Tander Ryder was worried. And scared. The reverberations from the bombing even reached his position in New Zoran City, the floating city far above the once habitable planet, Zoran. He grabbed the nearby railing as another explosion threatened to shake him to the floor. He glanced sideways at Andromeda, his wife, and Gemini, his  8-year-old daughter, as they hugged each other, terrified.

We should have left when we had the chance. Evacuations of the city had begun 2 hours before the bombing when the city officials had lost all hope of saving it. Tander had told Andromeda it was nothing, a false alarm like every other time. Except this time it wasn’t. The attack had come, and it might now be too late to evacuate. But he would find a way to get his family to safety.

“Quickly,” he said, urging his family forward. “We need to hurry to catch a shuttle.”

“I’m tired,” Gemini said.

“I told you we should have left sooner,” Andromeda added, her frown stressing her frustration.

Chastised, Tander refused to argue the point. They had to hurry. “We’re leaving now.”

New Zoran City had twelve transport platforms scattered around its perimeter. Unfortunately for Tander and his family, they didn’t live near any of them, and the attack had already knocked out the power supply to the city’s transportation network. They had to walk, or in this case run, to reach the nearest platform to their home. But the elevators still operated. They had their own emergency power supply because of its vital importance to the city.

Tander reached the nearest elevator to their home, gasping for air with his family in a similar state of exertion. He pressed the button to call the capsule. It arrived a minute later, the doors opening and they entered. Tander pressed the button for the platform level, and the doors closed. With a jolt, the elevator moved with a sensation of rising.

Taking a glimpse at his family, he saw fear. He didn’t blame them.

The elevator suddenly jolted, the light flickered, and the elevator stopped.

Gemini screamed.

“It’s okay,” Tander said to calm her, but the issue worried him too. It shouldn’t have been possible. “They will fix it in a moment.” He glanced at Andromeda.

Before anyone could say another word, the elevator started again. Not realizing that he was holding his breath, Tander breathed out and gulped another lungful of air. The others did the same.

“See. I told you they would fix it,” he said, although he wasn’t sure that he believed his own words.

A few moments later. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Once he checked they were on the right level, Tander ushered the others out and pointed towards the direction of the platform. “Quick.”

“Again?” Gemini questioned. “My legs are tired.”

“You can rest when we get onto the shuttle,” Andromeda said as she grabbed her hand and started pulling Gemini along. Reluctantly, Gemini relinquished her resistance.

Tander breathed in gulping gasps as he urged the others forward. They rounded the last corner to the platform entrance and stopped.

A tremendous roar blasted at them as they watched the last shuttle on the platform take off, leaving Tander watching in despair.

Andromeda stared with panic at the sight and then at him, tears threatening to cascade from her eyes. “Now what?”

Suddenly, the shuttle flared into a brilliant light and then disintegrated, debris radiating from it as it exploded. Tander gaped at the destruction, horrified by the thought that they should have been on that shuttle and would now be dead, him and his family. A cold sweat beaded all over his body. Both Andromeda and Gemini screamed and clung to each other for mutual support.

“Take cover,” Tander shouted. He grabbed the two and pulled them back around the corner for protection as the shrapnel from the destroyed craft hit the city and peppered the inside of the transport platform. He could only imagine the number of personnel who died as they fled the deck to take shelter.

Boarding a shuttle was now out of the question. Even if there were a shuttle and they could get on it, it would likely be destroyed as soon as it took off, just like the last one. As much as Tander dreaded using them, their only option for evacuating the city now was the emergency escape pods to descend to the planet’s surface and hope someone would eventually rescue them.

He looked at Andromeda and Gemini, both terrified. “We need to find some escape pods.”

“What?” Andromeda stared at him. Her eyes bulged. “We can’t survive on Zoran.”

“You can for a time.” Tander appreciated his wife’s reluctance. Life would be unpleasant, to say the least, on the planet. “The pods have survival kits for two weeks. And the surface supports some life.”

Andromeda stared at him as if she didn’t believe him, but said nothing.

“We have very little choice.”

Another gigantic explosion rocked the city somewhere, causing it to tilt momentarily before it leveled itself again with the anti-gravity matrix generators.

Andromeda’s shoulders slumped. “Where are they then?”

“We will need to check. Follow me.”

“Again?” Gemini said, her face covered in misery.

Tander led his family to a nearby information kiosk and searched for the emergency escape pod locations. “There should be a launch station just along this corridor a bit and to the left.”

As he led his family to their destination, Tander wondered how they might get rescued once they were on the planet. Andromeda was right. You can only survive for so long on Zoran in its depleted and polluted state. Their only hope was trusting the government to pick up its citizens. He hoped it wasn’t wishful thinking.

They rounded the last corner and entered the emergency response station where the escape pods were housed. An officer stood in a booth at the entrance, his appearance halfway between boredom and fear. The man looked at Tander and his family with suspicion when they approached him.

Tander said, “Can we use three escape pods? The last shuttle just left, but it exploded.”

“I know,” the officer said. “I saw it on the holo-link.” He stared at Tander, and then at Andromeda and Gemini. “I only have two left.”

At first, his comment confused Tander, but the implications of his words hit home as they seeped into his understanding. “Oh.” Tander glanced at his family as he considered his options. He had none when he thought about it. Andromeda and Gemini would obviously use the two escape pods. They could try at another station, but by the time they reached it, they might be too late. The city might be destroyed since the next station was quite a distance from where they were and they would have to travel there on foot. “You two have to go,” he said to Andromeda.

Fear radiated from Andromeda’s eyes. “What about you! What will happen to you? How will we survive?”

Tander looked down at Gemini, who reflected her mother’s fear with terror. She started crying.

“It’s the only way. I’ll survive somehow and come and find you when all this is over. I promise.”

Andromeda’s protests lasted another few seconds before she relented at the realization that someone else might come and take the pods if they didn’t when he mentioned it. Then no one would leave the station, which would devastate him and distract him from what he now knew he had to do. Finally she nodded, but rushed towards Tander to hug him. He hugged her, but eventually had to peel her off.

“You had better go,” he said. He squatted to Gemini’s level. “Be a brave girl and look after Mommy.”

Gemini nodded, but tears ran down her face as she focused on Andromeda for direction.

“You going to use them or not?” The officer said, a hint of annoyance in his tone.

Tander glared at him. “Of course.” He returned to Andromeda. “Love you. I’ll come for you before you know it.” They kissed, but he had to tear Andromeda away from him again.

The officer led Andromeda and Gemini to the pods and helped them step into them, sealing both in afterwards.

Tander lingered behind him and watched.

When everything was ready, the officer returned to his booth, keyed instructions into the terminal inside, and the pods shot out into space.

Tander watched the pods disappear, wondering if he would ever see his family again. He stood where he was long after Andromeda and Gemini had disappeared in the emergency pods headed for the surface of the planet below them. He was in a predicament. On the one hand, Tander could find somewhere to hide, but he felt that was cowardly. On the other hand, he could reveal his secret by volunteering to help with the defense of the city. They had a much better chance of surviving if he helped, but he risked being ostracized by his society for his unusual, frowned upon talent. Could his contribution to the defense overcome any prejudice he and his family would face afterwards? Tander feared that if he did nothing he would die anyway and no one would bother looking for his family afterwards. He sighed, knowing he had no choice, so Tander headed for the city defense command center to offer his services.

A hive of activity confronted Tander as he entered the enormous volume that housed the screens and personnel coordinating the city’s defense. No one turned in his direction to challenge his trespass into their secure space, everyone being too busy concentrating on the events that were happening beyond the city limits as battleships pummeled the city’s defenses, the city’s defending gun turrets firing back at them, some energy bolts hitting the mark and causing damage or destruction to the enemy’s ships, but most missing altogether, ineffectively shooting out into the vastness of space.

The commander stood in the room’s rear, where the overhead screens, which provided a panoramic view of the battle, offered the greatest view of the information depicting the city’s defense’s success or failure in protecting it from the enemy without excessive head movement to absorb it. Tander’s motion as he strode towards him distracted the commander from his observation. The commander rotated his head to face Tander, his expression revealing annoyance and inquisitiveness simultaneously. “What can I do for you, Mr. Ryder?”

“I’ve come to volunteer my services.” Tander resisted the urge to look elsewhere, feeling intimidated by the commander’s stare.

After several seconds, the commander huffed. “And what can you possibly do?”

“I can man a gun turret.”

“Do you even have experience in firing one?”

“I trained on it in my city defense service draft.”

“And did they instill the need to stand at attention and address me as Sir during your time of service?”

Tander felt his temperature rise. He brought himself to attention, saluted and said, “Sir!”

Seeming satisfied, the commander said, “Report to the officer at the desk over there.” He pointed to the room’s far side, where an officer sat watching the exchange between Tander and the commander.

“Sir!” Tander repeated and strode to the man. The officer’s eyes followed his progress all the way until Tander stood in front of him.

To avoid any further embarrassment for not observing protocol, Tander came to attention and saluted the officer. “Reporting for duty, sir.” He felt humiliated but decided not to aggravate the situation any more than necessary.

The officer sighed. He gave a quick glance at the commander before drawing his eyes back to Tander. “At ease, Ryder.”

Tander relaxed, but his eyes occasionally glanced at the commander as he continued standing in front of the officer.

“I see from your record that you have extensive gun turret experience,” the officer said as he stared at the screen before looking up at Tander.

“I had a couple of practice sessions.”

The officer frowned. He continued staring at Tander before redirecting his eyes back to the screen. “Do you know where Turret 27E256 is?”

Tander raised an eyebrow in recognition. “Yes. I trained on it.”

“Well, go and man it. It’s unused.”

“Yes, sir,” Tander said as he drew himself to attention again and saluted.

Before the officer could reply, Tander turned and hurried from the command center. He knew he should have waited for the officer to dismiss him, but he wanted to escape the commander’s notice without further complications.

Most of the gun turrets were remotely controlled from a central control console deep in the city’s heart, where no one could destroy it until the end, if that ever happened. But the turret assigned to Tander was old, one Tander had to operate at the turret panel itself. That was why it currently sat idle. No one wanted to put their life in such danger unless absolutely necessary. Tander laughed. So he was expendable. Turret 27E256 was located centrally in the city’s defense zone, a place the enemy would put at the top of their list to disable and destroy. It amazed him it hadn’t been destroyed already. That was the turtle they assigned to him, so he hurried to it.

Ten minutes later, Tander sat strapped in the gyrating control seat of Turret 27E256, bringing the controls up into operational mode. The screen flickered on a few seconds later. It was split into two sections. One gave a visual representation of the field of view directly in front of the gun. The other gave the same view but a radar/lidar rendition. This gave Tander better targeting information at greater distances, especially when the enemy used optical cloaking technology.

However, Tander knew he needed neither of the displays before him to aim at his target; a secret he had religiously hidden from everyone, including his family. But with the survival of Zoran City at stake, Tander had no choice but to use his covert talent to help save it from destruction.

With the turret now functional, Tander grabbed the joystick in one hand, the weapons firing controls in the other, relaxed, and closed his eyes. The field of view his eyes would normally see appeared in his mind’s eye. Now he saw each ship with a clarity no instrument could replicate.

Enemy attack fighters zipped in all directions as they took potshots at the city when they zoomed within range before receding back out of normal range for the city’s weapons systems. Tander wasn’t interested in them. He searched for the mother-ship, their home base. Concentrating on what he saw, he rotated the turret over its full range until he found his goal. “Got you,” he said to himself when he found it. It sat a safe distance out of the normal range for personnel at the gunnery controls. Tander’s skills allowed him to sustain a tighter focus on his target, effectively giving him a greater range in the vacuum of space, and the mother-ship was within his range.

He locked his targeting controls onto the ship, keeping the bullseye steady as he started firing his maser cannon at the enemy base. The force field around the ship flared as the maser fire hit its mark. Tander continued firing until the shield fell and the maser hit the ship’s hull.

Switching to the rail gun, he fired kinetic missiles at the ship, one after the other until ten had left his gun. Seconds later, the hull began to break up. Given the brief interval, the ship’s navigators had no time to maneuver it away to escape the barrage. Tander counted eight hits before the ship disintegrated.

The enemy fighters stopped fighting and retreated as they realized their only means of escaping the victim of the city had just been destroyed. They looked confused as Tander watched them buzz in random directions like bees suddenly unable to find their hive.

“Turret 27E256, was that you?” Tander heard over the military communication system.

Tander didn’t want to acknowledge the question, but he had no choice. The answer was obvious to anyone keeping track of events. “Yes, it was.”

“How? No one can aim that accurately.”

“Luck.” Tander knew his answer wouldn’t be believed, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before the commander considered the impossibility of Tander’s achievement and realized what Tander was.

As Tander waited for any further communication from the commander, the fighters stopped moving relative to the city. He couldn’t hear whether they spoke with the city about terms of surrender. But he assumed negotiations were in progress since the city had also stopped firing on them. The fighter craft started filing towards the city transport platforms soon afterwards.

Operating the turret was no longer necessary, so Tander shutdown the system and unstrapped from the seat.

“Report to me immediately, Mr. Ryder,” the commander said over the communication unit.

With a sigh, Tander responded, “Yes, sir.” And now the shit hits the fan, he thought.

Half an hour later, Tander stood in front of the commander’s desk in his office, standing at attention. He didn’t quite know why he still obeyed military convention, since the fighting had stopped and he could return to being a civilian again. But he decided he shouldn’t irritate the commander any more than he already had.

The commander stared at him. Eventually, he broke the silence. “You’re an Enforcer, aren’t you?”

Gulping, Tander replied, “ex-Enforcer. I retired when I settled down with my family.”

As if the commander were even further annoyed with Tander, he waved an angry flutter of his hand at him. “Stop that.”

Tander frowned. “Sir?”

“You don’t have to follow protocol any more.”

“Oh.” Tander relaxed but remained standing, as much because any chair other than the commander’s was absent from the commander’s office as anything else.

“You should have said something.”

“You know how we are ostracized.”

“You still should have advised our command. We could have used you earlier.”

“I was busy trying to save my family. Speaking of which, could I borrow one of those fighter ships and go pick them up from Zoran? We had to use escape pods for them.”

The commander raised his brow. “You can fly them?”

“I can fly most spacecraft.”

With a shooing motion, the commander said, “Go. I don’t want to see you again.”

“Will you keep my secret, sir?”

“Yes, but we will officially note it in a classified file in case we need to call on your services again.”

Tander’s shoulders slumped. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Without and further comment, he walked out and headed for the nearest transport platform, where he commandeered a fighter craft and headed for the planet in search of his family, and hopefully a return to a peaceful life.

The End.