Exodus: Empires at War: Book 05 - Ranger

by Doug Dandridge

“You’re a good soldier, son,” said Drill Sergeant Ferguson, walking up behind Walborski. “Probably the best I have ever seen come through Infantry Advanced. Remember what I told you.”

  “Don’t just concentrate on becoming a killer?” said Walborski, turning around to look the Sergeant in the eye. “Even though there are billions of creatures out there that need killing?”

  “And when you’re in a position to take them out, don’t hesitate,” said Ferguson, a concerned look on his face. “But when you’re not in that position remember, you are still a human being. With human wants and desires. And in a position that will probably not lead to a wonderful retirement in the distant future. So enjoy it while you can.”

  Cornelius saluted the Drill Sergeant, then waited for the man to walk away before he headed into the barracks to pack his gear. It was Thursday, and he had until Monday to report to the NCO Academy. He had thought to stay on base until Sunday, then take the wormhole to Orange, Sanctuary B IV, the fourth world of the second star out from the black hole, so he could settle into the barracks that night. Now the words of the Drill Sergeant struck home.

  Why not, he thought, linking with the com system and sending a request. Travel through the wormhole was restricted to militarily necessary transport. But he was the holder of the Imperial Medal of Heroism. It came with certain privileges, including priority transportation. Within moments he had a reply to his request. Approved. With a smile he finished packing his bags and called for a taxi. Now that he had a destination he was ready to go.

  Chapter Four

  It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash. Fred Woodworth.

  AZURE, SEPT 20TH-25TH, 1000.

  “Set and match,” yelled the coach, who was also the referee of the game.

  Rebecca jumped up and down on the court, her feet clearing almost twenty centimeters. “We won,” she yelled, raising her fist in the air. She really didn’t like the personal part of school, except for gym. She was very athletic, at this period when girls were bigger and stronger than boys.

  Her teammates clapped her on the back. Her ace serve had won the fourth set of the match. Many of her serves and spikes had won two of the three sets prior. Volleyball was her favorite, though she also liked basketball just fine. Of course they played those sports differently on lower gravity planets. Azure had one point four one gravities at the surface. Jumping was difficult, and led to sports injuries, which could be healed fairly quickly, but were still painful. It was easy to generate artificial gravity as long as there was enough energy. Reducing gravity was a different proposition. Objects could be shielded from gravitons and raised, at a huge cost. Lowering the gravity over a large surface, like a playing field, was just too hard to accomplish without many disturbing fluctuations. At least for children’s sports.

  “Congratulations,” said Margo, the captain of the other team.

  Rebecca could tell by the other girl’s expression that she really didn’t mean it. She knew Margo was jealous of Rebecca’s athletic and scholastic abilities. She was jealous of Margo’s looks, but wasn’t sure she would trade her two talents for Margo’s one.

  After gym was biology lab. Most subjects could be studied at home, and were, but labs were thought to be too hazardous without hands on supervision. So they worked in a lab that kept the native life from interacting with them in a harmful manner.

  Today they were dissecting a plantimal that was a small time predator and scavenger. There were nanite fields in place to prevent any of the creature’s materials from getting into the environment shared by the students. There probably wasn’t any danger, but the adults weren’t willing to take chances.

  Rebecca sliced into her specimen with a laser scalpel while her partner, Timmy, took notes and recorded the procedure. She traced the rudimentary nervous system from the tiny node that was its brain. She opened the creature up more and got a look at the two chambered heart that propelled fluids through its body. They observed and noted, and Rebecca and Timmy received an A plus, as always.

  “See you Wednesday,” said Timmy as Rebecca got into the aircar her dad had driven to pick her up. Rebecca smiled back at the boy, then stepped into the car. She thought Timmy liked her, and she liked him. He wasn’t the strongest or handsomest boy in the class, though he definitely wasn’t weak or ugly. And he seemed to be on the same mental level as Rebecca. She didn’t think she was that pretty, even with her long dark hair and blue eyed combination. Like everyone on Azure she was dark skinned. Some were darker than others, but fair skins didn’t do well with all the ultraviolet, so they were enhanced with greater pigmentation.

  “We’re not going right home,” said her dad as he lifted the car. “I have to stop by the job site for a little while.”

  Rebecca smiled as she heard that. It meant that she didn’t have to watch her little brother, which meant that the little shit was with a caregiver, probably their neighbors.

  “How did school go today?” asked her dad when she didn’t say anything.

  “Fine.”

  “Who was that little boy?”

  “That was Timmy, my lab partner,” said Rebecca, thinking again about the boy’s smile.

  “What faith is he?” asked her dad, looking over at her as the car took over the flying.

  “Dad,” said Rebecca in her you’re kidding me voice. “I’m not about to marry him.” Not yet, anyway. And I really don’t care what church he goes to, or if he goes to any at all. She really wasn’t sure about the God thing at all, and thought there might be some better choices for practicing faith if she ever developed any.

  Her father was quiet for most of the trip to the worksite, and Rebecca thought he might be embarrassed by his question. Nah, that’s not like him. He’s worried about something.

  Her dad circled the aircar over the job site. He was an assistant project engineer for a company that installed underground shelters. Below was the newest shelter to be installed on Azure. They used the same kind of protective central capsules that were installed in warships, a large cylinder of hard alloys and carbon fiber armors, with multiple floors for quarters, messing facilities, and clinics, with lots of storage, power generating units and recycling tanks.

  She had seen this one when they were digging the hole. Two kilometers straight down, and then the destroyer central capsule was put together and sealed into a single unit by nanotech. The cylinder was one hundred and fifty meters long by seventy-five in diameter, and had room for over twenty thousand people in not quite comfort. Many more than the town it was being installed for. Jeffers was only home to ten thousand, though it was growing fast enough to warrant this kind of shelter.

  Massive robots were layering the dirt back over the three hundred meters of ferocrete that had been poured over the shelter. To her eye it looked impregnable, though from what her father said it was anything but. He had told her that it would hold up to medium scale nukes or minor kinetic penetrators. And that anything big would blast right through. Shelters were to protect against pirates or raiders. Any real military force would be able to find them, fix them, and kill them.

  Dad landed the car near one of the lift entrances to the shelter. He motioned for her to get out, then led the way to the lift which was waiting for them. The two kilometer trip straight down did not take long, and soon the lift was opening onto a chamber that led into the shelter. The heavy door was retracted, and they walked into the first real chamber of the shelter, an entry in which refugees were processed before being assigned to quarters.

  The cylinder was a hive of activity, with workers and robots installing equipment and moving supplies. Rebecca had been on other shelters at this stage, but this one had the signs of being rushed into service.

  For several hours they walked around the cylinder, taking a lift up to the top level, then down thirty floors to the bottom. They walked through room after room, quart
ers, corridors, supply rooms, even a couple of armories. Her dad signed off on some paperwork at several locations after making an inspection, and then led the way back to the entrance and the lift back up.

  “What’s the matter, dad?” she asked him as soon as they were back in the air.

  “You know about the war?” asked her dad, a concerned look on his face.

  “Of course,” said Rebecca. “It’s just about all there is on the net.”

  “I’ve been called up,” said dad, who she knew was an engineering officer in the Imperial Army Reserve. “We’re going to try and fortify the planet as much as possible.”

  “Will that help?”

  “Maybe. Probably not. I really don’t know. It depends on how much they hit us with, and how much of the Fleet we have in the system.”

  “But, they have to protect us. Don’t they?”

  Her father didn’t answer, and she realized he didn’t want to say what he had to say if he was to be honest. And he was the most honest man she knew. She looked out the window of the car, watching as small villages and farm fields passed below, the terrestrial support lands that allowed them to live on a planet where the natural life had a cell form that wouldn’t sustain them. At least without heavy nanite augmentation. There were cows down there, and horses, and other animals that were not nutritious to the native life. Not that such would stop native predators from killing and eating them, if not for the colony defenses.

  “I want you to go camping with me this weekend,” he said after the silence had grown for too long. “I want you to know how to survive if you have to.”

  “What about the shelters?”

  “Those are death traps if the Ca’cadsans come. I know it and your mom knows it. I will try to get back home if they come, but that might not be possible. It will be up to you and your mom to keep yourselves and your little brother alive.”

  Rebecca didn’t know what to say, so took the option of not saying anything at all.

  The next day her dad was in full uniform, a Captain in the Imperial Army, and left the house, not to be seen for several days.

  He appeared again Friday night, and loaded up Rebecca and their camping gear for a weekend campout. Rebecca had been camping before, but felt that this was going to be something more.

  * * *

  The campsite was on a hillside, more or less out in the open except for the shade of a couple of trees. The actual camp was in a cavern, where they would sleep after dad’s friend Ted had made sure it was clear. That had been accomplished by shooting the large predator that had laired there. Now they had their campsite covered by a pheromone screen that kept all native animal forms away. Ted showed her how to make a fire that would keep her warm without giving out a lot of light.

  “Of course, if it’s summer you really don’t have to worry about heat,” had said the man who moved like a cat and seemed to know everything about the wilderness on this world.

  Rebecca wondered what the man did for a living. She only knew that he was a member of the reserves who didn’t have a family, and she was sure that he was not working as an engineer.

  He showed her how to apply pheromones to her body that would keep animals away from her, as well as many of the plantimals. She practiced sharpening a knife, then figuring out directions from the star patterns. He also taught her how to use rope, both regular and nanoweave, the kind of rope that attached to itself in unbreakable loops for any kind of use. With the standard rope it was knots, and she learned a number of them. It was late at night when she went to bed exhausted, not even needing to kick in her reticular activating system.

  Dawn came early. She knew because she saw the sun come up over the trees, having already been up for an hour, while Ted taught her the morning calls of the jungle, then how to make a cold breakfast with dry rations and water. After that he led her on a recon through the jungle at the time when the night hunters were going to cover, and before the day hunters were out. She learned the names and habits of some plantimals she was not familiar with. Knowing those habits could keep her safe from the bizarre creatures, or give her a trap to use against an enemy. He introduced her to the safe trees at this time, large plants that kept most other life forms away with their chemicals, which, while inimical to most native life, was harmless to Earth creatures.

  Later in the morning they visited a stretch of grassland, where large herbivores grazed on the grass like plants while the harsh sunlight reflected off their silvered hides. Ted told her to shoulder her rifle and shoot one of the placid looking animals.

  “I can’t shoot them,” said Rebecca, staring in horror at the man.

  “I’m telling you to shoot one. Now shoot one, or I will shoot all of them, starting with that baby over there.”

  Rebecca looked helplessly at her father, hoping he would intervene.

  “Do it, Becca,” said her dad, who then looked at Ted and nodded. He looked back at his daughter. “If you’re out here trying to survive you’re going to have to kill food without thinking about it.”

  “I killed the hell hound,” squealed Rebecca, staring at her father.

  “And it was good that you did,” said Ted, putting his rifle to his shoulder and aiming at the baby. “Now show me you can kill something that’s not trying to kill you.”

  Rebecca was shaking with anger, tears in her eyes as she raised her rifle and aimed it at the adult. She didn’t want the beast to suffer, so she sighted in carefully, then squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked into her shoulder, and blood that was almost black under the harsh light of the sun spurted from the hit. The beast bellowed and went down on its front knees.

  “Finish it,” ordered Ted.

  The crying girl raised her rifle again and finished off the beast. Then Ted showed her how to butcher it. They ate the flesh of the animal for lunch and dinner, after taking booster shots of gut nanites to help them digest it.

  Ted showed her some tricks to get food from the vegetable kingdom as well, while warning her away from trying to gain sustenance from the plantimals. “Too many of them are poisonous. Even if your nanites protect you, it’s just not worth the risk.”

  That evening they fired more weapons, including some that most civilians did not have access to. Another night in the woods, part of a Sunday, and they headed back home. Ted gave her a lot of homework, readings and vids, as well as a promise to her dad to take them out the next couple of weekends. She knew that dad was determined that his little girl would survive, no matter what.

  Chapter Five

  I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. Ulysses S. Grant.

  SUPERSYSTEM, JEWEL AND OTHER WORLDS. SEPTEMBER 21-24th, 1000.

  He walked into the wormhole room on Ruby in a building on the grounds of a large military landing field. There were people in uniform everywhere, and a long line leading into the wormhole room. It looked like a long wait, until one of the armed sentries noticed him. His medal had been of use before, and was so again, as a First Sergeant escorted him to the beginning of line and through the hole. Walborski was aware of the stares of the people he bypassed, including some officers. There were murmurs, which died as soon as people saw the ribbon around his neck leading to the medal on his breast.

  Cornelius had felt this before, the somatic experience of wormhole travel, so it came as no surprise. Still, it was a disorienting experience. A step through the silvered surface and he was transported into a place where time had no meaning. He seemed to float for hours without a body, nowhere and everywhere. And then he was stepping out of the wormhole, on the other side, his implant clock telling him he had spent one ten thousandth of a second in transit.

  The only disorientation came when there was no karat in his vision showing him the way to his next destination. It should have been there. Some of the guards in this crowded room looked at him, while people kept moving around him from behind. A naval officer, a Lieutenant Commander, approached and rendered a salute to the award. Her name tag said her last nam
e was Okeke, which Cornelius saw on his link was of African origins.

  “You need to move out of the way, PFC,” said the officer, pointing to posted signs that said Keep Moving.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Cornelius, trying to call up a cursor on his implant. “I seem to be experiencing a malfunction on my plant. I’m not sure where to go next.”

  “That is because I am your cursor for the moment, PFC,” said the officer with a smile on her pretty face. “Dr. Yu wants to talk with you a moment, if that’s OK with you.”

  “There will be someone waiting for me in the Hexagon,” said Cornelius, not sure what the director of the largest station in known space would want with him.

  “She’ll be here in a moment,” said the Commander, gesturing for Walborski to follow her. “We don’t see a lot of those around here,” she continued, pointing to his medal.

  “You’ll probably be seeing more of them in the near future,” said the PFC. “If anyone gets back.”

  “I’m afraid you’re correct,” said the officer, leading the way through the door and down a corridor. “I’m hoping for a Fleet assignment myself. It’s hard to sit here knowing that others are doing the fighting.”

  Cornelius smiled and nodded, understanding completely where the woman was coming from. A minute later they were stepping into a small conference room, and a tall blond haired woman stood up and offered her hand, while a small Asian man stood behind her.

  “I’m Dr. Yu, Cornelius,” said the woman, grasping both of his hands in both of hers. “I don’t know if you remember me from the time you last came through here.”

  “I do, ma’am.”

  “And this is Senior Agent Jimmy Wu of the IIA. He’s my bodyguard, as if I need one.”

  “That you most definitely do,” said the man, holding out a hand that Cornelius grasped. “Dr. Yu is very important to the war effort.”

  And she means more to you than that, thought Cornelius, noting the look between them and feeling a bit of depression at the thought of the love he was missing. “I would guess more important than any grunt,” he said with a smile. “Without what you give us we don’t have a chance.”