You will kneel to my Helmetus (Levantine Salvation/Dominion of Tion)

[Jorus Merrill]

The Tion Hegemony Trade Nexus wasn't actually in the Tion system, but close by. He'd come here in disguise once or twice, to monitor Hegemony actions and make contacts in what might be the galaxy's largest and most diverse marketplace. The nexus was a mobile station, a sphere four kilometres wide. He'd come here by anonymous Niathal shuttle, Mon Cal-designed and Silk-built.

And he was absolutely going to be late for his meeting, because his comm board had just lit up. Someone was attacking Tion, and the Sanctum had decided to help.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Seydon of Arda"] [member="Darell Irani"] [member="Kana Truden"] [member="Seydon of Arda"] [member="Ilias Nytrau"] [member="Jaxton Ravos"] [member="Thessa Kai"] [member="Thessa Kai"] [member="Jennifer Blanchard"] [member="Gerion Ardik"] (#HelixMissleTion?) [member="Darth Adekos"] (#HelixMissles5eva #ImGonnaWreckIt #NotEvenFeelingGuilty)

Helmetus smiled the cheeky smile of one who smiles cheekily at things. His schwartz senses tingled and he pointed at a fighter.

"Tractor beam that one!" He said with no explanation, "Oh feth and fire turbolasers at that orbital space station! Have "Kill'em" and "All" begin engaging the fleet with Turbolasers and for kark sake someone turn off the elevator music."

"Sir no music is playing."

"Good work." He nodded, "I want to see ships venting atmosphere before tea time...and not ours fethers!"

"HAIL HELMETUS!"

"Fething right hail me. " he said before begining his walk to the hanger where the schwartz was guiding him.

 

[GREG]

GREG WAS IN ONE OF THE FIGHTERS, HIS AWESOME MUSCLED BODY RIPPED AND AWESOME SITTING IN THE COCKPIT. FLIGHT SUITS WERE FOR PUSSIES. HOWEVER, PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR WAS QUINTESSENTIAL TO A GOOD PILOT, SO HE PROPERLY PROTECTED HIS HEAD, NECK, AND EYES- WITH SUNGLASSES! RADIATION IN SPACE, AND ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY WERE CLOSE TO STARS WAS INCREEEEEEEEDIBLY DANGEROUS. SO @GREG WAS SUPER PROTECTIVE.


HE HEARD THAT HIS LONG-TIME BUDDY [member="Darthka Helmetus"] WAS FIRING AT HIS OWN MEN. IT WAS ALRIGHT, HE FIGURED. HE HAD SIGNED A SIX-PAGE RELEASE WAIVER THAT MADE SURE THAT HIS FAMILY RECEIVED LIFE INSURANCE AND THAT THEY COULDN'T SUE FOR ANY DAMAGES- EMOTIONAL- OR PHYSICAL!


GREG MOVED INTO POSITION, MAKING PEW PEW NOISES AS HE TOOK A RUN AT THE FRIGATE.


THEY NOISES WERE LIKE BANG BANG PEW PEW POW POW. EXCEPT WITH LASERS. AND HIS MOUTH.


GREG WAS HUNGRY.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Darthka Helmetus"]

Having been informed of the unfolding situation in the Tion System, Gerion Ardik hastily departed from the Raxus System. He had to leave his Lucrehulk in orbit, unfortunately, where it would continue to help coordinate the relief effort of the planet. Traditionally Lucrehulks carried enough forces to occupy an entire planet. Now it contained enough supplies to have the Raxians renounce their Silver Jedi ties and instead join the Tion Hegemony. That was important to Gerion, but even more important was the safety and sanctity of the star system that gave the Cluster its name. The Umbaran's hastily mustered forces consisted of two Tulak Hord-class Star Destroyers left over from the old Sith Empire. They dropped out of hyperspace behind Darthka's expedition force.

"This is Gerion Ardik of the Tion Hegemony." The Umbaran announced. "It is hereby requested that the entity known as Darthka Helmetus remain perfectly still while being destroyed."

With every conceivable armament they had, both Tulak Hords concentrated their fire on the Star Destroyer that Darthka was presently no on board. It was preferable that the invader witness the destruction of one of his vessels. Preferably while helpless and unable to coordinate his forces. With a frown so deep it should have been immortalized in an oil painting, Gerion dispensed his next set of orders to his bridge crew.

"Someone jam their communications, please. I'd rather not hear the screaming."

 

[Jennifer Blanchard]

Jenn was waiting for the next move. There was the Levantine's, and apparently they were the good guys here? It was disrupting Tion... Or maybe it wasn't? That was why she was getting ahold of [member="Darell Irani"], the other handler when Marek was out learning to be the Weather God of Death by Meterology or something.

But she was now hearing that there were riots? That was something she could do. Nodding at the message, she checked her weapons and her light Santhe created armor. Time to go to work. Picking up her comlink, and dialing up [member="Emerald Sage"], she made the call. “Hey, Em. Meet me downtown? If you're still on Tion. Got some work to do.”

And she might get to run the Whiteguard? That was going to be fun.

“Roger that, sir. Heading down to see what I can find out. I'll coordinate with the Whiteguard, we'll find the rebels, and get rid of them. Do I get to keep the lightsabers if there are Silvers?”

 

[Thessa Kai]

[member="Darthka Helmetus"]

"Sparky, what do you mean we're tractored?" The astromech warbled angrily. Iced-azure gaze narrowed as she lost control of the snub-nosed fighter and it was invisibly dragged into the hangar of the enemy destroyer.

"Yeah well, I'm not having warm and fuzzy feelings about this, either."

She peeled off her helmet as the ship settled down in the hangar. The hatch popped. With hands raised she slowly rose out of the seat.

"Keep her warm, Sparky 'cause we're not staying long," the whisper left the corners of her lips as she slowly climbed down the ladder.

 

[Jaxton Ravos]

[member="Gerion Ardik"] [member="Darthka Helmetus"]

"Sir, two star destroyers have exited hyperspace behind the aggressors."

"Contact the rest of the Levantine Patrols. We can't stop an added force like tha-"

"Sir, they're firing at the aggressors. I think they're Tion ships."

"Tion had two Star Destroyers in reserve? Bunch of a rich bastards." Captain Ado muttered under his breath. "Get our Cruiser and our two corvettes to supplement their turbolaser fire, and have another two squadrons of interceptors mobilize. I don't want any bombers making a run to the planet."

"Yes sir!" Ado's first mate replied, and the MC70 and two Alyndys class corvettes opened fire, while the Frigate continued to take hits, notably taking heavy damage from one [member="GREG"] as he strafed by with a starfighter. A couple of interceptors noticed his efficiency and went to try and pick him off, but if he shake him he'd probably disable at least a system or two of the Frigates with his next bomb/torpedo/missile run.

 

[Kana Truden]

The joke fell on deaf ears though and Kana slumped her shoulders in disappointment. The time for them to separate had come as they each had enough patients to go over. The fact that they were playing vent to some of the richest people in the world did not pass her by without the occasional thought of her own connection to stuck ups such as this. Her family. Her mother and father who were both very much considering themselves the wealthiest people alive. It was nothing compared to the people around here. In a sense it was both horrible and oh so very sweet. Maybe one day they would hear of this world, but until then there was little Kana could do but grin at it all.

Which she did. Right as her 'patient' went on to explain how horrible his life had become because of half his workforce disappearing. Talks of salary cuts and disciplinary actions on his employees for letting it reach this level of 'bad'. As much as she wanted to outright slap him in the face she simply couldn't bring herself to such a thing. It pained to admit but if there was one thing that would secure the Levantine's continued operation within the area it'd be to have the rich and powerful at their side. Hell, even just the rich would probably do just fine.

But for now she would listen. After all, there was hint of truth in the saying "No pain, no gain."

[member="Jaxton Ravos"] [member="Thessa Kai"] [member="Jennifer Blanchard"] [member="Gerion Ardik"] @GREG @Darthka Helmetus [member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

The anonymous shuttle was Silk, which meant quality™. Its short preflight concluded about ten seconds after takeoff, and he slipped out of Tion Trade Nexus space bound for Tion itself. He keyed in the comparably short hyperjump; while the navicomp ran the numbers, he took closer stock of comm developments. Multiple Star Destroyers, some Tionese, others hostile. Sanctum forces, too. The Tion system appeared to be getting crowded.

He really, really wished he had access to something with more firepower than a Niathal.

 

[Arage Bao]

Radiant planet covered with a feth ton of water, Khaleel didn’t care about Tion. It wasn’t why he was in the sector though, that honor went to one of the industrialized moons orbiting the planet itself, to be more specific the one with the spaceport established on it and to be even more specific one of the many unsavory cantinas lining the streets of the moon.

He was here to establish some smuggling contacts, get into the Tion game before someone else locked it down and all that crap. There was cash to earn here for the Exchange and that was what Khaleel cared about, well… sorta. Sometimes a man had to keep up appearances for the sake of it, the current sake was a smell bottle of gin and a straw that didn’t quite look like a straw.

A sigh.

The things he did for business.

 

[Not Ordo]

[member="Gerion Ardik"] [member="GREG"] [member="Thessa Kai"] [member="Jaxton Ravos"] [member="Jorus Merrill"]

Darthka Helmetus walked like a freaking boss down the corridor toward the hanger while the two star destroyers dropped from hyperspace and opened fire on "All" the I-class destroyer. It was typical businessman behavior really, find a target and hit them full blast from behind, economics 101.

Helmetus however missed the show and probably would have just cursed and shot a crew member but that was the way things go. He walked into the hanger and saw the odd mildly attractive form of an evidently nonhuman pilot exit her ship and stopped in the door way imagining that he was imposing and totes scary though really...well you get it by now.

"Are you prepared to taste the wrath of the helmet?" He said in his overly embellished excuse for a James Earl Jones voice.


Meanwhile....in space the final...wrong show sorry....

Commander Rod locked onto the Orbital station and fired Ion cannons again because he had a freaking one track mind and that was the last thing he did before Helmetus left the bridge. Star Destroyer "Kill'em" began its slow turn to face the new fleet while "All" belched out the rest of it's fighters and sent them to harrass the Levantines. Both Star Destroyers began pumping turbolaser fire like pistons into space at the two fleets cuz the fight was on tighter than Danger's fingers on a cred chip.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Closing in for blade-work and somehow putting pay to that technorganic appendage cannon wasn't proving manageable. The beast had its posture squared, burning through each rotator-barrel until it was a half-melted slide of concussively bent duralloy. Seydon could feel the run off heat emitting from the case-dispenser. It was lit from muzzle to pivot-elbow a crackling red, threatening to expire on its wielder lest it finally release its in-built trigger stud. The animal had little intention of that; it snuffed brazen air through its ringed nostrils, cramped its arm again into the ready-fire posture, and let fly. The cannon roared. Seydon ducked into a long roll and felt the caseless heavy-caliber slugs scathe just by a hairs breadth over his curling spine. One scorched over the hard leather armour. He heard the beast rear back and bray in laughter, churning up further impact depressions across the roof court.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

The Niathal-class shuttle exited hyperspace in the Tion system, a couple of astronomical units off the plane of the ecliptic. That put him either above the system or below it. Some systems, in his experience, acquired a default 'up' and 'down' relative to that plane rather than relative to a gravity well. It was a softboiled sort of convention.

Tion was entirely too busy for that. Ships took on every orientation, except for the capital ships facing off against each other. Flat-plane thinking.

Some people just couldn't shake the mental habits of growing up in gravity wells.

The shuttle headed insystem. He'd need to make a microjump in a bit. For now, he was out of range, and with the Force all wonky, a quick microjump was out of the question.

 

[Aeron Kreelan]

A contract with Arceneau Trade meant that the Omega Pyre had a vested interest in ensuring Tion was free of Helmetus. So it would be to no surprise that the Prex of the Pyre would send reinforcements near the Tion Hegemony to give the locals back up.

The Icarii would stand before a large holo array, information coming in on the status of what Helmetus was doing. A grin would draw over her lips.

Maybe it was time for a little boarding action.

 

[Not Ordo]

Kal sat sleeping on his bunk aboard a ship he could have sworn was supposed to be travelling between Etti IV and Arda. His grey eyes looked out the porthole at the blossoms of laser fire streaming through space and decided he was pretty much not at all where he intended to be.

He grabbed his bag and sticks then left his room. His long strides carried him along on his way to the hanger and was lucky enough to catch one of the supply ships that was heading planet side. He hunkered down beside a human female and looked down at her.

"You better protect me miss." He said

"Why is that?"

"What do you mean why?" Kal said, "because you have a blaster and I have a stick!"

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Darthka Helmetus"] | [member="Jaxton Ravos"]

Gerion's vessel, henceforth to be referred to as G-1, shuddered under the volley of turbolaser fire from Helmetus. Nothing a shield generator couldn't handle, for now. Frankly, the Umbaran was less concerned with the damages to his ship. Repairs could be made to a Tulak Hord for relatively cheap. Repairs made to a planet were a lot more expensive, and the price tag on the whole cluster after that damnable rapture was already looking fairly ridiculous.

"Sir, we're taking return fire."
"Obviously." He rolled his eyes. "Maintain the current course. Keep firing until this enemy fleet is destroyed. And scramble our own fighters."

TIEs, probably just the basic Interceptor and Fighter types, began launching from beneath the hulls of G-1 and G-2. They would do battle with the nefarious starfighter squadrons of Darthka Helmetus. Not that the TIEs launched by the Tionese battleships were any less nefarious. Really, in terms of nefarity, they were probably equal. They just had different ways of expressing themselves. Like by buying out orphanages to replace them with factories instead of bombarding planets.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

A microjump with no reliable Force. He wet his lips, grabbed the handles, and did his level best to relax. He'd keyed it up for a reversion within approximate range of both the fleet and the planet, with no chance of overshoot ramming him into Tion proper. Which wasn't to say he wouldn't revert to realspace on top of one of the thousands of ships in this system. Space was big, but randomly dead was still dead.

But he was going to do it anyway. He never seriously considered not doing it.

Space flared blue-white for a fraction of a second; he slapped the levers with bruising force, and the shuttle fell back into realspace half a klick from one of the Tionese Star Destroyers. That had been entirely too close.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Its weaponry died. With a gutteral whine of machined steel slashed back against the over-worked case block that housed the robust mechanisms feeding, priming, and firing ammunition into the rotator barrels, it flew apart at its welded seams. One barrel went spinning away, whacking a long arc before descending out of sight, clattering onto a near street below. Another folded in half against the barrel brackets, caught in place. The rest shot and snapped free, hurling like scorched javelins, and struck through the scarred up roof tiling. As if disgusted with the cannons broke utility, the bull-ogre began trying to paw at the mechanical orbital-joint linking its function to his body. It hardly gave Seydon notice, 'till Winterfang worried a long, welting cut through its waist. The beast paused, blinked, while the Dunaan watched the pain begin settling in through its various, overworked nerve sheathes. ...It turned on its wounded hip and appraised Seydon. And then it began trying to kill him in earnest.

 

[Aeron Kreelan]

Well boarding action would have to wait.

That lucrehulk was busy blasting the main ship. Okay new plan. Aereon would narrow her attention at the ever shifting holographic map. It was constantly being updated as the battle went underway.

An opening came up by the rear. Perhaps a couple of pot shots from Pyre vessels would do this some good.

The order sent out, Omega Pyre ships would move enroute to enact those orders.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

In the shelter of a Tionese ship, Jorus cycled through IFF telesponders for a better idea of the battlefield's composition. The main ships involved were Levantine, Tionese, and the unknown hostiles. Another group of vessels looked vaguely like a putative boarding attempt, however, and they bore the telesponders of Omega Pyre. Interesting. An evolution, perhaps, from the vessels Cater had kept parked at Etti Four. Regardless of their rationale, here they were, and they looked to be making a gutsy sort of move. He commed [member="Aeron Kreelan"], angling the Niathal-class shuttle to intercept and match their vector. Stray fire rocked the durable little ship.

"This is Captain Jorus Merrill to Omega Pyre vessels on a coded channel. I'm in the Niathal coming in off your flank. What's your plan, and you want a hand?"