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"GET DOWN!" He screamed. Dev, Rorick and Lucian dropped flat to the snow as the crack of thunder blew right over them. Unlike in the vids, laser fire was totally invisible. The charge up of the cannon itself was really the only warning. By the time you heard the thunder, the air was already ionized and the "laser beam" itself traveled at the speed of light and was now whole kilometers further along its path.

Unless of course you were in its path. Then being dead was your warning.

Joining the B-72 War Droids was none other than a Leonian Model 7 "Invincible" Tank. AI operated, armored, sporting a long range turreted laser canon and three gimballed short ranged railgun emplacements, the Model 7 served as a rank and file Leonian armored unit. Not terribly new of a design, but still effective enough. Of course these weapons testing sites had salvaged or stolen Leonian tanks just laying around.

"Fuck, a TANK too!" Rorick yelled out. "We need to fall back to cover!"

"What fucking cover? Theres just fucking snow!" Dev had clearly lost his composure.

Lucian hazard a glance to the steaming impact of the laser. Had they not dived down, they would have been vaporized, not the snow. Smiling, Lucian formed a plan.

"We make cover then! Dev, stay down and give me a scope on that tank, I need to know the second it starts to charge up again." Lucian bolted up to a standing position, his own HUD view supplemented by a smaller screen showing Devs stationary, scoped view of the tank. With Dev acting as his eyes, Lucian made a dead sprint to the north towards a large snow drift, getting between the drift and the tanks line of fire just before the beam weapon began to charge up again. Lucian dived, the beam overshooting into the drift, instantly sublimating the icy snow into a cloud of steam.

"Into the steam!" Lucian rolled into the cloud, with Dev and Rorick following in after.

Now completely obscured from enemy heatscans, their own equipment remained fully unhindered despite zero visibility. The Trio followed Lucians paw-signs to the north edge of the cloud. More explosive shots could be heard above them, as BetaTeam fired from their vantage point. Lucian took the opportunity to sync with their feeds and assess the situation.

According to BetaTeams linked target marking, the tank had come within 100 meters of the cloud, veering south to the last known position of its targets. The smaller, bipedal B-72 war droids had converged on the tank to protect it and themselves, as only about 15 of their numbers remained.

"Rorick, start firing the mag-coils on your sword, let it heat up. Beta, keep suppressing fire on that tank, and be prepared to cease on my mark. We're going to make a charge."

"Fuck. Alright, affirmative Alpha." Ysanne called back.

"Alright, we're just at the edge of the cloud, on Mark, we run out and Rorick, you'll give us another cloud, this time a nice line across due east past the tank then circle around south. Dev, you and I will rush the tank, its railguns are two forward one on the back, if we come from the side we can avoid its guns. Just have the droids to deal with. Understood?" Looking to his team, they nodded in affirmation.

The large cloud began to settle around them, clearing and soon to deprive them of cover. Taking this as que to go, Lucian prepared to run. "Ready... Mark".

The three dogs bolted out from the dissipating cloud, Rorick in the lead, bent over with the RailSword gliding across the snow, flash heating it to steam. Not as much as the prior cloud, but enough to baffle sensors for the time being. Lucian and Dev fired two quick explosive shots each destroying or disabling the droids on the tanks northern flank. The two continued at a dead sprint, right to the treads of the tank. Its looming laser cannon began to swivel on its turret to follow Rorick, however not fast enough.

Lucian fired another round the tanks rear gimballed railgun, the gun exploding in a shower of fire and metal. Lucian winced as a shard pierced his armor. HUD systems indicated it was his left shoulder, minor penetration.

Need to remember not to use these damn things in close range. Way too powerful.

Now heated to capacity, Lucian flipped the vent switch with his thumb, setting the sword ablaze as hot plasma fired out its length. A two pawed swing to the tread mechanism cleaved something important, and metal on metal snapping and crunching brought the tread, and tank itself, to a halt.

Dev went to work hacking further up the tread, ensuring the tank was disabled. Lucian climbed the side and went to work on the armor around the laser turret itself. With some effort, he managed to open it up enough to see some sort of power supply, probably for the cannon. The turret began to swivel from its rear back around to the north, likely to try and target Dev or Lucian. Once he cut a wide chunk of armor away, Lucian painted the hole with his HUD.

"Beta, think you can hit this hole?"

"Affirmative, Alpha, can hit that in my sleep. Get clear and I'll be ready".

Lucian jumped down off the side of the tank, and signaled Dev to run. They cleared a good 50 meters before Ysanne put an explosive round through the hole in the tanks armor. The resulting shockwave knocked both fleeing dogs down into the snow.

Lucian shook his head, his vision spinning and a sharp ringing in his ears. The rough outline of a Lupus in battle armor running up to him was all he could make out. Reaching out a paw, the figure pulled him up and his vision began to clear and ringing die down. Much to his displeasure.

The first thing he heard was Alric; "That was absolutely stupid, under no circumstance are infantry units supposed to CHARGE a fucking tank! This is a live fire test, you could have gotten us all killed with that!"

Jed, while helping Dev to his feet, scoffed, "What're they supposed to do, wait for friendly air support? No we have to work by ourselves, it's just us out here. That's part of the test. Anyways, they wouldn't have killed us. Maimed, maybe, but not killed."

Dev hunched over and coughed, "I really hope that was the test, divine fuck that was-" the black and white dog then proceeded to lose his breakfast.

Lucian shook his head while it still span, he could feel the blood vessels in his ears throbbing. "Keep your guard up, visual sensor sweep out perimeter. Rorick how are our vitals?"

The tall dog jogged his way to his alpha and immediately pulled out his medkit. "Devs got a minor concussion, nothing serious I already administered the head trauma stimulants. Hence the slight side effect." Rorick paused as dev recovered from a coughing fit only to hold up a paw signing he was fine. "You, boss, on the other paw, I can't remotely patch you up. Need to remove the shoulder pauldron."

Lucian winced as the medic sheared the protruding end of the small steel shard along his shoulder using a micro-torch, then gently removed the pauldron and surrounding armor segments. Rorick attached the needed tools to his wrist-mounted surgical aid, parted the fur around the wound and quickly came to a prognosis.

"Nothing too bad, don't need much stitch-gel either and definitely no scarring. Stay still."

Lucain complied, bracing as Rorick pulled the remaining fragment out with a tweezer clamp, fitted with micro-servos for extreme accuracy, and promptly sprayed an antiseptic, painkiller and cleaning agent mix. Finally a small spray nozzle on the wrist-mount shot a dollop of stitch-gel which would seal the wound and promote natural cell growth. Within less than a minute, Lucians shrapnel wound was fully field dressed.

Popping back on his pauldron and giving a light roll of his shoulder, "Thanks Rorick, quick as usual." Lucian glanced back towards the ridge sunward of them, "Ysanne, anything in visual range?"

"Negative. Can't be sure if anything else is just hiding in the snow though. How do you think we'll know we finished this test?" the Sniper inquired

Lucian tilted his head, "Can't be sure. Even if they did give us a straightforward objective, odds are we'd fail if we pretended it was that simple. I have no idea if that was the test or just the warm up exercise. Dev, can you fire up a drone and give up a full spectrum scan? I hate this 'not knowing'."

Nodding his head with a cough, the tech specialist activated one of his micro survey drones. Along his spine, Devs armor sported three small circular protrusions, each one a microfabricator for a detachable drone.

Highly versatile, they could act as recon, scanners, cameras, saboteurs, and flying landmines. Most field units had at least one member with a microfabricator, specialist roles like Dev fittingly had more. From what Lucian recalled of the Praetorian Guards gear, top of the line microfabricator units came standard issue in all armor regardless of combat role and members were encouraged to use them. Lucian knew their current gear wasn't mere standard issue, although neither was it Guard quality.

After a quick spin-up of the fabricator, a predesigned scanner drone popped out the back of Devs armor and quickly ascended out of sight. Giving his display a quick study Dev perked up in surprise "Hey look at that, there's a faint beacon way past where the tank came out of the snow. Really low powered. There's a small heat signature buried in the snow too next to the beacon."

Jed Whitepeak laughed, "Well shit, if only we had thought to look for a beacon from the start".

It did seem like a dumb blunder, Lucian thought. Little to his surprise, Alric couldn't hold his tongue, "Great, so all this time we had a mission and we did nothing? No wonder the instructors sent an ambush on us, you had us all just sitting here, Iceheart!".

Dev snorted, "Unlikely the case, since this beacon didn't activate till after Rorick treated AlphaLeads shoulder. The signals got a timestamp showing how long it's been running. Sorta like a distress transponder. That and it's using a Leonian style retrieval request."

Lucian tensed and ran through the implications.

It's a faint, low powered Leonian distress beacon, next to a heat signature. Only activated after the droids were blown. A request for pick-up. Probably from a covert operative.

Taking hold of his Railsword, Lucian prepared the unit, "Alright, new objective: capture Leonian infiltrator. Assume hostile, use lethal force only if necessary. Target likely has droid support still, assume there's more still buried in the snow. Dev, launch two more drones, combat drones this time. Give me some air support. Stormcrown, you and Dev hold back a half-click and provide some coverage. Tiberius, Whitepeak, Rorick; on me. We are going to be on a clock to capture the target before they get extracted, keep me informed on any heat sigs, movement or a shuttle. Move out."

With military precision, the dogs snapped to his orders. Despite whatever personal resentment Alric had, or any differing opinions on how to approach, none spoke. For a brief moment, Lucian reflected on how moments like this unnerved him. Any semblance of free-will shut off like programming. He hadn't noticed it until he took command of his unit months ago, being the subordinate and being the officer were very different vantage points. Some officers got off on this power, like that bastard First Commander Bravis. Lucian needed to mentally shake himself and reiterate the fact that this subservience wasn't malicious, but necessary to keep the unit alive. Free will had prompted all those here to military service, even Dev had a choice in the matter. They were here by choice and right now they needed unquestioned obedience to the orders.

Focus. They have your back. Don't question it. Do what needs to be done.

Lucian made a heated sprint across the frozen landscape, the five other dogs in near lockstep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The interior of the small shuttlecraft was powered down, a red glow of the backup lights dimly illuminating the lone active panel and the Lupis observing the screen. The cadet unit had made remarkable progress over the course of their term here at the ASML, it was without a doubt in this old dogs mind they qualified to be Praetorian Guards.

The occupant regarded their sprint across the icy plains. Such an interesting batch this time around. Not one but TWO Senate pups, a conscript, a washout, one needed a psych discharge and the last needed a court martial at a minimum. These were NOT traditional Guard resumes.

Lucky for them, the Guard needed more than the traditional recruits. Something had changed out there, the Alphate knew it and required change. For the good of the Guard. For the good of the Republic.

The distant group of Lupis soldiers approached the small rift in the snow where their target huddled for warmth under a thermal tent. The poor bastard. Freezing his tail off, cornered, alone. And sure to die even if he managed to kill all the cadets. It'd be a shame, of course, but at least the orbital bombardment of the site would be a modicum of justice. Hopefully they'd live up to expectations.

Lupa help Rexius if those Senate pups get killed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Other than the heater in the tent, the beacon and some computers, I've got zero EM activity. Just the tent on thermal. One occupant." Dev reported in over the coms.

"Good. AlphaTeam, take positions around the tent. Dev, pull your drones in, Ysanne the moment he steps out of the tent I want a killshot lined up. Tracer line on. Let him know you have him." Lucians orders were followed by nods of acknowledgement from his team.

As the group took positions, Lucian crouched a dozen meters from the tents front flap. He could feel the heat from where he stood. Odd that an instructor playing covert operative would run a heater so damn hot. Perhaps the colonel enlisted some poor sod of an administrative aid to sit out here in the cold. Simply no practical reason to use a damn heater, a real operative wouldn't give a damn about 'comfort'.

HUD displayed showed his unit in position, even if he couldn't see them all directly, the system filled in the info Lucian would otherwise miss. Rorick had his Railsword primed to blow the tent to a crisp. Jed and Alric were set to move in for a melee, blade in one paw riot stunners in the other. Dev was deathly still off to Ysannes' side. She must have threatened him to not be a distraction.

Damn, Ysanne has her pulse low. I suppose that means she's ready to take the shot.

Taking a breath, Lucian switched his helmet from voice coms to speaker and cranked the volume. "This is the Republic Military Special Service Division. You are surrounded. Come out of the shelter with your paws behind your head".

Thermal imaging showed the single figure inside scrambling from a seated position to its feet. The figure was well over two meters in height, it reached for something against the doorway of the tent. Lucian reacted.

"Weapon!" he called hitting the snow, just as a spray of ballistic rounds flew through the tent.

The second burst went in Roricks direction, he rolled just in time. A shot cracked from behind and the figure in the tent flew to the far side, colliding with the wall and pulling the whole tent down on top of him. A well timed shot from Ysanne.

Lucian, Jed and Alric moved in unloading their stunners on the form inside the tent. Spasming and yowls of pain made it clear their target was still alive. Claws began to tear through the insulation material, and much to the dogs surprise a Leonian lashed out of the wrecked shelter. Claws, caked in blood swung wildly at Jed, who sidestepped as the crazed alien lunged towards Lucian.

Lucian swung his Railsword in a clean arc down and forward, severing the cats left leg just below the knee, the blade's heat flash cauterizing the wound. Screaming incoherently, the feline fell again.

Crippled and surrounded, the Leonian, a male if Lucian had to guess, bit his lower lip and stopped wailing. Lucian held his still smoldering blade to the cats chest and once again demanded surrender, "Last chance. Cease your resistance and you will be provided with medical care and fair treatment".

The alien spat a wad of blood at him. He certainly understood Lupis, had a translator or at least understood his predicament. The cat locked eyes with Lucian and began speaking in incomprehensible tongue. The units own translator software kicked in with little delay and began:

"Insect ridden beasts, you have captured only the dead. A corpse will tell you nothing. Unlike my people, you will learn nothing here, while we have already ignited the fire that will burn your presence from the galaxy! A cold void-death awaits you, the shadows you live in will burn with the divine light, for we are the true heirs to the Precursors. Solis Averatum Indes Atherius!"

The Leonian rolled to his side, making great effort to turn around completely as Lucians dogs moved to secure him. He ceased struggling the moment he turned around, bit hard into his cheek and within seconds began frothing at the mouth.

"Suicide pill, open his mouth, put him on his side, now!" Lucian prompted. The group of three dogs struggled to hold the massive cat down properly. Almost as quickly as the leonian had acted, he expired.

"Fuck." Lucian rolled the cat around and closed his eyes.

Ysanne called over the coms, "what the flaming shit just happened? He's dead?".

Alric stepped back from the corpse, panicking, "Lupa, Lupis and Divine Spirit, please grant me the wisdom to see my failures, judge me for my sins and show me the compassion of the Divine Parents' '.

"I don't get what just happened, this was supposed to be a training exam, what did we just do?" Jed looked over to Lucian in concern.

Lucian pulled off his helmet to the metallic scent of blood, fear and ionized air. "I'm just as clueless as you, if this was an actual Leonian spy, then those droids earlier were Leonian too, not the academies. This was no fucking simulation or exam."

Alric continued his prayer for forgiveness, seemingly unaware of the other for the time being.

Removing his own helmet, Rorick laughed, a deep hearty laugh totally unfazed by the blood on the air. "No, boss you're wrong, this WAS an exam. The Guard sent us on an actual field assignment, a real mission, for the test. They must have known about this agent poking around the ASML, damn they probably knew about the tank too. What better way to test new recruits than put them on a real mission?"

"And what, not tell us? No hint whatsoever this was REAL?" Jed barked back incredulously.

"Why would they expect a Guard unit to need info, or expect a battle? Aren't we expected to always expect a battle? Prepared for crazy missions with no preparation?" Dev chimed in.

"It does make sense. They detected a GLE spy here on Arct Kyber, we needed a real practical test, proof we deserve to join the Guard. They get two Krenicks with one arrow." Lucian posited.

Rorick grinned, "and of course if we failed they'd still kill this guy anyway. Probably have a bomber wing prepared to slag this area and AA cannons pointed here to shred any incoming ships. He would've been dead, pill or not."

Alric turned his ears at that and stopped praying. "If we failed? So they seriously considered all of us dying on this damn snow drift?"

"Probably, yes. We knew the risks of simply accepting an invitation to the Praetorian Guard." Lucian shrugged.

An alert from command popped up on the units HUDs, orders to gather up the slope of the hill and await extraction.

"Well at least we know what to do now." The black dog chuckled.

Alric huffed, "Too little too late if you ask me".

Once the six dogs had convened at the extraction point, they didn't have to wait long. The group felt a wave of relief as a shuttle with Republic Military markings came in sight and began landing procedure. Lucian silently hoped they met expectations.

The hatch popped open, and the cadet cadres head instructor, Colonel Caidwin stepped out, a datapad in paw.

The Guard hopefuls assumed a tight salute in unison, to which the colonel gave a nod.

"At ease. Well, this has been quite an interesting evaluation. To be totally transparent, I did not have terribly high hopes for you lot. Divines only know why Alphate Rexius assigned you to my command, I swear sometimes it feels like the dog is out to give me a hard time. I always hate going undercover. The ASML makes some damn fine soldiers, but damn are some of these staffers total sacks of sheddings. I hope I never see any of these idiot instructors again. Thankfully, you all completed your objective. And all survived, which is a bonus. From here on out, all six of you are ghosts. Your official military records will be buried so damn deep, they'll need to crack the planet to dig em out. The real records anyway. Before you senate pups ask, yes you'll be given a very honorable looking resume for when you run for office. All backstopped and perfect and honorable and great for your career in a decade or so. As of now, you don't belong to your old branch of service, you don't belong to the military, fuck you don't even belong to the Republic. You belong to the Praetorian Guard. Welcome to my command. Hop on the shuttle, we're leaving for Apex Station immediately."