But it needed to be done. In no time she was at the end of the rope’s swing. She needed to let go despite her clenching gut. Katie made herself do it. A touch late. She almost stumbled off of the far side of the receiving platform, but caught herself in time. Andrew hadn’t waited to try and help by catching her. She was touched by his faith in her. Not really so much.
Andrew was down the rope and half way to the next obstacle by the time she got her breath and bearings.
The path continued on to a soggy, low-lying area that wasn’t full of clear water, but wasn’t exactly solid land either. Katie had tried researching it after her first encounter with this sort of terrain. It was either a swamp, a marsh, or a bog. The exact distinctions weren’t clear, or at least they were in dispute. As annoying as that was, it didn’t really matter. Bottom line, it wasn’t the sort of terrain you tried to walk or run across. Not normally.
In this case, the Space Force had provided a series of widely spaced stepping stones made of anchored piles of rubber tires. You were supposed to run across them at speed. Gave an unfair advantage to people with long legs, Katie couldn’t help thinking. Also good co-ordination, she had to admit. In any case, it was another obstacle she needed to overcome and as quickly as possible.
Katie lost some skin off of the palms of her hands, going down a rope from the top of the structure somewhat faster than she should have.
It hurt. It was a minor detail in the larger scheme of her overall misery.
Her tired, plodding run to the edge of the swamp was almost a rest. Katie could see Andrew up ahead, loping his way along towards the end of the interrupted causeway of tires.
Katie knew it couldn’t be taken slowly. You needed some momentum to make it from each pile of tires to the next. It was a nicely calculated instrument of Katie torture. She knew it wasn’t personal, but it was hard to keep that in mind. It felt personal.
Katie dug into her reserves and gathered speed. She did need that momentum. Katie hit the first set of tires just fast enough. One, two, three, a few more and she was half way and starting to flag. She was barely making each successive stack as it was. Katie couldn’t slow down if she didn’t want to go for a swim in the muck. That’d worsen her already abysmal time. And her time would be the whole team’s. She didn’t wonder her teammates might resent her, she did wonder why Andrew seemed to be the only one being even a little helpful. It made her angry.
Katie tapped that anger for the extra energy she needed. She’d pay for it later, she knew. She’d have a raging headache to add to her other hurts and her sore muscles and strained joints.
She did manage to make it across the swamp without slipping. That made for a glimmer of happiness and pride that broke through her basic mood of grim misery. Yes, she could do this.
Andrew had disappeared.
The next part of the course ran through a small patch of forest. The path there was narrow and twisty and full of roots. Straightforward as long as you didn’t trip and hurt something. She took it as fast as she dared. She’d not noticed how hot and sticky it was, but it was pleasantly dim and cool under the trees.
Katie had been told earlier in the year clouds of biting flies were a problem here. It was an experience she was glad to be missing.
Katie exited the patch of woods just in time to see Andrew topping the final major obstacle. It was a large wall, too high for a single individual to get to the top of on their own. You needed a teammate to either give you a lift up or a pull up.
Andrew was getting a pull up from Susan, who’d apparently been waiting on the top of the wall for him. Katie tiredly wished she could assume Andrew would wait for her. Going around the wall would mean not having completed the course, and she couldn’t go over it without help. Would her teammates actually let her fail out of spite for her making them already look bad with her slowness?
Susan disappeared over the wall. Andrew waved at Katie and didn’t move. Thank goodness. She felt a burst of actual gratitude.
Reaching the foot of the wall at a run, she jumped for his hand and caught it. He held her weight. Couldn’t be easy. More than that, he pulled her up until she could get a handhold on the top edge of the wall and pull herself up the rest of the way. She rolled over the edge exhausted.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Sure,” Andrew answered.
Andrew grabbed the other edge of the wall and let himself down to dangle from it. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was certainly fit. Lean and muscled. He dropped to a narrow ledge of muddy ground at the wall’s far side and twisting, jumped across the muddy puddle a little further away. Who knew the marines and Space Force would be so into mud? Showed off Andrew’s co-ordination too.
Katie doubted she could replicate his feat. She had to assume that puddle had been worn by other cadets most of them more co-ordinated than her. She had to try though.
As soon as her tired arms felt they might be up to it, she lowered herself over the wall and dangled there. Even that was an effort. Katie let go and tried to twist the way she’d seen Andrew do.
Katie landed badly, but did her best to turn her momentum into a jump over the puddle. She failed. Katie stumbled and fell face first into the puddle. She made a full out belly flop into several inches of thickly muddy water. You can’t breathe mud or water.
Katie pushed herself up out of the water onto her hands and knees and looked up to see Andrew standing close by.
Andrew was splattered with mud from head to toe.
Stephen and Susan standing further away were doing their best not to laugh.
“Congratulations on your spectacular finish,” he said angrily. He wasn’t amused now.
Katie didn’t know what to say. She scrambled to her feet.
Andrew stalked off. Stephen and Susan followed shoulders shaking.
That could have gone better.
Didn’t bode well for the final race in a couple of days.
2: Katie Settles In
So, last day of Cadet Prep.
Katie should have been happy. The rest of the cadets were gathered about her, behind the start line to their final test, the Cadet Prep Final Obstacle Course Race. They were tense and somewhat apprehensive, but happy. Most of them were eagerly anticipating the end of their grueling six week long preparatory course and their acceptance as full-fledged cadets.
Unfortunately, the main exceptions were Katie’s teammates. They didn’t anticipate doing well in the Obstacle Course Race. The problem being Katie.
It’d been emphasized over and over again that the race was a team competition. The team did as well as its least successful member.
The race had to be successfully completed for cadets to graduate preparation.
It hadn’t been made clear what happened if a cadet completed the course as an individual, but a teammate didn’t. It was quite clear that this was a result the instructors wished to discourage.
Katie’s team, composed of herself, Andrew, Susan, and Stephen, hadn’t practiced together since the evening she’d belly flopped into that mud puddle and splattered Andrew with mud from head to toe. Neither had she had a chance to talk to any of her teammates. They’d studiously ignored her in the few fleeting opportunities there’d been.
Clear goals would have been nice. Katie didn’t mind challenges, but she liked to know what her goals were. She wasn’t used to working in teams, but she had to think it’d have been better if they’d told her what they intended.
Right now they didn’t look too happy.
Katie didn’t know if that was because they weren’t looking forward to having to work extra hard to carry her butt across the finish line and only getting a mediocre placing for their efforts. Or if it was because they planned to leave her to swim, and likely sink, on her own. They couldn’t be certain if they’d pass in that last case. Katie suspected a board would be called, and they’d all have to explain themselves to it.
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Well, she’d know soon enough.
/>
A few more minutes of dancing and loosening up in place passed. All the cadets were brimming with nervous energy. Then the whistle sounded.
They were off.
It was crowded. For the first thirty seconds or so, Katie kept pace with her teammates. Nobody could move fast in the jostling mass.
Then she bumped into another cadet, who apparently didn’t even notice her, and stumbled. She almost caught her balance, but tangled a foot with that of yet another cadet who cursed and kept going. She stumbled again and fell flat this time. It knocked the air out of her. Someone almost stepped on her hand. She was surrounded by a forest of moving feet and legs threatening to trample her.
Katie turtled for a long minute or two. Katie didn’t know how long it was. It couldn’t have been that long, but it seemed like forever. Finally the thudding of feet and grunting of cadets around her diminished and she pulled herself to her feet and looked around.
The trailing edge of the spreading out mass of cadets wasn’t that far in front of her. A marine instructor off to one side was watching her. Katie met his eyes, nodded, and flashed an okay sign. She was shaken, but not injured.
Katie took off after the rest of the cadets. Their passage had made a muddy mess of the ground, and it wasn’t easy going. Fortunately, she had gotten better at running on broken ground if nothing else.
There were no obstacles on the first few hundred meters of the course. It was a dirt path, a mud one now in fact, through a downward sloping field and then an upward sloping one and then over a low ridge. As Katie ran, she inspected the straggling cadets in front of her, hoping to see one of her teammates. Hoping they’d slowed up to stay behind and lend her a hand. She didn’t see any of them.
It looked like she was on her own.
As she topped the low ridge, she saw the first sets of obstacles in front of her. Some low walls, a large one that had rope netting to climb, and the first of the water obstacles. None of them impossible for an individual that was fit and knew what they were doing.
Katie could see teams helping each other quickly surmount the walls. They could be taken alone, but it was quicker with help. Also, much less tiring.
Katie glanced behind her. She was dead last. Well, at least she wouldn’t be holding anyone up.
Without anyone to give her a boost or a hand up, the low walls took some effort, and a little longer than was ideal. She had to jump to grab the top of them, then pull her full weight up with her arms before rolling over the tops and trying to land semi-gracefully on the other side of each of them. Hard with all the ground stirred into slippery mud from the earlier passage of her fellow cadets.
Finally, she was done with the walls and faced the first water obstacle. It was a set of lined up narrow planks set on their sides, at best a few centimeters wide at their tops. They bridged a swamp, cum pond, that was mostly water. It was shallow, but there were lily pads in the pond like parts. Katie knew from unpleasant experience that it was a long, slow, and wet trip wading back to the beginning of the obstacle if you slipped off and fell in.
If you weren’t intimidated and kept your balance, it wasn’t a difficult obstacle. The difficulty was doing it quickly without going so quick you lost your balance on some of the zig-zags in it.
Katie wasn’t vying to come first in the race, so she took it as fast as she could without pushing her luck. Didn’t help the thing was now slippery with the mud from the shoes of her fellow cadets who’d gone before her. She made it across easily enough, though. She was learning how to cope. Just not as quickly as she would have liked. Maybe not quickly enough not to be flunked out.
Whatever, didn’t help to worry about that now. She had to do her best and hope it worked out.
The next obstacle was a floating bridge. It was rather fun once you got the knack of it. It crossed yet another pond. This one a little deeper. The bridge didn’t have the buoyancy to support more than one cadet, and not that if they stood still. The trick was to run across at the right pace, never stopping, one at a time.
It was good not to slip on the wet, muddy planks, too.
Everybody else had already gone on. Katie didn’t have to wait for any of them to finish crossing it. She actually enjoyed the sloshing dash across the pond. Slipped a bit at one point, sending a jolt of fear inspired adrenaline through her, but it only lasted a split second.
There was a little hill of an embankment at the end of the floating bridge. Katie paused to catch her breath there. It was work running on the unstable floating bridge. She eyed a marine instructor observing her from nearby. Katie wanted to ask him how far behind she was, but knew the instructors were only there to act in the event someone was hurt. They weren’t supposed to interact with the cadets.
Katie suspected they also reported on outliers such as herself, but she didn’t know that. Best not to linger too long.
Katie topped the little hill to see a long downhill slide where the path followed what looked like it had been a small streambed at one time. The water was non-existent to a trickle now, but a jumble of various sized water-worn rocks remained. You had to pick your footing carefully, running down this path, if you didn’t want to turn an ankle. It was worth a medical fail to do that. You’d get to redo the whole thing in a year, if you wanted to.
Katie wasn’t eager to wait around on Earth for a year and then to do the whole Cadet Prep course over again, so she was careful. It wasn’t too bad if you were careful. The odd rock shifted under her weight reminding her it wasn’t exactly safe, however careful you might be.
Katie wasn’t certain, but she thought the goal of the course was to challenge the cadets without actually flunking most of them. She suspected the instructors weren’t eager to injure any of their charges either. Still, there were always outliers, like her, and bad luck was always a possibility.
So she picked her footing with care.
It wasn’t too bad. The real challenge lay in the little hut at the bottom of the hill right before the course veered off at an angle. A couple of meters square with a sloped roof, a large cloth covered window on this side, and from experience, Katie knew a doorway also covered with cloth strips on the other side. The hut itself wasn’t a major obstacle. The tear gas inside was the issue. You wanted to get through that window and out that door as fast as possible. You didn’t want to be exposed to that gas too long. You didn’t want to take a breath of it.
Katie was going at a good rate coming up to it. She figured to dive through that window and roll out the door. That would require having a certain degree of momentum. More than a completely safe pace allowed.
She sped up as she plunged down toward the hut. Katie knew it was risky, but it was also exhilarating.
All went well until the last moment when pushing off to jump through the hut’s window, the rock her foot was pushing on shifted.
Katie almost cleared the window sill, regardless. Almost. A toe of one foot caught on the sill and she plunged face first into the hut’s floor. Shocked, her face scraped and full of splinters, her nose hurting, she pushed up and took a deep breath of tear gas.
Damn. Katie kept going. Jumped up and burst out the hut’s door into the fresh air. Face, nose, throat, and lungs all burning, she stumbled on.
Katie’s eyes teared up. It was so bad she couldn’t see. She had to stop. She took deep breaths. Expelled them as quickly and fully as she could. With great care, she wiped her eyes on the hem of her muddy tee-shirt. She had to clear the tears and mucus without rubbing more of the tear gas into her face or eyes.
Katie started moving again. Wasn’t much chance she wouldn’t be the last cadet candidate to finish, but she didn’t want to keep anyone waiting longer than necessary. Especially if her teammates were waiting to help her at the final wall, she couldn’t manage it on her own, she didn’t want to keep them waiting.
The path was broad here, and it wasn’t hard. Through some open woods, and then out into the grassy field that'd been so slippery the last time she’d done the co
urse. The path was pure gooey mud this time. The grass having been trampled out of existence by the full body of cadet candidates. It was work, but Katie struggled on and up.
Andrew was waiting on the top of the structure spanning the stream when she came in sight of it. He waved. She paused and waved back. He went on without her. Jerk. Still, she was glad to see he hadn’t abandoned her, even if he hadn’t bothered to be much help yet.
Katie washed her face in the stream before scaling a rope to the top of the timber structure bridging it. For a moment she wondered if she could somehow crawl across on the beams of the structure itself.
Only looking, she could tell it was designed to thwart such ideas. The middle beams were beveled and steep where they rose to meet each other. Besides, even if it was workable, it was obvious the intent of the instructors was that cadets should swing across on one of the ropes hung between two narrow platforms. That they should master their fear of heights and letting go.
Katie wished Andrew had been good enough to remain behind to catch her on the other side, but he’d already shinnied down a rope on the far side and was running down course.
Exhausted, Katie reached out and hooked a rope. Grabbing it, she pushed off.
Katie had delayed too long to let go last time. This time she let go too soon. She didn’t miss the far platform. She caught it mid gut and slammed face first into the narrow platform. Getting to be a bad habit. A painful one. She started to slide backwards, her weight mostly over the platform’s edge. Desperate, she scrabbled for a hand hold on the platform. Her fingers caught in the cracks between the planks it was made up of. Painfully.
Katie pulled herself over the platform’s edge and rolled her body over to lie on it. She could have stayed there looking up at the sky and gone to sleep. It’d all be for nothing if she gave up now, though.
Some deep breaths and she forced herself to her feet, found the ropes on the other side of the platform, and shinnied slowly down one of them. This time at least she didn’t lose any skin going too fast.
Katie Kincaid Space Cadet Page 3
