The men moved in with ghostly silence, their simulated monomolecular blades in hand. One struck, a second later the next, and both light infantrymen went down as their suits went offline from the simulated kill. He motioned the rest of his unit through the gap, then slowed them down thirty meters in. The enemy would know something was up when the sentries didn’t report in. By that time he hoped to be in position to hit the target.
The enemy camp was starting to stir just as they came in sight of it, a squad of soldiers moving out to the breached perimeter. The Ranger trainees let them go by, a pair of soldiers detailed to keep them under close watch, while the rest moved toward the target tent that was lit up like a small town on infrared.
Cornelius sighted in on a man in front of the tent. His firing would be the signal for the others to engage. He squeezed his trigger and the rifle sent out the simulator beam that froze the target’s suit. The rest of the squad opened fire, and within moments the area outside the tent was occupied by frozen statues, while a couple of rifle launched grenades went into the small structure. Behind them a firefight erupted as his two rear security men took on the relief patrol, pinning them down.
At the count of ten seconds they started extraction, moving at an angle to their path of entry, not wanting to give the enemy any chance of picking them up retracing their path. Once clear they moved a couple of hundred meters further into the jungle, then paralleled the river back to their insertion point.
Walborski felt calm for the first time that night as they pulled away from the shore into the darkness of the river. He moved them two kilometers up river before crossing, then to the other shore.
“Good job,” said Master Sergeant Martinez as they came off the boat. “You really caught them off guard with that maneuver.” Of course the training staff had been tracking them by their implants, which had not been accessible to the Opfor.
All the men had lowered their hoods, taken off their gloves, and opened the front of their suits. Many were panting, and Cornelius could feel the sweat running down his face in the high humidity. He looked at the Master Sergeant and nodded his head, feeling exhausted after the night of fun.
They spend a couple more days doing water borne, this time on the coast. They swam in underwater from submarines. They parachuted into the water and swam in. They planted real demolition charges on boats and then blew them out of the water.
On one of the exercises Walborski saw what looked like a shadow moving through the water around him. He didn’t know what it was, and really didn’t want to find out. He headed for the bottom and found some cover in the rocks on the floor of the bay. He opened the zipper of his survival suit and played with his wedding ring, taking comfort from the physical symbol of his pledge. The shadow moved over him, and he caught a glimpse of a very large ocean creature. The Corporal never did know what the creature’s intent had been. It left him alone when he got into a space it couldn’t, and he felt that it probably would have enjoyed a feast of human that night if he hadn’t have been sharp.
* * *
Heaven did not boast any really high mountains. There was a range running down the center of the double continent that ran across the equator of the planet. The tallest peak was just a bit over twenty-five hundred meters. The range was an old one that was worn down through millions of years of erosion. Heaven was a low level tectonically active planet, without significant mountain building through those same millions of years.
Looking at the cliff they were expected to climb, Cornelius thought the Apalian Mountains were more than high enough, thank you. He wasn’t terrified of heights. Such were not passed on to Ranger training. Then again, he was not overly fond of them. He had heard once that people were afraid of heights because they had a death wish. He liked the other explanation, that people realized that the stop at the end of a long fall could kill you.
They spent the first morning learning how to use the ropes, pitons and other equipment they would need for scaling the rocks. Then it was to the tall wooden towers to practice going up and down a sheer surface. Up was easier as far as the Corporal was concerned. All he had to do was keep his feet on the wall and walk while he moved his hands up the rope. Down was a leap of faith as they were taught to rappel, first with feet on the wall, then freely hanging.
That afternoon they made their first real climb, what the instructors called an easy one. Walborski was not so sure about that. They still had to haul their bodies up and over hard rock that scraped and pushed and bruised. They were wearing safety harnesses that would activate if they changed position in a downward manner more than a meter a second. There were some stumbles and falls, and embarrassed people floating slowly down to the ground. Cornelius avoided such himself, mostly through holding on for dear life as he scrambled up the rocks.
They spent the night in quiet repose, everyone sore and exhausted. Cornelius doubted there would be many nights like this, evenings of ease. That wasn’t in the vocabulary of the instructors. He lay back in his bedroll and looked up at the cloud of stars in the sky, enjoying that ease. They were in wilderness, in a star system that was in the center of a densely populated arm of the Galaxy. The sky was multiple close constellations backed by a horizon to horizon river of stars and numerous bright nebulae. He fell asleep with the image of that starscape in his mind.
Dawn came early, and they headed for the task of the day, an ascent up a sheer cliff face, almost a four hundred meter elevation. For this task they needed the pitons, and the morning rang to the sound of rock hammers pushing hard rods into the surface of the cliff. The thirty-one men who had made it this far fought their way up the cliff. Most made it up to the spot where straight wall became overhang. Everyone attempted the overhang, and half fell back to hang from their ropes.
Cornelius fought his way around the overhang with multiple pitons. He was feeling good about himself, and the knowledge that he was going to make it, when the vibrations of a sonic made him slip to two points of contact. He looked up to see a smiling instructor sweeping a sonic stunner over all the men who had made it. That was his last sight of the man before his last foot slipped and he concentrated on holding onto the rock with his one remaining hand. The rest of the men had fallen, and the lift harnesses were set to let them fall twenty meters before they kicked in. The result was fourteen men coming to a jerking stop on the end of fifteen meters of rope.
“No you don’t, Walborski,” said the instructor, waving the sonic back his way. Walborski felt his hand freeze up and his grip loosen. Then the panic of falling back to jerk to a stop at the end of his rope.
He took a moment to calm himself down, telling himself that he had redundant safety systems deployed, lift belt and rope. It still took a moment to calm the terror of having fallen with almost four hundred meters below his back. When he had gotten himself together he pulled himself up the rope and across the overhang, then onto the top.
“You did good, Walborski,” said the instructor as he sat down a couple of meters in from the edge.
“Scared the hell out of me,” said Cornelius, looking up at the Sergeant.
“That’s the idea,” said the instructor with a smile.
Cornelius shook his head as the man moved on to talk with another soldier.
The next morning two more men had dropped out of the class, unable to handle the stress of mountaineering. That day was more of the same, climbing up sheer cliffs. Only this time as darkness fell they went on night maneuvers through the mountains, and by necessity they could not show lights in the wilderness terrain, as that would have allowed bad habits to develop. There were a few minor injuries that night, but overall the men did a good job of navigating the treacherous terrain.
Fourth day they flew by way of hypersonic transport to the southern hemisphere, and the other continent of the western hemisphere. While it had been summer in the north, it was winter down here, and they found themselves in a snow covered landscape. They soon found that was not the only difference. Icy mountains w
ere even more treacherous, and they had another dropout during the two days of winter training.
The last exercise in the mountains was a squad navigation to a target across the mountain terrain of the snowy landscape. Three squads went out, and this time Cornelius served as the point man for his unit under the command of another soldier. He really didn’t feel comfortable in the snow. He had hunted the equatorial lands of New Detroit, and Sestius had been a hot planet with very little frozen water on the surface. To compound problems was the necessity of keeping the survival suits buttoned up to avoid the heat differential between body and environment that would illuminate them like spotlights in the dark on infrared. It was snowing as they moved, an event with both positive and negative impact on the exercise. Cornelius found it difficult to see, and any tracks in the snow were covered almost immediately. Conversely, the Corporal knew he was hard to observe.
Cornelius thought he was leading them on a safe path, and was sure they would reach the target area without a hitch. That was the last thought he had before the Opfor caught his squad in the ambush he had walked through without incident. He himself was able to get away, not that he thought it would do any good as far as an ass reaming went. With that in mind he continued on to the target himself. The trainers hadn’t signaled him to cease, so he would try to achieve the mission on his own.
Checking against the map he saw the last approach to the target, a high pass. He couldn’t see what was on the other side, and wouldn’t be able to until he got there. And he was sure that there was no way through the pass. It had ambush written all over it. With that in mind he lay in cover and looked over the approach, trying to decide on a course of action that might accomplish more than his simulated death or capture.
I must be fucking crazy, thought the Corporal, looking for a path up the steep cliff that would lead him above the pass. He had one length of rope, some pitons and a hammer. The hammer and pitons were out if he wanted to get to the top without being located. Cursing once again he grabbed a handhold and pulled himself up.
Cornelius had no trouble pulling himself up. He had gained almost ten kilos of muscle since he had started Basic. He had doubled his bench press, pushing almost double his own weight. His biceps had developed to the same extent. Still, the slick rocks were treacherous, and he didn’t have a lift harness on for this climb. It would have been so easy to just give up, walk up the pass, and get captured. You didn’t have to be successful in every exercise to pass the course. In fact, the instructors wanted every soldier to have some failures, so they could evaluate them on their ability to face adversity.
Well, this is one I’m not going to fail, thought Cornelius, positioning his entire body on the vertical and starting on the way up. He kept a tight grip on every hand hold and made sure he positioned his body with a lean that pushed his weight into his feet. Sweat was pouring own his face despite the cold, and he knew that he was risking everything for a stupid training exercise. That knowledge didn’t lessen his resolve, and he kept moving up the cliff, shifting one point of contact at a time.
After what seemed like hours, and registered on his internal clock as twelve minutes and change, he reached the top. The snow was really coming down, and visibility was horrible. Still, he picked up movement just below the top of the pass, and realized he had been right about the ambush. With a smile on his face he moved along the heights and bypassed that ambush. The way down on the other side was not near the trial that the way up had been. In fact, it was a gentle slope that almost defeated him as his feet slipped on the ice despite his snow cleats. He regained his balance and footing before it became a disastrous roll and angled down to some rocks that would give him cover.
He could hear the soldiers talking in the pass as he checked out the area. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the included laughter had him thinking that they weren’t taking the situation seriously. And why not, he thought with another smile. They must have caught all of us except me, and what can one man do?
With a shrug of his shoulders he moved out, keeping to the shadows as he made his way toward the target compound. He was determined to show them what this man could do.
The compound was just as lax as the pass security. Men were sitting around, eating, joking, essentially not taking their job seriously. Cornelius crawled through the snow until he was within throwing range on the compound. He detached his three hand grenades, set them all for impact detonation, then checked his rifle. When he determined that all was a go he threw the grenades, one after the other, into the compound. They went off in sequence, simulated blasts along with sonics that crippled the suits of the Opfor, and he was on his feet, running at the compound and sending beams into anything that was still moving. He jumped the low berm and landed in among the troops, most of whom were down by this time. He shot down the rest, then ran into the tent and pointed his rifle at the officer within.
“What the hell is going on here?” growled the Major in the tent, staring at the rifle pointed at him.
“You are my prisoner,” said Cornelius. “Don’t bother calling for help. All the rest of your men are down.”
“Impossible. We got all the rest of the Ranger trainees. There was only one man out there.”
“That would be me,” said Cornelius, holding the Major at gunpoint until his amazed instructors showed up at the compound.
* * *
The final week of regular training was really more of a refresher of Basic and infantry training, with some instruction in air assault operations using a variety of combat aircars. The whole time they were being made ready for Hell Week, the last week of training for Phase I, and the one that would determine if they made it to augmentation and full Ranger status.
There were a lot of rumors about Hell Week. A lot of the men thought they were exaggerations. Looking around at the men who had made it this far, men he now knew well, and realizing what tough and motivated individuals they were, he wasn’t sure. It was said that less than half of these men would make it through that week. That would have to be a real week of hell to make any of them quit.
Cornelius didn’t sleep much the night before Hell Day, the first of the five they would face. He didn’t think anyone else did either. Still, everyone looked awake and alert when the instructors came for them the next morning.
There was no talking as the soldiers filed into the mess hall for what promised to be their last good meal for the next five days. Everyone was too tired while at the same time bursting with nervous energy. After breakfast it was a trip back to the barracks to gear up, then to the nearby landing field where they were split into teams of six and put on aircars.
The passenger compartment of the car was sealed, and the men rode with no idea of where they were going. Their implants were disabled for this exercise, sans the emergency locator. They had no way of knowing their destination, or even if all the teams were going to the same location.
The internal clock function was still working, and Cornelius could tell they had been flying for three hours before the car started its descent. He estimated that they had travelled at least six thousand kilometers, which meant they could be over just about any point on the planet.
“Everyone out,” yelled the instructor as the doors came open. A blast of cold air came in along with a view of almost pure white.
Cornelius was one of the first out of the car. He had been assigned point again for this day. They would switch positions on a daily basis, everyone filling each position but one during the exercise. The Corporal found himself standing on a flat field with a layer of deep snow under foot. His feet sunk into the powder, and he quickly configured his boots into wide bottom snow shoes. The world was flat to the horizon.
“Here are your maps,” said the instructor, handing the plastic sheets to the soldiers. “You are to be at the rally point by midnight. Failure to get there on time is a fail.” With that the instructor got back into the aircar and closed it off. The car then jumped into the air and mo
ved away.
Now they had a good view in all directions, and saw that they were in fact standing on a featureless plain. Cornelius looked at his map, noting that their position was marked. He pulled out his compass and took a bearing on their location as compared to the target. “That way,” he told Sergeant Dillard, the leader for the day.
The men spread out and started on the indicated path. It was a trudge across a desolate landscape, with snow flurries all through the rest of the morning. At times the snowfall grew thick enough where they had trouble seeing one another, and then they closed ranks. At one point in the afternoon some dark objects ran across their path, then through their formation. Dillard called out an order to not shoot, and soon the animals were identified as caribou. They had to wait in a compact group for over an hour for the herd to pass.
Despite the survival suits it got very cold, and the temperature fell as the sun started to descend in the early afternoon. Cornelius was pretty sure they were above the arctic circle based on the shortness of the day.
With nightfall came a secession of the snow, and with it a glorious star field in the sky. Cornelius shot the azimuth of several of the more notable stars and got a fudge factor of where they were located on the globe. He presented his findings to Dillard, who grunted and said nothing, then started the party on their way.
Cornelius was put off a bit by the snub, but thought about it as he walked through the snow. It really wasn’t important where they were on the planet. The only thing that really counted was getting to the target before midnight. And to do that they just needed to keep putting one foot in front of another in the right direction. Their only real enemy was the cold, and they could defeat it short term, which was all that was needed.
It was late into the night when they approached the campsite. They could see the tents in the distance by the lights within them, and the big fire in the center of the circle. Cornelius felt good that they had made it within the time frame. He could see the smiles around him as everyone else realized it too. The first day of Hell Week hadn’t been so bad. They had gotten cold, and tired, but other than that it hadn’t seemed such a big deal.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 05 - Ranger Page 11
