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Hey everyone, this is a draft for something I will use later in another form. Enjoy it here as flash fiction, and any crtique is very welcome. Thank you.
Sunskimming
Outskirts of the sun's corona.
With the light filters on you could look directly at the sun's surface. You'd see its roiling photosphere, the result of a deeper convection zone where solar contents mixed and swirled in violent eddies. You'd infer the hidden dynamo at work as arcing coronal loops traced magnetic field lines with ionized gas. You’d follow the extreme magnetic fields of dark sunspot clusters circling your way. And you'd wonder, even after years of observation, how much time you had until one popped.
Magnus rose from a crouching position atop his skimmer board. The sun's full spectrum gleamed off his opalescent spacesuit and from a short distance away he and all the other competitors looked like little stars lined up in a row.
There it was now. Above the sunspot cluster, magnetic field lines twisted then broke only to smash together again at 40 million degrees. High-energy electrons and protons poured from the reconnection site while invisible x-rays and gamma rays blew past the sunskimmers, scattering off their specially designed attire. It was merely the precursor.
The alarm sounded. A coronal mass ejection followed the solar flare, erupting from the sunspot like spray from surf. The expanding cloud of ionized gas continued into space, on route to engulf them within seconds.
Magnus turned from the sight. With palms forward and arms extended to his sides he commanded the skimmer board to release its magsail coil. The wire spun itself out and around until it had encircled the board within a spacious ring laid flat against the oncoming storm. Vented plasma met with the charged wire and lit it like a candlewick, forming a spherical magnetic sheath around Magnus.
The gale struck. A shock wave of charged particles careened off his blazing white magnetosphere, thrusting him forward. The other
sunskimmers, each with their own spheres of white, purple or red, kept equal pace.
The magnetospheres, inflated by steady streams of vented plasma and the onslaught of the solar wind, swelled beyond their initial circumference. Space between the competitors grew ever tighter until their posturing reached critical.
Several magsails struck each other, deflecting, driving them apart and costing their owners precious momentum. Others gave way to their neighbors, only to shadow their back and steal the wind from their sail. Magnus evaded them while plasma continued filling out his magsail. Even after his plasma store had exhausted itself he held back from action.
Then he saw an opening. Magnus swerved and intentionally collided with his neighbor, knocking them both back and away, yet timed it so he would rebound off the front of another’s magsail. That sunskimmer’s magnetosphere transferred its forward momentum and Magnus vaulted ahead as if struck by a cue ball in a game of pool. The sunskimmer however dropped speed so fast that a competitor shadowing from behind crashed into his backside.
Magnus used the acceleration to angle himself behind another sunskimmer. Seeing this, the sunskimmer attempted to tack upwind and ram into Magnus, but Magnus had planned for that, and for what was coming next.
The shock wave on which they sailed was merely the front of the coronal mass ejection itself, which had now arrived. A dense cloud of red-hot ionized gas blew over the magsails, distorting their bulbous shapes until they looked like comets with their tails streaming away from the sun.
Magnus veered as the sunskimmer continued falling back. But instead of ramming, the sunskimmer merely passed over the top of the magsail, which was now a narrow and cone shaped tail instead of a broad ball. Magnus soared ahead and then tacked upwind to ram the sunskimmer with his broad backside. The sunskimmer dropped back and out of reach.
He held the lead as the finish appeared within sight. The demarcation line seared a brilliant blue in the midst of the fiery squall. Even then it was difficult for him to see, more so to see who was coming up behind him.
Magnus experienced a loss of momentum. Before he could react he was overtaken by a sunskimmer. His skimmer board was still venting minute amounts of plasma as he passed by Magnus to the finish line. Magnus couldn’t believe it. He figured that sunskimmer must have stayed behind with only half his plasma in his sail while the others jostled for first place. So he had been the first to receive the full gust of the coronal mass ejection and had had it the longest. From there on it must have been simply a matter of shadowing to the finish line.
Magnus recalled something in old earth stories. Something about a tortoise and a hare….
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"I must create my own system, or be enslaved by another man's"-William Blake
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