SODIUM:4 Gravity

by Arseneault, Stephen

  Shepard logged that the alien craft had its gravity wave active and had it aimed in a wide pattern at the small moon. She ran a few calculations and came back with a startling discovery. The aliens were pushing the moon towards Alvin. I marveled at the fact that a single ship was able to move such a large mass.

  I fired off a micro-burst of the BHDs to bring us to a full stop. We watched and gathered information for nearly ten Earth hours before Command came back with a theory. If the big ship continued its push the small moon would be in a decaying orbit within a month.

  The decaying orbit would cause the moon to accelerate slightly which would in turn eventually send it hurdling into its twin. I could not fathom the reason for putting your entire planet at risk of destruction. Shepard continued to run her own numbers and soon came back with a new theory.

  Since the planet had been depleted of its Sodium it was possible that by allowing the moons to collide and shower the planet with their debris that the Sodium in the oceans could be replenished. But it was a process that could take hundreds if not thousands of years. Again, it seemed like a risky maneuver. Why not just mine the Sodium from the moon directly? Why risk your existence on such a perilous scheme?

  Command then gave the word to return to our previous mission. We had an alien fleet to worry about first and we needed whatever data could be gathered from it before its arrival. The remainder of our trip around Alvin was uneventful and the data much the same as what we had already gathered. I again gave the BHD a quick burst sending us towards the nearest gas giant that orbited close to the orange fire of Epsilon Eridani. With a few minor micro-burst adjustments we would use the gravity of the gas giant to silently slingshot us back towards the alien fleet.

  We drifted for nearly half a day before reaching the far side of the second planet and pushing the throttle to full. Six minutes later we passed light speed and once again accelerated towards the enemy fleet. Our reconnaissance mission to the alien home world had given us far more information than we could have hoped for.

  The data also told us that the main alien fleet that approached Earth was our only concern. Even if the aliens had more ships at the ready it would take them 13 years to launch another attack as their speed was limited to below SOL. Our technologies and abilities continued to grow and the knowledge of no further threat would only serve to embolden our resolve.

  With the QE comm, Command had all the information we had acquired and our scientists and engineers were no doubt busily analyzing it. I wondered what the squid creatures were like. Did they laugh? Have families? Were they expansionists? Were they only trying to survive? It was obvious that they were aquatic animals and I found it interesting that they wore a type of helmet when in the oceans of Alvin.

  Were they saltwater creatures? Was the lack of Sodium somehow detrimental to their health? And could our scientists crack the language barrier that prevented us from understanding their motives for attacking Earth? We knew they were interested in our Sodium and we knew they used it for power. But, why not negotiate with us? We had plenty.

  At full throttle our journey back to the alien fleet would take 12 days. Again I spent the time practicing in simulations against hordes of enemy fighters. During the flight out I found that I was beginning to anticipate the simulated alien moves and had advanced to a 3-1 kill ratio. Shepard continued to tweak the program and I continued to hone my skills.

  As we reached our cruising speed of 2412 SOL the view of the stars behind our ship was again complete blackness. It was as if a giant void had opened up shielding a third of the universe from our sensors.

  All I could hear inside our ship was the faint hum from our 32 reactors which were constantly being drowned out by the play-list of music I had stored in my audio implant. My selection was typically of the Binge genre which was a throwback to the generational music of the 2030s. Hard tones followed by soft sequences that slowly built up to more hard tones.

  As I practiced my weapons and maneuvering skills I soon found that during certain songs my kill ratio increased to 5-1. I quickly compiled a short-list of songs for use during combat. If it worked in the simulation I was willing to take the chance that it would work during a real fight.

  I practiced my turns and flips until the moves were all second nature. I had also found a firing pattern for the coil guns that was effective against multiple craft at once. As I flipped hard and fired off three rounds in a simulation my screen was suddenly overwritten with odd shaped characters. Shepard then asked a question.

  She wanted to know what I thought I was seeing. It took a few moments to recognize the characters as being the same ones we had seen on the side of the alien structure. Shepard then asked if I understood them to which I gave her an irritated glance. My holo-screen soon showed another two lines of characters... but this time they were in English.

  Again Shepard asked if I understood what it said. As I read through the text with a scowl on my face I came to the sudden realization that she had done it! She had cracked the alien's language. I quickly asked how and she revealed that she had a linguistics algorithm that had been running in the background on the ship's computers, continuously analyzing the alien’s communications.

  The artificial intelligence module of the computer system had taken the symbols from the alien structure and run them through the linguistics algorithm. It was nothing that Shepard had done herself. But the result was one of immense importance.

  If we could decode their communications we could use it against them in battle or perhaps even find a method to disrupt their comm altogether. It was a huge discovery, but as we sped along at 2412 SOL we had no immediate way of sending the message home. We would have to wait until we dropped below light speed which would take another three days, and then only if we flipped and slowed immediately.

  I began to run the numbers for a flip when a warning light flashed on both of our holo-screens. Collision with an object just above our safety parameters was imminent. I looked directly at Shepard as the collision counter ticked down from ten seconds. At zero the impact was not much more than a shudder. But the affect was a critical strike to our BHD rings knocking out all but one.

  I did an immediate flip and punched in the numbers for how long it would take to slow to a dead stop. I was disheartened when the time counter came back with just over 182 days. From our current speed we would come to a stop more than 12 light years on the other side of Earth. I viewed it as an unacceptable outcome.

  I punched up our on-board supplies and found that we had four extra rings. I again ran the numbers with only five BHD rings and found that it would still take 36 days to stop, placing us just over two light years beyond our own planet. Shepard then suggested that we scavenge some of our side rings. It would inhibit our ability to turn but at this time turning was not our problem.

  We were soon busily running scenarios and simulations of doing a ring exchange at 2412 SOL. The tiniest spec of space dust could obliterate the ship if it was struck at that speed with no active skin. Our best simulation yielded an exchange time of 22 minutes. During that short time-span we would travel almost 400 million kilometers.

  I asked Shepard for her thoughts and she concurred that without a full exchange we risked missing any attempt at fighting the main fleet before it reached our space. We were unaware of any such plans, but those things always had a way of not coming to the forefront until zero hour approached.

  As I reached for my helmet Shepard put her hand on my arm. She was the engineer and it was her duty to bring the ship back to within its proper operating parameters. She was the one responsible and she would not be releasing that duty to me.

  I looked her in the eye and then took a firm grasp of her hand. After a nod of my head and a slap on her shoulder I turned towards the supply boxes as she slipped her helmet over her hair and spun it slightly to the left until it latched. I followed immediately after with the same maneuver.

  Shepard took several minutes checking and rechecking the in
formation on her holo-screen before proceeding to the control panel by the rear door. No one before had turned off the active skin while traveling faster than light and simulations above light speed had generally yielded gibberish for results as the standard laws of physics seemed to no longer apply.

  As Shepard looked hesitantly at the holo-button I wondered if we would not be instantly vaporized. She then looked back at me through the glass bubble of her helmet and gave me a wink. The button was pressed and the active skin turned from pitch black into the familiar silvery white of a parked ship.

  Other than the expected visual alarms going off on our holo-screens and the now vivid silvery white interior of our Ghost, there was no indication that anything had changed. We each quickly attached our tethers. Shepard then pushed the button and the rear door slowly opened.

  I handed Shepard the ring tool and sent her on her way. We were traveling at 2412 times the speed of light with only a thin layer of protection from our BGSs. I watched intently on the console holo-screen as Shepard loosed the first ring. Suddenly, the holo-screen started flashing a bright red warning. We had entered into some type of a plasma cloud.

  Seconds later everything began to be covered with a faint green glow. The green glow continued to grow in brightness as Shepard worked. At the same time I became brutally aware of the lack of our simulated gravitational forces inside the ship.

  The green glow turned into an aura that moved back and forth between green and orange as you moved in one direction or the other. We had no shielding except for that which our BGS supplied. The outermost layer was a low powered Sodium active skin. I held up my arm and watched as the green glow of the plasma danced across it in tight swirls.

  The plasma also had an effect on the stimulus operation of the BGS. The small micro-pulses that kept our muscles toned and bones thick were now seemingly in overdrive. I felt as though I was flexing every muscle in my body at once.

  The weightless feeling along with the stimulation from the BGS and the green and orange aura gave the sense of having a hallucination. The plasma seemed to flow slowly over my suit and then wisp away into nothingness.

  As I waved my arms back and forth in wonder I suddenly became aware of the fact that the active skin of the BGS was going into overdrive. My arms were fading in and out of sight right before my eyes. The plasma was supercharging the active skin.

  I had sudden thoughts about what it would be like to have an active suit that matched the capabilities of the active skin of the ship. It would be like a personal cloaking device. My mind began to wonder with all the abilities that an invisible BGS suit would provide.

  I could charge headlong into one of the alien ships and wreak havoc on their crew. Blasting away with a coil gun while throwing punches from an unseen location. I could bash alien skulls and run amok without threat of discovery or harm. I could own their ship and they would fear me.

  I was then brought back to the reality of the moment when I reached my hand out towards the toolbox only to have it pass through it like it was not there. I began to wonder if I would slip off the tether and through the walls of the ship and out into space. I began to fear for Shepard and what might become of her being already outside of the ship.

  The green glow then suddenly left just as quickly as it had come. The red alerts on the holo-screen returned to the door open and active skin off warnings. I marveled at the black void of space behind us slowly moving out to the red and then orange stars as it had a dream-like appearance. I was soon brought back to reality by a scream from Shepard.

  I called out several times but got no response. I quickly scanned her health status and all parameters were in order. Shepard then came back with a reply of frustration. The ring tool had slipped in her gloved hand from the plasma activating her suit and was now floating away from the ship. I momentarily pondered what damage a ring tool might do to a stationary object if struck while traveling at 2412 SOL.

  I turned back to the tool chest in search of another ring tool. The box contained none. I then checked the ships manifest and after several searches located one in another supply case. When Shepard returned I handed over our last ring tool with an apprehensive look. She remarked that it would not happen again.

  Shepard continued on her faster-than-light spacewalk and when the last ring went into place 24 minutes had passed. I was dizzy from the combinations of stress and the visual and physical stimuli from the plasma glow. When the door closed and the active skin of the Ghost came back to life I let out a sigh of relief.

  The immediate pitch black of the ship’s interior and the feeling of gravity brought my senses crashing back to reality. Shepard returned to her console and ran test after retest on our new hardware. She then ran a complete physical report on the conditions of our bodies and turned to me with a puzzled look.

  She pointed out structural changes to our DNA. The strands of fiber that defined who we were and what we looked like had tightened and had grown slightly in length. She feverishly worked at running calculations and simulations of what affects the longer tighter DNA might have on our bodies. Every simulation yielded the same result. Our spacewalk in a plasma field at 2412 SOL had probably turned back our biological clocks, adding years to our life spans.

  I flipped the ship back to the forward position and then set the throttle so that we continued on at 2412 SOL. I sat back in my chair and began to ponder what I would do with the extra years that I would possibly have at my disposal.

  I wondered if another 20 minutes of spacewalk through the plasma would again increase that span. Shepard ran repeated tests on the sensor reading from the plasma cloud and could not come up with a solid explanation of its makeup or possible origins. It was unlike anything she had ever seen.

  As we continued on our trek, several days had passed since the plasma spacewalk. Shepard spent her time analyzing the alien language translations, trying repeatedly to fill in holes and better define meanings. As my mind wandered on about my new found health I suddenly became aware of a tiny spider that had somehow managed to stow away aboard our craft.

  I wiped my eyes several times before coming to the realization that my eyesight had somehow gotten much better. I should not have been able to see the spider at all as it was tiny in size and blended in with the black surroundings of the active skin.

  I activated the play-list in my audio implant and was startled at how high the volume was. Then out of curiosity I turned on the holo-screen camera to have a look at my face. I took immediate note of the appearance of a small scar almost missing from my chin where I had crashed my bicycle into my father's car as a child.

  Shrinking too were the freckles that normally adorned my nose. Whatever it was that had happened to us during the spacewalk was having an immediate impact on our bodies. I quickly brought the strange health anomalies to Shepard's attention.

  When she looked up at me from her screen her eyes went wide. As we discussed what was happening she again ran a full health report. Our DNA continued to slowly lengthen.

  I then asked if our computer profiles held the standard IQ test that we had taken when first joining the corps. She said it did. I took the 15 minutes to once again run through it and was again startled by its conclusion.

  I had been repeatedly tested and had consistently scored in the 131 to 134 range. I was above average when it came to intelligence, but it was nothing to boast of. The new score totaled at 144. I was one point shy of being considered a genius.

  Shepard took the same test and came in at 151, again, 12 points higher than her previous best. The faster-than-light spacewalk had added nearly a dozen IQ points to our intelligence scores and potentially dozens of years to our lives. Shepard then ran vision tests and compared them with the health database.

  In the short time since the spacewalk I had gone from a corrected 20/20 to a clean 20/12. What others could clearly see at twelve feet I could now see at 20. Shepard explained that it was an excellent ratio for the human eye. Birds of prey were the
only animals we knew of that had significantly better. An eagle would typically have 20/4 or 20/5.

  We next did a hearing test that yielded similar results. It seemed all of our senses were heightened and abilities increased. After exhaustive testing of our new found health we got back to the business at hand... preparing for the alien fleet. Shepard continued with her language translations while I returned to my simulated battles. Within hours my kill ratio had increased by 30%.

  Chapter 4

  Nine days later our speed had slowed to 0.99 SOL and our QE comm link once again became active. The teams back home had come up with the same discovery as Shepard regarding the alien's language. Shepard quickly forwarded her achievements to be combined with that of Command's.

  Shepard next transmitted our health stats and the sensor data from our spacewalk. The medical corps officers were in a state of disbelief. She then chimed in with a warning. Before they could begin trials on attempting to make something of this, they had to reproduce the conditions we had gone through, and before testing on humans they needed to see if we survived it first. We didn't know if we were truly blessed or would we be dead in a month.

  In our final day of travel we came to within 200 million kilometers of the alien fleet. After matching their speed I punched in the numbers and waypoints that would take us to within 2,000 kilometers of the largest mega-ship.

  We would burst to increase our speed and then move past in stealth mode. The maneuver would take 16 hours and it would yield our best data on the fleet to date. We were down to ten months before zero hour. Everything was on the line.

  At 100,000 kilometers we began to get our best visuals. The carriers began to take on their long rectangular shape and the 40 km mega-ship was now showing color. A thin green glow bordered the rim of its disk shape.

  At 20,000 kilometers rows of fighters were clearly discernible. The green glow of the rim of the mega-ship continued to brighten. The remaining saucer shaped ships were a dull dark gray.