SODIUM:3 Fusion by Stephen Arseneault

almost 120,000 tries before she had the pairs she needed to put her fusing theory into practice.
    I could not imagine having the patience for such an endeavor. Gimme-now or go away was more of my speed. I felt lucky to have had her by my side for as long as I had. She was indeed brilliant... like David Brenner.
    And like my Great Uncle she was kind and caring and unselfish. As far as I was concerned the world could not have enough people like her. Those types were the ones responsible for most of the great advancements of Mankind, the dreamers, thinkers and doers.
    I had arrived at the DSim that morning a bit early. I had hoped to have a few moments alone with Paige as she was normally the early bird. Instead I was greeted this morning by Chad. Chad was a tall dorky kid with a high squeaky voice. He was a chatty Cathy which coupled with his tone put me in a foul mood.
    After I sniped at him a couple times I had to stop myself. He was just here doing his job like the rest of us. I had no real cause to treat him in an unprofessional manner, even if I did have a strong desire to do so. I apologized after the second incident.
    Chad said that it did not bother him. He knew he could be a bit grating and talkative and I was not the first who had let him know. After that response we began to get along much better. Chad then showed that he knew his stuff when it came to being a handler. He had been the handler for the pilot of the first Defender that we had lost in battle. This was like a second chance for him to prove his worth to the program.
    Bigg soon showed up followed by Pop and then Whip. Bigg had spent the day with his son learning about the BHD drive. He was now well versed in not only how it functioned, but in how it was assembled, installed and magnetically balanced between the five rings that propelled a ship.
    Pop's day was spent with the reactor research group. They had been going over his ideas for an improved feed and had managed to get a prototype running that showed a 23% increase in power output. Pop was all grins.
    Whip's day had been less eventful. Her day was spent in study of tactical planning and more specifically on what were the best practices for weapons use that had come from the simulations. We still had very little real world weapons data as our engagements with the enemy fighters had been limited.
    I filled the crew in on Paige's discovery and accomplishment and then gave the bad news that we had probably lost her to the realms of research. Everyone warmly welcomed Chad.
    We were soon connected to our DSim and heavily involved in destroying the simulated enemy while trying to protect ourselves. Chad quickly proved his worth. At the completion of our second scenario I was startled by a warbling sound from my implant. It was Paige. I rolled my eyes at how quickly I had forgotten that we had a direct channel to one another.
    I answered and Paige began to detail her morning’s events. The team had agreed to leave the one QE comm channel between us intact and when not in use for testing it was available to us. I was elated at the news and took a bit of comfort in the fact that she had insisted that I keep my end of the connection. It gave me hope that she might harbor some of the same personal feelings for me that I had for her.
    She said she was unsure of when she would be able to talk again as they had been busily ordering truckloads of the equipment used to create entangled particles.
    At about 40,000 tries per entanglement it looked like the fleet would not be rolling out this new technology to the masses anytime soon. I thanked Paige for keeping me in the loop and we ended the conversation with a prolonged goodbye.
    As I turned to tell the others about Paige, Red chimed in with a shocker. One of the crewmen on Defender A15 had taken ill and a replacement offensive specialist was needed. My first thought was that we were going to lose Whip.
    Then Red barked out that I was to report to conference room D422