"Exactly." Jeremy was genuinely worried. With their enemies growing in threat, the chances of their survival will be lower than expected. With Lion's invention of body armor for everyone then that makes a gateway to another opportunity at hand, especially when they're in a hidden army installation.
"I believe it's high time we train everyone aboard this ship for military combat."
"Sir, I have some old holo-videos from my time with the SDF, it's mostly basic CQC-techniques and efficient ways for beginners to handle weapons better. I'm uploading copies to the Archius datahub as we speak, the crew will be able to access them on their PDA's."
Dwan, checking if anyone was in the bar, leaves the comfort of his secret quarters, closing and locking the exotic drinks cabinet in place. Dwan checks the clock to see that he's been gone for more than an hour. He wonders if anyone came to the bar while he was gone as he puts his away sign back under the counter.
"Good good, but videos could only do so much. I got it, I could ask the Major for assist."
"It's your call Cap, now, if you'll excuse me I have some more Knight sets that I need to attend to."
Jeremy nodded and turned to the door as he exited out. This was going to be a tough call, whatever it takes he's willing to put his men into a new perspective in combat. 'Let's hope everything goes swell.' Jeremy thought to himself, taking the lift to the hangar bay as he makes his way towards Major Kira's command.
Varn was thinking about the idea of training the crew. So he called captain Jeremy on the communicator. "Sir, a few seconds if you could spare them. The Major could help us, sure. But does the crew trust her? We all work for the same guy, but she hasn't been with us, when shit hit the fan." Varn realized his voice was getting louder. So he stopped himself. "Sorry captain. That was out of line. Its up to you of course, I wont argue with your decisions ,but let me offer some help. Allow me to train the crew in squad tactics."
Just when Jeremy walked across the corridors, he simply sighed and noticed the distant in trust was increasing every hour. "It's alright Varn I understand your concerns, but we need all the help we can get in order to defeat the enemy. The best chance is to request some sort of training, if she refuses then fine we could train each other ourselves." Jeremy hoped for the best at his reasoning with Kira.
Lion examined one of the helmets before he put it down. "That's the 20th set, counting the Caps'. Should be enough for a while."
Lion walked up to his desk were two weapons waited for his final check. "These are done as well, good."
He started organizing the armor sets on a shelf next to the weapon racks. The shelf was divkded into sections, one section for each crewmember.
All the sections had a nametag that included both name and profession, however unlike the tags on the helmets the ship's name was not present.
Lion returned to his desk and sat down he brought up a hologram of a type of scale armor he had been working on. Next to it was a hologram of a armored up Dracobine.
"Now to our latest addition..."
"Right good luck sir." Varn walked to the Nomad VI armor. He turned to Lion. "Best make one of those for me, Ill need a spear." He looked at the armor. "This beast right here needs more work."
Lion replied without even looking up. "Already did." He pointed towards one of the shelf sections that contained a slightly beefed up Knight set.
The tag on the helmet read "V. MERNER - SECURITY - ARCHIUS XI".
Yanim entered the bar after failing to fall asleep in her quarters. Her mind had finally stopped reenacting the day's events and the numerous projects which typically occupied her imagination had gone stale. Despite these things, she couldn't simply turn herself off. After nearly half an hour of tossing and turning in her bed she decided to dull her cognition with alcohol until she could no longer remember the words which were troubling her.
Kira focused directly on the large stacks of paperwork, the mind was stressful enough to fill out but this was spirit breaking. Unfortunately it's required to write out official documents such as maintenance reports, recent arrivals, employee safety regulations, and finally the accidental rates in paper. This meant she usually wanted to tear someone's limb apart if she gets interrupted.
She heard several knocks on her door, she rolled her eyes and awaited the inevitable. "Who is this and state your reason for interrupting me." She gave a stern voice.
"It's Captain Jeremy Spacehawk. I need to talk to you about training my crew." Once she heard his voice she at least got some relief to know it wasn't one of her workers. But his proposition was rather odd, he wanted her to train his crew? It's been a long time since her days she received training at boot camp.
"Come in." She gave the order for the Captain to enter through, he was assured that a seat appeared on her front. "Sit." Once he sat, her eyes laid on him like a pack of dogs that it gave him goosebumps.
"As you know my crew isn't bound for military combat, the only people who have ever received training is me and my security team. I would like to ask you for your help during the following week."
"You do know that one week won't fully turn them into killing machines right?" She crossed her arms.
"Any training is better than no training, I honestly don't expect them to become soldiers but I at least want them to get a fighting chance in case we have to fight the Crimson Son again." Jeremy exclaimed. While their chances of basic training being successful in one week sounded silly she felt rather inspired to hear a Captain speak out for his crew like that. From his point of view he desperately wanted to do save their asses on the line and that was fine for her. She just felt that they needed more time.
"Alright, I'll meet them and see what do they need to improve on. I"m going to need help too, does your security team mind if I burrow them?"
"I honestly don't know, I'm sure they will be glad to help their members. Though my crew has difficulty trusting you. I've already received some skeptical comments and it's not exactly compliments." She could only be left unfazed by the unfavorable opinions about her.
"Whether they hate me or not it's not my job to care about their opinions. In the end I'm helping them out to unlock their potential and I believe that's all that matters."
"Wait aren't you a commissioned officer, shouldn't a drill instructor be more fit for the job?" He questioned. She could only glare daggers at him comically. "You want me to help or not?"
"Right, lead the way."
Iska had woken up, and once again there was nothing to do so she decided to visit the bar.
She strolled in, still a bit drousy from just waking up.
"Hello dwan, usual" she managed to say between a long yawn. As she sat down at the desk she looked over at Yanim.
She seemed troubled, but Iska was no talker. Being a khergian she had loved her whole life with the mindset that people should face their own problems and overcome them alone because this would make oneself stronger.
As Iska took out a cigarette she noticed her pack was empty, and she requested Dwan throw in a Taubor red label pack as well in her order.
By the time Iska had entered the bar, Yanim had just ordered [I]dzekor[/I] with vodka. Dzekor was a drink component commonly available in kanad-controlled space and in nearby systems as a bottled mixer, made by combining aspartame-sweetened [I]stryptika[/I] (a minty substance extracted from a family of trees which practically cover the planet Tredet,) with a small amount of purified blood (usually sourced from fish.) Normally, the alcoholic component would be [I]skolka[/I], or diluted methanol, but vodka was more or less identical in taste.
Yanim had never had this drink before, even though it was one of the few domestically-produced libations from her world. She was too young to drink until she graduated from the Academy, but even then it seemed like a pointless, expensive luxury. It was only after she took her first offworld job that she had the money to drink recreationally, and she had largely been taking recommendations from other species which had never had dzekor either. For that reason, it didn't remind her of home, so she wasn't entirely sure why she wanted one.
When Iska sat down, she didn't say hello. Yanim looked over at her and remembered how she didn't answer when Iska greeted her in the hangar.
"Spaska, Iska," she croaked. "It is good you recover quickly. You may be needed soon," she said, listlessly. "There is a job I cannot do."
Iska looked back, surprised and grinned. "A job Yanim can not do? Must be joke". Iska wasn't really used to her kanad friend being unable to preform a task by herself, usually because she was so stubborn.
"I don't have any choice," she continued with a empty expression, her eyes still bruised from oxygen exposure. Iska was confused. "We hid the cybernetic parts took from the Crimson soldier before he destroyed himself. The Privateers wanted them, maybe just to destroy. I don't know. They need be analyzed when it is safe to do so."
Yanim took a sip from her drink before continuing; it was bittersweet and unusual, but soothing to her senses in the end. "I made major procedural error securing those parts. The captain is unhappy and I may have lost his trust. Perhaps I never had it. I cannot work with those parts while Arthur has his ear; he is warning Jeremy that I am no good, I... I sense it."
Iska being unaware about all this because she had been out cold while all this happened. Iska lit her cigarette and gave Yanim a sceptic smile, " you are computer engineer, why need Iska for looking at small components?. She paused and gave yanim a suspicious glare "And why help with something that make captain suspect you?"
Lion leaned back in his chair and examined his work. He smiled. He began writing a project report, just like he always does after performing some kind of work in the armory or in the hangar.
He opened up the ship intercom. "Attention all crew members, there are now several armor sets available for added protection during off-ship deployment. Make sure to try on yours.
Also, can Squish, Pippin and Hercules please report to the armory for distribution of personal weaponry. Thank you."
Yanim stared into space, a look of disgust piercing her indifferent façade. "Two of our comrades nearly died today, are you not aware? We are at extreme disadvantage against these human criminals. They are better trained, better equipped. [I]They don't bicker with each other.[/I] We need to take every action available if we want to survive."
Yanim took a deep sip and tried to ignore this latest round of suspicion from her crewmates. Here, she hoped to make matters clear:
"Iska, I am more than able to analyze those components myself. I want to do so. The Crimson soldiers were invisible, and I want to know how they cloak. I also want to know about anything else they have that we don't so I can provide a copy to everyone in this ship. And maybe next time, if I do that, and everyone else does their part, I won't be ordering my maintenance droids to clean blood off the floor of the Roughrider.
"But you know, [I]I can't.[/I] For one, they speak about the Crimson technology as if it's... devil's play! As if knowing too much will damn us into becoming 'them.' And worse, everyone on this ship seems to think that I'm [I]just itching[/I] to go running back to Kanadys with everything I learned here like I'm some kind of spy. It doesn't seem to matter that I've been shot at just the same as anyone else, or that I spend nearly all of my free time in the engineering section trying to improve anything they'll let me work on, the first thing anyone sees in me is 'the kanad.'"
She finished her drink. Breathing deeply, she calmed herself down again.
"It has to be done, we need to understand that technology" she said, sadly. "You are khergian; the humans trust you. And I trust you too." Yanim didn't look up when she was finished- she had said her peace, totally and honestly.
Iska looked down on Yanim and into her bottle. She took a swig to finish her beer and looked back to Yanim.
"Iska understand. For kanad, you have a rare trait and is honesty." Iska pressed her cigg into the ashtray and but her hand on yanims shoulder, their racial difference showing forom Iskas strong hand on Yanims small shoulder. Iska smiled: "Iska will help."
In this moment she heard lions announcement on the comm. She gestured to Yanim with her head and got up to leave.
As Lion waited for people to arrive, he begun shooting at the range with his LWA Last Stand LMG. As the five barrels began spinning, three targets appeared.
Lion fired off several salvos while moving sideways. He repeated the procedure again and again...
When Yanim felt Iska's hand on her shoulder, she forced herself not to cry. She had already done so earlier when she sat alone in the airlock, and it had necessitated removing her goggles. Her eyes were still hurting from the exposure. Critically, she knew she had finally reached someone on a personal level. Whether or not it would translate into long-term progress remained to be seen, but at that moment she was able to weakly return Iska's smile.
She paid her bill and then walked with the khergian.
((Going to bed))
Dwan just listened to Iska and Yanim's conversation once he handed them their drinks (and barely managing to find Iska a pack of Taubor red label under the counter, as the bar only serves drinks). Dwan sympathized with Yanim, as Dwan also had people not trust him in the past, though for completely different reasons.
Having heard Lion's announcement, Dwan followed the two to see these armor sets.
Arthur had been waiting, keeping the parts from the assassin safe in case someone felt the need to steal them, as per the captain's orders. Having been idling for an hour or so, Arthur grew tired, and contacted the captain through his communicator.
"Jeremy, my friend. Have you discussed our issue with Yanim yet? What is your verdict on this equipment we have down here? I do hope that she hasn't charmed you into believing whatever she may of said to you."
Pippin arrived at the armory, rubbing his eyes. He had fallen asleep for a while in his bunk. He walked over to lion and yawned. "You wanted something?"
Lion put down the LMG and turned to face Pippin. "You look chipper. I have something for you."
Lion gestured for Pippin to follow him as he walked up to the equipment table where several weapons were.
He picked up a small carbine.
"Meet the LWA Alpha Tactical Carbine. Full-auto laser gun with a high-capacity ppwercell, ensuring that you can maintain fire on your target. Scope can be zoomed in three times, the stock can be adapted into five positions."
Lion handed over the weapon.
"Secondary mode turns it into a semi-auto shotgun. For when you're having a really bad day."
He pointed towards the armor shelf. "Don't forget to try out your armor set."
Jeremy and Kira walked towards the lift to get to the armory where they would meet up with his security team and talk about their plan to get their members into the soldier life. "Major I'd like to introduce you to my security, I gotta say they've been helping out the crew since Day 1. Each one has encountered many dangerous obstacles and pulled through."
Jeremy gestured to them as Kira crossed her arm, placing her index to the side of her cheek. They were tough looking that was clear, and if the Captain was telling the truth she might have some people helping out to test the waters. "It's a pleasure to meet you all." She said as she noticed one of the soldiers was Lion which she met when the Archius suffered an explosion. She extended a hands towards him, slapping away her emotionless face. "I believe I've already met Lion." "I apologize for the stern attitude everyone, the job comes first and if civilians are in danger then I know I have to get serious." She felt a bit of regret but she was at least attempting to get on their good side like Jeremy said.
Jeremy heard his holo band, hearing Arthur guarding the cybernetics. He simply sighed as a few watched him in curiosity. He saw Yanim walking with Iska as both looked at him, Yanim felt like the Captain was going to murder her for a bunch of people to see. "Yanim, come with me. We need to see Arthur right away." Yanim was redundant to follow but orders were orders, they went down to see Arthur guarding the cybernetics.
After Jeremy took Yanim with him to see Arthur, Dwan and Iska entered the armory.
Dwan greets the Major before turning to Lion. "Hey. You said something about armor sets?", he asked Lion.
[gonna be busy all day today, just so you know]
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