• The first clue that something was terribly wrong aboard StarFlight Six was the emergency klaxons sounding throughout the merchant vessel. Their piercing sound roused fifteen-year-old Kyle Mitchell from a particularly pleasant dream about that girl he had met last time the ship had made port. “What now?” He groaned, shielding his eyes from the flashing red lights as he sat up. The ship rocked violently, pitching side to side and throwing him from his bunk on to the metal deck plating. There was a beeping and the communicator on his wrist started vibrating. Quickly, he glanced down and read the display. “All crew – Code 13.” Kyle stared at the display for several seconds as its meaning sank in. “Shiv, we’re under attack.”

    Another jolt spurred him into action. He grabbed his pants and shirt from off the floor and hurriedly pulled them on. They were still dirty from his last duty shift and he was in bad need of a shower; somehow though he didn’t think anyone would mind given the alert status. The pants, cast-offs from an older crew member, were at least two sizes too large for him. Luckily his duty harness acted like a pair of suspenders, holding his pants up. He could also hang his various tools from the harness along with his crew pass and music player; he was, after all, a teenager.

    In the rush to get dressed, he banged his head on the low ceiling as he stood up. Apart from the captain, Kyle was the only crew member onboard with his own quarters. Of course, this was because, unlike the captain’s, his was merely a cleaned out storeroom with barely enough space to fit the makeshift bunk. Still, it afforded him a small amount of privacy during his off-duty hours.

    As he hopped into his boots and stumbled out into the corridor, Kyle wondered what he should do. He’d been onboard for several months now but he didn’t know where he should go if the ship came under attack. Kyle was the lowest ranked crew member, a deckrat; part cabin boy, part manual labourer. He got all the jobs that no one else wanted; cleaning up spills and the vomit from space sick passengers, changing fuses, loading and unloading cargo, crawling through the ducts to check on wiring, cleaning dishes in the galley. It wasn’t easy work and it didn’t pay much, but it got him off that dead end dirt ball of a planet he was from. However, his menial position meant that no one had bothered to go through the emergency procedures with him; he only knew what a Code 13 was because he had skimmed through the crew manual during his free time.

    Kyle looked up as he heard footsteps coming down the corridor towards him. It was Casey, one of the ship’s engineers. The man was massive, tall with broad shoulders and bulging muscles. When he had first met Casey, he had been more than a little intimidated by the nearly seven foot tall man as he towered over him; Kyle himself was short for his age, being only five foot five. However, the former solider had turned out to be a friendly and easy going man who worked hard, partied harder and yet kept an eye on Kyle, looking out for the young boy. Whenever they made port, Kyle found himself dragged from bar to bar by the big man. Spaceport bars can be rough places, especially out here in the Boondocks, the outer rim territory where the StarFlight operated. A night in the bar would often end up with words exchanged, punches thrown and a hangover in the morning. Kyle though had grown up around the sort of people who frequented these places; his father owned a bar back on Progeon 2 and when he had been younger, Kyle had helped out after school; collecting glasses and dodging bar fights whilst cleaning up. As long as Casey, who seemed to fear nothing, was with him, Kyle never needed to worry about getting in to too much trouble. So seeing the man come down the corridor with a worried expression in his face, Kyle realised that they must really be in trouble.

    “Casey, what’s going on?”

    “Not now Kyle,” Casey said without stopping or slowing down, “we’ve got a situation here.”

    Kyle jogged behind him. “Yeah I know, a Code 13. Who’s attacking us?”

    Casey hesitated for a second before responding; “The Accord.”

    “Peepers?” Kyle said using the boondocker slang for the Pan Pacific Accord, one of the three national blocks that controlled Earth and the Core Worlds. “Why would the Peepers want to attack us?

    They stopped as they reached the interdeck access ladder. “I don’t know, but I’ve got to get to my duty station.” Casey started climbing up the ladder, heading towards the engineering and command deck.

    Kyle reached up and grabbed the man’s jacket, stopping him from climbing. “What should I do?”

    Casey didn’t have time for this; he was about to pull away and tell Kyle to go back to his room when he looked down and saw the near-panicked look in the boy’s eyes. Sometimes it was easy to forget that not everyone had spent fifteen years in the Defence Forces of the Atlantic Alliance. Kyle was just a kid after all, and even though he may have grown up in the Boondocks, this was probably his first taste of actual combat. No wonder the boy was a little scared. Now that he thought about it, the last thing he should do is tell Kyle to go and hide. He should give him something to do, let him feel like he was being useful. Casey pretended to look thoughtful for a second. “Kyle, you best head over to the escape pod and make sure it’s prepped in case we have to evacuate the passengers.” He watched as the boy nodded and ran back down the corridor. The escape pod was largely automatic and didn’t need much in the way of “prepping.” However, it would keep Kyle busy and distract him from thinking about the fight. Plus, if something went wrong, at least the boy would be in a safe place.

    Kyle ran down the corridor, his feet pounding on the metal deck plates almost as hard as his heart was pounding in his chest. He ducked through a bulkhead door separating compartments and leapt down a short flight of stairs into the passenger compartment. The escape pod was located at the far end of the compartment. As he ran down the corridor, passing the passenger cabins and heading towards the common room where the escape pod’s hatch was located, one of the cabin doors opened. A man in his mid-twenties stepped out wearing combat pants and a white sleeveless t-shirt, a pair of military dog tags dangling around his neck. The man saw his crew uniform and grabbed Kyle’s arm as he ran past. “Hey kid, what’s going on?”

    “Um, we got a situation but everything’s under control,” Kyle said, trying to sound a lot more confident than he actually felt. The man was a passenger, and if there was one thing the other crew members had told him, it was that you should never let a passenger know just how bad things are.

    The man raised an eyebrow sceptically. “Look, Kyle is it?” He asked looking down and reading the boy’s crew pass, “I know weapon impacts when I hear them.”

    Another door opened, this time a middle-aged woman in jogging pants and a t-shirt stepped out with her hands over her ears. “What in God’s name is that racket?”

    Kyle pulled his arm free and stepped back. “Ma’am,” he said in his most professional voice, “there’s an emergency situation but there’s nothing to worry about, we have everything under control.” He turned to the man as an idea popped into his head. “Sir, it would be a great help if you could gather the rest of the passengers in the common room.”

    “Lieutenant Tyler Maddox at your service,” the man said with a mock salute.

    Thanking the man, Kyle turned and ran into the common room. He slapped the hatch controls and the pressure in the hydraulic pistons holding the hatch closed was released. With a hiss the hatch opened and Kyle ducked inside. The escape pod had two columns of seats facing towards the front of the pod and away from hatch, eight seats either side of the central aisle; enough seats for the StarFlight’s six crew members and its maximum complement of ten passengers. Of course, with him on board that made it seven crew members, one over maximum capacity. If the StarFlight had been carrying a full load of passengers and they had to abandon ship, someone would be left behind. He had wondered on more than one occasion if that someone would be the least important and least useful person on board, him. Thankfully, on this trip they were only carrying six passengers.

    Kyle sat down in one of the seats and pulled a flip down monitor from the ceiling above him. As it locked into place a holographic keyboard flickered into existence. The boy took his crew pass and inserted it into a slot on the side of the monitor, logging on the escape pod’s onboard computer system. According to the readouts, the pod’s fuel, power and O2 reserves were all topped up and the download from the StarFlight’s computer was also complete.

    Satisfied that the pod’s systems were at 100%, he got up and wondered what to do next. As he did so, the ship was rocked by a particularly violent impact, the lights flickered and Kyle was knocked of his feet, striking his head on the edge of a seat. The force of the impact stunned Kyle for several long moments until the beeping of his communicator brought him around.

    “Kyle, are you there?” It was Casey.

    “Yeah,” Kyle said sitting up and rubbing his head, his hand came away with a smear of blood on it from a cut on his forehead. “Just about.”

    “Are you in the escape pod like I told you to be?” There was something strange about Casey’s voice but Kyle put it down to the pressure of the situation.

    “Yeah, why?”

    “Kyle,” Casey said slowly and deliberately, “I want you to strap yourself in, I’m going to start the launch sequence.”

    “What,” Kyle said in shock, “you can’t. Only the captain can authorise launching the escape pod?”

    “The captain’s dead,” Casey snapped, “the bridge took a direct hit and the reactor’s destabilised.” Behind Kyle, the hatch slammed shut and a computerised voice announced fifteen seconds to launch. The passengers, who had gathered in the common room at Kyle’s request, rushed towards the hatch and started pounding on it, demanding to be let in.

    “Dammit Casey, open the hatch,” yelled Kyle as he slapped the hatch controls. It was useless however; Casey had taken over the pod’s systems remotely. Through the glass panel on the hatch, Kyle could see that one of the passengers, a scruffy-looking youth in his early twenties, had taken out a handheld computer and attached to the hatch controls. Kyle realised that the youth was trying to open the hatch by overriding the controls but it wouldn’t work, the hatch was magnetically sealed and with the countdown running it would be impossible to open.

    “I’m sorry Kyle, but you should never have been here,” said Casey, “the captain had no right keeping you on board, he should have sent you back home the moment we found you. Space is no place for a boy your age.”

    “Stop treating me like a kid,” he said through gritted teeth. Ever since he had come aboard, stowing away in the cargo bay, everyone had treated him like a child. He also knew that the captain had taken advantage of his youth by giving him a job that was little better than unpaid grunt work. None of that mattered, he knew that he belonged in space and not wasting his life away on some backwater colony. It hurt that Casey, the only one that had ever treated him like an equal, now saw him as a kid that needed protecting.

    “You only turned fifteen a couple of weeks ago Kyle, you should still be in school, not running away to space. You’re family must be worried sick about you.” Kyle wasn’t listening though; he was determined to prevent the launch of the pod. Lifting up a deck plate in the centre of the pod’s floor he exposed the pod’s power cell.

    “I don’t need protecting,” Kyle muttered, “I’m not a little kid anymore.” This was going to hurt, a lot. You were supposed to shutdown the pod’s systems before disconnecting the power cell; but the countdown was rapidly reaching zero and he had no other options. Uttering a silent prayer, Kyle reached down and grabbed the power cell. The power cell was hot and he grunted as he pulled at it. There was a crack as the power cell short circuited, dumping its charge directly into Kyle.

    Kyle screamed in pain and was thrown back against the wall of the pod. “Failure in escape pod power system, remote launch suspended,” the computer announced. With the removal of the pod’s power cells, the lights and computer screens died and the magnetic seal on the hatch deactivated.

    “What are you doing Kyle?” Casey asked.

    The pain in his hands was indescribable. Struggling to maintain consciousness despite the pain, Kyle began pulling himself across the deck plating towards the hatch. “My job,” he groaned in response to Casey’s question.

    “You remind me of my kid brother, he was stubborn just like you and he got himself killed.”

    “I’m not leaving these people behind.” Although the magnetic seal was disabled, the hatch was still locked. Kyle crouched in front of it and unscrewed a panel next to the hatch. Grimacing in pain and with his hands still shaking, Kyle disengaged the locking bolts. Now all he had to do was force the hatch open but it was too heavy for him and he couldn’t get a grip, he couldn’t lift it more than a couple of inches.

    A passenger with muscular, tattooed arms pushed his way to the hatch and lifted it effortlessly. The man climbed through the open hatch, shoving Kyle out of the way. “Out of the way brat.” The rest of the passengers piled in after him, rushing to strap in. Tyler though knelt down next to Kyle. The boy was cowering in a corner, blood dribbling down his pale face and holding his hands close to his chest. He seemed to be whispering something, forcing the words out.

    “Reconnect … power cell.” Tyler glanced over to the middle pod where the power cell lay and he immediately understood what Kyle was trying to say.

    “Sarah,” he said to the middle-aged woman that Kyle had met in the corridor earlier, “could you give me a hand here.” Together, the two adults helped the boy into one of the seats. While Tyler went to reconnect the power cell, Sarah strapped Kyle in. As she did so, she noticed how he was clutching his hands against his chest protectively. Although his fists were clenched, she could tell that they were badly injured.

    “Let me see those hands,” she said gently. When Kyle didn’t respond she looked up at his face. His eyes were closed, he had passed out.

    “Power system restored, remote launch programme resumed,” the computer announced, Tyler had reconnected the power cell. Sarah hurriedly sat down and strapped in, checking on the boy would have to wait. “Two … one … launch.”

    The hatch slammed shut and resealed; seconds later, a series of dull thumps sounded as explosive bolts detonated severing the pod from StarFlights hull. As soon as they were separated, rocket engines fired and propelled the escape pod away from the merchant vessel. The g-forces created by the rockets overwhelmed the pod’s artificial gravity generators, pinning everyone in their seats.

    As the pod rocketed away from the merchant vessel, Casey watched it leave on a handheld monitor in the ruined engineering bay. Sirens and warning tones were sounding, alerting the engineer to a multitude of problems and failing systems. Not that Casey would be able to do anything about them, not with the support beam lying across his chest.

    Casey glanced around the engineering bay. Johnson, StarFlight’s other engineer, lay slumped at his station. His face and the front of his torso were blackened and burnt from the power surge that had destroyed the console he was working at and killed him instantly. The rest of the crew, excluding Kyle, had been on the bridge; they were dead too. There was only one thing left to do now; make sure the pod got away safely.

    He picked up the monitor again and tapped into the StarFlight’s navigation systems. From the data being relayed to the unit, he could see the Accord ship manoeuvring around the StarFlight in order to target the escape pod. Casey inputted a new course, a collision course. The engines fired up for the last time and the StarFlight surged forward.

    In the seconds before the merchant vessel collided with the Accord ship, his thoughts turned back to his young friend. “Stay safe kid,” he said coughing up blood, “the passengers are your responsibility now.” As the StarFlight smashed into the side of the Accord ship, the merchant vessel’s reactor finally lost containment and exploded. The blast vaporised the StarFlight and tore the Accord ship in half. Secondary explosions ripped through the enemy vessel before its reactors also exploded.

    The escape pod rocketed away from the rapidly expanding fireball carrying the survivors towards a distant planet.