"What is it like out there?" I asked. The survivor, Leo, was about twenty-five. He had been the Flight Tech on board the Orion Three. We've heard about him while training for the mission. Many people claimed that he was the best software geek USRA had ever had. According to what I heard, Leo could hack absolutely anything, and that pretty much got him into a lot of trouble. Apparently, he hacked the main server of the Orion Program and had been listening to the confidential matters 'for the sake of fun'. It wasn't that fun when he was caught, though. I called Leo into my cabin. Although Orion Three had basic weapons fitted, the ones fitted on Orion Four and Five were far more superior than the ones on Orion Three. I wanted Leo to have a look at the list of weapons we had on Orion Four and Five. He had a long glance at the list and shook his head. "There are weapons which can blow up stuff to heaven come, but this will not help us any bit. Firing against them is fruitless. We need to have a battle plan. But these weapons would not last even for defending ourselves. We need more of these. Is there any way you could beam a message back to Earth and ask them for reinforcements?" Leo asked. "Well, I could try. They are already preparing for launching their evacuation ships. Hopefully, they would be able to spare a few ships for us. Our communication system is out again and we seem to have problems bringing it back online. So, we haven't heard from Earth for quite a time. This problem would be rectified in under an hour though. I will try to ask them for more weapons." I replied. The chances of Earth sending us reinforcements was close to none but it still was worth a try though.
"Alright crew, taking into consideration of what Leo said, we would as Earth for reinforcements. They probably have quite a few spaceships ready for launch and even though the chances are slim, I would at least try to convince them to send us the requires weapons. Thus, we would be postponing our mission by two weeks. Reneesh, get down to the bridge and shut down the ion engines. Activate the retro thrusters and fire them to slow down the ship to match our mission schedule. Note the same in the logs. Souvik and Konrad, take Leo along with you and make a list of the weapons we need. I need to be specific on what I'm asking for. Anna and I will send out a message to Earth informing them about the latest change of events. I need all this to be done within an hour." I addressed everyone sitting in the room. All the crew members acknowledged and got down to their respective jobs. "Alright." I said, looking at Anna. "Let's get to work too."
***
"This is Orion Four to Atlanta Space Control. This is to inform you that we found the debris of the lost ship Orion Three just beyond Saturn. We were able to rescue Leo, the flight tech of Orion Three, but we regret to inform that the four remaining members of the Orion Three crew died in space due to rapid decompression caused due to the breaching of the hull. Leo has been officially entered as an additional crew member but it is his opinion that we would need more reinforcements to at least stand a chance of defending ourselves and based on his account, we do share the same view. We have also decided to postpone our mission by two weeks so that we can wait for our reinforcements to arrive and also so that we can come up with some sort of a plan. Leo has also informed that there are a number of ships and bases on the other side. He tells us that they had some sort of a defense system which deflects back everything which is fired at them. All this needs a lot of thinking to be done. We will send you a list of weapons we would need. This is Orion four, over and out."
We had to wait for a few minutes as the signal had to reach Earth and then had to travel to us again. After almost half an hour of waiting, we finally got a reply to our message.
"This is Acting Atlanta Space Control to Orion Four, we are glad to hear from you again after the communication blackout and even more glad to hear about the survivor from Orion Three but at the same time grieve the loss of the remaining crew members. As far as the reinforcements are concerned, we regret to inform you that sending in any sort of reinforcements is not possible. All the resources we have are being used to build the evacuation ships. In addition to this, any sort of mission to the surface to extract the materials needed for building the weapons needed cannot be undertaken due to the fact that the magnitude of these solar flares has increased exponentially and any such mission would ensure the certain death of the people involved. In other words, travel to the surface is totally restricted. We also have advanced the evacuation schedule and we will be abandoning Earth very soon. We apologize for not being able to assist you with this, Captain Rithvik, but we are helpless at this point in time. Coming to the situation on the Solar System of Planet G, there seems to be a problem with getting back signals from it. We are not able to spot it on our telescopes. We are blind over here. It probably is a problem with our satellites. The solar flares are messing with them pretty bad. One of our communication satellites was destroyed by a solar flare and we are communicating with the backup satellite. We are not sure if our communication satellite will be able to function properly due to the flares. We may lose communications with you any minute. We do have another communication satellite on the main evacuation ship and we will try our best to stay in contact with you. May God be with us all, Captain Rithvik. May God bless us humans. Acting Atlanta Space Control, over and out."
"The plan has gone right into the dumps." I said, looking down, not able to believe the mess we were in right now. "Call the rest of the crew." I ordered. "They need to know about the shitstorm we are in right now."
"Alright guys, so we basically have no backup coming from Earth. They say that their the solar flare's intensity was too much and that they have to evac. They do not have the resources. So, Leo, we can forget about your weapons idea. Well, I suggest we still postpone our mission by two weeks so that we can think about the situation and come up with some sort of a plan." I said to the crew. "Well, this is NOT something I wished would happen." Reneesh said, banging his fist on the table. "Don't worry. We'll come up with something." Leo said, reassuringly. "Alright guys, the meeting is done. Back to your routine schedules." I said getting up.
Leo was kind of like me. We shared the same interests. We had a lot of things in common. I slowly drifted to sleep and I had another nightmare. We were at war against the aliens. All our weapons were exhausted and my ship was being torn to bits and my crewmates were begging me to make a decision. And then I woke up with a start, relieved it was only a dream. "What if this situation becomes true?" my mind asked me. What if I had to make a decision between saving my crew and saving the human race? Of course, I would choose the human race. But would it be that easy to take that decision when it comes to it? Just then Leo woke up and started getting ready and I spent another hour pondering over this, thinking about it again and again.
***