Riddick – Into the Blue.
Chapter one : Planetfall.
The Skiff shook around him. The instruments in front of his hands told him things he did not want to know. The engine of the small craft was tearing itself apart due to a meteor strike – the original one in a billion chances.
He wasn't even sure how much damage the ship had sustained. It could have been a speck of dust, travelling at thousands of mile per hour or something bigger that had just bounced off the plating. He hadn't felt anything as he had awoken to the warning alarms from the cockpit so he presumed and hoped it was the former.
"One lady owner my ass!" he cursed, remembering the female bounty hunter that he had killed and stolen her ship. Next time he'd steal a ship with more armour plating.
He turned his attention to the long range scanner to see if there were any planets nearby he could set down on. He found just one solar system, which was just over a light year away. The skiff shook again. It was going to be tight.
Setting the heading, he accelerated the ship to the maximum speed he thought the engine could take, and sat back for the ride.
An hour later, he entered the outer edge of the solar system. He scanned again for planets and found the fourth planet from the small star had an atmosphere which he could potentially breathe in and set a course straight for it.
As he got closer, another alarm sounded on his instrument panel. He'd programmed the skiff to alert him if it found any other ships within a light year. He studied the display. Whatever the skiff had detected, it was not a ship. It was the size of a small moon, but not spherical. The display zoomed in on the object and Riddick stared at it. He thought he was familiar with all the types of ships and space stations in use (and several which weren't officially in use), but he had never seen a station like this before.
As the skiff got closer and closer to the planet, more detail appeared on the display. The station was made up of eight long boxes, all attached at the centre, and was slowly spinning, presumably to provide cheap gravity. As he got even closer, writing started to appear on the edge of one of the boxes. The text read 'Milli-Com'.
Riddick frowned. Milli-Com.. Military Command? He was not aware of any wars in this quadrant of the galaxy. Maybe they were on manoeuvres from a nearby system.
He gave the station a long range passive scan, which told him there were possibly a thousand people living on it, and it's engine systems were strong enough for keeping it in orbit but not for interstellar travel. It was a long term installation then.
He was jolted from his thoughts by yet another alarm sounding, this time informing him of six sleek and fast ships heading straight for him. Fighter craft. Another quick scan told him they were tracking him with targeting lasers, which could only mean one thing : he wasn't welcome here.
"Dam!" he spat, wrenching the controls over to the left and heading for the planet. The skiff wasn't going to outrun anything like those fighters even in top condition, let alone in it's present state. Nor could he outgun them. One hit on the thin plating would finish him off. His only hope was to reach the atmosphere, hoping that the fighters we space based and not landing craft like the skiff.
He pushed the throttle up to the max, hearing the engine scream behind him. He caught the edge of the planets atmosphere doing an insane speed, throwing up a tail of fire behind him, which would have made the fighter's job of tracking him even easier, but he had to land.
As he got deeper into the ionosphere, the skiff began to shake uncontrollably. He had no control over his direction and could only stop the small ship from nose diving straight down into the planet below. He checked the scanner to find the fighters were not following him, but they were still tracking him with the lasers. A tiny dot appeared next to the lead fighter and sped toward the centre of the screen.
The missile tore through the upper atmosphere approaching mach 20, seeking out the fiery target below. It had little trouble chasing the crippled ship with it's heat sensors, catching it with speed to spare. The small yield nuclear warhead it carried was enough to destroy a thousand ships of the skiff's size, but it's designers had decided that overkill was the safest option in building something that was supposed to kill people.
The missile exploded with exact precision three feet from the skiff's metal skin, vaporising the ship and everything inside it.