Star Wars: Before the Awakening Read Free Page B

as you weretrying to finish. All of them had learned to eat quickly or else go hungry. The result was that if you tried to talk and eat at the same time, you’d end up failing at both. Zeroes’s comment was therefore something of a surprise.
    Nines laughed. “You’ve got numian cream all over your chin, Zeroes. Don’t let Captain Phasma see you like that.”
    Zeroes wiped at the mess with the back of his hand,then leaned forward over his plate. “It’s coming, you can feel it. No more exercises. An actual deployment.”
    FN-2187 looked at him, curious. “You know something we don’t?”
    “I heard some of the instruction officers talking.”
    This got all their attention.
    “Saying what?” asked Slip.
    “They’re accelerating our training. They say we have to be ready.”
    “Makes sense.” FN-2187 used the corner ofa chunk of mealbread to wipe up the last of the cream on his plate. The meal, like so many others, hadn’t been designed for flavor as much as efficiency—slivers of overcooked meat in a numian sauce that tasted more like chalk than anything else. But it was filling and provided energy, and that was the point.
    “I hope it’s soon,” Slip said. “I really hope it’s soon.”
    “Don’t hope it’s too soon.”Nines drained his glass, then set it down hard and stared at Slip. “Way you’re going, your first deployment might be your last.”
    “Hey,” FN-2187 said. “He’s one of us. We’re in this together.”
    Nines and Zeroes exchanged looks.
    “Yeah?” Zeroes said. “Well, way he’s going, I’d rather it be just the three of us.”
    The look on Slip’s face said it all—said more, actually, made FN-2187 wonder if hedidn’t have doubts, too.
    Maybe FN-2187 wasn’t alone in what he was feeling after all.
    Whatever the reasons for it, whether Zeroes could be believed or not, their training
did
accelerate. They were in the simulators two, three times a day, sometimes running combat missions as a single fire-team, sometimes working in concert with the other members of a larger squad. Twice they participated inmultiforce battles, base assaults where their simulator was tied to the action in fifty others, all of them running at the same time. They were massive engagements, with full air support, advancing armor, even orbital bombardment from capital ships. TIEs screamed overhead, engaging Republic X-wings in dogfights that streaked through the simulated skies.
    FN-2187 found himself actually enjoyingthose simulations, so much so it almost surprised him. The simulations were simple. The stormtroopers had a clear objective, they knew who the enemy was, and honestly, as serious as the simulations could be, they were ultimately just games, ones he knew he played well. In that kind of environment, it was easier to heed Captain Phasma’s advice, to let Slip rise or fall on his own. When Slip went down—andhe always went down—it didn’t really matter, because none of it was real, was it?
    After the second multiforce battle simulation, Captain Phasma singled out FN-2187 for praise in front of everyone who had participated. She had him stand and face the debriefing—and there were hundreds of them there that time, all the pilots and stormtroopers and instructors; it felt like everyone. She talked abouthis skill and his efficiency and his ruthlessness, how all the trainees could learn something from watching FN-2187. It made him feel awkward, even embarrassed, and he was thankful he had his helmet on so no one could see him.

    The following morning they started on intensive melee combat training. This was done outside the simulators, in one of the exercise rooms designated for the purpose.Previously, FN-2187 and the others had trained in hand-to-hand combat, working in close quarters with fists and feet. This time they found the room prepared with racks of weapons and shields lining the walls.
    The instructors demonstrated the use of each weapon, the vibro-axes and shock staffs and