229-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the Stars
August 16th, 2552 – Obstacle course
Pilot/Mechanic/Jump-Gate Navigator/Grunt Kat “S-Kat” James Reporting
Today we focused on the obstacle course that the officers set up in the main assembly hall on the Valhalla. The trouble began almost immediately when they realized me and my fellow criminal contingent weren’t allowed to carry weapons. There was a very long discussion on the matter and I believe that will be revisited at another time but for now, they’ve given us radio packs, provisions packs, and dispatch tubes to carry instead of firearms.
We were supposed to crawl with our ‘firearm’ cradled in our forearms so we could use them at a moment’s notice… I understand the reasoning, but what are we going to do? Charge the enemy and give them papercuts?
We drilled with our dispatch tubes until after lunch when we got to run the full obstacle course.
Now the obstacle course involved a lot of climbing and vaulting and crawling over or under things, it also involved a lot of people yelling at you. I don’t know about the others – but part of my training as a career criminal was avoiding getting yelled at, avoiding being noticed, and well— getting away from hostile environments.
That means you used the terrain and the equipment to your advantage. I may be small-ish, I may not be armed, but I am a slippery one, and I’d been doing Parkour since before I knew it was parkour – When you’re shorter than the guys, you learn to use that to your advantage, that means running starts and bouncing off of things and trying to get as much lift as you can. When your range of available spaces includes a hall of mirrors that can take you 2-8 feet from where you are, well, that tends to make obstacle courses a lot more interesting.
The officers were not pleased with my way of taking the course– until they realized just how handy those abilities could be. Now, it looks like in addition to emergency repairs, I need to work on a course of going around, over, and through things.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do about tomorrow – tomorrow is firearms training and I don’t think holding a dispatch tube and saying ‘bang’ is going to be very productive
Leave a Reply