Zafo filed out with the masses from the conference room where Gunnery Sergeant Rogueboy just finished his briefing.

"Why the sudden need to train us in radiation armor?" Zafo pondered.
The mystery behind it had Zafo more excited rather than skeptical, as many other faces hinted. He was also looking forward to working with a group of soldiers outside of Jesters.

Zafo was the first to arrive at his assigned simulation room, where he was asked to give the techie a list of equipment he wanted loaded into the simulator. Zafo handed the technician a diskette containing simulation information for his custom pistol, customized Nightfalcon speederbike, as well as a list of things he brought with him on practically every mission. The technician nodded as he loaded the disks contents.

"Alright, you're good to go." The techie approved, giving Zafo a thumbs up.

Zafo nodded his thanks and stepped into the simulator. He was surrounded by darkness for a few minutes while he waited for the rest of his group to get set. All of sudden, without warning, the darkness slowly manifested itself into indistinguishable shapes before spinning wildly. Zafo closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was standing in the middle of a road leading into a medium sized city.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The city looked as if it had been fought over for decades. Grim looking buildings stood tall and strong. Amongst them, shells of former buildings could be seen, some more intact than others. The outskirts of the city, or at least what could be seen, resembled a ghost town for the most part. Masses of grey clouds blocked out any evidence of one or several suns, though the dull lighting was more than ample to fight an entire war.

The Radiation armor's HUD differed slightly from that of a standard stormtrooper's helmet. It seemed slightly more sophisticated, though Zafo never relied too heavily on said technology. An indicator in the corner of the screen revealed that there was a low-moderate amount of radioactivity where he currently stood. Enough to be of harm to anyone not protected, but not to much as to effect the use of most weaponry or equipment.

Zafo turned his head over his shoulder to see the rest of the squad had loaded into the simulation, along with his nightfalcon. "Heh, usually the techies like to make me look for it."

"So whats the game plan?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Zafo's HUD revealed each soldier's name as he singled in on them. As he glanced over the last one in line, he new who had spoken; Tanus. Quite some time ago, Zafo had been his squad leader in the Dark Dragoons. However, such was a time when Zafo was in a very unstable place and often disappeared for weeks at a time. In the end, he resigned from the position to take time off from the army. He was aware that Tanus was now in charge of the squad he left behind.

"Tanus, it's been a while. I'm glad to hear you are in charge of the 'ole squad."

"Aye, it has. Things are going well for us, though we should save the chit-chat for later. We've got some proving ourselves to do."

"I say we move in to the residential area first, set up some sort of field base. We have no idea what we will be facing in this city, and it would be nice to set ourselves up a safe zone."

Zafo's HUD revealed the speaker to be another ex-Dragoon squadmate, Jennabelle.

"I think that's a great idea. Glad to see you are doing well, Jen." Zafo replied, scanning over the other three troopers once again, though not recognizing any. "All in support?"

All troopers agreed with the notion.

"Into the city we go." Tanus cheered with a fist pump into the air.

Zafo hopped onto his nightfalcon. The engine gave a nice little growl as he started it up.

"That doesn't sound stock parts to me." A soldier by the name of Specter chimed with excitement.

"You have no idea." Zafo replied with a chuckle. "I'm going to speed ahead into the residential zone and scout it out. If I run into any trouble, I'll notify you guys and come speeding back. Keep in touch if you see anything sketchy."

"Will do."

With a grin under his helmet, Zafo fiddled around with the accelerator, revving the engine much to Specter's amusement. The clutch dropped, accelerator floored and Zafo went speeding off into the distance...

The squad regrouped where their enemies lay slain. They posed little threat, especially since they didn't even see their ends coming. The radiation protection they were wearing appeared primitive in comparison with the Vast Empire's radioactive gear.

"Probably just un-important skirmishers deployed here to add some sort of obstacle on our way."

"Check the bodies, you never know what you'll find." Zafo proposed. Already he could see a pair of thermal detonators he wanted his hands on.

Anival and Zorgn approached the corpses with Zafo, while the others stayed in their places. Once he had the grenades secured on his belt, he turned to the rest of the squad.

"We should really get to some sort of cover...I don't like standing out in the open like this." Zafo suggested, gazing around the street for a place to go. One building in particular caught his attention.

"I think we found our base of operations." Zafo said with a grin, pointing to a movie theatre across the street. The outside of the building was very intact in comparison to some of the surrounding buildings. In fact, if it wasn't for the complete absence of people, you wouldn't have believed it was from a radioactive ghost town.

Once the squad passed through the pair of rotating doors, they were greeted by a large circular lobby. To the left, along the wall was a counter with several stations for the ticket salespeople. The far end of the room had several doors leading to the viewing rooms. The purply velvet carpet gave way to staircases on both right and left extremes of the lobby, leading to an upper deck that surrounded the entire lobby, looking down on it.

"Definitely would be an easy place to hold down and lay low." Tanus commented looking up to the upper deck

"I think there's even a way onto the roof!" Zorgn piped with excitement, pointing to an emergency exit.

"Ill go give it a look," Zafo volunteered, already on his way up the first set of stairs. The upstairs deck surrounding the lobby was very deep and would serve as an excellent place for the squad to position themselves in the event that they had to defend themselves from the theatre.

The emergency exit passage was very narrow. Just like Zorgn guessed, the stairs went either up or down. Curious as to what lay on the roof, Zafo squirmed his way up the stairs and out the solid steel door onto the roof.

The city appeared to be even more of a wasteland from the roof. From the roof, Zafo could see something he was not able to from ground level earlier. Off to the north west was a section of city that stood out from the rest like a sore thumb. Tall, solid black buildings stood menacingly immune to the destruction which existed all around them. A unknown banner hung across the front face of the tallest building. It appeared as though most, if not all of this "new" section was blocked off from the rest with a twelve foot high concrete wall. Taking advantage of the macrobinoculars built into the radiation armor's helmet, Zafo scanned more closely for an entrance point from the "old" to "new" city.

He found it. A large road ended at a large gate on the eastern side of the new section. The gate was protected by two small turret towers and a reasonable force of New Republic soldiers.

"I think we found our strike point. This new section of city appears to be of importance to them. Though we might need to find a way in other than that gate, it seems heavily guarded..."

A slight rumbling interrupted Zafo's thoughts. What started off faint grew louder and more noticeable.

"Zafo, do you hear that? Do you see anything?" Tanus' voice crackled over the comm.

Zafo scanned each street he could see for a possible source of the disruption, but found nothing. Until he turned around to look down the road the squad was on before.

"We might have a problem..." Zafo moaned as he gazed upon the source.
"I don't know if they are onto us, but we've got four AT-APs heading up the street..."

Sweat trickled down the Sergeants back as he lay pressed against a vent on the roof. That little stunt he had pulled took a lot out of him: not to mention his simulated life would be quite short if either of the remaining AT-APs caught wind of his location. That main cannon of theirs was not something to be taken lightly.

"Anyone have any idea how we are going to take these two out?" Tanus' voice inquired over the comm channel.

"Don't bother opening fire." Zafo piped in quickly. "None of our weapons will do much against them, unless you can hit where the legs meet the head from underneath. Even then, the only thing I'd hope for is disabling the third leg which might knock them over if they tried to fire off their main cannon."

"...So we've got nothing on them?" A voice unfamiliar to Zafo moped.

Zafo could hear the clanking of one of the walkers passing right by Zafo for the third time since he took cover back on the roof.

"We only destroyed one of the walkers, I only shot the shit out of the guys in the other one!" Specter chimed. "All someone's gotta do is make it to..."

"Done." Zafo interrupted, already sprinting down the stairs and through the lobby of the theatre.

"...you sure? I'm right there..." Specter added, somewhat taken back by Zafo's sudden interruption.

"Sorry Bud, but this is not the easiest machine to handle solo." Zafo stated, peering out the window to try and get a location on the other two mechanical threats. "I've just about finished my vehicle crewman training, I know how to work these things with my eyes closed. I need some kind of distraction while I make a bolt for it. Any takers?"

"Can I use the nightfalcon?" An excited Specter inquired.

"Eh, its just a simulation, why not." Zafo replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Go."

The silence which had enveloped the past minute was broken by a stream of blaster fire coming from the two remaining AT-APs. The decoy was in action.

Zafo threw himself into a sprint across the decrepit road towards the stationary, intact walker. He effortlessly clambered his way up the machine and into the cockpit. Luckily, it was big enough for Zafo to drag the three New Republic corpses into a corner where they would be out of his way. What was not so lucky, were the damages from all the stray bullets that never met with their target.

"I don't know what kind of operating state the walker is in." Zafo said very matter-of-factly. "There is a fair amount of damage that was done to the cockpit's computers. I'm running a system's check now."

The screen scrolled through a whole bunch of systems and components, many were green, indicating normal function. Though many were green, the amount of red that was flashing on the screen was somewhat alarming. Zafo bit hard on his lip as he read through the failing systems.

"Well, for starters, this walker isn't moving anywhere." Zafo sighed. "But luckily, all weapons and the stabilizing leg are functioning."

"Then waste no more time!" Specter shouted. " These guys know how to aim! Some of these shots are coming too close."

Specter's immediate danger had slipped Zafo's mind. His hands sprung into action over the various control boards and systems. Within a matter of seconds, Zafo had diverted full power to the walker's main laser cannon and was steadying the walker with the third leg.

"Boom." Zafo muttered under his breath as he sent the first blast exploding into the walker. The enemy cockpit shattered as an explosion tore the walker apart. Shards of flaming metal went spewing in all directions. One of said piece struck the second walker in the side, nearly knocking it over.

"What a shot!" Shouted Zorgn with excitement. "The next one!"

"Not so easy..." Zafo said, concern rising in his voice. "Since I diverted all power to the blast, its going to take a short while for the cannon to recharge."

Zafo could see the final walker attempting to stabilize itself with the third leg. The long barrel was pointed straight at him.

"Damn, Damn, Damn!" Zafo shouted, beginning to scramble out of the cockpit. His shot was not going to be ready in time. Just as he was about to leap from the practically useless walker, he caught a glimpse of one of the squad sprinting to the walker. A hail of fire began erupting from the soldier's rifle, heading straight for the underside of the walker. Involuntarily, the stabilizing leg began retracting. The enemy's barrel glowed blue before erupting a powerful blast from the cannon. The walker, unable to hold itself up properly while using so much energy for the cannon slouched slightly, sending the power blast into an adjacent building.

"Get out of there!" Zafo shouted.
3...2...1...Ready!

"Next shot is charged!" Zafo shouted over the channel before unleashing another blast of doom.
This explosion was nowhere near as spectacular as the first one, but got the job done none-the-less.

Though he could not hear any but his own, sighs of relief emitted from every squad member.

"Well done boys, I say we get the hell out of here before we've got more trouble..."