In her senior year of high school, Natalie Hope reunites with her friends, Adam and Barbara, at the funeral of the fourth member of their once-close gang, Jake. They remember the made-up superhero game they played as kids called "the Astronites," wh...
"Coming out of starspeed now," Adam announced, sliding the throttle back.
Natalie and the others seated themselves and braced for deceleration from starspeed. The stars returned to being little dots in faraway space as Star's fierce starpower engines died down to a purr.
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The Rosewood System presented a barren cosmic wasteland. There were no planets, clouds, rocks, or spectacles in sight. Only the Rosewood star, a distant crimson pixel of light, gave the system what little personality it had. As Natalie's eyes adjusted to the emptiness, something flew past Star's window. It appeared to be the severed bow of a UEF fleetship.
"Ruff!" Ador barked.
"What was that?" Natalie asked.
"Wreckage," Star answered. "I'm tracking debris below us."
Adam maneuvered the joystick downward and dipped Star into a horrific scene. A floating junkyard of UEF fleetship parts was suspended in a field of desolation. It spanned across and throughout Star's forward window. Nothing seemed recognizable. Every bit and part of metal was contorted, twisted, melted, and burnt. Many of them were stained with blood.
Victor straightened up in his seat. "What are we looking at, Star?"
"I am siphoning the data," Star replied. "I am having difficulty identifying most of the objects ahead of me. All the debris here could have belonged to fifteen or twenty fleetships. From what I can recognize, several pieces belonged to the UEFS Montana."
"The Montana?" Victor repeated. "She's in a fleetship the Elem Fleet. Some of my friends served on her. Can you find her black box? It'll have all her data stored in it."
"I'll scan the area. Tech, you'll have to take me further in," Star requested.
"Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to go into stealth mode," Yona advised.
Adam snapped himself out of shock and flicked several switches. Star's headlights and interior lights shut down. The engine lowered to a barely audible hiss. Very gently, Adam pressed his thumb on the head of the joystick and sent Star into the fleetship graveyard. Ador whined as they proceeded and passed through larger vestiges of destruction. Ribcage rafts and skeletal frames of UEF fleetships loomed over and around them, hollowed out and sliced.
"What could have done all this?" Barbara nervously asked.
Victor shook his head. "Something bad. . . ."
"Where are the rest of the fleetships?" asked Yona. "Why are we the only ones here?"
"I am detecting traces of a starpower outburst," Star reported. "A lot of electromagnetic radiation, too."
Adam flew them through a gap in between the layers of skin that once belonged to a UEF fleetship's hull. As they exited, Natalie noticed the left half of the fleetship's bridge, reduced to only its blackened skull, hovering out in front of them.
