“Okay,” said a Ranger cadre dressed in camouflage fatigues. “Who can tell me the mortality rate of an expectant mother giving birth for the first time—before the onset of agricultural society? No priests, healers, or village midwife. Just you and your friends in a cave. Any guesses?”
Kayla shivered with excitement while the class of fifty Rangers pondered the question. They were sitting on a grassy field near the edge of a runway. Behind the cadre, a group of airplanes were fueling on the tarmac, and it had become common knowledge amongst the girls that they were going to jump out of them.
Day one of the six-month Ranger School had begun. The dozen immortal warriors that now stood before the class were going to train Kayla in everything she needed to know to be one of the most dangerous women in the galaxy. As interesting as the rhetorical question was, she was impatient to get airborne. Seated beside her, Rose, Thandi, and a few of the others looked pale as they eyed the aircraft.
Christie raised a hand. “One to five percent,” she suggested.
“Way off,” the cadre replied. “The actual number was fifteen percent. Today, women like you have better odds because you’ve been raised with good diets and healthcare. But, throughout most of human existence, you would have effectively been rolling a die. Once agriculture and civilization started to develop, the lifetime death rate for all mothers dropped to between five and ten percent. Even an upper-class woman in the Middle Ages, upon announcing she was pregnant, would be encouraged to write her will. Since the revolution of modern medicine about six hundred years ago, childbirth, and life in general, have been relatively safe. That’s three hundredths of a percent of the history of the human species.
“So, for a tiny sliver of our existence, an extremely privileged group of people have been able to live free of the fear of an untimely death. Unfortunately, as you have learned throughout your training, this is not a gift—the shelter stands firm because of the people that stand at the edge of it, risking their lives to push the darkness back.”
The cadre watched the silent Rangers before continuing. “The business of the infantry is to close with and kill the enemy. That means the enemy will have a chance to kill you. Dice will be rolled. You have endured so much pain and misery because you want the strongest possible odds on your side. While the rest of the world tries to ignore the anxiety of getting on a shuttlecraft to their summer vacation resort, you will crawl through the mud to meet your destiny face to face. For this, you will receive no recognition beyond the respect of the women around you.”
She paused as she glanced at her colleagues, then looked back to the seated Rangers. “Deep within all of you is the desire to confront evil and overcome it. We will teach you how to do this, and how to do it better than anything else in the galaxy. Then, when you meet the darkness, you will crush it beneath your boot.”
The class was silent. Kayla buzzed with energy. If they told her to jump off a cliff, she would do so without hesitation.
The cadre gestured to the runway. “We will begin by throwing you out of an airplane.”
The girls were broken into groups of twelve. While most of the class were led away to classrooms, the other cadre members approached Kayla’s group and paired off with each of them. The Rangers were told the basics of tandem skydiving, then fitted with a harness. Once they were all ready, the cadre shepherded them to a large idling airplane and loaded them on board.
The engines roared to life, and the aircraft sped down the runway. Kayla stared through a window and beamed as she watched the world fall away from her until the surrounding hills resembled a model landscape. Opposite her on the plane, Thandi and Rose’s jaws were clenched. They looked subdued, though they didn’t fail to respond to instructions.
The plane’s side door popped open, and the engine noise was drowned out by rushing air. A cadre clipped Kayla’s harness into her own, before shuffling them both awkwardly over towards the opening.
“Last chance to back out, Barnes!” the cadre yelled in her ear.
“Don’t even think about it!” Kayla shouted back.
The cadre slapped her shoulder, braced her hands on the outer skin of the aircraft, then pushed them both into the void.
Kayla’s stomach dropped as a rush of panic threatened to overwhelm her, and the horizon spun in circles until the cadre managed to stabilize them. Kayla was able to watch the ground rising up to meet her as the wind rushed past her face. Shortly after, there was a pop, and she felt her shoulders jerked backwards as the chute deployed. Then she was hanging idly in the breeze, watching as more canopies blossomed above her, while the sound of girls shrieking in delight reached her ears.
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Kayla didn’t think she would ever be happier. They were going to pay her to do this for the rest of her life; even for eternity if she wanted.
“Cadre,” she said cheerfully, “I wasn’t paying attention that time. I think I need to go again.”
The woman behind her chuckled as she reached for the risers and began to steer the canopy. “You’ll get plenty of jumps, don’t you worry.”
“Did you ever have a chute failure?”
“Sure, three times now. But I cut away each time, and the reserve chutes did their job. We’ll teach you that procedure that once we get down.”
Kayla pondered for a moment. She was unable to keep her mind from delving into darker corners. “Has anyone’s reserve failed?”
“Absolutely,” said the woman nonchalantly. “Fortunately, if that had happened today, I would have used you to cushion my body from the impact. So I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
Kayla cackled at the joke.
“But in all seriousness, your enhanced body can survive the fall—though you won’t be walking so well afterward.”
Hoping she wouldn’t have to experience that for herself, Kayla turned her attention back to the scenic descent.
Once she got down onto the drop zone and unclipped from her jumper, Kayla watched while the others landed. Thandi was still pale, focused on her breathing rhythm, while Rose walked away from her cadre on shaking legs. Christie appeared pleased with the day’s fun.
To Kayla’s immense disappointment, it would be a while before she would be allowed to jump again. While other Rangers walked out to the airplanes, Kayla’s group took their place in a classroom to study the theory and practice of parachute jumping. Over the next few days, they learned the drills required for opening, cutaway, and reserve chute deployment, and practiced them until they were bored stiff. Then they jumped into vertical wind chambers to learn control and stability techniques.
Finally, the Rangers made their first solo jump, with cadre jumpers falling alongside them to watch for problems. Kayla hadn’t thought there was anything she would enjoy more than climbing, but she placed skydiving first on that list. Spinning wildly while hurtling toward the ground, with her life in her own hands, was a thrill beyond comparison.
As they lined up to the plane for another jump, she wrapped her arms around a shaken Thandi, who was repeating her breathing routine like it was a religious mantra.
“I feel like a big kid,” Kayla crowed. “How can a job be this much fun?”
Thandi turned a foul expression on her. “Do you enjoy anything that isn’t completely terrifying?”
Kayla thought for a moment. “I like horses too.”
“My cousin was once kicked by a horse!” Thandi snapped. “He was in hospital for a month!”
Kayla shrugged helplessly.
Once basic parachute jumping had been mastered, the Rangers concluded several large-scale exercises, including a night jump. After landing on the blacked-out landing zone in night-vision goggles, they packed away chutes and withdrew into the cover of a nearby forest as rapidly as possible. Kayla tried to contain her disappointment, as the successful jump marked the end of parachute training.
The course continued with the less exciting business of land navigation, which the Rangers had to learn all over again, with their new abilities. A mountain that would previously have taken a whole day to summit could now be climbed within an hour, especially as they could take more difficult paths. Kayla’s spirits flagged, while the other Rangers scrambled excitedly across steep slopes that she found to be unchallenging.
She brightened up when the cadre produced helmets, ropes, and harnesses. The class was taught the basics of climbing and rappelling. They swung beneath cliff faces thousands of feet high, hauled hundreds of pounds of equipment up ropes, and struggled to ignore gut-wrenching drops as they reached for shaky handholds. None of the class faltered in the training, though Rose and Thandi were relieved when the ‘spider-girl’ portion of the phase ended.
Next, they were taken to a pool for water familiarization. The girls swam and dove, while the cadre encouraged them to sit at the bottom of the pool for as long as they could. Once the terror of drowning began to leave the Rangers, they discovered they could stay underwater for upwards of twenty minutes on a single deep breath. Then, they were taken out to sea to dive amongst the coral reefs without equipment.
After the free dives, they moved to diving with oxygen and spent hours exploring the deepest trenches of Tyr’s oceans. Several miles below the surface, they experienced a pitch-black world of nightmarish looking but harmless creatures. Though the class had been taught about the dangers of disorientation, one Ranger had to be rescued when she panicked, attempting to tear off her mask in a claustrophobic fit.
Once dive training was complete, they moved on to boat handling, then kayaking in white water and over long distances. They learned to drive the all-terrain Caracal, the Ranger’s standard ground transport—then they visited some of Tyr’s tallest snowy peaks to learn skiing and more advanced hiking skills, from route setting through dangerous terrain to winter survival.
The flood of information was intense and exhausting. Kayla felt like she was trying to drink through a fire hose. One week she was looking out over breathtaking valleys, trying to make sure she didn’t lose her footing and fall into a thousand-foot void. The next, she was drifting with exotic fish on a lagoon seabed, or paddling an inflatable boat as a team through the surf zone, getting tipped over and dunked into the maelstrom.
She started to imagine she had signed up for some kind of adventure holiday, but as the course’s Movement Phase ended, the cadre reminded the class not to get overconfident. The novice Rangers had only been given basic familiarity with the techniques they had covered. More intense, expert training would be provided once they reached their unit, and depending on the type of operations they would be involved in.