Starsnatcher - Trapped In An Alien World [COMPLETE]

Chapter 7.2

Day 245 (Shadowmoon days)

Day 62 (Earth days)

Neutron stars are weird things, even compared to what I usually deal with. Their gravity is so huge that they crush any nearby matter into neutrons. They rotate around their axis several thousand times per second.

Lich in particular is a so-called pulsar. I like to call pulsars "cosmic disco balls" as they rotate and continuously churn out radiation, very deadly radiation. For this reason, Mustafa ordered us to always fly in the shadow of one of Lich's three planets when coming closer.

It's been a long while since I gave a lecture about astronomy stuff, hasn't it? Since I don't have Wikipedia in front of me at the moment, for obvious reasons, I'll tell you from memory everything I remember about Lich.

Lich got discovered by a Polish astronomer in 1990. It's heavier than the Sun, but with its radius of ten kilometers, it has a smaller surface area than Los Angeles. It houses three exoplanets, the first discovered by mankind. The farthest is called Phobetor, the second-farthest is Poltergeist while the farthest is called Draugr and this was incidentally the one Mustafa wanted us to go to.

We traveled through wormhole after wormhole to get here.

We had passed Phobetor and we had passed Poltergeist. Soon, Draugr made itself visible on our camera screen. Draugr was a tiny planet, only twice as massive as our moon, but still significantly heavier than Pluto. One side of it was craterless and white while the other side of it was covered in eternal darkness. It orbited so close to its pulsar that its gravity stopped Draugr's rotation, meaning that one side of it faced its parent star forever.

Our target was near the twilight zone, just barely outside of the deadly pulsar radiation's range. The planet had one small satellite - either an asteroid or an artificial structure - which provided us with important shadow. Shadow we could use to orbit Dragr without exposing us to the pulsar's deadly radiation.

"Pilot, scan for threats!" Helix transmitted.

Tesla showed the tactical displays. "No threats detected, Captain!"

A cloud of dots accompanied us. They represented the various ships Mustafa sent us as a backup. One of them contained the mysterious ally that Mustafa still hadn't informed me about. Starsnatcher itself was notably absent, given the security measures Fountainhead took against it. It remained well outside Phobetor and ceased communication with us.

The screen contained no space structure we could not identify as part of our side. We even exposed several of our ships to the lethal radiation just to be sure.

I checked the Gauss gun and squirt pistoles around my belt; replacements printed after I lost the originals to Cherub. Then, I checked our 3D display again. Was it just me or did it lack some dots I saw last time? I looked closer and counted the ships, only to find one dot disappear right before our eyes.

"Helix, what's happening?" I ask.

"Well, what do you think happens?" Helix answered. "Our ships get wrecked. One after the other. Our cameras record plasma beams from an unknown source."

Tesla stood in the same posture as during the battle around Eden; Body motionless, tentacles wrapped around it, weak blinking. It didn't take a genius to guess what happened next. They increased the acceleration as far as they could survive. Helix sank into the safety of their airbag while I felt a mild strain in my legs.

Through my bones and my enhanced inner ear structure, my singularity stone gave me a precise sense of acceleration. Tesla alternated between accelerations as low as one-point four gees and as high as six gees, with two-point eight to four-point six being their preferred range.