The transport shook as it rode through a gust of turbulence. Garryll Gates was unfazed by the sudden motion of the ship; he’d ridden through hundreds of storms, and this one was no more violent or surprising than any other normal storm.
On the other hand, the rookie soldiers were starting to look green. Gates was the oldest in the craft, and was among the two Stormtroopers who’d even seen combat - and that was counting the scarred trainer. He chuckled to himself; orders were orders - he’d never had formal urban combat training, so his superiors had ordered him into specialized training to increase his aptitude with it.
The trainer was a Sergeant Major, only a year and a half younger than Gates. He’d seen just as much combat, and caught Garryll’s eye before announcing, “The final test will begin in two minutes! We’ll be landing on the roof of the training building! Expected resistance is a dozen enemy combatants; neutralize all of them. Buckets on!”
Gates spun his helmet in his palms before slipping it on. The other three Stormtroopers were doing the same, and soon their nervous swallows, sighs, breaths and other noises pattered lightly across the fireteam comlink.
He checked his loadout, each check a pat or glance; a compact but powerful SMG in his hands, a cut-down combat shotgun with armor-piercing rounds; flash-bangs and concussion grenades attached to his belt; his armor was sitting correctly across his body, its gleaming white surfaces almost totally hiding the black body suit underneath.
“One minute,” Gates said quietly into his comlink. “Sound off, team. Y’all ready?”
“Two here, sah,” said the first recruit. “Ready to rock.”
“Three, boss. Let me at ‘em.”
“Four present. Kickin’ ass and takin’ names. I even got my stylus and ‘pad.”
Gates turned his T-visored helm to the trainer, who wasn’t clad in Stormtrooper gear, just urban-camo combat-uniform. “Trainer, training team is ready for deployment. Give the word.”
“Twenty seconds,” the man answered. “Hook up!”
The dropship was still moving quickly, but Gates stood up anyway, taking his fast-drop rope harness and raising it up to the upper grip-bar. It clicked into place, and was followed by the other three soldiers doing the same.
Gates blinked a quick countdown on his HUD, and called out, “Five seconds … four … three … two … one … DOORS OPEN, GO GO GO!”
The dropship’s doors slammed open, and the rain poured in. Gates ignored it as kicked his drop-rope out of the ship and then stepped backwards out of the craft, falling only as quickly as his drop-harness would let him. He landed on the building’s roof, his boots splashing on the standing puddles as he swept left and right with his SMG held in one hand, the other unclipping his drop-harness. Around him, the three young Stormtroopers were doing the same, if a little clumsier.
Ahead of them was the first entrance, a door into the main building - roof access. The dropship peeled off, its engines roaring as if it was really in combat. It made good practice for the pilots, as well. Gates pointed at the door and the team moved towards it, quickly moving towards the door.
They stacked the door, two men on either side of it; Gates had swapped his SMG for his shotgun and stood next to the wooden door’s handle. “We’ll breach and clear on my count. Two, take right; three, take left. Four, you go in before me, and I’ll bring up the rear.”
After getting a chorus of affirmatives, he held up three fingers, and then lowered them one by one. As he dropped his last finger, Gates pulled the trigger, firing his shotgun right below the handle. The wood splintered under the ferocity of the armor-piercing shell, a fist-sized hole blown right through it. The Stormtrooper across the door from Gates - Two - slammed his shoulder into the door, totally breaking the portal and crashing into the room.
His rifle swept right, relying on his teammate to sweep left and cover that half of the room. Three stormed into the room a moment after, stomping past Gates as the Lieutenant racked his shotgun, and clearing the left half of the room. Two’s rifle spat laser fire and he dropped a humanoid-shaped droid as it raised an arm with a double-tap to its chest and head. Three found no enemies, but carefully ran his rifle’s sight over his entire half of the room. Four kicked aside the last dregs of the door and stepped out of the rain, Gates on his heels.
“First room secure?”
“Secure! Team is Oscar Mike!”
Two took point, carefully descending the stairs. His rifle tracked left and right, aware for anything that might suddenly pop out. At the corner, he carefully peered around, rifle covering the stairwell, before murmuring, “Clear.”
Three took over point, then, hugging the far wall to give his squadmate an unblocked view of the stairwell in order to provide cover. The team repeated the exercise at the next corner, before reaching the bottom of the stairs. A hallway led directly to another door.
Rainwater dripped off of their armor as they creapt towards the door at the end of the hall, the two furthest left and right troopers hugging the walls. Four had turned around and walked backwards slowly, his rifle covering their rear. Gates walked the center position, his SMG raised and held tightly. The door was within a few feet, now.
“Hear that?” Two asked. “I can hear the droids, sir.”
They stopped for a moment, and the audible sound of the training droids communicating could be heard. The machines were simulating a group of nervous soldiers, unclear on their orders or nervous about the prospect of combat. They’d likely heard the noises upstairs and were ready for the Stormtroopers.
“Breach and flash,” Gates ordered this time. “They’ll all be looking at the door, and we’ll use that to our advantage.”
The team stacked the door, but this time it was different; Two readied himself to hold the door open a crack, and Four had a flash-bang in his hands. “Team ready?”
At their nods, Gates aimed his shotgun and blew a hole in this door as well. The droids became agitated, and laser fire splattered against the door, making it smoke and burn away in places. Two fearlessly opened the door a foot, and Three stepped forwards, ducking low to avoid some of the blaster fire, tossed his grenade through the barely-opened door. Two yanked the door shut and turned his face from the door. Gates racked the shotgun and blinked for the explosion, his visor tinting to block the 400 watts of pure light, his helmet’s audio systems blocking the worst of the ear-bleeding 170 decibels of raw noise.
Any normal sentient would be rendered totally helpless at this point; disoriented, blind, deaf and possibly even injured if they were too close to the explosion. These droids had been programmed like sentients, or the gear would not have been issued. The team kicked the mostly-destroyed door out of their way as they crashed into the room. Gates took the left, Four took the right, and Two followed up the middle.
A pair of droids were clutching their ‘eyes’ and writhing on the floor. Gates’ SMG blasted twice, killing both training machines. Behind him, the blast of close-range laser fire slammed out twice more as Four and Two downed the rest of the incapacitated bots.
“That’s five machines dead. Almost halfway there, Four!” Three crowed.
“Keep it frosty, Three,” Gates admonished. “We’re movin’ out. Let’s clear the last few rooms and get this over with.”
Three nodded and took point, gingerly stepping over a couple more bodies. He cautiously opened the door at the far side of the door, and slipped through. The rest of the team followed behind. Another turn and they were confronted by an open elevator. Gates held up a fist and stepped into the elevator. It only had two buttons; one was for up, the other for down.
“No elevators,” Gates said, as he locked the elevator’s controls and opened up the maintenance hatch on the ceiling. “We’ll rope down.”
Gates slung his SMG and climbed on top of the elevator; the cables swayed in front of him, and he gripped it tightly. Grease smeared all over his palms, and he gripped tightly, creating enough friction to descend with some semblance of control.
The shaft was only a dozen meters tall, and it only took Gates twenty seconds to get to the bottom. “Next, descend.”
Gates stepped towards the ground elevator’s doors, SMG in hand. Two slid down next, cursing as he fell the last two meters. Three and Four followed, and two minutes after Gates started his descent, they were all at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Gates gestured at the doors. Three and four drew crowbars from their packs and set the edges into the opening. At Garryll’s signal, they slowly pried the doors apart.
The other two Stormtroopers pointed their rifles from between the slowly-opening doors, but there were no enemies. When the doors were opened far enough, Gates climbed up, SMG steady the entire time as he used mostly his legs and off-hand to get up. The other three Stormtroopers copied his lead, and they emerged into a dim hallway, their once-pristine armor covered in stinking rainwater, soot, ash, grease and gun-smoke.
There was a cross-roads of hallways as they emerged from the elevator shaft. Two and Three stepped forwards and simultaneously checked each corner. “No contacts. Clear.”
There moved forwards, ignoring the crossing hall for the moment. A heavy wooden double-door appeared on their right. The last droids were undoubtedly inside, as the only sounds apart from the Stormtroopers were coming from inside the room.
“Sir, should we really go in the front door?” asked Four. “We’re pretty badly outnumbered this time.”
“Yeah...we’ll make our own entrance,” Gates replied. “Two, rig the door like we’re going in that way; explosives under the handles, then link up with the rest of us. Three, Four, follow me.”
They backtracked and went down the crossing hallway. Gates pointed at the wall to their right. “The room is right there. We’ll create our own door.”
Three and Four nodded, pulling shaped charges from their packs. They quickly began setting the chained explosives into a rough door-shape. Two returned, nodding his completion. Two-dozen small explosives, shaped to send all of their explosive force forwards, dug into the wall.
“This is it. Ready?” Gates asked, gripping the detonator tightly. At the nods of his team, he flicked open the plastic safety-cover and pressed the first red key. The tiny explosion around the corner shattered the doors, and was instantly followed by a barrage of laser fire. Gates traversed his thumb an inch and a half and stabbed the other red button.
The shaped charges exploded two-by-two, starting at the bottom of either side of their soon-to-be-door, each explosion overlapping with the next as the explosive charge-command crawled at lightspeed to each new explosive. In a moment, the entire wall was thrown in, filling the room with shrapnel and dust. The Stormtroopers crashed into the room, capitalizing on their element of surprise, visors set to infra-red and weapons barking as they moved in.
Gates dropped the detonator and moved in, ducked to minimize his profile in a raging gunfight. Already, the numbers had been evened, with one of the machines smashed aside from close proximity to the Stormtroopers’ entrance, and two more gunned down. Now, it was a close-range firefight amongst couches and cubicle walls. Gates rolled behind a couch and pulled a concussion grenade off of his belt, tossing it at most visible droid. It was thrown into the air as the little explosive crushed its leg and it registered ‘fatal’ damage.
Two and Four swept right as Gates and Three poured fire into the last three droids’ positions. Another machine fell as it tried to draw a bead on the moving Stormtroopers, a dozen laser bolts slamming into its chest in a moment. Smoke filled the air from their weapons and the explosives, but the combatants fought on regardless.
One by one, the droids fell, surprise evening the odds and then superior firepower carrying the day. The last machine fell with a groan of circuits and metal. “Police ‘em,” Gates said after a moment of silence. “Make sure this place is clear. I know we downed twelve of ‘em, but the trainer coulda been lying.”
The Stormtroopers cautiously kicked guns away from dead droids and watched for any sign of another enemy or two. “Clear?”
“Two clear!”
“Three clear!”
“Four clear!”
“Lead clear!” Gates finished. “Mission complete. Building secured, enemies neutralized.”
The Stormtroopers exited the building, and radioed their success to the dropship hovering at twenty-five hundred feet up. It pulled into a calm dive to pick them up. Gates nodded at the trainees. They’d make capable Stormtroopers in the future.
