A sci-fi space opera - Sol: Chapter 1

Today marked the day of Zi’s 100th flight into space. When she was a little girl in the slums of Beijing she climbed onto the roofs of the dull steel prefab structures, most poor Chinese people called home, and watched the rockets fly into space.

The "houses" were only about 8 feet tall so there was no real worry of her falling down and getting hurt. That didn’t stop her father from grounding her for a week after she came down. Ever since the population boom in the 20th century, the population control was more and more strict in China, allowing famillies to only have one child. This ment Zi was the only way for the Lei family to rise from the dirt of the slums of Beijing. He would not let his treasure and the most talented girl in the Chi district to kill herself because of daydreaming.

Zi snaped out of reminiscing to the shrill voice of flight control asking her about the engine status of her cargo ship.
"Everything green. Ready for liftof!" said Zi.
"Firing engines. All systems nominal." was the response of the bored man on the other side of comms. Not much excitement was to be expected ever since the introduction of the Sǔn engines which proved to be very reliable in almost 1000 flights done by various pilots since their inception.

The cargo ship she was piloting was not a pretty sight at all. It was a boxy thing with an engine nacele on the stubbed wings on each side. The engines still used basic liquid fuel, but the technology was much more refined which allowed ships to reach the Moon in about a day. This also allowed a potential colonization of the outer Sol system after the Mars colony would achieve a sense of stability and self-sufficiency. But this was still a long way of.

The new cargo ships performed much better than the older model. After finishing the academy she was imidiatelly hired by the Tian Conglomerate and tasked with ferrying machinery in one of the older model cargo ship to the fledgling chinese Moon colony that was founded 40 years ago in 2030. She was a first officer to a very old, mostly drunk male pilot, who tried to grope her on every occasion. This was not what she imagined she would be doing after she finished the Chinese Space Academy 5 years ago, at the very young age of 23. Finally after proving herself she got to pilot one of these new babies.

All colonies were left mostly to live or die alone by the other colonies on the Moon. There was not much love to be felt between the countries of Earth when it came to Space ventures ever since the satellite debacle in 2020. The Americans mistook an Indian communication satellite for a mega super death ray and shot it down. This of course didn’t go well with the rest of the space faring nations so there was a bit of a Space Cold War going on.

The brewing conflict also meant that if she got stranded during a flight she would have to wait for 3 days alone in space for the next Chinese cargo ship. She knew from experience this was not very pleasant, so she carried extra holomovies with her on every flight, just in case a malfunction would occur.

"Sensing some strong vibrations on the right side wing. What does your telemetry say?" Zi shouted over the noise of the ship breaking atmosphere.
"Nothing on telemetry. Probably just some turbulence!" the man reasurred her.

Sure enought the vibrations let up and Zi relaxed. There was no point of being tense up in space. "Either everything is fine and I live, or something goes wrong and I die." Zi whispered as she started watching a very old holomovie named War of the Worlds.

***

"Ping!" The noise of the Space Detection System woke Zi out of her blissful sleep one can achieve only when experiencing pure boredom. Flying into space wasn’t as exciting as she had dreamt it will be when she was a kid standing on the roof of her home.

She checked the SDS display. Something was barelling at her at incredible speed. Panic struck! This must be a rocket based weapon. She initiated evasive manuevers but her ship was very cumbersome, the engineers that designed it not expecting the ship to come under fire. She knew there was only a very small chance for her survival. Why the hell would someone fire at her?

With alarms blazing she closed her eyes and said a simple prayer for her beloved father. She had not always loved him during growing up. After her mother died of lung cancer, caused by air pollution in Beijing, he was even more protective than when she was a small kid climbing over houses and stealing candy from the neighbours. But after she has grown up she eventually understood his overbearing attitude.

All of a sudden the alarms went quiet. The goddamn thing missed. "This must be my lucky day!" she thought to herself still trembling from the adrenaline. "Ping!" The thing was still on her radar, flying directly towards Earth.

"Comms. There is a thing heading straight towards Earth. It appeared right in front of me, and missed me by only a hair. It is still showing on my SDS. Can you confirm?"
"Roger pilot Lei. UFO is on my scope. Holy shit that thing is fast! I will send out word to military command! Stand-by for further instructions."

She could hear the excitement in the voice of the man in the mission control room.

Zi cut her engines, letting her ship slowly drift towards the Moon. She sat in the pilot chair in contemplation, not knowing this would change it all!

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I always wanted to try myself at writing sci-fi and thanks to Steemit I can at least partially try.

I love reading sci-fi books on my kindle. I usually go for some space opera tipe stuff where humans are forced in insurmountable conditions but still manage to come out alive by just the skin of their teeth. And this series will be something like that.

I wont include any relevant pictures because I dont think that is the point of books. One should be able to imagine what is going on in the book by using only their imagination instead of me forcing my own imagination down your throat.

I hope you enjoyed the first part the sci-fi opera named Sol. Tell me your opinion bellow and thank you very much for reading it.