Chapter 5: Ranger

I had celebrated my eighteenth birthday in a mud pit they call Sweet Water. That was the providence of the Rangers and their training company. After the first night they never underestimated me again.

A Ranger instructor had attempted to attack me in my bed and had frozen as my Swift touched his temple. I swam the weightless tube from the shuttle into the small Corvette. The senior sergeant grinned as she took my kit bag, “My cousin said you were good looking.”

I looked at her and smiled, “Corporal Golden?”

She nodded, “Junior Sergeant now.”

I followed her to the tiny cabin that would be home until we reached our target world. There were four narrow bunks, three with thin mattresses rolled out and one with the mattress rolled up. She tossed my kit bag on the empty bunk and I set my EQ bag and weapons kit beside it. She held out her hand, “Patricia Golden.”

I took her firm hand, “Author England.”

She grinned, “Or Pendragon as the gossip goes.”

She led the way out and down to another cramped room where six more men and women were. She introduced them and looked at me, “Our newbie just graduated at the top of his class and beat several records.”

A large muscular man smiled, “Class is not the real thing.”

Golden nodded, “True but anyone that gets pinned with four of the top five and is still alive can get the job done.”

I shook my head as they laughed and she began a briefing. A tiny bright red haired woman shut the lights off. The holograph of our target world appeared in the center of the room. That was the first of many briefings, because of limited space our rehearsals were all computer generated. The mission was to land on the alien world of Trohas and rescue one hundred diplomats.

To do a silent movement through a thick jungle was not going to be easy. The Tro were known to be hostile and had captured an entire diplomatic mission and were demanding the Empire give them an entire carrier group. We were going in to kill the guards and secure the diplomats before a Marauder company dropped in to make a drop zone for evacuation. The Marauders and the pick up ship were following a half day behind us.

We approached behind the nearest planet and the Corvette went silent as it went ballistic. We passed Trohas in a low orbit and our composite capsules were kicked free. This time our descent was faster and we impacted a couple of miles out in an ocean. Our swim to the shore was marred when we lost Sergeant Ericson to an underwater creature that pulled him under and ripped him apart.

Once we reached the shore we used ragged rocks to cover our approach to the jungle where we put our equipment on. Junior Sergeant Golith took point and I moved to the starboard flank. Sergeant Samantha Morgan was the other flank and the only other person to carry a silenced Swift, she was barely five feet tall and hard as battle steel.

This time I had loaded my Swift with expanders since the Tro never wore armor. They were three meters tall with six arms and six legs, the top was straight above the bottom. They also had six eyes, four in the front and two in the back. The huge mouth almost split the head in half with rows of teeth like an earth shark.

We moved through the dense jungle carefully and froze ten kilometers after we started. Golith was choking and I could not see him but heard a silenced round from an assault rifle. Golden appeared a few moments later to whisper, “Golith is dead, one of those big spider lizards.”

I nodded as she drifted away and a minute later we were moving again. Our recon drone had shown us a large cave a kilometer from where the diplomats were being held. That was where we were going first, to secure it before bringing the diplomats. We had started with six men and two women and were down to a total of six.

Barely five minutes later I spun at the hint of sound and shot the two slime snakes dropping from above. Two kilometers from the cave Junior Sergeant Auto crashed around behind us as a slime snake struck him and began liquefying him as it ate. When we reached the cave I moved forward.

Caves on Trohas were known to be home to very large floating bats. They were not bats, more like balloons with wings that sucked in air and released it in a type of compressed jet of air. Morgan joined me and we carefully switched positions. The bright light Morgan flashed ahead of me, illuminating a large concentration of bats and I fired rapidly as she slowly turned the light.

I changed the magazine and she whispered, “Watch the hole to the right.”

I nodded as we moved deeper and finally we slowly backed out. Golden glanced at us and turned to toss a large tracker into the cave before setting her pack down. Sergeant Ellis took point after tossing his pack to the cave mouth with mine and Morgan’s. We began to slowly move apart as we headed for the clearing a kilometer away.

The huge Tro turned in front of me and I shot it through the head. As the edge of cleared space appeared I stopped and took a knee. Sergeant Ellis and Junior Sergeant Phillps moved apart to circle around the clearing. It was their job to kill any Tro inside the jungle. It seemed to take forever before I heard the human scream.