OOC:

Sandwich Sam
Combat Engineer
Level 5: Advanced Explosives Use
Sabotage and Demotilitions

The room smelled of explosive powders and steel.  All things pointing to what should be expected in the training course entitled “Sabotage and Demolitions.” This was a class that some feared and others longed to take, but also it was one many failed with ease. Previous courses seemed like children’s school in comparison; if only for the sheer fact that there was an enormous risk of dismemberment and or death. For Sam, he was in the group that was looking forward to trying his hand in this course.

As he entered the large warehouse that was listed as the location for the class the aromas of blasts and battlefields assaulted his nostrils from all angles. Off to the right, there were a few chairs and some other students; yet no sign of an instructor. The Zabrak moved to the group and noticed a stack of pamphlets on a small table. He picked one up and silently read the cover, “Basics of Sabotage and Demolitions.” Sam knew he should have expected no less. Moments later, a scrawny human clapped his hands.

“Please, take a seat and we shall begin in a moment,” the thin human spoke. His voice was incredibly smooth, which was something that all of the students in the class had not expected. The man disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a cart and large boxes loaded upon it.

“These are basic charges that the Corps use when doing any kind of demolitions,” the man explained, “And yes, I am your instructor.” He quickly tagged seeing a hand shoot into the air. “And, you may call me, Jim. Nothing more,” He added with a stern glare. Most of the class nodded and the others looked as if they were about ask as to why, but Jim’s glare deterred them from following through with their desire.

“These blast cords prevent a large of unnecessary damage to surroundings and most importantly the crew,” Jim explained fluidly, “These cords act as, what one may look at as, scissors for cutting through the toughest of durasteel and concrete. There are a number of uses for this detonation cord.” He passed a yard and a half to each student to examine. The cord was fairly light and extremely flexible. It was easily tied into different knots and perfectly safe with no blasting cap.

“This cord is rated in explosive mass per unit length, or grams per meter. A typical rating is 10 grams per meter, which is used for connecting a number of charges of C4 for a nearly simultaneous detonation,” Jim flowed, “With larger yields in this cord, it can be used for detailed cutting. From carving massive pieces of rock all the way down to lopping off a door knob. This is the core of your demolition equipment. Uniformity is key to every sabotage mission.”

“Uh excuse me sir, but why is that?” a random student blurted out. He quickly realized that may have been a bad idea.

Jim spun around and glared sharply at the no silent speaker. “It is important because it may be so that a team would have to multiple sabotages and make it appear as though somebody else is doing them. If each strike was just slightly different then it may be possible to prove that the accused really were not doing them!” Jim finished sternly yet vastly more fluidly than many would have done. The student slumped in his chair, embarrassed by the lashing he received from his lanky instructor. “And another thing,” Jim began taking a step towards the group, “Uniformity in your detonations also limits the risk to non-targets in the area and your team. Precision to a strike is infinitely more powerful as just leveling an entire city. If we wanted to just glass something we would let the flyboys bomb the thing.”

The thin man turned and walked towards the far end of the warehouse, gesturing for the class to follow him. Everyone hesitated for a moment before following. At the far end, there were large dioramas of common buildings from a variety of planets. Only what appeared to be the basement sections were on display. Jim stepped into one of the dioramas and began to wrap detonation cord around the pillars. Most of the class was confused by their instructor’s actions, yet Sam had a pretty good idea as to what was going to come of this. When Jim finished, he turned to his students.

“From the looks on most of your faces, you’ve no idea what I am doing,” Jim lectured, “But I see a few that may think that you have an idea.” He pointed at Sam with a long boney finger that had clearly see a number of blasts. “You appear to know, what have I done?”

“Eh, erm. You have wrapped blast cord around the support pillars of the structure,” Sam stated caught slightly off guard being picked.

“Exactly, with these being taken out a simple sonic charge will be able to vibrate the building into implosion. Causing minimal exterior damage and leaving a nice pile of debris for all to see,” the lanky man said in such a smooth way that could almost be referred to as sing song. This was clearly Jim’s favorite part of his job. “This works on all buildings of great stature, but not on the single and two story buildings. Those are structurally sound without supports. So, where do we place charges on those buildings?”

Everyone in the class looked at each other attempting to find an answer in the air. They all turned back to their scrawny instructor for the answer. Jim hissed a laugh and said, “Then it sounds like you are all ready for your practical exam, which is to bring down such a building leaving a beautiful debris pile.”

Jim flourished around and headed out a large door that opened in the side of the warehouse. The class followed shortly after. The door opened to a field with six moderate sized houses. All of these structures were just like the ones that Jim had spoken of. These had no support beams, but the entire class new that there was a single point that they were expected to take advantage of.

“As you can see, these are your targets and there are not enough for each of you individually. Split into six teams of four and I shall assign you your target. You will not be able to just walk into these buildings, they are locked tight, which means you are going to have to break in to examine the inside of the building. That is not to say that you are required to enter to succeed,” Jim retorted, “At each target, for simplicity, there is a crate with the supplies that you would normally have if you were sent on a mission like this.”

Jim waited as the groups sorted themselves out. Sam had ended up in a squad of three due to uneven numbers. The squads had lined up in the grass and their instructor marched down the line assigning a target to each group. When reaching the group of three he paused.

“I suppose I miss counted, no matter,” he glided, “You three will have the far back one, which happens to be one of the more difficult ones. Just luck of the draw guys.”

The group ran out to their target and quickly opened their chest of supplies. It contained fifteen meters of detonation cord, two sonic charges, a one kilogram brick of C-4, and blasting caps. These were the very basic of supplies that a team could have, but still enough to get the job done. Now all that this group needs to do is figure out how to make this building fall, cleanly.

“Think we should get inside and take a look around?” Sam questioned the other two in his group. They nodded in agreement.

“We can use a small amount of our detonation cord to blow a hole in the side of the building to enter through,” the only female in this group said whose name was unknown. The guy, named Erwin, and Sam grabbed a meter of detonation cord and positioned it in a circle on the side of the building. Sam attached the blast cap and the group stood to the side. Moments later the cord exploded in a small yet brilliant and precise puff. The thud of the chunk of building was solid on the interior of the building.

The team did not wait for the smoke to clear before hurrying inside. The interior of the building appeared to be completely furnished from the looks of the basement they entered through. The team split up to examine all points of the basement, noting every pipe, crack, and flaw.

“This looks like where we should place a few of the charges,” Sam suggested pointing at the gas main, “I know it will cause a large explosion but if we place the sonic charges on top of the building and the remaining C-4 on the outside of the building…” He was cut off mid-sentence by the shock wave of another team detonating their structure. “To contain some of the blast,” Sam continued after regaining his footing.

“Do you really think that is going to work?” the female asked skeptically.

“No, but by letting the external charges detonate shortly after this one then the force of those blasts would keep the interior one contained some. At least I would suspect it would,” Sam retorted as Erwin stood there with a blank look on his face. “Is something wrong?”

Erwin did not respond. “Now that I think about it, you may be right,” the female human responded. Sam patted Erwin on the shoulder to get him to realize that the team was prepping for the strike. The Zabrak placed a bit of the C-4 on the underside of the main. He attached a blast cap to it and ran the cable out the entrance hole.

As the Zabrak exited the building Erwin was round the corner back towards Sam and the girl was nowhere to be found. Sam began rigging up the detonation timer for the exterior charges while Erwin began to run det. cord to his charges. Suddenly the girl appeared behind Sam with a thud.

“Done setting the sonic charges on the roof,” she said startling Sam.

“Eh, ok. I just finished setting up the timers. When Erwin gets back I think we will be able to toast this thing,” Sam retorted with a chuckle. The girl let out a small giggle at the zabrak’s comment.

“We are all set,” Erwin said rounding the corner, “Let’s grab the remaining supplies and get this show on the road.”

Sam pressed the button on the timer device. The group rushed the remaining supplies away to prevent any excess damage from those explosives. Moments later, the thunder of the first detonation sounded and was quickly followed by the secondary explosions. Debris rained down upon the group. With each piece hitting them, it felt as though they would be failing this course more and more. As the slowed, the group was knocked to the ground as they began to stand.

Another team had detonated, only their explosion was wild and untamed. Large chunks of debris were crashing about the training grounds. The screams of the group could be heard. The only thing that was going through Sam’s mind, although cruel, was at least he did not fail as bad as those guys. Sam and the rest of his group stood up to find that half of the building closest to theirs was all over the place. There were medical teams already rushing out of the warehouse and towards the latest detonation site.

“You all did very well,” Jim spilled smoothly, “I am rather impressed by your precision and uniform beauty.” The team had not even looked at the results of their strike being more interested by the failure of their classmates. They turned to find that their structure in a pile of rubble that looked more like total annihilation than beauty.



The class was back in the warehouse, minus the group that took a hard hitting from their own explosives. It was extremely tense in the large warehouse. One could almost extract the adrenaline, which was coursing through everyone’s veins, out of the air. Jim was standing facing away from the class and breathing deeply.

“Many of you did very well on the practical, others did not,” the lanky human flowed, “But that is just a single lesson. You will be required to perform these tasks against enemy defenses. With your previous training you should be able to utilize the tools shown to you today in order to remove such obstacles.” He began to pace side to side during his lecture. “The main difference will be sometimes the enemy will be watching and other times you will have to create an enemy that is watching. These may be mentally straining upon you, but you must overcome those demons.”

Jim, the scrawny human instructor, glided away with a gesture signaling that class was dismissed. He was still a mystery to the students and aimed to maintain that status. Who knows when a stray explosive will remove him from his position within the Academy? The class slowly departed in confusion. They had no idea whether or not they passed or even if the right people would be getting their results.

“That Jim fellow is an interesting character,” Sam thought to himself as he entered the hallway bringing a bit of the warehouse smell along with him.

OOC:

Passed! Well done, as I said to you, nice and clean writing, keep up the good work

OOC:

Sandwich Sam
Combat Engineer
Level 6: Terrain Managment
Navigation

“Navigation” was the title of the next course in the Combat Engineer specialization. Course title could not have been anymore vague than that. It could mean simply finding one’s way around a city or all the way to being tossed into the wilderness and getting back to civilization. Sam was unable to venture even the slightest guess before turning to the description.

The course description cleared up all issues of vagueness. It revealed that the class was intended to teach the student how to negotiate terrain, along with teaching them how to recognize advantages that could be gained from the surrounding terrain.

The hike from the main academy campus to the location of the Navigation class was a long one. There were times when the Zabrak had thought that he would be late for class, which something that he could not allow himself to be. Once he finally made it, there was a group of people departing towards a large field in the distance. Sam was worried thinking that was his class leaving, but his chronometer on his data pad read five minutes before class was supposed to begin.

He approached an average sized human that had a head and face full of hair. From a distance some may find him a small wookie with rather short hair.

“Welcome to navigation class,” he greeted Sam in a gruff voice, “The names Griffin. I’m your instructor. Looks like you are going to be last one to arrive, so we’ll get started.” He turned to the other four people standing around him.

“So, there are not any textbooks or diagrams for this course nor desks or the like as you can clearly see. This class is purely physical. I hope you all are prepared for some good cardiovascular exercise, because we will be hiking all over this area.”

He fanned his arm out bring the class to the attention of the surrounding beauty of Tadath. The flora dominated the landscape in places and in other places mountains owned the horizon. The closest of these were only half a kilometer.

“Come!” he said turning and walking away. The five students followed without the faintest of ideas as to where they were headed.

The silence was broken by a blond headed student, who asked, “Sir, where are we going?”

“That is something that is only to be asked when on a mission and you should already know the answer in that situation because if you don’t then you are going to have a difficult time finding the best path to it.”

The small class marched along for nearly fifteen minutes at a reasonable clip before arriving at a small cliff. Below were the remains of a quarry pit long since abandoned.

“This is your first example of difficult terrain. As you can see this cliff would be a poor choice to route a squad through, if that squad was moving armor or heavy weapons. Your first goal is to devise the simplest and most efficient path to suggest. Although, this being difficult for weighted teams, this is ideal for squads that are carrying only a few blasters and such.”

“Sir, this can’t possibly be a common type of terrain we would encounter,” the blond student said.

“You would be surprised. You may not be going down it all the time, many instances you will have to scale up the side of this. With the loose rock and dirt, it makes for tough travel. Depending on if you are trying to sneak in back or take the quickest path, it will appear.”

The course continued on in a similar fashion. The class stopped at a number of different kinds of terrain ranging from the steep cliffs to the shallows of a river. All had their pros and cons. The river is a good way to have a tracking animal lose your scent, but is not a good idea if hauling equipment sensitive to moisture.

Eventually the group made it half way up the nearest mountain. There were rocks and boulders littering the sides of the path they were taking.

“This is a great example for learning how to observe advantages and disadvantages of terrain. If you look about you, there are a number of large boulders. What could these possibly be used for?”

“Cover obviously,” the blond guy spoke barely allowing Griffin to finish his sentence.

“That is one, but how is that advantageous? The enemy will be doing the same thing. You are going to have to get creative with your surroundings.”

“You could knock them loose to fall,” Sam said.

“Great, why use ammunition on someone that is inevitably going to be hiding behind a huge rock? But couldn’t there be a downside to that?”

“Eh,” Sam paused thinking, “I suppose that there are similar objects further up the mountain that a well placed shot could knock loose and allow the enemy to fight fire with fire in a sense.”

“No you idiot! You are knocking your cover away, leaving yourself vulnerable.”

Sam shot a deadly glare at his classmate, who returned the glare. Obviously, the blond man thought himself to be the better.

“Hey now, keep your hostilities for your free time. The Zabrak is very right, with the addition that if an opponent did do that it would put them in danger as well, but they would also have more time to get out of the way. You, on the other hand, also have a good point. Knocking your cover away would leave you vulnerable, which can always be unfavorable to you and your squad.”

The group climbed up the mountain a bit further. The reached a landing, that had a transport waiting for them. The class let out a sigh of relief. They were relieved that they would not have to walk all the way back to the Academy. Though, they had not even the faintest inclination as to what the real use of the transport was.

“Well, now. It appears as though you all think you are about to get a lift back to the Academy. Too bad, you aren’t. Actually, you are going to be taken to a random location out here in the wilds and are expected to navigate your way back to base with only the minimal equipment. No data pads, no tracking devices, nothing. You will have only this.” He held out a small round object. It was a piece of ancient technology that had not been used in a thousand plus years.

“This is a compass. It is a simple device. It detects the magnetic forces of a planets pole. It will point you the direction of North. But if you should come to close to any other strong magnetic forces, then it will miss lead you.” He handed each student a compass. It was simple indeed. Only a needle and markings on the outer edge of the compass were used to make navigational decisions.

“Now, don’t think that I’m going to have you just go without any techniques other than a compass.” He laughed. “There are a number of ways to figure out your location without the aid of any mechanical devices. Navigators on the seas use the stars in the morning and evening for references on their locations. They at both evening and morning twilights make notes of the position of at least six different stars. That is not to say that you are to only make note of six stars you can make more if you feel like it.”

“Sir, is this going to take multiple days to get back to base?”

“Blondie, you ask a lot of questions don’t you? But no, it shouldn’t. Yes, that means this particular method isn’t going to help you much. There is another technique, that will help you get your directional bearings and that is the moss phenomena.  On a number of planets, moss grows on the side of trees that face north. You would be wise to investigate this prior to going to a planet. It may come in handy. Here on Tadath, moss does grow on the northern sides of trees.”

Griffin lectured on for an hour. He described the method of dead reckoning. This is the method of taking one’s current position and plotting the estimated positions at different times based on the speed one is going. This method is used for other purposes such as determining celestial bodies that will be available for references, determining sunrise and sunset, and predicting arrival times.

“Well, that about covers the most major points that you would need. Time to go.”

The class boarded the transport shuttle. The windows were blacked out to prevent the students from memorizing their flight path, which itself was twisted and convoluted. Nobody in the class could memorize the number of turns and twists the shuttle took before landing.

They exited the shuttle to find they had landed in a clearing amidst thick woods. This was going to be a difficult task.

“Here is one last gift for your task.”

Griffin hands each a relatively blank map. There were only two markings on the map. The directional compass rose, along with two dots. One was marked with the class’s current position and the other was marked as the academy. There were no terrain markings. That means they would have to learn how to use their terrain negotiation skills to choose the best path to take.

“Alright, I’ll meet you all back at the academy.” He turned boarded the shuttle and departed.

The four watched as the shuttle departed and flew off into the distance. The group trades looks of bewilderment.

“So, uh, who wants to take the lead?” Blondie asked. Nobody jumped at the question.

“I think I can handle it,” Sam said stepping up to the challenge, “Alright, so, we need to head in a north eastern path according to this chart.”

He held up his compass. He pivoted keeping the north marking facing the same direction as he was. The needle eventually matched up with the north marking.

“Alright, according to the compass this way is north. Let’s check the moss thing and make confirmation.”

They spread out and examined a number of trees. This was the most difficult part of the entire process. It was a good thing that they did not rely solely upon the compass.

“This moss is on the opposite side.”

“Same here.”

“And here.”

“Griffin did say that Tadath’s moss followed the north phenomena. So, we must be near a large source of magnetic rock or something. Let’s head due north until we get out of this odd magnetic field then we can head a more direct path to the Academy.”

The group nodded. They marched through the forest weaving between the thickly wooded underbrush. Trees were at times packed tight and other times were sparse. They had marched along for nearly ten minutes before the needle spun and pointed straight in front of the group.

“Great we have broken into normal magnetic fields.” Just as Sam finished his sentence he felt his feet become wet. He took a look down to find they had walked right into a marsh.

“We should follow the edge of this for a bit, that way we do not get wet unless we absolutely need to.”

The group nodded with the exception of Blondie.

“But going through the marsh would be faster! We should go through.”

“Look, nobody else stepped up to be the leader and I did. Now you can either follow me or go about your own path. Besides, you would still be going north and we aren’t sure how far we have gone.”

“Whatever, I’m going to continue through the marsh.” He marched on into the swampy waters. No one contested his choice.

“If either of you wish to follow him, feel free.”

One of the girls shrugged and followed after the blond guy. This was training for a reason. If they did not go with their guts they cannot honestly learn from any mistakes.

“Alright then. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Well, I, uh, think we should take a second and estimate how far we have moved and do a bit of dead reckoning.”

“Good idea. That way we will have an idea of how close we are.”

The two estimated their average velocity from their initial point to their current point. They used the distance key on the chart and plotted their new position. They had moved roughly a tenth of a kilometer from their initial and were roughly two and seven tenths from their objective.

The duo proceeded eastwards along the edge of the marsh. They plotted their positions regularly and made notes on the chart of terrain they had passed. As the progressed, their chart began to turn into a map with some terrain markings on it.

They came into contact with a few cliffs on their trek back to the Academy. They opted to avoid descending them and diverted their path around them. They hit a small creek and waded through it. They had been avoiding more difficult terrain, but this was one that was a bit inviting due to the heat and they had no idea as to how long the creek ran.

Once they reached the Academy, they had a fairly detailed map of the area they traveled. They were greeted by their instructor Griffin.

“You made pretty good time. Three hours and twenty seven minutes.”

“Thanks, here is our chart if you need that.”

“You guys even detailed your terrain? That is an excellent idea. I had not thought of having that done. Great work!”

“Sir, just curious, but any word from the other two?”

“I take it they split from you guys?”

The two nodded.

“Well, we have not heard from them. If they do not return within the next few hours then we are going to send out a scout craft to pick them up. But, you two are done. Go in and relax.”

Four and a half hours later, Sam received a message on his data pad stating that the others in his class had returned. It was tagged with the comment, “Just thought you’d like to know we found them nearly five kilometers north of the Academy. – Griffin”

Edit: Passed Mister Samwise, and it was quite a good read as well. Thanks for that^^ The spec was nicely detailed by sound and real substance. keep it up!