by Daniel Day
Most days she pushed the thoughts from her head, but recently she’s found herself encountering those thoughts of ‘how’ and ‘why’ her fore family participated in an organization that was intent on the destruction, or total control of other worlds – a place where no man of Earth or an alien world, deserved that right. Each world, in her opinion, should be able to decide what they believe is in their best interest and she wanted nothing to do with forcing government structure, religion, or war on any otherwise peaceful world.
∞
Watson left the common room where the resistance force had set up a makeshift control center for their operations. She made her way to the former mine and down the halls to her quarters. She closed the door providing access to her dirt-wall room and leaned her back against it as it shut, reflecting on all that had happened in the past 32 hours of operations. She, in fact, had personally orchestrated a deep cover insertion of a resistance force operator to retrieve Commander Reyes.
During the transition into orbit of Artak, the vessel ‘daisy-puff’, she hesitantly believed could accomplish the mission, was spotted on UIF radar. An ensign notified her of the ongoing events while she directed Captain Fox to Reyes and fortunately, evasive maneuvers and skilled stealth left the UIF ‘guardians’, a fighter class warship unit, chasing their own tails in the wind. Fox had made it. He was in. All he had to do was now act – something he was horrible at doing.
They hadn’t been together very long, but longer than most relationships in the UIF or resistance, a rarity in itself. Fox complimented Watson on her skilled coding techniques for the AI program used in this very operation. The code was that of Reyes’ former AI system ARIA. She had recovered most of the data from his BSU suit the team stole from the UIF after the initial court proceedings, but not all of the data was there. Mostly stuff about his childhood and speech patterns were there, but no other details about his Neuro-transmission, which was vital during conflict or warfare. If the AI couldn’t understand his logical thought, it could very well lead him into dead-space.
Nevertheless, she pulled off the programming. Somehow, Watson managed to mimic Reyes and taught the program most of what she had learned about the legendary Commander. At least the pertinent parts of the program were there. The software he had received, although not the original, had enough information to build onto what Reyes will provide in flight to Earth. By the time he would reach Earth, his AI would be 88% of its original state with only some of his personal conversations with the AI missing. She never liked when users knew programming. Changing a code that she created sort of pissed her off. It was like, ‘hey, nice system. Now I’m gonna change it’, she thought.
Watson stood for another minute or so until she decided she had better lay down before she fell down. Fatigue wore into her mind hard and she had passed delirium a while back. At this point, she was in zombie mode, on ‘autopilot’. She closed her eyes and drifted into what could easily rank as one of the best sleep sessions she had ever had.
“Sir, could you look at this?” the ensign said while observing packets of data reflecting gunfire from Fox’s built-in reporting unit of his rifle.
“What is that?” the Adroitian Lieutenant asked, leaning over the young ensign.
“It appears to be gunfire, Sir,” she responded, pointing out a scripted message from the packet data.
“Do we know who he is engaging?” the Lt asked.
“No Sir, there are no hostile indications,” the ensign responded. “Wait! I think this is a surge of energy,” she said pointing to another scripted message in the data feed, “No, a… explosion?” she said, more of a question than a statement.
“Explosion?” the Lt asked, trying to decipher the message himself.
“It appears there was an explosion and Captain Fox has engaged an enemy,” she said now putting the packets in chronological order.
A major pain in cosmic space was that information, specially sent in Tachyon bursts, tended to spread out. Some bursts traveled faster than others did, depending on the file size, and most of the time only parts of the information made the journey to its intended destination.
Fortunately, the ensign was very skilled in deciphering the code and could understand enough bits and pieces of the information to discover that Captain Fox had encountered the enemy.
“Where is Captain Watson?” the Lt asked, briefly surveying the room.
“She’s been relieved by the Commander, Sir,” another ensign responded from behind him.
“That makes for a hard decision. Follow the data and keep me posted ensign.” He ordered while turning to make way toward the Commander's quarters.
The ensign acknowledged the order and placed a small transparent tablet at her side to maintain notes. She knew, along with everyone in the resistance, that Captain Fox has been just as important to Captain Watson as Commander Reyes was important to this mission. The ensign subconsciously hoped that should something happen to Fox, she wouldn’t have to be the one to notify the Captain.
Lieutenant Aiku, an Adroitian military officer made his way to the Commander's quarters. He knocked three times before placing his long thumb on the biomechanical reader to unlock the door. He entered the Commander’s quarters and found her sleeping on the bedside surrounded by stacks of papers, pictures, many tablets, and three containers of energy.
“Commander,” he said gently as to not scare her, “Commander,” a little louder he sounded.
“Huh, yes?” she said, sitting up as if she wasn’t sleeping at all.
“Captain Fox has encountered hostile forces,” he said, moving some of the papers to put them into some kind of order, “the readings don’t make sense, but it’s not my expertise.”
“Where?” she asked.
“At the pick-up site,” he responded taking a seat behind Leila on the bed.
“Captain Watson?” she asked, turning slightly to face him.
“No, Commander,” he said crisply.
After a brief pause, the Artakkian resistance Commander responded, “We should not keep information from her. She is the operations officer and though she had a personal relation with Captain Fox, I believe she is capable to maintain herself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Lt responded, “Shall I retrieve her?”
“No,” the resistance Commander responded, “You clean this up,” she said pointing around at the strewn papers smiling a bit, “I’ll handle it.”
“No worries, ma’am,” he said, looking around then back to return the smile, “We Adroitians are good at everything we do.”
Chapter Five
Commander Reyes plundered the storage compartments of the Vanguard while ARIA maintained a precise trajectory to the farthest outlying moon of Artak, Jedois. He found little of what appeared to be food and ripped open the small packages, scarfing down what bits of powder the minute packages offered. He soon realized that each small packet was genetically modified nutrition packets and the substance began expanding in his stomach providing substantial nutrition.
∞
“Estimate Time of Arrival, Jedois maneuver,” he said while his stomach churned and expanded exponentially.
“ETA, Jedois, 2-2 minutes, Commander,” she responded.
Reyes navigated his way into the control seat and confirmed the trajectory, relative speed, and energy levels of the vessel. The date onboard, Earth’s time, read two days prior to the current date of departure from Artak. However, in twenty minutes he would reach Maximum Effect of the warp drive systems, nuclear reaction ion thrusters, launching the vessel into deep space whilst bending time, putting him two weeks into his own future, two weeks into the future for Earth.
∞
Technically, it’s not the future, per se. For the crew onboard a vessel traveling at FTL speed, travel time that passes is six, seven, and at the most 14 hours, per the onboard timing systems. However, the passing of time at any given destination does not speed ahead but passes at a normal interval. It would, in fact, be two
weeks on Earth until Reyes’ arrives.
∞
“Commander, Approach sequence engaged,” ARIA sounded through the headset.
“Confirmed, approach sequence engaged. Activating hyper-sequence, mark T-20 seconds,” Reyes responded.
“Commander, hostile vessel incoming, mark 7-2-9-8-0 meters per second, aft vessel,” ARIA said, simultaneously providing a radar that indicated a red blip mark approaching his vessel at extremely fast speed.
“Load onboard defense,” Reyes said and began filtering through the provided defenses systems on the transparent display ARIA provided. He selected two multi-stage plasma burst and fired at the incoming vessel.
“Stage one, miss,” ARIA said, “Stage two, miss. Stage three, partial impact,”
“Identify” Reyes ordered ARIA, keeping a keen eye on the counting down warp drive sequence. He’d only need to evade the assailants for three minutes, two minutes to orbit Jedois in a slingshot maneuver, and one minute to actually bend space and disappear.
“Vessel one identified, UIF warship, EG-265,” she said, “Vessel two identified, Grongan attack drone.”
“There two?” Reyes asked, eyeing the radar that now showed three blinking red dots approaching his location. “ARIA, are they coming after us or the EG?” he asked.
“Commander, all forces appear to have an auto-lock sequence targeting Vanguard,” she said, showing Reyes some batch of numbers, letters, and coding that probably proved her statement.
“Hyper sequence complete, engage drive at a nominal velocity, you have the controls,” Reyes commanded, notifying ARIA.
“Confirmed, sequence complete, engaging maximum thrust,” she replied, instantaneously forcing Reyes head into the headrest of his control seat.
∞
Reyes monitored the force applied, surpassing 3, 4, 5, 8 g’s, and his face pressing into his skull even harder with each incremental gain of force. He faintly heard ARIA through the headset, barely audible through the blasting thrusters and whirring warp drive centrifugally forcing zero g’s to accelerate the vessel into a near surface orbit of Jedois.
As the vessel entered orbit of Jedois, the first round of increased effect, the force began to subside. Power of the magnetic field protecting the vessel increased and leveled the artificial gravity within the vessel, encompassing the spacecraft in its bluish-grey bubble-like shield of protected mass.
Reyes eyed the radar still visible on the viewing window in the control center. He found the blinking red blips on the radar and each were seemingly coming together into a wedge-like formation. Though it was not possible for the assailants to match the increasing speed of his vessel, it was quite strange for an identified Grongan attack vessel to be in an attack formation with an identified UIF warship. As the blurriness in his eyes continually subsided and force released its grip on his body, he found the third blip.
∞
“ARIA, can you identify the third vessel?” Reyes asked, monitoring the oncoming exit onto trajectory.
“Negative, Commander. It appears to mimic space debris. Infrared and sonic readings return low-level frequencies,” she responded.
∞
Commander Reyes monitored the readout detailing the ongoing events of the nuclear reactor and warp drives. There was not much he could do now; even entering orbit would result in a catastrophic death. The vessel accelerated at an astounding speed, from the previous 53,250 meters per second, the vessel accelerated to 5,335,694 meters per second, one-tenth the speed of light.
He monitored the radar, the orbit of levels of Jedois, and countdown to warp, excitedly waiting for the euphoric feeling accompanied by literally jumping into the future. Once the warp drive activated at maximum force, the spacecraft would literally disappear, leaving in its wake a swirling effect of spent plasma dust and electrical particles.
∞
“ARIA, threat assessment,” Reyes order the AI.
“Hostile vessels have entered orbit of Jedois, 2,455 meters in distance aft,” she said, regarding the assailants as on the trail of the vessel.
“Doesn’t matter now,” Reyes said, “Mark T-3, hold your-” he began.
∞
In an instantaneous flash, Reyes and the vessel he was piloting, assisted by the AI, launched into hyper-speed, surpassing even the fastest he had previously achieved while commanding the ISDV on its maiden voyage into deep space.
The vessel interior remained positively normal, about 0.89 g’s artificially sustaining the cabin and occupants. However, any object or being across space would not be capable of tracking the vessel because under warp drive engagement, the vessel literally jumps across the expanse of space in a matter of seconds.
Although technology advancements finally achieved faster-than-light-speed velocity, slowing down became a bit of a challenge. Seconds after entering warp drive engagement, Commander Reyes, and the onboard AI systems, would have to perform a number of tasks within a short amount of time – 14 seconds to be exact.
Within this period, Commander Reyes would physically map the trajectory path, locate entrance into Earth’s system, decelerate thrusters, increase magnetism against the forward path forcefully slowing the vessel by pushing against space with massive force, and ARIA would algorithmically resolve any inconsistent data or stabilization during the trajectory exit.
∞
“Trajectory, Mike-Kilo 3-5-point-8-6, Sat 2-3,” Reyes said, reading out the corrected trajectory path, “decelerating thrust, 80%, 55%, 12%,” he continued, making the required adjustments.
“Inconsistent data, Commander,” ARIA sounded through the headset, “Automatic override,”
“Negative, ARIA, continue on trajectory path,” Reyes ordered.
“Confirmed, override disengaged,” she responded, “Impact with Earth, one minute, twenty-two seconds.”
“What? Impact?” he asked double checking the data feeds he had already confirmed while correcting his course adjustments.
“Impact Imminent,” ARIA said, resonating a flashback of his crash landing on Artak that led to his imprisonment, “Impact Imminent,” she continued.
Reyes could see no reason the vessel would impact Earth, at least not right away; he scanned the relative magnetic force, it was safe; he checked the thrust damping, it was precisely engaged; he monitored the relative speed and found the issue corresponding to ARIA’s alert.
The vessel had only slowed to two-tenths the speed of light, roughly 599,500 meters per second. This was way too fast to enter the Earth’s gravitational pull. Within the blink of an eye, he and the vessel, along with Fox’s corpse, and all relative composition of the spacecraft would disintegrate entering Earth’s atmosphere, traveling at over 650,000 meters per second after Earth’s grip pulled the vessel to its surface.
“Trajectory, Lima-Papa 4-3-3-point-8-9, Sat 6-7, Maximum thrust,” Reyes commanded, performing a 180-degree spin while flashing through Earth’s local system.
“Impact imminent,” ARIA continued alerting, “Impact imminent.”
Reyes entered Earth’s atmosphere flashing through the Karman Line, roughly 100km above the surface. Magnetism of the space craft’s forward shielding averted to the rear of the vessel, essentially trying it’s best to equalize the artificial gravity within the spacecraft.
The force of Earth’s gravitational pull, engaged thrusters at maximum power, atmospheric entry, and magnetic field surrounding the spacecraft, made for an awe-inspiring light show, flaring blues and oranges of streaking lines falling directly to the surface.
Reyes braced himself for impact as he monitored the halving relative speed and surface distance. At 80km above the surface, the vessel pushed at the maximum power of 84g’s. Without the magnetically charged artificial gravity, Reyes would have died from the compression alone. The plummeting speed decreased from 500,000 meters per second to 300,000, then 100,000; 65,000; 42,000; 23,000; 8,000 and continued decreasing.