Alarms blaring, emergency lights flashing red. I ran down the hallway, explosions erupting in the background. The escape pods! I thought as I got closer. I smashed a button and as the nearest escape hatch swung open, I climbed in.

  The controls were very similar to all the other small spacecraft I’ve piloted before. With a press of a button and a flip of a lever I was off! I slowly throttled up, trying not to hit any debris from the doomed starship.

  Once I was far enough away, I used the limited controls to turn around, and get a good look at the STS Vanguard as its hull began to shatter. Then, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a metallic object. It was probably just a piece of rubble, I speculated.

After a few minutes, the large spacecraft and I were just floating there. I noticed that the Vanguard was moving, ever so slowly. It probably just had some extra momentum; after all, we were going at a pretty fast speed.

  Well, what do I do now? I asked myself, I only have about a weeks’ worth of supplies and no means of communication.

  Then I stared back at the vessel and I thought that it was moving faster - not much faster, but faster nonetheless. That’s strange. I began to think of reasons why this would be happening, and then it hit me, maybe it was caught in a planet’s gravity.

  I looked around, trying to see a planet, but all I saw was the vast emptiness of space. This planet would have to be small enough, or far enough away so that I couldn’t see it, but it would also have to be big or close enough so that its gravity could reach the big transport. The small pod didn’t have any scanners, so I wasn’t able to see if there was a nearby planet or moon.

  I decided to point towards the way the ship was being pulled and commence a short burn, and with that I began to hopefully drift toward a celestial body that I could land on and regroup.

  After a while a planet came into view. It was dark brown and had some craters, indicating a very small atmosphere, if any. It had at least one moon, which was most likely an asteroid or comet that got stuck in the planet’s gravity. The exoplanet was about a third of the size of earth, and the moon was even smaller.

  Hmm, I wonder why this planet wasn’t picked up on the Vanguard’s scanners? I wondered, unless someone – or something was trying to hide it.

  I started getting closer to the rocky planet. The pod had a heat shield, so I rotated around and began my entry. As I started to pick up speed, I watched the Vanguard begin to burn from the small window. The parachutes automatically deployed, but it didn’t slow the life pod down that much, mostly because of a lack of air. I saw the larger craft crash into the ground a mile or two away. At that moment I blacked out.

  Then, my pod made impact with the surface. Once I woke up, I quickly checked the damage to the small pod. After I made sure that all the systems were online, I got my suit on, making note of the amount of oxygen left in the tank, and with that I opened the hatch and clambered out.

  The surface of the alien planet was brown and dusty, and looked similar to what it looked like from space - hilly but mostly flat with a few small craters here and there. I consulted my suit’s built-in compass, and headed northeast toward where I thought the Vanguard had crashed. My suit had three and a half days of oxygen left, and I was going to need it.

  As I began the long trek to the wreckage, I noticed that the gravity was quite a lot weaker than Earth’s. Then, a while later, I saw something in the distance. It was the wreckage of the Vanguard!

I rushed over to it, a burned, mostly ruined vessel, three or four stories tall, still smoldering. Cautiously, I climbed into the large craft via a hole in the side. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Survivors, maybe? I checked the escape pods: Six had been launched. I warily made my way around the ship.

Then I went into the vehicle bay. I can ride the speeders! I thought, but when I looked, they had all been destroyed. The speeders had an automatic deployment system, so maybe I can find one somewhere else.

  I exited the ship and began to head northeast again. I must have been traveling for hours because when I finally saw one of the ejected speeders I had to sit down and take a break from all of that walking.

The speeder was one of the bigger ones, maybe six or seven feet long. I hopped in and sped off in search of a way off the planet. The speeder had a scanning system; not long after I saw something on the scanner, a large man-made object fifty-three miles away. The speeder had a max speed of only forty-five miles an hour, so it would take quite a while, especially with the rough terrain. I zoomed off, on course to the unusual structure.

  One and a half long hours later, a large settlement of buildings came into view. I noticed a large tower; it looked strange, menacing. I thought it looked like a security tower, like the one at the old base. That one had an auto-target mode, and would blast anything that wasn’t authorized at the base, and if this was the same type of thing, I had a feeling that I wasn’t authorized. I got off the speeder, determined to infiltrate the base.

  It was a good thing I got off when I did, because moments later, the top of the tower began to turn towards the parked speeder. Then a bright yellow beam shot from the tower and hit the speeder with a loud explosion, completely obliterating it. I stood there for a few seconds, stunned. Once my ears stopped ringing, I snuck into the settlement, unsure of what dangers lay ahead.

  There was a large wall surrounding the base, seven or eight feet tall. I wasn’t going to be able to get over it. I cautiously walked around the walls until I found a gate. The gate was shorter than the walls - they obviously weren’t trying to keep anything out. There was a large gap under the gate, big enough for me to fit through. I slipped under the gate, careful not to tear my suit.

  Inside the wall was four rectangular buildings, two of which were connected by a translucent tunnel. The buildings were a dark tannish color with no windows. One of the buildings was probably a hangar, the two buildings that were connected looked like the main living area, and of course the other building was the security tower. I went through the air lock to the connected buildings.

  Inside the building was a few chairs around a circular table. I looked at my oxygen meter and it said that there was oxygen in the building, so I took off my helmet. Once I walked in, I saw a couple of men talking to each other, their backs turned away from me. They hadn’t noticed me yet so I looked around the room, trying to find something to defend myself with.

  I saw a few metal pipes on the ground I picked one up and gripped it with both hands. I took a couple steps before one of the men noticed me. I think I wasn’t supposed to be there because he started yelling at me in a language that I didn’t understand. He and the other man started walking towards me.

  clutched the steel pipe harder and swung it at the first man. It hit him in the shoulder with bone-crunching force. He fell back in pain. The other man, a strong, athletic person, sprinted towards me. I hit him hard, and he fell to the ground. The first man started to run for a communication device. I threw the pipe at him and knocked him out.

The room had two doors. The one on the left led to the tube that connected the two buildings. The door on the right, however, I was unsure about.

  I opened the door on the right, preparing for the worst. But when I opened it, nothing happened. It was a small room with a few monitors on the walls. There was also a desk that wrapped around the room. The desk had some buttons and switches on it.

  I looked at the screens: two of them had security camera footage playing. The other one had some files on it. I looked through some of the files. ‘debug.DESKTOP-1KH16NR’ ‘MANIFEST-0000001’ ‘level.dat_old’ ‘KnownGameList.bin’. None of these was important; I needed something that could help me get off this planet.

  Then I saw something interesting: ‘LatestFlights.json’. I opened it. It required a password. Hmm what is a good password? I thought. PASSWORD. Didn’t work. 1234. Also didn’t work. I looked at the file above: ‘password.19465229’. Worth a try. I entered 19465229, and it worked! I looked at the contents of the .json file.

  Most were boring, just normal flight logs. Patrol missions, exploration missions, nothing I cared about. Then I saw one ‘Destroyed target ‘ISA-STS-247’’ ISA-STS-247? What does that mean? I asked myself.

  I thought about it some more. ISA, the I.S.A. maybe? Then STS is Space Transportation System, and for 247, the Vanguard’s id number was 247. Does this mean they purposefully destroyed the Vanguard?!

  I knew that the whole station would be on alert because of me, so I grabbed a USB drive that was sitting next to me. Old technology, but it will have to work. I moved the file to the USB and ran out of the room.

  Once I got to the air lock, I put my helmet back on. I looked around and then ran to the hangar bay. I ran through the large hangar door. Someone started yelling, probably at me. In the hangar were three small craft, most likely fighters. I found one that had an open hatch and jumped in. I powered it up, closed the hatch and began moving forward.

I throttled up and started moving fast, but I wasn’t off the ground yet. I pulled up and just barely missed the wall. “Woo Hoo!” I shouted as I left the atmosphere, glad to finally be off this planet.