Freehold (33 page)

She opened her eyes to find Mar kissing her and the men asleep. "Feeling okay?" Mar asked.

"Sure. Did I black out?" she asked.

"Not as such. You mumbled a few words about being ruined for regular sex, then fell asleep."

"Oh," she replied wittily.

"Speaking of which," Marta added as she began caressing her again. Kendra wondered if she was going to be allowed to sleep any more.

They spent the next day on a six-meter sailboat on Mirror Lake. She gratefully stripped naked and sunbathed as soon as the temperature permitted. It had been so long since she'd been outside without clothes that she felt odd about it again. She declined to join Marta in a dip over the side, however. The young woman resurfaced dripping and howling, her nipples crinkled from the cold and her lips taking on a blue cast for a few segs.

Rob pulled the tiller taut against the breeze, tacking them. He was experienced with sailing vessels too, and Kendra wondered again just how many skills were in his repertoire. She lazed on the deck while Marta teased Ash again. They munched a picnic lunch and headed back in the afternoon as Io began to bake them. There were hundreds of boats out by then, and Rob steered carefully. Kendra nodded at appreciative stares, still not used to them. Marta played to the audience and had a great time.

Mar was definitely amused by Asher. She was kissing and caressing him as they sat relaxing in the room. "You realize how lucky you are, I hope," Kendra grinned. "What would last night have cost him?" she asked Marta.

Considering, Marta said, "Sex with some variations, voyeurism, extended oral, about two divs worth . . . two thousand credits would cover it."

Asher looked suitably impressed. "Wow," he said. "Kendra said you were high priced, but wow."

"You don't think I'm worth it?" Marta asked with a cruel grin.

"Uh, yes!" he agreed quickly. Despite his minimal experience, he knew Marta was incredibly skilled and he'd be pondering the differences between her and Kendra, while trying hard not to rate them against each other. It was amusing, but Kendra was glad they weren't involved more than casually. It could get very confused and ugly if they were.

Marta dropped them at the barracks the next morning with twenty segs to spare. They changed and were ready for free-fall training, Kendra still a bit stiff from athletic sex.

After the daily exercise and shooting, they listened to the lecture again and ran through rehearsals one-on-one with the staff. Satisfied, they were herded back aboard the vertols, Kendra feeling well rested, and confident. There was just a twinge of nervousness inside and she looked around at the others. Some wore grins like Ash's and she wondered how many others had been trysting. She doubted any had had as athletic a time as she'd had.

They were quickly at altitude and Kendra was motioned to be first. Her stomach flopped, but she stepped forward. There was an interminable wait, then the ramp dropped, then there was more waiting as the landscape glided by. They were doing barely 150 kilometers, but it seemed faster. The jumpmaster walked casually out to the edge of the ramp and looked down while Kendra swallowed. He motioned her forward.

She stepped gingerly to the edge and stood there, buffeted by the slipstream as the instructor pointed down. "There's your target," he shouted over the roar. She could hear it live and in her headset in odd stereo.

She glanced down, nodding, not really seeing.

"No, lean over. Down there!" he repeated. She leaned, gripping the stanchion, and saw what might be a painted target. "Ready," he told her. She put her toes against the edge, waiting in the disconnected state she'd learned to associate with sensory or mental overload.

She heard a bellowed,
"Go!"
 

Swallowing again, she dove off the edge and dropped, spread to catch the roaring wind. The air and gravity ripped at her, pulled her, tumbled her from headfirst to belly-down as she took a stiff
"Arch!"
while shouting instructions to remind and time herself.
"Look!"
she yelled and sighted her release handle near her right side. At
"Reach!"
she pulled her arms in toward her torso as she'd been taught and yanked the release while bellowing
"Pull!"
 

It was supposed to be a five-second count. It had taken her barely one. But the gear worked as advertised and the canopy rippled and billowed over her. She checked it and could see other students deploying overhead. Adrenaline coursed through her and she whooped in delight. This was a rush.

The next trip was a ten-second delay from a faster craft, face-first in a rush toward the ground, rolling in the gale to a stable position. They did twenty seconds. They could go no further than thirty without oxygen and stopped there. Kendra would vividly remember that jump forever.

She leapt headfirst out the back, feet against her buttocks, arms extended to let the buffeting winds catch her. She flattened out in the sudden silence and heard the steadily increasing roar of the air past her ears. Occasional side-gusts caught her and there came a whuffing sound as she dropped through a wisp of cloud. Full gravity returned as she reached terminal velocity.

The world curved away from her in a vast panorama and she leaned sideways to turn for a full view. It was exhilarating and she grinned beneath her goggles. Remembering to check her altimeter, she was surprised to find it was only 185 meters and about five seconds into her flight. She had plenty of time. She turned back to the view.

She kept a steady eye on her altimeter. After a long time that was meditative and restful, she popped the canopy at five hundred meters as ordered. She found a rising thermal and managed extra hang time, in violation of regs.
It should cost to have this much fun,
she thought. She landed and reported in for dinner. They resumed afterward, doing a static jump and a free fall in darkness with night-vision gear.

The rest of the instruction block passed at a blur. They began jumping with gear and did more night jumps, into water, into thick woods with armor to prevent injury, then into mock urban settings. They practiced malfunctions, including releasing a "damaged" main and deploying the reserve. They used oxygen to go as high as seven thousand meters and practiced steering for their targets.

They were more than halfway through already. After Recruit Training, as busy as it had been, the breakneck pace here was staggering.

Up before Io again. Exercise, shooting range, classroom. They devoured the lecture and were driven to another training area. They jogged up stairs to the top of a one-hundred-meter training tower and donned harnesses.

Kendra snapped the rope through the links as taught and the instructor tugged it to inspect. "Okay," she said. "You can't fall as long as you grip the rope against your hip," she reiterated the lecture. "Try to hang on in front, you'll slip. Now, back to the edge." Kendra nodded, shuffled to the edge of the tower and leaned back. She felt fine so far.

She slipped one foot over, then the other, and gingerly edged down, feet against the building, slipping the rope through her fingers and snugging it against her hip. "Faster," she was ordered. "We don't have all day."

She quickened her pace, looking at the wall and not down and was quickly done. She was surprised at how easy it had been. She'd expected to be scared of the height. Free-fall training had put a stop to that.

She went up twice more for practice and prepared for the real training after lunch.

That was a different experience. She faced forward, standing at the edge. It looked like a long way down now. "Over you go," she was reminded.

She squatted and stepped over with her left, then her right. She stared straight down the tower to the packed ground below and paused. It was disorienting, and her hindbrain waited to plummet to her death. Gingerly, she stood out from the side, holding the rope taut in front of her. She stepped, then again, jerkily, shifting against the tower and hissing. Her adrenaline level was up again. If this continued, she'd be addicted to the stuff.

She continued jerking down the side. It was easier this way, once she was used to it. She could see where she was going and it was easier to control the rope. By evening, she was proficient and comfortable with the basics. They did one in darkness, then bedded down and rose early again.

They spent the day rappelling from vertols, finally leaping out the side and dropping fifty meters in five seconds using a friction lock to slow the descent at an increasing rate. They started in free fall down the rope, gravity building as they dropped and hitting the ground just hard enough to sting the feet a little. The friction heat could be felt right through the gloves.

By the end of it, she could drop, maneuver during descent, fire a weapon to clear a window and land inside it or hit a roof on the fly. She could reconnect to a trailing rope and lift, spreading to stay steady in the wind. She could drop from a moving craft, timing her descent to match the pendulum swing of the rope and land stationary at a selected position. They spent more effort on rappelling and roping than on any other task. Current doctrine held that this was the most useful technique for assault. It was a lot of fun to bounce across the landscape, once trained. Better than any amusement park ride she'd ever tried.

They spent what seemed now to be a very brief span on beach assault and additional land techniques. It was unlikely they'd ever be assaulting from water, but it was possible for a drop pod to land off-beacon. They practiced wading, swimming and using small boats. The two days were dawn to dusk affairs, but flew by quickly, although cold, wet and itchy. The last day of the block was spent frontally assaulting prepared positions. Kendra was reflective afterward. It finally hit her at gut level that she was learning to kill or be killed. A frontal assault would be suicide for most involved.

The final exercise was quick, brutally hard and messy. The students lined up at the beginning of the course, psyched and ready to graduate. From here, technical training for most, direct assignment to their new unit for others . . . and for some poor unfortunates, follow-up with Blazer training and perhaps Black Operations after that. Kendra shuddered to think about what could be worse than this.

She waited anxiously, a bit concerned about the test. She understood exactly what was involved, but the waiting was still unnerving. She approached the front of the line and killed time watching those ahead of her.

Her turn. "Pacelli, Kendra A." she recited to the evaluator.

"You ready, Private?" he asked her.

"Yes, Sergeant!" she replied.
Hell, no!

"
Go
!"

She ran three steps and jumped into the trench, landing chest deep in frigid mud. Floating in it was assorted trash, refuse and rotten garbage. She held her breath and bent forward, slime rising over her face and into her ears and hair as she grasped the two sunken ammo cans left for her and grabbed the handles. As she stood, filth oozed down over her and into her clothes. She longed to wipe her face, but that would mean dropping one of the boxes, which would mean another dunking.

She waded forward, as close to a run as she could manage under the circumstances, feeling her boots squelching underneath as the mud forced its way in. The two cases, full of ammo and mud, were already heavy and dragged her arms behind her as she slogged onward.

She reached the end of the two-hundred-meter ditch exhausted, cold and aching. The handles had cut into her hands and she'd banged both shins, her knees and thighs with the sharp corners several times, front and back. She was only too happy to drop them. She wasn't happy with the high-pressure fire hose used to clean her off with even colder water, the spray blasting up her nose, into her mouth when she yelped and pouring liters of water into her clothes and down. The dousing added the burden of additional weight and she sprinted away as soon as she was clean. The hose chased her for a few seconds. Once out of range she coughed water out of her burning lungs and resumed at a slow pace.

There wasn't much point to the soaking, she thought, since she immediately had to dive face-first for cover in wet, limy sand that burned to the touch. The small arms fire blazing overhead was live, and while it was being held high enough to avoid injury, so she'd been told, it still made cracking sounds as it ripped by. She dragged herself along, cringing at the occasional low round. It actually was possible to flatten to half one's thickness, she decided, but the sand grains were a bit small for real concealment. She stretched her arms out again, scrabbled with her fingers, dug in her toes and crept under the first strands of razor wire.

She got snagged eventually and had to carefully snip the wire with her shears. The springy metal twanged along its length and bounced over, catching another trainee. He snapped, "Watch it, dickwad!" as an instructor poured a burst right over her head. Kendra flinched, and wasn't sure if the warm wetness she felt was lime and water or if she'd peed her pants. That had been close. Another bounding wire cut by someone else sliced across her hand. The sand rubbed in to create a fiery pain. She decided she could deal with it until she was clear, and crawled faster.

Once clear, it took her a few seconds to rinse the wound and spray sealer on it, then she ran for the target range. She found an open lane, punched her ID into the touchpad and unshouldered her weapon. She banged the grit from it, raised it and commenced fire at the pop-up targets. Once done, she slung it again and hit the track.

Unarmed combat test, and for evaluation, they meant unarmed. Someone could get killed from a clubbed rifle or shovel. The student was required to attack, and she took short steps toward her opponent. The man was smaller than she and her hunched posture caused him to misjudge her size. She straightened, raised her foot a full meter farther away than he expected, pivoted and kicked his ankle. He hopped back, changed stance and threw a fist toward her face. She rolled it aside with her right, circled her left hand down the other way to slow the parallel punch into her guts and tangled her left foot past his leading leg to kick the ankle she'd already abused. She grunted from the thump to her belly that he snuck in and breathed deeply and openmouthed as her diaphragm protested. Shoving his weight back onto the injured leg, she twisted her torso and he fell to his knees. She dropped her knee into the small of his back, stuck her extended left fingers into his throat and said, "Dead."