Taking Space

LET’S TAKE OVER THE GALAXY

“I said, ‘Steven’s right; someone should do something about it and that someone is us.’” Daniel answered.

All four of them stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

“I’m serious. Think about it. We’re the best team that has ever existed. We’ve never lost any strategy game yet, and who’s better to take over the galaxy and fix it than us?”

“Wow Cat, what did you feed him this morning?” Stephanie retorted.

Catherine shifted uncomfortably. “Noodles.”

Stephanie glared at her. “For breakfast?”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Stop trying to change the subject. The galaxy is a mess, and someone needs to fix it and that someone is us and we should start with the stupid pirates.”

Stephanie’s glare swung to Daniel. “And just how do you plan on doing that, Mr. I-want-to-be-Emperor?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know… this mining station has an impressive array of weaponry, can’t we use them somehow?”

Steven shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” Daniel insisted.

“Because they’re hardwired and I’d have to rip half of the station apart. Not to mention you’d leave us completely defenseless.”

At this, Stephanie’s face hardened. “No, way you're going to risk Catherine’s and my life in some false idea of conquest.”

Daniel put his hand up. “Okay okay. I get it that’s not a good idea. But what if we lured them into the asteroid field then ambushed them with the station?”

Michael shook his head this time. “No, their scanners would pick up our station and our weapons long before they came in range. Any pirate worth his salt would know to stay away from an armed space station.”

“Well then, what if we lured them into the asteroid field and crushed them with asteroids? That way, there will be no weapons for their scanners to pick up.”

Catherine looked at Daniel and sighed. She pulled out a hollow tab and leaned against the viewports as she began to play a puzzle game on it.

 “Wait, Catherine,” Michael said as she played off the idea as another one of her husband's wild imaginations. “what he suggested might actually work.”

Dismay filled Stephanie’s eyes as she recognized the look on Michael’s face. “What? You’re not actually thinking about listening to one of Daniel’s crazy ideas, are you?”

Michael smiled. “The pirate ship is most definitely equipped with a logic drive. So it will automatically calculate the trajectories of the asteroids and make the necessary movements to avoid them. But if we use undetectable explosions to change those asteroids directions, there is no way their logic drives can compensate in time.”

Catherine lowered the tablet. “Something like that would take absolute precision in timing, and you'd need one whale of an explosion for an asteroid to crush a ship.”

Michael tapped his lip with his finger, “Well, Catherine, you’re good with timing. So I don’t think that will be a problem. Plus we don’t need a big explosion.”

Steven moved his hand, dismissively, “No, Mike, she’s right. If we want to crush the ship, we would have to have big explosions to move the asteroids with enough force. We don’t have that type of explosives, and something that big would easily be picked up on their sensors as well.”

Michael gave a toothy grin. “No. You’re both wrong. All we need to do is to take down their shields for a few seconds, and a few bumps from asteroids will do that quite well.”

Both of them looked at him questioningly.

***

“Eh Cap, you gonna to want to hear dis.” The first mate said with a hungry smile on his face.

The captain noticed the evil glee in his underling’s eyes. “Something interesting, huh?”

“Sur is. Lis'en.” The first mate flicked his finger at a screen, and a recorded audio file played over the ship’s sound systems.

“Aurorian diamonds! Oh, my word Aurorian diamonds! This asteroid has diamonds in it! It’s completely chock-full of them!” Daniel’s voice crackled over the deck’s speakers.

“Are you sure?” Catherine’s voice answered back.

“Of course, I’m sure! I know what diamonds look like! This thing is the size of a ship. Get the others out here; we’re going to be filthy rich!”

“Shut up you stupid moron! We’re not on a secure channel,” Stephanie harshly scolded.

“Oh, oops,” Daniel’s voice answered back, and the recording came to an end.

The captain’s eyes sparkled. “Looks like a bunch of kids found a catch of diamonds. What do you say, boys, shall we relieve them of ‘em?”

A hearty cheer from the pirates filled the command deck.

***

Catherine stared intently at the hologram of the asteroid field. “There! There is the pirate ship! They did get our little message.” She turned to Steven, “Do you think you can find it before they enter the engagement zone?”

Steven started to move his hands through the hologram, zooming in on the pirate ship. “Absolutely, I’ve created mock ones from scratch you know, so I’m sure I’ll recognize it when I see it.”

Stephanie stood there watching anxiously, “Oh God, please protect us from my brothers’ stupidity!”

Michael knew his little sister was firmly against this, but somehow that didn’t bother him. It was like he had a weird inner peace about the whole situation. “There are about thirty-five seconds away from seeing our little IFF ruse.”

Steven continued to move the hologram around the pirate ship, zooming in and out on parts of it. “Okay I figured out the ship’s make, and I should know exactly where it’s at very soon I just got…. Ah, they’re right at Y+42 Z-12 X-94.”

Steven made a red IFF spot on the aft upper side of the ship. “It’s normally installed in the undercarriage, but this one is on the top, and its vent is only a foot wide.” He looked over at Daniel, “are you sure you can pilot my makeshift drone into such a small target?”

A giant grin spread across Daniel’s face. “Does a spider monkey glide when he jumps?”

“What?”

Catherine rolled her eyes. “Dan Dan, a spider monkey doesn’t glide.”

“Oh, I meant a bush baby then.”

“That doesn’t glide either dear.”

“Oh.”

Stephanie covered her eyes with her hand. “Oh God have mercy on us.”

Michael zoomed out the hologram, “Catherine, they’re in range. Start nudging.”

***

The captain sat in the seat, slowly rotating two balls in his hands. “Power the weapons. I want those mining ships disabled the instant we get around this big asteroid. Be careful not to hit the diamonds though.”

“Aye aye Capin’.”

The crew anxiously stared at the viewports as their ship rounded the last asteroid in the way.

“What in the world? There’s nothing here but three really old rusty boxes! Where’s the mining ships?” The captain barked angrily.

“I don’t know capin’.”

The entire ship shook, and the captain dropped the two metal balls. “Looks like we’ve been had, boys! It’s time to show our ambushers we have fangs!”

The captain pushed a button on his seat, causing the cockpit’s color to change into a red hue while the metal flooring and celling turned into one gigantic viewport. The captain raised his hand, taking direct control of the ship’s guns.  As he anxiously scanned the area around them; however, there was no enemy to be seen. “I don’t see anything… what hit us?” He demanded.

“I t'ink a blazzin' asteroid.” The first mate replied.

“That’s not possible! This ship has the best logic drive there is!” The captain proclaimed. But despite his proclamation, an asteroid still rolled towards them, mysteriously bumped into the shield on the starboard side.  The ship shook again than a third time as another one bounced on the port side shield.

He watched in amazement as three other asteroids lazily tumbled into them, and the shield’s energy meter flashed as it dropped, indicating they were taking damage. “What is going on here?!”

At that moment, his first mate’s eyes grew wide as he noticed something. “Tha ship is detecting some weird signals I t'ink are messin' tha drive up.”

Understanding played across the captain’s face. “I see. Our ambushers are trying to get nature to destroy us. It’s a good thing I’m a master pilot.”

The captain sat fully back into his seat, pushed a button, and took manual control of the ship.

***

Catherine watched as the hologram of the ship began to move sporadically, unlike its earlier very calculated movements. “Looks like your little ruse worked. They switched to manual control.”

Michael smiled. “Now all we have to do is to keep up the gentle nudges until their shield falls.”

“That won’t be long now. Human reflexes aren’t nearly as fast as computers and very few pilots can navigate an asteroid field much less one as booby-trapped as ours.” Steven said grinning.

Catherine pushed another button. A small highly compressed tank of oxygen that Stephanie, using the mining drones, had spent hours planting on the asteroids in the area detonated. The sudden explosion of gas pushed its host asteroid firmly into the aft of the pirate ship. The asteroid grazed along the hull, then lightly bounced away.

***

Sweat streamed down the side of the pirate captain’s face, as he tried to escape the seemingly never-ending asteroid field. An explosion of curses hissed under his breath as a small asteroid bounced off the underbelly of the ship. No matter what he did, there always seemed to be an asteroid barreling straight for them. If he moved one way, the ship got hit from another.

“Enough ‘s enough!” He blurted, flaring the maneuvering, and decided to bulldoze his way out of this mess. Mass and inertia, on the other hand, didn’t coincide with his plan.

An asteroid one-tenth the size of the ship solidly contacted with the port side, and the captain’s head whipped to the right. “Arr!” he growled in frustration, as this relatively small asteroid didn’t bounce off, but sent them spinning into another asteroid instead.

Anger flooded the captain’s face as they ricocheted off asteroid after asteroid. He tried to get the ship back under control, but nothing he did seemed to work.

They bounced around as if they were in an ancient pinball machine until the Captain flipped the logic drive back on in desperation. The ship stabilized just as a loud warning buzzing sound flooded the cockpit.

“Capin’ ta shields ar falin’!”

***

“Their shields are down! Go now.” Catherine shouted.

Daniel completely suited up in his GTX 4000 pilot virtual control system that he had convinced Michael to let him keep, seized the controls with both hands. With an epic-sized smile, he threw the control sticks forward. The simulated cockpit whirled and squeaked as he navigated the drone through the asteroid field towards the pirate ship at an insane speed.

“Careful Daniel, it took Steven hours to print out the stealth fibers on our small 3-D printer. If you crash it, we're done for !” Stephanie warned.

Daniel ignored her as he shot the drone up around two asteroids and blasted towards the ship.

“Seriously, SLOW DOWN.” She hissed in agitation.

The aft of the pirate ship loomed in his view as his drone burned hard in a whipping turn and smashed through the dynovamator’s vent at over a hundred matters per second. As the outer layers of the drone vaporized into tiny dust particles, Daniel activated the self-destruct.

The little drone exploded with an EMP pulse that sent a massive amount of energy into the Nova generator. The dynovamator’s casing lit up as bright as the miniature sun that was inside it. But right before it went supernova, the safety systems kicked in, causing it to discharge.

Giant arcs of electricity shot out, jumping from asteroid to asteroid as the discharge sent an energy pulse through the entire ship, frying every last bit of its circuit.

The pirate ship sat dead in space.