Irus, home planet to the Rundi (the oldest race known to the universe, pinnacle of the law, and seat to the Galactic Assembly. It had survived billions of years in the light of a distant star sibling to 11 other planets revolving about its singularity. In those years of its existence, and the comparably short time in which the Rundi had ruled their solar system, they had set up hundreds and thousands of defense outposts manned by a constantly rotating batch of mechanics and engineers tasked with maintaining the vast defense nexus that kept their planet safe. If it weren't for the Rundi, their planet would have been obliterated thousands of years ago as their solar system was in a slow binary rotation with another galactic anomaly constantly spitting rocks towards them at odd thousand year intervals.

Some of the nexus stations had been due for repairs for hundreds of years, kept at a constant state of near disrepair on behalf of the Rundi's legendary and infuriating bureaucracy. Sure, you could blame the council for its foresight, or the engineers, but who could really blame them. Peaceful times made the watchers lax in their duties.

Someone was not manning their post that day. Sure, no one had needed to man that post in the last thousand years, but it didn't matter. It was never determined who exactly it was that had shirked their duty that day and it was a freak coincidence that at this time, and at this place it was to happen.... Where that entire splinter of the nexus was obliterated in a single explosion unheralded by the proximity alerts that should have been put into place, and unhindered by the rail guns that should have ended the problem before it began.

When they were to know, they knew to late noticed only by armature star gazers, who, unlike their more professional counterparts, had their eyes turned to things close at hand. Even then, by the time the news reached the Assembly, it was far too late. They would have detached another splinter of the nexus and brought it to cross paths with the object, but as it was, a detachment would not have arrive in time. Perhaps they should have kept splinters of the nexus closer at hand for just such emergencies, but again, hindsight is 20/20.

As the center of galactic law, there were many visiting delegations from other planets, cargo ships, and auxiliary soldiers, but none of them were willing to stay long. As soon as they were alerted all delegations, representatives and friends of the council fled to their ships returning to the stars with all due haste. For a long moment the atmosphere was crowded with their panic as "Friends of the council" Fled leaving them to their inevitable fate on the face of the doomed planet. The airfields were silent and deserted.

Mass panic, overtook cities as thousands of civilians thronged their way towards any available civilian transport off planet. Crowds thronged ships, backed up onramps stuffed themselves inside until the ship was grounded due to sheer weight, and an inability to fly without the possibility of mass casualties. Rundi bureaucracy broke down as panic took over. And due to that panic thousands more were slated to die.

***

A team of soldiers quickly escorted the UN representative from the building. Captain Kelly was forced to shout over the roar of the engines, "Don't worry Madam. President, we will have you out and into warp back to Earth long before the asteroid hits, though I daresay you have remained here far longer than I would have liked."

The chairwoman of the Galactic assembly followed behind them at a dejected pace staring with a pained expression up into the sky as the last of the ships began takeoff. The humans were the last of the alien delegations to remain on planet, but the enterprise was already fueled and ready for takeoff. From where it sat on the staging ground, engines roaring, it rose above the sound of mass panic happening on all sides, but despite this, the human ship remained otherwise uncrowded as soldiers nervously patrolled its perimeter.

The President turned her head back towards the chairwoman an expression of clear agony on her face like none of the other delegates had yet to show, "But there must be something we can do... the ship has rail guns doesn't it?"

"Yes, but we barely have enough time for takeoff and even less time to prepare the rail guns." A hand was placed on her shoulder, "We cannot ask thousands of people to give up their lives like this."

The chairwoman had to agree, the humans had done what they could. Their concern far outweighed that of the other delegates, and they had offered to take as many civilians aboard as they could in a certain amount of time trusting their abilities to control the scared throng.

It had almost failed, but they had done what they could, and now there was nothing more.

"But we aren't doing nothing." Captain Kelly responded as President turned as if in question. However, a firm had shoved her aboard the ship and turned to look at the Chairwoman motioning her after. But, Rundi shook her head slowly and sadly, "I cannot in good conscience leave my people as they die while I flee..... it was a pleasure...."

The Captain of the ship shook her head sadly before, "If it means anything, we leave you with one last hope." The chairwoman stood at the base of the ramp in confusion as the humans disappeared inside. She stepped back away from the ship just in time to see a line of soldiers march onto the grounds outside the ship. She stepped closer to see what was going on.

"You men are the last hope for this planet." On closer inspection, she saw that all the humans were wearing the same tinted green spacesuits and grey helmets tucked under their arms, "No one is asking you to throw away your lives. You can board the ship right now, and no one will judge you. We are ASKING for volunteers. You will NOT be ordered to do this." She watched in hopeless silence as the men stayed quiet. Behind them a row of strange human warships were being rolled down the line.

Silence.

The ma sighed, "Very well, on the ship, the lot of you."

And that's when she knew it was hopeless, not even the humans were willing to try it.

"WAIT....." She turned at that moment shocked the voice was not coming from the line of men. From the top of the ramp, a light-haired figure bounded scrabbling with one of the grey helmets as he adjusted the suit around his chest. He tripped towards the bottom of the ramp, but the older human caught him, "Ada- Lieutenant." The man said voice strained in a way she had never heard a human strain before, "Get your ass back on that ship."

The young human shook his head, "No sir," His voice cracked, "I have to..... I can't let all these people die."

The older human pulled the young man tight to his chest growling, "You stupid boy." He pulled back, "I can't ask you to do that. I promised your old man I wouldn't let you die."

"But you're ok letting them die?" He wondered motioning to the other pilots, "No, sir, you asked for volunteers and.... And I'm volunteering."

"You've never flown an active mission in your career son, this is suicide."

***

What had he done? Inside the cockpit of the jet Lieutenant Vir sat slowly accelerating the thrusters gaining altitude after takeoff followed by only two other pilots. Three pilots in all. He took a deep breath slowing his shaking hands on the controls. All he could hear was his own breathing inside the mask as the ground receded below him. He closed his eyes for only a moment wondering about his mother, his father, his brothers. The F-16k's computer sent a nerve impulse up his hand reminding him to stay focused as he opened his eyes.

His hands were sweating horribly. He slowly brought the jet upwards accelerating at appropriate speed. The F16k (Thunderhawk) was the first and only piloted jet capable of reaching escape velocity. It was expensive, it was rare and it was a terror to fly.

He had only ever done it in simulations.

It had your standard jet engine on it of course, but utilized psudofusion technology in order to reach the appropriate mach 33 or 33 times the speed of sound. He could feel his suit slowly constricting around his legs as his acceleration brought the Gs upwards. The small crafts accelerated much faster than the larger ship cutting the 15 minute breach time down to ten. He gritted his teeth against the acceleration and the rattling. The voice of the veteran pilots rang in his ears as they moved upwards in formation.

"Keep it together kid, you're drifting." One of the pilots commented, and he pulled her back on course doing his best to focus.

He was terrified.

Below them, thousands of stranded alien civilians watched their ascent, counting on them..... their last hope.

Why was it now that he suddenly needed to pee?

He was expected to save the world, and instead of being all cool and macho like he wanted, he was a terrified sweaty kid who was probably going to piss himself before this was over.... That wasn't really how he pictured going out, and if he died they were going to find out that he had ruined a 50 million dollar space suit because he couldn't control his bladder.

He would rather crash into the massive deadly space rock.

Inside the cockpit of his aircraft, he could almost imagine the roaring sound of his engine. At mach 33 they would be leaving behind them a wave of sonic thunder. He could see the curvature of the planet now, mostly green, and some dusty brown only a few specs of blue here and there. He gritted his teeth against the rattling as the sky above faded form light blue to dark blue, and then to black. With the pedals at his feet, he rotated the secondary maneuvering engines for their functioning. He could see the rock clearly now. It was a tiny, far off speck trailing a wash of dust behind it. Calculations said it was about 6 miles wide, and that was big (Big enough to cause a mass extinction event and kill almost everyone planteside) odd, how it looked so small from here. At six miles wide it was no puny thing, but in the vastness of space it might as well have been a speck of dust.

Looking out at the dark expanse of space, he felt his heart leap into his throat. Sweat poured down his back now eyes wide knuckles white. A simple sheet of acrylic between him and absolutely nothing. He felt himself growing dizzy, but bit it back as another impulse was shot through his fingertips.

"Priming missiles." He announced into his mike stoking a thumb down the side of the joystick to trigger the release catch. He could both hear and feel the metallic ca-chunk as the 16 megaton bunker-busting nuclear warhead dropped from the ordinance bay of the ship. The calculations said it would take about 48 megatons to pulverize the space rock into dust, and though their weaponry had come a long way since the birth of the nuclear bomb, it was determined it would take at least three thunderhawks to carry enough ordinance to take it out.

"Synchronizing targeting systems." He ordered engaging another button on the left side of his lefthand joystick. Now this was the dangerous part; If they missed, they were done for, but they couldn't just get close, they would want to stay as far away from the blast as was humanly possible, and that meant targeting the rock early on before it got any closer, and before they were unable to escape the blast radius, and that meant using Neuro-targeting. Controlled completely by the brain it relied solely on the focus of the pilot to target a system and fire. Any break in concentration could send the missile rocketing in the wrong direction, which is why it wasn't a widely used piece of technology. He would have had one of the more experienced pilots do it, problem was, he was the only one trained on the system.

"Systems synchronized." The other pilots said through the line. He could hear their gritted teeth over the com as he engaged the targeting protocol.

The neuro net was blisteringly cold as it suctioned to his skin pulling tight against the muscles at the base of his skull. The restraints constricted tight around him as the small probe pierced his skin. A whimper broke through his lips at the pain, but suddenly, the display before his eyes lit up, not on his visor, but on his EYES, altitude lines, gravity curves, orbital paths all laid out before him on the surface o his iris.

With some difficulty he swept all that away thinking hard about the targeting system to pull it up.

"Please kid, focus." One of the pilots begged. He ignored the man taking a slow, deep breath and allowing his body to relax.

Targeting System Engaged.

He barely felt his hands on the joysticks, barely noticed the other planes flying at his back, barely noticed the three circling moons winding around at a distance, barely noticed the enterprise as it broke atmosphere and roared in the opposite direction. Inside, he felt nothing, saw nothing but the rock looming in his vision in the vastness of space.

Target Lock.

He clenched a fist slowly.

Fire.

All at once 3 16 megaton nuclear warheads detached from the underside of the thunderhawks rocketing off into space in a tight triangular formation. Pieces of missile dropped off as they closed together rotating slowly around to attach themselves to the point missile turning 16 megatons into 48 megatons in a matter of seconds.

As soon as the missiles dropped, the lieutenant dropped the targeting systems reversed the forward engines, and rolled the jet around in a loop so tight the edges of his vision went black, and the suit around his legs squeezed till he felt like he was going to pop open. As soon as he was facing the other direction, he hit the throttle, and accelerated as fast as was advisable slamming himself back into his seat as the weight of the Gs thrust hi backwards. Engaging the fusion engine, he accelerated as fast as he could manage till near blackout. Mach 97.75 nearly 75,000 miles per hour, manually. If he hit anything at all going this speed, he would be obliterated.

In the minute it took the missile to hit he made it around 1,250 miles. With his visor engaged, he was still nearly blinded by the blast of light unhindered by atmosphere or other obstructions. He didn't feel shock wave, and if there was EMP, the faraday cage composing the inner cockpit left him unaffected. He reduced his speed for fear of crashing, and when he could see again, he found that he had passed the planet by. He took his jet in a wide circle to examine the blast. Nothing was left now but a massive hunk of expanding dust and particles.

His heart hammered in his throat.

Cheering from the other pilots rose in his ears. He would have cried out of sheer relief if he wasn't too stunned to do so.

And if that weren't for the debris of fist sized rocks hurtling towards them at unwarranted speeds.

***

The three human aircraft roared into the atmosphere with the power of rolling thunder trailed by a massive meteor shower as, what was left of the rock, burned up it atmosphere. Lights dotted the sky as the three tiny jets approached. From the ground, they came into view long before the sound of their engines did. They dropped low in a triangular formation, powerful manual weapons roaring over the crowd with a crack of thunder as they broke the sound barrier using jet engines, hardly comparable to the speeds they had been traveling before. But even that seemed to be drowned out by the relief of the crowd below.

Video of the blast traveled across the galaxy at speeds that made the jets look slow. The humans of earth couldn't have been more proud..... and one human in particular, never so proud in her life, but very much inclined to smack the boy when he came home for putting himself in danger like that.

But she supposed she could forgive him if it meant saving the world