Exodus: Empires at War: Book 05 - Ranger

by Doug Dandridge

  The six Rangers seemed to come out of nowhere, wearing winter cammo that blended them perfectly into the snow. Each sought out a target and none of the soldiers could do more than move or shout before they were down in the snow. Cornelius struggled against the Ranger that had pulled him down and turned him over. He might as well have been a toddler fighting against a strong adult. Plastic cuffs were placed on his wrists and he was jerked back to his feet.

  “What the hell is going on here,” yelled Sergeant Dillard.

  “Shut the fuck up, prisoner,” hissed one of the Rangers into the Sergeant’s face, then slapped him across the cheek. “You speak when you are spoken to, and only then.”

  The men were led away from the fire to a compound they hadn’t seen. They were made to strip down to their long underwear, enough to keep them from freezing instantly, not enough for them to stay warm.

  They huddled on the snow while Sergeant Dillard was led away. Moments later they heard shouting, then screaming. This went on for minutes, then stopped, then started again. The screaming rose in volume and seemed to go on for an hour, though Cornelius’ internal clock told him it was about twenty minutes.

  “What the hell are you doing to that man?” yelled another of the soldiers.

  A stream of water came out of the dark and struck the man who had just spoken, some of the splash hitting all the others. “You were told not to speak,” yelled a voice. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  The screaming went on for a few more minutes, then cut off. A minute later a Ranger came and took another man away, and the same scenario repeated itself. Cornelius was the fourth man to go, to be led to another small fenced area where a couple of hard looking men gave him cold stares.

  “If you cooperate this can go easy on you,” said one of the men.

  Cornelius shook his head. He knew that way was a quick fail.

  “Very well,” said the man, pointing a small device at Cornelius. He pushed a button on the device and Walborski was wracked with agony, running through seemingly every nerve in his body.

  “If you cooperate this will stop.”

  Again Cornelius shook his head, and again the pain came. This time the snot ran from his nose, tears from his eyes, and his scream came past his clenched teeth. The pain relented for a moment, then came back two fold. He screamed and screamed, his bladder releasing.

  “Talk.”

  What the hell do they want me to speak about, he thought through the haze of pain. They aren’t asking for anything at all, just cooperation.

  The torture seemed to go on forever, though his internal clock again told him it was about twenty minutes. Then he was led away to another compound, where two of the three who went before him were gathered together sharing body heat.

  “Where’s Chung?” he asked, joining the cluster on the ground and contributing his body heat while taking theirs.

  “He failed out,” said Dillard with a frown.

  The other two men came in at their times, and the soldiers continued to huddle together through the rest of the night. Just before dawn they were freed and given back their equipment. Then it was back on the aircar, without breakfast, and a one hour flight to another location.

  This time it was a mountain range, another of the low ones that dominated the planet. Off the car they were made to pick up heavy boxes to carry up a steep path. At the top of the path they were given climbing equipment and told to get the boxes to the top of the cliff to their front.

  That task was a pure bitch, and several of the men fell on the way up, one of them several times, swinging on the end of their ropes until they could reclimb the lost height. Finally they all made it, only to be matched with a heavy log they had to carry down a steep path. This was even more difficult than carrying an individual heavy weight, as they had to move as a team. They slipped, slid and fell down several times. There were scrapes and cuts, and fortunately no broken bones, partially a result of the bone augmentation they had received in Basic.

  Night was falling when they reached the bottom. Again they were set on an orientation course, this time alone. Cornelius wanted to ask why they were told they would switch team positions when they obviously hadn’t done anything of the sort. He finally decided it wasn’t worth the energy. Instead he started on the course, wondering what was in store for them this night.

  Again they were captured, and again they were questioned, this time without physical torture. Instead they were subjected to sleep deprivation and sound overload.

  In the morning they were flown to the coast and made to carry a fully loaded rubber raft over coral reefs and mud flats, over and over, then up a river for riverine operations. They were harassed all through the day, hit from the jungle, while they were on the river, while they were trudging through the jungle, while trying to take a break. More hardship, more sleep deprivation, and another day passed.

  Cornelius was able to get some food through this, the middle day of the ordeal. There were berries and palm shoots and even some lizards he grabbed and ate raw. It wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing.

  The next day it was the desert, and on the final day the steppes. Both had different challenges. And both had the same people harassing them as they trudged through their missions like sleep walkers. By the last day Cornelius was not even sure if what he was seeing was real. There were some obvious hallucinations, and some that made him question what he was seeing. He was just glad they were not on the mountain course through these last two days.

  When the sun came up over the endless grasslands the fourteen men left knew they had made it. Hell Week was over, and they had all passed. Ten good men had not made it through the trial, either by failing out or just plain quitting.

  The aircars came for them for a lift back to the base. Cornelius stared at the gaunt faces around him as they waited, men who had gone through days of starvation and sleep deprivation as well as hard calorie burning work.

  As they got aboard the cars they tore into anything aboard that might contain food. The next three days, while not really a leave, was down time, and they slept and ate as much as they wanted through that time, knowing that their next stop was a secure medical facility, and full augmentation. They were told they were an exceptional class. Normally only ten to fifteen percent of those who entered the course passed. A full twenty-eight percent of this group had made it through. Cornelius looked at the other men at one meal and felt a flush of pride that he was among such, and would serve with such. He was almost there, and soon he would be turned loose to kill the creatures who had taken his wife from him.

  Chapter Eight

  There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. Thomas A. Edison.

  SECURE MEDICAL FACILITY, PLANET DAIMON, DECEMBER 1ST, 1000 - JANUARY 5TH, 1001.

  The secure medical facility was in orbit around the planet Daimon, Sanctuary C-II, another Earth terraformed world. The sun was called Citrine, a star of the G3 variety, and the third out from the central black hole.

  Cornelius came aboard the Class I fort, two hundred million tons of defensive station, that contained the medical facility. Two hundred and fifty-four Ranger trainees, the successful graduates of twenty two Phase I platoons, came with him. They were assigned individual quarters that each contained a suite of sensors to monitor their biologies during the process.

  That evening they reported to the mess hall for dinner. All were in undress uniforms, and as they sat over the meal they introduced themselves. Cornelius knew that these were the men he would enter Phase III training with, and that he might eventually be deployed with them to combat platoons.

  There were other men in the mess hall, military personnel with different uniforms. Walborski noted the uniforms of Fleet and Marine Corps personnel, all young men trying to become a part of t
he special ops community. He didn’t see any of the people who were on track to become special agents of the various security and intelligence agencies. They were supposed to have their own facility, the location of which was not even common knowledge.

  A large viewing screen on one wall of the mess hall showed the globe they were in orbit around, a blue and white world of oceans and clouds, with the forms of continents and large islands peeking through in numerous places. There were some large brown patches on those continents, deserts, but fewer than on most worlds. The greater part of the landmasses were forest and jungle, with some very large areas of grasslands, all populated by genetically altered Earth life. Altered because of the heavy gravity of the planet, one point three gees. Some of their Phase III training would take place down there, using that heavy gravity to help to toughen their bodies.

  Before hitting his rack Cornelius read up on the process he was about to go through. The changes they proposed making were astonishing, and just a little frightening. Changes in almost every system of his body, all coordinated to make the whole of him superhuman, or at least as much as an organic being could be, given the current state of technology.

  The next morning they were again in the mess hall, eating a high protein breakfast. The medical personnel joined them and encouraged the men to eat all they could. Cornelius had no problems with that. He had lost five kilos of body weight during Hell Week. He was still ahead of the game, ten kilos over his enlistment weight.

  “Candidates report to the scanning rooms,” came the call over the implants of some of the men, Cornelius included. A cursor appeared in the air to his front, and he got up and followed it from the hall, going down a long corridor. Other soldiers were heading into rooms along the corridor, and Walborski got glimpses of what looked like surgical tables and sensors mounted on arms.

  The cursor stopped at one of the doors, which opened as he approached. A man and a woman in medical suits were waiting for him to enter the room that looked identical to the ones he had seen on the way there.

  “Corporal Cornelius Walborski?” asked the woman, the insignia of an Imperial Army Captain on her collars.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, snapping to attention.

  “Be at ease. Disrobe and get on the table, if you please.”

  “What is going to happen?”

  “We’re going to do a complete soma scan on you,” said the woman. Cornelius wasn’t sure if she was a doctor or a nurse.

  “You already did that before I was allowed into Ranger training,” said the Corporal, feeling just a bit of embarrassment as he pulled off his uniform and folded it over a chair, then pulled down his underwear and tossed them on top of the other clothes. He was not ashamed of his body, but was not really comfortable getting naked in front of a woman he didn’t know, despite the exposure he had in Basic and infantry training to coed bathing facilities.

  “We want to make sure there were no changes we need to be aware of,” said the woman.

  Cornelius settled in on the table, moving until he was centered. The male member of the medical team pushed a spray hypo into his right arm, then again into his thigh, then his neck. He shifted around and did the same for the left side of the soldier’s body.

  Both med personnel stepped back and the sensor arms started to move over his body. The two people were looking over some screens that were not visible to him, and making quiet comments to one another. According to Cornelius’ internal clock the scan took twenty minutes, after which the woman looked down on him with a smile on her face.

  “You check out perfectly. In fact, you have a very unusual genome. A very favorable one.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means, son,” said the man, who also had captain’s bars on his collar, “that you will probably live a good long life, despite the effects of augmentation. If you survive your term of service you will easily live over two hundred years, possibly all the way to three centuries.”

  Cornelius thought that over for a moment. Augmentation robbed most people of from two to four decades of normal life. The Imperial line had a genome that transmitted some of the effects of augmentation down the generations. And they still lived a normal life span of around two hundred and fifty years.

  “We just need to verify that you still want to undergo the process,” said the man, pulling a screen over and positioning it in front of the Corporal’s face.

  “I didn’t know I could opt out at this point,” said Walborski, reading what was on the screen, then affixing his right hand print. “Of sound mind and body, I agree to the terms of this contract,” he said as the screen scanned his hand.

  “Very well,” said the man. “You understand there will be some temporary side effects of the process?”

  “Yes. Blindness, deafness, paralysis.”

  “Then don’t panic when they happen,” said the woman, patting him on the arm. “That’s a common reaction that we see.”

  “Now lie still,” said the man, pulling out some needles and attaching them to large bags of fluids. He positioned the bags on poles, then started to push the needles into the Corporal’s arms, two to each, then another set into his legs.

  “The bags contain nanites and the materials they will need to work with,” said the woman, looking at a monitor. “The first stage will be to reinforce your bones and tendons with carbon fibers. Then the specialized nanites will work their way into each of your cells to ennact changes on your genetic structure, so that the physical changes will be maintained by your protein generation.”

  “I recommend that you eat as much as you can tonight,” said the man. “Your body will demand the nutrients, so you shouldn’t have any problem with appetite.”

  An hour later the bags were changed for fresh fluids. They observed him until it was time for lunch, at which time they brought in a large pudding of protein rich glop and allowed him to sit up and eat. He had to admit that as unappetizing as the food looked it tasted very good. After he had finished it some more was brought, and he set to with a still unsatisfied appetite.

  The afternoon went much the same, and he was released to go back to his quarters in time for dinner. Again food was brought for him, and once again he set to with a great appetite. Afterwards a great weariness overcame him, and he fell into bed and went under as soon as his eyes closed.

  When he opened them the next morning he was greeted by darkness, and no sound reached his ears. “Don’t worry,” came the voice of the woman who had worked with him the day before through his implant. “It will take a couple of days to rework your eyes and ears into their new configurations. You will also have some trouble with balance and movement as your nerves are rewired.”

  Cornelius nodded his head, not attempting to speak. The woman sat down next to him and started to spoon feed him some more of the high protein pudding. She then helped him into a powered chair that started to move as soon as he was comfortably seated. He couldn’t see or hear, but as he was helped onto the table he was pretty sure this was the room he had started the process in the other day.

  That afternoon he heard his first sound. It wasn’t much, just a slight humming. He could feel more needles being stuck in his arms, more from slight pressure than anything else.

  The next day his hearing had almost returned to normal, though his vision was still dark. Again he was wheeled into the room, this time to be tested.

  “His nerve conduction rate has increased by four hundred and thirty-one percent,” said the voice of the man. “That’s right at the top of the scale.”

  “Adrenal capacity has increased by over five hundred percent,” said the woman. “Mitochondrial structures have increased by four times. I think we have a real gem here.”

  Day four Cornelius woke to a cacophony of sounds. Not only the normal sounds of a complex in space, but voices from the hall and high pitched sounds he could not interpret. He thought that this kind sensitivity to noise could drive him mad, and he made that known to the woman Ca
ptain when she entered his room.

  “It would, if we let it,” she agreed. “Part of your training will be to control your receptive hearing, tuning out what you don’t need.”

  On day five he could see, somewhat, a blurry world of shadows.

  On day six the images were the sharpest he had ever experienced, and he was astounded by his ability to look into the shadows and see like it was brightly lit. On this day he was subjected to a series of tests, senses, strength and reaction time. He felt clumsy when he moved, when he reached for things he moved too fast, and many times overshot his target. Sometimes the object he was looking at would blur before his vision, before focusing again into crystal clarity.

  “Your new vision is better than twenty/five,” said the woman, who he had learned was a Doctor named Jenn Norwood. “When everything is working properly you will be able to look at distant objects as if you had fine field glasses to your face. You will see at night better than any animal. We have increased the number of rods and cones in your retina, and changed the arrangement to where they are much more sensitive to light. Your cornea has also been improved. But it will take time to get used to the new functions.”

  The strength tests were just as amazing. Previously Cornelius could at best bench press a little over twice his body weight. Now he could hit a stack of four times his weight and push it for a dozen repetitions. He was told he would get stronger still with work, and that was the incentive he needed to hit the weight room each night.

  One of the last major alterations made to his body was to implant a micromesh of carbon fibers beneath his skin, a coating of armor that would stop low velocity rounds and most blade weapons. His implants were upgraded and he was fitted with an improved bionanite system that was both a better immune response and tissue repair mechanism than those carried by all civilians of the Empire.