Flame Rider I: Rise of a Warrior

Chapter 6: Born for Danger

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” 

― Primo Levi

Coralak, 12/05/2998

Blaze’s POV

I slept while the fighter I had stolen flew me to where ever it was programmed to go. I had felt a strange tingling when the radiation had rushed over me. I didn’t know what it meant, but it had given me the energy I needed to escape Reqziga. Once out of real space, the fighter was able to head to its target at teeth rattling speed.

“Exiting hyperspace,” blurted the ship’s computer. “Disengaging zero-gravity drive. Disengaging auto-pilot, manual control engaged.”

I grabbed the joystick, gently pulling back on it, as the fighter re-entered real space with a jerk. I shook my head, trying to clear the headache that had formed with re-entry. I smoothly flew the fighter towards a green and blue planet.

‘Why would Death send me here?’

This was Coralak, the home of the Imperial Earth Fleet shipyards. I was still trying to figure out why Death would send me here, when the disk shaped body of a warship slide out of the docks. I recognised this ship as the Russ/Ameri Red Shadow class assault frigate. This was now an Earth Alliance world now.

I scanned for any other craft I could recognise. I soon spotted four Deakal made craft types; the Dorrailian class battleship, the Pluto class light corvette, the Hydro class battleship, and the Orrin class destroyer. Others that I could not see or identify were; the Calvin class cruiser, Oysadin class battleships, and the Voyager class fleet carriers of the Arlenain shipyards at Olari, Three versions of the Orca class corvettes, a Larfek class battleship, and a Pharaoh’s class frigate of the Relofak shipyards were also present.

The last ship I saw, before entering the planet’s atmosphere, was the pride of the Freedom Earth Alliance Armada. The Mercury class ‘Freedom Fighter’ Galactic Warship was the largest ship produced by the Russ/Ameri space docks, had irony in its name. Named after the smallest planet in the Earth System, this capital ship was covered in turbo-cannons, torpedo launchers, and any other weapon a commander could want for orbital ship-to-ship combat. This warship took three years to build, built on Earth shortly after the Earth system had become the centre of unrest in the Milky Way.

After realising what their ‘royal’ leader was doing, a small group of the government and military broke away from the Imperial throne. These men and women started to plant the seeds of rebellion in the Earth system. Once these planets had broken free, the rebellion moved its way throughout the rest of the Earth Empire, crushing it from within, in a war everyone referred to as the ‘Galactic Colonial War’.

I orientated the fighter towards the largest spaceport, something deep within me saying that was where Death wanted me to go. As I approached the landing platforms at one of the casinos that scattered the city, the fighter’s controls seized up, as the fighter’s engines gave out.

I saw the spaceport’s landing field, so I gave the joystick a slight nudge in that direction. But the fighter’s controls didn’t respond, instead the fighter’s engines turned on, and I felt the fighter begin an unexpected climb. As I started to panicked, I heard a noise coming from the headset in front of me. I picked it up and put it on.

“…control to unidentified craft, please respond,” said a clam voice. “Traffic control to unidentified craft, please respond.”

“This is Shadow Hunter,” I responded, thinking quickly.