Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  It was like any other kitchen that she had seen on a star-ship. Very basic in look and feel, and all monochrome. Stepping into the chamber, she turned to her left where her tracker indicated the two crewmembers should be and spotted the two cooks cowering behind a large freezer unit. Moving up to the duo, and quickly noticed that one of the cooks appeared unharmed, while the other seemed to be pinned down by the refrigerator.

  “Are you uninjured?” She asked the one who was holding a metal ladle in his hands, which he must have used to communicate with her through the door.

  “Yes.” He replied, his voice shaky. “But Leno is pinned down.” He said, looking at his friend.

  “I’m fine.” Leno said, looking at Standish.

  Standish quickly produced an EEVT bag and handed it to the uninjured cook. “Put yourself in here.”

  The cook took the bag, unfolded it, and slipped himself inside, and zipped it up halfway. “What about Leno?” He asked.

  Standish stood up and took control of the floating EEVT bag and dragged it to the closest drone. “I’m going to get him out of there.” She zipped up the bag and sent the drone on its way.

  Looking back at the freezer, Standish walked over to it and knelt down next to the trapped Leno. “How does your leg feel?” She asked at the same time she ran a bio-scan.

  “Feels fine, just can’t move it.” Leno responded.

  “Ok.” Standish quickly removed the restraints on her suits power levels and put her hands under the edge of the freezer and tried to stand up, but the fridge didn’t move. Stunned, Standish gave it a second attempt, and when that didn’t work, she ran a quick systems check on her armour and discovered it was functioning correctly. For whatever reason, the freezer was jammed down in place.

  Cycling through her comms net, she pulled up the Rescue Tech support coordinator on the bridge of the Laakari. “This is Standish on the Prince of Ruylor, I need a power-jack sent over.”

  There was some static on the net, but eventually, a response came back. “Negative.”

  Standish stood up and put her hand on her hips.

  “I say again, I need a power jack on the Prince of Ruylor. Respond please.”

  “Negative on that request. Get back over here now!” It was the coordinator again, and their tone sounded panicked.

  “Standish.” It was Jae, but the line was almost garbled. “Abandon……” After the first word, there was nothing but static from the team leader.

  “Avi.”

  “Go Standish.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a rout. All forces are preparing to jump out of the system.” Avi replied in an excited tone.

  “How long?”

  “You’re already on borrowed time.” He said. “We’ve already moved far enough away from the Prince to effect a jump out.”

  That got Standish’s attention. Things must have gone wrong fast with the battle for the ships to be jumping out. Looking down at the trapped cook, Standish knew she had no options and no time to waste.

  Bringing her right hand across her body, she grasped the handle of her electro-saw that was attached to her left forearm and unsheathed it quick. Looking down at the cook, she could see that he was terrified at the sight of the saw. Taking a knee, Standish quickly turned off the external headphones in the suit, jabbed a painkiller into the cook, then started sawing off the leg farthest from where she was kneeling.

  The second the saw cut through the cooks uniform blood started to spray from the wound in the zero-gravity environment. The saw was chopping through the flesh and bone like they were nothing but water. Out of the corner of her eye, Standish could tell Leno was screaming as loud as he could, arms flailing in the air, but she couldn’t hear a thing. All she was aware of was the waterfall of blood that was spraying from the wound.

  The first leg off, Standish set the saw down on Leno’s lap for just a moment and quickly slapped an auto tourniquet onto the wound to prevent him from bleeding to death. Picking the bloodied saw back up, Standish started on the second leg, cutting through it with precision to create a clear line in the middle of the thigh. Once she got through, she turned the implement off, put it back in its sheath, and then applied a second tourniquet to the patient who was slowly floating off the ground.

  Standing up, Standish gave Leno another injection for the pain, then as quickly as possible, stuffed the remaining two-thirds of his body into an EEVT bag, attached it to a drone, and then sent it on its way. Standish followed the drone out of the kitchen into the dining hall and then back onto the long corridor that ran towards the front of the ship.

  Moving at her best pace in the zero-gravity environment, Standish moved through the kit room, then into the billets, then to the airlock. She found the airlock hatch secured and the drone waited for it to depressurise. When the chamber was ready, the hatch opened, and Standish and the drone moved inside. Stepping inside the airlock, Standish got back on the comms. “Jae, what’s your status?”

  Before she could get a response, or ask a follow-up question, Avi was back in her headset. “We are jumping in sixty seconds.” He warned.

  Fuck.

  It would take thirty seconds for the airlock to cycle, then open the outer hatch to exit the ship. Standish quickly checked her position to the Laakari, it was over four-hundred metres directly across from the Prince of Ruylor.

  I am fucked.

  It dawned on her that even with her thruster pack, she’d never make that distance in the time required to reach the ship and gain entry.

  “Understood!” She shouted back over the open comm channel.

  Moving toward the far side of the airlock, Standish looked at the control panel and quickly scrolled through the settings until she reached an emergency release option. Without hesitating, she tapped the button, and the number five appeared on the screen, then four. Jumping backwards, Standish crouched down and put her left forearm in front of her helmet to act as a makeshift shield.

  The counter hit zero, and for the briefest second a claxon wailed, the chamber turned white, but all of it was barely acknowledged by Standish’s brain as the hatch slipped open and she was sucked out by the vacuum of space at a rapid pace.

  Why the room went bright white before an emergency breach would be anyone’s guess. It made no sense because unless someone was wearing a helmet that would automatically compensate for the sudden brightness in the room, their vision would be impaired when cast into space. Luckily, Standish’s helmet was equipped to handle such changes, and it was also designed to automatically switch view modes under certain circumstances, and the moment Standish was sucked into space, the heads-up-display turned to a digitised view, allowing her clear imagery of her surroundings.

  Checking her position, she noted that not much had changed. The planetoid of Qera was still above her, and her helmet didn’t detect any hostile ships within fifty thousand kilometres, but the key to the entire equation was the Laakari, which was now four hundred metres away from the Prince of Ruylor. Using her enhanced optics, Standish could tell that the ship had already extended its jump coils in anticipation of leaving the system.

  Racing towards the Laakari at unsafe speeds, Standish knew that at some point she was going to have to use her thruster pack to slow herself down, then gain entry to the ship. By the time she had covered three hundred metres distance, she had already had a few close calls with debris, but eventually the inevitable happened, she collided with a tiny scrap from some damaged ship, no bigger than the palm of her hand, but at the speed she was travelling, it slammed into her left forearm with great force, breaking it cleanly, even with the armour she was wearing.

  Dropping her injured arm down, she focused on her range to target, one hundred metres and closing rapidly.

  Seventy-five.

  “30 seconds, Standish.” It was Avi again. “I’m on the port side, midships hangar. I have dummy recovery droid with me. When you’re within fifty metres, I’ll hit you with it.”

&nbs
p; Standish keyed her mic once to acknowledge the transmission. The droid was similar to the sledge she had used at training on Tekori when she had first arrived. The machines were rudimentary, but they were fast.

  “Firing.” He shouted.

  Standish quickly picked up the incoming drone on her heads-up-display and tracked it as it raced to an intercept point along Standish’s flight path. When the drone got within ten metres, she tucked herself into a ball and gave a little thrust from her pack until she was flying back towards the Laakari. When she was satisfied that she was facing the correct direction, she hit full power on the pack, bringing her to a complete stop in space, just as the recovery droid reached her.

  Without time to catch her breath, Standish reached out towards the droid, just far enough for the machine to use a grappling hook to clasp onto her uninjured wrist, before suddenly taking off on a return journey towards the Laakari.

  She wasn’t sure how fast the droid was going, but it was pulling Standish towards the medical ship so quickly that her helmet was giving her impact warnings. At this rate, she was slightly worried that she’d either bounce off the side of the ship and careen off into space, or slam into the hull at such a speed that she’d be killed, but her fears were averted when the droid slowed five metres from the ship, allowing Standish’s body to keep moving.

  Shocked at her sudden deceleration, Standish was caught off guard for a moment, then spotted Avi, his arm outstretched, and reached towards it. Getting a tight grip with her right hand, Avi pulled her and the small drone into the hangar, and quickly slammed the emergency closing switch.

  “In!” He shouted over his open comms channel.

  “Jumping!” The announcement came in over Standish’s headset, and over the speakers inside the empty hangar.

  Flipping the blast shield up on her helmet, Standish looked down at her left arm. It seemed perfectly fine, but she knew it was broken. Looking over to Avi, she took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Where’s Jae?” She asked.

  Avi flipped up his blast shield and revealed a distraught face. “I don’t know.” He said dryly. “Her comms went down.”

  Standish blinked a few times. “So, you left her back there?”

  Avi shrugged. “I guess so. Things went bad for us fast, Ship Master ordered the jump, and that’s what happened.” Avi rose to his feet as the pressure in the hangar came back to normal levels. “She got ten survivors out.”

  Standish stood up and looked down at her forearm control panel and started the suit shut down procedures. “Better than I did.” Letting her left arm drop down by her side, she waited for the suits built-in medical systems to start repairing her broken arm. She should have been in pain, but the suit had already numbed her and injected nano-bots into her system. It didn’t take long, and by the time they were out of the hangar and walking back to their quarters, her arm was healed. When they reached their room, Standish removed her helmet and gloves then slumped down onto her bed.

  Trying to let her body relax, she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, but before she was able to find a tranquil space in her mind, the ship's alarms started to ring loudly.

  “Enemy contact!” Came the report over the ship’s speakers.

  Standish didn’t think, she automatically sat up and put her helmet on, started her armour power-up sequence, then slipped her gloves on. Flipping down her blast screen, she quickly tapped into the Laakari’s tactical status and tried to grasp what was happening.

  “Where are we?” Avi asked over their secure comms channel.

  “We’re back at Killious.” Standish responded after checking the information available.

  Standing up, Standish moved towards the door to the room and looked back at Avi as he put his gloves on. “Let’s get to the bridge and see what’s going on.” She said. “We need to know what’s happening.”

  Opening the door, Standish looked down the corridor and saw a group of crewmembers dashing towards their posts. Standish grabbed one of them by the arm and flipped up her blast shield.

  “Status?” Standish demanded.

  The crewmember looked at the grasp on his arm, then up to the armoured figure holding them in place. “We’ve been tracked back here by the Pohjois forces.” He looked back at his arm. “Let me go!”

  Standish released her grip and turned to look at Avi. “That’s not good.”

  “We need to.” Avi didn’t have time to finish his sentence.

  The closest enemy ship had fired at the first target it could find after arriving in the system, and that target was the Laakari. The Pohjois forces had tracked them to Killious through either skill or blind luck, but it was irrelevant now, the enemy forces had jumped into the Etelainen system with enough ships to make quick work of the remaining vessels that had run from Qera to Killious.

  33

  The Past

  Killious

  The blast hit the ship almost square in the middle and cut the four-hundred-metre-long vessel clean in half. The beam went through all the decks and was broad enough to cleave the ship in two. Emergency protocols automatically went into effect. All hatches were shut, preventing anyone in adjoining sections of the Laakari from being sucked into the vacuum of space. At the same time, the U7 Rescue Tech suits automatically went into an operational setting, readying their Techs for action.

  The force of the blast had rattled Standish, and she automatically dropped to one knee and quickly tried to access the ships AI, but the system had gone off-line.

  Standing up, she walked over to the hatch to her quarters and tried to open it, but emergency procedures had frozen it into place, and the door wouldn’t budge.

  “Avi, I can’t open the door.”

  “Stand clear, I’m going to blow it.”

  Ten seconds later, ninety percent of the door vaporised in a cloud of smoke, and Avi walked out onto the hallway. “We need to get off the ship.” He said.

  Standish walked up to him. “We need to do our jobs.” She corrected him.

  Avi turned and looked down the stark white corridor, then looked down at his wrist datapad. After a few seconds, he looked up at Standish, then flipped up his blast shield. “This ship is caught in Killious’s gravity. It is going to be pulled down to the planet, and everyone on board is going to die either in re-entry or on impact with the surface.” Avi rechecked his systems. “There are escape tubes down the corridor, I suggest we get in them and get to safety.”

  “We need to help these people.” Standish said. She looked down at her forearm datapad, while simultaneously checking her heads-up-display. “The rear medical centre is still intact. If we can get everyone inside there, we might survive re-entry.” She looked at Avi. “It’s designed to act as a disaster shelter.”

  Before Avi could respond, the artificial gravity cut out, and Standish started to drift off the decking before her mag-lock activated.

  “Anyone who doesn’t make it to a lifeboat is dead.” Avi said and lowered his blast shield. “I am leaving. I suggest that you come with me.” He pushed past Standish and started moving down the corridor just as the internal power began to fail, cutting the lights in the hallway for a moment until the emergency lighting kicked in and flooded the space in a dull red glow.

  Watching Avi walk away, Standish considered her options. If she followed Avi to the rear of the ship, she’d most likely find safe transport off the Laakari, but she knew that if there were any wounded crewmembers still alive in the damaged section of the ship, they’d need her help to get to the disaster shelter. It didn’t help that most of the vessels escape pods were amidships, where it had been hit. Anyone left on the ship had a better chance of survival by getting to the rear medical department, because, if her guess was right, most of ships lifeboats were probably already gone.

  Closing her eyes for just one moment, Standish thought of Vaz, and what her team leader would do. It didn’t take long for her to realise that Vaz would have stayed and tried to save as many crew members as sh
e could; damn the consequences. Well, Standish wasn’t about to let down her Rescue Tech team leader, especially at a moment like this.

  Looking around the hallway, she spotted a communications panel, and walked over to it and toggled a ship-wide emergency call. “All crew, evacuate the ship. If you cannot make it to a lifeboat, move to the rear medical bay.”

  Standish probably didn’t need to tell anyone to get off the ship, but there was always a chance that some had forgotten that the rear medical bay was a disaster shelter. Turning towards the front of the vessel, Standish started moving down the hallway, she needed to get to the front of what was left of the rear half of the ship and work her way to the rear of the vessel, helping whoever she could along the way.

  Bringing up the ship's schematics, Standish confirmed her location on the top deck of the six-deck ship. Rear medical occupied almost all of the second and third decks at the rear of the vessel, just above engineering. The remainder of the back half of the ship was comprised of various storage units, crew quarters, life support systems, and other sundry rooms.

  Reaching the rearmost lift shaft, Standish walked by it to the sealed bulkhead door. Running a quick check, she was able to confirm that the Laarkari was gone on the other side of the emergency door. That was her forwardmost limit of exploration. Checking her heads-up-display, Standish confirmed the ship's position above Killious, then requested an estimated time until impact on the surface from her armour’s AI.

  Thirty minutes until impact with the surface.

  Long enough to get anyone trapped on her half of the ship to the disaster shelter.

  Switching her HUD to a ship-wide tracking system, Standish pulled up all the crewmembers via their trackers. She was still getting faint signals from the front half of the ship, but they were out of her hands. The final count in the rear half of the vessel came to 79. Many were still moving about the ship in what seemed like good order, moving towards the remaining lifeboats, or towards the rear medical centre.