SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  For three hours we tracked and recorded the mega fleet. For three hours we saw no sign of our BHD Drillers. We wondered if they had somehow not activated, because they were six hours overdue. We marked the supplies down as lost as we prepped for our voyage home. I punched in the waypoints for our flight plan. I had the others do a quick check of my numbers before pushing the throttle to full.

  Distance to Earth... 1.93866 light-years, or 18,313,289,748,000 kilometers. Peak speed would approach forty-two times light speed before deceleration. We would be home in just over twenty days.

  As we sped away from the main fleet, I began thinking of what the next twenty days of boredom would be like. We were captive in the small vessel. We could stand, but there was really nowhere to move around. I asked Whip how it was that we were able to sit in the chairs for so long without feeling weary and sore. She dug into an electronic manual and soon had the answer.

  The reclamation suits we all wore were equipped with thousands of small electrodes. Tiny high-voltage shocks were constantly being applied to our bodies in patterns that would keep our muscles healthy. It was another of David Brenner and his team's ingenious creations. Whip noted that the manual stated that test subjects actually saw muscle gain over the course of a week while the suits were active.

  I began to picture myself scooping Paige up off the ground with my bulging biceps before carrying her through the door to my quarters and laying her on my anti-grav mattress. It didn't take long before my daydream was interrupted. It was Pop remarking that with our use of two reactors, we would be cutting it close on our fuel supply on our trip home.

  According to his calculations, we would be down to 2.5 percent supply when we arrived. And that calculation had plus or minus 3 percent accuracy. The last thing we needed was to run out of sodium before reaching home. Space was a cold, dark place.

  Our flight path took us around the alien fleet and then straight back toward our tiny sun. For just over ten days, we accelerated to just under forty-three times light speed. We studied or played solitaire for sixteen hours before another six hours of sleep were imposed upon us. That cycle was to be repeated daily for the duration of our flight.

  Pop made power adjustments to turn off the ship’s lighting and consoles during periods of sleep. The savings were miniscule, but with our potential fuel shortage every bit helped. On the thirteenth day, Pop's calculations had our fuel supply showing us with 0.04 percent remaining upon arrival with plus or minus 1 percent accuracy. We had about a fifty-fifty chance of running out of fuel.

  He tagged our worst case as leaving us still well above light-speed at just outside the heliosphere. We would zip past Earth with no way to slow. The black void of space would not be our friend. I asked if there were any other systems that could be shut down. Eight minutes later, the reclamation system was powered off and we each disconnected ourselves from our chairs.

  We would be traveling the final week of our mission without food. The reactors on board had the ability to produce small quantities of water. For seven days we would be sipping the water orally in an attempt to stay hydrated. Man could go for weeks without food but not without water. The shutdown of the reclamation system increased our numbers to 0.34 percent, raising our chances to seventy-thirty.

  The last seven days were spent in silence with our consoles and the interior lighting off. The dim light that remained in the cabin was being emitted from several equipment LEDs. Two flashing green LEDs were my friends.

  At the start of day twenty, we dropped through light speed and entered the heliosphere. Pop quickly powered down the second reactor in a final attempt at conservation of our remaining sodium. Its tiny amount of remaining fuel was diverted to the first reactor's feed.

  As we passed Jupiter, Pop's console lit up with a flashing, ominous warning. We were out of fuel for the BHD, leaving us with two hours of active skin and cabin oxygen scrubbers. I began broadcasting on our standard communications channels. We needed help. Our speed remained at more than two hundred thousand kilometers per hour, but we had no steering.

  Our current course would take us just past the moon, but that was still three hours away. By that time we would be completely out of power... and oxygen. Thirty minutes passed before we got a response from Command. Ten minutes after that, the warble of channel 1647 chimed in on my audio implant.

  It was Paige, and they had two rescue ships on the way. The rescue Defenders would have to match our speed, and then one of them would have to swing its rear door around to ours. A sodium transfer would have to be made in open space while traveling at two hundred thousand kilometers per hour. The transfer would be done by tossing a small package of sodium from the rear door of one craft to a waiting astronaut at the rear door of the other.

  Bigg volunteered for the duty. Defender A1 with its freckled, red-haired pilot soon came alongside us. A quick maneuver placed the rear of A1 within twelve meters of the back of our craft. This would be our first chance to test out the new reclamation suit helmets. It was not something I looked forward to. Before depressurizing, I did a full dump of our main fleet data to Battle Command.

  With the active skin disabled and the cabin depressurized, we had about fifteen minutes to make the transfer, stop the reactor, reload the feed, and finally do a restart. With the reactor and active skin down, we were vulnerable to space debris. Any strike would easily penetrate our aluminum hull, bringing our journey to an end. We moved as quickly as possible to make the exchange.

  With both rear doors open, the defensive specialist for A1 tossed a packet about the size of a baseball to a waiting Bigg. He had it on the first catch and quickly turned it over to Pop. The A1 crewman then sent over a line attached to a winch. Bigg connected himself to the line and was pulled to safety in the other craft.

  The line then came back for Whip, and within minutes she was aboard A1. I had volunteered to stay with my ship and fly Pop home when the power was restored. I was disobeying a direct order to go, but I was not going to leave Pop alone. Defender A1 quickly closed their rear door and reactivated their skin and BHD.

  With our rear door closed and with five minutes of air remaining, Pop struggled to reload the reactor feed. I asked if the second reactor was a viable alternative, to which I was told a resounding no. The light on my wrist pad began to blink yellow as our oxygen levels dropped to under a minute’s worth. We continued to zoom along at two hundred thousand kilometers per hour as we moved just inside the asteroid belt.

  With seconds to spare, Pop let out a yell as his final reload attempt bore fruit. We had one shot at a reactor restart. Our ship’s battery held just enough power to spark the fusion reaction. Pop held up crossed fingers as he pressed the flashing red holo-button on the reactor console. Seconds passed with no indication of success.

  The reactor then began to emit a small glow that just as suddenly faded. Several agonizing seconds passed before the glow returned and began to slowly build. Within less than a minute, the reactor began to power up. I struggled to breathe as I looked down at my wrist pad. My oxygen timer read two minutes and three seconds.

  Pop hit a restart of the cabin systems, and seconds later the cabin began to pressurize. When a green light appeared on the cabin oxygen readout, I reached up and flipped the latches on my helmet. The stale air of my suit rebreather was soon replaced with fresh, clean cabin air. I took in a long, deep breath. We had made it home.

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  Two hours after the reactor restart, we were landing at Regents Field. Once down in the chamber we were taken to separate rooms, where techs removed our reclamation suits and hosed us down. The stench was horrifying. After the hose down, we were left to take showers. I took note of the fact that I had again lost weight. The reclamation suit and not having eaten for a week had worked wonders.

  Strange thing about wearing the suit: you did not get hungry. I suspected they had some chemical fix in the IV to suppress those urges, but we had not been hooked up to the IV for
a week. I dressed in a clean but now very baggy uniform and was then escorted into a debriefing. The recordings of the advance carrier and the full fleet had everyone in awe.

  Just as we had entered the briefing room, a team of techs had come in and hooked our IV ports to portable feeding units. We would be receiving the nutrition we had given up during our final week’s flight home.

  I wondered how we could take on such an enemy with our meager defenses. Would Earth fall to these robotic ships? To a foe that we had yet to actually see? As voices in the room began to rise, General Buck put his hammer fist down hard on the table. It drew everyone's instant attention.

  He ordered each of the groups to start evaluating the data. Once they had a handle on what was coming, he wanted action plans as to what we might do to try to stop them. Again he banged his fist on the conference table, and the senior staff scrambled to begin their work. When the room had cleared, he approached my team.

  He wanted the details on how we had managed to destroy one of the carriers. I told him of our tactics and how I thought we had been a bit lucky with an attack not being expected. I did not think we would be that lucky again. A thousand fighters would be upon us in about two months, and we had seventy-eight Defenders ready for our defense.

  The General then let us in on a contingency plan that had been in the works since the large fleet had been detected. Shell companies had been set up to design, to plan, and to build factories overseas that would produce parts to be assembled here. He expected those plants to be fully operational in a matter of days. On our end, we had another set of shell companies that were set up to assemble parts of the Defenders into larger subassemblies.

  There were also two other chambers identical to this one, with the first pilots expected from them in the next two weeks. By the time the alien carrier reached us, we would have nearly three hundred Defenders with their crews at the ready.

  It was hardly a match for a thousand alien fighters. But, there was a second tier to the defensive strategy. Starting in another week, we would be launching two rockets a day that would each be carrying four coil gun satellites each. That would give us almost five hundred coil guns encircling the Earth. And then there was tier three.

  After a briefing by the President and his secretary of state, we would be deploying three times the ground-based coil guns at every major city around the globe. They were to be manned by each nation.

  It was a technology we did not give up lightly, but it was the only way we could possibly protect the Earth's inhabitants. When the other major nations were briefed fully on what was possibly coming, they were at first angry. With the gift of the coil gun technology, they became very cooperative.

  We had to all work together if we wanted to survive. At that very moment, they were each receiving an updated briefing on what would be upon us in two months. General Buck had briefed the President personally, telling him that a worldwide effort was the only chance we had.

  More than four thousand heavy ground-based coil guns would be in operation within that two-month period. And with the size of the approaching full fleet behind them, he expected cooperation to only grow.

  I told the General about our attempt to ambush the main fleet with our Drillers. When asked for specifics of how it went, I had to tell him we did not know. We were not sure what had happened, as there was no evidence they had actually gone active before we left.

  After a long discussion about the alien fleet, the General dismissed us. We were given the remainder of the day to relax and rest. Bigg asked Whip to go with him to visit his son. Pop immediately made his way to the officers’ lounge for a beer. I headed directly to Paige's lab.

  I made channel 1647 private and talked with Paige as I walked. When I entered the lab, I was met by a teary-eyed wife who was ever so happy to see me. It was a moment I would surely not forget for the rest of my life. I wrapped my arms around her for a long embrace. I then knew what it was like for every sailor, soldier, and airman who had ever had duty away from home. The welcome back made it all worthwhile.

  We talked small talk for a bit before I asked what had happened to the QE comm link. She said that when we passed through light speed, the link was broken. She had tried for hours to determine why, and after a full day of effort had finally given up and determined that it was lost. She had removed the implant to run tests and had left it there in the lab.

  She had tried several times since to contact me, but she guessed it was when we had again passed through light-speed on our way to the main fleet. In my absence, she had managed to create a second grouping of entangled particles. With one more, she would be able to make another QE comm pairing, enabling a second channel in another implant.

  General Buck had given me permission to relieve Paige from duty for the remainder of the day. With my command, we headed quickly to my cabin. Once inside, I shed my baggy clothes and was greeted with an impressed smile. I scooped Paige up with my firm arms and laid her gently on the anti-grav mattress. For the remainder of the day, we were in our own little private world.

  In the morning I was directed to a refitting room, where I was put into a new reclamation suit. I was then told that my training was complete and that I should report to Red for new orders. When I arrived at the DSim, the rest of the team was waiting. We were greeted by a gracious Red, who immediately foisted a set of shooting stars into each of our hands. The shooting star in the USAC was the equivalent of earning your wings in the air force.

  There would be no more DSim for us. We would instead be utilized for instructing other crews until it was time for battle. Red sent us to a conference room where we would receive instruction on how to be an instructor. I looked forward to the task of yelling at a new crew for their mistakes.

  After two days of instructor training, I was given my first crew: two Brits, an Israeli, and an Indian. All women. They were eager and they were tough. They had been briefed about what was coming and were committed to giving all they could in the effort to protect our precious Earth.

  I gave them hard scenarios. I pushed them. In two months they would be going up against a foe that had them outgunned and outnumbered. Their names were Kat, Kate, Inrasia, and Krysa. The girls were all good at something I had always had trouble with... multitasking.

  When Kat barked an order, the other three were on it. And they each had the knack of being able to focus on their own duty while keeping an eye on the others. The subtleties I would rely on Bigg or Whip or Pop to catch were never missed by the crew. As a team, they were tight.

  For six weeks, they put twelve hours a day into the DSim. Their final two weeks would be alongside my team in A55. It was imperative that I teach them everything I could, as once in battle, crew A277 would be our wingman.

  We would be going out in formations of three. The other team joining us was A104. Each of the early crews that had received the full training was being teamed with a crew from the accelerated class and one from the short class I had been instructing on.

  The rookies I had been schooling were not as green as I had originally thought. General Buck had authorized the DSim code to be rolled into an online holo-game where thousands of teens and twenty-somethings had been in competitions for prizes for more than a year.

  Two of the crew of A277 were regional winners of the ZZ Defender game. The General’s vision had been to generate a steady stream of experienced simulator pilots to fill the ranks of our new pilot recruits. Over a third of those newly admitted to the USAC had come from participation in those games. Every little item that was preplanned gave me hope we at least had the right people in the top positions at the right time.

  As the training continued, the countdown clock had soon dropped to two weeks. We had gathered in a large hangar at Regents Field for the first flight test of more than sixty new crews. We would take to the heavens with 210 Defenders in a mass formation. Our weapons would be on sim mode. The DSim system had been tied into the fleet of Defenders.

  As a safety pr
ecaution, the ships had all been programmed with anticollision software. There was no sense in losing crews and their ships during a simulation because of an accident. We would be flying in our formations and following battle instructions fed to us by the Tacticians. The alien carrier would be simulated on all sensors and monitors during the live flight.

  We launched from the tarmac at precisely 2:00 p.m. It was a hot July afternoon. I split my view-screen and had the view from Regents Field displayed on the left side. Two hundred ten Defenders taking to the sky at once was an impressive sight of blurry detail.

  The battle against the simulated alien carrier only lasted forty-five minutes before the last Defender was turned into space debris. Half an hour later, the last of our newly launched space guns were taken out. An advance of the simulation told us that Earth would fall in less than a day. In less than a week, mankind could be sent back to the Stone Age. It was a sobering thought.

  As each of the ships met their fate during the simulated live battle, they were programmed to turn and report to a rally point just above Regents Field. It was to be the launching point of each of the day's battles.

  Half an hour after each of the simulations was lost, a new one was starting up. The slaughter of our Defenders and their crews went on all day... every day... for the next nine days. Just before the start of our fifth attempt on the tenth day, I asked Pop and Whip to simulate the Drillers in our weapons program. I wanted to see what the simulators thought they could do.

  We passed the Driller info to our other two crews, and by battle’s inception we had eighteen Drillers at the ready. When our orders came down from the Tacticians, we were questioned as to why our weapons supplies had been altered.

  I asked why they cared, as we had been unable to utilize our full complement of weapons for any of the battles we had been directed into. The result was a ground commander yelling at me over my audio implant. In every scenario, we had been left on our own to contend with at least fifteen alien fighters to our squad’s three. At our best, we had managed to destroy four of them and temporarily disable two others.