Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  The instructor moved over to the extreme environmental suit. “You’ve been training to use this suit for some time now, you have all passed the qualifications tests on the armour, so you should rest assured that if you keep your focus on this exercise, you will survive.”

  Standish, like the rest of the trainees, could see the finish line of the course insight. Just two more exercises stood in their way, but this one presented the most significant challenge yet. The rest of the briefing covered the standard pre-launch safety speech, along with the mandatory opt-out option for all students, allowing them to choose a less daunting line of work, but at this late stage of training, no one was going to quit.

  “Mission, you are to land on the surface of Alpha India 75R, in reinforced duo-drop pods, remotely activate a mini-shield generator, then use that shield to reach the safety habitat located at the coordinates I am sending to your datapads now.” The senior instructor paused and waited for all eyes in the room to return to him. “You are all qualified on the equipment for this exercise. You need to focus on remaining calm on the surface and making sure that your suits and the shield generator are functioning properly at all times, or you will face the risk of death.” The screen switched to a set of forty-five brackets. “You will be randomly assigned a partner for this exercise. Once you’ve got your partner, head back to your quarters, get your base layers on, and the rest of the kit you think you need, then report to hangar bay five.”

  Taking a deep breath, Standish waited for the first names to start getting matched up. When her name finally flashed on the screen it was quickly followed by that of Num Blaz, she immediately looked over at him, a smile already on his face. They both knew that they were two of the most reliable candidates on the course. The second thought that ran through Standish’s head was that they could set the course speed record if they were careful and performed to the standard that was expected of them.

  When Standish arrived in the hangar bay, she was wearing the skin suit that was worn universally by Rescue Techs under their armour, a form-fitting costume that left very little to the imagination. She had also brought with her some liquids and a small piece of fruit to eat on the trip to 75R. There was a pack of instructors standing along one wall, and a small group of candidates already performing light exercises and stretching in the middle of the bay. Walking over, Standish set down her items and started warming up herself.

  It wasn’t long before Num Blaz came up next to her and put his items down and started jogging in place.

  “Excited?” He asked, looking down at Standish.

  She smiled. “Sure. Should be able to dominate this one.” She continued loosening up and sat down on the hard deck and started stretching her legs.

  “Listen up.” It was one of the instructors. “The transport will be here in ten, once it arrives, form a queue with your battle buddy and get ready to board the ship. Once onboard you’ll get fitted for armour, then you’ll each be given some additional training on the shield generator. Once we’re happy, we will jump to Alpha India and conduct the training evolution.”

  Standish looked at Num. “What do you think?’

  Num sat down next to her. “Well, it seems like they’re making a big song and dance out of this one to me.” He paused and rubbed his chin. “It’s pretty straightforward. Keep the shield generator running, and haul ass. It’s easy.”

  Standish smiled. “Famous last words.”

  A single siren blast announced the arrival of the transport, and the hangar bay’s energy field activated, casting a blue glow along the giant far wall of the chamber, and after a pause, the massive hangar doors opened, showing the majesty of space, and a good view down towards Tekori. The ship that was floating in space just outside the station slowly manoeuvred into the hangar, caught by a tractor beam. The vessel made almost no sound as it glided into the room.

  Setting down, the ships front hatch opened, and a long ramp extended into the bay and out walked a solitary figure dressed in a set of coveralls. Standish watched as the individual went over to the group of instructors and spoke at length, before returning to the ship which she recognised from some of their previous off-station training operations. It was an old rust-bucket, even for a girl coming from the darkest regions of the Empire, it was shabby.

  Lining up in pairs, the remaining candidates were led onto the grey coloured transport. Once on board, they turned right and walked into the central holding room that was box-shaped, twenty metres by twenty metres. Today it was filled with row upon row of extreme condition suits and mini-shield generators.

  Stopping in the middle of the room, the candidates stayed in two ranks and waited for the senior instructor to put them to purpose.

  “The ship needs to refuel, then make the jump to AI 75R, that should give you ample time to find a suit that fits, get some more training on the generators, and then report to the drop pods.” The instructor looked at his datapad. “You have 50 minutes.”

  Standish quickly looked up to Blaz. “See you after you find your suit.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned and promptly walked off to the section of the room that looked like it held suits in her size.

  The extreme conditions suit, or hazardous operations suit as some called it, was bulkier than any of the other suits that were worn in the fleet. They were used primarily for high-risk mining operations, and rescue missions where the U5 through U7 armour would fail to ensure the safety of the operator. As Standish moved down the line of suits checking the sizes, she knew that there were specialist Rescue Tech crews that only handled these suits and missions, and she really did not want to be assigned to one of those units after graduating.

  The suits themselves were all a worn silver-copper colour of hardened composite and were even able to survive re-entry into an atmosphere if needed, but not the impact with the ground. The one thing that made the suit slightly tricky to use was the lack of a proper visor. Unlike the suits that Standish had trained with at basic, and the U5 suit, this suit used an advanced optics suite to feed data to the operator, and only in a complete systems failure could the user activate a tiny slit at eye level to see out of the unit. The only other suits that had this type of advanced helmet optical system were combat suits, one of which Standish was hoping to wear one day as a Rescue Tech and at Dynamic Operations.

  After checking three suits, she finally found one that fit, and with the help of a nearby service droid, wiggled herself into the suit, and sealed the massive armoured shell around her. With the front of the armour closed, which was the only way to wear the suit, it was pitch black on the inside while she waited for the armour to power-up.

  The slight hum of the reactor reassured her that the suit was functioning correctly, and then a low blue light filled up the helmet section of the unit. The armour’s operations relied on tracking Standish’s eye movements, and she quickly went through the start-up procedures, then checked fuel levels, oxygen levels, and water levels. Once she was satisfied, she gave the droid the go-ahead to release the suit from the rolling hanger it was on, and she gingerly stepped down the half-metre to the deck of the ship.

  Rotating at the hips, Standish went through the mobility test for the suit and found it felt less clumsy than the first time she had worn one in training. Satisfied, she activated the suits communications system and scrolled through the channels that were open until she found the one she was looking for.

  “Num.”

  “You online?” He asked.

  “Yes. Where are you?” With all the suits looking the same, it was impossible to figure out which one was her partner.

  “Centre of the room with Instructor Yulo and our generator.” He replied.

  “Moving.”

  Instructor Yulo was considered the friendliest of all staff for the training class, and he was the senior instructor for all the shield training they had received. The perfect individual to give them some last-minute pointers.

  Trying to move around the room filled with power
-suits, Standish attempted to be as light on her toes as possible, but in a suit as bulky as the hazardous conditions unit, it was difficult, and she had more than one collision with another trainee on the way. Arriving at the centre of the room, Standish looked down at Yulo who was kneeling next to the generator.

  “As you both know, this unit is too heavy for one of you to carry alone and can only extend its shield in a circle of five metres, or into a bow five metres long, and five metres to your front. That will be your best option for speedy travel.” Yulo said. “Once you land on the surface, the generator will be deployed by the drop-pods robotic arm and activated. Once it is live, it will provide you with a five-metre circle around the drop-pod. It is up to you to adjust the beam how you deem fit. But remember that you must keep changing the beam to compensate for the wind on the surface. At 8000 kph, any part of you exposed to the wind will get blown away, resulting in serious injury, and possibly death. It will be next to impossible to recover you if you are separated from the shield.”

  “The generator will function for more than enough time to complete the exercise, so you do not have to worry about the power reserves. Just keep monitoring the pitch and angle of the shield as you move from the pods to the training centre.” Yulo stood up from the generator and walked over to Standish. “Trainee Standish, ready?” He asked, giving the front of her armour a heavy slap. Yulo checked the seal and ran a system check from his data-pad on the suit. “You are good to go.” He slammed his fist into the eight-foot-tall armoured suit again then moved over to Blaz and ran the same checks. “You are set. Head over to the drop pods. You know where they are.”

  Standish looked at the suit that the much larger Num was in. “Ready?” She asked. Standish was good working with eye-and-face controlled heads-up-displays and already had the armour running smoothly.

  “Roger.” He replied over the comm system. “How do you want to carry this thing?”

  Standish looked at the generator which was a meter and a half high, and half a meter in diameter. There was a single large button on the top of the device to activate it, and a control unit that was attached by a cable that was used to change the settings for the shield output. The whole thing weighed 900 kilograms, which would have far exceeded the weight that Standish and Blaz could have dragged without their suits, but with them, they were more than equal to the task.

  “There are four handholds, I’d say we grip it with one hand each and run like hell.” Num moved closer to the generator. “You want to handle the shield projection?”

  Standish smiled. “Sure.” She moved next to her battle-buddy. “I’m thinking we create a shield wall that protects us from the wind and haul-ass.”

  “You’ll have to be razor-sharp with your modulations.” He snapped back quickly.

  “I know.” Standish watched as another duo picked up their generator and started walking to the exit of the chamber. “Time to move. Let’s get on with it.”

  The drop pods were kept and deployed from the rear of the ship, and since this particular transport was only used for training, the regular drop pods had been easily swapped out for the massive, extreme conditions pods, and as the pairs arrived in the drop centre, they were shown to their pods. Once the instructors and transport crew were satisfied that they were set, they were sealed inside the pods with their shield generators affixed to the hull.

  Standish was used to waiting. Life was slow in training, so once the hatch on the drop pod was closed, she tried to keep her heart rate down and her disposition cool as she waited for final exercise orders. She knew that much was riding on this test. Dynamic Operations had eyes on them, and his evaluation was the last word. She had to deliver a near-perfect performance. After 40 minutes, a familiar voice came over the comms system.

  “This is the senior instructor. All pods are filled and ready for the drop. Your suits Nav systems have the sanctuary location synched to them. You will all drop equidistance to the objective, and you will be on flat terrain. This exercise is simple. Keep your generators protecting yourselves and keep moving. The course record is 36 minutes. I expect that to be beaten.” He cut the channel but came back seconds later. “You drop in one minute. Your shield generators will activate on touchdown. You need to clear the pods in under five minutes, they are on auto-return to this ship.” The line went dead.

  “Num.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  A light green number lit up in the bottom right-hand corner of her heads-up-display and started counting down from 60. She felt the pod rock slightly in the planet’s atmosphere. On an exercise like this one, the transport would have dropped into a low planet orbit, roughly 100 kilometres above the ground, and would fire the pods at once, allowing their built-in navigation and flight control systems to take them down to their designated landing zones.

  When the timer hit ten, Standish took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. She knew that even with all the built-in wiz-bang technology involved in the suit she was wearing, and the drop pod itself, there was a chance for something to go wrong, and when a strong vibration started just before launch, it didn’t fill her with confidence. The massive shudder continued as the pod waited to be shot out of the ship, and down towards one of the most dangerous planets in the Empire.

  6

  5

  4

  3

  2

  Focus.

  1

  The pressure was sudden, immense, but brief. Trying to control her breathing, she knew that she’d be on the ground shortly, where she always felt more comfortable. She always hated the drops.

  “3 minutes to impact.” An automated voice came over the comms net.

  Looking at her heads-up-display, she was able to select an external image of the transport that was floating above her in space, silhouetted against nothing but stars. Switching views, she toggled to her main screen which showed the pertinent data for the mission they were on: Elevation, time to impact, and distance and direction to the objective were all being fed to her suit as the drop-pod continued its swift descent towards the planet’s surface.

  Another screen displayed the location of all the other drop pods and their expected landing sites. The wind on Alpha India 75R whipped around the planet at 8000 kilometres per hour out of the east, and while there might have been variations on a local level, the trend stayed constant over the entire planet. This meant that teams approaching directly into the wind and with the wind on their backs would have the most accessible route to the sanctuary, while teams approaching from the north or south ran the risk of being buffeted by winds coming from the east. As luck would have it, Standish and Blaz’s drop zone was directly south of the target objective.

  Checking the time remaining in the drop, Standish switched over to the live weather reports from their drop zone, and tried to make some sense, or pattern out of what she was looking at. Giant waves of glass-like raindrops were being flung around the planet at supersonic speeds. Any contact with flesh would be instantly fatal. They had been warned in pre-mission briefings, but the weather picture looked like a blur to her.

  “Num.” Standish said, waited for a moment, then checked her comms suite, made the proper adjustments. “Num.”

  “Go.”

  “You check our landing site?” She asked, a hint of excitement in her voice.

  “Roger that.” There was a pause for a few moments. “Looks like a bearing of around 20 degrees to the sanctuary.”

  Standish looked at the drop site, then back to the objective. “Roughly.” She said. It was her way of subtly agreeing. Their route would be slightly off a twenty-degree approach, but it was close enough for now. “We’ll just follow the auto-tracker.” She said dryly. Thank goodness for technology.

  “Trainees.” It was the voice of the senior instructor coming over the suits communications system.

  “You’re 30 seconds from feet down. The auto-trackers are synced from your landing zones to
your objective.” There was a two-second pause. “They’ve just been disabled. I am feeding you a basic grid map of the training area, your starting location grid number and that of the destination. Calculating the distance and direction should not be difficult.” Another pause. “Landing in ten. I expect clean dispersals from the drop-pods.” The line went dead for the final time.

  “Num?”

  “Here.”

  A red light came on inside the pod, which Standish could see with her current heads-up-display configuration, letting her know the landing sequence was initiated. The pre-touchdown burn kicked in fifty metres off the surface of the planet. It had to be brutal to stop the pod which had dropped at a rate of 2000 kilometres per hour. The down blast from the undercarriage thrusters roared at the ground below the pod, while at the same time, the side thrusters were working at full power to keep the pod from moving in the massive gusts that raced around the planet non-stop.

  After just a brief pause floating above the surface, the pod landed and instantly extended out a set of three micro-rocket assisted spikes that dug into the planet’s hard crust, locking the large pod into place.

  “Shield generator deploying.” An automated voice came over the suit’s network again.

  Standish looked at the red light in the top corner her view screen indicating that the drop pod hatch was still locked.

  “Generator deployed and operational.” The tone came back.

  “Your generators are online.” It was one of the instructors from the transport. “Your pods will open in 20. Once they do, you need to egress, determine your plan of action, and move out.” There was a pause where Standish could almost hear the instructors talking among themselves in the background. “Oh, and don’t get killed.”