Location: Sarkan Defense Force Command Center, Southeast Quadrant,
Salyrini,
Sarka
Objective: The Siege of Salyrini
Allies:
Syd Celsius
Syd Celsius
Enemies:
Galak
Keldothera
(If I'm missing anyone involved in the shield generator, please let me know so that I can tag them properly - Thanks!)
Travot walked through the hall with his hand resting on his saber's cold, metal hilt. Overhead lights flickered on and off asthe cool CryoBan mist seeped through the building's shattered windows.
Whatever that fell near us must have been huge. He let out a short breath and reached into the currents of the Force itself to expand his senses - but he immediately felt a jarring sensation. Pain, loss, anger, fear - all the feelings that might lead to the Dark side - all caused by whatever catastrophe had happened immediately outside the tower. The big-boned jedi briefly halted as he attempted to calm himself from the feelings of such anguish. A disembodied voice called out from the shadows, briefly startling him.
"
Who goes there? Oh, it's you, Jedi. Knight Ravenna, is it?"
A Concordian soldier of one of the
expeditionary regiments walked out of the shadows and lowered his blaster to a low ready position. The Susevfian stretched out his mind to read the soldier but felt no presence.
Another droid... That in and of itself caused even more emotions to bubble up inside him.
A droid like that couldn't truly felt what he felt or knew what it was to live through this, did it? Does it really know what fear and loss are? He wasn't sure if it was true about all droids, but he knew that the Synthetic Soldiers used by the Concord didn't experience such emotions, or if they did, their programming carefully controlled it. He looked the almost human-like solder over from top to bottom.
Entirely expendable...
"
What is the status of our outside forces?" questioned the Susevfian, continuing forward down the hall.
The synthetic soldier fell in step with the bulky man, "
One of their big digging machines dropped out on top of the perimeter. Our dug in infantry and armor are currently attempting to put them down."
At those words, fear gnawed on him. The Bryn'adul had a ferocious reputation for a reason - unpredictable acts of violence did seem to be their modus operandi.
How many more will die at their hand? ...but this is...more calculated, isn't it? They're going straight to the heart of the city, the command center. Aren't they? The man felt a blast of cool air against his skin and immediately turned into a room through a cloven door. Shards of glass littered the floor amid overturned desks and the corpses of computers . He gingerly stepped over what he thought was the body of a now deceased Sarkan to get to the remains of a window. To his surprise, he could see the vestiges of natural sunlight casting their rays at the edges of the city and gradually grow larger to creep up towards him. But more immediately in front of him, he could see the embattled
Expeditionary Armor and
Infantry Regiments fiercely defending their lines in their blunt, defiant way.
Two sets of shield barriers formed in front of the Concord lines, with
Faambaa-class Mobile Shield Generators acting in concert to form a unified entirely conventional, theatre-grade shield bubble to immediately protect the units around the command center as the building itself. One of the generators that had been around where the Bryn'adul Burrower had landed seemed weaker than normal, and the Jedi guessed that the Fambaa which had originally held that spot had been destroyed by the massive burrower landing on top of it. Its spot was being taken by a substitute
Kaaduu generator, a weak point in the system. Around the immediate ground perimeter, miniature
Starlight Scutum shields radiated out from the
Sarlaccs that had been detached from one of the Subterranean Armor Regiments.
"
Two layers of shielding," observed the droid soldier as it intently watched the jedi, "
One to strip whatever that stuff they use to pass through our shields unharmed, and another one to actually stop them."
"
Stop them temporarily," said Travot with a frown, "
The Bryn aren't stupid. They'll find a way through that..."
Thunderous fire suddenly broke out from the Concordian lines as
Gharzr-class Battle Crawlers and
Katarn-class Battle Tanks fired directly into the approaching Bryn'adul lines with capital-grade
hypervelocity cannons,
plasma turbolasers, and
mag-pellet autoguns. Dirt and duracrete flew up into the air from their firing and Travot could see brief flares of characteristically blue
Bremsstrahlung radiation from some of the plasma turbolaser's blast. He shuddered.
Have we really stooped so low as to employ radiation weapons against our foes? He folded his arms. Horrible as the Bryn'adul are, do we stoop to their level? He knew it was another position that pitted the sometimes machiavellian Concordian military at odds with the more ideologically pure Jedi. Something writhing in the distance caught his eye.
Is that? It can't be...Fear tugged at him yet again, but he knew it was a problem larger than he could handle on his own. The Susevfian quickly brought his comlink up to his lips.
"
56th Armor Regiment Command, this is Jedi Knight Ravenna. There is a debaucher in the Bryn'adul ranks at approximately 7 o'clock from my position. Something needs to be done to do it before it gets closer. Maybe an artillery strike?"
A frantic voice crackled through his comm.
"
Oh kark it all....will do...probably...."
That's the most unmilitary response I've heard. Yet for whatever lack of decorum the officer on the other end of the line hand, seconds later, haphazard
particle cannon bolts from a battery of
A-1 Frontline Self-Propelled Artilleries began to rain down on the Bryn'adul. It gradually began to coalesce into a column of explosive light that seemed to shift closer and closer to their target.
They're walking the fire onto the target? I suppose one can't get really good target acquisition against something like that...and any fire is better than no fire...He frowned. The collateral damage wrought upon the nearby city would be significant, yet for once, he agreed with the Concordian officers that it was a necessary tradeoff, as much as that troubled him.
"
See, it'll be fine," said the synthetic soldier.
Not a care in the world about the damage we just dealt to our people? Droids...He dismissed the thought - did the droids really know better? Travot briefly glanced at the rays of sunlight intruding into the caverned city, "
I am not so sure about that. The only thing we have right now between them and the command center are blunt instruments. The Bryn'adul are more cunning than people give them credit for. I'm not sure if this will really be enough...."
He flipped a switch on his comlink to the frequency he shared with Admiral Quee, "
Admiral, the command center is going to need some help..."