A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

For stories, roleplaying, or any other creative literary projects.
Post Reply
sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Tue Jan 08, 2013 7:50 pm

Another update, another slow talkie. Mostly delving deeper into the Man in Black as well as allowing me to give a shout out to a character from another series. We also check back in with Deran and Slytherina just to remind myself I haven't completely forgotten about that plot thread. Where I attempt to express emotions and concepts which are not the gibbering madness gleamed from witnessing necrotic pustules burting forth from nitar caked graves in a desolate and long forgotten edifice of eternal rest half obliterated by the incessent creepage of mottled vegetation and grasping vines...

“ The outer surface of the planet was charred, baked first by Atomic fury then, following the exhaustion of such stockpiles, trampled by the iron treads of battle tanks which were finally followed by humble infantrymen. Analyze of the fragmentary debris suggests the prevailing culture was a highly developed technological race reaching if not exceeding our own. Therefore being fully capable of defending themselves from outside aggression as the damage wrought clearly shows. Which is why the other ruins, that I have identified as similar in style to UBO infiltration discovered a few months ago, preserved beneath the radioactive cinder that is the planet and believed to have flourish congruent with the later era of the above civilization is so alarming.” Excerpt of Agent Sylph’s report on the planetoid Bacab’s extinct civilization.

Talon-II-

I.the beast in me-Johnny Cash

Amid plumes of his hot, ashy breath which swirled in grungy contrails, incensing air already stale from the burnt odor of the crushed cigara butts growing in mound on the table, the Man in Black leafed through another ScanDoc on his, genuine, datapad. Sitting with his back to a corner, in keeping with his habits, his holstered blaster within easy reach just in case something happened. Which it did from time to time, sometimes legitimately others wholly unexpected. Alone, save for his thoughts, his erstwhile associate at last departing, with all the grace and dignity of a Rancor with a toothache, along with the droid which, by all outwards appearances, had become quite enamored with the young Agent. Fussing and preening over him with an almost matron level of devotion, which did nothing to appease his sour attitude, and determined to prove it to him. If the hot tempered Gambil didn’t have the thing melted down first of course.

The brash, headstrong voice of which acting as a rather less than soothing lullaby coming through the wizened Agent’s earbud, predominantly consisting of jeers and insults at Parvus’s expense. Such as when he crowed obnoxiously at “finding” the transponder hidden on his person, which if he had bothered to examine it would have seen him confirm it was active and transmitting, never suspecting their may have been a second, more intricately hidden, bug. One preset to be inert and inoffensive until it passively registered the loss the first’s signal allowing it to evade a basic scanner sweep.

But that was youth for you, cocksure and arrogant. Confident you could take the whole Galaxy on with nothing but a blaster and some plastiod armor and win. The slightest whirring of his facial muscles into a grin as the Man in Black remembered his own early years in the “Family”, the exotic worlds, the even more exotic women and the giddy, intoxicating thrill that came with holding such unbridled power in your hands. That sweet nectar which at night, when the perfume had grown stale and the latest conquest into quiet slumber, as he lay alone with his thoughts would he at last regret and choke on it. Whisper fervently to himself that he was doing what was right, that the bastion of Democracy and freedom that was the Republic couldn’t be allowed to be destroyed. That the wages of his sin bought greater virtue. Only then it became that the bastion of security and order of the Empire couldn’t be allowed to be destroyed. That the Galaxy would descend into cannibalizing chaos without it and his sin bought the great virtues of peace and tranquility. After that he whispered the balm that he was garroting some planetary leader he’d never met simply because some man at the “Office” had selected it. That if he didn’t someone else world or the victim would preemptively protect his own life by assassinating the official at the “Office” as part of an endless parade of violence which had began since the Galaxy’s birth and would likely continue until its slow demise eons hence.

Bit by bit everything had faded from that point as it was inexorably bound too. The stunning beauty of alien vistas dragged down and muddled, causing each to blur together, by the broken worlds whose skies burned a hazy brown and the ground writhed with festering maggots swimming fetid excretion and bile like blood of the slain. The most dolled and exquisite joygirl’s face forever darkened and diminished by the spectacle of a little girl’s roasted face twisted away and forever screaming from the heat of a turbolaser strike. The fruits he toiled for, setting faction against faction or deactivating planetary defensives at a crucial moment.

Until all that remained was his work, until he was his work. A weapon others wielded, some honestly laboring to build a heaven which could not be while others were explicit in the cruelty of their actions. Such as his current master, an honest man who didn’t offer sniveling excuses for his villainy, whom he’d first met all those years ago while both served under the auspices of the Admiral. Even then, still an energetic youth, he’d been different from the coarse and careless imbeciles that Parvus had served with. More than any other his master understood how to wield the weapon that he’d become, that to his credit he understood the use and indeed need for subtly.

Such as the tangle web he now tracked through the baleful bellies of the Destroyers and the planet below, an insidious infiltration whose dimensions far exceeded what he’d inferred to Gambil. Through knowledge of the parasitical worms had certainly been an unpleasant surprise, which he’d taken efforts to supervise and understand, the trauma of infestation was too obvious and too discrepant to what he had observed of the conspiracy to be the cause.

For starters it was not immediately clear if the brain-leeches were capable of true thought or planning beyond sating their seemingly limitless hunger and the quarry he chased was certainly intelligent. Cautious, staying to the proverbial shadows, approaching only the utmost dregs of the crews. The Ratings, the enlisted grunts, the logistical clerks. The forgotten people, overlooked, without much prospects but dying at their posts or retiring on some measly pensions to some awful sepulcher world. People who further had lost whatever families they had after the transition to this uncharted Galaxy, deprived of whatever anchor or fear of repercussions such things granted. And to each his invisible enemies whispered a select spiel to turn them. In one it might be to play up the Empire’s totalitarian inclinations, another the clichéd melodrama fit for a holo-vid of seducement and still another may be drawn into a neo-pagan blood worship which even Parvus had to admit was overly peculiar and vile.

And yet through it all the cabal itself remained tantalizing out of reach, any names or facts betrayed by their bewitched Imperial allies covered and cleaned up before the Man in Black could seize upon it. Granted there had been exhilarating moments, times he appeared to be on the cusp of them but each ended leadless. Either from the captured knowing little if anything of the insidious cult, taking their own lives before they could be cajoled into speaking or, all too frequently, by overpowering the assets sent to sequester them. It was vividly etched into his sharp mind the first time he cornered one of the “inner circle” in a blind alley, how the man went from a charming if concerned aristocrat, of which the planet had a depressing large number tripping about, to a crimson streaked beast. Striking down a pair of Stormtroopers, their throats scooped out as if with a small charge, sustaining repeated shots from the Man in Black’s hold out at least long enough to leap up to a second story ledge and break through a window to flee.

The incidents which followed faired little better, even with Parvus stretching the bounds of his orders of stealth by bringing in a gunship to circle overhead. A feat which did nothing to endear the Natives whose own aero-fighters, while largely outmatched by the heavier war platform, interdicted and escorted the LAAT away. Its pilot’s claim of faulty Navi-com falling on deaf ears. As for his quarry that night it had gone to ground and eluded him in a way little else had ever managed.

Another time, “hiring” out derelicts of all stripes from the more impoverished quarters of the capitol, he’d staged an urban riot to mask his presence and with a platoon of CompForce blind-loyal imbeciles at his back stormed a grungy cantina of a meeting place. There, among otherwise normal customers whose resultant deaths he’d prearranged to be blamed on the shiftless rioters, he’d come the closest to his foes and even exchanged a few strokes and parries with one of the members. His swordsmanship rustic and simple, receiving no formal training but what he’d picked up infiltrating DeathWatch those years ago, it proved more than adequate against his opponent, almost force like, maneuvers which was balanced towards the elegant grace of formal fencing not the brutal hack and slash affairs of a real brawl. Where it was not unseemingly in the least to smash one’s hilt guard into your opponent’s face than knee them in the groin while they were blinded.

The conspirators had escaped that night, staining the cantina and the outer streets scarlet with the blood of the innocent and Parvus’s warriors’, through in one exception they didn’t escape whole but instead leaving behind a palm severed just a few millimeters past the wrist. That hand now resided on the Judgment in stasis as he sought answers to what exact Xeno, and he had little doubt it was some chameleonic alien, menace had intruded itself upon the otherwise human population. One which, like a slobbering pet to a meat covered bone, was now reaching its tendrils upwards through the orbiting ships.

Rynth indeed being a likely applicant for the cabal’s ministrations, a relatively long service length with little commendation and a remarkably long Scandoc of infractions many of which involved liaisons with female companions. Ripe for the breathy whispers of a pretty young thing but yet there was that nagging hint of doubt at the back of his mind which he kept turning to.

“Why? Why be so obvious about it?” He asked himself, chewing on the end of his latest cigarra, unable to shake that question from him.

All the other candidates, even those whose sanity had begun to slip, had been far more careful requiring careful screening to be found out. And if, as he explained to Gambil, Rynth’s goal was to be captured he’d certainly wouldn’t have resisted Gambil’s efforts and if he meant himself to be a distraction from some unperceived threat he’d stayed active not vanished. Which did not add up.

At least not with the current Xeno shadow race he’d been conducting against, their moves cleanly polished and hyper-rational. More than a year previously on an otherwise desolate mining world Apatros where the Task Force was taking berth for repairs following the destruction of the pirate Lord Krom’s Star Navy and fortress. A world he likely would never had set foot on, content aboard the ship, if he hadn’t received a communiqué from an associate in Intelligence. One of old acquaintance, even if she didn’t show them like Parvus did, summoning to help her contain a problem before it grew out of control. Finding her, Inquisitor Vail, in the sanctuary of her safe house overviewing on a remote link the euthanasia of a clearly feral alieniod of uncertain parentage, the full extent not realized until some minutes later when the dissection was brutally interrupted by thermal breaches from every wall. Swarms of similar misshapen creatures as well as humans, heavily if motley armed, storming through the heat scarred holes and followed by larger, more pronounced “purestains” of the genetic abomination being dissected.

In mere bloody moments the half dozen enforcers Vail had employed for the operation, each well acquainted with battle and prewarned such an attack could occur, were dispatched but it was only afterwards after the larger specimens had withdrawn and the mutants had withdrawn their slain that the humans, before acting with the same animal fury as the others, had the sense to terminate the channel link with a blaster shot ending the gory Vid-cast.

“The race appears to be connected, part of the same gestalt coconscious. “She’d explained afterwards.”What one knows, they all know with all the baggage that entails. ”

Having stumbled upon the infiltration, itself likely one of the Admiral’s lingering experiments, by accident while following unfounded rumors of a surviving Jedi having taken the world as a haven. Through before the mission was through the Man in Black would have wished for a hundred Jedi, mad as Mace Windu, rather than the monstrous brood lurking in the intertwining underground causeways and sewage lines of the planet’s capitol. Intractable beasts which struck with blinding, animal swiftness only to vanish just as quickly among the untold kilometers of interwoven tunnels, passages Vail and he had to painstakingly trek through trying to trace the cancer to its nerve center.

Through they’d had unexpected help from the Commodore whose selection of a cantina of ill repute, the Devil’s Dare, had inadvertently been one of the primary dens for the brood’s human strains. Particles of its gestalt mind which were lost in the ensuring inferno which claimed the hovel. Depriving the lair of much needed defenders, and of greater flexibility than the carapace horrors, as Vail and Parvus pressed into the center of the lair with CN-20 canisters prepped and ready.

If the species, thought extinct save for samples taken by Vail for Imperial study, had resurfaced its animal cunning would explain the discrepancy of Rynth’s actions. Not that the idea gave him much comfort, earnestly afraid the days of his dueling with two meter tall chitin armored monsters were behind him, through the alternative, that there was yet another alternative aberration not yet known, did little to lighten his gravelly mood.

“To live in interesting times…” He mused to himself, content at this stage to merely watch and wait.

New Hope, New Haven-

II. Blue oyster cult- I love the night

“…startled everyone. I mean here we are still struggling to get the main reactor online and a starship just pops out of nowhere.” Deran murmured to Slytherina as he sat up, still dreamingly lost in her infectious presence.

Taking advantage of the constant shuffling of engineers and designers Gort was dispatching to oversee the “integration” of the Greater Imperium and the Empire’s resources to slip away and see her. Even if it was only for an evening before he returned to pouring of hydrocarbon distillation plants designs and squabbling with his Native counterparts over it.

“Americans?” Slytherina, stirring from her repose beneath the silken veils of the bed’s covers, inquired softly, barely a whisper, in a way with sent pleasant chills downs Deran’s spine.

“Yes. It did identify itself as a Merikan vessel. Through they didn’t want revenge for the lost of their station, but to talk.” The engineer answered as he, most reluctantly, slide his legs out from beneath the warm trappings of the sheets and hobbled about the room recovering the accouterments of his Imperial uniform.

Barely noticing on his skin the cool night air wafting through partially opened window allowing the gentle melody of the city’s vibrant nocturnal life float in. This one of the better quarters, not the industrial slums where the socially disadvantaged as well as immigrant flourished nor the political quarter with its own share of corruption as well as overflow from the former. No instead Slytherina, when not playing damsel, had chosen a respite in a haven for the aristocracy and well to do, where more pleasant faced guards showed hesitancy and compassion to those they met on the street. Acting more as wardens to cordon of the trash, the dealers and thieves, than as enforcers demanding writs of papers. Freeing the inhabitance to enjoy all manner of clubs and upscale cantinas without fear of robbery or petty murder, filling the air with the exuberance of their liveliness.

“Treacherous pigs.” He heard her curse behind him, her wondrous features now doubt scrunched in earnest rage, at the confirmation.” They preach uproariously about peace and understanding while confining women and children to the butchery of Hell’s fire. Whatever they say is merely a guise to attack.”

Having heard such before, when he’d discussed the taking of Last Chance with her, Deran only added his agreement and sympathies to her outburst before moving on.

“Well if it comes to that they’ll be crushed. I saw the spec read out, their ship is a joke compared to the Judgment. Even in her present condition she could take maybe a hundred easy.” He informed her, hoping to brighten her mood, as he slipped his shirt on and struggled to smooth it out.

“ Yes and soon they will know that.” She purred, anger forgotten, rising at last after the engineer but, perhaps more vulnerable to the cold’s embrace, keeping one of the sheets wrapped around her frame.” You’ll teach them, my warrior. My champion.”

“I’m no warrior…just an engineer. I build things…” He whispered loosing track as she approached him, the delicate feather-touch of her fingers trailing across his cheek and mouth in prelude to her lips’ pressure.

“Excellent things, unparalleled in human history.” She breathed when they broke apart again, laughing a soft tinkling laugh at the last part as if it was some jape, allowing her hands to run across him straightening the creases in his uniform away.” Your people are kind to share it with us. You are kind. But you are wrong, you are my champion even if you don’t realize it yourself.”

“And to what have I done to deserve such honor?” He asked bending for another kiss, receiving but one transitory endearment before, like wisp of mist, she vanished from in front of him.

Only her hushed breath on the nape of his neck and gentle touch of her fingers alerting him to her new position, feeling her arms encircle beneath his pulling his body against her and the thin cover wrapped around it.

“You helped me up. A thousand-thousand soldiers there that day and only you acted. And yet you doubt your worth to me?” Came her whispered reply in his ear.

“I think you overvalue a solitary act, when we both know you were far from vulnerable.” Deran reasoned trying, without excess effort, to break free of her clasp.

“But you didn’t, not then. And that’s what matters.” Came her cooing answer, nuzzling along the edge of his neck now as she spoke.” Why you’re my champion and why our two empires need such as you.”

“Never going to win this am I?” Deran asked at last.

“Not really.” She answered with another angelic laugh.” Do you really want to?”

“No, I suppose not.” The Engineer conceded.

“I thought not.” A very pleased with herself Slytherina murmured.” Now then, my hero, let us forget the loathsome American swine for now. Let the remainder of the moment be about us, I believe you were telling me about your day before I interrupted. The reactor?”

“Yes…the reactor. Zarkon’s being cycling crews to work on it continuous, still a few days away from her being operational again.” Deran answered willingly, always eager to talk of his work, craning his head to reach Slytherina’s as she traced kisses up his neck.” Its his own fault we’re behind, mostly a refinement problem. He overestimated the purity of the ore we were working with. The initial bath was insufficient insulation…would have desiccated us in a nano second had we fired her up like that, but we’re improving. Adapting. And I dare say, with some of the modifications I’ve undertaken, the annihilation chamber efficiency should rise above specs…”

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Tue Jan 08, 2013 7:55 pm

Still good, keep 'em coming... :)

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Tue Jan 15, 2013 6:34 pm

Another update. A little more meat for Agent Gambil showing he isn't a total failure plus another of my random exerpts. Really had fun with this one, if its enjoyable and there's interest I might like do a couple more excerpts from Krevin's trials on Pangu.

“My command has thirty thousand soldiers, over three thousand M3 halftracks, fifteen hundred medium and light tanks, five hundred mobile cannons, and just shy of ninety siege guns. It is the largest, toughest army assembled on this mudball and you are saying it is insufficent?"

"Exactly. Hopelessly so."
Major General Edward Pierce and OSS Agent Smith regarding the colonial world Pangu's garrison.

Talon-II-

“Sire, if you forgive such an impudent interruption, are you in need of assistance?” The balmy droid beseeched even as Gambil, convulsing in a series of ragged coughs, waved it away.

“You really should have that looked at.” Shiami, his vocalizer managing an indulgent smirk, allowed probingly from his seat at the table.” Proper health is so important, and I find one doesn’t value it properly until its gone.”

Unlike the contemptible Huriel and Enot rather than some seedy dive the Facilitator had chosen a suitably more cozy lounge. Where the walls were neat and impeccably tidied and well maintained droids swiveled past dotingly imploring you to try exotically themed but unimaginatively bland and dull cuisine. The latter of which the Negotiator had ordered to have waiting and it was from this Gambil took a glass of tangy, purple juice to help subside his irritated airways.

Grinding out as he did the smoldering remains of his cigarra, one of several crumbled husks, into the provided dimpled tray one of the ostentatiously submissive attending robots, receiving stabbing looks of envy from QT-HPO in the bargain.

“As if the matters of my health concern you.” The Agent answered backing lowering the beverage back down with a putrid frown.” What the feth is this swill? Tastes like fabric cleaner.”

“ Small, sun ripened fruit globules harvested from select Worlds renown for their benign climate which are crushed together, purified and then seasoned with flecks of Naalwood for that aromatic zest of flavor you so revile. I find it soothing for my throat. A pity, then, that the source is now gone from us but I assume I’ll adjust.” The Negotiator spoke, finding no difficulty in doing so as he raised and drank from his own glass.” But then I’m not here to discuss my dietary requirements but rather a trooper I frequently employ.”

“That is how it sizes up.” Gambil concurred experimentally prodding the lumpy multi-colored cubes in the hallowed bowl before him and finding out by trial that they were pieces of fruit.” And as a duly appointed representative of the Emperor I would gladly appreciate your cooperation.”

“And I would give nothing less however I am unsure how much help I can be to you. I hardly know the Stormtroopers I employ on a personal level.” Shiami, eyeing the Agent hawkishly, said dipping one of his cubes in the remainder of his juice before eating it.” They are merely my bodyguards. I trust them but hardly converse with them to any depths.”

Jaws working in quick, sudden motions as he continued to talk through the protruding metal in his neck, almost disconcerting to the watching Gambil.

“I’ve checked the logs though. Rynth and his squadmates have been attached as your personal use for years. Proximity begets familiarity begets confidentiality.” The operative arrogantly concluded.” Surely in such time you have gotten to know those whom you depend on to protect you.”

“Only in the most limited and contrived ways.” The Facilitator, not budging a millimeter, answered.” I will gladly tell you what I know but it is, as I said, of a constrained nature. Little better than what you have undoubtedly been made aware of rummaging through his service record.”

“Indulge me then.” Gambil, nibbling on a bluish square, prompted forcefully.

“He isn’t a traitor. A bit of a cad with an impulsive tendency not to think things through but loyal. And in my time I don’t think I have ever hard him utter a disparaging remark against the New Order. Frankly he isn’t one for politics but rather certain other venues of activity.”

The nearest he’d come to the former, in Shiami’s approximate opinion, being the odd irate Planetary Governor concerned about the innocence of his daughter. And even then quite rarely, all too typically such frustration and fear were directed the Commodore’s way whose appetite ,which if not raised to mythical proportions were at least well traveled through ship’s scuttlebutt, was a rather known factor. In equal proportion to his purported bravery of course, from dueling with alien squadrons in light shuttlecraft to the latest gossip of him routing an invasive intrusion upon his ship the Commodore’s name got more transaction among the enlisted ratings than even SubCommander Tyler whose icy dread reached deep into even the bowels of the Talon-II.

“I keep hearing that.” Gambil, fishing out another cigarra, noted.” Not just about Rynth but for my whole career. You’d be surprised how many traitors went to the gallows with their praises still being sung by the idolatry masses. And I could fill Scandocs concerning once loyal citizens whom were lead astray by a pretty face or a kind whisper.”

“I’m sure you could. Just as I’m sure you could fill them with heroics and lionized fealty if you so desired.” The Negotiator pointedly answered, a fair imitation of annoyance in his metallic voice.” You asked me what I thought of Rynth and I told you. Is there anything else you need or am I free to go. I’m afraid something has dismayed my appetite.”

“So soon? I have so much I want to discuss with you. If you’re tired of the subject of Rynth perhaps we can switch to your conduct during the Interex fiasco.” Gambil answered just as heatedly as he leaned to the side for QT-HPO to slavishly light the end of his cigarra.

Taking back and experimentally puffing on it, fighting down the tickling cough it brought about, as he watched the measured face of the scarred Facilitator morph into an unregal glower. The entire episode a blemish on his career the way only running for an outbound shuttle ahead of a security detail could be.

“The issue with the Interex was unfortunate but I warned the Commodore it was a hopeless case.” Shiami explained slowly.” They preferred their Xenos over their union with their brethren. Such is their concern.”

Choosing not to voice the act of arson against a public building, a museum if he recalled his facts correctly, which had been the blaster bolt in a vat full of tibanna gas that produced the resulting conflagration. Certain wild rumors persistent the precipitous incident had been engineered to collate the tense and strained relations between the two parties and force annexation by more direct means. At least until the planet’s ground batteries had opened up.

“True to one degree or another but I was thinking of your personal place in those final, terse moments. When the sky lit up and the heavens wailed, if you’ll allow me a bit of poetic indulgence, when your fellow Imperials were in mortal danger. Where were you? That is the question, I think, which most intrigues me.”

“As in every of the odd dozen times something goes ploin shape. Legging it towards an escape shuttle with what seemed like a full regiment of angry Natives on my heels.” Came the Diplomates swift but cold answer.” Must say my security detail performed most admirably during that incident.”

“I’m sure.” Gambil sound unconvincingly.” What interests me through is how you expected to escape by shuttle. They were still raising strikecraft, then the cruisers and planetary batteries…that’s quite a thicket to run. Then with those deviant alien force-users they employed I’m not sure even a cloaked ship could slip through.”

“Your point my esteemed colleague?” Shiami, matching the Agent’s tone with remarkable skill for one with an artificial vocalizer, queried.” We had no way of knowing the full extent of the situation until we made it to the shuttle and we had more pressing matters as I alluded to. I doubt I gave any thought to it beyond getting myself safely behind a layer of durasteel.”

“But it is interesting, had the Taskforce been defeated as it appeared it would be on the onset, caught so tightly in that vise, you would have been without home or hearth to return to. Requiring new accommodations to be arranged.” Gambil slowly reasoned with a predatory grin, the curling of smoke from his cigarra around his features not helping his impression one iota.” Such as with the Natives who might be immensely grateful for any tactical knowledge you might allow “slip”. Natives whom you would be safely in their protective embrace, lost and forgotten by the Empire at large, in all but the unlikely scenario the Task Force prevailed. I mean for me that what I find so interesting, what could have been.”

The Agent enjoying the darkening of the Negotiator’s features as he spoke, a souring which robbed him much of the faux civility he’d impeccably maintained. Wiping away the veneer for the red, pulsating mass of emotions which existed beneath the calm exterior.

“Utterly preposterous. An overwrought bit of fiction not even the lowliest peddler of Imperial Melodrama would accept.” The scarred Diplomat challenged, his voice striating with greater amount of grinding static.

“Is it? Yet your very own reports established they used Force endowed aliens as shifters of truth/interrogators during the negotiations. And it is an accepted scientific fact that the Jedi, that malodorous sect of Force users, could cloud or even bewitch a man’s mind. Do you claim special exemption from that which all of us are vulnerable too?”

“Those gibberish freaks never displayed such a power and besides the point if I had been seduced to their ways and convinced of their imminent victory why was I chased with Native warriors but one step behind. The crew of my shuttle, isolated and protected against any possible influence, can support my harried arrival as well can the members of my security team. All accounts prove we were pursued by a harsh and determined force all the way until we broke the lower atmosphere and only then because of the Commodore securing a truce against the Natives.”

“And yet we were just discussing the disloyalty of one member of your security team and you expect me to accept his or his comrades’ word at face value?” Gambil, with mock surprise, reasoned.” You can see my bind, if on the other hand you had something more than empty assurance of your loyalty to the Empire, such as direct and open aiding a case of mine, than I could see to it to ignore those nagging questions.”

“If I don’t obey you’ll hold me accountable to your fictitious dribble?” Shiami demanded to know rising with a heavy indignant air.

“I’ve convicted people for less. And, just in case it’s crossing your mind, I have friends as high as you could have made in your career. So don’t count on their protection.” The Agent answered rising his own self, grinding out his smoke and gesturing for the Negotiator to take his seat again.” And now I’ll take my leave from you, kindly finish your meal of soggy plants and rotten pulp juice. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of what may be your last meal.”

Interlude-

I.two steps from hell-protectors of Earth

"…was the perpetual brinkmanship and ones upmanship which so categorized our tenuous relations which brought us to the world of Pangu, a world nominally under Earthian control or what passes as the fragmentary equivalent. Such facts as I had digested, primarily against my better judgment having better pursuits to entertain me, it was a grungy world of some two or three million souls. Most of whom emigrating, by force or otherwise, from the planetary segment referred colloquially as “The People’s Sanctuary of China” which was the nub of the issue, the Merikans, or Englanders I don’t quite recall, having issued in no uncertain terms prohibitions on the expansion of The People’s Sanctuary of China and moved assets to usurp governorship. With the Englanders, or possibly Merikans, then intervening as “provocateurs of stability” leading to a three way entanglement as precarious as a Satyr with a loaded weapon.

And it was this conflicting backdrop in which Tyler, whom keen readers will note such preamble occurs with disheartening regularity before I invariably end up in the stick of it, believed my appearance, as the majestic Lord Protector, might help galvanize this discontent and direct it in cause of our glorious Confederacy of Man. Officially of course I had to have slightly less ambitious aims, I think our Diplomatic Corps instigated I was there to oversee if basic protocols of humanity were prevailing through honestly as a man who has total authority over a Super-Class Star Destroyer I’m a bit too important for a magistrate, colonial or otherwise, to fob off.

Regrettably through my beloved Judgment wouldn’t be accompanying my visit, there being obvious political ramifications if she appeared over an Earthian colony which both Tyler and I wished to avoid for the immediate present, and instead I was forced to make the transit, much to my dismay, in a glorified Assault Shuttle. Not that I for a moment harbored any doubts of its being serviceable, more than strong even before our modifications to withstand and evade anything we were likely to encounter, nor had the artisans failed to indulge my specifications for a properly opulent interior. It is merely that since that debacle with the Vraen I can’t step inside the bulkhead of an Assault Shuttle without a slight treble running down my spine, memories of that fateful event reaching up through the mists of time to jaundice my humors even with the gala of nightmares I’ve had the most strained privilege to.

The latest of which I had no way of knowing was forthcoming as we exited Hyperspace near the gravity well of the world in question, just far enough out to make a hasty exist in case a squadron of warships awaited to greet us, and proceeded with the drearily routine handshake/signaling to alert the colonial government and have them not try and swat us from the air. A most unagreeable predicament which I’ve been forced to suffer on more than one occasion from both Xenos, whose treachery I should have known better of, and humans, whose treachery I know all too well, in my time. Many a diplomatic function having ended with my shuttle scurrying out of the way of a strike-missile or a burst-shell followed in return with crippling bombardments from Judgment and possibly the quick deployment of Drop units or even full military landers as the case warranted.

All of which was denied to me of course so you can appreciate how gladly I welcomed the, deceptively, warm reception I received from the planet’s Natives. You would have thought it was the second coming of the Emperor the way the bureaucratic managerials who policed Pangu’s sky-ways preened and jockeyed to speak with me much less the ever upwardly drifting administrators whom I was rerouted to as the shuttle followed their guiding beacon to the ground. Apparently they’d had heard of some of my exploits, including “rescuing” an Earthian colony from an incursion of Iron Golems. That I had only been present because said Golems had shot down my shuttle, and been attempting to strip the Golems’ drifting hulk before they reactivated, I wisely chose to omit from the accolades they heaped upon me. And besides, it was beginning to look like I was going to enjoy myself quite immensely.

So, naturally, it was only a matter of time before it all imploded. Not that I realized it at the time of course, idolatry can be quite disarming as I’ve found out on far too many occasions, instead being quit mollified and content as we touched down on the crude and simple slab of concrete they called a starport. Through I made sure to disembark with my blaster holstered and fully prepped and surrounded by my flock of Stormtroopers, pacified I might been but foolish I wasn’t which is solely why I’m able to indulge in all this yesteryear reminiscing. Meeting me there was the technical Magistrate of the planet, through there was one or two others who may have challenged him for the title, with his own honor guard of the “People’s Militia”. A rather hacked down and vestige organization I gathered, mostly from Tyler, was a sort of compromise between the ostensible planetary government and the Merikans, or Englanders, whom had claimed jurisdiction.

Still they did their best to appear smartly, standing with regimental perfection to either side, as I and my small team exited the shuttle and approached Magistrate Hsu. The remarkable adaptation of the Imperial anthem swelling in the background as I extended my hand, and what I hoped was a rather sincere looking smile, to the Native leader. Which was just when the black painted motorcar, chipped and pockmarked from weapons fire, barreled through the restricting enclosure and us. Swerving only at the last moment and I just had time to catch the cold steel of a gun barrel protrude from smashed side window before it ventilated its way through the assembled including Hsu whom I watched bow at a severed waist and collapse at my feet.

Which since this did not unduly discourage him and, as I saw with hindsight, as he’d been in the process of drawing a compact autopistol a harness hidden above his wrist I did not shed a great too many tears over him. Instead, as his upper body pushed itself up off of the concrete and fix me in the sights of his handgun, I stepped back and with barely a glance towards the large black suited figure emerging from the vagabond car flicked my blaster from its place at my side and fired with reflexes honed by regrettably years of close calls and ambushes. I was also aided by my shot flying straight and through, compared to his percussive hand cannon which bucked and snorted with wild abandon, impacting the dignitary across the side of his pale, stiff face. Revealing it to be a wizen husk, a dried shell for the shriveled green thing within which perished screaming a breath later from the consuming heat.

Through visible for less than a heartbeat before cremated to ash by the purifying force of the high powered shot the race’s name, one of several they’ve been given over the eons, leaping to my lips like a curse. “Cultium”, one of my least favorite Xenos in a Galaxy brimming over with vile specimens. Through admittedly the hellish, high tone shriek the remainder of the honor guard chose to just then emit would have been clue enough. Few things are as noisy or as ear splitting as a Cultium screaming.

This fact plus the aforementioned guardians turning their weapons against me and my team with the same vicious determination they’d done against the armed intruder directed and explained my next action. Slinking further towards my protectors, whom closed around my like a mailed fist, and shouting to be heard over the reedish wailing of the alien imposters I directed their attention and fire to the most immediate “Militiamen” between us and the black car which, by point, not only had the rather blunt, and dare say suicidal, man in a suit and long coat but a contingent of uniformed and rather more professional looking soldiery spilling forth from its interior. Weakening the intervening clump of the duplicitous Xenos with their withering barrage of repeater fire and scattershot unlike the unmolested group converging behind separating us from the shuttle’s gangway. And noting the exceeding durability and determination of our unexpected foe, eyeing more than one stagger back up even after struck with a blaster round albeit glancing one, I had every intention and desire of putting the most distance and cover as I could manage from the unholy terror. Giving mute thanks to the Emperor that the “honor guard” had been so neglected and curtailed to have afforded only archaic bolt operated slug throwers which greatly hampered and hindered their rate of fire. Unlike my own or my men as I ordered them into a charge through the weakened perimeter, the light of our fire as well as the revolting boiled cabbage smell which rose in greasy clumps of smoke from the falling bodies alerting our erstwhile allies as much as my shouting of our plan of intent. And I sensed, rather than discernibly saw, their fire shift around us forming an invisible cordon to try and push back the insidious alien warriors.

Not that they were overly eager to close to grappling range, not being the hell minded Satyr, and indeed many of them distanced or peeled away from our group to better wield their long barreled rifles. Their shots whizzing past with a banshee like cacophony and more than one of my protectors shuddered and fell, streamers of scarlet washing down the side of their helm or from gaping craters in their chests. Not least of which was my tiny squad’s point man, an excitable chap who may have had Colonial blood in his veins, whose armor was already chipped and cracked by glancing shots suddenly spasmed and reared backwards with his stomach ripped open and stained red. Which since I, most eager to reach the relative safety of the car, had been barely a millimeter shot of being his own shadow meant he flopped directly into me, becoming so entangled I couldn’t shake him loose as I continued stumbling forward. Dragging him the rest, a little under halfway of the killzone, juggling between the dead of his weight and sniping anything which looked remotely threatening to me.

By Emperor’s grace I somehow avoided sharing in his fate, bumbling the last few meters on sheer frenzied fear and self-preservation, and kept him aloft until a burly men-at-arm crouching behind a pitted door of the car rose and took him off of me. Slouching the fully armored warrior over one meaty shoulder as if he was an empty sack he wheeled around and slung onto the bed of the back seat where the trooper’s blood added to the rips and tears the abused vehicle had already sustained. As for the Earthian soldier, dropping back behind the riddled clean through door again, he curved his doughy face up towards mine as he fired his scattergun again, cleaving apart another of the faux humans, to shout at me with a belligerent tone that would have been amusing on other circumstances.

“Look Governor, if it isn’t too much of a bother could you please get a move on? Being here isn’t conductive to our health as it were.” He grunted in a guttural, I was instantly reminded of the Satyr’s vocals, rendition of basic.

Which, I assure you, I had every intention of doing delaying only to turn my gun back across the way we came and add my fire to my remaining two protectors in cutting down a handful of Xeno strain who’d have bum rushed us otherwise. While doing so I sensed a dark presence manifest beside me, reeking of putrid bile of the alien, and with a slight tilt of my head I, truly, met the insufferable Agent Smith for the first time.

“Get. In. The. Car.” He growled with that Merikan uncouth warping of basic as he fired a dog eared scattergun into the dwindling throng of Xenos.”Now.”

“We appear to have the better of them.” I offered in counterpoint, more out of defiance, even as I slinked partway towards kneel soldier by the door and crouching slightly beside him.

Which was truthful, under our combined fire the shrieking aliens were retreating. Scampering for cover across the desolate star port, darting behind loaders and unattended pallets ever further a field from our holdout in a pattern which was only then beginning to crystallize. Suspicion turning to graven fears as I read my Merikan associate’s weather beaten face, ordering my bodyguards into the car as I rose through not fast enough for Smith’s taste who manhandled me by the scruff like a small child and heaved me into the open compartment. Adding incentive to my guards, shoving one atop of me on the car’s floorboards while the other was directed to attend to the wounded man I’d carried, while he and the other Earthian soldiers piled in over us just as the first even shriller whistle cut over the dirge of the remaining Cultiums.

The iron wrought shell arcing past over head darting a quarter kilometer beyond where my Assault Shuttle sat parked vaporizing a rather sturdy looking tractor and gouging a jagged tooth crater through the equally solid looking concrete slab which had supported it. The first of a cascade which began homing in as the over weighted car lurched into gear and sped with abandon back the way it had appeared. Escaping the steel deluge, which I was to learn hailed from an Merikan artillery unit, which came in ever increasing sheets to atomize the crude starport. Through not without everyone’s share of discomfort as we were slung in the cramped space by a sharp turn or was buffeted by the passage of a too close shell. The latter enough to rattle your teeth loose and gave me a renewed appreciation of primitive, but effective, technologies.

“Hell, they want to go bloody blow him up why didn’t they go and do it proper at the first?” The burly soldier complained from somewhere above me, the meaty trundle of his knee spearing my side, as a particularly painful concussion swept through us.

“Not him.” Smith, who despite his mass sounded reasonably comfortable to my ears, answered in his clipped, brisk manner.” His shuttle, if they can’t capture it they want to deny it from us.”

Which, I kept to myself, was far from a certainty of being accomplished even with the big guns at their disposal. If the droid pilot had raised deflectors in time, a chancy affair at best when it comes to their kind, I knew they could withstand the salvo. At least long enough to transmit an alarm back to Command which meant I could count on the Judgment and Tyler riding in at the fastest possible speed to save me. Unfortunately, out on the fringes of space as it were, that was likely to be more than a day or two trapped in a city I was shortly too learn was kneedeep in a new, and unexpected, civil war…" Extended excerpt from Lord Protector Krevin's autobiography
" How to live through a life of service" circa 9 N.E. ( 1977 AD old calender)

*
Praeothmin wrote:Still good, keep 'em coming... :)
If you say so ;)

Admiral Breetai
Starship Captain
Posts: 1813
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:28 pm

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Admiral Breetai » Wed Jan 16, 2013 1:33 am

that's interesting, he somehow cemented himself as the lord of all known space in the future? nasty little bastards the cultium...

trying to give my founders a run for their money?

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Wed Jan 16, 2013 3:59 pm

Krevin's lived an interesting life...

A tough bunch of SOBs these Merikans, no?
They remind me of an actual country, but which one?
Oh, yes, Canada... :)

Admiral Breetai
Starship Captain
Posts: 1813
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:28 pm

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Admiral Breetai » Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:42 pm

the wilderness makes a man hard..but polite

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Thu Jan 17, 2013 1:13 pm

That is true, I'm always polite, even when hard... Err, I mean... Nevermind... ;P

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Thu Jan 17, 2013 8:58 pm

Well you didn't explicitly discourage me so here's a second helping of Krevin's experiances on Pangu.

“Who gave the command to the siege element? Get me the battalion Control its attached to, give me the company level or even the fracking platoon level just get me someone who knows what in Hell is happening-what in the Lord’s name is that noise? Ground Strikers? Get down…” Major General Edward Pierce, to aids, during the strike on the command building by Hurricane fighter-bombers attached to the People’s Militia Air Corps.

“…can not truly convey the sensation of hearing, while still buried beneath a mound of sweaty humanity in a car barreling through a city tearing itself apart, the muffled flatulence of a tire’s burst or the panicked gyrations of the car’s driver to retain control. The planet’s previously constant gravity, as deduced by my stomach, rapidly oscillating through wild phases and polarities around me accompanied by a painful lurch which felt uncomfortably like a steel toe boot to the rump and the grinding of metal being devoured by pavement as we dragged to a stop. From outside this cushioning cocoon their came the regular patter of small arms in unending and ever thickening sheets. Thank the Emperor, as I saw after the mass above me began to shift and claw upwards kicking open the skyward facing door to escape, most of such wasn’t directed towards our motley crew but leaping between opposing windows in the squat tenement houses lining the grungy street or peppering the shrunken and decrepit alleyways between as the disparate factions I spied from every corner writhed in mutual destruction.

At the time it appeared as if the entire city, and perhaps the entire colony for all I could see, had abruptly and belligerently gained sapience and utter self-hatred striving to blot itself from existence in one consuming conflagration of destruction. In actual fact the city quarter we were in had been the prime nesting ground for the sect of agitators who resented the Merikan, or perhaps Englander, intrusion and thus had the greatest singular concentration of both Englander and Merikan forces, whichever one the instigator being chaperoned by the other, of anywhere in the capitol and hence why Smith, in his inexorably limited capacity, had chosen it. Which entailed we’d barreled into a womp rat’s den of three or four armies heavily committed to annihilating each other, a choice which rates on the intelligence metric as running into the midst of a Gamorrean brawl to protect you from a pickpocket but I digress.

Suffice it to say I was most fervent in getting myself behind cover delaying only the length it took my Stormtroopers to extract themselves from the overturned conveyance, the two cloistering around me while I took upon myself the weight of the wounded trooper both for the addition of the carbine he wielded as well as the protection his armor gave to me as I trudged shooting at anything which gave me undue notice. The nature of the Cultium, and the havoc they usher into fruition, making the rather dreary and confounding similar uniforms each faction drabbed itself in even less illuminating than usual, the best I could do was hope and cling to my rubric that anyone who shot at me or by extension the people who had assisted my extraction from the airfield were likely people I didn’t want to long associate with.

Following after one of the latter uniform troopers, the hefty scattergun toting fellow whom was one of the few I was confident of being reliably able to discern and identify in the chaotic maelstrom, I, along with my bodyguards, barreled up a weather beaten stoop increasingly pockmarked by weapons fire and trampled over the charred remains of the dwellings door which looked as if it had exploded off its hinges. Spying the odd rocketry munition sailing from the higher windows, along with plain old fragmentation grenades and crude simple bottles of crude hydrocarbons with burning rags stuffed in, I couldn’t wholly discount the possibility. Only furthering my desire to retreat deeper within the building’s walls, while true it was hardly an Imperial garrison it was far more agreeable than then empty air which I saw as my alternative, through in this endeavor I was halted less than a meter over the threshold by the solid back of the soldier my team and I had been following. A Sergeant Onslow I was to ultimately discern through, understandably, I was indifferent and careless to this fact at the time of our collision.

And subsequently was drawn, as were my guards, to the trio of soldiers whom approached weapons posed and faces threatening. Which, while regrettably not the coldest reception I have ever received, is a far from enduring gesture I can assure you.

“Oh, nice. We nearly get splattered out there and this is the thanks? I’m Alliance you goit and they’re-“ My burly point man blustered to the three stone faces jerking a fat thumb squarely towards me.”- a bunch of prats honestly. But not a bother. We’re not your enemy is what I’m trying to impress to you.”

“ See the thing is we’ve already had a visit by Alliance troops trying to be social. Back when the platoon had a lieutenant.” The lead of the three, a hard faced man with the utterly not so name of Kelly, answered back in a low, gravelly whisper which didn’t hide the butchery of his Merikan undertones.” So why don’t you shove off and see if the next house has any use for you.”

Alliance being a bit of codeword or work around for the Englander faction, when not using Commonwealth or similar vague terms, whom the Merikans were here watching over, or vice versa, leading to strained relations at the best of times which they currently weren’t. Now, seeing as at any moment a stray projectile could come piercing through my precious cranium, my readers can be forgiven if assuming my response to this, typical, Merikan bravado in a time of actual importance was a quick shout and volley of blaster fire. But I held that inclination in check and with subtle sign countermanded any such thoughts in my retinue that may have been prospering, partly out of respect that they hadn’t fired upon along with the fact that since they hadn’t and hadn’t started bawling in high ultrasonic squabble they were likely human but mainly because I had no way of knowing how many were hidden around the paper thin walls of the crumbling tenement. And through blasters are overall more powerful and robust weapons I’ve learned in my peril filled life solid slugs do perforate deeper and more easily than capsules of highly charged plasma.

So I instead employed the other weapon in my arsenal, after making an overly elaborate but non threatening movement to holster my first, and pawning off my wounded trooper to the guard stepped out from behind my chaperons with my hands held nicely visible. Granted I was a bit of a soft touch if they decided to fire through I was confident I could duck behind the ample frame of Onslow should such an eventuality occur and besides at the slightest hint of aggression from the three my Stormtroopers would quickly give them something else to preoccupy them.

“ I can relate to your caution, to your distrust, but as my large companion informs you we are not your enemy. Rather it is infernal, alien vegetable matter which is besetting all of us.” I voiced in my “best” Lord Protector voice, even through I realized how stupid it sounded when you actually spoke it, as I stepped towards them.” Am I wrong in assuming that since the loss of your lieutenant you’ve been attacked by Merikan units as well as Alliance and Native forces? That a nefarious, shadow influence is orchestrating and benefiting from our fratacide.”

Which was Cultium standard mode of operation, being fairly predictable and uniform for something so utterly Xeno to humanity, and earnest additional incentive to get to the safest refuge surrounded by as many soldiers as I could manage. After exhausting and obliterating what martial opposition they sensed, be it a world, a continent or a city, the unsightly buggers then would bring forth their own nigh inexhaustible legions from the dank depths which they’d been gestated and nurtured. And it hardly needs to be stated that their intentions and aspirations were not compatible with my own of living a long, prosperous existence. Or anyone’s not focused on becoming chattel really.

“And you’re just the man to settle it right? Well isn’t that good fortune.” Kelly’s less than impressed response came, through I freely admit he wasn’t shooting at me so that was something.” But I can’t help but think maybe you Fascist star-steppers might be set to benefit from us tearing each other apart. Which is less fortuitous but in step as the world works. So I guess the question is “do I feel lucky?”.”

Which wasn’t a bad idea, one I filed for later implementation should the need come about, but rather more paranoia than I had use for given the situation.

“Luck has nothing to do with this, rather reason.” I offered.” What are you gaining by destroying this city block, this tenement? What of the Alliance or even the Natives? Nothing. There is no great glory, no great cause, to be won here in these crumbling shells but stopping this, preventing further bloodshed of the innocent, there is in that. Besides, its likely your only chance to get out of this alive.”

Waiting holding my breath as my words filtered past the lead soldier’s unreadable face, the weighing scales almost palatable as he worked it out. Again I was reasonably confident I could escape to sanctuary should he reject my offer but the loss of any assets I could potentially used chaffed me the wrong way. Than, thank the Emperor, Kelly smiled and lowered his slug thrower along with his associates.

“I still think you’re a slick, lying snake but I’ll buy that last point.” He announced allowing the entire party of us to retreat further into the war torn building.” To a point at least. Any further has to earned but as fate would have it I have an errand that should square the rest.”

Which, on that Death Star sized shoe dropping, was my cue to politely inform mister macho Merikan warrior-hero that my personage and those of my assets were not to be squandered on petty, personal crusades save for my own. Which all involved pushing towards the nearest impervious bunker and sitting out the duration until the Judgment arrived. Unfortunately before I could get the words out, wishing for something with a hint of decorum rather than “Feth this” as my first instinct was, Smith had to blunder back into my life.

Storming through the doorway with a pair of his Alliance flunkies he’d been car pooling with, something to do with an altercation with Major General Pierce I would ultimately gather, cracking shots with his revolver out the shattered door. And in the other he cradled the conical head of a Cultium being, whom posses no special distinction of gender or role readily apparent in my experiance, which he presumably meant to help bridge support or understanding with the entrenched troopers. Seeing as I managed to make that crucial step my owns self he quickly bypassed over, beyond letting Kelly and his boys gawk at the true face of their enemy for a brief spell, and in keeping with his limited capacity skipped straight to his ultimatums.

“The Sector is destabilized.” Stating the obvious as only he could.” We have to establish lines of communiqué with Command and lateral forces, to get them to understand what we’re facing. What we’re fighting. Where is your unit’s radio?”

“Oddball has the last one, in the platoon’s remaining tank on the other side of the corner.” Kelly answered still studying the seemingly eyeless head which he now held in the palm of a hand, looking more like a oozing clump of thistles than the organ of a sapient warrior.” Your welcome to it, I’ll even show you the way but you’ll have to help me in moving some stuff while we do it.”

“I hate to be presumptuously importunate but a warzone doesn’t seem like the place to become movers.” I voice before Smith could and interrupting Onslow’s second “Oh, nice!” which I was to learn was a repetitive phrase with him.” It is imperative that one moves light.”

Quite liking the idea of, Smith, going for the radio and getting help called in. The more Earthians that could brought and made to see sense was , as far as I was concerned, at last a proper suggestion from the Agent and if worse came to worse I’d at least be rid of the fool.

Instead of answering my, completely reasonable, objection however Kelly took a step to the moth eaten wall of the dilapidated edifice and rapped against it thrice in nimble succession. Great noise and muffled voices rising from further within the structure, revealed moments later with the trampling of innumerable feet to be a disheveled coalition of men, women and children ranging from near adult to mewling infants. Quiet a collection with made me, sinkingly, realize Kelly’s intent before he could even voice it.

“I promise they won’t slow us down. And like Slick here says-“ The Merikan soldier explained jabbing at me.”- this place isn’t going to be here much longer. Oddball’s hunkering with the remains of the platoon’s halftracks at what was a bank, should be able to hold out longer.”

“How do you know he hasn’t been already overwhelmed?” I blurted out, before my mind could think better of it, rebelling at the thought of wasting effort on essentially “strays” he’d collected from the adjourning buildings.

“He was holding when I ran from there just five ago, right before all you swell fellows up and volunteered to help my good Samaritan brigade.” Kelly answered so sharply you could hear it cut the air.

Prompting me to tell him what he could do with his dreary school boy heroics only for that oaf Smith to butt his way over me again, drowning and stifling my voice with that grumbling monotone of his that could grind a battle tank down.

“ As long as it understood that one of us must reach and establish links back to Command, paramount of all other considerations, I don’t see any issue.” Smith readily agreed, opening his revolver and replacing the spent cartridges, before continuing with a purposely loud aside to me” Do you Krevin? I’d hate for you to risk your soldiers callously.”

While being the first time he’d demonstrated to knowing even who I am, and from my run ins with that stubborn man I can assure you simply assaulting a field full of Cultium warriors meant less than nothing in that regard, the innocuous and, surfacely at least, considerate query hung me on the spittle to be either the one solely who torpedoed our chances of reaching the proffered radio or “reveal myself” by refusing to commit to the, extremely arguable, operation. Which, speaking wholly dispassionately, wasn’t a bad move for an otherwise low brow and unexceptional specimen of humanity. Through I had far more colorful thoughts swirling in my head at the time, not least of which was scorching the wretch at his own game while helping to cement the, admittedly shaky, rapport I’d already started with Kelly. And it’s never a bad thing to cultivate a working relationship with your soldiers in a warzone, for all the obvious reasons.

“Seems reasonable. But haste is of the essence. Every second we waste standing here discussing the matter means more soldiers and civilians being blown apart by these fiendish things.” I boasted placing a hand on my resting pistol.” Either we do it now or there won’t be a planet left, at least not one any of us want to live on.”

And with that I steeled myself for a brutal death march into the guns of the enemy…
" Extended excerpt from Lord Protector Krevin's autobiography " How to live through a life of service" circa 9 N.E. ( 1977 AD old calender)

*
Admiral Breetai wrote:that's interesting, he somehow cemented himself as the lord of all known space in the future?
His little corner of it. Not much compared to the Cytherian Ascendency or the Consortium Hegemony but its a place to your hat. If your human. Aliens need not apply :)
Admiral Breetai wrote:trying to give my founders a run for their money?
Nah. I have one thing cooking which might, I stress might, rival your Founders but Cultium are innocent sheep compared to those monsters.
Praeothmin wrote:A tough bunch of SOBs these Merikans, no?
They remind me of an actual country, but which one?
Oh, yes, Canada... :)
A fair point through patriotism does compel me to point out Alvin York and Audi Murphy. ;)

The funny bit is that while it wasn't explored in the text I intended/envisioned the troopers with the obvious exception of Smith to be "Englanders" rather than "Merikans".

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:07 pm

Krevin is a bit of a snob, isn't he?
sonofccn wrote:A fair point through patriotism does compel me to point out Alvin York and Audi Murphy. ;)
We have war heroes in Canada too, you know...

I swear, we do...

Some weren't even fighting...

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Mon Jan 21, 2013 7:48 pm

Okay I'm still having fun with this and, well, didn't actualy do a real update. Hope you enjoy this, Krevin's continued adventures on Pangu.

“Anybody reading this? Please transmit…Christ…those things. My squad…they got’em…ground just collapsed underneath us. That’s where they are, under the street…so many, they just cut us down. Frank, John, Peter…all of them. I couldn’t help them, had to hide. Have to get help, please someone you have to hear this. Have to save me. Please I-no! Get back! No, help! Someone, someone hel-“ Fragment broadcast of unidentified soldier recorded during the battle for Pangu.

I. Burning Bridges

…threw myself to the battered pavement with a pungent curse as the artillery shell plunged through the tenement building demolishing it. First with a bone rattling thunderclap of an explosion than a creaking implosion as the shattered third and much of the second floor collapsed sending plumes of gritty detritus and filament rakings overhead as it slithered its way through the ruined streets. The mobile gun carrier which was the instigator, unseen and hidden from the devastation it wrought, no doubt laboring to slap a fresh iron shot into its breech and continue through whether it was purposely targeting the churned landscape or laying out a blind barrage was unknowable. As well whose faction it belonged and if it had been infested with the blighted Cultium, mislaid by their efforts or merely driven by the frenzied confusion of the maelstrom the city had become. And I dare say I cared even less, should such be even possible, concerning merely where the next shell landed and my proximity to it. Or lack there of if I had my way.

“Close one.” My remaining Stormtrooper bodyguard, an amiably blunt but obedient trooper named Jurgen, stated needlessly as he knelt slightly up and scanned a cityscape which incredulously still teemed with vibrant, and lethal, life.”Brek is inquiring should they hold position.”

My other able one, Brek, being split off and placed at the rear end of our miserable convoy allowing us to maintain some semblance of communication across its length thanks to their short range communicators, and making me envious I hadn’t bothered to requisition one of my own before we departed the Judgment. The wounded trooper, Falk, whom after being administered a rather large supplement of morphine Kelly had “ at hand”, through the interest of the soldier in charge of it seemed less medicinal but rather recreational if you’ll allow a diatribe, was obliviously out of it and was being man handled by some Natives we’ve pawn the chore off to for a change. His helmet was “freed” because of it but it had been purloined to keep Kelly’s group in contact in the treacherous and ever shifting terrain.

“Tell them to proceed, it isn’t getting any safer.” I answered rising as well and snapping off a shot with my carbine, something I had managed to get off of Falk’s person, not hitting anything but making it scurry back for cover.

In response of the noxious, belt fed slugthrower types swatted over our heads through the cacophonous weapon had barely struck its first noisome chord when a flash of red streaked across the battlefield silencing it, and removing the better portion of the operator’s cranium I’d hazard.

“Brek says their coming.” Jurgen relayed, craning his rifle up from the completed shot, as he stood up with me as far as either of us dared and scampered towards the next toothy bit of rubble.

Leap frogging in the wake of Kelly’s fireteam, which included the insufferable Smith, whom plodded along through the Hellish landscape as the vanguard of our ragtag assembly and, I dearly hoped, drawing the brunt of the inhabitance’s ire. Not that I noticed any variance in their desire to kill me you understand, that staying depressingly constant. The broken stalagmites of rubble still verdantly teeming with the stubbornly entrenched, the air around me rattling with the all too familiar crackle of weapons fire which had greeted far too long on this worthless trek.

The length of the matter was while Kelly hadn’t lied substantially on the distance expected of us he’d flummoxed the intensity of the reception as the disparate and bewildered squads similarly colluded and collated, many no doubt under the thrall of Cultium influence. One of the many reasons to despise the Xeno breed, few others necessitate the slaughter of innocent, human, life. Through the fact that the greater majority of said humans, being stubborn Earthians, would likely have ended up shooting at Confederate troops, or myself if something had gone terribly wrong, did do something to soothe my conscious, such as I have at any rate, as I scampered forward to my next perch showering a flicker of a shadow with searing plasma.

The body, an immolating thing briefly seen, tumbling to the broken, uneven ground scant moments ahead of my own body which I angled behind the brewed up hulk of a battletank, crouching in the lingering miasma of its scorched crew as I flipped my carbine up over the pulverized contour of the apartment complex, at least I assumed it was such so little of remained in its original configuration, to wary off any shooters and then swept it back over Jurgen covering his run as he’d done mine.

Carrying past me as I snapped back around, sending a flurry of bolts impacting an excavated window where I caught scuttling movement, and charged his way a little further on to where an artillery shell, or perhaps tank burst, had gutted the tenement’s corner causing it to rupture and spill out into the sidewalk and street. Creating a sea of torso sized chunks of masonry he flopped himself into, crest of his helm and his rifle reemerging seconds hence to add to the general din the almost startling in its brevity note of three rounds rapid. A fourth following, after he raised his helmet a little further and craned it to the left of where one of the divergent bolts had gone, as he tracked the movement of his remaining victim, the enhanced lenses of his helm filtering out the detritus and jetsam from the raging environment which I could scarcely imagine, after which he beckoned me on with a quick wave of his hand before resuming his predatory survey. Placing a fifth and six bolt behind me as I sprinted past him, or doing the best approximation I could manage in the strewn environ, which I neither cared or bothered to look back after. For one confident that if Jurgen missed my efforts would be best rewarded in furthering my flight and second I was supremely faithful that Jurgen didn’t miss, at least not by a wide enough standard to matter. One of the reasons I had ensured to keep him attached my security detail.

The other he demonstrated just as I managed to hobble ahead of him, spying a blasted car flipped on its head and diving for that, as I sensed him rise and lunge for me a hairbreadth before I heard the shrill shriek of more inbound missiles.

“Down sir.” He bade me, as if I had much choice or reason to argue, clasping an arm around me even as his weight fell atop of me and forced my face first into the jagged lipped cityscape.

His bulk forming atop of me adding to the energy of my landing but shielding me from the scattering burst of the first and successive shells which deluged around us. Mostly into the forsaken apartment which groaned dragged out moans of protest as each bore through its crumbling flesh and exploding carving voracious blisters through its hide continuing what the previous strike had started. Through not with the heftier big gun, that infernal contraption either still loading or distracted by something else, but lighter crew portable implements through such distinction can only be drawn from after the fact. At the time each seemed quite large enough and I was immeasurably grateful when the torrent lessened and began to attenuate. The firers either laying down blind barrage or, satisfied with the destruction reported back by their spotter, shifting to secondary designations.

As such, my ears still ringing, Jurgen rolled off from me and, after brushing away most of the clutter piercing through the back layer of his armor, rose in a crouch circling the subtly changed landscape in search of new threats. None of which remained in the tenement itself, the last of the second floor having joined into the third and any life which lingered within her was to have other concerns than pestering us, through to either sides of us and across the street I caught the whiff of movement through the blasted ruins. These he skillfully picked at, his sedate but precise firing joined with the bluster of my own barrage as I wobbled up on one knee trying to take stock of everything and leery of a renewed bombardment on or position.

Through even as such pertinent thoughts perked up through my conscious mind my faithful Stormtrooper interrupted with his phlegmatically neutral voice of his, not the slightest urgency or haste in his words even as he torched a figure’s head across the way, of the plight of others.

“It’s Brek sir.” Jurgen relied continuing his sweep with matronly devotion and hawkish ferocity.” It appears when they went to ground from the passing barrage they became engaged with an enemy contact of indeterminate size. Pinning them down in fact.”

“This isn’t Brek’s first run dirt side, he can break himself loose.” I reasoned shifting to look back from whence he we came where, sure enough, a few yards beyond the burned out tank I could make out a knot of people huddled with the glitter of weapons fire sprinkled all around them.

“He’s confident of that, but the others.” Jurgen stated matter of factly referring to the train of civilians Smith and company had decided to saddle us all with.

The plan, or dare I say hope, had been for Kelly’s team to simply plow through and smash the ardent defenders between us and the promised sanctuary, myself and Jurgen would then pick off any stragglers as well as anyone drawn by the commotion and then the caboose of this train could slip through unmolested. Which had gone about as any plan did when it made contact with the enemy, such blokes having a nasty tendency to take crudely wrought hammers to your finely honed cogs and gears.

“Of course.” I found myself sighing with the heavy air of reservation, glancing over my shoulder back towards Kelly’s fireteam whose progress had stalled.

And in fact was regressing, collating back around the trooper whom had donned Falk’s helm, back across the so recently hard ran ground. Pulling away from the long in the proffering sanctuary, or at any rate the partially filled alley Kelly had indicated was a “straight shot” to the promised bank, I made out to be twice as far ahead from their concentration as they were to me and Jurgen. I wish to stress this development to better clarify and underpin what will surely sound like total and object lunacy on my part, and even with this understanding I’m glad there had been no psychosis-evaluators present to observe it.

“Get Kelly on the Com, tell him to hold.” I ordered my subordinate Stormtrooper in a voice I sincerely hoped wouldn’t splinter and crack.” We’ll get stuck in, try to push the bandits off if we can. Make them extend and vulnerable to Kelly’s push if we can’t.”

“Yes sir.” Jurgen answered me with his faithful determination, the same I’d imagined he’d answer if I commanded that we were to skydive naked into a den of hungry Vraen and what I was suggesting was only slightly less homicidal.

But, and I wish to stress this to you my readers, my decision was based upon a solid, if sadistic, logical foundation. The first item was in order to reach a secure and safe “rear echelon area” in which to wait out the arrival of the Judgment I needed access to the planet’s Command network, the nearest ascertained would require Kelly or one of his men’s “grace” to prevent the depressingly all too likely outcome of the encampment blasting us away on sight. To which it was clearly counter-productive to appear goldbricking while the warriors Kelly assigned to the rear detail were slaughtered. The next piece was the likelihood of perishing from a falling bomb or stray projectile increased inexorably the longer I was caught out on the, relatively, open battleground. The sooner I could get solid walls between me and everyone trying to kill me the better. Lastly and in conjunction with the previous point I understood that with the lessening of firepower as the team slunk back across the defenders, invigorated, would come crawling out from whatever bolthole they’d been hiding in and require the taxing effort of slogging through once again.

Through looking back across the years, with considerable hindsight, it is a deeply open question if I would not have been better off taking Jurgen down one of the cratered side avenues and took my chances. But in the hectic snap-shot of the moment the alternatives all seemed fiercely bleaker , or at least more likely to end with me dead, so, with grave reservation, I moved to better cover Jurgen as he spearheaded our two man assault team. Most definitely compensating our deficit of numbers with his quiet, unflinching determination. His shots never warbling, at least no more than can be excused for firing on the move, as he bounded over the chewed up rubble peppering the broken shambles of buildings the enemy were hunkered down with cauterized dimples, as well more than a couple of the beings who’d been too slow to rescind back into the protection of their ramshackle battlements.

“Missed a few sir.” He almost sulked to me as we sped into the shadow of the apartment complex, distinct and different from the one we’d seen pummeled but clearly poured from the same depressing mold.

His normally impervious and apathetic mood returning short swift as he skidded around into the street to crouch beneath a hovel of kibble blasted free from pocked street, brazenly offering his backside to any shooters across the way while he was at it, steadying his weapon and his aim to his typical results. His gun discharging again as I dropped into a stilted crouch beside him, positioning myself to exploit the greatest number of angles of protection I could wrangle from his armored form, with the resultant flurry of motion from a window and muted thud enough to inform me of the shot’s success.

“Well I hardly think they’re going anywhere.” I replied, more sarcastic than supportive I must admit through I think it was lost on Jurgen, as I unfettered a long and extended clip first over the kneeling Stormtrooper to the opposing street side and then wrangled it back across our side.

Hitting little but the already quite moth eaten building itself, mostly against the remains of the second and third floor where I’d seen the most movement, creating an avalanche of glowing embers and shattered masonry which rained down atop of us but I had little intention of doing otherwise. I had little idea on the enemy’s numbers, through clearly insufficient to overwhelm the handful of professional soldiers stuck in with the civilians sprawled unevenly in clumps in the surrounding sidewalk, alley and street, or their determination to put up a prolonged fight. I merely, as opposed to Jurgen whose gun fired twice more in the breadth my gun unleashed tens of dozens of high powered bolts, wanted to give extra incentive for them to keep their heads down while we got this wagon train on the move again.

To that end I begin to scamper past Jurgen towards the nearest clump of them, continuing and alternating my fire back across the street towards some unsavory sorts who took my earlier barrage as a challenge, recognizing Onslow by the girth of his frame as he rose more than anything else. The shellacked trooper coated by grime, sweat and a powdery coating of shattered concrete which stuck the to the latter two which partially transferred to me as the big soldier grabbed hold of me and dragged down with him to the ground.

“Knock it off will you!? Are you trying to save us or bury us for pity’s sake.” He, most unappreciatively, growled fractions of millimeters from my unprotected face.

Of course, due to his reckless action, had I not released the firing stud on my carbine I’d have been breathing in the atomized wafters of his visage instead and the accompanying searing vapor, through inhaling the pungent miasma did give me pause to consider the alternative might have been preferable, which wouldn’t have been conductive for the discussion for either of us. Not that I intended to converse at any great length with the trooper, sanity haven’t fully deserted me despite my previous actions, or offer anything but the most brief of brevities until we got to something approaching safety. But it is the simple courtesies which I think stand out.

“I’m just giving them something to think about.” I snapped pulling away from him and, rising in a crouch, twisting my sights back across the littered street to the persistent foes hunkered there.” You want salvation, your going to have to work your own arse into motion.

“You heard Slick, let’s get these people moving.” The ostensible, and I stress the word ostensible, sergeant of Kelly’s fireteam grumbled unearthing himself from beneath the smothering carpet of grayish dust.

A craggy, mean faced son of a Bantha, with a pitted personality to match, he shook off the layering of filth like the dreaming god T’aogu unearthing itself from slumber and nimbly trampled over to one of the more intact pieces of detritus choking the passage. Cradling himself behind it as he added to my own bellicose fire on the opposing fireteam, pausing to line up a shot before unleashing a frenzied spurt through, for a few terse moments before the antagonists all delved back behind their protective debris. Then he, labeled Big Joe by his squadmates, shifted himself up off of his haunches and went bestriding the huddled length of this our convoy’s rear most echelon to encourage the civilians to action. Not that such efforts were needed, the bulk of them grasping without or without understanding of Basic what to do, through he’d helped coral and direct them as a compact group that could be guarded rather than a dispersed mob easily preyed upon by every fether with a loaded weapon.

Through of course this concentration in turn would be like an attractant for the warriors still determinedly burrowed into the dilapidated environs and so you can understand it was more than just simple valor on my part which kept me squatting low, close to the ground as the mass stampeded past. The greater bulwark between me and the hidden gunners the better if I had a choice, mentally counting off as I continued peppering the far side of the street and the upper floors on our side so that we would be at the safest portion of the herd. Far enough ahead to push and break through once we were safely across the worst of it but near enough back to slip out and away in the case things went ploin shaped.

“Get ready to run!” I was forced to shout, greater than I anticipated, for my Stormtrooper bodyguard to hear me.

His sagely, and mutely dispirited, acquiescence however prevented not only by the growing rumbling which set my teeth on edge or the echoing thunder clap as a big shell carved a small lake down the city street but by his own piercing cry.

“ Sir, behind you.” He rather forcefully cautioned as he rose from behind his shelter and took a cautious step back, akin to a fervent outburst in any less ardently composed.

And I, rather foolishly, craned my head away from the distant street side to the tenement complex, my mind suddenly taking interest in the fact I hadn’t spied the slightest gusset of motion but that of our weapons for the last several, bitterly long seconds, just as its broken front bulged forth and vomited the steely behemoth of a battletank.

Now I freely admit that there was still a lingering trail of most panicked civilians between me and the iron monster, as well as Onslow off to the side who, with an “Oh nice”, fired his scattergun uselessly against the tannish-green skinned beast, but when you are facing a thirty-four ton beastie a barricade of a half dozen stragglers suddenly seems quite flimsily and unsubstantial . They certainly didn’t last there very long, most scurrying with renewed abandoned down the street with the rest cut down either by the hull mounted machine gun triggered by the tank’s driver or by the infantrymen who scuttled up from the dark depths of the destroyed apartment from either side. These, I feel I should note, were Cultium warriors whole and without adornment of human guise which rather safely explained to whom the crew of tanker’s belonged to. That they were of such confidence to parade openly either meaning their earlier gambit had failed to sufficiently obliterate the human defenders and they saw nothing lost in a final, unmigated push or their efforts had been all too successful and there was nothing to be lost by emerging and crushing the last few dissenters and unwitting pawns into the dust. And I had a sinking feeling I knew which way this battle, having a first hand account of its people’s devotion to utter and complete destruction, had fallen.

Now such thoughts might seem extraneous in the best case when you’re staring down the gullet of an enormous cannon, and from where I knelt it looked wide enough to swallow me whole, I strangely found it soothing to dissect and analyze the complication and permutations such trains of thought stood for my long term survival; freeing me to dispassionately act upon the immediate hurdles to my short term existence.

So to reiterate and clarify I was kneeling down in the detritus and mock as the tank so impolitely rolled out upon me, its secondary gun ablaze as were the ones of its fellow infantry as they spilled out laying down a scything wall of lead. What occurs next I still can only recall in a disjointed, hazy manner. I distinctly recall bolting up backwards, simultaneously trying to turn around and backtrack, delaying my being flattened underneath the machine’s treads by a few precious milliseconds. Then, a thick and color boutique of oaths flooding out of me, I suddenly sprung forward into Xeno midst’s with the forlorn abandon of the forsaken. The revolting stench of boiled cabbage engraining itself in my memory in the process, suggesting I shot one of the vile things, and I can vividly remember the wail of another as I shoved it beneath the iron tracks of its support tank and then, without any of the unnecessary baggage to how, my memory takes me up on the steely skin of the tank itself. Clutching to it with unembarrassed shamelessness and scrambling up its side towards the hump of its turret box trying, I think, to put as much of the rolled homogeneous armor between myself and the surrounding infantry as I could.

Through I could hear the sizzle of Jurgen’s carefully controlled blaster bolts signaling the exposed Cultium warriors at least had other concerns to deal with there was also the skittering patter of rapid repeaters which scoured at my heels as I clamored up to the very highest reaches. And I dare say my assault on the sealed hatch was more my attempt to get inside than an effort of sabotage, alternating firing my blaster and clawing at the broiling edges trying to loosen it. Regrettably it likely would have stayed locked hadn’t the commander, or more accurately the Cultium wearing his skin, popped it himself slinging it up into my face and nearly knocking down over the edge where throngs of the infernal Xenos were climbing up after me. Pouring out from the destroyed tenement as a veritable swarm, most of which streamed towards Jurgen you understand who had retreated a safe distance and was harrying them in his sedate but accurate manner, and tens of them laboring up the steely hide with their leafy limbs.

So even the most optimistic of individuals might conclude their days were numbered as I did rolling my head back around from the swirling, dragging scene back to the hatchway and the commander emerging from it hand gun drawn. No hesitancy or compassion as he clipped it towards my center of mass, preparing to riddle that first before moving up to my head, but neither were there in mine as with a long, drawn out cry of “feth you” the toe of my boot sprang up to meet the edge of the gunman’s arm which bent marvelous out of the way thanks to the Cultium’s boneless, pliable structure. His shot flying wild to burrow into the ground somewhere as mine stitched across it frame, tearing away the dried husk and exposing the fragile creature within, incinerating most of it and sending the rest tumbling back down into the depth of the vehicle.

Leaving the turret hatch clear which I immediately latched on to then, sanity reasserting itself, instead of diving over to grapple with the crew and only prolong my death at the mob swarming up over the tank’s hide I flipped my carbine around forced it to eject the compresserized canister within it against all rules and regulations for safety. This I allowed to fall down the rim onto the immolated remains of the commander which I snapped my pistol clear and fired upon it before plunging over the rising heads of my surrounding alien combatants. Their noisy but thankfully inaccurate rippers, fashioned in their underground factories which favor bulk of quality I’ve heard Merikans refer to them as barely a step or two above “Zip guns”, serenading me as I sailed most unmajestically away from them. Barking a singular, guttural order as I harshly landed, already mid stride, for Jurgen to “leg it” which he dutifully complied with.

Catching up to me before the fire in the rumbling tank, instigated by the ignition of my carbine’s tibanna canister, set off, like an elaborate chain of dominos, the heavy petrol or munitions shells stored within it. The battletank, anything still alive within it, and the horde of green onto or surrounding it hull going up in one dirty conflagration. The shockwave of which felt like a ramming Star Destroyer as it slammed us to the ground, its effect partially absorbed by the ever dutiful Jurgen, and passed over. Leaving both of us panting, choking on acrid tangs of smoke as we rolled over onto our backs and looked back at my handiwork. The iron beast burst open, splayed gruesomely like a twisted mouth filled with broken teeth, amid a plain of frolicking flames which leapt, writhing with hunger, about the dark shadows we spied wiggling feebly on the ground trying to crawl to safety. More no doubt were coming but still it was a pleasant sight, even if the rising miasma polluted it slightly, and one I can honestly say I cherished watching the last traces of the treacherous Xeno perish in that purifying blaze.

“That settled them, it seems.” Jurgen phlegmatically ventured without need as he rose, extending a hand towards me…"
Extended excerpt from Lord Protector Krevin's autobiography " How to live through a life of service" circa 9 N.E. ( 1977 AD old calender)

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Jan 25, 2013 2:07 pm

Krevin is one ass-kicking dude... :)


IF his memoirs are to be believed, because we are reading his words, after all... :)

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Mon Feb 04, 2013 8:26 pm

“The murals appear to depict some pageantry of history, that is I think that is what is purpose is, in which starts by showing some calamity or destruction taking place, I mean assuming the wavy lines on everything is fire and those winged things scooping up people are not good, whereupon some leader or wise man, not to say the image couldn’t be female of course its very sketchy, appears gifted with some divine power or gift by which he appears to drive the Sky-beasts away and they celebrate him as a great hero, what I mean is the people not the winged things whom he drove away, and them it depicts them kneeling at his feet, well hunching over and they don’t really have feet as we would call them, and bringing in of his essence or perhaps knowledge then he, or she, is shown leading throngs of people similarly endowed with power followed by them building a fane or temple on a tall hill overlooking the world, not that I think the mountain is accurately represented but rather it’s a metaphorical symbolism. Then they all seem to die horribly.” Alvin Knobs, junior, regarding the murals found within walls of “Death’s Citadel”, soldiery moniker of a structure which employed skeletal remains in its construction.

Talon-II-

I. Coasters-Yakety Yak

Music greeted Gambil as the doors parted, nonsensical gibberish of non-lucid wordings and notes, playing uncomfortably loud from the room’s intercom. Utterly flippant and nonconformist the Agent concluded, completely devoid of the higher attributed of Human Culture which the Empire has set out to regenerate and impose upon a chaotic Galaxy. That the sniveling, apologetic droid bobbed its head soothingly to the poly-morphic meter only further cemented the pronouncement on the juvenile audio which the supposedly nefarious Man in Black was subjecting himself to.

That dark lord, source of many fervent and fearful whisper, resting with the wide back of his chair towards the entrance way, the wizened fool preoccupied with a flickering hologram of the Talon. The ship simulacrum rotating in a leisurely pace, highlighting and briefly expanding certain segments revealing maintenance areas or disused storage bins, which he from time to time dipped his creased head from to check the display of his datapad he clutched in one glove encased hand.

Wholly vulnerable and bare Gambil couldn’t help but think, the slightest ripple betraying the change in his stream of thoughts. His gait never outwardly altering through he suddenly became conscious of his every breath, every scrape of his sole against the metallic deck, or the whisper of his coat as he reached in for the compact blaster. Thankfully for the uncouth and vagabond music volume, cushioning all noises as he eased his weapon clear…

“Shooting a member of Imperial security is an offense punishable by death. Most slow I believe.” Rasped Parvus swiveling around from his display to face Gambil.” Assuming you survive the attempt of course.”

“Merely pressing a point old man. About the dangers of being unguarded or careless.” He wheezed back in a voice nearly as raw and death like as the old hand.

Soothing drink the Emperor’s eye, the Negotiator’s swill had stung like TIE fuel when it had went down. The tiny chips of “flavoring wood” catching on the tender tissues of his throat making what felt like a million-million tiny scratches down its length. Not unlike the coolant grog, processed between shifts at the refinery, he’d drank as a youth on his bloated, infested ecumenopolis of a birth world. Shortening the lifespan of his various organs no doubt but the cheap fluid had at least been some escape from the dingy recluse of Hell and squalor in which he’d been born to and escaped from.

“Of which I am neither.” The Man in Black answered, with a smile which made Hoth seem tropically warm, reclining in his seat while revealing that charm of a gold coin of his.

Letting it play across the fingers of one hand, the dull hue of its surface twinkling between the folds of the glove’s black fabric, as he divided his attention on his younger associate and his scrolling datapad. The former approaching the divide of the desk between them, his hand removed from his blaster, and leaning across it to access one of the built in terminals. Moments later the ongoing selection ended with laser cleanness dropping the room back to its natural stillness.

“Of course you are, but if I may what purpose did all that noise serve.” Gambil asked equally icily as he found a seat across from the elder Agent.” In the name of the Emperor it sounded like a stricken Ambull.”

“It’s a Merikan song, a “Yakety-Yak”, which we’ve managed to obtain from the Imperium’s own archives.” Parvus said by way of explanation.

Setting his pad down and bringing up a selected transcripts of Rynth’s files accessed on the screen before the younger Agent which immediately highlighted and expanded a specific entry for his benefit.

“He accessed it, briefly, along with his other searches of Merikan cultural factiods. All esoteric and quite useless militarily speaking. I found it…a discrepancy. More so than his already erratic behavior and actions.” The Man in Black said slowly letting Gambil go through each entry, allowing him to realize that it, however paltry, included nearly their entire sum of knowledge on the Merikan threat.

“So he had absolutely no taste for music. I’d hope you would have committed yourself to a somewhat greater task than proving that.” The younger man shrugged producing and lighting a deathstick and almost immediately regretting it.

The hot fumes stinging as he inhaled, sending red hot coals reminders of what his birth world’s polluted atmosphere had felt like, which he involuntarily tried to vomit back up. The gaseous seepage, along with the disturbed phlegm, helping to turn the last of his sentence into an even more warped and gravely imitation of its former self.

“Actually I’d conducted a clearance three internal scan confirming his biosignature is no longer aboard the Talon-II, verified that no ships or shuttles have entered or left the Destroyer since the time of your failed apprehension implying Rynth has either been disposed of by what forces he was employed by or is employing relatively sophisticated means of subterfuge.” Parvus indulgently ticked off.” I’ve also correlated the three most likely vectors of informational transgression from this ship to an outside source and interrogated them through to no avail.”

Entering a new command the withered Agent brought up on display the Operator number and service photo of three crewmembers of, initially, no apparent connection. The group composed of a mid level Stormtrooper officer, a Naval Lieutenant and a civilian “barkeep” attached to one of the more respectable cantina’s the three were unlikely to cross paths let alone converge in the city sized Destroyer. But yet a common thread they did share, one which grimly blossomed in Gambil’s psyche as what Parvus said sunk in.

“Efficient but I would have like to be kept briefed on any new leads, for courtesy if nothing else.” Gambil croaked at last eyeing the three unsuspected traitors.” I suppose I couldn’t cross interrogate them to cross-verify your findings could I?”

“I’m afraid none of them survived the experience. Audio logs are available for your review, censured of course for any material which does not pertain to our investigation and which could potentially damage the integrity of Imperial Security.” The Man in Black expectedly answered threading the weave of cloak and deception by which the Agency lived and died by.

“Of course, your reputation does proceed you. But if I were to stake that I, as an experienced operative, should be privy an unredacted disclosure of what occurs on my ship your response would be?” The younger prodded.

“ To explain that by comparison you are a naked babe in the woods, naïve to the hostile fates and destinies in which our ilk swim through.” Parvus lectured catching his rolling coin between two fingers and returning it to a pocket.” That your are too Reek-headed for your own good and likely to get yourself and those you work with killed if pushed beyond your current station of skill.”

“Feth I am, you old maggot. I’m not a dribbling old fool, a half phantom creature living off of myth and exaggerated legend. Nor am I scion of some pampered fool and a wanton slut needing a vocation to tide himself over, I clawed my way here. On the backs of the dead and the misery of the dying.” Gambil cursed, stupidly ignorant of the true depths of those words.

Mistaking an early frost for the long, sorrow filled winter twilight; the slight ache for the amputation. Still young, eager to prove himself to his Emperor or, in keeping with Bureau hiring practices, a non-existent father. Still naïve enough not to understand the difficulty of the Line lay not in perishing but in living; surviving with the memory of the faces. The faces of the victims, some deservedly so, which for the Man in Black stretched out beyond his field of vision like a sea.

“Ashen, grayish-green.” Parvus said at last, picking up his datapad again and pretending to study it even as his mind was lightyears hence.” Mottled texture.”

“Come again?” The Man in Black heard asked, the vigorous voice warm and eager compared to his more desiccated one.” Hello? You still with me?”

“She was. You spoke of the misery of the dying, of stepping on the dead. Saren Aseca. Twi’lek, then seven standard years old. Found literally underfoot beneath nearly a meter of soot and detritus beside what I assume had been her mother.” Parvus recited slowly without looking, eyes on that yester time, that cold and drab world of gray.” Have you ever seen the result of a hypermatter explosion? Makes a Proton bomb look like a damp spark, erased the city proper. Carved a fifteen kilometer crater across the planet’s surface, scouring the outer provinces leaving nothing but blacken ruins which were then swallowed by the grungy sleet of ash. Didn’t stop for days choking anything which hadn’t burned to death, crushing underfoot every last stubborn trace of life. Of civilization. And from this Saren was recovered. Alive if only just.”

Parvus remembering, with icy clarity, that sickly, mewling little thing he’d dragged up from the cloying flakes of soot. As well as each of the thousands of her immolated townfolk and in turn the untold millions whom had been vaporized in the capitol city; having poured over the census data along with meteorological charts and industrial diagrams to be better work out the “industrial accident”. Distinctly recalling without omission the myriad and tangled weave of fate which had so brutally intersected the Man in Black’s life with Saren’s.

A Corellian merchant tired of the troubles of the Galaxy had “leased” a former Neimoidian colonial world from the newly born Empire, one just far enough from the major shipping lanes to be of no interest to the Star Fleets already attenuated across the known galaxy but not far enough to be unreachable. Attracting dissidents and refugees because of this as well as its High Lord Governor failing to subscribe to the norms and standards of High Human Culture; among those the skilled alien scientists and engineers whom were either being purged from the former Republic or forcefully recruited for “special projects”. The slow, collating effect of their talents and abilities leading to developments, such as hypermatter reactors, which the Emperor was dismayed to see in a world with such an independent streak. Seeing another Alderaan, or a Mon Cala had the Emperor possessed prophetic sight, in the otherwise unremarkable world.

And so the Man in Black had been called to “fix” the problem, nullifying a gestating threat as well as sowing a visceral warning against other, civilian, attempts to harness the raw power of hypermatter. And all it had taken, once the plan had been set in motion, was a few bribes to obtain the needed clearance access and an unscrupulous “partner” whom mistakenly believed they were to hold the city hostage. And with that the capitol’s power plant, the first generation of annihilation cores which would have allowed the world to generate nigh endless energy, had went up.

“Have you ever seen radiation burns? Up close?” Parvus continued.” Very nasty, never heal right. Assuming the afflicted person lives long enough for them heal. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a little girl, her body covered with such burns, and seen the struggle within to comprehend what has transpired? To know she’ll bare the marks of your deed for the rest of her life? No? Until then you are naïve, inexperienced and in my book green.”

“Don’t tell me the big bad boogeyman got a conscious. Did you hurt an itty-bitty girl and want to cry over it?” Gambil wheezed, exhaling a pungent plume of smoke from his ravaged passageway.” Life, for us at least, goes on. If you don’t have the stomach well…I can think of a few young bulls who are ready to take your gilded spot old man.”

“A conscious? Doubtful. Had I been ordered to I’d have snapped her neck right then and there. But I would remember her regardless, her and the other eight hundred million, three hundred-fifty-six thousand, four hundred and nine who ultimately perished from the incident and immediate fallout.” Parvus answered, looking up from his pad, with the cluck of a lecturing professor.” I accept what I’ve done, what I will do, without reservations or varnishing. I accept the monster I am and what I’m capable of. Something you’ll never learn until it’s too late.”

New Hope-

II. Alice Cooper-Poison

It had started to rain. A hard, murky filthy rain which stabbed the grungy street outside like sheets of steel knives or at least Burkhalter found them imagery most readily appearing in his mind. Daggers falling from the sky posed at the forefront of every, in his opinion, right thinking German. The Sword of Damocles having returned above the Fatherland’s head, now through in sleek spaceships and vast legions rather than Atomic bombers through the ultimate result was the same.

Unless he and his chosen comrades acted with utmost deft, a thought which made him shiver more than because it included Klink sitting a fawning elbow length beside him in his own chair but the creature which was entering into the rented apartment’s living area. The warmth and light of which somehow faltering when it reached the creature, unwrapping its rain slicker from about itself, masking it underneath a cloudy shadow. Likely mercifully, there many things man wasn’t meant to study to closely, through no less disconcerting. Hammering just what it was he’d partnered with.

“Your late.” He growled at it, refusing to be intimidated even by such as it.” Enjoying yourself I presume.”

“Immensely.” Slytherina answered removing her coat and hanging it, the shadows parting enough to reveal a face that would be angelic if not for the subtly wicked radiance of it.” But modesty forbids any further. To business then.”

As if the witch had any modesty, or a soul for that matter, in which to violate. But to protest would be to play along with whatever game she’d currently made up to entertain herself and be a waste of breath. Even Klink evidently understood this staying uncharacteristically silent as she helped herself to the remaining seat or perhaps the fool merely was glued to the soft undulations of her movements. Either way he stayed quiet rather than pollute Burkhalter’s train of thought, who not for the first time cursed that the self-aggrandizing fool was one of the few whom he could trust not to betray him, which he was most grateful for.

“Indeed, let us discuss business.” He concurred trying assert control on the flow of the conversation.” Perhaps we can discuss the recent attacks expelled upon the Fatherland, attacks brought about by the plodding efforts of your kind?”

“And yours.” The creature of the night breathed, voice low and inviting, as the door the chamber parted once more for the entering servant.

Deaf and mute so he could betray no secrets of what was discussed the old, gray haired man none the less cringed and recoiled as he offered Slytherina her cup and saucer. Showing not the slightest improvement at the disarming smile she treated him to or the slight twinkle in her eye as she accepted the beverage. Rising it to her pale lips to sate her building thirst before continuing, lips which were a darker ruby when she lowered the glass away. All the more striking due to pale white of her skin.

“Not everyone is as well suited for the missions of intrigue as we are. But I can assure you no secrets have been divulged from the Family of Blood.” She answered when she’d finished, tip of her tongue poking out as it slowly circled those crimson stained lips.” As for the attacks themselves they are regrettable but survivable.”

“That is a matter of some opinion.” Burkhalter answered studying her unflappable demeanor for any chinks or weaknesses.” And my opinion carries more weight. We will not suffer further reprisals because of your sloppy work. We’ve already taken steps to improve our efforts.”

Mostly by having Major Hochstetter clean “house” with a little intimidation tactics and a lot of bullets. Those whom remained could be counted on to be more cautious in the future.

“As have we. There should be nothing more to fear.” She answered rising her cup again, the red liquid inside flowing smoothly past those scarlet lips.” Not even from the Man in Black.”

The last said in a tone equally respectful and vengeful, a guttural quality almost curse like as she pronounced the living shadow which so purposely hunted those who dwelt in it. The mortal almost singular in uncovering the various informants and contacts the Imperium as well as the Family of Blood had established snuffing them out and trailing them back. Supposedly, if Burkhalter’s sources could be trusted, the Immortals had even tried to trap the shadow-man without success. Rebuking the threat on his life and sending the challenger scampering away with at least one less limb then he’d started with. Hardly fatal for one who was the living dead but painful to one’s pride.

At mentioning the common nemesis of both the Family and the Imperium, who unlike the others didn’t seem blind but instead warily aware, the two dueling orators’ conversation stalled and perished leaving a lingering silence which was only broken by Klink a few pregnant moments later.

“You know…” He exclaimed in the drawn out manner which meant he was trying to sound intelligent and incisive.”…I really don’t think there is such a person as the Man in Black. I think the Imperials just made it up to try and intimidate us. With multiple agents and costumes that is.I mean he’d have to be practically in two places at once to track down one of your coven in the city while uncovering our black market transaction on the Wraith-

“Klink! Shut up!” Burkhalter familiar thunder came.

Through the transaction was sordidly broken up, with the Imperial perpetrator literally impaled and jabbed on the prow of the Destroyer, with his operatives involved either dead or reassigned it struck against him to reveal to the Family what goodies they’d managed to acquire beforehand. Surplus anti-gravs, pulse weapons array, scanning units, an entire arsenal leaps ahead of what even the quasi-insane engineers Addam and James were proposing. All for the Imperium to slowly break down and deduce, adding to its ever increasing arsenal.

“That is interesting.” Slytherina, seeing no point to add that the Family had set up their own trades as well, prodded with a devious grin.” Then tonight we’ll be a very fruitful evening.”

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Thu Feb 07, 2013 8:40 pm

A little extra something to tide you until my next update. Mostly a bit of fluff for a certain individual whose influance has shaped and directed just about all of my primary Imperial characters. Well Krevin, Tyler and Jackson at least.

“Shields depleted, ion-drives destroyed, enemy cruiser closing for broadside…we’re about through here. Captain Krevin, the banner’s yours. Get my men home.” Commodore Yuran’s last broadcast before his flagship, Indomitable, was destroyed during the battle of Gamma-Alpha-91

Imperial Classics-The Early Years:

Last time on Imperial Classics{The Early Years}an insidious plot! Through the Empire expands mercilessly on nearly all fronts an enigmatic admiral plots a dangerous course. Summoning famed but forgotten General Butlerian, the hero of Ba’run, the admiral weaves his plot of intrigue. One which promises great rewards or the darkest of defeats...

Gocdlrow-

I. Rolling Stones-Sympathy for the Devil

The suite was among the most prized and luxurious spaces on the grungy Mech World, a vast and unending jungle of belching refineries and churning factories, squatting Neimoidian like beneath the brown miasma of its polluted atmosphere. Its luxurious walls sealing it apart from the outerworld, creating a serene bubble whose air was perpetually filtrated and cleansed for consumption as well as perfumed to enrich the experience. A soothing, syrupy aroma which subtly made one think of long, verdant fields of grass, swaying trees of vibrant life and coolly refreshing babbling brooks. Treats long erased on Ecumenopoleis such as Gocdlrow, the great magnitude of its inhabitances destined to spend their entire lives without seeing any living vegetative matter but the “pond scum” which thrived in the planet’s murky oceans, and merely one of the gilded indulgences the suite owner refused to spare for his guests.

From the soothing jets of the hot tubes along the bathhouses, both private and communal, which took one edge of the spacious apartment to the sedentary “spice dens” or cantina guests might have all but any whim sated. All while catered to by a host of female servants chosen both for their exotic diversity as well as comeliness, the better to encourage a festive and congenial atmosphere the suite’s owner found so expedient when negotiating deals. Through currently only two shared but one infinitesimal fraction of the cavernous habitat and the atmosphere held the icy reservations of a morgue.

Of the pair one was General Butlerian, an immense creature of grotesquely exaggerated human features and coarse, necrotic skin. The latter result of the toils of war as well as the carefully orchestrated routine of radiations and chemical baths he endured to prolong his life. Well over a hundred standard years of which he’d devoted to the martial arts, nearly as many worlds giving him ample opportunity to prefect and wield his craft. As well as supplying him with a pageantry worth of unique dress uniforms and medals he could don for receptive occasions. Such as the specifically tailored Atrisian he’d chosen to wear for the cordial summons, replenished with the sigils of that world’s legendary Assault Corps.

The other, standing to the General’s resting his great bulk, was the more slender and wiry compared to his esteemed guest. His patrician features sternly engraved, chiseled with deep attention, but capable of softening into boyhood mirth at the slightest provocation. Dressed in a trim but unassuming Imperial Admiral uniform he appeared, if not longer the poster image of the Navy with the gray creeping in through his air or the slight weathering of his tanned flesh, every millimeter paternal and trustworthy. As he deliberately willed it to be, finding it beneficial in his line of work.

“Awful business. Forcing retirement…after I gave the Empire seven years of service and the Republic before another twenty.” Butlerian blathered holding up his crystalline goblet for another helping of Saurian brandy.

Which the Admiral gracefully aided him to while politely refraining from pointing out it had been in light of the General’s long and distinguished career rather than ignorance that he’d been retired, with full benefits and pay, from the galaxy at large. Notably that of a freelance and unaligned mercenary who’d undertaken numerous campaigns to usurp or overthrow planets’ reigning governments; elements increasingly at odds with the consolidated empire the Emperor was trying to forge.

At the time there had been talks of a rather more straightforward and long term solution to the problem of the General, dead heroes did after all have their uses, through one which the Admiral had curtailed. A pragmatic man by nature he’d seen potential still in the old warrior, an investment he now saw to collect.

“And after you put down that droid revolt. Saving how many star systems? How many tens of billions of lives?” The Admiral asked rhetorically as the aged bottle of Saurian brandy, easily older than the General, flowed into his guest’s glass.

“Was a mechanical cancer, would have eaten the Empire out from within if I hadn’t put them to the torch.” Butlerian responded obviously pleased, lifting his now filled goblet to his pursed lips which he wetted before continuing.” But for me the Emperor wouldn’t be on his throne but caste aside in some reclamation pit and how am I repaid for my troubles? Virtual banishment to some backwater moon. Forgotten and abandoned. These younglings today, those pups coming up through the academy, they don’t understand. About duty or dedication or what it takes to win not just an engagement but the war.”

“Of course. How quickly youth abandons.” The Admiral responded unsure, considering his guest’s probable age, if he was included in those “pups” or not.” And frankly its good to hear you say this. Frankly I worried the hero of Ba’run may have grown soft in his pampered exile.”

“Soft? Well you can report to those callow younglings you command that the man who hurled the Tyrant of Ba’run from the ramparts has become anything but soft.” The General barked, sudden vicious note in his voice, rising in a sluggish but determined manner more befitting a beached Hutt than a human.

And like a Hutt the General’s leathery flesh was proof enough against all but the most crippling of wounds while his ample frame and bloated muscular allowed him prowess over crushing strength. Suffice enough to overpower the Ba’run tyrant, himself a Gamorrean, and throw his corpse to shatter on the ground below.

“And you have no idea how glad I am to hear it.” The Admiral, feigning embarrassment and humility, answered.” Not to impress the whelps I have running about but that you might be interested in a little venture I have in the offing.”

Which was like dangling credits before a Neimoidian merchant, Butlerian’s eyes lighting up with fervent glow as his entire posture changed and softened. Slighted ire replaced with cautious optimism when next he spoke, through only after draining the rest of his chalice for a “nip” of courage.

“And I don’t suppose this venture of yours may have need for an experienced military officer.” He implored holding out his glass once more for a refill.” One calloused to the slings and hardships of War?”

“It most certainly does. I suppose you’ve heard of the Diabolus Abyssus pocket sector?” The Admiral asked with a trace of hesitancy as he poured another helping, deeply aware this was were his deal could flounder.

Certainly no shortage, of officers or enlisted, who’d baulk at the idea of following the steps of one of the Empire’s most failed operations. Through Butlerian, through mixture of experience and iron forged confidence in his own abilities, was not among their number. His engorged, mottled face showing a flicker of surprise before a joyishly wicked smile sprouted from his fat lips.

“Repeating the Yuran debacle? Hopefully the Emperor learned his lesson. How many…what are the Imperial chaps calling them now? Battlegroups? How many can I expect Him to lend me to command?” The Army officer pressed, battle plans already forming inside his gargantuan cranium, while raising his goblet yet again.

“Virtually none actually.” Came the Admiral’s reply, inwardly smiling as the General choked on his beverage, smoothly stepping aside to set the Saurian bottle down and fetch a towel for his guest.” I’m afraid this isn’t an officially sanctioned campaign. As such I’ve been forced to be a little more open in my recruitment. Rest assured you’ll have all the troops you’ll need.”

Which was the truth. From mercenaries to disciples looted from a monastery world which viewed the Emperor as the will of the force made manifest a worthy army was being accrued from the disparate and unorthodox elements. Including a regiment of Wookiee slave-soldiers “altered” by that mad Sith cultist the Admiral had culled from a “fishing” trip to Korriban. Scarred and twisted by the long dead Sith Lords whom haunted that dreadful planet the nut talked little of sense or coherence, but rather prophecies and chosen ones, but could be made to serve with the proper “encouragement”.

“To do?” The General inquired pointedly having seen the holo-vids of Megarachnids in battle.

“For now, I merely want to scout the pocket sector. Establish a few forts and emplacements to sustain and supply subsequent exploration and expansion, that sort of thing.” The Admiral soothed.” Its over three hundred cubic lightyears of uncharted space, virtually a Ghost Nebula in its own right, posed dangerous close to our porous and under equipped border. From it has already spawned the hordes of the Megarachnid which test the patience and strength of the neighboring sector, one trembles to think what else we may find within its clutches.”

“Diabolus Abyssus will be a mass grave, you understand that admiral?” Butlerian asked accepting the towel in one meaty hand and dabbing at his jowls.” No matter your other intentions I’ll be forced to choke on it the dead before I’m finished. You must be comfortable of that be we set this, otherwise you should seek other solutions. Perhaps merely a Cordon fleet.”

“ You’ll have to do what you must do, if you feel the need you may drown the entire pocket sector in the fallen but understand one thing clearly. I’m not doing this to annihilate the Megarachnid race.” The Admiral spoke pouring himself a helping of brandy.” No, far from it. They have too much potential, too much promise to just erase from existence. Part of my reason for what I plan to be a series of expeditions is to obtain a gravid female of the species.”

“A treacherous prize, as Yuran could tell you.” The General toyed, not wholly repulsed by the idea of the attempt.

“The Commodore was a fool, underestimated the race’s tenacity. And it cost him.” The Admiral hotly rebutted.” Worse he’d put the Megarachnid on edge, remaining spy-drones attest to them strengthen Gamma-Alpha-91 closing it from us. We’ll have to go deeper, find another verdant world which we can prey upon.”

Having been attached to the Force Superiority which Yuran had squandered, on the Indomitable until nearly the end when he escaped aboard his personal yacht, arguing with the insufferable old goat about his archaic and tepid fleet displacement when bold and quick moves were called for. The Admiral had demanded they strike immediately on exiting hyperspace, whole and without reserve, in order to overwhelm and destroy the immediate defense assets. But the codger Yuran had delayed, playing it out in stale formation like he was a child down at the learning crèche, maneuvering his cruisers and their support ships into positions he’d believed would maximize their effect while minimizing their danger. Through that captain who’d taken command after the Indomitable went up had showed promise, shown vigor…

“Perhaps.” Butlerian allowed looking into the contents of his own chalice.” But you said that was only part of your reasoning. If it isn’t to destroy the vermin, what is it?”

“Well in the few short years since we’ve made contact with them the Megarachnid race has gone from vagabonds stealing unwary ships to taxing a Sector group, a force of several thousand warships, and entrenching on planets so deeply that ultimately only the sterilizing act of planetary bombardment can loosen them.” The Admiral whispered, a far off look in his eye.” And there are some in the intelligence circles who claim the race as a whole is egressing from something…some other force of army inside the Diabolus Abyssus. And if so I want it.”

But more than that he would have it, just as he possessed a Sith Battledroid locked up on Gocdlrow or a race of cybernetic insects gestating in maturation chambers. All quivers in his bow, swords he could wield in his fight. Weapons lesser men ignored from lack of vision or courage, weapons he would chain and make bow to his personage.

“Then all which remains is for me to inspect my troops.” The General bellowed raising his glass.” To victory!”

“And all that we deserve.” The Admiral echoed holding his own beverage aloft.
Last edited by sonofccn on Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Praeothmin
Jedi Master
Posts: 3920
Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Quebec City

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:45 pm

Why, you devious Admiral, you!

Man, all your higher ups are plotting sons-o'-bitches, aren't they?
It's like you don't even believe there can be people of power who are honest and upfront... *whistles innocently* :)

sonofccn
Starship Captain
Posts: 1657
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 4:23 pm
Location: Sol system, Earth,USA

Re: A NEW TERROR( STAR WARS CROSSOVER)

Post by sonofccn » Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:30 pm

Another update where I stall with attempts at characterzation but I swear Sylph and the Man in Black will fight and that the plot will, someday, get moving again.

“…land did fester and the people did writhe and fall, their bodies swelling in decay till each burst open revealing winged scarabs. Said vermin, glistening with the revolting dew of death, taking flight until the very skies darkened and became turbulent with their number becoming a living canvas in which hideous faces formed could form. Leering, misshapen visages fleshed from beetles who did speak in the Old tongue, the most ancient. So it was that dark wizard Athor Kun , Immortal and high priests to the long departed gods, did announce his presence to Khonak and his party…”Excerpt from the mythic fable the “trials of Khonak”

Talon-II-

I.3 doors down-away from the sun

He was alone again, the Man in Black, his only companion the soft trill of the computer terminals as they carried out his tasks. Continuing scans, cross checking data strands for a possibly overlooked connection, projection detailed schematic sections and myriad other menial tasks needing the minimal of his attention. Confident that, if one was motivated, there were too many places to hide on an Imperial class Star Destroyer to make a search practical nor did he believe Rynth still existed in a meaningful sense to be found.

The stakes far larger than an errant Stormtrooper and a young bull with his pride tarnished, like the game of Regicide what mattered was the endgame which Parvus had set for. The peons pushed into their proper alignment and now all that remained was for his opponent to take the bait and overextend. Freeing him to take the Emperor piece and the board. But that required waiting, an act obviously Gambil couldn’t provide. The young agent, sulking from his dressing down, becoming increasingly agitated and argumentative about the “delays”. Pacing with the dragging of the hour, his ragged and torn voice becoming shriller as he alternated between barkish shouting matches and long, grumbling sessions where he huffed on his death sticks.

Wanting, so he said, to “do something” not just sit around “hoping Rynth will walk through the door”. Nor did he intend any more pointless questioning with obstinate Stormtroopers or uppity Negotiators rather, as he so vehemently described it, that the time for “subtly” was past. Boasting, still so cocky, that he could show the Man in Black a thing or two about an “intense” interrogation. Through unless the young bull had ever been mind probed by a force user his imagination faltered at the depth to which Parvus experienced and held himself too. Granted he required a crude surgical tool to excite the region of the brain which regulated the sensation of pain but its application rivaled that of the Separatist Interrogator’s.

Needlessly, and uselessly, the Man in Black had explained there wasn’t further need for such acts yet. The humble questioning he so reviled were, as they spoke, creating proverbial ripples through the ship. Whispers, gossip and scuttlebutt traversing across the Destroyer reaching parts they couldn’t. And in turn, like a string of photons striking a reflective surface, this talk would create its own ripples, its own waves, when it intersected the culprit or culprits. Waves which would be picked up by those in Parvus’s employ, most unknowingly, and sent to them. Requiring only patience to root out the guilty conspirators but Gambil wouldn’t have it.

In truth it was less a lack of patience on the younger man’s part but humble frailties of the body and spirit which had sharpened his tongue to such a razor’s edge and dissolved his restraint so. The deprivations of sleep, growing ever longer with each crawl of the hour, sapping him until he retreated, with the droid yapping at his heels, no doubt to wrangle a palm full of stims to cut against the drain. Through not without its own share of problems, first and foremost the addictive cycle it fostered or the slight treble which built up in a user’s limbs if he indulged too often.

Either potentially fatal in their line of work through untold scores of Agents took the risks. Parvus among them, much comfort gleamed knowing vitality and alertness was just a pill away, until he’d been hunted through the long, twilight nights of a death world’s jungle. It had been just after the War, the mammoth droid armies shutting down across the Galaxy and the newly minted Emperor Palpatine announcing the New Order, not that he’d been aware stuck Rimward. Tracking an byzantine alliance between the turbulent planet Mandalore, the Death Watch usurpers, seemingly half the organized crime cartels in the Galaxy and a shadowy new Sith cult. One led by an enigmatic Zabrak whom, so it was whispered, had united the deeply disparate factions and plunged the war torn Mandalore once more into brutal civil war.

Then seemingly vanishing at his triumphed zenith leaving it all to turn to ash. If he had ever truly existed, Parvus on the trail struggling to prove one way or the other when a troop of Death Watch soldiers ambushed him forcing his transport down on a verdant but lethal planet-moon orbiting a Jovian mass. One with harsh, short days and unending nights as the worldlet slunk behind its parent body, hounded during both extremes by Death Watch with little more than he could salvage from an escape pod. Learning, huddled beneath a murky pond infested with leeches with a shallow breath-pipe, laying in wait to spring an ambush for an armored warrior how much sleep he needed and how to deal with its loss.

Allowing him to be alert and useful when needed and yet catch needed sleep when the moments arose unlike jittery stim users, through the need was still to minimal to be pressing. Instead the Man in Black exploited the dull passage by attending his not inconsiderable arms and munitions.

His hat and cloak, smoothed and folded, laying before him on the table’s desk alongside a compact blaster, a heavy disruptor, nearly Gamorrean in its blunt design and power, his scratched and marred durasteel handled sword and his thermal lance all waiting to be polished and clean. Waiting their turn as he finished up with the “sineater” holster gripped about his forearm, its mechanical limb snapping forward and back towards his waiting palm as he worked to remove even the faintest trace of grit or grime that might hinder the operation.

Parvus taking one of the gray skinned canisters arranged about him on the table and spraying small jets of lubricant into the harness’s crevices, dabbing them with a mechanic rag to obtain the excess, and then repeating the whole thing again. Tedious, repetitive work but one in which his mind could lock into keeping it from wandering. From dredging up old memories needlessly, ones best left undisturbed from their moldering sepulcher.

Not the planets’ names which he’d destabilized nor the faces of his victims or even the giddy thrill one couldn’t help but feel to wield such power over death. Or life if he allowed himself to be honest, every decision made which spared someone certainly pleasing on some level at the power such acts represented. No the painful remembrance was from before. Before his meeting the likes of Vail, before he met and accepted what was to become the Man in Black on that moldering battlefield of destruction, before he’d even raised his hand and swore an oath to defend the Republic against all enemies both without and within. To all that which was his previous life.

One of infinite the Man in Black had experienced, lived in his long, seemingly unending existence of destruction. But those had been parts Parvus had subsumed, melodramatic theater spun as part of some greater web of deceit. A friendly Naval Ratting found at a cantina, a grandfatherly patron, or an upstanding man of business and piety. All facades, without substance, worn like shadow holograms. His life, his first and primus one, had been different.

Genuine. Authentic, what he’d felt he’d felt rather than a construct as part of some ploy or gambit. He had friends, parents, people whom he could talk to earnestly and in turn listen. More than that his life was anchored by something to believe, perhaps not in the same way as the Pius Dea might understand the word, that malignant and stubborn worship-cult, but a faith all the same. An unflinching understanding of the bedrock of society and its ideals, that democratic process, liberty, and order were not things to simply to be abandoned for convenience.

That the bloated politicians voting, in the lecherous name of peace, to banish half of the Republic to barbarism was just as treacherous as the Separatists whom strove to erect where the elite and powerful trampled the uncounted trillions of common folk beneath them. A Galactic view, sharp and defined, which solaced and guided him when he made those first trembling steps into the inky blackness. A home star by which to pilot his self by. Now such light was denied him, its absence painfully noted in comparison.

The light was a lie, but a soothing one, however one which had been peeled from his eyes in an incremental but steadfast pace. Such as the atrocious acts by the hypocritical and pompous Jedi order and their mythic “ghost prison”, by the mass burning of Confederate fortress worlds regardless of the sapient life residing to the brutal elimination of the vestige Republic by now Emperor Palpatine.

But with the lie’s passing he’d learned some aspect of the greater truth, some objective position at the Galaxy at large. Learning that it was not tarnished, for such believe suggested an original pristine state to which one could work towards and bring about, nor mismanaged, needing only a brilliant visionary to bring about the utopian dreams all sapient seemed to cling to, but that it was a vile and ugly beast. One where repeatedly down through the ages men, and women, had strove unshackle their brethren and evaluate themselves upon their backs to the very heights of godhood. So that the very Galaxy could be regimented and rearranged according to their whims.

And what of the Creator, the Goddess, the mythic Force which supposedly ruled over the universe? What deity or deities existed upon their ethereal perch gave no signs and spoke no words at the blasphemies of “Man”, perhaps too busy enjoying the spectacle or maybe weeping at their hobbled creation repeated tearing at its own flesh.

And through the never ending cycles beings such as the Man in Black stalked, cultivating it, enabling it and sustaining off of it. Like the dreaded devil-god Nurg-leth whom feasted upon the pestilence and misery of the dead and dying. That was a truth as well…so Parvus cleaned his weapons.

Taking each in turn, ensuring his tools were at the upmost and ready, and only afterwards when all was done, after they’d been neatly put away and his cloak and hat had been returned to him did Parvus take out small, cylindrical holo-emitter. Projecting from it a green skinned twi’lek child. One about eleven or twelve standard years of age with scars, the ones you could see, gracefully fading under a regular routine of bacta treatments and eyes as bright as opals. If not brighter than even the stars themselves.

Even in the handspan length image they shone radiance, twinkling jewels which looked up at him just as they always did when he activated the program, the image captured from a fleeting moment years before. A frozen sliver of time which he could carry with him always, one of many she’d experienced since that grungy, miserable day. An extending sequence which, but for a command, could have seen it severed.

He’d have broken her neck and would it have mattered? This the Man in Black constantly questioned. Would not he have found some other orphan of his actions, some other pitiable creature to salve his pangs? Was that not all she’d ever been to him, a crutch that if not relieving him of his actions eased them? Perhaps…the morals and motivation of Man had filled scribes of Galactic philosophers for eons…each trying to lay down some understanding on what was as unfathomable as the Galaxy. Meaningless and pointless arguments and while there was a lot of that going around he wasn’t for it.

“Stay safe.” He whispered to the image, crouched so that no other ears could catch its sound.

Judgment, Captain quarters-

II.Metallica-Fade to black

“No, no, no…the absolute worst had to Corthrina, heir to some duchy back on a Mid rim rock you never heard of.” Krevin elucidated loosely and in a slurred pitch as he leaned across the table and refilled Tyler’s cup.

The two of them sitting at Krevin’s table with a small forest of emptied bottles at their side and the growing treasure of their Sabbac game between them, both of which were the accruement of many determined hours of investment. With many more still to play if the Commodore could help it, continuing his story as he slumped back into his seat. Spilling a dark stream from the held bottle into his own beverage as he talked while the SubCommander, whose question had piqued the round of tale swapping, listening eagerly.

“Upper classman-at the academy. I’d just arrived and she caught my eye…big mistake.” The Commodore laughed slapping the bottle down at the table for emphasis.” she was one of those career minded dames, you know the type. Wanted to be a Grand Admiral before the Emperor had even created the position-and hell-bent to prove she’d be the best at it. And I just-I just got tired of it. I wanted fun, not a career which was what she planned for me. Not to say she didn’t have her moments, when she smiled her whole face just lit up like a supernova. Its just…she didn’t smile.”

Finishing Krevin picked and raised his mug ceiling ward giving a toast to old Corthrina whom finished a Imperial Captain of a Star Destroy, before her and her vessel’s untimely vaporization by Rebel sabotage, which Tyler echoed. Both tipping back their glasses and slapping them back down, the bottle circling around once more.

“ So she was a little demanding, some of the best females are. Now-Now I got one for you, back when I was on the Abyss-what nine or ten years ago?- we pull into port and somehow Preial, the ugly fether, lands taking some Guildmaster’s daughter to a ball being thrown in our honor.” Tyler fumbled through dealing Krevin and him another card.” Now I didn’t really know SubCommander Preial that well but we both had served under the Admi- together under the same project and he needed to fix up his date’s cousin-now his lady was a work of art. Platinum blond, blue eye, sculpted figure, likely had daddy buy her all the proper Gene-Treatment, and I figured what the Feth. At the very least I could get close enough and win her away.”

“And did you?” The Commodore asked, wolfish grin threatening to break through his visage, finishing pouring and squinting at his for some reason squirming cards.

“ Hold on-Hold on. I’m getting to it. Like I said she was this stunning, alluring creature. And family being family I held out hope her cousin might be the same. Feth even if isn’t in the genes the family’s old lineage traders, from back when Hutts had a conscious, so they can afford to remove any blemishes.” Tyler, holding his face to his palm and laughing, chastised before continuing.” So I go right, me and my sort of friend Preial, we go and pick them up at her father’s estate. And his date’s absolutely ravishing, wearing a scarlet dress which looks like it was molded to her epidermis, and then I see her cousin. A fething Gamorrean, an honest to Emperor fething bloated Gamorrean Sow. Apparently the Guildmaster’s family had “bought” them into the family in order to facilitate some trade negotiations five centuries back, the corpulent creature before me descending from their equivalent of royalty I was told.”

Neither man doubting the immaterial of such pedigree when it came to the Gamorreans, the clannish, brute Xenos caring little for either pomp and spectacle or elegance and refinement. Instead, ruling from a fortress every bit as crude and durable as they were, their “king” would merely be the biggest, toughest brawler while his mate would be the meanest and most convincing.

Rather like the way Colonials' managed things Krevin imagined as he raised his glass again for Tyler’s toast. His subordinate ending it with a long, drawn out guttural and phlegm thick growl that he deduced was the woman’s name only after Tyler finished and slung his cup back. The Commodore belatedly following, choking partially on the burning fluid as he slammed his cup down once more on the table.

“So…what the feth did you do.” He wheezed, sagging against the table’s edge and struggling in vain to make the markings on his cards unscramble into coherency.” I mean-with the Sow.”

“It was tragic-very tragic…but the groundcar we took to the ball suffered-it suffered a small accident. Nothing serious but Preial suffered a broken leg. And my date, she was hurt too…both needing an evening in a Bacta tank. And of course Preial’s date was shaken up-startled-but I was there for her.” Tyler, rambling, spoke reaching over the table for the nigh empty bottle.” I comforted her and-and-she was great. Could teach Zeltrons things but that Sow…that was a face on her-you can’t beat that.”

“I can’t?” Krevin temporized while flummoxing his brain to remember if it was his bet or not.” What about what’s her name. That Inquisitor lady-you know the one. You threw her to me-“

“Vail? Inquisitor Vail? Fething hell. She is gorgeous-gorgeous.” The SubCommander slurred spilling just under half of what he poured, losing a little more when then slung his drink accusingly towards Krevin.” How dare-How dare you insinuate…that she is comparable to a thing-a thing whose name sounds like a belch.”

“Vail is lovely.” The Commodore said back reaching for the bottle, having concluded his memory difficulty stemmed from insufficient mental lubricant.” But for such a lovely places she drags me to the most dangerous girl. I think. But-But the thing of it is chasing mutants through a sewer isn’t my idea of romantic. Well afterwards, after we cleaned up, wasn’t bad but the whole sewer part. Plus the death part…”

“You make it sound like that was all she did-all she cared about. Vail is a very whimsical, enchanting woman. Who can kill you with a safety pin-but you won’t believe how often that comes in handy.” Tyler, spilling more as he tried to raise his glass and speak at the same time, continued to argue.

While Krevin merciless shook the bottle of Saurian brandy over his cup only to find the minutest drops slide free, barely enough to drown a microbe in, much to his displeasure. Attempting to add it to the pile, where it slipped off the side and crashed, he fumbled to his feet to retrieve a fresh one.

“I’m not saying she did it on purpose but-everywhere we went something seemed to happen.” The Commodore continued staggering a bit aimlessly about his quarters.” Remember-or did I not tell you?- that restaurant I took her to? That sky-orbital thing, floated on contra-gravs let your sight-see like a quarter of the bloody rock while you ate. I thought it would be a “nice” touch.”

“Isn’t that the orbital that got taken over by militants?” The SubCommander spoke up with a slight hesitancy, unsure as he was if what he was remembering was real or some silly holo-drama.

“Social-liberating militants. Fething Xenos incensed at the plight of their downtrodden people and they chose that night of all nights to make a spectacle.” Krevin whined as he half fell onto a cabinet, leaning on it heavily as he pulled its door open.” I’d planned white roses and wine and instead Vail and I to go all blasters blazing. That isn’t what I want in life, to everywhere I go to be shot at.”

“ I don’t fething believe that. That action, that excitement don’t tell me that isn’t what you want. That thrill of being a hero, of having everyone look in hushed awe at you…you love it.” Tyler insisted as the Commodore plucked a bottle from the cabinet and began to lumber back.” Ever since you were a child, don’t tell me you didn’t want it.”

“Ever since I was a child.” He agreed, wobbling back and forth.” For as long as I remember I wanted to be a soldier like Ranulph Tarkin, the hero of Troiken. Wanted to serve the Republic and save the Galaxy from Pirate Lords just like I saw in holo-dramas.”

Finding his seat, more by chance than skill, Krevin wrestled open the bottle and began to pour another helping. Continuing his equally warbling speech as he extended the drink towards his second in command.

“Father wouldn’t hear of it. Our people, he would say, came from a long line of diplomats, philosophers, artists and scholars. He wasn’t going to let me “trash” it all to live some juvie fantasy.” The Commodore continued sullenly.” Not that I listened, their was a War on to save the Republic’s soul and I was going to be part of it. Father didn’t take kindly to that, or when Palpatine ushered in the New order.”

“Few of your people did.” Tyler offered in what he thought was a helpful contribution.

“Couldn’t understand the Emperor was trying to save us, us humans, from the rabble which brought down the Republic. Thought we could leave in peace with those conniving sub-humans, that peace and rationality would prevail.” Krevin continued to mewl, his untouched beverage sitting in front of him alongside his untouched cards.” Fat lot of good it did them when the big D came.”

“They’d turned from the Empire, allied themselves with mad Jedi Windu. With Spaarti clone cylinders and the insanity to use them we would have been drowned in their foul kind.” Tyler, regurgitating the official public line, consoled.

“They betrayed the Empire, Bail Organa betrayed the Empire, I know. But what the feth is that.” The Commodore complained.” Thank you for your years of service oh and by the way we blew up your planet while you were comatose. They were my people, my fething family, and they were all killed.”

The ones on the planet of course, millions survived off world, ironically many in various positions in the Imperial military and infrastructure, through their “heart and soul” had been felled with their planet.

“ Honestly I think you had to much to drink. You’re getting sappy.” Tyler shrugged standing up.” Keep the pot, we can play for it tomorrow. When your back together.”

“I know- I know. Feth I’ve already betrayed and abandoned everything of my heritage according to my Father. He disowned me you know, said I was tyrant and a fool. Mother said I broke her heart, seeing me all proud in my uniform. Proud of the Star Fleet and what it stood for. They were foolish ones, blind and dumb to the cruelties of the Universe.” Krevin droned laying his head on the table.” But they didn’t deserve that, they weren’t traitors…they didn’t understand…that’s all…didn’t understand…”

Post Reply