Taking Back a Mud-Ball 101

         You ever make a Low Orbit Drop? No, I don't suppose you would have. Most haven't. It's sort of 'reserved' for us DTs. That's 'Drop Troopers', in case you ain't got the lingo down. Don't know what that is? Well, it's simple. See, you got the United Fleet, right? It's the interstellar organisation, charged with the defence of the Alliance. It's been around for, oh, about a hundred and fifty years now, give or take a decade or two. It has two main branches; the Navy and the Marines. Also known as the Mobile Marines, by some. I won't go into the Navy side of things since, to be honest, I don't much care about that. Not that I don't care for the people, mind you. More than one occasion they've saved my hide. But it's the Marine side of things I've got my stake in.

         The Marines -- like the Navy, I guess -- have various sub-groups in 'em. You have the straight up Marines, the general grunts of the bunch. There's the Specialists -- the snipers, scouts, demolitions, and Counter/Electronic Intrusion teams, or C/EIs -- and then us; The DTs, Jumpers, Rockers, Nutters, take your pick. they all mean the same thing. Drop Troopers. We're the first ones into any situation, always there to clear the next-in-line a beach-head. What's it all involve? Well, that's were that LOD -- said like the word ‘load’ -- comes in. That's, Low Orbit Drop, for those of you who've forgotten that bit already.

         See, the Fleet Lords -- that's the Brass upstairs in Higher-Higher -- decided a while back, way back in the first days of the UF, that we needed a 'quick' way of gettin troops to the surface of any 'contested' planet. 'Contested' being the political way of sayin some mud-ball we either want to take from someone, or need to take back from someone. So the simple theory went something like this; How we gonna get men down there? Well, first off, we need a sizeable group, right? What's the smallest size of people we can land and still have an effective party, beers 'n all. Well now, that'd be a platoon. Squads are good and all, but they don't have an officer at the head. Just a lonely little Sergeant. So we gotta land a Platoon, with a First or Second Lieutenant heading 'em up, and all four of his squads to watch his ample backside. That done, how we gonna get 'em there? Birds -- that'd be what some might call 'transports' -- would do the trick, 'cept all that flak might cut 'em down 'afore they get there.

         "Flak?" you say? Think of it like this; You got a mass driver. Basically, a giant cannon that sticks up out of a reinforced bunker in the ground. It's a giant gun with electro-magnetic coils wrapped all around the barrel. You stick a shell in there, about 50 kgs -- hollow and filled with micro-shrapnel -- and fire those coils off. EM field is generated, drags that sucker up and spits it on out the business end, right up your aft thrusters. Even if it don't, those rounds have got prox-fuses. They detect anything not sending out the right signal, or a signal at all, and they go boom. And all that pretty micro-shrapnel? Well, it'd get dispersed, now wouldn't it? In a nice shiny -- and highly lethal -- flower. So, the Birds're out since takin flak fire is just too risky. And this ain't no Vid., neither. Sure, ship's got pulse shields. Hell, even us troopers got pulse shields. But they only do so much. No one -- no one -- has got some magic 'protect-me-from-all-harm' ray shield, complete with neat sound affects and dynamic glowing.

         So where does that leave us? If we can't fly em down to the planet, there's only one option left; We drop 'em. And that's were we DTs come in. Funny that, ain't it? They drop us in drop capsules or drop pods and we get called Drop troopers. Real creative, them egg heads in R 'n D. Anyway, like I said, there's two ways they drop us. Capsules or pods. Capsules are one man devices. They're a helluva ride and you run the risk of emerging planet-side with at least a broken leg or two. Three, if you're of the more exotic kind. But they're also the only thing that'll keep you alive on world with heavy ground defences. Pods are the main way we go in. They're large, big enough to hold a squad a piece. A squad being about fifteen men. Usually. War being what it is, teams aren't always up and ready at full load. But, again, war being what it is, the Brass don't much care if you're missing a few guys and gals. So long as you're above that critical 'combat ready' margin, you're fair game for an Op.

         So, say you and your platoon get called up for a drop, ‘cause, hey, lucky you, you're a DT. And this world just happens to be 'friendly' enough that they haven't got MagGuns at every available street corner pointed in your general direction. So they, the Brass, are sending you, and fourteen other mentally deficient people, down in a pod. You gear up, check your weapon, check your gear again -- never can be too careful, mind -- and head on over to your designate drop bay. You and the other fourteen Brain-Deads -- ooh, forgot that one earlier -- show up outside something outta some old science-fiction novel. Looks kinda like a big cone, only the top don't end in a point, but instead ends in a flat top. The base, a kinda rounded affair, is about five meters in diameter and the entire thing is nearly eight meters high. I've been told the design is 'reminiscent of Old Earth landers'. You know, the kind the old spacers used to use when they came back from spending time in orbit? Wouldn't know too much about that, though. Never did like history much. My own, or any one else's.

         Whatever it reminds somebody else of, I know this much. They're cramped, hot -- even before you hit the Thermosphere -- and get to be real uncomfortable, real quick. But they got all the gear a squad needs to hunker down for a day or two, got comm. units up the ying-yang and have about thirty centimetres of star-fighter grade hull plating for protection. That might not sound like much to some, but keep in mind our own armour is only about three, maybe four centimetres, tops. That extra little bit really helps calm a trooper's nerves.

         So, anyway, now you're inside this over sized tin-can, right? Waiting for sweet Skip to hit the bright red button on the bridge. Well, it might be not be red. And the Captain's name might not be Skip. But to every trooper on every boat, from now all the way back to the first days, we've thought of the button as big and red, and the Captain's name is always Skip; Male, female, don't much matter to us.

         Now, there's lots of clanging goin on about now from the outside, as heavy loaders descend from the ceiling to drag the pod right on into the Plunger -- which has probably got a far more technical and laborious term attached to it, but, again, we don't much care. Next, there is a swift jerk as the Plunger rams the pod into position, deep in the breech of the MagGun.

         Oh, excuse me. It's not a 'MagGun' in this instance. It's a 'Magnetic Acceleration Unit', used in the 'delivery of troopers'. Whatever. Them Navy types can play their games all they want. All I know is, MagGuns use EM fields to huck huge gobs of metal about, and MAUs use EM fields to huck huge gobs of metal about, filled with itty bitty little troopers. Give it all the fancy names you want, boys, it's still a MagGun and I'm still an undersize slug aimed at a 'contested' mud-ball that I've likely never heard of, nor wanted to.

         So, right about now, the troopers on board this 'drop capsule ' -- insert bullet or slug here, we usually do -- are running through a variety of very bad jokes, nervous laughter, prayer, and safety checks. Oh, that's one thing I've forgotten. Safety harnesses. They make you put those on, right before they seal up the pod. Naval Ensigns in charge of the MAUs come on board and check each trooper, to make sure he or she has got their straps on and in place.

         The straps are two fold; One is your traditional material type. Usually some ultra-strong, ultra-lightweight deal. You know, steel-silk weave or something like that. The second type is the MagSeal. Basically, another magnet. Only this time it don't shoot nothing. Just magnetises the seat you sit in, and sticks your armour to the seat, preventing you from gettin jostled about. The egg heads like magnets, can you tell? You'd think it's the Holy Grail itself, the way some of them go on about it.

         Anyway, back on topic. Where was I... Oh yeah. So you've been strapped up, you've been Plunged on into the breech of the MAU and Skip upstairs has his or her hand poised over the Big Red Button, waiting for the seconds to stretch. ‘Cause that's what Navy types like to do. Wait. Wait for as long as possible, until they just can't wait anymore. And then... BOOM! No warning, no 'heads up', no nothing. Suddenly you're sitting in your chair, unable to move since you're magnetically sealed to it, then the red light comes on in the interior, there’s a loud bang and suddenly your stomach is in the Drop Bay, with most of the rest of your insides, and your skin and skeleton are halfway down the Chute. Supposedly, you got thirty seconds from the moment that red light comes on to the moment you launch, but I ain't buying it. Not that I've bothered to check, but I can tell you it don't feel like thirty seconds. It's always either too short or too long.

         So now you're in the Chute. About four maybe five seconds after the bang -- your stomach still hasn't quite caught up -- you hit the Ionosphere. You know, the first 'layer' making up a planet's atmosphere? That's pretty rough, hitting that. Picture this; You're standing there, minding your own business, legs braced, hands behind you back. Some mule walks right on up to you, turns 'round, and lets out a nice and solid kick with its hind quarters. Right into your stomach. That'd be pretty close to what hittin the Ionosphere'd be like.

         That's phase one. So now, after the four or five more seconds it's taken to catch your breath, your stomach has accelerated right on past you, since it was still tryin to catch up and ain't affected by such silly things as 'air resistance' and such. Right about now, the pod is starting to skim the top of the Thermosphere. The underside is startin to go a lovely cherry colour, too. But heat shieldin should keep most of it out. The temp. inside the pod starts to spike, of course, and the metal starts groaning as it expands. Cold of space to super hot of re-entry makes some pretty odd noises and, I gotta tell ya, the first time you hear it you'd swear your pod is about to come apart at the seams.

         So as you pass on through the Thermosphere, your stomach starts to catch up. This would be about the time amateurs start to gag and possibly more. Apparently, while stomachs aren't affected by air resistance and such, they highly object to being separated from their hosts and having to chase them all about the universe. Which is also why any first time DT is told, straight up, by their squad leader not to wear their helmet on the ride down, no matter what Regs. say. The Regs. -- or ‘Regulations,’ if you prefer -- take things like 'rapid decompression' into account. And yeah, if a trooper hasn't got their helmet on when that happens, they'll be dead inside of a minute, if they're unlucky and live that long. But let's be realistic here, shall we? Why would there be decomp. -- that’s short for ’rapid decompression resulting in extreme loss of air, heat and life’ -- on a pod? Cause something prodded it a little too hard. Like, say, an enemy round? If that happens, decompression would be the last thing on a trooper's mind.

         So we've passed the Thermosphere, the Ionosphere and most of the Stratosphere by this time. Not much happens in the Stratosphere. It goes eerily quiet for a second or two -- not too sure why that is nor do I particularly care -- then the fireworks start. Most targeting comps can't get an accurate bead on you from orbit, even low orbit. But entering the atmosphere tends to kick up a stink, what with the streaks of fire in the sky, and what not. So by the time you hit the Troposphere, some twenty to thirty seconds after leaving the Drop Bay, the sky around you is starting to light up with flak and solid rounds from ground batteries who rather object to your plans to throw a barbeque on their world.

         At about this time, when all of Hell is knocking outside, the thrusters kick in. Big nasty looking gouts of flame shoot out from the base of the pod 'n kill the speed. This usually results in another kick from that bloody mule. I say usually because sometimes people have passed out at this time and don't feel much of anything at that point. Something about blood rushin to the head or a way, not sure which. And, you guessed it, don't much care. Either way, the thrusters don't fire for long, but they do fire with enough force to throw the pod up at a whopping three or four kilometres per hour. Now, I know that's slow. Real slow, in fact. But think about that a sec; We were just plunging at god-only-knows what speed down. And now we're going at some speed up. I've been told that this is to throw off the computers and gunners below. At any rate it doesn't last long.

         Shortly there after, the on board computer picks a random trajectory downwards and fires a second set of thrusters. The Pod is then accelerated down towards the surface at a decent clip where, seconds before impact, thrusters are fired a third time to once again kill enough momentum to stop the 'landing' from being a 'crash'. But again, that 'landing' is polite-speak for 'holy-crap-we-are-all-gonna-die'. I have, however, heard some concede that is not a landing but is in fact a 'controlled crash'. None of them, mind you, have ever been through a drop.

         From that point on, the ride is largely over. The mag-seal breaks and you can move, the harness straps snap back and out of the way and you can get up, and your weapon is released from its mooring in the centre rack. The sides of the pod in three separate places where there are no chairs suddenly drop open, like the petals of some crazed flower, and we all storm out and down the ramps to go and do our job, whatever that may be.

         Yeah. The life of a Drop Trooper is hard. We're the first in, but we're glad to do it. And do you know why? Cause once you've ridden the Chute, no drug, no ride at an amusement park, no vehicle or star ship will ever give you the same high. And that, my friend, is why we get the name 'Nutter'.