cool, continuing to clean up my My Documents folder i found this, a freelancer based short-story (that has nothing to do whatsoever with my up coming real story) that i wrote for a language arts asignment, the end is highly rushed (i ran out of time
) but its ok
L # 105
My name whent here
3/14/2005
4TH Period
Ghosts of the Nomads
Captain Emily Bradford stood by the forward view port of the super transport Osprey. She watched the blue-green lightshow that accompanied jump gate travel.
Ahead of the Osprey 2 Brittonian heavy fighters gleamed a new orange-brown paintjob now pockmarked from an encounter with corsairs not yet 3 hours ago. Behind the captain stretched the long super transports hull. The front end housed the Command Bridge, crew quarters, and meager living areas. Behind that was a long, narrow tube that was the only connection to the engines and reactor at the back, as typical for a super transport. Along the tube in secured crates sat their cargo of vital supplies. Food, water, oxygen, and uranium; the basics for backwater space stations. This was cheep, though not unnecessary, work. The captain yearned for a better, more important, riskier, higher paying trade route.
Gold, silver, H-fuel ! Heck, even hauling copper, fertilizers, and terraforming gasses would be better than this! Not bloody food and water!
Behind the Osprey flew 2 other super transports, the Atlantic, and the Greensboro. All three transports had a single-fighter escort on each side; also 3 more fighters protected the rear behind the Greensboro.
The convoy was flying through the Magellen system when the Corsairs had attacked.
* * *
“This is Freeport 4 to Super transport convoy S-19, you are cleared to detach, good luck out there.”
“Good luck to you too Freeport 4.”
The Atlantic detached its mooring clamps and slowly floated away from Freeport 4. When it got far enough away small bursts of fire from many small maneuvering jets flipped it over.
Slowly the Atlantic activated its main engines and joined the other super transports of the convoy lined up for the trade lane.
Trade lanes are the primary way of in-system travel within the colonies. Patented, built, and controlled exclusively by Ageria Technologies, which also own the rights to jump gates and planetary docking rings.
The actual technology behind trade lanes is top secret, but most people know that is has something to do with magnets, and powerful ones at that, because around ships traveling through a trade lane, space becomes distorted and creates a brilliant lightshow.
As the convoy accelerated to speeds only surpassed by jump gates, most of the crew relaxed, but Captain Bradford knew that even trade lanes weren’t safe, she always had at least her command crew on their toes at all times.
15 minutes into the ride and well within the Wendell ice field a siren blared suddenly and in a loud, but calm voice over the intercom, the ships computer stated:
“Trade lane disrupted.”
Anyone who could grab onto something did, and anyone who couldn’t was in for a lot of bruises and possibly broken bones.
Flight leader Dillon Keys was positioned just off to the right of the Atlantic in formation for the trade lane ride. He always loved watching the colors swirl around the edges of the trade lane. Though it often made him sleepy, and sleeping want what he wanted to be doing if pirates attacked.
Trade lanes consisted of four identical T shaped sections that somehow made ships move fast. All the sections had to be in alignment for the trade lane to work. Sometimes rocks or other debris might knock the trade lane out of alignment, this was called a trade lane disruption. Disruptions weren’t always accidents though. Sometimes pirates disrupted trade lanes to prey upon transport convoys or just to cause general havoc. Luckily Ageria Technologies had make trade lanes self-aligning and soon after being disrupted they were reactivated. This took approximately 2 and a half minutes though and in that much time many things could happen.
Suddenly the trade lane was disrupted.
Dillon was strapped into his fish like shaped Brittonian heavy fighter but it still wasn’t fun to be violently decelerated and thrown in a random direction.
Unluckily in that random direction laid the Atlantic.
* * *
Captain Bradford just had time to grab hold of a chair when she was wrenched upwards with a force way over 8G’s. Inertial dampeners are a gift from above! Emily thought.
Even with the inertial dampeners she was hit with a force nearing 5G’s, the limit of human beings ability to resist gravity. Blackness ate at the edge of her vision as she fought to stay conscious.
Slowly the force subsided as the Osprey began to slow. No one could relax though as the speed had thrown them well away from the cleared area around the trade lane and the frozen rocks began to hit.
As fast as she could the captain got up and took in the damage. She didn’t notice any damage to the controls but the crew was in bad shape. The helmsman was sprawled unconscious over his controls, and many a groan could be heard. The captain immediately accessed the situation and half ran, half stumbled over to the helm. She unceremoniously dumped him to the floor; he wouldn’t be happy when he woke up. Reactivating the ships engines she began evading the larger rocks, but a super transport is large and clumsy, within a few seconds the ships shields began taking damage.
Dillon’s Crusader had bounced off the Atlantic, but in the process he had lost most of his shield energy and it was slowly recharging. When he was bounced off the Atlantic he had gotten a split second view of the Osprey and the Greensboro plunging into the field. Somehow though the Atlantic was able to wrestle control and stay within the safe area near the trade lane.
Dillon watched his scanner closely, hoping this wasn’t a pirate attack.
Sadly it was
Captain Bradford slowed the ship down to better control. With the roaring of small particles hitting the shields lessened she was able to hear a rapid beeping coming from the sensor station. The lieutenant manning the station quickly jumped up, and with a “Thump!” banged his head on the underside of the controls.
Clutching his skull the young lieutenant rose again, more cautiously this time, and seeing the source of the alarm, exclaimed “Corsairs!”
The captain immediately slapped a button on her wrist pad. Then, over the intercom, said, “Alert, Corsairs, man all turrets, alert!”
In the cloud behind the Osprey came the corsairs, 8 of them. Dillon swerved away to help the Osprey, who was probably lacking fighter support. He came up behind one group of them, 3, one heavy fighter and two light escorts. He didn’t know where the other 5 were, a problem.
He activated his comm. unit, “can anyone hear me, we have corsairs incoming!”
All he heard was the hiss of static. “Dang the field’s blocking signals!” he told the inside of his cockpit.
He zoomed his cockpits compuglass in on the heavy fighter, and jumped back in surprise!
The heavy fighter was armed to the teeth with missile launchers! This group of
Corsairs didn’t plan on taking over the Osprey; they planed on destroying it!
* * *
As the Corsairs came closer to missile range, the captain desperately called for fighter support.
Dillon slowly gained on the Corsairs, straining to keep them in view to get a lock.
He then got the garbled call for help from the Osprey. He then replied, even though he probably still couldn’t be heard; bigger ships like transports have bigger transmitting arrays then fighters.
Suddenly his targeting computer beeped rapidly signaling a lock. Dillon’s pilot instincts automatically made his finger clamp down on the trigger. His fighter’s guns spewed out yellow blasts of deadly, high-powered, laser energy, right into the heavy fighters behind. Since the pilot wasn’t expecting an attack from behind he had all his shield energy put forward, none behind, his lasers ripped straight through the thin rear armor. The Corsair ship exploded, taking one of its escorts with it in the explosion of all the ammo for its missiles.
The remaining light fighter swerved away behind an asteroid, then exploded. A Cavalier light fighter, one of the rear escorts, had also been hiding behind the same asteroid.
The pilot did a “hi” wave with his guns, and then was off, pursuing the other heavy fighter Corsair group.
Dillon watched as the other pilot shot down with excellent skill the 2 escorts on the remaining heavy fighter. Then suddenly the heavy fighter stopped his engines and was within seconds on the light fighters tail, who had not had the reflexes to stop in time.
The heavy fighter, though less maneuverable, was able to stay on the light fighters tail like a fly to rotten meat.
Dillon quickly flew to an ambush position and waited, and waited, then, he pounced! He flew out from around the asteroid and fired right into the front of the heavy fighter, vaporizing it in seconds!
Dillon made sure the other pilot was all right before flying over to the Osprey. He found it had already found its way out of the cloud. The remaining two Corsairs were flying away, when suddenly they exploded in a bright flash of blue light.
The captain watched the holographic sensor readouts in the center of the bridge. There were enormous power readings from where the corsairs had exploded. Then the readings stopped but a whole squadron of blue alien fighters remained. Immediately, the entire convoy activated the trade lane and fled.
That is what got them to where they were now.
Slowly the convoy slowed and ended up right at the jump gate back. The captain wished they had gone further into the system when she spotted that the alien fighters had gotten there ahead of them.
It was a long battle, the humans were overmatched in ships and firepower, but they were much better pilots than the aliens. The scary thing was that when every one exploded a ghostlike version popped out and suicided into one of the fighters, or transports. To everyone’s shock and horror, one flew into the Greensboro’s uranium storage and it exploded in a bright flash, vaporizing half the aliens with it.
Finally only one was left; it flew straight at the front end of the Osprey. All of the Ospreys turrets opened fire on it, to no avail as its ghost image flew on.
In one brave last sacrifice, Dillon, the last remaining fighter pilot, flew into the onrushing nomad ghost.
Both were gone in an instant.
Mourning their comrades, the Atlantic and the Osprey, badly damaged, took the trade lane to California, to warn the colonies of the oncoming unstoppable alien attacks.
lol i just realized i turned it in with 4th piriod on it when thats when i had math, i had LA 5th lol
"If im phased and can walk through stuff, then why am I not falling through the floor?"
Sun Jul 03, 2005 6:15 pm 
) im about done with the extra-long chapter 1 on that but the hard part for me is typing it (im a really slow typer)
