Paths of Duty and Honor

Before commencing their graduation cruise aboard the magnetic sail vessel, Eagle III, Randal Stewart and his friends from the Space Authority Navigation School were required to take a month of mandatory "gravity time" on Earth. Space Authority health regulations specified the minimum amount of time active duty personnel had to spend under normal gravity. With over one-hundred-fifty-years of experience the Space Authority was well aware of the destructive long-term effects of micro-gravity on the human body. On this cruise their main propulsion would be provided by a nuclear powered, seventy-five-kilometer diameter super-conducting magnetic-loop sail.Once deployed the sail would interact with the solar-flux emanating from the sun at velocities up to 600 kilometers per second. Just like an old Earth wind sail the "Mag-Loop" worked by presenting resistance to the solar wind. By trimming the angle of the sail, they would be able to accelerate or decelerate simply by adjusting the shrouds that connected the Mag-Loop to the ship. The ship's mass acts as a keel. Due to the gravitational attraction of the sun, it provides enough ballast to adjust angle the sail in relation to the "wind." Trimming the sail in the orbital direction causes the ship to move outward from the sun or, when set against the orbital direction, movement sun-ward was achieved. Movement to solar north or south was accomplished in a similar manner. The students had been informed through the ever-present rumor mill that they would be evaluated in part, on how well they dealt with the boredom of long distance cruises through inter-planetary space. If indeed this were true, they would soon learn an important fact about all plans. Changes occur when reality starts intruding... First Pirates, then they encounter and ancient alien AI that is almost as old as the Earth itself...