Meeting the Major

Posted on Wed May 9th, 2018 @ 10:22pm by Major Hailey Weston

Mission: https://wellington.pegasusfleet.site/index.php/sim/missions/id/4
Location: Major's Office
Timeline: Prior to SpecOpsWarning

ON:

Christine finished unpacking and made sure her pet was secure and fed. She suddenly saw the PADD that held her orders and realized she had to see the Major before anything else. Picking up the PADD, she took off at a run for the Major's office.

Arriving on the correct deck, she made for the door and hit the chime and straightened her uniform and hair and waited for a response.

"She's not in there." One of the uniformed Marines mentioned as he passed by, "Ma'am." He added as he noted the silver bars on her collar, "The Major is rarely there, right now, though, she's on the range for her morning target practice." He gestured in the right direction, "Good day, ma'am."

"Damn it...", she said, and headed in the direction that was pointrd out. Hurrying down the corridor she nearly tripped over a tool kit that was left out in the open. Swearing, she continued to the firimg range and proceeded to enter.

The brunette in the center of the spherical portion of the range held two phaser pistols and was in the process of shooting down the swarm of holographic drones in a systematic way, each vanishing after a brief flash of red. With twelve of the drones left, she finally made eye contact for perhaps an eight of a second with the new woman, then even as she ripped that contact away to continue her practice, a smile started to grow on her face. A flurry of shots later, the last drone flashed red and the minor forcefield that would keep stray shots from flying around the area dropped, Hailey holstering one of the phasers and swapped the second with a woman wearing two swords, who handed her what was just as obviously a slug-throwing automatic that she automatically checked and holstered on the left hip. Hailey exchanged a brief bow with her before she walked off the mat, the other woman taking her place.

Hailey took the few steps over to the newcomer,"You must be my new exec, aren't you?"

"Yes I am, and I must say a hard act to follow sir. However, I am pleased to meet you and this is the firing range? This is much better than what I had on my last assignment", she said, looking around.

"Actually, this is the holo-ring, makes it easier for something like I did, or your basic personal situations. A door down is more of the 'range' itself, fifty feet of actual space, but can holo-it out for at least phaser rifle practice." Hailey was somewhat vaguely disappointed with the lack of salute, but shrugged that off, "We have a lot of space here, but not enough troops to fully fill it out, so we've repurposed a lot of the space." She gestured for the new arrival to follow her as she strolled towards the actual firing range and worked to recall which of the several officer requisitions this one had been.

"I'm going to be blunt with you, Lieutenant, but before we really take much time in getting to know each other or for you to settle in, I need to ask you a couple questions. This unit is not yet certified as such, but it is in the process of being turned into a Raider team. I have a couple veterans I know rather well, but I'm also bringing in new blood as well." The face finally clicked into Hailey's mind and she nodded, "I know you have some special operations experience, but this is a step above that. SpecOps does some of the behind the scenes and dangerous missions, but they have limits on some of the basic 'danger' levels in comparison, so my first question I have for you: Are you afraid to die?"

Snapping a fast and correct military salute, "No sir! Dying for ones country and service is what we get paid to do. Death is just a part of living and is not to be feared, only to be embraced as giving ones self the will to live for a cause", she stated.

'One strike.' Hailey thought to herself, waving off the salute, but not stopping her stroll, "Our job is not to die for our country, but to make the other bastard die for his." She pointed out, "Roughly quoted from General Patton, one of the best pre-space generals there was. "And I hope that doesn't mean you havea death wish, because I don't want any of those people on my team. We don't go where angels fear to tread, we go where angels don't dare go. I don't remember the exact statistics, but the odds of a Raider surviving fifty missions is about twenty-five percent. Being unafraid of meeting a grisly end is good, but don't be too eager to lay down life and limb, it gets other good people killed. Second question: Are you married? Do you have any significant other? Pets?"

"Sir, I am not eager to die if that is what you mean. I remember a quote from World War ll history. 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', however I am not sure who said it, but the meaning is clear. If you kill one of ours, we kill one of yours", she said, keeping pace with the Major. "As for the second question, married no way. In Zen's past hosts there were marriages and relationships that either ended in divorce or death. Pets...well I have two...otter pups. They are in a self contained unit which has an automatic one week supply of food and water. They help in unwinding and relaxation when in quarters. I don't walk with them unless I am going to the holodeck and that is not often", she added.

Hailey nodded slightly, "Eye for an eye is a lot older than than that" She quirked a smile, "Pretty much back to the start of recorded history on Earth, a fine chap named Hammurabi is who it's attributed to, from Mesopotamia." She had to point that out why? She didn't know, but it was important somehow, "But unattached isn't a bad thing for a unit like this. Special Operations teams tend to have a logistics chain, even if it's a bit out of the way, with extraction assets pretty much on call in case shit hits the fan. Raider teams oftentimes don't have those luxuries, especially the emergency extraction asset. They go in, they get the job done, then they have their rendezvous locations for getting out, or other arrangements. A Raider team is meant to be it's own entity, as little reliance on others as there has to be. Are you sure you want to be a part of that? There's no shame in saying no, I've known many excellent Marines who didn't want to take that big of a risk."

"Sounds like something I had hopes of being one day...a Raider. The idea of rescue and extraction is something on the order of saving lives or going in to do some damage.I am willing to risk it and become a Raider", she said, looking at the Major.

"I happen to think you're crazy, exec." Hailey shook her head slightly and smiled just as much, "But that's not a bad thing in this job either. You really are going to have to play a lot of catch-up, because I want my exec to definitely earn the respect of the rest of the team." She reversed her course, "So, let's go introduce you to some of the others. Right now we have a grand total of three experienced Raiders, two experienced SpecOps types, three potentials, four grunts I'm probably going to work on re-homing and another very... special case in their own right." As they re-entered the area, Hailey waved a hand slightly to get the attention of one in particular and another Trill said a couple words to a male with E-5 sergeants stripes and patted him on the shoulder, "Lieutenant Zen, this is Gunny Ami Rori, she and I go back a few years."

Christine was shocked a little as the Major introduced her. "Hello Gunny Rori, a pleasure to meet you", she said holding her hand out.

"My pleasure, ma'am." Ami shook the hand firmly, "As I'm sure this young reprobate has told you, I'm your senior NCO and one of the experienced troops, going on about six hundred fifty years is it?" She thought to herself, "Rori has been in the military for that long, part of various special operations teams for gods only know how long. I'm also probably your best hand to hand specialist in the team."

"Zen has had her share of military, spec ops and a smattering of demolitions. I still have a load of things to learn", she said.

"And she's good at most things, likes playing the teacher and is rather good at that part." Hailey added, "You can ask her basically about anything and anyone here and she'll have the answer. I've been giving her most of the boring paperwork which, thankfully, I can start giving you in a week or two." Hailey smiled brightly at that.

"Oh joy...paper work", she said, laughing along with the Major.

Ami gestured to the matted area Hailey had used as target practice, "Nyx is about to begin, I need to get back to Chavez." She flashed another smile to Christine, "I'm sure we'll get to know each other really well, ma'am."

"Yes Ami I am sure we will and soon", she said, still smiling as a glint of light caught her eye and she dropped to a defensive stance immediately.

There were three Klingons in full armor and wielding bat'leths, other bladed weapons circling the woman with the swords, who was crouched, left foot forward, weight mostly on her right, arms and swords forming a circle with the tips nearly touching. It was obvious that she was waiting for some... Thing.

Hailey glanced at her, then to Christine, "Computer, what level is this scenario on?" The answer of four came back almost instantly and Hailey nodded, "Set to level eight."

The Klingons immediately began to appear more feral and predatorial in their circling, Nyx, in the center, turning her left foot back about an inch, turning her right toes inwards slightly, her crouch deepening by perhaps a centimeter and a half, her eyes fitting very, very briefly to Hailey before back on the task at hand.

Then one of them stopped and attacked, followed in sequence by the other two. A level of eight was close to real combat, far closer than the 'training' level of four that had initially been called for, but not unheard of for the war priestess. Against three, she was put immediately on the defensive, angling her blades during interception to deflect each of the blades in turn, using hr footwork to keep them mostly in front of her, finally ending up with two vaguely in front of her and one off to the side.

In one concerted move, two of them began swings low in a bid to cut one or both legs out from under her, the other, from the side, slashing to take her head off. Recognizing instantly, Nyx jabbed down with her downwards facing right handed longer sword to dig into the mat with it, placing the flat of her right foot onto it on the opposite side of one of the low-swinging blades, lifting her left foot above the other and interposing her other blade to intercept the slash at an angle to deflect it. As the high blade hit the blade and began to alter course ever so slightly, Nyx released the grip and let the now-deflected Bat'leth push the blade into a spin. As the handle reversed, she grabbed it again and pushed off the blade her foot was placed against, using the force of that bottom blade impact to propel herself into a somersault above the 'unblocked' Klingon, stroking her reversed blade towards and underneath his throat, causing him to crumple to the ground with that vital place cut.

Nyx, on the other hand, had kept hold of her other blade and used it to parry away a reversed slash and and brought the slightly shorter one inwards as she completed the spin to face the remaining two in a forward-weighted crouch, right blade facing vertical up, left blade vertical down in a reverse grip in front of her. A wide grin was on her face as she brought the left out facing backwards while the right she put horizontal as she pushed off into an attack. There was an aura of purple around her as she moved, strands of her hair glowing a deep purple, sweeping her left blade violently to intercept one bat'leth as it came down at an angle on her, just deflecting it as she dropped her right leg to slide past the right side of the one she designated her target, slashing with her right blade, blocked by the second bat'leth as she came back up and reversed to have her right foot forward.

This time she let them come at her, again angling one of her blades against an overhead slash, supporting the blade with her right shoulder, leaning her head forward to avoid the blade as it skittered off behind her, then twisted left to take herself out of another horizontal slash's path and click a blade out to take a nick out of the Klingon's side armor, unlimbering her right sword from her shoulder, to press the attack on this target while the other recovered. The first Klingon had delivered a vicious backhand slash to the Tialan that only took empty air while she shoved her longer blade through one of the handholds of the bat'leth. Predictably, that warrior twisted his bat'leth viciously to disarm her, but she twisted herself in three dimensions with her blade and came up with her shorter blade upwards into his stomach and out his back.

That left one Klingon and Nyx ripped the smaller sword out of the Klingon as she abandoned her longer one and faced the last one, left foot forward, weight on back right, blade in right hand, pointed towards the target and one hand out, two fingers vertical towards him. She took two steps towads him as he took a pair as well and began a flashing downwards stroke towards the smaller warrior. She brought her blade up and caught the bat'leth on the flat of the blade and bent her arms to absorb the blow, left hand on the flat of her blade to balance it against the bat'leth edge. Her knees bent, but she let herself get pushed backwards by the Klingon's power, giving him the at least partial illusion that he could break through her guard by the exertion of that strength.

The moment her right foot touched the 'wall' of the forcefield, she let her bent left knee collapse and rolled forwards and to the right as her now angled blade, deflected the bat'leth to her left. As she came out of the roll, she hamstrung the now very-overbalanced warrior and spun to her feet, blade intersecting with the warrior's neck in a two-handed grip as he tried to recover and turn to parry. The holographic scene dissolved as the head began to slip off the neck, leaving the now-almost-fully glowing Tialan alone on the mat, breathing heavier, but only a little, a smile on her face as she bowed to the audience and then retrieved her other weapon, sheathing both.

She rolled a shoulder and approached Hailey, “My Lady, that was not a nice thing to do. Thank you.” Her glow was fading as she got to the officer.

Hailey snorted in brief laughter, “You remember that 'special case' I told you about? This is Nyx Valentine, Staff Sergeant and Priestess Fifth Class of Bey'a'Dande?”

“That is correct, My Lady, though I still only show the Third at the moment.” She brushed the purple tattoo markings on her cheek, then turned to Christine and bowed to her, “My Lady, I apologize for not greeting you before, I was unobservant and failed to recognize your rank.”

Finally standing up straight again, "I to must apologize as well. When I caught sight of the light from the Klingon's blades, I went immediately to my defensive stance and stayed till the exercise was over. However, your apology is accepted. I enjoyed your exercise Staff Sergeant Nyx Valentine. It was most excellent and I would ask to be shown how to use swords like that. Maybe some day you could show and teach me how to use them. You never know when you might need that training", she added.

"There is no need for apology on your part, My Lady, threat reactions tend to be automatic when it's an unknown threat. I would be honored to teach you some about the blades as I can, however..." She glanced over at Hailey, "My style, however, is different than many I have seen non-Tialans practice, My Lady, and it can be difficult to pick up. I could work with you on some of the more classical Federation styles, if you'd prefer?"

"I would like that very much Staff Sergeant NYX Valentine. I would be proud to learn from you", she said, giving her a slight bow.

"My Lady." Nyx gave Hailey another glance, then bowed again to the new Lieutenant and rolled her right wrist as she went off towards the door where Hailey had indicated the distance range would be.

Hailey watched her go, wondering what the look had been about, but figured Nyx would let her know if it were anything important. "Chavez over there runs most of our demo right now, but he relies on 'more is better'. Rozhev there is good with a rifle, but not a sniper quality. I have a couple really good PFCs in Finch and Cassidy, I'm working on training them up to be close-in shooters, but if you need someone who can do anything, sniper, hand to hand, shooting at any range, anything but demolitions, Valentine is it. Me? I'm good with guns, at short and middle distance, but my initial calling was as a medic, but the Corps turned me into an actual doc."

Looking at the Major, "So who be the demolitions expert here? I can make a decent bomb but the Rangers, I take it need more than just simple bombs...", said to the Major.

"What I'm really wanting is an artist with demolitions. Those are extremely rare finds and I wish I could have snagged Almaze, but he's entrenched with Team Eighteen, the absolute best I've ever seen. Chavez is the best I have at the moment." Hailey shook her head, "But I'm willing to bet you're already better than he is, at least, if I remember your file right."

"Well...", she said, a small smile beginning to form, "I have been told that I am good, but I feel I need more training", she concluded with a Cheshire cat smile.

"We all can use more training." Hailey pointed out, "I can't teach you how to blow things up, not my specialty in any way, shape or form. My expertise in demolitions is P for Plenty, but I'll gin up a few scenarios to see what you're capable of. If you can't do those, then we know what you need to work on." She gave a very slight smile, "And I'll put you through a few scenarios to see your proficiencies in the other areas, shooting, hand to hand, teamwork, all sorts of things, just to evaluate what you know, what you don't and what we need to work on. All standard stuff." She gave a general gesture, but while I have no problems with you having pets, make sure there's someone who can also take care of them on a moments notice and without any warning whatsoever. If we deploy in a rush, we won't have time to do anything but grab our gear while I'm briefing the unit. Comms may or may not be available and I may not know how long we'll be away. If you officially join the unit, that's part and parcel of being a Raider. High risk, high danger missions on the spur of a moment.

"Well fortunately, I have that covered. The good CMO was kind enough to take over the care of the pups just in case. Besides, they are in a self contained unit that stores enough food and water for one week of my being absent and Janice will check in on them and if worse comes to worse and I...well you know...she was willing to take them as her own so that is not worrying me at all. As for being a Ranger, I definitely want to be one", she said with a gleam in her eyes. Truth be told, she wanted to be a Ranger for a long time as it was a child hood dream and now she had the opportunity for it to happen if she knuckled down and became the sponge for the knowledge.

"Ranger?" Hailey chuckled, "No, not a 'Ranger', those are just SpecOps teams, I'm talking about 'Raider'. Sometimes we take the best of the Rangers, but when I said we go where angels don't dare go, I meant it. In the Jinuan conflict, there was team of us, eight troops, who were on a C and C I mision that were caught behind their lines by a full battalion of theirs coming off the line. They didn't have enough left to bury their dead when all was said and done. There is no 'Ranger' team that could do that. We take the impossible missions and figure out a way to do them anyways."

Her face turned bright red in embarrassment. "Oh my god!!! How...bloody past lives...they get me so confused at times. What I meant to say was Raider's not Rangers!!! How embarrassing. Blasted!!" she said with tears in her eyes. She usually doesn't get confused but this time she did and it was not only embarrassing but it hurt deeply for her to have it happen in front of the Major. The one person she didn't want to see this happen and not now!!!

"Just remember there's a difference between a Ranger and a Raider and you'll be fine. There are quite a few Raiders who might hand you your ass for that. None of them are here on this ship, but they are out there." Hailey nodded slightly, "We'll see if you can fit in, Lieutenant."

"Oh yes Major...to be a Raider was a child hood dream and it would be something that my parents would be proud of if I made it. I will definitely try Major", she said as she snapped a crisp salute before walking for the doors.

"One final thing." Hailey said before she made it that far, "Until I get get you evaluated, we're going to slot you as the face of the exec here. If the shit hits the fan, chain of command will be Me, Rori, Valentine, then you. Just for the moment, okay?"

A look of puzzlememt crossed face just as she reached the doors, "Ok Major", she said, and left.
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OFF:

Major Hailey Weston
Marine CO
USS Wellington

1st Lieutenant Christine Zen
Marine Executive Officer
USS Wellington

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