Harrowed and Reaped (Levantine Sanctum Dominion of Bosph)

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

Ayden stood there and glared balefully at the shield below them. This was the problem with ion cannons, particularly low-powered ones. Though they had the potential to shutdown a target, they needed to cross a certain threshold for that to happen. The point defense ion cannons on the Iblis-class were designed to target starfighters and bring them down. If they coordinated them, the cannons could theoretically take out light capital ships even. But even if all of them could be fired simultaneously onto a single point, they just didn't have the necessary energy to bring down the shield. They needed something with more power. Problem was that everything that had more power would probably tear straight through the shield and do exactly what Jorus said they didn't want to do.

"Roland, got any ideas?" Ayden had taken to carrying the AI around with him as a sort of companion to help him bounce ideas off of. Maybe it was because Roland was based off of a Corellian man that gave him a sense of kinship with the AI. "None, sir. The LH-39 is our most viable option to break through the shield, but Sanctum orders preclude the option due to potential damage to the base." They needed to fire the weapon without damaging anything down there, but how would they-

"Roland, transfer down to Engineering." Ayden unhooked an S-link from his wrist device and plugged it into the ship's network. "I'm going to need you to make some on-the-fly calculations." The AI dutifully transferred into the ship but paused to appear from a projector on the bridge. "Might I inquire as to what I will be calculating, sir?"

Ayden grinned. "We can't fire the Javelin cannons because they're liable to punch clean through the shields. We need the cannons power without the many tons of 'kark off' that come with firing the cannons. So instead of using the accelerators to move the slug-" "You want me to calculate the necessary modifications to enable the cannon to create a recursive pulse in the cannons. But unless we have some manner of projectile or energy source, the pulse won't have any effect on the shield." Ayden looked at the AI with a raised eyebrow. The gesture caused the AI to pause while it considered. Though it couldn't know exactly what Ayden was thinking, the benefit of being an AI meant that it could brute force the various possibilities to arrive at the same page.

A slow matching grin came over the AI's face. "I see. I trust you'll alert the crew to the dangers." The ship's commanding officer and looked at Ayden with a questioning gaze while the AI disappeared. Before he could ask, Ayden held a hand up to ease the man. "The danger to the crew is minimal. Roland is going to turn the Javelins into a pair of massive ion cannons. The magnetic accelerators used to fire the slug can easily be modified to generate the constricting forces we need to fire a burst of ionized plasma into the shield. It'll overwhelm the target shield where our individual ion cannon turrets failed."

"So if the risk is not to the crew..." The commanding officer was a bright man and could read the undertones to what had been said. "There's a fair chance that we'll blow out the capacitors when we fire the cannon if we're not careful. The cannon wasn't built with this idea in mind, so the exact aftereffects are unknown." He brought his com device up and opened a channel with Jorus. "Jorus, if there are any Sanctum forces near the shield perimeter, I'd advise they fall back. I'd also advise that folks shield their eyes here in a few minutes. I'm about to try something stupid and new. Not sure it'll work but it'll be pretty nonetheless." At the same time, he sent a brief databurst to let Jorus know just how stupid and shiny this plan was.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

"Nah, Master Cater, we're it. Gypsymoth's got the commando team, and the mop-up crew's on its way to an aerial rendezvous point two klicks from here. You're clear to do what you're doing...and I'm looking forward to seeing those babies in action."

He reclined his shock couch gently and oriented the Gypsymoth's viewport toward the shielded base.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[ The City Without A Name - Parkway Through Desolation ]

Tusk-things, skeined with sheathed ganglions of sloughed epidermis, drooling some thick viscosity from their massive underbite jaws, came at him along the mew. They emerged from parts in surrounding, reduced structures, breaking through glassed-over walls, clubbing along the slurry mud and ferrocrete with their stretched forearms. Bellowed howls crossed several sheer octaves, until Seydon winced against pin-pricks of pain rocketing inside his ear canal.

The first man, with a skull so badly chipped blossoming, gangrenous brain-matter poked through the bone-cap, reached him and swung a felling blow to crack Seydon's throat in twain. He was smote on Winterfang in a single chopping reverse-step, the Dunaan whipping the sword-peak up and across the beast's throat, clavicle, left-most ribcage, parting his torso at the hip. Blood with the consistency of syrup hosed onto grey stones.

Seydon ducked low and came around for the bodies at his backside, heaving them to pieces. Ichor and rotting tissue flushed down Winterfang's double-fuller blade-flat, keening a note on the air. Motion was crisp, economical, brutal. Ysian swordplay eschewed virtuoso beauty, emphasizing marriage between footwork, body, longsword. Seydon clipped right, cutting down four tusk-things in six blows, reversing his hilting, stabbing right and over his hip upwards, impaling a fifth through its diaphragm. It gurgled and slipped off the sword, dead but stamping its feet through the throes.

One of them managed to rumble in when there was a brief part in the Dunaan's defense work, ratcheting up its knobbed elbows. Seydon flew back by a meter, struck at his midriff, gasping. His heels tried digging at the earth but the steel-caps simply broke through flaking asphalt. The Dunaan hissed out his breath instead, tucking into a compact roll, bouncing off the ground and grinding to a temporary kneel. He lashed out in a razor counter, severing bodies from their knees, leaping into a high rise that stroked Winterfang in a crescent slash and bifurcated a tusk-man in two from his eyes to his ruined pelvis.

Taurannik inscriptions writ and fashioned in his assemblage was what kept up their numbers flooding into the narrow street-way. The Farwalker armour was blessed under insidious passages wrought from fragments of the Taurannik Codex itself; the kind of Force 'magic' that made the mewling 'Masters' of their age shid themselves when confronted by inexorable, cyclopean alchemy. Winterfang itself was a Sith Blade of unique pedigree, holy puresilver plated over a carbon-durasteel core and enhanced through noetic forging some four hundred years prior. So it went, it was spelled to wreck vicious havoc on Sithspawn.

From the way the tusk-things wailed at its sterling moon-glow, Seydon could believe it. The mew winding up to a parted tetragon square a click further into the city ran awash with severed bodies and disgorged matter, slick with blood up to his booted ankles. Seydon kept up his focus, luring the storm of half-mannish things close, severing them apart before they could blink, breathe, comprehend. Soon, the kilometer-wide radial influence of his kit ceased their effect.

There were no more creations to attract. Sword in hand, the compass in his other, listening and scenting likewise, Seydon ventured on further.

 

[Not Ordo]

SITE ONE?

[member="Delila Castillon"]

Kalizka looked back at the woman as she sat and waited for the dropship to land. His simple brown and green robes a stark contrast to her combat armor. It was funny but in his day, that is to say, two thousand years ago when he was but a young Neti of 1000 years, this was common. The force user wore simple free moving clothes and the soldier wore armor, but now day's everyone and their third cousin twice removed wore armor of some kind or another. He nodded and reached his hand to grab the safety handle as the ship set down and the doors opened.

While soldiers jumped out and hurried to form a semi circle to cover one another Kalizka made a show of feigned aches and pains slowly stepping out of the dropship and leaning on his staff.

"So anxious you are." he said to the soldier woman, "Who'd think it was your first date."

 

[Mornhun of House Marr]

[The nameless city]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

The creature had leapt from the dropship to a twisted building as it passed and he looked through the force at the tangled hellish landscape. Whatever had happened here, darkness clung to this place like sand to wet feet. His obsidian blade hiss free from it's sheath as he stepped from his perch into the black structure. Life, wicked life was somewhere in this place the twisted organs in his breast told him so. He quickly moved onward, deeper into the building, into the city, into the embrace of the unknown, and begged it to stop him.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Delila Castillon"]

Rhan checked his flak vest and H-harness one more time before he check the charge on his blaster rifle. His black utilities and dull jungle boots made him look every bit the soldier he had spent the last twenty years being. He was freelance now, taking jobs when he needed them and fighting wars on his own terms. His checked his ear piece and throat mike as he saw the lights change from green to flashing red. It was time. He waited as the heavy ka-chunk ka-chunk of the dropship vibrated through the deck. the door swished open and he was out in moments the rifle to his shoulder as he combat walked a few meters and took a knee scanning from side to side as he checked for hostiles.

"Clear" he said echoing the rest of the team as they awaited orders.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[ The City Without Name - Crown of Smoke and Glass ]

A parkway slowly egressed into a steepened jag of rock protruding upwards into further city districts. Cataclysmic eruptions, a pyroclastic disaster, detonated somewhere below in the under-works: ravines cut through the roading cross-sectioned opened sewer and power distribution tunnels and passageways threading beneath rockcrete and layered earth. Seydon had since collapsed his compass away, keeping Winterfang sheathed beside brother Razorlight on his shoulder. Navigating deeper on required extensive agility, and he had need of both hands.

He swung off a length of exposed bar jut out from a collapsed bay dome and reversed a somersault mid-air, extending his boots out to briefly collapse onto a steel-tiled roof. Skies overcast above were growing heavily petulant, fat with unshed rain. Winds were lashing moisture into his eyes and casting chilly dew across his cheeks. It was cold and drearily damp. Pale light dyed the world into total monochrome. The Dunaan didn't pause, rolling onto his haunches then heels, on a sprint running through dessicated housing. He cut through what must have been a hab-block, just barely keeping ahead of a section of rapidly disintegrating flooring, boosting over downed furniture, bio-organic sedans and emptied vat-beds. Seydon cast himself through an oval slit window and fell out into empty air, descending for approximately nineteen meters until his hands grappled onto a spar of steel along a neighbouring habitation tower.

Seydon contested his weight up onto the narrow hands-breadth and paused, settled prone on the tips of his gripping boots. Captain Merrill outlined several mentions pricking the Nameles Place as where the defunct "New Order" had stripped and siphoned in bizarre, outlandish production schemes. Building semi-sapien war machines, super-massive war-vessels that, according to him, had found their way into fleet tasks for the One Sith. Unmentionable marriages between high-technology, "Vongtech", and Dark Side manipulations had taken place to "breed" them out.

At best guest, the likeliest place to venture in and set to flame was the distant, misted construct settled on a field of white micca-snow, veiled in brackish gauzes of insect and tobacco-brown. It was a diagonally ribbed chapter house framed on its jambs by paired towers of equal stature and design. It didn't look so much constructed as a nightmarish outgrowth, Seydon thought, pillared up from the earth according to wants and specifications unknowable to human minds. Every so often, pricks of lightning danced off their slanted, veined roofing.

[member="Mornhun"]

 

[Delila Castillon]

SITE ONE - Semi-Crushed Sith Structure | [member="Rhan Nidor"]



"I don't think many first dates involve getting shot at." At least her anxiety abated somewhat, seeing their surroundings. Grassy plains from far as the eye could see, the Sith structure was partially built into some type of scarred ground. A bombing or battle had taken place here before, hundreds of years before they had arrived. As per the intelligence, the Sith structure did look partially collapsed and beat-up. Standing in the semi-circle with everyone else, Delila quickly checked to make sure the MK1 bolter was loaded and ready to go. Extra ammo for the gun weighed heavily on her. The pros certainly outweighed the cons with the gun, especially when fighting Sith.


"Alright, lets listen up. Reports state remnants of Sith remain in the lower levels of this thing. We've also been told there are native Bosph in with the Sith. Most likely taken as slaves against their will. Use caution as we move out, these Sith like to make laboratory pets and unleash them on their guests."


Thoughts broken up by the officer in charge, the group of soldiers started to move out. Two immediately broke off and went to flank the old Neti, while the rest moved with caution through the exposed space. No one was firing on them yet. No doubt someone knew they were here -- but probably decided to make a last stand of it in cramped and familiar quarters. At least, this is what she would do.


Trying not to think too deeply about it, she fell in a half-step behind the muscular, dark haired soldier that ended up next to her. Raising her blaster rifle, sharp blue eyes kept a good scan on the horizon as they advanced.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Delila Castillon"] [Site 1 - Sith Structure]

Rhan heard the old Neti comment to the Red-headed woman about it being her first date but said nothing. He kept his head down as he listened to her reply keeping a continuous scan of his fire arc just like the rest. This was basic. Unknown structure, unclear number of hostiles, possible force users, likely hostages and or monsters...just another day at the office. They began to move out and he rose to a crouched combat walk as they made their way toward the structure and he found himself beside the Levantine Patroller.

"I've had a couple." He said to tthe woman as they moved, "First dates that involved getting shot at...I've had a couple."

He wasn't really trying to be funny but truth be told getting shot at was easier than most dates he'd had. They drew near a fallen door and troops began stacking on each side of the entrance and they trained weapons on the dark interior.

"Eyeballs." He said to the troops younger than him to remind them to cover each of and keep scanning rather than everyone face the same way. He wasn't the CO but time as a Gunny was hard to forget.
"2 meter intervals on CO's go." He said as he kept ready for hard contact.

 

[Delila Castillon]

[member="Rhan Nidor"] | Site One - Sith Structure


"A couple? How lucky for you. I normally just end up making them cry."


Delila was silent otherwise after the dating revelation. It was hard to talk and hold a decent conversation when wondering if one was going to get fired on from above. Somehow they had made it, her back pressed against the cold rock of the structure. Since she was one of the last in line, Delila remained crouched and scuttled over to the edge of the building, training her blaster rifle around it. Cautiously, she peered around the corner, one eye down the scope to sweep the landscape quickly. If there was something out there it was hidden in the grasses quite well.


Taking her eye off the scope, she kept a good look out, peering around and skyward. It was a little too quiet for her tastes, there wasn't even the sound of other Levantines in the air. Only the sounds of boots scraping against grass. The Commanding Officer was giving soldiers a pat on the back at regular intervals, signalling a "go" into the dark structure. As each soldier moved into the depths, Delila slowly worked her way backwards, still crouching and keeping an eye on the six of the group from her angle.


Soon enough it was her turn to dive into the dark corridors. A grimace graced her features. If it was one situation she hated it was this. Dark, enclosed spaces. Too many Roche flashbacks. Yet one foot kept pace in front of the other. She could clearly feel they were going down and fresh air was evident in the hallways. Yes, someone or something else was here.


Lovely.

 

[Jericho]

OBJECTIVE B: BROKEN TEMPLE OF THE NEW ORDER
[member="Nephesh Raivah "] [member="Rave Merrill"]

After being poked he turned around seeing her in the robes and in the armor, he looked her up and down then gave her a nod. "Now you look ready for this raid and like an actual mandalorian warrior." He stated as a compliment but his tone may have sounded otherwise. He turned back around as the ship landed in the destination, he walked down the down and took his first step onto the planet feeling the the dark aura of the place they were heading to. He took in a deep breath of the planets air vented through his black combat mask. Then turned around to face his young padawan. "Raivah, your mission is observe your surrounding and the people around you, including any enemies we may face." He said in his usual stern voice then let out a slight sigh. "As I said stay close and avoid fighting as best you can."

He watched as a small unit of five came out with speeders including one for the two of them. He nodded to the men and mounted his speeder followed by a quick signal for her to get on quickly. "Sir, we on the reinforcement com-link." Stated one of the soldiers. In response Jericho gave the man a nod in acknowledgement, and place hand on his ear to speak into the frequency. "This is Jericho. Levantine units heading to objective, ETA five minutes. Will notify if met with any hostiles. Jericho out." He stated over the comlink before waving for his men to roll out.

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

"Roland, tell me you're done already." Ayden had begun pacing back and forth with nothing else to do. They had been sitting there for many long minutes while the AI worked to make the necessary alterations to the cannon. The Sith weren't going anywhere of course.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize we were looking to have a Corellian flambé." Ayden blinked in surprise while the commander had a suspicious coughing fit for a second. The AI certainly had no problem expressing its sense of humor.

"You need alcohol for a flambé, Roland."

"And you don't drink the stuff like water?" A loud bark of a laugh came from the commander while Ayden stood there and tried to decide whether to be annoyed or amused. After a second or two he decided on the latter and grinned. It had been a nice retort.

"Alright smart-ass. You done?"

Roland appeared back on the bridge with a cheeky grin of his own. "I suppose for now. Oh and I finished the calculations too. The engineers have already loaded the cannons with the necessary gas. They're awaiting your order."

Ayden nodded and stepped up to the rail, all traces of amusement gone. "All hands, brace yourself. This could get interesting." While the bridge officers all began to strap in, the commander came up and asked with a subdued voice. "Define 'interesting' for me."

Never one to miss an opportunity for a quip, Roland turned and looked at the commander with a grin. "Oh god, oh god we're all going to die?"

Ayden yanked the S-link to pull the AI back from the network and turned to reassure the commander. "Don't worry. We'll be fine." As the commander turned to find a seat, Ayden muttered under his breath. "Probably."

The ship angled itself to allow the cannons a direct line of fire on the shield while the smaller ion cannons all fell silent. From deep within the ship came a low thrum as gas was slowly ionized within the magnetic fields. Slowly, the gas began to glow angrily and pushed forward as its intensity broke through field after field. By the time it neared the edge of the barrel sparks were flying within the ship as the stress of the makeshift retooling began blowing out relays and capacitors attached to the cannon.

Moments before the stress could begin to threaten the ship two great gouts of blue fire shot forward and slammed into the domed shield. The effect was instantaneous as the shield began to flicker rapidly. It seemed as if it might hold against the assault before it began to collapse and failed to come back. There were cheers on the bridge as Ayden wiped his brow and flicked his com on. "You're clear, Jorus."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Ayden Cater"]

Jorus uncoiled himself from the pilot's seat to lean forward, elbows on the dash. "Now that," he murmured, "is a thing I ain't seen before." He touched the comm and spoke up. "Sounds about right to me. Thanks for the assist -- feth -- they had a hangar buried in there. You've got inbound."

Small, powerful starfighters lanced up from the base, engines at full burn, arrowing in on the CEC starships.

"Cloaking, going for the commando drop. We'll be right under you at the base, so, ah, watch how you're shooting."

 

[Velok the Younger]

SITE B: BROKEN TEMPLE

[member="Jericho"] and [member="Nephesh Raivah "]would find the temple surrounded by a perimeter of armed, clothed qo'saarai tuk'ata, who would wave them through much as they were waving through [member="Aeron Kreelan"]'s dropship. Rave Merrill, clad in armor of golden leather, sat on the steps and watched the ships make their approach. AEL treated its contracts seriously, and she did try to look her best.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Delila Castillon"]

Rhan was next to last in the line. He kept his head clear and made himself keep the woman's pretty face and strong personality out of his thoughts. "Leave it to you Rhan to get distracted by a pretty face when your walking into a combat zone." he thought.

He turned on his underbarrel flashlight and began walking forward in the staggered line. He heard a noise off to their front left about 70 meters away. He knew hostile when he heard it and shone his flashlight in the direction of the sound. Sure enough a creature with saliva dripping teeth padded slowly around the corner. Its thick mangled hide made what it had been indistinguishable but he had been around enough to know Sithspawn when he saw it.

"Contact front left." he said as he fired several red blaster bolts at the creature....he doubted it wasthe only one.

 

[Nephesh Raivah]

OBJECTIVE B: BROKEN TEMPLE OF THE NEW ORDER
[member="Rave Merrill"] [member="Jericho"]

Lazying letting her eyes look to him after saying those words. "Oh, what just like my dear sweet Cousin, well news flash I'm no trained mandalorian.", pulling her head down she spoke with harshness. To that fact that she would never been like her Cousin Calum even Countess knew that maybe that was the reason why she sent her away. To start fresh, to make something more of herself then fancy dinner parties and balls that took place every now and then.

To seeming pop up her head when she heard her surname being spoken. What she was to do and not, this looking answering. "Got it I will try not to let you out of yourself, and to be mindful of all around me.", as she got on the speeder with him wrapping her arms around his waist for a fast ride to where every they might be going. Finding herself being drawling to keep her head down next time she would come more prepared even get a briefing to the mission at hand.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[ The City Without Name - False-Snow on a Flying Buttress ]

There was a way into the Chapter House. Despite a brief age of neglect, plague-growths of striated 'cabling' that wound up in seething bunches from the heat-cracked earth tangling the high adamite-plated walls, along the angled and buttressed roofs peaking up, were faint 'windows' billowing shades of tinted, matt-darkness. The Dunaan approached on a southerly course through a faint depression in the micca-snow, having bulled his way through prior ruins and climbed down into the settled, industrial crunch. A pathway brick-stoned with paved, re-purposed platinum scrolled through a silent atrium field. It was dead quiet, and sound had an unnerving habit of rebounding in close, thick echoes.

Seydon stilled a moment to listen: blood thundered in the shell of his ear. His pulse beat at a quickening in the core of his breast. Flaked shaves as thin as almond slices and spectacularly powdery were drifting slowly overhead. To borrow a phrase, the sky was the colour of a dead broadcast channel. The running lights of Ayden Cater's proud cathedral ship winked in the parts of grey and stormy black. It was lacking in the previous dampness and wet misery. Seydon strolled on through the flattened landscape, up gnolls in the micca-hills, to the base of the Chapter House.

Up he climbed. Hand over foot, cunningly dextrous as he sought out pits and grooves for his gripping, scaling along sheer surfaces with terrifying surety and form. Twenty meters high, he was just a weaving dot picking through cabled bundles of porous, webbed stone draped from the chapter walling like spider-weaves. There was no wind, but the silence had grew. Something to it chilled him straight through his heart and marrow. Unnatural... Like the caves of the Tatooine Razorbleme, or the alchemical visions scorned into his memory by Ysian dark arts. Seydon curled in and levered onto a sad, tongue-waggling gargoyle draped over a part in the notched crenelles.

He was amidst a sloped roof-bank striking up to a second level of the Chapter House, in a knuckled, pustuled forest of arch, gothic pinnacles. Below was a hundred and twenty five meter drop of naked, voiceless air. Micca-flakes were falling thickly now, snowing into dusty drifts teasing over the roof edge. Seydon climbed aloft a near pinnacle and gazed round, looking out over the alien desolation.

...That was when he heard a quartet of wings beat the wind six kilometers away. Wolf-eyes glared about, trying to pierce the static gloom. It was all he could hear. It winged in closer, three kilometers. Two. ...And an object like a shifting mass of wriggling marble and glass ploughed him off the pinnacle and through the other seven along its row, showering glittering soft stone and rippling dust clouds high into a sudden crosswind.

 

[Kaida Taldir]

Location: On dropship, en route to Site One
Objectives: Do things, shoot stuff eventually. Perhaps get annoyed by Sith ghosts.



It appeared Kaida was really getting around. Not in that way, mind you, since no matter what certain holovids and the popular magazine Ashira's Angels might tell you not every space elf was wanton and driven by carnal lusts. No, but she was certainly seeing a great deal of the galaxy since she had first been cast out of Kaeshana and exiled for the crime of thinking for herself. Times had changed a good deal since then. She had been a soldier in Omega Pyre, led by the brutal then Colonel Kerrigan, returned to her homeworld to fight in a that ended with a break with the old order and her exile beng lifted, survived the hellish invasion of Gehenna to quit Protectorate services and return to Kaeshana.



Now she was an Angeli once again, an officer with the rank of Captain even, perhaps meant for higher things in time. Not something she had expected when she had been drafted to join the royal guards. Granted it had taken compromises, some of which were barely palatable to her eve now, though she had come to understand the necessty, even though it was a bitter pill to swallow. And so her people still lived in the dark about their past and true origins, the knowledge of which had once been the cause of her exile, yet now she had helped bury it. Yet Kaeshana was free, led by a Queen who Kaida could actually consider decent despite her inherent contempt for most nobles, and against all opposition opening itself up to the rest of the Galaxy instead of staying stagnant and stuck in the past. She was older now, less idealistic. Wiser? Well, that was probably a matter of perception, though she liked to think she was. Constantly railing against the powers that be because things were not ideal did you no good.


And so she shook these musings off and looked out of the window as the Silaqui-class Dropship broke through the atmosphere and descended down upon the planet. From Kaida's perspective naming the dropship after a Queen who had been a self-indulgent, egotistical and vain hedonist was not a good idea, but then Firemane had designed it. The craft was sturdy, heavily armoured and did its job well enough when it came to getting you planetside in one piece. Keen blue eyes looked upon the ruined city that came into view as the dropship swept across the land, with Kaida swaying slightly as the dropship rocked.


She checked her weapons once again. Lightsabre at her side, plenty of grenades stuffed in her pouches and tied to her belt, sarix, as the traditional energy blade of her people was called. A Cylix bolt pistol was holstered on her hip and she carried an MK1 boltgun. Check run through Kaida turned and retrieved the Taegis battle shield she had let lie around given its weight, strapping it across her back. The shield was a powerful defensive barrier that due to its power generator could even resist lightsabres and blasters to an extent. Check run through she looked over the band of soldiers that had accompanied her, a mix of Firemane mercenaries and Eldorai warriors. The latter being what had been called new model army soldiers, proud and conscious of their heritage, but trained in the art of modern warfare. Reactionary fools and knaves might scoff at how terrible it was that the traditional and more 'refined' staser blasters were being replaced by 'crude' human guns, but anyone dumb enough not to adapt deserved to be shot. An Eldorai Warsinger was doing her part to motivate her battle sisters, inspiring them for the coming struggle so that they might fight in the name of the Goddess. Kaida did not join in and was not the praying type anyway, but let her be.


The dropship would hit the ground soon enough and then they would descend upon the ancient Sith facilities, aiding the Levantines in the quest of putting down what nasty critters might still be lurking around. The sort of job these soldiers had ample experience with, so Kaida was not unduly worried. It could not be worse than Gehenna and that trip to the ghost ship at Iferetes! Well, maybe it could, but ah well, she'd deal with it just fine. Kaida had heard about Sio Kerrigan's and Ember Rekali's little excursion to the Sith Council's archives, since the Lady had bragged a lot about it. She was, you might have guessed it, pretty indifferent to it.


Its arrival heralded by a massive shadow that swept across the broken ground, the dropship swooped down from the sky and came in to land. Before them lay a partially collapsed and beaten up Sith structure. Kerrigan and Rekali had really done a number on the place it seemed. Without time being wasted, the group of soldiers quickly started to move out, speedily but with evident caution and alert to dangers. No one was shooting at them yet, but that was bound to change. If there were no 'Lost Sith' skulking around, then their beasties would pounce on them. Ah, well, been there done that, got out in time when a certain Exarch dropped a mountain ceiling on everyone.

 

[Aeron Kreelan]

SITE B: BROKEN TEMPLE
@Jericho and [member="Nephesh Raivah "] [member="Rave Merrill"]

[ Omega Protectorate dropship, this is Temple Actual. Welcome to the party. ]

The message came crackling in -- drawing an elbow to Aeron's side and waking her from her nap. "What?" she'd ask as slumber would fade from her eyes.

"Comm message from Temple Actual." said a Lieutenant, patching her through.

[ This is Commander Aereon Kreelan of the Omega Pyre, Temple Actual. ] came Aeron's reply, [ Getting coordinates to land soon, hope there is someone to be a welcoming party -- my boys are a bit thirsty. ] she'd joke. A wave of a hand would catch a signal that they would hit dirtside soon.

Dirtside it would be, as the hum of the dropships engines would roar overhead, nearing Rave Merrill's location.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Aeron Kreelan"]

Rave clicked her comm to transmit, shielding her eyes as she looked up at the descending Omega Protectorate dropship.

"Commander Kreelan, this is Temple Actual. Sorry to say your options are limited. Nothing here to drink but Forcerade and the blood of our enemies. We believe in staying hydrated."