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Posted By: Axzazz De`Nyde Feb 12, 2005 - 06:19 pm

Green Stars
by Axzazz De`Nyde

A scene from the fighting between Farcorp Interstellar Development
security forces and the Daughters of Eden Foundation.

Mershvael grunted and gasped in pain as thousands of slivers of cold nickel
tore through his cooling vanes and spattered into his outer hull, directly
over his reactor compartment. He spun, revved up to full thrust, and twisted
back around, an instantaneous reflex. There was a sharp burning feeling in
his side, as if he had been running without warming up first. He ignored it,
held the thrust, closed distance rapidly. But the enemy was angling up and
away. He dropped the throttle and burned maneuvering thrusters, throwing
hard Gs, trying to bring his nose up quickly enough, but he had too much
momentum, was going to undershoot, and so he let it happen.

He shot 'beneath' the enemy fighter, no more than three klicks away, and
fired opposing thruster clusters, spinning so fast that his eyes seemed
to keep spinning even after he'd counterburned to a steady facing. Firing
the pitch thrusters, he dropped his tail and brought his nose up. Rolling,
pitching more, there to the left. The enemy was running away, nothing
visible but the brilliant blue blazes of his main thrusters. It was a
perfect chase setup. He threw his throttle to the max...and screamed in
agony.

It was as if someone had jabbed a knife, or rather a hot poker, into his gut.
The reactor was overheating. A diagram popped up in his field of vision,
twirling and zooming in. Bright blinking red circles highlighted small holes
in the coolant lines. An arrow pointed to a pump that was running too
slowly, debris lodged in its vanes, making it scrape on every revolution.
Superimposed on the diagram, an external camera view appeared, swung round,
and focused on a thin cloud of mist running back down his side. Coolant
vapor. He was leaking.

He dropped the throttle, let the reactor cool. The enemy was still burning
hot, but he had just a tiny bit more velocity. A coprocessor somewhere, in
his brain or in the computer, he didn't know which, calculated that at his
current velocity he would continue closing range for 42 seconds. That would
be the closest approach. After that, the enemy's acceleration would begin
to open the distance between them. The camera view and diagram faded out,
replaced with a countdown chronometer and rangefinder.

It would be a longshot, but he'd have only one chance...he hoped. If he
failed, and the enemy returned before his reactor section had patched itself
up and cooled off, he'd be a sitting duck. He could spin and roll, but
didn't dare use the main thrusters with a hot core. The rangefinder was
dropping more slowly and the chronometer quickly approaching zero. He
warmed up his missiles, lit their seeker heads, and armed his lasers.

Still the enemy didn't maneuver, giving him an easy straight-on tail shot.
Five, four, the seeker heads bleeped acquisition, three, the lascannon light
turned green, two, one... The fighter lunged backwards in reaction as four
missiles arced off, streaks of glaring yellow in the darkness. In the
center, flickering green lastracers marched up and out as he held the
trigger full back. A buzzer signaled the full discharge of the laser
capacitors and the whirring of the barrel motor went silent. He waited.

Now the blue flares of the enemy's thrusters were growing farther away,
the missile exhausts were no more than yellow specks like bright stars.
Suddenly the blue flares doubled in size, turned bright magenta, died out.
Four simultaneous starbursts, like bright white fireworks, lit the enemy
ship from all sides, were themselves consumed by a massive explosion from
the center.

In the fading light of the blast, tens of thousands of fragments of debris
blew outward in a rapidly expanding sphere. Some of those fragments were the
pilot. Mershvael wondered coolly, emotionlessly, whether they would have
been friends or rivals had they been on the same side. He wondered why the
enemy had been so keen to escape that he'd flown a straight path, building
maximum acceleration but leaving himself an easy target. Perhaps it had
been the last mission of his enlistment, he just wanted to make a token
effort so he could return to base, hand in his helmet, and go home.

He pulled up a status screen. The reactor section had cooled off, and had
partially repaired itself, but it was still leaking and the pump was jammed
tight now. Something was wrong. The autorepair systems had prioritized
repairing the hull for some reason. The splinter holes weren't really a
danger. He swept the external camera across the area again. It was odd,
green, and covered with a spiderweb shatter pattern. He took a look at the
cooling vanes. They too were green and shattering. One broke into pieces,
drifting and rolling slowly in place, just as the camera went past it.

Mershvael's eyes went wide with horror. There was no way he could move now.
Without the cooling vanes, the reactor would soon overheat even if he shut
everything off. Worse, the green film on the hull was spreading, the cracks
reaching out. Green Blight. Modified terraforming nanites re-engineered to
replicate indefinitely, and destroy every inorganic thing they touched. A
shiver ran down his spine, alongside the wires that traced his neural
pathways, allowing him to interface with the computer and control systems of
the fighter as if they were parts of his own body. Humans were safe from
Green Blight, it wouldn't touch his flesh, but as a cyborg with systemic
implants, he faced a fate worse than death.

He threw the switch that should have detached the cockpit section, set him
adrift in a life pod...but it just clicked. It was too late. Already the
external camera lenses were blinded by green film. A creaking groan ran
through the hull. He thought a quick message back to the carrier.

"Scratch one for Mershvael. Hit by Green Blight. Emergency systems
inoperative. Send my wife a rose."

At least it would be quick. He wouldn't suffer long before the life-support
systems were destroyed. He blinked. What was he thinking? Why suffer at
all? He unplugged his hands, reached into his vest, and drew his pistol.
He held it for a moment, admiring its clean, graceful curves and smooth
finish, then flicked the charge switch. He lifted it, tilted his head back,
and stuck the barrel in his mouth. Space was so beautiful. A field so dark,
covered with seemingly-random, but patterned, stars. Stars so bright, so
green, like the ready light on his pistol. Green, the color of life.

THE END

Posted By: Bmat Feb 13, 2005 - 04:01 am

You have a gripping tale! The only thing that distracted my attention was "He pulled up a status screen. " This comes right after referring to the enemy as "he", so I had to adjust my thinking for it to be "he" the protagonist.

I also wondered about vanes- you do mean vanes like panels, right? and not veins like tubes?

I enjoyed the story.