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Johanna Bryce

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Everything posted by Johanna Bryce

  1. 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.
  2. (( @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?”
  3. 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.
  4. 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.”
  5. 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.
  6. 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?”
  7. 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.”
  8. 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.
  9. “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?”
  10. “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.
  11. “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.”
  12. 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...
  13. 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.”
  14. 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.”
  15. 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.
  16. Johanna Bryce

    Naboo

    Fifty thousand meters above Theed, a squadron of A-Wings were blazing downwards through Naboo’s atmosphere at a velocity that some meteors would have envied. In a frightening feat of precision flying, the twelve starfighters were flying so closely together that their overlapping sensor signatures might have caused some sensor relays to misidentify the interceptors as a falling meteor. The superheated gases glinting off of their hulls would have certainly caused any casual observers to dismiss them as a meteorological event. The A-Wings were continually buffeted from side to side by the turbulence from their own airfoil vortices, the tiny interceptors within such a close range that their pilots could have communicated by hand signals rather than the narrow-band line-of-sight comms that they used to avoid detection. “ No diversions from Theed. Looks like we might make it through undetected.” “I can’t even see it. All I see is smoke and--” “That is Theed. Remember, protect your wingman, hit fast, hit hard and do not stick around for a fight. We’re here to give the knuckle-draggers some cover. Esk-war up on my mark. Five, four, three, two, one--mark!.” At that moment, the pilots simultaneously triggered the jammers on board their equipment, filling the nearby atmosphere with interference that would play havoc with comms and sensor transmissions. Of course, the enemy would instantly realize that something was on its way, but from where--and what--could only be confirmed by the mark one eyeball. _____ “Go Lead, before they… pos…” “Repeat, Aurek--repeat.” Bryce growled as the Talon rained down semiautomatic blaster fire down the Palace Promenade, spattering sparks against the turret of one of the Sith transports. Static was all that answered her--the turret swiveled around to face her position and she fell prone to the polished floor.. In the next second, her hearing was blown out by the shriek of shattering glass and crumbling walls. Rubble and glass rained down all around her as the laser cannon opened up on her position, causing the entire wall and part of the floor to cave in. For the moment, all she could do was to try and protect her head from the wreckage. Once the impacts stopped landing, she triggered the repulsorlift in her armor, causing the rubble to blast away from her in a miniature explosion as the thrusters tried to push against the obstacles. Bryce shook her head and tried to collect herself. The roar of laser cannon fire seemed to have died down. Nothing seemed to have been broken, but she had lost her rifle in the collapse and a warm liquid was leaking down her face. Somehow, the cave-in had caused her to fall down to the ground level of the promenade. Seizing her vibromachete, the Talon began to rush own the debris-strewn steps of the once-proud Royal Palace, to join in the firefight against a final unseized troop transport. The crew hadn’t seemed to realize that two of the other transports had gone silent and were seized by her soldiers… but as her boots sprinted down towards its landing struts, the whine of its repulsors took on a higher pitch. They were preparing to take off. Cursing under her breath, Bryce redoubled her pace and jumped onto the retracting boarding ramp--a chrome-plated Sith trooper nearly jumped in shock to see the Rebel marine lift her machete in a double-handed grip--a pair of bolts went wide and showered the keel of the transports--she brought the machete down in a hacking blow on the soldier’s shoulder. The Sith trooper collapsed to the deck, his weapon falling to the deckplates of the transport. His gauntlets rose as though attempting to protect himself from a second crash of the blade--then shock and blood loss set in and his hands fell to the floor. Bryce only took a second while stepping over his body to slam an armored palm against the controls of the boarding ramp. She charged towards the cockpit. An officer of some description stood from his position at the comms unit to pose some meager resistance with a light blaster pistol--Sophia tucked her head down in imitation of a shockball player’s tackle and felt burning heat against her left shoulder as a blaster bolt found plastoid. Her tackle rammed the officer into the corridor wall--a distinct crack resounded as the officer fell, and the man did not attempt to rise from his supine position. Finally, the cockpit. It was a simple layout, just two seats surrounded by control boards. Bryce lifted her vibromachete in preparation for another overhand chop and roared from a core of visceral rage that astonished her. “Take this fracking ship down! Take it down or I will fracking chop you two up right now!” She could not quite hear the response of the pilot, but it appeared to be a terrified squeak. More relevant was the fact that the deckplates sank under boots as the transport returned to the ground, allowing the remainder of her Talons to board and take control of the vessel. A pair of her men dragged the gunners out of their turrets, and another pair held sidearms to the pilots heads and shoved them into the passenger compartment. “Take us out, Cegt. Any direction…” As the adrenaline began to subside, Bryce began to lean heavily on the co-pilot’s seat. Cold was beginning to creep up her fingers, and blood began to ooze between the gaps of her pauldron. As the four seized transports lifted from the ruins of Theed and into a hostile airspace, the sensor boards reported that multiple Acklay fighters were vectoring to intercept their escape. At that moment, the A-Wings of Geist Squadron struck, dumb-firing their missiles into the Sith fighters. That fire was largely inaccurate and only two of the missiles found their targets, but the exhaust trails streaking past their cockpits undoubtedly threw them off their quarry. The grey-painted A-Wings then swooped around, spraying fire from their blaster cannons as the other half of the squadron began their own attack run on the grounded Sith forces around Theed. At that moment, Johanna had collapsed from a mixture of blood loss and exhaustion. A medic fell upon the Rebel Captain, peeling away armor plating and shoving bandages into an ugly blaster wound at her shoulder. It had nearly severed her the subclavian artery, and she was in danger of bleeding out while they made their escape. Bryce would later have no recollection of screaming out of shock and pain as the bandages were packed into the wound. She certainly had no recollection of the hysterical laughter that issued from the copilot as a pair of the grey A-Wings formed up just in front of the cockpit, giving the transport an acknowledging wag of their fuselage before breaking off to embark on another strafing run. Johanna did, however, distinctly remember the jolting landing as the transports set down in the hangar of Wrecking Machine. It stirred her into attempting to rise despite the firm pressure of the medics who held her supine, and she instead mumbled plaintively: “Men? My men? Where are my men? They make it? Tell me--need a headcount, let me up, gotta--” Those were the last intelligible wounds that she uttered as the marine was lifted onto a gurney and the Rebel fleet made its escape into hyperspace.
  17. Johanna Bryce

    Naboo

    “Hit the deck!” Cried a soldier at Bryce’s right. One of the gloriously polished Naboo shuttlecraft, this one a sleek, needle-like yacht the size of a medium freighter, had just lit its sublight engines and was rushing at the four Talons at the entrance of the hangar. The marines fell prone to the deck and a wash of wind and searing heat swept over Bryce’s armored back. The rush of exhaust blasted the marine off of the deck and sent her into a battering halt, bouncing her against the waxed surface of the hangar deck until the collisions finally depleted her momentum. “No joy, Talons.” the Bespinian groaned as she staggered to her feet. Nothing seemed to be broken, aside from a cosmetic crack in her faceplate. However, a brief scan confirmed that the hangar was now quite empty, aside from a pair of the slim starfighters favored by Naboo Royal Starfighter Corps. Even those were two-seater spacecraft, marked with bright blue at their wingtips: unarmed training craft, most likely. No escape would be found for her men from the Queen’s starfighter corps. “Repeat, no transports are available at the Royal Starport.” “Lead, Dorn. Several transports remain in the Palace Plaza. Plenty of space for the company, only…” “Only?” “Lot of infantry, wide open spaces. We’ll be a sitting duck for those starfighters.” The tall Marine made a circling motion with the fingers on her left hand, signaling the remainder of her platoon to form on her lead. The formation jogged out of the hangar and towards the waterfalls directly under the Queen’s palace. “Copy, Dorn. We’ll need to risk it. Lay down some suppressive fire and we’ll hit them from the opposite side.” At the edge of the waterfall, Bryce made an easy hop and gave the jetpack a brief burst. The Sith were now growing wise to their airborne attacks, and small arms fire was now beginning to track her flight despite her attempts to weave unpredictably. A streak of heat stung at her leg--a reflexive glance caught the crimson streak of a near-miss from the streets. The marine veered in her course, diverting from the jade-roofed towers that overlooked the promenade and towards the tall windows that lined the sides of the royal palace’s upper halls. “Brace for collision.” Bryce uttered seconds before the repulsorlift-powered glide sent her crashing through the glass, spraying shards onto the polished floors and the startled Sith occupants below--a dozen crashes tore the air to her sides as the remainder of her squad made a similar egress. Both sides equally surprised by the forced entry into the chambers of the evacuated Queen, the Talons rained blaster fire onto their exposed foes. Blaster bolts streaking through her torn belt-spat and creasing her pauldrons as her glide descended, Bryce simply focused on landing fire on the exposed chests and heads of the Sith troopers as they scurried for cover. “No time for prisoners, just stun ‘em.” Bryce growled as her feet touched the polished stone floors. A pair of stun blasts silenced the groans of the wounded Sith occupiers. Two of the marines shouldered the weight of one of their own wounded. Glass cracking under her plastoid boots, the Bespinian jogged towards a set of tall windows overlooking the Palace Promenade. Through those windows, she could watch as several of the angular Sith troop transports were being harassed by blaster fire and rifle-grenades from the remainder of her soldiers, their turrets sweeping back and forth to rake the rooftops with blaster fire. “Go, get Javs out first. Take the nearest transport and move down the plaza. I’ll provide cover fire.” Bryce smashed a hole in the window with the butt of her carbine. She snapped the weapon up to a check weld, taking careful aim on a pair of Sith soldiers using the landing pylons of a transport for cover. The rest of the squad battered a man-sized breach in the glass and made a gliding egress towards the rubble-strewn flagstones of the Palace Promenade. They were so close...
  18. Johanna Bryce

    Naboo

    Two minutes after the Gungan submersibles had descended into the darkest depths of the Naboo Abyss, Bryce refused to look through her bongo’s canopy and just stared into her lap. As a denizen of Bespin, she was a creature of open skies, far horizons, and free winds. The journey through the planetary core was one of impenetrable darkness, claustrophobia, piloting by instrumentation, and eldritch sea creatures with teeth larger than an interceptor. Yuusan continued to boast about the honor of the Gungan Grand Army--centuries of tradition, never backed down from a fight even against a technologically-superior opponent--but the Talon’s discipline failed her. But she was still a soldier of the Galactic Alliance, and a veteran of the Third Death Star, Coruscant, and Dark Sun Station. She had long developed coping mechanisms in confronting abyssal horror--most of which revolved around keeping calm and busying herself with work. “Bryce, comms check.” “Four by five, Captain,” came an answering voice from her Chiss executive officer. “It’s a little staticky this far down.” “We’ll make do, sergeant. Open up your holomap of Theed. I’ve an idea. We have a direct route to Theed from the Abyss… one of the tributaries of the Solleu opens up to us. Depth is about twenty meters, give or take. Is that sufficient for navigation, General?” “Disa bongo travels just fine. Da transports… risky.” “We’ll have to make do. Unless… our packs carry their own oxidizer. They’re vacuum-sealed. They’ll work just fine at that depth.” “Bit slow until we clear the water.” “True, but the last thing that they’ll expect is an airborne insertion carried out from submersibles. Two bursts should get us to the palace hangar. The opening to the Virdugo Plunge will be perfect for entrance. From there, we can gain transport and exfil. Targets of opportunity are grounded shuttles. Remember, Talons, this is not a fight we will win if we get stuck in. The best we can hope for is to surprise them, blast as many targets as we can on our way to exfil, and get out while they’re still trying to figure out where we hit them from. No heroics--and especially nothing stupid like trying to take on a Sith Lord. You see red lightsabers, you put on the fuel and run, understand?” “Understood, Captain,” was the general response from her soldiers. ____ “Sorry about that, General. I… feel better now.” Bryce apologized to Yuusan, after having defiled the Gungan’s submersible with seasickness. The Gungan, however, seemed to find her response to the final, hairraising maneuvers Thirty minutes later, the bongos began their final ascent from the Naboo Abyss and began to rise towards the Solleu River. Somewhat shaky after having expunged her seasickness from the final, hairraising maneuvers onto her boots, Bryce lifted a canteen to her lips and apologized. “Sorry about that, General… I’m not exactly suited for amphibious operations.” The Gungan, however, seemed to find the defilement of his submersible hilarious. He burst out into massive, jolly, jowl-shaking laughter, taking his hands off the yoke to pound one of the control panels. “Birds not so good at water maneuvers, eh! Ha! Now, weesa ready! Depth tenska meters! Go and maken big messen. Ouch-time for deh Seeth.” Bryce stood to her full height and clamped her helmet onto her head, the airtight seals hissing into place. The hydrostatic bubble canopy retreated and water flooded into the crew compartment--the warm air of the compartment was replaced by cool, stale air from her armor’s air supply. The Talon looked upwards, at the glimmering surface of water above her. She and one hundred shock troopers kicked off from their transports and triggered their jetpacks simultaneously, turning their bodies into sapient missiles that rode a stream of exhaust and bubbles towards the surface of the Solleu River. The water was far from an ideal medium for their jet packs--acceleration was slow--but they soon cleared the surface of the water and streaked unimpeded to rooftop level above the surface of Theed. Or it would have been rooftop level, had a squadron of transports not been blasting the city into rubble from turbolasers. Muttering a curse, Bryce gave the jetpack another burst of fuel and kicked in the repulsorlifts, causing her to glide above the smoke and rubble from a vantage point. Her head on a swivel, the Talon scanned from side to side in search of grounded transports. “Multiple targets in that plaza to the left, take them. Boom and zoom, Talons.” Two platoons of Talon Company veered towards the open boulevard that led to the palace complex, while the other half continued their glide towards the hangars that rested on the cliff face at the very edge of the city. Another troop transport had touched down at the entrance of the domed hangar complex--she and four soldiers in her squad cut their repulsorlifts and fell upon the grounded vessel, landing hard on its dorsal surface. “P for plenty, Rashik.” Bryce muttered to the Chiss, who thoughtlessly planted a sequencer charge just in front of the sublight engines. She and the other Talons blasted freely at a squad of the chrome-plated Sith troopers, forcing them to scatter and take cover until the charges were set. A heavy pat on her pack confirmed that the explosive charge was in place and ticking down. Without a word, the five shock troopers gave their jetpacks a microburst of thrust to escape and sprinted along the roof of the hangar complex. Far in the distance, a series of explosion rumbled and dark smoke began to rise from the Place Plaza, signifying the success--and retreat--of the rest of her soldiers.
  19. Johanna Bryce

    Naboo

    The next several minutes felt like hours. As Johanna paced the edge of the lake, splashing the cool waters against her ankles, the Rebel marine reflected that perhaps the reputation that the Gungans had for perpetual tardiness was perhaps warranted. In her experience, there was never a moment that she could afford to lose. And yet, the amphibians also had a reputation for being The next fifteen minutes felt like an hour. As Bryce paced the edge of the lake and waded into the cool waters up to her ankles, the Rebel marine reflected that perhaps the reputation that the Gungans had for perpetual tardiness was somewhat warranted. In her experience in the armed forced, there was never a moment that she could afford to waste. And yet, the amphibians also enjoyed a reputation as unlooked-for allies: their society existed separately from the Human Naboo and had a somewhat isolationist perspective… yet they had sacrificed entire legions of warriors in times of crisis. Rather than being allowed to dwell on this wasted time, the Talon’s comlink buzzed on her bracer. It was a direct line from Admiral Klatchka, who hovered above her armor as a miniature Mon Calamari. “Captain, major Sith fleet units have emerged from hyperspace. Naboo is under invasion. We can’t hold these forces back. We must withdraw.” Bryce grimaced. “Sir, and my soldiers?” “You’ll have to make do on the surface. I’m sorry, Captain. May the For--” And that was the end of the transmission--terminated midsentence, doubtless to enforce comms discipline as all outgoing transmissions needed to be kept at a minimum as the ships “went dark”. Johanna suspected that the fleet units were withdrawing to the planet’s star--probably making use of solar flares or other phenomena to mask their presence--but that meant that she and her two hundred Talons were going to be cut off from evacuation and stranded in hostile territory. She exchanged a glance with Alpha’s platoon sergeant, a Chiss whose expression remained impassive. At least, Bryce hadn’t yet learned out to read Drell’s facial expression… but if his thoughts were mirroring her own, then he also knew that all two hundred of them were likely to be dead at the end of the day. A bubbling cauldron of lake water stirred Bryce from her distraction. A loose-limbed Gungan came swaggering up from the opaque water, clad in dripping leathers and a bearing an unusual, staff-like weapon with a hollow at its end. “Capitan Bryce, Bombad General Yuusan. Weesa welcome you to Naboo.” “General, sir.” The marine saluted; the Gungan held his weapon-bearing hand to his breast. “I’m afraid that our timetable has just been moved up significantly. Our ships have detected major Sith fleet elements--enough that they need to withdraw. The planet is under invasion.” Supposedly the Gungans also had a reputation for advertising their every emotion on their face, of gawping wide-eyed, of frothing at the mouth, bashing spear against shield, and spitting defiance at their enemies; this one’s expression may as well have been carved from wroshyr. The Gungan warrior just blinked, nodded, and intoned slowly, “And whatsa yousa being doing about dis?” “Well, sir… it occurs to me that this invasion is not likely to stop with Theed or the other Naboo cities. This Sith Empire has not exactly shied from executing genocides against species that have opposed it in the past. The reports of what they are doing on Mon Calamari are… frightening. A similar scenario is likely to occur here. However, my men are not a garrison or a Cresh-Besh unit.I propose that we join our forces to launch an immediate counterattack.” Feeling her spine attempting to melt away under the unyielding stare of the Gungan General, Bryce forced herself to rise to military-spec height and straighten her shoulders. “Talons strike, sir. ” Now the Gungan reputation for being emotive was redeemed. Obviously amused by this display of esprit de corps, the fat Gungan erupted into massive, booming laughter--and continued laughing even Bryce’s jaw tightened and her expression grew serious. “Oh! Hohoho! Weesa like dees one! Ohoho!” The Gungan slapped his knee out of amusement. “Yes, yes, okie-day. Yousa want to keel and die, weesa happy to help. Longo comprends da thrrreat ahf da Seeth. Weesa--weesa long sheds mui blood to them.” Still chuckling, the Gungan began wading into the waters, which began boiling with the hulls of dozens of clamshell-shaped transports. “Pleasa! Comen Capitan! Comen! And yousa warriors! Weesa provide transport! And when da time comen, weesa fights and dies with you. But for now, yousa shares yous plans. Oh-hoh! Disa be hot.” Glancing at the formation of shock troopers behind her, Bryce just shrugged and signaled her men forward to the Gungan transports. In a few minutes, they were all under the waters, cold, sopping wet, abandoned… and determined to make this a long and miserable day for the Sith Empire.
  20. Johanna Bryce

    Naboo

    Two Rebel officers surveyed the blue-and-green jewel of Naboo from hundreds of kilometers above in its orbit. The younger of the two officers, an impressively tall human woman, was frowning down at the planet, lips moving in silent calculation as though trying to make sense of the peaceful world. From a slew of sensor operators and air traffic controllers, the fleet’s Admiral disentangled himself to join his marine commander at Wrecking Machine’s viewport. “The planet doesn’t have a solid core? It’s hollow? And the Gungans have it mapped out?” “Most of it. It’s a conglomerate of rocky bodies and fresh-water tunnels. Geologically stable, but otherwise quite hazardous to traverse, seeing that there is so little submersible traffic between Theed and Otoh Gunga.” “Respectfully, sir, you sound like…” Bryce tilted back an invisible flask in her hand. “That can’t be mathematically possible. How can the planet even have a magnetic field without a metallic core?” The fleet’s Mon Calamari Admiral fixed the marine in a single black eye. “Bryce.” “The planet should have been sterilized by its own star billions of years ago--” “Captain, you hail from Bespin.” “Sir, that’s completely different. The planet is a gas giant. Most of its atmosphere is unbreathable--wrong mix of gases, wrong air pressure… it’s only habitable in a very thin slice of altitude--therefore the repulsorlift cities. If it weren’t for the tibanna, Bespin probably never would have been settled in the first place.” “Whereas I find the exclusively terrestrial existence of most humanoid species a bizarre evolutionary dead-end. However, as fascinating as the conversation may be, we have a mission--to prepare this planet for a potential invasion. Those… mathematically impossible tunnels may be key to the planet’s defense. There is not a moment to lose. Captain.” “Aye, sir. Contact with the Gungans. I suspect they’ll be properly motivated once they realize the threat facing them. Force be with you, sir,” Captain Bryce offered and received a snappy salute as she departed, belt-spat swaying from her hips as she swaggered from the battlecruiser’s bridge. Several minutes, she and the company of Talons--plus their Bothan liaison--departed in a half squadron of assault shuttles. The glow of their sublight engines converged on a location that was all but uninhabited by either of the world’s sapient species. It was a wilderness at the edge of Lake Country, where the hardwood trees began to give way to irascible, stubborn mangroves at the edge of the Gungans’ deep, dark waters. When the shuttles finally set down on the boggy, saturated soil, Bryce stood under the wing of her LAAT/i and began to pace anxiously. There was no sign of their Gungan contacts…she also knew that meant nothing, if the Gungans were waited for their arrival under the surface of their waters.
  21. The next several days were spent surveying the highlands surrounding Drev’starn. Under normal circumstances, Captain Bryce would have found the thin air and fierce winds of the mountains refreshing--almost like the platforms that were suspended in the upper atmosphere of her homeworld, Bespin. However, these circumstances were while carrying a heavy load of communication gear--even heavier than her typical combat load of twenty kilograms of armor and weapons--and surveying positions to protect Bothawui’s anti-orbital emplacements. In no less than eight crags of the Kurual’grast Mountains, the Bothans had already fortified their capital city with planetary turbolasers. Bryce shouted orders to four of her Talons to deploy their MANPADs not at the peak of the nearest hill, where there was a risk that their position could be silhouetted against the horizon even in spite of the tree line, but just slightly under it. The Bothans’ sensor arrays in these mountains would provide valuable targeting data even in absence of line-of-sight. Sweating under a load of communications gear, Johanna took a moment to breathe and studied the turbolaser emplacement behind and about fifty meters below her on the rocky trail. The massive, cylindrical cannon resembled the W-165 cannon developed by Kuat Drive Yards--perhaps too closely to have been obtained through legal means. It was likely a stolen design, she reflected. At two more locations closer to the enormous cannon, the fleet’s engineers were building small bunkers of durasteel-reinforced plastoid for repeater emplacements--as were the Talons and Bothan marines at the other seven turbolaser cannons. Captain Bryce sighed and returned to a jogging place up the side of this particular mountain, scattering gravel and dust down the trail below her. This communications gear was intended to synchronize the entire defensive operation, to share tactical data between Bothawui’s orbital platforms, the local sensor arrays, and the multitude of portable missile batteries that were being emplaced all over the mountains. Their position would not be unassailable--this terrain was treacherous and the mountains were riddled with hundreds of goat paths so narrow that only a single person could walk through at a time, as Bryce was discovering as she trudged up this mountain. No position was unassailable--and she and her Talons only had a few weeks, or even a few days before the notice finally arrived that contact had been made with the Sith. But it would be costly to attack these batteries, and would force the Sith into directly assaulting Drev’starn. ____ The notice came at midnight that day and took the form of an urgent pound on her cabin door. Groaning at being awoken from recovering from several days of nonstop activity The notice came at midnight and took the form of an urgent pound on her cabin door. Groaning at being awoken from recovering from several days of sleepless activity, Johanna rolled over with all the grace of a sleep-deprived bird of prey and stumbled towards her door, blindly donning a shirt. She attempted to growl a pithy complaint at her rouser, but it merely came out incoherent and mildly obscene. “Talons are diurnal animals,” was what she thought she said as the door to her cabin opened. “Sir!” The Talon followed with a crisp salute, upon realizing that her visitor was the cream-furred Bothan colonel. “Get your gear, Bryce. We know where the Sith are going. Koth Melan will leave the moment that we are on board.” Ten minutes later, Bryce’s squadron had fled into hyperspace.
  22. For the next few hours, Koth Melan and a host of escort spacecraft were descending into the upper reaches of Bothawui’s atmosphere. Not that Captain Bryce could see the fourteen vessels that were preparing to receive their transports, as the ships were hundreds of kilometers above them. She and Colonel Dun’nosu stood over the bleached walls of the military base, looking over the roofs and towards the snowcapped peaks of the Kurual'grast Mountains to the east. “For our own part, we’ve made substantial progress in our lighter units--especially coordination between our corvettes and fighter-bombers. The new Senth-class corvette from Naboo is death on interceptors--excellent firing angles over a very broad flying wing. Unfortunately, the Sith have made their own advances. In particular, there’s a new class of Star Destroyer with upgraded turbolasers that our fleet has had quite a bit of difficulty with. We’ll be sending you its specs… for mypart…” Bryce turned a half-circle, displaying the mass of a light jetpack module that was attached to her armor. “We realized after our raid on Kuat that our capabilities in zero-gravity operations were significantly lacking. My Talons were tasked with disabling a Golan platform… we took higher casualties than necessary because the hangar was seriously damaged on our approach. Solution: develop zero-gravity sapping and assault maneuvering units, as you see here. We found the heavier jetpacks favored by other units unnecessary and excessively heavy--and maneuvering in zero-gravity is a matter of planning your moves, and firing in short, disciplined bursts.” The Talon Captain turned and focused on a distant rooftop at the periphery of the base. “Standard fuel mix for the primary engine--but we’ve added a microrepulsor array for making fine adjustments in flight. We equip soldiers with heavy weapons and demolitions with more powerful units, obviously, but the controls are otherwise identical.” The Bothan Colonel stroked his cream-colored beard. Or whatever the Bothan equivalent of a beard was, considering that the species was covered from head to toe with short fur. “These new capabilities in extravehicular sapping would obviously synergize with our new stealth technologies.” “My thoughts exactly. If you’d like a demonstration…” “By all means.” Bryce took a deep breath and donned her helmet. As the atmospheric locks engaged and she began to breathe recycled air, a head-up display appeared with pertinent information for flight: fuel and atmosphere supplies, atmospheric temperature, pressure, wind speed; distance markers to vantage points and watchtowers surrounding the base; ammunition reserves and a miniature map which would normally display the locations of her squad. It was a lot of information for a green soldier to manage, but zero-gravity was not a notoriously treacherous environment to fight in. That data would keep her alive during maneuvers. The tall Bespinian set off across the bleach-white roof at an easy trot. As she neared the edge of the room and nearly fell into the street traffic of the base, Captain Bryce triggered her thruster unit with a sharp burst, propelling her nearly fifty meters into the air. After she reached the apex of her thruster-assisted leap, she was essentially guiding, drifting towards a vehicle depot on the gentle propulsion of the unit’s repulsorlifts. But merely making a leap of a hundred meters and returning would be a mediocre demonstration of her unit’s capabilities, she decided. Halfway through the jump, she altered course in a sharp ninety-degree turn, instead making for a slender communications tower at the center of the base. Her boots instantly magnetized upon contact with the slender steel-and-fiber tower, and although the entire structure swayed a few centimeters upon landing, the shock trooper remained fixed to its side as though she were welded to it. Her push-off sent her gliding over the base and towards a collection of parked cargo speeders--several of the Bothan mechanics were glancing up from her work and pointing curiously at the armored figure drifting in their direction. A second micro-burst gained another ten meters of altitude, and the Bespinian used the extra space to return to Colonel Dun’nosu, drifting from side to side over the rooftop until she finally touched down. She removed her helmet and realized that had been grinning throughout the entire demonstration flight. “As you can see, our lighter design lacks the speed and endurance of the heavier units you might be familiar with, those favored by the Mandalorians, for example. But our goal wasn’t long-distance flight; it was short bursts for rapid redeployment--or maneuvering in null-gravity.”
  23. It took all of thirty minutes for it to become clear why Captain Bryce and her Talons had been dispatched to the Outer Rim. Upon setting foot on Bothawui and being shepherded to a fortified room about ten meters below the surface of Drev’starn, it took all of thirty minutes for it to become clear why Captain Bryce and her Talons had been dispatched to the Mid Rim. It was an enclosed, hermetically sealed chamber in which she received her briefing from a Colonel Dun’nosu. But it was more than the sound-proofing and hermetic seals that secured the chamber. The shock trooper felt strangely… buoyant on her feet, and every step seemed to require a moment of calculation. She allowed herself to wonder how else this briefing room might be secured--perhaps suspension in a vacuum by miniaturized tractor beams? But that was speculation regarding the stereotypical paranoia of the Bothans, and the fact that the cream-colored hackles of the Bothan Colonel were raised suggested that her liaison was almost terrified at the prospect of imminent invasion. “You see, Captain, there has been a significant build-up of Sith fleet elements in the Arkanis sector for some time. Personnel transports and escorts have recently gone missing from this staging, leading us to believe that an invasion of the sector has begun.” “If I remember correctly, Geonosis and Tatooine sit on the intersection of the Corellian Run and Triellus Trade Route.” “Accurate. Despite the poor development of those two systems, they command a dominant position over that sector’s trade. And from there, the Sith have easy access to Ryloth. Or Naboo. Rodia. Bothawui. And even Nar Shaddaa,” Dun’nosu stated with a knowing look on his long face. At least, that was the approximation that the human imagined. “Well, last on my update, the Galact--the Rebel Alliance had made significant strides in blunting the Sith advance through the Core Worlds. They’ll need to divert resources least they risk losing control there. We may have time. Before our situation becomes untenable. My lads have some unusual specializations that may help break up the Sith advance here--zero-gravity maneuvers, capital ship sapping.” “Our own developments have advanced along these lines. Once your Galactic Alliance fell apart, we were left to defend our territories without heavy capital ships--your MC90s and Star Destroyers, for instance. We have had to become somewhat adaptive in our own fleet elements. For instance… our Koth Melan-class Stealth Cruiser.” The holoprojection between the two officers disintegrated and bloomed again into a hazy image of the bulky, blocky Bothan Assault Cruiser. However, this particular vessel had been stripped of most of its armaments--most notably the array of proton torpedo tubes that made the ships so dangerous in a close-quarters brawl--and had been festooned with a forest-like array of comms antennae. Johanna squinted at the ship. To her untrained eye, those rails and towers had almost no value at signal reception--they were almost entirely transmit-only. The jutting bridge superstructure of the Bothan Assault Cruiser was also shortened and the armor plates on its flanks were replaced by thin skirts of an unfamiliar design. She leaned forward and examined the side skirts. They were composed of thousands of linked holoprojector cells. “You… you made a stealth hacking cruiser?”
  24. “We’re sending you and a platoon of Talons to Bothawui. Choose well, try to pick soldiers who you trust to be on good behavior.” They had said two days ago. “They” being Admiral Klatchka himself--the old Mon Calamari had actually considered it necessary to speak to someone as far down the chain of command as the captain of a below-strength company of airborne shock troopers. It had taken Johanna a few seconds to recover her wits, which had gone searching for an escape pod the moment that she had learned that the Admiral needed to speak to her personally about an important matter. Once they had finally given up the search and consigned themselves to going down with the ship, the potential import of this briefing had gotten her attention. The marine immediately perked up and sat up in such a posture that she appeared to have been surgically implanted with a durasteel girder in her spine. “Sir? Didn’t the Bothan only just join the Rebel Alliance…” The marine was busy ticking down the days, which could be numbered in the single digits. “Ongoing incorporation, Captain, yes. We’re hoping that your Talons can make progress in that regard while we formally bring their territory and military into the Alliance. Part of those efforts is an officer exchange--a few of our top soldiers for a few of theirs, a corvette for a corvette. Demonstration of each side’s capabilities. The goal is to look smart, look tough, and in the name of the Force to stay out of trouble while the diplomats finish with the microprint.” The salmon-skinned Calamari fixed the Captain with a single side-viewing eye, making the taller woman feel as though she were at least a foot shorter. “Feeling up to it, Captain?” A Talon did not turn down a challenge. “Aye, sir! We’ll give the Bothans a show, sir.” “Good. You and that former marshall--Colonel Howlster--will be working together. There will be a packet of secondary objectives to achieve. But whatever you do, Captain,” again, the Mon Cal fixed the marine with a single eye. “Do not anger the Bothans. You may go.” _______ Which was how, two days later, Captain Bryce found herself on one of The Red and Black’s larger docking bays--one of the platforms capable of servicing a corvette or even some of the smaller frigates in the Alliance. One of the new Senth-class Picket Ships rested as an enormous flying wing on the deckplates, unpainted but nonetheless ludicrously polished in that mirror-like finish that the Naboo Royal Engineers invariably used to decorate their starships. Johanna and the forty Talons that she had hand-picked were somewhat less polished. An entire day had been spent scrubbing out the blaster creases (and occasionally a direct hit) from the last month of almost-constant fighting; the inevitable dents of combat maneuvers were similarly hammered out. Although the plastoid plate wasn’t polished or waxed or treated with any other ludicrous embellishments, they almost looked presentable for inspection. More notably was a new addition to their armor; they had recently been issued with the Alliance’s latest attempt at hypermobile combat--a light jetpack clung to each of their backs and they each wore a black, blast-resistant belt-spat that was so fresh from the assembly lines that they still reeked of the chemical treatment. The cost to the new gear was that some of their heavier weapons, like the E-Webs in the heavy weapons squads, would need to be left behind. The engines on the jetpacks simply couldn’t accommodate the extra weight. The belt-spat was, however, a very nice touch, a surprising mixture of ceremonial and practical. It would protect against the backplast of the jetpacks… and Johanna found herself standing just a little straighter so she could feel the weight of the garment against her legs. Captain Bryce waited while her Talons boarded the corvette and Howlster’s men arrived. She found herself sweating--it was a warm day for Nar Shaddaa, and she’d been told that Bothawui was warmer.
  25. “I hate desert worlds. All this… dust.” For the first time in the mission, Bryce was quietly grousing, picking at the sleeves of her bodysuit. She had removed her gauntlets during the hyperspace jump and was pulled at the seals around her wrists. Grains of sand occasionally spilled out. “Ugh. It’s everywhere. It somehow got under this bodysuit. I grew up on Bespin. You know what’s great about Bespin? It’s clean. Whatever mess we had to clean up, we made ourselves. Oh, coming out of hyper in five, four, three…” Ticking down the remainder of the journey on her fingers, Bryce pulled back the levers to reveal the concrete-clad moon of Nar Shaddaa. The descent was routine, aside from a pair of old TIE Interceptors that followed obnoxiously close as their escort into Nar Shaddaa’s atmosphere. A few minutes later, however, the U-Wing settled at a landing pad near The Red and Black and the Exorcist, the Jedi Master, and the Rebel Talon were finally safe at home.
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