3310 was not happy about her squad’s reassignment.
They’d gotten the news last week, delivered rather unceremoniously by her former commanding officer. The worst thing about it was probably that he couched the news in terms of a promotion, and then had the gall to tell her that they were moving her squad downward almost five hundred floors.
Floor four thousand. She almost couldn’t believe it. “What about the ‘good work’ that my squad was supposedly doing? Why the sudden reassignment?” she’d asked, as respectfully as her anger and shock could allow her at the moment. The officer narrowed his eyes.
“Orders are orders, 3310. It is not our place to question them, but to carry them out. I had assumed you understood that. The infrastructure that you have helped to set up on this level will help a less experienced squad to take up the work that you now carry out, while you attend to your reassignment,” the officer droned, checking something off on his clipboard before handing her a slim dossier. “The details are here. Report to your new commanding officer on floor four thousand at 0800 tomorrow.”
She took the dossier and began to flip through it. A deeper level of the underworld presented new challenges, of course, but 3310 was not on her way down. For the past four years, she’d been working her way up.
The orders were vague. Organize and attend various checkpoints, detain suspicious individuals, attend to the rampant gang violence in the area. She hoped her new commanding officer wouldn’t be so stingy with the details of their new assignment. She delivered the news to her squad, where it was received with much dismay. They all grumbled as they packed their sparse belongings in preparation for the move.
And then, at 0800, they reported. 3310 made certain that everyone was in good order so that they might make a good impression on their new CO. All of them lined up, spotless white armor buffed to a shine, looking the part of a organized, efficient, and dangerous Stormtrooper squad. When their CO finally arrived, fifteen minutes past the time that he was due, she could have sworn he was drunk. She couldn’t imagine how, at 0800, anyone could possibly already be drunk, but CO-225 had to have been, what with his slurred speech, disheveled uniform, and absolute disregard for her squad. He provided no details and simply sent them out to build a checkpoint.
That was a week ago. It had taken them hours to build the checkpoint, and she still couldn’t be sure that it was secure—the Underworld had an amazing number of dark alleys and secret entrances, after all, and her unfamiliarity with the area only exacerbated the problem. They had been teamed up with another squad, led by a gigantic sergeant who insisted she call him “Jack.” He knew the area. She couldn’t say that she enjoyed his company, however.
And here they were. Minding a checkpoint on level four thousand. A checkpoint that had so far found nothing worth detaining anyone for. 3310 swore it was the most insignificant work she had ever done in the Stormtrooper Corps, and her first assignment was cleaning bathrooms.
“Stand here,” she ordered an Ithorian male, who then proceeded to not stand where she had indicated. “Here,” she repeated, indicating the spot.
The Ithorian said something in Ithorese. Did he not have a translator?
“Here,” she indicated even more obviously for the Ithorian, and when he still didn’t move, she gave him a shove into place. “Identification?”
Obediently, and thankfully without another word, the Ithorian handed over his identification holopad. So he could understand basic, he was just being stubborn. Two could play at that game. 3310 scanned the holopad and began to look over the files within. Then she looked them over again. She had only really started to physically look over the holopad to delay the Ithorian, but now something was striking her as fishy about the files.
“Stand here,” she ordered, shoving the Ithorian to her right before flipping through the files again. Yes, there it was—it was faint on the display, but the expiration date on the identification had passed. But then, why had it scanned? Well, no matter—at least processing an expired ID would be a nice change of pace from what she had been doing for the past week.
The heat of the blaster just barely skimming her armor hit her before the sound did. She looked up from the datapad, and saw the blaster in the Ithorian’s hand. Her reaction was nearly instinctual—she didn’t even bother to raise her own blaster, but tackled the Ithorian to the ground, attempting to knock his weapon out of his hand in the process. He was screaming and the sound was piercing her eardrums. She hoped her squad was running to back her up, because any chatter in her helmet was drowned out by the Ithorians’ throaty voices.
She had him on the ground, but as she struggled to kick the blaster away, she realized that beneath the Ithorian’s clothes were patches of something hard. She scrambled to get a glimpse, any sort of indication of what he was hiding. Her stomach had dropped through the floor, but she had to confirm, or else—
She saw the wires and the hard plastoid containers. Explosives.
“BOMB!” she tried to scream over the Ithorian’s blasted double-throated yelling. The Ithorian gripped her by the shoulder and pulled her close, not letting her escape.
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