly moved in too close and the pull of Earth was relentlessly sucking us in like a funnel.
We evaded the little saucer fuckers, but in the end, we were given a challenge that we hadn't been expecting, one that came out of nowhere and completely side-blinded us.
It was a contest where in which we made a crucial error to complete. Of course, we didn't know it at the time, but we were going to pay dearly for this monumental mistake.
"They're coming straight for us," Merrix cried with enervation and dread.
"I know," I hissed through gritted teeth, keeping my eyes locked in on the biggest saucer. Out of all of them, it was the last one flying.
It was big enough to wipe out all of us in one clean splat, but I viewed it as nothing more than my target to bullseye.
"We need to think of something fast, boss," Shan said, his voice laced with panic.
When Shan was worried about something, that was when you knew it was time to panic yourself.
My head was spinning. I felt like every thought I had was racing a million miles a minute, too garbled to form into anything usable.
We were more or less locked in a game of fucking chicken with these merciless bastards.
"We have two choices," I said.
"Well, whatever they are, I'd love to hear them before we're taken out," Merrix declared frantically.
"We're too close to Earth's gravity now," I said. "I fear that we're going to get sucked into its orbit."
"Then what?" Shan asked, his voice still high-pitched and on edge.
I swallowed hard.
Then disaster strikes.
As the leading commander, it was my job to keep my crew as safe as I possibly could, and to keep moral and spirits high enough to get us through the problem — but I didn't see any other way out of this.
"We're out of ammunition and judging by the fact that they aren't firing any further rounds at us either means that they probably have depleted their ammunition as well," I began. "So, that means — we either call their bluff and charge at them full steam ahead and wait to see if they bow out first, or we fly directly into Earth's orbit and out of their danger zone."
"I think that's going to happen either way, boss," Shan stated grimly.
"We can make it," I said.
"You think we should really wait to call them on their bluff?" Merrix asked bleakly.
"Honestly, I don't think we have a choice," I said.
"I can play their game if that's what they want," Shan said and powered on ahead of us by several yards.
"We need to band together for this one," I instructed him. "Pull back, wait for us to catch up to you. Then, we're going to pursue these jerk-offs in a straight line."
"Copy that, boss," Shan said and swung a hard right, swiftly returning to our cluster of three.
"It would highly increase our chances of winning this stand off if we had the others with us to help defend ourselves," Merrix stated glumly.
"We can't think about that right now," I said. "Only focus on the present because it's all we have." I took a deep breath to gear myself up for what was to inevitably on our horizon. "On my cue, crank your engines to full throttle and let's show these asshole space dictator fucks that we are a force to be reckoned with."
Merrix and Shan verbalized their understanding, Shan more enthusiastically of course, given his spontaneous and adventurous personality.
I took another deep breath.
"One… two… three!"
The next part happened in a blur. We were headed on a collision course straight to the saucer. I saw a flash of light. At first, I thought we had barreled into them and I was dead — and thus swirling through the afterlife.
It took me a moment to realize that we were very much in fact alive, and not only were we alive, but we had also won the gamble. The saucer had been the first to pull back, but unfortunately, it wasn't the end of our life threatening situation — in fact, it was far from it.
The mainframe of my space bike began to blink blue and yellow at first — a sign of distress, that I had lost a signal and my connection was short-circuiting.
Then, the panel began to alarm, blaring through my ears. I became dizzy and lost control of the bike altogether. I glanced to my left and right. I could make out the blurry shapes of Shan and Merrix spiraling out of control along with me.
My oxygen tank levels dipped dangerously low, and another alarm began to sound for that inside my heavy duty helmet.
Without the steady flow of oxygen being fed from my tank, and without a control panel to steer my bike back on course into the space lanes, I had no choice but to rapidly rotate into the gravity well and the dangerous temperature fluctuations upon entry to the Earth's atmosphere.
Our space suits and bikes were equipped to withstand extremely hot temperatures and perilous situations without destruction, but with all the technology shorting out, I wasn't sure we were going to make it. We plummeted further and further, hurtling toward Earth extremely fast.
I felt lightheaded, willing myself not to pass out. What did it matter anyway? As soon as we made impact with land, wherever that may be, we were doomed to be dead on arrival in a fatal crash.
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