StarFall Comics
A Division of Pullemouttayerhat Productions
A Wholly-Owned Subsidiary of StarFall Innovations
Proudly Presents:
Going Solo
#3: Fight or Flight
Cover: A small wedge-shaped fighter flying past a dark red, crater-pocked world on a starry background. Two cylindical space stations are seen in the background; one sports the Nazi flag, the other sports the Japanese Rising Sun flag. Sprawled across the top of the logo are the words "High Contest Challenge". Under the logo are the words "The Red Planet".
Stardancer's Gnat starfighter dropped her out of hyperspace. Instantly, she felt more alert; the effects of hyperspace caused one's mental reactions to be sluggish, an effect that normally lasted only within the confines of hyperspace itself. The Gnat was a small, wedge-shaped craft, not more than ten meters long, a wingspan of about and three meters high, with oversized engines for a ship its size. With a flip of a switch, the cockpit shields that protected her from the unusual radiation of hyperspace retracted, giving her a clear view of the area around her.
Stardancer was of Amerindian descent, standing 172 cm tall, with close-cropped black hair, dark brown eyes that bordered on being black, and a reddish-tan tint to her skin, with a slender build. She was currently dressed in a rust red, skintight flightsuit and a standard pilot's helmet; a patch on her left shoulder showed the emblem of the Iroquois Nation Exploration Corps.
Out in front of her ship, a small red-tinted world, pockmarked with hundreds of craters, came into view. Two large cylindrical space stations were visible in orbit around it, a number of smaller spaceships coming and going.
"Explorer Sixteen to Hiawatha Station," she broadcast. "Requesting permission for docking."
To her surprise, there was no answer. She repeated herself, this time broadcasting on all frequencies. For a short time, there was no answer, then a reply came; the speaker had a thick German accent.
"Explorer Sixteen, this is Hauptman Steissmann of the Fifth Reich1. As a member of an inferior race, you are hereby ordered to surrender yourself and your vessel, or we will destroy you as we did Hiawatha Station."
The implications of this barely had time to register. The Fifth Reich was the new Nazi movement which had appeared several decades before in the Core Worlds. They had seemed unstoppable, which is why her people, the Iroquois, had retreated to the frontier to regroup - along with several other Amerind nations, as the Apache and Lakota. Hiawatha Station had housed ninety percent of the remaining Amerinds in the Sol Sector. If the Nazis had destroyed them. . . .
"Don't listen to them," came another voice. "Hiawatha Station is safe, under the loving protection of the Trans-Stellar Shogunate. You are free to dock with us; we will guide you in." Stardancer grimaced inwardly. Trans-Stellar claimed to be benevolent, but their predjudices were well-known; anyone who wasn't of Asian - and specifically Japanese - descent were treated as "eta", the lowest of the low, made to perform menial tasks. She shuddered to think of what she'd be reduced to if she followed the signal beacon.
But which one was telling the truth? And what were both doing here? She quickly checked her instruments before replying; there was the usual residual radiation and debris from a recent battle, plus the Cherenkov radiation of many hyperspace transitions - but one trail seemed odd. Then it hit her; the Elders had shunted Hiawatha Station into hyperspace!
At the present, though, she needed fuel. She didn't really have a choice; the Shogunate was the lesser of two evils.
"Trans-Stellar, this is Iroquois Explorer Sixteen coming in for a landing."
Immediately, her sensors indicated that one set of forces were changing course to intercept. Fortunately, none of them had the speed of her Gnat. Pulling hard on her flight stick, she opened up the throttle to a full ten Gs and rocketed towards the Shogunate station, while the Reich kept calling for her to "surrender or be destroyed."
Stardancer had not earned her name for nothing. As the Reich's missiles closed in, she pulled her Gnat into a rolling weave. This move caused several missiles to run into each other. She turned into a tight 'dive' towards the planet 'below'2, running headlong into a number of Shogunate ships that were coming to her defense against the Reich.
Space erupted into battle as the two forces met. "All this for one stray second-hand fighter?" she thought. "There must be more going on."
Stardancer's Gnat came to rest on the flight deck of the Shogunate station. As she disembarked, she pulled off her helmet, leaving it in the seat. Two technicians came towards her; she noted that one of them was a young Caucasian boy barely into his teens.
"How can we help?" the older tech asked her.
"I would just like some fuel," she replied, "and a reload of missiles, if possible. I ran into pirates in the last system I was in." She reached into the cockpit and pulled out her service blaster. "I'll be back in a few hours."
"As you wish."
Stardancer didn't exactly expect them to let her go around the station armed, but that's exactly what they did. Stopping at the station's cantina, she asked a few questions, but no one really knew where Hiawatha Station had disappeared to. The battle that had started over her had died down not long after she had landed, but she still didn't expect to get off the station without another fight starting.
Two hours later, as she was heading back to where her ship was docked, she ran into a squad of soldiers; four blocked her way, while two came up behind her and confiscated her blaster.
"You'll have to come with us, miss," the soldier in charge told her bluntly. "You are not to leave the station."
"We'll see about that," she stated, flicking her wrist slightly. What appeared to be a knife appeared in her hand, but as she spun on her heels, it became evident that the "knife" was a monowire whip. She sliced through three of the soldiers' chests and through the blasters of two others before they knew what had happened.
The remaining soldier drew his own blaster and fired, but she used one of the deceased's torsos as a shield. His blaster fire was absorbed by the corpse. She threw the corpse at him as she picked up her own blaster off the floor. Seconds later, she had gone, fleeing down the corridor towards her ship.
She wasn't surprised that the bay door was locked; a quick shot into the electronics solved that little problem. What did surprise her was that the techs had done exactly what she had asked them to do: the Gnat had a full tank of fuel and fresh missiles in the launch tubes. She ran through the start-up sequence as quickly as she dared, and began calculations on most likely destinations based on Hiawatha's last trajectory. Then she realized a problem.
The hangar bay doors were closed. She hated to do it, but she armed and fired two of the missiles at the bay doors. The explosions created a hole just large enough for the Gnat to fit through . . . barely.
As she fled from the system at full throttle, she closed the hyperspace shields. The navicomputer indicated that the transit was ready, and then the small ship leapt into hyperspace.
"Is she away?" a uniformed Japanese man asked an associate dressed in a face-concealing black jumpsuit.
"She's just made the jump into hyperspace," was the reply from the jumpsuited man.
"You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard her ship? I'm taking an awful risk here."
"The New Axis cannot be denied," the officer's associate stated. "The Fifth Reich and the Shogunate performed beautifully in their mock battle earlier. She will lead all of us to our enemy, where we will eliminate the primitives once and for all. For the greater good."
"The greater good," the officer echoed in a monotone, almost absent-mindedly.
Notes
1. The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, the Second Reich was Bismark's Germany, the Third Reich was Hitler's, and the Fourth Reich is the German-dominated European Union of the mid-21st Century.
2. In space, where there is no gravity, 'down' is a relative term. As such, most people tend to place the nearest star or planet as being navigationally 'beneath' them.