Chapter 240

Earlier in the afternoon, at the Prime's direction, Kayla and Art had a training session in the Ship. Kayla wasn't sure what the Ship had done for Art, since he had apparently finished before her, but she had spent what seemed to be weeks in the simulator learning about a spacesuit, and the proper use of its equipment while in free fall. The course even included some repair. The suit was capable of receiving "mental" commands in generally the same way that Security's helmets did. Although she still did not have the "mental" system down perfect, she thought she was reasonably proficient with the manual controls. A portion of the training even taught her how to find her ship, should she become separated from it in deep space. Then she was tested by being tossed out an airlock as the ship powered away. It took her days to locate the ship halfway across the system from where she was dumped. Being alone in the nothingness for an extended period of time scared her to the core.

Now, again in the training room, she once more relaxed on a couch similar to the two command couches on the bridge. With an abruptness that was startling, she found herself standing in the shuttle bay of a ship, dressed in her suit, the giant doors open to space. Her memory of lying on a couch washed away, the simulation becoming totally real in her mind.

"Fisher," the Sergeant snapped as he walked over, "your suit-up time has finally become acceptable, but you still have a long way to go to compete with your first officer's suit-up time."

"Yes, Sergeant. I'll continue to practice."

"That would be time well spent, Fisher. A hull breach may only give you seconds to suit up, particularly if the breach is caused by an invading force."

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Are you ready for your final test?"

"I hope so," she started, but when the Sergeant frowned, she quickly added, "I'm ready, Sergeant."

"Good. You have ten short-range beacons to find. At, or near, each of them will be instructions for the procedure you must complete, and also instructions on how to locate the next beacon. Beacon number one is fifty miles from our present location. No beacon will be more than fifty miles from the previous beacon. I have just transmitted the coordinates to the first beacon, so your suit is ready. The allotted time for this exercise is four hours. Oh, yes. We are presently paralleling an asteroid belt. Not all of those rocks have the same velocity vector, and there are some areas that are quite dense with both slow-moving and faster-moving rocks. Being struck by one of them moving at several miles per second relative to you will overcome your shields and generally screw up your day – as in stone cold dead. Any questions, Trooper?"

Kayla swallowed back a question she knew he would not answer. "No, Sergeant. I'm ready."

"Ten seconds as of... now."

Kayla saw her display begin the countdown. When it reached zero, she jogged to the bay door and dived through the forcefield that was keeping in the air – and into space.

She drifted for the few seconds it took her to enter the coordinates into the autopilot, then engaged the drive. Shortly, she overrode the autopilot to push the acceleration higher. She felt as if an elephant were sitting on her chest, but she could breathe – just barely. Time saved now will give me a better chance of completing the test, should I later run into trouble. With nothing else that she could do for the moment, she allowed herself to check out her surroundings, both with her scanners and with her eyes. She was in a solar system. The star, thankfully, was behind her for the moment, its size about a third that of Sol as seen from Earth.

She had already checked any nearby objects that might be on a collision course with her. So far the only thing showing on her scanners was the asteroid field on her left. She knew there was always the possibility of a rogue paralleling the main band of them, so she would maintain vigilance. Other than the neighboring star, there was nothing else to see. If there were planets in the system, they were too far away to see with the naked eye. As her vision drifted below her, she had a momentary sensation of height. It felt as if she were falling toward the starfield spread out beneath her. Fighting back the sensation by reviewing what little she knew about the course helped somewhat.

Coming up on twenty miles. I'll reach the turnover point shortly.

At twenty-four miles out, she cut the power to the drive. Just before the twenty-five mile point, she spun the suit and brought the power up again to kill her speed, accelerating in the opposite direction, or decelerating, if you will.

Later, for the tenth time, she checked to make certain she was exactly on course, her sensors continuing to scan for the beacon, her speed down. When Sarge said "Short range," I suspect he really meant it. I'll bet the transmission range isn't more than a couple of hundred yards. But I'll find the beacon. I'm dead on course... "Shit," she grunted out as she swung the suit slightly off course. I might very well be dead on if I hit the thing.

That was a sobering thought. The suit she wore was deceptively tough, although the suit's transparency seemed to belie that, but space was unforgiving. Make a mistake and I'll become a statistic, she thought.

She spun the suit back around so she could use her eyes to help scan for the beacon. Still slowing, her fingers hovered over the controls in case the beacon was in her flight path. Sarge told me that students have died on this course. It would be double-dumb to run over the beacon and kill myself.

A couple of moments later, Coming up on fifty. If the Sarge said fifty miles, it will be exactly fifty miles.

Suddenly, she heard the faint "tick, tick," of the beacon's signal. There, to the left. She killed the remainder of her forward speed, and maneuvered toward the faint glow of the beacon. Once there, her suit stabilizers holding her on station, she looked at the approximate four foot cube of flat black metal. Now what do I do?

She ran her hand over the surface, the powerful lights of her suit showing the hair-thin lines of a lid fitted into the box. How do I get it open? There was no apparent mechanism to spring the lid. She pushed on it, but it didn't budge. The lines are thin, which means the lid is probably fitted tightly to the box. If the beacon was inside before it was brought out here, some of the moisture in the air might well have frozen in the crack.

She reached for her toolbelt and brought out a tiny pry bar. Sliding the thin point into the crack that outlined the lid, she managed to pry it open. Sure enough, there were the remains of ice crystals that puffed into space. Inside the cube, there were a small transmitter and a voice module. She keyed the module and heard the instructions on her communicator.

The transmitter had to be opened and a small component replaced. Hurrying, she opened the back and easily saw where the component plugged into the unit. When she closed the back of the transmitter, the once-quiet click was now loud enough to jar her ears. The sound snapped off and the beacon transmitted the coordinates for the next beacon.

Yes! I can do this.

Three hours into the test, she had only one more beacon to find. When the beacon she had just finished transmitted the coordinates for the last one, Damn, another one inside the asteroid belt. That place gives me the creeps. Oh, well, being a good shot helped to cut down on my overall time. Maybe this will just be another target to find and shoot.

As she lay in the coordinates, she began to wonder. This was too easy. Oh, I had to work hard on some of those stations, but still I have another whole hour to finish, with only one beacon left. I looked up the test results for previous classes. While there were a couple that finished in slightly under three hours, most finished during the last fifteen minutes of the test. I'm a pretty sharp girl, but I'll bet the other newbies were sharp, too. Why am I almost finished with so much time to spare? Her gut tightened, and she slowed her approach to the asteroid belt. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, she admonished herself, remembering the line from Pope's essay. She suspected it was just as true now as it had been when he was alive. Besides, the test was pass/fail. One second before four hours was just as good as finishing in three hours.

There were some faster moving rocks on the outside of the belt, but her scanners picked up the danger, giving her ample time to avoid the strays. Past the outer shell of fast moving rocks, the inner ones were mostly stationary in reference to the ship, and now her. A few minutes later, her sensors picked up the faint click of the last beacon.

What had Sarge said yesterday? Was he giving us a clue when he stressed that anything could happen on the test? What the heck is "anything?" I'm not going to get suckered into failing my test.

Although the signal was straight ahead and probably less than two hundred yards away, she hesitated. Shit. Could this be the test? Has everything else just been window dressing? Now really worried, she shut her scanning equipment down, killed the lights on her suit and eased past a giant boulder to peek on ahead. Nothing.

Worrying about coming straight in, she veered to her left, making a circle a mile out to come upon the beacon from the other side. What she came upon was totally unexpected, and had nothing to do with the test as far as she could tell. As she circled behind one of the larger asteroids, she passed over a ship that was apparently anchored there by its tractor beams. Three men in spacesuits hovered near the airlock. One saw her and spun toward her, bringing his rifle up to point in her direction. She couldn't see the beam in vacuum, but a chunk of rock bigger than her fist exploded outward from another asteroid behind her.

Learned reflexes took over, and she felt heavy acceleration for a second as she activated her drive and dived behind another nearby rock. Not staying there, she kept the rock between her and the figures on the big asteroid. Finally, reasonably sure she could risk a peek, she eased to the side a little so she could see what they were doing. It almost cost her life. She ducked back just as two of the figures fired.

Shit! They didn't stay by the ship. They're almost upon me. Trying to keep the last boulder between herself and the approaching figures, she headed for another rock. This time, instead of hiding behind the rock, she used it for partial cover and readied her rifle, while at the same time, keying her communicator to her ship's frequency. A high-volume squeal tortured her ears. She switched through several frequencies, but all were jammed.

The three figures simultaneously popped up from different positions around the big boulder she had just left, but before they could fire, they had to locate her, then bring their weapons to bear. Hers was already lined up on the boulder and as luck would have it, almost perfectly lined up on one of the figures. A minute shift to the right and she was on target.

When she fired, she saw a flare from the chest of the figure's suit, and if she could have held the maser on him for another second, it would have penetrated his shields. As it was, he or she, as the case may be, tumbled backward from the force of the particle beam that accompanied the laser, but she doubted she had done any real damage to him.

Chunks of the rock exploded away from the edge she had just vacated. It would not have been good if she had stayed to peek over the edge of the rock and take another shot at them. A head shot, even if it didn't penetrate her shields, might well have permanently blinded her.

What were they doing on that big asteroid? she wondered as she accelerated toward another rock. Ironically, the rock had the last beacon on it with a big sign that said, "Shoot me to end the test."

Why not? She reduced the power of her weapon and shot the target as she passed. Well, I finished the course, now let's see if I can get back to the ship alive, or at least get far enough away from the jamming to contact some help.

She was almost behind another rock when a blast caught her in the side. It was a glancing shot and only hit her for a short period of time, but even through her shields, it hurt as if someone had hit her hard with a fist.

She poured on the power, trying to suck in air past the pain, worrying that she may have a broken rib that could puncture a lung. Zigzagging from one boulder to another, her side screaming at her, she came around another big mass of stone and almost ran into one of the figures that had been chasing her. They were at ninety degree angles to each other, but luck was on her side this time. She was approaching his left side while he was directly in front of her. She held the trigger down on her maser, the beam quickly overriding his shields. His power pack blew. Chunks of flesh and intestines slammed into her, but against her shields, they were of no consequence. The carnage slipped from her suit as she powered away.