This is something that I have been working with for a while. I always hated how my specs seem so mechanical, not flowing freely from my mind as I wish them to. So my solution was putting them all into a background story for my character. Thus I had to find a way to tie a medic specialty into Riqimo's current background, and came up with this unique idea.
To understand it, some background (for lack of a better word) is needed. First off Riqimo is left by his parents and sister (all smugglers) at about age 15; from there he starts smuggling on his own, and eventually runs into Brightstar. Later on he gets hunted on a bounty place by a Hutt. Ryan Kiba is the primary bounty hunter that chases him. He eventually escapes, to Ando Prime, but has become separated from Brightstar on the way there. He takes up a temporary job, and then uses the first paycheck to smuggle himself to become a citizen on Tadath. Eventually he is drafted by the VEA.
Further Explanation: The VE Stormtrooper Corps are separate from the Vast Empire Army. In a sense they are still part of the VEA in a similar manner of the USMC being both separate and at the same time a department of the US Navy (the men's department of course
)
Anyways, Riq is drafted as a normal infantry soldier; he is opposed to killing, and tries to become a conscientious objector. Anything further would be telling
Don't worry, the Riqimo present does not change the way he is, you'll see when I get there
If you have any comments please let me know, either if you can catch me on IRC, or just fire off an email to
[email protected]
Oh, there is some strong language after the first part, a few sexual references made in attempts to make this seem "realistic" if you think you will be offended, please don't read further and miss out on Captain Buttshot. You'll be sorry you did, but then you wouldn't know, would you?
The first section is okay for little kiddies, so at least read until the next line break please. Only "hell" is used near the end of that part
The walls of the room had a shade of brownish green and gray that fit with the smell of carpet pads mildewed from years of too much shampoo. Tobacco haze stained the windows and hung trapped in the tall hallways. Riqimo sat on a bench, his only pair of dress pants constantly slipping on the lacquered wooden seat. He straightened up a dozen times, not wanting anyone to see him slouch. He was supposed to be making a mature decision here. A sloucher couldn't be trusted to think for himself.
The sound of high heels clacking in the wide hallway stiffened his muscles.
"Riqimo Ray Pershaw?" Riq sat very still. Using his full three names always spelled trouble. "Riqimo Ray
Pershaw?" she asked louder. Riqimo was gawking. She had the thickest bifocals he had ever seen. The sides bent into S's with shiny pink jewels accenting the curves. She was wearing glass bookends on her face.
"Yes ma'am?" Riqimo wanted to disappear.
"The board is waiting," she pointed to an open door.
With no introduction, Riqimo went in and sat. A shiny wooden table and padded high-back chairs filled the bottom half of the room. Tobacco smoke filled the top. Three balding men sat smoking two pipes and a cigar. They were each reading identical papers.
My papers. They had Riqimo's words in front of them, words he had so carefully crafted.
...I am seeking the status of conscientious objection because I believe our conscience is often the truest guide in achieving some sort of understanding, love and compassion for our fellow sentients. And our conscience must be our guide if we are ever to achieve galactic peace, and peace of mind...
It all came down to this moment. Would these men believe the words they were reading? Would they even understand them? They had Riqimo's papers in front of them. This was possibly the most serious test Riqimo would ever face.
Going into that room, Riqimo had never considered the alternatives. It was him against the system from the beginning. They would ask questions and he would answer them, and they would decide whether or not to believe him. Never had Riqimo considered bartering or compromise or any other possibility. It was, quite simply, the draft board versus the conscientious objector. They wanted Riqimo to train himself to kill people. He would not do that.
But in the first thirty seconds with the board, they made it perfectly clear that there was no possibility of avoiding the draft, at least not without committing a crime or leaving the sector.
Riqimo finally just blurted out that he would go.
"I'll serve," he said, "I'll be a soldier and wear a uniform and do push-ups. Be a cook, medic, clerk, or ambulance driver. Carry a radio, polish belt buckles, police the area, march in step, call everybody 'sir,' and stand at attention. I'll salute people I don't even know. I'll wash tanks or change tires, mop, paint, dig trenches, scrub shower walls. Learn to shine boots, smoke, cuss, gamble, and drink coffee.
"I'll go, only not with a gun."
The board asked Riqimo hypothetical questions. "What would you do if you were driving down a steep road with a bus load of crippled children and the brakes went out with nowhere to swerve? Grandmother's house on the right, a steep cliff is on the left. Did we mention the kids were crippled? There's a baby in the road straight ahead."
Grandmother. Cliff. Brakes. Crippled kids. Baby.
"Now, Pershaw, what would you
do?"
"I wouldn't
shoot any of them."
"No, Pershaw, as a pacifist, how would you decide who would die?"
"What does deciding who will die have to do with pacifism?"
"Answer the question."
"Who left the baby in the road?"
"Never mind. What would you
do?"
"I would have checked the brakes before driving the bus."
"Son, just answer the question."
"I'm not a philosopher. I don't know how to answer questions that have no answers. I told you I would serve, I'm just not willing to kill anybody. I won't train myself to kill. I won't pretend that I'm a killer. I can't. It's against everything I know."
"Answer the question."
Riqimo tried a different approach, "Why is it that you have a nonviolent type driving the bus? Why not Vader or Boba Fett behind the wheel?" He thought a little humor might help.
"It says here that you were a smuggler, surely you have killed then."
"No I have not killed anyone. Punched in the face a few times sure, but only in self defense. I was
very careful."
"About your father," one mentioned. The other two looked up and nodded.
"Can we go back to the bus? I'm better off driving the bus," Riqimo forced a smile.
They said no. In fact, the said
hell no. Riqimo's status would remain 1-A (eligible for military service). No chance for alternative service as a citizen, and no chance for noncombatant duty as a medic or clerk. They saw Riqimo as a soldier. His efforts to convince them otherwise had only sealed his fate.
In three days, Riqimo went from repairing droids at a local droid shop to taking orders about how to brush his teeth from a redneck with an eight-year-old's education. To receive this sentence, all Riqimo had to do was fill a form required of every young Imperial man - register with the Selective Service Board. Never mind if you are a young woman; the Empire already assumes you know how to brush your teeth.
On the appointed day, Riqimo boarded a commercial shuttle that would take him to where he was to board a military shuttle. Then he was dropped off in the middle of a deserted field. A screaming collection of angry gene pools welcomed Riqimo to basic training, or boot camp. It turned out to be much more boot than camp.
In the wee hours following the long day that had begun the morning before, none of the recruits could be called very resistant. They shuffled into a line and were ordered to stand still with their feet on each side of white numbers painted on bright red circles. Nobody said a word. The guys that had been yakking it up on the shuttle bragging about sports and sexual; conquests, were now mute and totally passive. Everyone stared down at their number, trying to forget the humiliation of the induction physicals they had just endured a few hours earlier. Riqimo stood on number fourteen.
Roll was hollered. Everyone answered "Here!" and nothing else.
"You will not respond 'present' or 'that's me' or any derivation whatsoever, you fucking ignorant civilian piece of shit assholes! Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir!"
"AHH CAIN'T HEAR YOUUUUUU. ..."
After soggy toast and water-laced scrambled eggs, the recruits were marched into a barn, where they were ordered to strip naked and put everything they had worn or carried with them in a bag to be mailed home.
"If you're married, you may keep your wedding ring. Put everything else in the bag."
"Glasses?"
"Yes, Four Eyes, put those ugly frames in the goddamn bag. The Empire will issue a proper pair tomorrow."
"Wallet?"
"That's right, ass wipe!"
"Indent Chit?"
"Every goddamn thing in the goddamn bag, Gomer! Do NOT make me say it again!" The sergeant then took the question as an invitation to lecture the whole group. "Does anyone else have a stupid goddamn question? Wait! Stop right there. Don't fucking move a muscle. Before we do another goddamn thing, does ANY ONE of you stupid lowlife motherfucking civilian have another goddamn fucking question?"
Could've heard a tick toot.
"Good. Fine. thank you very fucking much. Now maybe we can go on putting every goddamn civilian piece of shit you brought with you in the goddamn fucking bag." He turned away and threw his arms above his head in frustration, shouting to the wall, "Before I lose the rest of my fucking patience!"
They shaved heads and issued olive green clothes and attitudes to turn the recruits into a cohesive working unit. Bodies were now Empire-issue, and their minds were supposed to follow close behind.
"If you somehow miraculously live through this training, you will be soldiers. If you do not, you will be dead. Far better in boot camp than in a real war zone where the lives of others could be put in jeopardy by your weakness." The beer-bellied drill sergeant leapt right out of central casting for holofilms. Smokey-the-Bantha hat. Spit-shined boots. Starched fatigues. Mr. Cliche marching about as if he were totally unique.
He bellowed and bawled. "Your ass is grass and I'm the lawn mower." and "We can play it my way or we can play it the army way," which left Riqimo and his mates scratching their heads. He wore his IQ on his sleeve in the form of three stripes and a rocker, willingly and eagerly accepting his calling in life to whip recruits into shape physically, emotionally, and mentally. The trainees' military lobotomies began as they placed all they had in one sack, mailed it home, and started their lives over from zero.
"Nothing you have brought with you is of any value here. That goes for attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, ideas, and desires. The quicker you learn that, the easier it is going to be for all of us.
"If you start thinking about home, forget it! Jimmy already has your girlfriend's legs spread like a wishbone and she can't even remember your face."
"If you start thinking about sex in the next ten weeks, look around you. These are the only sentients you are going to see. If you wake up with a hard-on, slap it once firmly and go back to sleep.
"If you don't like the food, you will starve.
"If you do not shit when it is your turn, you will explode.
"If you do not like me, that is expected and part of the program. I do not want you to like me, because I do not like you. I do not like fucking civilians. If you do everything you are told without question, I might shake your hand and wish you luck in ten weeks. And I might not."
Riqimo had gambled and lost. He thought he could convince the draft board, but he didn't stand a chance with them. Then he bet his maturity against military insanity, thinking that because he had a little knowledge and had been totally self-sufficient in the real galaxy, that would sustain him. If all else failed, Riqimo thought his irrepressible charm, optimism, and keen wit would carry him through the brainless hell of basic training. He was wrong. Any humor ant intelligence should have been dropped into the bag with the rest of his belongings.
It took Riqimo half of the first day to realize that personal sparks of life would be immediately stomped out by the drill sergeant. The only way to appear, physically and personably, was olive drab green. Shut up and stare straight ahead. Sink back into the landscape. If isolated and abused, suffer quietly and without protest. Everybody would get his turn. And when the bloated oaf reveals his bottomless ignorance with yet another insane utterance, for god's sake, don't giggle.
"Tonight, ladies, we're gonna learn to pee, shit, shave, brush, and shower in five minutes, by the numbers, the ARMY way!"
"Yes, sir!"
"AH CAIN'T HEAR YOUUUUUU. ..."
Don't laugh. Don't think. What good will thinking do when given thirty seconds to effect a bowel movement with twelve platoon mates waiting in a straight line facing you? There's no time to do anything but count and shit.
Boot camp leadership strategy consisted of limited information, a full measure of fear, and immediate nondiscriminatory punishment. After seventy days of ridicule and torment, recruits were to miraculously emerge as fighting machines. In reality, on the last day of basic training they were a scattered, whimpering mob of scared boys who would pee in their pants if anyone yelled at them, most praying out loud for duty as clerks or cooks.
A couple days in the field would change that. It surely did for Riqimo. Some would become more scared, some less. But none would remain little boys.
"Lies," Lieutenant Hutch said.
"Sir?" Riqimo was staring down at Hutch's desk and the poster sized photograph that covered it. A glassy-eyed face looked back, a white guy with Afro hair so big it didn't fit within the edges of the paper.
Why would the lieutenant have a poster of this guy under the glass on his desk?
"We're swimming in a pack of lies. Hell, I believe you, Pershaw, but why should anyone else? This whole platoon is swimming in lies."
"I can't go further with this, sir. I've never killed anything, much less a sentient. It's against everything I ever..."
"Draft board thought you were cooking it up to get out the army," he interrupted. "I appreciate your coming here and telling me straight, but there's nothing I can do. You can't just say you don't want to play the game. You know it doesn't work that way."
"I know, sir."
He nodded and waved his hand for Riqimo to sit while he thought.
Lt. Starsky Hutch commanded Riqimo's advanced individual training (AIT) unit. After basic training, everyone went through another ten weeks to get their military occupation specialty (MOS), like clerk, radio operator, cook, mechanic, or in Riqimo's case, infantryman.
"You'll need to flat out refuse an order," Hutch finally decided. "Refuse to fire a weapon or something like that. We don't want a radical demonstration or anything, just a simple refusal. No big fuss. It's against military law to refuse an order. In a war zone you could be shot for it." He laughed and caught Riqimo staring again at the large face on his desk.
"That's me about ten months ago," he smiled. "Can you believe the hair? You'll be put in the secured holdover barracks across the way."
"Secured, sir?"
"Okay. It's a jail barracks, guarded twenty-four hours a day. Bars on the windows. Everybody locked up by seven. Bed check. All that."
"What will I do there, sir?"
"Oh, you'll have plenty of company. Homos. Bedwetters. All kinds of freaks. You'll just
love those guys. But during the day you can work in the orderly room. You type?"
"A little, sir."
"Well, you'll type a lot."
On the firing range during the third week, Riqimo put down the hand pistol he had been assigned and stood back from the shooting podium.
The sergeant barked something barely intelligible about seven years in an Imperial prison for refusing a direct order. Riqimo repeated that he wasn't going to train himself to kill anybody. Like falling dominoes, every soldier on the range stopped to turn and look at Riq. The sergeant called Riqimo a coward. Riqimo said again he wasn't going to shoot the pistol. The training sergeant raised his hand as if to slap the defiant trooper, then thought better of it and went to his hover-jeep to radio the commanding officer. Training stopped on the firing range as groups began to form.
It took Lt. Hutch little time to arrive. He directly approached Riqimo without even looking at the sergeant and ordered Riq to pick up the blaster pistol. Riqimo refused. Hutch spoke the same words three times, each time adding a witness. Each time Riqimo refused. The guys that Riqimo had been living with in the training barracks gawked with their mouths wide open. Riqimo had suddenly become on of the hated hippies beyond base perimeter. Or worse, he was about to become a "holdover." Riqimo stood out, exposed, embarrassed, wishing it would all require less attention.
It seemed like forever for the MP hover-jeep to arrive. When it did, it came gear grindingly to a sliding sideways stop, raising a dust bowl. Two eager-eyed barrel-chested linebackers leapt out and approached Riqimo as if the safety of the entire galaxy depended on their next few moves. Four rifle-range instructors stood at parade rest. Only the top sergeant moved, speaking out of the side of his mouth, not wanting to take his eyes from Riqimo.
"Fucking Rebel," he said, then turned to address the stunned gallery. "What are you looking at?" he bawled, "Your bantha fodder shit friend here is about to become somebody's girlfriend in an Imperial prison. Anybody want to fucking hold his hand for the trip?"
The rest of the platoon turned and dispersed, finding safe places to share a smoke and talk in hushed tones until the show was over.
The holdover barracks was on the outskirts of the company yard. It indeed had bars on the windows and doors, and its charm was enhanced by cold water only and no toilet seats. For the next four months Riqimo shared this hell with a group of recalcitrant head cases, dropouts rotated in and out of the twenty-two bunks. All of them were being held under lock and guard until orders came for them to return to camp, fly home, or go to jail. They were given no days off and could choose to sit waiting in the barracks or perform some task for the training camp across the street.
Riqimo's temporary assignment as an office clerk was a blessing that got him away from the idiots and kept his mind occupied. Working as a clerk helped the hors pass quickly. Riqimo's typing and filing skills improved, earning him some autonomy. He arrived early, made the coffee, stayed late, cleaned the pot, and didn't complain much. He managed to keep his spirits up. But hoped waned that he would get a reassignment away from the training company. Lt. Hutch made small talk and treated Riqimo like "one of the boys" around the office. Riq spent the evenings typing his request for reassignment as a noncombatant, and spent the nights sleeping four inches from barred windows, surrounded by jailhouse gutter and sporadic flashes of threatening teeth and knives.
They were more inmates than roommates. Roy Martin feigned asthma. Bob Robinson walked stooped over. Four of the guys said they were compassionate objectors. Getting to know them, Riqimo suspected they were more opposed to being killed than they were to killing. Smith and Friedman were said to be homosexuals, although nothing they did or said made Riqimo believe that claim. The sergeants gave them the worst time though, and they were discharged in two weeks.
Martin, the asthma faker, wheezed his way past a team of doctors, then even fooled a board of civilian specialists. When he got his discharge data pad, he used the phone in Riqimo's orderly room to call a cab, then went in to wait for the first sergeant in his office.
"Pershaw!" the sergeant bellowed, and Riqimo shot out of his chair. His superior had returned from morning inspection to find his back door wide open, letting in the freezing winter air. The first sergeant expected to give Martin one final lecture on responsibility and duty. Instead, all that remained of Roy Martin steamed off the defecation in the half-opened middle drawer of the sergeant's desk. The rest of him had gone.
"Pershaw!" The sergeant screamed as if he had been mortally wounded. "Get in here!" Cleaning the mess with his boss glaring at him, Riqimo bit his cheek as hard as he pictured the look on Martin's face as he squatted on the desk, his orders in hand, with a taxi fifty feet away.
Barely seventeen years old, Bob Robinson lied to get into the army and tried a more difficult lie to get out. He walked bent at the waist everywhere he went. MALINGERER glowed at the end of his bunk, stenciled in four-inch high red letters on an official army-issue sign. Malingerer. Riqimo had to look it up. Robinson barely managed to limp to the mess hall three times a day and couldn't do anything else. Stooped over, there was no way he could train. And no training... no war. His waking hours were devoted to whimpering in the fetal position on his green army blanket. Sometimes his soft wailing would put Riqimo to sleep at night, as well as wake him up in the morning.
"He wasn't exactly crazy when he got here," the first sergeant assured Riqimo, "but he's getting there now."
When they came to take Robinson away, he miraculously sprang to life, jumped out of his curled position, and ran screaming, shin up and shoulders back, across the shiny waxed floor, crashing through a thick, closed second-floor door. He flew off the landing and dropped in a lump in the company yard. Riqimo and his fellow inmates flatted their faces against the bars on their windows to get a clear look at the tangled mess strewn out below them. Riqimo heard the MPs radio for an ambulance, trying to describe Robinson's condition. Splinters of wood and glass from the door were embedded in his arms, chest, neck and face. His lower spine was twisted and appeared broken. He was frozen on the ground in the position he had fallen. Hearing his shrieks of pain and seeing his contorted face as they strapped him to a board and lifted him into the ambulance, someone commented that now he'd probably
really walk stooped over. For the rest of his life.
After four months of clerk duty by day and holdover barracks madness by night, Riqimo got his reprieve. Somebody at the Army HQ finally decided to deem him noncombatant, and Riqimo flew away without so much as a "See ya!" from anybody. He landed at another fort, about fifty degrees warmer, for training as a field medic. Riqimo's new battalion commander took one look at Riqimo in his cold weather uniform and shook his head.
"You bear resemblance to hammered nerf shit, soldier," he said.
"Thank you, sir." He leaned closer to search Riqimo's meaning. "It's good to be here, sir." The commander grumbled some unintelligible grammar, dividing each syllable with a cussword, then assigned Riqimo to a training company that would begin a week later. This meant that Riqimo could rest in a barracks by himself for a few days. It was his first break in about six months.
In the ensuing ten weeks, Riqimo would train to earn an MOS as a field medic.
-----------------------
Riqimo "Doc" Pershaw
EclipseSquad
ASL/SGT Riqimo/2SQD/2PLT/1COM/1RGT/1BAT/Tadath/VEA [ES2]
Imperial Baronet
+ Advance Recon Commandos {ARC} +
