“You will each be assigned to a simulation room, where a member of our technical staff will load up a simulation that will hopefully gain you each some radiation trooper armour experience. I will be monitoring your progress and any I deem unsuitable will not be participating in the upcoming mission. You have your orders ladies and gentlemen I suggest you start filling them out.”

Sithspawn. The idiots just sent use on a mission to a radioactive dustball, and what do they do now? Why make us go through a simulation of a radioactive dustball, of course! Why can't they do something right for a change?

Muttering under his breath, Dante followed the short, balding assistant  holding the board with a large, black "4" written on it.

Looking to his left and right, Dante noticed a few troopers from other squads, a sarge he dimly recalled being told was a drill squad leader, and...

Sniping 101. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, they go and do this to me. Which sick foxtrot decided that I should end up in the same group as my squad leader?

Mentally running through some choice curse words, Dante followed the man's lead until they came to a doorseal in the side building reserved for such events.

The man typed in a ten digit code and the metal portal slid open.

"Follow me."

As he did so, Dante looked to his left and right, noticing the clumps of technicians and beeping monitors. All the bells and whistles.

Comparing this place to the old sim rooms he had used for his training was like comparing a Hammerhead cruiser to a Imperial Star Destroyer: they were light-years away from each other. While the miserable, abused excuse for a couch he had lay on for his first sims had groaned under his weight, the bunks here were made out of self-molding foam that automatically fit the shape of the person lying in it. Instead of a grimy Clone-Wars era viewscreen, there were dozens of wall to wall monitors. He blinked then looked again to make sure the vision hadn't disappeared.

I think I died and went to Heaven.

Dante then noticed everyone staring at him and seemed to shrink slightly.

I didn't mean to say that out loud.

One of the technicians cleared his throat before speak in a dull monotone.

"Each of you should find your assigned chair and sit down in a non-stressful position. You may be in the sim for a while so we will be inserting IV tubes. Please try to remain as still as possible while we are preparing you for the sim."

His tone changed slightly.

"Be advised, that the method of entry is slightly different, and there may be some...unusual side effects."

What does he mean by unusual side effects?

"Any questions? Good."

With that Dante was ushered to the left-most seat. The trooper closed his eyes, feeling the prick of the needle
going in the vein, and waited for the sim to begin. The world seemed to flicker behind his closed eyelids and then everything went white.

The wind whistled through blaster holes and the ruined hulks of vehicles lying in the streets. There was the odd discarded rifle and pile of depleted power cells, but there was a noticeable lack of corpses. That, plus the dull buzz that he dimly heard, was all that marked the mission as a sim. Dante ran his hand over the wall, and felt a prick. Looking at his hand, he saw that it was bleeding from a cut made by a jagged piece of glass.

Injury simulation. Most impressive.

The fact that Sniping101 called his name at that moment saved his life, as a bolt of red energy filled the air where the center of his helmet had been a moment earlier. Dante yelled "Sniper!" at the top of his lungs and lunged for the nearest cover. A trio of crimson energy bolts flew through the air and impacted on the ground with a loud hiss. Then, as quickly as it started, the barrage stopped and silence once again descended on the ghost town.

All the bugger has to do is wait for one of us to poke our heads out and blow us away. We have no idea where he is, so all we can do is take cover.

Retreating further into the ruins, Dante found himself stepping on something soft and yielding. He knew before he looked exactly what it was.

The man looked like he had been dead for a while. With his open, staring eyes and claw-like hands, the ex-civvie looked anything but peaceful, escpecially considering the blaster pistol one of his rigor mortis-stiffened hands was clutching. Adding to his grotesque appearance was the gaping hole in his cheek and the exit wound in the back of his neck, through which mucus and spinal fluid had dripped out and dried. Ignoring the drone of flies disturbed from their meal and his sudden queasiness, Dante teod the corpse over. There was nothing of use on the body. Maybe he could try to lure the foxtrot out from his cover with...

Wait. That was it.

Grabbing one of the body's stiffened arms, Dante dragged it to the doorway and tried to prop it up. Slowly and carefully, he let the body's head move out of the building and into view. Three flashes of light, and the cadaver's cranium was in tatters on the ground. Still, Dante grinned, and opened a private channel.

"This is Lance Corporal Dante. I've found the mike foxtrot with the sniper and have marked his location on your HUD's. Let's take the bastard out."

OOC:

Sorry if I started the action a bit early; its easier to write about than just walking about.

Several thin, deadly beams hissed through the air, but they all failed to hit their targets, who were making good use of the cover. Poking his Deece through a hole in the durasteel wall of the building he was hiding in, Dante sent a flurry of well-aimed shots in the sniper's general direction. The others did likewise, and slugthower rounds and craters soon pockmarked the surface of the complex the AI sniper was hiding in.

Hopefully we can take him our, or at least keep him busy long enough for Snipes to get to him.

A streak of red energy grazed Dante's shoulder, coming so close to his head he felt the heat sear the side of his helmet. With a grunt, he dropped below the sill.

"Sithspawn, I'm hit."

"How badly?"

"Not too badly. SOB just grazed me."

"Then get back to work." Sniping101 replied blandly before closing the connection with a loud click.

Your care for my well-being is overwhelming. Oh what the hell, it's just a sim.

With that in mind, Dante crawled down several meters until he came to another window. Then, carefully keeping his head out of sight, he took out an elongated barrel from a belt pouch and attached it to his dee-ce. His HUD chimed as it linked up with the new equipment and an "activate scope" option appeared.

Time for a little payback.

He let the rifle's barrel drift slightly and watched as th aiming icon changed colour. Instantly he opened fire, sending four shots towards the mike foxtrot and was rewarding with a short scream. Looking at the area he saw the man clutching his leg, his teeth gritted and his rifle at his side.

I have you now...

Dante was about to finish him off when he realized that the sim had only given him one sniper clip. Kriffing technicians... With a curse, he instead marked the man for the others to take care of.

The AI bot had just retrieved his rifle and was about to open fire again when Sniping101, who had been climbing to the AI's position the entire time, used the butt of his rifle to swing a vicious blow at his back. The man grunted in pain as he slipped off the edge and fell quickly to the ground. There was a cut-off scream ,a loud crunch, and then a perfect silence. The silence was broken shortly afterwards by the clunk of metal hitting metal, as Sniping101 kicked the man's rifle off after him and it bounced off a piece of scrap metal on the ground.

Despite the pain in his left shoulder, Dante grinned.

One damn bot down, Force knows how many more to go...

This is ridiculous. was Dante's first thought as he ducked to avoid the tight crimson beams. He quickly rolled behind a large piece of debris and hence avoided another volley of fire, which instead bounced off debris and the ground until it eventually dissipated. Dante had already begun to reload his weapon when he heard a series of cracks from behind and above him, and red bolts shrieked past him.

“Minions of Xendor!” Dante cursed before sprinting for the nearest building. The sniper shots impacted all around him, sending up puffs of dirt at his feet but all missed their mark.

Thank the Force for programming limitations. If I'd been that careless on a real mission, I'd be shipped back to Tadeth in a body bag.

With that in mind, Dante pulled up the first sniper's probable location and activated thermal imaging. The Rodian was an island of orange and red highlights in a sea of blue and green, and Dante zoomed in to ten. Thankfully, he had found several power cells which, with a little modification, were compatible with the deece rifle. Now, as he let the rifle drift for a moment and watched the Rodian twitch this way and that before opening fire on the bot. The alien sank to its knees, letting its rifle drop and clutching its chest,before writhing twice and becoming still.

However, with impossible timing, the rest of the enemy squad opened fire and Dante was forced to duck to avoid the blisteringly precise return fire.

Glancing at his HUD, Dante saw that most of squad 4 had made its way to  a building on the other side of the street.

Mike foxtrot...how am I supposed to cross the street without getting my head taken off?

Dante saw shadows moving on the other side, and his visor marked them as PFC murderedmonk and LCPL Leth.

There was the sound of shattering transparisteel and a steady stream of blaster fire poured from the other side, impacting on the durasteel wall.

The RAIDERS began to return fire, but neither side was able to gain an advantage. Taking advantage of the enemy's sudden distraction, he jumped from a balcony to the other building. Landing heavily, he dropped his deece, which landed with a clatter nearby. He quickly picked it up and made his way into the room. Leth was there as well as Sniping101.

"Nice of you to join the party." Leth muttered before sending a volley of blaster bolts at the entrenched enemy. There was a loud scream and a Bothan trooper fell over backwards, his heart flash-fried and chest reduced to ashes.

"So what's going on?"

"We're stuck."

"I can see that."

At this point Sniping101 cleared his throat.

"We can't wait here forever; the enemy will have called for reinforcements and time is on there side."

"Muderedmonk, Dante, Bathlar and Leth you're to use the sewer system and get the drop on them. The rest of us will cover your backs and tell you if there are any complications. Understood?"

Four acknowledgement lights flashed on, then off.

"Get going then."

With that, Dante turned briskly around and waved the others forwards. Sniping101 had marked the rough location of the sewers on his HUD; they were below the building's basement and the cover had been welded shut. The group filed into the turbolift and Dante activated the panel. The lift dropped fast enough to make Dante's stomach lurch and his ears pop.

The lift suddenly stopped and the doors slowly hissed open. Elapsed time: 12.34 seconds.

"Lights."

The basement was suddenly illuminated by the glare of half a dozen helmet lights. Each of the trooper looked left and right, and in doing so, created a composite map of the room.

"Right there, in the middle."

Dante created a nav marker on the group HUD. The quartet filed over. Crouching, Dante swept away the thick layer of grime that had accumulated in the area, revealing a circular durasteel portal.
"Paydirt."

"Almost literally."

Dante almost chuckled at that one but was silent instead.

"Looks like it's welded shut."

Shrugging, Dante unslung his rifle and pumped fire into the metal. The metal began to glow red, then yellow, and gave way with a bang then a splash after the trooper had pumped a clip into the metal. Leaning over the hole, Bathlar recoiled. After taking a short breath, Dante knew why. He had smelled worse, but not recently.

"Let's get this over with."

With that, Dante began to climb down into the pit, followed by the others.

"What an incredible smell you've discovered." commented murderedmonk.

"Well if you have a better idea, do tell!" Dante snapped.

After that there was silence as the unhappy troopers made their way through the maze-like sewer system.

42:45 seconds Later

There was a bright circle of light for a moment, and the metal sewer cover hung by an edge, its welding now dripping down into the filthy water. Quietly, Dante pushed it up slightly and saw a human silhouette. Motioning to the others to stay down, he slowly and noiselessly moved the grate to one side. The man still hadn't noticed them. Pressing the stub of his still-glowing cigarette against a wall before letting it drop, the man stood there for a moment. Dante gestured once, and Bathlar nodded. The Private First Class then pulled out a combat knife and crept behind the unsuspecting bot.

The cold steel ripped through the program's simulated flesh, cutting through the thin neck portion of the bodyglove with ease, and severing several veins. The man gurgled, his windpipe in two pieces, and fell to the ground. Murderedmonk caught the man before he fell and the troopers gently lowered him into the sewer. There was a splash, and the corpse lay in the fetid water, its hair filled with filth and eyes staring blindly. Other than several bloodstains on the dank walls of the basement, there was nothing to show there had been a man there mere seconds earlier.

Leth gently pushed the cover back over the foul-smelling hole and broke the silence.

"I can hear blaster fire; they must be directly over our heads."

He was right, Dante realized. Even from down here, they could hear the whine of blaster rifles and the crack,crack of their rifles.


“We can’t take the turbo-lifts; the shriek would be a dead giveaway. We’ll have to climb the stairs.”

According to the data the others were sending them, the main clump was two floor above their current position. On Dante’s HUD, the groups were a trio of arrows with distances inscined directly underneath them. Waving the troopers forwards, Dante slammed a new clip into his deece to replace the nearly depleted power cell. The group quickly and quietly made their way up the ladder and through two rooms.

That was when Dante used the butt of his rifle to push the pieces of a slagged doorseal apart and came visor-to-visor with a surprised hostile wearing a grey environment suit. Behind the man’s transparent faceplate, Dante could see his eyes go wide and his mouth go open as he prepared to yell. Dante nipped that in the bud with a quick blow from the his rifle barrel, which smashed the man’s visor into a thousand shards of transparisteel and left his mouth a bloody ruin. Then, quickly and remorselessly, he fired two shots at point blank range into the bot’s face. The AI’s almost headless corpse fell to the ground and began twitching randomly. After watching it writhe for four seconds, Dante had had enough and pumped fire into the corpse until it was still.

Looks like they haven’t quite perfected the death animations yet.

With that little problem neatly taken care of, the ground walked to their first objective. Here, a trio of Rodians in modified Phase I clone armour were pumping clip after clip into the Raiders-controlled building. Leth calmly walked behind the first one, pressed the business end against the back of its head and gently squeezed the trigger. As the creature’s head exploded into a cloud of vaporized cranial matter and fragments of bone, Leth turned to the second one, who was struggling to bring its barrel up to firing range, and fired three shots in rapid succession. The first bright red energy bolt vaporized the T-visor, the view-screen below it, and charred the Rodian’s skin. The second  melted away layers of flesh and bone, going deep into the alien before dissipating. By the time the third bolt hit, the creature was almost unrecognizable.

The trooper retrieved the fallen enemy’s power cells and moved on.

That’s one group down, two more to go.

They came to another ladder, and the group paused for a minute. The squad com crackled and Dante heard the voice of his squad leader and the sarge he had seen earlier, Saphia or something like that. Apparently the situation hadn't changed much, with the snipers preventing the Raiders from charging and the Raiders killing any AI dumb enough to go hero on them. However, the enemies kept on spawning, meaning something had to be done. The street was filled with the rat tat tat of a slugthrower on full automatic and there was a shriek of pain. The fire team quickly made its way up the ladder, and saw a trio of troopers there.

However, this group had heard the commotion downstairs and was ready for them. They opened fire with their blaster pistols,s ending a hail of red energy towards the troopers. Ducking behind debris, the group members returned fire and the hallway was filled with blue and red blaster bolts. There was a loud crack, and one of the hostiles fell to the ground, its head a bloody mess due to the 12 mm projectile that had penetrated its cranium through its left eardrum and exited on the other side. The AI paused as though confused, which was all Leth needed to de-pin a frag and throw it at the two enemies. There was a flash of light and the hostiles were riddled with shrapnel. Their battered corpses fell to the ground in a pile of their combined blood, twitched several times, then stopped moving.

Now to take care of the last mike foxtrots.

Nodding to Leth, Dante advanced, his weapon barrel at firing level. Passing through several ransacked rooms, Dante heard a dull whine coming from the next room and froze. They have a heavy weapon of some sort and are using against the others. If we can't take them out quickly, they'll turn the weapon around and take us out

With that thought in mind, Dante held up a hand. The group came to a halt, their weapons pointed at the doorway. Threading a fiber-optic probe through, Dante saw a group of five troopers, one of which was using an E-Web. Red energy came in waves from the weapon's long barrel and impacted on the much-abused walls of the buildings the Raiders were hiding in, which were already beginning to creak ominously.

It was clear that the group had to be taken out so, sighing, Dante gestured. The closest three rebels were sent flying back with their chest-plates burning and their chests slagged. The fourth had drawn a light blaster pistol and had fired two wild shots before a bolt of searing blue energy blew away the front of his helmet and most of his face. As he collapsed like a rag doll, the last enemy tried to turn his heavy weapon but had only halfway turned it when he was flash-fried by half a dozen energy beams to the chest. His fingers suddenly nerveless, he dropped the weapons controls and wordlessly fell off the building. His corpse bounced off several pieces of debris on its way down before coming to a stop with a sickening crunck.

Outside the Simulation.

Technician Riley sipped his cup of stimcaf, and gagged as the liquidwent down his throat.

"Who made this? It tastes like shit."

"I did, and you'd better get used to it. Decaf is all we have left." replied his partner.

"And whose fault is that?"

"I'm not the one who went through an entire shipment in a week. Besides,that's not the point. They want a status report on group 4."

Riley glanced at the monitor.

"Whoa. Looks like they took out the squad I spawned, and the snipers too."

The other technician relayed this information to the man on the other side.

There was a moment of silence before he replied.

"What? Are you joking, sir? Oh. Yes, sir."

"They want us to spawn a troop transport and another squad."

"Are you joking?"

"Just do it."

Sighing, Riley turned back to his datapad and typed in several commands before pressing enter and waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Inside the Simulation
There was a crackle of static and Sniping101's voice came over the com.

"We've taken out most of their ground forces, and they seem to be out of reinforcements. What's the status of the snipers, over?"

"This is LCPL Dante. We've taken out the snipers."

"Nice work. Let's get out of here before more troops arrive."

"Yes sir."

Dante clsoed the com and was already half-way to the turbolift when the whine of repulsorlifts caught his attention.

"Sithspawn..."

A large, angular vehicle was making its way down the street. Dante noted the two side tracks, on which two entire squads of troopers were seated and the heavy blaster cannon mounted behind the cockpit. Dante gulped.

That'll tear through the buildings like they're flimsiplast, and we don't have any heavy weaponry to take them out other than an E-web and a few grenades. This is not looking good.

The vehicle maneuvered past several pieces of debris, before coming to an abrupt halt. Its main cannon made a complete turn, then moved left and right as the gunner searched for a target. Looking through his rifle's scope, Dante could see the enemy troops sitting on the vehicle and saw that they looked confused. Most were using deeces or E-11's, with the exception of the one trooper holding a PLX-1. Still, the vehicle, not the troops, was the main problem.

There were several flashes of light from the seemingly abandoned buildings and several of the troops fell from their seats, their chests slagged by blaster fire and armour piercing slugthrower rounds. The transport began to turn, but it wasn't quick enough to stop the snipers from claiming another pair of victims. The transport came to a halt, and the survivors quickly dismounted from the vehicle before opening fire on the buildings. There was a flash of blue, and the vehicle's gunner opened fire. With a dull roar, first one then another of the ruins crumbled and collapsed into a pile of debris. Thankfully none of the allied tags on Dante's HUD blinked out.

The unfortunate hostile infantry, which had tried to find cover behind a piece of debris in the middle of the street, were hit by half a dozen sniper rounds and fell headless to the floor.

There were cracks and the shots impacted on the vehicle, but they either failed to penetrate the thick armour or bounced straight off. In retaliation, the transport opened up with its light, front-mounted blaster cannons but failed to hit the constantly moving group members. The transport turned and Dante chose this moment to open fire with the E-Web.

Crimson energy pulsed through the air, and there were a pair of explosions as the light blaster cannons were vaporized. However, Dante and the others with him were forced to take cover as the vehicle made a sharp turn and fired. Dante could feel more than hear the floors underneath him collapse and knew that in seconds the building would collapse.

Slowly, almost casually, the tank moved left to get a better angle on the group...straight into the blast radius of three EMP grenades. There was a flash of white light and the tank sank to the ground with a loud crunch. It's repulsorlifts and running lights flickered once, then went dead.

Knowing the vehicle would be reusable within a minute, Dante quickly made his way down towards the crippled transport. Sniping101's voice cam e over the com.

"Come on, let's take this bastard out!"

OOC:

My idea is that we could take the transport and use it to make our way to a complex where we help AI stormtroopers defend a complex from attacks. Group 4, please PM Sniping101 if you have questions.