Korriban

[Johanna Bryce]

Within certain circles of thought--mostly historians and economists with a dry sense of humor--it was said that the chief export of Korriban was misery. Its chief import was everything else. The ancient lords of the Sith were not known for their commercial success, but they were infamously accomplished in their production of war machines and more esoteric sources of suffering. At the very least, the Sith tended to not produce anything that lacked an immediate application to their purposes.

 

Even understanding that Korriban was likely to be one of the least populated systems that she would ever visit, Bryce had charted a course that brought their U-Wing infiltration craft out of hyperspace far from the spacelanes that branched out from the Perlemian Trade Route. She was making a final check on her gear during the last few minutes before the heavy starfighter dropped out of hyperspace. Everything appeared to be in order, from her blaster carbine and sidearm, to her vibromachete and a number of small rifle-grenades that she hoped would never be of use. Even the ysalamir between her ankles seemed calm, blissfully ignorant of the fact that a loaded pistol was less than half a meter away from its inscrutable reptilian form and its owner was perfectly willing to kill her.

 

As planned, the U-Wing popped out of hyperspace nearly a hundred kilometers away from the nearest spacecraft, and that was an ancient Barloz-class Medium Freighter with an obsolete sensor array. Even still, the Rebel Talon shut down the heavy starfighter’s thrusters seconds after reversion and the planet’s  heavier gravity to exert its influence on the ship. She next shut down the craft’s active sensors, relying only on the craft’s ability to monitor thruster emissions from the spacelanes. They would be safe from immediate detection, unless a defensive satellite or a sharp-eyed starfighter pilot just happened to be looking their direction during the few seconds that the starfighter’s thrusters were active.

 

“ETA for atmosphere is fifty-three minutes. We should be safe…. ish for now.” Bryce glanced back at the cabin, where the two discomfited Jedi were undoubtedly waiting impatiently to be released from the ysalamir’s presence.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

“Landing zone is in the badlands surrounding surrounding the Valley of the Damned--uh, Dark Lords,” Captain Bryce attempted to make some small amount of conversation, partly to distract herself from her own nervousness at approaching the ancestral Sith homeworld. “Passive and visual scanning… minor traffic. Mostly light and medium freighters, nothing frack-huge like a barge. Some satellites. Can’t pick up what they are at this range, maybe communications, maybe surveillance or other defense. Not exactly a dead world, but nothing like a core or colony. Likely landing point about five kilometers from the Valley. Figures. Estimated landing forty-two minutes.”

 

The Rebel Talon raced from one side of the cockpit to the other, keeping herself busy with the U-Wing’s  myriad sensors and computers. As the night side of the planet loomed larger and filled the canopy with darkness, Bryce finally nodded with satisfaction and yanked a small datachit from the transport’s consoles,stowing it in a little pouch on her plastoid breastplate. She gave it the pouch a bump with a gauntleted fist, reminding herself of where the transport’s navigational logs were located. The redhead gave the passenger compartment a nervous glance, watching as the Anzati was about to start rocking back and forth in the crash webbing.

 

“Sarna,” Bryce called back to the passenger compartment. “We’re entering the exosphere. I’m going to be a bit busy in a moment.” She tossed her sidearm to the Jedi Master and gave a meaningful nod. 

 

Hopefully that nod communicated the following: “She’s freaking out and I have no idea if this is some weird Force thing. Kill the ysalamir if you need to.”

 

Without active sensors, without sublights, and without shields, atmospheric re-entry was an noisy, percussive, and all-around unpleasant experience. Bryce secured herself into the crash webbing just in time for a jet stream to attempt to upend the U-Wing. Using only lateral thrusters, the marine fought to keep the transport upright and on course. Flickers of red-hot gusts gathered at either side of the canopy--to an planetside observer, the descent of the U-Wing would resemble that of a crashing meteor, though hopefully this ancient, creaky little craft wouldn’t have the same fate. For five minutes that felt like a day, they were in unpowered free-fall, allowing Korriban’s gravity to drag the transport to only a few kilometers over the surface before Bryce finally engaged the repulsorlifts and sunlight engines.

 

Even on powered flight, Bryce was notably tense and nervous as they hugged the surface and began to cross over the day side of Korriban and approach. The U-Wing’s visual scanners were attempting to locate a potential shelter that the little craft could land in--a large cavern, a determined outcropping of vegetation that survived in Korriban’s badlands, even a rocky overhang that would shield them from some angles. There was nothing--nothing but open desert and windblasted peaks and valleys. 

 

It was several more minutes of nervous surface-skimming, twilight turning into dawn and eventually the full glare of day. Grimacing, Bryce finally gave up the search for suitable shelter and set the U-Wing on the sandy soil of Korriban.

 

There was no time even to consider their next move once the sublights shut off and the passenger hatch slid open. “Masters, I’ll need help with the camo netting.,” she muttered as she gathered up the ysalamir harness and grabbed a rolled up bundle of netting from the rear of the transport. She hopped down the side of the craft--

 

--and stumbled on the sandy soil and nearly fell flat on her face.. She had been briefed that Korriban had substantially higher gravity than most inhabited worlds, but experiencing it was something else.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

“Seven Hells…” Bryce planted a fist into the crumbly red clay of the badlands and tried to push herself up. Her arm was shaking, much to her dismay. Another arm slid under her shoulder to haul the Rebel Talon back up to her feet. Johanna gave the smaller woman a nod and a tight smile, the color just beginning to return to her feet. “I’ll set up our doorbells. After that, survey of the Valley and the Praxeum perimeter. You two take one of the speeder bikes.”

 

Captain Bryce attempted to throw the bundle of camouflage netting over the top of the U-Wing starfighter, but the heavy gravity of Korriban dragged it down before it even cleared the engine nacelles. Grumbling and damning the benighted world, Johanna clambered over the bundle and dragged it over the fuselage of the transport. 

 

Next were the proximity sensors. Johanna pushed off of the fuselage, hitting the red clay of Korriban with as much force as she would if she had been thrown to a concrete slab. Again with the routine of pushing herself and her plastoid armor back to her feet, noting that the crumbled soil fell directly to the ground despite the gusting wind. The Rebel Talon retrieved a set a short, silvery spikes from the interior of the U-Wing and jogged a short perimeter around the transport, embedding the proximity sensors every fifty meters or so into the desiccated soil and stomping them further in with her boot. The sensor spikes were not exquisitely sensitive or particularly long-ranged, but they would at least afford the three scouts some warning if an interloper attempted to board their transport.

 

And then there was the actual task of scouting out the ancestral homeworld of the Sith Order. She took the other of the two speeder bikes, burdening it with a satchel of surveying equipment, the harness housing the Force-nulling lizard, and her service carbine. Leaving the engine on idle and allowing inertia to carry the vehicle forward, Johanna began the slow uphill trek from the Korriban’s desert floor to the crags and valleys surrounding the ancient dwellings of the Sith.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

It wasn’t until the first peak that Bryce trusted her awareness enough to mount her airspeeder and stop moving at the pace of a jog in Korriban’s high gravity. Finally, gazing out at the meager horizon afforded by a few hundred meters of elevation, the Rebel Marine saw… nothing. At least nothing of immediate tactical importance. The heat haze of the badlands nearly obscured a sad shallow watering hole in the distance that a few small shapes were gathered around. A pair of condrocs, winged beasts with a wingspan of nearly six meters, were circling above that watering hole in expectation of easy prey. Johanna had yet to lay eyes on any fortifications, any patrols, or any signs of technology more impressive than the occasional moisture vaporator and the twinkle of sunlight engines in upper atmosphere.

 

That was no matter. Her task was to gather topographical data regarding the Valley of the Dark Lords. Bryce opened a pouch on the side of her speeder bike. Within it was a cache of slender steel spikes, about fifty in total. They were pulse-wave scanners that would map the surface of the planet, but they were small units and had a limited radius of a kilometer--more than sufficient for her purpose, however. She drove the first of these spikes into the ground with her boot and climbed aboard the speeder bike, setting off at the relatively cautious pace of a mere 100 kilometers per hour.

 

The next hour was routine--merely trying to not drive herself and the ysalamir into a fiery grave and stopping every few minutes to drop another of those spikes into the ground. Bryce made a loose crescent through the crags that surrounded the Valley, the ominous peak of the Sith Praxeum growing larger and more distinct with every minute. Navigating stony pillars that pockmarked the Valley with care so as to not stall the temperamental speeder bike, Bryce finally got a good look at the Praxeum and dismounted. She withdrew a set of electrobinoculars and scanned the valley, peering from a prone position.

 

Three pyramids, arrogant and dominating in their construction, overlooked the ancient Valley. Tiny figures pockmarked the floor of the Valley, but as the binoculars focused on their position, she realized that they were merely sandstone statues. Those figures loomed over a smaller set of sapients, puny in their stature compared to the temples of the Praxeum. Several kilometers in the distance lay the Faust Intergalactic Starport and its numerous landing pads… but few freighters seemed to be in operation. No frigates were present, although a small subset of landing pads were expanded to admit their passage. She could only conclude that the Korriban Praxeum, although of intense historical value, was of only secondary importance to the Sith Empire--but what Bryce thought didn’t matter. Her task was to gather data.

 

Johanna withdrew the final spike from her speeder and pounded it into the dust. Remounting her speeder, the Rebel Talon began the return journey to the U-Wing. With the eerie sense of eyes gazing out sightlessly to pinpoint her location, the mere 100 klicks per hour that a stealthy withdrawal required seemed a snail’s pace.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

For the first few minutes, all Bryce heard was the whistling of the wind in her ears and the gentle whine of the repulsorlift engine as she coasted from pillar to pillar on the badlands. Her sensors had been placed and all that remained was to get enough distance from the Sith Praxeum before they were triggered. However, even with the ysalamir behind her back protecting her from the watchful eyes of the Sith Lords, the Rebel Talon felt as though some distant, malevolent presence was looking over her shoulder and she kept pausing in her flight to glance behind. Each time, however, there was only heat haze of the clay of the Korriban badlands, the glare of its star, and the wisps of desiccated dust that choked her at each gust of wind.

 

Pausing once again to scan the horizon for a glimpse of a metallic reflection, Johanna glanced down at a miniature datapad affixed to her left vambrace. With a single press of a button, she could trigger the pulse-wave scanners and map the bulk of the Valley within a few seconds… but the combined energy output of the sensors would likely alert Korriban’s security forces to the presence of malign forces on their world. Johanna closed down the datapad and shook her head. She decided to wait at least until the two Jedi had returned to the U-Wing before triggering the sensors.

 

The Bespinian blasted away on the speeder bike, this time not sticking to the comparatively stealthy withdrawal at a mere 100 klicks, but at the full roaring 400 kilometers per hour that the loaded vehicle was capable of. Though much faster, the shriek of the repulsor engine would be audible from nearly a kilometer away and the dust cloud swept up by her wake would be visible from an even greater distance. Her eyes glared from side to side, scanning the horizon for familiar landmarks—a many-fanged set of wind-eroded pillars, a shadowy den in the cliffs that she dared not investigate, a boulder that Bryce had used to hide one of her warning bells. The datapad on her arm vibrated firmly, warning her of her own intrusion. She was close

 

The speckled tan of the U-Wing’s camouflage gradually resolved itself into metallic mechanisms and the gentle fluttering of a camouflage net, and Bryce killed the speeder bike’s engine to coast the rest of the distance to the transport on an unpowered vehicle. A glance into the transport’s cabin revealed that neither Jedi had returned. It was just her.

 

Johanna muttered a quiet curse.

 

The Rebel Talon clambered onto the fuselage of the U-Wing transport with her carbine, lay down, and waited for a sign of someone’s approach. Whether she responded with her carbine or her comlink would be determined by whether it was one of the Sith, or one of the Jedi.

[Johanna Bryce]

The dust cloud of an approaching speeder bike grew larger as the two Jedi returned to the U-Wing. Peering over the receiver of her carbine, Bryce watched through a set of electrobinoculars, trying to determine whether its riders were friend or foe. Gradually, the image resolved itself out of the heat haze and dust, and the Rebel Talon made out of the image of a tiny Jedi Master with blonde hair--with a Padawan braid. She let out a sigh of relief and stood to wave, her gleaming plastoid silhouette reflecting clearly against the matte surface of the gunship.

 

By the time that the Jedi had pulled up alongside her speeder, Bryce had climbed down and was hauling her own speeder bike into the shuttle. “Please,” she said, taking the steering vanes of the bike into her gauntlets and bodily hauling the vehicle onto the gunship. “I can’t wait to shake the dust of this blasted world off my boots.”

 

A few buckles was all that kept the flimsy bikes from bouncing against the walls of the gunship. Bryce stowed the ysalamir at the aft of the passenger compartment in the hopes that at least one of the Jedi would be outside its influence.

 

Once the ship’s start-up sequence was completed, Johanna tapped in a short sequence into the ship’s console, activating the pulse-wave sensors that had been scattered in the vicinity of the Sith praxeum. The activation of the sensors likely would not go unnoticed--although the scanning sequence would only take a few seconds, it would be impossible to miss the fact that the gravel around its grounds was periodically rattling as though the Valley was experiencing a minor earthquake. That was no major concern, however, for once Bryce lifted the U-Wing off of the planetary surface and kicked in the sublight engines, it was only a matter of minutes before they cleared atmosphere, escaped the planet’s gravity well, and escaped into hyperspace for a five minute microjump. Their next jump would take them the rest of the way home.

 

[Johanna Bryce]

(( @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?”

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by ObliviousKnight

[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.