Survivors

Luke had initially flown up and away from the transporter. He wanted to swoop in really, really fast so that:-

a) The Aliens wouldn’t be able to spot him and

b) When he flipped over onto his back that he had enough speed to keep going without crashing into the ground.

When he felt he was high enough he turned, tucked in his wings and stretched himself into the most streamlined shape he possibly could.

“This is going to be fast” he thought “really fast!”

The transporter was about three hundred meters away and was only flying about forty feet off the ground, which didn’t give Luke a great deal of room to fly under it. He lined himself up with the dead centre of the transporters rear. As his speed increased the air was rushing past him faster and faster. There was a roaring noise in his ears that grew still louder and louder as his velocity increased.

Thirty feet from the rear of the transporter he flipped onto his back with a twitch of his tail feathers. He’d expected the move to be violent and sudden, what he hadn’t been prepared for was how much that tiny movement of feathers would hurt. His speed had made the air feel almost like a brick wall, a brick wall he had just smashed his way straight through. For a split second he felt like all the muscles down the right side of his body had been ripped from his bones. No matter how much it hurt he knew he mustn’t flinch or react to the pain at all as that would probably just send him spinning out of control.

“Focus Luke!” he bellowed at himself.

Even as he thought the word “focus” it he felt his mind zoom in on animals with fantastic reaction speeds; flies, spiders, snakes and fleas, all creatures that could strike, move or react in a fraction of a second. As the images came into his mind’s eye so he felt his eyes, muscles and brain change. Time seemed to slow down and he felt hyper aware of what was going on around him. In what appeared to Luke like slow motion he saw the rear of the transporter come into view above him. He slightly adjusted his rifle and took aim up the barrel. Even though he was going really fast in real time he felt like he was waiting for the transporters vent to appear directly above him.

All of a sudden his peripheral senses became aware of an explosion high off to his left.

“Must be Joe’s distraction” he thought “Now get out of there!”

Then he spotted the outer rim of the vent and his attention was absolutely fixed. He could now see straight up the vent right into the heart of the ship. He was aware of a dim blue glow pulsing somewhere deep in the transporters belly. Luke squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, just to make sure. He watched the laser bolts burst from the end of the rifle and spear towards the vent.

The first shot was early and smacked into the vents outer casing. The next one hit right on the rim. Some of the bolts energy must have entered the vent but not enough to start the chain reaction Luke was hoping for. Luke willed the third one on, and to his intense relief he saw it disappear up the pipe without even touching the sides. Luke’s relief was short lived as he realised he now needed to get the hell out of their ... FAST!

He flipped back onto his front and beat his wings as fast as he could. The pain in all his joints was agonising, but he knew he had to get away.

The explosion when it did come was bigger than Luke could have possibly imagined. He was smacked to the ground by the percussion of the blast as if a giant invisible hand had swotted him from the air slamming him into the ground. His ear drums burst sending daggers of pain stabbing through his head. Blood instantly poured from his nose and ears and he felt completely dazed and confused. He rolled around on the floor finding it really hard to gather his senses. His hands scrabbled in the dirt trying to push himself up off the ground. He collapsed back again his arms flailing out. His bones felt like they were buzzing, vibrating like a giant tuning fork. Suddenly his fingers bumped into something hard, it was the butt of his rifle. Feeling the rifle seemed to galvanise him and give him a little more self-awareness. His scrambled senses began to sort themselves out. He shook his head hard and felt some of the fog in his brain begin to clear. Within a couple of seconds he was on his feet and a few seconds after that he was back in the air.

He flew away from the remaining transporter as hard as he could. Then he veered upwards to give himself the room and speed for his second run. This run was going to be more dangerous as he was coming in directly at the transporters front straight towards its lasers. So if anything he knew he probably needed to go even faster than the first time. He felt himself picking up speed and as he did he noticed something odd, he couldn’t hear any wind. In fact now he thought about it he couldn’t hear anything at all.

As he got to about fifty feet from the transporter one of the animal senses began to tingle and without even thinking he jinked first left then right. Two laser bolts flashed past him, missing him by millimetres. They were so close he felt his feathers singe. Then he reached the underside of the transporter and relative safety. He once again flipped onto his back. This time he was ready for the pain but that didn’t stop his whole face contorting in an agonised grimace.

“Focus, focus, focus!” he thought.

He controlled his breathing, he concentrated on his shot and he waited for the vent. Then it was above him. This time he knew as soon as he squeezed the trigger that this shot was perfect. The bolt disappeared up the vent so smoothly it was almost as if it was supposed to go there.

This time Luke knew what was coming. He knew he couldn’t get away from the blast, so he decided to try Joe’s old trick and simply rolled himself into a woodlouse ball and braced himself for the double impact of hitting the ground and the blast from the explosion. When the blast did come he felt himself picked up and thrown twenty feet into the air. All the breath was forced out of him and it felt like his insides had been smashed by a giant sledgehammer. Everything was spinning, everything was confusion, everything was pain. He was aware of hitting the ground several times as he bounced along before coming to a standstill still curled in his woodlouse ball. Then without really being aware of it he vaguely felt himself turning back into human form. Blood still streamed from his nose and ears mingling with the dirt that seemed to cover half his head. He was dimly aware of the smell of the soil, of the blood, his blood before the pain got to be too much and everything went black.