The drop

Coming out of a hyperspace jump is always disorienting, due to some small inconsistencies particles can change their orientation or probability, so weird things can happen. It's rarely lethal just because of the scope of it, but there were times trooper's cells changed their properties due to this shift, either not enough information was passed when they shifted dimensions or the atoms themselves changed to a different element, breaking molecules at times. This posed a serious threat to any organic bodies when making a hyperspace jump. These fluctuations happened more often near great dimensional distortions, anything that bends space-time, like planets, stars, black holes etc. This is why hyperspace jumps are calculated over rather short distances with a line of sight, the usual jump's length is about 10 light years, but in clusters or heavily populated areas it falls to 2 light years. Traversing this distance is slow and painful when going at sublight speeds, the best ships in the fleet, using the most robust blackhole generators can only reach 0.8 causality at max acceleration, which is still very fast, but even at 1 causality you will still be moving only at the speed of light, meaning a distance of one light year will take you a year in relative time. But like always, physics has its own little dirty tricks, one of them is because a black hole is always black hole, it's a zero-dimensional point that will be a point no matter how many dimensions you'll add to your coordinates system, you will always get the same amount of power from the generators. Sure, you'll need to readjust the shielding around those mini black holes which power your ship, but they produce enough power to compensate that. When in Hyperspace, you shorten the distance between the two points, making the path much shorter, so moving at 0.5 causality through hyperspace will be much faster, moving in the outer rim can take a 5 light year long jump only two hours in relative time. Elissa was aware of it all, this is why she found 2nd Platoon's conversation rather amusing.

She was less amused when they came out of the jump and her left arm was missing, probably disintegrated in the transformation, a rare and an unpleasant outcome of being unshielded during a hyperspace jump. She could more than agree it would be preferable to be in the shielded sleeping pod during the jump. Luckily, enhanced bodies are built to deal with these outcomes, as soon as a an alternative limb will be placed to where the stub is, the nano-bots in her body will reattach it, she'll just have to wait until she'll be back in the ship's medical centre. For now her armour suit rebuilt itself back to the shape of a gauntlet to compensate her lost limb, thanks to the suits nano-bots and store of suit building materials. Elissa made a note to look for heavy metals once on the ground, to replenish her material stock. She closed and open her new palm, controlled by the ARPC's link to her brain, the sensory data just kicking in allowing her to feel with her temporary replacement hand as though it was her own. "Report" she said to Anna directly, without the use of the ARPC. It was uncustomary to have both the Co and the XO on the same vessel during the drop, to preserve the chain of command should their vessel will get hit, but Elissa had her reasons to not follow this custom. "Everyone is a hundred percent, minor transformation irregularities. We're green to go" Anna replied. "Update it to include that I lost my left hand and send the report up." Elissa ordered, Anna's eyes open wide as she looked at Elissa's left hand, seeing it's there, making her give an inquisitive look to her CO. "The suit compensated, did you also send the deployment plans?" she asked as the pilot announced the EMP bombardment was on its way, the glow of reentry was visible through the shuttle's external-view screen, some distant trails of missiles were visible on the background of the planet's horizon. "Done and yes, platoon leaders briefed personally." Anna Answered. "Let's get ready" She said quietly, while buzzing the ARPC to broadcast to the entire company "1st, fifteen seconds to Black out, twenty five to touch down, forty five to positions, weapons hot on mark" she waited to see the count down, "Mark! Good luck!".

Elissa switched her ARPC view to the outside using the shuttle's external cameras, fifteen seconds exactly after the mark, everything went black and dark.