RIDE THE LIGHTNING

Part 2 - Stellar Jet

Surt

Autumn stared down into the abyss and the abyss stared back.

She couldn’t NOT look down...considering who, where and what she was.

“Brrrrr….that’s frackin Scary” she thought..and shuddered.

Considering who, where and what she was, that was saying a lot. She didn’t scare easy. What she saw was terrifying. She had tossed a huge ‘device’ into the sun. The device had detonated and dug a deep , dark hole. From the bottom of that hole something was coming OUT. She did NOT want it to get her. She had to flee.

The ship she was flying represented the leading, bleeding edge of advanced technology for her time and place. That was saying something. It had the biggest, baddest, strongest and best of everything. Was it sufficient? Time would tell.

Autumn tweaked the shield generators yet again to achieve the very last micro-watt of electromagnetic deflection of charged particles. She tweaked the drive... yet again...to achieve the last possible micro-newton of thrust. She examined her trajectory...yet again... to insure that she was on the optimum course. She had done her job and would kind of like to survive.

The ship was exceeding full military boost. It was redlined beyond sanity. It was hammering hard to put the limb of the sun between her and what was coming out of the sun...real soon now.

Autumn’s mother and her mother’s human companion stood on their laboratory’s balcony. They each gazed into the sky. They saw doom approaching. Planetary Death was coming at them from beyond the blood red moon. The swarm was visible in the far distance, approaching from the sector Vigrid. There, Ragnorok had been fought and lost.

They recalled the transmissions from the ships involved in the greatest space battle of all time. The video transmissions from surveillance satellites were seared upon their minds.

Millennia hence the mighty battle would still be remembered...if in a somewhat distorted fashion.

They recalled the accounts of their Command and Control Carrier Odin, the capital ship of the fleet. It had engaged the enemy wolf ship Fenrir. The Battle Dreadnaught, the Thor, had courageously attacked Jörmangandr, a battle formation of enemy ships that resembled a Serpent.

Their ship the Freyr had fought the enemy ship Surter ...foolishly. Freyr was never intended to punch that far above it’s weight. Surter destroyed it easily. The enemy Garm dove into the very throat of the good ship Tyre. Both were destroyed in an eye searing blast.

The ship of traitors, the Loki was destroyed by the much smaller Heimdall. Heimdall died too. The Thor, against all expectations destroyed the Jörmangandr, with it’s expert use of the mighty weapon, Mjöllnir. In doing so the Thor sustained fatal damage and blew up with all hands.

So it went. The battle continued for days. No quarter was asked or given.

A Fenrir destroyed the Odin...a Vioar destroyed the Fenrir in turn. Alas, their fleet were too badly outnumbered. Even though they fought as fiercely as berserkers, even though they took multiple numbers of the enemy to destruction with them, there were many MORE attackers than defenders. The enemy could lose eighty percent of it’s fleet and still outnumber the defenders ten to one. Eventually all of their fleet, all the ships of brave hero’s were destroyed.

The enemy was coming.

Coming to rain death and destruction upon the populated planets.

It was up to Autumn to release Surt, the stellar jet, a last ditch defense, their only remaining hope.

“Do you think she was successful” ask the human idly. The time had passed, Autumn had either failed or had been successful. They would either die soon, or perhaps not. It was beyond anyone’s control now. He leaned against the balcony rail, heedless of the rocky shore far below, and gazed at the approaching doom. Like a mouse staring at a cobra...he couldn’t avert his gaze. He had to look.

“If anyone could do it she would be the one...she is unique.” rasped the mother of the courageous child.

“ Yes she is. I helped make her so. We should know shortly...it’s almost time.” he said.

Suddenly the moon brightened by several orders of magnitude.

“She did it! “ Exclaimed the human.

“That she did” said the Cat Lady….”That she did...but did she survive?”

“A few hours yet and we should know that too”...muttered the human still fixated on the approaching swarm...which was far beyond the moons orbit.

“a few hours…” he repeated through an unexpected onrush of tears. He was overcome with emotion, now that there was some hope of survival of all that he loved.

He Wept…

He shed tears of gratitude for the salvation of his planet. He shed tears of sorrow for the deaths of the millions of hero’s who had sacrificed themselves battling the enemy. He shed tears of grief for the one who was his daughter in all but fact. His daughter had succeeded where all others had failed. She had succeeded in her mission but had she died in so doing?

The mother, a cat-like being showed no grief..her face was not constructed to show emotion. Nonetheless she felt grief deeply.
Autumn was her daughter also.

The two lovers didn’t leave the balcony for some time. It took a few minutes for the light of the flare to reach the oncoming swarm. When it did they were illuminated just like the moon had been. Close behind the light, the x-rays and the gamma rays were a gust front of high energy particles. They were moving fast but not quite the speed of light. That one-two punch pretty much killed anything living or electronic, be it friend or foe. None of the escape pod survivors would live through that hellish glow.

Nothing, no matter how protected, would survive the “clean up squad” which had yet to arrive. The CMJ was traveling MUCH slower than the radiation. Eventually Surt, the Coronal Mass Ejection swept through the irradiated swarm and all the lifeboats and escape pods from exploded ships. The gigatons of the CME was still intensely hot and writhed with magnetic fields. The swarm, everything else in space and some planets and moons was well and truly…….toast.

Earth, too, was damaged by the gigantic solar flare. The ozone layer was temporarily destroyed. On the Sunny Side of earth all unprotected large animal life was killed.

Anything, in a conical section, from the sun to beyond Mars orbit, that was not shielded by a magnetic field, ozone and an atmosphere or a lot of rock….was toast. Total Planetary death had been defeated. But the cure was barely less damaging that the disease. Of the original life bearing planets and moons, a damaged Earth was the only survivor .

To Be Continued

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