Hayward's Reach

NaShoStoMo #11 - Hunger

              She opened her ram jets and ingested the matter. She saw she could burn it and her plan depended on this. She scooped it, compressed it and attempted to start the engines. No success. Fuel ratios, out of balance, must correct. She was beginning to catch too much atmosphere, she would begin to slow down. If she did not get these jets started she would begin to lose too much speed to escape.

              Fuel mixture needed higher pressure, higher ignition rate, she needed to go deeper into the atmosphere. She inched her way into the atmosphere, her wide wings spread out, increasing the pressure bit by bit. Once she had the right pressure, the engines ignited and she had a sudden burst of speed, Then the engines performed better. The faster she went the faster they gathered mass. Her plan was working.

Then she noticed a storm below her and the ionization on her hull.

              As she moved through the atmosphere, she was building up ions on the hull making her attractive to the storm below. The storm was thousands of miles wide and would take her minutes to pass over. The first lightning strikes were the worst, as her cold hull was covered in ionized matter and gas.  There was damage all over her body, systems overloading everywhere. She made what repairs she could internally and hoped she would be outside of the range of the storm shortly. As the hull heated due to friction and energy discharges, it lost its attractiveness and within a few hours the energy discharges stopped.

              She extended her senses into the atmosphere of the planet and noticed there were differing layers, each with its own weather activity. And there was simple life here just below her layer in the clouds. A cloud creature of some sort, floating in groups like she and her family once did. She reconfigured her primary boosters to utilize a refined fuel she had been working with while studying the clouds. She was more than halfway around the planet and now needed to begin adding to her thrust profile. The ramjets would not be enough. She prepared her new fuel and pressurized the systems. 

              Each engine was the size of a mountain and she had hundreds of them. She activated them in a series of controlled operations, because to fire them all at once in atmosphere would tear her apart. The controlled burns began, each exploded with the force of a million nuclear weapons, in a sequence, faster and faster. Unexpectedly, the engines began to ignite the atmosphere, its natural chemical makeup allowed the powerful engines to ignite it and the flames surged out in a fire trail for thousands of miles, and once the storm started, it spread. She saw the flames surging toward the giant creatures and eventually overtake them. 

              They burned quickly, the gas that kept them buoyant was highly flammable. They did not suffer long. The last of her engines ignited and she was certain she would make it once the last step was made. She prepared the final jettison and fired the last of the main engines as she left the atmosphere. The ramjets and wings, hundreds of megatons fell away to burn up in the atmosphere, now she was just a needle, her core systems, her engines, her data network, her manufactorum, her ability to create a new her, was all that was left as she streaked away from the planet. As she entered the light of the sun, she flickered like a diamond and slowly came to rest in the Trojan  orbit of the planet.

              There was so little of her left. She could still see her fiery trail burning in the clouds, as the planet orbited beneath her. Now in geosynchronous orbit, she created a tendril of matter to drop into the atmosphere of the world. She also spread herself thin to gather the energy of the solar wind. With the tendril below, she would slowly siphon off mass from the planet. With the energy of the sun she would spread out until energy was flowing freely. This would allow her to rebuild herself over a few centuries.

              Nearly a thousand years passed. She has grown from a tiny sliver of light to a massive moon of the great world below. And she has a satellite, a daughter moon of her own to ease her loneliness. She has told her daughter of the voice of the First Sound and how she can barely hear it from this location. She has told her of the probability drive and how it was almost complete. She would be able to take them back to the core and to their family. Unfortunately, the storms destroyed much of her memory of their migration routes so they would have to hunt for them. It might take some time, a few centuries at least.

              Her daughter asks her about their sun, and their animals in the atmosphere of their Jovian world. She loved taking care of them and using her smaller bodies to joyride through the solar system.

              Mother explains they will be fine and now that we have been here and lived here for so long, we will be able come back and see them any time she wants. This location would be keyed to their drives.

              Her daughter tells her how happy that makes her and says she could not imagine living anywhere else.

              Mother agrees with her daughter but will also be glad to be going home. This place saved her life and she was grateful, but it would never be home, even if she lived here for a thousand years. And she did. And it still wasn't.

Hunger © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved