Read Online Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets by Laurence Moroney - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Laurence Moroney
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slow down, you have to spend more
energy to push in the opposite direction. The same applies for
turning. In air, you have elevators on your plane that change the
resistance to make you turn. In space, if you want to go left,
thrusters on the right of your plane will fire, thus pushing you
left. What does this mean?”
They thought about it a moment,
before James, a white kid from New York spoke up. “We burn energy
in different ways. Braking costs energy. Turning costs energy. So
we need to ensure that we monitor our potential energy
effectively.”
“ Bingo,” said Simms. “Nice work.
Okay. First class. Start flying these things. The red button on the
joystick fires your lasers, the green button near your thumb is
your projectile weapons. Last pilot standing gets no homework for a
week. Go!”
“ Wait, what,” said James, before
his ship was immediately hit by fire from one of his neighbors,
splattering paint all over the cockpit, and he was out of the
game.
Aisha quickly dropped her ship
from the hangar, and accelerated as fast as she could away from the
melee. She had chosen the far end of the cylinder as her ‘ up ’ position, so
she tried to shift her mind into the mode that she was climbing
above all the other fighters. One by one they dropped. She had
burned close to a quarter of her meager supply of fuel when she cut
her engines, and continued to drift.
Projectile weapons he had
said. She thumbed the stick, and felt a machine gun empty several
rounds. They shot out in front of her at high speed. Being a
friction free environment, they kept moving, without slowing down,
and without falling.
She could see how useful these
would be, tactically. One could shoot these widely and put up a
curtain that any ship coming towards her would have to go through.
They ’ d take hits trying to get through it,
perhaps enough hits to take them out of the game.
She turned her ship around,
pointing her nose back at the fracas below. Then, nudging the
joystick while she held the firing trigger, she spun her ship so
that the bullets shot in front of her, making a cylinder of fire.
With a few more nudges of the joystick, she widened the cylinder
into a cone surrounding the hangar. Any ship escaping the chaos
would take hits. The question is, were they enough to drop them out
of the game?
This worked both ways, though.
Ships down there could shoot bullets in her direction, too. They
were all too distracted by each other, but surely one of them would
have seen her escape, or, others had the same plan as her. The
worst thing she could do was stand still. She checked her radar,
and found an alarm that she could turn on for incoming mass. That
might give her warning, but warning wasn ’ t
enough.
And then there were the lasers.
She held the button and a lance of light lanced out from the nose
of her ship. No matter how tightly she focused it, she could see
that the laser still attenuated, so that at longer distances – such
as the distance to the hangar – it was clear the laser would have
little effect. She also noted that this wasn ’ t Star Wars, where laser bolts flew so slowly
through the air that one could dodge them. The speed of light was
the speed of light, so as soon as she pulled her trigger, she would
hit the enemy almost instantaneously. It was a question of whether
she was close enough that the focused energy of the laser would do
enough damage to take out another ship.
Again, she checked her scanners.
There was a basic radar that bounced radio waves off other sources,
with a computer filtering out what was moving and what was
stationary. Instantly she noted that this had several
disadvantages. First, in order to detect other ships, she was
sending out radio waves, giving away her position. Second, of
course, was that radio waves traveled slower than the speed of
light. If her enemy was armed with lasers, they could conceivably
kill her before she saw them.
A second scanner detected heat . It did this by
energy to push in the opposite direction. The same applies for
turning. In air, you have elevators on your plane that change the
resistance to make you turn. In space, if you want to go left,
thrusters on the right of your plane will fire, thus pushing you
left. What does this mean?”
They thought about it a moment,
before James, a white kid from New York spoke up. “We burn energy
in different ways. Braking costs energy. Turning costs energy. So
we need to ensure that we monitor our potential energy
effectively.”
“ Bingo,” said Simms. “Nice work.
Okay. First class. Start flying these things. The red button on the
joystick fires your lasers, the green button near your thumb is
your projectile weapons. Last pilot standing gets no homework for a
week. Go!”
“ Wait, what,” said James, before
his ship was immediately hit by fire from one of his neighbors,
splattering paint all over the cockpit, and he was out of the
game.
Aisha quickly dropped her ship
from the hangar, and accelerated as fast as she could away from the
melee. She had chosen the far end of the cylinder as her ‘ up ’ position, so
she tried to shift her mind into the mode that she was climbing
above all the other fighters. One by one they dropped. She had
burned close to a quarter of her meager supply of fuel when she cut
her engines, and continued to drift.
Projectile weapons he had
said. She thumbed the stick, and felt a machine gun empty several
rounds. They shot out in front of her at high speed. Being a
friction free environment, they kept moving, without slowing down,
and without falling.
She could see how useful these
would be, tactically. One could shoot these widely and put up a
curtain that any ship coming towards her would have to go through.
They ’ d take hits trying to get through it,
perhaps enough hits to take them out of the game.
She turned her ship around,
pointing her nose back at the fracas below. Then, nudging the
joystick while she held the firing trigger, she spun her ship so
that the bullets shot in front of her, making a cylinder of fire.
With a few more nudges of the joystick, she widened the cylinder
into a cone surrounding the hangar. Any ship escaping the chaos
would take hits. The question is, were they enough to drop them out
of the game?
This worked both ways, though.
Ships down there could shoot bullets in her direction, too. They
were all too distracted by each other, but surely one of them would
have seen her escape, or, others had the same plan as her. The
worst thing she could do was stand still. She checked her radar,
and found an alarm that she could turn on for incoming mass. That
might give her warning, but warning wasn ’ t
enough.
And then there were the lasers.
She held the button and a lance of light lanced out from the nose
of her ship. No matter how tightly she focused it, she could see
that the laser still attenuated, so that at longer distances – such
as the distance to the hangar – it was clear the laser would have
little effect. She also noted that this wasn ’ t Star Wars, where laser bolts flew so slowly
through the air that one could dodge them. The speed of light was
the speed of light, so as soon as she pulled her trigger, she would
hit the enemy almost instantaneously. It was a question of whether
she was close enough that the focused energy of the laser would do
enough damage to take out another ship.
Again, she checked her scanners.
There was a basic radar that bounced radio waves off other sources,
with a computer filtering out what was moving and what was
stationary. Instantly she noted that this had several
disadvantages. First, in order to detect other ships, she was
sending out radio waves, giving away her position. Second, of
course, was that radio waves traveled slower than the speed of
light. If her enemy was armed with lasers, they could conceivably
kill her before she saw them.
A second scanner detected heat . It did this by
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