Standish Read online

  Standish strode towards the hatch with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. She had swagger.

  Time to put on a show. She knew that if she wanted Dat Roser to select her for Dynamic Operations, she needed to do something big. Attack. That was the plan. It was always the plan.

  Helmet on, Standish waited for the barely detectable breeze of fresh air that started to circulate around the suit, then looked over to the instructor.

  “Ready.”

  The instructor nodded and repeated the same motions he had done so many times before. Arm up was the warning, arm down was a two-second warning.

  Standish assumed a running stance. She was going to charge into whatever was in front of her.

  The arm went up.

  Control your breathing, she said to herself. Her fingers danced like she was playing an instrument, ready to grapple the first challenge.

  The arm came down faster than she remembered.

  Her eyes locked on the hatch. Nothing else. Her blinders were up. Go time.

  The hatch was open, and she disappeared from the waiting room in a flash. There was a vacuum in the blacked-out first chamber, and it sucked her in just like the incident on the Bailcox, but Standish was equal to the task. She immediately brought her shoulders down, and knees up and activated her helmets torch, casting a bright light to her front.

  There was no lighting on in the room, and even though she and all the other trainees had used the room dozens of times during training, it was a different configuration to the previous set-ups. On this occasion, the room was twenty metres long, and just five metres wide. The vacuum sucked Standish to the far end of the room quickly, but she was ready for landing on the wall.

  Switching from her standard view mode, she quickly toggled through settings until she found one that was able to detect air-flow, and promptly spotted the training hole that was creating the vacuum in the room on the wall next to an access hatch on the ceiling of the chamber. Moving towards the hole, she quickly pulled a repair slip from her utility belt, one of ten that came in the primary load-out of the Rescue Tech utility belt, and slapped the silver squared sheet on top of the hole. The slip quickly sealed itself down and stopped the loss of air and pressure in the room.

  Gravity came back on instantly, and the room lit up with blue lighting. Without hesitation, Standish leapt up and hit the control panel next to the ceiling hatch with her left hand while grabbing a support rail with her right. The hatch opened. Standish reached inside and pulled herself up to the next level.

  Once she had cleared the hatch, she closed it behind herself on instinct and surveyed her surroundings. She was in a hallway with a single hatch to her right, rising to her feet, Standish covered the ten metres in four bounds and pounded the access pad, allowing the hatch to slide up and out of the way, revealing a room mocked up to look like an engineering compartment, albeit one engulfed in flames.

  Her helmets heads-up-display quickly told her that the heat was not a threat to the suit for limited exposure, so she moved into the room and promptly assessed the danger. The source of the fire was a large stack of graphite, which had no place in an environment such as this, but this wasn’t the time to question the logic behind the tests.

  Scanning the room, Standish couldn’t see an extinguisher of any kind but did hear a loud claxon warn her that the flammable materials would soon inflict irreparable damage on the compartment, which would cripple the ship.

  Looking over the fire that was growing in size on one half of the room, Standish knew that the water supply she had on her wouldn’t make a dent in the flames. Searching the room for some idea of how to proceed, she spotted a panel that had a detailed diagram of the compartment, and the simulated part of the ship that it was supposedly located in, and she noticed the one thing that could help her out: the fuel tanks. The data being displayed indicated that there were just under 700 gallons of purified water in the compartment directly above the room she was in, and the decking wasn’t thick.

  Moving back towards the fire, she climbed onto one of the fake diagnostic stations that were spread around the room, just a metre from the edge of the fire, and ran her gloved hand along the spot that the schematic indicated was the thinnest. Not wasting any time, Standish pulled out one of the two spider charges that she had on her belt and attracted it to the ceiling using the systems mag-lock. Checking the explosives were secured, she jumped down and ran to the far side of the room, took a knee, facing away from the fire, checked her HUD, brought up the command switch for the charge, and detonated it.

  The sound of the charge was barely audible through the protective sound dampeners built into her helmet, but her HUD recorded the detonation, and before she could even turn around to look at her handiwork, a rush of water was starting to fill up the floor around her feet. Spinning around, Standish was just in time to see the fire disappear under the wall of water that kept falling from the ceiling. She wasn’t sure how many different rooms had been set up for all the trainees, but they probably hadn’t used this trick yet today.

  When the smoke from the fire finally cleared, Standish could see a partition on the far side of the room was open, and just wide enough for someone her size.

  Racing across the room, Standish reached the slot which was about a metre wide, and half a metre high, barely slowing down, she dove headfirst through the gap, and rolled, and stopped herself, down on one knee in a large, well-lit room filled with four metal tables.

  The first thing Standish noticed about the room was the screams. The room was filled with screams. It was clear right away that her helmet’s hearing protection had been disabled, and it sounded like there were voices inside her helmet screaming in agony.

  Rising to her feet, she made a quick scan of the room.

  It was square, ten metres square. On top of the four metal tables, were three simulation patients writhing on them, and in the centre of the room was instructor Mafu, standing motionless with a data-pad in one hand.

  Standish quickly toggled her heads-up-display to the medical program and walked to the first table. Assessing the station, she got her bearings and looked down at the droid playing the patient.

  Male. Floxian. Left leg amputation below the knee.

  The droid was play-acting with beautifully. Grasping at its fake missing appendage and screaming at the top of its artificial lungs, while pumping a considerable amount of synthetic blood onto the operating table.

  Tapping a key on the table, Standish activated the holographic display for the bed and requested a painkiller and an auto-tourniquet.

  A robotic arm descended from the hub that was above the table and quickly injected the droid with the painkiller, then applied a cauterising dressing to the wounded leg. Under normal circumstances, the table would have done all of this on auto-pilot once the patient was placed on the table. No such luck today.

  Assessing the patient was in the clear, Standish moved to the next table. Instructor Mafu careful to stay out of her way while maintaining a cautious eye on her progress. The second patient had third-degree burns to the entire surface of its skin. No needle for a situation like this. Cycling through the options available, Standish selected a neural uplink kit, a web kit cap that would tap into the patient’s brain and could switch off specific vital areas of thought and cognition. Cap in place, pain switched off, Standish next ordered a full burn-bath for the patient, which would have to be performed at a more advanced facility, in the interim, she deployed a liquid nitrogen like solution to the patient’s body that would put their skin in a form of suspended animation, keeping it from decaying any further and numbing the local pain receptors.

  Moving to the final patient, a Qeran with brain trauma, Standish quickly activated a localised forcefield around the skull and requested a brain trauma specialist before moving to towards the exit hatch.

  The next room was the first that let her know the games on the ship had come to an end. The room was long, almost thirty metres, and along one side of
the wall was a giant bank of drop-pods. Time to move, she thought to herself and systematically walked down the row of pods, looking for one that still had an actual pod in its chamber.

  Finding one, she backed into the dark green pod. Standish knew her blood was up. She was pumped. When her shoulders hit the backrests of the pod, the safety restraints came down and synched over her armour.

  The pod started its pre-launch sequence with a simple accounement. “Launch in five.” The countdown continued inside her helmet.

  The pod fired out of the test ship just like it should. Once clear of the vessel, it lowered its nose towards the surface of Tekori, and overhead thrusters kicked in, rocketing the pod towards the beautiful planet at a ferocious rate.

  The interior of the drop-pod was devoid of anything other than a simple altimeter that was just below Standish’s eye-line. The pod was nothing more than an emergency escape vehicle, and while there were many variants of drop pods in the Imperial arsenal, this was one of the most fundamental models. But for the purposes of this test, it was more than she needed.

  The restraints that held her securely in place did not leave her much opportunity to move, but her right hand was free enough to pull the by-pass system she had requested out of her utility belt.

  Focusing her eyes back on the altimeter, she knew that she had to act with precision and razor-sharp timings to pull off her manoeuvre, or her stunt would result in an embarrassing failure. Or her death. Based on the data that was given to the class prior to the mission, she knew that the downed pilot was at an elevation of ten-thousand metres on KatlaStor, and if she wanted to jump in, she needed to exit the pod at roughly fifteen thousand in order to glide towards the target, and she was approaching that altitude rapidly.

  Activating the kit, she waited for it to vibrate in her gloved hand, then watched the start-up sequence run on her heads-up-display. Once the system was active, Standish plugged it into the pod's access port. Once it had taken control of the unit's systems, she immediately disengaged the safety harness, which automatically triggered a red alert light inside her helmet and a buzz in her ear-piece.

  “Trainee Standish, you have disengaged your safety restraints.” She wasn’t sure which instructor it was, but she ignored it and rechecked her altitude.

  Switching her attention to opening the pod’s hatch, she armed the explosive bolts on the frame of the hatch, and without hesitating, detonated the charges, blasting the heavy door off the plummeting pod, allowing the rushing air to fill the capsule.

  “Trainee Standish.” It was the senior instructor. “State your intentions.”

  “No time.” She killed the channel and dove out of the pod.

  The air hit her like a swift kick to the chest and immediately flipped her backwards, into a spin. Tucking herself into a ball, she tumbled a few times, finally opening herself up, spreading her arms and legs outwards, facing down towards the ocean that she was racing towards. The next trick was the riskiest since she had repeatedly been told in training not to attempt it unless it was an emergency, an emergency suit release.

  “Standish!” The line cracked loud in her ear.

  Looking down at her wrist pad, she brought up the emergency release switch and just as her finger was about to hit the red flashing button, the comms unit came back one more time.

  “Don’t fuck up!” It was the senior instructor.

  She mashed the button, and a series of micro-charges went off around the suit, sending it flying away from her body in an instant. All that was left were the boots, gloves and wrist systems and the helmet and an emergency air supply cartridge at the base of the helmet.

  Knowing that she had to slow her descent and get her bearings, Standish reached up to the parachute system on her chest and activated it, allowing the drogue shoot to stream away from her body before tugging the primary chute up and away from her. When the canopy finally opened, it gave her a sharp tug, yanking her upwards while stabilising her descent.

  Once the chute was fully deployed, she reached up and grabbed the two hand-holds that allowed her to steer the system, while simultaneously channelling through the heads-up-display system until she found the beacon that was located near the top of Katla, which was ten kilometres to the east of her position. Looking down, she could tell she was still over water, but Standish was confident that she had enough altitude to make a smooth glide path towards the pick-up point for the downed pilot.

  Standish had only received training on the parachute system once, but it was almost foolproof, and once she had aligned her direction of travel up with the beacon, the micro-computer in the chute took over responsibility for guidance, allowing Standish to release her grip on the risers, and take a deep breath. The air in the helmet was slightly stale, so she tapped a small switch on the side of the helmet and opened two tiny vents on the far left and right sides of the visor, letting a stream of fresh air come in. The sensation gave her face a slight tingling feeling.

  Allowing herself a moments reprieve, she closed her eyes for just the quickest moment before snapping them open and using her helmet’s optics to zoom in on her objective. Scanning the terrain, she noted how the volcano had no vegetation above the very bottom of the base and was heavily scarred from previous eruptions near the rim. There didn’t appear to be any walkways or paths leading to the top of the mountain, but she could clearly make out a pair of figures standing at the top.

  Scanning down the side of the volcano, she spotted a single figure moving quickly up the face of the dark brown mass at a swift pace. Their orange Rescue Tech armour unmissable. It had to be Num Blaz.

  Checking her HUD, she confirmed the time until she was going to be on target and calculated that she would arrive just behind her fellow trainee. Close enough to give him a shock, no doubt, she thought with a smile on her face.

  When Standish was fifty metres from touching down, she readied herself to retract the chute, and execute a running landing, which would be tricky on the uneven and rocky terrain.

  Of the three individuals at the top of the volcano, none of them had spotted her yet.

  Five metres to go, she activated the chute recovery program and felt some pressure from the harness on her chest as the parachute was rapidly wound in and scrunched into a tiny rectangle that fit inside the carrying case perfectly.

  When the chute had collapsed seventy-five percent, it lost lift, and Standish quickly dropped to the ground, but not before the remainder of the chute disappeared. Hitting the ground at a faster rate than she had anticipated, Standish had to keep her legs pumping quickly in order not to tumble forward, and in the process ran past Num plus the two instructors playing the downed pilots and almost kept running towards the edge of the volcano. Slamming her right foot down, she slid to a stop seven metres passed the stunned onlookers.

  Steadying herself, Standish took a deep breath and spun about. “Good day.” Looking down at the control system on her right forearm, she activated the call system on the drone that was her ticket off the volcano and started to walk over to where Num was standing.

  “Where is your transport?” She asked with a smile on her face.

  Num’s armour gave his already muscular frame more bulk, making him an imposing figure.

  “En-route.” He said dryly. He pointed at the parachute on her chest. “I guess you didn’t kill yourself.”

  Standish nodded and flipped the glass visor up on her helmet. “Not yet.”

  The wind that had been the only sound atop the volcano was quickly drowned out by the arrival of the first drone that arrived.

  Turning to the direction of the noise, Standish was surprised to see an old dual-fan drone moving towards their position. The machine had two large rotary blades located above a flatbed with a single box at the front. The entire thing was only five metres long, and maybe eight metres wide. Standish had seen them used for moving supplies around back on Nadolo Prime, she had thought that they were too dated for military use. It seems she was wrong.
/>   Looking at Num, she saw that he had taken control of his craft and was landing it several metres away. The engines shut down quickly, and Num and his instructor moved to the vehicle, getting down on their hands and knees to crawl onto the flatbed before the rotor-blades came back to life, and lifted the duo off the ground, and started to head over the mouth of the volcano and then disappeared out of view down the other side of the mountain.

  Just as the drone carrying Num disappeared from view, a second drone appeared, and a vibration from Standish’s right control unit informed her that she had control of the craft. Walking over to the last instructor on the mountain, Standish flipped down her helmet visor and brought the craft in as fast as she could.

  “You ready to travel, Sir?” She asked the instructor and got an affirmative nod.

  The drone continued in until it was ten metres from the pair. Standish set it down on a level piece of terrain and waited for the engines to cut off before guiding the instructor towards the machine. Reaching the old transport, the pair bent down and crawled onto the flatbed that looked like it required serious repair. There were several small holes in the bed, and large patches of rust. Shaking her head, Standish checked that the instructor was on the bed, and reactivated the engines. It was time to put this exam in the books.

  22

  The Past

  Tekori

  Standish had been standing at the position of attention for over an hour outside the senior instructor’s office. The raised voices inside the room were that of the senior instructor, Marlon Genova, the head of the Rescue Tech school and Juliantta Dove, the second in command for the Rescue Tech branch, and Dat Roser, the representative from the Dynamic Operations branch. From the back and forth she was hearing, she knew she was in real trouble this time.