Mech Corps

by Jake Bible

  Then they all cheered and clapped. Even the teachers stood in awe.

  Emily looked off stage to her husband Cole, who was sitting on the front row alongside a Public Affairs Office specialist and the JSC Center Director. Emily winked to her husband. Then to the children she said, “Okay, who wants to see the DSMU jump?”

  More cheers.

  3

  Sensors were blaring, most of them warning codes, and none of them serious. The system was not happy with the freefall event. Through the portal window above him, Cole could see the Anchor. It seemed to be falling away from him into space (or maybe he was launching away from it—being in space had really messed with his sense of up and down). He turned to look outside the EDLS. 51 Golgotha was getting closer with every second. It was lush and green and full of alien plants. Anna had been gushing about them the entire course of the trip. He had seen holograms from the autonomous devices already exploring the planet. But now they were actually going there.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Imagine the loudest explosions you have ever heard. These were louder. The sound was so intense, Cole could feel the vibrations rattling in his chest and tickling his ribs. They startled the hell out of him.

  The explosions came to a crescendo, and then the shell flew off of the DSMU. The robot lay kneeling in its EDL configuration tethered to the heat shield. An intense orange and red glow was burning all around Cole’s DSMU. He was sure that, from an outside perspective, this looked very much like a giant robot skateboarding through the atmosphere. In the future, assuming he survived the landing, he would assure anyone who asked that it was nothing but terrifying.

  The world was coming up to meet him as he plummeted to the ground at nine Gs. The status screen showed Environmental Controls and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) as nominal. His kph was somewhere around 500. He was 80 kilometers from ground. As his vision tunneled, he focused on the DSMU temperature readout, which was pushing toward peak heat, 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. And then Cole blacked out.

  Kaijunaut is available from Amazon here.