🐺 ~PROJECT SAC-1~ ⚔️

Chapter 47 - Politics 🗣️

(ONDERON)

The speedy verbal and visual lessons had come and gone. Now, it was time for hands-on, nitty gritty training in rebel bootcamp.

"Hustle, I said hustle!" Talla could hear Rex's gravelly barking in the distance, "C'mon, move it like a soldier!" One recruit stumbled on his way to the assault tank, "Like a real soldier!"

To his credit Saw Gerrera was at attention nearby, continuing this line of motivating belittlement, "C'mon, Dono!" Another rebel was lagging behind him, "Pick it up, Hutch! You can do better than that!"

It seemed he was more than willing to help turn people up into capable and confident soldiers. Talla fully understood this pattern of phrase and behavior was necessary for these rebels to succeed under the dire circumstances heading their way, but the fact of the matter was no one had asked Saw to help, and he had humiliatingly failed the assault tanks demo that he had now so presumptuously chosen to oversee - perhaps trying to make up for it by showing his impeccable self-proclaimed leadership skills?

It only irritated Talla. Out here, Ahsoka would be the buffer, the peacekeeper really, and her title as a Jedi exalted her so much that she did not have to become a Drill Sergeant like Rex and Talla to earn the compliance of these rebels, where the pushback was real. Talla mimicked Rex as best she could since she never had a Drill Sergeant as a cadet, only a ruthless Mandalorian. Much of her cadet years were indeed fuzzy or completely locked away deep in the recesses of her mind, but there was one distinct memory with a flamethrower she could never forget even if she wanted to - She figured that approach wouldn't be appreciated by the peacekeeper, though. Talla didn't appreciate it much either at the time, she still found herself having shaky hands to use a fusioncutter or a blow torch when making repairs to things, but hey, at least she had survived so far out there in the field!

Like her brother, it seemed Steela Gerrera wasn't actually so technologically gifted as her volunteering for Talla's seminars had suggested. Talla had granted Steela several different assignments she'd claimed would prove her worth as one of the tech savvy team members, and each request became less confident than the last because she failed. Repeatedly. While the rest of Talla's trainees picked up on the tips and tricks remarkably fast, just as hoped for.

Right now, they were in the middle of one of the more complicated lessons because it wasn't logical or fair for Talla to hold back the other trainees for one poseur. And stupidly stubborn as ever, Steela was alongside the rest of the students, a droid head in her hands while having one of those regulation wrist computers, which Talla managed to snag from the armory before departure.

After subtly scanning over some cheat sheets on her wrist computer, Talla whipped out one of the intact B1 droid heads that they brought with the supplies, salvaged from the front lines with their commlinks torn out so it wouldn't give away their location. It was laid on its face on the holotable so the back hatch could be cracked open and Talla could show them all the inner workings, and what had to be calibrated with what to first get that connection to the wrist computers.

Talla tapped in the final sequence into her mini keypad and lo and behold finished her demonstration in fifteen seconds, a new record for her! Not as fast as Tech but still impressive. The droid head was picked up by its long neck and with some coaxing by light tapping it against the edge of the table, it whirred back up to life. "Huh?" Its high-pitched nasally droid voice sounded, moving its head side to side, and shook when the panic set in, "Hey, what's going on, where am I -?!" Talla finished typing something else, smirking underneath her bandana as the droid head seized, it rebooted with a low hum, and then ordered her students for her: "Now do what I just did and make it snappy, soldiers!"