Battle Born Vagabond Prequel

Chapter 10: Chaos: Sargent Chumura: Feb 06, 4996

I'm 9 years in and only Rank 5. So I asked my company to go back to basic, to help see, if I can get more points and pointers on getting more points. And the exercise this time around is very easy, I'm used to doing much more since the first time. My record is 12 extra missions, 28 assigned missions and 19 confirmed kills and 4 failed missions. My record is horrible and doing basic over again will bring me to rank 6. I will have earned the right to be Staff Sargent, to be called Dude. But for now, I'm in basic training again.

I'm in squad waiting for the orders from FSM Burger. "Chumura, Healy, Frailey, Papanaugh, York and Quesadilla get yourselves in the mech; I'm not telling anyone anything about the weapons. You figure it out; you're all smart enough to have survived so far. Besides, you should have been keeping up with your reading at least biweekly. Roll out!"

I'm waiting in line with everyone and I just see that the line isn't moving. This is taking so long. Reaux and Burger went down the stairs. The elevator takes another four people and I say, "This is bullshit! Civilian Healy, Civilian York, Private First Class Healy, Dirty Dog Papanaugh! Are you okay with me and the rest of us taking the stairs?"

I hear one of them say "Fuck yeah, this shit takes too long!"

I run down the stairs with a great scream and they scream as well and run down the stairs with me. I can feel them on my tail. We're just having a great time as we fly down the stairs. Shortly after, I can hear more screams as more people take the stairs. Papanaugh catches up to me and says "more people who aren't retraining might not know where the hollo-room simulators are, I'm going to catch up with you guys. Tell Burger if he asks." And Papanaugh picks up speed further and zooms really fast past me.

I get down to the locker room and I'm handed a card with the number 3 on it. And I get the gear from that locker. I hadn't put on a mech in a while. Everyone else is catching up and we're all putting on our gear.

FSM Burger turns to us right after I see Papanaugh walk by me beginning to put on his gear.

"I need to make sure in the other room that everyone is ready."

I see someone in their gear standing at the door waiting for him and talking to him. Almost right after he gets in there, he's walking right back and we are standing by our mech. Burger smacks the leg of a mech and is talking to Reaux. And Reaux runs to the mech that was smacked and we all get in and do our com checks that only go to Burger's mech. I guess that's why he demanded that mech.

Burger gives his speech over intercom about what is supposed to happen, what the objective is etcetera. I see on my heads up display the surrounding. It's beautiful, there's trees about the size of our mech. I don't know if we can get through these things or not. I touch one with the mech. I can hear the creaking and stressing of actual wood. We are not meant to go through these. But there has to be 1000's of them. I am separating out just like the everyone else. And tanks start appearing around the trees, occasionally one in a tree. Now I'm watching my step going further away from Reaux. Reaux stays right there with his arrogant attitude just standing there arms crossed "I'm waiting!" I get about 2km away from Reaux. I figure everyone is about the same distance as the time counts down. Tanks are reappearing without being in trees as the timer goes down from 10 seconds. Reaux again "I'm coming for you First Sargent Major Burger."

The bell dings and all the mech including myself run up to him. I'm the 2nd one there and Reaux dodges the first guy going under him and coming up on me and kneeing me in the chest. I try to grab and pin him to the ground, these damn mech don't have fingers. He flexes his legs and thrusts me up in the air with his legs. And is just continuing to wail on people around him. He starts to move away from us. And there's a loud burst and I see him get knock back real hard. I have no idea what happened. He is on the ground and the tanks are advancing and a few are firing at him. Some actually hit him. We wait for the dust to settle, just to see him fly out, and he suddenly has a large pole and he flips some tanks over. We go running after him and chasing him.