Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  To the naked eye, the pods would have appeared invisible unless viewed from the top, where the engine exhaust was, and to anyone checking their scanners and scopes, nothing would have appeared where the pods were hanging in space. Not even the heat from the pod's engines was detectable.

  Back on the station, a small room that was just off from the primary command centre was the only place in the system where the gateway was controlled. Its staff of ten had spent the last two days confirming coordinates and timings, celestial movements, expected atmospheric conditions on Qera, everything to give the operators the best chance of making it alive to the surface of the planet, and into the correct drop zones.

  A massive fleet had been assembled in the Darjk system, the most prominent flotilla seen since the fateful raid on Qera years earlier. Seven hundred ships of various sizes and classes waited for the word to jump to Qera. The fleet included several vessels from Alliance Diplomacy and several other administrative branches that were poised to ensure a smooth transition from the Salrugina regime to one that recognised Princess Via as the rightful heir to the Imperial throne on Jarosis.

  Of course, there were a few small problems to overcome before that reality could happen. First, the D-O teams had to kill or capture the Prince. Secondly, once he was dead or in custody, the relief fleet needed to take over the Qera system fast, and get its own administrators on the surface as quickly as possible to ensure continuity in Coalition government services during the transition period.

  Fleet command, along with almost all of the Royal Council and Elders, the Princess’s most senior advisors, knew that the key to securing the Pohjois was not in the conquering of vast swaths of territory, but the control of crucial pieces of government infrastructure that ran the vast Pohjois region. Once that had been accomplished, it was all a matter of how the Coalition military would respond. Would they fight on for their fallen Prince, or would they negotiate a cease-fire to the war that had wrecked the Empire? The assumption was that if the mission to Curzon were a success, then the military would see that their only course of action was peace.

  To the operators trapped in their pods like insects in a tiny jar, the considerations and deliberations about the fate of the Pohjois were not of their concern. They were about to be shot over six-hundred light-years across the galaxy by means which none of them even knew existed days earlier. They needed to survive the hour, then the day, to see the brave new world that those in governance on Mechcharga were prepared to usher in. Only once the shooting had stopped would they have a respite from the war that was destroying the galaxy.

  For Val Standish of Nadolo Prime, mixed emotions racked her mind. She could not deny that there was a sense of fear that lay in anticipation of the large-scale assault they were about to embark upon, but that fear would ebb and flow towards excitement and the thrill of the upcoming battle. She knew that this was what she had signed up for many years ago in Port Sunlight.

  Before they had left Mella II for Mechcharga, Cryne had taken her aside for a quick philosophical chat about warfare, and the meaning of it all: life and death. Like Standish, he knew that life was finite, and without challenge and risk, what was left for them as warriors to accomplish? It was opportunities like this that were so rare that they would be written about in the annals of history. If they were successful and the day was won, then songs would be sung on the farthest points of the Etelainen about what they had accomplished. It was now just a matter of going about their business and winning.

  “Gateway warming up.” The voice sounded familiar, but Standish wasn’t sure who it was. “We go in Sixty seconds.”

  Standish checked her grip on her rifle, ready to flip the safety off the instant her pod hatch opened, as she counted down the seconds in her head, a text message came through on her heads-up-display.

  “There are no points for second place.” Cryne.

  It put a smile on her face.

  “Ten seconds.” The voice was foreign to her when it came back, and then she remembered who it was, Commodore Craz, the overall mission commander.

  “Five seconds.”

  Standish closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was it.

  “One.”

  57

  The Present

  Fury 161

  The lift still worked. Standish wasn’t sure which was a bigger surprise, that or the fact that no one had checked her for weapons upon entering the building. She was starting to regret not even bringing a knife, but it was too late for second-guessing.

  A single chime sounded as the elevator came to a halt on the top floor.

  Standish held her position. She wasn’t the only one who had ridden the lift up. Five other passengers walked off the transport on onto a small concourse that led directly onto a massive hall that stretched almost to the end of the building, and at the very far end, Standish could just about make out a banner hanging from the wall with the emblem of the Melcore Combine on it.

  The smells and sounds from the top floor were intense and pungent. There was the smell of unwashed bodies, smoke, food, and other rich scents. Music was ringing out from the rafters. Standish couldn’t see a band, but it sounded like it was being played live. The colours on this level were the same that had been present on the surface. Lots of black and greens, and as such, Standish looked out of place. She was also the oldest person in the room.

  Moving forward, Standish walked down the concourse with caution. There wasn’t a sense of peril in the air, more the sense that a never-ending party was in progress.

  58

  The Past

  Mechcharga

  Standish had jumped many times since she had taken off from Nadolo Prime on her way to her basic training course. Standish had even had the pleasure of slipping to the AB 79 system aboard an old Darjk freighter, but this was the first time she was going to be flung light-years by a method that had been highly classified and never adequately tested until recently. Those facts didn’t inspire her with confidence, and when the pods were finally fired towards the gateway, she started to understand the real terror of interstellar travel.

  When the pod’s thrusters kicked, the sudden burst of speed tried to force Standish into her shoulder restraints, but she was buckled in tight enough that she didn’t move. The pod had no gravity, but she could still tell it was pulling double-digit G’s when it finally fired its primary drive. She wasn’t sure how far she was from the TDSSG, but she knew that as a member of the AO Throne strike team, she’d be one of the first in, then out on the other side.

  Standish had never been one to ask how ships jumped or moved faster than the speed of light. She recalled hearing about quantum tunnelling at her basic training course on Bern 36, but it wasn’t something they were tested on. More of an information dump on young minds to give them some clue as to the magic of space travel.

  As the pod continued to rocket away from its starting point, a thought suddenly crossed Standish’s mind that had never been a consideration until that moment. She had never asked how larger ships were able to jump, she just assumed that there were systems and components that allowed the massive vessels to move incredible distances with little effort, and even though she knew that she wasn’t jumping as much as being teleported, she started to wonder what was going to hold the pod together when it was flung across the stars. There was no shielding, nothing on the tiny pod to convince her that she wasn’t going to be displaced into a million particles spread over numerous star systems.

  That was until a faint blue mist was released from a vent just above Standish’s armour. She didn’t recall hearing about the mist in the pre-mission briefings, and she had no idea of what its purpose could be. She was safe inside her pressurised combat armour, but she noticed that when the mist contacted the suit, it created a sparkling sensation, similar to a static electricity reaction, and before she could give it any more consideration, the mist was sucked back through the port it had come.

  Checking her tracker, she noticed th
at her scope was clear, and before she started to worry, an automated text appeared on the screen.

  Welcome to the Qera System. The surface temperature is twenty degrees. Maintain comms silence until on the ground. Craz.

  It was official, she was back in the Qera system, on a mission like the previous one. The place did not have fond memories for her. Perhaps this trip would be different.

  Before launch, all the teams had been given estimates on how long it would take from jump to landing. Much depended on how far from the planet they were inserted, and then it was just a question of arithmetic. From her experience, Standish knew that she should expect a flight time of up to thirty minutes, followed by an entry of up to ten minutes. She started a clock inside her heads-up-display and began to wait.

  The first indication that things were progressing was when the pod made first contact with the upper layer of the planet’s atmosphere, and after a very brief shudder, the pod resumed its smooth flight path. Unbeknownst to Standish, she and the rest of the pods had slipped by the patrol ships, defensive gun batteries, and other sentries that were in orbit over Qera undetected. So far, the pods were working as advertised.

  The weather on the surface over the target was clear and bright, and the local time was zero-nine in the morning.

  Once the pod was safely into its entry cycle, zipping around the planet en-route to a safe landing in Curzon, an altimeter came up inside Standish’s helmet, giving her a more accurate idea of when she’d be on the ground, which was where she’d rather be. Anywhere was better than being cooped up in an unarmoured flying coffin.

  When the pod crossed over the five thousand metre mark, Standish switched her mind to the next gear. She was already in a war operations mindset, but now, contact was imminent. Things were about to get fast and loud. It’s game time. The thought put a smile on her face. It was Cryne, in her head. His countless sporting remarks. His non-stop belief that life and warfare were just games that had to be played, and that on the battlefield, the better team would win.

  Four thousand metres.

  The front hatch on her pod released a loud hiss, then pushed outwards on four metal rods, letting the outside air rush into the pod, which surprised Standish, because there was no way that the pod's aerodynamics would benefit from the hatch being open.

  Three thousand.

  Standish ran through what she needed to do the moment the hatch opened: grab her rifle, the cratering charge, her backpack, and move away from the pod. She knew, everyone knew, that getting her mind right upon landing, orienting herself to her environment, was the most critical task she had once she hit the ground. If Standish stayed still, she was dead. She had heard enough briefings at D-O school about operators getting killed in their pods when making a landing on a hot LZ.

  Two thousand metres.

  Assemble at the entrance to the station. Easy.

  One thousand metres.

  The retro rockets on the bottom of the pod fired to slow her descent. She knew the pod was programmed to minimise her risk and exposure, but the pod needed enough time to slow down, and before she could think about how many more seconds would pass until landing, her comms channel came alive.

  “Standish! Blow your hatch and engage the enemy!” It was Cryne.

  His voice sent a shiver up her spine, and for just the smallest fraction of a second, there was fear in her soul, but it wasn’t there long. Her training. Her conditioning. Her mind that had been shaped and formed over her time in the fleet snapped into action, and without consciously thinking, she slammed her fist into the emergency release button and watched the hatch explode outwards away from the pod.

  What had been a darkened compartment with only a few rays of light slipping in was turned bright as the morning light from Qera’s sun shone into the pod’s interior. Standish’s armour’s optical systems quickly compensated for the change in illumination, as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at below her.

  Still strapped into the pod’s restraints, Standish could only see out the transport at a forty-five-degree angle, and from that vantage point, she couldn’t see a thing other than plains that ran as far as the eye could see over the horizon away from the city. She must have been looking south over the area of operations her team was dropping onto. If she couldn’t see that park at the centre of the city, she knew that her pod must be somewhere directly over the target area.

  Releasing the restraints, Standish grabbed her rifle with her right hand, and grabbed hold of the restraint straps with her left, leaned forward, looking out of the pod. She quickly spotted the three barracks that were where they were supposed to be and could see muzzle flashes that were coming out of the windows towards her landing zone, and the Royal Palace.

  Standish knew that she was at the far end of her weapons effective firing range, and she didn’t have any clear shots at the individuals inside the three barracks, but she knew that putting some rounds down at the building would help draw fire, and perhaps keep a few heads down. Taking up the best firing position she could, and using her suits advanced capabilities to stabilise her right arm, she set the rifle to its standard energy output and started firing off aimed shots towards the muzzle flashes she could see or the barrels of rifles stuck out of windows.

  It didn’t take long for her attention to shift from the windows of the barracks to the swarm of infantry that was rushing out of them. They had been told that there were three hundred infantry forces assigned to each area of operations, but the swarm she was seeing suggested that that number was too low.

  Checking her elevation, Standish confirmed that she was under the maximum safe drop height for her armour. Reaching down with her left hand, she grabbed the cratering charge and backpack and promptly stepped out of the falling pod. Her drop of forty metres was only stopped when she fired the leg thrusters in her armour, allowing her to hit the ground gently, dropping into a crouching position.

  Bringing up her rifle, she quickly scanned for immediate threats. The well-manicured lawns around the Royal Palace were already covered in several empty drop pods, random bits of kit that had been discarded by assault team members that had vacated their pods in a hurry, and a few dead bodies, friendly and enemy.

  Confident that she wasn’t in immediate danger, Standish quickly clipped the cratering charge onto her left hip, then slung the backpack on, while bringing up her HUD map of the area. She needed to get to the entrance to the underground station as fast as possible. Her check revealed that it was one hundred metres to her front.

  Bringing her weapon back up, she pointed it towards the barracks and checked for threats that were close in, none were. Casting a quick glance to her left, Standish looked up at the black Royal Palace that was the highest building around, even at only six stories. She could see a steady stream of individuals running out of the building, their hands in the air. Whichever team in AO Gold was securing the ground floor of the building must have been trying to filter out all the non-essential personnel to make their search for the Prince easier.

  Shifting her focus back to her front, Standish pointed her weapon in the direction of travel towards the underground entrance, which was also towards the barracks, and the enemy, and started moving forward at a low crouch. As she proceeded, she kept one eye out for any possible threats and watched as other members of the strike team dashed about. It was clear that some members that were assigned to AO Silver had dropped in a different sector, and Standish was reasonably sure that she had fallen into AO Gold, but that didn’t matter at this point. She just needed to keep moving, keep her head down, and shoot anyone that was a threat.

  Rushing forward, Standish kept her head up, continually scanning her front. To her left and right, bits of grass was getting scorched by weapons fire. After travelling thirty metres, Standish ducked down behind a drop-pod that had rolled onto its side and took aim at the barracks that was to her right. Hostile forces were continuing to pour out of the building and flooding out onto the vast area that surr
ounded the Royal Palace. Most were dropped within twenty metres of the building by some good shooting of her fellow operators.

  Taking up a good firing position, while maintaining excellent cover behind the drop-pod, Standish aimed her rifle towards the building, picked a target that was visible in the second-story window, and fired off a single blast of blue coloured energy that raced away from her position at five hundred metres per second, and struck her target in the forehead, boring a hole right through. The body dropped out of sight a second later.

  Checking the field of fire to her front, Standish could see the entrance to the underground station and spotted several operators in black and red armour rushing towards the only other feature on the field that surrounded the palace. Standish could see at least two different camouflage patterns also moving towards the entrance which was below a canopy roughly twenty metres from the lift shaft, which was burning, sending black smoke into the air.

  Not hesitating longer, Standish got to her feet while maintaining a crouched stance, moved around the drop-pod, then hustled the rest of the way to the entrance of the underground. When she reached the canopy, she found two members from team Beta Four-Three setting up a defensive position with a large energy cannon. Knowing she was late to the party, Standish quickly made her way to the downward moving escalator and stormed into the underground centre.

  The fact that the escalator was still moving surprised her. The next thing she noticed was that the escalator was much longer than the specs they had been shown before the raid, and was along the wall of the uppermost level, not in the middle like she saw before launch.

  Looking to her left, down to the station's floor, she spotted several armoured members of the strike team trying to herd civilians towards the next escalator bank, which was at the far wall, and away from the surface.