POST VII
THE_STORMCHASER
1ST EXILED-GALIDRAANI DIVISION
2ND GALIDRAANI ARMOURED-VOLUNTEER BRIGADE,"BLUE-HEART BRIGADE"
OBJECTIVE 3: Remnants of Dust
Taskforce LIONHEART:
Willan Tal
Konrad Bolter
Enedina Tal
ALLIES (NIO/GA):
Irveric Tavlar
Tulan Kor
Noel Strasza
Fisk Kamer
DT-0800
A.I.M
Rika Hiro
Djorn Bline
Arcturus Tal
Tiberius
Cotan Sar'andor
Captain Raith
Suri Vullen
Kal Ostan
Zirell Marxon
Master Zoryu
Zark San Tekka
Kinoan
Asmundr Varobalder
Aelys
Allyson Locke
ENEMIES (TSE/CIS): Irina Volkov Valen
Taeli Raaf
Sith Dominance
The Amalgam
Laertia Io
Maple Harte
CALLSIGN: BLUE-HEART ALPHA
Custom Blaster-Pistol | Basket-Hilted Vibrosword Claymore
A BARRAN WASTELAND - Wrath of the Stormchaser I (Clashing Lights)
<"Scout Leader to Barran, that's a negative. 'ppreciate the offer, but looks like we gotta have six to operate this damn thing and I'm not leaving my squad to their own devices, over.">
Ziost was burning, shuddering under the abuse of the sheer weight of the surface's hostilities, wincing under the thudding onslaught of the NIO's high-altitude bombings on New Adasta; of the souls who rushed to escape the hellishness of it all, not even the wilderness of the war-theatre's Exclusion Perimeters could offer them any meaningful shelter, for the New Adastan inner-city maze held no solace for the routing Sith-Imperial land armies either. This battle was certainly looking to go in the Galactic Alliance's favour, as the NIO had all but succeeded in achieving their goals in their eastward push for glory, and all that remained to the symbiotic anti-Sith factions was the fighting destruction of the battle's balance of power.
To top it all off, light had been cutting through the murky dark from within the inner-city since the lightning-storm was still passing beyond the mechanized encirclement, growing with increased overall mass as the Sith-Imperials' lightning-storms steadily started withering away in the stormy entanglement, little by little as Erskine was in the process of sending comprehensive usage-instructions to Major Strasza's prodigal Watchmen. Two contrasting wonders on a jaw-droppingly hellish backdrop, storms of light and shadow embroiled in a cataclysmic fight to prevail over the other as the warriors fighting beneath watched on, with heads tilted and mouths agape in fear and amazement. If the dark, ominous thunderstorms were surely the work of Sith, then this new, pulsating dome of light was surely the work of the Galactic Alliance's most-powerful of Jedi elements, inducing an entirely new wave of shivering goosebumps in addition to his ceaseless aesthetic-pleasure in observance.
For all the destruction his engineers had inflicted on the enemy mechanized contingent, (and with equal measure, a portion of the New Adastan suburban landscape) this new display was beyond anything the Woad-Macushla could even dream of, and it frightened some of the men among them, believing it to be the working beginnings of godly retribution for centuries of the galaxy's seemingly-eternal run of sins throughout it's long, storied timeline. Though their superstitious nature was appreciated, especially as none in the old Battalion had really taken to the myths and superstitions of their forefathers like Lord Erskine had, Barran knew such thinking was preposterously counterproductive to the collective morale of those around them, and had made a whispered point of ordering his nearest subordinates to verbally slap down on the worries of those indulging such talk.
The power of the Jedi on Ziost could be felt before in Cotan somehow, but this was an obviously greater culmination of collective Force-manipulation from the collaboration of singularly-powerful life-force emanations, but none of the Blue-Hearts would know this for sure; some were guessing it was a countering concept to the Amalgam's Shadow Dome on Generis, but a fair few were correctly guessing it was the work of Jedi masters, including Lord Erskine, smirking as he gazed through the ACV's right-side viewports. The Brigadier-General would have considered his life complete, as a Galidraani life in absolute fulfilment of everything one of their generation may ever have hoped, even dreamed to achieve; but fate, it seems, had much preferred to be rather excessive with her cataclysmically-ironic sleights in such times, and Barran was completely oblivious to her evils in the one moment his absent wariness might have prepared him for what happened next.
'Barran to Scout Leader! Instructions sent to both your pilots' datapads. Set yer eyes t'the north, an' look up.... Now that's something a Blue-Heart doesn't see every day, so take it all in, mate-'
As if by instantaneous reaction, the heavens flashed white with the brightness of a sun in supernova, giving way to a flashing orbital hail of annihilation. The burning world of Ziost's residual husk was being murdered before his very eyes, and by the same faction sworn to protect and fight for it's safety; contingents friendly and opposing alike would buckle under the wicked rain of blinding deathliness, and whether they were fighting, fleeing or non-combatants, the screeching beams of the Sith-Imperials' insidious orbital strikes would slaughter the powerless below with careless abandon.
Like Bastion, only worse; far, far worse. Is there no low that these freaks won't sink to? Such evil knows no bounds!
Ziost was burning, but brighter than ever before; the very ground itself shook beneath everyone in and around New Adasta, and in ways that completely dwarfed the magnitudinous efforts of the Tuath engineers and the NIO bombers combined, seemingly right down to the base of the planet's increasingly-agitated lower-tectonic layers. Screams, uprootings, building-collapses and lesser explosions would be muted by the sheer roar of hemispheric obliteration, stomping the entire battle itself into the dirt with apathetic prejudice; and the Sith-Imperial starship would be fortunate in being too far away the deafening cacophony to hear or feel it's frightening intensity, though Lord Erskine wouldn't.
A BARRAN WASTELAND - Wrath of the Stormchaser II (Ashen Skies)
The last thing he remembered seeing before being knocked unconscious by the rolling impact was looking at
Jax Sloane
's graffiti, and apologising to his friend for breaking the ACV before one of the many orbital-strike beams collided with ACV One's thick, well-armoured hull, and with the force of an explosion that may have been strong enough to throw it into the tracks of a Cataphract halted nearly twenty-metres to the south of their previous resting halt-position. Though Barran was fortunate enough to still be holding the overhead safety-grips, the remaining crewmen were not, though Lord Erskine would have to find this out the hard way. Right after the Brigadier-General awoke in a contused daze, he turned to his left and saw a dusty pile of bloodied-rocks where CSM Malcom's head should've been, crawling away with a succession of back-lying teeps to the broken surface beneath; wincing with pain all over as he slid and backpedalled with his still unsteady legs and feet, though still horrorstruck enough to move away from the grisly scene and find a way out.
'KARK IT ALL TO HELL, MAN!!!!!', the Lord-Major cried to the heavens that rained death and destruction on his mad dash for glory, and with a pained groan that followed after feeling a tight pain in his chest, below the left pectoral. Looking down to find a red-hot shard of steel sticking out his jacket, Barran began to prepare his mind, heart and soul for the worst, but chose to unbutton his jacket without overthinking it; to his great relief, (and with equal intensity, to his great dismay) the reek of spilled whiskey ran riot on Lord Erskine's nostrils, revealing that the unofficial male-line heirloom had sacrificed their life to save his own; an ominous omen of what he was to expect in the following minutes, as the Brigadier-General was fortunately lucid enough by then to understand that he still needed to get out of his mobile sarcophagus to look for survivors.
Grey skies above would snap the Lord-Commander to his senses, realizing that the ACV was lying on it's right-hand side with the slide door pulverized in it's open slot, but looking to the left and seeing what had been pulverized by the pulverized caused Erskine to blot out the agony and roll over instinctively to vomit safely, but violently retching dry nothingness onto the rock-quilted base tower of what was once his map-holographics unit. The only thing that could cut through that wall of pain all over, the throbbing and ringing-tinnitus in his ears, and his retching fit was the triplet-vibrations in his pocket that nagged at his patience incessantly; but the lucidity would increase yet again in time, realizing the vibrations were hails on his personal datapad and pulling it out his trouser-leg pocket to try and read from it.
<<first wave is safe but we were hit much harder on the south flank
easiest gaps of the two envelopment lines to fill in mind?
you can survive worse ya wee pie
we both know this
the tuath would mock your death if you died now
get angry now and reprimand me later ya woad bam>>
'Oh, ah'll haud you t'that, ya glaikit wee Tuath reproba-', the Brigadier-General said to himself, trailing off to laugh his wryest, most dry of lairdly chuckles yet. Before his laughter truly had a chance to take hold in fits, the bruising under his pectoral had brought swelling on that hurt his ribs when he started wheezing with it, transforming almost instantly into the deep, agonizingly-growled exhalations of attempted pain-suppression; and though Erskine was in his most desperate fight for survival yet, the fear of dying on a Sith-infested planet was expectedly driving him onwards on adrenal instinct alone, urging the budding Stormchaser to assume an aggressive posture when all hope around him had been obliterated beyond recognition. Testing this however, would be the adversarial appearance of Erskine's peripheral droid-sighting, the Lord-Commander's first opponent of the Sith-Imperials' second wave, and all Barran had the will to say was,
'A toaster oven? Nah, mate. See ye!', before quick-drawing his blaster pistol and unloading it on the head, right arm, neck and upper torso of the opponent who was in the process of extended it's own blaster forth to shoot him first.
Other droids awaited outside, the throbbing in his ears was beginning to subside, and Lord Erskine was fighting his shooter's instinct to draw his Vibrosword instead. But as he was readying himself to climb out through the cover of the LMG-hatch, Barran noticed an undented box of stims embedded in a torn up segment of underfloor insulation foam, asking the hands of fate,
'How? Since when did life work out like that? Kark this nonsense for a laugh....', under his breath as he shuffled towards it on his stomach so as not to get caught in the sights of the Sith-Imperial droids in the process. Easily done, though the Brigadier-General was sure they could hear him moving; having vowed before to never look a genuine gift-horse in the mouth, Erskine would inject himself with one of the stims without so much as a second thought, and consciously pocketed an extra few, knowing other survivors would need it more in their fight to snatch a gruelling victory from the demonic jaws of defeat.
A BARRAN WASTELAND - Wrath of the Stormchaser III (What Breaks Lesser Men....)
The first of the pistol-shot droid's squadmates would attempt to stomp on Erskine's head as it jumped in from outside, dropping in from a terminal height to connect with and shatter every bone it's foot-pads were expected to land on; two shots to it's shooting arm, and two to it's head were unleashed after the timely attempt to roll over, slamming his back against the rock-covered digital units before unleashing the pistol shots, reloading and using the breathing space to crawl out the LMG-hatch behind him. Utilising the cover his hatch-escape had gifted him, the Stormchaser dropped two more droids on the group's exposed right flank with double-taps to their exposed chest-units; turning around to find another trying to climb through the hatch he'd just exited from, drawing his Vibrosword and slicing it's head and arms off before stabbing the power core behind the chest-plating to shut his foe down.
Five down already? Your move, ya bunch o' useless toaster-ovens.
After hearing him sheathe his Vibrosword again, the Sith-Imperial droids started pulling the wrecked ACV upright to get a better shot on the Blue-Heart at the other side, but not a single AI among them had accounted for the fact Erskine was leaning on the LMG in a momentary brainstorm to plan next steps that would never see their fruition. As the vehicle tipped yonder, Barran instinctively grabbed onto it's upward-facing trigger handles below and leaned back with his feet instinctively seeking the ladders in the hatch, screaming,
'SAOR GU WOAD-MACUSHLAAAAAAAA!!!', as the remaining eight droids were backpedalling to make way for the wide armoured vehicle in it's uprighting descent. By the time he was done spraying the last remnants of the ammo-magazine into the robotic adversaries beyond, only one spluttering, malfunctioning wreck of a droid remainied to stand in his way, so Erskine shot it once to do the trick with his blaster-pistol.
'Never take on a Blue-Heart wae unlucky troop-numbers, we'll use yer disregard o' chance against you at every opportunity.'
<"Lionheart one to Blue heart alpha-">
Wait, my comms-device still works? What the kark? Lucky me, I guess. But where in a thousand galactic hells might it be?
Jumping back down into the broken husk of ACV One, and for the last time, the horror within would need to be ignored in the Lord-Commander's attempt to find his personal (requisitioned) comms-device, though it had only taken a moment to find in all that mess; it had been lying where he'd landed, seemingly shielded from the rocks, steel and glass shards by the very mass of the man who'd been trying to find it, conveniently pointed out by the footpad of the second droid he had decommissioned. Whilst in the act of dusting the sandy gravel off the comms-device, Erskine made for the broken open left exit and sighed with dejection and lessening rage, preparing himself for the inundation of worst-case scenarios that were sure to follow as soon as his Lord-Protector had properly patched through. A solitary, ghoulish figure stood off to the south behind him, completely within the Brigadier-General's blind-spot, but he could feel their presence, still and resolute but somehow passive in the place where Erskine couldn't bring himself to look.
<"Lionheart one to blue heart alpha, potential high casualties from units local to blast radius, all hands presumed to be lost until otherwise over.">
'Wait, what about our firstborns? No, he can't mean that.... No, what have I done? NO, ERSKINE!!!! YOU KNOW THAT YOUR DECISIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, AN' THOSE DECISIONS HAVE DOOMED YOUR OWN SON TO DEATH!!!! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, OLD MAN??!?!?!?!?!?!', Lord Erskine ranted and roared at himself, screaming untethered, tearful rage at the manifested cost of his life's actions. Unleashing a lasting, chest-beating primal scream of fury into the ashen wilderness of death beyond, Erskine turned round to see who was watching all this time, but what he saw lashed at his last tether of emotional control. All his tears, all his hopelessness and grief would spill forth, reduced to a sobbing wreck by the silent, spectral shade of his son, Lord-Leftenant Thomas Barran. Kneeling back to make teary eye-contact with his son's ghost, Lord Erskine pulled his pistol to his forehead, cocked the hammer, and whispered the sweetest of silent apologies to his wife, before abandoning his trigger discipline to wrap his index finger around the blaster-pistol's trigger.
'IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT, THOMAS?!?!?!?!'
<"Understood, Blue Heart Alpha. The 501st will punch through soon enough, but firstly I want to disrupt any means to reinforce what they already have. Regardless, carry on as you are. For Galidraan. For the Empire.">
Not today, Thomas. Not today.... War on your killers first, then we'll see about meeting in the next life, eh?
A BARRAN WASTELAND - Wrath of the Stormchaser IV (The Saga Begins)
Sheathing his weapon after reflecting on how close he'd come to ending it all right there, the Lord-Commander began to straighten himself out for what was expected to be a difficult ending to the Second Battle of Ziost, as men like Erskine knew that their fight wouldn't end until they'd killed everyone in front of them, or until everyone (or everything) in front of them killed every last one of Barran's martial, fighting ilk. Erskine would stand again, from the place he was close to accepting as the best place to kill himself in, rising from the ember-topped gravel with a renewed resolve the Sith would surely learn to fear before long. The new man who'd risen from his own despair would stare out across the hellscape and spit his venomous disdain at it, drawing the basket-hilted Vibrosword claymore and stepping into the oddly-serene wilderness of wreckages and corpses with an exhausted heaviness to the Lord-Commander's step as he began his hunt to find friend or foe.
As if by a shock to the system, Barran was taking his first steps towards the city when he heard the loud metallic clunking of metal-on-metal contact at ramming-speed, desperately repetitive in it's impacts, though sporadic enough to be perceived as driven by sentient habit. Following the direction of the noise, it didn't take long for Erskine to realise it was one of the AT units that Strasza's squad had stolen before the orbital strikes were implemented; crashed, written off and burning all over it's surface, the vehicle that Erskine had correctly surmised was Noel's latest steal had luckily turned out to be the one that all the metallic cacophonies were coming from. Sprinting towards the vehicle to get a better look, the Lord-Commander understood that only someone like Major Strasza could survive the blasts so easily, but understood the peril she would be in if the fires turned the inner-compartments into makeshift ovens: so Barran quickly darted around to find the spot where the Major was trying to burst out from, and with relative ease too, despite the smoke everywhere increasing the difficulty of his task.
'Strasza, it's Barran! I'm about to cut a nice big triangle in this bothersome wall o' yours, so step back an' ready yourself to burst through it as soon as I finish! You're not dying today, mate. Not here, an' not on my karking watch! Step back!'