Skip to main content

HMSS Pangolin Prime Chapter 4

Chapter 4
I pushed my way against the tide of the day shift returning home, and pressed towards the docks. the lift emptied and I got in, once again descending towards my destination. Only now did I start to realise the risks involved in these missions I left the lift and walked back to the dockmasters office. There was a not on the door which read: Sam, (then an arrow) dock 18. I shrugged and asked my Forzy as to the location of dock 18, he promptly overlaid a line for me to follow on my visor.
Dock 18 was a part way down the secondary docks, within the dock was a large, stocky looking ship, its snub-nosed, dropship design being quite iconic, I recognised it as being a Class B vessel of the Aster variety. It bore the classic white and blue markings and paint job typical of its creator, the Kerbodyne corporation. The name of the ship was “Bullfrog III”, part of me wondered what happened to Bullfrog I and II. I made my way to the gangplank and as I approached the dockmaster came out of the ship and gave me a small wave before coming down the plank. “Ah, there you are!, good, everything is in order, once aboard you guys can leave.” he shook my hand and walked away before I had a chance to respond. The gangplank was uncomfortably wobbly under my feet, I hurried along it. Even in the dim lighting it was clear to see the interior had been modeled for function over comfort, the few chairs were only padded enough to avoid damage to one's posterior, the walls were bare metal and the windows were thick and small. I heard some commotion coming from one of the room, where I proceeded to investigate. It turned out that the room was the ship's canteen and the commotion was my to-be crewmates joking about the dockmaster, something about his hair, or the lack of. I knocked on the door which was ajar, to announce my presence, the four of them stopped and stared at me. This was the first time I’d had a good look at members of the security team. Members of the security team start training from the moment they can walk and so are people at the peak of physical health. There were three men and one woman, all with muscles everywhere, their uniform featured pads for protection, further increasing their overall size. Although I was above average in height, these guys were easily a head over me.
“Oh, it’s you.” Said the woman, “I guess we can get going then” she continued.
The four of them sighed collectively and walked out of the room, pushing me out of the way. I followed them up some steps to the cockpit, one of the men sat down in the pilot's chair and pulled on a helmet, and started punching buttons on the control panel. The woman picked up a headset off of a nearby seat and put it on without sitting down, and requested their departure. The Ship slid forwards into the airlock, and sat still while the blast doors closed. The artificial gravity switched off and the ship rose up, the ship had its own gravity so I didn't start floating through the air, which was somewhat disappointing. There was a long, loud hiss as the air was pumped out of the airlock, followed by the opening of the exterior doors, revealing the blackness of space. My nerves were tingling, this was it, I was finally leaving the PP!
The pilot eased the ship forwards out of the airlock, using the RCS (reaction control system) thrusters, mainly used for small movements and docking. Once they were clear, they took their seats and accelerated. Once at cruising speed they could get up and walk about again, one of the crew had put on some music, some sort of electronica styled stuff.
“Hey, Sam, get in here!” one of the men shouted from the tabled room. I got up from my seat where I had been daydreaming about something or other.
“The room was bare except from a large table in the centre, the others were standing around it. They stepped aside to let me get in, the woman began;
“I don't know how much that dockmaster has told you Sam, but I'll assume you know the basics” I nodded, “Right, so we go to this ship, we haven't got any name for it yet, so for now it's called the target.” she paused as we nodded, “so we drop in, aiming for a large hole on its starboard side, analysis suggests that it exploded from within, luckily there isn't too much debris so the Bullfrog can get nice and close.” more nodding, “Our objective is to determine who or what that ship is from, as well as to see if it can be retrieved, the brass thought that there may be some repairs needed, they said that the security team have not been known have the lightest of touches” a light chuckle was had by all. “we have three hours to complete the mission once we arrive at our destination in about 12 minutes, so gear up!” With that the room emptied and I followed them to the gear room. This room contained five boxes in front of five cubicles, three had the word ‘security’ written on in blue, one with it in pink. The last one had ‘2tech’ on it, I pulled the box in with me into the cubicle, closed the door behind me and opened the box. Within were all the tools I might need as well as a special EVA suit for me to wear. I pulled the suit out of the box and pushed my feet into the footwells, I had to take my shoes off as well as my WRAP, but it comfortably went over the rest of my uniform. I continued to drag the heavy material of the EVA suit over my uniform, I got it over my shoulders and then I could zip up the front of it, followed by a series of straps I pulled tight. The suit had its own in-built WRAP, which displayed oxygen levels as well as other vitals, I had no canister so it read zero oxygen. I stepped out of the booth, and the others were finishing dressing, their suits had more padding than mine, as they didn’t need as much dexterity, instead of tool holsters, they had slots for weapons. On the PP no lethality is used, only stun guns and batons designed to just knock people unconscious rather than kill them. On the backs of the suits it said what role we were, for example mine said “Tech”, the pilots said “Pilot” and the other security team members had “Security”, for easy and quick recognition. One of said security team members held out an oxygen canister to me, then indicated to his back, as I looked at the canister and it said O2, with a blue stripe around the top and down the side. I slid it into the slot on his backpack, and it clicked into place with a hiss, promptly after I felt someone do the same to me, and my O2 gauge filled to 100% and lit up in a comforting shade of blue. After a collective thumbs up, we all sat back down, and spent the rest of the journey going over the mission details and checking and rechecking our gear, ready for the quickly approaching drop time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Soldier, Sunny Side Up - Part of the Bag of Beginnings

This is the story of Corporal Jash Masterson, and how he survived world war 3. A Smoothie of Comrades- I was tucked into my bunk when the first bombs fell. The ground trembling around me, I heard loud noises from within the compound as some of the ceiling caved in. I flung myself from my bunk, and legged it down the corridors. The corridors I knew so well, rushing past me as I charged forwards, the piercing wails of the alarms cutting through the chaos. I was one of the first to make it to the kit room, a few others made it in before the ceiling collapsed outside the door. The hardened walls and roof of the kit room, made us all feel better. In the room with me were; Captain David Hams, Lieutenant Laura Barnsley, Corporal Gregory Smithers and Madam Cornblower, one of the Compounds cooks. We all stayed silent for the first five minutes, except for the still screaming alarms, recovering from the sudden start, breathing heavily. I stood up and made my way to one of the cases and
1 comment
Read more

OLD - Week 1 Day 2 Morning

The forest that Seth had made camp in that night also happened to contain the Barons place of residence, so both parties used the area to their advantage by hunting and trapping the creatures that also resided there. This forest was coated in tall thin pine trees, but occasionally, areas were punctuated with the odd looking Kamra trees, their Prussian blue bark and bright red and yellow flowers making them popular among artists, while their toxic fruit making them popular among poets. Seth woke early the next morning and just lay in his hammock for a while listening to the “birds” calling, well what we call birds now anyway Seth thought as he rolled off his hammock, he stretched his arm and groped around in the half-light until he found what he was looking for. He reattached his left arm and switched it on; a soft whirring noise was now being produced by the little box between his shoulder blades as the byronium crystal was set spinning. He sat and considered his situation then p
Post a Comment
Read more

Artificial Ignorance - Part of the Casual Collection of Catastrophes Volume 2

It was my 143rd birthday, the holo cake still managed to fit all of the candles. I stood in the lounge with my friends and family, my parents came all the way across the ocean to my habitat just to celebrate my birthday. They had to hire a special drone to fly them across, they did live 50 years before the singularity after all. My sister made the joke that they are nearly more nanomachines than person at this point. The act of giving gifts at birthdays phased out a long time ago, since everyone lives so long now, even my grandmother, who lived most of her life before it happened, made it to 203rd birthday! I mean, they cured cancer within the first five years after the singularity. The year is now 127 PS, PS standing for Post Singularity. The oceans have risen and most of the 12 billion people of the earth live on habitats which float on the surface of the ocean. The lunar bases are restricted to qualified professionals ever since the “Grey Lung” epidemic of 120 PS and the few space
Post a Comment
Read more