The air in front of the ship warped as the ship shook like a leaf caught in a tornado. The cockpit resounded with alarms about turbulence, wind shear, and pressurization differentials, while the RWR system on the Navigation screen flashed red without showing any kind of new contact.
“Theridion, what the fuck!” I shouted. I had no idea what was happening. Nothing was locked on to me that I could see, and my own radar didn’t have any targets.
UNKNOWN. ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE MATCHES PATTERN FOR HYPERSONIC KINETIC MUNITIONS. FIRE LOCATION UNCERTAIN.
“Shit.” I entered a steep dive, corkscrewing erratically in the hopes to avoid whatever and whoever was shooting at me. I recognized that this was how attacks would be in the real world, but I was less than pleased with Theridion for just springing a fresh scenario on me. The warp and weft of the world were pulled apart as another projectile ripped through the atmosphere I was fighting against.
KINETIC ATTACK APPEARS TO BE REACHING SIGNIFICANT FRACTION OF C. ATTACKS ORIGINATE FROM EXO-ATMOSPHERIC SOURCE. SUSPECT BLUE ON BLUE, POSSIBLE KEY LEAKAGE. FOLLOW COMMS PROMPT, MAINTAIN LOW FLIGHT. DO NOT BREAK CHERUB FIVE.
I was too overwhelmed to question it, so I went into a near vertical dive and started to read my lines on frequency.
“Blue On Blue, Blue On Blue. Orbital, Knock It Off. I say again, Blue On Blue Orbital, Knock It Off.”
FUCK YOU, LAPDOG. I HOPE THIS HURTS.
I felt my bones vaporize as the simulation told me I had just taken a Rod From God at .01c, just before everything suddenly turned white.
Just as suddenly, I was in calm, level flight again. “Hey, fuckwad. I thought I couldn’t get hurt in these? That fucking hurt.”
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, TUGGER. YOU ARE NEITHER HURT NOR INJURED, JUST AS I SAID WHEN I EXPLAINED HOW THESE TRAINING MODULES WORK. PLEASE, ELABORATE.
“NOT HURT! You… you know that we both just took a telephone pole of tungsten to the face that was going at least a hundredth of the universes speed limit, right? That qualifies for hurt in my book.”
I SEE. WE ARE OPERATING OFF OF DIFFERENT PRESUMPTIONS. WHEN I SAY SOMETHING WILL NOT HURT YOU, I MEAN PHYSICAL HARM. THIS TRAINING HAS BEEN SHOWN TO BE FAR LESS EFFECTIVE, EVEN DETRIMENTAL IN SOME SCENARIOS, WHEN YOU ARE NOT GIVEN A COMMENSURATE PHYSICAL RESPONSE TO YOUR ACTIONS. BECAUSE YOU ALLOWED YOURSELF TO BE TARGETED AND ULTIMATELY HIT BY THAT ORBITAL STATION, ALLOWING YOU THE STIMULI PROVIDED BY THE STATIONS WEAPONS MAKES FOR AN EFFECTIVE TEACHING TOOL. I WOULD AVOID GETTING TOO DISTRACTED DURING CALM FLIGHTS IN THE FUTURE. MISSIONS WITH THIS TEAM WILL PROVE FRENETIC.
“So what should I have done then?”
FIRST? WHENEVER YOU CALL A BLUE ON BLUE TO SOMEONE YOU ARE NOT 100% CERTAIN IS ACTUALLY FRIENDLY, LIGHT THEM UP WITH RADAR. IF YOU HAVE THEM TARGETED, THEY MAY CHOOSE TO DISENGAGE, GIVEN THAT YOU ARE NO LONGER AN UNAWARE TARGET. YOU SHOULD ALSO HAVE VISUALLY SURVEYED THE GROUND IN ORDER TO LOCATE ANY OBVIOUS WEAPON EMPLACEMENTS. ANYTHING MOVING THAT FAST IS EITHER COMING FROM A MASSIVE GROUND FACILITY OR IS EXO-ATMOSPHERIC, SO YOU COULD HAVE DEDUCED WHERE THE DANGER WAS COMING FROM WITH THE FIRST CONTACT BASED OFF OF THE ANGLE OF THE SHOCKWAVES CREATED BY THE ATTACK. MORE REALISTICALLY, DEINOPIDAE WOULD HAVE ATTEMPTED A CURRENT PASS PHRASE EXCHANGE WITH THEM AND DIVERTED YOU TO KILL THEM WHEN THEY INEVITABLY FAIL. RADIO KEYS ARE FAR EASIER TO SPOOF THAN QCOMM CHANNEL INFO.
“So… for my first time, there was nothing I could do?”
NOT REALLY, NO. IT IS QUITE ALRIGHT, TUGGER. I HAVE RECEIVED THE TACTICAL PACKET FROM DEINOPIDAE ALREADY. IF THERE IS A CHANCE OF SIGNIFICANT ANTI-AIR FIRE ON THIS MISSION, THE TEAM HAVE BEEN PRACTICING EXO-ATMOSPHERIC INSERTIONS. YOU ARE TOO QUICK OF A LEARNER FOR THEM TO WANT TO SACRIFICE THIS EARLY.
“Comforting. Let’s run it again, I guess.”
A massive sound was accompanied by the ship violently corkscrewing through the air. A diagnostic window popped on to one of the forward screens; it showed my right wing was missing, taken off almost at the wing root.
IT STARTED AUTOMATICALLY AFTER YOU FAILED THE LAST ONE. I GAVE YOU ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEEDED TO NOT FAIL. YOU LEFT YOUR UAIFF SQUAWKING, SO THE ENEMY WAS ABLE TO FIND AND TRACK YOU. ANY TRAVEL TO OR FROM A MISSION SHOULD BE DONE WITH LIGHTS AND TRANSPONDERS OFF.
“Fuck you. Start it again.”
The world flashed white as I was suddenly in level flight again. I turned my IFF squawk off, dropped altitude until I was just a few hundred feet above the structures that served as trees on this planet, and increased my speed. I only stopped accelerating once I got a BAYS LOCKED warning.
“Theridion?”
MOVING TOO FAST IN ATMOSPHERE POSES A RISK TO THE SHIP IF SOMETHING WERE TO SUDDENLY PROTRUDE. ABOVE MACH 2.5, WANDERER 6 DISABLES WEAPON BAY DOORS TO REMOVE THE RISK OF CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE. THE AFT FACE BOMB BAY AND MISSILE TUBES ARE STILL FUNCTIONING.
No matter what scenario Theridion had cooked up for me, I didn’t care to lose access to whatever weaponry I had access to. I dropped speed in tiny increments, stopping as soon as the warning vanished. Speed, in my mind, was key to surviving.
As I crested a ridge, a sprawling facility appeared before me. Massive runways, enormous hangars, and absurdly sized aprons spread for miles. In the very middle of the facility a massive fuck-off gun was pointing straight at me.
I immediately cut to the left and dove, conserving energy through the turn to get under what I hoped was the gun’s firing angle.
I locked it up and pushed my thrusters as hard as I could. I had reached Mach 3.2 by the time I blew past the gun, and popped the largest missile I had. It was, thankfully, optionally laser guided, so I lazed the connection point between the weapon body and the building it sprouted out of. As I cleared the far side of the facility, at Mach 3.4 and ignoring overheat warnings from both my leading edge sensors and the thruster packs, the missile penetrated into the facility. A heartbeat passed, and the facility vanished into a cloud of dust, fire, and hate as I entered a slow climb in the hopes of avoiding the shockwave.
YOU HAVE FAILED AGAIN TUGGER. THE INCOMING SHOCKWAVE WILL BE STRONG ENOUGH TO SHAKE THIS CRAFT INTO ITS INDIVIDUAL BITS OF HARDWARE. WHY DID YOU USE THAT PARTICULAR MISSILE?
“The system let me sort by tonnage, so I just dropped the largest one that wasn’t locked. What’s the issue?”
DO YOU KNOW HOW LARGE THAT MUNITION WAS?
“0.9 Tons? That’s what it was listed as…”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
NO. THAT WAS 0.9T TONS. NINE TENTHS OF A TERATON. THOSE MUNITIONS ARE USUALLY USED AS MOON CRACKERS. WE WILL GO OVER PROPER MUNITION SELECTION ANOTHER TIME. DROP TO MACH 0.9, CLIMB TO ANGEL 15. WE HAVE TIME FOR A FEW MORE EVASIVE RUNS.
I ran four more scenarios before Theridion cut me off. Two of them were ground bases again, one of them was another orbital station, and the worst was 10 minutes of calm flight. I failed the calm one, because Theridion claimed there was no enemy, and being so on edge when there was no threat was detrimental to my focus. Mechanical fucker wouldn’t accept what he called ‘excuses’ when I said my nerves were shot.
I managed to win against the orbital station by climbing hard until I could launch a missile that hit the station. I was lucky that it hit the barrel of their accelerator and not something unrelated to their orbital bombardment capabilities, but I would take it. I lost both ground bases again scenarios, though. The first was a lucky hit from a SAM launch that I was going to fast to avoid; Mach 3 leaves little room for maneuverability if you want to maintain control. I dumped speed the next time I saw the base, which gave them time to launch an enormous amount of manned and unmanned fighters. I climbed hard to try and avoid the swarms of enemy aircraft, but the gun that was in the middle of the base was agile enough that it could track me. With competent anti-air coverage at every altitude, I was just happy I survived long enough to both completely overheat my CIWS and run out of cannon ammunition thanks to the cloud of SAMs I shot down while avoiding the base gun. It hit me eventually, of course.
VERY WELL, TUGGER. EXIT ATMOSPHERE. WE WILL RUN A FEW INSERTION ATTEMPTS, AND THEN ITS BACK TO THE REAL WORLD.
“Alrighty then.”
I broke atmosphere, and followed the guidelines that Theridion put onto my HUD to reach a geostationary orbit.
“What’s next? Didn’t you say that this was supposed to be sub-orbital?”
CORRECT. YOU’LL NEED TO GO TO THE CARGO BAY AND RIG THE DOOR; THERE ARE MANUAL SAFETIES THAT NEED TO BE DISABLED IN ORDER TO ALLOW FOR THIS MANEUVER.
“Really? The jumpers aren’t able to do it?”
WHEN YOU HAVE JUMPERS, THEY ARE ABLE TO. THIS WILL NOT ALWAYS HAVE OTHER PEOPLE INVOLVED. SOMETIMES THE DROP IS CARGO THAT CANNOT SURVIVE REENTRY ON ITS OWN.
“So.. yeah, ok. Sure.” I got up and took the elevator down to the cargo bay.
FOLLOW THESE STEPS EXACTLY. ANY DEVIATION COULD RESULT IN DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, AND PROPERTY DAMAGE.
I was careful to follow the steps, double checking the seal on my vac suit before purging the atmosphere in the cargo bay. Once the bay was at vacuum, the next step was removing floor panels that were secured with QDs instead of the normal counter-sunk machine screws and pulling a few pins that kept the cargo door on its rails. With the door disconnected, a crane attached to the ceiling pulled it out of the airframe and placed it into a hollow in the ceiling that I hadn’t registered as important before. Finally, small plates were unfolded from a space in the airframe through the door frame. These plates, it looked like to me, would act as a diverter to maintain aerodynamics while entering atmosphere.
Fixing these plates in place was the most dangerous part of the process. Getting them locked to the hull required leaving the ship for a spacewalk. Thankfully, both my regular vac suit and my armor had magnetized feet and palms, allowing me to stick almost anywhere to the hull. As a physical back up, because those were always important, the cargo crane also had a thin line; I suspected it was installed specifically for this specific task. Thankfully, the plating was affixed without any issue. I unclipped myself from the crane, and realized something as I stood next to what was now just a gaping hole in the side of my ship. The space ship. In space. Without any air around it.
“Uh, Theridion?”
YES TUGGER?
“How am I supposed to get back to the rest of the ship? It didn’t depressurized, did it?”
NO TUGGER, THERE IS STILL PRESSURIZATION. THE ELEVATOR ACTS AS AN AIRLOCK. A COMPLETE DEPRESSURIZATION IS NOT NECESSARY YET, THERE IS NO COMBAT EXPECTED.
That made sense. Except… “What happens if we lose power? I haven’t seen stairs or a crew ladder to use instead of the elevator.”
THE FLOOR AND CEILING ARE ENERGIZED INTO PLACE. WITHOUT POWER, THEY FOLD INTO THE SIDEWALL TO ALLOW CREW UNFETTERED ACCESS THROUGH THE ELEVATOR SHAFT.
That made even more sense. I shrugged, and looked at the elevator. It was open, and unlike its normal white lights, it was bathed in green fluorescents. I stepped into the elevator, and looked at the control panel. Nothing was different; no differently colored buttons, no extra controls that had been behind a false panel. Just to see what would happen, I pushed the button for the flight deck. The door closed like normal, and the green lighting faded to yellow as the door shut. The lighting started flashing red as soon as the elevator was sealed, and mist poured in through vents in the ceiling. I heard hissing for a second, but it quickly stopped as mist stopped pouring in. The lights winked back to a solid green and I assumed the airlock was cycled since the elevator began to rise.
I sat back into the pilot’s seat, making sure that the screens and my control stick were properly adjusted. “Ok, cargo bay should be set, and I’m in the seat and ready. What’s next?”
NEXT, TUGGER, YOU DIVE. YOUR CURRENT ORBIT PLACES YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF A PARABOLIC ARC WITH THE LOWEST ALTITUDE BEING 70,000 FEET ABOVE THE TARGET. YOU PROVIDE OPERATORS WITH A 3 DEGREE WINDOW IN WHICH TO EXIT THE SPACECRAFT AND BEGIN THEIR MISSION. IF YOU ARE DROPPING CARGO, DEPENDING ON THE SET UP, YOU WILL HAVE A VERY BRIEF WINDOW IN WHICH TO DROP, SOMETIMES AS SHORT AS THIRTY SECONDS. YOU ARE NOT DROPPING CARGO CURRENTLY, SO WE WILL FORGO THAT PARTICULAR TRAINING. IT WILL BE DIFFERENT DEPENDING ON THE CRAFT YOU ARE PILOTING, ANYWAY. PRINTING ARC TO YOUR HUD. DIVE NOW.
“Let’s do it.”
I oriented the ship to be nose down, and started burning towards the planet. This turned out to be the easiest training so far; it went smoothly. Absolutely nothing went wrong. I followed the plotted course, and the dive and climb were both so shallow that I couldn’t even feel the airframe rotate. There was just the slightest change to fuel usage once I started climbing, because the simulated weight had dropped with the team leaving the ship.
“That… went according to plan?”
CORRECT. NOT EVERYTHING IS VIOLENT. DROPPING FROM SO HIGH IN THE ATMOSPHERE MEANS YOU WILL LIKELY AVOID ATTRACTING ATTENTION, AND ANY HOSTILE FIRE WILL BE EITHER EASILY ESCAPED, OR UNDEFEATABLE. PERSONNEL INSERTION IS ONE OF THE EASIER JOBS YOU WILL HAVE. THE OPERATORS ARE THE ONES DOING THE WORK, IN THIS CASE.
“Are they training for these drops too?”
I BELIEVE SO.
—-———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
“Dera, this jump is yours.”
I shook my head.
“Really Dean? You’re the squad lead, you should be the first one to drop. That was your whole thing, for a while. ‘First one in, first one out’. I got sick of hearing that, but now you want me to do your job?”
Dean didn’t even bother to look my way, his response calm and level. “You get command if I’d removed from duty, Dera. You aren’t as comfortable leading as you need to be. Start the sim, and call the drop.”
I stood at attention and saluted as my armor responded to my mental command and formed around me. “SIR, YES SIR!” He hated when I did that, but if he wanted to issue me orders he should know what kind of response he was going to get. I sent a second mental command, and the screens embedded in the armor covering my eyes faded to black.
They flickered back to life, showing the cargo bay of Wanderer 6 with the special clarity that only sensors in a vacuum could achieve. Given that the bay lights were red, I told Dean and Recluse to pull the bay door using hand signals, while I tied off with a personnel static line and deployed the aerodynamic panels as soon as the bay door as moved out of the way.
With the door secure, I ordered armor and rocket checks. We were expecting that this next mission would need us to reach the ground as quickly as possible, just in case any self-destructing data had been put on a timer like it had before. It hadn’t been in the brief that Tugger participated in since he didn’t need to know, but the three of us had been given the whole account of the effort to track and capture Grasshopper. He loved his traps, and usually fed more information to agents who got to whatever repository he left the fastest.
Knowing this, Dean’s gut feeling that we would need to do SUPER-HERO landings was absolutely correct. It was the worst when Dean was correct. He tended to lecture, and they were always the same lecture, word for fucking word.
“The goal of a SUPER-HERO landing is two-fold. This is outline by the name itself. SUPER, or SUPplementary Entry Rocket, is used when extremely fast entry is required. As you should know, your armor is able to accept a specialty rocket booster which when attached to the back will allow the user to descend at rates which allow operators to reach the ground in approximately 40 seconds from insertion at 70,000 feet above the target. The rocket also provides assistance bleeding speed prior to landing when the operator properly adjusts nozzle direction. The rocket is discarded on landfall, allowing the operator to perform at optimal efficiency.
HERO, or High Entry Radar Occlusion, explains why we perform such a dangerous maneuver in the first place. By entering at extreme altitudes and dropping as fast as we can, radar, lidar, and forms of scanning are given the minimal amount of time to find and lock operators. Further, your armor is specifically designed to have the minimal scanning signature that human biology allows for. When in the proper descent form, which is head first with your arms and legs together, feet pointed, operators have essentially no scannable signature. Simply put, we are the stealthiest things in the sky, and the best way to keep it that way is to get out of the sky.”
Word for word, every time. It was almost unbelievable; in fact, if I hadn’t grown up with him, I would have sworn that Dean had flash cards he used to practice his speeches.
This echoed through my head as I checked over Dean and Recluse. The gear checks went without a hitch, and took most of the time we had left to the drop zone. I tapped at the pad on my wrist, alerting the pilot that the tac team was drop ready. bay lights turned yellow in response. I stood next to the hole in the floor, and as the lights started flashing, I knelt and tried to find the target we were supposed to drop on. A small gap in the vegetation, with a straight line leading away from it, seemed to be a likely choice. I confirmed the target with satellite imagery, and activated my comms, broadcasting to both the other tac team members and the pilot. “Target confirmed. Commence drop. Fire Team, the light is green.”
As soon as I stopped speaking, the lights in the cargo bay went to a steady green, and I fell out of the ship. “Tac Lead, Out.”
Dean and Recluse followed close behind, saying “Tac Two, Out.” and “Tac Three, Out.” respectively as they fell.
We were all oriented face first, as proper, so I gave the fun order. “Meteor, Meteor, Meteor.”
As one, our rocket packs lit off, pushing us well past Mach 2. We screamed down as I kept an eye on my altimeter. At 7,500 feet, I said my next line. “Rotate, Rotate, Rotate.” Small boosters attached to the sides of the rocket pack flipped us in the microseconds that the main rocket nozzle cut out, preserving pur trajectory while allowing for a landing at survivable speeds. As soon as we were vertical, I called “Weapons Hot!” and pulled my Fang off of my thigh. I flicked the safety off and put it back on as I watched for hostiles.
The main nozzles lit again, dumping speed until the packs ran out of fuel 30 feet above the ground. We dropped the rest of the way, rolling both to absorb the landing and to dislodge the rocket packs.
An empty shed, one door hanging open, one on the ground, was all that greeted us on the gravel road I had seen cutting through the trees. It was old and weathered, the paints stripped from the wooden walls and metal roof; it looked like the door had fallen because the hinges had rusted away to dust.
I stood and let my Fang snap back into place. “Good job, buckos. Clean drop.” I feigned confidence as I stretched, and said “Good enough, I think. It’s almost jump time anyway, and then we get to do the real thing. End simulation.”