She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually, the door opened, and in walked a tall female from Los Cal who was wearing the skin-tight Rescue Tech suit that Standish had been issued, along with a blaster on her right hip.
“Standish?” The female asked with a smile. “I’m Lovia. Welcome to Sandura 26G.”
Standish got to her feet and exchanged greetings.
“Do you have your RT Skin Suit?” Lovia asked, looking down at Standish’s bags.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Put it on. Regulations while on the station are that Rescue Tech’s wear them at all times.”
Standish quickly knelt down next to her bags, opened one up, and pulled out her suit. It only took her a minute to strip naked, then get into her Skin Suit. Once she was fully dressed, she looked at Lovia who was holding out a belt with a holster attached to it.
“Put this on.”
Standish slipped the belt around her waist.
“Here.” Lovia handed her a blaster. “You’ve trained on this weapon at basic?”
Standish took the weapon, checked it was on safe, then holstered it. “Yes.”
“Good. That stays on you at all times.” Lovia looked at Standish’s belongings, then back at her. “Grab your kit, let’s head to the RT centre.”
Standish picked up her bag, and set the hover-case to follow her, then followed Lovia out of the holding room she had been waiting in and back out into the hustle and bustle of the station. She wasn’t sure what level she was on, or how many levels the station actually had. In fact, she really didn’t know a thing about the station. Not much had been available in the database on Tekori about the Sandura system.
Standish trailed Lovia, taking in her surroundings. There were large numbers of individuals moving around the bustling deck they were on, and everyone seemed to make way for the two Rescue Technicians as they approached and then clogged up the thoroughfare once they had pasted.
After a short distance, the pair came to a secured lift bank where Lovia inserted a key-card and entered a code into a pad next to the doors. Withdrawing the card, the doors opened to reveal a large compartment which the duo entered. The doors closed quickly behind them, and Standish could feel the lift race upwards.
“This lift is for our use only. The Valalis Corporation personnel and civilians on the station use other lifts.” Lovia said.
It was the second time Standish had encountered the word Valalis, but she still didn’t know what to make of it. “Valalis?”
Lovia looked at Standish. “Yeah. They own the entire station. They staff it. Run it. Secure it. They even pay the fleet to have us stationed here.” Before she could continue, the lift stopped at its destination, and the doors opened to reveal a massive space that was almost one-hundred metres square.
“Welcome to the hive.” Lovia said with a smile, stepping out of the lift.
Standish followed and dropped her bag where Lovia told her to along with her hover-case and followed her to a spot in the middle of the enormous space and stopped.
“Okay.” Lovia pointed to their right along one of the long walls of the space. “Those are the living quarters. Everyone has their own room with all the necessary bits and pieces.”
Standish looked off to her right and spotted twelve doors along the wall which, like the rest of the walls, was painted in a combination of orange and blue.
“In the far-right corner.’ Lovia pointed to the corner past the last room. “Is the kit lockers. All the armour and other gear we use.” She moved her hand to the top of the chamber. “That is the control area. All operations are directed from there.” She swung her arm a bit to the left. “Next to it is the weapons locker.” She looked at Standish. “We don’t have anything bigger than individual weapons here.” Then she moved her arm to the side of the room opposite the living quarters. “And there are the access points for all our ships. We have six two-person Swift Boats at this station, and one light tug.” Lovia dropped her arm down and looked at Standish. “That’s about it. Let’s go meet the boss.”
She started striding forward towards the control area at the top of the giant room. The closer she got to the control stations, the more she could see what was going on. There were several monitors on, and many more off, showing views from the station’s exterior and interior. There was audio coming through a speaker that sounded like regular communications traffic to Standish, but she wasn’t sure.
When they got within twenty metres of the area, she saw three individuals get up from chairs and turn to face her, all-female.
“May I introduce Rescue Technician Val Standish.” Lovia announced to the trio.
“Welcome to Sandura.” The older of the three said, taking two steps towards Standish. “I am Senior Tech Toper Vaz.”
Standish stopped where she was and came to attention before the senior member of the team. “Ma’am.”
“Relax, Tech.” Vaz said. “Your data file?” She put her hand out.
Standish pulled a small data-stick from her breast pocket and handed it over.
Vaz looked at the file. “You know Juliantta Dove?” Vaz smiled. “An inspirational woman. She was my senior instructor at Tech school.”
“I only met her once, ma’am.” Standish replied.
“Fair enough.” Vaz replied, then pointed to Lovia. “You’ll be paired up with Lovia, here.”
Standish looked at the female that had brought her up and smiled.
“We’re operating in six pairs. While assigned here, you will have plenty of downtime, which will be spent doing fitness training, flight simulations, or here at the control centre monitoring the current status of the system. You will receive time to wander the station if you please, and you will be allotted time on the surface of Sandura once a month for a few days.” Vaz continued reading down the information on the data-stick Standish had handed her. “For now, let Lovia show you to your quarters, freshen up if you need to, just remember Skin Suits and blasters are with you at all times. Once you’re settled, come back here, and we’ll talk about how things work around here.” She looked at Lovia, “Okay.”
Standish watched Vaz and the two other females go back to their monitors and information broadcast, then followed Lovia back to where she had dropped her bags earlier. “Are there any males here?” She asked.
“Sure. There are six.” Lovia answered.
After collecting her baggage, Standish followed Lovia to the room that was fifth from the kit locker. Opening the door, Lovia entered the room and hit the lights illuminating her new home. Bed, table, closet, entertainment screen, and a shower in the far corner of the room.
Standish left her hover case outside and dropped her bag in front of the closet and surveyed her new abode. While it was modest, it was modern and clean, and considerably nicer than her home, and much larger than her personal space during training.
“How was your journey here?” Lovia asked, walking towards the door.
“Long.” Standish said, with a smile.
“They usually are. It always takes forever to get out here from the Core ” Lovia replied. “Take a shower. They don’t have a water ration here. Help you freshen up and relax.”
Lovia left Standish alone while she unpacked her belongings and found appropriate locations for everything. She was finally able to put up a digital display frame that had pictures of her family from back home, which she hadn’t been allowed to display on her training courses. Once she was satisfied with the way the room looked, she put her Skin Suit back on, added her belt and holster with the pistol, and exited the room, closing the door behind her.
Walking back to the control area, she noted that a pair of males were walking away from the ship launch area towards the accommodation. She assumed there had been a change in the team that was on flight status. Reaching the control area, she was able to pick up more details about the area. Giant data-screens, data terminals, and a single command chair that Toper Vaz was sitting in, and finally, a long couch.
There was a gentle buzz about the whole space.
Vaz spotted Standish and waved her over.
Standish walked around the wall and sat down on the couch behind Vaz, who was alone in the area except one of the females she had seen earlier. Lovia was nowhere to be seen.
“Everything alright?” Vaz asked.
“Of course, ma’am.” Standish replied.
“Good. You’ll find things out here are a little different from what you experienced back at Tekori, but if you’re not comfortable with Lovia, I can give you another partner.”
Standish shook her head. “She seems good.”
“First duty stations can be nerve-racking.” Vaz got up from her command chair and moved around to the couch and sat down next to Standish. “Now,” she pointed at the monitors. “Here’s what we do here. We respond to any distress calls from within the system, including the planet and even on this station, even though the station has their own medical response teams, and most of the villages on the planet have healers of varying degree of capability, but we still get call-outs all the time.” Vaz leaned back on the couch. “The system doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic. Traders coming in and out to take goods to and from Sandura and the station. We get a few Imperial ships that are part of First Fleet that are on cruises.” She rocked her head from side to side. “Most of what we respond to are minor accidents near the station. Trouble with docking, poor ship handling. I’ve been here for almost two years, and we’ve had only a handful of life-threatening incidents in that time. The biggest risk to your safety,” She pointed at the blaster on Standish’s hip. “Will be some of the rogues that come aboard this station. That’s the reason for the blaster. The planetoid is safe if you just watch out for the wildlife, but this station gets some scum making visits. Stay off the two red-light levels, and you should be fine. Valalis has enough security droids to maintain law and order, just use your common sense.”
Standish nodded.
“Good.” Vaz pointed back at the screen. “Once you’ve got an understanding of how things work, you and Lovia will rotate into the flight plan. When you’re on duty, you’ll be in one of the Swift Boats pottering around the system for just under four hours a day. The rest of your time will be spent sleeping, performing maintenance, fitness training, the usual. You’ll do everything with Lovia from now on, like all the other pairs.”
“I’ll give you the rotation in a bit, and you can start to get an idea of how things will go. Every day changes fractionally, that way no one is stuck with some horrible hours for flight shifts or fitness.” Vaz looked at Standish, then back to her front. “Any questions?”
Standish thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “No, ma’am. I’m sure I’ll get a handle on things.”
“Good.” Vaz smiled, then pointed to the empty chair at the data-station. “Why don’t you take that chair and just follow what’s going on. We get all the comms traffic from ships in the system, that’s all the chatter you’re hearing, which you’ll get used to. Just watch the monitors, and you’ll start to pick things up the more you see”.
Standish got up from the dark blue couch and moved to the empty chair and sat down in the heavily worn leather. She looked to her left at the other female that had on a set of headphones and seemed engrossed in the several images that were displayed to her front, and on the giant wall. It was a lot of information to take in.
Leaning back into the chair, Standish looked at a three-dimensional image that was floating in the air on her station of the Sandura system and tried to get her bearings. Five planets around a red dwarf star. Simple.
In her first month on the station, Standish felt like she learned more about being a member of the fleet, and a Rescue Technician, than at the two training institutions she had attended. Senior Tech Toper Vaz kept Standish close to her during her time on duty. She might have been partnered with Lovia, but she flew her first missions with Vaz, allowing the senior member of the detachment the chance to understand what Standish knew, and where there might have been room for improvement.
For Standish, it was an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with all the systems that were used on the frontier and gain a mastery of the use of the U7 armour, and of the Swift Boats. It took a while. Trial and error, but eventually she got up to speed. Perhaps most significantly, of all that happened during her first month on the station, Standish finally had a female role-model to look up to. Ever since her mother had died when she was young, she had lived in a world dominated by males. Both the senior instructors at her courses had been male, and it was only now, out in the darkness of space, on the fringes of the Empire, that she finally found herself another female that she could look up to.
“First operational run tomorrow.”
Standish looked at Lovia. She was standing in the middle of the doorway, still sweaty from physical training. She was the same height as Standish but had more muscle tone.
“Yeah.”
“Want to get into trouble?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Red light district.”
A wide grin came across Standish’s face.
“My fucking head is killing me.” Standish was sat up on the floor, looking at Lovia, who was still passed out on the floor.
The night was an eventful one. Drinking in three bars, then visiting a brothel for a sex show, then a fourth and final bar where they had been involved in a massive brawl. It had gotten ugly. Security droids from Valalis had to break up the fight.
During that first month, Standish developed a much closer relationship with Lovia than she had ever had with anyone outside of her family before. Her friendship with Num Blaz had been great, but now that she was settled, and in an environment that was more relaxed, she found that she was opening herself up to a woman that she saw as a peer.
“Ready to do this?” Lovia asked.
Standish looked over at her teammate and nodded. She was putting on her brand new U7 armour. She had already run pre-flight checks on their Swift Boat, and she was excited to be gearing up for her first operational deployment to the system. She had gone on several trial flights with Vaz and some of the more senior members of the station’s detachment, but those were always familiarisation flights, this was the first real operation she was going to be running.
Looking down at her helmet, Standish verified that the front five lenses that fed the optics of the suit were clean. The helmet had a large central lens, then four smaller lenses surrounding it. They could see in various spectrums and could magnify great distances or zoom in on objects that required some form of microscopic maintenance on them.
Above the central lens, the words Rescue Technician were written in orange. While most of the helmet was blue, it had orange accenting. Tapping a button under the chin of the helmet, Standish released the front blast shield that ran down the central facing of the helmet and contained all the optical gear and slid it back and up into a locked position revealing a transparent, blast-resistant cover. Happy that the helmet was ready for duty, she carried on with the rest of her kit-up procedure.
Once she was finished, she looked over at Lovia who was going through the same procedure and waited for her partner to finish. When Lovia finished her suit prep, she got to her feet and walked over to the weapons locker and drew her weapons. Standish followed, and once they were checked and ready to go, they made their way to the launch room for their Swift Boat.
The six pairs that were on the station rotated through the boats, one being on operations, a second ready to go on operations, a third on emergency standby, the fourth on a delayed stand-by, a fifth in reserve, while the sixth ship was usually undergoing some form of maintenance.
“Jae and Avi are ready to dock, better get out there!” Vaz shouted at the pair from her command chair.
Lovia looked at Standish. “Those two are always so eager to get back in, aren’t they?”
Standish smiled. She had spent enough time at the command and control c
entre to pick up on the habits of the team members, and everyone was keenly aware that Jae and Avi took the timings of their shifts down to the second.
The hatch from the central area of the Hive led to a single chamber that held one of the Swift Boats. The space was covered in rust coloured paint that made it look as old and worn down as it was. To the left, resting on its side, with the flight compartment open, was the Swift Boat. The bulk of the ship wasn’t visible, with the section that was lying on a ninety-degree angle from the floor of the room. When Standish had first seen the set-up, she asked out loud how they would get into their seats. Vaz told informed that the gravity in the room would go out, and once it had, the flight team would just manoeuvre themselves into position, and prep the ship for launch.
On this first operational mission, Standish followed Lovia with her eyes, checking everything she did. Lovia first killed the gravity in the room allowing the pair to move into their respective seats, Standish taking the right-hand co-pilots seat. When Lovia reached her position, the duo went about the flight checks in silence. It was the same all the time, by the numbers. Once everything in the cockpit was powered on and primed, the ship was nearly ready to launch. Lovia lowered the hatch on top of the compartment, which was accompanied by a loud hiss from the rear of the ship as the engines powered up. Toggling the release switch, the vessel uncoupled itself from the station's power supply, finally ready for launch.
“Comms check.” Fix came in over the net, she was on command and control duty that morning with Vaz.
“Lovia.” Lovia replied first.
“Good.” Fix answered.
“Standish.”
“Good. Happy flying, ladies.” Fix said.
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