The Chronicles of Lich King's Landing

The Founding Part 1

"Leeeeeeeeroooooy Jeeeeeeeenkiiiiiins!!!"

Ga'bjshik braced himself with four of his lower arms and two of his legs against the fuselage, while Joanna pulled the small fighter into a corkscrew that felt tighter every turn. Plasma bolts flickered past the cockpit, as the nimble craft dodged and weaved through the storm of defensive fire from the giant space station.

The poor Skreelith couldn't really tell the difference between being hit by a plasma bolt and the chitin-jolting bucking of the evasive maneuvers. But the lack of exploding and burning while freezing to death in the void of space led him to the conclusion, that the evasive maneuvers of Joanna must have been successful up to now.

The human pilot, with whom he was seated back-to-back in the small cockpit, yelled in excitement. "Sit tight, Gabs! We're going to do what's called a Pro-Gamer move!"

The fighter lurched beneath him and rolled repeatedly, it's lateral thrusters firing seemingly at random intervals and shoving him against the restraints. Ga'bjshik just pressed his mandibles tightly together and tried not to paint the interior of Joanna's cockpit with his last meal. If they should survive this - against his firm expectation - he surely would be killed by Joanna for ruining the interior design of her personal fighter with his extremely acidic stomach fluids. Self control was the key to survival, repeatedly told himself.

Parts of the superstructure of their target now raced past the cockpit. In a rush of blurring images he saw dozens of defensive plasma cannons quickly swiveling on their mounts, tracking for a target. The cannons were mounted on blocky outcrops of steel and armor plating which rose from the irregular surface of the space station. It only took a second and one of them locked on to their fighter. It's dull red targeting laser dazzled his multi-faceted eyes, as it aligned a shot. Ga'bjshik desperately tried to wrestle the pintle-mounted gun in front of him around to take out the gun before it could fire, but he was too slow. Temporarily blinded the bright flash of plasma from the defense cannon, he reflexively relinquished his grip on the gun and covered his eyes with four of his hands.

After not having been incinerated in a several thousand degrees hot plasma ball a second later, Ga'bjshik hesitantly uncovered his eyes. He saw another human fighter closely chasing their six. He was trailing a shower of molten metal droplets glowing a dull red against the darkness of space. A deep, glowing crater disfigured the otherwise polished, thick, overlapping armor plating covering it from nose to fins.

"Got you covered" a deep voice rumbled through the radio channel. "Aggro's on me now."

The plasma cannon fired again, but the other craft simply glided right into the attack, and again the bolt exploded on the thick armor without penetrating further and damaging anything relevant. A few seconds later, Ga'bjshik could see the tell-tale flickering of nanobots streaming from another, much smaller fighter zooming in from nearby, knitting together the deep gouges in the armor plating and restoring the reflective surface.

"Try not to move out of healing range this time!" another voice cut through the link.

"Show-offs" snickered Joanna. Ga'bjshik felt her shake her head behind him.

"Continuing on final target approach!"

With a sudden lurch that triggered another wave of nausea in his guts, she dived into a deep chasm of the structure looming beneath them. To the left and right of the cockpit, cliff-high steel walls with brightly lit windows raced past, suited Drynari faces behind them, shocked and yelling, pointing in their direction.

"We're inside the minimum firing distance of the point defense cannons. Now just the drones to worry about. Do something about them, while I line up the torpedo! This is tricky. The opening is just a two meters wide thermal exhaust port!" Joanna yelled over the whine of the engine, the back of her helmet rattling against the thickly armored chitinous back of his head.

Summoning all of his willpower, Ga'bjshik managed enough body control to convince two of this upper arms to release their panicked grasp of the frame. He again grabbed the handle of the aft-pointing heavy projectile cannon installed in front of him and searched the flashing and flickering sky reflected from towering metal surfaces behind their craft for a target. He didn't have to wait long. A defense drone launched from a tube they only had passed a second ago and accelerated in their direction.

With a jolting reverb that rattled his mandibles, he triggered the cannon and sent a flurry of tracer rounds at the drone. At first, it looked like it tried to elegantly dodge the glowing stream of bullets, but then it stopped and just jittered in place. This nice surprise made it a really easy target. It exploded, before it could even fire once at their fighter.

"Got one!" he yelled. For the first time in this endeavor, he thought he might actually able to survive this madness.

Before he had closed his mandibles again, two more drones burst out of the debris cloud the first drone had left behind. Then five more. Ga'bjshik swallowed, gripped the handle of the gun tighter, pressed the trigger and cursed the circumstances that had led him to end up in this situation.