SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  With all the rubble underneath, we had come away with several slightly twisted ankles, but those had not been anything serious enough to slow us down. We were happy it was now November and the temperatures were mild. David stayed under his camo cover for a full day while the great ship recharged overhead. Our intense planning paid off that day—we remained well concealed and undetected by the giant craft.

  When the ship moved back over the water, David finished his hookup and made his way back to our hidden camp, almost a mile away. We decided to take a few days’ rest back at the homestead to catch up on our chores and relax. Regardless of whether or not we were fully successful in our warfare with the invaders, we would still need to eat and sleep afterward, if we survived. We would not immediately be in harm’s way, and even if we met with a lack of success, we could still escape with a bit of luck.

  In our last bit of planning, we decided to enable ourselves to trigger the weapons from almost two miles away. A pair of two-way radios would do the trick and provide us that extra bit of a safety cushion we desired. We felt a momentary blast of radio waves would be difficult to pinpoint and would still allow us a quick getaway from the area.

  Tree and brush growth along the roadways had made travel on them much more secure, as it made line of sight very difficult except from nearly directly above. We had tried to cover all the angles for our getaway. I was certain we would stir up a hornet’s nest of their fighters immediately following the triggering of our weapons.

  After several days of rest, we returned to Daytona and began our final preparations. Two weeks into our countdown, the final power cables were rigged. I closed five scavenged fuses, and the power flowed out to the five weapons. As we traveled from one to the next, we checked, double checked, and triple checked that they were charged and ready for action. We had to be sure this would work; we would only have one chance to fire at the ship.

  The next several weeks as we waited were going to seem like the longest of my life. Everything was in place and ready. All we needed was a victim. We pulled back to the Two Mile camp and began our wait. It took us two days of pacing about and twiddling thumbs before we decided to head back to the homestead for a week. Cows required milking and eggs needed to be gathered if we wanted to keep our little food factory in good working order.

  Time dragged on, and there was much pacing about. We always had enough work to keep us busy, but with such a huge event coming up, there was a complete lack of concentration on any given task. I tried to fill Mike’s gas tank three times the same day. David followed after with the same thoughts twice. The anticipation of the event was powerful enough that I began to imagine, due to our high level of excitement, that any one of us could spontaneously combust at any moment.

  We had worked hard on our testing and our plans for more than a year. The days had flown by during that time, but the final week was taking forever. I knew we would be in the thick of it soon enough, but one couldn’t help but be impatient.

  After our week at home, we again ventured out to Two Mile camp to await our victim. The point we had picked almost two miles away sat on slightly higher ground. With the help of our binoculars and a small platform high up in a large tree, we would know exactly when to pull the trigger.

  The second day brought a large thunderstorm with loads of lightning. I was a bit worried about our whole setup given the fact that a brisk wind in the right direction could easily expose not only one or more of our guns, but also the electronics that went with them. We had tried to take precautions, but Murphy’s Law had a way of rendering precautions useless.

  The lightning from the thunderstorm was not far from us. It was David’s turn as lookout in the tree when a bolt struck the adjacent tree right next to where we had Mike parked. After almost falling out of the watch tree, startled by the strike, David came down from his perch. We walked over to inspect our mobile gun. I was stunned that it held about a 30 percent charge. Somehow all the electronics had come through unscathed. I could only speculate that the coils and capacitors had acted as a giant current sink, keeping the electronics from being fried.

  For some reason, I had not thought about the gun being able to store a charge. If it proved true that it could keep a significant charge for any period of time, it would make the weapon truly mobile. We had nothing but time to kill, so I checked the charge about every half hour.

  It took two hours for it to fully dissipate, and that was with only a 30 percent charge. My conservative guess, if we began with a full charge, was that we could maintain a greater than 50 percent level for more than three hours. That certainly added a new twist to our ability to fight.

  As the storm moved away from us and toward the substation, David once again reclaimed his perch in the tree. He was only there a few minutes when a large lightning bolt struck right in the area of the substation. He scrambled down the tree and ran to me with the news.

  Had Mother Nature done us in? Was power still going to the substation? We had to know, as we believed we would only get one good shot at our attack. We piled into Bubba and made our way over to our Daytona base camp. We had our two four-wheelers on the trailer behind Bubba and quickly rigged them for our inspection. It was raining heavily, with lightning strikes all around, but we had to know if our weapons were still functional.

  The alien ship could come at any time, and if we were caught underneath, we would not be able to fire the guns without killing ourselves. The first three guns checked out as fine and fully charged. The fourth gun had lost some of its camo in the winds of the storm, but was otherwise OK.

  The final weapon however, had taken a direct lightning strike and lay scattered about. I was at first apprehensive about our prospects, but we still had four good functioning weapons that were charged and ready to fire.

  Since we had a fuse on each of the lines running out to our guns, the fuse on the fifth gun had probably saved the substation transformers from receiving any damage; we had wired straight into them. We headed back to Two Mile camp disappointed in our bad luck, but still anticipating letting loose our big strike. Four guns would have to be enough.

  Our vantage point had at one time had a nice house sitting just beside the trees. After some minor investigation, we were able to excavate its power line and hook up the big gun on the trailer behind Mike. We reconnected the fuse on the nearest transformer, and we had power flowing to our mobile weapon. It took several minutes to fully charge with the smaller line, but it would allow us to unhook and travel for some distance with an active weapon. We were happy with whatever extra protection we could get.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  The following morning, Janie called down from the tree. Our prey was approaching. It took another twenty minutes to settle over the substation and to drop its cables. Two small robotic helpers emerged and went about their task of hooking the great ship to the grid just as each time before.

  My hands were sweating with the anticipation of what we might be unleashing on our foe. David placed his hand on my shoulder and suggested we wait until the beast was almost fully recharged. If we were lucky enough to get explosions, a full load of fuel, even though it was only in the form of stored electric potential, still might help. The kids were warriors and thinkers, and I felt blessed to have them fighting by my side.

  The waiting was even more excruciating than before, and I couldn’t help but think maybe all that power would also be what might save the ship somehow. I was a very patient person, but the minutes seemed like hours and the hours like days.

  A full twenty hours after the ship had connected, the helper robots appeared and began the process of disconnecting the cables. We all climbed the tree and struggled to settle in on our little platform. As we counted downward from ten, I finally keyed the mic on the walkie-talkie we were using as a remote trigger.

  Nothing happened! What had we done wrong? Had the ship somehow drained the power from our guns? Was it interfering with our signal? Was it the lightning? It was
turning into a catastrophe, when everything up until then, excluding the lightning strike, had gone so well. Had the lightning fried our walkie-talkie receiver at the substation? My heart sank further with each of those thoughts.

  That’s when Janie pointed out that my radio was not switched on. Here I was about to do battle with man’s greatest foe ever, and a teenage girl had it together better than me. I flipped the power switch and keyed the mic. What happened next gave me goose bumps then and still gives me goose bumps when I tell of it today. What an adrenaline rush…

  The four guns fired simultaneously up into the great ship. Debris shot downward as the hypervelocity tungsten penetrated its hull, and more debris spewed upward as each pellet exited through the top through the top. We had positioned our guns in just the right places, and only a moment after I sent the signal, the only remaining propulsion disc pushed that side of the behemoth upward, sending the other end crashing violently down to the ground on the beach. All appeared to happen in slow motion because of our distance and the enormity of the alien vessel.

  For a few seconds, the great ship stood upright on its side as we watched the flashes from secondary explosions on the underside of the great vessel. The entire scene was surreal, and no movie special effects could have ever done it justice.

  In a final death roll, the ship finished its flip and crashed into the ocean waves upside down. Fire and smoke billowed from its now-exposed underbelly. We watched with our jaws dropped. When the rumbling sound finally made it to us, we were jubilant. As the once-mighty ship now lay upside down and on fire, it became evident our attack was a complete and utter success.

  At that moment, we experienced what was probably the greatest group hug in all of mankind’s short existence on the planet. In our excitement, we almost fell out of the tree. We watched for several minutes as nearly half of the great ship began to burn. All I could think of at that instant was "burn, baby, burn."

  The massive ship lay in about thirty feet of water. After a few minutes had passed, a major explosion blew nearly a quarter of the damaged ship to kingdom come. I surmised it was the power storage source now interacting with the saltwater. It was a fireworks display like none other—sparks, massive flame, and billowing smoke.

  I didn’t know if mankind would ever experience a prouder moment. Rachel had the digital camera out and snapped pictures of the action. I could only imagine the money those pictures would have brought if there was still a media around to fight over them. The images gave us one more reason to return home: we were eager to relive our ultimate fight.

  It then occurred to me there was another ship out there of the same size, backed up by one ten times as large. It was time for us to move; we had already wasted precious minutes gawking and celebrating.

  We scampered down the tree, unhooked our mobile gun from the power line, and began to break camp. David took one final look with the binoculars and informed me that at least one of the fighter ships was now circling over the wreckage. We gathered ourselves as fast as we could and made a beeline down our getaway road. Two hours later, we were secure in our compound with the vehicles safely hidden away.

  The excitement was just too much for us, and we stayed up all night reliving the moment over and over. Rachel had recorded the event live before snapping her pictures, so we were able to watch the recording again and again, and each time was celebrated as raucously as the first.

  For me, I had finally done something right in my life, and for the girls and David, it was thoughts of justice for the slaying of their loved ones. The best part of all was that we had all escaped unscathed and were ready and eager to fight another day.

  We let three weeks pass before venturing back toward Daytona. After a short stop just up from the Ferrari memorial to put a charge on our mobile gun, we headed to Two Mile camp.

  When we arrived, the first item of business was to again hook up our remaining gun to the grid. Two minutes later, we were ready for battle if needed. We would have to be completely lucky, with a ship just happening to fly directly into our firing line, but it felt good to at least have something for our defense.

  Minutes after our arrival, Rachel and Janie shouted down from the tree perch that the wreckage was still there. There were several of the fighter ships hovering around it, and what looked like some ongoing activity on top of its overturned hull.

  We would have to make our way back down to the Daytona camp to get a better look. With the fighters around, we would have to be extra careful to maintain our cover in the overgrowth. We decided to leave Mike and the gun charging at the Two Mile camp and even took a few minutes to aim the gun toward the path we had taken from there to the Daytona camp. If we had to run and they happened to chase, maybe we could get off a lucky shot. We would need divine guidance to score a hit, but at least it was something.

  We managed to creep into the Daytona camp and get Bubba and the four-wheelers covered. We would do our surveillance on foot as we needed to get close to get good intel. I carried the binoculars and David the spotter scope. We made it to just under half a mile away before deciding any further was too risky.

  Our first mission was to conceal our little outpost. We had a good stockpile of camo tarps to draw from; we had come across an army-navy store on one of our scavenging travels. The building had been crushed, but we had managed to dig out all the tarps we could ever want. They had certainly come in handy.

  The defeated ship lay still in the water, showing tremendous damage. One-quarter of the ship was missing after the last great explosion, and a full third of the rest was a burned-out hulk. After observing the activity going on around it, we determined it was nothing more than a salvage operation. The still-intact part of the hull teamed with activity—hundreds of the little helper robots moved about, and small freight carriers occasionally lifted off and headed out toward the other ships.

  The remaining water ship still hovered in the same position it had been in for the past year. There were still signs of damage, and there was still activity from the robots on those sections, but it looked to at least be partially functioning again as far as the mineral extraction went.

  The mother ship hovered about a mile above it on the other side, and the freighter craft were still lifting their stolen cargo to it from the remaining water ship.

  We returned to Daytona to spy a number of times in the weeks after. Each trip, the activity was the same, although the work at the destroyed craft seemed to be winding down.

  I took the time to check out the substation and our vertical guns. The substation itself had been damaged but looked to be largely intact, meaning it still had power. The vertical guns had been obliterated by the blowback from their victim.

  From the looks of things, the aliens had no plans to search for us, so I guessed they had no idea of what had taken place. Maybe they thought it was some type of catastrophic failure, as there was no evidence of any warhead or explosive. There was also no evidence of anything but an accident. Our luck to date had been more than we could have ever hoped for.

  We returned to our homestead with new plans. With the impressive power our guns had managed, we felt we could make a half-scale version that we could place on a swivel base. With faster charging and with the ability to aim, we reasoned it might give us a formidable defense against one or more of the fighters.

  Again, it took months of work to gather the resources needed. I was getting good at welding and figured I could build just about anything I needed, given the time and materials. We took a rear axle from a small pickup and mounted our newest gun on it; we called it our howitzer. We could easily tow it behind any of our vehicles, and with just a little muscle, we could take aim before getting out of the way to fire it.

  As part of our battle plans, we also made a few remotely controlled decoys. Two were just radios that would start broadcasting when they received a signal, and three were smoke bombs that would detonate when triggered. We felt we would need to make use of every trick in the book if we wer
e going to stand even the slightest chance during an assault of any kind. The enemy had many defenses; we had few. So far, our only real defense had been their ignorance—they didn’t know we were there.

  I had an idea to build another of the half-sized guns as a vertical gun and rig one of the decoy devices up beside it. That way, we might be able to lure a fighter in and blast it from a remote location. We would get to work immediately on two such weapons after completing the howitzer.

  David also resurrected our original handheld coil gun and made a few extra modifications. With power supplied from the grid, it could fire a steady stream of tungsten pellets with an energy force better than that of a .50-caliber machine gun. We would not be able to hold it for such, but after welding up a nice swivel base in Bubba’s bed, we could put up a modest defense, again, if we had power.

  All our planning and work was exhausting, but the levels of adrenaline created from our success in taking down the water ship kept us working hard and barely sleeping at night. I for one could not wait for another engagement with our nemesis. It took us another four months to bring together our new military equipment. With our weapons complete, it was time for some training.

  It would be too dangerous to practice around the Daytona station, so off to the Ferrari substation we went. The overgrowth was now encroaching on the transformers within the chain-link fence. I felt it would not be long before Mother Nature would be knocking out our little well of power.

  We hooked up the howitzer first and took several practice shots with it. Again, the only way we were able to control such force was with an equal force going out the back.

  The half-sized weapon was recharged and ready to fire again in less than ten seconds. We had hoped for such and had made an automatic ammo-feeder mechanism to go along with it. Our electronics work to date had been outstanding, and the auto feeder was no disappointment. About every ten seconds, a new round shot out in each direction.