"Fugitive: The Uxel Herum Saga" by Alain Gomez (Novelette)

Genre:  Young Adult Science Fiction

Type of Short Story: Novelette

Summary: Book 2 of the Uxel Herum Saga

Fearing retribution, Uxel Herum flees Gemshorn. Her escape is short lived when her ship malfunctions and she crashes to the surface of a neighboring planet, leaving her completely stranded.

While trying to explore her new surroundings Uxel is captured by the natives who are as formidable as they are fearsome. Their leader offers Uxel a chance to prove her skills, provided Uxel has any skills worth proving...

Excerpt:

Everything was flashing red. Not good. Uxel Herum scrambled from panel to panel trying to assess all the damages to her ship but it was becoming more and more difficult to focus with all the alarms blaring. What could have possibly happened? Her ship, though old, had been in perfect working condition when she left Gemshorn.

It must have been those ramea…

She had left her ship unattended for several months. Who knows what they could have done in her absence? Scavenge for parts? Chew on the wires? Whatever it was that they did to foreign vessels when no one was watching. With the accidental death of her teacher she had been too frantic to check her systems before take off. Her survival instincts had overridden everything else and now she was paying the price.

More alarms went off. The fuel systems were malfunctioning, light speed was out of the question, and her engines had just decided to fizzle out. Her ship began to careen toward a large green planet, caught in its gravitational pull. There was nothing Uxel could do to stop the crash but she did have the presence of mind to pull up her star chart. Kortholt. The planet was Kortholt. And it appeared to be inhabited and had a non-toxic atmosphere.

Well, there could be worse places to crash.

She gripped the controls of her ship as gravity pulled the ship even harder. At least she still had maneuvering control. She flipped a few switches to direct every bit of her remaining power to her forward energy shields. The sharp angle of her decent made the ship’s hull glow. More alarms went off but with no engines there was nothing she could do until she broke through to the atmosphere.

‘Vert!

Buy this story on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.