Hicksville:
There’s a certain amount of disbelief whenever the subject comes up, still after all these years. Christian was born the favored son of a fourth generation farmer, two of which had lived in the very same small town as he was born to. He went to the same school house as his father and grand-father, studied some of the same books and was president of the 4H club just like they themselves had once been. He seemed destined to become the next to continue his family’s legacy, but ultimately it wasn’t to be.
When Chris was ten, he built his first radio set with the help of his father. The reception was terrible, and the pine box he’d built for the radio was in constant danger of bursting into flames but it’d get the short-wave band just fine on a clear night with an antenna strung up in a tree. It was the first time he ever heard another language, and for a boy who’s family had never owned a TV; daily BBC world reports were something special.
He’d built a series of short-wave sets of increasing refinement, learning from old library books and a number of minor workshop fires until he’d become quite proficient. Most folks thought his preoccupation with radios harmless, but when he became the first person in the county to get a ham license the local recruiter saw his chance. The promise of world travel, access to the most sophisticated radio equipment in the world and enough money to build a life away from the farm was all he needed. Chris never attended his high school graduation ceremony; he was already on the bus bound for basic training
Christian would prove to be an exceptional student, qualifying almost effortlessly with every field radio in the US inventory before going overseas to further his education with foreign equipment. A lifetime hunting in the woods around his farm, and an excellent physical condition got him a coveted posting inside the 101st airborne. Soon he’d find promotion, and a transfer into the 3rd ranger battalion where he would become the tip of the spear.
Despite excellent field evaluations, and an agreed mastery of radio communications his time inside 3rd ranger seemed doomed soon after his transfer. His superiors immediately began to doubt his fighting spirit; there was serious concern that Christian simply wouldn’t have it in him to take another human life no matter the circumstances. It would take Afghanistan to prove them wrong, and demonstrate just how much heart the farm kid really had.
Bleeding heart:
Four rounds cut through the thin air, and found Christian. They tore through his backpack, a trio of flash bangs and his field radio before stopping at the back panel of his vest. The resulting explosion from those flash bangs looked and sounded every bit like a fragmentation grenade, and it turned the contents of his backpack into shrapnel well enough to convince anyone. Doc Nickle was standing directly behind Christian when his pack went, but it was Doc who got the brunt of the blast. Still the pair fell instantly, and it was assumed the pair had died in the explosion.
Eager to avenge their fallen comrades, Christian’s squad advanced rapidly on the contact and moved into a nearby town to continue the fight and left the rangers where they lay. It was the Taliban that found them, a pair of machine gunners sprinting around the perimeter to flank the Americans and cut off their route of retreat. When they saw the two fallen soldiers, they couldn’t help but pause to collect souvenirs. Chris woke deaf, and bleeding from just about everywhere but he could feel people close by.
He was sure it was the Doc; he was confident his squad mates would never just leave him. When he finally sat up and turned around, it wasn’t his squad mates he encountered however. Without a moment’s pause Chris drove his bayonet into the closest Taliban’s heart, where he would simply abandon it before moving to the next. The remaining machine gunner had set his weapon aside, and started to rise to retrieve it before Christian caught him in a bum rush and drove him to the ground where meet his end at Christian’s bare hands.
He knew he was in trouble still, deaf as he was he couldn’t hear the gunfire from the village and he was sufficiently dazed to the point where he wasn’t even entirely sure where they had originally been going. After taking stock of the situation, and finding that Doc still had a pulse, he hoisted his friend onto his shoulders and headed back the way they’d come. A few miles down the road, and several hours afterward a detachment of Royal Marines would eventually find the two rangers and see them home.
For a few dollars more:
By the end of his second tour, Christian was already pondering retirement. Since he joined at eighteen, he’d never had more than a few months in any one place and a distinct lack of foundation was beginning to grate. Still Christian didn’t have a vast array of marketable skills, and he was in no hurry to return home and start farming dirt like his father and his father before him had. He had seen too much of the world to be satisfied with seclusion now.
The ISA didn’t have to do a whole lot of convincing, the pay was better, the deployments were less frequent and rarely more than a few months at a go. He was still defending the nation, and if he decided to bail after a few years he’d have a uniquely marketable skill set for the civilian sector. Its unclear if he would have gotten the position he did if he was “normal”, but at least Christian doesn’t seem to mind in the least.
