The Last Starfighter by Alan Dean Foster

The oversized image appeared simultaneously on both screens.

“The command ship!” Alex yelled. “But they’ve stopped firing at us. Why?”

“Maybe they can sense that our drive is dysfunctional. Maybe they’re going to put a tow beam on us and pull us in.” He worked frantically at his instruments. “Plenty of evidence of damage to their exterior. We hurt them bad on our initial attack.”

Indeed they had. Kril raged at his fire control officer.

“Why have you stopped firing? They are not even trying to evade. They must have engine damage. Fire!”

The officer in charge turned to face Kril. “Commander, all our weapons systems are down now. It will take time for damage control to repair even the least damaged of them.”

Kril whirled back to face the main screen. It clearly showed the gunstar drifting aimlessly above Galan.

“Sensors?”

“They have minimal power remaining, Commander,” came the reply. “I would imagine they retain life support since there is no visible sign of hull damage. But all other energy readings are minimal at best.”

“Could it be a deception?” wondered another officer. He was patched from where he’d struck the deck hard during an earlier explosion.

“Why bother?” Kril exclaimed. “They must know how badly we are hurt. If they could mount the most minimal attack they would be coming straight for us. We must therefore assume they are incapable of attack and cannot even manage their own escape. Could we put a tow beam on them?”

Again the disheartening reply. “That system is also down, Commander.”

Kril fumed silently. The opportunity was present to snatch victory from defeat, and he was helpless!

Or was he?

He turned to navigation. “Plot an intercept course. Even at our mutually reduced speeds the impact should be sufficient to reduce them to scrap. Clear all forward compartments of crew and seal off the forward section of the ship.”

“Yes, Commander,” came the replies from the appropriate stations.

Kril was able to regard the screen with satisfaction. This would be like the ancient battles, when Ko-Dan warred against Ko-Dan on the surface of the mother world for control of tribal territories. With the advanced weaponry of both vessels crippled, he had the advantage. He had no intention of waiting until his own weapons were fixed. The gunstar might regain the use of her drive and escape, or worse, mount her own attack.

No, the final outcome of the battle for Rylos would be determined by raw basics mass against mass. In that primitive equation, the Ko-Dan led.

Alex stared at his screen. “Grig, they’re moving toward us.”

“I know, Alex.”

“What are they doing?”

“I think they are actually going to try and hit us with their own vessel. What a remarkable notion.”

“Remarkable, hell! Do something!”

“I am trying, Alex.”

Hesitantly, Alex touched one of the fire controls. All his effort produced was a red warning light on the readout and monitoring system. He tried another. Two red lights glared angrily at him, fiery hostile eyes in the dim light of the cabin.

“Grig, we need power. I’ve got nothing back here.”

“All systems were drained by the use of the blossom, but I’m trying to override the emergency safety system. It’s not designed to be overridden, Alex.”

“Well, do something. Another minute and we’ll be overridden!” The Ko-Dan command ship was clearly visible on the screen, leaking glowing gases from the gaping wounds inflicted earlier by the gunstar. It was moving at an infinitesimal speed straight toward the gunstar.

Grig worked with quiet determination. Something behind Alex’s seat vibrated awkwardly, stopped.

“All we have left is a little stored power for communications and life support maintenance.”

“Switch it through to the drive and hold your breath!”

Grig tried to do so. The temperature in the cabin began to fall rapidly. No longer continuously recycled and freshened, the air started to foul.

“Hurry, hurry!” Alex yelled, though he knew he shouldn’t have wasted the oxygen.

“Power . . . on!” Grig gasped as a battery of lights sprang to weak life on his console. He immediately switched it to the gunstar’s maneuvering thrusters, not daring to try activating the main drive.

The little ship moved. Very slightly and very slowly. It just did dip below the immense ship bearing down on it. There was actual contact between the hulls, a rarity in space, unheard of in combat. The screeching sound produced by the scrape of metal against metal was deafening in the cockpit of the gunstar.

Then they were clear and moving steadily away. The red warning lights above fire control fluttered, went out. Alex pounced on the possibility and hit everything at once, hoping something might work.

Something did. The gunstar’s weaponry raked the underside of the command ship one final time before burning out. Explosions, vast and silent, erupted from the target.

Grig cut the power to the thrusters and rechanneled back into life support and communications. The air began to clear immediately. Feeling like a scuba diver who’d stayed down too long, Alex inhaled deep gulps of the refreshened air. The cabin temperature, which had fallen below a hundred, climbed steadily back toward the comfort range. Only Alex’s flight suit had kept him from freezing solid, but he was still shivering even after the temperature had returned to normal. His body remembered.

“What was that?” Kril demanded to know as a violent trembling ran through the deck under his feet. He gazed up at the screen. “Did we hit them?”

Panic built at the consoles. One officer turned a frightened face toward his Commander.

“I don’t know, sir, but our guidance system is gone! We’re locked on course.”

“Notify the nearest Imperial ship of our situation and give them our speed and heading. They will rendezvous and help us initiate repairs.”

“You don’t understand, sir,” said the officer, all pretense at courtesy swamped by his fear. “Our present course is not directed outsystem. It’s . . .”

He didn’t have to finish. The main screen still functioned and Kril could see as clearly as anyone else where the great flagship was heading when drive control had been lost.

All the odds had favored them from the beginning, he mused while the panic spread around him. He ignored it. Xur and his traitors with their precious secrets to sell, the easy destruction of the Starfighter base; everything had been too easy.

And now this. To perish because the cosmos had finally determined to even out those odd s. With all of immensity open to them, all space to escape into until repairs could be made to the guidance system, they had inadvertently chosen the one wrong heading to take. Had they retained control of the ship it wouldn’t have meant a thing, of course. But they had not.

Through the shouting on the bridge another voice reached him faintly. “Commander, the Rylan gunstar is now astern of us, still drifting. She must have regained power temporarily and fired on us in passing.”

Kril had already reached that conclusion. He just nodded, smiling to himself. Truly the odds had evened out. The cosmos does not play favorites.

He was still laughing at the irony of it when the command ship plunged into the surface of the moon called Galan, briefly but spectacularly changing a section of the desolate surface from coppery green to a bright, intense hot yellow.

14

The ceremony was more than a little overwhelming. Previously, all Alex had seen of Rylos had been clouds and forest, distant oceans and extensive mountain ranges.

Now, with the gunstar resting in the central square of the capital city, he had the chance to see what really had been at stake. It was much more than the idea of a Frontier, of a League of united worlds and races. People had been at stake, their lives and future. Even if most of them did look a little funny.

There were representatives of many peoples standing with him inside the building. Grig stood nearby as the ceremony concluded. Alex blushed at the effusiveness of the translation, until one Rylan official was compelled to wonder aloud if the change in skin color wasn’t due to some allergic reaction to something in their atmosphere. Blushing even redder, Alex assured him that it wasn’t.

“Thank you, Ambassador Enduran,” he was finally able to mutter, making the Rylan complimentary sign with his hands as Grig had taught him. The gesture must have gone over well with the onlookers, because there was an alien murmur of approval.

“Thank you, Starfighter,” Enduran replied. He turned and gestured, whereupon the assembled officials, administrators, and directors of the government of Rylos, in concert with the visiting representatives of the League, performed a half-bow toward Alex that left him feeling very strange indeed.

To escape the attention, he paid a little homage of his own, turning to Grig and saluting. Grig didn’t respond in kind. Instead he chose to make a small modification in the carefully rehearsed ceremony, and stuck out his hand. Alex took it and they shook warmly, sharing the private joke.

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