Chapter One of a oddly titled story (I called it Space Sty) I wrote quite some time ago, and (true to character) did not ever finish. 

‘Not a bad count’, Drac thought as his lasers struck and destroyed yet another Fart Terrorpod.  ‘I've nailed six and my shield can still handle one more direct hit before I lose it.’  It had always been Drac's style to look at the positive side of everything.  It kept him focussed.  In his current situation it was a definite advantage to think this way.  His fuel tanks were down to sweet FA (Fume Activation, often referred to as sweet due to the sugary aroma of Spanda, the fuel used by the starships in the Elite Imperial Military Organization), and his hyperdrive had been knocked out of commission hours ago.  He was 6,000 Km over the surface of the planet Grime, and its gravity field was pulling him down.  He was about to be blasted by a Fart Terrorpod and his shields were almost gone. 

Back in the Academy, he had been given a PMAFR (Positive Mental Attitude Factor Rating) of 25, the highest ever recorded by the instruments used to record such things.  In fact, he showed a remarkable resistance to other people's NMAFRs (Negative Mental Attitude Factor Ratings).  High NMAFRs usually caused even those persons with very high PMAFRs to have their ratings temporarily decreased. 

A not-unexpected blast from the rear shook his Foerd and caused a small light on Drac's dashscreen to begin flashing.  The small light indicated the shield was history.  The next direct hit would blow him to small fragment-like pieces, - some flesh-coloured - most Foerd-coloured.  Drac pulled a hard left on the steering mechanism and heeled the Foerd around to face the new attacker. 

"Right on!"  He exclaimed.  "I thought there was only one Fart left, but there's a whole splifload!"

Indeed, the one Terrorpod he had already been aware of before turning was now quite close, and another nine Terrorpods were bearing down from a slightly higher altitude than Drac's own.  He adjusted quickly and fired twice at the group of nine, and managed to blow one out of the sky and graze the closest one’s front end, rendering it without fire power.  Drac shook his head quickly with a fleeting thought about Fartarian ship designers deciding making Terrorpods so that you had to drop your forward shield to fire your weapons.  How dumb.  Drac was about to volley a second round of fire before the Terrorpods came within the range of their own weapons, when suddenly his Foerd seemed to drop out from under him.  Drac glanced down at his fuel indicator.

Empty.  All his Spanda had leaked out or was used up.

"Splif.” Drac frowned at his situation. “How am I supposed to aim and shoot at these buggers if I can’t manuever?"

And then Drac's face split into a wide grin as a thought occurred to him:  "I wonder how many Farts are down on the surface?!"

Drac reached for the steering mechanism and tried to get the star shaped Foerd to go into a spin.  The group of Farts flew by, holding their fire as they saw no jets of flame coming out of any of the various ports, ducts and orifices on the Foerd.  Drac figured they wanted to see the ship crash on the planet instead of blow up in the sky.  Farts were always suckers for new experiences, especially if it involved another creatures gruesome death.  Almost as a unit until they unanimously scrambled for their long-distance viewers.

            Drac got the Foerd into a spin as his altitude dropped to 1,000 Km.  He tried to then get the spin to increase, which was very difficult to do with no fuel to power any ducts.  He had to bank the Foerd so that it fell on a diagonal and keep cranking the steering mechanism to turn the Foerd in an ever faster spiral.

Suddenly the Foerd was shaken by an impact.  Drac's brain was getting a bit fuzzy as his spin was giving him the pressure equal to about 12 Gs, so at first he thought it was a Fart firing at him from a Terrorpod.  Then he realized he had just hit Grime's atmosphere.  The Foerd was beginning to heat up.  Drac brought the ship up so that it was in a flat spin, like a frisbee.  The spin increased, but the Foerd's decent began to slow ever so slightly.  Drac hoped he could remain conscious long enough to do the last couple of maneuvers to land the ship.  He had some Farts to kill.

The heat was already beginning to diminish, due to the ice particles ever present in Grime's atmosphere, as well as the honeycomb-shaped nano-ceramicarbon tiles present on the bottom of the body of the ship. But the Foerd was now hitting 16 Gs.  Drac fought with every neuron of his mind to stay awake.  The Foerd hit some turbulence and threatened to bank into a dive, but Drac fought the steering mechanism until the flat spin was again established.  A dive would be bad.  A dive would mean Drac could never get rid of another Fart, because Drac would be, you know, that thing where you stop breathing.

"Built Foerd Tough!" laughed Drac, thinking how some of the other makes of ships would have either blown up by now, or would have been uncontrollable, or would have flipped over for a "pilot sandwich landing" as it was nicknamed.  The steering mechanisms in Foerd's products were the main reason Drac chose to pilot them.

His altitude was rapidly becoming non-existent, as his spin was reaching 20 Gs.  Drac had never been able to remain conscious past 17 Gs before, but the thought of being able to cut down ten or twelve Farts with his Lazer Blaster kept him conscious.  After all, he couldn't blast any if he passed out, crashed, and burned, could he?

            Once his altitude hit less than 500 meters above the surface, Drac felt consciousness slipping away from him.  He hit the hover switch, hoping the experimental fusion-powered hover units which were designed for stealth maneuvers while ships were planetside might have enough guts to slow the ship down some more.  If Drac hit the planet even at his currently reduced falling speed, he would create a quaint little ball of fire and subsequent crater, and that wasn't what he wanted his last contribution to the Universe to be.

The hover units whined, coughed and then made an awful rattling sound which continued.  Through the haze of unconsciousness, Drac realized something was very wrong with the hover units.  He could not shut them down, however, because he would crash for sure.  He just had to hope they did not cause the ship to blow up in midair...

Suddenly Drac realized he was once again becoming fully conscious!  He was coming in fast, not too far from some settlement which kept zipping by the windshield as he spun.  A quick glance at his G Meter showed the Gs had dropped to 7, undoubtedly because of the loudly-rattling hover units.  Smoke was pouring out from between the floor panels, and the noise was getting worse, but his descent and his rotation were both slowing.

"Now to land before the hover units blow!"  thought Drac out loud.

Drac coaxed the falling Foerd over closer to the settlement, which he could now see was as large as a city.  The Gs dropped to 4 now, but it was still very difficult to keep track of where the city was when it kept zipping by the windshield.

Suddenly the ship slammed into the ground, silencing the rattling hover units.  The descent of the Foerd had been slowed enough however, that Drac simply lost all of his wind as the ship crashed and the crash pillow popped into his face.  Drac would have exclaimed upon the benefits of wearing seat belts, but he had no breath to use for such an exclamation.

Drac scrambled out of his seat and grabbed the Lazer Blaster pistol at the rear of his cabin.  He was about to scramble forward and take the Lazer Blaster rifle out of its compartment, when the hover units below finally caught fire.  The heat was becoming unbearable very quickly, and Drac knew there was enough Spanda stored in canisters in the emergency area to blow the ship.  He changed course and tried to burst through the door by the passenger side.  It wouldn't budge.

            Drac swore and quickly headed back to the rear of the ship.  Smoke streamed up through the floor panels back here as well.  Drac burst through the door leading to the rear area of the Foerd, running for the rear exit.  At that moment, the rear door burst inward from some impact.  Instinctively, Drac dived behind

some air tanks to avoid the shrapnel.  As it turned out, the shrapnel was minimal, but some things are worse.

   Seven Farts crowded around the rear door of the Foerd, the three closest ones blasting the interior with the pale grey rays of their plasguns.  The insidious invention of the Fartarain scientists from their home planet of Fartar, Fartarian plasguns ignore all material except bone, which the rays disintegrate.  If Drac had been standing where he was milliseconds before, he would now be a pile of blood and flesh on the floor.  Not a pretty thing to dwell on, so Drac didn’t.

After the initial blasts from the Farts, Drac fired his Lazer Blaster Pistol three times from his position behind the air tanks.  Two of the Farts went down, the others diving for cover behind the sides of the doorway.  Immediately Drac changed his position three paces to the right, behind a crate, just as one of the other Farts jumped

back in front of the doorway with a Pinhole Smelter rifle and fired.  The needle-thin laser punctured the air tank Drac had just moved out from behind, through the other side, through the wall beside the doorway leading to the cabin, through the pilot's seat, and then through the windshield of the Foerd.  Presumably it would continue to infinity, although Drac still considered that to be a false rumor garnered by the Farts to frighten the other sentient beings of the Galaxy.

            Air burst out of both holes in the air tank noisily and all at once.  It wasn't a great distraction, but it would do.  Drac was up and firing instantly.

            Drac's gun fired three more times, taking the Pinhole Smelter rifleman in the chest, and the two other Farts who were peeking around the doorway to watch the progress of the pinhole laser between their eight collective eyes.  One fault of Farts, Drac thought, was their curiosity about things getting shot, blowing

up, getting wrecked or catching on fire.

Drac fell flat to the deck and rolled back to the left where the air tank was still hissing from the two neat holes punctured in it.  His body sizzled from the heat of the floor boards.  He aimed his LBP at the fallen rifleman through the billowing smoke.  He was sure one of the other Farts would try to grab the Pinhole Smelter rifle, and was not mistaken.

Drac grinned as both Farts tried for the Pinhole Smelter rifle at the same moment, both grabbing it at opposite sides and beginning a tug-of-war.

"Gar!" shouted one.

"Nur!  Gar!  Tay gar!" shouted the other.

Drac shook his head and laughed as he slowly stood up.  He knew now he was safe from these Farts.  The two Farts froze and looked up at the sound of Drac's laugh.  They began an even more frantic struggle over the rifle.  Drac shot twice, quickly, taking both Farts in the neck.  Suddenly there was a muffled

explosion from the front cabin, and smoke and heat filled the Foerd, forcing Drac out into the Grime air.

His vision was obscured by smoke, but Drac thought he saw movement.  He dropped to the landing strip, rolled left, and stood back up.  There was a popping sound, and his pistol began to hiss.  He blinked some of the smoke away and looked at his pistol.  A small, glowing hole could be seen in the power chamber.

Drac flipped the pistol over to see another pinhole opposite the first.  It was ruined.  Drac looked around him to see twenty or so Farts, all with pinhole smelter rifles pointed at him

He dropped his pistol, shrugged, and smiled.

The Farts advanced and one indicated Drac should raise his hands above his head.  Drac complied, and the Fart grabbed his hands and trussed them behind his back.  Drac was surprised at how efficiently he was being bound.  These Farts have had experience with humans before!

The Fart prodded Drac with his rifle, apparently indicating that Drac should go forward.  Drac did.

Right onto his face.

Drac awoke to find himself alone in a very dark area, on a cold hard surface.  From the smell and air quality of it, it was underground.  His head ached and there was an awful sensation in his lungs, like he had inhaled several dozen cigars.  Something large stirred in a far corner.

In his mind Drac leapt up to defend himself against whatever monster inhabited the Grime underground, but instead he barely managed to turn himself to face the sound.

"Drac?  Zat you?" drawled the monster in the shadows.

"Huh?" Drac said.  ‘Where the hrak am I that creatures know me?’  Drac wondered, quite disoriented.

"Well, Drac!"  the voice said, coming closer.  "It’s sure good to see a familiar face, even down here!"

Drac’s eyes were adjusting to the gloom, but he still could only see the silhouette of a figure in the  dark, coming closer.

"When they brotcha in, they were talkin’ about how stupid this human was who hadn't worn a breatherpack and was tryin’ ta take on the whole gorram Fart force after crashlandin’ right in the middle of their airfield!  I should have guessed that it was y’all by that ballsy description, but I jus’ thought it was some other dumb hrak who was gonna spend the last few days of his life here with me in this osquip's nest.  It sure is good to see ya, ol’ buddy!"  the now familiar voice said.

"Gen?  Gen is that you?!"  Drac asked incredulously.

"Bet your hrakin’ Krysler it is!"  the voice answered enthusiastically.

"Holy splif!  Gen!  How the hrak are you?"  Drac struggled to get up to embrace the huge fighter pilot, but was still woozy from the exposure to Grime's poisonous atmosphere and fell back to the floor.  "I haven't seen you since that expedition to the Nagal system that went all wrong!"

"Yeah, I din't know when we'd run into each other agin after that captain ordered us split inta different squads so’s we wouldn't cause no more trouble!"  the other replied.

"Where are we?"

"In the gaolhouse of the Farts.  I bin here almost a standard year now.  I wuz with a patrol that got hit hard two star systems away.  They had one of them big mother ships and got me in a Lonmarr Beam.  They caught me and a couple of other guys, and then brung us here to interrogate.  I've managed to

stay alive by only feedin’ 'em a little information at a time, but always makin' 'em think I've got more."

"You're feeding the enemy information?!" Drac asked incredulously.

"Nothin’ they can use, but nothin’ they can figure out that they can't use!  Farts is so dumb!"

"What about the other two pilots?"

"They refused flatly to give any out..."

"Oh."

"Besides, I acted like I didn't know Fart language.  It took ‘em seven months just to 'teach' it to me!  Then I started my 'information leak'.  I've jest about run out o’ stuff, though, and they bin actin’ a lot less patient with me."

"That doesn't sound good, Gen."

"But now that yer here, we can escape!"

"How the Hell do you figure on that?"

"Because yer Drac, that’s why!"