Zara's knuckles turned white as she clenched the controls, easing the spacecraft closer to the swerving enemy ahead of it. Her glittering hazel-yellow eyes focused on the bleeping screen in front of them. Her mind was blank, nothing but a perfectly trained muscle sending the appropriate signals to her hands and feet.
"A little bit more," Henrik said behind her. His voice was shaky with anticipation.
Their ship shuddered as the planet's gravity strengthened its hold; the planet, itself, grew larger and larger in frame. The enemy craft buzzed back and forth like an angry wasp.
"Get a shot and take it," Zara said. There was no shakiness to her voice. Perhaps this was why she was the pilot and Henrik the gunner. Gunners were notoriously anxious.
"Anti-measures!" Henrik cried. Zara looked up from the controls. The wasp seemed to be vomiting glowing blue balls out its ass. This was trouble.
"Hold on," she said. Zara took evasive action, thrusting the controls right. The ship shuddered as a mine erupted to their left. She pushed the controls down, and another mine turned their vision white as it burst with a sharp crack.
Zara's nerves tingled. They'd left the vaccum of deep space and were enough into the planet's atmosphere to hear sound. This was bad. In space, there was no sound. It was one of things that Zara found so peaceful about it. But she did not like getting too close to uncharted planets, certainly not close enough to hear outside sound; anything could be down there.
She swept the ship past the mines, electric blue energy exploding around them.
"Take him out," Zara said through gritted teeth.
"Got him," Henrik replied, and he mashed the trigger. Nothing.
"What's the problem?"
"I've... I've got no response. Guns're out!" Henrik cried. The ship began to shudder. Zara felt an iciness grow in the pit of her gut. She tried to pull the ship up, but the ship didn't respond. She felt her composed resolve begin to evaporate.
"No response from the controls. The planet... must have some kind of magnetic field jamming us," Zara said in a dead voice. She kept her hands on the controls, hoping that perhaps if she could keep the rudders steady they might have a chance at not being obliterated when they hit the surface. It was a small hope. This was exactly why she didn't get close to uncharted planets.
Then the windshield filled up with green, quickly approaching land, and the world exploded around them.
***
Zara's eyes fluttered open. Her mouth tasted of smoke and blood. The cockpit reeked of sour vomit. She twisted in her seat, checked on Henrik behind her. The front of his shirt was splattered with orange slop- that explained the vomit smell, at least.
"Henrik," she said. His eyelids twitched. His lips puttered.
"Z... Zara?" he said in a weak voice. "We're not dead?"
A sound, a rustle of jungle foliage, caught Zara's attention. Her mind reeled. She thought about ship they had been following and its cargo: Karh Blade, the most sought bounty this side of the Asimov quadrant. Her eyes went to the blaster strapped in her shoulder holster.
"Not yet," she said. She unbuckled herself out of the pilot's chair and helped Henrik out of his own; she noticed the back of her seat had been coated with a healthy helping of Henrik's breakfast.
"None of that shit better be in my hair," she said, nodding towards the vomit. She kicked open the hatch.
"Why do you think we wear helmets?" Henrik responded. Zara looped an arm under his armpit and pulled him out of the wreckage.
She took a moment to take in their surroundings as Henrik struggled to find his balance. Thick, dark jungle loomed in lush greens and browns. Zara was reminded of the long extinct rainforests of Earth that she had studied as a girl. She thought of the sound she had heard, a sound like someone or something moving through the jungle.
And then Karh Blade appeared from the shadows of a large, yellowish fern, and his blaster erupted with a fiery red laser.
"Down!" Zara cried and pushed Henrik to the ground while simultaneously unholstering her weapon. They disappeared over the side of the wreckage. Blade's shot burned a scorching scar into the metal carcass of the ship at their backs. It was just her luck that that starshitter, Blade, would have survived.
"I didn't see Terk," Henrik said. His eyes were wide and red. He looked scared out of his wits, all confidence gone now that he was not behind a set of mega-blasters. But he had a point. No doubt, Terk, Blade's infernal side kick, was flanking them while Blade caused a distraction from the front.
"That's because I'm right here," as if reading Zara's thoughts, a throaty, shrill voice said to her right. A hand with a blaster extended from behind a gnarled tree. Zara cursed her luck. If only Henrik had made his observation a half second earlier, she might have had time to think of something.
"Throw it down," Terk said, taking a step from behind the trunk of the tree. His beady eyes gleamed with delight. His lips were stretched back, revealing a set of crooked teeth in a wide, twisted grin. Zara sighed and dropped her blaster. To think it all would end like this, at the hands of a bounty and his flabby, fish-faced flunky.
"It seems the hunters have become the hu-," Terk was saying, and then suddenly he wasn't. As if one of the gods had grown tired of the cliché Terk was about to utter and wanted to nip it in the bud, his words turned into a high-pitched shriek, and it took Zara's mind a moment to catch up to what her eyes were seeing.
A roar and an explosion of foliage, and then Terk was flailing within a set of giant, razor teeth. He was torn from the ground, his feet kicking, and blood spurted from the mouth of the creature that had clamped him in its jaws. It was a tall, monstrous lizard, black eyes mounted on the side of a long scaly head. Dark, wet liquid dripped from nose holes at the end of a curving snout. The lizard shook its head, and Zara heard the distinct sound of bones cracking and snapping. Shreds of meat clung to the monster's teeth. Something dropped from its mouth and rolled between Zara's scuffed boots: Terk's head, his mouth gaping open in a horrible, silent scream.
Zara grabbed her blaster and pulled Henrik and yelled, "Run!"
