Life in space, a hard sci-fi series.

[KSK]

On 10/31/2021 at 10:36 AM, Hyperspace Industries said:

By the way, the exams start Tuesday, so no new chapters for a while probably.

Oh good luck with those! Hope they went / are going, okay.

[Hyperspace Industries]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Oh good luck with those! Hope they went / are going, okay.

I'm happy to report that they are going well! Also, most days I have about 3 million years between finishing studying and bedtime. I'm mostly just using the exams as an excuse to take a break from writing. 

Speaking about bedtime: it's about time I got busy sleeping.

[Hyperspace Industries]

Chapter 8: Mars, bringer of war:

While they were on the way to earth, Val had time to think. Something she wondered about every now and then, was why exactly they were on their way to earth. The news said it was as a result of the massacre of Rosy, and although that was the spark that lit the war, underlying tensions were there long before. Mars was, all in all, doing well under earth's partial control, so what caused them to fight?

Maybe it was the fact that they were controlled by a government four light minutes away, maybe it was the common desire to control your own life. Val concluded on mild annoyances, like a toll rise on entering earth's space, a bit more taxes, maybe the constant bragging that earth's media does with ten thousand nature documentaries a second. These small irritations pile up over time, turning into frustration, anger, and war.

Of course, the biggest of these annoyances, was that companies and governments were making money off of them, and independence would mean tolls like those earth has on it's SOI, and other losses of profits and taxes from governments, and when big companies might lose profits, they lobby, when governments might lose taxes, they are not happy.

And when asked for the ten trillionth time, the government spokespeople will not give them their independence in return for them hightailing it back to the red planet!

On the weeks long coast, Val and Heins practiced fighting with some friendly wargames, proved that the Red October does live up to the standards of stealth set by its namesake, gave their spaceship duet a group name: the Redneck, and met some new people. One good friend they made was Bob "the marines" Draper's fiancee, Mia "shoot them in the" Bakken.

The medusa drive cut out and the 0.4g gave way to weightlessness, they had fallen into a high orbit of luna. Val sat at the helm of the Red Arrow, Heins directly behind her, and looked through the external cameras of the Red October. She also checked the radar maps which showed clean vacuum for a hundred kilometers, with the notable exception of them. They listened in as captain Allonzo bargained with the earthlings, and weren't surprised to hear no agreement being reached.

What did surprise them is the frankly astonishing amount of confidence the earthlings had about their military, and the fact that they could, and would, put up a fight.

The bargaining and arguing ended, and they began considering attacking luna, no one wanted to, but they all knew that it was what they were sent here to do. Before they could make a decision, a small nearby dot appeared on the radar. It was barreling towards them, too small to be crewed, or to have torpedoes, and it looked like a drone with guns through the telescope. It looked harmless...

Until the point when two more appeared, followed by three, then five more, then they caught on to the earthlings' plan, and the Dreadnought was placed on red alert, all the ships started leaving the hangar, and the pdcs, torpedoes and railguns kicked into high gear. More drones appeared, many were shot down, but they could see that they were heading for the sail and its pdc blindspot.

All fifteen Rocinante classes had gotten out of the doors, four of them went to cover the pdc blindspot, the rest were annihilating drones as fast as they could, Val hoped it was fast enough. A few other ships, mostly privateers, were helping them. The Redneck was coasting out of the doors and getting ready to fire, but before they could, the bridge called them.

Captain Allonzo said, "Redneck, we've tracked the radio transmissions from the drones, they're being controlled from a station in LLO, we need you to sneak past them and take out that station, see orbit attatched to this message."

Val replied, "Roger" and had the computer plot the fastest rendezvous burn it could. Once she wouldn't crash into the Dreadnought, she burned at the October's max of 0.4g. They coasted through the enemy lines without anything detecting them. They coasted for ten agonizing minutes wherein the Dreadnought was fighting hundreds of drones and they couldn't do a thing.

They encountered the station, or to be specific, a Gagarin class ship, and did a breaking burn at the same time that they launched all four of the October's torpedoes. After they were relatively stationary they shot the Arrow out and went straight for the Gagarin class. It coated them in a hail of pdc fire but most of their small missiles got through and were able to shoot down the pdcs. Silent bullets streaked through the Arrow, and the sound of the pummeling on their armor was carried through the ship and into their eva suits.

Heins shot down the last of that side's pdcs with a few emp blasts, and then they went to work on the ship's antennas, they destroyed all of that side's antennas and heard the cheering from the Dreadnought as almost half of the drones lost control. They cautiously moved to the other side with two burns, taking down pdcs on their way. The Gagarin class shot out two torpedoes before the unreliable tubes broke down.

Heins got out a few missiles and took out a few more antennas while the computer did its best against the torpedoes, for the few seconds until the pdcs ran out of ammo. Val almost exclaimed a profanity, and put them into a 2g burn away from the torpedoes, which matched the acceleration with ease.

Val looked between the readouts, radar, delta-v, orbit, and finally back to delta-v, let out a small chuckle and said, "I've just had a really, really dumb idea."

 

(To be continued....................)

[Hyperspace Industries]

Chapter 8: continued: 

Val flipped them orbit retrograde and burnt at full speed, the acceleration crushed her and her brother as she watched their orbit change. She stopped burning when their orbit intersected with a particular area on the surface. 

She burnt in random pulses to stop the torpedoes from blasting them to who-knows-where. Heins remote controlled the Red October, firing torpedoes and pdcs from a few kilometers away and into the communications systems on the Gagarin class, he was able to stop their transmissions entirely, which allowed the Dreadnought to take down the last of the drones. 

Heins then launched missiles into the torpedoes chasing them, he blew up one, but ran out of missiles before he could disable the other. 

They screamed in towards the surface, a small crater as it turned out, and Val told him to brace. She pointed them away from the ground and waited as the crater rim charged towards them from one side and the torpedo from the other, a second before impact 2 gees of acceleration fell on them like a ton of bricks and they barely missed the crater wall, the torpedo on the other hand, did not. 

Both of them sighed of relief, then they went back to orbit and docked with the October with barely even fumes in their tank. They got a call from the Dreadnought wherein the captain congratulated them and stated that the earthlings had agreed to discuss independence, and that while they had backup transmitter ships, they were all around earth and not luna. 

When they returned to the Dreadnought they celebrated their achievement, as well as the fact that there were no casualties, some people were injured, but no-one wasn't going home.

 

 

(That's technically the end of this story, I might write an epilogue, but still. Hope you found it mildly enjoyable @KSK )

[KSK]

I did indeed!

Good job - and good job seeing it through the end! I think an epilogue would be good just to wrap things up but only if you have the time.

[Hyperspace Industries]

44 minutes ago, KSK said:

I did indeed!

Good job - and good job seeing it through the end! I think an epilogue would be good just to wrap things up but only if you have the time.

Good to hear that you enjoyed it.   Had a blast writing this, the word count is currently on 8750 words! 

Also: I've got a 2 month vacation, so yes, I have the time.