A green light flashed, signaling that the pilot had started applying the vacuum procedure of the passenger bay. The valve on his helmet shut itself. He was now breathing through his oxygen tank. They’d be in full vacuum soon. Air was never wasted in the void.
The red light started flashing again. Everybody grabbed the straps of their seatbelts. The pilot hit the reverse thrusters hard. Everyone jerked to the front. When the reverse thrust finished, the Ciklops started to move and shake in various directions. It felt like hammer blows were landing down on the ship. Every recruit held on to their armrests or seat belts for their dear lives. The sergeant and the instructors seemed less impressed by the violent movements the Ciklops was making. ‘Collect yourself, Voss. The pilot’s just parking manually.’ The lieutenant bit at him on their personal intercom channel. Voss was annoyed by her presence. He had no idea she would be along for the ride today. It felt like he had to go through a double exam today, where he had to keep her satisfied as well as the sergeant.
The janky movements of the ship were losing their intensity. The sergeant spoke through their intercoms. He was mostly repeating what the lieutenant had already told Voss on their private channel. ‘Manual rapid deceleration into parallel velocity and direction. Also colloquially known as parallel parking. Can get quite rough, but every pilot needs to be able to do it. Once in a while they’ll switch off the autopilot and give it a go. Today you gentlemen got to enjoy the process.’
The red and green lights started flashing again. ‘Alright ship status is green. Mission is go.’ the sergeant barked at them. ‘Everyone unbuckle your seatbelts and make your final preparations. Hatch opens in two minutes.’
The lieutenant did a check to see if Voss had all the equipment they needed stashed in his toolbelt before placing her hook onto one of the metal rings on Voss’ suit. She and the other instructors gave the sergeant the ok hand signal, indicating that every recruit had been checked and they were now ready to go.
The hatch opened. Voss hadn’t been ready for what happened next. For a few seconds he found himself unable to breathe. He had never seen something so awe inspiring before. He had been under the impression that they were going to repair a standard satellite. Those things were never bigger than fifty meters at most. Instead, the opened hatch had revealed one of the space port’s main defense bastions. A five kilometers tall, heavily fortified, massive structure that had been built in the old days of war, long before the imperial peace had put an end to such folly. It was so big, that he hadn’t even noticed the majestic, yellow, green and blue of Fosfat revealed beneath the bastion.
He forced himself to take a deep breath and push away the overwhelming feeling of awe that had come over him. He had just spent two months traversing through narrow, claustrophobic corridor after corridor. He had spent most of his time on the space port being locked up in gritty, metal rooms where every nook and cranny filled and no space was wasted. Before that, he had spent most of his live in the dark and labyrinths of the slums. Only leaving them when he went to work in Saltpete’s undercity. The only time he had ever been able to see further than a couple of hundred meters had been when he was at Herbert University. Not that he could see very far, not with the urban sprawl of high rise after high rise in the way, but at least then he had a free view of the night’s sky. He used to spend hours gazing up at the stars, trying to spot the spaceport and the large bastions that were visible with the naked eye.
Now he was right in front of just such a bastion, looking back down on Fosfat. It was the first time he recognized the true scale of the greater Saltpetersburg area. Not even in his wildest dreams had he ever imagined it to be so vast. There must have been at least a billion, perhaps even two billion living down there. Such views were enough to instill a slum dweller such as himself with a sense of cosmic terror. The vast expanse surrounding him felt gripping, choking even.
‘Focus, recruit! Or would you rather have me fail you before we’ve even started?’ The lieutenant’s familiar voice snapped him out of his bubble. The lieutenant was floating in front of him. She held onto a metal rail with her left arm and had her right arm, which was holding a grappling hook, outstretched towards him.’
He grabbed the hook and attached it to his suit. They were now connected. ‘Start paying attention and follow my instructions. We’ve got a jump to complete and if we muck it up, we could be hurtling towards a most uncomfortable death in the deep void before I have time to kill you myself.’
‘Jump? You can’t seriously be suggesting we’re going to jump to the bastion? That must be at least three hundred meters from here!’
‘Four hundred, and yes we are. Forget to call me lieutenant one more time and I’ll smack you towards it with a steel rod. Do you copy?’
‘Yes, lieutenant.’. There was something different about the lieutenant. He couldn’t quite place it. Something grave. She wasn’t up for any of their usual banter. It was as if she had bigger concerns to worry about. He chalked it up to nervousness about being exposed out here in the void… And, who was he kidding? He felt the exact same nervousness. They all did. He took another look out into the void. Perhaps the choice that the recruits had been given was a false one. Perhaps no matter what they chose, death was the inevitable outcome.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
One by one, the instructor-recruit couples got onto the ramp to make the jump. They were up fifth, in correspondence with their number.
‘Listen up, recruit. Void jumping isn’t like jumping back on Fosfat. Gravity is negligible out here due to the speed with which we’re rotating around the planet. That means you have to jump straight at your target. Always jump from a platform that’s angled at 90° from your target and jump straight up. You have to be exact with this, because small deviations can have big consequences when you jump such distances. Do you copy?’
‘Yes, lieutenant.’. He tried to sound braver than he really felt. Truth be told, he was terrified and it took him everything he had to stay collected enough to make the jump.
It was their turn to jump. Voss tried to climb up on the jump platform and hold himself steady there. A process that was much more difficult than it sounded. This was the first time he was moving around freely at zero G’s. He discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to overshoot and topple over when there is no stabilizing force like gravity, nor was there any resistance to slow him down. He had to learn to use very small amounts of force with any move he made.
Lieutenant Vanmire locked her feet into the braces that were on the platform. Both of them were given the end of long ropes. ‘Hold onto this, recruit. They’re emergency ropes. If we muck up the jump, then we hold onto the ropes and they prevent us from tumbling into space. If we make a successful jump, we let go of the ropes before they are fully extended and we go.’. He didn’t know how to feel about the rope. On one hand, he was happy to have an extra safety mechanism; On the other hand, he found it a bit disconcerting how primitive the tools were that they depended on. Still, it may have been primitive, but it had worked when Hoog had jumped just a little too far to the front. Both him and his instructor had been able to quickly rope themselves back in and make a second jump.
The lieutenant got upright on the platform. She stabilized herself using a metal rail, and told Voss to do the same. When he he also had his feet strapped in and body stabilized, she signaled the sergeant, who retracted the braces. Voss’ feeling of unease wasn’t made better by the fact that nothing they did made any noise. The only sounds he heard were the voice of the lieutenant, barking orders at him, and that of his own breath.
‘Are you ready, recruit?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be, lieutenant.’
‘Good, now grab my hand.’
He did as he was told.
‘Relax your grip, recruit. I want this jump to go nice and smooth. There’s no point in putting a lot of force behind it. There’s no resistance. We’ll get to our destination even if we go a bit slower. The most important thing is that we jump synchronized to prevent us from spinning around during the jump. Now let’s jump. Three, two, one, GO!’. He tried to coordinate his jump with hers as best as he could and hoped it was good enough. ‘Release the rope, now.’ The lieutenant said and he did as he was told. ‘Jump successful, sergeant. Switching back to private intercom from here on out.’
Voss could tell they were heading in the right direction. They were spinning around ever so slowly, but he didn’t expect that to be much of an issue during landing. The void jump did make him feel quite powerless. There was nothing he could do now to stop their spin or change their course. The movements he made with his limbs did nothing. He remembered to focus on his breathing and relax, just like they had been taught during practice. He aimed his eyes towards their target landing area to help give him a sense of space and direction. He could see the first team had just landed and was now moving towards the malfunctioning antenna. Three more teams were in front of them. All were floating towards the bastion at a steady pace. He couldn’t see what was happening behind him, but he knew there’d be five more teams that followed them.
‘Alright, recruit. Time to focus on our landing. We only get one chance to get this right, and if we screw it up, we’ll bounce right off and drift helplessly into the void. I want you to grab your right side hook. I’ll grab my left side hook. Anywhere within the big red circle, you’ll find plenty of metal bars and rails to grab onto. Right before we land, I’ll give you a signal to push my hand away gently. I’ll push yours away as well. This way we’ll land at an angle. Landing is easier that way because it increases the chance of finding something sturdy you can grab onto. As soon as you get a hold of something, hook yourself onto it. If both of us manage to hook into something, we’ll have a stable landing. If one of us fails, we’ll have a rough landing, but we’ll be fine. If both of us fail, we’re in for a world of shit. Do you copy?’
‘Loud and clear, lieutenant.’
‘Good. When we are hooked in, the first thing we need to do is to look up behind us. Last thing you want is another team crash landing on top of us. Can lead to all sorts of bad things and they’re likely to bounce back off into the void. You want to be ready for any incoming team so you can either help them land, or get out of their way.’
‘Understood, lieutenant.’
‘Oh, and one more thing, Voss. Don’t embarrass me today, because you will regret it.’
Her comment broke his nervous state. His face relaxed and a small smile appeared on his face.‘Trust me, Vanmire, the last thing I want is to spend my final moments drifting into the void together with you.’
‘Good, now brace for landing. We only get one chance to get it right.’