The Banning Crew

The Crew

• How they came to be...

  Alec Banning, Jason Valmont, Nathaniel Fillip, and Paul Gatto. A varied bunch of misfits who when individually inspected one might not quite know what are the ties that bind them all together but in this 'verse it is a common enough story: Independents or Alliance you stick together and the Unification War certainly did more than unite the moons and planets of humanity's adopted home system.
  
  The quartet hail from Shadow, not all rural but that is relative on what was an agricultural world, and were assigned to 788th Alliance Mechanized Infantry.
  Nathaniel (more commonly known as Nat for short) was a grease monkey in the motor pool who, despite his small stature, proved quite capable at maintaining the transports and war machines of the unit... even excelling in some ways when it came to any small spaces or parts that. His build certainly was a point of contention early in his time in the unit but the unseen strength behind a swung wrench or two put an end to any harsh jibes tossed his way.
  Jason Valmont had been a hunter and a tracker on a ranch prior to enlisting and this experience served him ably getting him tapped for scout work. His training for this niche has to this day allowed him to be quite the scrounger for parts, material, and shiny shiny loot that are useful as his catalog-like mind that once was used to maintain knowledge on animals was expanded to know what he could use and what was junk.
  Alec Banning had been the son of a veterinarian who had taught his skills to his son and on the odd occasion treated wounded people as well. His father, having great aspirations for his son, had sent him to the core worlds to learn to be a physician but barely a few years into actual medical school the outbreak of war sent this wayward son home to do his duty and help defend his home. For obvious reasons he was flagged as a medic: not having enough training to be assigned to a medical unit but too experienced to not use either.
  Paul Gatto was ranch-hand not terribly overburdened with any learning or intelligence but he was not a lay-about or a fool. He had bounced from job to job for years since he was a teen, his parents having died in his youth and himself having fled the orphanage he had been placed in, before settling on one particular ranch where he was appreciated. He was a monstrously large man with a face that naturally appeared to be glaring at those he looked at and flattened nose from multiple breaks over the years. With the war on he signed up to protect those who had taken him in by serving militarily. His massive frame and strength settled him as a heavy weapons operator and was thus trained in the use of carried and mounted weaponry used for support of the general infantrymen.
  
  As a group they first met, briefly, in basic training but otherwise were separated until they were loaded up at the star-port for embarkation to a troop transport. With a mind-numbing amount of travel time to both hook up with a greater Independent fleet and then deployment for ground combat many of the men and women did what they could to keep busy. What would bring them together beyond a brief earlier acquaintance would be quite simple and common amongst folk like them: a poker game. With not much to do and at least one or two pay periods worth of money unspent the four of them, barely knowing each other just a tad more than anyone else on their boat, got together to waste time, flap gums, and see who might scoop up a nice bit of coin. To this day when they find themselves without a thing to do the gang is likely to pull out a deck and start up a game.
  
  What truly bound them together, as if soldiering on through years of bloodshed wasn't enough, was battle of Serenity Valley. Their unit had been pounded by Alliance air support, their vehicles obvious targets and of concern to the conflict at hand... their destruction hindering Independent movements and their ability to support an advance. Bombed, shelled, and taking bloody beating, the four men fell back into the hillside to hold out on higher ground... their squad-mates either dead or dying at the base of the valley. Paul held off the Alliance ground pounders giving chase with a machine gun he'd torn off of a bombed out transport, giving the others time to get to cover. Once established in a defensible position Paul kept their foes at bay, Nat blasting away with a scavenged battle rifle at his side, Jason picking off enemies with a sniper rifle, and Alec attempting to be useful by shooting a service revolver towards the enemy (his glasses long broken, making it difficult to see if he hit anything anyway)... and this was just within the opening days of the seven week battle of attrition.
  As the days went by they picked up a few survivors that managed to run, crawl, or fall into their makeshift fortification giving Alec plenty of work to do as wounds were many and multiplying without end. Jason was able to maintain some supplies by scavenging ammo, food, and what little medical supplies he could find to keep them from running out of bullets or starving to death. Nat, while not having any vehicles to work on, did his best to keep their gear working with their collective kits for servicing weaponry in his capable hands. Paul was their rock: his weapon, when it had ammo, staved off many a charge that would have taken their position with their limited number of combatants.
  On the final day though it just wasn't enough. Alec was out of everything and was down to tearing uniforms off corpses to make bandages from. Only a handful of other survivors were capable of putting up a fight with the weapons they had and most of them could count their remaining rounds on their own digits. Jason, resourceful as he was, had nothing new to bring back... the Alliance had gotten to collecting gear from their fallen to keep it from the enemy whenever they could by now. Water had run out the day before and food was down to a single tin of beans someone had held back until then. Then came the Alliance push that broke them: Paul, beginning to pour down his usual heavy fire, was incapacitated by a sudden explosion from his overworked gun as the ammo belt cooked off from a combo of heat and misfire inside the barrel that sent shards of steel that had once been a gun assembly into Paul's face. Combined with the lack of water and food the big man was down for the count. Even before the Alliance reinforcements began their descent into the valley the hillside position was over-run and the broken men forced to lay down arms.
  
  Afterwards they drifted, together at least, and happy in that at the least... they knew that they had each others back and, unfortunately, they also had no one left waiting at home or even a home. Shadow had been bombed into an orb of blackened glass and ash years prior and no one could live there now. So the four of them persevere and do anything, whatever job they can, to keep on going.
  
  Now they crew together on the Sky's Freedom, an illegal salvage ship that had been an old clunker of an Alliance prison transport before its decommission before the war under Lily Mae, the wife of Alec Banning, who had originally hired them on prior to relationship that had bloomed from their work together.