Scratch

I've just finished writing an action scene for my story Space Academy. It's the first major action scene, and is properly relevant to the plot (unlike the sword fight earlier in the story). Of course, it won't make perfect sense, as you would have needed to read the rest of the chapter, but it should make enough sense. 

Here it is:



William leaned back into his seat, much to the pleasure of Luke, and listened to the speech. Suddenly, there was a terrifying crash from the ceiling, and a large object came hurtling down. It almost smashed into the stage, before slowing to a halt, hovering just above it.

Screams of terror could be heard from both the audience and the students on the stage. The students jumped from their seats, trying to escape the falling debris. The large object stopped hovering, and smashed on top of the chairs on the stage, moments after the students got out of the way.

From the floor of the stage, several escape pods came up. They were like large, glass boxes, with doors that were designed to open very quickly. The students all ran towards the one nearest to them, trying to get in as quickly possible.

As it was now stationary on the stage, it was clear what the object that had crashed though the roof was. It appeared to be a huge, bulky, yet smooth, humanoid, silver robot. It had a comparatively small, faceless, spherical head, with a body about 1 and a half times the size of an average man.

As all the students and teachers on the stage were rushing to the escape pods, the robot raised its arm, pointed at the students, and fired! An enormous laser shot out of some sort of contraption on the top of the arm, and narrowly missed the students. The laser smashed into the stage, creating an explosion, sending several of the students flying.

Emily was one of the students blown away by the explosion. She was sent tumbling towards the edge of the stage, but slid to a stop just before. The other students who had been hit got up and ran to the nearest escape pod. Emily also got up, but the doors of the nearest escape pod, the one she was running to, automatically closed, as it detected that it was already full.

Panicking, she looked around to try and see an available escape pod. She saw an empty one, and ran towards it as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast considering she was wearing high heels and a graduation dress. Before she could get anywhere near it, the robot fired at the pod, blowing it to pieces. With nowhere to go, Emily flicked her high heels off at the robot; a feeble attempt to attack it.

During all this, the audience were being led at of the main hall by the attendants, while all the guards available at the school were rushing in. The school had sent out an automatic distress call to the local police, and also to the military.

William, though, was less than willing to go. He saw Emily left on the stage with the robot, with no means of escape, almost certain to be killed. Without much thinking, William charged towards the balcony of the audience section of the hall, and vaulted over it, heading towards the robot.

The robot, which was now looking at Emily, pointing its laser cannon at her, detected that William was flying towards it. Just before he hit it, the robot swung its arm around, whacking him in the side, sending him flying towards the edge of the stage. William hit the floor with a thud, and continued half rolling, half bouncing towards the edge.

He was sent over the edge so fast, he cleared the gap immediately and banged into the opposite wall. As best he could, he grabbed onto one of the indents in the wall, and clung there tightly. He could feel the jets of fire shooting up every so often, a few inches away from his back. After catching his breath, William turned around to see what the robot was doing, and saw it pointing its arm at him.

“Look out!” Emily screamed in horror as the robot fired at William.

William leapt from the outer wall to the edge of the stage, dodging the laser as it shot past his head and into the wall behind him. He cried out in pain as fire and debris hit into his back. The robot then lowered its arm slightly, re-aiming, and fired again. William hopped backwards, spinning round in the process, and grabbed onto the outer wall again, further down this time.

The laser smashed into the edge of the stage, blasting a huge chunk of it off. It toppled over and fell into the gap between the stage and the audience. It was about to fall on top of William, who was still clinging onto the outer wall, but it got wedged in between the two sides.

Thinking that William had been dealt with, the robot turned back to Emily. What the robot didn’t know is that William hadn’t been crushed by the huge chunk of the stage. In fact, William was climbing up the wall, and had grabbed onto the top of the broken off piece of the stage, and pulled himself on top of it. On top of it, there were other, smaller pieces of broken off metal. William picked up one of these, and charged towards the robot, which now had its back turned to William, still looking at Emily.

William leapt into the air, and with all his strength, he whacked the head of the robot with the piece of metal he was holding. He landed on the floor a few feet away from the robot, and turned to look at it. The robot was completely unfazed by this attack.

Slowly backing away from it, William pulled out his blaster from his jacket that he’d made last week, and pointed it at the robot. He held down a button on the hilt, but didn’t fire. Instead, he began stalling.

“What do you want?” William demanded.
“Victory,” the robot answered after a few seconds, in a very computerised voice.
“Victory? What do you mean ‘victory’? What are you trying to do?”
“I do not negotiate,” it replied, raising its arm yet again. “Prepare to be annihilated.”

William could see the hole where the laser came out of on the arm beginning to glow, and knew that there would only be about a second before it fired. William kept his blaster as steady as he could, which was pointing directly at the robot’s laser cannon.

Without waiting any longer, William fired, sending a bolt of plasma shooting through the hole of the laser cannon. The laser cannon, along with the entire arm, blew up in an enormous explosion! The robot flipped through the air, before impacting the floor, and tumbled off the edge of the stage.