[03] Space Battles!

[Ander]

God damn, this guy’s good.

Ander dipped and weaved and banked in all manner of evasive maneuvers, yet still the enemy TIE Fighter trailed him with relentless determination. If the thief didn’t know any better, he’d swear that this other guy held the rank of professional. The match-up between the two fell abysmally far from fair, although Ander had managed to hold his own up until this point. He got away from him once, fired on the one pilot who was perhaps worse than he, and managed to clear the way for Victoria. At the very least, the blue-eyed bandit had contributed.

“Hey back there,” Ander called over the shared frequency. “I don’t suppose you’d gimme a break and go have fun with somebody else, would ya?” He banked left as a spray of deadly neon lasers peppered the starry void.

“Not a chance,” came the reply.

Ander then jerked the throttle sharply to the right as the TIE Fighter corrected its line of aim to compensate for his movements, cutting off his escape path. Thus far, only kneejerk reactions had saved his hide, to the tune of “avoid the pretty green lights that cause lethal decompression.”

“Had to ask. Haha, why aren’t you on my team?” the thief chuckled.

“Luck of the draw. Some people have it, some people don’t. Que sera sera.”

The coolness of his tone reminded Ander of his own typical façade, playing the unshakeable guy with all the right moves. The nomad wondered if this kid was the real McCoy, or if he just pretended all the same.

“What’s your name, buddy?” Ander asked.

“Alexander Trafford, but you can call me Ace, ’cause I’m always aces.”

Ander could hear the confident grin in the youth’s voice.

“Ace, huh? Ander. I’ll be seeing you again,” the thief replied.

“Maybe if you’re lucky.”

HA! Bastard, Ander thought with a good-natured chortle. In a last ditch effort, he decelerated and sharply pulled to the right in a move reminiscent of his fateful car accident that lead to his capture and participation in this whole ordeal. He hoped to pull a U-y and blast right past Alex, giving him time to escape while his pursuer consumed precious seconds reversing his own course. His X-Wing “skidded” a bit while the thrusters attempted to maintain a stable axis, but nonetheless, his hasty gamble cashed in just enough chips. Unfortunately, Alexander once again proved his superiority in this arena of combat as he looped backwards with almost precognitive skill. He settled his TIE Fighter right into Ander’s oncoming path, obstructing the course and guaranteeing a very messy collision. However, Alex didn’t plan on getting smashed, indicative by the gentle, deadly hum of his cannons as the tips glowed their sinister green.

Ander’s eyes widened in shock, while Trafford merely grinned and winked as his fingers dropped like a guillotine on the fire controls. The thief lunged forward in a completely erroneous first reaction, uselessly bracing for impact. Fortunately, his hands still held firm grip on the throttle, and his X-Wing dipped steeply into an incline, ducking barely in the nick of time beneath the lethal execution as the lime-colored lasers sailed over his cockpit. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, thanking whatever dumb luck that had saved his life, especially after overlooking the obvious fact that spaceships could move in three dimensions.

The desert dweller scanned his console for anything useful in his somewhat futile escape attempts, finding nothing other than weapons meant for offensive attacks. His probing blue eyes eventually spied a shiny, unlabeled red button that somehow managed to remain overlooked until this point and time. Even as you grow older, you never quite lose that childlike curiosity, the innocent naïveté that always got you into more trouble than it was worth. Ander felt the sensation creeping up on him now, his will weakening against the overwhelming adolescent impulse. Of course, he quite happily relented.

“Ooh, what does this button do?”

His index unrestrainedly jabbed the button, and immediately the force of gravity slammed his body back into the seat, nearly crushing him with awesome force as the canvas of space around him turned into a blinding blur of black and white lights. It was enough to make the special effects team of The Fast and the Furious series jealous. Despite the immense pressure on his lungs, he managed out a scream that quickly turned into a crazy type of laugh, as if he rode on the world’s most extreme rollercoaster. The pure burst of speed from what now identified as his ship’s boosters drove him wild with exhilaration.

“YEEHAW!”

Eventually, the afterburners cooled off, leaving him far away from the galactic hunter Alexander.

“That… was intense…” Ander breathed, speaking to no one in particular. He checked his radar for any signs of his comrades. “Iron Maiden, Iceman, come in, this is Hotshot. You guys there?”

“Iron Maiden here. Nice to have you back on the air. We need to get this bomb dropped, ASAP!”

Ander paused a few moments, expecting a second response and receiving none. “Ice! Hey, Ice!” he called out again. “Hey, where’s Iceman?”

“I don’t know,” Victoria replied uncertainly, and maybe even a little worried. He couldn’t tell. “His signal went off the radar a couple minutes ago. I haven’t heard from him since. On the bright side, one of their guys is gone too, so we’re still even.”

Ander gave a quick shake of his head. One of their teammates went down, but that was the nature of the game. At the very least, it wasn’t him, and in the end, that’s all that mattered to the thief. “I’ll rendezvous with you in a sec for cover. I don’t know if I have a bomb on my ship or not, so it looks like you’re all we’ve got, little lady. Just tell me where to go.”

“Follow the signal on your radar! I’m taking some fire over here, so I’ll hold off until we can sync up!”

“Roger that.”

Suddenly, a wailing cut through the radio airwaves, something that sounded both bestial and melancholy.

Weird, Ander thought, ignoring it.

Instead, he zoomed off towards the Kill Cluster, blasting his way through the enemy bandits. He had to make it towards Victoria so they could finally achieve their objective and end this game, because Victoria was his only hope. He came one last ship, and the ostensibly poor piloting gave away its aviator. The thief smirked, fired off a couple of shots to throw the TIE Fighter off balance.

“Sorry sweetheart, I don’t have time to play with you,” he grinned as he brushed right by, leaving her spacecraft to rock violently in his jet-wash.

As he barreled towards Victoria, their respective radar blips growing closer and closer, the wailing cut into his headphones again, a jarring and rather annoying throaty sound.

“Hey! Who is this?” Ander finally demanded. “You have the wrong number!”

“Who are you talking to, Hotshot?” Victoria asked.

“I don’t know,” Ander replied. The wailing reverberated again, this time perhaps a little angry.

“It’s that damn Wookie! He’s sayin’ you left him behind at the hangar, ya rude ass!” the Southern voice of their commander informed.

As if on cue, an X-Wing with a giant, furry brown creature with a belt slung over its hairy torso popped into view, its fanged mouth opening wide in an angry cry. Ander looked at his radar, and the blip read: ‘Chewbacca.’ He vaguely reminded somebody telling him not to leave the “stupid wookie,” and apparently he’d forgotten in the rush to meet and greet with Victoria.

“Oh,” Ander said, audibly unremorseful. “Oops.”

Chewbacca kept yammering about something.

“Sorry buddy, I don’t know a word you’re saying,” Ander shrugged, still completely unapologetic.

“He’s tellin’ you to use that there Force, damn rookie!”

Ander’s eyebrows furrowed in irritation at the meddlesome officer. “Are you still bothering people? Go away.”

Ignoring the distractions, Hotshot finally caught up with Iron Maiden.

“Miss me?” the thief grinned.

“With baited breath,” Victoria retorted. “There’s a fighter ship obstructing the hatch where we’re supposed to drop the bomb. We need to get it clear before I have a clean shot at it. Cover me while I take it out with missiles.”

“Your wish is my command,” he joked.

Ander broke formation and dove in, taking out swarms of ships left and right while the remaining Insurgents and Conglomerates duked it out in the farther reaches of the battlefield. Much to the thief’s chagrin, even as he cleared out any dangers towards his teammate, he saw a neat line of ground-to-air defense mechanisms slide neatly out of the armored hull of the Kill Cluster. After all, why would they ever want to make it that easy on them?

“Ooh, I’ve got a nasty case of turrets over here,” Ander announced.

“I think they make a cream for that,” Victoria added perfectly.

“Anybody wanna help me fill out a prescription?” the nomad asked comically.

“I still don’t have the hatch cleared. Can you handle it?” she said.

“Oh yeah. More fun for me,” Ander assured. His voice spoke confidence, but his mind betrayed a hint of doubt. There were a lot of turrets. He shook his head and let out a breath, psyching himself up, as if he found himself in a locker room right before a big breakball game. “All right, let’s go, let’s go, A-Team baby!”

His cannons lit up the starry space as he blew off the anti-spaceship weaponry, his face drawn taut with pure concentration as his eyes locked onto the targets and his nimble fingers reacted accordingly. Suddenly, another X-Wing swooped in to assist him, a telltale howl warbling angrily over the communications device. Chewbacca let loose a salvo of laserfire, taking out the turrets with much more accuracy and much more violent rage. Ander couldn’t help but let out a laugh.

“New strategy: let the Wookie win!”

Determination still etched tightly along his features, although the thief allowed himself to have a little pleasure in the game, despite the desperate odds and the possible finality of the outcome. As much as he couldn’t understand it, some part of him was wistfully reminded of his days back in Dürren on the Sandstorm team. A little piece he had tried so hard to hide still recalled what it felt like to be part of a team, to watch somebody’s back and have them watch yours, to move in perfect harmony towards a common goal, and the security and deep camaraderie that complemented the feeling. It was like some ghost of his past, cruelly reminding him of things long since gone, and at the same time, mercifully allowing him briefly to have it one more time. As soon as the game ended, so too would this feeling, and Ander would once again shell inside the distrust of anyone but himself, as life had taught him so stringently. These were not his friends, only a means to an end.

About the same time that the Han Solo-wannabe and his faithful wookie companion decimated the Kill Cluster’s last line of defense, Victoria wrecked the obnoxious obstruction of Juno’s TIE Fighter. Ander turned his ship to check her rear, seeing two previously forgotten Kill Town competitors looming in like incensed hornets protecting their queen. They looked like they were a-chargin’ their lasers. Ander set his targeting, but quickly realized he could only possibly get one of them in time, and had to pray that the second one missed. Given the choice, the thief chose Alex’s ship, knowing he was the better shot and subsequently the biggest threat to Iron Maiden. Victoria locked on to the Kill Cluster, Alex and Kazuya locked on to Victoria, and Ander locked on to Alex. It would all come down to one single moment: who fired first. It was the tiebreaker in sudden death overtime, breakball style. This was when it counted the most, when people saw what you were truly made of, when everything was on the line and there were no second chances. Ander closed his eyes, imagining he was back on the breakball field, just hanging out with those he once called his best friends. Minutes passed in the mere span of milliseconds. Then, within the very same second, his eyes snapped back open, shattering the illusion, seeing only the here and now. He shouted with every last force of his lungs into his microphone.

“All you, Iron Maiden, make the winning shot! Score on that bitch!”