The Landcruiser emerged on the horizon like a hulking and unwieldy steel whale, hovering gracefully across the badlands as it made its final approach to the Antaria Flats military base. The six new transfers stood in a loose gaggle rather than a formation and waited for their new assignment to quite literally come to them. Each soldier was an elite GEAR pilot, handpicked from one unit or another, and while each of them couldn’t be more different from the next, the past few weeks had all but ironed out operational wrinkles. Even if there were personal differences from one person to the next, they were professionals, through and through, and they shared an ironclad bond; all had survived and graduated from special operations training school. 

Despite the brutal difficulty and participating in exercises and training that went beyond anything Corporal Ross Nordegg thought he or his equipment was capable of, pushing man and machine past their limits and somehow thriving. Once the badger had acclimatized to the brutal training regimen, he equated it to more or less the same shit he’d been doing before, just far more sophisticated and it played to his individualism. Unlike other units, being spec ops gave one a certain amount of autonomy, where each soldier was to be self-sufficient and a leader in their own right, not just a member of the rank and file. It went beyond just following orders; the spec ops troops needed to be able to do things on their own under their own initiative. 

It was daunting, but also liberating. Ross decided he liked amounting to more than being another number in the rank and file. He had something to prove, and he could do it under his own merits, not following orders to such tedious meticulousness that it became stifling. He had no problem following orders, and he certainly didn’t consider himself insubordinate, but there were times where the official orders were ill-advised or ineffective and he simply completed the objective in a more efficient manner. Unfortunately,  the brass didn’t see eye to eye with him whenever he deviated from the usual protocol and it ultimately kept the prospect of promotion off of his radar, which ironically would have meant him calling the shots and getting away with his more… creative solutions.

He watched the Landcruiser come into port, towering over the platform and Ross couldn’t help but admire the size and complexity of the machine; hell, the power and propulsion systems that provided the beast with lift must have been immense and complicated, possibly involving something like quantum mechanics. And so, he watched as the moorings came down and [I]Parvan’s Claw[/I] opened up, giving the new transfers a glimpse at their new crew. 

It gave Ross a reason to think about what he must have looked like. Combat vest over a tunic with the arms cut off, brown cowboy hat over a bandana, neck-length ponytail and a machine gun over his right shoulder while pouches containing ammunition drums and a spare barrel hung off of his rucksack. The the CO, one Colonel Blade, would be given his first impression soon enough. Either it was going to be a productive relationship, or more of the same as the last CO he had who was all too eager to see Ross out of his regiment. The badger considered that he spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of 500 credits on replacement tunics and the fact a lot of his physical fitness was maintained by discovery of his abuse of the “if it fits under your head dress, you can keep it” policy in regards to hair. Skirting policy and stubbornness aside, Ross decided for this first meeting, he’d show the Colonel point blank exactly what he was all about. No sense in keeping surprises hiding under a pretense of suspense and an elaborate game of pushing buttons. 

As the man of the hour descended to the replacements and greet him, a man with no small amount of scarring and cybernetic enhancements, Ross stood anchored in place, waiting for the dust to clear before he introduced himself. The man looked tired, that was for damn sure.