When the altitude readout dropped below a thousand, Damian yanked on a switch and the ship changed direction, swinging from a vertical drop to a horizontal orientation. Nick stopped breathing for a moment, and the royals were completely flattened.

The cameras switched back on, showing a bright blue sky and rolling green hills in front. In back, the same hills and green sky were slightly marred by the four ships, like thumbtacks of death, pulling out of their own drops and following them.

One of the ships wavered. Perhaps the pilot didn’t handle the g-forces well. Triskar focused his fire on them, pounding them with blasts that left an afterimage in Nick’s eyes, until he carved a long gash through one wing. The ship, now almost completely out of control, fell away, and Nick didn’t see it land. Now only three ships remained, the big one in the lead.

“We need to get away from them fast,” Triskar said. “Batteries are at twenty-two percent.”

“I’m open to suggestions.” Damian continued the same weaving he had done in space, this time against the backdrop of the nice, sunny day. It was not fitting.

“Highnesses, any ideas?” Damian asked.

Et looked up from where he was half-crouching on the floor. “We need to get to Extor,” he said. 

“Thirty miles that direction.” It would have been more impactful if Damian had pointed, but given the likelihood that removing his hands from the controls would cause them to crash and die a fiery death, Nick could accept the stylistic failing.

“They’re getting wise to my shooting,” Triskar said. “Dodging more. And the battery’s still dying. Eighteen percent and dropping.”

“Do we have any solid ordinance?” Damian asked.

“Most of it’s not rated for gravity,” Triskar replied. “They’ll sink like rocks if we launch them now.”

“Hmm.” Damian fell silent for a moment. Then, “Do it.”

“What?”

“Prepare the solid ordinance,” Damian said. “Do a few practice shots. Try to see how quickly they fall.”

“They would have to be right on top of us for me to hit anything,” Triskar said.

“I can manage that,” Damian said. He pulled up, and the ship started to slow.

“What are you doing?” Et demanded, wide-eyed.

“Wait…” Nick said, watching. 

Damian flew more cautiously, banking slowly, gradually dropping in altitude. Combined with Triskar’s wild shots with the ship’s missiles, they looked for all the world like a ship out of battery back-ups, trying to get by with just their primary energy core. 

“Transfer battery power to the shields,” Damian said. Triskar nodded not looking up from the screen in front of him, where one of his practice volleys shot from the missile bay and fell to the ground. 

The Stargazer’s shields took a hit, lighting up the rear view in a wash of white light. Then another. Something on the console started beeping. Damain kept flying slowly, staying out of the worst of the laser fire. The enemy ships got closer, started firing more boldly. The two smaller ships swung around to the left and right, so they could come at the Stargazer from three sides.

“Wait until they’re close,” Damian said. “This trick won’t work twice.”

Triskar nodded. The bridge collectively held its breath as the enemy ships got closer. They were a hundred feet away, filling the sky with laser fire. Damian made a slow, awkward attempt at breaking out of their formation. Eighty feet. The shots were coming in quick. Fifty feet. There was no point in dodging anymore. Every blast the enemy let lose slammed into the Stargazer’s shields, fizzling to nothing inches from the hull, but stealing away a part of their precious energy.

The ship started to shake at forty feet. At this distance, it was hard for the enemy ships to fly in formation. One of them shifted, overcorrected, and ended up drifting closer to the Stargazer. It was their last mistake.

“Now,” Damian said, voice cold as ice. He brought the ship closer.

Triskar released two missiles, like small black darts. They leaped the gap between the ships, the first destroying itself on the enemy ship’s shield, overloading the small fighter’s system. The second missile hit, and a flower of fire replaced the ship in the sky.

Nick cheered, but they weren’t done. Damian lurched the ship in the opposite direction, all subtlety gone. The ship was too far away on Triskar’s first shot; the missile fell, just barely missing the enemy, exploding somewhere in the forest below. The second and third shots hit, repeating the destruction of the first enemy ship.

At this point, the buzz of enemy fire against the shields was near constant. The lead ship was hammering the Stargazer before it even realized what had happened to its allies. Damian pulled up, bleeding momentum as the ship’s nose tilted toward the sky. The royals started sliding backwards on the floor. The ship almost turned all the way over and flew upside down;  Nick could feel the confusing sensation of being in the grip of two gravities at once. 

Triskar, somehow, managed to maintain his focus as the ship tilted. He let loose a half a dozen missiles as the lead ship got close. Nick watched their progress on the screen as an alarm blared. The buzzing of the shields stopped, and the whole ship lurched. 

The last enemy ship’s explosion was turned into an orange blur by the Stargazer’s violent shaking. Nick held on for dear life. Debris of the enemy fell to the ground, but they weren’t safe yet.

Damian wrestled the Stargazer right side up, and the gravities miraculously snapped back into place. They were upright for a bare moment before the green fingers of the tallest trees appeared on the screen. The ship shook again, less forcefully, and continued to fall. 

Violent shakes were replaced with violent bursts. The Stargazer crashed through the forest, one crash and jolt after another, until it came to an end with one last thud. Nick was thrown to the ground. He tasted the metal of the floor and felt someone’s knee, possibly Asl’s, digging into his stomach.

“What happened?” Nick asked as he got on all fours.

Damian stared at the console in front of him. The screen was showing static. He took a deep breath, then another.

“We crashed.”