DC20:Well, it seemed a little stupid to us as well to have cookie-cutter characters, but we'll put a section at the end explaining the rationale behind all the characters. Kudos to you if you catch all the references though. ;)

Fort Merit - April 4, 1836

Edel Wagner strode up the firing range, observing the recruits drilling steadily on the line. "How are they coming, Wolffe?" he called, seeing the other sergeant berating a hapless trainee.

"No! First the load, then the cap!" he shouted before turning to Wagner, yanking some cotton from his ears. "Thumb-fingered fools the lot of them," he grumbled.

"Oh, they're not that bad. I seem to recall a certain private who once tried to ram his load with a ball screw."

Wolffe grinned. "Ram his load . . . with a ball screw?" he echoed.

"What?" It took a full second for Edel to process Wolffe's comment. He scowled. If looks could kill, Wolffe would have keeled over on the spot. Since the sergeant remained alive and healthy, Edel contented himself with a poor second best. "You're terrible. You should be a second lieutenant with that sort of joke, you know that?"

Wolffe started to laugh. The privates, bewildered by the sudden outburst of laughter, stared wide-eyed at the sergeants.

"Weapons pointed DOWN RANGE!" Wolffe suddenly bellowed. Edel winced, wishing he had plugged his own ears as well.

Shaking his head to dispel the ringing in his ears, Edel left the rifle line and continued on towards the field assigned to Corporal Cheslock. Loud shouts shook the air as the privates practiced throwing unfilled grenades at a cutout window. He listened to conversation between the Corporal and a particularly ambitious private as he approached.

"So Corporal, why can't we carry grenade launchers like you?"

"It's simple. If a grenade malfunctions, it either kills you instantly or gets thrown back at you. With a grenade launcher, you're caught in absolute fear as you think of what you were never trained to deal with. You'll probably die, too." Cheslock's eyes gleamed with amusement as the private turned back to the line crestfallen.

"Are they any good?" Edel called to Cheslock.

"They have an arm to throw with, a pair of eyes, and not much else."

"That bad? Sergeant Wolffe though much the same of his boys. Still, it's only been a month."

"It takes much less than a month or a week to screw up, however. But we've only had a week or two of hands-on training, so I can't expect too much out of them. Think none of them ever pitched a baseball?"

"Probably not. Most of these are country boys, so they've probably never played a team sport."

"Mm. Point taken. The real problem with this training isn't throwing - perfect tosses aren't generally needed in a fight. It's more teaching them how to arm the grenade right, every time."

"Well, you're right. Good luck with that," Edel strode away toward Tillock's medical aid training station set up in a nearby tent.

"As you can see, this powdered ragnite can be used to disinfect wounds and speed the healing process."

"So does that mean we should just pour the packet on the wound and bandage it?"

"Erm . . . yes. Just use most of it and swallow a pinch to ward off infection."

Edel broke in abruptly. "No, you shouldn't use the whole packet. That high of a ragnite concentration could lead to blood poisoning and local chemical burns. Furthermore, swallowing ragnite will lead to explosive diarrhea and possibly an extremely painful death." The comment was made all the more hilarious by the simple fact that Edel gave the remark in a completely deadpan manner.

Tillock flushed. An unfortunate private let out a strangled titter as his fellow recruits clenched their jaws to avoid laughing.

"YOU! Go run fifty laps and return here to do your pushup allocation!" he bellowed.

"Fifty laps? That's fifty miles Sergeant. Are you trying to kill him?" Edel inquired.

"Erm..." Tillock paused. "Five laps then. I'll be watching. The rest of you, dismissed." The private ran out with an extremely relieved look on his face. The other privates shuffled out after him. They managed to get about twenty yards away before losing their last vestiges of self-control and exploding into raucous laughter.

"Apologies, sergeant. I didn't mean to embarrass you. I suppose the need to make corrections comes from my past experience as a surgeon's assistant."

"It's alright. You're the field surgeon after all. You're the one that needs to know these things," the sergeant muttered with slumped shoulders.

Slightly amused, Edel left the tent. His rare jocular mood was quickly dispelled as six bedraggled cavalrymen rode into the square.

"The Imperials are in Gallia!" one of them shouted hoarsely. Ice ran down Edel's spine. The men weren't ready. They had more training than most Imperial conscripts would have received before being thrown into the war against the Federation, but those unfortunate green recruits had died by the hundreds on that battlefield.

He ran up to the patrol. "What the hell happened?" he shouted.

"Ambushed by Imperials! Hundreds of them! Came out of nowhere!" the man choked out with a wild look in his eyes.

"Which unit were you with?"

"44th Light Cavalry. Eighty of us all dead in a few minutes!"

Edel frowned. This certainly sounded grim. "Come on, we have to go to the general with this" he said, taking one of them by the arm and dragging him toward the headquarters tent. Before he got there, General Damon stepped out.

"Who's this, sergeant?" he asked, one aristocratic eyebrow lifting slightly.

"Survivor from the 44th Cavalry sir. Reports his unit was ambushed and slau-" Edel stopped himself, "caught by a large Imperial force, sir."

"Where was this?"

"Inside Gallia!" the man burst out. "Don't you get it? The Imperials are here!"

"I am quite aware of that, Corporal," the general said coldly.

At that moment, one of the other survivors, who had seemed nearly catatonic thus far, spoke up. "I reckon I could tell ya, sir. We was on our way out of Outpost 12, a good day out. They'ns left 'emselves wide open, and they was only ten, so we reckoned we could take 'em. Then the rest of em sprang in'n outta nowheres an' went shot the hell outta us'ns, as far as from you and me to that there buildin'," the man said, pointing to the headquarters, barely ten meters from the gathered men. "We never see'd em afore we was gutted. Cap'n Danielson was the first'n to get hit, dead 'fore he hit the dirt. They's fire came frim No'th, So'th, Yest, West, jest gutted us. And I'm mighty sorry to say sir, we gone and run, jest as fast as we could." After this speech, the trooper clammed up and refused to say anything further.

"Come on, Chester, let's get you to a bed" The Corporal said, taking him to a nearby tent.

As he came back out, the general addressed him. "Putting aside your earlier insubordination, what's your report?"

"Chester's report was correct sir. Not much else to tell."

"How did you let a few hundred troops sneak up on you like that?"

"I don't know sir, but there must've been at least that many from how much fire they were putting out."

"This is serious indeed. I want all my officers in the command room in thirty minutes. Dispatch a courier to Randgriz to inform his Excellency what has happened."

Edel watched the officers gravitate towards the tent grimly

"Hell of a thing, ain't it?" Wolffe said, coming up to him.

"Yes, well, you should start packing. I don't think we'll be staying here for much longer." Edel was right. The 147th received its new marching orders within a day.

Author's Note: A ball screw is a corkscrew-shaped attachment for a ramrod to extract a lead ball from a muzzle-loading weapon without firing it.

Once again, thanks to Markal and Chiemiangel for the beta.