Thud-thud, crack, crunch, “Waaaaa…” (yelling), “To the infirmary, you animal.” Jiu-jitsu rules, apparently.
Though here the discipline includes some things that weren’t part of it back home.
Closer to pankration mixed with elements of Krav Maga.
No idea how a fighting style whose actual inventors don’t even exist in this galaxy still ended up here, but I guess hand to hand combat evolves the same way for every sentient species eventually.
Either way, I broke this particular guy’s arm.
There.
He’d already worked three of us over pretty badly.
Now he’s lying there, silent, which fits.
Look at you, tough guy.
Master Kal brought in some hardened veterans for sparring today.
Not many of them, a bit older than the Alphas, fully grown, fully finished clones.
Something felt off about their whole demeanor.
Specifically, the one who took apart our guy was just number seventeen.
N-17, to be exact.
Only about two dozen of them total.
We’re clearly behind them in training, and it showed.
Master Kal silently scanned the group lined up on the mat and just flicked a couple of fingers.
Two of the clones he’d brought in immediately broke off and dragged their half broken comrade toward the infirmary.
I’d have joined him eventually too, that reptile of an opponent got a solid shot into my liver.
Not hard, but I felt it.
No, these guys are going to be terrifying fighters someday.
Almost no emotion on their faces at all.
Sharp, piercing stares.
Minimal wasted movement.
When you spend enough time surrounded by identical future soldiers, you start noticing the little things.
They matter, they add up to a whole picture of a person.
My current body genuinely feels uneasy standing near them.
There’s a cold, focused energy to young killers like that.
These wolf cubs got brought out to have some fun with us.
And look how that turned out.
Five to one, and not in Series A’s favor.
Though I might be exaggerating a little.
We had four people watching today.
Master Kal and his near copy, minus one obvious difference, Master Isa, in the same gold armor.
The black, unsettling armor of Master Walon Vau, our regular hand to hand instructor for the last couple weeks.
And, walking, breathing legend, Mister Jango Fett himself.
The full brain short circuit from seeing an actual living woman, the first one I’d laid eyes on here, passed fast enough.
Nothing happened physically, thankfully, though it was a near thing.
Honestly, there wasn’t much to look at anyway.
Armor built for someone fairly slight, chest plate barely needing any real curve to it.
Left plenty to the imagination.
Still, the fact that I’d taken down N-17, and in a sloppy way too, he’d let his guard down, sparked a real debate among our instructors.
Clearly happening over comms, since all I saw was them staring at each other through their visors, hands moving occasionally.
Master Vau seemed especially invested, but Master Kal had gone eerily calm and still.
I’ve studied that particular stillness of his enough by now to know it’s actually the highest level of tension he shows.
Worth mentioning, for the last month and a half we’ve been rotated through different instructors covering all kinds of disciplines.
Something’s clearly being planned.
Right, and that’s the end of the debate apparently.
Master Kal waves a hand, and the next pair steps onto the mat.
The matches are winding down.
Why’s this handsome guy glaring at me like that?
Come on, he’s got a nice face, I’m just being honest.
I flash a wide grin, probably a little unhinged looking.
Shall we dance?
Yeah.
So here I am, staring up at the infirmary ceiling while a med droid works on my ribs and left leg.
Not entirely sure how to feel about the outcome.
Held my own against two of them, the third one finished me off.
I did manage to catch the handsome one clean across the nose with an open palm, he nearly choked on his own blood.
But the next guy just wore me down through sheer endurance.
We’re not made of durasteel.
Fair enough.
Took about five minutes of me stumbling in circles before it ended.
In six months, our specialization training wraps up, and a year after that, assuming we’re not needed elsewhere, we’ll get assigned to some planetary garrison.
Frozen in carbonite reserve if it comes to that.
Except I already know that’s not how this plays out for me.
The real question is whether I manage to squeeze everything useful I can out of these instructors before that point or not.
The droid finished up the bandaging, flashed a warning in binary about avoiding falls for a while, and said the cracked ribs would need a couple of days to knit.
So, back to our quarters, not far off.
Through the technical corridor, past the Citadel, done.
And here I am, slapping bare feet against the familiar, slightly springy soft flooring of the corridor, heading toward our block.
What’s actually changed over the last six months?
Honestly, not much.
Just more of the same disciplines I’d already trained in, back during my time in military intelligence in my old life.
The one genuinely new development was going back to training in the sarlacc pit, the actual classroom side of things.
Medicine, political science, psychology, plus a whole pile of other subjects, some useful, some not so much.
Programming, for instance.
Feels like running on a hamster wheel to me.
Interesting, sure, but not exactly essential.
I’m no engineer, no tech specialist.
Give me a weapon that kills clean and quiet, no flashy light show, no obnoxious pew sound effects.
Let the actual technicians handle the electronics side of things.
I can field repair a speeder or an LAAT/i gunship if I had to.
Probably.
In theory, at least.
But real hacking?
Gods, no.
Relations with the others are fine.
They gossip among themselves worse than any small town rumor mill, over pretty much nothing.
With me, it’s strictly business, kept short.
I’ve built myself a solid reputation as the quiet, cold blooded type.
Slowly, but it happened.
And it was surprisingly easy, honestly.
Just talk less, stay calm, keep it brief.
Didn’t even feel like I was trying, but here we are.
And here’s the door.
Knock knock, you goats.
No, I actually respect these guys in my own way, I just can’t resist needling them a little.
So easy to rile up.
Heh.
Right on time.
Dropping myself into a chair someone had clearly dragged over from the gym, I found our boss and our progenitor sitting right in the middle of the room.
Fett himself.
He just narrowed his eyes at me for a second, sitting there without his helmet on, then jerked his head toward the door, get in already.
“For anyone late, that’s you, one thirty four, and for anyone who missed it, I’ll say it once more.
Departure in eighteen hours.
Between now and then, your job is finding a supply depot, sourcing gear for hot, humid climate, stocking up on food, and getting yourselves to landing site Ramu-A 411,” Fett said, grinning.
Worth noting, his voice is deep and rougher than I’d have guessed from the movies.
His face is a little different too, not by much, but noticeably.
Close, though.
“Sir?” the seventeenth asked, sounding hesitant.
“Where exactly are the depots and the site located?” “That’s exactly what you’re all going to figure out, Alpha.
Then get your gear.
On your own.” With that, he stood, turned toward the door, and called back over his shoulder on the way out.
“Oh, and almost forgot.
Don’t get caught.
Don’t be late either.
I promise you, I won’t wait around.” The second the bulkhead sealed shut, dead silence hit the room.
Then, two seconds later, the whole place exploded into noise.
Clones talking over each other, shouting plans, trying to figure out who might know anything about these depots or the landing site.
In conditions like that, somebody really needed to just take charge and start assigning tasks.
But apparently nobody was eager to volunteer.
Everyone’s used to just following orders.
Best I could piece together after a minute of chaos, our prep from here on is being handled directly by Fett.
Great.
Given the man’s a mercenary with basically zero patience for excuses, he’d handed us a genuinely hard task, and if we hit the mark in time, he’d only take the ones who actually met the standard.
Would the rest of them ever realize this whole thing was a team exercise?
The equipment and uniform depots are a couple levels down, easy enough to reach; we just need to move carefully.
Sure, they’re guarded, but distracting our own brothers shouldn’t be too hard.
Food’s simple, right there in the synthesizer.
Storage containers can be repurposed from the gym equipment; they’re sealed tight.
But the landing platform itself, nobody seems to have a clue.
I tried pulling it up on the terminals earlier, and the system kept giving me the same answer, no data available.
Meaning we’d have to actually leave the cadet levels to find it.
Wonder what exactly he meant by “don’t get caught.” Honestly, in the big picture, this is easier solo.
I can figure out a way into the depots, then improvise once I actually see what’s sitting in there.
Not that I want to be the one calling the shots here, but if this group can’t get organized on its own soon…
Well.
Here we go, I guess.
com/Hezzario