- OOC:
Crest
(A1) Infiltration
First Level Zero- 2 weeks and 5 posts
Crest sit in the back of the dropship, which was taking him somewhere to conduct his final test. He remembered his last conversation with his trainer at the infiltration training center.
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“Alright, Crest, that’s good enough,” sighed his instructor after taking an oral test of how much Crest remembered. “You remember it in textbook form and from your memories, but can you apply it independently on the field? I’m going to call in a dropship to take you out to where we conduct our final test. Go to the dropship and once you’re on the ground at the target location, I’ll contact you and brief you on what you have to do.”
“Sir, yes, sir. What will I need to pick out of the armory, sir?” asked Crest.
“No weapons, just simple wire cutters, and the camouflage SCOPE armor that you’ve been learning how to use.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” replied Crest. A grin spread over his face knowing he could finally test how much he knew and could implement.
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“Your armor is not the most vital part of infiltration, but it always helps to be invisible, so check the damn thing another time, Crest,” instructed a commando to Crest on one of the many trial runs.His checked the armor again to make sure no part of it was malfunctioning. He also checked to make sure the wire cutters were still attached.
The intercom clicked on, “Ya better be ready since we’re hitting dirt in approximately thirty secs.”
Crest snorted. The fool pilot actually thought that he wouldn’t be ready. It was the third thing you learned after touchdown at the academy, excluding that the drill instructors were mean and tough beyond any and all reason. You check the armor and equipment before you get on the dropship. You recheck yourself as you walk up the ramp. You make one more check before you sit down. You make your final check before you drop, and then every time any combat occurred, you checked the thing again. Also, you checked the thing anytime you felt like it. That usually prevented any problems from slipping by.
Crest stood up and moved to the back of the ship, grabbing a hold on the last handhold.
“Touchdown in three, two, one, touchdown. Get the hell off my ship, trooper.”
Crest ran down the ramp, coming into a crouch as his feet touched solid dirt. His radio crackled, and his instructor came online with no introduction, “Good, you’re on the ground. One mile north of here is a city. Inside that city is a small outpost has a bunker dead center. You are to reach that bunker without any detection from military forces. The forces have only stun rifles, but you’ll fail if they so much detect you. At the center of that bunker, I will be waiting for you. If you get lost on your way to the city, just find the river and follow it upstream. Oh, and I’ll be keeping track of you via a GPS tracking system, so make sure to keep that on you.”
Crest set a leisurely pace toward the city while surveying his surroundings. It was farmland which had crops nearly ready to be harvested. Maybe in a week or two they would be harvested. Personally, coming from Coruscant made him a little interested in new styles of life, especially farming. It was the exact opposite of how he grew up. It was late afternoon, so the planet’s sun shone of into the right side of his vision. A slight buzzing noise caught his attention. It wasn’t the bugs because it seemed mechanical. Nor was it farm machinery since it seemed like it was coming from higher up.
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“Get down, now! Aerial drones are in the vicinity,” ordered his commando handler. He and Crest were out on of their trial runs. They had been tasked with crossing two miles of open field, in early morning. It had seemed like an easy run to Crest, but after seeing how his handler was doing it by the book, making sure of everything before doing it, he no longer was quite sure that it would be so easy. Now it proved right. Crest crawled up to his handler and asked in a quiet voice, “Sir, how do you know about the aerial drones?”
The handler responded, “You hear that slight buzzing noise? It’s not like an insect, but it’s higher than farming equipment. Did you read anything on aerial drones back at the training center?” Crest indicated his ignorance, and the handler continued, “Alrighty, crash course it is then. Aerial drones are lethal to an operation since, if you’re caught in an open field, there is nothing to provide cover for you, excluding good luck. Preferably, to avoid aerial drones you should get under a solid, unbroken cover. If you can’t there are a few tricks up your sleeve. The first is to make it so that they have to fly into the sun. It is kinda hard to do, but can make a difference if you can execute it. Second, if there are thick shrubs or plants, get under them, but make sure not to disturb them. Third, if nothing else works, get in shadows, lay perfectly still, and hope for everything you have that you’ll not get caught. Got that? Follow me.”
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He listened and heard that the drone was coming from the east. They had executed his first trick most perfectly. As for the second trick, it was not going to happen because the plants were packed so closely he would disturb quite a wide patch. The third trick was going to have to work. He rolled down beside the west side of the road and laid perfectly still. He waited and waited. Nothing happened. He waited. Nothing happened. He waited. Suddenly, the buzzing noise grew much louder. The drone screamed over his head. Crest slowly got up and worked his way up to the road. He started running toward the city with all haste, not wanting to encounter another drone.
After about a half an hour of running Crest reached visual range of the city. By now it was late and the bottom of the sun was now touching the ground. He knew they city would be closing the gate soon. He had maybe thirty to forty-five minutes to get in. He pulled in quietly to the wall, entrusting his armor to protect him from the vision of the sentries. He slowly walked so that he was on the west side of the gate, behind the vision of the two guards standing at the gate that were there to check anybody who was coming into the city. He waited as the sun went down.
This was the second thing that you learned after you touched down. Patience is your second best friend. Use it, no exceptions.
It paid off. One guard commented, “Nobody’s going to come in now, come on let’s pack up and head on in, Conrad.” The other guard agreed and followed the first one in. Crest moved in directly behind the second guard, trusting his armor to hide him. As soon as the second guard (and Crest) went through the gate, the gate slammed closed behind them. Crest quickly detached himself from the two guards and slipped out into an alley.
He knew he couldn’t risk moving into heavily civilian populated areas. There were just too many eyes. While he mused over his options, he rechecked his armor. He found a slight piece of mud stuck to his heel, which he promptly removed. It would be odd to see a piece of mud floating in mid-air. There was nothing else attached to his armor, so he quietly slipped out toward the main street just as the lights came on to compensate for the loss of the sunlight.
However, before he could move into the street, he saw a four man stormtrooper patrol team patrolling it. There was one man up high on the roof top, one man on the walkway in the middle of the street, and two men flanking him on the walkways on the side of the street. They quickly moved by him. Crest slipped in ten meters behind the man on his side, using his armor to cover him from the overwatch and used civilians to cover him from the guy he was trailing. He cautiously moved behind him as they aggressively ran the patrol. It seemed as if they were clearing a hostile town. The patrol quickly completed their patrol loop, which lead Crest to the outpost.
The outpost was not anything near pretty but that made it all the harder to enter it. It was shaped as an octagon with each wall being approximately thirty meters long. The walls curved outward slightly so that no one could climb it.
Crest moved to the front but stopped before he approached. The gate was only guarded by one stormtrooper who seemed extremely relaxed. It seemed almost like the perfect opportunity, yet it didn’t seem right that a base used for infiltration tests and that was under the threat of urban combat would be complacent.
Here was now where the first thing you learned in infiltration school came in handy. Trust your instincts that something is wrong, and then use your brain to figure out what in the world it was.
Crest examined his surroundings. Four standard office buildings were in sight from the front gate. The roofs looked clear. The ground was clear with no civilians. No landspeeders were visible. There were no airspeeders either. No unusual sounds were emitting from the outpost. Something didn’t seem to be right with the office building. Crest suddenly saw one of the windows had a miniature hole in it. Crest quickly scanned the other buildings and confirmed that each office had one of those.
If I had to bet, I would bet that each of those buildings had a thermal signature scanner, thought Crest.Crest started moving around to the back. His foot quickly sunk into the ground. He stopped and pulled his foot up. He quickly examined the ground and found this same type of ground went right under the wall. Here, he could dig under the wall through this ground, so that is what he did.
The outpost had no lighting to compensate for the night which made it a pain to try to move around, but there were small streaks of light coming out of a nearby tent, which Crest quickly slipped into. It was an armory and a briefing room. He checked his armor. It was covered in dirt, and would take forever if he took the time to clean it. He quickly shed his armor and buried it into the ground, while looking around for another armor suit. He eventually decided on a nice shiny white set of regular stormtrooper armor. He looked over the armor and found various restraints on it.
Well, this might be my only chance to use those wire cutters, so out you come, you sharp snip-all-things-in-two cutter.He withdrew the wire cutters and cut through the various restraints on the armor, and quickly donned it, hanging the wire cutters off the belt and putting the GPS Locater into the belt
Shame that I didn’t get to use them for what they were made. It woulda been nice. He also grabbed an E-11 that had a nice thermal scope, which explained the lack of lighting inside the base. He walked over to the briefing side of the tent and perused the various papers that lay around in various states. There was a paper which had “STOPPER” written on it and a paper that had callsigns and the various other information relating to communications.. He pilfered a map of the outpost, which showed the patrol routes. Most of the routes were split into two circles. The squad patterns were laid out so that it was staggered outer-inner-outer, outer-inner-outer, outer-inner-outer, ...
The briefing tent was the only corridor inside the inner circle without having to sneak past squads. Crest felt an urge to laugh at his luck but held it in as the sound was usually detrimental to the attempt of sneaking around.
The bunker was actually quite prominent in the center of the camp. It looked as essentially a fifteen meter by fifteen meter by fifteen meter duracrete box. There was a small door slightly off center with a console on the right. Crest walked over to the console and powered it on.
----VEA.ITC.CONSOLE.ACCESS.VAULT initializing---
----INITIALIZED----
----VEA.ITC.CONSOLE.ACCESS.VAULT/DIALOGUE initializing----
----INTIALIZED----
----Beginning---
----Compiling User List----
----One account detected. Setting user as standard----
----VEA.ITC.CONSOLE.ACCESS.VAULT\ACCESS.REQUEST->VEA.ITC.CONSOLE.ACCESS.VAULT----
----Input: Crest stared at the console as if it were talking in a foreign language. While he had seen and acquainted himself with civilian-use consoles, this interface had been stripped down to bare bones. However, he was sure that the last line asked him a password. For some reason the unmarked piece of paper with “STOPPER” came to his mind. He mulled over it and coming up with no better idea, typed it into the console and hit the accept key.
The doors slid open, and Crest walked into the bunker.
“You’re late, Crest,” commented his trainer.
Dead tired, Crest replied, “Maybe you shoulda given me a free ticket into the city, base, and bunker. I would have come in much faster, sir.”
Laughing, the trainer asked his next question, “Why did you grab the stormtrooper armor?”
“Well, sir, it might have freaked your squads out on seeing vaguely humanoid dirt covered shape walking in their midst.”
“Maybe. Come on over here and we can discuss your mission.”
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