Disgraced
Copyright© 2025 by Ogreface
Chapter 6: Seventh Training Battalion, Cornell System
Dane had a surprise waiting for him during the on-boarding process into the Seventh Training Battalion. Besides a lot of medical testing, IQ testing, and aptitude testing, as well as computerized tests to determine a recruit’s educational level, there was a lot of paperwork to complete. It was not the fact that the computer decided that Dane was above the expected level of education for his age group, it was the fact that he missed his own seventeenth birthday, by a week.
Boot camp on Cornell was every bit as bad as Gunny and Corporal Agosto made it out to be. It was just impossible for any recruit to ever do anything right in the eyes of the gunnery sergeant. Even the surprise that Gunny Orth was their platoon instructor didn’t make life any easier for the sixteen recruits when they finally got off the Taygete. Corporal Agosto revealed that the gunny had been sent to the Seventh Training Battalion to take over the training of new recruits.
Agosto also stayed behind, having just finished his first year in the marine corps and was posted to the Seventh Training Battalion for the next two years. Between the gunny and Agosto, they really tried to break Dane of his aloof and calm mentality. No matter how hard they pushed him, or how unfair they supposedly treated him, he never even pulled a face and never opened his mouth unless it was to respond to direct questions. He was no longer the acting section leader like on the Taygete, and neither was Oxley.
Nobody except Dane was surprised when he finished boot camp with the highest score. As for Oxley, he was the only one who was surprised when he scored at the absolute bottom of that group. As usual, he blamed everybody except himself. He got posted to chef training school on Bova and left a week after finishing boot camp.
“He doesn’t qualify for specialist training so he will never be issued a weapon or get any promotion,” Agosto explained. “He is not stupid, just lazy and with a bad attitude.”
Specialist training was actually a lot of fun for Dane. He turned out to be good enough with projectile weapons to qualify as Sharpshooter, making him eligible to train as a sniper. He was even deadlier with bladed weapons. The spike instructor was not quite as good as the old sergeant on Sagan who trained Dane. Before they were half done with bladed weapons training, Dane was pushed into the position of assistant instructor for both the spike and the saber. By that time he was again the section leader and for a while the members of his section hated him, until they saw the result of him forcing them to excel in fitness and even cleaning the toilets.
One part of their training consisted of being trained on how to embark, disembark, and behave in and around the standard Marine Assault Shuttle. Shuttle training also involved being taken up to the space station where they received vacuum training. Since Dane and the members of the section-two recruits off the Taygete were already certified for vacuum operations, Dane, and Nick, the two best ‘vacuum jockeys’, received advanced vacuum training. It meant they were trained in the use of jetpacks and went out untethered.
Dane liked vacuum operations, but didn’t really think much about it during or after their trip into space. He was thus surprised to discover that it was very unusual for marine recruits to receive jetpack training during their specialist training phase. According to Gunny, jetpack training was part of advanced specialist training, which the instructors did, or during Ranger training.
A week after Dane and Nick completed their jetpack training in space, Gunny sent them off to go see the executive officer. They were a bit nervous, since being sent to the XO always resulted in being handed some punishment and sometimes even resulted in being kicked out of specialist training.
“Danny, these are the kids I was telling you about,” the major said to another unfamiliar marine captain. “Both are very high up on the specialist points ladder and both are now also space jockeys. Do you feel like taking them along and give them a taste of Ranger training?”
“I guess we can,” the captain said as he looked Dane and Nick in the eyes from up close. “How are they in handling spikes?”
“Feel free to test them, but don’t underestimate Galan.” The major said with a smirk. The captain gave the major a questioning look before ordering Dane and Nick to follow him.
The unexpected ranger exercise was actually to qualify a few new ranger candidates in a particular skill set. For the rest of that day, the captain, and another ranger sergeant chased Dane and Nick around with heavy packs on their backs. Within an hour of starting, four more marines, two PFCs and two corporals, joined them. Dane and Nick learned that the other four were Ranger trainees halfway through their advanced training.
The chasing around and tiring them out didn’t stop when the sun went down. By midnight the captain got replaced by a very cocky lieutenant while another sergeant replaced the first one, but they kept being chased around the badly lit obstacle course as well as the regular five-kilometer track. Every hour they got a few minutes rest. By three am the ranger trainees started complaining with two of them started falling behind. Nick and Dane were just as tired, but Dane had this attitude that nothing can really hurt him, and Nick kept watching Dane, and then did what Dane did.
When the sun came up, they could not run anymore, even with Dane urging them on. Then the captain and other sergeant returned and stood watching them for a while. They were told to go have breakfast, and halfway through their meal, got chased out, told to fetch their pressure suits, loaded onto a shuttle, and taken into space. Not surprising, all six of them slept all the way up during the two-hour flight.
“Now comes the real fun,” the captain said. They were wearing the space suits they were issued with during vacuum training, and were now issued with a shiny outer liner for the space suit, and a backpack which contained a specialized parachute. “Rangers love to do this and since it is not that complicated, we don’t bother training people with this rig, we just strap it to your back and watch you pass or fail. For ranger qualification you get to fail only twice. If you don’t pass on the third try, you are out of Ranger School.”
Dane was curious and half amused, but he stayed quiet when he saw how nervous the four ranger trainees were. Nick seemed oblivious. As they waited for the shuttle to be in the correct position, Dane learned that of the four ranger candidates, one already failed the high-altitude insertion once while the other three were doing it for the first time.
“To pass this exercise, we are going to drop you at an altitude of above sixty thousand meters,” the sergeant said after their rigs were checked a third time. “There is no atmosphere, so you will accelerate to just under two thousand kilometers an hour before the air gets dense enough to slow you down to normal insertion speed. Each of you have a locator on your wrist. That locator is tuned to a beacon somewhere near the ranger base in the forest. At an altitude of two thousand meters, your parachute will deploy automatically. Once that happens, you are to start navigating to that beacon. You have to land within a hundred meters of the beacon to pass this test. Any questions?”
“How does one steer the parachute?” Dane asked. His question got a smile from the sergeant.
“Once it is fully deployed, you will locate two toggle handles above your head,” The sergeant explained. “Pulling down on one of them will result in the rig turning in that direction. Pulling down too hard or keeping the handle down, will result in the rig starting to spiral and eventually collapse. Not a good idea.”
“What happens if I pull down on both?” Dane asked. This time the sergeant’s smirk got bigger as the ranger candidates gave Dane a confused look.
“Pulling down gently will result in the rig slowing its descent slightly but only for a short while,” the sergeant said.
“Why would you want to do that?” one of the ranger candidates asked. Dane just shrugged as the two sergeants and the captain grinned at each other.
The shuttle was in orbit, around one hundred and forty kilometers above the planet when it started slowing down. It was not a standard re-entry burn but rather a ‘slamming on the brakes’, process. The shuttle managed to keep its altitude in spite of slowing down by using its antigravity generators. Once its orbital velocity was low enough for their purpose, the shuttle started to descent vertically to about eighty kilometers. Then it used whatever horizontal velocity it had left to position itself within range of their objective.
The shuttle was still above the altitude that caused plasma to form on the hull during regular re-entry, but was kept at the same altitude by the antigravity generators, when the back ramp of the shuttle opened. By that time everybody, including the pilots, were in space suits. Dane and the other five were standing on the lowered ramp looking down at the planet below. It took a while before Dane finally recognized the island they were headed for. He knew the island was around eight hundred kilometers by six hundred kilos in size and close to a much larger continent, but he needed to locate the coastline. From their altitude they could make out half of the island directly below the edge of the ramp.
Then the green light came on and all six of them dropped out of the back of the shuttle. For the first few minutes there was no sense of dropping. Dane figured out that he was tumbling since the sun kept flashing in his eyes, followed by the dark purple sky. He relaxed, and after a while arched his back slightly. It was purely instinctive to do so. For a long time it had no effect at all. He kept tumbling.
Nothing was said about them tumbling. They were told that the parachute rig would self-deploy at the correct altitude so even if they did nothing, they would eventually slow to a survivable speed. Dane would only learn much later that relaxing was the best way to counteract the tumbling, provided there was some kind of atmosphere to counteract the tumbling.
Dane ignored the tumbling and focused on what he could see. The liner covered his entire space suits and fitted loosely. Dane noticed as the outer liner started vibrating all along the vertical edges of his arms as he kept tumbling. Some sparks were also flying off the liner. Dane was concentrating on the weird effect of the suit liner that it took a while before he realized he was not tumbling anymore.
Once he was not tumbling anymore, Dane stopped concentrating on his suit and stared watching the planet below him. Once he had himself orientated towards the coastline and the continent beyond the island, he checked the locator. By that time the air was dense enough to have a noticeable effect on his body orientation. Just by moving his one hand slightly caused him to start spinning in the horizontal plane while he kept facing down. From there it was not long before he knew how to change where he was facing. Then he figured out how to point his head in the direction indicated by the locator display inside his helmet. Then it turned into a sightseeing trip as Dane examined the landscape below him. He was surprised when the locator flashed a green light just before the parachute suddenly deployed. That was when he realized he was at two thousand meters already.
The toggle handles were two metal hand grips tied to two chords leading up to the rear of the canopy. Dane got hold of them and started experimenting with turning the rig. He even tried a gentle spiral, letting go of the toggle if he descended too fast. All the time he kept an eye on the locator, moving closer to the center point as he experimented.
At eight hundred meters he found himself above a near impenetrable forest. According to the locator, he was right above the target but all he could see was the tree canopies. After a few turns he figured out where the trees were farthest apart. Thinking to how trees grow, made him decide on a spot between three trees. From the locator he figured out the target was located right under one of the three trees. Landing right on top of the target would result in a painful trip down the trunk of the tree.
Then, as he made a final turn, he saw a tunnel through the branches to the ground. The tunnel was not straight down but at a steep angle. He was able to determine what his forward speed was and figured out that he was going too fast to drop through that chute among the trees. He made a last desperate turn, pulled down on both handles to slow himself a bit and then pulled down hard on the one line, causing him to spiral steeply down while still having some forward motion. Then he was being slapped by tree branches and had the toggled pulled out of his hands.
“Not particularly elegant,” somebody commented as he leaned over Dane, looking down through the face shield. Dane was flat on his back with most of the parachute rig still over him hanging from the tree branches. “Better get your ass out of the way before one of your buddies decide to drop in on top of you,” Dane struggled to his feet and untangled him from the lines. As he pulled on the lines, the main part of the parachute came tumbling down on top of him. He managed to gather everything in his arms and moved off to where two marines were standing under the nearby tree.
“I was expecting one of our people to try to ride that tunnel, not a rookie,” one of the sergeants said. Then he extended his hand to Dane. “Congratulations, you were within fifteen meters of the target. Walk that way for two hundred meters where you will find a hovercraft. Somebody will take the chute from you.”
Dane was about twenty meters away when two more jumpers came crashing down where he landed. Both were whooping and shouting as they got tangled in each other’s lines. After a marine PFC helped him out of the rig, he opened his space suit and relaxed next to the hover craft. Ten minutes later a hugely grinning Nick and four exuberant Ranger candidates came walking up to the hovercraft.
“Galan, you are my hero,” the one Ranger trainee exclaimed as he slapped Dane on the back. “I saw where you went through the tree canopy and decided to follow you, resulting in me passing this phase.”
That night, back at their base, neither Dane nor Nick said much to the others. Everybody know they did something unusual since they saw the small group being chased around for a day and a night. Dane and Nick just grinned at each other and stayed quiet.
A week later Dane and his entire section was back in that same forest for another training exercise.
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