Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 7.9

Only a dozen fighters remained. It was always the same pattern. We shot, he dodged, he fired back, and three more fighters broke apart. Our cannons carpet-bombed the alabaster spaceship floor with salvos of antimatter munition. The projectiles' explosions covered the ground in a blazing tapestry of blinding light. Each time the dust settled, Ay emerged without a scratch. He covered dozens of meters per leap, and always jumped in time to outrun the fireballs. He skipped between our fighters, putting us before a dilemma. If we shot him with antimatter, we decimated our forces in the process.

Ay's fighters joined the scuffle. Their barrage forced us to disperse, and their presence made us shift fire from Ay onto them. His gel bots attacked from the ground. When we shot back, they re-structured themselves on a molecular level and absorbed the damage. Only antimatter bullets killed them reliably.

I tried to play this safe. I flew covered by a fighter and watched Ay's movements. Why didn't he kill us already? Was it because he wanted to keep us alive so that we could experience eternal pleasure in the end? Was he that confident in his master plan?

He shot the fighter behind Crick's. He had estimated the distance just right so that the fireball knocked Crick out of their vehicle, but didn't kill them.

I considered swooping down to save Crick, but maybe that was a trap for me. But what if they died just like Helix?

Ay shot the wall behind a fighter. The building-sized fireball ravaged the surrounding canvas and ate through the nearest crafts. The fighter lost its outermost thruster and parts of its lateral hull. Thanks to the radiation, its remaining thrusters failed as well. The fighter tumbled like a bird that refused to leave the sky. A last desperate exhaust plume prevented a hard landing. Kira and Layla jumped out of it.

I froze in shock. He could kill them any moment if he wanted to, now. Instead, he put his antimatter rifle away and gestured his fighters and robots to protect him from our air support.

Layla and Kira shot at him with blasters and missile launchers. Predicting their movements, he evaded their shots and fired back. Layla used her microbots to shield Kira from a blaster. Unfortunately, Ay predicted that and focused on her instead. A beam hit Layla square in the torso. She staggered, barely keeping herself on her feet.

I had to do something. I failed to save these two back on Earth. Now that we were so close to getting home, I couldn't just let them die.

I maneuvered my fighter around the one that blocked my way to Ay. Spinning, my craft dodged its shorts. I shot a bomb into its heart and watched it explode into garbage.

Distracted by my victory, I noticed Ay's next shot too late. He attacked the fighter closest to me and repeated his previous trick. A fireball larger than most corridors I faced advanced towards me. The moment I noticed it, it had already caught my thrusters. Tesla's portion lost its hull. They hurried towards the wall in the middle.

"Can you control it?" Tesla asked.

The fighter fell out of the air like a dead fly. I tugged the joystick closer to me, desperate to save us from a deadly landing. The fireballs' shockwaves flipped our fighter so that I plunged onto my controls. I felt the impacts' full force as a thruster slammed into the ground.

Above me, Tesla lay on our wall. Slowly, they climbed to their feet and pulled themselves out of the wreck of a fighter we were in.

It took me a while until I could feel my hands and fingers again. I moved them under my belly and pushed myself upward. Then, I used the still-intact controls to dissolve the wall above me. Finally, I jumped out of the fighter.

A scuffle of brawling and firing machines unfolded before my eyes, Ay, Kira, and Layla in their midst. Kira lay on the ground, eyes closed, while Layla still held back Ay. To my horror, I realized I was too late.