"Cadet Kiriel is correct: victory is about control of the battlefield. When you can control where your opponent goes and engage him at a time and place of your choosing, you are assured of victory. This is as true in arm's-length close quarter battle as it is along an entire division front. Today we will focus on area denial and the maneuvering of your enemy at close range.
"This is a standard Ministry issue Mark Twenty-Nine offensive grenade. You've all been familiarized with them, but I will remind you of the pertinent specs. Assault fuze is set to the minimum one second to prevent rebound or return. Lethal fragmentation radius is three meters, nominal safety radius is four meters...The fragmentation elements are low mass and slow dramatically as they exit the lethal range, having almost no wounding capacity after traveling four meters...
"This room is five meters across. Defend yourselves."
Player: Kolotil
Character Name: Hadiya bint-'Aliyya bint-'Layla al-Zarqa'.
Age: 29
Sex: Female
Species: Her mother is a predominantly mouse/antelope hybrid (multi-generation hybrid), her father was a cormorant/Urial sheep (first generation). Genetically she is fairly mixed but mouse and Urial sheep predominate in her features.
Height/Weight: 5'2" 122 lbs.
Social Status: UniClass
Physical Description: A modest five feet, two inches in height, out of uniform Hadiya hardly has the build most would associate with soldiering; a slight, slender physique whose wiry muscularity is rarely obvious in the loose clothing she tends to wear. Her head is predominantly murine, though there's a faintly more rabbity than mouselike pudginesss to her muzzle. The right corner of her mouth is puckered into a permanent grin by an old, jagged scar that twists up that side of her face and along her cheekbone. An Urial sheep's curling horns and horizontally-slit-pupiled eyes showcase her father's influence. Patchwork fur is almost evenly divided down her muzzle: grey-black to the left and creamy yellow-white to the right with a contrasting black oval around her golden right eye. her throat is tinted a rich russet that becomes visible again on her left hand, her right hand being creamy-white. A skullcap of glossy black feathers fills the space between broad, sweeping horns that frame round mouse-ears. Her tail is slender and mostly mouse-like, though the fur near its tip has a slightly coarse tuft. Her feet are relatively rodentiform but with golden birdlike scaling near the ankle and shank, and sharp birdlike spurs at the 'heel'. Her voice has a heavy Arabi sweetness to it, cut with a hoarse , rusty rasp that most would associate with a really bad throat injury, although she has no scarring on her throat...Molasses poured over broken glass.
Off-duty she tends to dress in a faux-uniform style made fashionable during the later war years...Loose BDU-style pants and mandarin-collared, military-cut long-sleeved tunics of bright gem tones, quilted for warmth and belted at the waist. The quilting does a fair amount to conceal her meager bust and hips, and it's not unusual for strangers approaching from behind to mistake her for a young male. While it was fashionable in the heyday of such outfits to wear an ornamental knife and a box-pouch that mimicked a holster, the weapons at her waist are neither gemmed nor decorative: an early-issue MDISU dagger-length semi-automatic gunblade honed with long use until the blade is thin as pain, and balancing it on her right hip the flat white ceramet of an issue sidearm.
Occasionally she can be found in a skirted faux-uniform ensemble or even a dress. She tends towards clean white and bright metallic yellows that enhance her eyes and particular jewelry. No matter what she is wearing, it will almost always be long-sleeved and high-collared, the better to hide old scars, and it will always have collar tabs in polished gold showing her lieutenant's rank and, opposite it, the torch and wreath of Unity.
On patrol duty she wears regulation white Lower Ministry combat armor (Not uncommonly among horned or antlered Ministers, she has had her spiraling horns operated upon to be removable so that she can wear a standardized helmet.). She will generally select a submachinegun or carbine for patrol duty, but keeps a regulation pistol in crossdraw at her belt as well as the aforementioned gunblade strapped grip-down to her harness in front of her left shoulder. Her height does tend to make her stand out from the majority of other Ministers in the infantry arm, but few are foolish enough to point it out.
While on Special duty with her own command (1st Assault Platoon (sometimes referred to as First Shturmovye Gruppe...A deprecated title that the team was first formed under during the wars), 39th Strike Operations) she will generally wear the much heavier, more sloped and faired bulk of Ministry assault-team armor. Made to shrug off at least the first hit from most offensive and defensive grenades as well as fire from most man-portable squad weapons, the armor is unsuitable for patrolling but exactly the thing for room-to-room, entry-team or hostage exfil work...Which is exactly the sort of operation the Ministry normally tasks to Hadiya and Assault One. As she rarely has far to go in this armor, and expends prodigious quantities of ammunition in a very short time, her loadout is similarly heavy: an additional backup pistol and carbine, assorted grenades (flashbangs, offensive fragmentation, fuel-air 'bunker busters' and possibly even an abZero grenade or two), and the heavier form of an entrenching tool strapped to her shoulder in place of the more demure (but theoretically more lethal) gunblade.
On Special duty she will sometimes be unseen wearing experimental mottled grey urban thermoptic camoflauge armor of roughly the same design but with significantly less visibility. On these occasions she is usually being tasked for covert infil or exfil work, so her loadout will most likely include weapons that are similarly camoflauged.
Background: Hadiya bint-'Aliyya bint-'Layla al-Zarqa'. Born al'Zahfar Colony, Hybrid Ghetto Guwwa'jidar (Lit. "Inside the Wall"), 1 ECE. She was born and raised in the ghetto, attended fairly simplistic schooling within the ghetto, helped from a young age in her father's restaurant just outside the Wall. She has quite a bit of skill at cooking al'Zahfari cuisine, when she can get the right ingredients. She often had to wait tables as a child and fetch supplies while her parents cooked.
al'Zahfar was predominantly a pureblood city with a hierarchy of predominantly caprid and antelopid species and very, very little tolerance for any sort of predator. Most predators, even purebloods, lived within the ghettoes with the hybrids. There were strict curfews and stricter laws pertaining to the ghetto-dwellers, who were in no way thought of as citizens. The majority of hybrids in the ghettoes had a fair amount of visible predator in their makeup. The fact that Hadiya did not have any visible predatory characteristics is probably what got her violently raped and beaten within an inch of her life around her fourteenth birthday. Her first memories of wakening afterward include her father blaming her for it.
Her father dealt with the problem by forcing her to dress in more masculine fashion and in a way that downplayed her female characteristics. Her mother dealt with it by quietly sending her to a different tutor, to study a form of martial arts rather than religious history and homemaking. Neither of these served to prevent a second attempt two years later by another gang of purebred thugs...But her mother's efforts did result in a different outcome. The long scar on her cheek is from a splinter of bone raking her as she tried to bite one of her assailant's eyes out. This effort and a few similarly vicious 'low blows' did result in her escaping the gang. Unfortunately, the fellow whose face she tried to chew through was the son of a local magistrate.
She ran away and stayed with a friend, not wanting to face her father again, so she missed the magistrate coming to his small restaurant the next morning to press charges against her and shut his small business down. While that wasn't the sort of thing one might notice from a few blocks away, the smoke when vigilantes burned down her father's business was more obvious. With the help of friends in and outside the ghetto, she and her parents fled al'Zahfar in the company of a small group of other hybrids secretly heading for Einheit. There was no organized pursuit, perhaps because her father's account had already been frozen and the magister with an axe to grind being well aware of how destitute they were. The small caravan somehow managed, like so many other refugees, to slip past the lines of battle and arrived in Einheit in 14 ECE.
Among so many other refugees sharing their own stories of oppression and abuse, not a day passed that Hadiya failed to find new reasons to hate the purebloods outside of the City. Even those within were not necessarily safe, a fact brutally demonstrated only a year later when an Argent city infiltration kommando whose cover was blown had the bad taste as one of its last acts to hole up in the building her family was living in and use the inhabitants as hostages. As Ministry troops began to effect a fast entry, Hadiya took advantage of the distraction, grabbing a pistol from a passing guard and going from 'helpless cooperative hostage' to 'biggest threat in the room' in an instant. Whether through luck or instinctive timing, the distraction and elimination of the two outward-facing guards in that room meant that any plans the kommando may have had about killing the hostages as a 'last act' were disrupted as Ministry troops crashed in. While Hadiya almost got shot by an eager rescuer for her pains, her solo action was hard to miss and did make its way into the Ministry After Action Report. Her father, who still blamed her for the loss of his restaurant and home, and now having seen her kill in his presence, effectively disowned her. It wasn't a half-day later that a Ministry recruiter contacted her.
She required very little convincing.
Her basic training record makes note of an enthusiasm and natural talent for close combat, with her greatest weaknesses being ranged fire beyond about twenty meters. 'Recruit bint-'Aliyya displays an extremely flexible and effective approach to close-quarters battle, but needs extensive discipline and focus to manage ranged fire under combat conditions. While an acceptable riflery range score has been achieved, marksmanship seems to run counter to her natural talents. Given the trainee's enthusiasm and demonstrated ability to act under immediate fire, it is this trainer's assessment that she will best serve the Ministry in urban or close-fighting, and that these skills should be pursued in further development.'
The Species War did not encourage the most extensive training regimens so much as it encouraged rapid deployment to the field. Within four months, Hadiya found herself doing urban sweeps in Einheit's efforts to liberate as many oppressed hybrids as possible. House to house and room to room fighting were things she excelled at, and revelled in. After the way they had dominated most of her young life, killing purebreds was satisfying. She wasn't given to arbitrary mutilation of her kills, though like many in the more ruthless and violent crucibles of urban combat she did go through an ear-collecting phase. For the most part, the opportunity to kill was enough. Hadiya would volunteer for extra duty as necessary to secure that opportunity: taking point in house raids, recon in force, mouseholing operations, tunnel ratting... Anything dangerous and liable to give her the first and best shot at killing purebreds. In time and in the confusion of the crucible, a squad coalesced around her; first an unofficial set of regular volunteers, then as command made 'what worked' official, a promotion to Leytenant and the formation of a Shturmovye Gruppe of four fire-teams.
She visited with her mother when she was cycled back to Einheit on leave, but it was rare for her to exchange words with her father. Einheit was becoming more structured every year, and her parents had moved into the Toride. She took news of the division of the city into UniClass and OuterClass as only proper, and while she had some doubts about the usefulness of purebloods (after all, weren't there enough of their genetics in the hybrid community already?), she kept those doubts to herself as she watched the roles slowly reverse, with Midcity becoming more and more a sort of ghetto for the non-hybrid members of the city's population. This relatively minor disagreement with the protocol of Unity has resulted in a silent agreement among her superiors that she will not receive further promotion until she has mellowed.
Multiple times in the last decade, she was referred to training stints to remove her from the Line, receiving more advanced training in Limited AGrav Airborne Assault, and with Armored Suit Tactics and Mechanics, then being sidelined into the Academy cadre as an instructor herself on Close-Quarters Battle, where she taught recruits both unarmed combat and techniques of fighting with improvised and special close-quarters weapons. Graduates of her course tend to be recognizable by the carriage of an entrenching tool grip down over the left shoulder...Almost a ubiquitous style during the last years of the war in many of Einheit's more elite infantry units. She is the author of a Ministry close-combat manual dealing with the use of entrenching tools as weapons, though she herself has stated flatly that she only wrote down techniques that were already established and that she had learned in fighting desperate colonials…Albeit perhaps not techniques that were all known to any given colony. She has co-authored other field manuals on armored hand-to-hand combat and the close-quarters employment of offensive grenades in combination with armor.
With the advent of peace in the aftermath of Operation Boreas, Hadiya found less and less opportunity for the combative moments she lived for. Long range patrols in the Night and sweeps to take out armed Nightlander encampments or surviving Colony military troops became more and more infrequent, and more and more of her time was spent in Midcity. Her yearly mandatory training stints are focused more and more on peacekeeping and 'police' operations, and she has had repeated requests and reviews of her own teaching to concentrate on less lethal forms of restraint. She has complied, but her medical/psychological profile reviews indicate her unspoken dissatisfaction.
The Ministry are neither wasteful nor foolish. There are thousands of veterans in her position, people with an axe to grind against a supposedly defeated enemy. Discharging them would put the problem on the streets, and result in unstructured conflict and casualties. Counseling is only so effective, and neural restructuring is too likely to blunt the fine and discriminating utensil that is a trained Minister’s mind (though it has been dryly argued that Hadiya’s mind is a blunt instrument indeed). The social and psychological map of Unity that the Ministry has drawn does include room for a certain number of 'police incidents' in the Midcity, and programs for the handling of those veterans who trigger such incidents are well set in place, with counseling, temporary leave, and reintegration into the force becoming a regular procedure less than a year after the declaration of peace.
In the case of such finely-honed tools as Leytenant bint-'Aliyya, there are still regular operations conducted in the Midcity and the Undercity which require people able to do rapid room entry and as-rapid extermination of all within. She has the necessary restraint and the ability to think on her feet in combat which is required to be reliable in hostage rescue situations, and as such has become one of those Ministers who routinely cycles onto Special Mission teams as and when needed. Her medical/psychological profile seems to indicate that this employment is working well with her mental state. She does not show the satisfaction levels manifested when she was regularly fighting and killing purebreds, but neither do they show the deviations and sullenness manifested in most soldiers about to 'redline' and begin killing for its own sake.
Her father ran a successful restaurant in the Toride, her mother has been confined to hospital for the past two years and Hadiya visits her often. She listens to her daughter's tales and troubles, and while she may not understand or agree, she does not show disapproval and does encourage her to live her life and do what she can to make the world a safer place for Unity. Her father disapproved of her to the point of not even speaking to her when she came in for a meal, but she did come in to his restaurant regularly, and she did leave her payment on the table. While for a long time she secretly hoped that there would be some reconciliation between father and daughter, it was not to be. Only last December, Abbas ibn Al-Sayf ibn Ulayyah was convicted of anti-Unity sympathies and sentenced to a Nightlands gulag due to a report made by his own daughter.
Even while assigned to training cadre, Hadiya put aside time every week for (usually regular) classes in one of the Toride gyms local to her small apartment. Veterans and new recruits alike have continued to cycle through, and while the most recent members of the Ministry may consider her attitudes a bit over the top, there is no question that her methods have kept a good many of her students alive.
Personality: Hadiya comes across in different fashions to different people. To other Ministers and hybrid veterans she is invariably formal on-duty and sometimes ribaldly inappropriate off-duty. Purebreds, and most particularly caprine and cervine male purebreds, will find her unremittingly cold and suspicious to the point of hostility. She is given to occasional, predictable depressions on the anniversaries of particular battles...So predictable that Ministry physicians prescribe medication for her on certain calendar dates...And is noticeably more ebullient and upbeat in the wake of successful operations ('successful' in her definition, meaning the opportunity to legitimately terminate some purebred presented itself). Her loyalty to Unity as a cause is unquestioning and internally unquestionable, although she has had past disagreements with commanders regarding method and meaning (mostly during the war years). At least one psychoanalyst has registered concerns regarding details of her neural scan which seem to indicate a reaction to and near-personification of the symbolic flame of Unity which approaches an almost dangerously religious level of adoration.
Weapons/Equipment: Off-duty she is almost never seen without a dagger-length gunblade of early Ministry design and an officer's pistol.
On-duty her weapons loadout will vary with the needs and taskings of the mission: fairly standard on patrol duty with some variation due to her rank and Stormgroup specialization, heavier more close-combat oriented equipment for Special missions. She is disinclined to larger melee weapons such as chainswords, and (some would say terrifyingly) prone to using grenades at the near-contact ranges her armor makes feasible. She has been known to use tesla gauntlets, plasma pistols, and is rated with just about every weapon in the Ministry inventory that can be used one-handed. She avoids heavier weaponry, rifles and squad weaponry, anything that doesn’t leave a hand free or is otherwise not maneuverable enough for dealing with opponents within arm’s reach. Like many urban fighters, she is prone to carrying a second firearm as ‘the fastest and simplest reload’ at close range.
Misc:
In Mid-December of 30ECE, Hadiya was severely injured and temporarily blinded in a fight with a known Enemy of Unity. A member of the OuterClass took her in and healed her. When her vision recovered and she discovered her whereabouts she turned herself and her rescuer over to Ministry authorities. Hadiya was interrogated physically and chemically, subjected to extensive brain-mapping as well as a full neural scan, and only then court-martialed. Despite opposition from Internal Affairs, she was exonerated of most charges due to her high loyalty indexes and the extenuating circumstances caused by her medical and sensory incapacitation. Hadiya was sentenced: suspended and her commission revoked until completion of a series of courses in Unity Command Doctrine and Responsibility. These requirements were fulfilled and her commission reinstated in late January.
These experiences have shaken her, and some of the playfulness and smart-assed attitude she once exuded when out of her Whitegear are now gone. There is a slight hollowness about her eyes and more of a tendency towards silent introspection. Some of the scars of Inquiry and doubt will never heal.
On the other hand, events following this temporary fall from grace have buoyed her in other ways. Her determination to be worthy of the Ministry is more solid than before, knowing how close she came to execution. She has also found surprising solace in some ways via a single interview with the head of the Low Ministry, Commander Benjamin Jorgen, whose attention (much less approval) was something she would have never dared hope to receive. Oddly enough, much of the vitriolic hatred she once manifested for the Outer Class has been tempered by this event as well: something has finally slipped through her lifelong doctrine of racism and convinced her that some purebreds do manifest qualities best hybridized and brought into the service of Unity. It is a bitter revelation to someone who so recently counted success in terms of the number of purebreds killed…And perhaps a source of some relief to her superiors. Contrary to popular OuterClass belief, blind racism is no service to Unity. This particular tool has been tempered and tested, and at least some of the flaws in its forging have been burnt out of it, leaving something that may well better serve Unity than the hot-headed Lieutenant who went missing for three long days.
Unbeknownst to Hadiya, she is under heavier surveillance than most Ministers since her second contact with Navarre du'Biske. Her nightmares are well-known to the Ministry after her total neural mapping, and she suspects she will be checked on more regularly due to her failures in December of 30 ECE, but it is the sudden emergent trend of her unusual survival of multiple encounters with such well-known Enemies of Unity as du'Biske and the Argent Hound which has focused the attention of Internal Affairs upon her...Events beside which a few foolish choices of an otherwise loyal Minister pale. It is not unreasonable to assume that audio and sensor inputs of her PDA are regularly monitored even when she believes it to be 'turned off'. It may not be actively monitored at all times. (Note: This should not deter characters from roleplaying with her! After all, she is a loyal Minister; anything that might be a problem if overheard by her monitors would be just as much of a problem to say to her face.)