Recruit by Jonathan Brazee (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

Chapter 10

Ryck was excited.  This was their first time in the RCET, the Realistic Combat Environment Trainer.  He’d played in the vanilla civilian version of the game before back on Prophesy, but wearing a sim-helmet and “walking” around in his bedroom, fighting others online was a far cry from what he expected in the real deal.  He’d watched a Discovery show on military training once, so he had an idea of what the RCET was like, and the show had just enhanced his expectations.

The civilian operator was a young guy, not much older than most of the recruits, but Ryck listened intently to the brief.  The first evolution would be fire team formations.  Nothing this afternoon would be graded, but that would change the next morning.  Scores would be tallied for the fire team, squad, and platoon stages, and those scores would reflect on platoon standings.  The highest scoring platoon would not only have a big boost to its total running score, but also it would receive a purple “battle streamer” to attach to the guidon through graduation.  The RCET streamer and the red marksmanship streamer were the only two such streamers that could be earned by a platoon, and 1044 hadn’t done so well at the range the week before.  This was not only the platoon’s last chance to earn a recruit streamer, but it should pull it out of being the consensus company booger platoon.

Finally, the operator was done with his brief.  It was time to get going.  Third and Fourth squads went to Arena B where several more civilians were handing out the armor inserts.  Actual personal armor would not be issued until the start of Phase 3, but as RCET was to be conducted in full combat gear, training armor would be used.  As they had discovered in Phase 1, the training armor was not only in bad shape, but the “one size fits most” philosophy meant that even if the inserts sort of fit a recruit, they never quite matched up with a recruit’s body, especially at the joints.  Although the recruits were all assured that their own armor would be tailor-made for each of them, the beat-up training armor inserts were a royal pain in the ass.

The battle helmets were almost as bad.  They had been introduced to the helmets during Phase 1, so the recruits knew how to operate them, but these had seen years of use.  There was no way to fit nor optimize them for each recruit, so most of the capabilities had simply been disconnected.  Each first-person visual would be recorded and would be transmitted in real time to the monitors so the RCET personnel, the DIs, and the other recruits could observe what was happening.  Monitors would also show the overall picture as well as what the electronic bad guys would be seeing as the recruits approached them.  All of this would be recorded and used to analyze and critique each event.

Ryck had tried on three helmets before finding one that was close to fitting.  Despite the antiseptic smell, he could imagine the sweat of hundreds, maybe thousands of recruits who had worn this particular helmet before him.  The mere thought made his forehead itch where the brow-pad rested against it.

Geared up, Ryck was ready to go.  He checked his weapon out of force of habit.  At least, now that the platoon had finished Range Week, the recruits were trusted to handle their weapons and no longer needed the horrid pink safety ties. 

When the Arena Chief finally gave the OK, Ryck eagerly stepped forward.  As the First Fire Team rifleman, he was the first to get inspected.  Pink tie or not, one of the operators gave his weapon a safety check, as professionally as any DI.  First, he cleared the weapon.  They’d been off the range for four days, and this was probably the 10th time his M99 had been cleared to make sure there were no rounds in the chamber.  As the darts were inserted in self-contained magazines, and as none of the recruits had access to any ammo lockers, Ryck wasn’t sure when and where he was supposed to have found a magazine and gotten a round loaded since the last time his weapon had been checked. After clearing the M99, the operator initiated the SFA.  The Simulated Firing Attachment would calculate a dart trajectory and transmit that to the RCET computer where it would be inserted into the simulation enabling the RCET brain to be the high judge and jury as to what would be happening if this was an actual combat mission with Ryck firing real rounds at a real enemy.

Ryck received the OK, and he stepped through the hatch into the Arena. 

Copacetic! was all he could think.  No, this was beyond copacetic, this was, grubbing “fantasmagorical,” as the Earth recruits say.

With his little commercial sim-helmet back at home, the game was pretty awesome.  But now, being in the Arena rendered playing at home as the black-and-white version.

He was not observing the game, he was in it.  Intellectually, he knew he was in a huge room, 700 meters long and 200 meters wide, adjoining another just like it with a wall that could be removed, making a single 400-meter wide space.  The room was empty except for the equipment needed to run it.

Ryck knew that from the brief and from what he had seen on the vids, but now, his senses rejected that explanation.  At the moment, Ryck was in a partially wooded landscape, standing on dark brown dirt covered with brown leaf-fall.  A breeze brushed up against him, and he could smell the dusky aroma of vegetation.  He scanned the scene.  Small birds flitted from branch to branch.  Sunlight filtered through the trees.  The detail was amazing.

He was aware of someone joining him. That would be Preston “Wagons” Ho, the team AR man. 

“Oh, wow.  Fantasmagorical!” Wagons said.

Ryck almost laughed out loud.  He called that one right.  Ryck didn’t use all the slang used by recruits from other planets, but this time, the Earth phrase fit.  Some words, such as “copacetic,” which was the catchphrase of Captain Titan in the Swordbinder series, were more universally popular.  Other words, such as “fantasmagorical,” or even Ryck’s own use of “grubbing,” were more regional. 

Within a few more minutes, Hodges and Calderón had joined them.  Calderón had lasted as squad leader for less than 24 hours before being fired.  Hodges, of all people, was now the fire team leader.  Hodges still seemed lost at times, but he had raised a few eyebrows on the range.  The guy could shoot.

Ryck and Wagons had already discussed their situation.  With the two weaker recruits in the team, it would be up to them to pull the team through, even if Hodges was the team leader.

The four of them quickly moved into a wedge.  Ryck had the point, Hodges was behind him and to his right, Calderón was even with Hodges