LOG-002.“WHOOOOOO! YEAH BABY! WHO’S YOUR DADDY?!”My exhilarated shrieking was (mercifully) drowned out beneath the thundering buzz of the speeder bike I was currently redlining, the ground moving beneath me at a fast enough pace that it was little more than a blur in the face of my rapid progress.I had officially started the Imperial Combat Driver training program seven weeks ago, and after forty nine straight days of living in a glorified barracks in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and getting my ass kicked learning skills such as how to not get my ass kicked in CQC, or how to disassemble, reassemble, and then shoot a blaster, my class had finally been given the chance to get into the actual vehicular section of the course.To say that I had been fucking terrified upon sitting down on a floating bike had been an understatement. But when I’d gripped those handles with my gloved hands, sweat soaked hair carefully pulled out of the way beneath the anonymity of my helmet’s built-in mask…“Damn it Thirteen, slow the kriff down! You’re making the rest of us look bad!”Risking a quick glance backwards to confirm that the one man currently keeping up with me (throughout my utter defilement of the makeshift race track we’d all been assigned to, of course) was still there, I grinned at the designation, before turning my sights back in front of me.CD-013, or Combat Driver Thirteen. That had been the designation given to me after I’d been processed into the training course’s systems. The Empire didn’t really do names, for whatever reason. Paperwork, maybe.“Better do your best to look good then!”The man currently swearing from just behind me as I shot back ahead was CD-012, real name Jarrid Zen, though I and everyone else naturally just referred to him as twelve. And in the month and change we’d spent together in the program, we’d become thick as thieves.Oh, there had been some friction at first, of course. He was some city boy belonging to a wealthy merchant family, one who wanted to get out from under his apparently overprotective mom’s thumb. I was some farmer kid who had been homeless prior to joining up. There had been some level of classism when we’d first met.Then we’d kicked the shit out of each other in a bathroom stall over our differences, covered up the fact that we’d kicked the shit out of each other in order to avoid getting into trouble, and the rest was history.“That is your third and final lap completed, CD-013. An excellent performance, make your way off the track and standby for further instructions.”Pulling back slightly in compliance with the familiar voice’s command, I made my way to the side of the track, slowing down and watching the blurs of half a dozen other drivers zoom past me, still on their second lap.“You got it sarge, moving to park now.”The older man let out a barely audible grunt over the comm link embedded into my helmet, before cutting the connection entirely.CC-8888 (or Sarge, as most of the recruits, myself included, had taken to calling him) was an interesting character. A clone soldier that was apparently made for and the veteran of some war I hadn’t been around to witness, he was apparently a former BARC trooper commander.Which meant nothing to me, naturally. But it sounded cool, and he’d absolutely kicked the fuck out of seven of us trying to rush him during a training session at once, so he’d certainly proved himself the guy to learn from.It was something I kept in mind as I idled into the small section of the track set aside for speeder maintenance and shut my ride down, swinging a leg over the thing and standing at attention as the older man approached me, looking me up and down for a moment before nodding firmly.“Good work, grab a rag and clean her off, then report to the mess for some chow.”Despite the seemingly neutral tone to his voice, I couldn’t help but grin as I snapped off a salute, watching him step aside and reach up to tap at the earpiece he was wearing, likely to tell the next driver to pull in.It was hard not to be optimistic, the first time we’d met he’d called me several different curse words I didn’t understand before ordering me to clean up an oil spill, after all.—“And then I told him he could shove his hydrospanner right up his ass! Hah!”I shovelled bland but relatively filling food into my mouth, fork working to empty the tray in front of me even as the table I was sat at erupted into yet another round of boisterous laughter.The mess hall was busy today, likely due to most of the hundred or so men and women that were part of the driver program all being gathered up at once, rather than the usual separated classes I’d eventually become accustomed to.We all had our helmets off and set to the side for the moment, to let us eat obviously, and it gave me a slightly better field of vision as I glanced outside one of the windows, staring at the rolling fields of green that I knew surrounded the little base the Empire had set us up with.I’d likely be patrolling those fields for shit like dangerous wildlife after today, or maybe space pirates. Those were probably a thing around here, right? Yeah, getting in a crazy ass shoot out with space pirates while protecting some civvies or something, that’d go hard-“Hey, Thirteen!”Blinking as I was torn from my thoughts by a gloved hand clapping atop my right pauldron, I turned and smiled as my brain clocked the voice.“J-er, Twelve! Finally got off the track, huh?”The incoming wince my friend had started to make at my potential fuck up was aborted at the last second once he realised I’d saved it, even as he nodded and sat down, his other hand carefully balancing his own tray of mystery grub.It wasn’t actually a mystery, thankfully. Just some goop the Empire liked to call protein slurry, alongside a few fruits likely harvested from the local orchards.“Yeah, no thanks to you ya damned speed freak. Half the class thought your engine was gonna blow out last second!”The statement earned a round of nods or otherwise agreeable noises from the rest of the table, and I found myself taking on an affronted tone, bringing up a hand to slap at my green armoured chest as I did so.“The Empire would never set us up with shoddy equipment! That would be ridiculous!”The silence held for all of four seconds before the entire table burst into laughter yet again, leaving me grinning as my best friend took his seat next to me.Kriff, I was going to miss this after we all graduated...