Mission Absolution [Dark Empire]

[Maestus]

Coruscant
In Orbit

Aboard the Corvette, Maestus waited in relative silence. The occasional sounds from her boots as she paced around the relatively small bridge. Small compared to her flagship, at least. The Corvette was spacious enough, but be damned if the Twi'lek didn't feel vulnerable in the lil can.

Not helping her mood was the radio silence from the groups on the surface. By necessity, absolutely. That did little to assuage the Sith's irritability at the absence of communication. All the bridge officers were silent, as well. They were under strict orders to not speak unless there was a pressing update. So far, there was nothing to report.

Maestus contented herself with watching the ship traffic coming to and from the surface. Her comms officers monitored every public as well as private channels for any hint of danger below. Extraction was in place, but rarely did a plan go as designed once underway. She cast a glance over her shoulder, towards the blast doors that lead to the bridge. She considered whether to have a shuttle prepared. Time saver and whatnot. She looked to her tactical officers.


Prep a shuttle.​

 

[Isar]

Reave Mercy

Dal stepped over a still-twitching corpse and stood beside the Devaronian who had spoken to him. Dal’s lips peeled up in a coy smile, the world still reeling around him from the rush of adrenaline and surge of fear. Panic and regret tumbled about in his chest, making his heart beat the pistons of a revving podracer.

Beyond these doors lay the most secure areas of the facility, where they kept villains even worse than the maniacs brawling it out behind them in gen pop.

“Sure. Why not. Out of the frying pan…”

Dal wedged The stun baton into the cracked doors and yanked back, levering them open between him and the Devaronian’s raw strength.

They stumbled through and began padding down the hallway of the max sec area, when they stumbled into a group of wardens huddled outside of a door.

“It shouldn’t be - that’s not possible,” one of them was saying.

“This is a Sith-aligned operation. It’s far too coordinated, we need to lock these down and if we can’t then-“

Their heads swiveled toward Dal and the Devaronian.

“You were saying?” Dal asked the guard, the smile slipping back onto his face. “Oh don’t mind my friend with the horns. The scowl is a permanent fixture.”

The wall behind the guards contorted. Which was impossible. It was null steel. That couldn’t…

The metal twisted with a shriek as a form behind the guards peeled away the very wall of her cell in a bid for freedom.

 

[Jon Hojkstra]

Block 5, H-wing
Alliance Judiciary Central Maximum Facility (C-MAX)​

ain't no grave​

Three months in the hole.

A Zygerrian majordomo; shiv punched right into the lungs, choked on his own blood. A hotshot Corellian hitman; garrote stole his voice and a pound of skin; third one deserved it most - a former imp army soldier gone rogue, face smashed in the wall 'til the cracked skull beneath cleaved through flesh.

A month for each filth he'd wiped clean off the face of the galaxy.

Cheap.

Well worth it for Jon Hojkstra.

First night back in the single cell is all about lying on your back till the blindness secedes. Eyes still squirming sensitive to anything over a hundred lumens. He stared at the darkness and it stared back, as it always does. The prison's distant cacophony morphs into dire screams and desperate cries, cell clatters turn into flying bolts and exploding bombs; and flames consume the darkness.

He was back there again.

The ambush.

Pinned down, Darius to his left, reaching for an enemy 'nade to return fire, but he's a second too late. The shockwave smears Jon's face with the viscera of his fallen comrade, carving the memory into his very soul.

"Pax! Pax! I'm gonna... gonna get us a way outta here... " his shell-shocked voice echoes in the confines of his mind as it races to relive the horrors of that fateful day, the anguish etched into every fiber of his being. "...gotta get outta here, Pax!-- Out..."

Out..

Out--

<"Gosa! Gosa One Way Out!!! One Way Out!!! ONE WAY OUT!!!!">
​

Gasping for air, Jon's brow glistened with cold sweat as he snapped back to the familiar darkness of his present reality. Slowly, his vision began to sharpen, revealing the dim outlines of his solitary cell. But the cacophony of prison life had transformed into a deafening pandemonium, punctuated by the bizarre sound of a Gungan's voice blaring through the speakers.

The door to his cell blasted inward and Jon's hand instinctively sought the shiv concealed beneath his pillow, his muscles tensing with readiness for whatever—or whoever—was about to come through.

Arminius Kroeger

 

[Arminius Kroeger]

D R E A D N O U G H T
IRON LEGION
Jon Hojkstra

PLANETS COLLIDE​

The embers at the tip of his cigara snuffed out in the puddle of water coalesced on the hard duracrete flooring. The figure walked alone, seemingly so at least, in the midst of the calamity. An errant shiv from the darkness was swiped toward his form before a blaster bolt bored into the man's chest, sending him to the floor with a lifeless thud. A single pale grey eye paired with a glowing cybernetic crimson peered down unto the figure before he wrenched a glance behind him to see one of his troopers shuffling from the shadows in well placed steps.

Coruscant. Ever the hive of decadence it always was and right beneath the false laughter, shared drinks and gilded finery. The pit. Where all the worst, depraved souls languished within the heart and core of the Galaxy.

Kroeger and Hojkstra had certainly seen their deal of service together, trailing back to Arminius's stretch in the Stormtrooper Corps. They were class mates together at Storm Commando selection though one passed, one failed due to injury, relegating him to the line units. Bastion. Dantooine...and of course...Ziost. They shared the field together. It was known Jon was rotting in this cell for some time, but with no means to retrieve him until the Dark Imperial prison break, he was left to languish within the rotting filth of the Alliance's underbelly.

But now, an ample opportunity to see him freed.

"That's the one..." Arminius said before Jon's cell door, a snap of metallic fingers beneath a thick leather glove signaling an operative over. He took a single pace back in a deliberate, methodical manner, letting the man do his work on the door.

Most of the men locked within. Refuse. Sentient garbage, the former Imperial infiltrators regarded them as such. Whoever didn't lurch at them from the darkness with the aim in mind that they were some Alliance here to snuff out the riots begged and pleaded for freedom. They met the same fate, scythed down by blaster fire. They had the cell identifiers of those they sought. Top of the list, Jon Hojkstra. A breaching charge was placed dead center of the blast door, the man stepped back, holding up his fingers to Arminius. Five...four...three...two one-.

It exploded inward, only enough to pull the door from its foundations, given its rigid and secured construction before a single kick from Kroeger blew it open completely, a single, crimson eye peering from the darkness before he stepped through into the cell. He saw the man, clutching his shiv tightly in anger and grinned to the sight. No mistake in the manifest, this was the one.

He grasped for one of the blaster pistols holstered at his hip and lobbed with a low, underhand, lazy toss to the man.

"Come on. You've been out long enough, there's work to do."

 

[Jon Hojkstra]

The smoke and dust gave ample cover to close the short distance to whoever had the bad luck to break this cell open. Battle-hardened instincts kicked into overdrive, swiftly plotting the course of action to disarm and neutralize the intruder. The risk was high--any professional worth their salt would manage to at least land a hit from this range, none of it just glancing either; or would've sprayed the the six-by-eight lockup the moment the door was unhinged, if the mission was kill the bastard inside.

An orb of crimson light piercing through the haze, restrained Jon in place as a familiar, broad-shouldered frame materialized before him.Light shone off a grinning grimace anchored for all eternity, while the shadows enveloped all that remained of his human flesh. Half-man, half-machine. A full-on reminder of their shared service to the Empire.

Arminius Kroeger.

Many, many years had passed since Jon had seen the man. Ziost, the thought sent a cold shiver down his spine. The raven-haired veteran shook the ghosts of the past away, settling his focus on the reality of the present and the questions that arose in his mind.

"Come on. You've been out long enough, there's work to do."

Kroeger's voice cut through the tension, tossing a blaster pistol to Jon, who caught it instinctively. A dry note of humor laced Jon's words as he quipped, "Never saw you as a spook." then the suspicions, the paranoia, kicked and he grimaced,

"Who sent you, Arminius?" but the man was already out of the door and whatever Kroeger's motivations or orders were, Jon Hojkstra was not too keen on rotting in prison any much longer than he needed to.

Arminius Kroeger

 

[Arminius Kroeger]

D R E A D N O U G H T
IRON LEGION
Jon Hojkstra

PLANETS COLLIDE​

"No one." Replied Kroeger in a curt, concise response to the man's question. He glanced over his shoulder to the loud ringing of chaos behind him through the prison. Filth getting butchered like sick dogs. It called for his attention not more than a second before he reared his gruesome, cybernetic gaze back toward Jon.

He turned with a faint motion of his hand. It was time to go.

Through the dark corridor, he glanced back to Jon, expecting him to catch up with him.

"What was the last you remember of the Galaxy before they put you up in here?" He asked, drawing his own blaster pistol as the flash of crimson tibanna lit up a nearby corridor, only for another Imperial operator to emerge. He certainly fit someone who'd be running with Kroeger, though he donned a black bodyglove and overcoat, all the weapons and kit belonged to the New Imperial Army arsenal.

"Men like you and me don't have much of a place in the Galaxy anymore." An Empire, a worthwhile battlefield, a fight with purpose. Nothing.

"But I know damn well you don't belong here." He said, a prisoner turning the corner with eyes widened with fear. A Rodian. Arminius pressed the muzzle of his pistol against its temple before squeezing down the trigger with a violent blast of tibanna through his brain pan.

"Go figure most of what I've seen down here are Xenos, surprised you could put up with it."

 

[Jon Hojkstra]

"No one."

Fingers itched for the trigger, either for the imminent danger of any prison guards stupid enough to get in this procession's way or Arminius and his dubious crew. But as they strode through the mayhem and bloodshed beset by the sight of smoldering corpses, the smell of burnt plasma and the sound of bolts whizzing past, Jon's paranoia began to subside as life surged into his veins. The anxious mistrust washed away by the clarity of purpose found amidst the chaos battle.

His ex-fiancée had once said: "—you've been walking through our life dead, Jon."

The war, it never ends.

"What was the last you remember of the Galaxy before they put you up in here?" he heard Arminius ask and frowned, eyes slightly squinting as if they were trying to the answer on a fine print written in the air. But the response mustered a thousand tales, a thousand stories and events that flashed before his sight; of an Empire fractured into a hundred pieces, cannibalized by greedy men seeking to carve their own little kingdoms for their own sick gains and ambitions; of a brotherhood of troopers who paid the cost of someone else's avarice; of a nation that once was; of a home—

"Home was no longer home." he said in typical fashion for a man of few words.

"Men like you and me don't have much of a place in the Galaxy anymore." Arminius said without even throwing a glance backwards, purposeful on his stride onwards through the havoc that surrounded them.

"But I know damn well you don't belong here." the unwavering cyborg added as he gunned down a Rodian standing in his way and Jon recalled the old rumors during the War -- not a cyborg of two equal parts, but of a man-turned-machine with a laser-crimson piercing gaze as purposeful as a crosshair willed by Emperor.

"Go figure most of what I've seen down here are Xenos, surprised you could put up with it."

Jon raised a single eyebrow at the man's statement, but said nothing. It was not too uncommon among the human populace of the Empire to share a negative view for those they saw alien even when it was not reinforced by the regime. Humans killed each other for being different, this was no new thing.

He caught a glimpse of a keycard hanging from a dead prison warden's belt and picked it up for the blast door up ahead. The veteran hugged the wall with his back, urging Arminius' crew to move into breach position before he slid the keycard over the terminal. With a soft hiss, befit the state-of-the-art supermax facility, the blast doors slid open and the infiltrators poured in with guns blazing. He took the opportunity to walk besides Arminius as they took the rearguard, pistols aimed forward.

"The Empire's gone—how about you tell me where you got the resources for this kind of op?" he asked, then added, "I'm not worth a tenth of what this costs." and Arminius knew that, he was no fool. There were not too many imperials in this prison, not enough to make it worth for a break in the heart of the galaxy. No, someone else was being liberated. Someone special.

Arminius Kroeger

 

[Arminius Kroeger]

D R E A D N O U G H T
IRON LEGION
Jon Hojkstra

PLANETS COLLIDE​

They continued along, the Iron Legionnaires methodically bounding from room to room, corridor to corridor, swiping key cards, breaching doors and entrance ways where able to as they crawled their way back to the hangar that Arminius had so forcibly comandeered for this operation.

"And I don't have a tenth of the damn resources required to break you out...could say we're hopping unto a job bankrolled by another...though...they're looking to snatch another friend of ours buried in this pit. I'll let them spend the blood and sweat to do that, I knew if I didn't come along, no one would be looking for you...or worse, you'd be caught in the cross." Arminius explained, igniting another cigara, prodding it between his lips as the electric blue shimmer of the stealth craft they used to infiltrate this corner of the prison complex sparked alight, revealing the vessel in all its technological prowess.

A relic of the Empire it might've been, still a top of the line vessel. Even so, Arminius hardly seemed urgent, standing outside of it to continue smoking his cigara as the clatter of blaster fire continued in the background, operatives rushing crates of Alliance uniforms, dataslates and essentially, what was of strategic use that wasn't bolted down.

"Things are a bit different. The dream is dead...the dream we fought for...or at least, thought we were." He remarked, pulling another drag from his cigara as two of his operatives laid out a crate of weapons, counting them out before inventorying them.

"But still...the Galaxy will never lack for killers like us. Iron Legion, is what I call them. A few organized remnants of the Army, Navy...Special Forces...soldiers of fortune now." He explained.

 

[Jon Hojkstra]

Jon Hojkstra scanned the vessel materializing before them from bow to aft, as he listened to Arminius. He wondered how many such cutting-edge products of technology were in the hands of dirtbags, or worse—the hands of the enemy. A once great nation stripped to nuts and bolts, to debris, to carcass for the vultures.

"I don't take well to owing favors, least of all if the favor's gunning for the highest bidder." the veteran dryly said, straight to the point. The cacophony of battle was now a distant, behind a dozen of blast doors and walls, allowing him to think. "So, who's doing the bankrolling here?" Jon asked, catching a glimpse of Alliance uniforms being hauled in the ship.

Arminius Kroeger

 

[Alicia Drey]

Tags: Lord Letifer Spindle
Location: Maximum security ward.

"Do you feel it? Do you feel the power of the dark side? The only real power! The only thing worth living for! Do you feel invincible? Invulnerable? Immortal? Are you ready to kill a world?"
-- Darth Bane.

The scream that had risen inside Darth Ayra's throat passed as the Sith regained control of herself. Only when she came back to her senses did Ayra take the moment to look around at her surroundings. She did not recognise any of this. Her last memories were at Sojourn. Whoever it was that had attacked on that fateful night had done it quickly, and they must have been strong because they had overwhelmed Ayra to bring her... here. As she look around the ward, standing in the middle of the pool of coolant that had gathered at the base of her cryochamber, did Ayra find what she was looking for.

Staring back at her was the crest of the Galactic Alliance. It was a caricature of the Republic's emblem and yet looked different. Had the Jedi been successful in reviving their fallen civilization, or had a new one taken her place? Had it been them who had attacked her on Sojourn and taken her to this place? It appeared to be a prison of some kind. As she stood there, taking it all in, Ayra could see the other cryochambers in the ward dump their prisoners out as well. Her eyes found themselves resting on Lord Letifer and the power of the dark side was unmistakable from him.

As the other prisoners in the ward found their own bearings Ayra turned to look for a nearby computer console to find out what she needed to know. Using her powers to create a tapas Ayra felt the debilitating, lingering effects of cryosleep fade from her as she dug deep with her fury to find the strength to move. Limping to a nearby console Ayra watched on the screen as it played footage from the other places in the prison. It appeared that the facility was under some kind of attack but by who or what Ayra did not know.

Tracing her fingers over the console Ayra hesitated and turned to look around as something begun to rise up from the ground. Turning to look at it Ayra realised that several compartments were rising up from the ground containing items which belonged to the prisoners in the ward. Perhaps it was a malfunction, or the deranged typing of a certain Gungan up on the surface that had made the curved, cylinder shape of the compartments rise up from the floor to reveal themselves, but what was unmistakable to Darth Ayra was the curved Lightsaber that was dangling there in mid-air from where the compartment had risen.

Making her way over to retrieve the weapon Ayra interlocked her fingers around the curved hilt and once again activated the crimson beam of her most prized weapon. The crimson beam shot forth out of the weapon's emitter matrix, and Ayra took to swinging the blade in front of her to get a handle of the weapon once more. Next, Ayra averted her gaze from the activated weapon to Letifer and the other prisoners on the ward when it dawned on her that this was her chance to escape.

"We have to get out of here while we can," Ayra croaked, having not used her voice in such a long time.

 

[Arminius Kroeger]

D R E A D N O U G H T
IRON LEGION
Jon Hojkstra

PLANETS COLLIDE​

He grinned for a moment, smoking down his cigara to a nub before flicking it unto the hangar floor as he began up the boarding ramp of his corvette. A few moments later, the rest of his operatives funneled in and let the ramp raise behind them as the ship's internal systems hummed to life. They'd be leaving soon.

"Nothing is expected of you. But yeah, the bankrolling is where the bad news comes in." He remarked, letting off a faint note of amusement.

"Not that we're tied in any obligation to them...the 'Dark Empire'...Sith." He explained curtly. It had a bitter, sour taste coming from him.

 

[Jon Hojkstra]

His mouth opened wide in a sour surprise at the news.

Sith.

Jon wasn't of the generation that born and bred to rebel and carved the New Order from the failed state of the Sith Empire. All he'd learned about the Sith was from the Imperial State HoloNet, the occasional COMPNOR-led educations at base, and of course his force-hunting training as part of the clandestine section 141. But he could recall the older veterans in the 8th talking about the Sith with acid that could melt steel, so strong was the venom in their voice that he couldn't help but feel the same way.

Home really was no longer home.

"Yeah..." Jon muttered, casting a fleeting glance back at the blown-out blast doors of the prison as if contemplating a return, before following Arminius up the ramp into the stealth ship. "...thanks."

Arminius Kroeger and Jon Hojkstra may have been long done with the Galaxy, cursed to walk through life dead, but one thing was certain for both.

The Galaxy was not done with them.

Arminius Kroeger