Places Among The Stars

Found

Robin woke up after what felt like only a couple of hours of sleep to the sound of the ship console beeping loudly and incessantly.

Robin groaned softly as he freed himself from his bed and pushed off of the mattress to fly over to the console to silence it.

"The hell?" Robin whispered in confusion as he read the results appearing on the screen from his earlier scan for life, surprised to already find a planet nearby.

"Guys, I found something!" Robin yelled to the others over his shoulder as he pushed away from the console to look out the window.

"What?" Felix mumbled blearily as he joined Robin at the window, becoming instantly alert when he saw the large lavender planet with white clouds spiraling around it in close proximity of the ship.

"Oh that's so cool." Mark whispered in awe as he watched the planet steadily grow closer to them.

Everything looked so beautiful.

Until they got too close.

Ships were firing blue and red lasers at each other around the planet, some ships exploding into balls of fire much to the crew's horror.

Some ships were jet shaped and silver lined with blue that had holographic screens like the ones the crew had in their helmets, while others were red accented with blood red that had the same shape, only much bigger.

"We need to get the hell out of here now!" Felix declared as he moved over to the console.

Just as the ship started to retreat from the battle, a stray shot hit one of their engines and damaged their autopilot control, as well as knocked out their communications with Micheal.

"Damnit!" Felix cursed as he smacked the console in frustration, flashing red lights flashing and alarms blaring around him.

"Move over, I know how to fly this." Mark told Felix, buckling into Felix's seat while the others found their own seat.

"Everyone hold on, this is gonna he one hell of a ride!" Mark exclaimed as the ship did a barrel roll to avoid another hit before taking off away from the battle.

"They're following us!" Ethan cried frantically, glancing out the window to see a blank with red ship peel away from formation towards them.

"What about the engine?!" Phil spoke up worriedly.

"I can't fix that and fly!" Mark pointed out as a red laser breezed by the window.

"How many engines do we have?" Felix interjected.

"We have four thrusters, well right now we have three." Mark stated as the ship did a dive to avoid more shots.

"Do we have any on board weapons we can use?!" Felix shouted over at Sean.

"The only things we have are the propulsion guys and a couple of laser guns, but nothing equipped for shooting down a ship!" Sean answered, griping his arm rest tightly.

Dan remained silent as he curled in on himself, panicking as everyone shouted over the loud explosions echoing around them.

Phil noticed Dan and unbuckled from his seat to go over to him, a reassuring smile in his face despite the own suffocating fear he was feeling.

He was almost to Dan when a shot burst through the window, causing everything not strapped down to get sucked out into space.

Including Phil.

"NO!" Dan screamed as he reached for him, chocolate brown eyes wide in shock and fear as he watched his best friend get torn away from him.

"Masks on!" Felix directed, activating his quickly.