SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  As we all sat watching our monitors, the reclamation suits injected a preprogrammed sleep aid into our systems. Within seconds we were all fast asleep. Our Defender continued to accelerate.

  We awoke six hours later from a stimulant and were quickly fully alert again. The speed indicator showed 308.54672 percent, and the trip counter had dropped to thirty-four hours, sixteen minutes.

  I ran a quick calculation of when we would need to start our deceleration and what the trip counter would be after that adjustment. We had sixteen hours before we dropped below light speed and twenty-two hours before we occupied the same portion of space as our alien invaders.

  Suddenly that long, dull, boring mission had turned into one where we were wishing we had more time to prepare. I consulted my crew, and we came to the decision we would adjust course to be well to the right of the incoming ships.

  We would also turn off the BHD and drift silently past our target before reengaging. With a little luck, we would be able to gather intel from behind them without being detected.

  In our final hour of acceleration, we topped out at 352 percent of light speed. And... we could have continued to accelerate. All systems were functioning normally.

  Bigg then chimed in with a bit of a revelation. He had been rerunning calculations on the active skin and had determined that at the speed we were traveling, it would not take a large asteroid hit to overwhelm the active skin.

  Something about the size of a pebble would be enough. We made adjustments to the automated steering program for anything larger than a BB.

  After the first hour of deceleration, we were all left twiddling our thumbs. The anticipation of the upcoming events was taking its toll on our ability to focus. Bigg was spending his time on holo-solitaire while Whip continued to read through manuals.

  I used the time to daydream about Paige while Pop got out of his chair to go look over the spare reactor they had put on board. We each programmed in a sleep time to coincide with when we would drop back below light speed. The hours ticked by slowly.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  The stimulants were again injected into our systems, bringing everyone fully awake. We each watched our trip counter and speed indicator as we dropped through light speed. I looked at the ship’s rear view and could make out a faint red glow of stars behind us once again beginning to show. My next thought was to contact Command to let them know our status.

  I tried repeatedly to raise the QE comm, but there was no response. Had we gone too far? Had our speed broken the entanglement of the particles? In either scenario, we were now so far into space that our regular communications would take months to arrive back at Earth.

  The alien ships were still almost four months away from Earth. Standard communications would only arrive at best a month ahead of them. I decided to adjust course closer to the alien ships, where we could glide close and send back data.

  Once we reached them, we could no longer broadcast a standard transmission, as they would then know we were there. It was not the outcome we had hoped for only hours before. We would slow to 10 percent light speed and then shut down the BHD. It would allow us to broadcast for three hours as the alien ships approached our position.

  As our BHD went silent, I asked Pop to hook himself back into his chair. I wanted us all focused on interpreting data as we approached our foes. Anything we could send back could possibly be the one thing that could change the course of the coming battle.

  Every half hour I again tried to reestablish the channel 1647 link back to Command. Every half hour I received nothing but silence. We had charted our course to bring us within a hundred thousand kilometers of the incoming ships. From that distance, all of our sensors would operate at full resolution.

  We each began the task of going over the data. I had visual, Whip took RF, Bigg took ultraviolet, and Pop took infrared.

  My first visual was still fuzzy at the distance we were. A quick measurement told me that the two ships were approximately seven hundred meters wide by three hundred meters tall. Again, we guessed they were saucer shaped, just like the ones from the Sodium Apocalypse, seventy years before.

  A few minutes later, the size was confirmed by the others. Whip detected RF transmissions between the ships like what we had captured before with the fighters. Again, we were unable to decrypt the codes that we had been listening to for months.

  As each feature of the ships became more distinct, we logged and transmitted it back toward home. Our counter had ticked down to display that we only had fifteen minutes more to transmit before we would have to go silent.

  That was when we got our first details about the length of the ships. It soon became apparent the ships were seven hundred meters wide by three hundred meters tall by... eight... kilometers... long. They were much bigger than we had expected.

  As the details became clearer, I could see two rows of alien fighters down the side of the ships that I was viewing. With only two minutes of broadcast time left, the computer imaging system counted out 256 fighters per row.

  That would be more than two thousand alien fighters total. Our guys at home would be overwhelmed. There was no way we could let these ships continue without at least taking a shot at them. I looked over at Whip, and she asked that I just give the word, and it would be so. I nodded, and she began to work feverishly at her holo-display.

  With only eighteen seconds left before broadcast silence, I adjusted course directly toward the alien ships, and Whip launched four BHD warheads with skins active and drives disabled. I then made a hard correction to maneuver us out of the way.

  The warheads drifted silently toward the eight-kilometer-long vessels. The first two warheads were not heard from again, as the alien ships had their gravity waves riding in front of them. It was evidently protection from any space debris they might encounter at their high rate of speed.

  We waited patiently for the second set of warheads, as they were coming in at a steeper angle to the second ship. As two bright flashes tore the nose off the alien carrier, it began to disintegrate along its axis as debris from the front smashed into the oncoming sections.

  We had done it! With one ambush, we had taken out an alien carrier and nearly a thousand fighters. The numbers would still be overwhelming once they reached Earth, but I was sure no one would complain.

  Just before the explosions reached the farthest point, a number of fighters ejected from the ship's hull. The first ship continued on its course while the fighters fell quickly behind.

  The alien fighters could not match the speed of the remaining carrier, leaving them to fall back. They continued onward, and I could only guess they would be picked up when the main fleet caught up to them.

  We had timed the blast so that Battle Command would at least see if a detonation had occurred. Three seconds of the destruction had been broadcast home before the transmission had gone silent.

  We drifted quietly, allowing the surviving fighters to continue onward safely away from us. We did not have the armaments to take them on in any meaningful way, leaving us with our best option... to stay hidden.

  When the aliens had passed us by for more than an hour, I brought the BHD back online. Pop then chimed in with a suggestion. He knew we all wanted to speed around the alien ships so we could be home to help fight them when they arrived at Earth. What he added was a thought that had not occurred to the rest of us. With our faster-than-light abilities, we could make a run out to the main fleet to gather data and still return home in time to fight.

  We all agreed it was a worthwhile mission given the fact the advance fleet of two smaller ships had carried over two thousand fighters with it. The blob of the main fleet had looked to be much larger.

  A course was plotted and set into the computer. If the acceleration held, we would increase speed for seventeen days before beginning to slow for another seventeen. In one month we could travel a distance that would take the aliens almost two years to do. Everyone agreed; the course was
changed and the throttle was pushed to full.

  Bigg began running his calculations of the speed we would achieve and what size space debris we could absorb. If the acceleration held, we would be traveling at more than sixty-eight times light speed. But, we had a major problem. At about twelve times light speed, our active shielding would have trouble absorbing space debris no bigger than a grain of sand.

  I quickly calculated an adjustment by lowering the BHD throttle percentage. We would continue to accelerate, only not as fast as before. The saved power could be diverted to the active skin. The new calculations stretched the trip to thirty-seven days at a peak of eighteen times light speed. It would allow us to handle debris strikes as large as a pebble. It was not optimum, but it was certainly manageable.

  I punched in the new numbers and watched as the computer adjusted the trip counter. Whip then let me know that we would have to immediately turn back once we got to the main fleet if we wanted any chance at returning home for the fight with the eight-kilometer carrier.

  I wondered if there would even be a home to return to. At the time of our departure, it was believed we would have eighty-seven newly commissioned Defenders ready to fly. The Defenders were ready, but their crews had seen very little action in them. The DSims were a great training tool, but the reality of fighting in space required another level of experience that simulators just could not provide. Aside from the carrier, the Defenders would have a thousand fighters to contend with. The odds were not in our favor.

  I pushed the throttle to full, and we settled in for our thirty-seven-day ride out to the main fleet. I wondered how much solitaire the crew could play and what else we might do to break the certain monotony and boredom that was coming our way. Pop immediately unhooked himself from his chair and squeezed through our supplies to have a look at the spare micro-reactor.

  I asked him what he was up to, and he replied he was just wondering if there would be any way to connect the second reactor to our system and power it up. He thought it would make for an extremely powerful shield if we had double the energy available. I had a sudden thought about what we might do to occupy our thirty-seven days of free time.

  We would spend it attempting to update and modify our systems with the spare equipment we had on board. With the reactor, I reasoned that with twice the power, we could possibly increase our rate of acceleration, thereby cutting down on our travel time.

  If we could arrive in half or two-thirds the time, it would leave us with more time to observe and more time to return home before the carrier arrived. I advised Pop and Bigg to focus their energies on making a second reactor hookup a reality.

  Aside from the theoretical thinking that my crew was capable of, I was more amazed with their practical commonsense abilities. Not only could they envision some pretty fantastic ideas, but they had the skills needed to put those ideas into practice. After sixteen hours of poring over schematics, gathering tools, and making modifications, my trio of unknown geniuses was ready to give the second reactor a try. They mounted the reactor to our frame and had only to connect the power feeds into our existing system.

  A breaker switch to an unused circuit had allowed the second reactor to tie into the power grid while the first reactor remained at full power. Pop said he did not remember the breaker being on any other Defender, but that he was glad it was on ours.

  I sat back in my chair and stared nervously at Pop sitting at his console. One more switch and we would know if our little experiment was a success. I then thought of my great-uncle, and I raised my voice, asking Pop to wait. He was about to flip a holo-switch on his console, bringing the second micro-reactor to life.

  I thought back to David Brenner's send-off message and how he had said he hoped we could put the reactor to good use. I could only come to the conclusion he had this exact scenario in mind.

  I gave Pop the go-ahead, and we watched intently as the micro-reactor slowly came to life. As the manual had instructed, it would take seven minutes to come up to full operational status. When the monitor readout for the second reactor reached 100 percent, I again gave Pop the go-ahead to take it live.

  As he flipped the second holo-switch, an alarm went off on everyone's console at the same time. Pop, Whip, and Bigg all began system checks to identify potential problems. The first reactor's output was dropping as the second reactor's output rose. The alarm continued to sound, and I advised everyone to just wait and watch.

  When the two reactors each showed 50 percent power, the numbers on both began to climb. We were rewarded shortly thereafter with the alarm going silent. Even though it was only the four of us sitting together in this small space, a cheer went up that I was sure could be heard back on Earth by my great-uncle. The extra breaker and the spare reactor were both of his doing.

  David Brenner had probably taken heat for sacrificing a capable Defender to give us the spare parts. He always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else with his planning, and it was my plan to put his wisdom to good use.

  I connected back into my chair, sat back, and pushed the throttle to 190 percent. The remaining power was being diverted to the shield to protect us from that random bit of space debris that could instantly vaporize us. The trip counter readjusted from thirty-seven to nineteen days, with us reaching thirty-four times the speed of light at our maximum. I turned back to look at Pop, and he had an extra-wide grin on his face at our accomplishment.

  I then began to ask the others to analyze the remaining spare equipment we had been given to see if there were any other advantages we could gain. We had nineteen days to put it to good use, if any good use was possible. We all pored over the equipment lists and the holo-user manuals for anything that could possibly be done.

  Less than an hour into our search, the automated sleep inducer injected a concoction into our IV lines that quickly put us all to sleep. It would be another six hours before the team was once again hard at work.

  Three days into our nineteen-day journey, Whip came up with a new idea. We gutted one of our active nukes, shortened it up to only use a BHD and picoreactor, and then added a second BHD ring on the back side. We would essentially have a flying drill that we could tell to seek out the enemy. It would just fly around for days drilling into and through whatever craft it caught and then exiting the other side.

  The second BHD would absorb any weapons they fired at it as it moved away, which we reasoned would make it virtually indestructible. With a picoreactor, it could fly nonstop for several days. Our hopes were for it to drill countless holes and cause untold damage.

  We had a dozen spare BHD rings but decided that only using eight would tell us for certain if the weapon would be effective. Our spare parts were of immense value, as we were far from home. The next sixteen days were spent alternating between sleep and study, with no new ideas coming to light. For me it was a difficult time, as I had trouble understanding much of the technology at hand.

  At our peak, we achieved 3,420.03577 percent light speed before the deceleration began. The plan was to fall below light speed early, drop three of our four Drillers in their path, and then silently slip by to the side of the passing fleet. If everything went according to plan, the three Drillers would look like space debris until the fleet was upon them. They would then activate and begin seeking out targets.

  I had an hourly alarm set that would remind me to once again try Paige on channel 1647. Every try yielded the same silence, but every try came with new hope. Even though our marriage was only weeks old, I missed Paige terribly.

  Our final hours of deceleration were agonizingly quiet. Except for our fascination with the increasing views of the incoming fleet, no one had anything to talk about. We studied the fleet as we approached before going silent. There were eighteen of the eight-kilometer-long ships we had dubbed Fighter Carriers.

  Those were followed by twenty-two saucers ranging from one kilometer wide to ten kilometers wide. The saucers were designated as Destroyers for the one-kilometer size, Cruiser
s for the four-kilometer size, and Battleships for the ten-kilometer behemoths.

  Destroyers numbered fourteen, Cruisers five, and Battleships three. And then there was one last massive ship following the others. On our long-distance sensors, it measured nearly forty kilometers across.

  We had little to match the firepower of this incoming fleet. We would do our reporting, but the news would arrive home behind us if we used standard communications. Our mission to gather intel and then return home as quickly as possible was now of the utmost importance.

  We dropped out of light speed, lined up, and then launched our Drillers. It was then on to silent mode. It would take sixteen hours of drifting before we would be able to turn our sensors back on. Again, the wait was agonizing. We could not see outside. As we drifted by, our knowledge of the alien fleet remained as it had been from a distance.

  I looked around the cabin at the others, and they were all busily reading away at Defender manuals. I suspected I probably had the most highly knowledgeable crew of the USAC. They had modified our ship while in flight and come up with what were hopefully ingenious weapons. Their drive and determination had taken us to more than thirty-four times light speed.

  The sixteen hours passed slowly by, but pass they did. When the counter hit zero, I flipped on the BHD and Bigg brought up the sensors. We were a full light-hour behind the fleet, and the view was impressive. Other than the long, thin carriers, the other ships were indeed all saucer shaped.

  We matched their speed and decided to trail them for several hours. In the distance beyond them I could see our tiny sun from its nearly two-light-year distance. It was not quite as impressive as it was from Earth. The feeling I was left with was one of being vulnerable. The massive fleet had us way outgunned. I could not imagine how we would possibly defend against it with our limited abilities and resources. Earth was in trouble...