Fire Gild : [Levantine Sanctum Dominion of Etti IV]

[Judah Dashiell]

Stack C - Salacia Consolidated's Corporate Sector HQ



Popping out of hyperspace, Judah wearily rubbed his face. More scruff than normal had filled in and he was still filthy from his time spent on Alderaan. He and Makai had managed to 'borrow' a vessel of someone who had disappeared. Should the person ever come back and track down the ship, he'd have no problems paying in cold,hard credits for its use. The ship was terrible though, certainly no Siren's Song or Sirena. He had debated on heading back to Ceto. Judging from the state of the galaxy that had quickly been nixed. Other plans had come to fruition, one based on getting and keeping Makai in safety. Keeping an eye out for raiders of any type, Judah quickly opened a private comm channel to the Siren's Song.


"Ferox, status please." Hailing a bodyguard-nanny droid never failed. Besides, his salvaged Footman droid was sharp as a tack thanks to his modifications.


"I have loaded the vessel with supplies from the Ceto residence as instructed. I am currently en route to your location Master Dashiell. My ETA is approximately one standard galactic day to your location. Rendezvous point, Salacia Headquarters.Final destination ; Tabaqui."


"Makai and I will be waiting. Hail us the moment you exit hyperspace."


"Understood"


Judah flicked the comm channel off and piloted the 'borrowed' vessel to the HQ building, landing on top. Things didn't look promising on Etti IV but at least he didn't see any Vong yet. Shutting the vessel down, Judah went down and grabbed his sleeping son, wrapping him in the blanket. No need to wake the kid.


Yet as soon as he stepped onto the rooftop, he could hear explosions and blaster fire. He shook his head, quickly moving to the stairwell access and typing in his security code. Granted access, he was thrust into a stairwell only lit by emergency lighting. He began the decent downward to his office, wondering who was still in the building.


[member="Thessa Kai"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

+Stack G+​

+ Overland Art./-Route 92-B +​

[Status: Inbound]​

​

Repulsor dirigible's, fat cigars shaded black but under-lit by panning search beams, patrolled methodically slow across Stack G's razed skyline. Nine out of the sixteen massive 'scraper-towers Seydon managed to count out the corner of his peripheral were set ablaze, and their stanchioned tele-com pillars, crisscrossed lines of heat-boiling girders and support brackets, were wreathed under blankets of scaling, snapping fire. Fire-control airbuses roamed overhead the conflagrations, distant and swerving micro-beads with their rotating flashers on loop. They were jettisoning floods of retardant foam. One tower looked like a spent, burst pustule, dripping with foam like greased pus down its siding. Briefly, the hundred million lights aglow across as many open windows on the city-face blinked dead, before lighting back online. Seydon grimaced.

He was breaking road-law and bypassing the Overland Route 92-B ranging out to the Bowl; the Bowl was a mass of web-interlocked air-lanes that acted as a common reroute nexus. Each stack wormed out swollen lane-trunks that met into the bowl and segued into rampart-exits ranging out over a desolate, scar of granite landscape, veined with rust-red pipelines snaking to stacked refinery nests belching flame and smoke. It was clogged with fleeing citizenry, backed up end to end to nose, brightening the air-lanes with headlamp illumination. From overhead, they appeared as multi-coloured threads spinning into a yarn ball that was the Bowl itself. Braying dash-horns were a ceaseless, discordant orchestra. Seydon banked his blackened, knife of a speeder higher into the dark air, and prodded his radio-caster awake.

"Seydon-actual, on transmitter to et all Levant receivers," He said. "Available for any assistance as required, over."

 

[Thessa Kai]

Stack C
Hired Ammunition

A nerdy guy with glasses came out, followed by two not-as-nerdy types with bolters. The Galan didn't hesitate in raising her blaster. "Lower your weapons. We won't need them in the conference room, gentlemen."

One of the seedier looking guys raised his and got a stun bolt to the face, hitting the ground with a loud and unceremonious thump.

"I won't ask again."

The other guy dropped his weapon and slowly raised his hands.

"Let's go talk this out real nice and easy like. Like civilized people." Maybe some people would recognize her as one of the missing CEO's wife.

[member="Judah Dashiell"]

 

[Kaida Taldir]

Firemane Headquarters


The little skirmish was over, now all that was left was the detritus of battle. "Hostiles have been terminated," Caerys spoke blandly as she strode over a bunch of corpses, looking indifferent as to whether they had been friends or foe. Then again, she was a murderous death machine. "Chrysalide Inc. must be reeling from this defeat. Combined with the mass disappearances, this is a useful opportunity to decapacitate them with a surgical strike."


Perhaps, but then maybe she did not care either way and just wanted to kill more things. In any case Askari, who did not like the droid much anyway, brushed her words aside. "In case you haven't noticed, tin can. Mass disappearances have hurt us as well. Last thing we need is deplete manpower even more. Get the wounded to the medbay, I want a casualty list. And strip any of the dead mercs of their weapons, supplies, anything. If any of their tanks are even in halfway serviceable condition, take 'em for repairs. Goddess knows we're gonna need it," the Eldorai sergeant spoke, barking out orders. At least the activity would give the Firemane mercenaries something to do that would take their mind of the frankly frakked situation.


"I have long come to the conclusion that the Goddess is fictional," Caerys stated, not being helpful at all, before she made herself useful by stripping a dead Chrysalide mercenary of his weapons and ammo. Not like he would need them anymore anyway! And if he did need them in the netherworld, she did not care either way.


"And I have long come to the conclusion I don't care about your opinion," the Eldorai Sergeant retorted, feeling quite tempted to introduce the damaged droid to an ion blaster before deciding against it. She made a motion to one of the Firemane troopers, who was apparently handling comms. "Still no success?"


"No, ma'am," the trooper, who was somewhat scarred Zabrak clad in duraplast armour, shook his head. "Kaeshana's still dark and no word from Tabaqui, but we've received some scattered comms traffic from across the city. Looks like Levantine Patrollers have popped by."


"Well, about time the space hippies made themselves useful. Hopefully they have more to offer than make love not war," another of the Sergeants, a strongly-built, massive Kar'zun, a being made of pure rock and stone, declared, blood splattered across his heavy armour.


Firemane was not a debating club and so Askari did not further comment on his views upon the Levantines. Space hippies or not, Firemane had worked with them. "If they're actually getting things done, we should support them. I want a scout team ready to recon situation in the city. And see if you can get a line to Salacia Consolidated! In fact, send a team over to find out whethere someone's left standing there." Obviously the Firemane minions had no way of knowing that [member="Judah Dashiell"] or [member="Thessa Kai"] were on the planet but they had a good working relationship with Salacia. Besides, this writer needs to interact with other people! Firemane provided security for Salacia, so a number of its security cops would be on Salacia premise, but in the general mayhem this base had lost contact with them.

 

[Judah Dashiell]

Stack C - Salacia Consolidated



Judah had reached his office from the internal stairwell with relative ease. It wasn't until he reached the door to the space did he encounter any other living creature. Lucky for him, it was a Firemane solider, one that had been contracted out by Salacia. Also lucky, the other man knew his job well and recognized Judah.


"Mr.Dashiell? How'd you get in here?"


"Stairwell. The one from the roof. Where is everyone else...?"


"Elias, sir. Those of us who remain are fortifying the building. Big fight broke out shortly after the great disappearance. Folks acted like they were pioneers, land grabbin' and all. Big war out there. Lucky for you, Firemane drills us like the next galactic war is around the corner. We lost the first floor lobby but everything from the cafeteria up is fortified. Had to use the furniture and tear some stuff apart though...."


"All material Elias, don't worry yourselves. You did good." Judah by now was into his office with Elias following. Makai was set down on the leather couch against one wall. The young boy stirred a little but settled right into the comfortable cushions. Judah walked over to a cabinet, rustling around. He soon came up with a box of cigarettes and a lighter.


Within minutes, Judah was taking his first drag in....well, probably a good five years. He was a little rusty, judging by the coughing. An offered cigarette to Elias and both men opened a window, blowing smoke out into the war zone. If there was any good time to start smoking again now was it.


"Elias, we're going to have to find a few free personnel. Start destroying records. If this building falls it will be a boom to the idiots up and down Stack C. Just for safety's sake, you know?"


"Understood Sir." Elias took a deep drag before leaning out the window. A woman was down across the block, hollering something. Just shot someone in the face too. "Whoa. G.I. Jane out there is kicking ass and taking names. Kinda hot."


Judah peered out in the same direction. "I second that. Reminds me of my wife. If she was here....well....maybe its a good thing for Stack C she isn't here, ya know?"


----------------


Meanwhile, corporate thugs on the ground were getting their behinds kicked by the one and only [member="Thessa Kai"] . A few looked at each other and whispered amongst themselves. Someone recognized her face from a charity gala about a year back. Some woman on the arm of Dashiell. Apparently it had been his wife.


"Hey...uh....shouldn't you be back in that building behind you instead of out here? Or you fighting your husbands battle's for him?"


A small wave of laughter shot up through the assembled corporate types.


----------------


Down in communications, word was coming in on a private comm from [member="Caerys Argente"] . Something about Firemane Industries. A large handful of Firemane soldiers remained, guarding the building from attacks from below. Most were determined not to let anything else besides the first floor lobby fall. A few grenades had scared most, but more than likely the looters would return.


Picking up the comm, a woman answered.


"This is Corporal Stross, Firemane. Word has it this is a private line from Firemane. How did you get through? Communications have been down all day."

 

[Kaida Taldir]

[member="Judah Dashiell"]


"Corporal, this is Sergeant Major Askari," the Eldorai NCO and former Angelii answered crisply. Caerys, meanwhile, was standing passive as usual. What exactly went on in the mind of a murderous kill-bot was difficult to decipher Then again, maybe it was terribly simple since she was well, a murderous kill-bot!



"Let's say we got a lucky break but let's keep this brief, don't know how long comms will work. Everyone above me bloody vanished, so I've taken command till Kaeshana starts talkin' again. I need a sitrep. What's your status? We just drove away a horde of Chrysalide mercs. If you need 'em, I can send some reinforcements over. ETA ten minutes for a Gunship."

 

[Thessa Kai]

Corporate Mucky Muck Sector


[member="Judah Dashiell"]

[member="Caerys Argente"]

"Laugh it up, suit." She didn't level her blaster at the cocky-arse CEO in the conference room. She was more worried about all the other hired guns out there. "Let's finish up the fair trade stocks, shall we?"

"What about all those people beyond that door! They said hey would kill me if I traded like I had planned!!" This suit was just a whiner. Reminded her of Makai break-down before he got his nap. It made her chest ache.

The Galan parked herself in front of the closed door. "I'll worry about them. You lot finish up your business. Understood?"

There was already pounding on the other side of door as angry yells and shots were heard on the other side. She readied her blaster. They didn't have much time and she wouldn't last long if reinforcements didn't come soon.

 

[Judah Dashiell]

"Please to hear from you Ma'am" Corporal Stross sounded a bit relived after hearing [member="Caerys Argente"] 's voice. It was most likely the first time anyone had felt relief while speaking to the woman. Either way, it was best to get down to business. Comms wouldn't last forever. Any frequency would soon be overloaded.


"Right ma'am. We lost the entire first floor but we're holding well beyond that. Situation looks like we can hold out for at least three weeks, judging by the cafeteria supplies and the personnel here. We could use more soldiers but I am confident over the next few days we will continue to fortify the building. We will take the troops if you have no where else to send them."


-----------


Several of the suits looked between each other. More whispering and glances stolen at [member="Thessa Kai"] . There was a general concenous going through a small sub-section of the group. Despite people trying to bust in through the door, the one leaned back casually before speaking.


"Well, I see whats going on here. Dashiell sent you over here to trick us into giving up our holdings. I never doubted the farmboy look for a moment. So now, he has you hold us all at blaster point, telling you if we dont cooperate with your dealings, you're going to kill us. Honey, you're going to have to pry my credits out of my dead hands before I give in an inch."


-----------


"Daddy? Where are we?" Makai had sat up on the couch, keeping the thin blanket around him. Curly hair was matted from sleeping and the general recent events. He looked tired still.


"Etti IV, my office."


"Oh. I'm hungry."


"Well, from what I hear the cafeteria is still under our control. Come on, lets go tour the facilities. Elias, why don't you keep an eye out on G.I. Jane. Seems to have quieted across the street though"


Since Makai was still shoeless, Judah gave him another piggy-back lift, the boy peering over his shoulder. They descended further into the building, encountering Salacia and Firemane personnel more frequently. Most were on the cafeteria level, the second floor of the building. Here the stairwell and turbolifts had been boarded up using bits of furniture and scavenged bits of metal - some from regular office equipment.


"Looks like we have a regular fortification down here. I can't say I've ever been prouder of Salacia and Firemane's work. Meanwhile, half the planet is trying to tear each other's throats out. We need to start to destroying data though. Busting electronics, burning flimsi. Just in case."


Judah set Makai up with some food from the cafeteria and took a set across from his son as the boy ate. The boy ate like him -- as if the next meal was never coming. Then again, the poor kid hadn't had much to eat in days. Whatever they had found Judah had given to his son.

Pulling out his comm, he tried to message his wife.


Thess, not sure if this is going through. I have Makai at the Etti IV office. Next stop the Tabaqui house in one day. I love you.


Probably best to keep it short due to fritzy communications.

 

[Kaida Taldir]

[member="Judah Dashiell"]


At the risk of sounding a bit pedantic and nitpicky, it was not the HRD Caerys Argente speaking over the comm since she was not in command, though this writer is shamelessly using her account in order to boost her post count so that she can get tags!



Rather is was an Eldorai NPC officer talking. One named Melantha Askari. NPCs can be important, like if they're the Dark Lord! Unfortunately, Askari did not have such an exalted position, being a simple NCO who was temporarily running the place because everyone higher had vanished into the underworld. But then maybe this one could Caerys over. After all, the Dashiells had gotten on so well with this one's other HRD!


Anyhow, she acknowledged the Corporal's words. "Good work. I'll send a fireteam over to help out." Chrysalide had gotten thrashed when they attacked, so she doubted they'd try something on the Firemane base again. "Work with Salacia, but keep me informed far as possible, comms being as they are. Do the Salacia people have any clue what the feth is going?" Obviously the Eldorai did not know that the Salacia CEO and the tadpole had just returned from a little family trip in the netherworld!

 

[Hira Mitsae]

Touch too much

So this might be the part where I tell y'all what company I am robbing here. Aratech, used to be a big wig in droids before something awkward happened and they had to shut down those operations. Since then they were focusing on repulsor technology, which doesn't really tell ya much, because it was a wide-open field with a lot of fething applications. Take the one we are after, I ain't got all the big dets on the job, but I know it's anti-grav tech.

Meaning, whatever it is it allows someone to basically bypass the laws of gravity. Pretty neat, huh? I am telling ya, if only I could take that for my own, would probably mean an uplift in the way I usually handled things. No more getting stuck in an air shaft, no more greasing mysel-- PG, I almost forgot, sorry kids.

Anyway, I was typing it up in the security room right now. Bob and Frank, the guards were currently passed out behind the counter and nobody else was in the vicinity for now. Would need to crack the codes and get access to the grid. Would make this job so much easier, no?

 

[Jorus Merrill]

"Warning," murmured one of the Gypsymoth's three interlinked sysops droid brains. "Systems breach: port hatch. Warning. Systems breach: port hatch."

Jorus bit back a curse -- he'd gotten in that habit after some time with Mara -- and goosed the repulsorlifts. The Gypsymoth rose two metres off the ground; the empty space beneath him became not so empty in short order, as refugees pressed in or were pressed. No, not refugees...this wasn't any of the worlds where he'd given support to asylum seekers...this was a metropolis with no food. The foundations of the concept of city were so immensely fragile, so divorced from the supplies that made city life possible. Food shipped in from other continents, other worlds; power from a thousand klicks away; water by pipe, sewage too.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth," he murmured to himself, "and ye cannot tell...feth, what's the line...ye cannot tell whence it cometh or where it goeth."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

His surroundings were essentially irrelevant insofar as they stayed quiet and safe. Considering he wasn't suppose to be here, that worked out well. Quite a few motion detectors, alarms, and fences lay between him and the nearest rioters. So here he stayed, in a facility whose purpose wasn't remotely clear to him, alone in a closet. He'd been meditating for nineteen hours, trying to stem riots, increase the efficacy of aid, cool tempers, instil hope. It wasn't going well. Etti didn't just have to contend with the vanishing; it was also a world of serious injustice along socioeconomic lines. Corporations were the government here, and all the other Sanctum worlds could do was encourage norm propagation and social safety nets. Even at his prime, this would have been more than a challenge.

 

[Hira Mitsae]

The mainframe was a tough one, which had been anticipated and yet disappointed me. Look, there used to be a simple code between the forces of them versus us, how else do you think the Death Star and the twenty thousand other super weapons of the old Empire got destroyed?

It ain't because those shaggy rebels simply willed it so and their audacity supplied them victory. That would be simply ridiculous. Nah, it was the binding, not often spoken law that dictated that you should cut your opposition some slack.

They were all just doing their job and it was the realizations that they could not exist without us, and we could not exist without them that these rules became a thing.

Aratech was clearly not in the loop of common social ethics. In the end I managed to crack it, took me far too much time though. Had to use one of Raziel's algorithms, smug bastard would be immensely pleased.

I shut down the terminal, turned around and wanted to walk outta the room. Took the wrong door though, opened it and... a closet? Huh. It also contained a shaggy dude in a jumpsuit.

He looked suspiciously like a rebel.

"Eh... hi?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Adrian Cassidy"]

In the closet, cross-legged between a mop bucket and a pail of de-icer, Shule opened his eyes and raised his hand.

"You don't-"

He stopped. Because even that brief touch on the young man's mind had told him that he wasn't supposed to be here any more than Shule was. He lowered his hand.

"Why are you here?"

 

[Hira Mitsae]

Handwave and those uttered words were all that I needes to know, guy's a force magics fella and even worse. I has the idea this might be a Jedi and I didn't dig that at all.

"Stealing stuff, I didn't see you, you didn't see me. Bai."

Firmly closed the door in his face and then started walking the other direction. Doubted he would leave me alone though, this job just got that much more complicated.

Why was I feeling so giddy then?

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Adrian Cassidy"]

And this was the part where all that battle meditation backfired horribly. He'd known, intellectually, that the Force was unreliable now, likely because these disappearances said an awful lot about people not returning to the Living Force on schedule; what he hadn't realized was just how bad it would be. See, battle meditation involved creating links between people for better coordination, and at the heart of those links was Shule.

The battle meditation stopped working. And he started knowing. Inescapable waves of thought crashed against him, the opinions and fears of everyone he'd attempted to influence (which was several). The noise was immense, undeniable. He staggered out of the closet.

"Don't be the problem, boy!"

 

[Hira Mitsae]

Waves of unsettling thoughts and feelings washed over me, I ain't a forcer or at least not one that practiced all that much. But the moment this guy waltzed outta the closet I felt my mind turn inside out and almost collapsed against the wall.

Through the upcoming migraine I heard his voice, thr message he was trying to relate to me. Could only snort at that.

"Problem? Aratech is the real problem. I am the solution."

Whenever a company reached to high folk like me got hired to do something about it. Aratech ain't a benevolent company, none of em were. I was just doing a job, no feelings involved.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Adrian Cassidy"]

"The foundations..." Shule managed to catch himself on the wall before he fell over. "The foundations of civilization are fragile. Everyone who loots makes a dozen more think they deserve to loot too. It snowballs exponentially. Look, what you do...if you won't be dissuaded...do it quietly. Secretly. And on that note, I'm going back to the closet." He levelled a shaking finger at the man in the suit, a man who looked pretty much the same age as he did. "Not all solutions are created equal, son."

 

[Thessa Kai]

"If that was the case," iced-azure gaze settled in the CEO, "I would've shot you already. Continue with your normal business proceedings it I open these doors and let the people in. I'm sure they have some strong opinions on how things should be run around here."

That seemed to shut them up especially when her hand rested on the pounding door handle.

Comm buzzed on her side. Maybe it was Jorus...

Aqua-lips parted and fingers shook as she opened a connection. The banging on the door increased.

"Judah? Judah are you there? It's me. Is makai okay?"

She wondered if this is what it felt like for the world to hold it's breath.
[member="Judah Dashiell"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

+ Stack D/Formal Division F2 +​

​

Some congregation throngs had already swept through a grocery avenue in the south-east quarter of Formal F2, pillaging, looting, or salvaging from store fronts ripped open by crude tow-winches and pull-hitches. Air-cars ate by fire smoked listlessly as abandoned fire-hulks, coloured jet, flitting blackened rust petals when passing breezes stirred along the street. Sidewalk and ferrocrete pavement were littered with broken detritus of every description. Sometimes, a broken mosaic fashioned out of tossed glass fragments mirrored the floating speeder coasting slowly overhead. Seydon had the pilot-side window screen toggled down. He listened at distant siren wails turning a looping shriek another hundred clicks northward, past Stack D, out in the loam-stripped wastes dominating the landscape between cities.

Below, he spotted someone trodding numbly along the sidewalk. They were dressed in a heavy, felt coat recently patched with tact-tape and cotton strips, plodding in heavy below-zero galoshes that didn't fit Etti IV's year round moderation. Knotted shopping bags, tied together by strips of torn tarpaulin, bobbed behind their shoulder. He glanced at an old, wire-stocked carbine bobbing in their hands. He observed them pause, bend down and begin picking through a dessicated looter. Seydon edged his angular speeder forward and coasted it into a park nearing close to a pyramid of upended, torched air-coups.

He slid the door panel aside and got out. The drifter, so far virtually powering through a fugue state, turned at the sound. The carbine came up, its safety broken off, and began pitting Seydon's armoured air-car with whining suppression fire. They wore a power-ball goalie mask to obscure their features, but their throat was exposed and looked like a wrinkled hang of liver-spotted skin rolls. An abandoned geriatric. A hair-trigger elder looking to recover immuno-medication, soft meats, and distilled water bottles. Seydon ducked back into his seating and glided the throttle lever on the dash-housing forward, smacking the gunner with a low ball of repulsor backwash. More fire pinged off the plated under-carriage. The Dunaan kept driving away into a low smoke cloud hanging over the hab-block, and then disappeared.