Sins of the Father - Part 5

Posted on Sun Jun 16, 2019 @ 3:56pm by Lieutenant Jason Haines

895 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Doors of Perception
Location: Xi'Cadia
Timeline: MD 13, 0200

[ON]

Zero-gravity operations was a part of his job that Rob hated with a passion. His first time in a zero-g environment, he had been so disoriented that he vomited. Given that there were others in the simulator with him, he did not win any friends that day. It took him a while to get the simulator cleaned up and make amends to his classmates by cleaning their uniforms and boots. As they were upper classmen, most of them gave him the rest of their laundry to do as well.

On top of the general disorientation of being in zero-g, there was also the issue of equipment failure. What if the air gauge was wrong? What if your suit got dinged by a small meteorite and got punctured? What if your magnetic boots failed? Your maneuvering thrusters could misfire, and you could find yourself on a long trip to nowhere, floating along until you ran out of O2. Then if you were crazy enough to do it without at least one partner, most mishaps had a high chance of being fatal. Oh gee, he was crazy enough.

When you added the general boredom of moving through space at a rather slow pace, it was a tedious thing. It was easy to zone out when one was moving to a drop zone from a distance. And that was exactly what Rob did until his proximity alarm beeped letting him know that he was about five minutes from entering the atmosphere.

Looking around it was easy to see that the Cardassians and probably some of the Xi’Cadians had been planning this for a while. Rob couldn’t believe from what he had read that this had all been coincidence.
There were several orbital defense platforms in place. Those didn’t go up overnight. The logistics for getting the material here was tricky. Then the resources that had to have been diverted from elsewhere. Then there was the number of ships in the system. A light cruiser and five small escorts. Which could now be re-enforced by the Cardassian ships at the nearby Federation space station. What politician was allowing that to go on?

Rob returned his focus to the planet below. Firing off a five second burst from his suit thruster, Rob got his drop trajectory lined up. There was no room for mistakes here. Once the drop started and until he could pull his chute cord, there was no correcting errors. If he screwed up, he could find himself thousands of miles from his drop zone, in an ocean, on top of a mountain, or worse, right smack in a volcano range.

A moment or two later, Rob entered the planet’s atmosphere, thinking, ‘Here we go.’

Space drop had to easily be the second thing Rob hated the most about his job. You went from being a nice weightless feather to dropping like a stone in ten seconds. Rob prayed that Kayhill hadn’t gotten a cheap suit for him. One tear and he would turn extra-crispy in a matter of seconds and burn up. Either that or the chute would get damaged and when deployed would fail to do its job.

It was physically uncomfortable to shift from being weightless to being affected by the laws of gravity. It felt like one’s nuts were being shoved up your throat while at the same time your head was being driven down into your ass. He had hoped that he had left this part of his life behind. He wanted to kick Jenson in the ass with a pointed boot so he could at least experience some of this sensation.

After about thirty seconds Rob got used to the shift and focused on the long fall ahead of him. It was just about thirty minutes before Rob pulled the cord to his chute. He was mid-way through the mesosphere and now had to be extremely focused on maneuvering so he could hit the zone while still in the dark.

Except for a few pockets of turbulence in the stratosphere and his oxygen starting to deplete just a bit too fast, the rest of the drop went fine and now the last and final stage, landing. Even with a parachute, one was still going at a fair clip when they hit the ground. During the day it was a lot easier to see any items that could interfere with one’s landing. At night, it was not as easy. Switching to the night vision HUD in his helmet, Rob adjusted for a few trees in the way just in time as to not slam into them face first. The rest of the landing was textbook.

He had only missed the LZ by a half of a kilometer and given that he had dropped from nearly 100 kilometers, he was ok with that. Given he hadn’t done a space drop in nearly twenty years, he thought it was not too shabby.

“Fire me if you don’t like it”, Rob chuckled to himself as he grabbed his pack, buried the chute and suit, and then headed out to meet the contact he had been given. If he pushed it, he would make it to the rendezvous point and stay on time.

[OFF]

Lcdr. Robert Haines
Semi-retired rabble rouser (NPC)
As played by Lt.(jg) Jason Haines

 

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