A day in the life
Posted on Fri Jan 19th, 2018 @ 7:45pm by Major Cornelius Tremble
Edited on on Thu May 31st, 2018 @ 9:51pm
1,531 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Episode 2 - The Enemy Within
Location: Marine Country
Timeline: MD003 04:30 - 20:00 hrs
Tags: SD 71375.0430
Depressingly, his alarm sounded at 05:30. Neil swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and sat there, rubbing his eyes and rotating his head, slowly stretching neck muscles.
An audible pop sounded when he turned his head abruptly to the right.
He hated mornings.
Well, mornings aboard. There wasn’t a sunrise or alien landscape to greet you and get your mind started. Instead, he turned to routine. His morning routine consisted of a large glass of water, PT clothes, the other half of a protein bar and, depending on the day, weight training, long distance running or sprints.
Unfortunately, today he was running wind sprints.
“Oh joy,” he murmured as he left his quarters, for the gym. The gym was quiet,, which he preferred and he left the lights dim as he began stretching. Fifteen minutes later he was running on his preferred treadmill, music hammering in his head phones.
Thirty minutes later, he was done. He had finished the cool down portion of the sprint routine and was sweating and breathing heavily. The bio monitor he wore on his wrist was in the yellow, so he kept walking around to get his breathing under control. Once it turned green, he wiped down the treadmill and walked back to his room.
After a quick steam and clean in his sonic shower, he treated his face with a pre-shave oil, mixed up sandle wood scented shaving soap in the mug that had belonged to his grandfather and used a well stroped straight razor on his face. Once satisfied with his appearance, Neil ordered a mug of Sharazzi coffee and confronted the paperwork of the day.
There wasn’t much, but he needed to keep up with it or it would grow to haunt him. Glancing at his schedule, he noted that he had a detachment meeting with the LT at 13:00. In the hours leading up to lunch, he had classroom work of his own and his squad’s to look over. After the meeting, he was running his squad through hand to hand training on the holodeck.
Normally, he wasn’t a huge fan of holodeck training, but it allowed him to program scenarios and opponents to fit likely foes. Today, he was running them against Bajoran guerrillas. It was a theme week with urban training against insurgents. It wasn’t likely they’d ever go up against Bajorans, but they had been very good and were indicative of the kind of fights they got thrown into.
Peace Keeping and Chase the Nut.
Neil reviewed his notes and packed it all away before he headed to chow. He insisted that his squad eat lunch together a minimum of four days a week. Without regular barracks, it was hard to build the unit cohesion as quickly as Tremble preferred. When troops lived, worked, and slept in the same environment without added distractions, they tended to gravitate together.
Especially if the team leader kicked their fannies enough to make them hate him a little bit.
Being in charge was not a popularity contest.
Once he finished in tasks for each of his sapper team, he let the computer chose a randomized end game and decided they would insert via transporter. Ideally, it should run eight minutes and wring them out like wet washcloths.
(After Detachment meeting)
An hour after the detachment meeting, Tremble was leading his team through a rocky gorge when the Bajoran’s sprung their attack. Flash, who was on point had his emergency shielding flash and he yelped in pain as they all dove for cover.
Swearing, Tremble brought his M-304 pulse rifle around and lit up the hill side above based on the trajectory reading and best guess he was getting from his tactical computer.
“Flash, you alright,” he called out in as calm a voice he could as he ducked down behind a big boulder.
“Yeah, Gunny. Shield’s burned out though and I think I may have popped my corn.”
“Your corn is fine Flash,” Teal called out. Teal was the team’s Corpsman’s and she sounded a nervous over the team net. “It’s getting hot around here though,” she sputtered as more rock from a multiple near hits showered the shallow depression she had found. “Peavy, you going to do anything about this?”
“Yeah yeah, hold your water Teal. Three seconds to get your launcher’s set,” the team’s Engineer called out.
Tremble picked up the feed in his goggles and angled his rifle, butt on the ground at the prescribed reading as Peavy dialed in a response and remote fired the three squad launchers. His was preloaded with a smoke grenade, while Peavy and Lark’s were set to deliver munitions. Explosions just over the ridge line and a immediate cut off of incoming fire was all Tremble needed.
“UP, UP. Get to the top of the ridge double time,” he bellowed and the team ran, weaving along the barely suggested track they had been following until they reached the way point he’d picked and they dropped into cover behind a cluster of boulders. Tremble moved to take point as Teal helped Flash get himself together. Changing his goggle’s tasking, he was about to wave the group into cover when he got a warning indicator and held up his hand.
“Booby trap,” he called out as he scanned the area. He wasn’t surprised by this tactic, but it annoyed him that they hadn’t been able to avoid an ambush. He saw the pressure activated mine between boulders where they would have had to slip through and he pulled a black box from his belt and activated the damping field that would (should?) block any electronic triggers the thing might have and he drew out his field knife and inched forward, checking for any decoys while the others set up an ad hoc perimeter. He stopped and considered things first however, then spoke.
“Teal, how’s Flash?”
“He’s ok Gunny, superficial burn when his shield over heated. Peavy’s replacing the components.
“We’ll be good to go in one minute, Gunny,” Peavy called out in response to Tremble’s next question.
“Make it half that, we’re not stopping here.” He ordered, pulling up the topographical overlay and nodding to himself. “Right, we’re going left and around. The ground sucks, but we’ll go slow and come back to the trail in 100 meters or so.”
The team moved out and as they reached the trail, the holotank dimmed and they all straightened.
“What…” was all Flash got out as they joined in and Tremble held up a hand, pulling his goggles down around his neck.
“That was the Sim. I know were were supposed to check out a hidden weapons cache and blow it, but we must have passed the sim’s requirements for success in this. Computer, report?”
“Confirmed, Gunnery Sgt. Tremble. Your team successfully survived the ambush that was designed to push you to the likely cover position at the top of the gorge where a munitions kill zone was set. Overall, team success scored at 90%, given the guidelines and parameters of this test.”
Grunting, Tremble looked over his team and shook his head. “The computer is being nice. That was fairly sloppy. Just because we don’t normally do sweeps like this, doesn’t mean we forget our field craft people. There was a lot of sloppy cover and movement decisions made and we wasted time, given the score.”
Sighing, he removed his patrol cap and itched his head. “We’ll debrief in ten. Drop your rucks and get some water and protein, meet in the squad bay.” He replaced his cap and set his rifle on the ground and shucked the pack and equipment harness he was wearing. Tremble watched as the Marines all did the same and exited the arch which had appeared. All of the gear disappeared in flashes and he followed his team out.
The debrief only took fifteen minutes. It confirmed that the entire team had been sloppy here and there and they had reacted as they should have. Still, given everything Flash would likely have died if it had been actual combat; you never knew how the portable shield generators would actually function. Tremble wasn’t too hard on them, but suggested that they would be doing many many more such drills in the coming weeks.
He also informed them to triple check their gear for the inspection in the morning and suggested they all get into their racks early as he’d be doing a pre-inspection inspection at 04:30. There were mutual groans, which he ignored.
After a quick supper, he went through his own kit with a fine toothed brush and racked out by 20:00.
~Another Glorious day in the Corps,~ he thought, as the lights auto dimmed and some jazz music his father had introduced him to came up, tonight the randomizer started with Miles Davis, Blue in Green.
Gunnery Sergeant Cornelius Tremble
Team Leader Rifle Fire Team 2, USS Pioneer
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