Torkel rolled out of bed reluctantly, his eyes as good as glued together, he had to rely on his hands to locate his trousers…
His pants on, a shirt soon followed and he made his way to the locker. Luckily he’d repeated the task of putting on and taking his armor off so many times he could do most of it with his eyes closed, giving them a few more minutes of rest. With everything where it should be, he tightened some strapps and then checked the fuel on his rocket engines and the batteries for his weapon. 
Not very assault troopers prefered the rifle as their weapons. They liked to use their speed and ability to fool their opponents to get close and blow them away with a well aimed shot to the face, not Torkel. He knew all too well that the closer you got to the aliens, the more danger you were in. The rifle on the other hand had the advantage of consistent damage no matter what range you were at. He didn’t have to sneak up on anyone, he only needed to flank them.

The door behind him opened with a loud bang that made Torkel jump. His eyes opened and helped his hands aim the rifle straight at a short, fat intel-guy. 
“Get yer ass to the plane, yah leave in three minutes!” He shouted and held up three sausage-sized fingers. Torkel relaxed and put the safety on. 
“I’ll be there in one” Torlek replied, his accent betraying his ancestry, if the blonde hair and over all aryan appearance wasn’t enough. He slung the strap over his head, swung the weapon back and started to jog. As he passed the door and pressed the button to make the door close the intel-guy had made his way over to the next door. Torkel heard his shouting something to whoever was in there, but didn’t stop to check. 

After a little jog to warm up he started to run at a slow pace. His eyes were fully open, his heart rate was going up and before he reached the hangar all traces of his less-than-gracious awakening was gone. He entered the hangar and slowed down to a jog again. He had barely broken a sweat running through half the base to get there. That was the difference between assault troopers and the others, they focused solely on stamina and cardio. Sure, the whole shooting-thing and all that was important too, but in the end an assaults first duty was to run ahead of the team and find the enemy. An assault trooper who could not run was a dead assault trooper. 
As he got closer to the transport plane he saw a familiar form coming from the other direction. Nicolai Mendaev, “Nic” for short. He came walking in full titan armor like it weighed nothing at all, a LMG nonchalantly leaned against his shoulder. Close by the whirring sound of the access elevator told them both that the MEC Marius was on his way. 
Nic approached the MEC first. "First one here, as always. Where is the rest of our circus troop? Still sleeping I assume?" He said, then Torkel stepped out from behind a supply crate only a few steps away. 
“How can anyone sleep with all this going on?” He asked, throwing his arms up into the air in an exasperated gesture “I think we can turn the sirens off now, unless we wanna wake up the dead too?” 
The sirens stayed on, and while Torkel thought himself funny, he knew that some people couldn’t see the humor in anything before noon. Instead of pissing anyone off more he produced a small black, flat and round object from a pocket, opened the lid and revealed a brown-ish black mush. With three fingers he fiddled around a bit and managed to compress the moist goo into a small pyramid. He carefully lifted it out of the container and placed it beneath his upper lip. As is customary he offered the contents of the small container to his squadmates (knowing well that neither would try his poison) before he put the lid back on and returned the container to his pocket. 
“Well.” He said, somewhat muffled this time, he adjusted the goo with his tongue and tried again. 
“Well, we’re not making any babies here, how about we get on board and see what the cat drags in to join us?” He asked with a smile, revealing the brown glob in his mouth as he drew his lip back.