Crest sighed as the new Corporal and one of his closest friends, Psycho, rushed the briefing. Seriously, how hard was it? He was not confessing a murder to a bunch of bloody-thirsty judges...

Crest tried to remember back to his own first briefing. Had he done that? Incidentally, which mission had been his first briefing? Crest thought back. It had been the Navarr incident. Crest tried to remember the briefing.... He had not rushed it, but he had had to use the original, Army-prepared notes. He supposed Psycho had beaten him in that regard, being able to go off his not-often-used memory and brain.

Crest only half-paid attention to the briefing. He had already memorized the thing before he ever summoned Psycho. Rather, he was remembering a face from Valiant. It was the only face that really mattered to him. He idly wondered what rank Aquila had made. Crest assumed she had become squad leader of Valiant after the last one had defected. Of course, Valthir had been muttering something about the previous one not actually defecting when they had recovered him in his half-delirious state, but, at the debriefing, Valthir had mentioned nothing in the squad leader’s defense.

Crest sighed, knowing that, whatever the truth was, it really did not matter to him. As he went back to his original pondering of Aquila’s new rank, he subconsciously reached up to his shoulder, checking once again if the triple chevrons of the Sergeant rank were really on his shoulders.

That promotion had been a surprise. After all, his squad had been decimated. Excluding bull-headed Psycho (even if he had been forced to spend time in therapy) and the ever-resilient Velius, none of his squad had been been able to go on and had been transferred out to less strenuous positions. On the plus side, the academy had come through (again) and provided Blackjack some fresh troopers, bringing them to eight. And somebody up high had been able to come through, and transferred Sergeant Alater, a Barabel, back to Blackjack. Now, that had been a pleasant surprise when Crest had suddenly gotten the transfer papers on his desk.

Velius was the other face Crest clearly remembered. The trooper sat there, taking in the rushed briefing. Perhaps Crest was imagining it, but the experiences were starting to take a faint toll on his face. Maybe. Crest was developing an admiration for the man. He was resilient and one hell of a trooper. Crest wasted exactly one point six seconds wishing he had five clones of him in the squad, instead of the fresh-faced, green recruits.

“Alright. Get in your gear, and meet up in fifteen minutes at the barrack--shuttle. No one be late. Any questions? Alright, good. This briefing is adjourned.”

Crest lazily looked up as Psycho rushed through the final customary step of a briefing, even managing to mess up where the squad was supposed to go. As the squad got up, Crest glided towards Psycho in a few deceptively short steps.

“Psycho, you do understand you’re not confessing to a murder, right?” Crest remarked, expressing an earlier sentiment.

“Oh, damn....I screwed it up completely, right? I knew I should’ve--”

“Psycho, shut up. The briefing was fine. However, remember next time that you are supposed to take your time with the thing. Give the squad the entire info, and actually wait to make sure they don’t have any questions. ‘kay?”

Psycho nodded.

“Off you go, Psych. Same stuff applies to you also. Grab your gear, grab a friend, get to the shuttle in less than fifteen minutes, I don’t care, just be the hell there, and ready to kill some people.”

This was the language Psycho loved and lived for. His eyes lit up like a child given candy of Life Day. Crest put on a lopsided smile and made a shooing motion toward the armory with his hand.

Crest, however, did not go to the armory. He had...liberated his normal loadout from the armory ever since he had become squad leader. His official excuse was that he wanted to be able to defend himself in a moment’s notice. His true, unofficial excuse was that he just did not trust the grunts in the armory to keeping his camo scout armor, his sniper rifle, his E-45, and his equipment ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Position did have its advantages. It now lay resting in his quarters, and that was where Crest proceeded to.

His quarters were relatively unadorned. Unlike his paper-stuffed office, which had quite a few painful weapons hanging up behind him (to intimidate the occasional, rebellious grunt), his room was utilitarian. The only similarity between the two was the top-quality stereo in the room, through which Crest played music, generally with a pounding pulse, to calm his nerves. The only thing in his quarters (apart from the stereo and a bed) was a mannequin that had his midnight-black armor on it. On the right pauldron, there was an orange stripe in lieu of the orange pauldron that squad leaders got.

Crest quickly put on the armor, including the helmet. He never had been a person to holding his helmet in his hand while not in action. On the back of the armor, he slung his TI-47 Deathwind sniper rifle. He clipped his dagger (a memento of his first kill) onto his belt. His E-45 was slung on the side of his thigh, almost like a pistol. He quietly stuffed ammo onto pouches on his belt. He forewent an actual pistol, as it would have been a pain to carry three weapons and ammo. This entire process took barely five minutes, a product of Crest’s thousands of repetitions.

He quietly stepped out into the hallway and shut his door behind him. He looked both ends of the hallway, and not seeing anything, he turned to walk to where the shuttle would be parked.

Having seen nothing, it was a very unpleasant surprise when he felt a knife being pressed under his throat.

“You really haven’t changed your careless ways, have you, Crest?”

Crest instantly recognized the voice. A true smile, unlike the one he had given Psycho, touched his lips behind the helmet. As he started delivering a reply, Crest’s right hand went unerringly toward the E-45 on his thigh.

“Hark who’s talking. Weren’t you the one who got captured in a net?”

“Only because you were annoying me. Still doesn’t change the fact that you are careless. You know, if I was actually an assassin, you would be dead by now.”

“Riiiiiiiiiight.”

“You don’t believe me?” asked the voice, full of incredulity. “Let’s review the situation, shall we? You’re the one with the knife under your throat. You don’t have a weapon in your hands. There’s none of your squad here. Yes, I would believe that you would be dead by now.”

Crest’s only response was to gently push the now-drawn E-45 into crudely-camouflaged figure in front of him.

“No weapons, you say?”

“How the...” the voice trailed off, mystified at the sudden turn of events.

“Aquila, if that really is the best you could do in assassinating somebody, you really don’t stand a chance.”

“But--”

“You know, if I had to choose who would do an assassination attempt on me, it would be you. Just because you are so careless.” Crest sincerely hoped that this last statement would keep Aquila from remembering too carefully. Otherwise, she might have seen through Crest’s ploy to save his face.

“Damn. And here I was, thinking that I finally had outdone you and your block-headed ways.”

The two of them withdrew from their positions, ending the standoff. Aquila clipped her knife back to her belt, and Crest reholstered the E-45.

As Aquila deactivated her armor’s camouflage, Crest finally got a good look.at the person he had been waiting to see. Her armor, though identical in model to Crest’s, was rather a dark-gray than midnight-black like Crest’s. However, like his, she also had the orange stripe, in lieu of the orange pauldron.

Crest activated his armor’s IFF systems, curious what rank Aquila had finally made.

“Ah, that’s just perfect! I can still order you around. Congrats, Corporal.”

“Thanks...sarge?” She said, half-happy for Crest and half-disbelieving that her hopes of being on the same rank as Crest were dashed.

Crest gave a brief nod and then proceeded onto smaller talk, “So, how was the briefing, Aquila?”

“I let my ASL, Helinar, do it this time around. I had to reign him in a few times so that he didn’t launch into a full-scale lecture of galactic politics.”

A chuckle escaped Crest’s lips. He had met the bookish, half-professor for a short time.

“What about yours, Crest?”

“Eh. Psycho, also an ASL now, did a good job. He could’ve gone a bit more into detail, but he did good, all things considered.”

“Hmm. Did you decide on where we’ll be spending the time in the freighter?”

“I was thinking of boxing up our two squads into a few crates, and I could have then arranged some good quality suites for us two.”

“Be serious, Crest.”

“I was! Alright, fine. I’m still planning on emptying a few of the larger, metal, side-opening crates, and splitting our squads up into them. We would then return some of the original materials in the crate, and seal up the front, making it look like they were still filled.”

“Not bad...not bad at all.”

“The shuttle will get us to the spaceport, and it’ll take away the excess supplies. All loose ends tied up.”

“Alright. I suppose we should be going before our squads get into too much trouble.”

“You suppose correctly.”

It was simple. They would be loaded into crates at the barracks, pushed into the shuttle, brought to the freighter where the unsuspecting cargomen would load them onto the ship. Once at Dazer-51, they would be loaded out. Thanks to a few undercover crewmen, they would be loaded out first, and away from the rest of the supplies, so their presence could remain a secret. The plan was simple.

Well, everything seemed simple to Helinar’s higher intelligence. Especially Psycho, he thought, especially Psycho. As the bulky metal doors to the barrack’s shuttle bay slid open, Helinar instantly detected the tall form of Psycho at the far corner of the room. It was not difficult, he decided. Psycho dwarfed all other bodies in the room, but it was not necessarily his height that amplified his presence. Instead, it was a variety of things. His thick armor, his posture, and his gargantuan rifle that slung across his back all contributed to his intimidating form. Nevertheless, he was there, and Helinar was eager to talk with his mammoth friend.

Approaching Psycho, who stood in the middle of a group of troopers, Helinar monotonously said, “Psycho. It provokes a positive aura in my emotional conscious to see you in your lumbering form once more.”

Psycho turned in the direction of the voice. Gazing upon Helinar, he produced a wide grin which imediately turned into a confused smirk. “Helinar,” Psycho began, “Good to see you...to. I think that’s what you meant...”

“Ah, Psycho. You still have not been able to decipher my more intellectually complex phrases. Should I speak in a language that will be more meaningful to someone of your brain power?”

“Yes...no...yes...damn book worm!”

“Psycho, you realize that if I were someone of more emotional discourse, I would laugh, but I prefer to put that nonsense energy into more important tasks.”

“You smiled today...that’s the only facial expression I’ve seen from you. Ever.”

“Ah, yes. Auqilla is trying to aid me with my autistic attributes. Is Crest trying to help you with your ig-”

“Finish that sentence,” Psycho interrupted, “And it’ll be your last.”

“That was an attempt at a joke. How did I perform? See, it was supposed to provoke amusement because I am much more intelligent than you, but you are not completely ignorant, so it exaggerates on that measure.”

Psycho tood in confused silence. Finally, he muttered, “I...uh...sure. Yes. Good job. You’re a comedian.”

“Ah, really? I’d rather not be that hilarious. Why do you throw a strange regard upon me?”

“I was exag- you know, what. Nevermind. Come on, we’re boarding the shuttle our first class shuttle.”

“Ah really? What is the service?”

“Tergis.”

“Tergis? That’s a crate and cargo company.”

“Precisely, my friend.”

=====

The “first class service” provided a two meter by two meter compartment for its passengers, along with a compliment bed of packing peanuts, and an onboard entertainment system of nothing more than a friend to talk to. That was, if you could remain friends while in the clausterphobic conditions that would last for hours. Psycho chose the smart thing to do. He napped.

As Helinar began his recital of a novel he wrote, Psycho quickly (abnormally too) drifted off to sleep, laying down in the comfortable packing peanuts...

With a reverberating metal tink the grenade bounced to his side. He tried to dive out of the way, but his body would not move. It just froze there, waiting for the explosive to go off. He began to sweat, trying harder and harder to move his stiff body, but nothing would budge. To his left, he heard Velius’s yell of warning, telling Psycho to move, but he could not. He had to do it before it went off! He had to take cover! Quickly! Then, the grenade went off.

With a jolt, Psycho awoke from his nightmare, sitting up straight in the metal crate. Trying to see, he saw nothing. For a moment, he was afraid, but his memory kicked in, alerting him to the fact that he was still in the pitchblack crate.

Helinar, who was still reciting his novel, stopped, asking, “Did the Krayt Dragon scare you? Don’t worry, in most of my novels, the heroes will prevail.”

Psycho shook his head, but realize Helinar could not see him. Instead, he replied, “No...I...had a nightmare.”

“What do you mean? Were you asleep this entire time?”

“No...maybe...yes...”

“Well, now I’m going to have to start over again. Where did you fall asleep? I was at page two thousand fifty nine when you awoke, and I was telling the story for several hours...”

“It’s okay. Just recite an encyclopedia or something...”

Not expecting an answer, Psycho was surprised when Helinar replied, “Coruscanti? Vectrian? Or the Hurram-Orlis editions?”

Psycho spouted some random answer, and became lost in his thoughts once more as Helinar began his recital. After the grenade incident during the last mission, Psycho had been experiencing recurring nightmares. Each one was the same, where he would not be able to move. He did not tell anyone either. He did not want to look weak. After the mission, they had to replace the bone structure of his leg, which had been completely splintered by shrapnel. His flesh had not been too damaged, and they just healed it with bacta and added in some skin grafts. Luckily, it was not a complete amputation, and it could have been worse. Still, the moment of the grenade haunted him. Hopefully, he decided, a new traumatic incident during the next mission would replace the grenade one...

Suddenly, the crate began to move. It jolted off an on for a few moments, then the movement stopped. With a sudden whiz, the top of the crate slid off, the faces of two crewmen staring down at them.

Alater was cramped and uncomfortable. Years of service to the Empire had put him much worse conditions than this, but that didn't change the small quarters. The thought only provoked memories of one of his extended stays in the Imperial Hospital on Tadath. Alater touched his side where three wide scars scored his ribs. He could almost feel the cold metal beneath his armor of scales.

“Are those vibroblade scars lizard?” Squirrel asked in a quiet tone. The young soldier was trained; whispers carried further than a hushed tone.

“A long story. If you ever end up working with a certain Riqimo his callsign of Doc is a lie. The short little human is a worthless field medic.” Alater hissed back.

Both soldiers braced themselves as the massive cargo container lurched when lifted off of the portable turbolift. Outside Alater could hear the rest of the squad being removed from their comfortable transportation quarters. The scrape of metal along the floor and the quiet sound of heavily tread boots on the durasteel deck was unmistakable to the trained ear. Eventually it was their turn, but whatever cargo junky was trying to open the massive door was having some trouble. Alater looked at Squirrel who instinctively turned his head to the side and covered himself.

The door creaked before it blew off its hinges and crashed to the floor. Alater wiped his hands in satisfaction and pulled the smaller soldier from the container. The noise had been loud in the cargo bay but not so great that it should have carried too far. The rest of the two squads were out of their containers and staring at the massive soldier and his tiny counterpart.

“Damn I am sure he is on our side.” The Valiant squad leader half muttered to Crest.

“If you only had any idea how many times that has been said.” Crest returned, both squad leaders eying Alater for a moment longer has he strapped the massive blaster across his back.

Alater listened to his squad leader as Crest explained their plan of attack. The enemy was unknown, the situation unknown, and even the nature of the whole mission was a mystery. None of that truly mattered; these were Imperial Stormtroopers and the mission would be completed. The crewman added to the mystery of the entire situation with their actions. Shortly after freeing the squads from their crates they had disappeared. On top of the dead silence in the receiving bay the radios were quiet on every channel. Alater instinctively cleared his sword in its halberd and turned off the safety on his rifle.

“I don't like this.” Squirrel muttered to Alater.

“Forgive the cliché, but it's too quiet.” Alater returned. He nodded to his counterpart before jogging to point for Blackjack.

Alater turned his head as he head the thud of footsteps. The ragged man that flew into the hallway looked like he hadn't seen a shower in a week. He also appeared to have seen his death. The observation proved to be true when a blaster bolt struck the man on the back. While his corpse was still smoldering a man in an unmarked uniform appeared in the hallway. Alater eyed him for only a moment while he called out to his companions. The man should never have bothered speaking; as he did so there was a resounding chorus of clicks as two Stormtrooper squads removed their safeties and shouldered there weapons. Alater was quicker.

“Down!” Alater shouted as he removed the Tyrant from his back.
As he did so the hall filled with more men in similar uniforms with a wide diversity of weapons. They should have stayed inside the room. Alater dropped to a knee and unleashed a hellfire of slugthrower rounds down the hallway. The Tyrant shouted with earsplitting sound; Alater had long since had the massive weapon modified to fit his massive size and strength. The portable squad weapon had an almost unlimited ammo capacity and fired a larger round than most.

“Danger front!” came Aquillas' voice over the comm as more blaster bolts filled the hallway to Blackjack's rear.

As Blackjack was forming up behind Alater's rain of bullets Valiant had formed a tight firing line as the rear hallway filled with soldiers. The men were untrained and were slow to react to Valiant's fire. Amongst the sputter of blaster fire the occasional sound of splitting air was heard only to be followed by a soft thud and a death scream. Squirrel was never much one for the usage of blasters, but the tiny soldier hid more knives about his person than Alater had ever been able to count. The leather and patchwork armor were no protection for his honed arm.

“We need to get of this hallway.” Crest commented over the smooth report of his sniper.

“Psycho, cover fire.” Alater called to his ASL.

The soldier, abnormally large for a human, cracked a sickening grin as he drew a second rifle from his arsenal and began to lay down a stream of blaster fire. Alater slung his Tyrant back across his back and a low ringing of steel cut through the crack and screams of battle. The Barabel was the stuff of nightmares, but in his hands was a weapon that had caused men to run in fear. Long Fang was almost as long as Squirrel was long and was serrated along most of its length. Dried blood from its previous victims gave the weapon a rusty color.

Between Psychos fire and Crest's sharp shooting the remaining enemy never had the chance to lift their heads to see what was coming. The three worked in a trained harmony as Alater rushed through them. Blood splattered the walls as Alater cleaved the first man almost in two. His ocean eyes turned a feral yellow and the world shrank into shades of red with pulsing hearts the center of his attention. In a matter of moments Alater was calling the all clear and poking his head into the room that the enemies had come from.

“Clear.” Alater hissed over the Comms.

The Blackjack stood and hustled towards the door while Valiant covered their backs. Alater continued to covered the door as the two squads entered the room.

“Well, if they didn't know we're here they damned sure do now.” Squirrel commented as he passed Alater, wiping blood of one of his knives as he went.

Alater closed the door and took a look around in the room. It seemed to be the security center of the entire station. Squirrel let out a slow whistle as he took a look at the screens and security data.

“Well what the fuck do we do now?” Psycho cursed as he took a look at the monitors.

OOC:

A little shorter than it could have been but I wanted to give you some room to work and decide where this was going.

Rudolph watched for a second as Valiant headed nack toward the Hangars. Then, refocused his attention ahead of him.  He had no idea what exactly they were supposed to do here, and wuite frankly he couldn't care less.  He was just eager to prove himself as a new member of Blackjack squad.  So far he had missed his only chance at gaining at least a little respect, as he had had no oppurtunity to fire at the hostiles that had attacked them earlier.

    Rudolph found he was having a hard time keeping his mind off the Valiant squad. he had seen the relationships among his squadmates and those of Valiant, and wished he could have had someone in the other squad with whom he was close.  But he managed to push those thoughts away, finally.


    He followed his squadmates, and couldn't help but jump every now and then at a shadow, or a sound down the corridors they kept passing.  Every time he realized it was nothing, he shook his head, ashamed of his obvious nervousness.

    He noticed something once again down a side corridor, and saw another man wearing the same leather armor as the guys who had attacked them earlier.  Without hesitating, he lifted his E-11 rifle, and fired at the man. Shoot first, ask questions later.
he thought.  He noticed that a few other troopers had also seen him and fired.

    Rudolph wasn't sure if he was the one who killed him, but suddenly he felt very sick, like he was going to throw up.  He had never shot live rounds at a living being before.  Finally he managed to get a grip on himself, and began to ignore the queasiness.

   

    "Sir?" Rudolph asked a little later. "I know we were briefed before coming here, but...with all due respect... it wasn't very detailed.  If I may ask, what exactly are we looking for? Besides those people who attacked us, that is."




   

OOC:

Not the best post, but I didn't have a whole lot of time to post, so I posted what I could.  If it isn't long enough for yall's liking, let me know I'll fix it.