The digital deaths of my two best friends distracted me just long enough to take another series of direct hits, causing my shields and weapons to fail. I immediately initiated the self-destruct sequence on my drone’s power core, even though I knew it was unlikely I would last the seven seconds required for it to complete.
All of the Glaive Fighters in the vicinity began to redirect their fire at me, hoping to destroy my core before it could complete its countdown and go critical. But in doing so, they were momentarily forced to take their focus off the Icebreaker, just as I’d hoped.
Five seconds remaining on my drone’s self-destruct sequence. Then four, three—
But that was when the inevitable happened—the Icebreaker finally took one hit too many and exploded directly beneath me. The ensuing fireball destroyed my drone, along with every ship within its blast radius.
Ominous music began to play in my headphones as the words MISSION FAILED appeared, superimposed over my now disembodied view of the Sobrukai armada, as each of the six Dreadnaught spheres began to recall their remaining drones and return to their original formation in orbit, with this minor threat to their world now vanquished.
I BLINDLY POWERED off my game console and sat in the darkness for a moment before pulling off my VR helmet and returning to the real world with a sigh.
My phone rang a few seconds later. Cruz was on the line—he had already checked, and wanted to let me know that Attack on Sobrukai wasn’t on the list of replayable missions—at least not yet. Then he conferenced Diehl in for his traditional post-mission bitch fest. After, the Mikes tried to cajole me into joining them for a Terra Firma mission, but I mumbled something about having homework and said I’d see them at school tomorrow.
Then I got up and went over to my closet. When I opened the door, a small avalanche of stuff spilled out onto my feet. I rummaged through the dense forest of dress shirts and winter coats on plastic hangers until I found my father’s old jacket way at the back. It was an old black baseball jacket with leather sleeves, and it was completely covered, front and back, with embroidered patches, all somehow science fiction or videogame related, including several high-score-award patches for old Activision games like Starmaster, Dreadnaught Destroyer, Laser Blast, and Kaboom! Running down both sleeves were logos and military insignia from the Rebel Alliance, the Star League, the United Federation of Planets, the Colonial Fleet from BSG, and the Robotech Defense Force, among others.
I studied each one in turn, running my fingertips over the embroidery. When I’d last tried this jacket on a few years ago, it had still been too big on me. But when I slipped it on now, it fit me perfectly, almost as if it had been tailor-made.
I found myself itching to wear it to school tomorrow—despite my earlier vow to stop living in the past and obsessing over the father I had never known.
I looked around at the posters, toys, and models that filled my room and felt a pang in my chest at the thought of moving all my dad’s prized possessions up into the attic. Despite my good intentions, it seemed I wasn’t quite ready to let go of my father. Not yet.
I leaned back in my chair, stifling a yawn that did not wish to be stifled. I did a quick systems-wide status check, the results of which confirmed that my wagon was draggin’. Plutonium chamber empty. Sleep required immediately.
I took three steps toward my bed and collapsed facefirst onto my vintage Star Wars bed sheets, where I immediately fell into a fitful sleep.
My dreams that night were plagued by visions of a giant Sobrukai overlord constricting its enormous tentacles around a defenseless planet Earth as if preparing to swallow it whole.
WHEN I WALKED out to my car the next morning and glanced down to unlock it, I saw the long sine-wave gouge that now ran bumper to bumper down the driver’s side.
Someone had keyed my car. I turned to scan the surrounding houses, on the off chance Knotcher was still in the vicinity. But he was nowhere to be seen, and it occurred to me he had probably done this last night, while the Omni was parked outside Starbase Ace. I just hadn’t noticed after work because it was dark out, and my car’s paint job wasn’t exactly unblemished to begin with.
I turned back to resurvey the damage, this time in the context of the vehicle’s overall condition. The long scratch Knotcher had added would be barely noticeable to anyone else. One of the few perks of driving an ancient, rusted-out shit wagon was that it took real effort to make it look any less aesthetically pleasing than it already was.
This realization allowed me to calm myself enough to heed the whispered advice of Master Yoda now on repeat in my head: Let go of your anger.
I often tried to calm myself with Yoda’s voice (which sounded nothing like Fozzie Bear, damn you) during moments of distress. Obi-Wan or Qui-Gon or Mace Windu sometimes had calming movie-quote wisdom to share too.
That was only on good days, of course. On the bad ones, I found myself drawing on equally compelling advice from Lords Vader or Palpatine.
But it wasn’t their dark influence that motivated me to get the tire iron out of the Omni’s trunk and place it inside my backpack. It was the voice of my friend Diehl, recounting his warning last night about Knotcher’s threat to seek revenge.
I PARKED MY car in the student lot and trudged toward my school’s front entrance while counting off the number of days remaining in my sentence—only forty-five more to go.
But when I reached the open grassy area bordering the parking lot, Knotcher was there waiting for me, along with two of his brain-trust buddies. All three were grinning, arms folded across their chests like goons in some Power Rangers episode.
My gaze shot over to the school’s front entrance, calculating the distance. If I tried, I could probably make it there before they stopped me. But I found that I didn’t want to.
Knotcher was standing out in front. As I’d feared, keying my car wasn’t enough. He’d decided that his manhood was now in question, and that he had no choice but to corner me and deliver a beating—with some help, of course.
Knotcher’s two gargantuan pals were known around school as “the Lennys,” even though neither of them was actually named Lenny. They’d been saddled with this nickname after our class read Of Mice and Men in sophomore English. I didn’t think the moniker really fit. Yes, they were both big and dumb, like the character in the book, but deep down, Steinbeck’s Lenny had been a kindhearted soul. The two Lennys standing in front of me now (who I thought of as Skinhead Lenny and Neck-Tattoo Lenny, respectively) were both as mean as they were massive. But their size was dwarfed by the epic scope of their stupidity.
“Love your new jacket!” Knotcher said. He made a show of slowly circling me to examine each of the patches sewn onto it. “These are really impressive. Is there a little rainbow patch on there somewhere, too?”
After a few seconds of processing time, both of the Lennys chuckled—that was how long it took their reptilian brains to complete Knotcher’s elegant rainbow-equals-gay equation.
When I failed to respond, Knotcher tried again.
“You know, that sorta looks like a varsity letterman’s jacket,” he said. “If being a videogame nerd who can’t get laid was a sport.” He laughed. “Then I suppose you’d be our star quarterback—eh, Lightman?”
I could already feel my anger spiraling out of control. What had made me think it was a good idea to wear my father’s old jacket to school? I’d basically been inviting public ridicule on the one topic guaranteed to set me off—and of course Knotcher would be the one to take the bait. Maybe that was why I’d done it in the first place—the same reason I’d confronted Knotcher yesterday. Some angry caveman lobe of my brain was itching for a fight—and so I had orchestrated this confrontation. This was my doing.
Knotcher and the Lennys took a step toward me. But I stood my ground.
“At least you were smart enough to bring backup this time,” I said as I slipped off my backpack and took both of its shoulder straps in my right hand, feeling the comforting weight of the tire iron inside.
Knotcher’s smile momentarily faltered, then twisted into a sneer.
“They’re just here to make sure you don’t fight dirty,” he said. “Like last time.”
Then, in direct contradiction to what he’d just said, Knotcher nodded at the Lennys, and all three of them began to spread out, forming a rough semicircle around me.
In my head, I thought I could hear the cracked-but-commanding voice of Emperor Palpatine, saying, “Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you!”
“You’re in deep shit now, eh, Lightman?” Knotcher sneered. “Kinda like your old man.”
I knew Knotcher was trying to push my buttons. Unfortunately, he’d pushed the big red one first. The ICBMs had just left their silos, and now there was no recalling them.
I didn’t remember unzipping my backpack, or taking out the tire iron, but I must have, because now I had the cold steel rod clenched in my hand, and I was raising it to strike.
All three of my opponents stood frozen for a moment, their eyes wide. The Lennys threw up their hands and started backing away. Knotcher’s eyes flicked over to them, and I saw him registering that his simian pals had bowed out of the fight. He started moving backward too.