Exodus: Empires at War: Book 05 - Ranger

by Doug Dandridge

  “We need to get going,” she told her brother. She opened the back of the car and started putting together some survival packs. When they were ready she strapped Benjamin’s on him, then shouldered her own.

  “We can’t just leave them,” protested Benjamin, struggling against her pull.

  “We have to go, Ben,” said Rebecca, watching as a slow moving aircraft came in over the hills and started to drop toward the shuttle. “Benny,” she said, kneeling down and looking him in the face. “We have to go, or we will die. Do you understand?”

  Benjamin nodded his head and she pulled him into the woods, then started to move through the brush toward the other side. Behind them the aircraft came to a landing at the edge of the crater, and she could hear the sound of hatches opening, then guttural voices. She kept Benjamin moving, knowing that this whole valley would not be safe in a very short period of time.

  There was a break in the woods of about twenty meters. To Rebecca it looked like some kind of beam weapon had just eaten a long swath of forest away. What it represented was an obstacle to cross. Not so much a physical obstacle as a barrier to their stealth.

  She looked carefully up, then to both sides, then up again. She pulled at Benjamin, then started across at a run. Benjamin stopped, looking confused, and she had to step back and grab his arm, pulling him over to the other side. Almost too late, as an alien aircraft came flying over the opening just after they had gained the cover of the other side.

  “You have to move when I tell you to, Benjamin,” she whispered to her brother as they made their way up the hill.

  “I’m scared,” whined the young boy.

  “I’m scared too. But I need you to be brave for me. OK?”

  Benjamin nodded his head, and Rebecca smiled at him, then led the way through the forest. Everything was strangely quiet. There were no motile life forms in evidence, none of the songs of bird forms, the squeaks and squeals of tree dwellers. Everything that could get away had done so. Everything that couldn’t had gone into hiding.

  It took a little time, but they made it to the top of the hill. Rebecca removed her hood and looked down into the valley through the field glasses she had taken from the car. There were large figures down there, moving around the downed shuttle and walking toward the aircar. Figures in armor, with long horns sprouting from their helmets. Those near enough to the car were given enough scale to show that they were huge.

  Ca’cadasans, she thought, now sure in her identification. A couple opened the car and looked inside. Moments later they stepped back about thirty meters and took the car under fire with particle beams. The car exploded with the second hit. Rebecca felt some closure at that sight. She couldn’t bury her mother, but the body had been cremated.

  “We need to move, buddy,” she said to Benjamin, motioning for him to crawl backwards with her. As soon as they were out of sight on the other side they stood up and moved into the comforting cover of one of the deadliest jungles in human space.

  Chapter Ten

  In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. Winston Churchill.

  PLANET DAIMON AND ORBITAL TRAINING STATION, JANUARY 6TH – 30th, 1001.

  “Fall out,” yelled the First Sergeant in charge of the training company as he walked through the barracks.

  Everyone jumped out of their beds, snapping to attention, then turning as the command penetrated sleepy brains to grab uniforms and get dressed. The senior NCO was out the door and headed for the next barracks over at a quick pace.

  The men ran out of the barracks, not really knowing what to expect. The Ranger instructors were waiting for them, not saying a word and pointing to the area where the platoons were to fall in. As soon as they were set a youngish looking Captain walked up and accepted the salutes of all the instructors.

  “Welcome to Phase III, Rangers,” said the Captain in a voice that carried despite its conversational tone. “In five more weeks you will be officially Rangers. As far as I’m concerned you are already there, having passed through Hell Week and augmentation. It is our job to put the finishing touches on your basic Ranger skills. You will be treated as men here. I see no need to yell and scream at you like you were raw recruits. The lowest ranking of you is a PFC, and I see NCOs in the ranks. You know why you are here, and you know how important it is for you to get through the training and get deployed. There is a great need for your services out there in the Galaxy. So work hard, train hard, and you will soon be serving the Emperor and the people of the Empire. Now fall out for chow.”

  There was a lot of conversation on the way to the mess hall. Whatever they had been expecting, this was not it. Breakfast was the same good food they had been used to getting throughout training. Cornelius had always heard stories about military chow, how bad it was. But he had found that not to be true. And breakfast was his favorite, all the eggs, bacon, sausage and biscuits he could handle.

  After breakfast they took a run out to the range. Where regular troops jogged anything over a couple of kilometers, these men took off on a run, what most would have called a sprint, though it was nothing of the sort to them. They covered the ten kilometers in about twenty-five minutes, about what one would expect of a very good athlete who wasn’t carrying a full load of equipment on a heavy gravity world, like they were.

  The range looked different from any that Cornelius had seen thus far. There were the regular pits from which the targets issued, plus what looked like barriers set here and there. A Sergeant Instructor stood in front of the range as they stopped and did a right face to orient on the NCO.

  “Welcome to tactical shooting,” said the NCO, walking back and forth in front of the platoon. “I am Staff Sergeant Mustafa, and I will be your trainer on this range. You may think you have learned to shoot in basic and infantry training. And you would be wrong. Rangers are rarely given the luxury of engaging the enemy from prepared positions. Rangers fire on the move, using all available cover and concealment to close with and destroy the enemy. Now pay close attention to Staff Sergeant Whitecloud as he negotiates the course.”

  A tall man with copper colored skin nodded to the range controller, holding his rifle in a comfortable grip. He then sprinted to the first barrier, laying down fire from his weapon, squeezing off a round with each step. Two targets popped up on the way, and both fell back before they could fire their simulators.

  Whitecloud fell to the ground behind the barrier, then crawled to the side while the bright beams of simulators struck the top of the structure. Looking around the side he took down two more targets, then sent a burst of full automatic toward a couple of other pits. He jumped to his feet and performed a rolling jump over the barrier, knocking down another target three quarters of the way through the roll. Landing on his side he rolled to a position behind another barrier. This time he crawled to the other side and took down another target. He pulled the magazine from the rifle and pushed it into a pouch, extracting a new one with the same motion, then slamming it into the rifle.

  This time the Sergeant jumped to his feet and sprinted around the barrier, moving in a blur. He fired as he moved, knocking down a couple of targets. He jumped over the last pit and turned to face the Ranger trainees standing a couple of hundred meters away.

  “We will teach all of you to move and shoot like Sergeant Whitecloud,” said Staff Sergeant Mustafa. “How well you do this will go a long way to determining whether you die in bed as a retired Ranger, or on a battlefield. I won’t lie and say that many of you will reach that point, especially with the war we now face. But of even greater importance to the Empire you serve is how much you bleed this enemy.”

  The Sergeant pointed at Cornelius. “Why don’t we let our combat veteran tell us how he killed all of those Cacas. Well, go ahead, Corporal.”

  “I stalked them through the jungle, Sergeant,” said Cornelius with a flush. “I got the bastards one at a time when they weren’t prepared.”

  “That was smart,” s
aid the Sergeant, pacing in front of the class. “I highly recommend that strategy myself. Of course, it won’t always be possible to sneak up on them, and at times you may find yourselves in a war of attrition, or even a stand up fight.

  “You go first, Walborski,” said Mustafa, pointing his finger at the Corporal. “Show the rest of these men how to do it.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” shouted Walborski moving forward. He really didn’t like being put on the spot like this, but there was no way out of it. Mustafa handed him a couple of magazines of caseless ammunition. Cornelius put one mag in a belt pouch, then slammed the other into his M36 rifle, careful to keep the barrel downrange.

  He looked down at the rifle, the low tech weapon they would be armed with in the field. It was a bullpup weapon, the magazine going in behind the pistol grip and maximizing the barrel length of a purposefully short rifle. There was a very good noise and flash suppressor on the front of the barrel, and a fine optic sight on top. And no electronics whatsoever, nothing to give the weapon away to the high tech sensors of the enemy. The only really high tech gear the Rangers took into combat were their survival suits, which used nothing but chemical energy, and their bodies.

  Cornelius moved to the start line and locked a round into his rifle. “Go,” yelled Mustafa, and Cornelius sprinted for the first barrier. The ping of a near miss by a beam sounded in his ears, and he swung his rifle to his shoulder. A squeeze of the trigger and the target went down. He landed hard into the barrier, grunting from the impact, and waited a second.

  “They’ll toss a grenade at you if you wait too long,” yelled out Mustafa.

  Cornelius cursed. They weren’t even going to let him do things his way. He got to his knees and looked over the barrier, and was greeted by a trio of beams, two striking his helmet. His survival suit froze up and he knew he had been tagged as a kill.

  “Did anyone note the error our intrepid killer made?” asked Mustafa from behind.

  “He looked over the barrier instead of the side,” said one of the other soldiers, to the laughter of the rest.

  Cornelius listened with a face flushed with shame. He was still frozen in place, unable to move, or to defend himself. He realized it was more than the suit. Somehow they had immobilized vocal cords through his implant.

  “OK, try again, Corporal.”

  He was able to move again, but he hesitated, and that almost cost him as beams speared by right and left. He fell behind the barrier by the expedient of letting his muscles relax completely. After that he crawled toward the left side of the barrier and positioned himself. With a push of his feet his head was looking around that corner, his rifle to his shoulder. There were no targets visible for the moment, but he kept his patience. By the rules of the game if there were no targets visible they couldn’t see him as well.

  Two targets popped up at the same time, and he serviced them in two one second windows. He scooted back and waited a few seconds, then scooted back into firing position and took down another target. A beam almost speared him before he got back under cover, and he was pretty sure they would nail him if he took the same position again. With that in mind he repositioned himself and gathered his legs underneath. With a spring he came up and out of the right side of the barrier, his eyes scanning to his front. Sprinting to the next barrier he took out two targets from the hip on full auto.

  Cornelius slid into the back of the next barrier just as three more targets popped up. He knew that this one would be a lot more difficult, that these targets would be waiting for him no matter which side he came around. Time was ticking, and he knew he had to move, or they would toss a grenade simulator at him and he would be dead.

  This time he went over the top, deciding it was a risk worth taking. He tracked on one of the targets as he went over, knocking it down, then froze in mid jump as two beams intersected his suit. His frozen body fell the rest of the way to hit hard on the ground.

  “That was a fail,” said Mustafa, walking toward him across the range. “We gave you some leeway because it was the first time, but from now on, any time you get hit on the range is a fail.”

  Cornelius felt his suit relax and he got back to his feet. The rest of the class was looking at him, some nervously, some laughing at his discomfiture.

  “That was actually a good move there at the end, Walborski,” said the Sergeant in a quiet voice. “With some practice you might be able to pull it off. But not at this time.” The Sergeant looked back at the rest of the platoon. “Everyone else will run through this course today. I’m betting that those of you who laughed the loudest will be the biggest fuckups on the course. And the rest of us will have a chance to laugh at you.”

  The rest of the platoon cycled through the course, one at a time. Everyone was killed at least twice, some more, except one soldier, a PFC Janikasta, who was hit only once. Cornelius looked the man over closely, knowing that this was his competition. He realized that by going first he had not had a chance to learn from the other soldiers, as Janikasta had. He still didn’t like losing, and made a promise to himself that he would be the top of this class, like he had been in Basic.

  * * *

  The rest of the week passed with more exercises on the ranges. They went through the same one as the first day. They went through ranges that were set in jungles, and some in built up areas. One of the ranges had life like targets, and not all of them were enemies. Some were in the likenesses of civilians, children, and the soldiers learned how to assess a target almost instantaneously and not kill the innocents. Sometimes that meant being hit themselves, and most of the troopers spent a lot of time frozen in their survival suits.

  Cornelius was proud that he did not spend much time in a frozen state. His shame came from the fact that he killed too many of the innocents in the exercise. The instructors didn’t seem to think that was such a big deal, not with a war of extermination being waged. It seemed that as long as he killed a lot of the enemy they were willing to tolerate the possibility of some collateral damage. He was sure that he was willing to tolerate the same.

  By the end of the week they were rappelling down cliffs and out of aircars while firing at ground targets. It seemed that there was no situation where they were not expected to be able to hit an enemy, quickly and accurately. Cornelius really thought that most of them would die if they had to go up or down a cliff under fire. He also thought it was better to fight back than to just die quietly. So he did his best in those exercises, hoping he would never have to be in any of those situations.

  Week two started with a trip into space. They practiced in battle armor in zero gee and vacuum, then in variable gee within a spaceship. It was difficult shooting, and the soldiers had to constantly remind themselves to position their bodies where the recoil wouldn’t push them out into the open.

  “Why are we doing this?” Cornelius asked Captain Zhukov, the company commander. “I mean, isn’t this a job for Naval Commandos?”

  “And that it is, Corporal,” said the officer, nodding his head. “And that is why we will only spend a couple of days on this kind of training, just basic familiarization. The Commandos spend over a month in variable and zero gee, but sometimes they might not be available, and we’ll be called on to get our asses shot up in null gee. That answer your question, Corporal?”

  “Sure does, sir,” said Walborski, grinning. It was yet another lesson in what might happen to him due to military misplanning. He realized no matter how stupid the training might seem to him, it was still important for his survival that he perform as well as possible on it.

  On day three disaster struck. Cornelius was in a zero gee battle room, maneuvering easily through the obstacles. Targets popped up and were knocked down by low velocity rounds from the rifles of the Rangers. Cornelius was approaching the hatch that was their target. He landed on the wall, grabbed a handhold and hung on when his body rebounded, and hit the hatch button with his other hand. The hatch slid open and Cornelius swung himself through feet first, getting ready
for whatever was waiting there.

  One of the soldiers had his rifle set too high, or maybe it was a malfunction in the velocity setting of the weapon they were not all that familiar with. Whatever the cause, a round was moving at the maximum velocity the mag rail could put out. If it had hit a person it would have torn through their suit. Instead it hit a glass steel window and tore through. It wasn’t that bad a hit. It would have taken minutes for the entire roomful of air to evacuate. The hatch emergency system didn’t know that and it slammed the door down, fast.

  Cornelius still had an arm through the door when it slammed shut. The suit arm went rigid, enough to prevent most penetrations. Not enough to stop the door from applying crushing pressure to the arm.

  Cornelius screamed as the door crushed his arm just below the elbow. The carbon fiber reinforced bone resisted the crush, only stress fracturing in a half dozen places. The muscle was not so lucky, and much of it was torn by shearing forces.

  Walborski almost passed out from the pain. He sent the mental signal to his pain pathways and turned them off. Then he opened his eyes as the pain retreated and stared in horror at the space between the door and the jam. That space was only about a third the width of his arm.

  “Get that goddamn hatch open,” yelled an instructor, flying up in the zero gee and grabbing a handhold next to the Corporal. “We’ll have you out in a moment, son.”

  Cornelius nodded his head, thankful that part of the augment process was voluntary control over the pain pathways. Otherwise he would still be screaming. Still, his thoughts were on the edge of panic. An injury like this would take at least a week to heal, and maybe longer for him to return to one hundred percent. That could mean recycling to the beginning of Phase III training, something he really didn’t want to think about.

  The door swished open, and he could see how flat that section of his suit was. The medics were around him and one used a laser to cut through the suit and expose the arm. There was blood floating in the air, not as much as would normally be expected by such a heavy wound. The nanites had done their job and stemmed the blood flow.