Exiting the Tetsuo Chou was going to be the trickiest part for us as well. Not that there was anything that we could do about it in our cocoons of heat-resistant foam and acceleration-resistant gel. It wasn’t just a case of being thrown out of a spaceship; we had to be pushed out at just the right velocity and just the right angle for entry. The maths involved was pretty heady. A mistake and we could burn up on entry or bounce, which would send us skimming over the atmosphere to end up in a low orbit until we ran out of air.
I’d done my fair share of parachute drops, though mostly we were inserted by assault shuttle, gunship or more rarely copters. I had done HALO jumps, mainly out of the back of assault shuttles, but I’d only ever done two OILOs before this and I hadn’t enjoyed them. Wrapped in the scan-absorbent and heat-resistant foam and surrounded by the gel designed to help you cope with the G forces, I could never shake the feeling I was the yolk of an egg being thrown at a stone in a fire.
The G force slammed into me. It was like someone massaging me vigorously with sledgehammers. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough to cause me to black out. I was panicking, which was irrelevant, as I couldn’t move. In the unlikely event I survived, I just wouldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even manage to scream as I entered the atmosphere. It was like hitting a solid wall. I had a moment to think my spine had broken and then, finally, I mercifully blacked out.
I knew I was dead when I came to. Beyond the faceplate of my environment suit I could see the gel bubbling. I was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was covered in sweat. This was the hottest I’d ever felt. I’d felt cooler when I’d been set on fire in Dundee. We’d fucked up. A stupid, stupid way to die. I should have just put the Mastodon to my temple and saved myself the pain. I’d seen people burn to death. At least that way it would be quick.
When I saw the cocoon burning away and the gel start to drain out I knew it was all over. Prat that I am, I didn’t pay any attention to the altimeter readout on my IVD. I had a jack from the parachute rig plugged into a port on the environment suit, which was in turn jacked into one of the plugs in the back of my neck.
Then the cocoon was gone. The chemical catalyst had started to dissolve the material of the cocoon as soon as we’d hit the atmosphere. I was falling far too fast. I understood everything in terms of flashes of dark ground, fast-moving cloud, a horizon of red light and then the stars again. Occasionally I could see other figures falling like I was.
I had to stop tumbling. Anger replaced panic as I desperately tried to remember my parachute training. I was supposed to be good at this. This is what we’d been trained for.
I managed to steady myself and get into the star position. I was free-falling looking down at shallow contours of dark rock and a storm front sweeping rapidly over them.
I felt heavy, like a lead weight, and all my movements seemed slow. The ground was coming up too fast. The urge was there to open the chute but I resisted it. Low opening, particularly with these scan-transparent stealth chutes, would minimise our chances of being detected. It would also give the corrosive storms that racked Lalande 2’s barren surface less opportunity to kick us around and less time to eat away at our chutes. Still it seemed like I was falling far too fast.
The ground disappeared as black cloud swept across it at a frightening speed. I had time to glance around and count four other people falling through the alien sky reasonably near before the cloud engulfed me. Then I was falling blind. Relying on the altimeter readout on my IVD. The number on the readout was counting down too rapidly for my taste.
Two thousand metres came and went so quickly I only just had time to pull the chute at fifteen hundred. A moment of fear as the upward yank didn’t feel as pronounced as I was used to but information from the interface showed that everything was okay. I glanced up, hoping to see a fully deployed canopy, but the thick cloud obscured it. Then the storm really started to knock me around.
Pagan and Merle were old hands at this; Cat had a little less jump experience than me; but Morag and Mudge had to rely on skillsofts and training simulations. It felt like I had to rely on every bit of training and experience that I could remember and fight the chute all the way down, using the interface and the chute’s on-board intelligent systems just to make sure I was mostly pointing down and not getting tangled. Fuck knows where I was going to land. At least I was moving at a speed I felt more comfortable with, but I still felt heavy and sluggish.
Out of the clouds and I could see narrow corrosion canyons in the dark scarred landscape, the horizon obscured by violently swirling cloud. Both the chute and myself were still wrestling with the wind. I was receiving warning icons from the environment suit’s temperature sensors. We were too deep in Nightside. There would have been ice below us if there had been any surface moisture.
I glanced up above me at the enormous canopy of the chute. Its translucence made it difficult to pick out against the backdrop of permanent night. I looked around and could make out another four parachutists and was pleasantly surprised to see one of the cylindrical drop containers had managed to track us. We had dropped six in the hope that one might stay with us. Because we couldn’t transmit without opening up comms systems to Demiurge, each cylinder chute’s intelligent system had been rigged up to a lens designed to track other parachutes by sight. Each of the containers had a timed explosive charge. If we didn’t get to them very quickly then the container and its contents would be destroyed.
I wondered who the missing parachutist was. We were all steering our chute rigs closer together now and closer to the container, all fighting the wind. It didn’t feel like the controlled graceful drop of parachuting; it felt like the ground was trying to suck me towards it. Every movement of my lead-like limbs was a painful exertion.
I hit the ground hard and got dragged along it for a while. The rock seemed to radiate cold despite the environment suit’s internal heater. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to trigger the chemical catalyst that would dissolve the chute before I hit the quick releases. Then I tried to get up.
I was used to carrying a lot of gear for extended periods in the field. I had the artificially boosted strength and stamina to manage it, and I had the fitness. Or rather I’d had the fitness. I’d done the maths and reduced my load by what I’d thought was enough to counteract the effect of 1.5 G. The problem was, it had been a long time since I’d carried a full infantry load. Arguably I’d been abusing myself somewhat since then as well. I couldn’t get up.
I resisted the urge to laugh hysterically at myself. I had this image of me lying there until the corrosive wind eroded me away. It felt like a massive weight was pushing me into the cold rock. Christ, if I felt like this how were Morag and Mudge coping? They didn’t have military-grade enhancements. Actually I knew how Mudge would be coping — with performance-enhancing narcotic alchemy. Again it occurred to me I’d been a fool to turn his offer of drugs down.
It was anger that finally got me to my feet. Well that and a purely medicinal stimulant from my internal drugs reservoir. Standing up felt like powerlifting. I really didn’t want to fall over again. I had no idea how I was going to operate in this place for a prolonged period of time. I felt like I was carrying someone my own weight around my shoulders.
My Heckler amp; Koch Squad Automatic Weapon was secured tightly across my chest. I loosened the strap and made the weapon ready. My IVD lit up with new information fed to my smartlink through the palm receiver on my environment suit. Time to pretend to be a soldier again.