As they sat about resting, Drill Sergeant Korto confiscated the weapons and informed them of the numbers. Forty-eight cadets had washed out over the course of the decle. Moreover, the cadets had received orders to not to keep extra meat against their elementary survival training.
The cadets had slept in the woods after the slaughter. The next cycle Drill Sergeant Korto had woken them, dumping their flightsuits in the middle of the clearing. No one questioned it, and after sifting through the pile, they pulled their flightsuits on over their mud-, sweat- and blood-soaked PT uniforms. From there, they ran to the hangar and boarded shuttles which ferried them out to an asteroid over a thousand kilometra from the academy.
From his shuttle hovering above the iron ore asteroid they’d landed upon, Drill Sergeant Korto looked down at the Blade Force. “Your task this cycle is simple, cadets. Make your way back to the academy before your air and water supplies run out,” Korto called over the link. “Sergeant Falpin has already informed me that the runts under him quit. They said it was impossible. Care to join them?”
Blazer shook his head and waved Korto away, not thinking of the implications, before looking out across the expanse from his little asteroid. His team stood arrayed before him, the Explosions at the end of another tendril near theirs, only just visible from their position. Between the two tendrils, he found the running lights of Drill Sergeant Korto’s shuttle, from where he watched both teams.
Following the navigation beacon in his helmet, Blazer turned to look back down the tendril of asteroids leading back to the academy. It was little more than a dot in his visor and he couldn’t make heads or tails of their orientation in relation to it. I can’t tell, are we coming in along the major axis, near the deep ruts? Or are we coming in near the ends? He imagined the academy as he considered what to do. The main facility was fourteen kilometra long, with the hangar at one end and the power plant at the other. From the end of the plant was a retractable six-kilometra-long structure of radiator panels. When the Galactic Federation had attacked the Admiral had ordered the array retracted in an effort to go undetected. The ruse had failed. If they bring us in along the axis, we’re hosed. Even at its narrowest the academy is three and a half KMe in radius, there’s no way an impact wouldn’t be fatal. Even if we survived there’s no way we could hold on. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they came in near the deep ruts. We must be heading towards the aft array then; depending on how close those tendrils come to the academy itself they would create a navigational Sheol that close to the launch tubes or the landing bay. Besides, I’ve never seen these anytime w’ve flown before, at least not near the hangar. The academy must only drag them into place for this test.
He looked around, and saw that no one could figure out what to do. He watched a few floating bits of rock and ice drifting along their tendril, bouncing off the invisible barrier containing them.
Blazer looked back towards the academy. Nothing to it but to do it. We have to get moving. So he reached down and clicked open the emergency tether from his flightsuit. The woven tether was a good fifty metra long. Blazer often wondered Why? But in that moment, he felt thankful for the additional length.
Unfurling it from its reel, he unclipped it from his flightsuit and turned to the others. “Okay, listen up! Reel out your emergency tethers and join them together. We need to get moving if we’re going to make it in time.”
Zithe bounded into Blazer’s face, his helmet dome set to transparent. “What are you talking about? Who put you in charge?”
Blazer closed his eyes for a moment. Damn it, Seri, why did you have to die before appointing one of us leader? We don’t have time for this. Blazer depolarized his own dome and locked eyes with Zithe. “If you have a better plan, let’s hear it.”
Zithe looked out at the tendril then back at Blazer. “Obviously, we jump for it.”
Blazer shook his head. “Of course we jump for it, but how? Do you want us going lone wolf out there? Each of us jumping for a rock on our own? Then what happens? If we split up, that all but guarantees that we’ll all end up adrift.”
“Then we hit the dark matter barrier. After that you jump back to another or walk the rest of the way from there.”
Gokhead stepped up in response to that, his reverse hinged knees making him stand out even more than usual. “I don’t think so,” he said, pointing out a series of twinkling objects arrayed along and between the tendrils. “First off you can’t just walk on a dark matter screen like that, it doesn’t work that way. Also, those are the dark matter manipulation satellites that keep the rocks in place. They’re the same as the ones maintaing the asteroid shell. While they are keeping the tendrils in place, I hazard that they won’t stop us. They probably aren’t programmed to. We’ll just drift, waiting to be picked up, and we’ll fail.”
“Besides that, Zithe, look at the distances,” Blazer implored. “If each one us has to make every rock to rock jump ourselves we’ll be so exhausted by midcycle that we’ll never make it. No, we have one person here who can make those jumps consistently all cycle and not kill himself in the process.”
All eyes turned on Bichard as he towered over the rest in his lumpy flightsuit. He looked from side to side at them, his antennae emitting a nervous hum over the link. Blazer approached his old friend, then pointed at the first asteroid he wanted to jump to. “Can you make that?”
Bichard nodded. “I can leap twice with no risk if I had to.”
“Good, that’s exactly what I needed to hear, buddy.” Blazer turned back to the others. “We’re each carrying a reel with fifty metra of emergency tether. If we snap them together, we have enough for 550 metra. The tethers are more than strong enough to hold all of us. Bichard will take one end and make the jump to the next asteroid inward. We’ll anchor it on this end, climb across, and repeat the process.”
They looked at each other and nodded.
“Bichard, I know this is a lot to put on you. If you start getting tired, you let me know, and we’ll start taking turns on the jumps.” Blazer then reached back and tapped his backpack. “While we’ve all got emergency suit jets, we need to limit their use. Every time we fire them, we use up a little of our emergency air reserves and power cells. We need those cells to run our air and water recyclers. We should have just enough to last, if we don’t waste anything.”
Blazer looked back down the tendril at the dim dot of the academy in the distance. That spinning, hollowed out rock was their home, now. Even after getting a decent sleep the cycle before, he knew they were still tired. The fatigue of the decle was wearing on all of them. He walked around Bichard so that he could address the team.
“No one elected me leader. So if anyone has a better plan, step up and let’s hear it.”
No one did.
“Then we go with mine. This is our best shot at making it home and our best shot at making it through the program. I know it seems impossible, but they’ve made us do things we have thought impossible every cycle, and we’ve risen to the challenge every time. There’s an old saying in Special Ops: if you don’t do one impossible thing before breakfast, then you’re doing something wrong.”
A few loose chuckles echoed back over the link.
“But I know this: I see Drill Sergeant Korto smirking at us in his nice comfortable seat, waiting for us to fail, and, on that tendril over there are the Explosions. They’re relying on us to make it too. And on that tendril over there,” he said, pointing at the one opposite the Explosions.
They all turned to look.
“That, that’s Chertsin and his group, or what’s left of it. I know he’s looking over here, and he knows it’s us. He’s thinking we’re going to fail. So, if you don’t do it for the Explosions, and you don’t do it for yourself, then do it for him. Do it so we can rub it in his snide little face that we can do this, and that we are not failures.
“This is who we are. You signed on for this, and you proved you could do it. So let’s get it done.”
Affirmative grunts rang out and everyone reeled out and disconnected their tethers from their suits. As the lifeline reached them, each hooked their tether to the end. Once they were finished, Blazer hooked the end onto the back of Bichard’s suit. No one ever questioned if or how Blazer really knew who was on the next tendril over.
Blazer handed the other end to Arion and Datt. “You two are our most massive guys. I’ll need you to anchor Bichard. So activate the maglocks in your boots and dig in. You two are the only thing keeping him from becoming a satellite if he misses.”
They both nodded, wrapping the tether around their waists and digging their heels through the surface dust to the harder iron ore beneath to give their maglocks the best hold.
Blazer turned back to Bichard and froze, his eyes wide. He watched one of the smaller meteoroids drift past where he’d estimated the barrier to be. He looked around and saw another do the same, and looking farther up the line of asteroids he noticed them separating. He checked his position in regards to other navigational markers around the academy. They were moving, not fast, but when they shut down the barrier they must have imparted some kind of force on the rocks. “They’ve shut down the barrier.”
Everyone else looked around. A few curses rang out over the link. It’s all little stuff now, but there’s nothing to keep the big rocks from getting loose either. Worse, if we take too long the rocks closer to the academy may not be close enough to jump to. He looked back at the others. “We need to move now. Arion, Datt, are you ready?”
“Affirmative,” the pair replied.
Blazer turned back to Bichard. “Do it big bug.”
Bichard skittered across the ground towards the next asteroid and jumped. He sailed across the darkness, the emergency tether trailing him. He landed on the rocky surface, the impact pushing the asteroid. Arion and Datt braced themselves as the line went taut and kept pulling until the tension on the line eased up.
“Move it folks. One at a time, let’s get across,” Blazer ordered, and then pulled one of the leg straps hanging from the bottom of his emergency kit and wrapped it around the tether. “Use your legs straps to secure yourselves to the tether just in case. Now move,” he called, ushering the first of them across before he turned to Arion and Datt. “The two of you will take turns going last. You can jump it or let us reel you in, but I recommend letting us pull you over.”
Both of them nodded, and one rock at a time, the Blade Force made their way towards the academy.
With each passing hect, the academy grew larger in their visors. It always reminded Blazer of an overcooked sausage speared through a flattened pastry roll. The texture of the rock at this distance just blended together into dirty gray mess. At least the view confirmed his suspicion, that they were parallel to the major axis.
Just as Blazer feared though, more of the rocks and ice that made up their tendril escaped too. Their motions, however, revealed that they’d been placed into orbits around the academy, orbits that seemed to speed up as they got closer. That should at least cut our impact speed, but I’d still rather come in on one of the ends if possible. Blazer couldn’t even begin to keep a tally of the rocks while planning their route. He found himself relying more on Gokhead, Gavit and Deniv to plot them a course that would keep their options open and the rocks close. They had the best instinct for orbital mechanics, but even they were having difficulty. With their helmet able to track only a single navigational reference point at a time, and no ready way to crunch the numbers, most of the plots they came up with for the asteroids were guesswork at best.
The fact that they’d begun a slow orbit around the academy didn’t help matters either. Bichard missed two of his intended targets when he jumped at them, sailing past before the team could pull him back. He had to adjust his jump to place himself slightly ahead of the next rock and let it come to him. The different orbital speeds meant that each jump required him to lead his target more each time.
What I wouldn’t give to be heading towards Singularity Station. He looked at the dim dot at the heart of the spherical shell of asteroids keeping the academy hidden, its main sensor dish glinting in the light. At least there we could see more clues about the orbital mechanics ourselves then we do with the academy itself.
Blazer looked back at the others preparing for the next jump. It would be their furthest leap of the cycle by far. By any normal measure of asteroid distances, these two rocks were still impossibly close. If the range finder in his helmet proved correct, they were six hundred seven metra away from it. They were even drifting towards each other, but too slow to make a difference. They didn’t have a long enough tether. If Bichard made that jump, he would just end up hanging on the end of the line.
Looking for another route, he saw they would have to backtrack to get to where the rocks were closer together. Do we even have that kind of time, or air reserves? He walked over to the others, looking for suggestions. He read the fatigue in their postures, the big meal they’d had the cycle before was a distant memory.
Looks like were’ going to have to lone wolf it like Zithe wanted to do all along. If anyone misses though, that’s it, there’s no way we can mount a rescue. Will they blame me if that happens? I will that’s for certain, it doesn’t matter how far I’ve brought them.
Blazer looked at the rock again. Sixty metra, that’s all we need, where do we get it?
He looked over at Bichard. They had asked so much of him this cycle. While others volunteered to make a few of the first jumps, none of them had made them as well as he had. None of them had the jump strength Bichard did and they would always end up having to fire their suit jets to make the distance or cushion their landing. Sighing, he headed over to his old friend.
“So, what’s the plan?” Bichard asked.
“Bichard, you know as well as I that we’re short.”
“We knew that this was going to happen at some point Blazer.”
“No. I won’t risk losing anyone when there’s a better way. I’ve made promises.”
Bichard placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sometimes there are promises that we just can’t keep my friend.”
Blazer looked at his friend’s arm, and inspiration struck. “Your resin!”
Even Bichard perked up at that idea.
“We can fashion more line out of your resin like we used to.”
“Maybe. I mean it did use to harden pretty quickly in vacuum. But we only ever used it to lash things down, not carry anyone. I can’t be certain it will hold.”
Blazer looked around at the others and focused on Marda. The weightless environment was good on her ankle but she would never be able to make the jump without hurting herself unless she used her suit jets. “Bichard, just sixty metra, that’s all we need. Then we triple time it across.”
Bichard’s antenna twitched in thought. “We know in air that the resin would be strong enough, but like I said...”
Zithe skidded over, listening in on the conversation. “This is insane. You’re asking him to expose himself to vacuum.”
Bichard looked back at Zithe. “I’ve been exposed to vacuum before. The question is, just how long will the resin last with us climbing it.”
Blazer swallowed hard. Even if they continued to use the leg straps as safety lines to lengthen the tether they would come up short, and they weren’t close to strong enough. There’s nothing else, it’s the resin or we go it alone.
Before Blazer could say so, Bichard took matters into his own hands. He ripped open a hole in his flight suit just beyond his resin duct, and began pushing the resin out. He pushed out a two metra long cord and then slapped his hand over the breach before handing one end to Blazer. They tugged and pulled on it for ten pulses. It stiffened, but remained pliable. After another fifteen pulses, it hardened, but remained strong. Ten pulses later, it snapped.
“Is that enough time?” Bichard asked.
They all looked at each other. Thirty-five pulses isn’t much, but we did that five hundred
metra jump in less. We can do this.
“We’ll climb three at a time just in case,” Blazer ordered. “Then we reel it in as soon as we can. If the resin line breaks before we’re all across, then those furthest up will tow the rest in on their suit jets. It’s our best chance.”
Marda laid a hand on Blazer’s shoulder. “You’ve carried us this far, we trust you.”
Bichard nodded and began producing more of the resin. He exhausted one resin pod, then tore open his other sleeve and produced even more line from the resin pod there. He wove the two lines together as the second pod produced its line and joined them to the end of the tether. “That gives us about two hundred metra, I figure. I could do more…”
Blazer shook his head. “No, you’ve done enough damage to your suit, even if it does reseal.”
Without any further orders or preamble, Bichard made the jump. The first three jumped with him, firing their suit jets to keep from jerking the line. Arion and Datt held anchor again. Over half of the squad jetted up the line as Bichard flew across the void. After he impacted the other rock, digging his claws into the surface, the rest followed. As they came upon the resin line, each of them checked its condition, relaying its state.
***
After the last group reached the midpoint, Datt waved Arion to go on. “You go now, it’s your turn.”
Arion shook his head. “No, we go together.”
“The line’s holding, you heard them. You guys can reel me in or I can jet over. I have plenty of reserve oxygen. I don’t breath as hard as the rest of you.”
Arion shook his head—there was no time to argue and he started up the line without Datt.
Datt watched Arion climbed and looked around. He searched the skies for Kal-Sing the star Kal-Var orbited. Treb should be home by now. Why did you have to leave?
In Death's Shadow Page 5