Subject: [Fanfic] Suicide Squad
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 23:25:46 -0500
From: "Pablo" <pablo_sanchez2000@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars



[Fanfic] Suicide Squad
#1: Replacement

    In the unkempt office of the Company Officer, a young man sat patiently.
He glanced around the room once, and waited some more.  He finally stood up,
walked to the desk, and moved several papers.  He sat down again.
    He was waiting for the Captain to come in and tell him that there had
been a terrible mistake, and that he should go back to the medical academy
straight away.  He checked his wrist chronometer, noted that he had been
waiting for an hour and a half, and decided to take another nap.  As he
drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard approaching footsteps.
    Sergeant Kynes strolled into the room, glanced briefly at the motionless
man, and went to the Captain's desk.  He picked the largest drawer, opened
it, and withdrew a bottle of Corellian whiskey and a glass.  Another man
came into the room shortly after him.
    Corporal Sanchez stared at the slumping body for a moment.  "Is he
sleeping, or is the Captain keeping dead bodies in his office again?"
    Kynes didn't look up; he was occupied with pouring the whiskey.  He put
a miserly portion in the container.  "He's just sleeping.  You can see him
breathing."
Sanchez was not impressed, "Yeah, well, the last corpse the Captain put in
here was rigged like that.  Nobody figured it out until the eye came out of
the socket and it started to smell."
    "Well, poke it in the eye, then," Kynes said, exasperated.  He examined
the glass, determining if he had poured the correct amount into it.
    "I don' wanna touch it," Sanchez whined.
    Kynes laughed.  "Remember when the platoon was starving and stranded on
Sirkarpus, and you ate a bantha's eyeballs?"
    "That's different," Sanchez protested.
    "Yeah, but the damn thing was still alive when you gouged them out!
Anyway, the Captain has that rifle on the wall next to the door.  Use that."
    Sanchez nodded, and took the sniper rifle by the stock.  He carefully
poked the sleeping form in the face, and waited.  The man began to stir, and
slowly opened his eyes.  When he saw the barrel of a gun staring him in the
eye, he started to scream.  Sanchez looked at Kynes.  The Sergeant shrugged,
and they both joined the man in screaming loudly.  He eventually stopped and
the other two wound down.
    The formerly sleeping man struggled for breath.  "Please, point the gun
away..."
Sanchez did so, set the rifle down, and walked over to the desk.  Kynes
handed him the glass of whiskey, sat back in the chair and began to nurse
the rest of the bottle.  Pablo sighed, and sipped at the drink.
    The intruder stood up and saluted.  "PFC Björn Paulsen, reporting for
duty, sir!"
    Kynes was too busy with the alcohol to bother with the PFC. Sanchez took
over, returning the salute.  "Corporal Pablo Sanchez.  What are you doing in
the captain's office?"
    The man shifted uncomfortably.  "Uh, I'm supposed to be S-Platoon's new
medic."  He looked at Kynes.  "Is that Captain Sheppard?"
    Pablo looked back at Kynes as if he hadn't noticed him before. "He may
or may not be."
    "Uh, okay.  So, what should I do now?" Paulsen asked.
    Sanchez shrugged.  "Don't ask me, I don't know.  I'm just a corporal."
    Björn licked his lips nervously, "Couldn't you ask him?"
    "Who?"
    "The Captain."
    "The Captain's not here," Sanchez said.
    Paulsen bit his lip.  "If he's not the Captain, who is he?"
    Pablo blinked.  "Who?"
    "The guy at the desk..." Björn waved vaguely at Kynes.
    Pablo turned around, gasped, and stared at the sergeant.  "Who are you
and where did you come from?" he shouted.
    Kynes shrugged, he was too busy with the whiskey at the moment.
    Sanchez smiled.  "He doesn't know who he is," he said happily.
    "Uh, he's not in uniform, so I can't really tell what rank he is,"
Paulsen said unhappily.
    Pablo laughed and downed the remainder of his drink.  "Oh, he's a
sergeant, of course."
    "I thought you didn't know him."
    "Know who?"
    Paulsen sat back down.  "I think I'll take another nap."
    Kynes had finished the bottle of whiskey.  He threw the bottle at the
wall, where the bits and pieces of it settled down among a large pile of
glass shards.  "No, Private," he giggled, "that won't be netheth-nessess-
 he stumbled over the word.
    "Necessary," Pablo prompted.
    Kynes nodded. "Yeah.  I am Platoon Sergeant Liet Kynes, and you are?"
    Pablo yawned, "He already told us."
    "Oh yah.  Well, PFC Carlson-"
    Björn coughed politely.  "Paulsen, sir."
    "Really?  I don' bereave you," Kynes slurred.
    Paulsen paused to consider.  "No, not particularly.  Why do you say
that?"
    Kynes started to answer, stuttered, and decided to slowly slide under
the desk.
    Pablo was not perturbed.  He decided to make polite conversation, "So,
you're here to replace Private Predator."
     Paulsen did a double take.  "Come again?"
    "Private Predator was our last medic, until he got killed two missions
ago," Sanchez explained.
    "Oh.  Odd name."
    "Yeah.  Hey, wanna know how he bought the farm?" Pablo said.
    "Uh, not particularly."
    "Yes you do, it's really cool.  Anyway, he took it right in the face.
The blaster bolt went right between his eyebrows, cooked his brains, and
slapped the steaming remains onto a rock, easy as you please."
    Kynes spoke from under the desk. "It looked like pink scrambled eggs."
    "Yeah.  But Dalton was really shaken up about getting him killed," Pablo
said.
    Kynes spoke again. "No, it was Kyle.  He got hit in the arm, and
Predator came up to help him."
    "No, it was Dalton in the leg," Sanchez protested.
    "Bullshit.  Remember the things Dalton said when he actually got hit, on
Gra'bel?"
    Sanchez giggled.  "Oh yeah.  I guess it was Knopf."
    "Damn straight.  It was Kyle who got our medic's brains blown out of his
head and flash-baked to a golden brown," Kynes said, as triumphantly as he
could manage from under a piece of office furniture.
    Paulsen vacillated from looking physically ill to outright fear.  He
asked quietly, "What sort of outfit is this?"
    Sanchez grinned.  "This is Suicide Squad 12.  Welcome aboard."  He
proceeded to tell the recruit the story he told all the new people.

    The Suicide Squads were an experiment conducted by the 506th Infantry
Division.  General Madisan had, over the years, realized the need for a
'disposable' infantry force, which could be quickly and easily dispatched
for special missions.  These special missions being ones in which the troops
were not
expected to return.  Stormtroopers, though more ideal for covert operations,
were too expensive and important to be wasted on such missions.  The program
encountered 11 straight successes in which the missions went off perfectly
(the objectives achieved and the suicide squads dead).  Then, everything
fell apart.
    Squad 12, deployed to the Rebel held planet of Sirkarpus, managed to
destroy their target and escape the field of battle without casualties.
Unfortunately, they did not receive pickup for over two months, a ghastly
cock-up springing from the fact that they were supposed to be dead.  This
caused no end of embarrassment to the Commanding Officer of the 506th, and
he immediately committed himself to getting the lucky bastards killed.

    Sanchez led Paulsen out of the Captain's office, leaving Kynes to find
his way out from under the desk.  As they left, they passed Captain
Sheppard, saluted, and went on their way.  Sanchez heard the officer scream
and begin cursing, and he guessed that he had sat down at his desk.
    He yawned, and started to speak. "Okay, Paulsen.  I'll take you to the
barracks.  Since you're the new guy, your bunkmate will be Private Rob
Dalton.  Insist on getting the top bunk."
    "Uh, why?" Paulsen asked.
    "In general, intestinal gasses are heavier than air," the Corporal said,
and left it at that.
    Paulsen gulped, and followed Sanchez.  After a few minutes of silence,
they came to a blast door.  The Corporal drew his pistol and punched the
door release.  He holstered it again while Paulsen looked on.  Pablo waved
the
new recruit into the room.  It was a barracks for the platoon, and several
people were in the room at the time.
    "All right everybody, this is our new medic, PFC Something Paulsen,"
Sanchez said.
    Paulsen sighed, and whispered, "It's Björn."
    "Right, PFC Björn Paulsen, like I said.  He will be the medic, and, uh,
do all kinds of medical things.  Dalton, he's your new bunkmate," Sanchez
continued, and pointed to a largish man who was taking no interest in the
proceedings.  He was far too busy doing what he did best, which was nothing
at all.
    Sanchez paused for several seconds to pick his teeth, then spoke again,
"Right now I have to go get drunk and beat someone up, so I'll leave y'all
to get acquainted."
    With that, he left.  Paulsen stood self-consciously near the doorway,
while the others took a marked interest in not noticing him.  After about
ten minutes, one of them looked up at him.  He sized the new recruit up, and
turned to speak to the rest of the squad.
    "Twenty creds says he gets shot!" he shouted to his comrades.
    Paulsen gaped.  "You can't be betting on that!"
    Dalton finally looked up.  "Of course not.  The odds are too long
against you."
    The gambler laughed, and talked to the recruit.  "Where are your
personal effects?"
    Paulsen sighed.  "That's what I asked.  The placement personnel told me
that they were on Coruscant, waiting for the local mail officer to sign for
them."
    "Ah, too bad.  Well, allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Kyle
Knopf, and I am a kick-ass sniper," the man said.
    Dalton snorted.  "No, you aren't.  Remember on our last mission, when
you shot Sanchez in the arm?"
    This was apparently a source of great embarrassment to Knopf. "That was
a fluke!  Besides, he looked like a Rebel.  You can never be too sure."
    "Well, it's a good thing you're a poor shot, because you'd have killed
him otherwise.  We didn't even have a medic on that mission," Dalton said.
    Paulsen continued to stand near the doorway, which made Dalton
uncomfortable.  He waved Björn to a chair.  "So, how'd you end up in this
sorry outfit?"
    "Uh, I was a student at Coruscant Medical, and-"
    Another of the soldiers spoke up.  "Jesus, you much be rich."
    Paulsen flushed.  "Not exactly.  I enrolled in the college, and signed a
contract that said I would serve as a rear echelon medic when my education
was finished.  They misfiled my records, and I got assigned two years early
to a front line unit."
    The soldier laughed.  "Well, at least we got a well educated medic now.
Predator didn't know human anatomy."
    "How did he get to be a medic, then?" Paulsen asked.
    "Oh, he was a doctor, but he wasn't human," the soldier said.
    "How did he--never mind.  What's your name?"
    "I'm Ryan Spickard, alias Atomic Chicken," he answered.
    Paulsen smiled.  "What does that mean?"
    "A chicken is a cowardly flightless bird that's raised for food on a few
planets," Dalton said.
    "How did he get that name?"
    "He occasionally claims to be a radiation-mutated chicken."
    Paulsen did not get the joke, if indeed there was any joke at all.  This
was going to be a real trip, and his first mission wasn't for three days.

    Lieutenant Strowbridge stood behind the podium at the front of the
briefing room.  He looked down at the squad he had to command on yet another
mission.  He bit back a sob, prayed to several different and mutually
exclusive gods that he would survive the next mission, and started to speak.
    "Okay, boys and girls," he sneered at Second Lieutenant Transcend,
"we've been assigned yet another mission, and this one is straight from
General
Madison," the men immediately began groaning, "and I hear it's a doozy." He
hit a button on the podium, causing a holo of a planet to appear to his
right.  "Here, you can see the planet of," he paused, "umm, we'll just call
it Planet F.  Now, Planet F has a largish Rebel installation, although it is
not officially a member of the Alliance.  Our job is too blow up the sensor
array of the base, preparing it for a combined armored and infantry attack
that will launched a few hours afterward.  We have also been issued some
intelligence on the strength of the rebels, but since it's actually an
annual report on the net profit of a Bantha ranch, I won't bore you with it.
Anyway, Morale Officer Chuck has a message for us.  Chuck?"
    As Sonnenburg ambled up to the podium, Strowbridge happily relinquished
the stage.  Chuck cleared his throat before speaking, "Now, I have been told
that this is a very difficult mission, and I'm glad that I'm not going," the
room was totally silent for a moment, while the Morale Officer realized his
mistake.  "Er, but what I mean is that it probably won't be that bad.  I
mean, if you're lucky, you might take it in the face and be dead before you
know it, and I think that's great."  He cursed under his breath.  "Okay,
maybe that wasn't the best choice of words, but, um, I'll pray for you.  And
as for you atheists, I hope that you don't die, because then you'll be in
Hell that much faster."  He started to sweat noticeably, and cursed himself
for thinking he could ad-lib a speech.  "And, uh, when you go down on
the planet, I want you to remember that I fully support and condone the
slaughter of Rebels and whatever else you are doing, as long as it doesn't
involve fornication or other immoral stuff."  Chuck felt he was on a roll,
finally.
    He continued.  "I would also like to wish you good luck, especially
Second Lieutenant Transcend, who has apparently been having second thoughts
about the mission and is considering faking sick, like the craven little
coward he is."  That was good, he thought, because insulting the hated
junior officer was a good way to connect with the men.  "I know we all may
have our own ways of delaying our inevitable death-" he silently cursed at
his blunder, "but, uh, we have to do our duty.  Right?"  He was finally
finished.
    Chuck hurried out of the room to sporadic applause.  Second Lieutenant
Transcend, a junior officer attached to the squad in order to gain combat
experience (and hopefully get them all killed), took the stage.  "Uh, we
need to get our gear ready and embark on the mission.  To get there, we
will board the Shuttles Alpha and Beta.  Boarding begins in thirty minutes."
Everyone responded swiftly, booing and throwing things at the junior
officer.

    Sanchez had already donned the camouflage fatigues and body armor of the
Imperial Army, and was gathering up his weapons.  He had never carried a
standard load since the first time he had ever fought in combat, and the
habit had
served him well.  First, the DL-44.  It was a big pistol, and it wasn't
going
to be hitting anything more than 30 meters away, but whatever it did hit, it
would put down.  Then, his 'special' E-11.  Then--he realized someone was
staring at him.  He turned around.  It was just Paulsen, and not one of his
myriad enemies.  He had so many enemies...
    He looked at the PFC, checked that the man's gear was in order, and
spoke.  "Yeah?"
    "Uh, I was wondering what weapons I should carry," Paulsen said.  Pablo
handed him an E-11.
    He thought for a moment before speaking again.  "You know how to work
that, right?"
    Paulsen looked insulted.  "Of course."
    Sanchez went back to his weapons.  His E-11 had been modified to accept
larger energy clips and had a reinforced barrel assembly, the result being
that it could be fired in automatic longer and was more accurate than the
standard model.  It was, of course, heavier, but that was the price to pay.
Add a few nonstandard grenades into the mix, and you had an effective array
of
weaponry.
    Sanchez walked into Shuttle Beta, and strapped into his seat.  The
soldiers in his group were seated around him.  They were the first down the
ramp, and he
went before any of them.  He didn't like being point man: He had an
estimated
life expectancy of just 10 seconds after landing.  Of course, everyone else
had
a mere 20 seconds, so he wasn't too broken up about it.  As the shuttle
jolted
slightly with takeoff, he started to give orders to his two men.
    "All right, when we hit the ground, I want your asses in the grass and
your eyes open.  We'll receive fire, and I won't kid you about that.
Dalton, when we land, I want you ready to give covering fire.  But don't get
predictable, got it?"
    Dalton was an old hand and had been in the army a long time.  He knew
his job, but it reassured the other guy when he acknowledged it.  "Yup."
    "Now, when we hit dirt, I'm going to move up as stealthily as I can, to
tag enemy positions for Strowie, so watch what you shoot at, okay?" Pablo
said, "We'll hit dirtside in two hours.  I'm taking a nap."
    With that said, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
    In the cockpit, Strowbridge was concerned with slightly more complex
matters.  He was conversing with the pilot about the mission.  "We're going
to be taking some ground based fire, so I want you to go in so fast and
crazy that the Rebs will think you're a psycho, okay?"
    The female pilot grinned from behind her flight helmet.  "If the last
psych evaluation was correct, that's exactly what I am."
    Strowbridge was not reassured.  "Just be sure to dump the decoys, that's
what they're for."  He moved back to the troop compartment and strapped in
for the jump.
    Two hours weren't a long time.  It gave Paulsen just enough time to get
jittery, and not enough time to recover.  Kynes looked over at the recruit
as they neared the mark, and frowned.  "Just stick next to me, kid, and
you'll be okay."
    Paulsen nodded just as the pilot's voice came over the intercom.
    "All right, you bunch of fools, prepare for insertion," she giggled and
recovered, "Good luck, and get ready for a rough ride," she giggled again.
    Kynes laughed.  "My kind of woman!"
    The troop compartment was well shielded with an acceleration
compensator.  Even so, a percentage point or two of power diverted to the
engines was well spent, even if the ride was a little rougher.  The ship
roared out of hyperspace, accompanied by her counterpart Alpha.  They
decelerated hard, throwing the soldiers hard against the restraints, and
then they hit the atmosphere.  The ship buffeted like a twig in a hurricane.
    The pilot gritted her teeth, and fought to keep her craft in line.  Air
began to collide with the ship's shields at a phenominal, turning red hot
and sliding off the edge of the field.  The shuttle was now marked by a
large red trail.  She barked at the EW Officer, "Decoys, now!"
    The man nodded, and began hitting buttons.  Everything from simple
pieces of iron to subspace radio transmitters detached from the ship and
began to fall.  They would serve to attract attention from the shuttle.  It
was a good thing too, as angry scarlet bolts were already streaking past her
cockpit window.  One of the decoys took a hit, and was vaporized almost
instantly.  The transparisteel screen darkened to block the flash, and she
flew on.  She didn't juke, because that would attract fire: the decoys
weren't maneuvering.  She glanced over at the other transport free-falling
in formation with her, just in time to see a red bolt intersect its belly
and turn the spacecraft into a white-hot ball of expanding gas.  She cursed.
    She activated the intercom. "Lieutenant, we just lost Alpha!"
    Strowbridge's couldn't respond at that moment, but Kynes laughed loudly.
"I never liked Transcend anyway!"
    The pilot couldn't hear the reaction, she just had to assume that
Strowbridge would be able to regroup.  As she neared 1,000 meters, she
flattened the ship out of its dive, so that the belly faced the dirt.  She
watched the altimeter count off the distance with alarming speed.  As the
shuttle hit 200 meters, she hit the repulsorlifts and thrusters.  The
craft's speed dropped off with impossible speed.  She detached the landing
gear and hit the dirt.  The copilot extended the ramp.
    "GO GO GO!" Strowbridge yelled.
    Sanchez gritted his teeth and detached his restraints.  He sprinted down
the ramp with his group close behind.  By the time he was about 30 meters
from the shuttle, red bolts streaked towards him through the night.  He
threw
himself to the ground painfully.  Several blinding bolts of light streaked
through where his chest just was.  He bit down on the switch next to his
mouth, activating his radio.
    "Dalton, covering fire!" he growled.
    "I'm on it," the infuriatingly calm soldier replied.  The light and
noise of
his T-21 split the darkness.
    Sanchez had a few seconds to think about things.  He reported to
Strowbridge how many positions the enemy was firing from, which were
riflemen, and which were the more threatening machine gunners.  Then, he
assessed his surroundings.  The Rebel base was about 100 yards ahead, across
a field of what seemed to be meter high prairie grass.  Sanchez briefly
thanked a few gods he didn't believe in that the grass was not burning.
Then, he quickly crawled through the grass, E-11 at the ready.  He carefully
avoided disturbing too much of the grass.
    He heard fire coming from about fifteen meters to his right.  Anyone in
that position had no business being there.  Even if it were a member of his
squad, he would deserve what he got for blatantly ignoring operational
parameters.  He pulled a grenade from its place on his vest.  He primed it,
got up on his knees, and threw it.  He hit the dirt, wrapping his arms
around his helmet to shield his head against the thunderclap.
    As the sound faded, he half-crouched, half-ran to the former enemy
position.
There was a small area where the grass had been knocked down by the
concussion.  Two people were laying in it, dead or incapacitated, another
was trying to load a T-21 and stop his neck from bleeding at the same time.
 Sanchez put the stock of his E-11 to shoulder and fired a burst into the
man.  He bit down again.
    "Strowbridge, I got one of the nests," he reported.
    "We saw.  Good job, Corporal.  There's another machine gun to your
right,
but we've got that one," Strowbridge said.
    "Roger."

    Kyle smiled faintly as he looked through the night-sight on his rifle.
The dark landscape of the field was turned a sickly shade of green, but was
sufficiently bright for him to pick his targets with ease.  He slowly panned
right, to where the targeted machine gun nest was.  On the way, he saw
Sanchez, crouching in the brush and reloading his E-11.  After a moment, he
saw the Rebel fire team.  He centered the crosshairs on the enemy machine
gunner's head.  He paused, then fired.  He smirked as the bolt lanced into
and through the man's helmet.  He got up and quickly repositioned, to avoid
the inevitable return fire.
    "Enemy machine gunner down, sir," he said on the squad radio.
    "Roger," Strowbridge returned.  He switched frequencies to Pablo.
"Corporal, I want you to advance to the edge of the enemy base tarmac," he
thought for a second, "but don't do it alone, bring your squad."  That last
was particularly important for the corporal, because he was a confirmed
loner.
    "We're on it, boss," Sanchez responded.
    Strowbridge waved a hand at Spickard, the squad missile gunner.  The
private advanced as quickly as he could with his bulky PLX-2M missile
launcher.  As he reached the Lieutenant, he got down on one knee.
    He said, "Yes sir?"
    "Do you see where the enemy fire is coming from?" Strowbridge pointed at
the position of the last enemy fire team.  "Kyle just knocked down the
machine gunner.  I want you to hit the rest of the bastards, Spikenard."
    Spickard nodded and ignored the nickname the lieutenant had foisted on
him.  "I got it, sir."  He put an eye to the holographic of the launcher.
He worked the controls to designate the area of the enemy squad as the
target.  The launcher, loaded with anti-personnel fragmentation rockets,
happily obliged.  It informed Spickard that it was ready to fire.  He
checked to make sure no one was behind him, and fired three times.  The
projectiles shrieked into the air on tails of fire and impacted at almost
the same
moment.  The enemy soldiers went down in a hail of flame and shrapnel.
    Ryan grinned.  "Decimated, sir," he reported.
    "Good work, Spikenard," Strowbridge said.
    Over the radio, Sanchez reported in.  "Sir, my group is deployed and
covering the enemy base.  I can see the sensor array."
    "What is the enemy doing?" Strowbridge asked.
    "They look like they're digging in.  They got pillboxes, automated
blaster cannons, and I think the approaches may be mined.  It'll be a tough
nut to crack," Sanchez reported.
    "Received," Strowbridge said, and proceeded to issue preliminary orders
to the squad.
    Sanchez broke in, "Sir, I see something.  The sensor dish is." he
trailed off.
    "Spit it out, corporal."
    "It looks like the dish's main supporting arm was under repairs when we
got here.  It's mostly removed, and the dish is supported by a repair
gantry," he said.
    Strowbridge was hopeful.  "Do you think Spikenard could take it down?"
    Pablo disappointed him. "No sir.  It's too tough.  We'll have to get
Hyde up there."
    "Damn.  I was hoping we could keep Hyde away from the explosives,"
Strowbridge said.
    "Shi-uh, the enemy is making a move.  Shall we?" Sanchez said.
    "Go ahead, Corporal.  I'll be up there with Hyde in a second."
    "Bring the new guy, uh, Paulsen.  Dalton took a graze along the
 forearm."
    "On the way."

    Sanchez quietly watched thirty enemy soldiers make their way across the
stark ferrocrete towards him.  The fools had unaccountably left the base
lighting system on, making their moves pitifully easy to spot.  Sanchez bit
his lower lip.
    He whispered to Dalton, "Wait till they're only fifteen meters away.  We
can't afford to take too many shots."
    Dalton winced at the burn on his arm as he raised his T-21.  The group
aimed their weapons at the advancing enemy and waited.  Dalton was the first
to fire, his light machinegun firing off rounds at an impressive rate.
Pablo joined in with his modified E-11, sending five round bursts at the
enemy.  He saw Dalton's gun take down at least ten in the first few seconds.
Sanchez watched a soldier fall limp under his fire, and he shifted to the
next.
The series of bolts sliced a flaming rift into the man's chest.  The enemy
soldiers hit the dirt and returned fire.  Sanchez ducked, and
signaled to Dalton to reposition.  He turned to tell the other member of the
group.  He stopped as soon as he noticed that the man had accidentally
dropped his face all over the grass, with a hearty assist by a blaster bolt.
Sanchez reached down, pocketed the dog tags, and jogged away.
    He met up with Dalton and Strowbridge's group.  He noted Paulsen
treating Dalton's burns.  Strowbridge ordered him to provide cover fire,
while Kyne's squad, including Hyde, assaulted, destroyed, and retreated from
the gantry.  He was only too happy to.
    Strowbridge explained the plan to Hyde.  The demolitions expert was
jittery as he responded, glancing back and forth and cursing the darkness.
    Paulsen looked up from Dalton's arm, and frowned at the man.  "You have
NV goggles, just like the rest of us."
    Hyde glared at the medic.  "Yeah, but I hate the color green."
    Paulsen shrugged and applied a dressing.
    The squad made their way to the edge of the field, and surveyed the
base.  The enemy had given up thoughts of a counter-attack, and had bunkered
down.  They would have to shown their mistake.  Spickard reloaded his Plex
Two-em was armor piercing 'bunker-buster' munitions and moved thirty meters
from the rest of the men.  Under the watchful eyes of his comrades, he
designated a target for each rocket.  Sanchez prepared one of his smoke
grenades.
    Strowbridge spoke over the radio, and Ryan fired off the magazine.
Sanchez pulled the pin of the smoke grenade and threw it.  It let off a
cloud of dirty smoke
just as the rockets hit their targets.  Several of the bunkers, autoguns,
and other targets were shredded, but the rest concentrated all their fire on
the Spickard's area.  The soldier was already gone, however.  With the enemy
temporarily distracted, the four man assault team sprinted towards the
gantry under withering cover fire.
    Sanchez let off long bursts, and had to reload after a while.  As he
performed the operation, he glanced over at Paulsen, to see how he was
doing.  He was surprised to see the recruit carefully and slowly squeezing
off shots.  Sanchez followed the bolts down to the enemy positions, and
noted that he was actually getting reliable kills.  It appeared that Kyle
had a new rival.
    As he finished reloading, he aimed and began firing again.  He glanced
at the assault team, noticed that they were a man light, and almost cheered
as they reached the gantry.  Hyde took an excessive amount of time to plant
the charges, and the three men made their way back to the field.  The
covering fire went much the same as before, but with three losses among the
Imperials.
    The remaining men exited the battlefield, with a thunderous explosion
and a tower of flames to see them off.  Another mission that they had been
lucky enough to survive.


[Fanfic] Suicide Squad
#2: Passing Time

    The Dancing Demon was a stereotypical military cantina.  The clientele
consisted mainly of off-duty personnel, personnel who were on duty but didn'
t care, and women who were on duty all night.  The four men sitting in the
corner booth fit into none of these categories, but were technically
off-duty.  It was their duty hours, but they had just completed a mission.
It would be at least three days before their company commander realized that
they weren't dead, so they had the rough equivalent of shore leave.
    One of them was disastrously intoxicated, another was occupied with
preventing his drunken comrade from soliciting sex, and the other two were
in the midst of a spirited conversation about women.  Actually, not about
women as such, but more concerned with the picking up and 'entertaining' of
said women.  Each had his own theory.
    Sanchez was quite adamant about his own ideas.  "Dalton, it's not just
about the sex, it's also about the thrill of the chase.  I mean, anyone can
get a slut, right?"
   Dalton was not impressed.  "Yes, but courting is one thing, and sex is
strictly another.  Surely you agree that, in general, the sole purpose of
the journey is the destination?"
   Sanchez considered this, but did not waver in his ideals.  "Clearly, but
my point is that arriving at the finish line is far sweeter if the race was
legitimately run."
    "Perhaps, but in the time it takes you to get in a classy woman's pants,
you could have made it with several sluts.  And as Grand Admiral Thrawn once
said, 'There is quality in quantity,'" Dalton retorted.
    The debate had been in progress for three hours, during which time
Sergeant Kynes had imbibed enough alcohol to debilitate him very severely.
Earlier in the day, he had been occupied with getting drunk and beating
people up.  Now that he was sufficiently drunk and had beaten up no less
than four people, he had decided that the next step was to get laid.
Sanchez had given Paulsen the task of stopping Kynes from doing anything
stupid.  Normally Kynes would do this himself, but three bottles of Whyren's
Reserve had lowered his inhibitions.
    "What about that laaady over there?" his arm was having trouble
indicating any one person.  Björn attempted to figure out which of the eight
women he was pointing at was his choice, but none of them appeared to be
ladies.
    "Uh, which one would that be?" he asked.  He clearly enunciated each
syllable, which he had learned to do quite well in the last hour.
    "The one wit' the burning red eyes and blue skin," Kynes slurred.
    Paulsen assumed that Kynes had managed to get even more drunk in the
last thirty seconds than he had been before.  He wasn't sure how that was
possible, but choosing an obvious (though humanoid) alien for a bedmate was
not something Kynes would do while sober.  "Uh, I don't think so.  She's not
human," he responded.
    Kynes frowned and spit on the floor.  "Picky picky."  He reached for
another drink, missed, and decided that the table looked nice enough to
sleep on.
    "That is indeed a cogent analysis, Dalton, but what about oral sex?  Is
it sex, or is it not?" Pablo was saying.
    Dalton was about to respond, but Paulsen cut him off.  "I think Kynes
had a few too many.  We ought to get him back to the barracks."
    Pablo turned and looked at the Sergeant.  "Yes, he is unconscious, but
he'll keep.  It's not like anyone will steal him.  This isn't Nar Shaada."
He turned in his seat and returned to his conversation with Dalton.
   Björn shrugged and called for the waitress.  He purchased himself a glass
of lum because he wasn't into hard liquor like Kynes.  The waitress took his
order, noted that he was a new face in the bar, and promptly forgot about
him.
    Paulsen sat waiting for his drink for several minutes, occasionally
listening to Sanchez and Dalton.  Just as Paulsen prepared to flag the
waitress again, Kynes sat up in his chair.  The right side of his face was
covered in a smelly brown fluid, which he attempted to mop off with his
shirt.
    "What did I miss?" he asked in a slightly less slurred tone.
    Paulsen sighed.  "Nothing at all."
    "Damn.  I was hoping I would miss something, and then I could be angry
about it," Kynes said bitterly.
    Paulsen rolled his eyes.  On their way to the ceiling, they spotted a
young woman in a flight suit approaching the booth.  Paulsen corrected his
vision downward in order to assess the situation.  A pilot, definitely.  Her
name patch was illegible in the semi-darkness of the bar, but it was a
short, snappy single syllable word.  She appeared to be a lieutenant.
    She stopped at the table, and smiled at Björn.  "Are you boys from
S-Platoon?"
    Paulsen didn't know if Pablo wanted him to advertise it or not, so he
thought back a few days to find the solution.  Taking a cue from Kyne's and
Sanchez's first conversation with him, he said, "We may or may not be."
    The pilot was momentarily confused.  "Well, either you are or you aren'
t.  Are you?"
    "It is distinctly possible," he said non-commitally.
    Her face was blank for a moment.  "Ooookay.  Can I sit down here, if you
are actually S-Platoon?"
    Kynes coughed, and responded.  "If you sit on my lap, I'll tell you who
we are."
    She laughed.  "I don't think so."  Björn pushed Kynes over a few feet,
and followed soon after.  The pilot sat at the cleared area.  She listened
to Sanchez and Dalton talk for a few seconds, and giggled a little.  Then
she turned to speak to Paulsen.
   "I'm Lieutenant Raven Ford," she said, "I was your pilot on your last
mission."
    Björn offered her his hand, and introduced himself.  "PFC Björn Paulsen.
Nice to meet you."
    She smiled.  "Normally I would be at the base, but they wouldn't let me
in because I'm dead."
    "Same here.  That was some good work getting us dirtside, by the way.
Thanks a lot," Björn said.
    "No problem.  We do our best in the Navy.  I heard you guys took some
losses on the ground, though," she said.
    Kynes laughed far too loud, both for the comment and for the size of the
booth.  "It was only 60% of us that died.  That's less than usual."
    Pablo and Dalton were finally finished with their conversation, and
turned to look at Raven.  While Dalton was more concerned with her chest,
Sanchez appeared interested in conversation.
    "So, what sort of things do you do in your off-duty time?" he asked
politely.
    Lieutenant Ford thought for a moment, putting things in order and
possibly deleting unsavory details.  "As little as I possible.  I know one
of your squad-mates, Ryan Spickard."
    Kynes snorted.  "That worm?  Ditch the poultry and get a real man!" he
said.  He was having some significant difficulty keeping the volume of his
voice at a reasonable level.
    Raven slowly looked the Sergeant up and down.  She chuckled, "Like you?"
    Kynes was unable to appreciate to fact that he was disheveled, stank of
whiskey, and partially covered in an unidentifiable liquid, so he responded
very earnestly, "Yes."
    Raven laughed, causing Björn to crack a smile.  The PFC grinned at
Kynes.  "I think maybe you need to get back to your room and sleep it off."
    Kynes had no interest in any such idea.  "Sleep what off?  I ain't
drunk.  Here, I'll show you."  He staggered to his feet and stumbled over to
a suitably large man near the bar.  He said a few things to him, none of
which were complimentary, and mostly involving the man's sister and three
breeds of farm animal.  Kynes shifted into a fighting stance.  Pablo lunged
over the table to stop his superior from injuring himself, but it seemed he
was too late.
    Kynes aimed a left jab at the thug's face.  He missed by about a meter,
but he was prepared to accept the secondary objective of falling face down
onto the floor.  Sanchez made it over to him a moment later, just as Björn
and Raven got up to leave.
    "Sorry about that, sir.  My friend had a little too much to drink, but
no harm done, right?" he said to the large man.
    The thug, who was easily two meters tall, said some very inappropriate
things about Sanchez, his mother, and his personal hygiene, before turning
back to his drink.
    Sanchez had been prepared to be charitable, but it was far too late for
that now.  "What did you say about my mother?" he asked slowly.  The thug
simply repeated himself. Sanchez spit in the man's eyes and drove a fist
into the man's solar plexus.  As the large and formerly belligerent fellow
dropped to the floor, Sanchez followed from above with his boots.  Dalton
decided that it was a good time to join in, since the Military Police wouldn
't be arriving for at least ten minutes, and he wanted to finish off his
evening with a good ass kicking.

    Sanchez had been in the interiors of enough jail cells for him to
consider himself something of a connoisseur.  The current cell was typical,
with its dull gray walls, reinforced durasteel door, and cold metal toilet.
He was not at all impressed by it; it was a simple ferrocrete box.  The
designer clearly had no imagination at all.  He kicked forlornly at the wall
nearest him.  He gently poked at the cut he had received on his eyebrow.  It
had stopped bleeding.
    Dalton was sitting in the opposite corner of the cell, and Kynes was
lying face down in the center of the floor.  Pablo walked up to the sergeant
and gently toed him onto his back. Out like a light.  Sanchez resumed his
pacing and waited for one of the MPs to interrogate him.  He had a fast and
simple way to get out of jail, but he first needed to speak with one of the
officers.
    Fortunately, the officer was not long in coming.  The door quietly
opened, and she entered the room, a pale blue woman with the general
appearance of the Chiss.  Her eyes glowed like two burning embers set into
her head.  She took in the room, looking at Dalton, Kynes, and Sanchez in
turn.
    Sanchez stood up straight and saluted.  "Corporal Pablo Sanchez, ma'am."
    The woman coldly stared him down.  "I don't suppose you know who I am?"
    Sanchez did not, and he expressed as much.
    "I am with Imperial Intelligence.  I was tailing a suspected Rebel agent
in that bar.  He was the large man who you beat nearly to death. You have
pointlessly complicated my operation, and possibly jeopardized the entire
mission," she said.
    Sanchez shrugged.  "I don't think that really concerns me."
    Her eyes seemed to burn even more fiercely.  "I think it does.  Can you
give me one solitary reason why I should not make the rest of your career a
living hell?"
    Sanchez grinned infuriatingly at her.  "Oh, that's easy.  You can't do
that, because I'm dead."
    That seemed to break some kind of spell.  She was confused now, but she
realized than Sanchez somehow had gained the upper hand.  "What?"
    "You can check our records.  Sergeant Kynes, Private Dalton, and me.  We
are all dead, you see.  We died on our last mission, along with our entire
platoon."
    The Chiss woman paused for an interminably long moment, then left the
cell.  The door slid shut behind her.  Sanchez waited patiently for her to
return.  She was gone for about ten minutes, probably because she was double
and triple checking the information.
    She reentered the room, her hands clenched into fists.  "You are indeed
recorded as dead in the computer nets, so we can neither hold you here nor
punish you," she began to relax, which made Pablo suddenly uncomfortable,
"but on the other hand, your Company Commander is an old friend of mine.  He
'll be giving you a stern talking to."
    Dalton cussed from the corner, and Sanchez involuntarily began to groan
with fear.  Because we Captain Sheppard spoke, he spoke an earful.

    Sheppard had his back to the door and was examining a portrait of some
obscure Colonel when the three soldiers were ushered in.  The Captain was
dressed as usual, in army issue forest camouflage.  His visitors stood self
consciously for a minute while Sheppard continued to look at the painting.
    Abruptly, he turned to face his subordinates.  His face was set in its
usual expression of slowly boiling rage.  Sheppard truly enjoyed being
angry, and he was good at it, considering how long he had been at it.  "Do
you have any idea what you've done?" he asked slowly and clearly, as if
speaking to small children.
    Sanchez would have normally responded snidely that he actually did, but
the waves of negative energy flowing off the captain stifled his humor.  "No
sir," he said meekly.
    Sheppard made a face sour enough to kill a lemon.  "Of course you don't.
You're a pair of moron NCOs and an even stupider private.  I'll tell you
what you did.  You not only embarrassed my company and me, you also
disrupted a sensitive and important intelligence mission.  You three idiot
pukes were lucky enough to avoid punishment from Commander Thelea," the
cowed men assumed that that was the Chiss woman, "but you won't avoid me.  I
don't care if you're dead or not, I'm still going to bust your balls."
    He turned his back on the three soldiers again, and gazed at the
portrait of the Colonel again.  Without turning, Sheppard asked, "Do you
know who this portrait depicts, Corporal?"
    Sanchez had once again been roped into being the spokesman.  "No sir, I
do not."
    "This is Colonel Arveid Kreed.  I trust you know the name?"
    Sanchez knew the name, as did every man who had gone through the
meatgrinder called basic training.  "Yes sir.  He was the mass murderer who-
"
    This appeared to set something off inside Sheppard.  "He was no
murderer!  He performed an operation that held the rebels from conquering
Coruscant long enough for reinforcements to arrive!"
    Sanchez would not normally argue with Sheppard, but this was something
that he knew he was correct on.  "Colonel Kreed attack the main Rebel
medical station and killed over five hundred medical personnel, destroyed
one thousand droids, and killed more than fifteen thousand wounded soldiers.
Regardless of the result, that is murder."
    Sheppard narrowed his eyes at the dissenting opinion, as if his eyes
would emit laser pulses and burn that offensive idea from existence.  "His
heroic action delayed the Rebel advance for more than three weeks, and saved
Coruscant from them.  And regardless of what you and some fuzzy headed
liberal treaty-makers may think, wounded soldiers and medical personnel are
valid targets."
    Sanchez knew better than to pursue the point further.
    Sheppard continued.  "Colonel Kreed knew that his mission was not to be
a nice guy, it was to follow orders.  His orders were to slow the rebels,
and he honored the Emperor and his commanding officers.  His actions and
death on the field of battle will echo in eternity."
    Sanchez could not resist this time either.  "Sir, the Emperor has been
dead for over sixty years, and we retook Coruscant twenty years ago."
    Sheppard turned red.  "Wrong!  The Emperor lives on in the actions of
his followers.  He unified the galaxy, until the shortsighted Rebellion
killed him unjustly.  It is your duty to follow his and my orders, to the
death, like Colonel Kreed.  To dishonor the Emperor as you did today is a
mortal sin.  If I could execute you for it, I would!"
    Sanchez was more than a little afraid, as were his two comrades.
Sheppard was crazy enough to follow through on that threat.
    Something seemed to cool the Captain down, however.  "But since I
cannot, I'll have to settle for punishment duty.  I hope you have fun
cleaning the latrines."
    A gorilla-like MP lead them out of the office and assigned them tasks.
At one point, Dalton tried to sneak away, only to be hit with a stun blast
and dragged away to his awful work.
    As it happened, Pablo did not clean the latrines.  Instead, he was
forced to paint the walls of the company rec room.  It would have been
simpler and easier to simply use a droid designed for the task, but it was
punishment duty.  Logic did not apply.
    He set a large can of paint on the floor and sat on the top.  Pulling a
flask of liquor out a pocket in his coveralls, he cursed Captain Sheppard.
"What a bastard," Sanchez thought.
    Pablo was momentarily distracted by an approaching group of
schoolchildren, led by a fairly pretty woman.  Next to her was Kynes,
grinning like a wolf.  The son of a bitch had gotten easy duty, shepherding
schoolkids.  Bastard.
    "On your left, children, is a soldier painting the wall.  What do you
think he did to get punishment duty?" the teacher asked.  The children
shouted a variety of answers, including murder, public drunkenness, and
narcotics trafficking.
    She laughed.  "I don't think it was anything that bad.  But regardless
of what he might have done, he is a man in uniform.  And what do we know
about men in uniform?"  She turned and smiled at Kynes, while the children
answered.
    "That's right, we can trust them.  Children, I'm going to talk to
Sergeant Kynes for a while, so I'll leave you with."
    "Corporal Sanchez," Pablo finished for her.
    "Right."  She sauntered out of the room.  Kynes winked at the corporal
and followed the teacher.
    "Filthy son of a bitch," Pablo said under his breath.  He looked at the
kids, and got an idea.
    "Hey kids, you wanna know what the next part of the tour is?" he asked.
    They did.
    "You're gonna help me paint this wall."
    They were incredulous; the teacher had said nothing about this.
    "Hey, you're teacher told you that you could trust me, right?  Well, I
say that this is the next part of the tour.  Now get painting."
    The children made no move to follow his orders.
    Sanchez scowled at the kids and slowly raised his arm.  He showed them
his hand, palm out.  "See this?  I can crush your head like a grape, you
worthless little bums.  I'll just tell the teacher that you wandered off.
They'll never find your body, because I know how to hide that kind of thing.
Now paint the wall!"

    Strowbridge was on the other side of the base, enduring a dressing down
from the base commander, Colonel Shimazaki.
    "Your men engaged in a drunken brawl, displaying a disturbing lack of
discipline.  And this lack of discipline traces directly to you.  Your
failure to properly control your men is a sad reflection of your abilities.
And on top of it, they disrupted a sensitive intelligence operation," the
Colonel said.
    "Sir, they did not know that their, uh, target was under intelligence
monitoring," responded the Lieutenant.
    Shimazaki was not impressed.  "That's no excuse.  Your men are still a
disgrace.  What kind of officer are you?"
    Strowbridge knew the answer to this one.  "A disposable one, sir."
    Shimazaki smiled.  "Yes, that's right, isn't it?"  The smile faded, and
the Colonel had a reflective look that was almost sad.  "You'll be getting
another mission soon.  I don't agree with the unorthodox use of your lives,
but I get my orders from above, just like you.  This won't be a mission for
your whole squad.  There will be just a few people along with you, for their
special skills.  You'll need a medic, sniper, pilot, and Corporal Sanchez."
    Strowbridge's eyebrows moved fractionally.  "Why him specifically?"
    Kazuaki thought for a moment.  "You've probably wondered why you've got
two schizophrenics as your demolitions and heavy weapons men, a sleaze for a
platoon sergeant, and a career private for your squad machine gunner.  If
you've got questions about these things, just don't ask.  Do the same for
this mission, okay?"
     Strowbridge nodded.
     "This mission will be deep-cover, you'll be assigned false
identification and all the other trappings.  I know this isn't your forte,
but just follow the Corporal's lead, and you'll be fine," Shimazaki said.
     Strowbridge started to speak, but the Colonel cut him off.  "Don't ask,
Lieutenant.  Dismissed!"
     Strowbridge made his way out of the office.


[Fanfic] Suicide Squad
#3: Garrote Wire

    Strowbridge waved Paulsen to a chair and leaned forward at the medic.
As Paulsen plopped down, he noticed that his seat was abnormally small.  It
put him at least six inches below the level of the Lieutenant's eyes.  He
wondered if it was intentional.
    Strowbridge whispered conspiratorially, "I need your help with something
I'm going to do."
    "What would that be?" Björn whispered back.
    "Well, it has to do with the whole overarching concept of our place in
the war, as well as my own being out of the loop," Strowbridge said quietly.
    "One question."
    "What?"
    "Why are we whispering?" Paulsen asked innocently.
    Strowbridge cleared his throat and spoke normally.  "Oh, right, soldier.
Sorry.  Just in an odd mood."
    "S'okay.  But what do you need my help with?" the private asked.
    Strowbridge thought for a moment.  "Well, it's complicated.  See, I was
never given the personnel files on each of my men, yourself included.  I've
been told nothing about their pasts, nor why they've been assigned to me.
With me so far?"
    Paulsen nodded.
    "And that is /not/ the sort of thing that I permit within my area of
control.  Not at all.  I should be in total control of my own men."  Paulsen
was disturbed to see the burning determination in the officer's eyes.
Apparently intrusion on his realm was not permitted.
    When the Lieutenant didn't continue, Björn realized that he was supposed
to say something supportive.  "Uh, that's right.  They have no right to do
that."
    The Lieutenant was pleased.  "Damn right.  Anyway, on the next mission
we're undertaking, we're going to hook up with a slicer.  A good slicer.
And he's going to help us get the personnel records."
    Paulsen was surprised.  "And why do you need me?"
    Strowbridge smiled.  "Well, you're new, so nobody knows you yet.  Plus,
you're pretty forgettable anyway.  That's an advantage in the sort of
enterprise that we're going to undertake."
    "Uh, thanks."
    "So, you're in.  Right?"
    "Sure."
    Strowbridge grinned broadly.  "Good.  Now, let's get ready for the next
mission.  This is a very important one for the Empire.  So you'd better not
screw up.  No pressure, of course."

    Knopf had been in the Imperial Special Forces for some time, and he knew
well how jealously a government would guard its secrets.  Soldiers were not
often told about the gravity of their missions, to prevent information from
leaking out.  Kyle spoke for most SpecOps troopers when he said that pissed
him off.  Fortunately, he had figured out a way to roughly gauge the
importance of an upcoming mission.
    "It goes like this, Sanchez.  When you're sent out on a special mission
like this one, you list the weapons you want, from the greatest need to the
least.  The higher ups choose a gun from the list, based on the importance
and necessity of the mission.  Do you want to know what I do?"  Kyle asked.
    Sanchez was burning with desire to understand, but he was far too busy
writing items down on his own requisition list.
    Kyle frowned.  "Sanchez!"
    "I want to know what you do more than I've ever wanted to know anything
else," Pablo said without looking up.
    Knopf smiled.  "Damn right.  Anyway, I always hand in the same list.  At
the top is the most outrageously rare sniper rifle in the galaxy.  It is
called-"
    "The Blastec Specialized Marksman's Rifle Number four-hundred and two.
You've told me about it before.  Many, many times," Sanchez interrupted.
    "Whatever.  And below it, I list items of decreasing outrageousness.
Judging by what rifle I am assigned, I can tell with ease how important the
mission is.  Isn't it ingenious?"
    Sanchez answered, sounding about as interested as a dentist on quaaludes
"Extremely.  You are my god, Knopf.  I will go and erect a shrine to you."
He finished the final item on his form with a flourish, and carried it off
to the quartermaster.
    Kyle scowled at the corporal.  "What a philistine," he said under his
breath.  He turned to Paulsen, who would hopefully be a better audience.
"Paulsen, do you want to know a secret?"
    Björn scratched at a stain on his uniform.  "No, I already overheard.
And before you ask, it is definitely ingenious."
    Kyle was flustered, but his ego was strong enough to bounce back almost
instantly.  "Damn right it's ingenious."
    Sanchez was having his own troubles, and they had nothing to do with his
ego, super ego, or even his id.  It had to do with his form.  He pushed the
flimsiplast sheet at the supply sergeant for the second time, "Look, I'm
going on a mission, and I need these things.  Got it?"
    The quartermaster looked at the form with evident distaste.  "No.  The
last time I got this kind of thing for you, Intelligence was all over me
like ugly on a gundark.  No way in hell I'm going to get this for you," he
said.
    "Come on, Crayz.  I need this stuff, or else I'll die on the next
mission.  You wouldn't want that, would you?" Pablo asked.
    Sergeant Crayz9000 considered this question for a while.  If Sanchez
died, he would no longer receive hundreds of forms requesting that he equip
the squad with their own naval task force.  On the other hand, Sanchez was
the only person on base who did not make fun of his droid-like name.  It was
a tough question.  "Well, couldn't you just fight the Rebels with your bare
hands?" he asked.
    Sanchez rolled his eyes, "Well, I could, but that would be unfair to
them."
    "Damn.  Then I'll have to requisition this stuff for you," Crayz said
wearily.
    "Thanks, Sarge," Pablo said as he walked away.  He stopped and called
over his shoulder, "Oh, and see about that fleet I was trying to get, okay?"
    Crayz grumbled to himself as he processed the form.  Knopf approached a
few seconds later.  Crayz looked up and frowned sourly.  "What do /you/
want?"
    Kyle tossed a form across the desk.  "The usual."
    "Just great.  You're very persistent, you know.  Look, try to understand
something, despite your teeny tiny brain.  The rifle you want is a limited
edition.  Only 3,000 were made in the whole galaxy.  Each one costs over a
million credits," Crayz said angrily, "so you're not going to get the damn
thing.  Okay?"
    Kyle grinned infuriatingly.  "I can still try."
    Crayz glared at him.  "Yeah, you can.  And I can still refuse you."
    "Oh, you'll eventually get it for me.  I'll wear you down, just like the
rest.  And then I will have my way," Kyle said.
    Crayz rolled his eyes.  "Just like it was supposed to work on all those
women?"
    Kyle flushed.  "Those were flukes!"
    "All eight of them?" Crayz asked.
    "Yes!  All eight of them!  Lesbians, each and every one!"
    The sergeant laughed.  "Tell it to the new guys when you get back."
    "New guys?"
    "Yeah.  You're going to get a new corporal, to replace what's-his-face
who got both his legs shot off," Crayz said, "plus two or three privates."
    "Huh.  Well, see about that form for me," Kyle said as he walked away.
    Crayz didn't touch the slip of paper.  He just looked at it for a while,
hoping it would go away.  He had served for twenty years, and didn't deserve
this crap.

    Sanchez had always hated commercial flights.  He always got the seat
next to the screaming baby, or the really fat stinky man.  Sometimes both.
This time he was moderately lucky.  One of the neighboring berths was empty,
but the other was occupied by the biggest asshole possible.
    Strowbridge cleared his throat.  "Get me another packet of those little
honey-roasted nuts."
    Sanchez sighed.  "This is your eighth package.  Don't you know when to
stop?  That synthesized crap will give you indigestion, and then you'll be
mad at me for letting you eat so many packets of honey-roasted nuts."
    "Get me the damn nuts, Sanchez."
    "You stupid fucker.  You did it again."
    Strowbridge was confused.  "Did what?"
    "That's a good question, /Mister Grandon, /" Sanchez said pointedly.
    Strowbridge considered this for a moment or two.  "Oh, oops.  Get me
some of those nuts, Rob."
    Sanchez reached into the aisle and pick-pocketed a package of nuts from
a passing stewardess.  "They're still going to make you sick."
    "Yeah, probably.  But they taste good right now," the lieutenant said as
he tore the packet open, "and I am your superior officer-"
    Pablo gritted his teeth.  "You are a freaking retard."
    "Did I do it again?  Damn.  I need to get the hang of this, Corporal."
    Pablo turned bright red.  "How about getting the hang of something else?
Shutting up!"
    Strowbridge scowled.  "Okay."
    The stewardess turned around to take a look at the argument.  Pablo gave
her a wide grin, affecting a slight wildness about the eyes that would be
sure to frighten the woman away.
    She was too curious for that, unfortunately, and the faux insanity only
made it worse.  "Are you guys soldiers?"
    Sanchez smiled even wider.  "Used to be.  We're just reservists now that
we've served our tour of duty."
    "Wow.  What was fighting the Imperials like?" she asked.
    "I don't like to talk about it.  It was a little hard on us both, you
know," Sanchez said in a tone that was intended to make her go away.
    "Really?  I have a brother in the army, and he hardly ever writes home,
so I really want to hear about what it's like," the inquisitive stewardess
continued.
    Sanchez inwardly cursed.  It was time to be rude; "I really don't like
to talk about it.  But you could ask him," Pablo said and jerked a thumb at
Strowbridge, "the fighting turned him gay."
    "Excuse me?" the stewardess asked.
    "He's a homosexual.  A real flamer, you should see him on a planet.  He
dresses up in women's clothing and hangs around in bars.  Panties and
everything," Sanchez said without cracking a smile.
    The stewardess stared at Strowbridge for a moment, and turned away.
"Uh, I have to go service some other people."
    "How dare you accuse me of being gay.  I'm just sensitive, okay?"
Strowbridge said with a slight smile.
    "It had to be done.  She was getting too curious."
    Strowbridge smiled, "Well, there's other ways to do that sort of thing.
You could, for example, insult her badly and maybe spit at her."
    "I'm far too genteel a fellow to do that to a lady.  But then again, you
wouldn't know anything about ladies, would you?" Pablo asked.
    "Hey, shut up!"
    "Wait, talk with a lisp for me.  Say something about dancing or
 singing," Sanchez demanded.
    "Stop it, really," the lieutenant demanded.
    Meanwhile, in first class, Björn was having troubles of his own.
    Knopf was being an idiot yet again, "Okay, let's say that I got her
drunk.  Do you think she'd help me join the Sky-high Club?"
    Björn wished that he were sitting with someone else.  "Probably not.  I
mean, look at her.  She probably rejects guys like you every five minutes."
    Kyle refused to let it go.  "Yeah, but if I got her so drunk that she
couldn't see straight, do you think I would have a chance?"
    "Maybe, but she wouldn't drink it anyway.  She's on duty, after all.
Stewardesses aren't allowed to drink alcohol," Paulsen said.
    "Damn, you're right.  That really sucks," Knopf said.
    Björn rolled his eyes.  "Sure it does, Knopf.  I mean, they should all
be allowed to drink.  The stewardess, the flight mechanic, the pilot."
    "Good idea," Kyle said, "I mean, if you can't drink on the job, what
have you got?"
    "Do you drink on the job?" Paulsen asked.
    "No.  But I sometimes use muscle relaxants," the sniper replied.
    Björn's interest was piqued.  "Really?"
    Kyle chuckled.  "Yes.  That's the assassin's secret.  They make
everything smoother, unless you overdose on them.  All the best assassins
use at least a little."
    "I hadn't heard that," Paulsen replied.
    The pilot's voice came over the intercom.  "Passengers, please strap in
and prepare for landing.  We will be groundside in fifteen minutes."

    The planet was very nice.  It was practically a resort, in fact.  That
was probably why the target had chosen it.  When the New Republic is paying
your bills, only a fool wouldn't go first class all the way.  Sanchez looked
out the window of the café at the people passing on the slidewalks.  Rich
men and women, all with fabulous tans and artificially healthy musculature.
He wondered if any of them knew who was winning or losing the war.  They
probably didn't care.
    The slicer was supposed to meet them in a few minutes.  Sanchez had
shown up early, as was his habit when making connections like this.  It made
a good impression, and that was always helpful in the underworld.
Strowbridge, seated at the bar, sipped at his fat, cholesterol, alcohol, and
caffeine-free drink.  He grimaced at the health food, and wished he could
get his hands on something that wasn't good for him.  No such luck on a
trendy resort planet like this.
    Sanchez sighed at Strowbridge's ineptitude.  The lieutenant might be a
good platoon leader, but he was no covert operator.  He stuck out like a
sore thumb.  Fortunately, he wouldn't be going up against real covert op
types on this mission, just a bunch of Rebels no better than him.
    Another person entered the café.  Sanchez looked up, and saw that it was
his man.  He was a bit shorter than average, slight in build, and had an
unremarkable face.  He was clearly an operator, and probably a good one,
judging by the way that he surreptitiously scanned the restaurant.  He
spotted Sanchez a moment later, and walked over.  He pulled the other chair
out and sat down.
    "How was the flight in?" the slicer asked.
    "Just fine, but the heating was a little high," Sanchez said.
    The slicer relaxed a little.  The codewords had been exchanged.  "Who's
the jackass at the bar?"
    "He's with me.  Supervisor, you know," Pablo answered.
    The slicer nodded.  "You should have ditched him at the spaceport.  My
name is Phong Nguyen, and you?"
    "Pablo Sanchez."
    Phong nodded, then asked,  "And you're the cleaner?"
    "Yeah.  Are you ready to tell me about the 'client?'" Sanchez asked.
    Nguyen smiled.  "Been ready for weeks.  Your employers underestimated my
speed."
    They both got up at the same time, and walked out of the café.  In
blatant violation of the plan Sanchez had given him, Strowbridge followed
them out.  Pablo looked wearily at the slicer.
    Phong nodded sympathetically.  "That's why I never work with partners
anymore."
    After switching slidewalks several times, and boarding a mass-transport
speeder, they arrived at Nguyen's base of operations.  It was a dingy
tenement building near the center of the planet's main city.  It looked
about two hundred years old and more rundown than the low levels of
Coruscant, but Phong assured him that it was better than it looked.
    "I've been here three months," the slicer said, "and I know the owner of
this place.  He's a local Hutt underling, and he's got this place as a base
for their operations in the city.  I slip him a few hundred creds every once
in a while, and no one bothers me here."
    Sanchez turned to talk with Strowbridge.  "Björn and Knopf ought to be
getting our equipment right about now.  The drop zone is only a couple miles
from here, so why don't you go see if they're okay?"
    Strowbridge stared Sanchez down.  "I'm in command of this mission,
Corporal.  I'll do it this time, but it you me another order."
    Sanchez apologized.  Satisfied, Strowbridge walked away.  After the
lieutenant was out of sight, Phong swiped a keycard through a slot on the
doorjamb.  They entered the apartment.
    Sanchez was impressed.  This was a sweet setup, several networked
Sorosuub supercomputers, various slicer paraphernalia.  Not enough to crack
the New Republic Strategic Command computers, but still very nice.  Nguyen
must be doing pretty well for himself.
    The slicer cracked his knuckles and sat down in front of the main
terminal.  "I got the floor plan, as well as the holocameras.  I recorded
some of the salient bits.  Want to see them?"
    Pablo smiled.  "Indulge yourself, Mister Nguyen."
    Nguyen waved him to a chair.  Sanchez seated himself, and locked his
eyes on the screen.
    "First, you'll be pleased to know the suite is fully equipped," Phong
said.
    Sanchez considered for a moment.  "Sound Comfort?"
    "Fully decked out.  It can block all the way down to ten decibels.  Very
effective, and a dream for a job like this.  You'll be in and out, and you
could shoot a blaster all day without anyone hearing," Nguyen said.
    "Good.  Guards?"
    "Five.  Two in the hallway with a weapons scanner.  I trust you've
planned for that?"
    "Of course."
    Nguyen continued.  "One more is outside the walk-in closet.  Normally he
issues the cleaning staff the equipment, but he can save the effort this
time.  He can't see the main hall from his position, which is ideal.  Next,
there's one in the bedroom.  No threat there.  Lastly, you've got one in the
kitchen.  He could spot you taking out the hall closet guard, but I think
you can take care of that.
    "Now, your target will be eating breakfast when you come in.  You'll
have about five minutes to take out the guards before he returns, at which
point you can eliminate him without too much trouble.  Extraction is simple,
as they don't report to their supervisor for half an hour after you'll have
left.  You can just walk out."
    "This all seems to easy.  I don't like operations that are this easy,"
Sanchez said.
    "I'm just telling you the facts.  Unless some elite specops platoon
falls from the sky and tries to kill you, this is a milk run," Phong said.
    "Okay.  But I still don't like it.  Go on with your briefing."

    Sanchez stepped off the elevator with an air of cool confidence.  He was
in his element, for possibly the first time in years.  It felt invigorating.
He had been kidding himself for a long time, playing the soldier and being
brave.  But that wasn't him at all.  He was a craven coward.  But a very
special breed of coward.
    He strolled down the hall nonchalantly.  He whistled a popular tune, to
affect the character as far as possible.  He brushed imaginary lint off of
his cleaning staff uniform as he approached the door.  Room 201, floor 150.
This was the place, and it was the proper time.
    Pablo rapped his fist against the door three times in rapid succession.
After a moment's hesitation, the specially reinforced lock slid open.  The
door opened slowly, as if dragging in thick mud.  Sanchez peered into the
hallway of the room.  The guard looked at him suspiciously.
    "You're not the usual guy," he said.
    Sanchez shrugged.  "I guess he's sick.  They sent me up here as a
replacement."
    "I wasn't notified," the guard said.
    Pablo yawned.  "Well, I guess they didn't want to concern you with every
little development in the cleaning staff."
    "I'm going to call it in for confirmation," the guard said.
    Pablo was unconcerned.  As far as the hotel was concerned, he was a
perfectly legitimate temporary worker.  The usual cleaner really was sick,
from being stunned and stuffed into a cleaning closet in the basement.
    The management confirmed this, but not quite in such detail.  The guard
sighed, "Okay.  I guess you're clean.  Come on in, we gotta scan you."
    Sanchez ambled in.
    The guard yawned, and his partner looked on without concern.  "Feet at
shoulder width, arms away from body.  No sudden movements.  Got it?"
    "All right," Sanchez said.
    The guard ran the scanner over Pablo thoroughly, and got no result.  He
turned to put the scanner back on the floor.  "Looks like you're clean,
buddy."
    The soldier had his back turned.  This was the golden moment of
opportunity.  In a single deft movement, Sanchez whipped the concealed blade
out and through the other guard's throat.  The milky white blade threw
crimson through the enclosed space of the hall.  The guard collapsed,
surprise in his eyes.  The other straightened up, hand dropping to his
blaster.  Too late.  Sanchez reached around his neck and laid the trachea
open.  Unable to scream, the man fell silently.
    Sanchez leaned over and wiped the blood off of his blade onto a guard's
shirt.  He examined the knife for signs of damage.  The beautifully crafted
bone had not cracked.  It was the ultimate assassin's tool, indetectable to
scanners.  It was one of two weapons that Sanchez carried.
    He slipped the weapon back into it's sheath, and examined his uniform.
Not a spot of blood, just like the old days.  It was just like riding a
bicycle.
    He walked down the hall and turned a corner.  The kitchen was to the
left, and the closet was dead ahead.  Sanchez walked up.  The guard did not
respond.
    Pablo coughed politely.  "I need some cleaning stuff, man."
    The guard jolted, as if out of sleep.  "Right."
    The man entered the closet, and returned a moment later, bearing a
vacuum cleaner and various scrub brushes with accompanying fluids.
    Sanchez took the things.  "Thanks.  I'll start in the bedroom, okay?"
    He walked across the kitchen to a door.  He opened it quietly and
entered.  He shut it behind him, and looked around for the guard.  He heard
a toilet flushing.  The bathroom.
    Sanchez pressed against the wall next to the door and waited.  The door
opened, revolving around to hide him.  The guard walked out into the room
without any idea of what was about to happen.  Sanchez grabbed two small
handles from their spot on his forearm.  They were just large enough to fit
into a close fist comfortable.  He slowly drew them apart.  A nearly
invisible length of wire appeared between them.  It seemed to sing in the
light from the picture window.
    Sanchez silently glided up behind the guard.  He never knew what
happened.  There was a flurry of motion, and the wire was wrapped around his
neck.  His mouth opened in a silent scream.  Sanchez held the corpse there
for thirty seconds and then released it.  There was no blood, only the
pervasive feeling of death.  He withdrew the blaster from the holster.
    Sanchez approached a dial on the wall.  He glanced at the nearby
display, and twisted the dial as far as it would go.  The display read ten
dB.  Sanchez snapped his fingers a few times for effect.  There was no
sound.  It was working.  With blaster at the ready, he kicked the bedroom
door open.  It was eerily soundless, as if in the vacuum of space.
    The guard in the kitchen was looking the other way, and was not the
immediate threat.  The closet guard started to draw his weapon, but never
got the chance.  A red bolt from Sanchez cut through his head, spraying
matter all over the wall.  Parted from noise, the image seemed curiously
detached from reality.
    Two bolts caught the kitchen guard in the spine and head as he turned.
    Sanchez checked his chronometer.  Thirty seconds until the target
arrived.  Sanchez walked into the entry hall, and stood with blaster trained
at eye level.  He aimed at an imaginary point beyond the door, where the
target's head would most likely be.  After a moment's thought, he flicked it
a lower setting.  Spraying a victim's brains all over a hall would not
foster stealth.
    After a short wait, the door shuddered and opened.  A man stood shocked
for a moment, eyes widening.  Sanchez pulled the trigger.  The red bolt
split the man's nose at the bridge and exploded within his skull.  He was
dead instantly, but without blood and without sound.  It was, in other
words, the perfect kill.
    Before the body could even collapse, Pablo darted forward and caught it.
He dragged the limp mass into the hall, and dropped it on top of a guard's
body.  He again checked his uniform for blood, and again found none.  He
dropped the blaster onto the floor, and walked away.  He shut the door as he
left, lest anyone discover the carnage.  As he drew close to the elevator,
there was a sigh of relief.  It had been a milk run, without the disaster he
had expected.
    Then all hell broke loose.
    Alarms began to blare throughout the hotel.  Almost as an afterthought,
his little commlink twittered at him.  He answered it, shouting above the
din.
    "What?"
    "There's trouble," it was Kyle, the observer.  He was planted on a
neighboring rooftop, with a sniper rifle trained on the hotel building.
    "No shit!  Have I been made?" Pablo asked apprehensively.
    "I don't know.  An armored speeder came out of no where and rammed right
through the wall on your floor.  There are specops troopers coming out of
it, I think eight.  They're wearing stormies' armor."
    "Are they with us?" Pablo asked.
    "I don't know, but I advise you not to try and find out!"



[FANFIC] Suicide Squad
#4: Dazed and Confused

    Pablo suddenly felt very closed in.  There were hordes of heavily
armed and armored troopers closing in on him, and they were going to
kill him.  He didn't want to die, at least not in that way.  He'd
prefer to die in bed with some fine women.  He decided that he didn't
give a damn about the danger, and indulged in that particular fantasy
for a moment.  Soon enough, though, he brought himself back out of it
and started to move.
    He wasn't going anywhere in particular.  It was just that staying
still and thinking about naked women would certainly get him killed,
whereas running around like a moron would /probably/ get him killed.
There was a world of difference between the two.  Sanchez considered
his assets.  He had a commlink, a bone knife, and a length of garrote
wire.  He didn't count his brain, like he knew some arrogant assholes
would.  Self-absorbed bastards, with their self-help books and smug
grins, he'd like to plant a boot right in their balls and…
    He was having trouble focussing, even beyond the normal low-level
madness everyone dealt with every day.  But he was trained to shunt
that aside during a mission.  There was something wrong.  He sniffed
the air carefully, finding nothing.  Obviously, all the proper nerve
agents were colorless and odorless.  He took a deep breath, before he
had even considered how very stupid that idea was.
    His head swam.
    Sanchez was lying prone on top of a massive pile of rubble.  He
turned his eyes skyward, seeing buildings that reached to the burning
sky.  Hundreds of blaster bolts of various sizes streaked by overhead,
painting the colors of the rainbow on his mind.  The freight-train
sound of big artillery shells in flight punctuated the spectacle.  He
saw that it was night, and that just beyond the fires and the slight
distortion of an active planetary shield, one could faintly see a
fleet of warships in mortal combat.
    Sanchez woke up on the floor.  He had no idea how long he had been
out.  He was about to start to his feet, when he heard a pounding,
transmitted through the floor, into the carpet, and into his head.  At
least eight men in combat boots, on the run.  He got up, looking
wildly all around.  There was nowhere for him to go.  The whole floor
had been sealed off for the convenience of his (late) target, so all
the rooms were definitely locked.  But staying in the hall was
suicide.  He had to go /somewhere/.

   "Dr. Brown is dead, Colonel.  No doubt about it," Corporal Yates
reported over the commlink.
   Colonel Poe considered this turn of events and responded with
characteristic aplomb.  "Fuck.  We're too late.  Are you sure he's
dead?"
    Yates replied quickly.  "Yes sir.  He's been shot in the head, and
his brain poured out through the blast hole all over the floor.  You
could come check it out yourself, sir.  If you wanted."
    "Well, get your ass over here, then.  If he's dead, our job is
over," Poe ordered, "except... the assassin.  We should try to capture
him.  He's got to still be on this floor, if the turbolifts and stairs
have been locked down.  He's probably even been rendered unconscious
by the gas."
    The Corporal came back on the commlink, "Yes sir.  I'll start the
search immediately."
    "Are you still on the line?  Fuck off," Poe said.  He switched
signals to his second in command, Captain Wade.  "Wade, let's find the
fucking assassin."
    "I heard, sir.  I'll get the men organized," the captain
responded.
    "Watch that fucking corporal, by the way.  He may be transferring
after this mission but, I still don't like him."
    "Neither do I, sir," Wade returned quickly.
    Poe growled, "Shut up.  There's nothing I hate more than a
yes-man."
    Wade made a confused sound, "But yesterday you said there was
nothing you /liked/ more than a yes-man."
    "I changed my mind.  I'll change it again tomorrow.  Now get off
the line and find the hitman," Poe ordered sternly.
    Poe looked over his shoulder at the three men under his personal
command.  "Let's move, boys.  Start up the life sensor, Private Quyen.
The hotel's been evacuated by now."
    The trooper lowered his E-11 and produced a small device from a
belt pouch.  Quyen flipped a switch, and the screen lit up, showing
eight blue dots and one bright red.  The sensor worked by detecting
the various electric fields produced by the human body-primarily of
the brain and heart.  These fields became distorted when passing
through body armor, so the eight troopers appeared as blue.  The
unarmored assassin was marked in red, and would soon be dead.
    "This way," the private said, pointing down the hall, "and he's
conscious, sir."
    "Not for long," Poe chuckled.
    The four men made their way down the corridors at a trot,
following the directions of Quyen.  Within a minute, they were
rounding the final corner, and they came face to face with…
    …Corporal Yates, Captain Wade, and the two other troopers.  Yates
flipped his own life sensor off with his thumb and placed it back in
the belt pouch.
    "Fancy meeting you here, Colonel," he said.
    Poe hissed behind his helmet.  "Quyen, what's the problem?"
    The trooper fiddled with his device for a moment, then shrugged.
"The thing says he's right here.  Right inside Yates, in fact."
    "Corporal, are you hiding someone else inside your armor?" Poe
asked theatrically.
    "No."
    "That's what I thought.  Quyen, you're reading it wrong.  It might
be a gigantic vrelt or a sensor shadow or-" Poe suddenly broke off,
jerking his E-11 upward.  Before anyone else could react, the ceiling
above Yates exploded into a shower of plaster.  Someone dropped down
behind him.  The man neatly popped Wade's helmet a few inches upward
with the heel of his hand, and pushed the now-blinded officer into the
line of fire of the two troopers just behind him.  He then drew a
knife from concealment in his sleeve, and had it at Yates' throat in a
moment.
    The whole sequence played out in less than a second, and Sanchez
had his back against a wall and the unfortunate corporal as a
reluctant body shield.
    Poe slowly adjusted his aim from the ceiling down to the assassin.
    "Don't even think about it, or your buddy here gets an emergency
tracheotomy," Pablo threatened, sliding his head down behind Yates'
shoulder.
    Poe chuckled, and clicked his filtered voice over the helmet
speaker.  "Buddy?  I don't think so.  You'd be doing me a favor.
Would you miss him, Quyen?  Thoc?  Giap?  Anybody?"
    None of them spoke up.  Pablo could feel his hostage sigh through
the armor, and he felt like doing the same.  They probably weren't
bluffing.  He thought furiously for a way out, when something struck
him about the way that the apparent leader was treating the hostage.
    "Poe?" he asked cautiously.  He slowly moved his head from cover.
    The Colonel replied, his voice rich with disgust.  "Sanchez."

    "It's a goddam disgrace, that's what it is.  This is definitely
the biggest cluster fuck I've ever been involved in," Strowbridge said
into his commlink.
    Sanchez tittered at the other end.
    Strowbridge turned red, "I don't mean that literally, you asshole.
Cluster fuck, in the figurative.  Yeah, it's real funny to make fun of
a your superior, both in the military and in the human sense.  Keep
laughing, I'll rip you a /new/ hole to chortle out of."
    Pablo started to say something else, but Strowbridge clicked the
connection off and powered the device down.  Björn couldn't help but
smile.
    "What are you grinning at, Blondie?" the officer growled.
    "Nothing.  What happened?" Paulsen asked.
    Strowbridge shrugged, "We saw the speeder hit from here.  It was
an stormtrooper termination squad."
    "Hence 'cluster fuck'?"
    "Yeah.  Fortunately or unfortunately, Sanchez knew the guy in
command, and they didn't waste him.  Plus we've got our replacement
corporal," Strowbridge said.
    "How's that?" Paulsen was perplexed.
    "Apparently, one of the soldiers there was actually the one
earmarked to come into the squad.  That's an even bigger coincidence,"
the officer continued, "but why not?  We've already achieved
one-in-a-million improbability, what harm can there be in pumping it
up by an order of magnitude?"
    "You seem almost angry that he's alive," Björn forwarded.
    Strowbridge nodded, "I am.  I'm an officer, aren't I?  Where does
he get off mocking me?  /Me!/" a long pause ensued before he
continued, "Let's go.  Sanchez and his friend have their own
extraction plan, and Knopf should be getting the call right now.  We
can rendezvous at the slicer's place."
    Paulsen grinned a bit as the two got on an immobilized slidewalk.
The police had shut down all transportation to and from the hotel
area, so as to prevent the escape of the assassins.  Unfortunately,
this was a resort planet, and the police were fairly incompetent.
They hadn't even cordoned off the neighborhood, apparently assuming
that it was beyond the capability of the assassins to walk.
    There was a crashing sound from above, and Paulsen jerked his head
skyward.  About 300 meters above, a repulsor craft pulled out from the
hotel and accelerated away.  Most of the double-hulled police speeders
from the armada massing around the hotel gave chase.  The fugitive
airspeeder wove a twisting path through the sky to avoid the
inevitable blaster fire, and it was soon lost to sight.
    "That'll be them.  Maybe they'll get shot down, and you'll have
your way, Lieutenant," Paulsen suggested.
    "Have my way?" Strowbridge was thoughtful for a moment, "That
reminds me, I still need to talk to the slicer about my little
problem.  Let's get moving."
    Paulsen glanced downwards, as if to verify that he was still
walking, "We are moving, sir."
    "Jesus, did they put me in command of the smartass brigade?  I
hate being the straight-man."

    Sanchez was, in fact, not aboard the airspeeder.  Neither were any
of the troopers.  It would have been suicide to ride in that vehicle,
with dozens of police speeders and possible military intervention.  It
was far safer and more comfortable to ride the service elevator down,
and walk along inside the transport tubes to freedom.  None of the
trains were running through the tubes, thanks to the law's misguided
attempt to seal off the hotel.
    So they walked two kilometers before surfacing in a maintenance
station to shed their armor.  Having no armor to shed, Pablo waited on
the adjoining boarding platform for Yates to finish.  The other
corporal finished in a few minutes, coming through the door in normal
civilian clothes.  About the same height as Sanchez, brown hair.
Fairly nondescript, something that most special operations troops had
in common.
    Except for Poe.  The officer came out of the maintenance room,
almost 2 meters tall with corresponding mass.  Matching that with a
dark face, he made an intimidating figure.  He was dressed in a
floor-length gray cloak, with a silver medallion around his neck; an
eight-pointed star.  The rest of the squad was just behind him, with
similar black cloaks, but their hoods were drawn up around their
faces.  The seven men drew stares from the crowd of people in the
station.
    Sanchez was one of them, "Starries?" he asked incredulously.
    "Holy Monks of the Stars, my brother, please," Poe said
emotionlessly, "and keep your voice down."
    "You're dressed as cultists?  Why?" Sanchez queried more quietly.
    Yates fielded it, "Some of the men on our team require special
considerations for concealment in public spaces."
    Poe nodded, "You are familiar with this procedure, my brother."
    "Yeah, now that I think of it.  But Starries?" Pablo asked.
    "They're common enough these days.  Now, let's go," Yates ordered.
    Pablo shrugged.  "It's slide-walk distance, Yates.  See you some
other time, Poe."
    As he made his way up the stairs and into the street, Sanchez was
surprised to see the seven cultists following him.  After two blocks,
he stepped off onto the normal concrete sidewalk and waited for them
to catch up.
    As they drew up to him, Sanchez demanded, "Why are you following
me?"
    Poe squinted at the young non-commissioned officers; "We are on
our way to pick up the other member of our team.  The slicer.  Where
are you going."
    "Slicer?"
    "Yeah, he locked down the elevators for us, located the target,
and told us the police response plan.  Usual slicer stuff," Poe
replied.
    Sanchez looked very perplexed for a moment, while his mind worked.
"Phong Nguyen, right?"
    "Right.  How did you know?" Yates asked.
    "I need to know more.  Is he with you, or independent?  More
importantly, is he family?" Sanchez questioned.
    "He's with the Ubiqtorate.  But yeah, he is family," Poe replied.
    "Family?" Yates asked.
    "That's above your clearance, the information being discussed is
classified at Level Victor.  Unauthorized access of said information
is punishable by death," Sanchez responded automatically.  His mind
was occupied with something else, but he apparently knew that phrase
by heart.
    Yates wondered how two corporals could have such wide differences
in clearance level, but he knew when to shut up.  He started to
contemplate the women passing by.
    Sanchez connected something in his head.  "I'm so stupid."
    Colonel Poe nodded sagely.
    Pablo took a deep breath, "We're going to have a talk with our
friend Phong."

   Knopf was feeling a little left out and otherwise miffed.  Not only
was he alone, he had also had to ditch his rifle.  It was not the most
inconspicuous weapon to be carrying in a city, so he had left it in
his old position.  He hadn't even had the chance to shoot anyone.
That pissed him off almost as much as looking like a damn loser
walking around in the city alone.
    He decided to get a cab.  There had been no orders against it,
after all.  He waved at a passing yellow speeder.  The door slid open
and the sniper clambered in.
    The droid in the driver's seat made a terrible scratching noise
before it's speaker adjusted, "----nation?"
    Knopf assumed that it had asked for his destination.  He gave it
the address, and leaned back in his seat.  The cab accelerated into
traffic.
     "Would you like small talk?" the droid asked.
    Kyle sighed, "Why not?"
    The droid didn't say anything.
    "That means yes," Knopf clarified.
    "Which Speed-ball squadron is your most favored in the coming
championship?" the droid hissed out.
    "It's team, not squadron.  And the championships were six months
ago," Kyle responded.
    The droid was oblivious, "I have not heard of that team.  Are they
successful in their gaming efforts?"
    Kyle shook his head, "Shut up."
    The droid fell silent for the remainder of the ride.  Eventually
the speeder slowed to a stop.
    "We arrive at your destination.  Your fee is eighty credits," the
droid reported.
    Knopf made a face at this, "What?  Bullshit!  The meter says seven
credits!"
    The droid hissed, "My mistake."
    Knopf slid the appropriate coinage into the provided slot and
exited the speeder.  The vehicle left in search of another fare.
    The sniper walked into the apartment building that the slicer
occupied.  After waiting for a couple minutes at the lift, he decided
to use the stairs.  He ascended to the level of the slicer's apartment
and knocked at the door.  There was no answer, so he knocked again.
He thought he heard something on the other side of the door, so he
hammered at it with his fist.
    "It's Knopf, jackass.  Open up!" he shouted.
    Kyle heard the mechanical lock being disengaged.  He waited
politely for the door to open.  After what seemed like a minute, he
reached for the knob himself.  It was at that point that the door
exploded outward in a shower of faux-wood particles.  Knopf shut his
eyes tight and staggered back against the corridor wall.  It had
gotten in his eyes.  He reached for the blaster under his shirt just
before a hard object-a fist?-slammed into his stomach.
    He gasped and fell to the ground.  Someone took the blaster away
from him, and he heard the safety switch being flipped.
    A voice floated in through the haze of pain, "You're early.  I had
hoped to have you here all at the same time, but I guess it's not
going to happen.  I'll take what I can get."
    Then there was a flash he could see through his eyelids, and
everything was black.

    "Stay here, sir, while Yates and I go up to Nguyen.  If he tries
to sneak out or get away, you guys can nab him," Sanchez said.  He was
in the lobby of the tenement that Phong occupied.
    "You do realize that I'm a colonel and you're a corporal?  Despite
the fact that they both start with the same letter, we are not equal
in rank and you cannot give me orders or suggestions unless I request
them.  Clear?" the officer asked.
    "Crystal.  What are you going to do, /Colonel/ Poe?" Sanchez
replied.
    "I'm going to stay here while Yates and you go up to Nguyen.  If
he tries to sneak out or get away, we can nab him," Poe said.
    "Brilliant plan, sir.  I wish I'd thought of it myself," Sanchez
said.
    Poe smiled, "Well, some people are just more talented than
others."
    The two corporals moved towards the lift, but a repairman got
there before them and affixed a sign reading "Out of Order" to the
door.  They changed course for the stairwell and began to climb the
stairs.  They got to the slicer's level and opened the door.  Yates
went through first, and Sanchez could see some debris around the
slicer's door and a large quantity of blood in the carpet, still wet.
Yates stopped, and Pablo saw someone leap sideways from the room, an
object that was probably a blaster in their hand.  Without warning,
Yates threw himself backward towards the stairwell.
     Sanchez tumbled down an entire flight before he stopped.  He
barely registered a blaster bolt streaking through where Yates had
just been and into the wall behind.  The door at the top of the stairs
swung shut.  
    "Fuck!" Pablo groaned. He continued, "You stupid son of a bitch,
why didn't you warn me?"
    Yates spared him a glance as he pulled a holdout blaster from
beneath his jacket, "No time."
    "There's always time for that!  Just like there's always time to
use protection, or to go to the dentist," Sanchez replied.  
    "Quit whining, would you?  Who was that?" Yates asked.
    "I didn't get a good look before I was unceremoniously thrown down
a flight of stairs," Pablo said petulantly.
    "Alright.  Crawl up there and open the door," Yates ordered.
    Sanchez looked at him for a moment before replying, "Why should I
have to do it?"
    "Because I have the blaster," the other replied matter-of-factly.
    "Fuck you.  Give me the gun and you can get killed," Pablo
suggested.
    "Maybe I'll just shoot you and then get on with it myself.  Open
the door," Yates counter-proposed.
    Sanchez could not argue with that, so he got onto his knees and
waddled up the stairs.  He reached for the doorknob, but it opened
itself before he touched it.  As it revolved out into the hall,
Sanchez tensed himself to strike, and possibly to prepare for death.
Sanchez couldn't see much, but Yates fired through the doorway, and
then an answering volley flashed past.  Taking a deep breath, Pablo
threw himself into the corridor.
    He came up on the enemy's knees, so he wrapped his arms around
them and took the gunman to the floor with him.  There was an
incredibly loud blaster shot, but it didn't hit Sanchez so he didn't
much care where it went.  As they both hit the ground, the blaster
slid down several meters down the hall.  The man swiftly rolled away
from Pablo and hopped to his feet.  Sanchez, being less agile, got up
in the normal manner.
    It was Nguyen, which did not particularly surprise Pablo.
    "So you work for the Ubiqtorate.  And you set me up?" Sanchez
asked.
    "That's about the size of it, peon.  Unfortunately, you defeated
all probability and survived the fratricide we had planned for you.
You'll have to be punished," Phong said, sliding into a fighting
stance.
    "Well, I happened the know the guy who was supposed to kill me.
Just like the All-Seeing Imperial Eye to attempt a double cross like
that and fuck it up in the stupidest way possible," Sanchez said.
With that, he shuffled himself into his own combat position and
studied his opponent.
    A real fight generally only lasted for a few seconds, because that
was all the time it took for one man to disable or kill another.  Both
he and the Ubiqtorate agent were deadly hand-to-hand combatants, if
Nguyen had been trained like others of his breed.  Sanchez had less
idea of his opponent's skills than his opponent did of his, so he
decided to wait.
    In a moment, Nguyen launched into a very smooth kicked aimed at
Pablo's legs.  A good opener, quickly crippling if it connected, and
exposing the attacker to little risk if it failed.  Sanchez dodged to
his right and then drove in towards Phong.
    Pablo aimed a hard punch at the other man's trachea, then a boot
towards his knee.  Neither connected.  Even in the tight space of the
corridor, Nguyen dodged them; he moved back towards his blaster.  But
that attempt had just been a probe.  Sanchez drew his knife from its
hiding place on his arm.
    Nguyen instantly changed tactics.  With a knife in play, Pablo
could take him out before he ever reached his blaster.  At this point
Phong's primary objective was to disarm his opponent.  Sanchez was
experienced in the use of knives, but he was, like all people armed
with such weapons, hampered by the physics of blades.  A man with a
knife is limited to precisely two geometric avenues of attack, an arc
and a line; that is, a slash or a stab.  All that Nguyen had to do was
to intersect one of these avenues at the proper point.  He had to be
rather quick, of course.
    Sanchez slashed at the throat and face of his opponent,
punctuating his assault with swift stabs.  Phong kept his distance for
the first few strokes, then he leapt forward during a stab.  Pablo's
strike extended the weapon above and behind Nguyen's shoulder.  The
Ubiqtorate agent grabbed the assassin's arms and they grappled.
Nguyen slammed Sanchez's wrist into the wall a few times, enough to
force him to drop the knife.  He then kneed Sanchez in the stomach,
knocking the wind from him.  Pablo doubled over at the waist and
dropped to his knees.
    At that moment the hall lit up red, and Pablo  felt a heat pass
above his head.  Nguyen hit the floor a split second before his head
did.  After he had caught his breath, Sanchez turned to the stairs.
Yates stood in the doorway, bleeding from a leg wound.
    "Thanks for joining us.  Better late than never, right?" the
assassin bitterly said between gasps.
    "You were in my line of fire," Yates pointed out.
    Sanchez nodded, "Fair enough.  Fucker."
    "By the way, no thanks are necessary.  At least that's what you
seem to think, you ungrateful-" Yates turned around and pointed his
blaster down the stairs, "IFF!"
    Strowbridge's voice came up from the lower landing, "What?"
    Sanchez struggled to his feet, saying, "They're friendly, Yates."
    The lieutenant entered the corridor, surveying the situation.
Paulsen started to bandage Yates' wound.
    "He's pretty well dead, isn't he?" Strowbridge asked rhetorically
as he toed Nguyen's corpse, then he asked not so rhetorically, "Have
you seen Knopf?"
    "Knopf?  Shit," Sanchez turned to look at the bloodstain a little
distance down the hall.  The crimson puddle flowing from Nguyen's neck
was rapidly spreading out and blending with the competing pool, but
but both remained distinct.
    Strowbridge walked over to the shattered doorway and took a look
inside the apartment.  After a moment he turned on his heel and walked
down the hall, shaking his head.
    "Found him.  Let's get out of here," he said.



[Fanfic]  Suicide Squad
5
Useless Hatfuckers

    The transport ship /Imperial Duck/ was state of the art, a lesson
in modern warship construction.  It had been designed to fulfill its
mission with a minimum of fuss and muss, and to get the division
contained within it to the battlefield with a minimum of fuss and
muss.  Tanks, artillery, and infantry were loaded in to the tune of
16,000 men, and the whole kit streaked through space at .65 factors
past light speed.  It was a wonder that had taken the KDY engineers
ten years to fully work out.  
    The Imperial Defense Board had approached them with a relatively
complex problem:  How to produce a divisional transport at the
absolute minimum of expense.
    The /Imperial Duck/ was a disposable piece of shit, and every man
aboard was reminded that he was rated at precisely that level by the
high command.  In a galactic war even an entire planetary assault army
of fifty million men was a pathetically small figure on the grand
balance sheet of the IDB.  They had to pinch pennies wherever they
could, and if they could transport sixteen-thousand men to a planet
anywhere in the galaxy for less than one-half the price of any
previous divisional transport bucket they'd do it.
    The /Imperial Waterfowl/ class transport was but one component of
the whole line of /Imperial Flying Creature/ economy troop-movers.
When the ships had first appeared in combat, the Republican admiral in
command described them as "rickety gray buckets of shit" in an
official report, and the New Republic Defense Committee nearly wet its
collective self with glee at the description.  They immediately set
the best Corellian engineers to producing a clone.  The Ubiqtorate,
catching wind of this plot, compelled the Imperial Navy to launch a
major raid.  The end result of this operation was the melting of
twelve planetary surfaces and the deaths of at least a hundred billion
people.
    Spickard finished with a smile, "All so that we could maintain a
monopoly on rickety gray buckets of shit."
    "You know what's full of shit, Chicken?" Kynes asked rhetorically.
    "No."
    Kynes sighed; he had hoped his point had been succinct, "You.
Idiot," he turned to the other enlisted men at the table, "Lum?"
    "Of course," Dalton replied.
    Sanchez raised an eyebrow, "May I remind you two that in a mere
sixteen hours we will enter combat in a hostile theatre against an
implacable enemy who will use every advantage available to him in
order to secure the swift termination of our lives?"
    "Whiskey it is," Kynes replied.
    "Thanks."
    The sergeant returned in short order, and within about twenty
minutes all four men were reasonably drunk.  The bartender had been
under orders to moderate the drinking in the enlisted men's cantina,
but after Kynes threatened him with a broken bottle he was forced to
relent.
    "That's it!" Sanchez shouted suddenly, knocking the empty bottles
from the table with a sweeping gesture.  The rest of the men in the
cantina, most of whom were reluctantly sober, glanced in his
direction.
    "What's it?" Dalton asked.
    Sanchez stood up from his chair wobblingly, then spit on the
floor.  "I'm going to the bridge to give General Madisan a piece of my
mind."
    Kynes shook his head, "You can't go to the bridge.  Only navy boys
and captain and up officers can go there."
    Spickard nodded, "But we're not going to let that stop us.  We'll
just kill everybody who gets in our way.  Especially Major Anomaly."
    "That won't be necessary.  I stole a naval pass from an
unconscious ensign.  He accidentally ran into a durasteel pipe eight
times," Sanchez announced.
    Spickard looked disappointed, "Can I still kill Major Anomaly?"
    "Only if you beat me to it, Chicken," Kynes said as he struggled
to his feet.

    Major Deimos Anomaly was really no anomaly at all.  With a name
like his, it was obvious that he would swiftly be promoted to the rank
of Major and would never advance any higher.  The Imperial army only
had a handful of Major Anomalies, and they weren't in any hurry to
lose them.  There was nothing more amusing to a general than demanding
that Major Anomaly report to him immediately, except for perhaps
dressing down a private named Parts or conversing with his Major Domo.
    Major Deimos Anomaly was a marginally competent career officer
whose disrespect for authority was born of the fact that he would
never be punished by death, loss of rank, or discharge, regardless of
his crime.  Despite this he still had a fawning admiration for Captain
Mark Sheppard, his subordinate.  People like Sheppard, Colonel
Shimazaki, and even Lieutenant Strowbridge were no nonsense fighting
leaders in every way that Major Anomaly wasn't.
    Major Anomaly turned to his commanding officer, Shimazaki.
    "It ought to be a fine chance to show our expertise, sir," he
said.
    "Not a chance.  A meat-grinder like Shelemin Beta is just going to
wear us down and fill us with new recruits.  In two months we'll be
like half the divisions in the army:  full of recruits and tradition
left by the dead," the colonel replied morosely.
    "Do you think it'll be that bad?" Deimos asked.
    Kazuaki sighed, "Have you seen the briefing?  Nearly a million
casualties in six months, and that's just us.  The republicans must
have suffered at least that much.  The Third Kuati Volunteer Army was
completely erased.  The enemy isn't going to give it up any more than
we will."
    "Why do they want it this badly, then?" Anomaly queried.
    The Colonel looked at him as if he was stupid, "Because it's on a
direct hyperspace lane to Coruscant.  It's a prime location if they
want to launch an attack on the capital."
    "Oh, right.  I was just thinking that--" Major Anomaly was cut off
as four dirty-looking enlisted men stormed onto the bridge.
    "I have a pass, you bastards!" one was yelling as his comrades
shoved naval troopers aside.
    Captain Sheppard, on the other side of the bridge, scowled.
Deimos quickly marched over to confer with his subordinate.
    "Do you know these men, Mark?" the superior asked.
    The soldier began shouting again, "I demand to speak with General
Madisan this very moment!  Or maybe two moments from now, if my
schedule is clear!"
    "Yeah.  They're from my company," Sheppard reported.
    Major Anomaly bit his lip, "Then you'd better calm them down, I
think."
    The man, a corporal, Deimos saw from his chevrons, had now leapt
onto a console and was shouting about a revolution in which all naval
officers would be shot.
    "What in the name of the sweet fucking Emperor do you think you're
doing, Sanchez?" Sheppard yelled.
    "I'm fomenting inter-service warfare, sir!" the corporal reported
amiably.
    Sheppard seized Sanchez's ankle and pulled him from the console.
The corporal fell to the floor and his head hit with a resounding
whack.
    "The rest of you stupid fucks get out of here right now!  You hear
me?" the captain screamed.  
    At this, Private Spickard kicked his captain in the groin
full-force.  The officer fell face first to the deck and rolled on the
floor in the fetal position, grunting profanities.  Spickard then
sprinted towards Major Anomaly.  Deimos took flight, but he had been
softened by years of rear-echelon work.  The soldier quickly caught up
with him, neatly tackling the major at the knees.  Ryan then proceeded
to mercilessly beat him in the stomach.
   Presently a squad of armed naval troopers stormed onto the bridge,
dragging the unconscious Sanchez and forcing his cronies to the brig.

    "Spickard's a lucky bastard, you know?" Kynes said, "He doesn't
get punished at all, and he's the one who jacked Sheppard in the balls
and made Anomaly piss blood."
    "Being a nutcase is it's own reward," Dalton said.
    "For the last time, shut you goddam mouth," Sanchez groaned.
    Kynes grinned savagely, "If you'd stop thinking about the headache
it'd just go away."
    "Bullshit.  Maybe if I just stopped thinking about the war, it
would go away."
    Dalton chuckled, "If everyone thought that way, it would."
    "Enough of your logic and reason, I need a hair of the dog," Pablo
growled.
    "Technically, Sheppard 'bit' you," Kynes pointed out.
    Sanchez shrugged, "Sorry.  I've just been hung over so many times
that I guess I've gotten used to it as the sole cause of my
headaches."
    The three men were in the sparsely appointed brig aboard the
/Imperial Duck./  It was more or less a box, and Sanchez considered it
to be one of the poorer prisons he had been incarcerated in.  The
fourth member of the group, Private Spickard, did not have to go into
the brig, and would never ever have to.  He had suffered a head injury
early in his career, resulting in various psychological and cranial
problems.  Rather than go about fixing the disorders, the Army Medical
Corps physicians had exercised their unofficial motto:  
    "Fuck it, let's get some grain alcohol and feel up the nurses."
    They had issued Spickard what was popularly known as a 'shooting
badge,' which stated that the possessor of the badge could not be held
accountable for his actions under stress.  Since Spickard still
performed admirably in combat, he had not gotten a medical discharge.
He remained as a man outside military discipline.  He had kicked a
commanding officer in the balls and beaten another about the kidneys,
and would get off scot-free.
    "What a fucker that Spikenard is," Kynes said.
    A gorilla-like MP opened the door and stepped into the box, "You
shits can go prepare for combat with your platoon.  Sheppard didn't
want you to miss your responsibilities."
    "Which ones would those be?" Dalton asked.
    The jailer looked almost sympathetic, "Front line of the
counterattack.  You poor bastards."
    The three men marched out of their cube.  Within a minute, they
were at the readying room.  After a rushed five minutes, they were
geared up and reported to their platoon rallying point aboard the
ship.  Then, with a sickening lurch that the /Imperial Duck's/ cheap
compensators could not disguise, the transport came out of hyperspace
above Shelemin Beta.
    This was the bad time, Kynes thought.  They were in a combat zone,
and NR warships could emerge from hyperspace and slag them at any
moment.  Camouflaged surface batteries could crack the ship as it
entered the atmosphere.  They had to trust their lives to the Imperial
Navy, who were considered by most legitimate fighting men to be
sissies and weaklings.  Meanwhile, Kynes was in the center of a
shoddily built transport, unable to see the red turbolaser bolts
undoubtedly streaking past the vessel.  Every moment was an eon.
    About the time he figured the apocalypse should be arriving, the
ship lurched again, and the landing klaxons rang.  The platoon marched
forward in its company, which was in its regiment, with the rest of
the division marching apprehensively through.  They emerged from the
/Imperial Duck/ and moved towards their speeders.  They would take the
division to its rallying point, it would split into its various
components, and then… over the lip of the trench.
    The division had landed in an area uncomfortably near to the
southern pole of Shelemin Beta; furthermore, it was winter and
everything was covered in snow.  The dirt, S platoon soon learned from
their driver, was frozen solid.  There were no trenches to leap out
of.  None could be prepared without explosives, either.  Hyde pricked
up his ears at this, but was cruelly denied when he learned that the
company would be going into an assault soon.
    After an interminable drive, the speeder drew to a halt at the
company rallying point.  Strowbridge and Kynes went to Sheppard's tent
to get their briefing.  The rest of the men passed the time by cursing
the cold and spitting into the air.  Their projectiles inevitably
struck ground as solid ice.  As the men of S-platoon screwed around,
they spied a number of haggard soldiers moving listlessly around the
camp.
    Pablo sighed happily, the cold was taking the edge off of his
headache, "Who're those poor bastards?"
    By the look of their gear, they were members of the great silent
majority, the conscript divisions.  Most of the Imperial Army was
staffed by people unlike the 506th.  The 506th was officially a
"guards support" division, which entitled it to the best gear and men.
Those other soldiers were not so lucky.
    Dalton shrugged, "Probably the people we're supposed to be
stiffening."
    Much of the time they were supposed to be operating in cooperation
with the regular infantry, the guards support divisions were simply
sprinkled piecemeal to act as stiffening.  A conscript was less likely
to break if the guards infantryman next to him was fighting like a
demon.
    Pablo was considering the idea of walking over to the sad sack
infantrymen, but that train of thought was cut off by the perennial
distraction of the base camp.  The artillery company a few hundred
yards rearward received a fire mission.  The actual firing of the
rounds was inaudible.  The magnetic launching devices were remarkably
quiet.  The main production of noise came from the boom of 105
millimeter rounds piercing the sound barrier.  A dozen kilometers
away, someone was catching hell.  Where he was, Sanchez clenched his
teeth and hissed.  He hated the noise of those shells, but he hated
the big ones even more.  Some ancestral memory compelled him to fear
them, and it was one of the few things he worried about.

     Strowbridge exited the tent with false strength; buckling
internally from the brutal dressing down Sheppard had given him over
the nut-kicking kidney-smashing episode… and the god-awful cold.  But
he was an officer and a gentleman, and he would suck it up.  Not only
did he have his usual crew to worry about, he also had to deal with
the new men.  His platoon had been running at less than half strength
since their last full mission, and division had seen fit to fuck him
over and saddle him with a bunch of retreads from the conscript
divisions.  They were admittedly the cream of the crop, but even the
best road apple is still a piece of shit.
    He waved at the soldiers moping around the base camp, unable to
simply shout because of the din of the barrage.  They quickly
assembled with the regular members of the platoon.
    After everyone had arrived and the noise ceased, Strowbridge
started the briefing.
    "Here's the deal, folks.  We're going to march about five klicks
to the west and meet up with a rifle company and reinforce them.
About two hours to get set, we're going to assault and secure a
densely wooded area.  We are to eliminate enemy resistance and move
towards the center of the woods, where we capture a bridge over the
river, ah, Kalkun," he explained.  Kynes passed a map to Yates, the
'new' sergeant, and finally to Sanchez, who studied the elevations
intently.
    Strowbridge continued, "As for introduction for the new folks.
I'm Lieutenant Strowbridge, your mother, father, and god.  Then
there's Sergeant Kynes, who will manage your ass for me.  Our new
friend Sergeant Fromage will be next down the line, and then there's
Corporals Sanchez, Yates, Fredricks, and Heller.  The rest of you
don't matter.  Any questions?"
    Sanchez looked up from his map, "What's my setup, sir?"
    "Dalton has a five pack, and it's you two plus three," the officer
replied.  Sanchez was the commander of the smallest squad in the
platoon, the light machinegun squad.  His job was to site his gun and
squad members in order to offer the best fire in accordance with
Strowbridge's orders, Dalton's job was to fire the gun, and the
remaining boys were carrying ammo and barrels and providing flank
security.  The LMG squad was only about half the size of the rifle
squads, but it spoke the loudest of any.
    Dalton's 'five pack' was a five hundred round battery which he
carried on his back.  It was a bit on the heavy side, especially
compared to the regular fifty round packs, but he was splitting the
difference among three men.  So as the platoon got up and marched, it
wasn't much worse than usual for Dalton.  Not that Strowbridge gave a
shit, because he was still pissed off by their actions on the bridge.
They were making him look bad, and he would never forgive them.
    Sanchez, on the other hand, was cheering up.  The intense cold was
making him forget his splitting headache, which was enough for him.
He marched happily.  Dalton grumbled about having to carry his T-21,
Strowbridge mumbled almost incoherently about his image, and Paulsen
was trying to make conversation with the new additions to the platoon.
Kynes, meanwhile, was getting to know the other sergeant.  Sanchez
moved a little closer to the two of them.
    "... so I don't see why we're fighting," Fromage was saying,
"those men over there are just the same as me.  They're fighting under
a functionally identical government, they speak the same language, and
they even use the same weapons."
    "I shoot them because they shoot at me," Kynes said.
    Fromage shrugged, "But say that they didn't shoot first?"
    "I'd probably use a knife to save ammo and noise," Kynes said
caustically.
    "Nobody's going to win this war," the other sergeant said, getting
annoyed, "especially not you."
    Kynes stopped scanning the wintry horizon and looked at the other
man, "Fuck you."
    "No, fuck you."
    "Fuck you!"
    As this continued, Sanchez drifted away to find better
conversations to eavesdrop on.  The three privates that had been added
to his squad were speaking among themselves as they marched.  Sanchez
thought for a moment to call up their names from his memory.  They
were Dean, Sheridan, and David, if he remembered correctly.
    "How good do you think these guys are, Bean?" the one Pablo
vaguely identified as David asked.  It was Bean, then.
    "I dunno.  Prolly pretty good if they're in the guards, huh?" Bean
mumbled.
    Pablo broke in at this point, "We are more than pretty good.  We
are tiny gods bestride this globe.  Right, Dalton?"
    "Yeah."
    This was not to Sanchez's satisfaction, so he shouted up to
Lieutenant Strowbridge, "Sir, I was just telling these fellows that we
were tiny gods!  Am I correct?"
    "Shut your goddam mouth, Corporal!" the officer shouted back.
    "That's a tacit confirmation, that is," Pablo said, "Isn't it
Dalton?"
    Dalton shrugged, "Sure.  But damn, if it isn't fucking cold."
    "Sure is.  Sure is," Sanchez replied.
    The three soldiers were exchanging glances through this short
conversation.  They had heard many interesting stories about the elite
guards soldiers, those men of the special forces.  Mostly concerning
thirty centimeter wedding tackle and kill records in the triple
digits.  They had not heard anything about this.  Fortunately for the
new soldiers, the conversations halted on account of the temperature,
until the platoon reached the jumping off point.
    Most of a regular army company was milling around near some
sandbag fortifications.  Kynes gestured to an unoccupied bunker; this
was the signal for Sanchez to get it up to speed.
    Once he and his squad got there, they realized why it was
abandoned.  One complete side of it had been blown away by grenade
fire, and a small pile of freezing corpses laid around it.  Sanchez
toed one, in a New Republican uniform.  It was as solid as a rock.
    "Right," he said to Dalton, "Get his legs."
    The two men hoisted the carcass up.  It was close to the
consistency of a board, so they moved it pretty easily.  Dalton and
Sanchez tossed it into the breached section of the bunker wall, and
turned for another.  This time, Sanchez selected one missing its legs,
because it was more blocky.  Onto the pile it went.
    Dalton glanced up at the three new guys, scowling, "What are you
waiting for?"
    The three men looked at each other in horror, then pitched in.  
    Moments later, Dalton broke up laughing, "Look at this poor
fucker."
    Sanchez glanced over.  One of the last men left had apparently
ended his career by throwing out his limbs in all directions and
falling spread-eagled in the snow.
    "Asshole probably did it just to be contrary.  We need that, and
we can have those arms sticking into our fighting hole.  Gimme that
T-21, and stand him up," Sanchez ordered.
    After handing over the weapon, Dalton supported the former soldier
on its feet and nodded to Sanchez.  The corporal gave a moment for the
windup, then struck down at the body's knee with all his strength.
Despite its frozen solidity, the joint buckled.  The procedure was
repeated for each of four limbs, and the carcass was tossed,
completing the grotesque task.  All the new privates were visibly ill,
but David looked to be very close to vomiting.
    Pablo gave him a hearty slap on the back, saying, "Now there's a
wall you can be proud of!"
    This was too much for the soldier, he stumbled a few yards away
and vomited into the snow.  This action attracted the attention of a
few of the regular army guys, who ambled over and surveyed the gory
creation.  None were too happy, but a few of them were particularly
angry.
    "Hey!  That's Bigsy!  That's my best friend," one shouted,
pointing at the shattered corpse.
    Pablo shrugged, "He belonged to the Imperial Army.  If he's not
going to serve it as a fighting man, he might as well serve it as a
brick."
    The regulars bristled at that statement, and the one who had
spoken out looked ready for a fight.  Fortunately for the outnumbered
guards, Kynes strode over to check their progress at that very moment.
    "Very nice creative engineering, Corporal," the sergeant said.
Then he turned to look at the conscripts, who had been driven into a
rage by that last statement.  They would have certainly rushed the
guardsmen and beaten them insensible, if Kynes had not said what he
did at this point.

   Sergeant Major Liet Kynes--Serial Number XPW-6155321--yelled, "What
do you useless hatfuckers want?"

    Everyone within earshot froze.  They had never heard such a
statement before, but it carried with it a weight of power and a
stunning ferocity.  The rage of the conscripts evaporated instantly,
replaced by a sheepish fear of this man, who could simply conjure up
such commanding language.  They meekly apologized and scurried away.
    "Now get ready to go, assholes," Kynes ordered the five guards,
who stood there speechless even after Liet had left.
    "My God," Sheridan managed to get out, finally, "I'll remember
that word for the rest of my life."



[Fanfic] Suicide Squad
6
Bunker Buster

   It was night in that particular area of Shelemin Beta, but a full
moon and the thick snowfall made it nearly light enough to see.  The
rifle company and the attached special forces platoon kicked off their
march only a few minutes behind schedule.
   The enemy positions were estimated to be a mere half-kilometer away
from the Imperial forward defenses, on the very edge of the thick
Kalkun forest.  As this was a company level action, the Imperials
would have nothing heavier than their medium 15 centimeter guns to
support their advance, and the primary artillery would be the
man-portable 62 millimeter mortars.  This was lamented by the regular
infantry, while Strowbridge's squad was ecstatic.  Ordinarily their
most powerful support weapon was Spickard's PLX-2M, and they were only
allowed to call in artillery fires on important targets.  Having a
good battery of guns and a handful of mortars was much better than
usual.
    Therefore the conscripts advanced cringingly, and were only kept
in motion by the shame they felt watching the Guards.  This was, in
fact, the very idea of assigning the Guards to the platoon.  Both the
Empire and the New Republic recognized that a man's pride was often
more powerful than his fear of death.
    So all the men of the mixed company managed to keep pace, and they
would until they came under fire.  Unfortunately, this would happen a
bit soon than expected.
    Corporal Yates was leading a rifle squad at the very front of the
company, and he was the first to see the enemy.  The New Republic
forces were about 200 meters forward of where they were supposed to
be, deployed in trenches that could only have been created with
explosives.  By the time Nathan had seen the well-concealed positions,
they were a mere seventy meters away.  The enemy was waiting for their
best shot.
    "Hit the dirt!" Yates screamed, throwing himself sideways behind a
fallen tree.  Only of a few of the men in his squad responded
immediately, as most of them were the sad-sack retreads.  Before they
could respond, the Republicans opened up.
    From his relatively secure alcove behind the log, Yates listened
to the blaster fire.  He made it at least two E-Webs, a half-dozen
T-21s, and a bunch of the Republican's stupid squad automatic, the
S-12.  The ripping canvas report of the weapon could scare conscripts,
but the canny veterans knew that it was an inaccurate piece of shit
that broke and overheated easily.
    Within ten seconds, half of the corporal's team had been killed.
He didn't feel much sorrow for the poor bastards, as they'd only have
slowed him down.  He bit down on his mike switch and tried to raise
the Lieutenant.
    Strowbridge had his own problems.  The main body of S-platoon was
under fire from both of the E-Webs at the same time, and was thus in
quite a bit of trouble.  Strowbridge had ducked into what appeared to
be a literal fox-hole to try and puzzle out what to do.  There was
very little cover in the area, and his men were being shot all to
shit.  He checked his radio, but got nothing but white noise.  He
switched frequencies once, twice.  Still nothing but white noise.
Nothing he could do for artillery, then.  Even the little 62s were
denied to him, as the range was too short and the teams were dead or
pinned.
    "Bunker down," the officer shouted, "concentrate on not getting
hit!"
    And pray for a miracle, he added silently.

    Fortunately for the Imperials, their miracle was already in
progress.  Sanchez cursed silently as he hauled himself upright in the
snow.  The cold blanket was about two and a quarter meters high were
he was.  He tried to climb out of the pit, but he slipped on the
surface on which he had formerly stood.  The snow broke his fall.
    "Dalton?" Pablo whispered, "You there?"
    "Yeah, I just wish I knew where here is," the gunner answered.
    "Must be a creek bed," the corporal guessed, "there's ice on the
bottom."
    "I noticed."
    "Hey, three stooges?  What about you?" Sanchez called out.
    David was somewhere to Pablo's left, "We're here."
    The light machinegun squad had been moving towards a position that
Sanchez had picked out on the map.  It was elevated, protected, and
offered a good field of fire on the area the enemy was supposed to be
occupying.  It was just like the Rebels to be contrary bastards and
muck up a perfectly good plan.
    All five soldiers had been a bit to the right of the main force of
the company, and they had moved for cover in that direction.  For good
or bad, they had been precluded in that attempt by the presence of a
previously unknown ditch.  They had thus escaped notice by the mass of
the enemy fire and were not in such a position that they could be shot
at anyway.
    Sanchez listened.  There were a lot of small arms on the
Republican side, but no artillery larger than medium mortars.  They
were either in dire straits or conserving their efforts for a general
offensive.  The corporal sighed, then, because it was none of his
business which problem it was.  His business was getting that T-21
into action and making at least an attempt to preserve the lives of
the other four men on the way.
    "See if you guys can dig your way towards the trees we were
sprinting for," he ordered.
    The other four men began to rustle through the thick pillow of
snow.  Dalton because of his stature and load, the three conscripts
because of inexperience.  By comparison, Sanchez was ghostly.  The
enlisted men made it to the edge of their little gully and lay prone
on the lip.
    "What do you make of it, Dalton?" Sanchez asked.
    "Two E-Webs, five T-21s, and at least eight S-12s, none of it
coming this way," the experienced soldier responded.
    Sanchez assessed the light and noise of the fusillade for a few
moments before coming to a decision, "We're going for the trees.  If
we crawl, they'll cut us up, so run your asses off.  On three."
    This particular stand of trees was sturdy and about twenty meters
distant.  It could have been one hundred meters, for all the good it
would have done them.  Sanchez started to count.
    "Wait, wait!" Private Bean interrupted, "Do you mean
one-two-three-go or one-two-go?"
    Sanchez shook his head.  
    "Just GO!" he shouted, leaping up.  Before he had gotten ten steps
he heard the whine and crackle of blaster bolts nearby, several times
he felt warmth on his face as he passed through their contrails.
Luckily the enemy had dedicated only one or two of the shoddy S-12s to
that area.  Sanchez threw himself into shelter behind one of the
massive trees.
    "Fancy meeting you here," a voice said from only a meter away.
Pablo jerked his E-11 up.
    Kynes laughed, "What are you going to do with that?  Stab me?"
    Sanchez looked down at his blaster.  The entire barrel forward of
the magazine had been shorn away.  The corporal didn't waste time on
pissing his pants at that moment, that could be saved for later.  He
tossed the piece of metal aside and drew his DL-44.  The pistol was no
match for a rifle, but it was a reassuring weight and would tear
anyone's head from their shoulders… provided that it hit them.
    "What are you doing here?" Pablo asked the sergeant.
    "Reconnoitering the enemy position is my stock answer," Kynes
replied, "but since we're both good NCOs, I'll tell you that I was
skipping off to the right flank for a wee nip of the creature."
    Sanchez nodded sympathetically, but not without a trace of hunger
in his eyes, "Gimme."
    "I got the same shitty trick as you.  Fuckers shot the bottle
right out of my hand," Liet said mournfully.
    Sanchez shrugged and rolled over onto his other shoulder.  Dalton
and the three guys were waiting.
    "So, what's the good word, sergeant?" Sanchez asked.
    "Well, I think our best options are to sit tight and let the whole
company get massacred, and then we get killed by the rebel mop-up, or
we can rush the enemy guns and probably end up dead," Kynes replied.
    "What do you think, Dalton?" Pablo consulted.
    "Why not?"
    Kynes nodded, "Get ready, then."  He produced a bottle from behind
his back and finished it off.
    "You fucker!" Pablo howled, "Lying cunt-rag!"
    "Man's gotta look after his own," Kynes justified, "Now do want a
count or just go?"
    Bean broke in, "Just going seems to work pretty well."
    At that, Sanchez leapt to his feet and moved.  Once again, fiery
red bolts whistled towards and around him.  This time, though, he
fired his pistol on the run.  He didn't hit anyone, but it made him
feel more comfortable.  The fire from one gun crawled dangerous close
to him, then stopped abruptly.  Presently he reached the edge of the
trench, at a point where two Republic soldiers were trying to fix a
broken S-12.  He shot them both with his blaster from about three
meters away, then hopped into the trench.
    It was a rather rough construction, apparently blasted from the
frozen earth by explosives.  As such it twisted and curved quite a
bit.  This was enough to save Pablo's life, so he appreciated the
shoddy workmanship.  Someone came around a curve.  Sanchez popped him
once in the chest, the massive bolt actually pulling the charred
contents of his cardiovascular cavity out of the exit wound.  That
wasn't something that one saw every day, but the corporal was too
occupied to do anything about it.  He moved forward towards the curve.
Another man came around the corner, and this time the bolt tore his
entire shoulder away, leaving the arm to flop to the ground.
    The rebel screamed terribly, so Sanchez put one in his head.
Above the roar of machineguns, the corporal heard movement around the
corner.  He selected an impact grenade from the array of bombs on his
belt and pulled the pin out.  He tossed it over into where he thought
the enemy was.  A flash of thunder, then screams.  Pablo dashed around
the corner, pumping quick shots into the five dead or wounded that
laid there.
    This had once been the other S-12 emplacement, now it was a heap
of twisted metal and flesh.  Sanchez moved towards the enemy center
slowly, wondering where his comrades had gone.  The trench once again
curved sharply away from the machinegun emplacement, providing the
corporal another nice advantage.  This time two men dashed around the
curve.  The first one caught two bolts in his chest, and Pablo caught
the other in his sights and pulled the trigger.
    Nothing came out.  The rebel started to line his big rifle up.
The imperial had only one option.  He threw his heavy DL-44 straight
into the enemy soldier's face, sending the rifle bolt far out of line.
Within a moment, Sanchez was on top of him, and the combat vibroblade
was buried in the area of the jugular.
    Even before the man hit the ground, Pablo had taken the rifle.  As
the soon-to-be corpse thrashed on the ground, Sanchez took its
ammunition belt.  The weapon was a Blastech A-280, with a grenade
launcher beneath the barrel.  The A-280 had once been the standard
weapon of both the Empire and New Republic armies, supplemented by the
E-11 and others.  The A-280 was a brutally powerful weapon--too
powerful, in fact, to remain in general usage.  A well-trained,
professional soldier could handle it.  The soldiers at this stage of
the war were neither of these things, and thus the venerable A-280 was
replaced by less demanding weapons.  The "bastard," as it was known to
front-line troops, could punch holes in light armor at five hundred
meters, and cut a man in half at twice that.  It had recoil to match,
of course.
    Sanchez was almost drooling; he was damn lucky to catch hold of
such a weapon, even if it was more cumbersome than his carbine.
    After he had finished inspecting his new rifle, he retrieved and
reloaded his pistol, finally slipping it back into its holster.  He
was now the commander of truly tremendous firepower.  It was time to
get moving again.  He heard a scraping noise behind him, so Sanchez
spun around and pulled his rifle into line.
    "Whoa!"
    It was just David.
    "Where's the other four?" the corporal asked.
    "Sheridan took one in the leg, Dalton's guarding him.  I don't
know about the other guys."
    "Good enough for me.  Follow my lead, and keep quiet," Pablo
ordered.
    David coughed, "Uh, sir… he's staring at me."
    "Who?" Sanchez asked he turned around again.  The bleeding NR had
his glassy eyes fixed directly on David.  Sanchez rolled his own eyes
in disgust.  He shot the near-dead man right between his eyes.  He
noted with professional satisfaction that the A-280 had destroyed the
soldier's entire head.
    Sanchez looked up at the Imperial private, "Better?  Good."
    David had already puked his guts out a few hours ago, so he was
forced to settle for dry heaves.  Pablo gave him a few seconds before
they both moved out.
    
    At this same time Strowbridge was still lying in his little animal
dugout, blaster bolts cracking in at him from all directions.  Without
his radio, he had no way to tally his losses, but he guessed that they
had to be significant.
    One emotion overrode the fear of death, as it always did.  He felt
nothing but indignation, that /he/ would be pinned down in a hole by
monkeys behind the triggers of machineguns.  He was Lieutenant C.S.
Strowbridge, and he didn't deserve this shit.  It was thus with little
surprise that he noticed the enemy fire stopping abruptly from their
left flank, and a number of grenade blasts.  Within moments, the enemy
fire had all but ceased.  The lieutenant poked his head up.
    The enemy line was buzzing with activity.  He could see a number
of republican soldiers fleeing to their rear.  He didn't know what was
going on, but he accepted it temporarily as the effect of divine
provenance on his behalf.  More logical explanations could wait for
later.
    He yelled, "Charge!"
    Besides himself, the limited numbers of his guards and a few
conscripts got to their feet and moved.  The rest of the men,
physically and psychologically suppressed, took longer.  Inspired or
shamed by the performance of their braver comrades, they reluctantly
joined the charge.
    A brutal infantry charge was something seldom seen in that day and
age, and it made Strowbridge very proud to have ordered it.  There was
only one enemy E-Web in action, and it appeared that the rest of the
enemies were in full flight.
    But that wouldn't be enough to save Strowbridge, it seemed.  The
single operating enemy gun downed the three men nearest to him and
swept towards him.  Now he was pissed again.
    Then there was a flash and a boom, and an enemy prefabricated
bunker was briefly illuminated from within.  Flames poured out from
the firing slit and the machinegun bolts stopped.
    Strowbridge hit the trench among cluster groups of riflemen.  The
Imperials enthusiastically fired into the defeated and demoralized
republican infantry.  The conscripts, until a moment ago to afraid to
even move, now whooped with victory.  Strowbridge did not deign to
fire on fleeing troops, but he still watched with satisfaction as
light machineguns set up and scythed across the enemy.  They had left
better than half a rifle company dead in the snow, with more dying or
incapacitated.  As the last of the enemy faded away, the lieutenant
dropped to the ground with a sigh of relief.  His ego had once again
been justified.
    With the retreat of the republican infantry, Strowbridge's radio
finally resumed function.  He reported to regiment that he would not
be able to advance through the woods to the bridge that day.  The
lieutenant tallied the total losses as more than a quarter of the
company, including the late, unlamented, and mostly unnamed captain.
More troubling were the losses in the cadre of guards.
    Spickard was dead, caught full in the chest by the first
machinegun bursts.  Sergeant Kynes had taken one in the thigh and a
number of the new replacements had been wounded.  They would be
evacuated to the rear.  (In all likelihood, Kynes would recover and be
reassigned to one of the hundreds of thousands of guards detachments
in the army, never to be seen again by his old platoon)
   Strowbridge, now nominally in command of a reduced rifle company,
had a few concerns.  Besides the business of holding the trenches
until reinforced, he also had to promote men to replace NCO losses and
come up with good citations.  Obviously he would put himself up for
the Distinguished Leader Medallion (among others), and he would sadly
be forced to nominate the whole light machinegun squad and Kynes for
whatever decoration associated with bravery seemed most appropriate.
Probably the Imperial Daring Assault Cross, with red star clusters
representing heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy.
    The promotions were a more difficult decision.  Strowbridge hated
Edam even more than he hated other people (no mean feat), but one had
to respect his competence.  This left a lower sergeant slot empty,
which would be filled by a corporal.  He didn't know Yates well enough
to put him in charge of anything, and the two new corporals he had
received from the conscripts were far worse.  Sanchez he knew better,
but it was still with a measure of disgust that he decided to make the
corporal a brevet buck sergeant.  Dalton would replace him.
    By the time he had this all decided it was almost morning.  With
the assistance of the dim rising sun, Strowbridge informed the various
persons concerned, repeatedly insulting them just to prove his
dominance.  It began to snow heavily.
    At about 0800, the company heard noises coming from within the
woods; noises that every infantryman feared to the depths of his soul.
Terror poured out from every synapse.

    Tanks.


Suicide Squad
7
Panzerangriff, Panzerfurcht

    Within moments, Lieutenant Strowbridge was on the radio back to
regimental.  As the commander of a mixed, and rather weak, infantry
force which was about to face down an unidentifiable number of enemy
tanks, he was ill disposed to bother with the direct chain of command.

    The first person he spoke to was Captain Sheppard.  The
conversation was short and to the point, as both men were fighting
officers.

    Sheppard growled, "What's your fucking problem, fucker?"

    To which Strowbridge replied, "Fucking tanks.  Put me up to
fucking regimental, Captain Fucker."

    Within moments, the lieutenant was speaking to Major Anomaly.

    "What's the problem, Lieutenant?" Major Anomaly asked.

    "Tanks moving towards us.  We have no weapons heavier than
disposables, I'm understrength, and most of my men are fuckups.
Reinforcements are necessary," Strowbridge responded.

    "Just hang on a moment, C.S.," Deimos said.  At this, soothing
jizz muzak poured from the radio.  After fifteen full seconds the tank
noises were growing quite loud and sweat began to trickle down
Strowbridge's spine.

    "It's been a fucking moment, you asshole," he whispered, "get back
to me."

    After a further five seconds of anxiety, the Major finally came
back on, "Just hold tight, son.  We'll get something together just as
soon as we can.  Oh, and by the way, we're going to have to withhold
your fifteen centimeter gun support."

    The radio clicked off, and Strowbridge stared at the speaker.

    Finally he shouted, "You're worse than useless, you fuck!"

    He clicked the radio over to S platoon's frequency and gave his
plan of action. 

----

    "Major Anomaly's doing some crazy shit and leaving us to bleed out
in the snow.  Guards, I want you to collect as many disposable rockets
as you can.  I don't really trust you to hit jack shit with them, but
I can't trust the conscripts in any way, shape or form.  Then, sit
your ass down and bleed out in the snow--but try and take some of them
with you.  Nobody fire until fired upon, or until I give the code
click," the lieutenant said.

    Yates yawned, momentarily drowning out the sound of tank engines.
The few conscripts of his squad that had survived the previous night's
activities were alternatively apalled and impressed at their leader's
impenetrable aura of calm.  He stretched out his shoulders and cleared
his throat.

    "I'm gonna need those," he ordered, indicated the conscript's
UGATM-D's.

    The Unguided Anti-Tank Munition-Disposable (inevitably nicknamed
the 'you got'em, dude') was the only effective armor-defeating weapon
in the conscript's pack.  It was a short durasteel tube with a
primitive glassine sight.  Within the tube was a rocket.  The device
would fly straight and true out to one hundred yards providing that
the winds were light, and on striking a vehicle, it could blast neat
holes in all but the heaviest tanks.  It was an old and simply weapon,
having made its name in the brutal battle of Coruscant; Vader Youth
members would ride speederbikes through machinegun fire in order to
get one golden shot at an enemy vehicle.  This story always conjured
up distressing shadows in Yates' mind, and it was with no small amount
of pleasure that he recalled that the founder of the Vader Youth had
been shot for this practice.

    Within moments, the corporal was loaded down with five of the
disposable rocket launchers, and he settled back into the snow.
Absently, he picked up a handful of snow and stuffed it into his
mouth.  Presently his mouth was cold enough that his breath produced
nearly no visible vapor.  This was unlikely to be noticed by the
Republican forces, but it was still a worthy precaution.

    As the tank noises grew louder Yates folded the stock of his E-11
and slid it into the snow next to him.  He set one UGATM on his
shoulder and tensed himself.  Just then a white block roared through
the snow at him.  It was enormous; he immediately identified it as a
Republican 'Successor' heavy tank.  Its turret swiveled menacing left
and right, and at least a squad of infantry could be seen immediately
behind it.  From where he was he could only strike it's turret and
glacis plate, and he might as well fling a snowball.  A PLX-2M could
have blasted it, but Spickard was dead and his weapon was trashed.
Meanwhile the tank grew ever closer.

    Yates was a snowdrift, he was not afraid, nor did he move.  His
conscripts, by way of comparison, were cowering.

    "Don't move, damn it," he whispered.

    By this time, the tank was a mere thirty meters distant.  At the
corners of his vision, Yates could see more tanks.  They were
positioned very close to one another, probably in order to maintain
cohesion in the forest.  It was the best decision they could have
made, but it was still a mistake.

    Now the tank was only twenty meters away, and something odd
happed.  It encountered a sudden steep inclined, shifted down a gear,
and began to climb.  As it did this, it's belly became momentarily
exposed.  Yates silently wished for Strowbridge to give the code.

    This he did.  Yates' radio earpiece clicked twice in rapid
succession, then again.  At this, the corporal reared up onto his
knees, swiftly laid his rocket in line, and triggered it.  A short
length of metal rode a tongue of flame the twenty meters to the target
and struck beautifully on the thinnest armor of the Successor.  Yates
imagined that at that moment the fighting compartment of the tank
filled with fire and the crew roasted.  At the same moment, a number
of other unfortunate tankers were suffering the same fate on the
opposite end of the Imperial line, struck from the flank.

    Yates dropped down and readied his next attack as his abruptly
emboldened conscripts rocked and rolled onto the enemy infantry.  They
hit very little, but their targets were no more experienced and merely
scattered.  The corporal heard something hit the snow next to him as
he shouldered his next launcher.  He looked over, saw the frag
grenade, and took it in hand.  Being something an expert at this
activity, he tossed it directly back whence it came and was
unsurprised to view it glance off a rebel's helmet even as it
detonated.  A direct hit.  He made a mental note to tell his comrades
about it, if and when he escaped from this.

    Abruptly he noticed a second tank, nosing around the carcass of
the now burning Successor.  This new threat was a mere Foxhound, a
medium tank that would have been imposing had it not been within
rocket range.  Yates again rose, fired, and dropped.  He was rewarded
with a flash of warmth as the Foxhound brewed up violently, bathing
nearby infantry in flame.  With more consternation he regarded a
shriek of pain from behind him.  He rotated a bit to see one of his
conscripts with a flame sliding up his sleeve.  The young fool had
blundered into the backblast of the rocket and had paid the penalty.
Yates paid no more attention, merely assuming that the soldier would
be able to extinguish himself.  Yates' view being momentarily
exhausted of hard targets, he retrieved his E-11 and fired short,
accurate bursts at whatever person was unfortunate enough to expose
himself.

----

    At the same time, Sanchez was in considerably more distress.
Before him lay three scorched tanks, and behind him were the empty
tubes of his rocket stockpile.  A fourth tank rolled around the minor
traffic jam, and Sanchez noted with a bit of professional disgust that
it was, in fact, a mere light tank.  It did not seem to befit such a
person as himself to die because of such a vehicle.

    "Fuck you, Reb!" he shouted, though the enemy could not hear him.
He had just been advanced in rank, and these bastards wanted him dead?
He flipped the grenade sights up and lined up his shot.  The round
arced up and out, zipping neatly downrange and striking the tank in
the turret, with no effect whatsoever on the armor.  It did, however,
cause the republican infantry to cower a bit more cravenly.

    Sanchez didn't consider this too long before selecting another
grenade at random from his bandoleer and loading it into the breach.
He repeated the process of aiming, even easier as the tank had closed
from fifty meters to forty, and shot off the round.  He was much
surprised by the result.

    A flaming cloud materialized at the point of impact, just where
the turret met the hull, and expanded at considerable speed.  It
expanded so fast and so far, in fact, that Sanchez was stunned by the
passage of its shockwave, and he imagined that it would have been
visible from miles away.  Pablo gaped at the destruction.  The light
tank had actually been melted, the main gun's barrel still flowing
like thick jelly, and the turret barely hanging onto the hull.  The
trees in the immediate area were all burning, and much of the
surrounding snowfield had become a sea of boiling mud.  The sergeant
slid the launcher's breach open and ejected the casing.  On
inspection, he found that he had fired a 'red,' a thermal detonator.
He had not even been aware that he possessed such a grenade.  He
examined what remained of his grenades and cursed.  He had wasted his
only 'little nuke' on a light tank.

    It was better than being dead, though, and it fully suppressed the
enemy infantry on a physical and moral level.  One of Sanchez's
accompanying infantry found his courage and whooped in victory.

    "Nice one, Sarge!"

    Pablo flipped the kid the bird and turned back to what was
important: killing people he didn't know.  In this way he ensured that
he would never have to know them, which was good because it was his
firm belief that everyone was an asshole, especially himself.  He
clicked the grenade sights down in favor of the standard pieces.  He
saw one infantryman attempting to crawl into some snowy bushes.  With
a simple pull of the trigger, the man discovered that his lungs had
been replaced by a gaping hole.  With an experienced marksman, a range
of only a score of meters, and snowy conditions to inhibit the
movement of a soldier, a firefight was more of a turkey shoot.
Scattered return fire came his way, but Pablo's enemies had neither
the skill nor the luck to strike him.

    Or so he hoped.  A burst of blaster fired burned past him at a
distance far too close for comfort.  Sanchez traced the red lines back
to their source and pumped a few rounds into it.  A small explosion of
red mist was the happy result.

    Then again, republican infantry was the least of his problems.
Yet another armored vehicle navigated the mud pool and field of tank
carcasses towards him.  Sanchez watched it's turret rotate around and
come to bear on him.  He grabbed the nearby infantryman by the collar
and yanked him to his feet.  The pair then sprinted several meters
toward the trench.  As Sanchez reached the fortification, a vast red
explosion blossomed behind him, and he tumbled into the hole.

   The unfortunate private next to him landed rather hard upon his
neck, dead instantly.  Of his squad of ten, there were four
remaining--if he counted himself twice.  This he did, because he felt
better afterwards.

----

    Dalton was more or less in the center of the imperial defence,
with his T-21 resting on the lip of the formerly republican trench.
He had fired about twice as many shots in the last minute as his
weapon was rated to withstand, and only the large cooling sheath
prevented his sights from being obscured by rising waves of heat.  Rob
imagined that, within the solid black casing, the barrel was getting
very close to the limit.

    "David!  I need a barrel, and I want it two minutes ago," he
yelled at his assistant.

    The private dropped his E-11 into the snow next to his body, and
crawled to the gun.  Dalton hefted the heavy repeater back into the
trench.  Even as the bipod hit the ground, he was releasing the
catches that held the barrel in the gun.  David grabbed the carrying
handle and pulled the barrel free.  As Rob had expected, it was red
hot.  The private set it down in a snowdrift, releasing a cloud of
steam, then slid a fresh unit into the piece.

    Dalton picked the T-21 up and turned back it to the battle.  He
cut loose at cyclic for a moment, resuppressing any republicans who
had been able to muster up the courage to move forward.  Afterwards he
shot the standard three to five round bursts to keep them on the
ground and kill some of them.

    A tank directly ahead of him roared forward.  A burst from the
T-21 sent its supporting soldiers scattering, and Dalton saw two
rockets stab out at it; one took a small nick out of the turret, the
other penetrated the engine compartment and ignited its fuel.  The
vehicle simply came apart, the turret flying several meters into the
air, and the hull fragmenting into dozens of pieces.

    He heard Yates' voice over his radio earpiece, "Does anybody have
any rockets left, over."

    "I AIN'T GOT SHIT!" Sanchez replied, before he was drowned out by
an explosion.

    Sergeant Fromage then got on, "Keep the channgel clear, assholes.
Lieutenant, we are out of anti-tank rockets, and they're right on top
of us.  What's the plan?"

    "Major Anomaly says to sit tight, so we sit tight," Strowbridge
replied, "is that so hard to understand?"

    Edam made a strangled noise of rage, "Yes, it is!  We're all going
to fucking die, and--HEY!  Get the fuck back here!"

    "What'd you say, Sergeant?" C.S. asked.

    "My squad is booking it out of here," Edam said, before loud
gunfire over his radio cut him off, "correction, my squad has been
liquidated by enemy action.  How long do we have to last?"

    Dalton spied some enemies attempting to move forward, so he put a
burst at them and went back to listening to the conversation.

    Strowbridge continued, "--maybe six minutes.  He didn't say."

    "I'm not going to last six FUCKING SECONDS!  Get that cumrag back
on the wire!" Sanchez yelled.

    Edam growled, "Keep the fucking line clear!"

    Finally, Yates came back over the radio, voice still cool.
"Quiet.  Does anybody else hear that?"

    Dalton momentarily held his fire and pricked up his ears.  In the
brief spaces between bursts of gunfire, he could hear a distant
mechanical grinding.  More tanks--but this time coming from behind
their position.

    "We're being flanked!" Edam said, "Now we're really fucked."

    As if on cue, explosions began to spring up around the encircled
Imperials.  After a moment, Dalton heard the shriek of shells'
supersonic flight, and he decided to passively wait for the end.
There was no point in dragging people to hell with him.  Then, a most
curious and fortunate thing occurred.  The artillery fire began to
crawl toward the enemy, until it finally settled in several hundred
yards away from Dalton.  This was a nice turn of events.

    Dalton then turned to his rear, spotting a dozen or more tanks
moving towards him.  As they drew nearer, he realized that they were
imperial tanks, with a large force of infantry.  Another excellent
occurrence.  The enemy began to fade away, and the Imperial tanks
roared off in pursuit.  Dalton stood up from the snow and waved at a
nearby tank commander, who was riding through unbuttoned.  The man
turned and saluted, and did not turn back in time to notice the low
branch his vehicle was driving under.  That was definitely, Rob
thought, the best thing he had seen all day, easily topping the part
where his life had been saved.

----

    Strowbridge stood and trotted towards the tank commander as the
unfortunate fellow stumbled out of his vehicle.  He tripped over an
antenna and tumbled down into a snowdrift as the lieutenant
approached.

    "Lieutenant Strowbridge, 501st infantry," C.S. announced as he
strolled up to the prostrate tanker.

    The fellow struggled to his feet with a cough and shook his head
clear, "I'm Captain Skimmer, One Thousand and Twenty-Fourth
independent heavy armor brigade.  Your relief will be along
presently."

    Strowbridge belatedly saluted his 'superior,' "Well, I suppose I
should thank you for saving our lives, and whatnot."

    Skimmer looked at the multiple tank carcasses that dotted the
terrain forward of the Imperial position and said, "Looks like you
were handling yourself rather well."

    "I suppose, but we were out of rockets.  You're lucky you came
along when you did.  Any earlier and we might have greased one of you,
any later and we'd've been dead."

    The Captain frowned, "Whaddya mean, greased one of us?"

    "Well, we weren't exactly informed that a bunch of friendly tanks
would be along.  In fact, we were told absolutely nothing by our
commander, except that we were to hold position."

    "So, your commander is a dick?"

    "In essence."

    S Platoon's relief arrived presently, and Strowbridge tabulated
his losses during the march back to Imperial lines.  He had lost
better (or worse) than fifty percent of his strength during the whole
two-day fuckup, but on the upside he had gained a lot of prestige,
some medals, and would certainly be recommended for promotion.  The
freezing corpse of some young jackoff from the central rim, newly
conscripted and now dead, was of no concern to him.  He would soon be
a captain, so fuck you, Private First Class Murat Miksiyov, the galaxy
was made for the /living/, he thought as he strode past a battle-torn
body bearing that very nametag.

    The enlisted men were not at all pleased by Major Anomaly's
command decisions, and Sanchez was in fact already earnestly planning
to 'terminate the Major's command' (this was his phrase, the men
called it simple fragging).  C.S. was of a different opinion.  He was
glad that the army was saturated with people like Deimos.  As far as
Lieutenant (soon captain) C.S. Strowbridge was concerned, such
officers existed just to make him look good.

    Sanchez gazed sourly at his commanding officer, "Look at that smug
bastard.  I should add him to the list."

    "List?" Dalton asked politely.

    "The list of people who're going to die," Sanchez said absently,
"some for good reasons, some for simple revenge.  But I'll leave him
off.  He's not evil or incompetent, just a towering scumbag of an
egotist.  The list is long enough already."



Suicide Squad 
8 
Three Day Pass


"I hate Coruscant. I've always hated it," Sanchez was saying. 

Dalton shook his head, "Have you ever actually been here before?" 

"Me personally?" Pablo asked. 

"Yes, of course you personally," Dalton clarified. 

"In that case, no. But I have heard a great deal about it," Pablo
replied, "from people whose opinions I trust." 

"That's no way to go about life. How will you ever find new things if
you've already decided how you felt about them?" 

"Why should I want to meet new people and discover new experiences?
Things are complicated enough, I want to keep them simple enough that
I can be drunk and ignorant twenty-four hours a day. Coruscant doesn't
fit into that scheme." 

Rob shook his head, "Drunk and ignorant. That's quite a goal, do you
think that you'll be able to accomplish it?" 

"It's easy to fail," Pablo replied, "but it requires a lot of effort
and training to fail as spectacularly as I am planning to fail. Take
the new morale officer, for example." 

Dalton smiled, "I'd love to." 

Pablo nodded and continued, "You know what I did this morning? I asked
her if she knew what fine Tercilian wine tasted like. She didn't know,
naturally, because there's no such thing. So I downed the cup of red
wine I was holding and asked if she wanted to find out." 

"That's a good one, Sergeant, really it is. What did she say?" Dalton
asked with a roll of his eyes. 

Sanchez shrugged, "She didn't say much of anything. She tried to punch
me but I rolled with it and it didn't do much. I she had connected,
though... what a woman. Now, have you ever failed so utterly at
something like that?" 

"Never." 

"You see? You just don't have my experience," Pablo concluded. 

---- 

The platoon was on Coruscant for rest and refit, a nice diversion from
the icy winter death zone of Shelemin Beta. They had helped to prevent
the capture of a minor waystation on the road to a larger waystation
which was on the road to the capitol of the Galactic Empire, and they
were damned proud of this achievement. Especially those members of the
group which had had their field promotions confirmed, Strowbridge
beaming with pride as he was soon to be transferred to command of an
obscure guards rifle company somewhere in the obscurity of the central
rim theatre. 

In the meantime, however, he had been presented with an incredible
opportunity to fullfil his devious plan of finding out what the hell
was happening to him and his platoon, and why everyone wanted them
dead. Most of his men, he could understand people having a desire to
kill, but he was simply too pretty and charming for anyone to dislike.
It had to be a conspiracy which was focussed on him, just as ninety
percent of all events happening anywhere were focussed on him. (It was
good to be an egomaniac). 

As part of its rest and relaxation programme, the platoon (né company)
under his command was guarding the Imperial Defense Board library, a
cavernous building which housed a lot of information. Strowbridge did
not know exactly how much data was there, and when he had asked
Sergeant Crayz, the computer-savvy unit quartermaster, the man had
told him to think of a big number, then multiply it by the biggest
number he could think of, and then that would get him somewhere in the
ballpark of how many different documents pertaining to the production
of female hygenic products were the mainframes. Everything relating to
the conduct of the Second Galactic Civil War was running through those
computers. This presented the guard (Strowbridge) and his slicer
(Crayz) with an incredible opportunity to find out exactly why people
wanted them dead (actually nobody really wanted Crayz dead, it was
only the members of the team actively involved in combat, which made
the horrible accidental death of former Morale Officer Chuck
Sonnenburg all the more tragic). 

---- 

"Look, goddamnit, I can't just /find/ the data. It has to be searched
for! You need to be specific, or it'll take hours. Give me a seed, for
a god's sake," Crayz said despairingly. 

Captain Strowbridge thought, "Personnel profile documents. Our PPDs." 

No soldier was supposed to get hold of his own PPD, which housed all
of the information that the army had collected on them. The two men
sat hunched around one of the hundreds of terminals in a tertiary
library, which was empty at that time of night. The immediate area
around them was lit only by the glow of the holomonitor.  As Crayz
initiated the search, a series of crashes and moans sounded behind
them. 

Strowbridge turned around, squinting into the inky blackness, "Damnit,
Björn, get your shit together!" 

There was no danger of them being discovered, because that tertiary
library was being guarded by their platoon.  But the bumbling was
dispelling the very hip secret agent feel that Strowbridge was
getting. 

Paulsen had tripped over a console and knocked a great number of
things from a nearby shelf. He groaned, "Can't we turn on the lights,
sir?" 

"For the last time, no! It's an atmospheric choice; stop being such a
buzzkill!" Strowbridge said. 

"Got 'em," Crayz announced, "Most of them are only classified level
Mother, easy to crack. Who do you want first?" 

Strowbridge leaned over and looked at the holodisplay, "Who do you
think?" 

"Captain Narcissus it is," Crayz said as he stroke the proper keys,
"Uploaded to our cube. Highlights..." 

Crayz was speed reading the display. Strowbridge had just recently
found out just after the Fall of Sonnenburg that Crayz was not an
ordinary, stock human. He was a crusty veteran, of course, but the
reason he was a quartermaster instead of a combat soldier had been
unknown. It turned out that Crayz had been shot in the head but
survived, much like the late Ryan Spickard. However, Crayz had been
fighting at a time and in a theatre in which the medical corps had not
yet begun to blow off their responsibilities, and he had recieved a
cybernetic brain upgrade in the interests of saving his life. 

When the accountants at the central hospitals had found out, they had
immediately fired off a barrage of memos ordering the doctors to let
their head-wounded patients deal with it by dying or going insane
(both being cheaper than fixing the problem) and moved Crayz to
quartermaster duty because his improved brain was too valuable to be
distributed all over some swampy battlefield by an unlucky blaster
bolt. 

Which was fine with him. 

He cleared his throat, "'Personality traits: Egomaniacal, ruthless,
self-centered, ambitious, competent. Recommend placement in penal or
one hundred PLR force.' That's a One Hundred Percent Loss Rate force,
abbreviated." 

"They hit the nail on the head, didn't they?" C.S. whispered, "What
else?" 

"Combat record, blah blah blah, full psych evaluation, yadda yadda
yadda. Boring stuff. It's on the cube, let's move on," Crayz
continued. 

"How about Kynes?" Paulsen suggested from the floor, under his shelf
and heap of datacubes. 

"Okay, he's still listed with us, but awaiting transfer to another
platoon," Crayz said as he skimmed the document, "Amoral, fond of
holding grudges, sex-crazed, intelligent. He seduced the psychiatrist
and didn't call her the next morning, so she recommended that he be
placed in a 100PLR." 

"Simple enough," Paulsen said, "me next!" 

Strowbridge growled, "I'll decide who we look at next. Paulsen it is."

"This is good. The assessor wrote, 'Intelligent, courteous, educated,
highly competent. Looks like your winning streak is OVER, fucker.' How
do you like that, Björn?" 

The medic was too busy making choking noises of rage to be bothered. 

Strowbridge considered for a moment. He wanted to find out the story
behind the assassination mission he had gone on with Sanchez, so the
new sergeant would be next. 

Crayz opened the file and hissed at the screen, "Double-U Tee Eff?" 

"What is it?" Strowbridge asked. 

"Just hyper-links to other documents. It says 'See FamilyProject.dev,
FamilyProject.opeval, CPabloSanchez6770.ppd, OPabloSanchez.ppd.' And
they're all classified at Level Victor; it'd take me days to crack
them. I don't know what the hell this means," the slicer said. 

"Try Yates. We hooked up with him on the same mission," the Captain
ordered. 

Crayz did so, "The same thing. Two 'Family Project' documents, one for
development and one for operational evaluation, and then two Nathan
Yates files with minor differences from eachother." 

"Shit. How long did you say you needed to crack it?" 

"Three, maybe four days," Crayz answered. 

"Make it so," Captain Strowbridge ordered. 

---- 

"Now, I know all you men are very bored with this guard duty,"
Lieutenant Antilles said over the mic, "but think of this: You're
guarding a library complex. It's not just dry reports. There's also
the Imperial Defense Board recommended entertainment list. There's a
lot of very good stories, movies, and games to be found. I have
prepared a short list." 

She cleared her throat, "On the literary side: Generals' Gambit, The
Defenestration of Corellia, Starcrossed, Journal of the Righteous
Defense of Coruscant, and much more. You may acquire a full list with
directions for access after my announcements have concluded." 

"Next, there are the movies. There are many popular and artistically
excellent films which can be viewed in the library cinema, here are
just a few: Marching Through Dantooine, Last Days of the Imperial
Palace--" 

Someone interrupted Kelly Antilles at this point. The entire platoon
under Strowbridge except for those on guard duty and those involved in
mysterious middle-of-the-night intelligence operations had been called
down to an auditorium to address the crippling issue of boredom and
its effect on morale. But, since most of them had not seen a woman in
some time, and were boorish pigs in the best of times, the focus soon
shifted. 

"I was in that one," Sanchez shouted, "It sucked! Why don't you just
sing us a nice song, that'll get morale up!" 

"Among other things!" someone in the back row said. 

Any further comments were drowned out by a wave of hooting and
hollering.  Sergeant de Fromage strode across the stage and grabbed
the microphone out of Kelly's hand. 

"Alright, you fuckers. You want something to do, I will PT your asses
till you fucking die!" he shouted, "I am NOT Kynes, I will NOT
tolerate this innuendo bullshit!" 

Private David, who was sitting in the front row, decided that it was
time to do something. He nimbly hopped onto the stage and pulled a
electronic pocket megaphone up to his mouth. 

"Alright," he said to the crowd, "I have an idea! A dream, if you
will!" 

Edam threw his microphone to the ground, eliciting a horrid screeching
from the speakers until they automatically cut off. 

"Where did you get that thing, you rat bastard?" he yelled. 

David turned and blasted the NCO with his amplifying device, "Shut
up!" 

He turned back to the crowd, "Now, my friends, I have a dream. Do you
know what that is?" 

Dalton, in the front row, asked, "Did you dream of a rhetorical
question?" 

"No! I had a dream of porn, gripe sessions, and a forum for free
expression. A brotherhood of men, and potentially a sisterhood of sex
workers closely involved. I have found a derelict lounge for just this
purpose beneath the library, who is with me?" 

The men cheered, for this was exactly the sort of thing that they
needed.  Edam was less enthusiastic, and he grabbed the pocket
megaphone and threw David from the stage.  But the force of his idea
was too great, and the men in the front row merely caught him and
carried him off to the abandoned lounge on their shoulders.  Edam
stormed out, and soon the only people left in the auditorium were
Sanchez and the morale officer. 

"That didn't go too well, did it?" the sergeant called up to her. 

Kelly gritted her teeth, "Obviously not." 

Pablo grinned, "Well, do you want to--" 

Lieutenant Antilles screamed, "No!"

----

Coruscant was a capital city during a massive war.  This meant one
thing: there were a lot of bars doing very well.  All it took to make
a good amount of money on Coruscant was a supply of alcohol which
would not maim the consumer.  Just as the entrepeneurial mind was
aware of this, so was the military mind.  It was obvious, then, that
all troops were supposed to be confined to their barracks or their
posts, and that the soldiers and the bars would do their damndest to
get them out on the town.

This created conditions that made the formation of a secret society
very likely.  When men are forced into a regimented setting and have
no access to mind-numbing chemicals, disaster is never far off.  Many
a mutiny had occurred under just those circumstances, but there was
nothing to be done about it.  The boredom destroyed respect of the
chain of command and commonly resulted in buggery, violence, or
desertion.  On more than one occasion the New Republic and Galactic
Empire had conspired to  open a new front solely for the purpose of
getting soldiers into the more controllable state of combat fatigue.

The platoon now had its own secret society.  Most of the troops who
had been guards for more than a few months did not bother with it, the
conscripts being the major participants.  It had created an espirit de
corps and structure of command wholly separate from the army, which
was a bad thing.  They did not care about conventional discipline any
more, and there was very little anyone could do about it.  When the
troops reentered combat, the new society would shatter, but who knew
when that would take place?  There were stories of whole divisions
transferred to Coruscant that sat and sat for so long that they
deserted and disappeared from the Imperial order of battle, fading
into the deep recesses of the Imperial City to live a troglodyte
raiding existence.

Until one or the other of those ends took place, David's society was
occupied with trying to have some fun.

"Leave me alone, you fuckers," Crayz shouted, "I've got work to do!"

David sneered at his superior, "This is more important."

"For the last time, there is no porn on this datanet.  This is a
government network, why would they have porn?" the quartermaster
asked.

One of the crushing crowd of David's followers shouted, "You never
know!"

Crayz shook his head sadly.  This was such a bunch of bullshit that he
could hardly believe it.  There had to be nearly twenty of them.  He
wished that Strowbridge was there, they might have listened to an
officer.

"Where did you come from, asshole, you're not even a member of this
platoon!" he yelled back at the man.

David stood up straighter, "It's none of your business, my friend."

"You will address your superior as 'sir!'" someone shouted from behind
the group.

The men all turned around to get a look at the new entrant, already
beginning to jeer.

Sanchez had just walked into the library where Crayz was doing his
work.  He had wanted to get something, but there were about twenty
idiots in his way, berating a superior officer.  Sanchez had seen this
problem of collapsing discipline before, or at least he had heard
about it (he could never remember what had happened to him, and what
he had merely been told).

At any rate, he knew he had to do something about it before the
situation got worse.  He asked himself the question which a surprising
number of NCOs across the Empire asked themselves:  'What would Kynes
do?'

Pablo knew.  It was imperative in this situation to assert dominance;
Crayz could not do it, because the soldiers thought of him as a soft
rear-echelon mother fucker who posed no real threat.  Sanchez was a
short, dark man who had killed many people without hesitation and
would do it again.  These men were soldiers like him, but also unlike
him, because not every soldier is a killer--especially among the
conscripts which composed these people.  It was thus possible for him
to do something.

He was still carrying his DL-44, so he whipped it out and pointed it
directly in the face of the nearest thug.

"Say it!" he ordered.

The man's eyes went wide and he stuttered, "S-say what?"

"'We were all just leaving, sir!'" Sanchez replied.

The man haltingly obeyed the command.

"Good!  Now get your hairy asses out of this library," the sergeant
gestured with his gun.

The men quietly filed past, and as the last one went by, Sanchez
reached out and grabbed him by the collar.

"You stay, David," he growled, turning to Crayz, "Get the Last Days of
the Imperial Palace, unedited version."

Crayz tapped out the command and handed Pablo the datacube.  The
sergeant pressed it into David's palm, "Here is one of the best
holofilms ever made.  You hatfuckers can watch that."

He pushed David away, and the private stalked out of the room,
plotting his revenge.

Pablo faced Crayz again, "Three-day pass."

"Easy enough," the slicer said, "Just crack this password prompt and
commandeer someone's signature... got it."

A sheet of flimsiplast emerged from a slot in the terminal, giving
Pablo the right to move through Coruscant almost at will.  Without
even a word of thanks, the assassin snatched up the sheet and sprinted
out of the room, as if he was afraid it would evaporate in his hands
if he waited even a moment.

Crayz turned back to where he was trying to slice into Sanchez's own
personnel files.

"Everybody's an asshole," he mumbled to himself.



Suicide Squad
9
Have a Sense of Humor

It was cold, almost unbearably so in the regions of the planet which
were uninhabited.  They had neither the benefit of the solar mirrors
and climate control nor the simple physical heat produced by living
creatures.  Much of Coruscant was now empty and dark, though its
physical damage had long been fully repaired by intensive efforts by
the Imperial government.  The Imperial city had once been a hub of
commerce, which all the great corporations and syndicates of the
galaxy locating their headquarters (or at least a major branch office
in the case of true leviathans like KDY and Blastech, who owned their
own planets) on the surface.  But the psychological and economic
damage to Coruscant was perhaps permanent.  The scale and reach of
this galactic war had made a far-flung corporate empire simply
unfeasible, except for those involved in defense contracting.  Lines
of communication were too uncertain, holdings too likely to be overrun
or divided.  The corporations had disintegrated into smaller and more
resilient bodies which could serve local interests without being
burdened by far-off possessions--something like what had happened to
the Empire herself in the years before the Vong.

Then there was the simpler fact:  No one wanted to live in a charnel
house.  There were billions upon billions of soldiers who had died in
such numbers and at such a rate that there was simply no way to
honorably dispose of them all.  They couldn't even be buried in mass
graves, because Coruscant itself was bereft of soil; most often they
were neatly stacked inside one of the innumerable vacant buildings and
sealed into the makeshift crypt.  During the battle the planet had
been a vast desert, its inhabitants nothing but a parade of men doing
all in their power to kill one another, so that their vast impersonal
governments could claim dominion over the blood-stained lifeless
stone.  Now it was just a rock, freezing out with no one to call it
home but half dead bureaucrats.

Sanchez knew all these things, but he didn't care, he had never cared.
He had started out knowing everything he needed, just like his
contemporaries.  And just like them, he didn't bother to look for
more, because he knew it was a waste of time.  They were all dead
anyway.  A soulless pessimism characterized them; they made good
soldiers but better corpses.

"It's fucking cold," Pablo said, and his words became a plume of
white.

He stepped onto the repulsor bus and swiped his identification card
through the slot.  The computer buzzed its approval and the NCO
stepped into the much warmer interior of the vehicle.  It was
half-filled with civil servants and military personnel, the only
people that still lived on Coruscant.  He took an empty seat just as
the bus jolted into motion.  The soldier in front of him turned and
offered his hand.

"Major Robert Wilson.  You look familiar," the man said.

Sanchez glanced at the hand neutrally, "Sergeant Pablo Sanchez.  I get
that a lot."

Wilson let his hand drop, "I thought you might.  Where are you
headed?"

"Nowhere in particular.  Is there any place you know?"

"Oh, I see.  Well, then I would recommend the Unknown Soldier Bar and
Grill to you, subfloor 80, sector 32, in the Palace.   You look cold,
you could use a drink," the officer suggested.

Sanchez paled slightly and looked out the window of the bus, towards
the north.  The grim trapezoidal facade of the Imperal Palace was
kilometers in the distance, visible as it towered above everything
around it.

"I never liked the palace very much," the sergeant said, his voice
somewhat weak.

Wilson's voice was still friendly, but not without a trace of iron,
"Nevertheless, it's a very good bar.  And everyone has to go by the
Palace when they've got shore leave on this planet.  It's the most
important landmark in the galaxy."

"I see.  I'll make sure I get around to visiting it, then," said
Pablo.

The major nodded and turned back to face front.  He got off at the
next stop, while Sanchez rode on.

----

"I'm glad you men are taking an interest in historical films,"
Leiutenant Antilles said, "it's not every day that a group of soldiers
gets to watch a documentary of this caliber.  Would you mind if I sat
in and viewed it with you?"

The various soldiers eagerly assented and scattered to recieve chairs.
A few came close to blows over who would give the young woman a seat,
but she got one for herself quickly enough to defuse the situation.

"Alright, you fuckers, I want a three-meter area cleared on all sides
of the Lieutenant or I will break your faces," Sergeant Fromage
ordered as the lights began to dim.  The enlisted men groaned but
obeyed.

Björn had got himself stuck operating the projector.  He clicked it
on.

The holo started immediately, the words 'The Last Days of the Imperial
Palace' floating over a pitch blake abyss.  They floated up, and a
brief description of the beginning of the war flowed past.  Simple,
secondary school things; the Rebellion, the Imperial Civil war and the
establishment of the New Republic, the short peace.  Then the Vong
invasions, repulsed thanks mostly to the brilliance of Imperial
Remnant Arms.  Immediately following it, the bitter recriminations
against the Republic's early conduct of the war, the Crisis of Public
Confidence, and a massive desertion to the Empire.  At this point the
film was surprisingly candid, as only an unedited version could be:
they admitted that no one knew who fire first.

Then the film started in earnest.  Scenes of the Coruscant garrison
mutiny which delivered the planet into the hands of the Empire.
Imperial Torpedo Spheres in orbit blasted holes in the shield, so that
Victory Star Destroyers could thread the gaps into the atmosphere and
eliminate point targets--with visceral footage of some going down in
flames and crushing entire borroughs like giants in their death
throes.

It was a very good film, Björn thought.  The enlisted men, chattering
like monkeys through the scrolling text, were overawed and silent at
the sight of such force.

A narrator came on over footage of infantry fighting room to room and
dying like flies.  Björn had seen the sanitized release version, this
was very different.

The narrator said, "At this early point in the war, both the New
Republic and Galactic Empire retained the basic military structure
which had existed since the Clone Wars.  Relatively small fleets, and
small professional militaries.  The mechanism of universal
conscription had not existed in any galaxy-spanning form for thousands
of years.  Within a month of the opening of hostilities both sides
found themselves in the depths of a manpower crisis, particularly on
Coruscant, where the fighting was especially brutal.  The average
infantry division in the Imperial City suffered casualties equivalent
to its pre-war effective strength every six weeks.  The system could
not be updated quickly enough to alleviate the shortage, and
reinforcements were not forthcoming.  Therefore, the Imperial Army was
forced to rely on local emergency levies to shore up it's defenses."

Footage of Imperial officers moving through a prison facility.

"The military governor of the galactic core, Semon Timosniko, ordered
that all prison populations be stripped of healthy inmates.  These
persons, ranging from multiple murderers to petty thieves, were formed
into penal battalions--which rapidly earned the nickname 'Suicide
Squads.'  With armed COMPNOR troops at their backs to ensure no
retreat, these men were expended like ammunition to wear down the
Republican enemy," the narrator continued, "The reactionary Vader
Youth provided another source of fanatically loyal, but tragically
inexperienced manpower."

A shot of the Imperial Palace, tiny dots of flame trickling out of
many windows and a vast plume of smoke and ash rising away from it.

"The last major deployment of these troops came just as the first
levies of conscripts arrived.  The remaining emergency levies were
sent as cannon fodder ahead of the main assault on the Imperial Palace
itself.  Those that few survived were folded into regular army units
to continue the room-by-room advance, their past crimes forgotten.
The fight for the Imperial Palace was the bloodiest of any individual
assault in the war."

A white-on-black word popped up again.  "Interviews."

----

"Fucking A, I have you now," Crayz mumbled as his fingers danced on
the terminal, "give it up, OPabloSanchez.ppd!"

Strowbridge looked up from where he had been dozing lightly, "What,
you've got that one cracked?"

"Mmhmm," Crayz said, his hands still racing.

"What does it say?"

The slicer rolled his shoulders to loosen up a bit.  He'd be sitting
at the console for a very long time trying to crack the file, and he'd
finally got it.  Now an officer wanted him to read it for him.

"It's right there," Crayz said, and leaned back in his chair for a
well-deserved rest.

Strowbridge mumbled as he scanned the document.

He finally spat with disgust, "This shit doesn't make sense.  It's a
dossier for somebody else, whose been dead for more than fifteen
years."

Crayz sat up, "What?  You mean to tell me that I just spent five hours
of slicing for nothing?"

The captain nodded, "Read it.  Name:  Pablo Sanchez.  Rank:  Captain.
Date of Birth:  49 AGR.  Date of Death:  85 AGR."

The quartermaster scanned the lines rapidly, "I don't know what the
fuck this is supposed to mean.  Look at his yellow sheet, he was quite
the criminal.  Five counts of murder in the first, a count of
conspiracy to commit murder, firearms offenses.  Looks like he got
nailed for some kind of assassination and then copped a pardon."

Crayz scrolled down, to find the dead man's combat record, "Shit.  His
combat record's long as Hell," the slicer said as he let his finger
hover over a line of the holo, "Here's when he shed the life sentence:
Conscripted in Sesswanna Convict levy, Imperial Palace more
specifically.  And look at all these unnamed secret operations, type
CET.  'Command element termination.'  Assassination."

"A bonafide fucking hero," Strowbridge said, "But what the fuck does
this have to do with our stupid and unheroic comrade?"

"His record says, 'Volunteered for Family Project, 83 AGR.'  I don't
know what the family project is, but there are files for it in Sanchez
and Yates' dossiers.  There could be a connection, and I think I could
get them by the end of the day," Crayz replied.

----

The interviews were with the various soldiers who participated in the
seizure of the palace.  They were a good cross-section of criminal
lowlifes, frightened conscripts, and leering psychopathic fanatics
from the Vader Youth.  Shot on location in dank cellars filled with
moaning wounded and devolved troglodyte soldiers, the film makers
asked the same series of basic questions.

"Why did you enter the Imperial forces?"

A fresh-faced Coruscant teenager:  "I wanted to do my part for the
Empire, and for Vader.  The Empire is the stalwart defender of all
that is right in the galaxy, and we owe them everything."

"What do you think of the Republican soldiers?"

A criminal with dead eyes:  "They die like the other people I kill.
Just more often."

"Do you ever feel fear?"

A hideously scarred gang member:  "Never, man.  Never."

It was a good cross-section of the poorer half of the Empire.  The
rich and well-to-do could avoid conscription through family
connections and simple bribery, whereas the young and impoverished had
to die.  This was the story of the mass infantry levy; money during
wartime was the freedom to go on living.

After about the tenth interview, the viewers were beginning to get
bored and talked among themselves.  They wanted to get back to the
violence and explosions and crashing starships and the blood most
especially.  The fact that these were real people that had really
died, people almost identical to themselves in circumstances, did not
occur to them.  When it appeared on the screen, violence was detached,
as if it hadn't really happened.  There was a barrier between them and
the men on the screen.  The Imperial Defense Board had once tried to
find a way to find that psychological distance and bring it to
reality, so that men could kill without compunction.  It was estimated
that close to 75% of their conscripts didn't actually fire at the
enemy, only randomly in their direction.  This was a damned shame and
a waste of ammo which could be eliminated if they could only give the
soldiers the same feeling they got when they watched the colors of
death in a holo.  This was a small but significant part of the Family
Project.

Interview number twelve was of some immediate interest to the people
concerned.  Silence enveloped the auditorium, blank shock overcame
most of the people there.  The soldier in the projection was lounging
on a shattered block of concrete, drinking what appeared to be a
bottle of whiskey, and not caring that his feet were resting on a
corpse.

"Why did you enter the Imperial Forces?"

He said, "I wanted to kill my fellow man, thereby liberating him from
the Republic.  I wanted to meet interesting new people and burn them
down like dogs.  I wanted to give something back to the government
which granted me poverty, forced me into a life of crime, and
condemned me to life imprisonment.  I wanted to come to Coruscant and
contribute to the destruction of the most important symbol of
government and order in the known universe.  But most of all, I got
drafted."

At this, Dalton laughed, "I guess he wasn't just bullshitting when he
said he was in this one."

The interviewer again, "What do you think of the Republican soldiers?"

"They're the same as me, or you, or this dead man," the soldier
replied, "we're all meat puppets in various stages of decay."

"Do you ever feel fear?"

Sanchez grinned widely on the holo. 

"I've been afraid all my life, so why should I fear death?  It'll only
be an end to the terror."

----

At the Imperial Palace, he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants.  It
was still as cold as hell, but he also felt the heat in his
extremities and face.  He was freezing and burning at the same time.
It had been both recent and distant, like everything he knew.  He was
a walking paradox, not human, not even an alien.  Sanchez was in a
turbolift.  He was not claustrophobic and had never been, but he still
felt as if the walls were closing in.  He had been here before and he
had not.  The logic of it drove a spike into his brain and he couldn't
tell whether he was sane or not.  Staring into that abyss, he couldn't
help but be nervous.

Reaching his floor, Pablo stepped out of the turbolift.  There had
been people on it, possibly, but he hadn't paid any mind to the gray
civil servants.  They might as well have been droids.

He walked down the hall, totally impassive while his mind shrieked in
protest.  He could see blaster bolts streaking past him , feel himself
sprinting full bore, and then a mind-killing pain in his thigh.  It
couldn't be this fucking corridor, he had been shot here.  What a
bunch of bastards.  His vision began to white at the edges just as he
saw the sign for the Unknown Soldier.  He staggered in and nearly
collapsed.  Pablo began to have dry heaves.

He closed his eyes and composed himself.  When he looked up, it was in
a dimly lit bar with the a large clientele and tasteful wall
decorations.  At last, something totally unfamiliar.  Not only had he
never been in this particular bar, he had never been in a bar that
wasn't a dive or an officer's club (which he would be promptly ejected
from).  Directly in front of him was a familiar face, though not in a
bad way.

The doorman had his hair died white and cut very short, and a wicked
scar ran from his chin through his left eye socket and on upwards.
His false eye glowed a tasteful and calming shade of blue.  He could
have been Pablo's brother.  Without the embellishments, he could have
been Sanchez.

Pablo looked at the man, "Why did it have to be here?"

"So we would always know you were the real deal.  It wouldn't be
difficult for the Ubiqtorate to make a fake, but the consciousness
modules had been smashed--so he wouldn't have reacted as you did.
Now, act normal, and have a sense of humor.  You're a regular here!"
the doorman replied, and pointed him to the door behind the bar.

Sanchez walked across the floor, waving back at the people who
recognized him.  He didn't know what was in the back room; his natural
instinct, honed by years of danger, would have been to be more careful
and suspicious and to prepare for a quick exit.  But he didn't have
any reason to fear.  He was among Family.

----

Crayz finished the slicing program with two rapid keystrokes.
FamilyProject.dev was now open to his perusal.

"Well, fuck me," he said after reading only the first line.

Strowbridge had been napping, but he awoke almost instantly, "Wh-what
is it?"

The slicer shrugged, "What is it?  It's clones, sir."



Suicide Squad
Final
Incident

"Each clone was given a name drawn from the same culture group as its
source material.  For example, copies of Colonel William Carpenter
were given names common to the Coruscant core area.  The proper names
Robert, George, Gregory; the surnames Wilson, Smith, Miller, etc. etc.
Clones of Ubiqtorate Special Agent Truong Quang were given names such
as Phong Nguyen, Phuoc Giap, etc. etc.  Because the population of each
group reached the number of permutations available from the names,
each subject was also assigned a number.  A clone of William Carpenter
might be designated Major George Miller #32012," Crayz read aloud.

Strowbridge was lying on the floor napping, Björn had returned from
the holo showing and still had some interest in the document, though
it was rapidly waning.

Paulsen moaned, "Can't we get past the damn nomenclature?  I don't
care about it."

"It's important," the slicer replied, "because a person's name is a
window into their soul.  How would you feel if your name was Pablo
Sanchez Six-Seven-Seven-Oh?"

"You know, he really didn't seem to mind, so why should I care?  Tell
us about why they chose the source material, the Captain-Assassin."

"Okay, we'll come back to the names later," Crayz said as he hopped
back to the index of the Family Project document.  He searched down to
where it explained the choosing of Captain Sanchez.

He cleared his throat with a phlegmy hack and commenced to reading
again, "Subject was chosen because of natural martial talents.  Prior
to military service, subject was an assassin for the Black Sun crime
syndicate, who was finally arrested after the successful elimination
of an Imperial Grand Moff.  After release from prison on a military
pardon, he distinguished himself in battle and special operations, and
displayed latent force sensitivity, leading to selection for the
project.  It was hoped that the clones would inherit the capacity for
force manipulation, but the it did not transmit genetically and the
clones displayed only minor force sensitivity.  This led to a drop in
effectiveness, but average combat capacity and exceptional
assassination skills led to a limited production run of 15 million
units."

"It's like rounds of ammunition," Björn said.

"Defective ones," Crayz said before continuing, "'After-market testing
and polling showed that the Sanchez model showed an unacceptable
tendency for mutiny, despite a self-loathing fatalism.  Remaining
models are designated for in-combat expenditure, with no further
production planned.'  As of three months ago, they're down to about
five million still around."

"Ah, good.  That must be what that thing with the Nguyen slicer
killing Knopf and trying to get us was about.  Using one clone to kill
the other," the medic said.

"You've interrupted me again."

Paulsen snorted, "You were being boring again."

"Oh!  Well, what would you like to hear about now, your exalted
highness?" Crayz asked theatrically.

"Read me a bedtime story, mommy," Björn said acidly, with a glance at
the snoozing officer.

----

When Sanchez walked back into the barracks where the platoon was
staying, he got nothing but stares.  What a bunch of fuckers.  Earlier
in the day, he had nearly had two heart attacks, and now they were
giving him the evil eye.

"What are you fucking dickheads staring at?" he shouted.  Some of them
ran away, the rest just continued staring.  He didn't remember being
that scary.

Then he remembered the holo he had given David.  Oh, right.

"That's right, men, I am the walking talking piece of immortality.
Get out of my way, unless you dare to hazard the abyss!" he shouted
again, "and where the fuck is Corporal Dalton?"

Someone shakily pointed the way.  As he walked past, Pablo waved his
arms mysteriously at the soldier.

"I hex you, a curse upon your house," the sergeant said gloomily.

He stomped off down the corridor.  He was pissed off, because people
were looking at him differently, because it was cold, and because he
was probably going to die tomorrow.  He had been in that state of
consciousness, the state where he was going to die tomorrow, many
times before.  But it had never been as permanent as this time.  This
time, he was supposed to die gloriously and in the pursuit of
something grand.  Before it had been for this ball of mud or that
patch of dirt.  Pablo resented the change, because after all that time
he had gotten resigned to dying for nothing.  It took moral fortitude
to die for a cause, all that it took to die for nothing was bad luck.

Eventually he ran across Dalton, together with his gunnery assistant
David.  The two were disassembling a T-21, cleaning it, and preparing
to reassemble it.

"Hello," Sanchez greeted them.

David looked up with the same dead stare that Pablo had been getting
for the last ten minutes.  Dalton didn't look up.

"How's it going, clone?" Rob asked.

Pablo shrugged, "Just fine, just fine.  Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Dalton said, "just wondering."

"Listen, Rob, I just got back from this important meeting at the
Imperial Palace--"

"What part of the palace?" Rob asked.

"It was in the back room of a bar across a table made of whiskey
boxes.  You should go AWOL tomorrow.  Just pop off for a drink until
the Governor-General of Coruscant makes a Holonet address.  There's
going to be this little coup, you see, and I am going to kill the
Imperial Defense Board and various others," Pablo said.

"Just you?" David asked dubiously.

"Me about five million times in administrative areas across the
Empire," Pablo clarified, "and who the fuck was talking to you?
Anyway, no one will care if you're out of duty during the thing,
Dalton, and the platoon is so close to the IDB headquarters that you
can't avoid getting called in to die."

"What about the rest of the platoon?" David queried.

"Well, I can't make you forget you heard this, so you could probably
go as well.  And Dalton can tell Paulsen or whoever else doesn't
deserve to die.  But don't tell everybody, because if the platoon
doesn't move at all the other troops in the area will liquidate you
before the Governor-General can declare for the coup," Pablo
responded.

"Who's coup is it?" Dalton asked, finally slipping the firing unit
back into the T-21 and looking up.

"Some Sith," Pablo replied, "but its mainly a
military-crushing-the-bureaucracy thing."

Dalton nodded his understanding, then asked again, "What's in it for
you?"

"For me personally, nothing.  For me in the larger sense, revenge."

David looked oddly, "What do you mean?"

Pablo sighed, "Imagine that your parents told you that you were
nothing but a mistake, an accident.  And then they did their damndest
to kill you.  Imagine that you had no purpose but to kill and die, and
it was all your father's fault.  That's revenge, my friend."

"This is all very confusing," David said.

"You think you're confused, step into my shoes.  I'm simultaneously
someone and no one, alive and dead," Sanchez said.

"I won't be going AWOL," Dalton said, "it's not my style to allow evil
people to take over the Empire without a peep."

"Your choice," Pablo said grimly, "see you in Hell.  Be sure and tell
Paulsen, though.  He might be smart enough to know not to take us on."

"Tell him yourself," Dalton said, anger creeping on the edge of his
voice, "he's up in the library, reading all about your personnel
files."

Pablo froze for a moment, then spoke again, "That's what Crayz was
doing?  Too bad."

He turned on his heel and walked out.  Pablo didn't go to the library,
he went straight back to the Imperial Palace, and the back room of the
bar.  He needed to look at the timetables.  He remained at the bar
until nightfall.  That was the time they had settled on.

----

Private Sheridan was on guard duty that night.  This consisted of
standing in a short tower next to a fence and trying not to sleep.
The entire expanse of the vast concrete plateau that the library and
barracks sat on was brightly lit by the base lighting, and it would
have been impossible to sneak across it.  Sheridan therefore had time
to play sabaac with his fellow guards and lose his dismal little
paycheck.

Then all the lights died.

Sheridan, clearer thinking that his fellows, lunged across the little
room and slapped the alarm within a second.  Nothing happened.  He
then turned to go for his gun, tripped on something, and fell to the
floor.  Then the lights in the tower went dark.

He laid there while his night vision recovered.  He heard his comrades
stumbling around, then there was a shattering of glass and a flash of
bright red light.  In the slice of a moment before it disappeared, he
watched the bolt transfix another soldier and send him thudding to the
floor.

Sheridan decided that he would continue laying on the floor, even
after his night vision returned.  Midway through his second minute of
terror something metallic landed on the floor next to him.  Then his
world ended in a flash of fire and flying shrapnel.

----

"Move move move!" Fromage shouted, "Get your gear, damnit!"

The dull thump of a grenade had awoken the sergeant.  Three other
explosions and a few bursts of blaster fire had reinforced the point.
Sleep-time was over, death-time was now.

A majority of the platoon had been roused, and they were getting their
shit together to defend the base.  No one knew why the enemy would
attack a library, but there was obviously no accounting for taste.
The enemy could appear anywhere at any time, because he was the enemy.

Fromage got his squad together and made for the front door of the
barracks.  His men piled out, straight into a volley of deadly
accurate small-arms fire.  Edam clinically identified the threat as
being E-11s being wielded by professionals.  He dove to the concrete
and hid behind a pile of bodies.  Soft fleshy cover was as good as he
was going to get.  The enemy had known precisely where he was going to
exit the barracks and had set up to cover it.  They were somewhere off
the in darkness, scanning for any survivors.  A corpse next to Edam
twitched and caught two bolts in the torso for its trouble.

Fromage willed himself to become a corpse.  Then he realized how
pessimistic that was and cursed himself silently.

----

6770 scanned the empty lot through his light amplifying goggles.  No
movement, the platoon had wised up and was no doubt bunkering down in
the buildings.  He bit down on his mic trigger.

"Remember who you're taking alive," he ordered.

The other responded with a hearty chorus of fuck you's and whatever's,
they knew their business every bit as well as 6770.

He signalled with his hands that they were to move up, now.  He would
take one squad through the door to the barracks, another would secure
the library.  As he stepped quietly over the cluster of corpses, he
noticed one in sergeant's chevrons breathing lightly.  He put a bolt
in it.

He bit the mic twice in a row, to connect with the inside man, "Cut
the barracks line... now."

----

Dalton was just inside the front door when lights went out.  The
bastards were cutting the power, and his NV goggles were missing.
What a bunch of bullshit that was.  He crouched, back to the wall, and
set his T-21 at his hip, aiming at the door.

A blurry shape came in, so Rob pumped a good long burst into it.  In
the red strobelight he saw two human figures crumple.  He let off the
trigger and charged forwards.  He reached the door and leaned around
it.  In the darkness he could barely hear noises of movement.  He
fired at the sound, and backpedaled into the barracks.  He bumped into
something solid but yielding and nearly screamed.

"Dalton?" Yates whispered.

"Yates?  Stop fucking around," Rob said quietly.

The other was silent for a bit, and no one came in the door.  So
Dalton thought it was alright to keep talking.

"Where's David?" he asked the other corporal.

Nathan rustled, probably shaking his head, "He couldn't make it."

"What?"

The warm muzzle of a recently fired E-11 pressed into the base of
Dalton's skull.

"Put it down and stand up straight," Yates ordered sternly.

Dalton dropped his T-21.  As he stood he heard bursts of blaster fire
going off through the barracks, and similar but duller sounds of
slaughter in the adjoining library.

"Walk," Yates ordered.  Dalton stepped through the door again, onto
the concrete littered with bodies.  Six armed men in dark uniforms,
faces covered with goggles and matte black paint, filed past them into
the building.

He stood there above the stiffening corpses for what seemed like an
hour, Yates and his gun just behind.  Finally the blaster fire
stopped, and a herd of platoon members guarded by the dark men
staggered out into the night.  They stood in a line in front of the
barracks.

One of the soldiers in black spoke, "Guess what, fuckers.  You're the
guests of honor.  We started this whole thing early, just for you.
You're the first people to die in the coup that launched the Imperial
victory.  Condolences and congratulations."

Then the others fired.  It took all of three seconds, and Dalton was
still standing.  He looked to his right and his left; of the whole
platoon, only he and Björn were still alive.

The soldier who had spoken lowered his E-11 and moved closer to
Dalton.

"You understand, nobody could know that it was clones who did this
thing, it would make it impossible for Darth Wong to get popular
support.  You're lucky we decided to leave you alive," he said.  It
sounded like Sanchez, but it could have been any of five million
examples.

"Very lucky," Dalton replied.

The clone sighed and said, "Eight of us are dead.  Do you want to know
if one of them was the one you knew?"

Björn answered for him, "Does it matter?"

The clone shook his head, "Not really, but here I am."

Pablo folded the stock of his carbine and slid it along its strap to
rest behind his shoulder, "7801, 1067, stay here and guard them."

Björn looked at the clone as he turned to walk away and overthrow the
current government of the Empire in favor of another dictatorship of
the Sith.

"How could you do it," Paulsen asked, "killing all these people you
knew?"

The clone paused, and said without turning around, "I never knew
anyone, because I've been watching this life as I watch a dream.
Pablo Sanchez died years ago, and I was never born.  I spared the two
I didn't particularly hate, and I would have bailed Kynes and Spickard
out, given the chance.  That's enough for whatever conscience I have."

The clones walked out, leaving only two of their own to guard Dalton
and Björn.  After a few minutes, the base lights clicked back on.  The
two took off their goggles and tiredly wiped black facepaint from the
space below their eyes.  One of them was identical to Sanchez, the
other Paulsen recognized as a Phong Nguyen.

Dalton just laid down on the ground and went to sleep, Paulsen stayed
up and stared off into space.  Perhaps when this was all over he could
go back to medical school.  He was sinking into a memory of how much
better life had been at university, when the Nguyen stood up and aimed
his carbine with the speed and grace of an oncoiling viper and
shouted.

"Halt!"

Paulsen looked up and did a double take.  Sergeant Liet Kynes stood
about fifteen paces away, carrying a pack of personal effects.

"Shut your ugly face, B--uh, whoever the fuck you are," Kynes shouted
back, "I just get out of the hospital and I've already got fucking
agenitalial wonder telling me what to do.  Put the gun away."

The clone was cowed by Kynes's tremendous force of personality and did
as he was told.

"What the fuck did I miss here, Dalton?" Kynes shouted.

Dalton shook himself awake, looked at Kynes, and glanced at the bodies
and pools of congealing blood.

"Nothing," Dalton replied.