The Drop III

Continuing on with the Drop story.  At this point he's no longer dropping, but I guess I might as well stick with the name I've been calling it.  Unlike the story set in the Hellenistic world, this should all be sequential and from the same character.  This week I'm also in the process of moving, so if I have to skip this Wednesday, you may have to forgive me.

He had landed near a large fountain, spraying water triumphantly into the air, and surrounded by the building on all sides, four stories tall and made of a light grey material, mayhaps concrete covered in stucco, with tall windows and white drapes.  The courtyard itself was filled with plants and paths and benches, four tall and narrow cypresses framing the courtyard, with hedges separating the paths in some manner of geometric design.  Avitus heard explosions in the distance, three simultaneously; his pod had detonated to avoid capture and reverse-engineering.

After gathering his surroundings and surmounting that there was no immediate threat, he centered his view on the direction that he was supposed to head in order to reach his unit’s rendezvous point, the self-correcting compass in his view having a marker to show him the direction.   Oriented, Avitus immediately began running off to one of the four tunnels, one on each face, which exited the building.  As he did so, he voiced, “Section channel,” picked up by a tape sensor across his voice box, detecting vibrations it made, to which his suit responded by displaying a glowing “S” on the upper portion of his view, next to the compass.  He continued, “Gaesetae, report.”  His two subordinate officers chimed in, each reporting a satisfactory condition, to which he replied, “Good to hear.  My pod was struck and knocked two kilometers out.  Proceed to rendezvous point.  Section channel out.”  The glowing letter disappeared from his view. 

By now he was in the street outside, observing all of the windows for any sign of activity.  The buildings outside seemed all to be quite similar to the one in which courtyard he had fallen, all quite the same.  He voiced, “Company channel,” with the suit responding by replacing where the previous letter had been with a glowing “C”.  “Gaesetae Zero, this is Gaesetae Three.  Section is on ground and proceeding to rendezvous point.  How copy?  Over.”  This would transmit all the way up to the ship in orbit, and so all responses were delayed by about half a second; a quarter to go up, and a quarter to come back down.

“Gaesetae Three, this is Gaesetae Zero.  That’s a good copy.  Proceed as planned.  Out.”

The Decurion voiced, “Company channel out” and the character disappeared from his view.  He hadn’t seen anyone since he landed, which was a good sign.  It had meant that everyone was either holed safely in their homes or fled the city entirely.  Regardless, it made them more like to stay out of the line of fire and avoid both civilian casualties and confusion on the field of battle.  The less complications there are, the better.  War was complicated enough as it is.

The Drop II

Continuing on with my little excursion into military scifi.  I just spent almost an hour researching orbital reentry speeds, terminal velocity, g-force, and a couple of other things to make sure that the deceleration was actually proper.  Hope it seems as such.  Oh, random question:  What do you think of the colours for the blog?  Does it make it hard to read?

The pod glided smoothly through the vacuum, having exited the ship.  Avitus could feel the weightlessness, but remained unable to move.  However, it no longer bothered him.  In fact, soon he’d be glad for those straps.  The pod began to vibrate gentry as it entered into the atmosphere, and did so more and more as the gasses thickened, soon violently shuddering him.  So too could he feel the pod begin to rotate.  There were three spines along the pod which burned away as it burned through the atmosphere, rotating it and releasing chaff designed to interfere with targeting computers.

Fully into the atmosphere and the chaff expended, the ride got smoother, and soon Avitus felt the force of three decoys fly off, each with a weak radar signature, and they composed the entire outer shell of the pod, taking away its heat signature as well.  Soon he would be at his target landing zone.

Avitus and the pod he was entombed within jolted violently and started spinning.  Something had managed to hit him and sent him spiraling.It righted itself, no longer turning, just in time to open and eject him.  It broke into pieces, instantly decelerating whilst he continued to rocket towards the ground, still two and a half kilometer in the air.  In the blink of an eye he had fallen a kilometer, and then another, decelerating from approximately 1800km/h in just a four seconds.  His vision began to blur a bit, everything turning grey and his peripherals closing in briefly before returning to normal.

If that much force was put on him much longer, and had he not been trained for such again and again, he would have blacked out, failing to properly land and striking the ground.  His armour automatically charged the Talaria on the back of his suit, which when charged with sufficient energy effectively had negative weight.  The computer did all the math; it slowed him down just enough that he would not break himself into pieces.

Hitting the ground itself was lessened by special attachments onto the bottoms of his boots which collapsed and crunched, absorbing the energy from hitting the ground, relieving hosts stress on the joints of both Avitus and his armour.  Even still he bent his legs at the knees and dropped backwards, rolling onto the ground.  He had observed the site as he descended, but had only few precious seconds to do so, landing in the courtyard of some large building, perhaps apartments.  This is not where he was supposed to land.

The Drop I

I'm finally back from my longer than necessary break from writing.  I had just really struggled to motivate myself to write anything.  Oddly enough, having a better outline of the plot made it harder to write.  However, I'd spent some time with my friend Jairus, also a burgeoning writer, who stated his need to have multiple projects to work on.  Now, I tend to work on things in bursts, fervently working on something for short periods of time, only to put it down soon thereafter.  This is part of why writing has been difficult for me, in that I want to try to write consistently, in so that I can actually complete something.  However, having multiple things to work on might actually be the thing for me.  I started in on a military scifi thing, based loosely on the Kae'Moda stuff I've worked previously on (for those of you who know what that is).  Hope you all enjoy.

Avitus was completely strapped in, completely secured, unable to move.  There was nothing that could affect him, nothing that could do him harm; all the same where he should have felt invincible, he felt the absolute most helpless.  Part of what made him so secure was that he was rendered completely immobile, any physical shock to his pod would be completely dissipated by the time it was transferred to him, and that he could not move prevented him from injuring himself.

However, that was just it.  He was rendered completely immobile and deprived of his senses, nearing nothing and seeing only Eigengrau.  They only shut him in five minutes before the pods were to be jettisoned from the troopship, but when one feels as though they are enclosed into a coffin and that there was no way of knowing whether one was dead or alive but from the faint glow of the screens just before his eyes.  In days past they had once looked directly through holes in the helmet, but this structural weakness led to superfluous casualties from eye-wounds.  Now there are armoured cameras where the eyes are, in order to transmit a simulated stereopsis to the small screens suspended directly before the eyes.  Less death, only slightly sub-optimal visual acuity.  Best for everyone.

Thinking thoughts such as these helped to stem the feeling of being entombed like a corpse within his pod, but he’d thought them all so many times before that by now that they’d become fleeting, passing ever so quickly whilst the time in his pod continued to crawl at a grueling pace, leaving only the thumping of blood in his veins to keep him company, slowly ticking on, the thumping his pendulum to keep the time, but each pulse seemed to go by even more slowly than the last.  He tensed all this muscles, he railed against his chains that they may give him some hope of movement.  None.  He breathed in sharply through his teeth; quick, shallow breaths struggling to give him more air, to make him think more clearly.

Nothing helped.  He screamed.  He screamed long enough and hard enough that sweat began to bead along his brow and his face became flushed with blood.  On the Lucullus, the troopship that bore him, there would be someone who was monitoring his vitals, and everyone in squad would be able to hear him.  That is, unless he was sealed in his pod.  It was completely cut off from the outside and no one could hear him scream.  Frankly, if he died no one would know until he hit the ground.  They were designed with state of the art stealth technology, which included the inability to transmit any information in or out of the pod, just in case some enemy were able to change landing coordinates, leading the soldier to their untimely death.

He breathed in more slowly, in through his nose and out through pursed lips.  “Calm yourself Lucan,” he whispered to himself.  If one has no one else to reassure him, one has only but oneself to do this.  “Once you’ve gotten down, everything will be okay.”  His breathing began to pick up a bit more speed again.  “How many times have you done this?  How many times have you gone through the simulators, which are just as bad?  You’ll be fine.  Think of something relaxing, not stuck in here.  Think of sprawling in bed, or having too much to drink.  Think of both.”

This only led to him attempting to sprawl out himself, which was met only with futility.  He started to let out a growl when he felt a sudden downwards lurching movement.  The hatch beneath him had slid open and his pod adjusted into a launching position.  It wasn’t long now.  Avitus took in a few short breaths, counting down in his head, finally taking in one large gulp of air.  The pod launched, shooting out from the troopship, screaming down into orbit.  He’d be on the ground soon.