by Tim Pollard
The Pyrrianaut
Tim Pollard
Copyright 2014
Edward sat on the bench in the medical centre while the doctors prodded and poked at him. His annoyance with the whole process was tempered by the amusement that came from realising that most 22 year-old men wouldn’t visit the doctors even once a year, unless there was something wrong with them. Yet here he was at his regular monthly checkup and there was nothing wrong with him—at least not yet.
He was a Pyrrianaut—a Navigator of the Armoured Dance, provided you where generous with your translation of the Greek and Latin roots—and it had been three long years since he was a teenager, so there soon would be.
The colony’s chief doctor, Dr. Nichols, interrupted Edward’s thoughts, “Lt. Philips, have the shakes got any worse since last we talked?”
Edward hesitated a moment, before answering truthfully—or at least mostly truthfully, “Not really; anyhow they’re nothing to worry about, they only last a few minutes after I take off the suit.”
Dr. Nichols looked doubtful at that, but continued, “OK Lieutenant, but inform me immediately if they get any worse; frankly you’re lucky to have lasted this long; and at the outside you have no more six months left.”
“Sure Doc, I’ll retire before it comes to that.”
“I’ll hold you to that; God knows I don’t want to recommend mandatory retirement—the four of you are spread thin guarding this colony already—but I will if I think you’re going to kill yourself. The Colonial Administration can always send a replacement, and I’d hate to see Miss Mari’s pretty face marred by tears.”
Edward silently nodded his head, as the doctors continued to run their tests.
Several hours later Edward was sitting playing cards with some of the armour techs in the ready-room at the Pyrrianaut base on the outskirts of City. His eight hour shift had started a little over an hour ago, and right now he and Armour Chief Ichiro where making a tidy profit in a poker game with two new techs, who had only arrived from ColAdmin the day before. Ichiro, the oldest armour tech in the colony, and Edward, the oldest Pyrrianaut, had become close friends in their time together and where often referred to as the old men of the unit, even if Edward was actually younger than most of the techs.
One of the newbies—Simpson was his name, Edward thought—looked like he was about to throw some more money into the pot, which Edward or Ichiro would hopefully soon win, when suddenly the strip of green lights around the roof and doors of the room turned yellow, and a polite, but insistent, voice started repeating the phrase “Yellow Alert, Yellow Alert”.
The two new techs jumped to their feet scattering playing cards and poker chips across the table and started sprinting into the armour-room that was just beside the ready room. Ichiro met Edward’s gaze and rolled his eyes as the two of them slowly placed their cards face-down on the table before joining the other more experienced techs in a more sedate stroll towards the armour-room. After all it was only a Yellow Alert—for a Red Alert they’d join the new techs in their sprint, but there was no need for haste for a measly Yellow Alert.
As soon as they entered the armour-room Ichiro began directing the other techs to prepare to suit Edward up. Edward and the techs moved quickly, but with no noticeable haste—they did this every day, and, other than the two new techs, they had the suit up procedure down to a well choreographed dance.
As they pulled the pieces into place the voice of Control—whoever the senior office on base was—came over the ceiling mounted speakers and started explaining why the Yellow Alert had been called, “Hello, Lt. Philips, we’ve got an incoming pterodactyl; hopefully it won’t make it over inhabited areas, but we’re putting you on yellow alert anyhow.”
Edward instinctively nodded his head—even if Control couldn’t actually see him—as a pair of techs clamped his upper arm plates into place. The “pterodactyls” weren’t actually Terran pterodactyls, but they looked kind of like a larger—much larger—version of the reconstructions of fossilised pterodactyls on Earth, so that was what most people called them. The most noticeable differences where the size—Terran pterodactyls had an estimated adult wingspan of around a meter, these monsters where closer to twenty meters—and the long tail ending in foot-long poisoned stinger. Due to a quirk of biology humans where almost immune to the pterodactyl’s poison—it was even often used in various cocktails to add a bit of kick—but that didn’t change the fact that a foot long spike of bone was still a rather formidable weapon in it’s own right.
As Edward’s helmet was placed over his head his suit’s on board headset took over the transmission from the command room, “We’re moving a Sentry Drone to take it out with a missile, but it keeps dropping below the minimum altitude for the Xv-3 missiles so we’re a bit unsure as to whether it will be able to engage it successfully. The drone operators are moving in for a short-range, low-altitude strike in the hopes of compensating.” Which is what Edward would have done in the drone operators’ place; the missiles where a bit more reliable at low altitude if you where firing up, and the short flight time allowed less time for the pterodactyl to drop down below the minimum altitude.
90% of the time the drones killed any threatening pterodactyls, which was a good thing, because, though the Pyrrianauts could beat them most of the time, the pterodactyls where still very large predatory pseudo-reptiles, and a lot of the lighter weapons built into the Pyrrianauts’ armoured suits had trouble penetrating the scales on a typical pterodactyl. One of them killed Lt. Karoza a couple of years back, and Edward had only engaged one before and it was a hard fight then. The problem came about if the pterodactyl got over the inhabited areas of the colony, while it was safer—for the Pyrrianaut at least—to try to kill them with drones, once they got over inhabited areas firing missiles at them—except at high altitude—was considered too dangerous; a miss could easily flatten a house or four.
As his suit’s HUD came up Edward called up the display of the various long-range sensors that had direct feeds to his suit’s on board computer. A 3D display of the main colony came up, with the various communities and major geographic features included. He was displayed as a small dot near the centre beside the City, with the two currently airborne drones on nearly opposite sides of the inhabited regions, and a bogey marker out to the North that was the pterodactyl. The nearest drone, Drone 5, was moving closer to intercept and dropping down to only a couple of dozen meters from the ground.
Within a couple of minutes it hit the one kilometer from it’s target and a second marker separated from the drone’s and speared away towards the pterodactyl at not much short of Mach 2. Almost instantly the pterodactyl dropped towards the ground. The missile’s on board computer started compensating and turning downwards. The two markers appeared to take up the same space for a split second and a small explosion animation played, indicating the missile’s detonation.
“Was that a clean hit?” asked Control over the public channel.
“Unknown, maneuvering to confirm kill now.” came back from one of the drone operators as the small marker for Drone 5 moved towards the last location of the pterodactyl. “I’m not sure sir, I can see it on the ground under the drone, and it’s not moving, but I can’t see any obvious inj– Oh crap! It’s live.” The marker for the pterodactyl reappeared and sprung up towards the drone on Edward’s HUD.
For a few seconds the two markers occupied the same space and then the Drone’s marker fell away and turned red.
“Control, Drone 5 is out of action. We’ve got a massive system failure across the board, looks like it bit the drone in half.” If it wasn’t for the seriousness of a pterodactyl potentially flying into the colonized zone Edward would have laughed at the obvious embarrassment in the drone operator’s voice.
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br /> “OK, such is life; maneuver Drone 2 in to place for a long-range strike. Armour-team, there’s no guarantee that they’ll kill it before it gets over inhabited areas, I want you to get Philips air-borne ASAP.”
Edward watched his HUD as he jetted across the landscape at 500 meters. His suit was attached to the “Wing”, which was pretty much what it sounded like: a big swept wing with high powered engines built in. The suit had onboard ground-effect systems, but the Wing was much faster, and had a longer range and higher performance ceiling, so it would carry him to the location of the pterodactyl and then he’d detach to engage it.
At least that was if they decided he needed to engage the pterodactyl, but that was looking very likely now. The reptile had—rather smartly for it’s kind—dodged the first two missiles from Drone 2. Edward was watching a third missile rush across his HUD towards the target, but it was likely it would miss as well, and they wouldn’t get a third shot; in a few moments the pterodactyl would be over Bill’s Lake, a small lake on the northern edge of the colonised zone, and on the southern shore was the village of the same name. They wouldn’t risk another missile shot this close to a community, so Edward
