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The drop-pod itself is like a gigantic onion—as it screams down, successive layers of braking flaps less than ten nanometers thick blossom open like flower petals. The atmospheric drag on the flaps is unbelievable—the things light up like Roman Candles on the Fourth of July and burn completely away in less than a hundredth of a second. Then the next layer of brakes flares open, and then the next. Bam. Bam. Bam. You get the picture. The bottom line is, by the time the drop-pod is five hundred meters above the surface it’s decelerated to about 1000 meters per second—depending on the atmosphere of the planet and some other stuff only engineers really care about.
At that point the ablative shielding on the pod’s nose has boiled away and the retro-rockets kick in, firing a magnetoplasma pulse for 0.01 seconds, slowing the pod down to a survivable speed and—coincidentally—frying anything within 100 meters of the target zone.
Now, nobody could survive any of this—not the gut-wrenching acceleration out of the ship or the spine-shattering deceleration half a second later—if it weren’t for the miracle of artificial gravity. A-grav is another handy bit of tech we inherited from the trash that pasted Earth—not that it makes up for losing our homeworld, but it does make life a little easier. A net of a-grav projectors ring the inner chamber of the pod, working like sixty during the descent phase to cancel out the g-forces rattling through the pod. The only problem is the computers running the projectors can only process so fast, so about one percent of the g-forces still make it through the null-field—and that one percent is enough to rattle your teeth out of their sockets. But at least you make it down the gravity well alive.
Of course, this whole process was theoretical. Nobody—at least, no human—had made a drop before. We, the spaceborne marines of the UFS Ruin’s Gambler were the first.
The whole drop process, from start to finish, flashed through my mind as I settled into my cocoon between Boots and Rogers and snapped my VMR into the forward bulkhead
Rogers was already grumbling about his stomach but I tuned him out and tried to focus on the muted sound of the cocoon latching onto my armor. I hadn’t said a prayer in months—losing everything had kind of tarnished my opinion of the Big Guy upstairs—but I figured now was as good a time as any to pick up the habit again.
Please God, get us out of this alive. And help me not to puke during the drop. Amen.
Behind me, Westover had produced a fist of cigars and was passing them out to Bergstrom and Tiang.
“I saw this on an old movie once.” I could practically hear the nut grinning through the radio as he passed three more cigars forward to us. “Always gotta have a cigar for the victory celebration. Some crap about fat ladies and singers.”
“Bucha!” Boots’ faceplate popped open long enough for him to drag the cigar across his upper lip. Eyes rolling up, he sighed contentedly. “This is a Cubano! How’d you sneak these on board, basura?”
The question elicited a nasty chuckle from Westover. “I put them in a plastic bag and swallowed ‘em before we were herded off Earth. Getting them back, that was the hard part.”
There was a collective groan through the com-frequency and Boots dropped his cigar, face twisting in a horrified grimace as his helmet snapped shut. “Westy,” he choked out over the radio, “if we make it down in one piece, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Ah, common Boots. I was only teasing.”
The crimson prep-light switched on and my timer started pulsing in the corner of my vision. Twenty seconds to drop.
Above my head, a bank of vents slide open and with a hiss a thick gray cloud of nano-bots splashed down over me. Hurriedly stowing my cigar in my utility pack—I didn’t care what Westy had done with the things, I wasn’t going to let a genuine Cuban cigar go to waste—I shut my eyes and tried to regulate my breathing, just like they’d trained me.
The foggy nano swarm quickly filled the cabin, so thick I couldn’t see Boots, Rogers or the bulkhead twenty centimeters in front of me. Then the fog was inside my helmet and I could feel the invisible machines sliding down my throat and filling my nostrils, thick and oily. I closed my eyes and my chest went cold as the swarm filled my lungs and I started to gag—we’d already done this twice in training, but each time was just as bad as the first—but I could still breathe, even if it felt like my lungs had been pumped full of water, so I fought the panic down and tried to settle further into my cocoon.
“This is it, boys.” Boots was all business again, as calm as ever. “Either the shortest trip we’ll ever make, or the longest. Hooah!”
Ten seconds to drop.
Without warning the soft, cloudy nano swarm turned hard as concrete, freezing all of us in place. My brain and body rebelled instantaneously, every muscle and cell screaming with a panic I could barely contain. There was no air! I can’t breathe! The thought screamed furiously between my ears, and I wanted to scream with it, only I couldn’t. My jaw was locked in place too.
Only I could. The nano swarm kept a constant, even flow of oxygen passing through my lungs, and even worked to keep my blood circulating through my immobilized heart. Gradually, as my trembling body realized it was not asphyxiating, I regained control.
Now for the hard part.
Five second to drop.
The ship-wide frequencies were alive with chatter, scan-techs keeping up a constant flood of information about conditions dirt-side, officers calmly passing orders to all parts of the ship, defense crew chiefs cutting in every now and again to report on closing missiles or other threats.
“Surface winds decreasing to twenty meters per second.”
“Prepare for a front portside burn, ten seconds.”
“Ready for burn, sir.”
“Two bogeys at three hundred kilometers!”
“Target acquired—neutralized.”
I was so caught up in the action that I almost forgot about the drop. My timer finally reached 00:00:00 and a warning siren began wailing. I had a half second to wonder if I’d feel anything when we launched—and then a force like a million tons of lead slammed into my chest, knocking the nano-propelled wind right out of me. My cocoon groaned around me, the webbing and padding creaking in protest. The pod began to bounce and rattle, vibrating hard enough to make me wonder if the ship was falling apart around me. A sound like a train whistle—only a thousand time louder—filled the cabin, and then another force every bit as strong as the first slammed into my back, throwing me against my shoulder restraints. Something exploded just beyond the forward bulkhead—the retro-rocket, I realized dimly—and I pressed further into my restraints until we finally came to a sudden, screeching halt.
I wanted to die. Every part of my body was burning in agony, and I just wanted to lay back and die, but the pod was already unfolding, the nano swarm evaporating in a gray-black haze, and the harsh light of this new, alien world burning through my helmet’s cameras.
Boots was already up on the edge of pod, framed by columns of roiling smoke and bright shafts of cold, blue-tinged light, the skin of his suit already shifting to blend in with his surroundings.
“Let’s move boys!” he shouted, twirling his free hand above his head. “Go! Go! Go!”
My cocoon popped open and I lurched forward, jerking my VMR free and cursing as I clambered past Boots to begin securing the area—that’s my job, along with Rogers, who was already ducking over the opposite end of the pod. Behind me, Westover was helping Tiang assemble the heavy weaponry, and Bergstrom was crouched beneath Boots, shouting across half a dozen frequencies as he frantically tried to establish communication with the Gambler and the other squads.
The retro-rocket had burned clear an area the size of a football field, leaving on strange charred shaped I didn’t recognize and ankle-deep ash that puffed up in fine clouds as I tried to wade through it. Tried, because gravity on this rock was about 70% what I was used to, and despite hours of training during the past weeks, I was nearly falling with every step. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I forced my body into the weird half-jog half-jump that we’d been taught, and made for the edge of the blast zone.
Explosions were rocking the ground on all sides, making keeping my feet extra-difficult. The alien suckers on this rock were a primitive lot—all they had to throw at the Gambler were chemical missiles with fissionable warheads. But they had a lot of these missiles, and it looked like they were using them up as fast as they could. From my position, I counted at least thirty columns of smoke and flame arcing high up into the sky—the exhaust columns of enemy missiles, and they were all converging on an invisible point almost directly over my head—the Gambler’s position in low orbit.
My ship wasn’t sitting still though. Even as I craned my head back to look, razor-thin lines of fire began to radiate from the Gambler’s unseen position, lancing out at each and every climbing missile. With a thunderous roar, huge explosions began to shatter the thin sky as the enemy rockets detonated prematurely.
“DA, is your side clear?”
Boots’ urgent call jerked me back to the job at hand. “Half a second, Boots, and I’ll know.”
I reached the edge of the burn scar and began scanning the perimeter, VMR couched against my shoulder, my HUD flicking through visible, infrared and x-ray wavelengths, alert for any signs of movement.
To my right, about two klicks from where I was crouched in the ash and hidden from view by a low, blackened ridge, a projectile battery of some kind was pounding away, firing in our general direction, but the shots were all passing high over my head with furious, buzzing whines, and I figured the aliens had panicked and started firing at the column of smoke ascending lazily from our pod.
Questions:
- How was the action towards the end? Could you visualize what was happening?
- Up to this point I've purposely been fairly vague about the planet they're landing on. Do you feel like I've given enough details to keep you reading, or does it feel like it needs more fleshing out?
- How is the dialogue between the characters?
- Does the main character, DA, seem interesting to you, or is he pretty 1-dimensional?
- Other comments and general impressions.
