SRVs are GO!
16 Nov 2020Lakshmi Bai
"Everything ahead is a sheer wall," piped one of the Pilots on the comm. Spotlights flared and dipped and rose, as the convoy snaked across the broken terrain. Lakshmi followed the lead SRV carefully close behind, the other members of the Squadron kept cautiously distant.
The all-terrain vehicle ahead was piloted by a woman named "Legion", who expertly drove down and to the left, then up and to the right, making frequent stops at vantage points and to allow the convoy to regroup. They trundled along at a speed of 5 meters per second, yet it felt much quicker on the narrow mountain trail. A distant computer-simulated roar coming from the rear left speakers indicated the presence of a Krait Mark II 'mothership' whose pilot, callsign "Herder" lived up to her name of shepherding the lost SRVs up the mountain.
They were in the system Hyades Sector DR-V C2-23, occasionally visited by farseeing tourists and prospectors alike for the presence of an abandoned, ill-fated mining operation Dav's Hope, and it was here the Fatherhood Squadron decided to send its pilots for RnR, far from the raging war between the Empire and the Federation.
It was nearly 200 light years away at the emotionlessly named star system LTT 1935 that Lakshmi first joined wings with the Fatherhood pilots hunting for fame and bounty as they flew in service of the Federation; her odd choice of a combat Dropship and a Cobra Mark IV somehow fitting in well with high end fighter craft and privateer Corvettes alike, both having enough speed and armour to stay viable in a pitched fight, and enough firepower to keep assailants at bay.
A large part of the Federal Pilots' Academy training involved classic Basic Fighter Maneuvers, an ancient aerospace curriculum honed to a razor's edge from the time Mankind discovered powered heavier than air flight, and now applied to three dimensions and six degrees of motion for void combat. But it was until Lakshmi was picked up by this social band of Pilots that this skillset started to see regular practical use.
Of course, just like her earlier social encounters it was awkward. Lakshmi couldn't say where she was, or what she did before her time in the Federation. That was all, one big blank, aside from what felt like artificially implanted false memories to mask what was really there. Or were they true? There was no way to tell.
This rock climbing adventure was Lakshmi's first non-combat outing with the Squadron, and as much as she had feared travelling through deep space aboard the privateer carrier TFCS Bellerophon that took her to the far reaches of known space and seeing the wonders of next-generation starship engineering at Felicity's station, she had learned to forget them and start to trust more in her skills.
Not as a person... but a Pilot. She swerved hard to the right to avoid two SRVs whose drivers made the mistake of having their wheels contact each others', the high torque of the independent drive electric motors sending their wheels violently crashing against each others as both vehicles tumbled end over end down the 50-degree slope - in the microgravity environment there was little except the specially engineered "duct tape" wheels that mechanically adhered to any surface, and when they contacted another such extra-terrestrial high performance wheel, all sorts of comedic effects would ensure.
Lakshmi shook her head and joined in the self-sustaining chorus of laughter over the comm, before surging her struggling SRV up the next incline, full 8x8 drives whining as the traction control struggled to grip loose rock and sand in just over 0.09 gees of local gravity. Good thing it was low gravity, else a fall from such a height would have been instantly fatal.
"Iri, lights to where I'm looking," ordered Legion, who stopped at the edge of a near vertical cliff. Lakshmi surged ahead to the flank to take a look at what's ahead, letting two wingmates follow the leader before rolling down herself letting those impossibly sticky nano-adhesive wheels do their job.
The convoy continued to climb those impossible slopes overlooking Dav's Hope, lured by the sight of the system's star rising above those pristine twin summits, following the massive bulk of a Beluga liner whose passengers watched the ongoing "8x8 offroad adventure" with glee. The massive "Prince of Whales" was so close it felt like they could have activated the SRVs' attitude control thrusters to boost up and touch it, but Legion sternly cautioned them "thrusters OFF" for fear of losing control!
Lakshmi used them anyway, struggling to find traction on the impossible slopes, hopping from ledge to ledge like a mountain goat of Old Terra climbing a cliff, and using them to arrest her inevitable mishaps but thankfully landing each time on her wheels.
It was two hours before all the Pilots turned rally drivers made it to the summit, and after a brief celebration, it was time to descent. Most elected to simply tumble down the kilometres-high mountainside with no regard for safety besides built-in bubble shields and the reinforced synthesis hulls their SRVs came equipped, but Lakshmi opted for a much more dramatic re-entry to Dav's Hope where their starships were parked.
She set full power to thrusters, and half flew half hovered, letting her thrusters blast the ground in a facsimile of ground effect and skipping off the treacherous surface at ludicrous speed. So far, that she had to be picked up by one of the Beluga's ship-launched fighters which bore her back to camp like a palanquin.
What a wonderful day. A brief respite from the surge of mobilization all across civilized space, before the privateers of the Fatherhood Squadron deployed three whole wings from Fleet Carriers to support the distant Coalsack Nebula Expedition. That's a story for another time.