Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  “Get ready.” Cryne warned. “Cutting.”

  Standish lowered herself into a crouching position and grabbed the pole with her left hand while keeping a tight grip on her rifle.

  Looking inside the cockpit, Standish was having trouble seeing what was going on due to all the blood splattered over the windshield and floating around in the zero-gravity environment. The pilot’s chair was roughly five metres away, and the moment the pole came loose, she quickly, but carefully, pulled it out of the window. When she got the end of the pole out, she could see that there was biological matter on the piece of metal which looked like it used to belong to a communications array.

  “Standish!” Jun sounded hurried over the net. “Start repairs on the screen. We’ll need to re-pressurise the ship as soon as possible.”

  “Understood.” She got back up to her feet, and hurled the pole away from the ship, then walked back to the top of the hull. As soon as she crested the rise, she spotted Mils walking towards her.

  “Nice work.” He said.

  “I’m not sure I did that much.” She replied.

  “Top and bottom cover.” It was Cryne. “Set up an energy cannon midships.” The line went dead.

  Standish knelt down next to the airlock. “You keep cover, I’ll get the cannon and the repair kit for the front screen.”

  Mils didn’t need to reply. He immediately redirected his attention to the space surrounding the ship.

  Standish pushed herself back into the ship, through the second airlock hatch, and went about getting the equipment she needed, all of which was secured in a centralised part of the vessel, where all the extra gear had been secured once they had boarded.

  Lo had already beaten her to the room and was taking the large energy cannon back to the rear hatch. Getting to her task quickly, she grabbed the backpack with all the repair kits and other gear necessary to make repairs on the old ship and slung it over her back. Hooking her rifle under her right arm, Standish picked up the massive energy cannon with one hand, then grabbed hold of the large case that contained the tripod and energy cells with her other and started dragging it out of the room. There would have been no way she could have moved either without the armour’s enhanced power capabilities, but in a zero-gravity environment, it was all rather easy. She quickly climbed the stairs back to the top deck and made her way to the front airlock.

  “Mils.” She looked up through the open airlock and waited for her teammate to arrive. “Cannon.” She took the long-barreled weapon, and pointed it towards the open airlock and gave it enough of a shove to send it flying up towards Mils.

  “Got it.” He confirmed.

  Standish repeated the manoeuvre with the large case that contained all the accessories for the weapon system. Once it was out of her grasp, she followed it out of the ship, making sure to close the airlocks behind her. Back on the hull, Standish assumed a defensive posture with her rifle pointed outwards while Mils set up the large energy weapon.

  Mils bolted the bottom of the tripod to the hull, which would cause only cosmetic damage, then pulled the energy pack out and clipped it underneath the centre of the tripod, then attached the cannon on top. Once everything was in place, he attached the reserve energy cells to the other legs of the tripod, then connected the primary cell to the weapon, then powered both units on.

  “I’m good here.” He said.

  “I’m moving forward.” Standish replied, getting to her feet.

  By the time she had returned to the bow of the ship, the flight deck was empty but was still showing signs of the trauma that had happened inside. Knowing there was nothing she could do to help K, Standish took a knee, pulled off her backpack, and went about starting the repairs. She was well aware that the repairs that she’d do, even if done correctly were no guarantee of a long-term solution. The emergency ship repair kits that all the teams carried were good for quick fixes in a situation without proper maintenance and repair facilities. She very much doubted whether the ship would be able to travel faster than light after this breach.

  With the backpack opened, she used her helmets heads-up display to give her data on what she needed to effect repairs on the screen, and where those necessary components could be found. She had plenty of experience working on minor ship repairs at Rescue Tech school, and her helmets AI was programmed to help walk her through all the steps to make repairs.

  The first thing that she needed to do was smooth out the breach in the screen. It was eleven cm across, just slightly larger than the pole that had punctured the bridge and had produced uneven damage and fracturing along the area it had struck, so the first thing her HUD told her to do was get a mico-file out of the kit bag and start smoothing down the edges.

  That process wasn’t complicated as the file was quickly able to trim the damaged edges away until all that was left was a surface that was smooth and resembled a circular puncture. Once that step was concluded, Standish returned the file to the bag and pulled out a sealing sheet of Aug Nova paper and placed it over the hole. The paper automatically clung to the front of the ship when attached, and Standish quickly went about smoothing down the edges of the off-white paper until it was to her liking.

  Following the instructions from her helmet, she pulled out a heat gun from the kit bag, and turned it onto the lowest setting, then moved it just over the corners of the paper until it had fused with the screen. Checking her work, she returned the heat gun to where it belonged, along with the rest of the Aug Nova paper. She rechecked the edges of the paper had been adequately fused into the screen, then zipped up the pack, slung it over her left shoulder, checked her weapon, then stood up.

  Scanning the space to the front of the ship, she could see two of the system’s planets, and the giant asteroid field that contained the two mining facilities, and luckily no other vessels. They were dead in space, not where they would want to find themselves, but at least there was no immediate threat to the ship.

  Walking back to the top of the hull, Standish saw Mils standing farther down the hull, and quickly noted that the heavy energy cannon had been set on auto, and was now facing vertically away from the ship.

  “Mils.” Standish had opened a private comm line. “I need to get to the bridge.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Jun. I need to come in to repair the damage to the bridge.”

  “Understood.”

  Standish reached the airlock hatch again, and pulled herself headfirst inside, and activated her mag-lock, then closed the outer hatch. If her repairs were successful, they’d be able to pressurize the ship, something that couldn’t be done with open hatches. Once the outer hatch was secured, Standish applied the safety on her weapon, then opened the second hatch, and pushed herself into the ship. She repeated the action of securing the hatch, and quickly made her way to the stairwell, then down to the main deck.

  When she reached the main level, she could see coagulated balls of blood floating in the air, and the closer Standish got to the bridge, the more blood she found. She hadn’t heard an update on Systa K, but she hoped she was still alive.

  Stepping onto the bridge, she immediately noticed the puncture in the back of the pilot's chair, along with more blood and debris floating around. The piece of the pole that Cryne had cut off was floating harmlessly in the air. Standish grabbed the pole and gave it another examination. It was undoubtedly a part of a communications relay, probably from a ship or a beacon because components of that small size were rarely found mounted on installations.

  Letting the end of the pole float off, Standish made her way to the pilot's seat, and set her rifle down on it, and pulled off the backpack. Fishing out another Aug Nova sheet, she repeated the same process she had on the exterior of the ship, and quickly fused the sheet to the interior of the cockpit glass. Once in place, Standish checked the seal and confirmed that it had melted entirely into the screen. Using her helmets advanced optics, which were able to determine wind velocities, and other disturbances such as vacuums,
she was able to confirm that the seal was holding.

  “Jun.” Standish waited for a moment, but there was silence on the net. “Cryne.”

  “Go.” Cryne answered.

  “I’m on the bridge. The seal is holding.” She looked over to the environmental control panel for the ship. “Request permission to re-pressurise the ship.”

  “Do it.”

  The line cut out.

  Stepping over to the environmental panel, Standish started at the top and quickly scanned down until she reached a small board that showed the current atmosphere on the ship, and found a switch next to it which would bring the ship’s environmental conditions back to livable standards.

  Flipping up a small plastic cover, Standish activated the ships life support systems, and instantly the panel lit up with lights of various colours as gauges started to twitch as air and heating were suddenly coming on-line. At the top of the panel was a straightforward three-bar indicator system that had been showing red since they had left Killious, and still showed red, but after watching it for a few minutes, it changed to yellow and remained there for some time.

  Checking her suits external environmental sensors, she was confident that the conditions outside her suit were enough to sustain life, but at the thinnest margins. Another five minutes of waiting and the yellow light changed to green, and less than a minute later, her suit registered that conditions were safe. All air-locks and vents were secured.

  “Cryne. Board is showing green for life support.”

  “Understood.” There was a pause. “Get back topside.”

  Standish grabbed her rifle, her backpack with the repair kit, and marched off the bridge. She got herself up to the top deck quickly and let go of the kit bag just by the airlock. Opening the hatch, she pulled herself up, then closed the hatch. She had to wait for the airlock to depressurise before she could open the outer hatch, and then when it did, she flicked the safety off her weapon and got back to work. In the back of her mind, she was thinking about Systa K, but she had seen teammates injured and killed before. She needed to focus on the mission and leave the contemplation until later.

  The ship floated motionless in space, among the giant planets, moons, and asteroids of the AB 79 system for three hours before a team-wide broadcast was made announcing that Systa K was in stable condition and that it was now time to carry on with their mission. The four team members on the hull of the ship were called inside but instructed to leave the heavy beam cannons they had set up in place on auto.

  For the time being, all the team members would remain in their armour but could remove their helmets, while keeping them within arm’s reach. The team assembled in the primary storage where all the extra supplies, kit, weapons, drones, and most importantly, their teammate K who was secured in an environmentally controlled med-bag that was keeping her alive.

  This was Standish’s first mission, and she knew that anyone given command of the Beta One-One team would have to be a competent operator, but when everyone was standing around the planning table, she couldn’t help but think Jun looked a little frazzled.

  “Let’s go over the numbers, from the top.” Jun was reading off a datapad. “Eight-member team, one member critically injured.” He looked at the faces of the of six members who were looking at him, then back down to the pad. “The ship is fully operational and mission capable.” He paused and pursed his lips. “But, due to loss of hull integrity, we are unable to travel faster-than-light, so we will need to call for extraction or find another mode of transport out of the system once we are mission complete. Third, all weapons and equipment survived transit, and the recon drones that were deployed have scanned the entire system and have revealed that there are no other ships in the sector.” Jun lowered the pad to his waist. “Now it’s time to crack on with the task at hand.” He looked over at Cryne. “Second, take us through our sweep.”

  Cryne nodded and moved over to the command table and activated a three-dimensional image of the system that floated above the table. “Here we have the AB 79 system. These red dots here,” he pointed at several flashing red dots that appeared in the image. “Are our drones. As Jun said, they have detected no activity in the system, so now we are going to start by clearing the two mines. Once they are cleared, we’ll set up in a hide position and wait for whoever is coming.” He zoomed the image in from the picture of the system to a single asteroid. “This is where we’ll start. Asteroid TKM44.” He enhanced the image until the team was looking at a cut out of the asteroid showing the mining facility.

  “As you can see here, the mine is located in a deep canyon and has four essential sections. The top level is dedicated to transport and loading docks. That’s how the ore gets out, and it’s how we’re getting in.”

  Standish followed his finger as it moved to a long vertical shaft that dropped down from the transportation deck.

  “This shaft has two internal lifts, the larger for moving the processed ore, the other for moving droids, supplies, everything else, including us.” His finger reached the bottom of the shaft where it touched the rock face. “Here the shaft goes into the refinery, which has been dug into the side of the canyon.” The image shifted to show a cut out of the facility inside the rock. “Five levels. Top two are for auxiliary uses, bottom three are for the processing of the ore.” He dropped his finger down to the bottom of the image. “At the bottom is the mine. This facility is only serviced by droids, so we should expect a very spartan environment down there.”

  Jun stepped into the table and put his gloved hands down on it. “Thank you, Cryne. We are going to send in three teams to sweep the site. With Systa K’s injury, I’m teaming Nik Has with Cryne, who will act as the assault team leader. Ho and Lo will be team two, and Mils and Standish will be team three.” He zoomed the image out until the entire facility was in view. “I don’t want any foolish risks taken down there. We have no reason to believe that hostiles are on-site, so act accordingly. Use your mini-drones as much as you can, and keep an eye on your radiological detectors.” He rubbed his hands together. “I will stay onboard the transport with K and provide top cover, although that won’t be much in this bucket of bolts. If I receive contact or detect enemy forces while you are on the mine, I will attempt to relay this information to you. If I can hide, I will. If I am engaged, I will fight. If you lose radio contact with me for over twelve hours, assume this ship destroyed, and Cryne in command.” He looked at his second. “Act in the team’s best interests at that point.” He tapped the command table and brought up a list of the supplies that they brought with them. “Because of the nature of this mission, and possible risk of enemy intervention on short notice, I want you to take enough supplies for twenty-four hours and stash them somewhere in the transportation dock, in the event of some disaster, you’ll have supplies to ration until you can devise a plan to get yourselves home.” He looked at the faces in the room. “Questions?”

  There was silence. Standish knew there wasn’t much to ask. It was a simple sweep and clear mission. They had drilled it plenty of times at the academy, and since she had joined the team, they had worked on it enough so that she was fully aware of what she was expected to do.

  Jun checked the time. “We can dock the freighter at the transportation point. Once you have inserted, I will get off-station, and find a suitable position where I can give support and allow you time to conduct your sweep.” He rechecked the time. “Take an hour for final weapons checks, and gather the appropriate amount of supplies for twenty-four hours on the station, then I’ll insert you.” He looked at Cryne. “I expect to hear a brief on your sweep plan before insertion.”

  “You will.”

  “Everyone back here in fifty for Cryne’s sweep plan.” Jun looked over to where Systa K’s body was and let out a sigh, then looked back at his operators. “Off you go.”

  Standish was the last member of the team in the stack. Her blast shield was lowered, her backpack filled with supplies, and her rifle pointed towards the
front. Ho and Lo were on point, right next to the hatch that they were all waiting to open. Behind them was Cryne paired up with Has, then Mils Cannarr and Standish taking up rear security.

  “Pressurizing the umbilical.” Jun said over the comms net. “Ten seconds.”

  The hatch flew up and out of view, and the stack started moving.

  Standish was able to get a picture of what was in front of them from the camera mounted on the front of Lo’s helmet. She also had a map of the facility on the underside of her armours left forearm, which she could refer to while keeping her weapon at the ready.

  The team cleared the freighter quickly, Cryne letting Jun know that they were out, allowing the old ship to get away from the mining facility where it would have been vulnerable to attack.

  The umbilical was only ten metres long, and the six operators crossed through it swiftly and found themselves in the middle of a giant loading dock filled with crates of refined ore. The space was vast, at least one hundred metres deep and wide.

  “Stop.” Cryne ordered. “Deploy your micro drones and give the room a rapid sweep for organic life and combat robots.

  Standish activated the tiny flight drone that was stored on the back of her right thigh and gave it a series of search parameters, then let it fly. Climbing to the maximum allowed altitude in the room of fifteen metres, the drone quickly disappeared from view as it raced away down a long row of stacked crates.

  It took five minutes until Cryne was happy with the recce that the drones had provided. “Ho, go far left side and clear forward to the end of the room. Mils, do the same right side. Has and I will take the middle.”

  Standish waited for her massive partner to move. He didn’t need to say anything, they were trained well enough that words would only be required for an emergency.

  Rising to her feet, Standish kept her rifle pointing towards the far end of the room, and as they started walking towards the right, she readied herself for a surprise with every row of crates they passed. All the time her micro-drone shadowing her movements, albeit halfway down the chamber, giving her a bird's eye view of the activity of what may lie in wait.