The F.O.X. Project

Chapter 6: Nova

A smoking ruin lay in the middle of the desert. It was an old satellite probably used for military use during the light wars. Trent clambered inside and searched its small hanger. He found a relatively unscathed fighter just sat in the middle of the twisted space. The cockpit was open.

It was dusty and covered in cobwebs inside but it looked functional. Looked being the verb used as the ship... didn't... start up, as he had hoped. He also hoped that it was nothing but something in the intakes and, to Trent's surprise, he was right. There was a literal 'spanner in the works', to say. With a tug he swiftly removed it and hopped back into the cockpit to start up the engines. It revved. It sounded like a formula one car tearing down the racetrack as the fighter took off. There was only one engine that could produce that noise; a high-tuned, 10-C hydro-turbine engine. The engines used by the nova corporation.

He took the fighter into the sky. Could the Nova Corporation be this old?, he contemplated.

With a shudder, the ship broke through the atmosphere. He headed straight for The Gateway. The post-light wars ship loomed ahead of him, its neon blue outlines in constant conflict with the pitch black paintwork of The Gateway's outer armour. The ship flew straight into the Lylapse-gate and he was bathed in a bright light.

A fraction of a second later he exploded out of Vanet's Lylapse-gate within its inner orbit and he plummeted down to earth. Suddenly, he was met with the ground, but not Vanet's, a rocky surface. He fired the ship's weapons systems and blasted his way through the passing asteroid. His heart stalled as an unexplainable force pulled him towards the planet's surface, along with a large hunk of the asteroid he broke through.

Flames engulfed his ship as it barrelled down through the planet's atmosphere.

The huge meteor was just meters away from his ship. Trent kept trying the fighters startup sequence until it finally started. The thrusters fired and he pulled the ship behind the meteor. It collided with Vanet and broke into pieces as he saw a colossal shockwave travel out from underneath it. The tsunami swallowed several immediate islands and started to slow down as he levelled with the ocean's surface.

Trent pulled back on the controls and the fighter spun around as if it was on an axis and fired two burst torpedoes at the oncoming tsunami. Just before the torpedoes touched the water they exploded and a huge burst of water flew up and along the length of the tsunami.

He had no idea how that worked but it worked and that was the important thing. Only he didn't feel particularly triumphant about saving several million lives and that was probably because the head island of the Nova Corporation had just been destroyed. Over ten million innocent people dead.

He landed roughly on a sea platform and rushed into one of its common areas.

It was all over the news. 'Pacifico destroyed by mysterious meteorite.' 'Nova Corporation headquarters destroyed, millions reported dead.'

It looked like DCC would have done this but the problem was that DCC would have preferred to destroy them economically. So who did it?

Running back to his ship, Trent saw the huge blast of water from the meteor. Just water vapour towering into the broken up, blue sky.

                          ♦️  ♦️  ♦️

The colossal wave came closer and closer. Max's mind was a mess. He wasn't sure what to do. I got it! He held his breath. And jumped.

Water enveloped him, the freezing water making him tense up as he tried to keep his breath in.

He saw the surface of the water disappear and splinters of wood and hull sunk either side of him. Into the deep, dark depths below.

He swam upward and broke the surface with a gasp. He was not a good swimmer. Reaching for a grip on a piece of debris, Max wondered what had just happened.

He remembered that dream. Now a fuzzy memory.

How did he do that?