Game Changer: Day 15

Word Total: 90,022

Year to Date: 660,254

Summary of Events:

Hawk was trying to sabotage the other hackers' efforts to get into the Sons of Nahash's computers to buy himself time to edit the General Secretary's video when one of his sabotage devices went out of control and shorted out all the computers — as well as destroying the probe factory and the millions of probes Hawk had already made. The General Secretary discovered Hawk was behind it all and had him put into his fighter on autopilot as the leader of an attack against the Sons of Nahash. Hawk found the autopilot disengage switch had been removed and tried desperately to disengage it somehow so he wouldn't be killed . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Remembering another code — the one for the cockpit lights — Hawk punched it in and startled when the screen actually didn’t flash red.

Autopilot Disengaged, the green screen said before flashing up the data that had him hurtling toward the Sons of Chesil at five thousand kilometres an hour.

Immediately Hawk shifted the stick to pull up and turn away from the futile attack and the demise the General Secretary had plotted for him.

As he did so his craft shook and the screen flashed red, informing him that he’d been hit, and it wasn’t a minor strike either; in fact, Hawk quickly discovered that it was almost worse.

He wasn’t as close to Maarath as he’d thought, and it was his guess that the Sons of Chesil had broken orbit around it and were heading for Tamah, which loomed larger ahead of Hawk than he had expected.

The worst part, however, was that Hawk couldn’t steer at all; not up, down, left, or right, and his computer told him that his acceleration system had malfunctioned and was accelerating rapidly.

Hawk tried slamming his foot down on the decelerator, but the speed only continued to rise until he was going faster than he ever had gone before in his life, screaming toward Tamah with no way of avoiding the planet.

His accelerator hadn’t stopped accelerating by the time he ripped through Tamah’s atmosphere, which scorched the paint off of his craft, but somehow managed to leave it otherwise unscathed.

Finding his eject button still intact, Hawk pressed it, only to have an error code inform him that his eject mechanism had been locked and he needed to put in a code to deactivate the lock.

All of his codes had been changed, and he only had three tries or he would be dead.

Hawk’s heart pounded loudly enough to be heard over the scream of the air around his craft’s exterior.

He punched in the code it had been. Error.

The surface of Tamah raced toward him.

He punched in the code for the fuel jettison. Error.

Flames erupted from the engines, unable to handle the speed.

He punched the code it had been in reverse.

Suddenly Hawk found himself flailing through the air, very close to thick woods. He grabbed for his parachute ripcord. Nothing.

An explosion sounded and its force sent Hawk across the tops of the trees. His craft had made impact, but he had managed to escape alive.

After the brief interruption of the explosion shockwaves, Hawk resumed his downward descent into the trees, which tore and snatched at him, tossing him about between themselves.

A large branch slammed into his chest and stopped him for a split second before dropping him again to be flipped over by a branch to the ankles.

The last thing he remembered was the impact of a branch against his cheekbone.

Next Post: July 31.