Read Steel Walls and Dirt Drops Online
Authors: Alan Black
Steel Walls and Dirt Drops
Steel Walls and Dirt Drops
By
Alan Black
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The Publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
STEEL WALLS AND DIRT DROPS
Published by arrangement with the author
Printing History
2009, 2014 Copyright
by Alan Black
Cover Design: Amy Black
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
digital format without permission from the copyright holder. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ISBN-13: 978-1496028761
ISBN-10:
1496028767
Library of Congress Number:
1-1234311241
:
I dedicate this novel to my wonderful wife Duann; the real Chief Master Sergeant Duann Elizabeth (nee Brown) Black USAF RET.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to the real people who inhabit these pages and have helped me visualize the characters and their stories: Duann Elizabeth (nee Brown) Black,
John Cochran
,
Cla
rice (Clancy) Preston,
Tammie (nee
Qualls) Wright,
Brianna (nee Wright)
Morin,
Bennett Beaudry
And
Richard Jackson
.
Thanks to my beta readers,
Steve Black,
Duann Black,
A
nd
Tom Brennan.
Their help and insight has been invaluable for this re-publication and correction of an old novel.
More information about Alan Black at
www.alanblackauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alan-Black-Paperback-Writer/259372705810
Table of Contents
Newly promoted Third-Level Commander Hamisha Ann McPherson stepped off the
space station slide-walk. She moved light and easy for a big woman, but a worried expression flashed across her none-too-attractive face. The Allied Protective Expeditionary Services (APES) normally promoted leaders from within the ranks of their existing unit. She wondered what kind of fouled-up unit needed an outside commander. Surely, a unit this size would have someone qualified with the desire to move up the command track. How bad could it be if the APES had to promote a newly minted second-level to third to fill the slot? What kind of nightmare unit would it have to be to assign a second-level who had just gotten her whole command killed on their last drop?
Her new command
was a hundred meters away. She was eager to begin in spite of her mounting apprehension. The gate and guard were well within sight despite the curvature of the station bulkheads. It was a huge station and the curve was gradual compared to many smaller stations she had visited.
Misha was worried.
She was not worried about her own abilities, but more than a little uneasy about what she was walking into. Distaining the use of the yellow and black striped caution handrail, she walked to the tarmac side of the Allied Mobile Space Forces (AMSF) echo deck on Heaven’s Gate Space Station in orbit around Heaven Three in the Heaven System. For the hundredth time since leaving her home world of DropSix, she wondered why it was called the tarmac side. The spacecraft parked there sat snuggled into hangers around the station rings with their back ends hanging into the nothing of space. Nothing was nothing; it certainly wasn’t tarmac.
She
stopped in front of a view port overlooking the military section of Heaven’s Gate. It was the last view port before coming to the entry gate leading to her new command. She read the small warning sign just above the view port controls. “FOD kills.” Misha gave a mental shake of her head. “Vacuum-breathers!” she exclaimed. She had seen this particular warning sign posted somewhere at every AMSF base she had been on or passed through, including her own four-year tour of duty before joining the Allied Protective Expeditionary Services (APES). In all of that time, and in the eight years since, no one she asked had been able to explain why it was called tarmac or what FOD even looked like. However, since FOD warnings were everywhere, she knew she would do her best to avoid it at all costs, if she ever saw it.
Misha spun the dial on the view port controls setting the opacity level to the highest possible
filter. Turning the 'dark on' changed the port into a mirror. Slowly, she smoothed her hands down the front of her light-gray dress tunic. Straightening the seams brought the tunic's blood red trim into line with the matching red stripe on the trousers stuffed into her soft-soled jump sneakers. The tunic didn’t have buttons to button, collars to straighten or pockets to close, so her adjustments did not take long.
Still, Misha let her fingers linger over the red triangle of her new rank. She hadn’t even had time to get used to being a
second-level commander before getting bumped up another notch. Reaching third-level in the APES was quite an accomplishment for a woman who barely looked out of her teens, although she had just passed her thirtieth standard birthday. Her youthful looks were thanks to GerinAid, Delta Corporation’s anti-aging drugs, more than any family inherited trait.
She smiled
remembering how in only eight years in the APES she had earned her triangles. Her smile faded quickly to a frown as her fingers slid down to the row of ribbons high across her left chest. If service tradition had not required that she wear her awards and decorations, she would have shipped them home to DropSix to let her baby sister’s new daughter play with the colored bits of metal and silk.
The top ribbon was the Aries
Award. It sat alone on a row of its own. It took its name from old Earth's Grecian god of war. The Aries was the highest combat medal possible in the Allied Systems. Sixth-Level Commander John Cochran personally presented the commendation to Misha. It gave her a small shiver recalling that the top commander of the Allied Protective Expeditionary Services took the time to present the award to a lowly APE.
“Presented
,” Misha reminded herself. “I did not earn it. I just did what I had to do, dammit! It belongs to those good APES on Guinjundst who did not come back and are gone forever. Gone," she thought. "The whole squad Gone; with a capital G. Hellfire, might as well capitalize the whole thing: GONE."
Most of the APES who dropped dirt on Guinjundst had
not come home. Her own third-level commander and nine other second-level commanders died along with the rest of the unit. The Sixth had been very specific to point out that while she was a new second-level commander; she rallied the survivors and took the battlefield back from the non-human Binders. She had turned what surely could have been humanity’s first defeat against the Binders into a significant and decisive victory.
In
a private ceremony afterwards, the Sixth shook Misha’s hand telling her the Aries Award was as much for the invaluable information she had brought back as it was for her combat record. He had tacked on her third-level command triangle with his own hand. Misha knew the information she brought back was now highly classified. She was certain no APE under the rank of fourth-level, except herself and those pitifully few Guinjundst veterans knew the real story of Guinjundst. She knew very few people in all the Allied Systems knew the truth.
Misha shook her head to
try clearing the mental pictures of men and women who had not come home from that deadly dirt drop. So many APES died so she could have a pretty ribbon to wear on her chest. She would rather have her old squad back. However, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Dead is dead.
Today, as the new commander of the
1392nd, she would take leadership of a squad of ten troopers, plus gain command over ten second-level commanders, each with their own squad of ten troopers. It was a larger unit than she was used to commanding and it held more unknowns than she liked.
Misha studied her reflection in the view port taking in the whole picture. She was not shy about her size anymore, not like she had been when she had first left DropSix. She stood 6
feet 5 inches tall. That was short for DropSix. She was shorter than any adult in her family, including her mother and her baby sister. She weighed in at 325 pounds standard, but looked like she weighed less; much, much less.
She smiled at how often people had been fooled into thinking she weighed about 245 pounds.
People from normal range gravity worlds sometimes underestimate the muscular density of heavy-worlders. DropSix was a 1.16 standard gravity world and over the generations the children of DropSix colonists developed a dense musculature with the heart and lung capacity to quickly pump oxygen to those dense muscles.
“Still,” she thought, “if anyone is surprised at my size it is their own fault, be they training partners, dance partners, sex partners or just barroom brawlers.” She chuckled inwardly at the thought of dance or sex partners. There were
few of those, but it still didn’t hurt to think of the possibilities.
Misha knew anyone who looked close
enough would see she was from a heavy world. The eyes staring back at her in the view port mirror were almost black, with specs of bright blue, a gift from her Scottish heritage. The red rim surrounding the cornea of her eyes was a specific trait of growing up on a heavy world. It was a dead give-away to anyone who took the time to look closely.
“Not that anyone has looked that closely in a long time
,” Misha thought as she smiled to herself. She scanned her face out of habit. She knew she wasn’t beautiful, pretty, cute or even average. Her features were okay and all in the right place, but she had always felt things just did not seem to come together. She had nice eyes and a nice nose, but somehow they did not seem to meld into a pleasant and harmonious union.
“Maybe I need a new hairdo?” Her hair was jet black, cut in the standard
grunt cut. She shaved the left side of her head from front-to-back and brim-to-nape for ease in attaching the control nodes in her armored helmet. This cut gave new meaning to the age-old military phrase: high, wide and tight. She cut the rest of her hair anywhere it might fall into her face or over the shaved area. She shook her head as the rest of her hair settled into place in various shaggy lengths normally hacked off whenever it got too long. It was very duty-functional, but it wasn’t designed to attract members of the opposite sex.
“Well, it is time to saddle up
,” she said, blowing a long breath through gritted teeth. She spun the view port dial back to open view and stepped on the slide-walk for the last hundred meters to the military section’s guarded gate. She was more worried about her new unit than she had ever been when facing an enemy in combat. In combat, the worst that could happen was that you died. If this unit was as snafu as she imagined, then it might be worse than dying, she might fail. She only hoped she could handle this outfit with a more delicate hand than she used in battle.