If she had heard it once, she had heard it a million times before. Yes, her background was...different when compared to what you usually got in the marines, but did that make her any less of a fighter? She may not have been born with absolutely ruthlessness or cold nature that many a soldier had, but she had finished the basic training like the rest of them. Yet every time it was the same damn question. “Could you kill?” they always asked her time and time again.

“Sir! I’m here to get the job done, sir!” she barked out in the way she had been doing for months now as she stayed at attention. Her body was stock still and her breath slow and calm as she kept her eyes set straight ahead. In truth though, could she? Even now she could remember the colourful lies that she had told her siblings when she left. War wasn’t a game, she knew that. Her parents had drilled that into her ever since she brought up the topic of enlisting. She had seen the way they mourned during reunions with their units, and she had noticed those odd tremors they had from time to time. Was she ready to get the job done? “And if that requires to rip out a throat I will do so, sir!”

Once inside the simulation machine, Alrik began to go over the system information by himself when the simulation started up. A mecha infantry program, Alrik did not like these. He was a man who believed in the power of the single individual not the huge machine wrapped around him, but he would attempt to complete the simulation. Hopefully with no casualties on his end and reaching the targeted area swiftly. 10KM away though, that's a distance and a half.

After finishing his inspection of the unit, he would take his comms and signal over to Sebastien, " Private, we're going to cut comm use for the time being. Use hand signals and minimal sensors until we're farther away from the starting zone, chances are they know we're here, so we need to move quickly and get away from this area." With that, Alrik would cut of the use of his comms and turn the sensors to a minimal ping, hoping to avoid detection by the enemy.

Quickly and quietly was a matter much different in a mech than that of a normal nepleslian body, but Alrik would attempt to use his survival abilities and his training in guerrilla tactics to guide the two away from the starting point and towards the end point, while keeping an eye out for enemies and staying hidden. His hand signals would tell Sebastien to keep an eye on the left side, while he covered the right. Hopefully, his leadership abilities would help in this situation.

Tyrellius, having been standing right where Lisa had said, felt his blood quicken at the sound of firing inside the room. There was a real target in there! "Good thing we didn't go kicking that one down," he said. Of course the door was still shut. Glancing at the other two, he reached out and pushed it open, making sure to stay back by the wall, out of line of fire of the weapon inside. As the door swung open he raised his weapon at the edge of the door frame and fired into the room.

damn it, Kurt swore to himself, still behind Tyrellius and now aiming his rifle down the hallway.

Now we're going to be pinned down outside this fucking room trading shot with whatever's in it, giving the guys in the rooms further down to prepare. Fuck this, I'm getting myself shot.

Kurt would attempt to shove Tyrellius against the wall next to them, and raising his rifle at the door, moved slowly in a wide arc towards Lisa, advancing extremely slowly while "slicing the pie" of the room.

So the rumors that had been drifting around were true.

Cedric had to stop himself from rolling his eye at the naval officer's words.

There had been rumors, though very sparse and vague, that "certain NCOs" would be getting a "talking to" in 4th Fleet. Since Cedric had been one of two NCOs who worked with Admiral Wazu in 4th Fleet, unless Phaedra had seriously messed up then they most likely meant Cedric. So he had done his best to silence all of those rumors up until the very last day he was there and they said the school was stable enough for him to go back to his unit. However, on the entire way back he hadn't thought about this. As far as he had been concerned, it was just some young private with a mouth too big for his own good. He doubted that anything was going to happen.

Yet now the new Admiral had a message for him.

Amazing how an Admiral would actually manage to squeeze time for a lowly little man like Cedric in to his schedule.

Returning his DataJockey to his pocket, Cedric watched in silent patience as the Captain worked out the Private's orders. She responded to his questioning bravely enough: with a typical attitude of brutality that all the green Marines carried with them (though some carried it with them during their entire time in the Corps). She seemed to be dedicated enough to the cause, or at least dedicated enough to make it through boot camp, and that in itself was saying something.

Cedric shifted his thoughts from concerning himself with the Private and looked to the Captain once more.

((Rana and Cedric))

"Good, very good. There's a couple of jokers running a PA combat sim two floors below. Tell the techs that I've ordered you to join the exercise as an NMX pilot. You can respawn as many times as you want, they can't. But I don't suppose it needs saying how it'll reflect on you if it takes you too many tries. Dismissed, Private."

Murdoch waved Rana away and motioned for Cedric. "My office, Sergeant." He led Cedric into a small, surprisingly well-kept office separate from the others.

"Coffee? Rum? Whiskey?" Murdoch offered, his tone slightly friendlier, his back to Cedric as he pulled out a couple glasses. The big Navy Captain turned to face Cedric and saw the look on the Marine's face.

"You think I led you here because you're in some trouble? That the Admiral wants you strung up and tried as a conspirator for something?" he asked seriously.

A moment passed before Murdoch snorted with a chuckle. "Marines get denser and denser as they accumulate more lead," he said, "Admiral Valken doesn't play politics like Admiral Wazu so whatever shit you were doing before, you can forget about it. If it wasn't for the Tange mission, 4th Fleet would be hitting the NMX where they're soft and squishy."

Murdoch eyed the still-silent Staff Sergeant. "Admiral Valken wants you to design two special explosives for him. First, a breaching charge to blow open a hole in a starship's hull or airlock large enough for PA to get in but not big enough to cause significant structural damage. Second, a small explosive that doesn't do much damage to anything. The Admiral wants to play merry hell with the bad guys, small bomb, big loud bang to scare 'em. We've got enough bombs to kill, he wants a bomb to scare them, strike terror into those squids. Because if we get the squids afraid, then everyone else will start to fearing us."

Murdoch didn't mention who "everyone else" was and waited for Cedric to reply.

'Of course I'd end up with one of those types.' Sebastien would think to himself with a heavy sigh as Alrik shows he not only has a talent for stating the obvious but for assuming no one else knows it. At least in Sebastien's mind. To top it off he also assumed he was calling the shots. Sebastien knew there was reason he didn't particularly like this fellow right off the bat, aside from being a prison rat, and this seemed to just show why.

However Sebastien didn't care enough to say anything and it could have been worse. At least it was sign this wasn't Alrik's first sim.

So following suit, so to speak, Sebastien likewise switched into silent running and took point behind Alrik's simulated Hostile.

Though given that given the speeds their 'suits' could go, 10k was not all that far and Sebastien would rather make a run for it. Not a mad run but a run none the less. The idea of slowly trapesing about with minimal sensors wasn't his idea of fun.

"Yes, sir," she said stiffly before offering one final salute, as it seemed she was dismissed. With duffel bag still over her should she turned about and quickly began to make her way towards...well assumingly the PA combat sim. Admittedly the directions were a bit vague, but if she couldn't figure out this how was she ever supposed to do anything in the field? Though speaking of the field...she really didn't know how to pilot a NMX unit.

Oh, it wasn't that she didn't know about them, but rather...well they only really taught her how to handle the Hostile and Aggressor platform in live fire exercises. Well as she thought about it further, perhaps that was why she had been allowed unlimited respawns? It certainly made sense. The first few tries would certainly expect to see her struggling to walk if she went with the Ripper, but the Daisy or Mindy? It'd certainly be either acquainting herself with either of those models. Though even as the options went through her head, her feet carried her onwards and forwards. Another flight of stairs, a left at a hallway, and she barely noticed when she arrived at the simulator room.

"Hello, I am Private 3rd Class Kalev. I've been ordered to enter the ongoing simulation as a participant on the NMX side by Captain Murdoch."

One of the techs, a woman in Navy blue, pointed Rana to another blocky simulator further away from the ones being used by Alrik and Sebastien.

When she was inside, the instructor, a man, spoke into her radio. "You'll be piloting captured Nepleslian units. Usually a Hostile, though we may throw you an Aggressor if you're too slow taking them down. That, of course, lowers your score since they're already pretty handicapped. NMX chatter will be in your radio. Your call sign is X1, if you die, you become X2 and so on. Your AI commanders will issue orders and while we suggest following most of them, nothing's stopping you from doing your own independent stuff. Have fun."

The Heads Up Displays started flashing on, going through the list of start up checks. Right away, Rana noticed that the suit was damage, with minor redundant systems offline and the shields were half charged.

"All K squad units, continue herding them towards us. C and D squads, be ready. X1, they're 300 metres to your front. Link up with F squad and attack them head on. Either slow them down or get them to split!"

Rana's screen gave her all the information about NMX unit displacements.

Cedric gave a small smile, "Well sir, I've always had a habit of not totally trusting people who get paid more than me, so you'll have to forgive me."

From that point, he simply stood at parade rest and listened to the Captain tell him about what he wanted. A breaching charge oriented towards space, and what was essentially a really big flash-bang grenade. The first one wouldn't be very hard: just making a large breaching charge that could stick to something in a vacuum. The second one would be a little more difficult: making a bomb that makes a lot of noise, light, and visual attraction without really damaging much. Cedric fished in one of his cargo pockets and retrieved his DataJockey from earlier. Searching his various 'apps', Cedric found the very program he was looking for. It was a 3D drawing tool he had gotten when he had first graduated from demolitioinist training. He had always kept it close at hand, yet it hadn't seen use until he had been designing new courses for the "Fine Arts" Academy. It seemed he finally had an actual use for it.

"Well, sir. You've come to the right person if you want those designs. I'll get working on them and try to get them to you by the end of the day if that's okay with you."