The Perils of Space Travel and You

Translation into realspace is always a somewhat jarring experience at the best of times, but this particular instance makes Jack sick to his stomach despite his many years of space travel.

It's not so much the fact that the mass of your body is being pushed and pulled in ways that make you feel like a human accordion that gets to Jack. Nor is it the acute sense of vertigo, like you are being tossed out from the highest mountain peak imaginable.
These are feelings that Jack know and handles as easily as any normal person might handle a slight breeze in their face or an inconveniently timed rain shower.

No, the sickness in Jack's stomach is a result of this particular jump into the normal realm of physics having missed the contents of Jack's stomach.

The phenomenon of temporary, local space-time distortion, or "the jumpies" as it is commonly known, when returning to slower-than-light travel, is well known to a veteran space traveler like Jack, of course. Small pockets that continue to travel at faster-than-light speed for just a fraction of a second longer than the space around them.
Jack once saw the captains Great Dane caught in such a pocket. That case had ended with the big dog being launched across the bridge of the ship, smashing into a command console with such force that the bridge crew was still finding lumps of fur in their controls to this day.

Fortunately for Jack, this case of the jumpies is a lot more benign than the incident that ended the life of poor "Snuggles".

For a moment Jack is even convinced that he'll be able to fight it off.

A buzz at the door announces a visitor and as the door slides away Jack sees the familiar face of his colleague, Eric. Smiling, Eric takes a step into Jack's quarters and looks at his friend, who is looking unusually concentrated.
"That was a nice smooth jump, eh Jackie boy?", Eric announces.

It is then that Jack makes a critical error of judgement, as he decides to answer Eric. Parting his lips seems to be just the opportunity his stomach had been waiting for. In his mind Jack hears himself saying "Well, I dunno about that, mate.", but all that his ears hear is "W..BWWWAURRGGHHGA!", as a jet of vomit spews from his mouth at a speed so fast that he swears there's a supersonic boom ringing throughout the small room.

The spray hits the opposite wall, narrowly missing Eric's head by mere inches but hitting him all across the face with the force of the recoil.
Eric blinks sheepishly, his mouth opening and closing like a surprised fish that's just been thrown onto the deck of a boat. After a couple of seconds he regains enough cognitive capability to form a single sentence; "I'll...I'll come back later, shall I?".

Jack wipes his mouth with the back of a trembling hand, a passing dry heave making his shoulders convulse.
"...Yeah...A little later, Eric...", Jack manages to gasp. "Fucking space travel...I just hope these folks appreciate the pepperoni pizza..."



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The final hours of the Arisen Imperial flagship ”The Lightbringer” - September 4933 (Part 2)

You can read part 1 here. This is the second and final part of my little short sci-fi story, which details the devastating loss of the Arisen Empire's flagship "The Lightbringer", destroyed in a terrible battle by the techno-hating Neo-Luddites over the planet Foenix.

As the fleet began slipping into convoy formation and prepared to leave, the three Supernova class battleships, the heart of the Arisen Imperial force, formed a back line, protecting the retreating ships from the vicious attacks of the fast-moving sleek Neo-Luddite bombers.
Buzzing around just outside of the maximum weapon range, the bombers looked like a pack of blood crazed sharks watching a colony of seals swim away from them, but being unable to do anything about it. Clearly unhappy about the situation they tried taking pot shots at the convoy from extreme ranges, however they were much too far away for the required accuracy and the shots went wide and exploded harmlessly in an impressive display of pyrotechnics. Occasionally a bomber would get overzealous and fly too close in an attempt to get in a real shot and would promptly get obliterated by the combined firepower of the three battleships that made up the rear guard.

Then it happened. The sharks decided that they were through with trying to get to the prey and being slapped away by its noble guardians. They would settle for ripping their protectors to shreds. Moving in unison, the bombers came straight at the three battleships. With their guns mainly trained on protecting the convoy, the battleships were unprepared for a direct assault and wheeled to get all their guns in firing position to protect themselves. Even unprepared the ships represented massive firepower and many bombers were destroyed before even getting into range.

“No… no!”, Djenkato watched in horror as the bombers screamed overhead of the Lightbringer, having released a deadly payload straight into the side of the Vengance. The ship was now dotted with huge holes all along the side and from the wild fluctuations of her engine it was clear that the main power core had been breached and threatened to explode at any moment.

The final hours of the Arisen Imperial flagship ”The Lightbringer” - September 4933 (Part 1)

Today I thought I'd bring you something a little different. Aside from my blog writing endeavours I have also been doing a bit of fiction writing on the side. I'd like to share a bit of my writings with you and I hope you'll enjoy them.
Any feedback would be most appreciated. If this is something that people enjoy, then I might share more of my writings here from time to time. 


Alpha Admiral Djenkato stared at the monitors with horrid disbelief. Somehow this supposed rabble of crazed fanatics were beating back her masterfully planned invasion. There could be no doubt now that, after three weeks of fighting, the Imperial forces were beaten.
And it all started so well, the admiral thought. The Arisen force had arrived 23 days ago as a silvery gleaming fist of unbridled power. Her ship “The Lightbringer” had spearheaded the attack on the orbiting planetary defences and obliterated them all in short order with minimal loss of support craft. The planet invasion force had launched from her fleet and within days, all but two of the strategically significant locations had been captured.


Then the Neo-Luddite reinforcements arrived. It started with reports from the planet of massive counterattacks from forces that had seemingly been kept out of the initial combat. It became apparent that large parts of Foenix’s underground was hollow and filled to the brim with Luddite fanatics, who rose up in a coordinated move that wiped out half of the entire invasion force in less than 24 hours. After the initial shock of the surprise attack the Arisen force had managed to consolidate their perimeters and were holding their ground, albeit only barely. For a time Djenkato believed the operation could still be saved with liberal use of the massive orbital bombardment capabilities of her, still almost completely intact, orbiting space fleet.

“Admiral, the final ships from Foenix are aboard the fleet. There are no more Imperial forces left on the planet.” The voice of one of Djenkato’s subordinates broke her line of thought and she looked up from the monitors, blinking a few times to clear her head and focus on the matter at hand. “Very well, lieutenant. Order the fleet to begin withdrawing from orbit and set a course back into Imperial territory. We will remain to hold off the Luddite forces along with the Vengance and Justice until the rest of the fleet is safely away.”