Airborne!
The sweat shed had had only the body heat of the trainees, initially twelve platoons, to warm it above the frosty morning. Twelve platoons, one selected from each company in the regiment. Captain Mulvaney had chosen 2nd Platoon.
The shed was large and strange, as well as cold, with no lecture platform and no "pulpit"-the Jerrie term for lectern. But Esau had gotten used to strangeness. By now he felt at home in the army, though it was a lot different from his favorite army in Scripture: Gideon's, whose warriors had lapped water like a dog.
He smiled inwardly, imagining Gideon's Hebrew warriors sitting crowded on benches, with parachutes strapped on their backs. A strange thought, even though Sergeant Hawkins had said their airborne trainers were themselves Hebrews, from a world called Masada. A world whose people still spoke the Hebrew tongue; now that was strange.
It was also strange to have their Sikh cadre-even Captain Mulvaney!-training with them, with Masadans as instructors. The division's Sikhs had all been airborne trained, Hawkins had told them, but War House had decided they'd retake the training.
Esau's eyes focused on Hawkins a couple of benches ahead, and he wondered what his sergeant was thinking about.
Hawkins wasn't thinking; that is, he wasn't processing data. He was meditating. He'd begun by focusing on his breathing cadence, which from long experience produced a deepening calm. And a viewpoint exterior not only to events, but largely to his own personality. Nonetheless, he was aware of his surroundings. He saw a door open-the benches faced it-and a Masadan sergeant stepped in. Heard the man call for C and D Companies' platoons, and watched some eighty men get to their feet. Burdened with chute packs and hampered by harness, they sidled to the aisle and filed out. Most of the benches had already been empty; the Masadans had begun with K and L Companies' contingents, and were working their way toward A and B.
Despite his calm exterior, Hawkins could flip out of trance and into action instantly. In more profound trances, a meditator might be oblivious to physical events, but Sikhs didn't court oblivion or bliss. Gopal Singh had advocated meditation to enhance living, not avoid it.
Isaiah Vernon often sought to enhance his life by silent prayer. For the most part he'd lived life cautiously, and stepping out of floaters far above the ground was seriously out of character for him. But dedication and duty were very much in character, and he was determined to be a strong and effective soldier for God and humankind. To calm his fear of jumping into what he thought of as nothingness, he sat praying and reciting Scripture in the privacy of his mind. At the moment he was repeating: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul…"
Jael Wesley dealt quite differently with her nerves. In her mind's eye, she'd been jumping from a floater-without a chute-and watching the ground rush up at her. At the last moment she snatched herself away, back inside the floater, then jumped again, and again, until she was bored with it. The technique was nothing she'd been taught; it had simply occurred to her.
Beside her, Esau sat calmly unconcerned. He thought about the briefing Captain Mulvaney had given them, on why they were being trained as paragliders. Paragliding was an ancient technique, something the Wyzhnyny were unlikely to expect. So on New Jerusalem, paraglider platoons would come silently down into Wyzhnyny positions at night, and with luck, wouldn't be detected till they were on the ground raising Cain.
He was glad that 2nd Platoon had been chosen. In his mind, paragliders were special.
Paraglider raids would be particularly dangerous, of course, but Division didn't intend they do a lot of them. The main reason for doing them at all was that War House wanted Wyzhnyny prisoners. The Wyzhnyny had rejected human surrenders, so they probably wouldn't surrender themselves. Getting prisoners would take special measures, and paragliders seemed the best bet.
The danger was something Esau knew mentally, but not yet viscerally. He couldn't recall ever being afraid for more than a moment; not in his entire life. His most intense emotion in life had been anger, and for whatever reason, during the course of military training his temper had grown more moderate and less frequent. Which pleased him. He'd wondered if daily contact with Sikhs had anything to do with it.
The shed door opened again, and a burly Masadan called in. "A and B Companies on your feet and file out!"
2nd Platoon, along with Captain Mulvaney and Lieutenant Bremer, shuffled to the nearest aisle and out into the autumn sunlight. There'd been a shower the day before, and this morning the ground was frozen. Only thinly though, Esau thought as they walked to the floater. No more than a crust. It hadn't been cold enough to freeze solid.
The transport floater was ten feet wide but low, a semi-cylinder flattened on the bottom, with a wide entry/exit at the rear, where a ramp was extruded for boarding. The troop compartment was a more solid version of the roughly-made stationary mock-ups they'd practiced in. There were two long benches, one down each side. When all the trainees were seated, the Masadan jump master murmured to the pilot via the microphone strapped to his wrist. A moment later, the seventy-foot armored floater lifted on its silent AG drive and they were on their way. Esau wished there were windows to look out of.
He ran through the jump drill in his mind. It was simple enough; no one was likely to screw up. Refuse to jump maybe, but not screw up. Captain Mulvaney had said that anyone who couldn't do it should stay in their seat and not interfere with the flow to the doors. Esau glanced at Jael beside him. It occurred to him that being a woman, this might be too much for her, and that if she couldn't jump, she might be transferred to a different platoon. But he reminded himself that when she decided to do something, she wasn't one to back down.
It was a ten-minute flight to the drop area. The word was, it had been plowed, then harrowed, to provide softer landings. Also, for safety, the trainees wore no equipment except their chutes. They'd been told that with the parachutes they wore today, they'd fall faster than with parasails-about twenty feet per second in Luneburger's gravity. That seemed awfully fast, but they'd been assured that on mass jumps, these chutes were safer than parasails. There was less risk of tangling in each other's lines.
A buzzer sounded. "Stand up!" called the jump master. On both sides of Esau and across the aisle, trainees got to their feet-but to his dismay, his own legs failed to obey the order! For a horrified second, Esau couldn't move. Then Jael's hand was on his sleeve, pulling, and somehow he managed to stand, his mind a fog of utter shock and confusion. Upright, his knees felt watery, as if he might sink to the floor.
"Hook up."
It was all well-drilled. On its own, his hand unhooked the static-line snap from its D-ring, hooked it onto the jump cable overhead, and tugged sharply. His mind, however, was frozen. "Sound off for equipment check." Each jumper, including Esau, checked the chute pack of the man ahead of him, and reported. "Twelve okay!" he called hoarsely.
"Stand to the door!" The two files shuffled toward the ten-foot-wide exit, each jumper sliding his static line along his file's jump cable. Esau felt paralyzed; Jael's hand on his back helped him move. Now the first man in each file stood in the exit looking out, a jump master beside him, eddies of cold wind snapping at his trousers. The others crowded behind. Esau's guts churned, and it seemed to him he was suffocating. Actually he'd stopped breathing.
He didn't see the light flash above the exit, didn't even hear the buzzer. He knew only that Masadan voices were shouting "Go! Go! Go!" The men in the doors had stepped out, the trainees behind them following quickly. Jael's helping hand was pushing, and somehow Esau kept pace. Then 3rd Squad was out, and the exit's lip was at his feet-the exit and empty air. For just an instant he hesitated. His jump master's meaty hand slapped his shoulder, and his feet obeyed, his traitorous mouth wailing feebly. He felt the jolt as his chute opened… and suddenly he was floating beneath its mottled green canopy-with a sense not of fear but exultation! Beneath him-2,300 feet beneath him-was the ground. He laughed aloud. His mental paralysis of a moment before was gone as if it had never been.
He gave it no attention, simply looked around. Parachutes formed irregular twin lines in the chill air. Invigorating! Pay attention, he reminded himself. You're supposed to be learning. As if paragliding, he examined the field for nonexistent obstacles. As he approached the ground, it seemed to accelerate toward him, a false apparency they'd been warned about. Don't reach for it, he reminded himself. Landing straight-legged destroyed knees. At almost the last moment he looked ahead, then felt the impact, and reflexively did a proper landing roll. Coming to his feet, he pulled in his risers and suspension lines, collapsing his chute. It was over.
He'd have happily gone back up at once, and jumped again.
"At once" was not an option. The rest of the day they went back to the physical regimen of infantry training, harder than ever, as if to make up for an easy morning. After supper, they did a ninety-minute speed march with sixty-pound sandbags and flak jackets. But at 2130 that evening, the platoon and its company CO and XO, were back in the sweat shed, waiting for the platoon's first night jump. No one had failed to jump that morning. Esau wondered if any of the others had felt as he had. It seemed to him he wouldn't have made it without Jael.
I sure as heck won't let that happen again, he thought, and behind the thought was total warrior intention.
This time the selected platoons from A and B Companies were tabbed to go first. As 2nd Platoon shuffled to its carrier, Esau noticed the brisk breeze. When they'd arrived twenty minutes earlier, it hadn't been half as strong, he was sure. They'd been told in their first lecture that for safety reasons, War House had decreed that no training jumps be made in wind stronger than 18 knots. On New Jerusalem there were no anemometers, and he had no real sense of what an 18-knot wind felt like, but it seemed to him this might be stronger.
Still, he told himself, the Masadans knew what they were doing. Aboard the floater, he felt as calm as he had that morning when he'd boarded. But this time, he knew, there would be no water-kneed paralysis. Reaching, he squeezed Jael's hand in reassurance. Eight minutes later, the jump master ordered them to stand, and they went through the drill again, Esau grinning widely. He literally dove from the exit, and with his head-down attitude, the opening shock jerked him viciously.
He hardly noticed. The night was clear, quiet, dark-peaceful!-and seemed more beautiful than any he'd ever seen before. The sky glittered with stars. The wind began oscillating him like a pendulum, and he reached the ground on the upswing, softening the landing. Then the wind in his chute was dragging him briskly on his side, and he half-twisted onto his belly, powerful arms pulling in his front risers and suspension lines, spilling the air from his canopy.
He stopped. Jerking the safety clip on his harness, he hit the release sharply, gathered chute and harness into a great wad of fabric and cords, then strode toward the headlights of the bus coming to pick them up. He felt big enough, powerful enough, to eat the world.
The next day was Sevenday; for B Company, a pass Sevenday. They slept in till 0730 and there was no morning run. After breakfast, Speaker Spieler held a religious service for the trainees. An early lunch followed, then those who wanted to-Esau and Jael among them-rode trucks in to North Fork. Since week seven, when they'd become eligible for passes, they'd spent their free afternoons in a by-the-hour room at a small hotel. With so much night training, they hadn't been visiting the water heater room much.
When they'd spent themselves, they dressed again and went outside to walk, holding hands. Old wives' summer lay on the land. The air was still, the sun soft with autumn haze, and Riverfront Park was carpeted with fallen leaves.
"What was it like for you yesterday morning?" he asked. "Jumping and all."
"Not too bad," she said, "until I started toward the door. Then I felt really scared."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Not as scared as me, I'll bet. If you hadn't helped me, I couldn't have done it. My brain was froze, and my knees were like water. I wouldn't have been any scareder with a tiger chasing me." He paused. "But as soon as I was out the door-bang! No way can I tell you how great it felt! When I got down, I wanted to go up and do it again. Right away. And last night was just as good. Maybe better, because the sky was so beautiful."
"It was, wasn't it." Jael paused. "About being scared that first time, scared of going out the door- Remember what Hosea Innis said that night, when we talked about warbots with Sergeant Hawkins?"
"Remind me."
"He said if he'd ever come across a tiger and didn't have so much as his ax, why even innocent as the Lamb of God, he'd be scared to death. Because while the soul goes to heaven, the body knows it's going to get killed and eaten." She looked up at her husband. "It was our bodies were scared. They did not want to jump out that door! And when they found out it was all right, the relief was so big, we felt really really good."
Esau nodded thoughtfully, then stopped and kissed her. "You know what?" he said. "I'm married to the wisest woman in the world."
She chuckled. "How about the prettiest?"
"That too," he answered, and kissed her again. "You know something else I really really like?" he murmured. "Better than jumping out of a floater?"
This time she laughed out loud. "Let's go back to the hotel," she said.
Over the next two weeks, each of the paraglider platoons made three free-fall jumps with parasail chutes. The first was by daylight from 4,000 feet, wearing high-altitude jump suits. The trainees needed to get used to them, and even at only 4,000 feet, these autumn days were freezing, or close to it.
Combat jumps would be at night, but the Masadans, demanding though they were, knew the value of training gradients. The trainees had been given a target to hit, a hundred-yard circle a mile from the flight path. Every jumper in 2nd Platoon came down inside the circle. And they all liked the parasails, which set them down less hard than the mass-jump chutes they'd used before. The second parasail jump was at night from 12,000 feet, their target a ring of unlit cloth panels eight miles away, invisible till they were near it. Until close in, they'd been guided by passive gravitic matrix detectors, read as a heads-up display on the faceplate of their jump helmet. They'd done it in virtual training, but needed to experience it for real.
Two missed the target, and were taken back up immediately, to try again.
Meanwhile, of course, they continued their infantry training, which was extended two weeks to accommodate the addition of paraglide and warbot training.
On the following Oneday, 2nd Platoon made its graduation jump. By then, Camp Woldemars Stenders was no longer Camp Mudhole. Or Dusthole. Deep-freeze temperatures had arrived, hardening the ground like stone.
It had already been decided to run this exercise in the subtropics. Their target would be an abandoned paddock, on an artillery range five hours by floater from Stenders. The operation was to be as realistic as feasible. There were even unwilling prisoners to be captured. Meanwhile, an enemy might very well have detected the floater, perhaps even recognized it as hostile, but would hardly connect it to the intended capture site. The floater would pass it twenty miles to the west.
Forty miles short of the jump point, the carrier had slowed to 200 mph, hopefully still fast enough not to draw suspicion. The jump would be made at the same speed. And until they were on the ground, the only electronic gear the jumpers would activate was their heads-up displays.
They had run and rerun this mission on sand tables, complete with imaginary enemy responses. But this was no sand table. Now they sat on bench seats 30,000 feet above the ground, in a nearly silent floater. Some stared at nothing, their attention inward. Some slumped, dozing. A buzzer sounded, loud and coarse, jerking them alert.
"One minute to amber!" The voice was the pilot's.
This time they had no Masadan jump master. Ensign Berg stood at one side of the exit, Sergeant Hawkins at the other. The floater arrived at the ready location. Above the door, the amber waiting light flashed on. The trainees got to their feet and did an equipment check. Static lines weren't used.
The amber light flicked off, and the green ready light came on. The double doors spread, and the two files of trainees shuffled toward them.
Exhilaration flowed through Esau Wesley; this was the life! Again the buzzer sounded, the red light flashed and the files moved, jumpers disappearing out the exit at a measured pace, one of Ensign Berg's, followed by one of Sergeant Hawkins'. Then Esau was at the lip, felt the ensign's hand slap his shoulder, and stepped out. The slipstream snatched him, then released him, and for a moment he seemed to hang suspended in the starry night. They'd been warned of the illusion. He maneuvered his arms and legs for a good opening position, then pulled his ripcord and felt the fabric feed out. There was no shock; he simply swung forward. Even the oscillation quickly damped and disappeared.
He spoke the words "Activate HUD" to his helmet, and his heads-up display turned on, hair-thin lines lit against the backdrop of night. A red X showed near the top: the target. Near the bottom was a green arrow point, himself. The arrow pointed to the right, so he pulled lightly and evenly on his left control line until the arrow aimed at the X. Small numerals at bottom left read 29,612-his altitude, referenced to the landing site. Next to it was the wind vector, an unobtrusive arrow with a shaft, the windspeed indicated by the shaft length and small numerals. At his altitude, there wasn't much wind at the moment. Then he jettisoned his reserve chute and its weight.
They'd been forbidden to activate their comm headsets till they were on the ground, in case the electronic signature was too strong. Again two key words activated his night vision. Peering around, he could see other parasails, higher, lower, ahead, behind… Deactivating the night vision, he settled down for the long, slow glide to the target. He could already sense the cold around him.
Isaiah Vernon felt his usual pre-jump tension and post-jump exhilaration. Glancing up, he saw his black canopy against the stars, then unclipped his reserve chute and let it fall, just as he would on a combat jump. But he did it out of sequence; he hadn't checked his HUD. When he did check it, the position arrow was rotating, not pointing somewhere.
Pulling on a control line-either control line-made no difference. Something was seriously wrong! His first impulse was to radio his predicament, but this exercise was to simulate reality. Besides, there was nothing anyone could do for him, and once he was down, he could call for help.
Again he checked his canopy, this time with night vision. His problem was a lineover, presumably due to faulty packing. Two suspension lines had gotten across the canopy, and instead of one large airfoil, he had what amounted to three small airfoils. One was ejecting air sideways, producing the rotation. His HUD showed him falling much faster than he should.
He responded quickly, climbing a riser hand over hand. When the connector link was in his reach, he pulled on its suspension lines. His thickly gloved hands were clumsy and the lines thin, but he was strong, and under the circumstances, driven. He continued climbing, partly collapsing his parasail, his rate of fall increasing markedly. Reaching the skirt of the parasail, he struggled to dislodge what seemed to him the lineover most susceptible to dislodging. What he succeeded in doing was collapsing the canopy entirely.
He let go. A moment later the sail caught air and reopened, but still with the lineovers.
I am going to die, he told himself, then shook the thought off and looked again at his HUD. His rate of descent was sixty-seven feet per second. At that rate, he thought, he'd end up mush when he hit. They'd bring him in in his helmet. Then he remembered a Masadan officer telling them the nearer they got to the ground, the thicker the air would be. That should slow him, but would it be enough? It seemed highly unlikely.
His rate of fall slowed to 64 fps. Possibly, just possibly… On the elevation readout, the tens column was a blur. The hundreds were peeling off rapidly, and the thousands inexorably. He jettisoned his blaster, his rucksack, and everything else removable, slowing to 47 fps.
Speaking to his helmet, he switched off all displays and deactivated his night vision. "Father in heaven," he said quietly, "into your hands I commend my spirit." Briefly he looked downward. A few miles to the north was a town, electric lights in its windows. There were people there-families, children-living their lives and worshiping the same God he worshiped. For a moment he felt love swell in him for those unknown Luneburgians. It seemed the most natural thing in the universe to do.
Then he turned his attention to David's most beloved psalm. "… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," he recited, "I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff-they comfort me. You prepare a table before me…"
Jael Wesley was intent on her HUD. She'd timed her forward speed well; she'd make the paddock nicely before she hit. Hopefully without having to spiral in.
Briefly she activated her night vision. Too far to see yet; she switched it off. The HUD gave horizontal distance to center target as 2.07 miles, and altitude 915 feet. At this level there was an eight-knot breeze, not enough to worry about, as long as she didn't have to buck it. The paddock was said to be about one acre. At one mile she slowed her forward speed, and at half a mile tried her night vision again. Now she could see the intended prisoners clearly, scattered but mostly near the fence. She'd hoped they'd be bunched up.
Deactivating her HUD to avoid distraction, she adjusted her speed and direction by night vision. Her job was to land at the far side of the paddock and suppress fire from outlying "enemy guard positions." She swung wide, sizing up the guard positions while button-hooking to use up altitude and avoid the fence. Somewhere out there, A Company should already have arrived, and be lying in support, ready to attack the guards.
But A Company made too much noise, and from the enemy outposts came blaster fire, directed not toward the paddock, but outward. In response, A Company's grenade launchers flashed, followed quickly by the pops of training grenades around the guard positions. No sooner had the grenades landed, then with blood-curdling shrieks, A Company's raiders rushed the enemy positions with fixed bayonets, blasters spewing soft pulses. Jael freed her rucksack and felt it jerk the dangle line.
She was almost down, and braked. Her feet touched lightly, three running steps using up her momentum. She hit her harness release, released her blaster tie-down, and crouched by the fence, ready to provide supporting fire as needed.
The capture teams were already in action. The intended prisoners consisted of twenty calves, each weighing about 250 pounds Terran. Unarmed though they were, the calves resisted, running madly to avoid would-be captors, and struggling when caught. One nearly trampled Jael. She fired a burst of soft pulses as it careened toward her, so that it fell skidding in its effort to turn. Someone grabbed it, threw it back down, and struggled to tie its hooves. After several minutes of running, wrestling, and whooping with laughter, the capture action ended with the landing of two floaters inside the paddock. Jerries dragged the "prisoners" to the ramps, then cut the ties and let them go. All that was left to do was muster, board the floaters and leave.
The mission was over.
It was at muster they learned that Isaiah Vernon was not with them, and no one had seen him since they'd jumped. Nor could anyone there pick up his transponder. Using one of the floaters' high-powered radios, Captain Mulvaney called Division.
Yes, he was told, Isaiah Vernon's transponder had activated, giving his geogravitic coordinate. An ambulance floater from the artillery range had already picked him up, and he was being rushed to the division hospital.
Why Division? Jael wondered. Didn't the artillery training camp have a hospital? Or perhaps his injuries weren't so bad. Somehow, though, it seemed to her they were.
They learned the next day how severe Isaiah's injuries were, when Captain Mulvaney reviewed their graduation exercise with the entire company. Division's umpires had given B Company's paragliders a grade of "very good." Then he told them about Isaiah. "Apparently Trainee Vernon's parasail malfunctioned," he said gravely, "after he'd jettisoned his reserve chute. He hit the ground very hard; his knees and leg bones were shattered. He also had broken lumbar vertebrae and critical internal injuries. The medics kept him alive with life support equipment and an injection of Stasis 1. They assured me there was no chance at all that he'd have lived long in that devastated body."
Mulvaney paused, and when he continued, used the trainee's given name. "Isaiah signed a warbot agreement last Sixmonth, so he's been bottled. When the sedative has worn off, he'll undergo therapy for neural trauma and be tested for neural functionality. But the conversion team doubts that he can function as a warbot."
After the CO had finished, Speaker Spieler led the company in a prayer for Isaiah-not simply for his survival, but beseeching God that their brother could fight as a warbot.
Afterward, more than thirty new agreements were signed by B Company trainees.
Esau considered signing, and talked to Jael about it. "That's fine, if you want to," she answered. "But I've decided not to. I want to have babies if I possibly can, whether I'm crippled or not."
Esau nodded. "Well then," he said firmly, "I won't either." And chuckled. "Because if you have babies, I want to be the father."