Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  K pointed towards the top of the ship. “They are along the top of the hull. Four, two-person shuttles.” She looked up from the datapad. “Good for short runs. Limited speed.” She looked back down.

  “Can we go inside?” Standish asked, noticing that there was a set of steps leading up to the craft halfway down its body.

  “Go for it.” K said, sarcastically swinging her arm towards the ship.

  Standish looked at Mils, shrugged her shoulders, then started walking towards the hatch, and underneath the decrepit ship. The moment she stepped under the belly of the vessel, she could tell how old it was. If there had ever been a nice paint job on the hull, it was long gone, and the entire fuselage was pockmarked from the long years of service it had seen. Running her hand over the hull, Standish could feel a distant warmth as her fingers dragged over the dilapidated shell.

  When she reached the steps that ran upwards into the ship, she was filled with an equal sense of dread and excitement. The mission that they were going on, her first, thrilled her. Going on that mission in the crappy ship that was before her, did not.

  Climbing up the steps, she found herself on the ships lowest level with a cramped corridor running forward and aft of her position. Another set of stairs just inside the vessel took her to the main deck, and a simple diagram on the wall at the landing gave her the layout of the ship. Storage was located to the stern, and the entire top level of the vessel was empty, bar the four shuttles, while living quarters and all operational sections of the ship were at the front of the lowest deck. Engineering was located at the rear of the deck.

  Walking up to the main deck and moving forward, Standish was reminded of some of the crappy ships she had taken when she had travelled out to Nadolo Prime. This was the kind of junk heap that was often found in the less desirable parts of the galaxy. Reaching the bridge, Standish could see that K had already powered on the start-up procedures and that the ship's computers were already warmed up and ready for operations.

  Sitting down in the captain’s chair, she took her time and looked over the bridge, and then suddenly realised that she could see out of the front of the ship onto the hangar deck. Most of the vessels she had travelled in, including all the military vessels did not have forward-facing windows. Looking over the rest of the bridge, she could tell that it was perhaps too old for her to fly; she wouldn’t know where to start.

  After sitting for a few minutes in silence, she heard the only other female on the team coming up the corridor behind her.

  “Comfortable?” Systa K asked, moving past Standish on the narrow bridge, and sat down at one of the two consuls on the starboard side.

  Standish shifted her weight in the chair. “Not really.” She replied with a smile.

  “Yep. These old Darjk freighters are pieces of junk, but very reliable.”

  Standish looked over at the team’s pilot and checked the screen she was using. It looked like a star-plot. “How many jumps is it to AB 79?” Val asked.

  K let out a laugh and turned in the chair so she could see Standish. “This thing doesn’t jump.”

  “What?” That was impossible, Standish thought to herself. Every ship that could travel between the stars could jump. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that this ship cannot and will not jump.” K said, before turning back to the monitors. “This ship, and a few others I’ve seen, use a device to emit a subspace distortion just in front of the nose of the vessel. This distortion field, if used correctly, allows the ship to travel in sub-space to its destination, assuming you have enough fuel to get there.’

  Standish tried to wrap her head around the idea but was left lacking.

  “You ever play with an elastic?” K asked while punching at the terminal.

  “Yes.” Standish replied.

  “What happens when you stretch an elastic?”

  “It gets longer.”

  “Yes.” K replied. “Now what happens if you release the closest end of the elastic? It races away from where it was to the end of where you’ve extended it.”

  Standish rocked her head from side to side. “Okay.”

  “That’s what happens with the distortion field. The front of the ship goes to its destination, while the rear stays where you started. Then it catches up.”

  “What?” Standish wasn’t sure if she believed what she was hearing.

  K turned around in her seat. “The reason this kind of drive is no longer in use is that when the distortion drive is activated, the ship is stretched from your starting point to your destination.” She turned back around. “Very dangerous to have a ship stretched out over a few light-years.”

  Standish suddenly felt nauseous, and quickly rose to her feet, banging her head into a control box on the ceiling of the bridge. Grabbing her stomach, she turned, and promptly walked off the bridge, down the stairs to the lowest deck, then down the stairs out of the ship.

  Leaning her head back, she tried to suck in some fresh air and get the stench of the old ship out of her nose. Turning back, she looked at the old freighter and started to sway, but just before she was about to hit the ground, Mils Cannarr walked up to her and put his sizeable muscular arm around her waist.

  “You okay?” He asked, but Standish was out.

  When she finally blinked herself back to her senses, K, Mils, Ho and Lo were all standing above her, while she had been propped up against one of the landing gear.

  “Okay?” Ho asked.

  Standish nodded.

  “Don’t worry, girl.” K patted her on the shoulder. “I don’t like the idea of it either.”

  Standish and the other six junior operators were in a straight line at the rear of the freighter. Jun and Cryne were going over each team members armour and equipment piece by piece. After each team member was checked off, they packed their extra kit and rations in their backpacks and loaded ammunition or energy cells into their weapons. Standish, being the newest arrival to the team, waited last.

  “Turn around.” Jun ordered.

  She did so. She knew he was checking the power level on her power cell that was in her armour.

  “Face front.”

  She did so.

  “Show me your reserve power cell.”

  Cryne was standing next to Standish, watching her, ensuring that she had all the necessary kit for the mission. Nothing was left to chance. It might have seemed redundant for operators of their calibre to have to go through such steps, but it was something that Standish came to appreciate from her time at both Rescue Tech and D-O schools, that in space, you were virtually useless without your equipment, and probably dead.

  After she had been checked off, she repacked her kit in her backpack to the same standard as the rest of the team. Extra ammunition, communications gear, micro drones, and medical supplies were all easiest to access. Everything else such as extra clothing, rations and other supplies were packed deeper, out of immediate reach.

  “Helmets on.” Jun ordered.

  At their own pace, the eight operators put their combat helmets on and automatically flipped up the front blast shields.

  “Comms check.” Jun said over the automatically synched and encrypted network.

  “Cryne.”

  “K.”

  “Ho.”

  “Cannarr.”

  “Has.”

  “Lo.”

  “Standish.”

  “All good on comms.” Jun replied. “K, board and start final pre-flight checks.” Jun switched channels but kept the team in the communications loop. “D-O control, this is Beta One-One, requesting final authorisation for departure.”

  “One-One, you are green for mission launch.”

  “Roger, control. Request launch slot.”

  “One-One, you are fifth for departure.” Came the response.

  Jun switched back to the team channel. “Everyone on board, combat load.”

  That meant Standish was getting on first. The team had been running practices on combat loads since
Standish had arrived, and as the junior-most member of the group, she boarded first, which meant she would be last off in an assault.

  Grabbing her heavy pack, which now felt very light with her suit’s power activated, she walked under the belly of the ship and climbed the stairs into the freighter, then immediately climbed to the main deck, and deposited her bag in a predesignated area. Once it was set down, she moved back to the stairs, then went to the top level, and to the forward airlock.

  She waited alone for a few moments until she was joined by Mils Cannarr.

  “This fucking ship is too small for me.” He said with a smile on his face.

  “Yeah.” Standish replied.

  The pair stood just below the front top airlock in silence as they listened to Jun and Cryne go over final checks before they took off.

  “Ready for launch.” K reported from the bridge.

  “Cryne, give me status.” Jun ordered.

  “Bottom hatch ready.” There was a pause while he moved through the ship. “Top hatch ready.”

  Standish could just see the top of Cryne’s helmet when he checked that Standish and Cannarr were in position.

  “Moving to storage area now.”

  Standish cycled through her heads-up-display until she found the ship layout, and watched the blue dots, which represented the team members, populate the image. Cryne’s was the only dot still moving as he entered the large storage compartment at the rear of the ship to join Nik Has.

  “Rear hatch ready.” He reported.

  “Understood.” Jun replied.

  Standish took a moment and cycled through all the live feeds from the other team members helmets until she found Systa K’s feed from the pilot's seat on the bridge. Standish couldn’t feel it, but she could tell that they had already risen up from the deck and were slowly floating towards the launch lift that would bring them up to the primary launch window, and out into the cold, windswept skies of Killious.

  The process of moving a large freighter inside a crowded hangar bay was no easy task. It took almost ten minutes to move a total of one hundred metres, but eventually, they were rising a few levels, past another hangar deck, until they reached the launch level, and were finally cleared for launch.

  When the old Darjk freighter finally flew out of the giant mountain base, it was into a fierce blizzard which hit the ship with a massive gust of wind, and just as the vessel started to get blown off course, K put the ship's thrusters to maximum, and started climbing the vessel away from the planet’s surface, punching through the swirling snowstorm.

  Standish could monitor the ship's progress as it climbed higher and higher. While it did, the excitement inside her continued to grow. This was it. Her first real mission. When the ship broke free from the planet’s gravity, Standish felt weightless for a few moments, before she activated her mag-lock in her boots.

  “Venting.” Jun said over the comms.

  Standish knew the plan. They had discussed it at length. The ship would travel to the AB 79 system with all the air vented, just in case they had an enemy contact at the destination. That was also why Jun had positioned the six of the eight operators on the team at airlocks so that they could quickly exit the ship in an emergency and provide cover. It probably didn’t help anyone’s confidence that the freighter was unarmed, and without any kind of shielding.

  “Vent complete.” Jun reported. “Blast shields down, weapons hot.”

  Standish flipped down her blast shield and flipped the safety feature on her rifle off. This was it. She knew, they all knew, that jumping, or arriving in a new system was the most dangerous part of the journey. No matter how good your telemetry and information on the system was, enemy ships could be present, and you’d be blind to the fact until you were there yourself.

  “Prep for transit.” K warned over the comms channel.

  “This is Jun. We are ready to transit to the AB 79 system. Be ready for anything.”

  “Slip-Stream activated.” K said.

  “Let’s go.” Jun’s final words of encouragement came over the comms system sounding garbled.

  “Slipping.” K said, but her voice also sounded not garbled, but groggy. Slow. As if she were really drunk.

  Standish also felt a little strange the moment K informed them that the transit was underway, and as she looked over towards Mils who was standing aft of her slightly, she thought that the distance between them was increasing, and while the middle of her vision seemed unaffected, the sides became blurred.

  Standish tried to shake her head to regain her concentration and vision, but even that movement felt sluggish. A second later, the light blue glow inside her helmet cut out, and she could feel herself drifting up from the deck. Her mag-lock must have cut off. Bringing her left hand up towards her headpiece, she tried to flip up the blast shield, but her arm felt like it was dragging itself through a thick fluid. A motion that should have taken little time took an eternity, but just as she was about to tap the release switch on the side of her helmet, everything went back to normal, rapidly.

  There wasn’t time for a warning from the bridge. The moment the ship arrived at its destination and returned to real-space, everything not bolted down inside the ship was flung forward. Standish was instantly sent flying towards the forward bulkhead which was five metres away, but she was quick to react, and in the zero-gravity environment which she was accustomed to working in, she had anticipated this eventuality. Bringing her knees up in a tucked position, she kicked her left leg out to the side and activated her mag-lock, which hit the forward bulkhead, with force, then quickly brought her right boot down and locked it in place.

  The manoeuvre she executed had allowed her just enough time to release her grip on her rifle, and brace for Mils’s large frame as it came racing towards her. Luckily they were in a zero-gravity environment, so when his armour touched her outstretched hands, she was able to absorb the impact.

  “Good?” She asked over a private comms channel.

  Mils flipped up his blast shield and looked at her. “Yeah.” He replied. With Standish standing on the wall, and Mils just floating in the air in front of her, they would have looked ridiculous to any passersby, luckily everyone else was in a different section of the ship. Unfortunately, not everyone had made the jump as unscathed.

  Standish wasn’t sure who it was, but there had been silence over the net, then her ears were filled with screaming.

  “K is injured.” Jun reported over the comms channel. “Standish and Mils get topside and set security. Mo and Ho give me bottom side security.” There was a pause in his speaking, but the screaming continued until Jun used his override to shut off K’s comms system. “Cryne and Has get up here.”

  Standish didn’t wait for further orders. She released her grip on Mils, and followed him to the airlock, a firm grip on her rifle, and waited for him to open the hatch. The large circular opening swung down into the corridor. Once it was fully open, the pair pulled themselves inside, then sealed the hatch behind them. Since the ship was already depressurised, there was no delay in opening the outer hatch, revealing a bevvy of stars above them.

  Standish had her rifle trained on the hatch, and when it opened, she gave a gentle blast of air from her leg thrusters, just enough to get her weapon, and her torso out of the hatch facing towards the front of the ship. All her armour’s sensors were on maximum range detection, and while that might not have offered the highest quality picture of the area, it was good enough to detect any ships within one-hundred-thousand kilometres.

  “Clear front.” She said.

  “Clear rear.” Mils replied.

  “Exiting.” Standish placed her left hand on the exterior of the ship, and slowly pressed herself outside, just enough that she was able to get her legs out, activating her mag-lock, before taking up a kneeling position. Once she was set, she activated her armour’s reconnaissance drone and sent it forward of the ship on a cone-shaped recce flight. At the same time, she continued to scan the area to
her front, left, right and above her for any threats.

  “Rear top clear.” Mils said over the net.

  “Front top clear.” Standish added.

  “Front underside clear.” Ho reported.

  “Rear underside clear.” Mo added.

  “Launch your drones and synch data receivers.” Cryne ordered over the net. “Hold your positions until further orders.” In the background, Standish could still hear some screams. “Standish, move to the bow of the ship.”

  Standish got to her feet and started moving towards the front of the ship, opening a channel to Mils. “You good?”

  “Good.” Mils replied.

  The front airlock was only ten metres behind the nose of the ship, and when Standish reached it, she could see that there was a long pole of some sort jammed into the front of the vessel.

  “I’m here.” She reported.

  “Come down until you reach the debris that is jammed into the cockpit.” Cryne ordered.

  Checking her mag-lock, Standish started moving down the bow of the ship, reaching the long pole that had driven itself through the protective facing of the cockpit. Squatting down, she followed the pole as it ran into the cockpit, and directly into Systa K who was still sat, motionless, at the flight controls.

  “Fuck.” Standish whispered over the open communications channel.

  “I’m going to cut the pole at her chest, then we’re going to pull it out of her back.” Cryne said in a voice that seemed rather calm considering that there was a 10 cm pole in the centre of Systa K’s chest.

  “Standish, grab the end of the pole, and once Cryne has cut it, pull it out of the cockpit.” Jun ordered. “Has, you will pull the rest of the pole out the back of the seat. Once the pole is out, I will activate the surgical droid and let it get to work.”

  Standish could see a small drone just floating over K’s body. She was shocked that she was still alive. Scrolling through her heads-up display options, she found the teams medical charts and quickly found K’s. She had massive internal injuries to several organs, and her armours nano-bots had cauterised the wound to minimise the bleeding and immediately given her a sedative to knock her out, but this injury was going to be terminal unless advanced medical treatment was made available.