Tracyn Ordo's (some what average) Fanfic

Wrote this last year for creative writing at school and got top marks for it! Yay
So here goes;


The Rescue Mission
By Tracyn Ordo

Whirr went my descenduer, as I rappelled down the fixed line from the transport hovering above me. It must have been quite a sight to see… A squad of eight men, in armour with weaponry and gear each weighing at least 120kg covering a thirty meter vertical drop in just over five seconds.
I looked back up at the transport majestically hanging there in the air, where it would stay until we called for an evac. My second in command approached and I turned to face him and my team, “The squad’s ready to move out Sarge, and Intel suggests the enemy has zero of our insert” said Rapier looking very menacing in his silver and black armour. “Thanks Rapier” I said. John ‘Rapier’ Freemont had been given the call sign Rapier due to his tall, wiry frame and cool logic under pressure. “Let’s go squad” I called out to the others, and with that we stole out of the clearing into the dark jungle.
After an hour of tabbing through the gloomy undergrowth, we had arrived at our destination, a ridge above a heavily guarded compound, in which there where twenty of our own mando troops being held captive. As soon as we had reached the ridge, the whole squad dropped to the ground as one, ‘I guess that is what, what seems like a lifetime of intensive training does to you!’ I mused to myself before being jerked back into reality, by the voice of Tony ‘Dead eye’ Dickenson, the squad sniper, “I’ve got them in my sights sir. Fourteen wets and ten tinnies on the outside, and the infrared indicates another twenty wets on the inside, plus our men in the basement level” I quickly worked out the odds in my head. Thirty four enemy humans and ten war droids didn’t look too bad against our eight men, not for us anyway, the best of the best, the mandalorian super commandos. However even with the three ultra-accurate, completely silent verpine sniper rifles our squad possessed, we would only be able to take out nine or twelve enemy troops before revealing our position, and becoming vulnerable to mortar fire.
“Hold your fire, Dead eye, a stealthier approach is required for this one because when they’re alerted to our attack the troops will start executing our men.”
“So Sarge, how are we going to do this?” asked Lee ‘Boomer’ Jenson a demolition expert, while subconsciously fingering a flash-bang.
“Nice and quiet like Boomer, nice and quiet like. However, Dead eye, Redoubt, Deo and Prankmeister, you stay outside here with the verps and the Z-6 to provide covering fire when Rapier, Boomer, Forger and I bust out of there with our men.”
Got it sir, I’ll man the Z-6” said Ben ‘Redoubt’ Reilly, the squad heavy weapons expert. He had earned the call sign Redoubt due to his 6’6”, 120kg frame and a certain predisposition for weapons with a high rate of fire.
“Deo, stand by for casualties” I said to Sam ‘Deo’ Jenkins the squad medic. “Okay men lets move out” I called and with a war chant of “Mhi te verde”, silent to the outside world due to our helmets, we moved into the darkness.
Within ten minutes Rapier, Boomer, Forger and I were at the back entrance to the compound, with four scorched sentry bodies lying on the ground around us.
“Forger, lets do this quietly” I said to Scott ‘Forger’ Kingston the team slicer, who had received his call sign Forger due to his hacking skills insofar as the computer terminal had to be removed from our barracks to prevent him from accessing information that he wasn’t meant to in his spare time. Needless to say within seconds he had the door hissing open, with a single utterance of “This is too easy!”
With out a word we all rushed single file in through the door, unleashing withering bursts of fire from our silenced rifles, taking care of the three enemy troops in the room before the even knew what hit them. We moved quickly from room to room with drilled precision, until another eleven corpses lay scattered at our feet and the building was clear. All the while the enemy troops on the outside of the complex remained oblivious of our presence. Something was nagging at me in the back of my mind, but with the adrenaline coursing through my veins and the safety of the twenty di’kutla captives in my mind I couldn’t put my finger on it so pushed it aside for later.
We entered the basement in textbook perfect style. The first thing that struck us was our twenty men strung up on the far wall as if crucified. They had all had their armour plates removed, and looked dishevelled and unkempt. We quickly set about cutting them down and retrieving their armour and weapons from the armoury behind a now open door courtesy of Forger, when all of a sudden six enemy troops dropped down from the ceiling vents mere fractions of seconds after some flash-bangs were thrown down in front of them. Five of the recently released men that were yet to
re-don their armour were cut down, their bodies exploding in thousands of red spurts. The last man down however, aimed a shot at Forger’s neck, just below his helmet. Time seemed to slow for me as he pulled the trigger of his gun, and the muzzle flash leapt out of the barrel fractionally ahead of the bullet. The next thing I knew Forger’s head had snapped back violently and he slumped to the ground. Time resuming it’s normal course I immediately opened fire with my rifle at the ambushers mowing down three of them down on a sprat of glassy red as they turned to face me. Meanwhile Boomer had shot two of the others right in the forehead, and Rapier was wrestling with the last man on the floor in hand-to-hand combat, his speciality. As soon as he was on top it was a one way fight. One powerful punch after another, until the man lay unconscious on the floor. Rapier calmly stood up, pulled out his handgun and without a hint of doubt, put two rounds into the man’s head.
Once we had all had time to recover we reloaded our weapons and the rest of the released men suited up in their armour. We assembled by the front door of the compound. Boomer placed a shaped charge of the door, we took a step back as it went off, and then while the smoke was still clearing eighteen men, fully clad in the distinctive mandalorian armour charged out, guns blazing. Simultaneously to add to out enemies confusion, Dead eye, Redoubt, Deo and Prankmeister opened fire. The effect as astounding! Within seconds their troops had been taken out, bar one, who had tripped me up and was standing above me with his gun aimed at my head as a final act of defiance. At this range even against the relatively weak power his pistol not even my beskar buy’ce would protect me. However, just as he began to pull the trigger, his whole body exploded in red bursts, from redoubt and the Z-6. The next thing I saw was the red and blue figure of Prankmeister, the teams scout, in his distinctive armour with the helmet’s T-shaped visor.
“Trip on a root sir?” he said offering me his hand.
Five minutes later we had collapsed from exhaustion on the transport, everyone in a sombre mood, with our fallen comrades armour stacked neatly in a pile in the corner, content, for now in the knowledge we were on the way back to the barracks, where a hot meal and shower awaited us, along with long sleepless nights once our friend’s deaths had truly sunk in.

The End

Tracyn

Tracyn, I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty to review/send feedback on your short story.

The premise is alright, the situation is set up fairly quickly and the reader is put right in the middle of the action quite early in the story. However, there are some things that I believe you could change/modify to make it an even better tale.

I noticed that most, if not all of the squad’s names are “earthly”, almost as if this was written as something else and then modified to read like a Star Wars action short. (maybe a more contemporary soldier story initially?). There are some inconsistencies with description and SW terms/items. For example: bullets, even though they exist in the SW universe are more of a rarity than the norm, thus there wouldn’t be as much blood spatter and gore in a blaster fight. I understand the possibility that everyone in the story was using some sort of projectile weapon instead of a blaster, but it seems unlikely given the setting and what weapons/tools are available to mandalorians and soldiers in general in-universe.

Another thing that bothered me a bit is the number of hostages. If there were 20 mandos, I can almost guarantee that they’d fight it out, even if surrounded, mostly due to the fact that they each know that there are 19 other highly trained soldiers that have their back. Unless the situation was quite specific (they were caught off guard while they partied and were all drunk when the enemy attacked, for example) it’s highly unlikely that 20 able-bodied professional soldiers would let themselves become hostages. For some, soldiering is a job, to mandos it’s a lifestyle. A lesser amount of hostages would be more “believable” both for the reader and the portrayal of mandalorians in general, or better yet, replace the 20 mando hostages with 20 refugees the squad was commissioned to rescue.

I’m unsure of the reason why you picked an 8-man team to conduct a stealth rescue when 4 would have been sufficient, as evidenced in the story. You only do use 4 members effectively, leaving the others on “standby”. The scout didn’t do much scouting, the sniper didn’t do much sniping, the medic didn’t do much at all and the your heavy weapons specialist only barely showed up in the end. Actually, the amount of detail you put into the characters was, in general, a bit much comparatively speaking with the length of the story. I’d say you should avoid too much detail when telling a short action story like this one. Weight description of your characters is also irrelevant, a more physical description is preferred, and be careful not to overdo things when it comes to the physical capabilities of a soldier. 120 kilos of gear when your soldier weighs in at 120 kilos himself is not very believable. (if you meant 120 kilos of gear between the 8 of them, then that particular detail should be mentioned)

Writing “military/spec-ops” action stories is actually quite demanding, especially if you’re trying to describe a stealth-type kind of scene, and it’s even more demanding when writing within the SW universe. Always, always, think ahead when writing this sort of action/battle type of story. Why did the squad not hide the bodies of the sentries they killed if they weren’t supposed to be detected? If Rapier was a close combat specialist, why did he punch his opponent to unconsciousness and not simply end the fight by snapping his neck? Why did the 4-man squad kill so many guards (that other sentries could discover) if they were aiming to get in undetected? If flashbangs were tossed into the room, why was the mando squad not blinded? You must ask yourself if writing a particular element actually adds to the overall story or if you simply wrote it cause it reads “cool”. Think of your reader as someone watching a movie, if they can’t see the screen they’ll complain, if they see something that doesn’t make sense/needs explaining they’ll go WTF?, so always take the reader into consideration. Writers are sometimes guilty of “awareness” writing, i.e. we know what’s happening in our scene so assume that the reader also knows what we’re trying to convey. Unfortunately, it’s not always the case.

In actuality, the story really isn’t bad, I’m probably mostly nit-picking with how the squad operated because I felt it wasn’t very mando-ish, but that of course is my personal opinion. You should write more, because the more you write, the greater your writing skills.

I apologize if I seem to have critiqued your story a bit harshly but I really do think you could write a good mando fic and this story is just the first of more to come.

Thank you for your input c-13, I appreciate it greatly. I had only really just gotten into mandos when I wrote this, so that explains some of the discrepancies in the area of mando behaviour etc. and up until reading the repcom novels just previous to writing this, all i had read of SW EU novels was lightsaber combat etc, so in that regard, i had not read much of the down and dirty, spec ops part of the SW EU so did not have much to refer back to in that respect. Your point about rapier is a good one, I think the point I was trying to get across was that he almost went into a blind rage of sorts but I did not convey that very well and that would also lead to discrepancies with how he acted after the enemy was unconcious (ie. calmly and cooly shooting him in the head). Your points about the size, depth of character and nicknaming, is noted and I shall remember that for my next one.

I now have to contemplate whether to go through this story and edit it, to improve it, or whether to just right another one entirely...

Once again thank you for your comments and critiques, I will put them to good use... And they were not too harsh, they were all reasonable, valid points, and besides I can take it like a mando... lol

Tracyn