Tales from the Corps, Vol. 1/Nom de Guerre

Tales from the Corps, Vol. 1

Nom de Guerre

Gand had long since become accustomed to his Republic Marine-issue battle armor; it was molded to suit his short frame and didn't bob quite as much when he ran. It had only taken the armorsmiths a couple of months after his graduation to manufacture a custom-designed suit based on his stature and physiology; as he understood it, they had started from a set that had initially been designed for use by a race of cave-dwelling mammals called Sullustans. He'd been in the Corps for six years now and had finally made corporal eighteen Standard months prior to this day. Having served as a recon scout with Esk Company, Second Battalion, Sixth Marine Regiment had been among the most joyous times of his life. The bipedal oxygen-breathers that made up the rest of his unit had proven to be good company, and he enjoyed spending his free time amongst their many varieties. If nothing else, his comrades were good for some easy entertainment; as he was the best scout in the regiment, he was frequently invited by company commanders to "ambush" their troops in order to help keep them sharp and battle-ready.

So it was thoughts of happiness at many a well-played training prank that Gand mused upon as he walked to his commanding officer's place of business, which he knew was a rather sparsely-decorated affair that spoke of a career spent on the move from post to post. His own semi-private quarters were quite similar, as he did not own much of anything aside from his armor, his gear, and his uniforms, specially-tailored to fit his small frame.

"Corporal Gand is reporting as ordered," he said to the Rodian lance corporal stationed at the desk outside. “Gand believes that he was summoned by Lieutenant Xodl.” He regarded the being behind the desk; the Rodian was not much older than himself. A quiet individual, the aide was usually found at that desk, Gand had seen him quite often. Stacks of flimsiwork sat on the surface as the Rodian plodded through each sheet with methodical diligence. He wore what Gand could only surmise as a galaxy-weary expression on his face; his shoulders rolled forward, half-lidded eyes and a snout that was turned down. He seemed unhappy and Gand was not sure why. Surely this young Rodian had seen some action outside of the office setting at least some point before, as he had noted the sheen of a prosthetic under the lance corporal's pants when Gand had seen him walk down the hall in a loping gait. After this Rodian had recovered from whatever injury he might have sustained on the battlefield, how could he have been relegated to a desk for the duration of his enlistment? A cold feeling began to pool in Gand's stomach. He had seen what happened to former findsmen on his homeworld when grievous injury had prevented them from attending to their duties as they should, even if only until the limbs regenerated. Cast aside, they were, like discarded playthings. Cast aside, relegated to menial tasks. Injury was a weakness, a weakness that should never be revealed. Many findsmen had gone to great lengths to hide any injury that they had sustained, as if it were to be made known to the Elders, then they were deemed as unproductive nuisances. Burdens on the family. Many went into exile and Gand had known of a few that had taken their lives. Injury was a weakness and weakness should not ever be made known, else it will be exploited.

"You are expected, sir," The Rodian's voice, tinged with just a hint of a lisp, replied, snapping Gand out of his meditation. The aide pressed a button on his terminal and the duraplast door to his right immediately hissed into the wall. Gand strode smartly through it, stopping just short of where his commanding officer sat and, clicking his heels as he stood at attention, snapped off a precisely-measured salute.

"Corporal Gand is reporting as ordered, sir!" he repeated, placing a respectful emphasis on the last word.

The human officer smiled slightly as he stood and returned the gesture. Gand thought that he sensed that the expression held some meaning to it, but his understanding of the many varieties of alien body languages and facial expressions was still incomplete. "At ease, Corporal," he said easily, then frowned slightly. "It has been a privilege to have had you in my company, Gand. You've helped to keep the regiment sharp these last months, and with all the trouble that's been going on here in the Outer Rim, I hate to lose you."

Gand had not relaxed as he had been invited to; he had determined long ago that his fellow Marines respected humility and an upright demeanor&mdash;much as he and his own kind did. However, the lieutenant's words had been tinged with what his species referred to as "regret," and Gand was unsure as to why. "Gand apologizes, sir," he replied. "But Gand is not aware that Gand was planning to go anywhere."

Lieutenant Walthir Xodl chuckled a bit. "Never could get used to you referring to yourself in the third person," he remarked, careful to put enough emotion into his voice so that Gand could understand his meaning. "Or with you taking everything so literally."

He turned to look through the window and out into the village bordering the outpost, his hands clasped behind his back. "Unfortunately, you are going somewhere. Your service to this outfit has been exemplary, and you are easily one of the best scouts in the entire division. This has been brought to the attention of the brass at Coruscant, and Rear Admiral Oluth Par'fey has personally asked for your services."

The officer extracted a cheap, disposable order datapad from a desk drawn and offered it; gingerly, Gand took it with his three-fingered hand and examined its contents. The transfer order was simple enough: he was to catch the next transport back to the capital world of the Galactic Republic, where he would then be sent to Druckenwell, where the Twelfth Marine Regiment, Fourth Marine Division was assembling. An addendum noted that he was to receive training for a new role: as a fire-coordinator for the Republic Navy, he would be learning how to liaise with warships in orbit of a planet in order to call down precision strikes. Gand mulled this idea over; as a scout it was already his function to seek out enemy forces on the ground, reporting their position to the chain of command. This seemed to be a similar task but on a much larger scale, for instead of fifty of his fellows engaging the foe in close combat, he would be unleashing the highly-destructive firepower of spaceborne turbolaser fire.

"Gand understands, sir," he replied after a poignant silence. "Gand will go and gather his belongings. It has been his honor to have served this company."

&mdash; &mdash; &mdash;

"Second Platoon, ON YOUR FEET!"

The order, barked loudly enough to rouse the dead, evoked a swift and strong response as the forty Marines in the barracks shot out of their racks and slipped on their body gloves. As Gand zipped up his own garment, he cast a brief but watchful eye at the hatchway from which the command had originated. Standing there was First Sergeant Jalard'aven, a Twi'lek of the Lethan subtype who served as lead NCO of Aurek Company, First Battalion. A harsh taskmaster who nevertheless rewarded good, honest effort, he was responsible for keeping the enlistees and junior noncoms in line and following their officers' orders. It was rumored that he was in the running for a battlefield commission, or else a trip to OCS, but Gand didn't much care about such possibilities; he rather liked Jalard'aven, and as far as he was concerned, the sergeant could keep on being who he was.

During the five months Gand had spent in training for his new position and then integrating with his new unit, the conflict with Exar Kun's Brotherhood of Sith and their Krath allies had expanded exponentially, culminating in a raid on Coruscant itself that had seen the deaths of many Marines, Jedi, and the politicians they were charged with protecting. Ossus, where the primary Jedi archives were located, had suffered a horrific fate when the Cron Cluster had collectively gone nova in the wake of a battle waged within the dense mass of stars. Across the galaxy, marauding bands of Krath warriors were terrorizing the civilian populations of countless young and underpopulated colony worlds while trainee Jedi were suddenly turning on their mentors with lethal intent.

But that was all about to change.

The entire Fourth Division, under the command of Bothan admiral Oluth Par'fey, had been mobilized for a full-scale offensive. Backed up by the Republic Rim Fleet and hundreds of Jedi Knights, they were about to land on Kun's base of operations, one of the many moons of a backrocket gas giant in the Gordian Reach called Yavin.

And then they would pulverize it into a fine mist.

As he tacked on armor plates with finely-trained speed and finesse, Gand knew that he would be part of the first wave. The capital ships of the Navy would need someone with his skills to call down precision turbolaser fire, opening holes in the Sith defenses for the infantry and Jedi to exploit. Gand finished armoring up, securing his helmet seals after a hearty intake of breath from his now-packed breath mask as he did so. Hefting his chopped-down BC-7m carbine, he slung it across his back as he gathered his target spotting laser and heavy-duty field datapad with in-built surface-to-space comlink.

The Twi'lek sergeant had long since left, most likely having moved on to rouse Third Platoon. Taking his place at the hatchway was Ensign Kisslar, a young human officer who had taken over the platoon at about the time of Gand's arrival. At his beckoning motion, the Marines in the barracks assembled by squads and made their way to their transport.

"Hurry up boys, we're behind schedule," he said to no one in particular as he jogged behind his marching troopers while they made their way through the bowels of the massive Republic cruiser. He didn't seem to notice nor care that the troopers he was tailing were holding their own private conversations over preset channels.

"This is it, Gand," the voice of Staff Sergeant Faldalon Pikosa, his squad leader, commented idly. "You scared?"

“Gand is not afraid for the safety of his person,” he replied, equally nonchalant, ignoring the cold feeling that had crept up the back of his neck. That feeling usually manifested when the mists were trying to inform him, but he did not have the time to meditate on that. He had a mission to do, a goal to meet; the mists can wait. "Gand is eager to rain destruction upon those who would sow discord among his beloved Republic."

That's what I like to hear, son," the veteran noncom said approvingly, grim satisfaction in his tone.

"You're really not afraid, sir?" the high, raspy voice of PFC Jondon Lir, Gand's assistant coordinator and supposed bodyguard, chimed in hesitantly.

"Of course we're afraid, you nimrod!" Pikosa shot back indignantly. "Only a loon or an idiot isn't afraid of impending battle!"

"Focus on your mission, Private," Gand offered, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. "Keep the enemy away from Gand and he will call down fire on anyone who would dare to harm the platoon."

"If you say so, sir," the enlistee replied, and Gand could detect an increase in nervousness in the young man's voice and demeanor.

"Snap it up, you lot!" Jalard'aven barked into the platoon frequency as he jogged past, the plates of his armor rattling like a poor-fitting carapace and his overlarge "jarhead" helmet bobbing up and down. "We're pads-up in three merns, so hop to it!"

The platoon increased its pace to match that of the first sergeant as Third Platoon joined in on the procession, taking up station behind them as they neared the huge bay that housed the battalion's transports. Gand knew that they were aboard just one of many such cruisers, each carrying another battalion of Marines in their bellies. Though as a fire-coordinator, he had only been taught the basics of fleet operations; he had learned enough from his instructors and so-called "bedside reading" to be reasonably sure of how this would work. First, the vanguard of the Republic fleet would surround the moon, clearing away any hostile warships and cutting off all avenues of escape into hyperspace. Then the main body would launch the Marines' transports and begin setting up on their prearranged bombardment coordinates. Meanwhile, the first wave of Marines would secure a landing zone, defending it as the rest of their brethren and then the main force of Jedi Knights arrived on the surface.

Aurek Company, Gand knew from the previous evening's briefing, would be among the very first to touch down.

&mdash; &mdash; &mdash;

"All right, ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to bring the pain?"

"SIR, YES SIR!"

A being not wearing full Marine-issue assault armor would have experienced near total silence in the transport as it made its descent toward the surface, carrying First and Second Squads from Second Platoon. As it happened, Gand was not so unfortunate, and inwardly he appreciated the uproarious camaraderie that lit up the comm channel. This was the time when good combat leaders made themselves evident, delivering last-minute information, advice, or pep-talks to their troops. Sergeant Pikosa was especially good at this.

"The average Massassi warrior is over two meters tall," he said, the bravado in his voice unchanged. "They weigh in excess of ninety kilos, and have sharp bone-spurs sticking out of all sorts of unpleasant places! But they are NOT immortal! You shoot 'em with your blasters or stick 'em with your vibroblades, and they will die just like any other scumbag! Am I understood?!"

"SIR, YES SIR!" the troopers replied loudly.

Gand, however, did not join in the revelry; his voice was ill-suited to shouting over a comlink through the ammonia-based atmosphere contained within his helmet. Instead he kept his compound eyes closed, focusing on the mists and steeling himself for action, a ritual he had known and perfected since long before he had ever heard of the Republic Marines. Perhaps now he could answer the call he had felt earlier, the beckoning to look to the mists for answers to the battle's outcome.

"Thirty seconds!" the human belted out at the top of his voice.

"THIRTY SECONDS, AYE!" the half-platoon responded enthusiastically, which yanked Gand from his momentary meditation. Thirty seconds was simply not enough time, the mists will have to wait.

The time seemed to pass in an instant, for no sooner were the words out of their mouths than the transport bucked hard to port as it slammed into the thick air of the moon's troposphere, with Gand's stomach following in close pursuit. The buffeting continued, with the Marines in the compartment grabbing onto roof-mounted handholds for support; handholds too high for Gand to reach, so he braced himself against the bulkhead as he was jostled from side to side. Half a heartbeat later, the machine impacted on the unforgiving surface, its hatchways blasting open in a rush of hissing and escaping steam. Almost immediately, Gand's ears were assaulted by the din of battle: the blood-curdling screams of friendly and enemy combatants, the whine of blasterfire, the puk-puk-puk of missed shots impacting soil and stone, and the unmistakable sounds of bodies being horrifically abused by hulking, red-skinned monstrosities.

"Move! Move! Move!" Pikosa screamed, leaping out of the nearest hatchway and gesturing wildly for the rest of the platoon to follow. Ensign Kisslar, displaying the sort of gornt-headed bravery that Gand had not expected him to possess, was the first to follow&mdash;and the first to die as the well-aimed bolt from a Massassi weapon shattered his faceplate and exploded his skull.

Reacting instantly, Gand shoved the deceased officer's smoking corpse out of the hatch, following in its wake as he dashed out of the transport and into the sun. He felt a twinge of remorse for the fallen ensign, but the scream of blasterfire told him in no uncertain terms that he did not have time to mourn. The clear blue skies of Yavin 4 drew his attention for only the barest hint of a moment as he threw himself at the rough ground in order to avoid another burst of accurate suppressing fire. Unlimbering his blaster carbine and cradling it in his arms, he shimmied forward on his belly, heading toward an exposed outcropping of rock that had been seared black by the pre-landing bombardment. All around him red and green bolts blanketed the air in a colorful but deadly crosshatch of energy, but he knew that he couldn't just sit here and wait for the others to emerge from the transport&mdash;if they made it out at all.

Unhitching his equipment bundle, Gand wedged it between the outcropping and the dirt beneath it, then poked his head over it for just long enough to take a quick look at what lay before him. Somehow he had managed to snake his way through the blind spots of around ten Massassi warriors as they lay a brutal pattern of fire on the landing zone from their fortified position, which looked like it had been made in haste out of large stones. Intent on taking advantage of this turn of events, Gand set aside his carbine and armed the pair of fragmentation grenades he had been issued, flinging them into the small, improvised redoubt. The resulting explosion was so near that the shockwave resonated within his sealed cylindrical helmet, causing Gand's head to spin in momentary disorientation. After a brief spell, he pulled himself together sufficiently to observe the effects of his ordnance. Eight of the muscle-bound brutes had been blown apart, with another two bleeding profusely as they staggered about senselessly. Gand gave the survivors no chance to recover, coolly unloading a pair of shots apiece into their heads.

"Nice work, Gand," crackled Sergeant Pikosa's voice into the platoon frequency. "Alright people, I'm taking over the platoon for now! Move up, get into that cover and prepare for counterattack!"

After collecting his gear, Gand vaulted the outcropping and made his way through the carnage to the position he had just cleared out. Setting his carbine, he kept vigil as the remaining members of the half-platoon picked their way swiftly toward him. "Who did we lose?" he asked once they had caught up and began setting up a base of fire around the first of the platoon's two heavy repeating blasters.

"Aside from Kisslar, we lost Henshel, Ybai and Ilgor dead plus a few others wounded, though they're still fit to fight," the sergeant replied. "The transport's a loss, though; she took too much fire while we were using her as cover and the crew is taking refuge inside. If it weren't for you we'd still be pinned down back there."

"Gand does what he can," Gand replied as he sat next to a particularly fat rock and began unpacking his targeting laser. "Where is Lir?"

"Right here, sir," the private replied, squatting next to Gand and helping him in unpacking and setting up their equipment. His armor had been scorched and furrowed along his right upper arm, likely a glancing blow from a Massassi blaster.

As the remaining Marines took up firing positions around the repeater, Gand sat his laser atop the rock and began looking through its optical scope at the far horizon. Tuning out the rest of the battle even as it unfolded around him, he scanned the vicinity for anything that even vaguely resembled a threat. The laser, coupled with its onboard computer and the field datapad, did most of the work for him. As he pulled its invisible cone of beams through a full circle, it slowly mapped out the terrain around them out to a range of five kilometers. Fortunately for him, the squad's position did not seem to be within the line of sight of any Massassi snipers that were surely out there, because the laser needed to be at the highest and least obscured point possible in order to do its job.

"Gand has the field," he announced after having completed his scan, which was downloaded into the datapad and combined with data being received from other, similar devices in the possession of other units.

“We're through to Fleet," Lir said. "I have the Orskinay and Elephantine on channel and open for business.”

"Alright, let's get them some targets," Pikosa added brusquely. "Looks like another transport's coming in, over to the left!"

Gand peered through the scope in the direction the sergeant indicated, where another ship much like the one that had delivered him and his fellows to the surface was making its own rapid descent. "They are taking fire," he said, with a strange tone as though he was commenting on the weather. His nuances struck him as odd for a moment, but he shrugged off the feeling. "From another makeshift redoubt, Gand thinks. Coordinates three seven zero by Aurek Forn Jenth..." That cold sensation continued to gnaw at the back of his neck. No time, Gand told himself. The mists will have to wait.

"...by Aurek Forn Jenth," Lir repeated into the comlink. "Fire mission is hot, we have inbound."

Silence descended upon the forward position as the two squads waited for the promised orbital strike. Sure enough, within moments a cascade of red lances as thick as tree trunks plunged toward the surface, impacting on the indicated target area and sending up geysers of half-melted earth and rock. "Fire mission complete," Lir said into the comlink before turning up to regard the squad leader. "What now, sir?"

"Now, we wait for reinforcements," he replied with some measure of satisfaction. "Unless Gand can find you something else to shoot at, of course."

"Gand has something," the insectoid corporal said as though on cue. "Grid square three six nine by Aurek Forn Leth, target appears to be enemy foot-mobiles advancing in column through a nearby gully"

"Numbers?" Pikosa asked harshly.

"Gand estimates about thirty in all, sir."

"There's gotta be something else," Pikosa insisted. "They don't just move into the open like that, not unless there's a whole wave of 'em."

"Gand does not see anything," he replied tartly. "But he will continue looking. Lir, call it in, adjust fire two degrees northwest."

A few moments later, another burst of turbolaser fire churned up the ground, vaporizing the advancing enemy troopers and deepening the gully by a considerable amount. Meanwhile, another six transports had landed and departed, dropping off the rest of the battalion before heading back for the orbiting fleet. As the bombardment cleared, a seventh craft began its ascent.

Which was precisely the moment when everything went completely to Chaos.

As Gand brought his laser back around to regard the landscape beyond the landing zone, it was suddenly filled with red skin pulled tautly over bulging muscles. The air was rent by the keening roar of the bare-chested warrior as Gand attempted to scramble away from his assailant, knocking the scope from its perch. He was not fast enough, however, and was yanked into the air by his left leg&mdash;white-hot pain shot through the appendage and his hip as he was tossed about like a human youngling's ragdoll. His body snapped forward and backward, arms flailing. An involuntary shriek escaped from Gand's mandibles as the creature then grabbed the corporal's left arm and began to pull as though to tear him in two. Pain slammed across his body as if he were hit with a board and his carapace cracked in sickening protest. Dimly, he registered the screams of more warriors, the shouting of his fellow Marines, and the whine of blasterfire as it engulfed the compromised position. His breath came to him in strained gasps; a sliver of wet cold in his left side where he heard the plates of his exoskeleton give way. He felt his shoulder and hip separate, pain seeping out in a warm dampness that moistened his body glove. Darkness began to creep in around the edges of Gand's vision as the Massasi continued to abuse his body.

A blaster shot resonated particularly loudly within his ears, and Gand felt himself hit the ground with a dull thud.

"They're charging the landing zone!" he heard Pikosa shout through the gelatinous pounding in his head, the sergeant's voice muffled by the pain. Gand gingerly attempted to work his injured limbs, but to no avail; the joints were dislocated and the Sith warrior had mangled them with all the savagery of the fabled gundark. His arm was bent at an unnatural angle and his leg had folded under his weight when he had fallen. He turned his glassy gaze to the blood-soaked ground in front of him, and saw that his antagonist, a massive hulk of a beast, lay flat on its back next to him, a smoking hole right between its solid yellow eyes. The mouth gaped, the head twisted at an unnatural angle, and the dead eyes were fixed on Gand.

"Sir, are you okay?" Lir was saying as he injected a syringe of kolto into Gand's helmet-mounted feeder. "Corporal Gand, sir?"

"Gand...is...alive..." he ground out through his tortured vocal chords. "Get...the scope..." His labored breathing sounded strangely loud and contained within his helmet. A deafening whoosh in his ears with each breath, ammonia swallowed into lungs that strained against a crushing band of pain. His throat burned, his chest burned, his arm and leg burned.

"More are on the way, let's get you out of here, sir!" Lir insisted, attempting to drag Gand to his feet. The grip by which Lir held him caused further dislocation in his shoulder and Gand could feel one of his chitinous plates shift inward by the movement. A burning vibroblade of pain slid into his chest and he inhaled sharply.

"No, Gand will not be moved!" he snapped, the sudden burning pain pitched his voice into a loud shriek. He arched his back to shake the private off and reached with his working arm for the surface-to-space comlink. His body protested in pain, but after a few frantic moments of clawing, he finally grabbed the cylinder in his tri-digit hand. If more of them were threatening to overrun the landing zone, then there was only one way for them to have gotten in such a position unnoticed... "Fire mission danger close," he strained into the device, quickly so as not to allow the pain to influence his words. "Grid square three-seven-one by Aurek Forn Krill!"

"Fire mission danger close acknowledged," the voice on the other end of the channel replied coolly, unfazed by the order. "Advise seeking cover in five ticks..."

"MARINES, HIT THE DIRT!" Pikosa screamed, and the ground shook as fourteen bodies impacted the soil. Lir had flung himself onto Gand's prone form in an attempt to shield him.

Five seconds later, the promised artillery fire rained down upon the designated coordinates&mdash;the grid square immediately to the east of the position occupied by Gand and his comrades. The cacophony of noise was nothing like the war cries of charging Massassi; it was like the cracking bellow of some tremendous beast of legend, whose mouth was the size of a shockball court and whose vocal chords were ten meters long. A wave of intense heat washed over the survivors' prone bodies like water; several muffled cries of pain were carried over the comm. After what seemed like an eternity the noise and heat abated, and an eerie silence descended upon the battlefield. The smoke dissipated like a fine mist, its swirls a hypnotic and beautiful reminder of the forces that had rent the ground into scorched, cracked particulates.

"Check in, people," Pikosa ordered as he stood up and shook himself back together. "That won't be the last of them."

Gand managed to communicate the fact of his continued existence through the pain that still racked his arm and leg, which had since crept into his thorax and abdomen. His breath came in short, shallow gasps&mdash;pain had effectively curtailed any deep inhalation&mdash;and he was suddenly very grateful to the Marine Corps' armorsmiths for having done such a fine job on his suit's vacuum seals. Clenching his mandibles, he managed to use his good arm and leg to move himself over to a stone, where he rested up against it. "The scope!" his voice rasped to Lir after a moment's respite. "Get the scope up!"

"Aye, sir!" the private replied, extracting the device from underneath the corpse of a dead Massassi. "I've got it up..."

For the next ten minutes Lir called coordinates, which Gand obediently relayed to the warships tasked to their spotter scope's data feed; the activity kept him conscious and helped to distract him from the crushing pain that had wrapped itself around his body. The half-platoon he had landed with, now whittled down to a single squad of combat-effective troopers, occasionally blasted Massassi that managed to get too close. The barrages continued, carving a mini-canyon through the soil as they were marched up the valley through which the counterattack had come. With each strike, more of the mist-forsaken moon's defenders were annihilated.

Finally, exhausted and in excruciating pain, the blackness came for Gand...

&mdash; &mdash; &mdash;

Voices, distant and muffled, began to flit through Gand's consciousness like the whorls of mist within the atmosphere of his homeworld. His awareness slowly came to him; one of the first things he noticed as the sounds around him became more and more distinct was the absence of that crushing pain. For that matter, there was no pain at all. He felt a soft surface beneath him and he attempted to open his eyes to see who was speaking, but the lids were two heavy to lift. After a few moments of listening to the goings on, he shifted slightly, carefully working his body underneath the blankets that he suddenly realized were covering him. It was at that point that he noticed an odd feeling in his left limbs; starting just below the shoulder and mid-thigh. A strange tingling sensation was present, he could have sworn that he could feel the heavy fabric of the blanket resting on his foot, his ankle felt tense and twisted at an odd angle. His hand was clenched in a tight fist, a tightness in his elbow. He tried to flex his limbs, only to realize that they were gone. Taking a deep breath, he dully realized that someone had found his breath mask and had fitted it to his face; his focus, however, was on his missing left limbs.

That cold sensation that he carried throughout the battle enveloped his head and chest and his heart began to thud against his thoracic plates. The bandages he felt binding him, the limbs that had been removed... the mists were trying to warn him. They were trying to warn him. He could have survived intact if only he was able to listen to them! If only he could have taken that brief moment and meditated, he could have been privy to the outcome. He would still have his arm and leg, he would have survived the encounter without injury if he would have taken one single moment to listen to the mists, to heed their warning! He shook his head&mdash;or what ever virtually unnoticeable movement he could muster&mdash;now was not the time to punish himself. That nagging, cramping feeling in his ankle, albeit a phantom sensation, was reminder enough. A reminder of letting his guard down. What a foolish weakness. He had gotten complacent, and thus careless.

More voices brought Gand further out of his internal diatribe. "...are able to regenerate," a male voice was saying, judging by the pitch and tonal quality. Gand did not recognize the speaker, but that was to be expected. "His species is phenomenal, it really is."

"He's a phenomenal Marine as well," the voice of Lieutenant Belton Carter, Aurek Company's commanding officer, replied. "That little shrimp sure does have one tough ass..."

&mdash; &mdash; &mdash;

"They gave Tuffass the Distinguished Service Order for his troubles, along with the Crimson Cross, Second Class," the Gand continued, wrapping up his story. "Then they fitted Tuffass with prosthetic limbs until his natural ones completed regenerating. It is as you think. Tuffass is called Tuffass because he has a tough ass. That is all."

Laera, wide-eyed, did not reply. Night had fallen by the time the elder sergeant had finished recounting his tale. The Navy chief who was in charge of the commissary belted out a warning, informing the now-sparse crowd that the place was about to close its doors and lock up. No one seemed to pay the harassed-looking Nikto any heed, however, save for a Rodian corporal in BDUs who was wolfing down the last of his own snack. Laera blinked a few times as she regarded the stragglers, then focused her attention back on her old drill instructor who had now become her comrade.

"That explains your name, but not the&mdash;"

"They grew out too short!" Tuffass hissed just loud enough for Laera alone to hear. "Tuffass does not know why, and he has long since ceased to care. What matters is that Tuffass can still serve the Corps and, by doing so, perhaps spare another young Marine from sharing his fate." Those last words were said quietly, with a hint of remorse.

“But anyway, that was the end of Tuffass's active service career,” he continued. “He was put into a succession of desk assignments much like that wounded Rodian had been, where he eventually received promotions to sergeant and staff sergeant. He would have languished in that field were it not for the new Commandant, Oluth Par'fey, his old division commander. She was a wise warrior, a veteran of the Droid Revolt as well as Kun's war, and she was appalled at Tuffass's situation. She offered him a promotion to gunnery sergeant and this opportunity to train maggots, and he took it, gladly and without haste. And that is how you came to be taught by such a tough ass.”

Laera nodded and smiled as she mulled this over quietly. The thought of Tuffass behind a desk was something that she simply could not picture; to have such a presence be relegated to flimsiwork, with only a computer to bark at just did not seem right. As much as her younger, less-experienced self would have hated to admit it, she was glad that Tuffass had become a DI, as she could not imagine him as anything other than the overbearing, obscenity-bellowing teacher whose methods had become legendary. And a remarkable DI he had been, considering the trauma that had caused his ever-present limp.

The idea of asking the Gand why he did not use compensatory devices, such as a thicker sole for his left boot, was dismissed almost as soon as it coalesced within her head. The answer had been obvious since the first day she had ever met Tuffass: sheer, gornt-headed pride forbade the tough sergeant from showing the slightest hint of weakness. Even entertaining the thought of sparing himself such discomfort was likely a shameful thing, which also explained his reluctance to discuss his personal history&mdash;nearly being ripped in half by a beast over twice one's size would cause any reasonable being to become a bit unhinged.

"I think I understand," she said at last. "Thank you for confiding in me."

"Tuffass is glad that you appreciate his tale, young sergeant," he said with a snort, though it lacked any sort of scorn or vehemence. "He may disagree with your own training methods, but he cannot contest their results. But it is getting late, and Tuffass requires plenty of rest."

"Thanks, Gunny," Laera replied, standing up and turning toward the door. She was about to leave when she noticed that the Gand was having some trouble extricating himself from the bench. Catching a glimpse of a pair of human recruits who were also leaving, she subtly moved to her left in order to obscure the struggling sergeant from their view. By the time they moved on, the insectoid had freed himself. "Could I walk you back to your quarters, at least?"

"Tuffass would appreciate that."

As they walked, Laera's own memories began to churn...