Second submission for round 4.

VX2

By Hazen Wardle

Thankfully this barren rock has a breathable atmosphere. My life pack only contained a very limited
amount of clean air. The oxygen-converter in my suit could have supplied me with air for years, but it
was damaged when I got hit. Additionally, food will be a problem in a few hours.

I shouldn’t have even been here. Though the VX2 is a new ship and I have only logged a few quick
simulator hours, I am a veteran pilot. I can fly anything. Give me a barn, and I’ll fly it. I’m that good.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about the idiots in my squad. We were on a scouting mission, primarily. This
system consists of only five planets orbiting star HD45634 in the constellation Canis Major. We are on
our way through the area and decided to stop in for a look. It had been known for centuries this star
had at least two planets, and our own deep space scans revealed three additional planets, one in the
habitable zone.

“We’re half a light year from the SSS Nosugref. Admiral Meeker won’t know a thing.” That was the only
thing Downie had to say—the other two guys in the squad follow him like lemmings; I don’t even know if
they can talk! (But that is another story in itself)

None of the planets were worth much, and this is the only one with any sort of worthwhile atmosphere
to speak of—I suppose we could send in a team of mining engineers, but we all know it would end up
being run by poor people forced into slavery by some big power-hungry multi-national conglomerate.

Anyway, Downie and the guys decided it would be fun to see if their VX2’s could reach light-speed while
in orbit. Well, ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little here. But they did want to race around this rock at top
speed. “Look at me! Look at me! Right turns only!” Downie yelled as he laid down the laps between the
planet and its asteroid of a moon.

So I’m holding orbit at 250k watching the idiots make fools of themselves. The three of them were
making me dizzy, but that’s not the reason why I’m stuck here. Yeah, yeah. I’m getting to it.

The guys got tired after something like a fifty or a hundred laps so they get this bright idea to buzz me.
They get into the classical delta formation and zoom right past me. The problem is, they seem to have
forgotten we were in space. Yeah, shock-waves and the like don’t form in a vacuum, so, like the moron’s
they are, they simply sped right past me.

Their trajectory was alarmingly close to the upper atmosphere, and they were nowhere ready to
land. All three of them actually dipped into the mesosphere, and I could see the plasma trails burning
behind them as they arced over the planet, disappearing from sight as they curved down and around the
backside.

I waited only just a few moments before I moved from my orbit, only then because they did not return.
They were on a very steep decent and it is very likely they were all caught in the planets gravity well.
Additionally, I could not raise them on the comm.

Time to go to rescue.

I eased on around the planet, sensors in all spectrums sweeping back and forth. I broke a sweat, and
that’s not typical of me. Believe me, on any other day I could care less if these idiots offed themselves
with one of their stunts. But in this current situation I needed them as much as they needed me. We
were a team, at least until we return to the SSS Nosugref—at which time I am seriously considering
asking for a transfer. I need to get with a squad that I matter to, a squad that cares more about the job
at hand than about horsing around.

As I am working my way around the planet I listen for any distress signals on the comm, but I hear
nothing. I scan the whole band and—

—an eye-searing flash of light and I suddenly find myself falling toward the planet. Something has hit
me, but I don’t have time to think about what. I’m in a flat spin and my controls only partially respond.
My reactions are automatic—as I said before, I’ve spent many hours in the sims, for this and other craft.
I manage to reduce the spin but I know I’m going down, that can’t be helped at this point. I launch a
distress probe at the last minute and ride it out as long as I dare. There is no way this bird will ever land
safely, so my only option is to eject.

At ten-thousand feet I pull the handle. The canopy ejects—two hundred years since the first jet
airplanes and they are still using ejection seats and detachable canopies—I can’t do anything about that
right now, but believe me, I do have some ideas on improvement.

The chute pops and I am jerked up and away from the derelict craft. I reach for the control handles and
angle toward the falling VX2. I am able to see the extent of the damage now. One wing is completely
missing and the other has a nice, round hole in the middle of it. It drops away and crashes, a smoky,
billowing cloud blooms a mile below me. I angle away from it knowing there would be nothing
salvageable.

I survey the landscape as I glide down, and I see no sign of the others. I am on my own.

Once I have landed all I can do now is wait. Hopefully my probe reaches the ship soon; I’d rather not be
stranded here any longer than necessary, and with those holes in what was my wings— something put
them there. This planet was presumed uninhabited, so I hope I am found by my people and not by the
natives. This whole situation could have been avoided.

So here I sit, waiting on someone.

I hear the comm in my helmet, and before I can pick it up I hear a ship descending in the background. I
look and realize today is not my lucky day. We were supposed to be alone out here in this sector. Turns
out we were wrong.

That is not an SSS Ship.

That’s the Telsnerians; the most fearsome race in the galaxy.

Here's the first submission for round 4.

Stranded

Tom J. Ferguson

 

  Sometimes I think that being the only Beriskevic female deep space fighter pilot is great. It sets me apart from the crowd. Just getting the position was a great feat in and of itself. I mean, where I’m from on the planet Beriskev, women do a lot of stuff, but I’m the only one who flies fighters. It was only by a fluke that I got the position. See, the Navy is skeptical about letting women enlist, simply because there are so many men that join, and we go into deep space in warships. A woman’s privacy is all but nonexistent, and that only leads to problems. So, typically, women don’t enlist in the Navy or Army. There are lots of women in the First Response Defense Patrol though. The FRDP is a branch of the military, however, they never go any farther than the edge of the farthest moon’s orbit. They are strictly a defensive force. The FRDP is where I got my start. I have been flying all my life. I started flight school when I was five, at my own request. Most little girls want to learn ballet, or horseback riding, or acting school, or singing. Stuff like that. Not me. I’ve never been comfortable as long as my feet were on the ground for as long as I could remember. So, I asked my parents if I could take flight lessons when I was little. I was a natural right from the very beginning. Flight controls come to me easier than walking or talking.
  When I was eighteen, I enlisted in the FRDP as a fighter pilot. I already knew how to fly- so it wasn’t hard to learn combat maneuvers, and I took to it naturally. I became the best pilot in the FRDP in a matter of months. So, naturally, when the Remissian attack came, I tore up their squadrons. I had already established a reputation by that time, and though I stayed right with my squadron, I still got more kills than the rest of them combined. The Remissians surprised us, but we still held them off. During the fight, and Navy Admiral on shore leave ended up in the FRDP Flight Control room, and he saw first hand what my skills were like. He recruited me personally, and asked me to fly with the Alpha Squadron of his flagship. Me fly in an Alpha Squadron? A nineteen year old girl only out of Combat Flight School for a few months, and they wanted me to fly in a Navy Combat Fleet’s most advanced, best skilled squadron? Wow, what an honor. Of course, I said yes. I would be flying with the Fifteenth Tactical Fleet in the Beriskev Navy’s oldest, and most reputable combat fleet. The Fifteenth is where every Navy crewman wants to be. The best of the best. The Fifteenth Fleet was one of fifteen formed for the Beriskev Navy during our revolution fifty years ago. Before that, we were just an outlaying colony of Earth, the only human settlement in the Andromeda Galaxy. We were so far away that Earth didn’t bother with us, until we formed our own government that is. Then suddenly, they were right there to remind us who was boss. After two hundred years of nothing from them, no supplies, no funds, no contact whatsoever but to replace the governor as needed, we decided to form our own government. Suddenly Earth remembered that we exist. We beat them after ten long years of war, and fourteen of our fleets were completely annihilated. We suffered ninety percent casualties in our army through the whole war, but somehow we won. Now we are facing an enemy that hates our guts for who knows what reason. The Remissians are the plague of the Andromeda Galaxy. If one person looks at one Remissian the wrong way, the Remissians will try to wipe out that person’s entire race. So, of course, when our Prime Minister told the Remissians that they can’t mine on our moons without the proper permits, they got really ticked and attacked. That’s when the Admiral found me. Now, two years later, at the age of twenty-one, I am still the only female fighter pilot in the Navy. And, it is quite an accomplishment. It can get a little depressing being the only woman in the Navy, especially when I’m deployed. I have no other girls to talk to. The guys all pretty much give me what  I want- having a woman aboard the ship is a luxury for them- or so they thought right at first. Then they found out that I don’t date every guy that I see, and then I was just part of the crew, just another lieutenant from one of their squadrons. And then we get to the first of the Remissian colonies, and the fight starts. My entire squadron gets blown away, and I am left to fend of twelve Remissian fighters alone. Okay, I am a great pilot, but even I am not that good. I shot down six of them, and retreated into the low atmosphere where I could use the abundant magnetic fields of this planet to keep them from getting a missile lock on me. And that’s when I found out that their fighters didn’t have that problem with their missiles. Yeah. I found out the hard way.
“Great, Miena, great. Now you gotta sit here behind this big, red, iron rich boulder until the rescue team finds you,” I muttered to myself.
I don’t get what the value of this planet is, the only mineral it’s got is iron, and it is very abundant in it. Useless stuff anyway. Weakest metal in the Andromeda galaxy right there.