-Tag-

I woke up to the sound of somebody frantically banging on the door of my room. I stumbled out of bed, threw a dirty shirt on, and opened the door to find Toby as the cause of the ruckuss.

"What do you want?!"

"We've got a problem."

I pushed past him and stormed down the hall, throwing the double doors open as I entered the cafeteria. In the middle I could see a group of men circled around two who were pummeling each other. I could hear Thorn yelling to cut it out, but most others were cheering. So far nobody has taken notice of me. I grabbed a metal trash bin and slammed it against the doorframe a few times. The loud crashing got everybody's attention as the chanting ended and the audience turned to face me. The fighting did not stop, so I charged forwards, grabbed one trooper, and yanked him away from the other, effectively inserting myself into the middle of the brawl.

"ARE YOU TWO OUT OF YOUR MINDS!?" I roared. "WHAT THE KRIFF ARE YOU THINKING!?"

"He said-"

"I DON'T CARE WHAT HE SAID! YOU'RE BOTH SOLDIERS! HAVE SOME KRIFFING DISCIPLINE! THIS GOES FOR EVERYBODY! I KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE ORIGINALLY 603RD, AND SOME AREN'T, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? THAT DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE! WE ALL CHOSE TO STAY! WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME SHIP! WE NEED EACH OTHER TO SURVIVE! SO STOP TREATING EACH OTHER LIKE CRAP, STOP JUMPING TO FIGHTS, AND STOP EGGING IT ALL ON! YOU ARE SOLDIERS! START ACTING LIKE SOLDIERS!"

There was dead silence as my words rang through the whole cafeteria. I left the circle and went to a counter, grabbed a mug, and poured myself a steaming cup of caf. The troopers silently separated, some finding seats, others going into the food lines, and others leaving to perform various tasks around the ship.

As I went to leave to go shave, shower, and change, Thorn caught up to me and said "Cap'n?"

I grunted without stopping, and he started following me out the cafeteria.

"Alright. So, I've been listening to the general rumblings. They're concerned, and there are a few rudimentary plans to leave if certain things aren't fixed."

I stopped and turned, asking "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I share those concerns. I don't share the desire to leave, but I'm concerned. And you're the captain, so you can talk to the General and actually get through to him."

I sighed. "If you talk to Darin, you can accomplish just as much as I can."

"Either way, it means more coming from you. If the troopers see you, the highest ranking officer out of all us troopers, talking to him on behalf of all of us, maybe you can, I don't know, unite the two sides or something. Just you yelling at them won't last forever."

I opened the door to my room and said "I'll think about it."

As soon as I finished showering and got back in my room, I heard another knock on the door. I threw on a clean shirt and opened the door to see Thorn at the door.

"Did you follow me?"

"No. I talked with a few of the new guys, then noticed you came back."

"New guys as in you or as in Joren's men?"

"Joren's. Can I come in?"

I opened the door for him and walked into the bathroom to shave. I saw in the mirror that he was looking around the room.

"I expected it to be bigger. It's as big as mine is."

"I'm no better than you guys."

I turned on the razor and began shaving the few days worth of facial hair off.

Over the buzzing, I heard him say "Right. So they're worried about direction. What are future plans? What are short and long term goals? What are we trying to accomplish? What are we doing? How are we going to fight? How do we get resources? They're looking for leadership, and want to know what the plan is. We are bred to fight, to work, to DO things, and it's been over a month since we've done anything. That's probably why there's a lot more arguing. Just a lot of steam that has to be released."

"You blaming Darin?"

He glanced around nervously and asked "Can you promise not to tell the General I said this?"

"Why? You afraid he'll come after you?"

"A little bit."

"Don't be. He isn't like the other Jedi."

"I have some concerns with him being the 'leader', or of being the one in control of our movements."

"And why's that?"

"Don't get me wrong, he's brilliant and extremely powerful, but he just doesn't seem to fit the role of General. He's been completely absent and avoided doing anything to tell us what was going on for over a month. I know that this was a rather difficult time for him, but we got new people, and they need to know what the hierarchy is. We trust him, but the new guys don't. Neither does any of the crew. Any orders have come from you or the Admiral. Also, you remember Noreno? He hatched a plan and then just did it without telling anybody. No help. Nothing. And on Ryloth, he ordered us one way and ran the other way without telling us what the plan was. Thankfully, you were able to come up with our strategy on the fly. Sure, it worked, but he's less of a team player and more of a lone wolf. He says he cares about us all, and I think that that's absolutely true, but I think he cares too much. It's not a bad thing, but he wouldn't ask for any help from us and would instead prefer to do things alone. Eventually, that's going to get him killed. A General doesn't go alone, but leads the team. While I respect his desire to save everyone, I don't think he can make a move to sacrifice a few for a greater gain, which a General has to do. He may work fantastically with a small strike force, or a small team, but not leading all of us. This will hurt our effectiveness for whatever the plan is going to be."

"So you don't think he fits as a General?"

"Not at this very moment, no. I believe that he has all the potential to become one, but right now he quite honestly kind of sucks at it."

I nodded. "Alright. Come on" I said as I put my hand on his shoulder and led him out the door.

Hand still on Thorn's shoulder, I knocked on a door, which Darin promptly answered.

"What's up?"

"We would like to talk with you."

He opened the door and waved us in. It was a bigger room than ours that, along with the usual bedroom and main room, had its own shower, had a small kitchen with a fridge and such, and a washer and dryer. This was the first time I'd been in his room. While bigger, it wasn't nearly as big as the big suite rooms like the one Fral Joren had.

He took a seat in a chair and motioned for us to sit on the small couch.

"What's up?"

"Well, Thorn here brought up some interesting points that I think you should hear."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really? Well let's hear them."

I leaned over to him and said "You might want to be honest. He can tell when you're lying."

Thorn glared at me, beyond furious. "You lied to me."

"Technically, I didn't do that. Now hurry up. You don't want to waste the General's time." I flashed a quick smile at him. This was fun.

"Fine. We need direction. Direction you aren't giving because you're sitting around and doing nothing to further whatever the hell our goals are. I also told the Captain that you suck as a General."

The room was silent for a few seconds before Darin's facade broke and a grin appeared on his face.

"I was talking to Tag about this yesterday."

"About what?"

"The plan moving forwards, my inexperience, my absence for the last month, and how we can get everything back on track."

"Oh." He looked at me and asked "Why didn't you tell me this?"

"Because you'd want to hear it from the General himself."

Darin said "Ideally, I would already be drawing up some form of larger plan and using a 'surrogate' General for me to study and learn but we don't have any other alternatives. Nobody else is qualified. We have three people with some degree of higher military training. Three. I'm excluding all of Admiral Cress's people on the bridge because they don't have any real military training, I'm excluding Sadie because I never taught her about that stuff, and I'm not going into the quality of our training, which reminds me I need to talk to you," he pointed at me "and the Admiral tonight about that. So three. Admiral Cress, Captain Tag, and myself. The majority of the planning I've ever had to do was solo stuff or with one or two others in the Arena, so that's been what I'm drawing off of. I'm reading everything I can, but I'm only one man."

"Okay. So what about the direction, plan, and all of that?" Thorn asked.

"Those details are going to be hashed out tonight. You can let the other troopers know about that, hopefully it'll ease their worries to know that they're not floating in space without a cause."