Coadster arrived at the Scout training course in good time, two weeks after getting off of Thyveck and one week after debriefing. It seemed like such a short time to have to go back to training, but RAIDERS were diverse individuals, all of them experienced in more than just the basics. He wanted so to visit his family back at Aargau… But he had a duty to his squad. He was fresh, he was green. If another person were to be dropped from the squad, it’d be him. And though he felt an invisible wall of experience between him and his squadmates, he wouldn’t let them down. He didn’t want to leave the RAIDERS. Even though what the squad did as a normal thing was against everything he’d been taught, he… well, he liked it. The explosion and the rioting… It excited him; it scared him.

The planet they landed on was large, covered in little else than craggy white mountains and frozen deserts. Upon arriving at the course, he was immediately told to leave his belongings in a small facility built into the side of a large hill but a loud brusque man that was simply called, ‘Sarge’, made even bigger by the thick white uniform he wore from hoodied head to thick gloved fingers to booted toes. A cloth was wrapped over his nose and mouth, and sturdy snow goggles made it impossible to see Sarge’s eyes. Coadster envied him; it was freezing, and none of the soldiers were told to dress for the cold.  Once all the equipment was placed in the facility and all fifteen recruits formed up into three neat squads, it was locked tightly by one of the troops stationed inside.

“For this trip, you’ll need none of that. Across the way there are the uniforms you’ll use if you don’t want to freeze to death,” Sarge said, hardly muffled by a bandana over his nose and mouth and no less boisterous than any Drill Instructor Coadster’d ever had to deal with. He pointed to another door across the flat snowy surface of the landing pad. The doorway was half buried in snow, icicles growing on the frame. “HUSTLE!”

Off the pad, the snow was knee-deep, waist-deep in places, and before long the object wasn’t to keep form in a platoon together; it was simply to get out of the fluffy freezing cotton attempting to eat them before they froze. It took Coadster and two others to pull the frozen handle up and several good hard pushes to break the thin veneer of ice that covered the door and froze it to the frame. With a solid Crack!, the recruits tumbled into a dark room, warmer than outside but still cool enough to leave Coadster for want of a fire.  Bunk beds lined both sides of the walls, more than the recruits here could use, the sheets sharply folded.

Coadster remembered the first few days in the Academy and the chaos that ensued when a recruit left his bed without making it look like a pressed suit; despite everything, he smiled. On every bed was a uniform very much like Sarge’s, made complete with dark goggles and white neckerchief. To the side of each bed was a large pack full of provisions. From outside, they heard Sarge yelling. “YOU GOT TWO MINUTES TO GET SUITED AND GET YOUR ASSES OUT HERE, OR I SWEAR THIS TRIP’S GOING TO BE A LOT HARDER ON YOU!”

The recruits, surely reliving their days in the Academy as well, took his meaning and hurried with the undressing of normal attire and redressing with the much thicker, much heavier, equivalent. One undershirt, one long-sleeve shirt, thin black gloves, extra socks, scarf, and long underwear were also provided. Can’t get your troopers frostbitten, now can you? Coadster thought to himself as he pulled the longsleeve on. Might hurt your investments. He paused gloving himself for a moment. Where the hell did that come from? He shrugged it off, and shrugged on the thick white jacket. Cursing himself for not bringing bootstraps, he twined his laces together on the front and tied it behind next to his ankle. He wrapped the excess pants leg around the lace, pulled the laces tight, and tucked the extra in. He pulled the neckerchief over his face. He adjusted his goggles. He was ready.

Because of his mishap, Coadster had been third last to the formation, though he hustled through the snow to avoid Sarge’s displeasure. He was pleased to note that the snow was now nothing but white dust; the outfit kept all the cold out, and the boots acted as snowshoes as well, which made for a better trip across. The platoon was up on the landing pad, and the transport was gone. He fell into second squad, looking at all of his mates in the peripheral the goggles allowed. The outfit seemed to make everyone but Sarge look like big preschoolers dressed for snow by overcautious parents. He’d laugh, but he felt like he’d just got to the Academy, friendless and faced with alien dangers. He was tight-lipped behind his kerchief. Why is it that I feel that way again? It shouldn’t. I’ve been there, done that, became a trooper the day I graduated, and became a soldier on Thyveck. Even in his mind that sounded untrue. He remembered the riots, the smoke and ash and fire; the smells of sweat and gasoline and chaos came to him with it. Suddenly he was ashamed. That wasn’t much like a soldier. An unfamiliar voice in his mind, more expected than anything else; his conscience made manifest with the voice of Osney. No, it wasn’t soldierly to throw a Molotov handed to him by a fellow rioter. That building burned brighter in his mind than anything else…

He was pulled from his thoughts by Sarge. The last soldier fell in line, trying to stand up straighter and look further past the rock wall that the platoon faced than the other recruits. Sarge gave him a glare better suited to freezing avalanches in place before bellowing to the platoon. “Now that we’re all here,” another subzero glance, “We can begin.”

He pointed to the side of the mountain the main facility was built into. “Around the bend we’re going to take a little hike. Follow in single file, unless you’d like to take a snooze at the bottom of this mountain. The path is straightforward. Do not push yourselves hard. This is the only time you’ll ever hear anyone to tell you to take a break outside of leave. Sweating in the snow is a dangerous thing, and your fancy warm jackets won’t help you if they’re drenched. They don’t work when they’re frozen. That being said, let’s move!” Sarge began walking, and the platoon formed a single column and followed. Coadster had a sinking feeling in his chest, tired already from the long ride there. And now, we hike. Judging these mountains, this is not going to be fun.

The hike turned out to be far more than Coadster expected. A trail took them up a mountain to the East of the bunker, and up a large dome of a mountain. They stopped frequently to rest, but only for a few minutes before pressing on, avoiding the overworking of the body but no more than that. The cold wasn’t an issue on any front other than the toes, creeping through the three pairs of Coadster’s socks to numb up his vulnerable digits on his feet. Some conversation was held in the beginning, Cody himself having a chat with the gungan behind him about the weather (it was cold), but halfway up everyone was too exhausted. By the time they reached the top, wide enough for all of them, the sun had traveled from one end of the sky to the other. The sky was still a single uniform cloud, though. The top of the mountain was a large plateau, snow capping it to make it like the bottom of an egg. Sarge stood on the apex of Eggshell Mountain, looking suddenly like a sage sharing a secret with his pupils. “Slow Joe,” he called out, the trooper at the end of the line walking up to Sarge warily. He stood next to Sarge, and looked out to the view. The sharp, scraggy peaks; white snow outlining the dark grey of rock poking from beneath the blanket of downy powder; the shadow of the sun silhouetting misty peaks far beyond.

“What’s here to see, Slow Joe?”

“I… I see a valley, sir, surrounded by mountains. It’s crisp, and everything’s real sharp. There snow, and there’s a little river over there. And that’s it, I think.”

A silence came down over the mountaintop, the whispering wind even dying down for a few moments.

“WRONG!” Sarge bopped Joe in the back of the head. “You see that peak right there, the one over that valley?! The whole side’s white, a big snowdrift on top! That right there is an avalanche waiting to happen! There’s a building over in that valley, perhaps housing enemies! Any snipers on those peaks?! You didn’t even check! Theseare the things to see!” He motioned to Joe to get back with the group, and turned around to face his audience. “Before these weeks here are finished, you will learn to look for these things. It will become instinct! You will learn to look at the lay of the land, any land, and be able to give your team reliable information. Your job as Scout is essential for any team, and if the one they don’t have is good enough, well… all it takes is one missed detail. If you can’t catch everything you need to by the end of this, you’ve wasted my time here and you’re going to leave empty handed.” His eyes bored holes into each member of the crowd as he went along, and once he was done there was no movement, and so silent a dropped pin might be heard, providing it wasn’t soundlessly sucked into the powdery snow. He breathed deep. “Now, lesson learned. Time to climb down. Let’s MOVE! “



“Four miles due East of LZ, all clear so far. Heading up a slope, get a better view.” Though Cody had been in simulators before, the one enveloping was more realistic than he’d ever seen, ever felt. The first few times he’d been floored by the detail; the whispers of a grassy plain, the crunch of half-melted ice, the heat of the lonely desert all excited him and distracted him. Now, he treated it as it was meant to be treated: an environment to be scrutinized thoroughly as well as an eminent combat situation.

Before him now was a thick jungle, dense with vegetation and heavy with the sounds of animals and insects in the underbrush. The ground sloped up in front of Cody, and he was eager to use the height to his advantage. Not that I can see anything anyway through this damned canopy…

He looked up at the remainder of the sky filtered through layer upon layer of treetop. All around him was tree trunks; it was almost claustrophobic how impenetrable the jungle was around him. He almost decided to climb one of those spindly trees, but thought better of it; what’d he see then but the tops of the damned trees?

“Dammit, how am I supposed to scout anything in this mess?” he muttered, continuing to walk up the hill. He pulled his datapad out from his pocket and scrutinized the map. He was heading toward the enemy encampment, but it was hard to tell his location considering that his pad wasn’t tracking his own location. “So, either, they’re below a cliff, or on top of a cliff…. Goddamn contour lines!”

He turned off the datapad and replaced it in his pocket. He smacked at a niggling itch on his leg and forced himself to ignore what he assumed was bug gore dripping down his leg. The hill had mercifully begun to slope to a more traversable level, good news for his aching calves. If ever he could, he’d smack the diabolical devil to have made this simulator.

The forest ahead of Cody had considerably lightened between the tree trunks, and the further he went the brighter it got. The wild jungle was just as thick around him, and he kept onward, approaching the light warily. Did I miss it? he thought to himself, stepping carefully over the ferns that covered the jungle floor like a carpet. I headed straight East… where did this clearing come from? He stepped into the light, blue sky above him and green below, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the midst of it...

Coadster grabbed at the tree trunk beside him and swung around, narrowly avoiding walking into open air. What he thought was at first the forest floor was tree top, a long stretch of them nearly unbroken, but for the smoke coming from a breach in the canopy. “Can’t see it from here,” he muttered to himself, looking for a way down from where he was. The cliff was sheer, looking as formidable from above as it must down below, which was a hazy brown shadow from Coad’s vantage.  Roots hung from the wall like threads of hope, swaying with the hot, humid wind blowing past.

“Roots…” His eyes traced their way up the roots to the tree trunk his arms were wrapped around, and followed it up its many branches up to the lofty leaves at the top. A sigh escaped his lips as he thought of himself climbing up the scrawny looking tree before him. “Well, hopefully this thing’s not too realistic,” Coad said, tugging himself up onto the lowest branch. He grabbed the next, and the next. Ground came away, and the branches got thinner. The tree began to lean toward the cliff face, and he vividly remembered his dreams of falling from the skyscrapers of Aargau, and he pushed down his growing worry. The rifle strapped to his back got heavier with every branch, and still it went on and on.

The tree was certainly more flexible than he’d imagined, and eventually he had to stop himself from going on further up the tree, for fear of falling. The wind was a bother too; a gust of wind had almost thrown him off as he was climbing, and every breeze made the tree sway to and fro. About halfway up he figured he was high enough; he’d climbed fifty feet, but there was still fifty more feet of tree to be scaled if he had the mind to.

He didn’t go any farther though; from where Cody decided to stop, he could see the enemy encampment. He straddled the trunk and unstrapped the scoped rifle from his back. He brought the rifle up and set the stock against his shoulder, looking down the sight at the clearing. It was a larger gap than Coadster had originally thought; a large tent he assumed was HQ the head of a circle of tents, all of them with soldiers walking to and fro. In the center were the remnants of a large fire, stamped out by the looks of it. Everything was temporary, but the occasional empty MRI box could be seen on the jungle floor, which made Coadster think that they’d beent here for a while. Remember, Cody, only the big stuff…

He counted tents, men, and noted anything odd or suspicious. He then pressed the intercom button on the side of his helmet. “A large group of enemy soldiers found approximately five miles due East of LZ, centered in a clearing below a large cliff. The group looks like it has the possibility of mobility, but shows signs of a longer stay. I’d say a company’s worth of troops in the camp, but it’s hard to say due to the fact that some of the tents are set up in between the trees. They’re on alert, so be cautious if approaching this area.”

He released the button for a moment, before adding, “Oh, and watch for the cliff; it’s one hell of a trip down.”

He began climbing down, when the wave of surrealism hit him, marking the end of this venture in the simulator. Color bled from the environment and a blast of cold wind hit him even as the sky melted like wax. A wave of vertigo set him spinning off of the tree he was straddling. Like a reverse tunnel vision, the sky darkened in the middle of his sight and slowly, everything went black.

“Alright, alright, let him up easy now.”

A cold hand pressed down on his forehead as another tugged a needle from his arm. The fingers at his head fumbled at the straps on his goggles, and then light filled his vision again. A rough hand pulled him up, and it shook the rest of the sleep from his bones. His eyes adjusted, and he saw that he was the first one out of the pod today. Twenty-odd simulators were set up around him, half full of the remainder that decided to stay this long.

Sarge kept his face straight, but a couple weeks with him taught Coadster how to gauge how he was feeling, and he was pretty pleased. “Well, you did pretty well in there today. Got all the info you needed in pretty short order, though you could’ve mentioned the stream next to ‘em.”
“Yeah, well, I thought mentioning the cliff was a bit more important.”
“Watch for it next time! You had the damned map!”
Sarge helped Cody out of the pod, and tossed his clothes over to him. “You’re doing well, though, and there’re only a few days left. Keep at it and you might just walk out of here with a certificate.”

He smiled, and walked over to the door. “Now put some clothes on. You’re gonna freeze the rest of your arse off if you don’t.”