Johanna Bryce

A dust cloud was approaching the Valley of the Dark Lords. At the front of that dust cloud were the Y-Wings of Wurm Squadron, which were kicking up a column of dust from their repulsorlift engines. It was expanded into a larger veil by the transports just behind them, to the point that it would appear almost as a storm cell to early-warning sensors. Shortly after the first of those fighter-bombers entered the canyons leading to the Valley, they came under fire from the ion batteries set into the rocky walls. The Y-Wings immediately loosened their formation and allowed the bolts to pass harmlessly over their bows and through the column, but one of the transports was not so lucky. Struck on its side, one of its engines coughed up dust and died, causing the vessel to lose speed and list out of the column. In a desperate attempt to save his passengers, its pilot climbed out of the formation, stalling the transport but succeeding in avoiding a fatal collision with the canyon walls. At the end of its lazy climb and the beginning of its terminal dive into the canyon floors, its passenger doors slid open. A squad of Talon marines fell into the open air and ignited their jetpacks, blasting away from their crippled transport before it plunged into the sandy floor and cartwheeled into a fiery wreck. Just a few meters above and twenty meters ahead, Johanna Bryce was listening to the comms chatter with an expression of growing apprehension on her face. All of the Talons were still alive and were on a glideslope to assault the battery that had downed their transport. Even the pilot had managed to get out before the crash. But the strike team had just been detected, and would be making their combat drops into a rancor’s nest of forewarned anti-air. She stood, gripping the centerrail and swaying with the sharp turns of the transport. “Sixty seconds! Gear check!” Her marines made the familiar motions, standing free from their restraints and patting down the locations of their weapons and gear. A chorus of responding readies followed, only a few seconds before the transport crested the final ridge and descended into the open expanse of monuments and archeological digs and tombs of the Valley of the Dark Lords. Four of the Y-Wings had already broken off into their attack runs and sent proton bombs into the entrenched point-defense emplacements. The other eight were racing past the Valley and towards the spaceport of Dreshdae, hunting for the anti-air cannons that were emplaced there. Captain Bryce’s own transport landed near one of the larger missile batteries that was fortified into the surrounding cliffs. Pausing only to allow the blinding clouds of dust to waft away, the shock trooper charged towards the site. The next few minutes would be of desperate, close-range fighting: bombers and transports struggling to provide air support in an environment that still had a number of point defense cannons in action, shock troopers rushing to disable and destroy cannons from the ground… …and a fleet that was waiting for the signal that their vulnerable troop transports could begin the occupation of Dreshdae.

(( @MSA)) “Oh, good. Good. I’m glad to hear that you’re not one of those weirdos that gets their kicks from killing people. We try to sort those guys ay-sap. Overenthusiastic. Unstable. Prone to going off and getting themselves killed–or worse, killing some random civvie schmo.” From the abundance of firepower and the hilt of the vibromachete that protruded from its shoulder holster, it was plain that all of the Talons were equipped and trained to be loud and aggressive–yet there was an edge of nervous energy that seeped into Johanna Bryce at the final hyperspace jump. The shock trooper offered the Jedi a helping hand into their U-Wing, gripping the Jedi’s arm just above his elbow. “You see the Twi’lek there?” Johanna pointed towards a blue-skinned Twi’lek as she strapped herself into her restraint webbing. He was visibly shivering against his restraints and looked a little bit pale with nausea. “Cazne gets the shakes every single time we do a drop, training or combat–” “Thanks, Captain.” “Scary calm in combat. It’s like the guy is doing some Jedi mind trick when the shit hits the fan.” The visibly miserable Twi’lek looked like he was about to say something in defense of his nausea, only to be interrupted by the transport’s pilot. “Three, two, one, we’re off, Talons.” The transport’s pilot recited before it lifted from the hangar and promptly went dark in the coldness of space. “Remember, we are making an unpowered descent. Expect heavy turbulence in atmo. Strap yerselves in. I don’t want bird crap all over my nice clean transport.” Eight U-Wing gunships and a dozen old Y-Wing fighter-bombers began their final descent towards Korriban. Unpowered and lifeless in their downwards glide, they would give off few signals that would mark them as potential targets–but they would be utterly helpless until they began their start-up sequences in the atmosphere. It was completely soundless in the transport that Captain Bryce and Knight Aequitas occupied, save for the hissing of a nearby life support vent and the rattling of one of their number trembling against his restraints. “I know, it’s cold. Gets cold quickly without life support.” Bryce smiled; she was also shivering. “It’s a bit like Bespin, actually.” What was completely unlike Bespin was the unpredictable rocking of the transport as it punched into the high winds of a jet stream, which only worsened as the transport continued its descent into thicker airs. Bryce just closed her eyes and kept her mind focused on her mental map of the Valley–the turns that the transport was likely to take in their approach, the optimal locations of marksman teams, and the jetpack time required to make a combat drop into the anti-orbital batteries. Light impacts battered the sides of her helmet upon entry into a minor storm cell–she heard the whining of the transports start-up motor as the pilot began a mid-air start-up sequence… and a mighty whoomp as the engines coughed away a cloud of dust and roared back to life. Johanna opened her eyes just in time to see the horizon of Korriban’s badlands distressingly close to the transport. The entire transport shuddered and creaked as its pilot pulled the vessel out of its descent–the shock trooper clenched her muscles to fight against the encroaching blackness in the edges of her vision… …and lost. The expression on her face shifted from a crunched grimace to slack-jawed peace. Her neck slumped and rocked limply from side to side with each maneuver. Each pilot fighting against their extreme speed and the winds of the planet, the U-Wing transports and Y-Wings pulled out of their steep dive and began to skim the surface of Korriban. They blasted up a cloud of dust in their wake, resembling a miniature sand storm that would be visible from kilometers away. It would take another thirty perilous seconds of surface-skimming until the strike team reached the cover of their trench run through the canyons of the Valley. Bryce eventually came to, blinking rapidly and scanning from one end of the transport to the other, her expression blank as though she was not entirely certain where she was. “Is everyone alright? Alright? Yes? I’m okay. Yeah?” A few more dumb blinks followed and reality seemed to reassert itself. “Jedi, are you still with us?”

At the end of this very long day, Johanna Bryce removed her helmet and pinned it to her hip. Her previous attempt at binding up her hair had long come undone. As she shook her hair free of the cheekplate, it came free in sweaty tangles that clung to her face. The Talon Captain’s appearance was rather worse for wear, with one eye bloodshot and bruised, the cheek below it cut from struggling in close-quarters combat. And yet, she and her men were smiling. And why wouldn’t they have reason to be pleased with themselves? Despite a long, difficult day of fighting, their entire fireteam had survived--indeed, the only wounds that they had suffered would knit together quickly enough after bacta and bedrest: a concussion, a broken leg, a ricochet from a blaster bolt, and uncounted bruises and scrapes and minor cuts that would be only an annoyance for a medtech. And from Bryce’s perspective, her twisted, bloodied smile came from a combination of pride and relief. After months of training and iterations on their equipment, the Talon concept had finally proven itself. Their breach into Outer Heaven had proceeded almost flawlessly--it was holding the reactor core that proved to be a challenge. Even with overwhelming numbers bearing down on them, however, they had held long enough for the regulars to relieve their position. “Thank you, sir,” salutes followed, with Vor gladly swinging his carbine to a rest at his shoulder. “I’ll be checking in with my squadmate on Constantine.” With the Rebel fleet ferrying regiment after regiment of ground troops to Outer Heaven, it was an easy matter to find a transport willing to take on an additional three soldiers back to the fleet. Insisting on watching from the cockpit--much to the pilot’s annoyance, the Talon watched the traffic descending from the fleet. Even with the station pacified and nearly all of its resisting elements neutralized, the shuttle traffic wasn’t slackening. If anything, it was only intensifying in frequency--and it wasn’t merely troop shuttles that were dropping off relief forces, but freighters and heavy transports.

There was no time to issue orders, no time to think, only time to run run run as ten meters and an uncountable number of kilograms teetered and began to tumble onto the shoulders of the two Talon shock troopers. Bryce hugged her carbine to her chest and sprinted away from ignominious death as crates slid off of the shelves and slammed onto the warehouse floor. She vaguely felt the heat of two blaster bolts sear through the synthleather of her belt-pat and caress the plate of her greaves--of more immediate concern was the figure that suddenly loomed out of the dust, long-barrelled disruptor rifle aimed in the rough direction of her breastbone at point-blank range. And then a blaster bolt blazed directly into the humanoid’s left temple, spilling both the sapient and their weapon to the ground amidst a cloud of vaporized bone and gore. The Talon shock trooper slammed into the falling corpse with her shoulder, pinning it against the wall and smearing red over the dusty grey surface. “Kriff, kriff, kriff--I’m good.” Her squadmate puffed as he narrowly escaped a metric ton of who-knows-what falling upon his shoulders. “Two more--” he flinched as a disruptor beam sizzled through the space between their shoulders. Johanna had already snapped her carbine up to their two assailants from a distant catwalk and was blazing blaster fire towards the two sapients. In her shaking hands, her blaster fire was splashing against the walls and catwalks, only succeeding in blasting chunks of duracrete from the walls and showering sparks over her targets. Their return fire was nearly as enthusiastic but even less disciplined; the crimson disruptor beams reduced entire chunks of the walls to dust. Bryce dove to the side as yet another disruptor beam burst only centimeters in front of her face, exploding the duracrete wall into a cloud of dust. The shock trooper clambered clumsily over the ruin of crates and shelves, the wreckage sagging under her armor as the inaccurate disruptor fire reduced crates to explosions of splinters and beams to slag… Two steadily-aimed blaster bolts raced out towards the final two terrorists, striking them in perfect center-of-mass impacts that pitched both to the floor. “Captain, Vor, you two alright?” Came the calm, reassuring voice of their squadmate. _____ The remainder of the raid involved a great deal of shouting and no small amount of toil from the Imperial Scouts’ medics. Half of the ground floor of the warehouse was a ruin, as misaimed disruptor fire had caused shelves to collapse against each other in a chain reaction. The catwalks were strewn with rubble from blaster fire. The few terrorists who had not been killed outright by blaster fire continued to groan and writhe, one even attempting to lift the barrel of their bulky disruptor rifle. Johanna’s boot came down hard on the receiver of that weapon with a crack of splintering plastoid and the shock trooper scowled at the supine Sullustan. “Really? Resisting a medic? Stormies, you find anyone else?" “No… Captain.” Johanna thought she heard a sigh over the comms. “All clear in the offices.”

Blaster fire continued to echo as Rebel troops stormed through the remaining sources of resistance in Sector Seven, but from her perch on the top of Warehouse Three, Bryce could see that the advance had stopped. Eight white-clad stormtroopers maintained a loose perimeter around the warehouse, taking cover behind landspeeders and waiting for a signal to begin their assault. That signal came in the form of a crimson-clad Imperial Knight charging in. Johanna felt her jaw drop at the sight of the man charging in through a breach in a side-wall. “That Jedi just went in. What in the Nine Hells…” “Chatter, Four. Tros, how’s it look?” The Duros jammed his vibromachete into the roofing material and used the blade as a lever. An entire block of the warehouse’s roof peeled away with ease, rust and lichen falling as splashes of color against the grey powdery dust that slipped through the shock trooper’s gauntlets. “Substandard duracrete mix. Ribbons, Vor?” A nod of assent came from the other Talon, and the two soldiers began to lay out strips of cloth that were packed with shaped charges. With only the occasional glance up at their compatriots, they soon created a tidy square in the roof. “Alright, Talons.” Bryce transmitted the conversation on an open channel that the stormtroopers. “Vertical breach and entry in 30 seconds. We blow the roof, pop flashbangs and move in. Remember, these people are rocking disruptors. Bad rate of fire, limited ammo capacity, but they’ll be motivated. They know they’ve got a death sentence for using those things. Ready, stormies?” “Stormtrooper Scouts at the ready, Captain.” The clipped Caridian accent came with a hint of annoyance at the old Rebel term for the infamous white-clad soldiers. “On my mark,” Bryce ticked down the seconds on her fingers and approached the square of ribbons. She took a deep breath, the sound of her own breath sounding unnaturally loud in the confines of her vacuum-proof helmet. “Three, two, one, mark.” A deafening crack and a shriek issued as the charges detonated and cut a square of duracrete free from the roof, falling for nearly a second before it shattered with a crash that the deafened shock trooper could feel through her boots. Bryce and Tros tossed in their flashbangs underhanded--and Bryce jumped in, her armor’s repulsorlifts slowing her descent. That was fortunate--the Talon had misjudged the height of the warehouse, and the drop of nearly twenty meters would have shattered her legs, rather than merely staggering under the weight of a full combat load. Visibility was reduced to vague outlines and lights in the choking dust of the shattered permacrete. She took a pair of steps forward and felt a light impact on her back--one of her Talons had just landed behind her. A vague shape was directly in front of her, only thirty meters away. No lightsaber--probably a shouldered rifle, and not one of the short-barreled carbines that the stormtroopers favored. Her carbine snapped up with a burst of three shots that struck the sapient in their foot, leg, and shoulders. They spun to the ground, hand squeezed around their weapon and triggering a single reflexive ground-- --and then all hell broke loose. That stray round struck one of the many storage racks that filled the warehouse, causing it to sag and spill its burden to the ground. The collapsing strack began to lean precipitously towards one side and the entire structure collapsed onto its neighbor--which just happened to be the storage rack immediately adjacent to Bryce and her Talons. At the same moment that the shock troopers glanced upwards and realized that they were about to be buried under tons of who-knows-what, the Imperial Scout Stormtroopers burst in behind Skyshatter and began to press the criminals from the opposite direction. One of them fell to a disruptor that had been stabilized at their point of entry, his death avenged almost immediately by a well-aimed blaster that sent the Shistavenan plummeting from the ceiling. The Talons, meanwhile, sprinted for the end of this corridor formed by the rows of storage racks. At least, their leader ran, closely followed by Jansen Vor. Her second-in-command, however, took note of an unoccupied gap on the collapsing rack and stepped through it, calmly allowing the entire structure to fall to ruin around him and emerging totally unscathed amidst the debris.

The firefight that the Talon shock troopers had intruded upon was over within seconds. The criminal units on street level had been hard-pressed by a single squad of the fleet’s stormtroopers. Nonetheless, they managed to withdraw in good order using an imitation of a classic leapfrog maneuver; half of the unit would retreat for twenty or thirty meters while the other half stood their ground and fired back at the pursuing soldiers, then the positions were traded. That basic maneuver was thrown into chaos by the strafing run of Tros’ scout bike and the other two Talons that overlooked the retreating criminals from the rooftop. Standing almost heedless of the sparse return fire from the streets, Bryce calmly fired single rounds and bursts into the flamboyantly-dressed militia. Bryce’s next round went low and ahead of one of the retreating militia. Sparks showering all over her target’s knee, the Twi’lek glanced up towards Bryce’s position and saw death behind the barrel of a rifle. That Twi’lek threw her carbine to the street. The shock trooper merely swept her aim towards one of the “stationary” element of the leapfrog. With a calm exhale, Bryce felled her target with a single round to the neck. “Cease fire, cease fire!” came a frantic handwave at her side. The marine lifted her brown eyes from the sights of her carbine; the criminal militia were throwing down their weapons and raising their hands in surrender. As the stormtroopers caught up with the quarry, the tall marine visibly relaxed and slouched from her fighting crouch…. ….and then another one of those crimson beams passed so closely to her helmet that the anti-flash visor turned opaque. Bryce threw herself to the ground and groped her way away from the edge of the rooftop, hoping that the sniper wouldn’t make use of the disruptor’s penetrative qualities by blasting the duracrete walls to atoms. No follow-up shots ever came. Her comlink chattered with a monotone, robotic voice: “Snipers are being--” Then came a burst of static. “Over here.” “Thank you. Thank you very much,” Bryce breathed a weary acknowledgement over the comms. Collecting herself and taking a glance along the path of the beam, the marine observed a distressing hole in the wall of a nearby tower. Nothing but dust remained of the building’s facade. “Confirmed disruptors.” The two Talons marched towards the edge of the warehouse and crested the intersection with a single burst of their jetpacks. “Skyshatter, on the rooftop of number three now. Holding position for the stormies to catch up.” Blaster fire was continuing to echo down the streets from their previous position. Bryce frowned; the stormtroopers should have been able to just stun the militia and proceed. “Don’t you… Imperial Knights have some Force Sense-y sort of thing to let us know what we might find in there?”

There were few bursts of emerald laser fire, a splash of red-orange and black smoke--and the crunch of overstressed steel and concussive wave that washed over Bryce’s shoulders. That was the trouble that had been brought on by the crew of that distant gunnery platform: a miserable, fiery death because they had stupidly decided to remain at their posts. Those two TIEs circled over the smoking ruin of that turret before returning to a patrol pattern over Sector Seven. Just far enough to watch the sad affair, three tiny speeder bikes zipped along the rooftops and towards the gentle sound of distant blaster fire. “Cheers, lads.” Fifty meters behind her left shoulder and directly into her ear, Jansen Vor murmured his appreciation for the aerial cover. “Chatter, Four.” Bryce responded. Ah, command, Fireteam Talon on the way. Estimate three minutes to the Aurek-Osk. Talons, course two-nine-zero. Maintain visual scanning.” Travelling at the mortality-highlighting velocity of three hundred kilometers per hour, picking out distinct details in the scenery of Sector Seven--such as possible ambushes--seemed an impossible task. At this terrain-blurring speed, it seemed that this particular sector of Outer Heaven was one of the nondescript, mildly depressing mixed-commercial-mixed-industrial zones that inevitably sprung up at the outskirts of major cities. It was too distant from major spaceports to attract intensive industrialization or commercial development, yet too distant from residential zones to merit the development of sapient-friendly businesses. Its only merit was that the area was cheap, and as a result, a disturbing mix of enterprises shared space: within a single block, Bryce spotted a small-scale biotech firm, an “exotic” dance cabaret, a promising Twi’lek restaurant that must have closed up at the arrival of the Rebel fleet, and a warehouse that contained machinery of an unidentifiable nature. At this speed, picking out infantry targets was an impossible task; millisecond-long glances into the exposed windows and fire-escape balconies had no hope of revealing any useful information. As the trio of speeder bikes zipped over a slightly taller block of warehouses, they passed over one of the running firefights between the Rebel Advance Recon and criminal groups. Making hand signals, Bryce gained altitude and sent her speeder bike into a slow, wide turn that would bring the fireteam in line with the streets to begin a strafing. At the apex of this slow turn, the Talon turned her attention towards the distant rooftops--and spotted a glint of glass within one of the warehouse roofs. “Movement, rooftop level, prox one-four-zero.” And then the shooting started. A beam of crimson-something--definitely not a blaster bolt or slugthrower projectile, lanced upwards and threatened to take off one of Bryce’s steering veins. Shoving its controls forward, she traded altitude for speed and dove towards street level. Another pair of beams crackled through empty air--and then, visible only in the corner of her eye, a fourth found its mark. The rear section of one of her squads’ speeder bikes simply evaporated--that is, if evaporation of metal also resulted in a fiery explosion. “Four hit--spast--bailing.” Somehow, Vor had survived the explosion of his bike’s engine block--he had thrown himself free of the plummeting wreck of his half-bike and was drifting downwards on the power of his armor’s repulsors. “Infantry target at your three, fourth window on the right. Oh, you stupid stang, I got you, I got you, yeah, no running now.” “Two, hit street level, I’ll join Four.” While the two mounted members of the Talon Fireteam began their controlled descent towards the level of the streets, Corporal Jansen Vor drifted from side to side on the artificial wind of Outer Heaven on his armor’s repulsorlifts. Another two beams of disruptor fire lanced upwards towards his squadmates, but Bryce and Tros had gained enough speed and descended so rapidly that the fire was more of a threat to Phalanx than the speeder bikes. The man hefting that disruptor rifle had tunnel-visioned on the larger, noisier targets so badly that it wasn’t until the Corellian’s boots had nearly hit the rooftop and he had lined up his carbine on the Duros’ position that the red eyes even glanced above the scope of the unwieldy rifle. Vor allowed his forward momentum to carry him upon landing on the rooftop of the warehouse--a few steps forward took him into a supported kneeling position--an slow exhale and a gentle trigger pull--and a carefully aimed bolt transformed that Duros sniper into a pile of flashburned flesh and an expensive rifle. Bryce landed next to him only a few seconds later and dismounted from her speeder bike. “Nice shot, Vor. Command, Fireteam Talon on foot at Block Two-Three. ” Bryce glanced over the side of the warehouse and attracted a blaster bolt that sizzled past her left ear for her trouble. “On rooftop of Warehouse… Four. We drew sniper fire from the rooftops, possible disruptor weapons. Watch yourselves.”

A worrisome series of metallic chunks and the whine of cooling steel filled the air as the reactor was shut down. Then the lights within the chamber shut down, and Bryce instinctively braced herself against what she expected would be a loss of artificial gravity--maybe even life support. Bryce glanced towards her squadmates, who were illuminated only by the internal lights within their helmets. Armor plates clacked against each other as shrugs were exchanged. “A bit slapdash, these Outer Rim bash jobs, innit?” Vor remarked as several seconds passed-- --and then with a second series of heavier slams, as though a massive breaker had just been flipped,the internal lights of the power core were re-ignited at a significantly dimmer setting. “Right, Sector Seven. Rys, you’re sitting out on this one. You’re in no shape to ride, let alone a firefight. Ammo check,” her hands unthinkingly unclasped the pouches at the front of her armor. “Good. Fuel reserves low. We’ll be taking the bikes. Command, local telemetry on Sector Seven?” Holding out a miniature holoprojector in her palm, a blue-white image of the space station bloomed to life. The Alliance commander idly turned it about with practiced movements of her fingers. It was a depressingly flat region of Outer Heaven station with regularly-ordered, blocky buildings interspersed only by equally flat corridors of permacrete and the occasional starport that opened directly to cold vacuum. Icons indicated the likely presence of atmospheric scrubbers and power substations--there were considerably fewer of them than the residential districts identified in their briefings. The absence of storage tanks, however, excluded the possibility of an industrial center. “Looks like warehouses, distro. Lots of wide-open streets, high windows.” “Yuck.” “Huh. Maybe they’re trying to move something out? Munitions? Illicits? Something else? Can’t think of anything else that would prioritize this sector for defense. A raid sounds just like the ticket, Talons. Mount up.” Setting out at a fast stride, the three shock troopers departed for the landing bay just outside the corridor, where they found that the Imperial Engineers had left behind four of the sleek, twin-vaned airspeeder bikes for the Talons. They were of a standard but battle-tested design; fast, maneuverable, a potent threat in hit-and-run attacks but lacking the armor to withstand return fire from anything other than small arms. Mounting up on the bikes, the three shock troopers set out into the open air with a shrieking blast from their repulsor engines Somewhat unused to the airspeeder bikes, the Talons whistled through the air at a relatively sedentary pace compared to the Imperial Scouts and were soon left breathing their exhaust fumes. Glancing about to avoid obstacles, Bryce finally had a chance to appreciate the progress of the Rebel assault. The nearby batteries had been silenced by the loss of local power; few sources of fire were continuing to respond to the advance of Damascus and Phalanx. A wing-pair of Imperial TIEs shrieked above their flight before veering off towards a laser cannon that was offering a few futile bursts of fire. Further resistance appeared futile. However, as the sounds of blaster fire grew louder, someone had clearly decided that something within Sector Seven was more valuable than the lives of their men.

“Pfasking…” Bryce drew her sidearm and shifted her weight to try to roll onto her side, but the weight of a sedentary Mon Calamari held her pinned to the catwalk. Glancing upwards, the marine saw heavy plastoid boots approaching--she swung her sidearm up and took a series of unaimed potshots--two sapients fell to the ground, howling and reaching clutching at their ankles. Then there was a sudden shift in the weight that pinned her to the ground, and the Mon Calamari fell dead to the deckplates with his bulbous head nearly split open by a blaster bolt. Rising to her feet, she saw Tros’ fire shift from her position back to the stream of militia attempting to pour in through the airlocks. Bryce took several sidesteps towards her fallen carbine, firing without much effect other than spraying sparks over the nearby consoles and forcing their attackers to keep their heads under cover. Heat rippled across her right thigh as a bolt grazed the plastoid plate and burned a hole in her belt-spat. Shifting her pistol over to her left hand, the shock trooper continued with the suppressive fire as she bent and retrieved her rifle, then shifted her weight in an attempt to take cover behind a bank of monitoring consoles that were affixed to the interior wall of the power core. “Confirmed, move as quick as you can. Talons! Away from the walls!” Not waiting for confirmation from her fireteam, Bryce matched action to words and forced herself into the open spaces of the catwalk. Snapshots from the suppressed militia just within the power core tracked her movement; the answer of the shock trooper was to fire her carbine’s underslung launcher to spray their position with a canister of buckshot. Both of her attackers went down--whether struck by her counterfire or simply suppressed again, the marine never checked, as she shifted her fire towards a Twi’lek that was advancing dangerously close to Tros on the other side of the catwalk. Then the entire room seemed to shift several millimeters to the right and her hearing was once again stolen away as the Imperial Scouts made their breach into the corridors just outside the power core. _____ With the arrival of a full squad of Imperial soldiers and the confusion of having to press an assault on two sides, the local militia soon fell into disarray. Eyes that were previously fixed on the four Talons fighting desperately for their lives soon became distracted, shifting from their sights and towards the sounds of blaster fire at their rear. One very foolish soldier completely lost his head and charged Harlaa Rys while the shock trooper was reloading her carbine. Though knocked down by the tackle and her weapon sent swinging wildly on its sling, the Togruta managed to rise and cleave through the human’s shoulder and pistol with a single swing from her vibromachete. And then, her leg having been broken from the awkward fall, she immediately collapsed with a yelp of pain. That was the last confirmed “kill” of the Talons during that firefight. With twenty plastoid-clad Imperial Scouts scything through the rearguard of the assault, the remainder of the militia soon surrendered, either raising their weapons over their heads or throwing them to the ground. When the firing finally quieted, Bryce reconvened with her Talons on the lower level of the power core, helmet removed to enjoy a few breaths of unfiltered air. “Command, we’re clear here,” she muttered into a tiny comlink. “Engies can have the run of the place now.” She cast a critical eye over her fellow shocktroopers. All of them were exhausted, sweat pouring from their brows. Tros had removed his left pauldron and was applying a small bandage to a blaster burn with Jansen Vor’s help, but aside from the wincing on the Duros’ expression, he seemed otherwise fit. Harlaa Rys, the Togruta, seemed in worse condition; dazed, perhaps concussed from the conclusion of the engagement, and leaning heavily on the consoles to avoid putting weight on her left ankle. “Three fit to fight. One to the aid station--” “The hell?” “You move one more time, and I swear I will stun you,” admonished the medic of the Imperial Scouts, who was wrapping a field splint around the Togruta’s ankle and shin. “Nothing urgent. Broken leg. Where do you need us next?”

“Boss, torches on the lower level!” Three shouted from the lower level of the catwalk. A quick glance at her helmet feed confirmed that the light of a second breaching torch had begun to pierce through the heavy durasteel doors--a slower and steadier pair of hands were manning the torch, probably had started about fifteen seconds slower than the breaching party on the upper level. “Right, Talons, I want dets on both doorways. Pack yourselves behind something that looks important. Command, tell the scouts that they have four.” Matching action to words, Bryce sprinted towards the portal on the upper level of the catwalk. A nervous glance estimated that the breaching torch next to her would require another sixty seconds before it completed its perimeter of the blast door and the counterattack began to bash the barrier in. Muttering quietly with her second-in-command, the two Talons set about thoroughly trapping the blast door. The Duros officer set a laser flechette mine directly in front of the blast door, its curved front helpfully labeled FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY. That would buy them perhaps a second of hesitation. Bryce bashed in the control panel of the blast door and placed a small sequencer charge on a proximity fuse within the shattered panel. Bryce gave the blast door another glance. The glowing column had inched up almost the entire way up down to the floor. It would be only ten seconds before their opposition began blasting their way inside. The Republic Talon hopped behind another of the control consoles and watched in trepidation as the sparking line continued to inch downwards. The sparking abruptly ended, and the Talons ducked their heads down. A shriek of overstressed metal issued as the doors were torn from the walls--a pair of grenades bounced into the chamber--and Bryce’s hearing was stolen from her by the concussive blast of the flashbangs. The marine lifted her head just in time to watch the mine detonate and spray crimson bolts into the corridor. A few seconds later, and the first wave of guards rushed in… only for the sequencer charge to blow up in their faces. Fire and shrapnel tore through their bodies--a steel ceiling panel caved in and pinned one of the plastoid-clad guards to the deck. Bryce hefted one of her grenades and tossed it into the corridor, only for it to be kicked back into the control room. Fragments riddled through the control console that she had ducked behind for cover, ripping through its interior wiring and denting the opposite wall from within. When the Talon leveled her carbine and opened fire, thus began a desperate firefight, but one with an inevitable ending: four highly-trained, well-armed and motivated marines against a counterattack of nearly forty militia. Although deafened and outnumbered, the four Talons barely even needed to speak or use hand signals to coordinate. After firing a short burst and felling one of the attackers, Bryce popped down and shifted a meter behind her console; Sergeant Tros, on the opposite side of the room, answered the volley with his own carbine to keep up a nearly-constant stream of fire. Bryce answered that burst with her own after a few seconds. And then something heavy, corpulent, and shaped vaguely like a piss-soaked Mon Calamari tackled her from the back, pitching the soldier to the ground and sending her carbine bouncing across the catwalk.

“Lead, we’re in vacuum. You don’t need to use hand signals.” The next gesture that passed from Captain Johanna Bryce was terse, immediately directed towards Corporal Vor, and was bluntly assertive in very certain terms that the speaker needed to cut the chatter, right now, and its vigorous motion gave it the air of an obscenity. But Bryce triggered her comms nonetheless and issued her orders. “On three, breach. Three and Four to the right, Lead and Two to the left. Remember, Peth for Plenty.” The shock trooper intoned, receiving three repetitions in return. Those were blessed words, a reminder that there was no need to conserve ammunition, grenades, or explosive charges. A rough ovaloid ring of shaped charges had been placed in an airlock that was just barely enough to admit a single person--the yellow-and-black ribbon, even faded by age and exposure, suggested that it was an emergency maintenance portal. Bryce shifted away from the ring by a few centimeters with a light touch of her fingers. “Three, two,” the shock trooper withdrew her fingertips and boots from the durasteel to avoid transmitting the deafening crash of the explosion through her armor. “One. Go-go-go.” A sharp flash of light and cloud of fragments burst from the ring of breaching charges--the plating of the airlock gave way and the entire assembly gave way, drifting into space on the air current of explosive decompression. And then she was in, physically hauling herself into the dome-shaped power complex against the buffeting wind. The power core within was a roughly-cylindric construct of nearly two four stories, ringed by two levels of catwalks and consoles, power cables and conduits connecting from one module of the core to another seemingly at random. The technicians and sentries ringing the power core had all braced themselves against the unexpected blast of wind, clinging to their consoles and the catwalks for dear life. “Up, up.” Bryce put on a blast of thrust from her jetpack, propelling her over the power core and across the complex to the other side of the catwalks. A pair of blaster bolts attempted to track her flight, first splashing the hull breach and then a conduit in the ceiling of the complex. And then she hit the deck with a heavy whump and a nearby screech. One of the technicians was cowering under her boots, hands raised in shaky supplication and his fleshy face quivering in terror. The shock trooper took cover behind his console, just in time for several blaster bolts to whine past her head and burst into sparks against the console. A quick peek once the blaster bolts stopped whining over her head counted eight guards within the chamber, unsteadily advancing towards the Talons. Their fire was poorly aimed, their hands shaky from the surprise assault and the winds that were sucking the atmosphere out of the room. They weren’t even wearing plastoid. Bryce snapped up her carbine, firing off a burst of bolts that struck one of the guards in the neck. Another dove for cover, but the other two decided that their lives were not worth laying down for their contracts and fled. One even threw his sidearm away and bolted away from the power core. And then, faintly due to the thinning atmosphere, alarm klaxons began to blare and vacuum-proof doors began to shut throughout the chamber. That proved to be too much for the surviving guards. The other squad--the two survivors, at least--decided not to experience vacuum exposure and ran for their lives, their plastoid boots trailed by a series of carefully-aimed blaster bolts. The yellow-clad technicians followed their retreat, sprinting for their lives with their hands, flippers, and other appendages held above their heads. At least, most of them retreated, for the cowering Mon Calamari at her boots was still quivering in terror. “Four, glop us in. Everyone else, seal those blast doors. You,” Bryce triggered her helmet’s exterior speakers, her voice coming out as a dry growl to the insensate Mon Cal. “Get up. Against the wall! let me see your hands, I said hands! Oh, for Force’s sake, I’m not going to shoot you.” The shock trooper sighed as she felt befouled fabric when she began to pat the Mon Calamari down. She tossed away a hydrospanner and a long-shafted tool that she didn’t recognize, but nonetheless looked sharp. “Show me where the head engineer works.” “Please don’t--” “Not his office, you idiot,” Bryce growled and poked the Mon Calamari with her rifle when he hesitated and turned towards an office overlooking the entire complex. “His station. The controls.” “I just work here!” “Good.” Prodded on by another encouraging tap from her carbine, the engineer picked over the bodies of two fallen guards with a whimper. Their path terminated at an enormous console at the center of the catwalk that overlooked the entire chamber, the console trailing with conduits that snaked towards the power core. It wasn’t the size of the console that frightened Bryce; it was the fact that it was strewn with pieces of colorful sticky-notes, switches and dials with hand-written labels, and one very large button that was labeled DO NOT PRESS in large, red letters. Some of the labels were not even written in standard Galactic Aurebesh. “Oh, pfask me…” “Ah… command?” Bryce keyed a channel that communicated directly with their director within the fleet. “Talon Lead here. We’ve taken the power core. We’ve got the place locked down for the moment… but… honestly, I don’t know what we’re looking at here. Everything looks very nonstandard. If you can get one of the engies on, I might be able to get you a cam feed...” “Lead! I see breaching torches! Upper level!” “Oh, pfask. Command, we have incoming." Bryce nudged the remaining Mon Cal engineer with her boot and nodded. "You, stay down and try to not die. I'll be back.”

Some twenty kilometers directly behind the enthusiastic charge of the contingent of battle droids, four Republic Talons were preparing to make a significantly less noisy entrance into the city-station of Outer Heaven. Launched quietly, without search-and-rescue beacons blazing their automated message into the black, an escape pod drifted towards the station. It made for a highly substandard entry vehicle--the four shock troopers were nearly sitting on each other’s laps--but it sufficed as a prototype for this first demonstration of the Talons’ capabilities. One of the shock troopers that was forced to stand on top of several kilograms of packed satchel charges watched with her face pressed against the tiny windows of the escape pod. “Nothing tracking us. Everything is still pointed at the fleet,” the Togruta happily announced. “Lovely. Equipment check, Talons.” Matching words to action, Bryce patted her armor down, confirming the reassuring weight of her carbine, vibromachete, air tanks, and a host of grenades and small explosives. “Lead ready.” “Two ready.” That was Saam Tros, the Duros sergeant and second-in-command of the fireteam. “Three ready.” Specialist Harlaa Rys hopped down from the tiny viewport and began to tie down the tips of her montrals. “Four ready. Gum, anyone?” Jansen Vor handed out a packet to his squadmates. “Check seals. Thirty seconds.” Hisses of air--and a sigh of displeasure from the Togruta in the fireteam--issued as the shock troopers crammed their helmets onto their heads. “Ten seconds. Brace.” The four shock troopers turned towards the hatch of the escape pod. A series of explosive bolts threw the hatch out into the void and flooded the interior of the escape pod with vacuum. As one, the Talons clambered through the hatch and launched themselves into a city-space that had gone mad. Freighters and smaller craft were racing to and from the station, some owners taking shelter on the ground and others deciding to take a risk in braving the blockade. Turbolasers and weapons of smaller caliber were firing varying levels of effectiveness at the fleet and filled the vacuum with green and red bolts. It was into that madness that the shock troopers plunged, propelled by four brief puffs from their jet packs. As the shock troopers monitored the chatter from the Rebel strike team, the defenses of the city-station suddenly fell silent. “Loss of targeting data from the control center’s fire control. Won’t last long, they’ll be switching to local.” “Significant power source in quadrant Forn-Six, Cap’n. Right in the middle of that big cluster of batteries at two o’clock. Shall we say hello?” “Copy, four. On my lead, Talons. Command, picked up a primary power signature in sector Forn-Six. Think it might be powering local batteries. Checking it out.” A second puff from their jetpacks diverted the shock troopers from their cruising flight over Outer Heaven and into a rapid descent towards a cluster of turbolaser batteries that ringed a central dome in the cityscape of the space station. As the Talons descended, the batteries opened up in a blaze of red and green bolts, illuminating Bryce’s side in a terrifying lightshow--but the fire was directed towards the fleet, rather than four undetected infantry. The Talon activated her repulsorlifts mere seconds before impacting with the dome, decelerating just in time to smack into the durasteel with bruising rather than lethal force. The other three shock troopers landed beside her in painful, but otherwise harmless impacts. With nothing more exchanged between them than a glance and a series of hand signals, the four armored troopers began to assemble an entry charge. Spooling out ribbons of shaped charges, they formed a rough ring in the ceiling of the dome...

Salute, salute returned; then Bryce allowed her eyes to flicker over the other Rebel officers who had answered the summons to the briefing. It was an eclectic bunch, almost as diverse as any strike team from the Bad Old Days of the Rebel Alliance; she and her Talons--an extraordinarily tall Bespinian, a Togruta, a Duros, and a Corellian--an Imperial Knight complete with the standard-pattern lightsaber of his order, the trim Imperial officer, and… a droid of unknown configuration. All that the shock trooper knew of its design was that the deck plates were flexing very slightly under its armored stride. The shock trooper studied the hologram of the space station before them and pursed her lips. “Aye, sir, I think I understand. Not quiet, not subtle, but fast and furious. If I can make a suggestion, me and my Talons have training in null-gee sapping, to make entry into a ship or station from vacuum. Our armor has its own source of propulsion. If the Imperial Marines run into problems--say, a Sith Lord--we can blast our way in and outflank them.”

Marathon, despite what her name might have implied, was not a particularly swift ship. It was old, creaky, leaky, and prone to making suspicious noises when making a hyperspace jump. Moreover, she was operated by a skeleton crew, barely enough to keep its engines running and pointed in the right direction. When the groans of ancient durasteel and suspicious chunk-chunk-chunk sounds from the engines were not keeping Johanna Bryce awake, the ship was otherwise silent, without any of the endless announcements and overheard conversations that would be present on a modern battlecruiser. Eventually, the DP20 Frigate popped out of hyperspace--with an alarming growl from her engines--and dispatched a single shuttle containing Johanna Bryce and her fireteam of Talon shock troopers. Allowing her comrades to handle the piloting, the tall Bespinian hunched over the communication console and signaled the Mon Calamari air traffic control. “Mon Cal control, shuttle Leth-Vev-Four-Two-One requesting direction. Passengers are elements of Fourth Fleet, assigned to Vice-Admiral Kolchak.”

Several days later, Johanna Bryce was summoned to a briefing room with Admiral Klatchka. This was a meeting that the Rebel Talon had been dreading; Naboo had been lost, several of her men had been slain with no hope of their bodies being repatriated. Worse, her action at Theed had accomplished little for the loss aside from the destruction of several troop transports and a single naviputer that had not been wiped by the shuttle’s crew. Her shoulder still aching as she took a deep breath prior to entering the briefing room, she knocked and was surprised to find three of her Talons along with the middle-aged Admiral Klatchka. While the Mon Calamari seemed to be in a grim mood, the solemnity did not seem directed at the commander of his ground troops. “Captain, glad to see you up and about.” He waved a webbed arm towards the round table in the center of the room. “Sit. We have little time. The situation has become dangerous for the Rebel Alliance. With the loss of Naboo, the Sith have gained a safe staging ground to launch further attacks into the Outer Rim. Nar Shaddaa is now within the grasp of the Sith.” “So we are to redeploy to Nar Shaddaa? Sir?” The Mon Calamari fixed a single pale eye on the Talon. “Wrecking Machine and most of the Fourth Fleet will lie in reserve in preparation for such an attack. That said, our special forces must secure a base of operations for withdrawal in the event of failure. I draw your attention to a space station in the Galactic Core, known colloquially as ‘Outer Heaven.’” A holograph of the space station appeared before them. Unusually for an isolated space station, the hull if the station appeared dominated by a vast cityspace. It almost appeared as a miniature Coruscant, albeit significantly more run-down. A miniature Nar Shaddaa, perhaps. “Despite its reputation as a den for mercenaries and less savory scum, the staton does boast many of the facilities required to maintain larger vessels. More importantly, it has never been under significant threat by either the Sith-Imperial or Republic militaries. We can expect it to be a softer target than the typical Imperial fleet. We have prepared a dossier on the station, but you will receive a full briefing upon your arrival at the rendezvous point at Mon Calamari. Good luck, Captain. I hope you won’t need it.” Several minutes later, the four Talons boarded the DP20 Frigate Marathon and were dispatched into hyperspace.