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Colonel Gelec really wished he’d been consulted on bringing these clowns into Intelligence—or that someone had, anyone really. But no, Cracken had acted unilaterally, as he always did, and then Gelec had to live with it.
Eight absolute idiots sat before him, crowded into his office on pilfered chairs. He drummed his fingers on his desk and tried to recall all of the shenanigans that had brought them to this point, and found it hard to remember everything.
Most of the other trainees were new to the NRDF, but there were plenty of egos among them. The combat-veteran Wraiths had no patience for that, and had made the lives of the more difficult cadets hell.
Once, after a pair of cadets had been found to have brutally hazed and harassed a younger cadet for weeks, the Wraiths slowly removed every possession from the bullies’ quarters, a few at a time, over the course of many days, leading to the cadets becoming more and more agitated and confused, until there was nothing left and the two were frazzled messes—after which point they woke up to find their quarters completely filled with creepy dolls and, upon screaming and running into the corridor, found all eight Wraiths waiting for them, and dozens of other cadets popping their heads out into the corridor. Kell Tainer and Hohass Ekwesh loomed over the cadets without saying a word, and everyone else saw them shrink and wither under their steel gaze.
Not all their pranks were in the name of justice. Colonel Gelec had come to the conclusion that they were just *bored*. They’d tie-dyed uniforms. They’d sliced into the flight sims and switched around the coding, such that every time a cadet flew a training mission they found themselves with the speed, shields, and armament of a different starfighter. Curiously, they snuck into the galley prior to breakfast one morning and simply…cooked breakfast. The cooks had come in to find all their work done and the kitchen spotless.
But pranks were one thing. Outright insubordination was another thing entirely, and they’d gone way too far. Gelec didn’t know what kind of undisciplined outfit Commander Antilles ran over in Starfighter Command, but here in Intelligence, the chain of command was inviolate. And not only had the Wraiths ignored the chain of command and disobeyed direct orders, but since their shenanigans had begun to shift the culture of the training base, quite a few cadets had joined them in their mutiny.
The Outer Rim world the base was on was technically neutral, but the New Republic had managed to negotiate the purchase of some land along with an agreement with the locals to leave one another alone. And so, when a warlord began terrorizing nearby villages, official Intelligence policy was non-intervention. The Wraiths had laughed, thinking that the orders were a joke at first, then grew suspiciously quiet.
Because they were commissioned officers, the Wraiths had more rights than the cadets, freedom of movement and access to sidearms chief among them. With their natural troublemaking talents and the skills that Intelligence training had taught them, they faked requisition orders and got the arsenal to release dozens of sidearms to them. Then they stole a pair of personnel carriers, and with dozens of cadets as willing accomplices, took off.
Investigators were still piecing together exactly what had happened, as the Wraiths and their allies were quite reticent, but the warlord had not been heard from in days, not a single Intelligence cadet had been harmed, and a group of locals had approached the guardhouse at the base to ask if their villages could join the New Republic even if the planet did not.
And Gelec had to clean all this up.
Most infuriatingly, the eight bastards in his office were all grinning. They knew as well as he did that the NRDF would never drum them out of service. Not after Trigit. Not after Zsinj. Gelec sighed and pulled up his records before beginning what would undoubtedly be an incredibly obnoxious questioning. He could not wait until the Wraiths were someone else’s problem.