Star Force: Integration (SF2) Read online

  Jack nodded and waited for the stabilizing rod to extend, then, using the skills he’d practiced yesterday, leapt off the wall like a bullet and shot towards the center of the room. He missed slightly, but caught the rod with his arm. He steadied himself facing the wall next to the others.

  “Wait for the signal to begin,” Gent said as the assistant retracted the rod. A moment later a chime sounded and Jack began swimming through the air much as he would have done in the water.

  Problem was, he wasn’t going anywhere. Instead he was spinning about uncontrollably, every twist of his body enhancing the problem and making his movements more erratic.

  “Null it out!” Emily shouted.

  Taking her advice, Jack forgot any attempt at movement and curled up into a ball. He tried to analyze the direction he was spinning and reached his left arm out from his chest, then moved it to the left, slowing but not stopping his leftward spin. He continued for another minute, trying to move his hands sideways through the air, then turn them flat against the motion to try and steady himself, only minorly succeeding. When Gent finally ordered the stabilizer rod extended Jack was out of reach by a few inches, struggling with forced patience to swim his way to it.

  Suddenly there was a blur in Paul’s peripheral vision as Megan leapt off the wall and flew towards Jack. She thumped him on the back as she passed, knocking him into reach of the rod while skewing her own trajectory. He got a handhold on the rod and she the far wall, then both pushed off to return to the group clinging to handholds near the corner entrance in the padded cube chamber.

  “021,” Gent called out.

  “Oh boy,” Randy said under his breath, launching himself off the wall towards the center point. He grabbed the rod and carefully steadied himself, nulling out as much micro-motion as he possibly could before the rod retracted.

  When the chime sounded he didn’t move at all. He just floated there, arms extended, studying his situation. After a long moment he reached both arms forward, much as the trainer had, then tipped the angle of his hands and brought them back along his sides trying to cup as much air with them as he could.

  He moved forward immediately, but not from the air he was moving, but rather from the counterbalance of his swinging arms. However, when they reached the end of their swing, their momentum tugged on his body and nulled out his motion, with a slight lateral twist thrown in that frustrated Randy to no end. He tried again and again, but couldn’t manage any controlled movement, though he did succeed in accidentally drifting off the center point towards the far left wall.

  After several minutes Gent looked at the other trainees. “Someone go get him,” he ordered.

  “I’m next anyway,” Kip said, jumping off the wall and grabbing onto Randy’s arm as he passed, which pulled them both over to the far wall. Kip waited there until the rod was extended again, then floated over to the center point for his try, which ended up equally fruitless.

  Emily came next, and started rotating around uncontrollably right from the start. She tried different arm movements, half steadying herself, but with each motion she made it seemed to send her on a slightly different trajectory than she’d expected, nulling out a twist but adding a corkscrew motion that either cart-wheeled her side to side or flipped her head over heels. Neither her arms nor her legs were attached to the center of her body, so creating straight lines of momentum was virtually impossible.

  She tried the next best thing, doing the mental math and approximating the direction each twist would send her before she made it, but it was no use. No matter how close to neutral she got, she could never null it all out, let alone provide any thrust. Emily knew the key was in moving the air, but it was too thin to cup with her hands, though if she could smooth out her motion enough it should work at least a little bit, and with successive motions her momentum would build, but she couldn’t tell if she was making any progress or not without some point of reference. With the rod gone there was no way of knowing if she’d moved an inch forward or back, leaving her no way to measure the tiny movements that were plaguing her.

  She blew out an exasperated breath, frustrated with her failure, when she noticed herself rotate slightly in a new angle. She frowned, but otherwise didn’t move, still listing about uncontrollably. There had been no arm movement to trigger that, and she was pretty sure she hadn’t twisted her torso or head.

  Then the epiphany hit her. She filled her lungs with air then blew out hard…resulting in a small, but significant rotation backwards.

  From the ‘ground’ Paul and the others watched as Emily made no progress, and he wondered what he could do differently. He would be the next one to go, and if he didn’t figure something out he’d be spinning about just like Emily was…

  Paul frowned. “Is she…” he whispered to Jason.

  “I think she’s figured it out,” he whispered back as Emily, still tumbling uncontrollably, suddenly had a lateral drift manifest…and it was steadily growing faster, moving her over to the side wall.

  “That a girl!” Brian yelled as it became clear that her sideways movement wasn’t an accident. She was still spinning about, but drifting steadily towards the wall, continually picking up speed until her flailing left arm hit. With the reflexes of a cat, she twisted about and swiped at the wall, brushing her fingers against the clingy pads and pulling herself to the nearest handhold. From there she made her way to the center and energetically punched the finish button. The clock stopped at 2:34.6 and she launched herself back towards the group.

  Megan reached out and grabbed her arm as she came close, pulling her up to the wall. “How…”

  “Use your breathing,” she said to everyone, but looked at Paul. “Like a low power jet engine.”

  Paul smiled and pushed off towards the center rod, ready to use Emily’s breakthrough and get a decent time logged for the 2s. He thought through what the best procedure would be, dismissing Emily’s tumbling. She’d been blowing out each time she rotated around, but there had to be a better way than that.

  Paul remembered what Gent had done, then a thought suddenly struck him as he grabbed the rod. He pulled himself out flat to the ‘floor,’ head down in a superman pose then released his grip. The rod retracted and he waited for the chime.

  When it sounded he slowly breathed in through his mouth, then exhaled through his nose for several seconds, thinking that would be as close to his centerline as he could get his thrust. He sucked in another breath and repeated the process, sure now that he was moving forward at least a little.

  After the fifth breath he spotted the small grid-like grooves in the ‘floor’ and used the end of his nose for a reference point, finally able to visually confirm that he was moving forward. He continued adding bits of speed with each breath before finally reaching the wall and grabbing a handhold. He raced his way over three meters to the center button and slapped his left palm on it, then glanced up at the clock just over his head, but he was too close to make out the numbers so he twisted and looked at the side wall.

  1:22.4

  “Better,” he said to himself as he flung himself sideways and down, floating slowly towards the others.

  “In through your mouth, out through your nose,” he told Jason, who was up next. “Tilt your head for vector adjustments.”

  “Will do,” he said, launching off the wall.

  “Nice work,” Megan commented, bumping into his shoulder as she floated beside him.

  “Not as fast as him,” Paul pointed out, glancing at Gent.

  “We’ll work it out,” she said confidently.

  By the end of the training session all of the 2s had their times under 40 seconds, with Jason scoring the fastest of any trainee to date the following day with a 26.4 second run, further chipping away at the 0s lead with a team average of 34.8 compared to the 0s’ 35.9 and the 1s’ 38.2, with the other seven teams’ attempts waiting for upcoming training missions.

  7

  With the first of three training segments completed,
the 2s moved on from zero gravity training to low gravity drills, which required them to adjust all over again, but more so than before, since there were a range of artificial gravity levels available throughout the station and their training drills didn’t always occur on the same level.

  Their quarters were based on level four, near the outside of the rotating disc, with every level closer to the center being a progressively lower gravity. This size of ‘disc’ contained 20 levels, not counting the small transit chamber they had arrived through, which unofficially was level 21.

  They started their training drills on level 16, which had approximately 1/3 gravity, which was enough to keep them on the floor, but not enough for them to walk about normally. Every step they took wanted to vault them into the ceiling, but thanks to the days they’d spent in the zero gravity training, they’d learned a soft touch.

  The problem was moving fast and begin agile. Their challenge for the day was to navigate an obstacle course for time…while getting pelted with fist-sized dodge balls from auto-tracking turrets spaced at vulnerable points around the course, like the narrow balance beam they had to walk across.

  Paul’s reactions to incoming objects, whether they be paintballs, dodge balls, darts, or any of the other training devices used to keep them on their toes were geared for normal gravity, making him an easy target for the little red balls if he tried to control his movements. On the other hand, if he reacted normally, he’d careen out of control up to the ceiling or off the apparatus he had to navigate through. A balance had to be reached, and their reaction times reset, before any of them would be able to successfully navigate the course on time.

  One trick they’d learned early on was that they could alter the artificial gravity by running with the spin of the disc or against it, giving them more or less grip. And while that wouldn’t help them if say they were on Luna or any other planetoid, it would work on any rotating station or starship.

  That bit wasn’t always helpful, because some of the obstacle courses moved laterally, also some of the sections where they could have used more grip required them to move against the spin of the disc, causing them to actually have less. Regardless of whether they were able to turn that factoid into an advantage, Paul and the others learned quickly that they had to be aware of the changes at all times.

  What was fun about the whole thing was the fact that they essentially had superhuman strength and jumping ability on the course, which was designed accordingly. The room they were currently in was double high, meaning that it encompassed two levels, allowing for some climbs and jumps over barricades that the trainees never would have managed otherwise.

  Paul had quite a blast with the hangtime at first, then cursed the vulnerability it gave him when the turrets tracked his way, because he couldn’t move again until he touched down. Many a time he got pelted in the back or stomach while he was jumping over obstacles. After a few bruises he learned to side jump the barricades or go over head first, keeping his body in as low an arc as possible. Superman jumps were a straight up invitation to getting pelted.

  Dan adjusted the best to the course, and got under par time before the rest of them did. Paul didn’t get the pillar walk for some time, which was the second to last obstacle on the course consisting of 10cm tall pillars spread out over a 20 meter stretch of hall that he had to pass through without touching the ground, which would result in immediate disqualification. He’d gone through the course 5 times and kept failing on this section before finally getting the knack of making small, quick steps side to side.

  The dodge balls were coming from the end of the obstacle, with two small launchers extending down from the ceiling. At first he’d tried to long jump over most of them, but had found that made him an easy target and the impacts would knock him down and off the pillars, resulting in a DQ.

  After that he’d tried smaller jumps, but still couldn’t dodge the balls coming at him from straight on, and since this part of the course was enclosed, he didn’t have the luxury of watching his teammates’ attempts, though Dan did give the group some pointers after his first successful completion. They needed everyone getting under par today, else there’d be a points penalty for the team.

  It finally sunk in to Paul that the point of the pillars and turrets was to force him to sidestep his way through, making complete redirections of his momentum with 1/3 the normal grip he’d normally have. Once he had that concept firmly implanted in his mind, he took to the course again and approached the pillars slowly, dodging a few balls that came out after him before he even got to the first small octagonal steps.

  Paul ducked to the left, then stepped up to the first pillar, barely large enough for his one foot, then he stepped to the right as a ball flew through the spot where he’d just been. When he stepped down on the right, he launched himself diagonally up to the next step less than a meter ahead of where he’d previously been, smiling wide as he dropped down in a crouching pose as another ball flew over his head. Like a lot of the challenges being thrown at the trainees, this one was deceptively simple, and now that he knew how to attack it he wasn’t going to have a problem.

  That said, he still had to move quick or get pelted, which happened about halfway through, but since he was staying low to the ground and taking short hops it didn’t completely knock him out of place and he was able to catch himself with a very long and flexible reach with his left leg over to the next pillar, which he immediately pushed off of and landed in a more normal position on the pillar to his right.

  He went through five more diagonal hops before he passed underneath the turrets, which were unable to depress low enough to hit him at point blank range, thankfully. Paul jumped over a small barricade and moved on around a corner, never having made it this far, and saw the finish pedestal ahead of him.

  It was, however, on the other side of a large red section of floor that he instantly recognized as a disqualification pad. He was going to have to jump over the entire thing…and there were four turrets, two on the right with another two on the left, waiting to shoot at him.

  Paul thought it over for a few seconds, deciding that speed was his best ally and backed up as far as he could to get a running start, which was more like a ‘loping start’ in the low gravity. Just before he took off, however, he added a slight variation to his plan as a thought struck him. Using his left foot he pushed off on the wall to add some initial momentum and lunged forward, running up to as quick of a sprint as he could manage.

  But instead of running straight on, he angled to the left in the last few steps and jumped towards the wall in between the two turrets, taking a nearly point blank hit on his left hand that he deftly placed in between himself and the turret in mid air. He let it knock his arm aside, but kept as much of the momentum off his torso as he could so as not to affect his alignment as he began to fall downward.

  Before he could hit the floor, he bounced himself off the wall, redirecting his motion back to the right and getting a half jump extra out of the maneuver. He landed face forward on the far side of the disqualification pad, managing to roll out of it in a somersault and get back to his feet and ‘run’ the last two steps to the finish pedestal, which looked more like a giant, slow motion leap with a pogo hop enroute.

  Paul smashed down the finish button and quickly looked over at his time, posted above where the rest of his teammates were standing…

  1:27.8

  He blew out a tired breath, relieved. Par was 1:40, which meant he wouldn’t have to go back through it again today. The individual time trials would be tomorrow along with the team run, which had everyone on course at the same time, with all having to finish before the clock would stop. Seeing as how he was one of the slowest today, he guessed that he’d be the team’s dead weight along with Randy, who had only managed a 1:34 about a half hour earlier, though he’d gotten the hang of it far sooner than Paul had.

  Jason inquired as to whether they could get any more practice time in today, now that they’d all gotten
under par, and the trainer informed them that they could if they wanted, but that any times they registered wouldn’t count towards anything. Jason nodded his understanding and urged the others over to the start line.

  “Let’s start with pairs,” he said, pointing at Dan and Brian, the fastest of the bunch so far, “then we can work up to more. I have a feeling we can use each other to get over some of these obstacles faster than going it alone.”

  “You mean like throw Paul over the pillars,” Megan teased.

  “Actually…” Jason hedged, “I was thinking something like that for the balance beam.”

  Kip smiled widely. “Brilliant,” he said, thinking through various possibilities.

  “He’s right,” Dan added, “there’s potential for assistance on several spots.”

  Paul quietly laughed to himself. So much for being done for the day…but Jason and the others were right. They needed to practice more, especially for the team run. According to the 0s’ and 1s’ results, their team course times were considerably slower than the individual ones, so maybe they hadn’t thought to work together. If that was the case, and the 2s could manage to shave off a chunk of time, it’d be another opportunity to close the points gap.

  “I’m all yours,” Paul joked, teaming up with Megan for their pair run. Dan and Brian had already taken off, not bothering to start the timer, so Paul assumed they’d all get out on the course together to try and sort this out. He let the pair get a twenty second head start and glanced at his teammate.

  “Let’s go,” she said, game as always for another challenge.

  8

  The next day they started with the individual runs with unlimited tries within a two hour time block. Paul took two, shaving his time down to 1:22.9, placing him 7th out of his teammates and 25th out of the 30 trainees to test so far. When all was said and done, the 2s had an average of 1:19.3, ahead of the 1s’ 1:20.2, but trailing the 0s’ 1:18.5 and losing a few points to them.