Chapter One

I was in the fight of my life. Narrowly missing twisted turns that would result in our deaths. Blowing asteroids or meteors - or whatever they – milliseconds before flying through where they had been. The enemy was on me, and the enemy was fast. Firing at me with their Dracon beams, keeping me in their line of sight. Not that 'line of sight' was much of a concern in the middle of space. I mean, we could all definitely see each other out here.

I wasn't exactly sure about how we were going to get out of this.

There were just too many of them. It was like a team of shepherd dogs with one sheep. Or a goat or something. Whatever those dogs chase.

I was using every trick in the book against them, but I was still taking shots to the ship. There wasn't a large margin for damage anymore. It was fortune mostly keeping everything functional, as the system showed. I was minutes away from being out of fuel, less than half an hour away from losing life support, a shot or two from losing gravity functions, and a plethora of other things waiting to go wrong at the next shot.

The ship was majorly screwed, even if we managed to get out of this mess.

"We're like the swiss cheese of spaceships," I grunted. My whole body shifted over as I leaned into the shots I was making, my eyes glued to the screen in front of me. Which didn't actually change anything about where or how much I was shooting or where I was shooting, but I couldn't really help it. I was jazzed. The fight was on. And was I going make it out? I had no idea.

Up. Down. Left. Right. Around and to the side. Spins, stops, feins, flips. Everything in my book – which was a lot, as I'd been handling controls much like these for what was probably many months now. I couldn't get out of regular space into Z-Space with the ship as it was now, so I didn't have much to lose them on. I couldn't even try cloaking – I'd lost the ship's ability to do that minutes ago. To be honest, it hadn't helped much with these folks.

We were losing. Dangerously low on resources and the ability to shield ourselves from attack by those pursuing us. The computers were showing extensive damage and dwindling resources to run with – soon we wouldn't be able to go to Max Burn. Tobias gripped at the countertop, his bluish fingertips very noticeably blanched from the tightness of his own hold. He could have been gripping to a cliff for dear life. He was practically sweating.

And Andalites don't sweat quite as obviously as humans do with their fur, so 'practically' sweating was saying something.

‹There! There! Shoot now!› Tobias cried. His tail twitched, raised a few notches with anticipation as though something was almost – but not quite - in striking distance. His eyes were thrust forward, glued to our screen.

ZOOM. The sound of everything inside rushing as I made it in the nick of time. Still, the enemies were just behind me. And I could see more ahead.

I was surrounded. And with our one ship? It wasn't looking good – we were in a critical point of kill-or-be-killed. We didn't have anything to kill with at this point.

"Well Tobias, I don't think this is going to end well," I muttered. I grabbed the weapon controls. Fired on the lead enemy spacecraft. In return, a blow on my own.

But I wasn't giving up without a fight.

‹No! Go there.›

"Hang on, hang on, hang on. I'm working on it!"

I swiveled and re-aimed my weapons, paying close attention to the crosshairs on the screen. The taste of tension was in the air. Tobias leaned forward, training all four of his eyes on the screen. I took a breath. Fired.

Just this one shot, I pleaded. And fired.

TSEWWWW!

It was beautiful. It lanced forward straight toward the main ship. If I took it down, at least that would be something. The mission wouldn't be an entire failure – there would be some accomplishment, however remote. Progress for the person after me.

But before my shot hit, there was a shot from behind me! It struck, making an effective final blow that would destroy us entirely. Alarms began going off. Noise was everywhere, hitting me uncomprehendingly. Tobias' tail drooped, his stalk eyes relaxing. It was all over. We were immobilized. Worse than immobilized. And on the screen, flashing to tell me that awful information I was already aware of – taunting me with a pair of all-too common words since I had begun:

GAME OVER.

Tobias chuckled, silent laughter in my head. I threw back the controller and rolled back into my chair. It was so nice, after so long, to have regular chairs. I was very pleased.

‹Should we try again?›

"Nah. I'm pretty bored."

‹You're always bored.›

"I'm really bored."

I looked outside a display that showed us in the vast regions of space.

Yes, that's right. Space. We – the other Animorphs and I – were all in space. Along with some other people, but that's a long story. I'd go over all the gruesome details, but to be honest if you're not aware of that you probably should consider jumping back a few stories. And if you don't know the term 'Animorphs' I recommend dropping these details right now and going back a few stories. Like the first one.

Trust me. This one will be here later.