2.2.1 Literary Adventure - Training Days Pt 2

<div id="i4c-draggable-container" style="position: fixed; z-index: 1499; width: 0px; height: 0px;"><div data-reactroot="" class="resolved" style="all: initial;"></div></div>The junkrat eats a blaster bolt and falls dead.

"Ha Haa. Good shooting, that man!" I holster my pistol. I'm not a bad shot and against critters like junk rats weight of fire is more important than accuracy. but a pistol's a pistol, I don't have any formal training with this thing nor the advantage of force sensitivity.

I didn't hit shit.

"Woman." the trooper to my left, forty five, says in a slightly more feminine crackle than the other bucketheads.

"Good shooting, that woman!" I declare, "Terra, our target is to the north from here." I inform the officer.

"We're making good time. Deploy a decoy, make sure anything hungry is eating here rather than following us." He commands absentmindedly.

This is actually part of the procedure that we've been through, all of us.

A thing which happens in Industry at home is the Safe Work Method Statement, or Swims as we call them. It's a fairly simple risk assessment technique where we go through each expected or plausible threat and make a plan. Terra, the Captain and I filled one out for this mission back at the base and the two of us reviewed it with the troopers before we set out, even made a couple of little additions at their recommendation.

It gives us a solid set of standing orders for what to do and reduces the chances that we're going to be surprised and caught flat footed by any given kind of nasty beastie by a good measure.

It might be just paranoia on my part but given the choice between being overly paranoid and dinner... Well I can live with OH&S.

Point being, Terra doesn't have to give the order for one of his stormtroopers to fling a decoy down the path into the corpses of the junkrats but he does it anyway because it's his job to make sure it gets done.

"Delay?" He asks.

"Three minutes Sir." The trooper, thirty nine, responds.

"Good, lets get going. Alex." I nod at the implied command and lead our group further into the near abandoned junkyard.

Three minutes later I hear the sound of something large tear into some meat.

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The nine of us wait in silence, Chanim is watching her scope, little red lights blinking on her motion detector as we wait.

Discipline holds.

...

"Clear." she says as the last blips leave her range.

"Anything on the others." Terra asks, standard issue pistol clamped tight in his hand.

Chanim clicks through the ten closest sensors tracing the path around us.

"No all clear there. Let me get a look topside." Terra nods at the girls suggestion and she scrambles up the pile of junk we're hiding behind.

"All clear up here. Rats are heading east, away from our vector." She Observes.

"Good, move out. Alex." Terra commands and again I take point, Chanim scrambles down and joins the centre of the formation.

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"So how much are you getting payed for this Alex?" Terra asks. As we walk down a pitch black alleyway, a pair of troopers are taking their turn on point. I hear the click of a motion sensor clamping onto a magnetic surface in the near absolute silence of the deep level.

"This here, a fair bit. Comes out of the platoon training budget and I got most of the bits to restore the droid myself. Only get my actual payday for that on delivery but still. Getting payed twice."

"I would wonder that it isn't illegal."

"If it were the same job it would be mate buut. I'm getting paid to show you and the lads how to handle yourselves in the deep and I'm getting paid for the delivery of a fully functional antique loading droid, for which you lot are getting a cut of course."

"In total?" He asks.

"Delivery of the droid, after restoration has a bounty of about a hundred grand more depending on the accessories I can up sell with it, most of that would get eaten by the restoration team and parts recovery so there's only going to be maybe thirty grand profit. Training comes to, about fifteen grand for the lot of you, plus any gear you might want to buy."

"That seems...."

"Excessive?"

"That is one word for it." The second lieutenant ventures.

"It ain't. Man, you don't know the half of it, I used to work in industry, that's where all these forms and shit comes from and a full week long training course with field excursions, hazard pay, equipment training and trained instructors is easily worth that kind of money. Probably more, unless I miss my guess Captain Labort is going to be abusing the hell out of your new skills."

"You act as if these skills are some sort of aberration worth far more money than is sensible."

"Most scavengers in the deeps barely last an expedition. That's the truth sadly. They go in half cocked to the deeps thinking that they're going to make it big, sometimes with really quite good gear and then they die. They die so hard it's not funny. The lucky ones escape with their skin and decide that living with their folks really isn't that bad, the unlucky ones have me returning their old gear back to their folks for a price. Running proper ops down here is the same, one wrong move and you're on the wrong end of a dozen Rancors or worse. The way your team is operating here puts you ahead of ninety percent of people who regularly go beyond the plants. Our trip in two weeks is going to go deeper than all but a handful of dedicated scavengers and I can pretty much guarantee that you're going to be on a very short list of officers with any experience at that kind of depth."

"Your point."

"When a Jedi or a rebel goes to hide in the depths and General Whatsisface,"

"Du Mont."

"General Du Mont asks for an expedition to be prepared to pursue them you will probably at the top of the list. Hell, you'll probably be the only one on the list. For the Captain."

"It's worth every credit." He says quietly, I can't see him smile behind his helmet but i'm pretty sure it's there.

"Damn straight it is." I Say cheerfully.

"One thing I don't understand is how you know how to find these Things? The ship, all of those other brochures, how can you find anything down here?" He asks, the troopers in front of us emerging from the alleyway into a large junction, the flick their wrists and proximity sensors go flying down each path. there's a light noise as each makes contact with a metal surface.

"Alexander's Action Archaeology isn't a name I chose for the Added Alliterative Appeal Lieutenant. It isn't one I chose to be in the front of the phone book either."

"Huh?"

"Sorry, homeworld joke. Point being, on expeditions I don't scavenge, I study. People just like paying for the souvenirs I end up picking up. After a bit I ended up making more from my souvenirs than my actual job. I heard about the deep history of Coruscant and decided on a bit of a working holiday."

"And then."

"Well you need to understand, that was two years ago. Two very lucrative years ago."

"So you just do this for the money." He says.

"I don't do this for money Terra, I Do it for a Fuckload of Money. Metric if you have it."

I can almost feel the man roll his eyes at my antics.

I don't have the map for this place memorised, I close my eyes and feel our destination.

"That way." I indicate.

"You sure? These all seem the same."

"Not all those who wander are lost Second Lieutenant." I say sagely.

"I'm lost as shit. How do you know where we're going?" He replies.

"I know where I am, I know where I'm not and I know where I'm going. So I subtract where I am from where I'm not to get where to go. I also have a fifteen year old with an extremely expensive sensor integrator attached to the sensor network we've been creating, mapping the entire area."

"So you cheat." The lieutenant scoffs.

"Not cheating means you're not trying." I reply. "Chanim?" I ask.

"Take a left in two hundred meters and straight on for another three hundred."

"Cool beans." I give the girl a thumbs up and follow the troopers we've got leading the way.

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"Is that it?" Chanim asks.

The droid we're looking for isn't in the open, that would be too fucking easy. No instead it's embedded about half a meter underneath the surface of a wall of droid bits. Luckily most of the bits are about the size of my arm (mostly arms) but occasionally there are chunks the size of my fist or enormous components nearly the size of my torso.

"Yep, there's the fucker, it's buried deep. We're going to have to excavate it before we call the transport."

"Because the transport will attract natives?" Terra asks

"Yeah, it'll take an hour, hour and a half to get this thing ready to transport. Sure as hell don't want to do that while attracting critters from across the whole bloody yard." I look at Terra. I've given my opinion, he's nominally in charge.

"Forty Six, Fifty, forty five and thirty nine you're on sentry, prepare decoy clusters on both paths. Chanim, you're on scope. The rest of us will dig out payday." I smile behind my helmet, as the officer doesn't pull up his sleeves, we're pretending it's hazardous atmosphere after all but he does climb up and begins to dislodge driod parts from our objective.

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"Anyone in the market for an old assassin bot?" I ask looking at a small pile of parts I've saved, A few arms, a pair of legs in almost functional condition and a bunch of droidbrain components from about a dozen different class one and two droids but most of them come from old model killbots of all kinds.

"That's an assassin bot?" Trooper Forty eight asks.

"Shit yeah, Someone who knew what they were doing could build a kill bot out of this, you'd probably want better servos but these would serve. I'm no good with assembly but most of these pieces are compatible without too much effort."

"If you say so. Why are you separating them again?" He asks, Hefting and old droid arm.

"Well money of course.... Wait a minute put that over here. It's from a compatible model to the target. Ho ho. Money money money."

"Why are we doing the lifting for your money pile anyway?"

"Well because you get a cut of course." I say as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well that's different then. Lieutenant apparently we get a cut."

"Part of his contract trooper, keep working we'll be tallying at the end."

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"That was surprisingly peaceful." Terra quips.

"Yeah. As a rule though don't say that unless you're already in the debriefing room." I say cautiously.

"You believe those silly superstitions. As an engineer I thought you were a man of science."

"Ha haaa. You've never been around a team of engineers doing a hardware update on a multi million cred plant. Mate, superstitious doesn't even begin to cover it."

I hear him laugh silently, I realise my hand's on the hilt of my blaster. I remove it carefully.

"Chanim, Perimeter check." Terra orders.

"All Clear LT." She replies.

He gives a little head tilt, chiding me for my paranoia.

I'll live.

Terra and I are standing on the top of the near mountain of junk, old shuttles in this case. I originally found the Droid while looting this very pile. We can't see to much of the junkyard from our vantage, it isn't a line of sight issue, the view's great from here. It's a lighting issue. We're well over a kilometre beneath the surface in an area which is the next best thing to abandoned. There is no power, there is no light, there is very little heat and the air is so clear, so still that even the faintest spark carries the vastest distance.

The lights of the transport glow in the distance. I've got no ideal how long it will take to get here.

"In any case. We went in quiet, went in professionally, kept discipline, and prepared properly. Odds of something going wrong were probably around ten percent." I say.

"My men aren't trained to retreat in the face of adversity." Terra says.

"I realise that but... In the deeps you can't rely on just bringing more gun. We've been over this." I'd tried bringing more gun once, I killed the first beastie which came for me, then the second and the third. By that point of course there were three fresh carcasses without an undisputed owner in the deep all expelling the chemical equivalent of a dinner bell. I spent the next three days after that learning how to cast recall in under a second reliably. It's not something one wants to do twice.

"It still doesn't feel right, skulking about like this." The young man grouses.

"Fair cop. But like today sometimes the act of not skulking simply isn't worth the effort. Besides if you skulk properly then no one need know you did it. That's rather the point actually."

"I suppose we should pretend that skulking in the shadows is instead a glorious fucking adventure." He checks his radio, the signal of the shuttle is still a few kilometres distant.

"Yeah, sounds like a good plan to me. God knows most people just pay someone else to skulk for them then pretend they were the ones going on a great adventure."

"I suppose you're the one who the honourless curs acquire these fantastic weapons from?"

"Buckets of Money Terra. Buckets. Of. Fucking. Money. I even write a plausible discovery story for each weapon full of derring do and Provinence. Oh Terra the Provinences, so fascinating." I emote cheezily in the still silence of the centuries old junkyard.

"Really, Alex? You make up tales about the weapons original owner and pass it off as true."

"Nah mate. The stories are actually true, for a given value of true, there's like twenty percent embellishment at most."

"Forgive me if I don't believe you."

"You're forgiven." I say and Terra snorts in Exasperation.

We watch the lights of the transport differentiate into the left and right and Terra holds up his beacon, guiding the craft in for pickup.

"I'll get the team ready."

I leave the young man up there.

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The light, warmth and fresh air of the inside of the imperial Recon Transport is unbelievably pleasant against my face as we hurtle back to Ryan's Shuttles. The old cat was the one who put me up to this, he already has all of the restoration gear he needs and I've stockpiled parts in the garage. We should have the Droid polished and ready to go in a month on the outside, especially withal lof the spare parts I managed to pick up. In the meantime I'm tallying our take.

"That, this and this, 'n that." My pencil scritches against the inside of my notepad as I tally the estimated value of the recovered components. "Round up and minus finders fee, mark down for wholesale.. and..." I mark down the final tally for the extra loot on my notepad.

"What's the good news?"

"Number fifty my fine fellow. Total value of today's extras to be moved at high speed comes to a neat two and a half grand minimum, plus the arm which is another one. Total additional bonus is three hundred each. Not a bad day all in all."

"Don't spend it all at once." Terra quips.

"If you do, make sure you get photos. A three hundred credit bender would be something to see." I mutter and a chuckle passes through the Transport.

"So what now?" Forty Five asks.

"We have debrief back at the barracks while Alexander arranges payment through his sources, we requisition any new gear we believe may be useful for our next expedition and we prepare." Terra states professionally.

"Next trip isn't for fifteen days but and you do have a bit of extra spending money. My advice, go get yourself something useful, something different. I recommend a sonic pistol if you can get one, mine's certainly saved my arse more than once. I'll be providing Decoys and such for the next trip as well but more options is always better." I say.

"Providing we are trained adequately." Forty five says.

"Damn straight." I chirp, carefully polishing the recovered pieces and inspecting them for damage.

We don't cruise in silence on the way back the way we did on the way in. Chanim and I work quickly on our parts while the troopers all talk animatedly, about their girlfriends, about their plans for their bonuses, about their friends and their family. Terra even shares a few stories about his home.

His family are Alderannian traders, they run a chain of department stores on the main continent. His commission was bought for no small amount of money and this is his first posting, with his great uncle of all people. With the constantly increasing size of the imperial army he's hoping from a promotion to something other than boot licker at some point in the near future.

Everyone has a laugh as he recounts a funny story about his families flagship store, two dozen space chickens they had in for a promotion and a particularly fussy socialite.

All to soon the Transport comes to a stop above Ryan's Shuttles, the Large articulated roof opening for us to lower the droid into the Repair bay.

"Looks like this is our stop guys. Mission briefing in eight days. Expedition starts in fifteen. I hope to see you all there." I wave cheerfully as I unload the large piles of Harnesses and gear from the crew compartment.

The troopers give a lazy salute as I finish up.

"See you in five days Alex." Terra says from the door, I hear him give orders to the pilot and a moment later the Transport lifts off and rises towards the exit.

Chanim collapses onto her arse in the bay, I visibly sag. Fuck me, that was a drag.

Ryan, the rotund business owner waddles out of the office.

"You had a successful trip?" he asks hopefully.

"Yeah, Fucking brilliant. Euuugh. Fucking Imps."

"A bad trip?" He asks.

"Nah, Ryan. Better than I had any reason to hope. The fucking Imps are just so goddamn enthusiastically Nazi. Come on. Let's get this shit signed in." I say tiredly.

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