Smokejumper

The day after finishing her basic firefighter training, Maya Estrada travelled farther than she had ever before. Under her uniform she wore a ring on a chain. It had been her father’s, but her mother had passed it on to her when she left for mandatory service. Probably as a reminder of what could happen, she thought.

Maya knew her mother wasn't happy about her choice of service, but she wasn't one to intervene. "You are your father's daughter," was all she said. Maya was to be a firefighter, like her father before her. He had started in his mandies as well, and continued on until he died fighting a wildfire when she was nine.

It was her first time off-world. When the liner entered the jump gate she was prepared to be amazed. It turned out, however, that super-C was boring. An even, smooth, featureless grey filled the window. She watched for a few minutes, hoping for some change, but only strained her eyes. Maya darkened the window and ran her hand over her close-cropped, tightly curled black hair. The haircut was required in basic, and seeing her reflection made her turn away from the window. She felt the short hair made her least-liked features, a sharp nose and thin lips, stand out even more. While her skin was a deep black-brown with a reddish undercast like her mother’s, her features were sharp like her father’s.

When lunch was served she was ready to refuse in some way without making it clear she had no credits. Instead it was placed in front of her and before Maya could say anything the server said with a smile, "Compliments of the Federation. If you'd like any alcohol, cannabis, soporific or stimulant that will be charged, though."

She was on her way to smokejumper school. Firefighters in areas too rough for robots or vehicles. When she was one of the four candidates selected out of training to go straight to advanced training, she already knew that was what she wanted to do.

The exit from super-C to normal space was at least a little interesting. The featureless grey flashed a blinding white, then was replaced with the blackness of space, stars becoming visible as her eyes re-adjusted. The planet below was far different from Earth. Maybe closer to Earth as it used to be eons ago.

She saw huge swaths of green around and between the cities. There were a few places on Earth that were still that way, but nothing like what she now witnessed. The cities were smaller than what she was used to, and most had an agricultural area directly around the city itself. Still, most of the planet was green.

Maya went from the space port to an airport where she got on the smallest plane she’d ever seen. From there it was a few hours flying over those vast expanses of green. They landed at a small strip adjacent to a small building, no more than eight or nine stories. The construction seemed solid enough, though lacking in any decoration besides a sign with a parachute over a flame.

The building wasn't what held her attention, though. All around the clearing trees reached for the skies. The air smelled like the rooftop garden on the block, but stronger. The sharp, resinous aroma of the evergreen trees mixed with the rich, loamy scent of decaying plants carried far in the humid heat. She stepped off the airstrip onto the grass. The ground was soft underfoot, and uneven. She dealt with momentary vertigo as her body tried to interpret the strange sensation of not standing on a truly solid surface.

As the other members of the cohort arrived she noticed that only one other was a Junior Troop like herself. Most of them had been wildlands firefighters for at least a year before qualifying for the program. A few of them, Troops wearing the green tab signifying they were still in their mandatory service period, eyed the two fresh recruits with obvious suspicion. The older candidates, those past their mandies and higher in rank, had no sour looks for any of them.

The other Junior Troop approached her. “Junior Troop Estrada,” he said, looking at her name tag, “Mel Travers, Sol 2. Just finished basic. You?”

She extended a hand. “Maya Estrada. Same, only Earth. You… look like you’ve spent a lot of time outside. Is that from training, or…?”

Mel laughed. “No, I’m straight off the farm.”

“Ah, yeah, Venus,” Maya said. “I didn’t want to assume.” She looked at the grass under her feet and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, getting used to the sensation. “So you must be used to this,” she said pointing at the ground.

“Have you really never been outdoors before?” Mel looked puzzled.

“Well, sure. But always in the city.” Maya inspected her nails. “Where there’s solid concrete underfoot.”

“You’ll get used to it in no time,” he said with a wink.

Eager to change the subject Maya pointed out that the head instructor was coming out of the building and the other candidates were beginning to line up. They joined in the line up, falling in as they’d learned in basic.

Once the line had settled the instructor called the seven highest ranking candidates forward. She passed a tablet to the senior ranking candidate and spoke with them in low tones for a moment before turning back to face the rest of the candidates.

“I am Commodore Jihane Ibrahim,” she said, her face reflecting the glow of the sun in its deep, cool brown; faint lines around her eyes visible only by the slight shadows there. “You may call me Commodore, or Sir. I am not your mother or your father, and I am not a civilian instructor.”

She wandered past the line of nineteen candidates remaining in the formation. “I’ve been a wildlands firefighter for 22 years, an officer and smokejumper for 19 years, and a Doctor of Government in Wildlands Emergency Management for nine years. I’ve run this academy for six years, and will continue do so until I retire.”

“I see I have five mandies with experience, and two fresh out of boot. I’ve selected the highest ranking candidates to pair up with you. The other twelve of you, pair off as you see fit.” She returned to her place at the front. “From this moment forward, you will do nothing on your own. Your partner will be in line of sight or hearing at every moment. If I ask you where your partner is you should be able to answer immediately and precisely. Losing track of your partner is an automatic fail.” She nodded toward the high ranking candidates she had pulled out earlier.

The first was Lieutenant Kal Markham, a lanky blond with pink showing through the dun of his tanned skin. “Junior Troop Estrada, you’re with me.” The next chose Mel, and the other mandatory service members, all Troops, looked at them with daggers in their eyes.

Kal took his place beside Maya, and leaned over to whisper in the nearest unhappy Troop’s ear. “We had to pick the fresh recruits, as they’ll need the most help to stay alive.” This mollified the Troop and the word passed through the rest of the formation in whispers.

Once the pairing-off had finished, and the assignments were noted in Commodore Ibrahim’s tablet, they were given their first task. “On the seventh floor you will find your rooms, marked with your names. You and your partner will drop your luggage there, then inspect and pack the rucksacks you find there with the gear that is laid out. You will mark your rucksack with one of the adhesive name tags that are being passed out now. Then you and your partner will report to the ninth floor to receive your fire suits. Mark the trousers, jacket, gloves, boots, helmet liner and helmet each with another of the adhesive name tags you have been given. You will then report back here in formation, geared up. There is no lift. You have thirty minutes. Go!”

“Sir, yes Sir!” the formation called out in unison, then began a mad scramble into the building. Kal and Maya both reached out to hold the other back, and laughed.

“Thirty minutes is a lifetime,” Kal said.

“Yeah, uh, yes, Sir. It was like this in basic,” Maya answered. “My bag is light enough I can run up the stairs if I need to, so why get caught in the crush?”

They finished their task, Kal taking time to show Maya how to inspect and pack the gear she wasn’t used to. The rucksack was heavier than Maya had thought, and carrying it up to the ninth floor was painful. However, once she had her fire suit on, Kal helped her adjust the numerous straps and pads on the pack making it far more comfortable than she had expected.

Kal and Maya, without rushing, arrived with five minutes to spare. Many of the others were sweating from the exertion of their mad scramble in the high humidity. Most of them, however, had made it back in under half the time allowed. Something she knew she’d have to get used to soon enough.

Commodore Ibrahim returned, followed by a Captain, and three Senior Sergeants. “The trainers will now hand out radios and navigation devices. You have forty hours to reach all the locations marked in the devices and pick up the markers at each stop. Each pair of you has different locations between here and the end goal. Failure to pick up any of the markers is an automatic fail of this school. Failure to show up at the end goal within the forty-hour time limit is a strike. Two strikes and you fail the school. Any questions?”

“Sir, no Sir!” the candidates called out in unison. As the trainers handed out the devices the pairs took off into the woods at the edges of the clearing. Kal and Maya were the last to be given their device and leave.

“I heard what you told that Troop, Sir,” Maya said. “Is it true?” 

“Not at all,” Kal said. “I argued with Sub-Lieutenant Obele over who got you. Your academic and fitness scores are no joke. Travers is a very close second. The rest of the mandies are all good enough, I guess, but you two are cut out to be exceptional.”

“Thank you, Sir.” Maya watched as they approached the tree-line. It seemed dark and otherworldly to her eyes.

“And when we’re out here, I’m just Kal,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for the Sir crap in garrison, but on the fire line there’s no time for that. If I, or any of the others with experience tell you to jump, you do it. That’s how we all stay alive.”

They walked in a silence broken only by the humming of insects, the chirping of birds and tree frogs, and the occasional check-in on the radio. The canopy closed over her head, the branches high above her threatening to fall on her at any moment. It was somehow both claustrophobic and comforting. Under foot, the ground was uneven, rich odors rising from every footstep. The air felt thick in her lungs, sweat soaked into her helmet liner, and more trickled down her spine. Every little breeze made the needles rustle in the trees around her and mixed the resinous aroma of the trees with the rotten smell of the loam below.

The day wore on, and they had picked up three of eleven markers, but Maya had trouble discerning where the sun was. They were in a place of constant gloom under the towering trees. “Sir, uh, Kal,” she asked, “how long have we been out here?”

He checked the navigation device. “Just coming up on nine hours. Let’s stop and eat.”

Maya nodded. “Gladly.”

Kal showed her how to quickly drop her pack by pulling on the latch at her chest. “It takes a little extra time to reconnect everything before you pick it up, but dropping it like this should become as natural as breathing.”

It took her a couple tries to find the latch without feeling around for it. “Yeah, if I needed it off in a hurry right now I’d already be too late.” She reconnected all the straps and sat down leaning against the pack. “Of all things, my ankles are exhausted.”

Kal smiled. “Yeah, I never left the block until my mandies,” he said, “so I know exactly what you’re talking about. It took me about three weeks to get used to walking in the wild.”

Maya pursed her lips, “I can handle three weeks. I’ll be used to it before I graduate, at least.”

They ate protein bars and sipped on their water. “With the way the light has barely changed I thought I might be too soft for this,” Maya said between sips. “Has it really been nine hours?”

“It has.” Kal looked at her. “I figured if someone as smart as you were coming to Dem 2, you’d have looked it up. 38 hours, 17.4 minutes per planetary rotation.”

Maya snorted, “I would’ve, only I didn’t know where they were sending me. Never saw my orders. They just said ‘get on this liner,’ and then ‘get on this plane.’”

“Well, then, welcome to Erinle, second planet of the Dem system.” Kal stood. “I need to piss, then you should do the same, and we’ll get to the next marker.” He turned his back to her and relieved himself against a tree. “Don’t you start until I’m done. That’s another habit to pick up. One of us should always be on lookout.”

“Makes sense.”

When Kal finished up he said “your turn.”

She moved a meter away from her pack, dropped her trousers and squatted, keeping her eyes on Kal. “I’m going to pretend that my ankles aren’t tired and we’ll continue straight on through to the end, right?”

Kal shrugged. “The first three markers were pretty far apart. If they’re all like this we may well have to.”

Maya stood and fixed her undergarments and fire suit. She knelt down and shrugged into her pack the way Kal had showed her, and they continued on. The next marker was just a few hundred meters ahead and they reached it in what seemed like no time. The trail they had been following, though, came to an end.

“Hm.” Kal pulled the marker off the tree and placed it in her pack. “It looks like we need to make our own path from here.” He pointed off the side of the path. “The next marker is that way.”

Where the trail had been hard-packed, with an occasional rock or root to trip her up, making her way through the trees was downright treacherous. Ferns, which Kal told her were called fire ferns, grew out of the thick, soft pine duff. Fallen branches, some five or six meters long, provided constant obstacles. The occasional downed tree had to be circumnavigated or climbed over.

“All of this,” Kal said, pointing to the duff, the ferns, and the fallen wood around him, “is fuel for wildfires. A great deal of your job will be to clean stuff like this up.”

They reached a small clearing, where Maya could once again see the slowly darkening sky. She noticed a new smell here, too, reminding her that she’d grown accustomed to the smell of the forest. “What’s that smell?”

Kal stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh, nice.” He walked to a pine growing on the edge of the clearing, smaller than the ones they’d been walking past and with a different pattern of bark. He pulled off a small piece of the bark and sniffed at it before handing it to Maya. “Here, check this out.”

The bark smelled of vanilla. The scent was heady and sweet. “What is this?”

“Pinus erinle,” Kal answered. “Engineered from Pinus ponderosa on Earth.”

“Studying botany?”

“No, you’ll come to learn the names of the trees and plants you protect.” Kal shrugged. “Or at least, I did.”

“So you’re from here?”

“Well, no, I’m from Kiwa, Bul 4a.” They crossed the clearing. “I’ve been stationed here for two years. We’re at the end of the wet season, and it’s been drier than normal. Fire season’s going to be bad this year.”

Maya mopped the sweat from her brow. “This is dry?”

“For the wet season, yes.” Kal pointed out their next marker. He pulled it and put it in Maya’s pack. “Sure, it’s 80 percent humidity. But we’ve had less than thirty centimeters of rain this season. Come dry season, this entire valley will be a tinderbox.”

“It’s hard to imagine all this on fire,” Maya said. She was going to say more until she saw another clearing ahead. This one, however, was black, not green.

“Dust mask and goggles on.” Kal didn’t bark it like an order but Maya felt the seriousness of it all the same. “The ash produces fine particulate that’s both bad to breathe and painful in the eyes.”

Maya stepped into the burn area with Kal. Even with the mask the smell of burnt wood overtook everything. The ground was coated in a thick layer of ash, the ghosts of burned trunks dotted throughout the landscape. As they crossed the thousands of hectares of scorched land, Kal pointed out small green nubs, pushing out of the ashes. “That’s why they’re called fire ferns. They’re the first thing that comes back. This fire was last season.”

Maya compared the desolation she stood in with the trees behind her. If there was any way to protect them, she would do it. “Do you think I can be stationed here?”

“I don’t know,” Kal said. “But if you prove my instincts about you right, I’ll personally request you for my platoon.”