The Characters:
Alethea: Princess/Medic
Peter: Rifleman
Yeff: Rifleman
Darman: Tech Monkey
Bootcamp:
The squad trundled off the shuttles and into the parade ground. Keeping their pace brisk in the dry, hot, air, they watch as laggers are attacked by NCO's with stun batons. A NCO sans helmet steps infront of their regiment, giving everyone the shakedown. Thank you for the service to the Emporer, the pay sucks, the places you go will suck, and your bosses will suck, any questions? No one is dumb enough to say yes, and after a brief stint of PT, they are sent to their baracks, handed tooth brushes, and told to clean.
The large empty room stares back at them grungy and mud filled. The unit scrubs, and scrub and scrubs, until everything is shinning clean. THe NCO comes back, congraulates them, then marches them over to Supply to drag their bunks and lockers, one by one, back into the barracks. They promptly fall asleep, and go through similar routines or heavy excersize and pointless busy-work with PT every now and then. This regimen culminates, at the end of the first week, in an obstacle course.
Now the team had run this course before, but almsot overnight it had gotten some serious upgrades. The ropes over the mud pit, meant to force troopers to belly crawl through the dirt to the other side, had been replaced by razor wire. Worse still, E-Web repeating blasters were firing above the pit, and occasionally into it. After that was the climbing wall, replaced with a shorter chain link fence, Yeff noticed a crackling energy, and Darman confirmed that the fence had a power source attached to it, running elctrified current through it. Beyong that was a mud pit, which didn't seem any different, but undoutably it had been changed somehow. Curiously enough, sitting about 4 meters to the right of the course was a very large cushion. Not the repulsor kind, but the kind a particularly rich merchant would use to let some Xeno beast like a Rancor lie down comfortably.
Seragant Tarland, the NCO from the first day, handed everyone helmets. Clad only in their Body Gloves and a sealed, powerless, Stormtrooper helmet the signal was sounded and the unit began moving. Yeff was the first to dive into the mud, scrambling through the wire and lazer fire, only to get stuck halfway across as he narrowly missed a bolt to the face, covering his visor in mud.
Next Alethea dived through the mud, moving with a certain amount of ferocity, if not grace. She was also the first one across, at the expense of her body gloves integrity. Her shoulders and back were sliced by the wire, though only as shallow cuts.
Third, Peter got on his hands and knees, crawing through the mud, moving at a decent clip. Unfortunately he also got entangled in the wire, though not seriously enough to hurt himself.
Last was Darman, who had stopped for a second to study the blaster pattern. While he timed it out, he was so concered with where the bolts would land that he started out much to slowly. The next group was pressing in, and he was barely under the wire. Forcing himself to speed up, he got a helmetful of mud from Grunt Peter.
It only took a half minute to cross the razor wire pit, but it felt like an hour. Most everyone got out and up to the fence, where Yeff was diconnecting the power supply, while Alethea tried to climb the fence. Yeff managed to undo the power, but Althea had already grabbed the fence, and shocked, let go. Peter got untangled, and crawled out of the mud and stopped at the wall, waiting for Alethea to move out of the way.
Darman was getting stuck in the mud, losing his orientation, as the second group caught up with him. He stopped as a stray bolt caught the grunt to his right. The man twitched for a second, before he stopped moving.
Yeff taps Alethea on the shoulder, making a lifting motion. But it is not to be. Alethea gets entangled halfway up and Yeff has to rush up to try and help her out while he climbs over.
Sergeant Talrand starts screaming at the recruits, calling them sons and daughters of Genosians whores, among other colorful phrases. The NCO's at the back of the groups running the training obstacles power up their stun batons. Alethea pushes herself, and with some help from Yeff, makes it out of her predicament and onto the top of the fence just ahead of him.
Peter scales the wall with ease, and drops down the other side, landing in the gently sloping mud. He takes a second to catch his breath, and waits to let someone else try to still waters first.
Darman finally manages to pull himself out of the razor wire. He hastily unplugs the power coupling on his side of the fence. Perhaps a little too hastily, as he accidently touches an exposed wire and his vision foes white for a second. However, he is all training at this point, and though blinking away the white, he starts climbing the fence out of instinct. When he gets to the top, he begins to panic, realizing just how far down the ground is from the top, arm flailing, he grabs onto Alethea, his pleas for reassurance unheard through his sealed helmet.
Yeff, having finished his climb to the top, drops to the other side with Peter and takes a moment to steady himself, before waiting to help whoever comes over the side. But he turns into more of a hinderance than a help, as he shakes the fence and stands in the path Alethea was going to drop into.
Deciding helping her panicking team-mate is more important than extracting herself immediatly, Alethea attempts to grab Darman and hand him off to Yeff, but only manages to shake the poor guy up more. Cutting her loses, she jumps off the fence and over Peter, straight into the water. Though she sinks liek a stone, she notices that there is a large fan of some sort beneath the incredibly deep mud, before putting her foot on some kind of metal crossing the bottom of th pit that the mud is sliding into. Struggling in her helmet she climbs back up and out of the mud and water.
Peter, ready to move, jumps into the freezing current, noticing it is pulling him steadily down, though not in such a way as to impede his swimming. He starts to bob in the water as the sensation makes him pause, and he loses focus as water starts to enter his helmet, forcing him to stop just short of the bank.
Darman drops to the ground, hard, and turns it into a dash into the water. For once he is confident, reminded of days swimming across the rivers of his home world, and he makes it to Peter in no time.
Yeff jumps into the water, making sure if any of his team starts to drown, he's there to help them back up, stopping about halfway across the pit.
Alethea tries again, swimming across while trying to keep herself above the beam if she sinks. It works, thankfully, and she walks across the pit on the beam after sinking to the bottom before climbing up the mud and out of the pit.
Peter follow suit shortly there after, sliding out of the mud to the chill breeze. Alethea and Darman, watching the peter climb out of the water, being to laugh as hard as they can. Confused, Peter turns to watch Yeff makea a desperate grab for Peter's shreaded Body Glove as it slides beneath the surface and down to the intake bellow. Fortunately humans don't produce enough body heat to melt plasteel, though Peter made a good effort as he blushes in embarassment.
Darman makes it out easily enough, and surveys the upcoming obstacles.
First is a square pit dug out of the ground. Across it is a ladder, with rulling runs and spikes along the side rails to keep people from grabbing on. The rungs are spaced out enough that stepping inbetween would drop a standing person into the pit bellow. Beyond is a dry patch of bumpy earth, to the left of the large pad from earlier. Every now and then, shiny bits of metal can be seen poking through the dirt.
Alethea tries her hand at crossing the ladder. With ease, she sprints across to the other side, stopping to catch her breath, and quickly check herself over for any serious injuries.
Next Yeff corsses, just as easily, but rather than stopping, he tries to rush through the dirt to the finish area. Unfortunately, his impatience costs him, and the last thing he remembers is hearing a click before being launched forcefully into the air. The rest of the team watches as the anti-grav mine launches Yeff through the air, dropping him onto the padded landing area. A pair of privates are already waiting with a repulsor sled, and carry Yeff of the infirmary.
Figuring it will be easier to slide across, Peter lays down on the rolling pins and starts to pull himself across. Through luck or happenstance, his pull is just a little too strong, and he skids from a moment across the dirt, before his helmet nudges a repulsor mine that is just a little too close to the bridge. His head snaps back as he is launched across the rest of the mine field, his forward momentum overriding the direction of the min, and dropping him in the victory circle. A pair of INCREDIBLY confused privates and a medic rush over to him, and his last words before he passes out are "Nailed it."
Darman improves on his squadmates idea, and sits down, holding his legs out stiffly infront of him, he slides hi way across. Alethea motions for him to hold, and he prepares to cross hte minefield when she gives the go ahead.
Boy does Alethea ever give the go ahead. Examining one of the mines, she determines it shouldbe same to move, and picks it up. Facing it away from her, at chest level, she triggers the activator plunger and he hand goes numb as the blast of antigravity digs a furrow in the terrain, and tosses a dozen of the mines hidden there into the next field over.
"Blast it Grunt, did your mom drink Sith Whiskey when she was pregnant, or are you just that stupid? You're going to have to find those!" the Talrand shouts, but Alethea and Darman have already sprinted through the open furrow to the finish line, and they collapse, exhausted.
Total elapsed time: 2 minutes.
Incident Code 1406 (ISB Major Konstanice)
Towards the end of Basic in the Storm Trooper Corps that train on Altaria, is a training excersize where they practice Breach and Clear tactics for use in most urban operations. Because Altaria is classified as a Production World specializing in Foodstuffs, they lack any infrastructure that could be used as a training area. As such, Base Command assembles a series of pre-fabricated two story wooden buildings, that they fill with painted cardboard cutouts, and security cameras. They call out when troopers are "Shot" or need to be extracted. The goal is to clear all 12 rooms, while downing all 14 "Rebels" and causing less than 2 civlian casualties. Bonus points are given for proper implementation of training.
The squad, now solidified and referred to as "Alpha", intiated the excerzie by opening the door, and clearing the main sitting room. Splitting into two groups of two, they split up and cleared 5 of the 7 rooms on the group floor within 30 seconds, with only one injury. Grunt Yeff Ideed "lost" his arm to an enemy that he and Peter did not clear fast enough. It was when they prepared to take the last two rooms and move upstairs that Grunt Peter heard what sounded like malfunctioning cutouts upstairs. He relayed this over the comms, while he sealed the front enterance. Sergeant Talrand, their commanding officer at the time, assures me this is standard procedure when clearing in densly populated urban environments and not evidence of wrong doing. Grunt Darman attempted to set a breaching charge on the last room, but ti went off early, causing him some shell shock, and blowing the door off its hinges. Grunts Alethea and Yeff put rounds into the cutouts on the other side of the door. Grunt Darman cleared the last room under the stairs, while the rest of Alpha got ready to move upstairs.
It was at this point that Sergeant Talrand reported that Camera 12, covering the second largest room upstairs, was out, and may have been out for the whole excersize. Alpha said it may have been knocked out of place by the breaching charge, and proceded to the next floor. Grunts Darman and Grunt Yeff proceded together, tagging the pair of cutouts as they proceeded up the stairs and onto the landing. It was at this point they noted the door to Camera 12's room was open.
Sergeant Talrand changed the mission parameters to be investigating the room, which was belived to be occupied by an unknown. Unknown was classified as hostile until identity was confirmed.
Grunts Alethea and Peter prepared to head up the stairs, while Grunt Yeff resumed use of his left arm, and advanced on the door of the occupied room. It was at this point the hostile was confirmed, wearing a Rebllion Eagle Patch, comabt greens, and a heavy vest. Grunt Yeff shot the hostile, which took him off his feet, and made note of a large package in the room that he believed to be explosive ordanance.
Sergeant Talrand asked for confirmation of the explosive device, and capture of the enemy operative. Grunt Alethea, Alpha's medic, moved to execute the order, while Grunt Darman went to open the door, taking the charge from Grunt Peter, who was waatching the other two doors for enemy activity.
Grunt Alethea entered the room, confirmed the device was a bomb with a twelve second timer, and shot the Hostile. Unfortunately, the Hostile returned fire fromhis position on the floor. He missed hitting anyone, thank the Emporer, and Grunt Peter put the hostile down with a wellplaced shot, before beating a retreate out of the building after Grunt Darman.
Grunt Yeff retreated as well, making it out through the now open entrance, but Grunt Alethea was hellbent on recovering the Rebel as a prisoner. She placed and primed a breaching charge on the wooden exterior of the building, and it detonated while she attempted to drag the Captive out through the hole in the wall before the bomb went off. Unfortunately she did not stick the landing, and in her fall knocked herself unconscious and broke the Rebels neck. Grunt Darman ran back to secure Grunt Alethea.
I interviewed all subjects as ordered. Sergeant Talrand praised their exceptional skills and level headedness, and recommended they be left together after promotion. I complied and have handed them off to Liuetenant Trinix, who made a name for herself in Incident 1402 on Coruscant. I could not find any traitors among the troopers present, and don't believe the Hostile was working directly with anyone in the training facility. I recommend we keep Alpha in file as a potential asset. They are attached to the Crusier Alteric.
End Report. Submitted in Triplicate with Flimsi backup.
Edited by Comic Collector Shop