Author's Note: Some slim bit of naughtiness ahead. Constructive criticism will be appreciated; flames will be met with an insurmountable wall of indifference.
Invigorating
Companion piece to Boredom.
Not all troopers perceived their forced state of idleness as a torment.
There were those who embraced the precious gift of a few days without plasma burning their sinuses and flesh, and the struggle to survive against all odds. Some found the mounting tension, as men bred to fight waited for the vibro-axe to fall, even...invigorating.
Base camp was nothing but a temporary structure; assembled and disassembled quickly as the need would have it, it lacked many of the amenities of a Star Destroyer. Like a proper mess hall or medbay. Or a gym.
But adversity tended to foster inventiveness and clones were nothing if not adaptable.
It didn't take long for Whynge to find the necessary parts - a bench taken from the polyskin tent that acted as their communal mess; a durasteel rod that had been an axle from a defunct airspeeder; four shifting gears, as large as his head, from a spare-parts bin for the AT-TEs.
Vice checked to make sure the gears were properly mounted on the rod, then nodded to his commander.
Lying flat on his back across the bench, Whynge tested his grip on the rod, then pushed.
Sweat began to pop out along his brow almost immediately as the muscles in his arms bunched beneath the weight of nearly a hundred kilos of pure durasteel.
"C'mon, sir. You can do it. Lift that sucker." Vice, in his capacity of spotter, kept up a steady stream of encouragements as the makeshift barbell began to rise above Whynge's head. Though confident in the vitality of his commander, Vice kept a careful eye on those deadly weights and his hands resting lightly on the bar, just in case a helping hand was needed. In lieu of proper lifting straps, his commander had only dusted his hands with the dirt of this planet. There was always the chance that one improvisation would proved to be one too many.
The barbell lifted and fell...lifted and fell...lifted and fell.
Sweat was running in thick rivulets down Whynge's face and his chest heaved with every push of strength. Baring his teeth, it was as if the commander dared the weights to beat his flesh-and-bone brawn.
A little group of Flash Company troopers had by now assembled around their captain and commander, watching avidly this show of muscle power. They added their voices to Vice's encouragements, cheering every time Whynge managed to push the barbell up over his head.
"One-hundred!" Vice announced in triumph and raucous cheering broke out amongst the crowd. Vice caught the barbell with practiced ease, helping his commander to resettle and balance the weights across the bench.
His upper body gleaming with sweat, Whynge straightened and clasped his hands over his head in victory, grinning at his men. Let the tinnies come. He was more than ready.
Command had its advantages, one of which was a limited amount of privacy.
Alone in his plastent, Gaff nervously adjusted his armor, making sure it sat just so. Freshly shined and polished, with Blazer Corps' maroon stripes and flaming star insignia, the armor at least was impressive. Gaff still wasn't so sure about the man wearing it.
He wasn't a shiny anymore. He was a battle-proven commander with several campaigns under his belt...Well, maybe "several" sounded a bit more grandiose than it actually was, but he'd set his boots on blood-soaked ground and had breathed in air heavy with smoke and burned ozone. So why was he so nervous now, with no one shooting at him and no lives resting on his shoulders?
Gaff ran a hand over his recently trimmed hair, wondering if perhaps he should comb it again.
He grimaced over such folly. If anything had mussed his neat black hair since the last time he'd combed it into place, it were his own restless fingers.
This is ridiculous, he thought, half exasperated and half despairing over himself. You've done this before. Just do it again.
Taking a deep breath, he snagged the comlink, settled on his bunk and punched in the comm-code before he could second-guess himself into another delay.
A few seconds passed while the signal traveled the vast distances of space, but they felt like interminable hours to Gaff and his thumb was already hovering over the termination key when the signal light turned from a blinking red to a steady green and a familiar, smiling figure appeared above the small holoprojector.
"Gaff!" The holo wasn't of the best quality, with lines of static racing through the blue, hand-tall image, but the delight on Ro's face and in her voice was unmistakable. "How's my favorite commander faring? Having a sparkling good ticky-tock of things?" She cocked her head to the side, smiling engagingly - the kind of smile that invited a man to spill his every thought and want to a sympathetic and interested ear.
He wasn't sure about the want, but Gaff was more than willing to share his thoughts.
Instantly set at ease by the sound of her voice, Gaff leaned back against the plastent's wall. A grin of his own was spreading over his face as he began to tell her of the past few days.
And at the sound of her high, clear laugh, he simply glowed.
Droid with a mission coming through!
Of all its lot, this particular WED Treadwell droid suffered from an overstimulation of its own self-assessment program and as a result, considered the tasks assigned to it as of the highest priority - whether that task was repairing a power coupling in a desperately needed assault walker under heavy fire, or, as was the case now, fetching a can of lube oil for one of the clone engineers.
Blaring for a pack of astromechs to get their squat little chassises out of the way, 943-Q barrelled right through, responding to the astromechs' outraged beeping with a rather rude gesture by two of its four arms - no doubt copied from one of the aforementioned engineers.
The lube, along with other spare parts and defunct machinery that could be cannibalized in a pinch, was stored at the very back of the hastily erected garage. It was dark here, as few beings other than the repair droids ever ventured this far and 943-Q increased the illumination of its photoreceptors, shining them over the closely-packed racks. The beams of its lighted eyes flitted over a clone's abandoned helmet, then a chest plate and what looked like three boots. Warbling to itself, 943-Q picked up one of the boots, examining it curiously. Its extensive files did not indicate that clone armor should have been racked with the engineering supplies...
Something clanged two shelves further down, followed by a curious organic sound. As this was also the direction its memory banks indicated the lube was stored in, 943-Q decided to investigate.
Trundling forward on its tread base, the droid peered into far-off corners. Having been programmed with threat-recognition software, it was just possible that the sound indicated an infiltration of some kind. Perhaps the enemy had penetrated their perimeter without the outer ring of guards noticing. Without the sophisticated circuits of a droid, organics were routinely fallible.
The sound that had grabbed its attention came again, louder and more urgent. 943-Q turned sharply to the right, easily winding its thin pole of a body through the close-standing shelves.
Its lights swept over a curve of bare, tan skin and entangled limbs before the previously missing fourth boot sailed out from the corner to strike the droid in its square head.
Almost unbalanced by the impact, 943-Q waved all four of its arms frantically as it tried to keep steady on its square base. A string of profanity preceded the next missile - a can of lube oil.
Beeping and whirring in surprised indignation, 943-Q grabbed the can of lube with one arm, while gesturing madly with the other three.
"Kriffing clanker! Beat tracks!" was followed by more improvised missiles.
Alarmed, 943-Q hastily retreated from the assault, swivelling its square head back again and again as it complained bitterly over such unprovoked abuse.
Still breathing hard - and not just from the unexpected interruption by the droid - Jakk tried to push away from the wall he'd been leaning against.
"Maybe we should..."
"If you're going to open that claptrap of yours," Wag interrupted, "I have something far more gratifying than words to wrap your tongue around." One hand on Jakk's shoulder to keep the younger trooper in place, Wag ran his other hand over his naked thigh, indicating in the most lurid manner possible what he meant.
Claptrap. Gratifying. Jakk was less interested in his lover's gesture than his words. No one he knew talked like Wag and Jakk avidly stored away each and every new term, fitting them into his growing lexicon. Sometimes, after lights-out, he'd write some of the words he'd learned down, putting them together with others to see what they would shape. He liked that exercise; far more, at times, than slagging clankers or kneeling before Wag.
He was distracted, however, when Wag ran his hand through Jakk's hair - he'd been letting it grow out a little, just to see what it was like.
"Come here," the Flash Company trooper ordered and pulled Jakk into a bruising kiss. "I've got an itch only you can scratch."
Even as he responded to the mouth eagerly moving over his, Jakk filed that turn of phrase away for later.
There was no way of identifying the beastie, even through the rangefinder, aside that it had eight legs, very large ears and was about to become slag.
Scope adjusted the setting on his DC-15A blaster rifle; the kind of fine-tuning only a fellow sniper could appreciate.
The 15A was heavy in his hands, but it was a familiar weight by now - tiring after a long battle, but reassuring for some quick shooting.
Four other troopers - all snipers from different companies - lay sprawled over the barren ground to either side of him, watching his chosen target through microbinoculars. None of them talked; there was no playful ribbing, encouragement or idle speculation as was common among troopers engaged in a friendly contest. As much as his blaster, a sniper's weapon was his concentration and it was considered the pinnacle of bad form to interrupt a sniper when he was sighting down a target. Naturally, most of Scope's squad-mates tended not to understand this simple fact, but they were plasma toters - of the shoot and keep shooting till you hit something solid variety.
This didn't bother Scope, but it was nice to share the quiet just before settling the shot with men who did understand.
His finger settled around the trigger; he began to squeeze...
The rifle bucked in his hands.
The beastie leaped into the air, as if stung by a rock hornet, before collapsing, smoke rising from a tiny hole in its cranium.
One of the other men let out an appreciative whistle. "Nice. Right between the eyes."
Scope rolled his shoulders to get the last of the kickback out of his muscles, then rose to one knee. "Almost makes shooting tinnies too easy."
The trooper to his right laughed. "Right. They're bigger. No challenge in it at all."
Predictably, when the Separatist army finally arrived, it was at the most inconvenient moment.
The sirens cut through the night and troopers rolled out of their makeshift bunks, while the graveyard watch readied the embattlements and called out enemy positions to the arriving squads.
The first of the bombs hit, followed closely by the chunk-chunk-chunk of thousands of droid feet.
Cursing, laughing or deadly silent, the clones pulled on their armor and grabbed their weapons to engage the enemy once more.
They'd been born ready.