Ghost Ranger

by Dayne Edmondson

  The next morning they’d stormed into the barracks, a dozen drill sergeants, banging loud objects and kicking over the bunks of those too slow to roll out of bed, dumping their recruits onto the hard duracrete floors. Once the barracks was in chaos, the drill sergeants ordered us to clean the filthy barracks. Then, when the barracks wasn’t clean enough after twenty minutes, they’d assigned more push-ups.

  Couple that with surprise nighttime drills, 3-minute meals and seemingly endless marching drills, and the first four weeks had both flown by and dragged.

  “Fifty-five,” I grunted, forcing myself to stand to avoid flopping into the mud. I looked around, relieved to see I wasn’t the last to complete the push-ups, but chagrined to see Juliana standing next to me, uniform virtually unblemished, grinning insufferably.

  “You look like you rolled around with the pigs,” she commented.

  I snorted, blowing mud out of my nose and wiping my face. She was right. The front of my uniform was caked in mud, while my backside was covered in splotches where mud had splashed up. “Yeah, well, I beat you in the ten-mile run.”

  “Only because that blubbering idiot stumbled and tripped me,” she said, glaring at Elise, who lay on her back in the mud, being lectured, loudly, by one of the drill sergeants. “I would have beat you, otherwise.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” I jested. “You just can’t accept I’m faster than you.”

  “Don’t just stand there,” a drill sergeant shouted. “Form ranks!”

  I wasted no time forming up with the other recruits. To be last was to be punished in boot camp.

  After the last recruit had finished doing push-ups and joined the line, and then completed more push-ups for being last in line, Sergeant Ferrez spoke. “Fall out.”

  She led us toward the firing range where she held up a gun.

  “This,” she said, “is a rifle. A rifle,” she emphasized the word. “Never call it a ‘gun’ or ‘boom stick’ or any other stupid name in any drill sergeant’s hearing or your whole platoon will be running ten miles. Once you’re assigned your own rifle, you are encouraged to give it a name. Do not give your training rifle a name.”

  Yikes, intense, I thought. Note to self - don’t call it a ‘gun.’

  I can set a reminder if you would like, miss, Jarvis chimed in.

  No, that’s not necessary, I replied. I hope, I amended.

  “If ‘rifle’ is too difficult for you to remember, the official name of this beauty is the CG-16 rifle. Can anyone answer what the CG stands for?”

  One of the women, Evelyn I thought, raised her hand. “Coilgun,” she answered when the sergeant called upon her.

  “Good,” Sergeant Ferrez replied. “And what is a coilgun?”

  Physics 101, I thought. Then I raised my hand.

  “You, in the back,” calling on me.

  Now was my chance to nerd out. “A coilgun is weapon that employs a magnetic coil in the barrel. When the trigger is pulled, the projectile, called a bullet, is propelled at extreme velocity.”

  “Good. And why are coilguns superior to traditional chemical reaction weapons using gunpowder?”

  “Because the velocity of a bullet fired from a coilgun is magnitudes greater than that of one fired from an older gunpowder weapon.”

  “Which allows the projectiles to be heavier and to pierce ever-stronger materials,” Sergeant Ferrez finished. “One thing you will learn in war, recruits, is that as offensive weapons become more powerful, ever more powerful defenses will be created to counter those offensive weapons. Then, more power offensive weapons are designed to counter those more powerful defenses. It becomes an ever-escalating arms race. Such has been the case between the Federation and the Rakosh Empire for two millennia.”

  The Rakosh Empire. The moral opposite of the Federation in almost every way. The only place more morally grey was the Commerce Sector and the far reaches of the non-aligned planets where warlords ruled whole planets unchallenged. But the Empire was by far the largest opponent to Federation power.

  “You will find much larger versions of coilguns aboard capital ships. They are called railguns when used aboard capital ships, while they remain called coilguns aboard smaller craft like fighters, freighters and transports.

  “There are also laser weapons,” she continued. “They are less frequently used, as they have far less range of coilguns and are more prone to dispersion and can be affected by strong energy nullification fields. Armor has advanced to the point where the mesh structure dissipates all but enormous amounts of raw thermal energy with no damage to the wearer, so coilguns are used to pierce enemy armor.

  “And now, the parts of the rifle...” she went on to explain every part of a coilgun, from the hilt to the tip of the barrel. She showed, in detail, how to break down and then reassemble a rifle, then made every recruit follow suit for hours afterward.

  We returned to the barracks for a quick meal and a cold shower. I’d gotten used to scarfing my food down in three minutes and washing as quick and efficiently as possible.

  That night as I lay awake, I wondered if I’d made the right choice. My body ached, with Jarvis displaying my energy level on an overlay to my vision. The nanites in my body, coupled with the nascent virus inside me, could heal nearly any wounds given time. Yet, they couldn’t fix fatigue.

  “Julianna,” I whispered, “you awake?”

  My bunkmate and grudging friend spoke from above. “I am now,” she whispered back. “What do you want?”

  “Do you ever regret coming here?”

  “Like joining the Army? No, I’m having a blast.”

  “Doesn’t your body ache?”

  “Of course it does. But this is greater than my aches, Rachel. It’s noble and all that shit.”

  I snorted. “You, being noble? I don’t buy it.”

  “Fine.” She paused. “It’s all I have, Rachel. It’s a purpose that drives me on.” I felt a thump and there she was, kneeling next to my bunk. “You have something to go back to. Me? I have nothing to go back to. I either adapt to this shit and become a soldier or I become an orphan.”

  I cringed. She was right. Some part of me had no fear of being booted out of the military. I hadn’t been actively thinking of dropping out of the Army, but I’d known that if I failed to complete basic training I would still have a meaningful place in the Federation. I didn’t have it all on the line. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Forget it,” she replied, standing up and making for the ladder leading to the top bunk. “No, really, don’t mention it anyone. I don’t want to be seen as weak.”

  I had to smile at that and suppress a laugh. My friend had proved herself to be one of the toughest recruits in our camp. I doubted revealing she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by making it through boot camp with flying colors would hurt her image. Instead, I replied with, “I promise,” and went back to sleep.

  THE NIGHT PASSED WITHOUT incident and the next day we got to fire our rifles. It was the first time I’d ever held a rifle, but it felt right in my hands. A drill sergeant ushered me up to the firing line and adjusted my sights for me and walked me through bracing it against my shoulder, lining up my target and pulling the trigger. I missed...a lot, but the feeling of rightness and excitement I felt holding my rifle, even a training rifle, couldn’t be dampened by inexperience.

  The CG-16 was a semi-automatic weapon. Pull the trigger once and a single bullet would fire. Pull it rapidly and the bullets would come out as fast as you could pull the trigger. The magazines of the CG-16 were detachable and each magazine held one hundred and twenty bullets. The sergeant explained we would carry several magazines into combat scenarios and knowing how to change the magazine rapidly could save our lives. Staying undead was an appealing concept, so I absorbed everything like a sponge.

  After all the recruits had had a chance to fire their rifles, we worked on how to march with our rifles. Holding them pressed against our shoulders, palm on the bottom of the stock, we marched bac
k and forth for hours. Not only was it important to march with our back straight and weapon steady, it was critical that we marched in unison, a concept some recruits found difficult. This led to push-ups for all.

  That evening, for the first time since basic training began, the sergeants gave us fifteen minutes to eat our meal. And boy did the recruits take advantage of it.

  “Did you guys hear about what happened on Xaros III a few weeks back?” one of the girls, Stephanie, asked at our table. Much like everything else in basic training, there wasn’t much personal space, and they crammed twenty of us at a table meant for ten.

  “You mean the supreme commander’s daughter?” another girl, Heather, asked. “Rachel, right?”

  My head jerked up from the sandwich I was eating as slowly as possible. My goal was to take the last bite right before the fifteen minutes were up. I’d be chewing it as I ran, not walked, the drill sergeants hadn’t gotten that lenient, out of the mess hall.

  “Yeah,” Stephanie answered. Then her head swiveled to me. “The same name as you.”

  “It’s a common name,” I muttered. “Galatia was small, but it wasn’t that small.”

  “Don’t get so defensive,” Stephanie said, sniffing. “Nobody thought you were her. Completely different hair and she’s way prettier than you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I grumbled. The way she described my old features, I’d gone from a beautiful swan to the ugly duckling. That didn’t help my self-esteem.

  “Besides,” Julianna said around a mouth full of steak, “the supreme commander’s daughter wouldn’t be slumming it with the likes of us.”

  “True,” I agreed, wishing the subject would change but not wanting to draw attention to myself. The perfect opportunity presented itself: two men in uniform entered the mess hall.

  “Recruits!” a drill sergeant shouted. “Attention!”

  I wanted to groan. We had three minutes left on the timer. But I knew a groan would end with the whole lot of us performing physical exercise as punishment. Instead, I took one last little bite, and chewed as I fell into a straight line in front of the newcomers and saluted perfectly.

  I recognized the first man, Captain Wilson. But the other - I didn’t recognize him. He had a hooked nose, was balding on the top of his head and had piercing green eyes that lingered on me for an uncomfortably long moment. He stood a head taller than Captain Wilson and was surprisingly buff for looking like a middle-aged man.

  “Recruits,” Captain Wilson began. “This is Colonel Octavius Schattler. He is the commanding officer of the newly formed eighty fifth ranger regiment, known informally as the Ghost Regiment. He is here to inspect the recruits.” He looked to his superior, as if wondering whether the man would speak.

  The gruff colonel continued to look over the assembled recruits. His gaze again lingered on me a second longer than the others - I didn’t think it was my imagination - before speaking. “You should be honored to be here, recruits. You are the first of a new lineage of super soldiers. You are superior to living soldiers in every conceivable way - that should make you proud.” He paused.

  Several recruits nodded, an act I followed suit with moments later. I did feel proud, though my being “superior” was through no fault of my own. A freak accident, even if it had been weaponized by enemies of the Federation, my power was through no merit of my own.

  “Some of you will not make it through basic training,” he said, no regret in his voice, just matter-of-factness. “For those who do graduate, you will have many career options available to you. I trust that some of you will consider joining the Army Rangers.” He nodded to Captain Wilson before walking out of the mess hall.

  “At ease,” Captain Wilson said before following the man out.

  I held my composure until the two men were gone, then sagged. There had been a power in Colonel Schattler’s presence and voice that awed me and scared me in equal measure. He was clearly a confident, powerful man, but I sensed you did not want to get on his bad side.

  Unfortunately, our drill sergeants didn’t let us finish our lunch.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, we stood outside a windowless building on the far side of the camp. Signs posted on the outer walls and next to the door of the building warned of hazardous chemicals and poison. I swallowed hard.

  “I hope you recruits didn’t eat too much,” Sergeant Ferrez said, an evil grin on her face, “because you might lose your lunch with this next training.”

  I resisted the urge to slap my face with my hand. Of course that’s why they would allow us a relatively luxurious lunch - they wanted us to feel the most discomfort possible.

  “This is the gas chamber.” She produced a mask from a crate next to her. “This is a gas mask. While most armor you wear will be hermetically sealed against chemical and biological contaminants, we are using these older style masks so you can easily remove them and take a sniff of toxic fumes. Everyone form up and grab a mask on your way in. Do not put it on yet.”

  We all lined up and grabbed a mask as we passed into the building. Inside, a tile floor with bare walls and vents high above met us. When the last recruit entered, the sergeant sealed the door.

  From there, Sergeant Ferrez and half a dozen other drill sergeants taught our group how to put on and clear the gas masks. After a dozen times repeating the maneuver, I felt confident.

  “Now this next part may actually go in your favor. You’re the first group, even before the men, to breath in this gas. While teaching you about the hazards of hazardous chemicals we are also going to test your level of resistance to said chemicals. Put on and clear your gas masks.”

  After we all complied, a hiss emitted from the vents and the room rapidly filled with a light green mist.

  “When a sergeant taps on your shoulder, you will lift your mask and state your name, rank and FIN. Then you will replace your mask and clear it. This is to teach you to trust your masks, whether separate like these or built into your suit. Sometimes you won’t have time to seal your suit before you’ve inhaled. Begin!”

  The sergeants began, a half dozen at a time, tapping us on the shoulders. Each recruit lifted their mask, shouted their name, rank, and Federation Identification Number.

  I finally felt a tap on my shoulder and lifted my mask. “Rachel Halbert, recruit, three one one seven three nine two seven...” shit, I’d forgotten the next digit. Jarvis, are you there? I asked in the space between thought.

  I am always here, miss, Jarvis replied. How may I assist?

  Weren’t you listening? What’s my fake FIN?

  Ah, yes. It is three one...

  I just need to know the last three digits, I interrupted. Quick.

  Ah, it is five eight six.

  Thank you. “Five eight six,” I finished. Only a second or two had passed. I dropped my gas mask down on my face and clear it with a hiss. Then I felt my vision blur from whatever gas I’d inhaled.

  Low level neurotoxin detected, Jarvis announced. Deploying nanite defenses.

  Immediately, the blurring of my vision stopped as the nanites in my blood cleansed and blocked the toxin.

  Others in the room were not as lucky. They stumbled around or bent over as if they were getting sick. One clawed off her mask and screamed, which only made things worse. She hadn’t always been the brightest.

  “Everyone remove your masks, take one deep breath and exit the building while walking,” Sergeant Ferrez ordered.

  I gritted my teeth. What was she putting us through? But I complied, because disobeying her in this moment would only bring worse pain. I inhaled deep, ignoring the alarms Jarvis sounded in my head as he warned of moderate levels of neurotoxin entering my system. Then I walked out, following several recruits who were not faring as well as me.

  Once outside, I coughed as the nanites cleared out the remnants of the gas in my body while watching the other recruits hacking their lungs out and falling to the ground gasping. Did they mean to kill us?

  “You’re killing us!” one of the
girls shouted, voicing my thoughts. I guess the other undead didn’t have as many nanites, or any, as me. And the virus wasn’t offering enough defense.

  “On the contrary,” Sergeant Ferrez replied. “We just dosed you with a neurotoxin that would kill a living man with a single breath. Normal soldiers would have died in that room without uttering their FIN. But you undead, you survived. And you’re speaking and conscious. That is remarkable.”

  I stood there, stunned. They’d duped us. I mean, technically they hadn’t told us which gas we were inhaling, but we hadn’t expected something deadly. How many of us would have gone in that building knowing the gas being administered was a neurotoxin? How many other “tests” would they put us through, some of which were deadly to the living, before we completed basic training?

  Chapter 16

  The week following exposure to the neurotoxin passed relatively quick. By the end of the week the drill sergeants were trusting us recruits more and we were looking like soldiers.

  Two weeks before the end of training they piled twenty of us into a transport shuttle and ferried us off-camp.

  “Where do you think we’re going?” I asked Julianna as the transport neared a silver tower.

  “I heard something about zero-G training,” Julianna whispered back. “From one of the girls whose brother went through basic here.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just train us in space?” I wondered aloud.

  Julianna offered her characteristic shrug. “Beats me.”

  A short time later, the transport docked and the other nineteen recruits and I marched out and entered the facility. Only when we were standing at attention inside, with a large duraglass window in front of us did Sergeant Ferrez speak. She wore gloves and space boots in addition to her uniform. A utility belt lay at her waist. She wore no armor or helmet.

  “You are here at the Gerald G. Hoss Gravitation Center to participate in zero-G training,” she began, confirming Julianna’s intel. “The reason we are not training in space is because this facility serves two purposes. First, it serves as a research facility studying gravitation and anti-gravitation, hence the weightlessness present in the chamber beyond. Second, its walls are magically hardened and heavily shielded to allow discharging of a wide variety of light and heavy weapons, something not always feasible, usually for cost reasons, in a space station. So here we are.”