Log:First Order: A Training Mission Goes Bad

First Order: A Training Mission Goes Bad

OOC Date: February 23, 2016
Location: Bayuir
Participants: Fuze as GM, FL-5114, RK-8801, FN-4126, First Order

The operation is, on the face of it, simple. Take a pacified area of Bayuir. Insert a Blue Team of Stormtroopers (that would include Foil and others). Insert a Red Team of Stormtroopers. Blue Team has to evade Red Team and make it to an LZ from which they will be extracted, if their evasion goes well. The Captain briefing Blue Team is blunt. "There'll be no friendly fire incidents. You'll all be armed with blasters incapable of being adjusted off of stun. Blue Team will be led by Sergeant RB-1298. She'll be in charge of getting you goons to the LZ intact. If you get taken out by a Stun Round, when you recover, hold in place and activate your tracker beacon. You'll be extracted within twelve hours, but you'll play no further part in the exercise. Now, this is the terrain you're in..."

The holomap reveals rocky, mountainous terrain, dotted with pine-like forests and patches of open scree; none of the peaks are above the tree-line. The insertion point, on the shore of a mountain lake, is approximately twenty clicks from the extraction point atop a low ragged peak; there's an obvious valley-canyon linking the two, a river that drains from peak to lake. "Insertion is an hour before dawn. There'll be a shuttle waiting for you at the extraction point until 0000 hours that night, so you'll have to move fast across rough terrain against the hostile forces of Red Team. If you don't make it to the rendezvous..." He pauses significantly. "Activate your beacon and you'll be picked up." It doesn't sound like a preferred option. "Any questions?"

Ugh. There's things that need cleaning elsewhere. Why is he here? FL-5114 stands in formation, waiting for the whole prep phase to be over. LZ, yeah yeah. Avoid Red Team, blah blah. No stun setting, whatever. Er, wait, did he get that reversed? FL-5114 glances down at his knockoff 'training' rifle, and its blue Stun indicator. Right, only stun. Turning his helmet up again, FL-5114 resumes watching the posterior of AL-0114 in front of him. They say all Storm Trooper armor looks the same, but he knows differently. And she wears it so well. Mmm-hmm. Blah blah, beacons, blah blah rendezvous, whatever.

FN-4126 listens closely, waiting for the fun part. Objectives are important; that's the whole point, really. But she's here for the fight, whether she acknowledges it or not. Testing herself against the troops she's worked with and helped to train. The fight is everything. But here, the fight is to be on the move, a breakthrough. Hurling themselves into the teeth of the enemy, or her favorite option: Playing predator and prey with the enemy, slowly reducing their numbers. Either way, she'll be having fun.

Checking her weapons, the Sergeant nods as the objectives finish. But she does have one question: "Will we have maps of the terrain and objectives?"

"Yes, FN-4126, you will have maps on your helmet displays." The Captain nods at the question, and then grins wolfishly, "but there'll be no interaction with these maps. You'll have to gauge where you are, you won't appear on the displays. This is old-school navigation. You can thank Sergeant LS-1441 for that suggestion." Sergeant LS-1441 is an old curmudgeon. "Right, if there are no more questions, let's move out." And, barring any further questions, the troops move to the waiting shuttles. Red Team have long departed, setting up their twenty-odd troops to best effect; RB-1298, a conservative, risk-averse Sergeant, leads her twenty troops to the waiting shuttle. "We're all going to make it through," she briefs, as everyone starts strapping themselves in. "We'll parallel the valley. It'll be the obvious place for an ambush so we'll traverse this ridgeline here, cross this canyon here, and make our way up the eastern slopes of the target peak." It's the obvious plan to avoid the deathtrap of the main river valley, too, but she seems oblivious to that.

FL-5114 has a topographical map right in front of him he'd love to study. Oh yes. Helmet maps, no interaction... Heh heh. Interaction. Mmm-hmm. "Wait, we can't use the nav system?" Returning to reality, FL-5114 sounds surprised. But them everyone is moving, including AL-0114. Grumbling silently to himself, just below the vocoder threshold, the Sanitation Specialist Slash Mech Warrior marches out with the rest of the platoon, "Hooray, time to get stunned by one of those sarlacc-suckers in Red Team. Again." Grumble-mutter. Peaks, parellel, traverse...stuff. He'll figure it out. Now which shuttle were they taking again...?

"If Red's thinking at all, they'll be watching that ridgeline," Rhona points out quietly. "If they catch us up there, we'll be sitting ducks." She doesn't say more, not yet, as she's not the Sergeant in charge of this operation. Instead, she looks for other ways to reach the ridgeline, and off-branches that could let her and a few picked others stage an ambush on the pretty-much-guaranteed ambushers. Her mind works as her feet move.

She brushes the shoulder of the nearest trooper as they start off, which turns out to be the posterior-gazing FL-5114. "Keep your eyes open," she says softly. "If you'd rather not get stunned, don't be a target." It's not a platitude: The Sergeant's head is constantly moving, her eyes sweeping the locale for signs of the enemy and potential ambush sites.

The insertion was uneventful, the shuttle touching down with a whine of engines on a gravel beach, and the troops emerging without any sign of Red Team. The shuttle lifts off, brushing the water as it departs - damn showoff flyboys - and then they are alone. RB-1298 considers Rhona's suggestion briefly, and seems troubled; but she doesn't seem to have a viable alternative. The team, on her orders, are strung out with a pointsman front and rear, as they struggle up the first part of the ridgeline.

For the better part of three hours they make steady if very slow progress. Dawn breaks gray over the land, and a light drizzle starts falling, making the rocks slick underfoot, but at least having the benefit of restricting visibility to maybe five hundred yards. They're making their way along the ridgeline and haven't made contact with Red Team as yet when Rhona spots something gleaming white, about half-way down a patch of scree.

"Gah!" Flinching a bit, FL-5114 looks over, "Oh, hey FN-4126. Uh...Don't be a target? You mean I could have opted out of this op?" Probably too late now. The lingering silence just shouts that he's thinking about it. But he doesn't ask. After they land, FL-5114 hustles on out and looks down at the rushing water in amazement. "...So, any brilliant plans for sneaking through? If we can see where the obvious ambush sites are, so can they, and they would know that we could see it, and would be going for the next best thing. That's where they'll set up their ambush. I recommend taking the fourth best approach vector. Even if it's harder, it's unlikely they'll commit assets to it." He's still staring at the body of water. He's never seen anything like that before.

"So far, no," Rhona admits. "I don't see any branchoffs. That ridgeline looks like a real funnel. On the plus side, they can't ambush us from many places. On the minus, they don't need to: We go where the ridgeline goes." Not that she doesn't keep looking... and nudging FL-5114. "Zoom, eyes open. It's pretty, but we've got to stay sharp. We'll have time for sightseeing later." She's turning her eyes back forward when she catches sight of the odd object on the trail. And then she sees what it is...

She quickly gives the 'take cover' sign, knowing the scree will be treacherous (and noisy) ground to cross, nature's intrusion alarm. "Something on the ground up there, a trooper helmet. Look sharp; something's not right!" Those usually come with troopers, after all. She raises her quadnocular, switching to infrared, and begins looking over the terrain.

The drizzling rain is messing with the quadnoculars' IR, but there doesn't seem to be anything nearby in the way of heat sources. Everyone takes whatever cover they can on the exposed ridge, and there's just the steady drip-drip of the rain off armor for several long minutes. The Sergeant in charge, RB-, has been considering. "I like your way of thinking, FL-5114," she mutters, after checking out the helmet with her optics for several long minutes. "It's a trap." No prizes for quick thinking there. "They want us to cross the scree to the helmet and take us there," she opines. "Let's break right." On the other side of the ridge, away from the river valley and the helmet scree. She hesitates, glancing at Rhona, as if wanting support for her plan.

Very quietly, FL-5114 comments to the person next to him, "That sounds dangerous..." when RB-1298 says she likes how he thinks. Then he turns his helmet and sees its FN-4126 again. "Oh, hey. Thought you were someone else." He nods towards the distance, "What's up? I don't see anything out there." His voice is kept very quiet, despite the chatter. But before an answer can come, they are diverging right, and FL-5114 hustles his way out that way. Apparently he supports the plan! Or didn't notice that the sergeant stopped.

"This is too obvious. They didn't even try to hide the helmet or make it look accidental," Rhona whispers. "I'm sure the trap's on the right. Is there a third way?" She lowers her quadnoculars back into their case, shaking her head. "Nothing on quads... if someone's around, they're not ours, and they'd have to be close to watch their trap. So whose trap is this?" The answer doesn't take long to reach. "/Trandos/," she realizes. "And here we are with stun-only blasters!"

There's an uneasy note in RB-'s voice as she looks sharply at Rhona. "There are no Trands in this sector," she mutters uneasily. "This sector has been pacified." There's a euphemism for you. "We have to go somewhere." That much is true, and time is ticking on; they've been on the march for three and a half hours, now, and have covered maybe three clicks, owing to the extreme caution of their leader. "You. You. You. You." She points to Rhona, Foil, AL-0114 and a faceless goon. "Head down the slope to the right until you hit the bottom and report back. Be careful. Don't get caught by Red Team. Everyone else stay here." Even more time about to be wasted. The rain picks up, heavier now, incessantly falling with virtually no wind, so the whole world is clouded in gray. It's then that both Rhona and Foil, glancing down, spot near the ridgeline, the gleaming barrel of one of the stun-only blasters. Left out in the rain is no way to treat a blaster.

"Right behind you!" FL-5114 is all-too-happy to cover that rearguard position. Forming up, he points to the slope, "Lets move fast, try to take whoever might be around here by surprise. The slower we go, the more ground they can search anyway." Spotting the blaster, however, FL-5114 immediately hunkers down, crouching as he makes his way along in a slightly stealthier manner, "Well that's ominous..."

Rhona grinds her teeth under her helmet: It's not just time they're losing. It's possibly lives as well. But she's not in charge of this operation, damn the luck of the draw. "Sir, yes sir," she mutters, saluting with sarcastic parade-ground precision, and moving to take point. If she's got to do something stupid, she'll take the lead and hopefully help keep these poor kids safe. Plainly RB-1298 isn't competent to the job.

And there's another telltale sign of just how bad this is getting: First an obvious helmet, now a blaster left out in the constant drizzle. "Don't touch it!" she hisses, moving to take a closer look. "Boobytrapping discarded equipment is an old Rebel trick. I'm sure Red Team's heard of it... or whoever's out here."

She checks the weapon. "Not this time, though. But this is really starting to disturb my calm," she mutters, picking up the weapon. "Either Red Team has really sloppy equipment discipline, or something's happened to them. My next paycheck's on the latter."

Down the slope, the four Stormtroopers are swallowed by the trees. There are rocks, from gravel up to speeder-size boulders, littered down the slope, the result perhaps of ancient glaciers. And then they see it, another white smudge in the trees below, perhaps five hundred yards off the ridgeline. It's like a pile of Stormtroopers...no, it's a pile of Stormtrooper armor, breastplates and pauldrons and greaves and helmets, thrown together at the foot of a tree. First Order trooper armor, perhaps four or five Troopers' worth. The rain runs in rivulets off the white material. Around them, the forest drip-drip-drips.

Coming to a stop slowly, FL-5114 comms to the others, "...I think we should maybe call for back-up. This doesn't look like part of the training program, and trying to 'prove our worth' and ending up dead isn't going to help anyone. If there are predator Trandoshans about, we're not equipped to fight them." He glances over at FN-4126, "What do you think? Should we bug out? I have a strange suspicion that the sergeant shouldn't have waited, standing around back there."

Looking as though he's about to wait for the superior officer to make the call, FL-5114 shrugs and flicks to the broader spectrum, "RB-1298, what's your status, over?"

"Backup's a great idea," Rhona agrees, quickly signaling AL-0114 and GN-5678 to take cover. "This is /not/ the kind of bait Red would leave for a trap." She takes cover as well, a spot with a good view of the armor and the terrain around it, trying the quadnoculars again while Zoom makes the call. She can monitor it on her own helmet comlink, anyway.

Scanning the trees, an easier job when you're half-way up a steep slope...the Stormtroopers that the armor presumably belonged too are suddenly located. Five of them, four men and a woman. Dangling. Stripped of armor to their undergarments. Strung up in the tree above the armor, coarse ropes around their necks, as the rain runs over them and drips down steadily.

On comms, there is static from RB-1298; she's speaking, and there seems to be no sense of urgency in her words, but they're all but indecipherable. Still, she's probably requesting /their/ status.

Seeing the strung-up corpses, FL-5114 looks to FN-4126, "Better call in the reinforcements... And we'd better activate our beacons. I think this training exercise just went live..." Messing with his rifle, he attempts to flick it back to live fire. "Everyone, get against the rock face, find cover. We need to either hunker down or bolt for the far end of the canyon to the LZ."

Following his own advice, FL-5114 is attempting to dislodge the fire selector.

Rhona hisses and nods. "It definitely did. This just got /real/," she agrees from her point of cover, toggling her mic on. <Blue Spearhead to Blue Actual, we have dead troopers here. Repeat: We have /dead/ friendlies, hung by the neck, in a /pacified area/. Respectfully request you rendezvous because WE HAVE A LIZARD PROBLEM!>

She begins working with her own weapon, cursing softly as the switch sticks. "This'll still work on them, but they have this nasty tendency to get up after a while," she mutters. "They had to take a lot of time and trouble to do this. I doubt they're too far away, especially in this. Trandos don't like cold and rain."

It's a training exercise. Was a training exercise. Blue Team were inserted in a mountainous region with stun-round-only blasters, to try to make it to an LZ some twenty clicks distant with Red Team trying to stop them. But it all has gradually spiralled downhill. The Sergeant in charge, RB-1298, has been cautious and indecisive as they made their way along a ridgeline, in the trees, in steady rain, so they're already running late for their objective. They have rescue beacons. Now a FO Stormtrooper helmet has been spotted on a scree slope, together with a discarded blaster, both believed to be a trap, and so Rhona, Foil, and two other troopers have been dispatched down the other side of the slope to look for an alternate way around. Comms is definitely flakey, it's working at a few yards range but anything greater than that is garbled. On comms, it's clear to Rika that Foil and Rhona trying to say something important, but it's hard to decipher even a few hundred yards away. "...friendlies...area....rendezvous...problem". And it's still raining.

Rika moves through the rain, quiet as a shadow. She moves with that loose, lioness grace even on the slope. She has given up trying to rig her blasters, despite the prickling at the back of her neck. Something is Not Right about this. /Blue SPearhead, Blue Actual, come again? You are breaking up badly.../ She considers, tawny eyes thoughtful behind the visor. /Blue SPearhead, Blue Actual, Squak your mike key twice if you wish us to join you.../ Maybe the static of the switch will carry better.....

Flipping on his locator beacon, FL-5114 is slowly scanning the forest. "You know, AL-0114, if Red Team has been eliminated, we may want to backtrack and race down the valley. We know they've recovered from any wounds inflicted by Red Team by now, so we know we don't have the numbers to overcome them. Speed may be our best option." Is he addressing her backside? Maybe. Stormtrooper helmets are great.

<Everyone's breaking up, Actual,> Rhona replies in frustration. She clicks the mic, just in case that static is distinct from all the other static, and tries again as Rika gets closer and closer. <We have /dead/ friendlies in what's supposed to be a pacified zone. They've been hung by the neck; looks like Trando work, but there's nothing in sight to say for sure. Request you rendezvous on our coordinates.> She looks back to the squad. "Hopefully we're about to get company from our friends back there. Stop fretting, Zoom: We've only found one squad so far. It might be a small group. But Intel sure needs some help, if this is what they call a pacified zone."

As the two groups close, comms clears up again, and soon there's a hubbub of confused words, not helped by RB-1298's complete lack of leadership; she's not taking charge, she's not attempting to quell the unease in some voices, it's clear she has no game plan for this turn of eventualities. "I think," she mutters, "I think maybe we should get back to the insertion point. It's closer than the rendezvous." Think. Maybe.

Rika is professional to the core. This is the Order, not some wiffling, amateur Resistance! Still, she tries. She moves close RB, husky voice kept low over the voder. "Sir, we have dead Troopers. Be firm, we cannot afford to loose unit cohesion or Morale." There. Louder now. "Right, you heard the Commander. Insertion Point. I want front, flanks and six covered. Stay frosty and watch for ambushes!" Not undermining her, but trying to buck her up, buck up the others as well.

Looking over at FN-4792, FL-5114 shrugs very slowly, "Hey, I'm calm. It's not like there's invisible lizard people out there stripping people and stringing them up. What's there to worry about?" He gestures with his rifle. "So, uh, are we pressing forward? Heading back? Time to make a call." He adds, helpfully, "For what it's worth, I vote we press on ahead. As fast as we can."

Rhona grinds her teeth and shakes her head. "No!" she says emphatically. "We are NOT retreating! Not after this!" She holds up the blaster they found. "This weapon has been /fired/. That means an ambush and a struggle, which means roughly equal numbers to our respected dead. Obviously, we have more than that here. I also remind you that the insertion point was a dead drop: We were let off and the shuttles went back to the barn. We'll be waiting a while if we go back... and they can always follow us there if they have the nerve." She lifts her weapon. "/I/ say /we/ take the fight to /them/. I'm leaving my beacon with the dead, and I'm going to do exactly that, alone if I have to!"

"And we might just have our chance," Rhona adds, gesturing. "We've got a little pack of lizards coming this way, and they look pretty relaxed. Anyone for doing an ambush of our own, and making some matched Trando-skin luggage?"

The rain continues to pelt down, dampening spirits further, but the Sergeant is bucked by first Rika's and then Rhona's speech. "Alright! You heard the Sergeant! Get into cover and stay ready. Hit them and keep hitting them with those stun rounds!" And the small group of Stormtroopers obediently begin to take cover amongst the boulders and trees.

Leaning forward, FL-5114 suddenly grasps FN-4126's shoulder pauldron, "No... They're moving from cover to cover, swiftly. They've seen us. They know we are here." FL-5114 slowly backs away, "Everyone, get to a good firing vantage, pick your targets, they're shadows in the dark up ahead. Don't fire until you've got a good shot. In close quarters they'll decimate us, so don't waste time on wild shots." His voice darkens, "And even stun rounds can kill, if you pump them full of them enough."

The valkyrie of a trooper can move with impressive grace and silence. She is tarting hide when the scond sighting report comes in, that first party is bait. Foil is right. Head shots then, inflict enough damage to the central nervous system and ANYTHING dies!!!!" She goes to ground behind a fallen tree, bracing her rifle, tracking the nearest targets.....

The Trandoshan hunters on the ridge ahead are closing rapidly, but when the Stormtroopers scatter into cover they break theirs, charging forwards with reptilian croaking cries. They're armed with rifles, pausing to fire and then running forwards to the next cover, advancing fast. At the sound of the first shots, the bait group down in the river valley accelerate their languid pace, struggling to climb the scree-slope; rocks slither down under their feet. A Stormtrooper is hit in the head and tumbles back, rolling a few yards down the slope before fetching up against a rock and twitching into death.

Rhona blinks as she's grabbed... and follows Foil's gaze. "Zoom's right... take cover, fast! There's /another/ pack!"

She doesn't step away, though. "Zoom, you and AL-0114 come with me. Stay low. We're gonna flank your group, then come back to reinforce against mine when they come running."

Rhona is no Rika, but she isn't bad: She quickly pushes AL-0114 to the side as the attack pack starts their charge. Dashing for a vantage point to the left of the incoming Trandos, she opens fire from the side to eliminate their advantage of cover... or at least give them something more to worry about than Blue!

Leveling his rifle, FL-5114 waits. That one is too obscured. Another is visible only for a moment. But when one comes screaming...that one gets plasma in the chest. Shooting several times more at the fallen figure, FL-5114 snaps his rifle back up, waiting for the next one to throw itself into the open. Calm and steady, just like driving a AT-ST. Calm and steady.

Rika snarls, it echoes menacingly through her helmet's voder, as she lines up a shot on the nearest lizards head. She squeeze the trigger, carefully carefully, the shot break and the stun bolts take him between the eyes...he drops and skids forward with the inertia of his charge. She is barely aware of his twitching body as she swingss the muzzle to the next. RInse and repeat. The business of killing, something she was born and raised to. That one drops, taking another shot to the back of his head as he does.......

The Trandoshans on the ridge, despite their rage, are sluggish in the rain, comparatively speaking, and they're the ones doing the running into a field of Stormtrooper fire from positions in cover, not to mention Rika taking the fight to them. An ugly brute leading the charge takes four solid stun rounds, falling twitching onto its face, while another, taking a stun blaster round in the head, topples off a small cliff and bounces off a rock before smashing open his skull on a pointed boulder some twenty feet below. The interior of a Trandoshan skull is unpleasant to behold. Another Stormtrooper, though, screams shrilly as a Trandoshan round almost severs her hand. The bait group are still struggling up the scree slope, but the loose stones are coming down at them in earnest now, some even the size of a man's (or a lizard's) head, and they seem to be rapidly coming to the conclusion that this was not a good tactic.

Rhona points the proper direction for AL-0114 and continues firing, her shots beginning to tell: One Trando, peppered with enough blue energy to cripple a Bantha, collapses in his tracks. Another charger is hit in the leg and tumbles tailbone over teakettle to a messy, groaning stop. "Keep it up, Blue! We're beating them!"

Waiting until a huge lizard is nearly right on top of him, FL-5114 fires off a shot right into the creature's face, peppering it with a few more blasts before calling back, "But how?! These guys wiped the floor with Red Team!" Ejecting a spent clip, it sails, sizzling, through the air. Slapping a fresh magazine in, FL-5114 is momentarily distracted as AL-0114 leans forward for a shot. That rear armorplast-sculpting! It's really the minor details that matter with armor like that.

Rika is machine-like, aiming carefully, double tapping them in the face, moving on. One she misses, though. The Lizard slides under the sizzling plasma, she drops her aim and takes him between the legs. In his last few sconds of agonizing consciousness, he likely regret dodging just that way. But They aclosing, despite the losses. She falls back, covering the wounded trooper. "For the Order!!!"

The Trandoshans are closing, but they are not stupid. They've lost the element of surprise, they've lost the advantage of higher ground and cover, the temperature has dropped and it's started to rain, making them sluggish, they don't have better numbers any more, and their prey is fighting back. There are some ugly-sounding gutteral cries from the bigger creatures, and then they're falling back, some slithering and sliding down the slope, others dropping from tree to tree down the slope to the right. The battle was not without cost; two Stormtroopers lie dead, and a third is gravely wounded, losing blood fast. But there's no time for reflection; some of the Trandoshan are starting to recover, and those that have retreated have not gone far.

"Blue, better police your takedowns," Rhona says quickly, stunning a Trando on the ground; he's twitching. "Some of them might have knives; put 'em to good use." She moves to aid the wounded trooper, pulling out her medpac. "Better get that bracer and gauntlet off. You'll be just fine." She sets her beacon for emergency signal, and activates it. The wounded woman will need dustoff in a hurry, and the dead will need transport. Hopefully nobody's asleep at the commo board up there.

Breaking from cover and taking a few shots at those who are escaping down the canyon wall, FL-5114 turns and hurries back, dropping to his knees near a dead soldier, "Hey, hang in there, don't..." Then he pulls off the trooper's helmet, revealing a limp figure inside. FL-5114's helmet droops a bit, and he slowly puts the helmet back on. He says nothing else.

"Yes Sir!" Rika slips forward, towards the fallen Trando's. The First one she reaches it dealt with by a summary stmp of booted foot to his thrroat. A muffled crunch and snap and his head lies at a bad angle. A very bad angle. She barelly stops long enough to stoop and sieze a blade from his belt before moving to the next. He gets a flurry of stun bolts to his face, the galvanic twitching is accompanied by snaps of bone. No one said the valkyrie was ever kind. Just bruatlly efficient.

The next few hours are long. The Trandoshan haven't retreated far, and every now and then a few will make an exploratory feint to test the Stormtroopers' alertness. But there are no more concerted assaults. After a while, it stops raining. And then comes the whining of ion engines, and a shuttle is circling overhead, the pilot sliding it towards the ridge from the side. Even the pickup is not without incident; the Trandoshan open up on it with small-arms fire, and its only the arrival of a couple of TIEs that seal the deal. The Troopers board without further incident, bearing their dead. RB-1298 is very quiet, as perhaps she envisages her fate aboard the Finalizer. One Trooper, looking over at FL-5114, says quietly, "Sir, did you know...?" He glances at the dead trooper.

FL-5114 shakes his head. "No. ...Never even spoke to her." He's very quiet, sitting aboard the shuttle. Taking a long, deep breath, he just looks at the wall. Windows are a structural weakness. Lightly tapping his fist against his thigh plate, FL-5114 tips his helmet against the wall and rides out the journey back to the staging grounds or the Finalizer in silence.

Rika pats Foils shoulder as she boards the shuttle, standing quietly by him for a long moment as she stares at the fallen. Her helmet masks the expression but her voice, ah that shows it. "Our comrades, all family." She gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze then sits, facing the dead. As if guarding them on this last journey......

Rhona does her best for the injured trooper, and at least keeps her from bleeding to death, and warm. But next..?

The young sergeant isn't a heartless person, not in the least. And normally she's even got a little more respect for her enemies and the dead. But not today. Not after five of her comrades were not merely killed, but executed. Claiming a good bone knife from a Trandoshan, she goes to work.

And when the shuttle dusts off, there's a new addition in the clearing for any more Trandos: Six green, scaly heads on six-foot, rough cut poles stuck into the ground, peering sightlessly out over the slope.

It's a warning that needs little translation: Challenge the First Order, and this will be you. And, standing at the egress hatch as the shuttle lifts off, green eyes looking bleakly out of her bloodstained face, FN-4126 is quite prepared to fulfill that warning.