• If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 February and March 2024 are YE 46.2 in the RP.

RP: 4th Fleet (NSN) IPG Training

Sigma

Inactive Member
YE 36

Following their initial role in the War Games, the Marines from 4th Fleet were disbanded. There were no more 4th Fleet Marines. There would only be 4th Marine Shaik. Most of the squads were simply sent to the Shaik to fill small holes still remaining. Several, however, were shunted for special training. It was part of a project that Commandant Shang had proposed to Admiral Ironside, who agreed to provide the pilot personnel.

In essence, Shang wanted to supplement the existing IPG Commando ranks with Marine veterans who could, in theory, perform similar roles to the IPG Commandos. Given the length and intensity of the full IPG Commando training course and the immediate need for highly trained special forces, it was decided to simply make it a simpler conversion course that took up a fraction of the time. The Marines would remain Marines but they would also earn the right to wear the black Commando shoulder patch, access to some IPG weapons and be at the beck and call of the IPG for clandestine operations.

The Marines from the Cavaliers, reduced in number to those who had been considered skilled enough for IPG Commando conversion, and Hardman's Hammers were the only ones who were taking part. Each squad drilled separately since the IPG instructors could see that the two units had different issues that needed work. Chief Santiago was also part of the program but he was not present in any of the Marines' training, having been shunted off somewhere else for entirely different training.

They now consisted of Phaedra, Laura, Bernhard, Epic Sequence, Talbain, Henry Morris, Wulfe Stones, Stan Brandt, Bastilen Wreno and a new guy named Delmar.

"Your problem is that you lot don't know how to work together! It's like we put a bunch of juvie gangers and told them what we want to happen. Well guess what, Marines, to be a Commando, you gotta be a team and an individual! To work within the group to accomplish a greater objective and to be smart enough, brave enough, and gutsy enough to do whatever needs to be done for Nepleslia. So, we are gonna work on your communications just as much as we are gonna break your balls!"

For the next five months, the Cavaliers followed the same regimen without stop. In the morning, they would stress their bodies to the limits. Different standards were applied to different species. They would get twenty minutes for food and then off to their courses designed specifically for them. Then they would do unit maneuvers in the evening before being allowed to crash at 11pm. The cycle would continue the next day at 6am.

Every third week, the squad was taken out for a weeklong exercise. Sometimes it was in Power Armor, some times it wasn't. Each time, they ran different situations that they would expect to be in from covert insertions that required them to find their own means of extraction to squad level Commando raids.

Most of the Marines' special courses helped them improve their existing skills or taught them new skills. The point was to train them up so that any of them could do the others' jobs. If the squad leader went down, everyone else could still function without going to pieces.

As much as the NSMC strived for that goal, the chain of command was still present and its sudden loss often disrupted operations. That could not happen to Commandos, who needed to be able to instinctively respond to any sudden action.

At the end of the five months, both the Cavaliers and the Hammers finished their training. Their graduation ceremony was muted and indoors. There was no fanfare, no crowds to cheer them. Just their instructors and the Commandant. In fact, it was held in one of the cafeterias that the Marines normally ate in.

"Welcome, Marines, to the world of shadows and deceit. Even in these times of 'peace,' our enemies are always out there. Waiting, lurking, planning. We will find them out. You will kill them for us. I wish you well, for God knows, we need Commandos. For now, your new unit is Marine Commando Unit 1. It is composed of the two squads you see before you. More may join you after we see what kind of successes you have in the field. Your commanding officer is Master Chief Santiago. Above all, remember this - Nepleslia expects great things from you."

With that the Commandant surrendered the spotlight to Chief Santiago.

"A boring speech," Laura whispered to Bernhard. "These guys volunteered to be the coldest killers in the galaxy, Laura. They don't need or want speeches to boost them," he replied.

"The Commandant has it right, people. We are now fighting in a new way. Our upcoming actions will be veiled in secrecy and deniability. No one will read about your exploits until your grandchildren are adults. For all intents and purposes, anything we undertake as Commandos is something that will never be known to the public. Look at this graduation ceremony. All we get is a buffet table. But, to make up for it, we also get some cool new toys, a shining black patch, higher pay, and three weeks leave starting tomorrow! So why am I wasting your time? Attack the buffet table and get your gear packed!"
 
Last edited:
Bastilen's body was aching from the recent stress training. In truth, as the brass finished their speeches, he wanted to just sit there at smoke a cigarette miserably. They wouldn't let him smoke in certain areas, though, and upon finding the fifth smoke-free area like some kind of mine-detector, he had crushed his cigarettes in a fit of blind, white rage. In this kind of stressful training, one was supposed to break during the exercises, but he had a knack for holding it all in when it mattered. The only moments the Nepleslian of odd origin had to worry about, was when he was too far from a smoke.

That had been for about a week, and the only thing keeping him from snapping Laura's motor-mouthing neck was his own weariness.

There was an indeterminate growl buzzing from his lips when he decided to be one of the first among the group to stand up. Instead of offering much cheer, he continued grumble in his strange dialect of 'va voos' and 'de allay rows'. He had been mumbling that strange language for the past month as his patience had begun to wear thin. If he wasn't at attention, he was grumbling, and he sure as hell wasn't starting conversation. As ever, he was unapproachable as he began slapping food on his plates.

"Comme si elle allait les tuer pour mettre des cigarettes ici."

As ever, he gave a mean, and spiteful look at the rest of them for making him get up first.
 
Delmar Rey Morro had chosen five years of military service over ten in prison only to find himself in an 'elite group' that no one would ever know about performing missions too difficult for the average soldier. He could only feel that he had been thoroughly decieved.

His case had been the subject of extreme controversy over the year it took before he could no longer appeal. The lawyer had done his best and he had worked down the sentence to reach the two options the judge had offered.
Ten years in prison or five years in the military...
They never said what he'd be doing.

Throughout training in Funky Town and the advanced training for the IPG Morro had learned to simply keep his head down, pay attention to the others, and break anything that dared to get close to him. He was a fine rifleman but his greatest strength was his strength.
2.1 kilos of rippling, dense muscle with training in every conventional form of martial arts have made him more than just dangerous in close quarters and he'd proven such in training.

He'd always been naturally gifted in a fight, no doubt a gift from his ID-SOL father. Supposedly a decorated war hero but nothing that could be proven. Not knowing a person's real name will do that.

Throughout the IPG training he'd kept mostly to himself, speaking when spoken to, breaking training dummies, and being a good toy soldier. Not that he had much time for socializing. The sergeants kept them going around the clock straight up to 'graduation'.

He rose upon seeing Bastilen's example. And followed suit, grabbing a plate and food.
 
The stress position had become a comfortable thing for Henry after a while. He'd signed up for this, and he might as well find what perverse joys he could in all of this stress he was enduring. When soldiers signed up for even the simplest and least demanding of jobs, there was a physical and mental rigour that was required to make the cut. Here in the IPG Commando regimen the bar was set so much higher; It made Boot Camp seem like a leisurely stroll through a Yamataian park.

Henry O. Morris had signed up to become a Commando. He was going to be treated worse than ever before and all he was going to get in return was a black emblem. Maybe that was the masochistic joy of it - being able to say 'I have survived Commando Training, and I have become a stronger person physically and mentally' and back it up. Not that it was anything to boast about - Henry observed the guys who were in it to brag washed out quick. Henry's preferred courses were resistance to interrogation, interrogation and electronics countermeasures and intelligence.

His beard had grown stressed and scraggly, his face hadn't touched a razor in five months because they knew that the sensation of an unshaven neck and untrimmed beard annoyed him. That was just the start of what they had to inflict on him to make him truly uncomfortable. They realised that it was the little details like that which nearly drove him off the edge rather than any stress position or traditional form of torture. From that, he learned to inflict it on his own charges for the extraction of information too.

The electronics courses seemed to pair him with Bastilen - they knew the two would be having a measure of overlap, and having two experts on field meant that if one went down the other could compensate, and that if the squad had to split, there was that speciality in both. He followed Bastilen's lead to the buffet table with his tin cup and tray, plating up and sitting across from him. The two resorted to using the same constructed language of grunts and shrugs to communicate that things were generally shitty - but it was a good sort of shitty. The Nepleslian Commando brand of shitty that nine out of ten consumers agreed was the best to be on the receiving end of. (the other one was washed out and disgraced)
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top