Galaxy of Heroes

The Turquois Nebula loomed large in front of Spade’s black and red interceptor. The shimmering blue and green colors of the vast gaseous cloud glowed brightly.

Genie was struck by the nebula’s enchanting beauty as she stood on the hull of the Red Wrath, surrounded by the luminous mass of interstellar gas and dust. She knew, standing here on the hull of this ship at this moment in time, that this would be a memory she would safeguard forever.

The interceptor’s engines were now at full power. Genie kicked off the hull as the vessel shot out of its drift.

The Red Wrath blasted away and then disappeared into the blackness of space.

Genie glided through the vacuum toward the cruiser, landing hard against its hull. She pulled herself up to the cockpit hatch, opened it, and climbed inside.

She took the pilot’s seat and set the cruiser’s heading for Gallos, while searching the scope for any sign of the approaching Craaldan interstellar destroyer.

The only ship appearing on any of the sensors was the Red Wrath, which was rapidly speeding away. This was odd, she thought, as Spade’s interceptor had long since detected an approaching vessel.

Something was wrong with the cruiser’s sensors. They were being jammed.

An enormous Craaldan interstellar destroyer emerged from the blue-green clouds directly in front of the cruiser. Genie fired the cruiser’s engines, just as the destroyer deployed a mooring cable.

A giant magnet slammed through the hull of the cruiser with a metal-crunching thud.

Genie increased power to the engines and the cruiser shot forward, but it violently lurched back against the taut cable.

The cruiser strained against the cable, but it was no use. The destroyer was too large and the cable too strong.

Genie was piloting a stolen Craaldan cruiser. She knew what the Craaldans would do to her once she was captured. They would dismantle her and kill off her biological nervous system. They would examine her memory banks and discover that Capt. Jace Spade and Sgt. Joe J. Grimes were her accomplices.

The cruiser was quickly reeled in toward the much larger hull of the giant black destroyer.

Genie unstrapped herself from the pilot’s chair and kicked over towards the transport shaft. She pulled herself through the shaft and down into the engine room.

Once inside the engine room, she hurriedly began overriding the safety controls for the cruiser’s antimatter flow.

Alarms began to sound loudly. Squawks and flashing red lights now filled her ship.

Genie pulled herself out of the engine room and then quickly scaled hand over hand down to the docking bay. She was hoping to attempt an escape in the shuttle, but was dismayed to see that the impact of the electromagnetic mooring cable had smashed the shuttle against the docking bay wall, rendering it inoperative. The giant magnet had slammed right through the hull and its electromagnetic force had anchored to the innards of the ship, crushing the shuttle into large, magnetized chunks.

Genie resisted the magnetic force that gripped her and pulled her toward the giant magnet.

Like most everything metal in the docking bay, the zodiac vectors had been ripped from their stations and pulled against the magnet where they were mangled within a tangle of metal debris.

But one of the vectors stuck against the magnet appeared to still be intact.

Genie yanked it free with a mighty heave. She strapped herself into the vector and blasted out of the docking bay into space, just as the cruiser was pulled into the mouth of the monstrous destroyer.

The tiny vector rocketed away as the cruiser was swallowed up into the destroyer’s underbelly.

Genie waited for the antimatter reaction she had initiated onboard the cruiser. She knew the exact moment that critical mass would be achieved. Whether she could be clear of the blast in time was another matter.

In a brilliant flash of light, the cruiser exploded and a powerful blast ruptured the belly of the destroyer, rocking the large ship and setting off a series of fiery red and yellow eruptions along the underside of its hull.

The shock waves hit the zodiac vector with the violent force of a nuclear blast. The intensity of the turbulence buffeted the vector and threatened to break the small vessel apart.

Genie tried to regain control as she steered the zodiac vector through the glowing columns of the Turquois Nebula.

She checked her sensors. Her scope displayed an image of the destroyer. The large warship was being jolted by explosions inside its hull. The destroyer drifted through the clouds of the Turquois Nebula as the explosions built in intensity.

The Craaldans were no doubt sealing off the damaged sections of the ship as they scrambled to save the vessel and their lives.

Genie’s scope indicated that the damage to the destroyer was catastrophic. If the crew was able to save it from destruction, the vessel would most likely remain inoperative until Craaldan rescue ships arrived. And this far out in the galaxy, that might be a very long time.

She set the zodiac vector on a trajectory that would take her to Gallos. She was aware that her tiny vehicle would run out of fuel long before completing a voyage of that distance, but with the right heading, she would coast there eventually.

She calculated the voyage time and was disheartened. Drifting to Gallos would take approximately 179 Earth-years.

This was not how she had intended to begin her new existence as a free and self-directed entity—strapped inside a tiny transport vehicle, without fuel, with her own systems on minimum power, drifting through the cold emptiness of space.

But in the grand scheme of things, 179 Earth-years was a blink of an eye. She could wait. She was patient.

Unexpectedly, her sensors detected that the Craaldan interstellar destroyer was changing its heading. Somehow, the Craaldans appeared to have the wounded destroyer under control. Its engines fired intermittently as the huge vessel slowly came about.

A pulse cannon on the nose of the destroyer began tracking the zodiac vector, attempting to acquire a lock.

Genie executed evasive maneuvers, zigzagging her tiny vehicle through the glowing nebular clouds. The zodiac vector’s computer flashed an urgent warning.

The destroyer’s nose cannon fired and achieved a direct hit, pulverizing Genie’s tiny vehicle in a lightning ball of energy and flame.