LightBlue: Earth's Last Stand

This is a story I started writing spontaneously, it just sort of came to me one night and I wrote til I couldn't stop. I really like this story and I would love to add more to it. I have nearly three chapters written and the first two are going up tonight. Let me know in the comments what you liked/disliked and I will try and post two chapters a week! Hope you enjoy reading! (Note: Any resemblence to any character or person from any media is purely coincidental, this is all original source material)

Chapter I

I looked up at the sky, a combination of bright orange and red glowed throughout it. I hope it will hold, I thought to myself. This was our last chance, a worldwide forcefield that was supposed to give us a few weeks to gather up our armies and make one final stand. From what I could see, though, it looked as if the glowing aura would only give us a few hours. I made a phone call to the Pentagon; we had established a relationship, the U.S. Government and I, considering I was their leading authority on the kind of threat we were dealing with. I was the only one who knew anything about this Enemy, and the government knew it.

"Hello?" I heard an aged voice answer.

"Yes, this is Dr. Connor Flash again, any progress with the U.N.?" I replied, hoping in vain that some decision was made.

"No such luck yet, China still thinks they can handle it themselves, so does Russia and North Korea."

"Why the hell can't they realize that we're doomed if we don't work together? Ugh, this is getting us nowhere and the clock is ticking!"

"Well, Doctor, we could initiate project LightBlue." The word stabs at my chest. The Secretary of Defense had just brought up something that we both would have ruled out as crazy and impossible just one year ago.

"Is it safe? We haven't tested it on a person yet, and no one has an ounce of bravery left in them to do it," I say, beginning to realize the inevitability of the situation. Project LightBlue was a secret laboratory study that was supposed to improve a human's anatomy to the point where they can survive in the cold, airless, hostile environment of space. I had devoted three years of my life into this study, along with a few of my colleagues. It was still years away from being complete, but at this point, it was our only glimmer of hope right now.

"Well, it was your idea wasn't it? Why not you?" the Secretary asks forebodingly.

"I'm not exactly in prime physical condition for that, I don't know how long I'd last."

"Doctor, it's our last hope! You have to try it or we're doomed!"

I thought about it for a minute, weighing the options in my head. "I'll get right on it Mr. Secretary." I just decided to go with it. I had trained to be an astronaut before getting my Ph. D in chemical engineering, so I guess I had the skills anyway. I ran out to the parking lot and got in my Volvo. I sped down the streets of Washington D.C., trying to get to Syntek Labs as fast as I could. When I arrived, I was surprised to see a few familiar faces there. My friend Roger Caldwell was there, a fellow scientist who helped work on Project LightBlue with me. Next to him was an old friend of mine, Sam Indigo, who I knew from my astronaut training and hadn't seen in almost six years. Lucy Reed was there too, smiling at me with a calmness that dumbfounded me. Lucy was the newest scientist at Syntek, and had a lot of great ideas that benefited the company. She came up with the idea to add some lighter gases like helium and neon to the mixture in Project LightBlue, not enough to be dangerous, but enough to increase maneuverability in space. Finally, an unfamiliar face joined the lineup, a well-built young man, who looked like he was from the military.

The Secretary came up on the video-communication channel. "Good to see you've made it, Dr. Flash. I made some calls and found a few people who are willing to join you on your brave endeavor to save the planet. Dr. Caldwell, Mr. Indigo, and Dr. Reed you already know, and this is Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Kaine of the U.S. Air Force. He has served his country well in these trying times, and was eager for a new way to help end this assault. Now, you may begin the process, Doctor. Mr. Indigo has supplied you all with spacesuits and Lt. Col. Kaine has brought the firearms. It's in your hands now, Doctor," He gave me a foreboding look. "The best of luck to you all."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, here's the lowdown. Project LightBlue is to be used as a last resort if our spacesuits should fail. What we're going to do is meet them in orbit, plant detonation charges, and get out as soon as we can. I wish we had time for proper introductions everyone but we have a planet to protect. Now, we step into these chambers and the LightBlue solution will be injected. It will react to changes in respiratory levels, so if you start to choke the solution will kick in. It should last about an hour or so, so once it activates, you should know you're on the clock."

"Our suits are designed to withstand the cold of space and to absorb shock," Sam chimed in. "The most vulnerable spots are the oxygen tanks and the visor, which is why Project LightBlue is essential. We have propulsion packs on our suits as well which we can use once we're in orbit."

"As far as weapons, we have machine guns with three extra clips of ammo, 4 concussion grenades each, and a 6-inch combat knife. Not much training needed with those, just load up, pull the pin, and let 'em have it." Lt. Col. Kaine explained.

"The shuttle will take us into orbit, then we will deploy out to the nearest enemy ship. We will leave the shuttle in the forcefield so we can return to it when we're done," Roger said, shaking a little bit.

"How much of a chance do we have at actually have at completing this task and driving those freaks away from here and living to tell the tale?" Lucy asked doubtfully.

"Well, if I had to make a guess, I'd say about 100:1. We may be able to plant the charges and escape back to the shuttle, but if they've been able to keep our armed forces at bay for almost a year, they're probably not going to give up that easily. We would just end up back where we started, or worse," I regretfully explained.

"It's not gonna do us any good to waste out time with this chatting either though right? Some effort is better than just giving up," Kaine said.

"Agreed. We should get ready, Connor," Roger said, getting into his injection chamber.

"Okay. Everyone, just as a warning, this will hurt a lot for about a minute or so while the solution settles. The whole process should only take about five minutes," I explained to our misfit team of impromptu astronaut soldiers.

"Let's do this," Sam said. He was always eager for adventure, so eager that sometimes he would ignore the severety of the situation entirely, treating it like a game.

"Alright. Initiating Project LightBlue, activation code 70G-Delta." I winced, tightening up before twelve needles entered different points of my circulatory system. I felt a rush of freezing cold solution rush into my veins, then came the searing pain as my body began to react to the foreign solution. I think I was about halfway through the process when I felt a shockwave throughout the laboratory, followed by an earsplitting alert sound. I looked up at the progress screen, still feeling the stinging coldness of the LightBlue solution inside me. It read "SYSTEMS DAMAGED: ERROR 70G-DELTA-12." That twelve on the end made my heart sink; a code twelve meant the process was rapidly accelerating. I tried my hardest to move but I was bound by the safety restraints and the needles inside me. I tried to scream for help, but just as I was about to, another shockwave hit and it shook the laboratory so hard that my chamber came disconnected and toppled over. Then everything went dark.