by Aer-ki Jyr
Jason walked up alongside the far wall, shooting the front turret sphere again to keep it deactivated. He adjusted his aim to the other and shot it as well. With the gun port snipers out of position he was free to abandon cover to continually suppress the front turrets.
Now came the worst part...
In the center of the bunker was the door, or more actually it was an open slot in the wall with a second inset wall blocking vision and access to the interior, allowing two lateral openings, one right, one left, into the bunker. The trainers had obviously fallen back behind the inner wall and were waiting for them to try and fight their way inside, walking directly into their pointblank fire.
That wasn’t the plan though.
Jack wiggled around enough to get his good foot under him and, leaning against the barricade, stood himself up on his opposite knee so he could watch. Dan and Megan ran up to the left side gun ports while Brian and Kip advanced to the right side ones. Carefully they poked their weapons in and fired several rounds against the back wall, but as expected the trainers weren’t there. They were cowering behind the inset wall that was blocking their position from the gun ports.
That’s exactly what the 2s wanted.
Dan dropped his weapon and, standing between two of the ports, knelt down so Megan could step up on his shoulders with Brian and Kip doing likewise. Randy kept suppression fire on the turrets along with Jason on the flanks, keeping them from pelting their elevated teammates in the face.
From the trainers’ perspective two heads popped up over the wall, followed quickly by their torsos and weapons, which fired down atop the foursome as fast as their fingers could pump the triggers.
Three of the trainers went down, but the fourth backed up against the inner wall and out of sight.
Megan stayed on her perch, but Brian let Kip down and as a pair moved into the bunker, splitting as they hit the entrance and circling around from both sides and attacking the last trainer.
Kip got hit immediately, but managed to fire one shot back, hitting the sniper rifle-bearing trainer in the vest just as he was hit from behind by Brian. The man slumped to the ground next to Kip while Brian sidestepped over to the mission end pedestal, keeping his eye on the four downed men as he walked over them.
He reached out and palmed the wide half-sphere, pressing it down more than an inch before it clicked in. The entire training course’s lights turned blue, indicating that the challenge had been completed successfully.
With the turrets now permanently offline and a wide smile on his face, Jason walked back to where Paul was now sitting up with his back against the barricade and helped him to his feet as a number of support personnel entered the room. One of them came over to Paul and injected an anti-stun charge into his right arm. It spread throughout his body and took away most of the lingering numbness, though it never quite got it all.
“Me too,” Jason said, getting his own injection. The numbness in his arm dissipated almost instantly.
“How many of us went down?” Paul asked.
“Emily, Ivan, Jack, and Kip…not counting me.”
“Five and a half,” Paul noted. “One better than the 7s.”
“That’s not an official stat,” Brian said, walking up to them.
“What was our time?” Jason wondered.
“Don’t know,” Paul said, “but it’ll up our rating a chunk. What’s up next?”
“Showers, Lunch,” Megan said as the rest of them joined up to the group, “Math, Tech, Swimming, Obstacle Course, and last but not least, our Halo match with the 4s.”
Jack flexed his hand experimentally. “Hope this tingle wears off before then,” he said, glancing over at Emily. “How are you doing? You got hit the worst.”
“Pins and needles,” she said regretfully, then broke into a smile. “But worth it.”
Jason clapped her on the shoulder. “Onward and upward.”
“Speaking of which, let’s get topside,” Dan said as he waved tauntingly at the trainers as they walked past the 2s towards the exit, “before the others grab the showers.”
“You’re right,” Emily said, wiping some of the blue paint from her chest onto her hand and swiping it across Dan’s clean face. “Terrible 2s,” she said, putting her clean left fist into the center of the group, with the others doing likewise, forming a 10-point sunburst.
“2 tough,” Paul added.
“2 fast,” Jason continued, going through their practiced mantra
“2 smart.”
“2 hot.”
“2 handle.”
“2 bad,” Megan finished, with them pulling back their fists and following the trainers out from a distance, careful not to slip on the mass of paint covering the floors. They’d really done a number on the place.
After they’d gone a mixed cleaning crew of Humans and machines got to work on the course, cleaning off every spec of paint for the first afternoon session scheduled a little over two hours later when the 6s would take to the course. Save for nighttime hours, the combat ranges were almost always in use, with one team or another working through their grocery list of challenges necessary to reach graduation which, at present, looked to be at least another two years off.
At the beginning of their basic training, it’d been anticipated to take the best of them no less than five.
3
Three weeks later…
Paul and the rest of the 2s walked out onto the spaceport tarmac atop of Atlantis to one of several dozen small Star Force dropships waiting in a neat row outside the boarding terminal to receive passengers. Usually the two-stage craft would nestle up to a docking port at the terminal and allow direct boarding, much like conventional airports, but at present this particular terminal wasn’t yet staffed and wouldn’t be open to the public until Atlantis officially came online in a few years.
The Scale-One dropships were the smallest in Star Force’s fleet, and used for low end personnel or cargo transport…the equivalent of a private jet to fly around the planet, except that these were used to get into space.
As they walked down the row of craft, toting their personal duffle bags, the pilots lead the trainees to the third in line of the perfectly identical dropships, cutting underneath the massive wings to get to the low boarding ramp sitting in the shade they produced on the otherwise sun-scorched parking grid. Looking up Paul could see three sets of wings on the aerolift cradle, with a smaller set underneath on what looked like an overly aerodynamic dart that was the actual space vehicle, affectionately known as the Angry Sparrow.
It had a single jet engine, modified to function at high altitude, that allowed it to fly about as a conventional aircraft, landing and taking off on its own as need be, but it also possessed four variable thrust solid propellant rocket engines that would launch it into space, as well as allow for a decent amount of orbital maneuvering.
Coupled with the aerodynamic design and low cargo weight, the Star Force created polymer/alloy dubbed ‘Prometheus’ allowed the small dropship to maneuver through and reenter the atmosphere at insane speeds, shrugging off the friction-induced heat that would threaten to destroy any other craft. Upon an exceedingly fast reentry, the hull plating would glow a cherry red for those cameras lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the speedy craft…thus giving it its namesake.
Paul and the others walked up the steep steps that were unfolded on the Sparrow’s starboard side and into the white/silver adorned passenger cabin. He and the other 9 trainees stowed their gear in overhead storage compartments and filled in ten of the 16 seats, none of which had any windows, which was typical of all Star Force air/spacecraft. Passengers were afforded outside views via hull cameras, displayed on three large screens at the front of the cabin directly behind the cockpit, which came online as soon as the pilots powered up the ship.
As soon as they were all strapped in, the boarding hatch secured, and their storage bins locked and checked by the copilot, Paul felt a faint hum through his seat’s plump cushions as the aerol
ift cradle’s 12 high power jet engines idled into action. A moment later the vibration increased a tick and the dropship began to inch its way out of line with its twins and accelerate across the tarmac towards a service runway that led to the primary.
The cradle’s ample landing gear were electrically powered, and could provide movement on their own when required for delicate steering maneuvers, but the dropships were spaced wide enough that the small blowback from the jet engines wouldn’t be a problem to either them or the terminal so the pilot gradually cranked up thrust and got them motoring down the service runway without delay.
Paul and the others remained silent, but they all eagerly watched the display screens…one fore, one aft, and the other one split starboard/port. Only Brian had been to space before, on vacation to a resort facility in low orbit, but even he was excited to return. The 2s were scheduled for a week and a half of zero, low, and high gravity training and, according to the 0s and 1s who’d already completed their training stint, it was supposed to be a blast.
In addition to the sheer fun of going into space and diving into new training scenarios, even if they were little more than orientation drills, Paul and the others were eager to add the experience points to their team total that the trip would give them a chance to earn. If they matched the 0s’ score, they’d pull within 50 points of second place, with the leading 7s too far ahead to eclipse on this mission, no matter how well they scored. Still, they didn’t want to give up any points to them when they went through their own mission several weeks down the road.
Point being, as much as this mission was going to be fun, they had team business to attend to.
As far as individual ranks went, the mission also afforded several challenges on that front. Paul was currently ranked 13th and second within the 2s behind Jason, who was 11th after the last completed training rotation. These challenge scores wouldn’t be added to the total until everyone had a chance to go through the space mission, but those scores had already been posted for comparison sake, fueling the ever increasing competition between the trainees.
Unlike other rivalries, this one wasn’t detrimental. Each of the trainees sought to become better, and helped each other train to overcome their weaknesses, not only because team scores were figured into individual ranks and vice versa, but because they all knew the stakes and the dire situation the planet faced. Earth needed them to rise to great heights, and the stronger they could make their teammates, the stronger Star Force as a whole would become.
And the stronger Star Force became, the better chance the planet had to survive.
Thus the training staff, along with Director Davis, stoked their competitive fires whenever they had the chance, unnecessary as that was, for the trainees were showing a remarkable amount of self-motivation. Still, any extra goosing of their existing rivalries was considered par for the course, and the trainers took every opportunity to ride those who hadn’t performed as well as the others, though sometimes they regretted that choice when they faced off with the trainees during combat challenges.
In addition to a myriad of impressive skills, the trainees had good memories and readily carried grudges against their trainers.
The Sparrow-class dropship pulled a slow U-turn at the end of the service runway and taxied onto the end of the number 3 main. Once aligned with the extra-long runway, the dropship’s pilots wasted no time and throttled up the cradle’s 12 jet engines to half power, with Paul and the others feeling themselves pushed back into their seats.
The small dropship accelerated fast and took to the air before they even reached the midway point on the runway and quickly gained altitude. On the display screens Atlantis disappeared from the forward camera as they tilted up into the sky with the rear view expanding out to give the trainees a good view of their city. The runway shrank rapidly until it was just one of several long spider web-like strands crossing the surface of the man-made island. Before long it disappeared altogether as they passed through a layer of clouds.
After a fairly smooth ascent to about 10 km, Paul felt the engines ramp up again and their speed slowly accelerate over the following minutes, gradually climbing higher and faster using only the cradle’s engines to ‘slingshot’ the Sparrow on the first leg of its climb into space.
When the air really began to thin the pilots switched the engines over into aerospike mode and throttled up to 100%, compressing and accelerating what little air remained above 32 km altitude in an effort to reach a minimum speed of 3,700 kph. As the air pressured decreased so did the drag, increasing thrust efficiency while diminishing the lift property of the cradle’s massive wings, but their speed continued to inch upwards as the dropship lightened as it continued to burn off fuel, peaking out at 42.5 kilometers and an airspeed of 4,350 kph.
Once there was no more speed or altitude to be gained by air flight, the Sparrow’s pilots disengaged the spacecraft from the underside of the cradle, dropping off of its belly clamps and gliding down below it several hundred meters as the cradle, now lighter without its payload, jetted ahead of the smaller spacecraft, now visible to the pilots as the carrier banked off to the left. The unmanned cradle was now under the remote control of Atlantis, beginning its trip back down to the city.
Once clear of any potential collisions, the Sparrow kicked in its rocket engines at partial thrust and began a hard, but smooth ascent up and out of the atmosphere, accelerating to a minimal orbital speed of 28,000 kph before throttling back, at which point Paul began to feel the first tingle of zero gravity.
He knew it was an illusion, the Earth’s gravity hadn’t disappeared and was still pulling heavily on his body at this very moment. The thing was, he and the Sparrow were falling towards the planet with nothing to rest his feet on and produce the compression that gravity on the surface afforded. It was the same principle of being at the top of a rollercoaster and feeling ‘weightless’ for a moment as you roll down the other side.
With no compression, no ‘gravity’ was felt, but it was ever present and continually accelerating him and the dropship towards the planet…which would have been a very bad thing if they weren’t moving so fast sideways. The trick of orbit was that your lateral speed moved you away from the planet as fast as the planet pulled you towards it, and since the tug of war was perpendicular your lateral speed never diminished.
It was a complicated, yet simple concept that Paul and the others had not been taught in school, but had been drilled on in training. Orbits were the foundation of the universe, and if you couldn’t understand how gravity redirected your lateral motion into a constant turn, then you could never navigate in space. All movement was dictated or affected by gravity, both that of the Earth, Luna, Sol, and the other planets and even asteroids in the star system. All gave a small gravity pull that had to be accounted for, and potentially used, to navigate in space.
It had been quite an eye opener for Paul when he’d finally got the concept, not to mention the actual names of the Moon and Sun. Why hadn’t they taught him that in high school? It made perfect sense now why they lived in the Solar System…because the central star, or ‘sun,’ was named Sol. And why had the first astronauts landed on the moon in a Lunar lander? Because the Moon’s name was Luna.
There were a lot of things like that that bugged Paul. The more he learned from his Star Force training the more he realized that the public was clueless as to what was going on above and beyond pop culture, whether it be cell phone disruption caused by solar flares or magnetic compasses not actually pointing to geographic north.
But not understanding an orbit was akin to thinking the Earth was flat, and that point was made all the more poignant as Paul’s body began to tug against his restraints and a wash of vertigo crept over his senses as the dropship entered a coast stage enroute to one of 7 starports orbiting at a lazy altitude of 900 kilometers.
4
The ‘Conduit to Space’ had been one of Davis’s initial selling points to the public, and was the foundation for Star For
ce’s pseudo monopoly on space travel. The basic principle was building transportation infrastructure that passengers and cargo could transit through, rather than designing do-it-all spacecraft akin to the early Apollo program that sent three astronauts to the moon and back on a single rocket.
Functional diversity and specification was the key, Davis knew, and the Conduit to Space formed the base of Star Force’s infrastructure, in that it focused solely on getting personnel and cargo up through the atmosphere to orbital speeds, and conversely back down from orbit to the surface.
There were three distinct pieces to the Conduit. The first was a Spaceport, the ground roots of space infrastructure and by far the easiest to construct. It was little more than a dedicated airport on the surface that served as a transit hub, whether it used runways, launch pads, accelerator tracks, etc.
The Dropship was the second piece of the Conduit, with the design concept being a spaceship that spent as much time in atmosphere as it did in orbit and whose sole purpose was to travel back and forth between the endpoints of the Conduit to Space.
The Starport was the third piece and opposite end of the Conduit from the spaceport, and served essentially the same function as its counterpart. It was a transit hub for orbital traffic and commerce, both ‘airport’ and ‘rail station’ that served as a waypoint for all Star Force traffic coming up from, or down to, Earth.
As the trainees’ Sparrow approached the starport, Paul and the others watched the display screens with growing interest. Far ahead of them was a growing grey dot that was the ugly, yet functional space station…but on their port side a long, train-like ship was pacing them, also enroute to the starport. It had nestled up to less than a kilometer away from the Sparrow and the two Star Force ships were using laser rangefinders to keep their distance steady while approaching the starport in synch.