Chapter 8

30 minutes earlier

Missiles away, Trak felt ecstatic.

Standing in one of Stuck Station’s lengthy corridors, he watched the projectiles streak down the white and blue hallway, leaving trails of gray smoke.

Traveling at five times the speed of sound, the missiles swirled around each other before colliding with a wall 2,000 feet away.

The sudden change from supersonic velocity to zero velocity flattened the weapons on impact. In that split second, the weapons’ crumbling onboard systems decided that it was probably time to produce a tremendous amount of energy.

The explosion’s blast wave traveled the distance to Trak in a blink.

He stood unharmed in the maelstrom of fire and shrapnel; molten metal splashed impotently against his armored frame.

The air around him ignited.  The temperature was now far above the survival threshold for most carbon based lifeforms, but to Trak it felt like home.

War is home, said the dark part of himself.

Stop talking, Trak said.

But the voice was right.  Trak felt intoxicated by the familiar feel of destruction.

Everything inside him wanted him to keep firing.

Can’t block me out forever, the voice said, dripping with a hatred just as dangerous as Trak’s weaponry.

But Trak forced himself to remember why he had fired his weapons: it was an experiment.

Ignoring the voice, Trak made himself retract his launchers. He had to examine the missile impact site.

Activating one of his scanner arrays, he studied the damage – The analysis took a nanosecond.