Adrift

Adrift

         Nilea stared at the pretty green eyes in the picture. She could feel tears filling her own eyes as she thought of the probability that she would never see those green eyes again. Her daughter's eyes were the same green of her daddy's. A tender, jade green that would radiate warmth into whomever they were looking towards. And right now warmth was a feeling Nilea desperately desired to feel.

         The cold was seeping slowly into her body. Nilea could feel the heat of her body being absorbed by the coldness around her. Her joints and muscles were freezing in place from both the cold and the inability to move. Even her head was held in place by the protective helmet covering it. Movement was limited to her lower arms, and those could only move eight inches in any direction. The fighter cockpit of her B8 was designed to minimize movement so the pilots could maneuver quickly without being tossed about. However after three hours of motionless Nilea was going numb.

         She stared out of the cockpit windows into the vastness of space talking aloud to avoid the silence, "How much longer you think you have Girl? The oxygen is starting to run low. You know, I really didn't think it would turn out like this. I was going to be the heroine."

         She had been talking to herself for some time now, trying to drown out the insaneness of silence. Space carried no sound, and the only thing she could hear was the thump, thump, thump, of her heartbeat echoing either through her body or the titanum, carbon-composite hull she sat in. She could not tell which. Nilea only knew that thump, thump, thump, was making her mad. This was her casket. An airtight casket drifting in the darkness of space.

         "What did you do wrong Girl? It was so fast, but I am the best. Was the best. What did I do wrong?" She asked herself, thinking back to the moments before her unfortunate situation.

         Nilea was the best rookie pilot in the Fleet. She could pilot a B8 better than most seasoned veterans. Her reflexes were in perfect harmony with the controls. Her barrel rolls were beautiful, her flips magnificent, and she had a 180 turn named after her. The "Nilea Turn" she invented, and no other in the Fleet could come close to matching her precision. She could turn the B8 around in less than a fighter length, and be heading into the opposite direction. Nilea had completed the final flight test in only 48.7 seconds with a perfect score. 52 targets at full speed, she was firing shots before the tracking computer would ever get a lock on the target, 52 shots to be exact, and 52 kills in less than 50 seconds. Her Nilea Turn, and an innate ability to know where the targets would be, gave her a perfect score 27 seconds faster than the closest perfect time in Fleet history. Nilea was going to be a great pilot, and this mission would be the ground she would be able to prove herself just as a good in combat as in practice.

         The aggressors had been detected in sector Z7-X4, by remote sensors. There was a possible colonizing planet in this sector, but neither the Fleet nor the Aggressors had colonized the planet. Now the Aggressors had arrived with a large force, possibly to claim it for themselves. A few years ago the Fleet would have not attacked, their policy was defense, and until President Trion was elected unanimously on the platform of taking the battle to the aggressors it was an option previously not discussed in the Fleet.

         Nilea's ancestors had first discovered deep space travel over 400 years ago, and they had colonized over 100 star systems without incident. Never during that time had they run across another intelligence race. None of the planets colonized had intelligent life on them, and generations had lived peaceably. Other than small, simple policing ships to stop a few lone criminals, the fleet hadn't any kind of weaponed ships. Most of the fleet was research vessels, or colonization ships, or some type of ship with a scientific classification. War had been abolished through an acceptance of each other, and the pursuit of exploring a peaceful galaxy.

         Until 87 years ago where on Star Five, a planet of over one billion citizens, the aggressors appeared. When strange ships had warped into the system, talk of another intelligence spread across the Fleet as fast as light. As fast as that light was lit the aggressors extinguished it. The strange ships made no attempts at communication other than firing plasma cannons at the Fleet's starships and nuclear rockets onto the surface of planet Star Five. Helps and Maydays barely had a chance to be sent, and no help had a chance to come before the lives of every citizen on Star Five were murdered without cause.

         Old records of war ships were researched, and the Fleet began construction of large, well-armed carriers loaded with a thousand single pilot fighter ships in each. Over the years trial and much error had given the Fleet an impressive group of battle ships. The Fleet had been able to stop the aggressors from destroying several colonized planets. But the Fleet's objective had always been to defend, never attack. Since the Fleet's first victory twelve years ago the Aggressors had slowed down their attacks but never stopped. Citizens still lived in fear of when an Aggressor swarm of ships would warp into a solar system and begin killing. The greatest fear was what would happen if the Aggressors warped into the Fleets home system.

         The policy of defense changed just two years ago when President Trion, with his primary platform being to take the war to the Aggressors, was elected. His plan was to hurt and maim the enemy so much they could no longer attack the Fleet. To turn the tables and make the Aggressors fear the Fleet warping into an Aggressor sector.

         After his election President Trion had the Fleet send small unmanned reconnaissance vessels, just large enough to be fit with a transmitting device. Thousands of these tiny vessels were warped across the universe to random sectors in hopes of finding an Aggressor system, and then to utilize this information to form a surprise attack and destroy the Aggressors.

         Today one of the reconnaissance ships had transmitted that a large number of Aggressor ships had warped into Sector Z7-X4. Within an hour the Fleet was prepared to warp into war. Ships were always on alert to protect colonies, and this quick readiness was used to make a quick surprise attack upon the enemy.

         Nilea remembered well the moments leading up to the attack upon the enemy. She had sat in her B8 looking around her. Five battle carriers led the attack, thirty destroyers above them, and the five thousand B8 fighters right behind the carriers. Even in space the number of ships seemed enormous. In any direction that Nilea looked all she could see were Fleet ships preparing to launch.

         "Wormhole sequence engaged, prepare to warp in 10, 9, 8," the transmission continued as Nilea gazed in amazement. No matter how often she had seen a wormhole she always felt her pulse elevate in excitement when witnessing the event.

         From the larger ships bright, blue lights projected in front of them. The beam narrowing as it brightens, until a brilliant flash erupted from a small pinpoint location. Points smaller than the pupil of Galzxia's eyeball, radiated out a greenish blue light from in front of all the larger ships. Slowly the Carriers and Destroyers moved forward. Nilea watched, still bewildered after witnessing hundreds of wormhole travels. The fronts of the massive shops stretched out and shrank in diameter. The sharpened tips of the ships drew closer to the small, lighted holes, and then once the tip touched the hole, the ship vanished.

         In perfect formation, the smaller B8s closed in on the wormholes from their Mother Carriers. Nilea watched her targeting display as one by one the blue dots of the friendly ships around her blipped off. The wormholes opened by the carriers were one way, staying open for a short time, which was usually less than an hour depending on the energy used to open the hole. So the entire process of bringing a thousand ships, one by one, took less than twenty minutes, far quicker than the hour it took to fly all the ships off the Carrier.

         Nilea looked up to watch the fighter in front of her vanish, replaced with a small black dot from which greenish, blue light fanned brightly out. She watched the nose of her B8 elongate as she closed in on the wormhole. For her she pictured a straw being stuck into the universe, this was one end, and on the other end was an incredible force sucking whatever came close into it, no matter how large. She braced irrepressibly as the nose closed the final gap. When the B8 touched she felt herself begin to spiral as her ship and body spun around millions of times, simultaneously stretching the length of the hole. The last atom of the ship was entering the worm hole as the first was ejecting out of the other end.

         In less than a tenth of a second Nilea and her ship had traversed nearly a thousand light years. The instant she felt herself exiting she had engaged full power to the engines, to avoid an unwanted rear-end collision. As her ship shot forward at half the speed of light she banked left and up to rejoin the formation.

         Already space around her was full of bright flashes of ships exploding. Making a quick check of her targeting computer she zeroed in on a red dot moving toward a blue dot. Another thrust to the engines, and Nilea raced up. A quick roll to the right and fire. Her finger shot the plasma cannons, milliseconds before the targeting computer flashed its locked signal. It was a perfect shot into the thrusters of an enemy ship. Magnetic shielding prevented damage to almost any other part of a ship, but for the thrusters to work they could not be energy shielded.

         Her first enemy ship was still exploding, as Nilea banked right and down for her next target. Another target destroyed. Nilea went for her third, a lone fighter above her. Her B8 rocketing in its direction, she fired the cannons. However the enemy fighter did not turn up and right as she had anticipated, it turned left and down. The plasma bursts harmlessly glowed off the shielding. The enemy jetted in Nilea's direction as though to collide head on.

         ‘No problem,' Nilea remembered thinking, ‘He breaks to miss me I spin around and BAM, three down.'

         But the enemy was not moving. A head on collision would destroy both ship, and Nilea did not want to die yet. At the last moment she pulled left on the control stick. The Aggressor pulled to his right. While he banked slightly downward as he turned, Nilea edged slightly upward so the collision was not direct, but catastrophic nevertheless for both. The Aggressor's ship had weaker shielding and Nilea's shields broke through smashing into the main reactor of the enemy ship. The Aggressor's ship exploded in a gigantic nuclear explosion. Nilea's ship flipped wildly end over end from the force. She moved the flight stick around uselessly. Although it had seemed her shields held, and the ship was physically undamaged, the electro-magnetic pulse sent out from the nuclear blast somehow penetrated the shields and all her ships electronics were shut off.

         When the ship finally stopped flipping, Nilea was a fourth of the solar system away from the battle. She flipped switches desperately trying to regain power, as she watched the battle in the distance. Who was winning? Who was losing? Nilea had no idea. From this distance all she could make out were flashes of light, some small and some big.

         That was about 3 hours ago, Nilea estimated. She thought it had been 30 minutes ago she had seen the greenish, blue light of worm holes. But since she had been blown out to this abyss all she could hear was her heartbeat and her voice. Nothing to judge the passage of time by, she realized how impossible it was to determine.

         Every switch had been reset dozens of times, and still no power. The star Z7-X4 was behind her illuminating her daughter's picture she kept in the cockpit to remind her what she was fighting for.

         "Am I drifting into this star? If so I guess that would cure the coldness soon. Or maybe I am just in orbit, to float around Z7-X4 forever. Girl did you ever mess up," her throat was becoming dry and scratchy, but to keep the sound of her heartbeat dulled, Nilea continued to think aloud.

         Her thoughts turned again to her daughter as she looked at the picture in front of her. Dying was not what scared her, but never seeing her daughter again, that scared Nilea. Knowing that her time was drawing near Nilea began to pray.

         "God hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. Please try to ensure the happiness of my daughter, Novala. None of this war is of her fault. Please I pray to you as I never have before, help with her well-being. She has no parents now, her father and now her mother are dead. Killed by the Aggressors. Show her the path that leads not to the fate of revenge that I have chosen," she paused as if finished praying. Then just in case someone was listening added, "and a little help here would be greatly appreciated."

         Wham! The B8 shock violently as a large chunk of debris from another ship slammed into its underside, "Beep, Beep," the computer chirped as the power systems of the ship came back on. The cold went away immediately as heaters kicked on, and the numbness of her body vanished as small electrical charges went through her flight suit stimulating unused muscles.

         "Thank-you!" Nilea shouted, "I am back on. Now to get a rescue party out here."

         She pushed the communications button, no response. "No, no, no!" Nilea began a test of the fighter's systems to find only life support and half the engines working. Four of five power cells were destroyed beyond use, the fifth badly damaged. No communications, no weapons. The power seemed to be only a small delay to Nilea's death.

         The rush of life drained back out of her. Then Novala seemed to look up out of the picture, "Mommy, you always said there is no impossible only more difficult solutions. Don't give up." Nilea could hear the words come from the picture just like her daughter was in front of her.

         "The wormholes. They may still be open," Nilea cheered as she thought it.

         Powering the engines she guided the B8 towards the former battle site. "What if we lost?"

         The unthoughtful thought of defeat rang out, "What if the holes are Aggressors?"

         During the 87 years of war an Aggressor had never been captured. They always fought to the death, activating self destruct mechanisms on their ships if disabled. Only from the remains of ships, and body parts floating in wreckage did the Fleet have any knowledge of the Aggressors. And the Aggressors have never been known to take a prisoner.

         But now Nilea's head race with thoughts of what horrible things the Aggressors would do if they captured her. A race so cruel as to attempt the genocide of an entire civilization that they knew nothing of. The terrible acts such a race would be capable of scared Nilea.

         Checking gauges Nilea realized she had just enough power to reach the worm holes and get through. Once on the other side not only would she be without communications and weapons, but Nilea would not have enough power in the engines to fly her ship into an enemy and escape possible capture. If the Fleet had lost this battle, and she was flying into Aggressor space, Nilea would be a floating target for them to blast away or capture without resistance.

         "What do you do now Girl? Surely God would not give you power back just to let you fall prisoner to the enemy, would he?'

         A million thoughts a minute were rushing through Nilea's mind as she neared the wormhole. "A chance to see you again is worth all the torture the Aggressors could possibly abuse me with," she told the picture of her daughter.

         The greenish, blue light was slowly fading as Nilea drew near. She knew there was no time to waste before the hole sealed itself, and the power of the engines died. Aiming into the small wormhole Nilea pushed the fighter forward.

         The front of the ship stretched out, shrinking in diameter until the nose touched, and Nilea was sucked through a straw in the universe to the other side. Popping out her first sight was a bright yellow star directly in front of her, a small blue planet to her right. A smile crossed her face momentarily as she thought it was home.

         But the dream quickly vanished, replaced by the worst nightmare possible. A large ship passed to her left, as she looked up Nilea could make out the strange glyphs on the side, "United Earth Space Federation".

         Nilea realized the Fleet had lost. The larger ship opened its cargo bay door, to pull her helpless ship in. Nilea was now the prisoner of a race who called themselves humans. Whose home planet was the third in their solar system, a small place they called Earth.