A note before I begin. The following story is the origin of ESDF. I had created a scenario to do some “youth pilot” stories, inspired by Japanese Anime, but more traditional Sci-Fi styled. I came up with a rational purpose for it, but I didn’t have a grip on the universe to put it in until I was writing the …

. With my heart sinking, I radioed, “Googly, I’m out of mass. Inform control that I’m eyeballing my own course.” “What?” “I don’t have enough range to do it their way. I’m taking the direct route. I’ll sideslip it at the end to brake and line up.” As I was speaking, I was already turning back to the left. This …

A quick Author note before we begin: Chapter 34 (68) will be the last in “Goblin Driver”, after which I will post the ten chapter “Star Light”. Since “Star Light” has already been posted elsewhere, I am uploading everything in its entirety. This will finish the current “Tales of the ESDF”. This is by no means the end of ESDF, …

. I had nothing left to do except wait for night while sitting in the cockpit and monitoring stuff– now that we were full of wounded soldiers, I needed to keep an eye on the climate control– when the short-range infantry comm that the lieutenant lent us crackled to life. “Captain, we have one more item coming out to you.” …

. I puzzled over her words for a bit, but couldn’t figure out how to ask how she could possibly be responsible for Farley making the flight. I had a couple theories, but decided to think about it longer. So instead, I wondered, “Do we need to move to a new spot now?” She looked up at her work, then …

. We had the internal comm system functioning, so we were able to converse no matter where we were in the craft. I was seated in the control couch rehearsing the controls– it had been two years since I sat in a Dragon cockpit, okay?– when I asked her a question that had really been bugging me. “How come you …

. Suppressing a laugh at the weirdly complex threat, I nodded. “I understand. Hang in there, Chief.” “Captain Resnik…” the lieutenant began. “Thank you!” I snapped back at him. “I’ve been wondering whether or not you were aware that the way to address me is ‘Captain’, not ‘Kid’!” His eyes open wider and he didn’t continue. I finished, “That is …

. I have to admit, I had a very long list of questions regarding these two, but I put them aside and instead asked Farley, “What happened?” “The weapon that got us was repeating fire. Dodged all but two of them. One of them hit at the cockpit. I took shrapnel in the leg and the arm. Nothing penetrated my …

. Neutron projectors fire silently in space. Everything does, of course, except that you can hear the missiles deploying while they’re still in contact with your ship. But, once you get into atmosphere, it is a very different story. You still can’t see the pulses of the neutron beams but they have a powerful effect on the atmosphere as they …

. Re-entry on a space fighter is not the spectacular fireball that you might have seen with NASA stuff. The main reason is, we can do a much harder retro burn, which slows us down a lot more from orbital velocity before we hit the atmosphere. Normally, I mean. We weren’t doing it normally this time. We did not launch …