Even Stars Go Cold

Chapter 3 - Elissa

New Arrivals, Brothers And Sisters, Confrontations, Unexpected Resolutions

The Marshall D270 troop transport Ayrshire wallowed through the atmosphere.

Carrying as many as three hundred souls, the Ayrshire was ungainly, bulbous, and huge; but what it lacked in grace it more than made up for in mission capability. Mighty rotating Rolls-Boeing thrusters kept it aloft and almost stable as the pilot brought the carrier down on the seemingly inadequate landing zone.

Pilots learnt early on that a fast drop and rapid deceleration at near zero altitude was preferable to being shot down. The transport was capable of carrying an entire Company and its gear, so it was very heavy and required a lot of fuel. Gentle landings were also slow which, in atmosphere, left it more subject to the weather, and made it a massive target for any enemy fire.

On that particular day the weather had decided not to be kind. The scuttlebutt was that was normal for the region - it had a well-deserved reputation for its prodigious rains, and the winds that often accompanied them. The inertial compensation fields were less than perfect, but anyone with stomach issues on the way just needed to harden up.

Corporal Elissa Mastar had no such issues any more. Just turned eighteen, she had already made a handful of combat drops. The first time was hair-raising; the second was a roller-coaster. Thereafter, she stopped thinking about it; tending to focus on the mission ahead, the leave to come, or almost anything else. It was, however, her first time dropping onto Mindoir. Her destination: the Cordoba Islands.

The touchdown itself was barely a bump, the massive hydraulic legs cushioning the last ten metres of descent. Inside, the padded brace bars popped up and released the passengers. There were no civilians on this ride: the vast majority of the personnel were Systems Alliance Marines, with a few from Army and Navy in the mix. Only a little verbal noise murmured through the compartment as Elissa pulled her kit bag from the netting under the seat, while the power plant vibration wound down. She checked her omni-tool once again for her deployment orders, the tenth time since boarding the transport from the SAMV Hercules.

Mindoir was a far cry from her homeworld, Asteria, both in distance and hospitability. On average, the surface temperature of her homeworld was thirty to forty degrees higher than Mindoir; Human habitation there was restricted to the polar regions.

As was the practice with longer interstellar journeys, the temperature onboard had been slowly dropping to match that of the destination. In theory, the acclimatisation should have been perfect but, on this occasion, it appeared there had been an error... or something else. Either way, Elissa was not ready for the wall of heat and humidity that greeted them when the main doors opened, notably higher than the arrival temperature aboard the SSV Hercules that had brought the Ayrshire to Mindoir.

Heat still radiated from the hull, despite the shielding. Cool landings were expensive and dangerous, but hot landings meant atmospheric friction. Hull shielding absorbed some and deflected most. Misty rain touched the surfaces of the transport and immediately evaporated. Clouds of steam rose in the air, as the vessel formed its own micro-climate.

The public address system barked instructions and Elissa found her way to her debarkation queue. Weather and the backdrop of trees aside, there was no real difference from any other deployment she had seen in the last two years since joining the Marines at sixteen.

Home from home.

She climbed into the back of the waiting hovertruck, stowing her bags under the seat. Taking her place, she took her cap off and vainly tried to wipe the perspiration from her brow. The engine whined as the vehicle lifted slightly, rocking and twisting as it left the motor pool and headed from the landing zone towards the barracks. Out of the open back she was treated to the receding view of the avenue of trees as they eclipsed the Ayrshire.