Jack Strong and the Red Giant

Chapter 23: Crash

Jack scrambled out of his smoldering spaceship to a world of fire and smoke.

In the distance a group of towering volcanoes were erupting, sending columns of ash high-up into the dim, crimson sky, thin slivers of lava streaking down their slopes, a featureless desert gnawing away at their ankles. And up above all of this, hanging in the sky like murder, was the angry face of a massive red star.

He scanned the horizon looking for a sign of Vyleria and Ros.

After several frantic minutes he found their ships several miles away to the North, at the base of a canyon just to the right of the highest volcano.

Something shimmered behind him.

Jack spun around at once, expecting another attack, only to see that his spacecraft had somehow repaired itself. It now looked fresh out of the showroom. Even the scorch marks were gone.

He jumped inside to see if it still worked, hope blossoming in his chest.

It didn't so much as fly an inch. Frustrated, he stepped outside and tried to use his rocket boots, but they wouldn't work either. He looked down and saw that one of his boots was singed in a couple of places, whilst the other had most of its heel missing. He would have to walk.

He soon wished he hadn't.

It was hotter than he'd imagined, and though his spacesuit sent a wave of cool air around his body, within an hour his throat was almost as dry as the desert around him.

It was a lot farther than he'd thought too. Miles farther. But he kept on going. There was nothing else he could do...

The planet was settling into a prolonged crimson twilight when he finally reached Vyleria's and Ros' ships. He'd never walked so far in his life, not even on all those rainy camping holidays his mum and dad were always taking him on in the Lake District.

He raced over to Vyleria's ship immediately, desperately trying to get in. But there was no door, no way at all to get in. He began to ram his fists into the spacecraft, its skin wriggling under his knuckles. Still it wouldn't budge.

He had just finished clattering it with a stone when he heard something moving behind him.

He turned around at once. A grey shadow flickered for a moment in the twilight, before collapsing into his arms, inky droplets of blood dashing against the palms of his hands.

CRASH!

Jack ducked instinctively as a screeching ball of fire cut through the sky like a scalpel, slamming into the spacecraft, before arcing high-up into the air and coming back down with a great thud a few feet away.

There had been three successive waves since Jack had first bundled Ros into his spaceship, each one more numerous and more deadly than the last. It seemed like there was a giant game of pinball going on, with them in the middle. If it wasn't for their spaceship being made out of some kind of super-strong, extra-durable material, he guessed they'd be as flat as an intergalactic pancake right now.

Jack's gaze drifted from the blood-red sky to Ros. Though he was still unconscious, he had at least stopped bleeding. It was lucky that the spaceship had increased in size, albeit only on the inside, otherwise they would have practically been on top of each other. Like with his own spaceship, much of Ros' had been damaged in the attack, including crucially the engines and weapons. The food dispenser still worked however, though he hadn't had a bite to eat since they'd crashed. The rampaging meteors and Vyleria's stricken ship had taken care of that.

Jack ran a hand down what was now the viewscreen, making the spaceship more transparent, and scanned the sky for fireballs. There were none.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, he glanced at Vyleria's ship a few feet away. If only I could swap her with Ros... she would know what to do, she would get everything working again, she would get them out of here, she...