SODIUM:4 Gravity

"All is well. All is well." If said enough times there are many who will believe. There are others who will believe because it is what they want to be true. Don't fall into the trap of allowing others to do your reasoning for you. Evaluate and re-evaluate as the things of this world are ever changing.

S.A.

Dedicated to those who value personal responsibility and freedom. May you live free and prosper!

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Copyright 2012-2013 Stephen Arseneault, All Rights Reserved

We were five days into our ten day station just outside the heliosphere. It was absolutely the most boring duty station in all the USAC. The main alien fleet was still 14 months away. Everyone on the planet was busy preparing our defenses for the incoming threat. We... were busy twiddling our thumbs.

The assignment was fun for the first several hours. Once we were over the thought of venturing outside the solar system and once we had looked around at the amazing views of the stars, the thrill was gone. Our main attraction looked to be an asteroid of about 30 meters in width that was approaching us from the suspect region of Epsilon Eridani. The only curious thing about it was its speed, almost half the speed of light.

After calculations had been done it was determined that it was on a course that would take it near Earth. We had been given instruction to pull up alongside and to blast it into tiny bits. Earth had enough problems with its reconstruction without having to worry about an asteroid strike. After five days of our uneventful assignment we were glad to have the distraction.

The throttle was at full as we raced towards the incoming rocky threat. I waited until the last possible moment to do the now classic flip maneuver in our Defender. The BHD (Black-Hole-Drive) continued its pull, first slowing us to a stop and then propelling us forward in an attempt to match the speed of the incoming asteroid. With our dual reactor setup the acceleration would take us an hour and a half.

I considered myself a good pilot. I scored well on my qualifying tests. And I was an ace in the Defender Simulators back in Chamber 2 under the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I would use those skills to slide up in front of the asteroid and then move off to the left side where we could blast it with our coil guns. My Offensive Specialist Randy had an itchy trigger finger.

His name was Thurmon Campbell but we called him Randy because he was always flirting with the ladies. I found him a bit obnoxious, but he seemed to have a knack for attracting their attention. As we pulled up in front of the asteroid Randy was already hatching plans about how he was going to be telling the ladies of his heroics in saving the planet.

I could care less about what he told them so long as he got the job done. As a gunner he was a worthwhile addition to my crew. He preferred manual controls over the computer assist and his scoring in the simulations had shown him to be skilled at it.

I prompted Raven and Tork for status from their stations before making the outbound maneuver. Raven (Janet Plumb) was our Defensive Specialist. Her jet black hair had given her the obvious call sign. Tork (Derrick Kennedy) was our Engineer. He was a quiet sort that spent his time tinkering with the ship’s systems. The automation on-board the Defender governed most of what went on with the systems, but Tork liked staying on top of it anyway. The way I looked at it, if he was happy, I was happy.

I took us to within five kilometers of the asteroid before banking hard left. At two kilometers out I would do another flip allowing Randy to take his shot at glory. Just for kicks I put my controls on manual in order to make Randy work for his shot. If I could coax a miss it would give me ribbing ammunition for whenever he got mouthy. He got mouthy a lot.

We quickly slid out to two kilometers and I flipped the ship around. We were completely unprepared for what lay directly behind the asteroid. It was a long line of alien fighters. Raven's console quickly lit up with a count of 315. They had been using the iron asteroid to approach Earth under cover. Randy redirected his first shots at the lead fighter just as I made another flip and went to full throttle.

The fighters broke rank and came hard at us. Raven directed our grav-shield to the rear of the ship while Randy began the launch of four Drillers. Our newest Drillers consisted of one BHD ring with a new field generator that allowed the Driller to change directions much faster. They could now almost match the turns of the alien fighters.

New algorithms in the Drillers programming offered an added benefit. The Driller would fly around chasing after a target and when it caught its prey, the black hole of the BHD ring would cut into the target vessel just like a drill. The new algorithms would then direct the Driller to stop and turn once inside a ship.

The old weapon would attempt to turn a ship into Swiss cheese by drilling straight through. This new model would gut whatever it came in contact with from the inside out. It was an untested weapon but the Tacticians assured us it would be more destructive than the original. Randy had four Drillers flying moments after our surprise meeting.

The fighter’s immediate shots took our shields to 65% with the first hit and 85% with the second. The fighters gained as our BHD began to accelerate. The following shot took the shields to 112% taking out all five of our BHD rings. We were suddenly floating dead in space.

The final shot sent us spinning, but had not knocked our active skin offline. When the rings collapsed the active skin shut down the sensors and covered the remaining portions of the front of the Defender. Our propulsion was gone but as a consequence, with the active skin, our ship was now invisible to the alien sensors. We were blind to what was happening just outside, but the enemy could not detect us either.

The computer gave its best estimate of our position and orientation but without a drive those parameters were largely useless. We were floating in deep space with no way home. It was just over a day’s travel at light speed to get back to Earth. We weren't going anywhere. But we had to warn the others of the approaching horde of alien fighters. The Earth had barely begun its recovery from the prior alien attack.

It had been three months since the combined USAC and World forces had defeated the alien carrier. It had been a hard fought battle with more than 270 million citizens dead. So far as we knew, the alien casualties had been zero as their ships were all autonomous. Twenty of the World’s largest cities along with numerous other military and industrial targets had been wiped out.

For me, I had lost a favorite aunt, uncle and cousin in Atlanta. Liz and I had been best friends growing up on my Grandfather's farm in East Alabama. When my aunt and uncle moved away I was devastated to see Liz go. It was that separation that had hardened me and sent me down the path from being a Tom-Boy to a Defender pilot for the USAC. For a while we had kept in close contact digitally, but that soon faded as we made our way into high school and into the inevitable friendships that followed.

The aliens had taken my cousin from me along with my aunt and uncle, when Atlanta had been destroyed. It was my first encounter with the aliens and I had grown up having a score to settle. Now floating helplessly in deep space I had no way of enacting my revenge.

We waited 20 minutes for the fighters to pass before attempting to activate a communications sensor. I had taken the time to complete a brief of our encounter and of what was coming Earth's way. The briefing coupled with a complete recording from each of our sensors was compressed and ready to send when the comm came online.

We were trapped more than a light day away while the enemy bore down on our planet. After receiving my signal our forces at home would only have 24 hours to prepare for the 315 fighters that were fast approaching.

At last count we had 37 Defenders at the ready along with more than 500 heavy space based coil guns and 260 ground based guns. Our factories had been feverishly pumping out ground launched Drillers but I had no idea of how many.

With the main alien fleet only 14 months out we would need the help of every man, woman and child on the planet to continue to raise our defenses. I worried that this pack of fighters would cause enough damage and distraction to make that defense impossible.

When the 20 minutes had passed I powered on the sensors and blasted out the warning. The fighters had indeed continued on their course towards Earth leaving us spinning helplessly away in space. At one half-light speed it would take the aliens two days to reach Earth. Our comm blast would reach home in one.

After sending the blast I turned to the team and asked what we could do to change our situation. Tork immediately volunteered a spacewalk in an attempt to do an on-ship repair. He proposed either that or an attempt to bring a damaged BHD ring inside the ship where it could be further evaluated.

I was just about to give the go-ahead when Raven threw out the facts. The fact that we were traveling at nearly half the speed of light was a big problem. And the fact that beyond the active skin we did not have adequate shielding from the stellar winds and the charged particles that freely moved about outside the heliosphere.

If Tork went outside the craft, even with his suit and helmet, he would likely be irreparably cooked from the inside out within a short time. We were trapped until such time as someone at home could attempt a rescue.

When the news reached Earth, there was a scramble to assemble all of our ready forces. A fast Defender was dispatched to attempt a rescue of my crew from our stranded position. Every available trained pilot was needed for Earth’s defense.

The fast Defender was powered by four reactors which would allow it to reach us in less than eight hours. This would also allow time for a rescue and for a return to Earth before the alien fighters attacked.

Our defender would first have to be stabilized so that a door-to-door transfer of its occupants could occur. It was a risky maneuver considering the stranded Defenders speed and the stellar winds. A volunteer crew was selected and sent within an hour of receiving the comm blast. They would have a four hour window available to attempt a transfer.

With the alien threat having moved on towards Earth we were free to use our sensors. We racked our brains looking for anything that could better our situation. After an hour of nothing, Randy offered up an idea. He reasoned that we could momentarily turn off the active skin and fire a round from one of our coil guns. The inertia from that round might slow our spin.

If he could calculate which gun would offer the best chance at slowing our out-of-control spin we had a shot at increasing our chances of a rescue. There was no question of survival time involved as we had enough nutrients and fuel to last us for a month. It was a question of wanting to get back to protect our world.

There was one aspect of Randy's plan that he was unsure of. What would happen when the active skin went down? Would the inertial forces that the skin held back splatter us all against the interior walls of the ship? Would the supercharged particles of the stellar wind come streaming through and cook us? Those were the questions we had no answer to.

Randy re-ran his calculations and setup the computer to best time the shot. Involving the computer in this instance was an irritant to him, but the computers precision was needed if the plan was to have a chance at success.

With the calculations complete and the parameters entered Randy enabled the computer to take its best shot. A countdown timer appeared on our consoles and we each watched anxiously as it ticked down to zero. The ship jerked violently and then three seconds later violently again. The computer continued to repeat this pattern in an attempt to bring our spinning to an end.

After 27 rounds the Defender slowed to an almost imperceptible turn. Randy's idea had worked. Raven looked over the interior sensor data and concluded that our exposure to the stellar winds had been a minimal risk. But, it was a risk that we would likely not know the outcome of for many years down the road.

I took the opportunity to train our sensors on the alien fighters and to broadcast that information towards home. I hoped they could somehow put it to use. I gave Tork the order to plan for his extra-vehicular ring repair in case we had no alternatives, the one thing we had was time.

I then began to think about how unfair it was that the alien craft each had repair robots attached to the outer chassis. They could affect repairs while zipping along at any speed... even during battle. I made a log note to post the idea up to our Techs when we got home.

For the next several hours we all sat quietly wondering about each of our existences. I thought for a few minutes about my crew. Randy was from Connecticut. He had lost family in New York when the carrier and its horde of fighters had attacked.

He had joined the USAC a year earlier after eight years as a low level commercial pilot. He loved the travel, but did not care for hauling freight. There was no glory in hauling boxes of clothing or toys or bean sprouts. It was a job he was happy to move on from.

Raven was from Vancouver. She made her way into the Corps through a simulation game that had been put on the market several years earlier. The geniuses behind our Defender craft had put out a holo-game called ZZ Defender. Those who scored well through competitions had been recruited into the USAC directly at a time when Defender crews were sorely needed. The game continued to be a recruiting tool bringing in much needed talent.

Applications to the USAC had been through the roof since the last devastating attack. Raven and a team of three others had been the West Coast ZZ Defender Champions. The rest of her crew had been accepted into the USAC and divided amongst three other Defender teams. I was happy to have Raven on mine.

Tork had come from the Midwest, somewhere in Northern Missouri. He was about as small town as you could get. As far as engineers went, I would not have traded him for any others I had known. He was a quiet but relentless worker.

As my thoughts wondered I began to daydream about my earlier days on my Grandfather’s farm. We had a small herd of goats and it had been my job to keep them fed and keep them happy. I spent much of my time hacking into our automated feeders in an attempt to have them do more of my chores. Several minor alterations had worked wonders until I crashed and ruined a very expensive piece of equipment.

My parents were livid, but my Grandfather took it in stride. He told me that man would never have accomplished much if he had never taken risks. It was a statement that had ruled much of my adult life.