First Reply Between Marble And Legacies

[Thorus Valerian]

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Colonies Territory | Carida | New Military Academy
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Carida had been a beacon of military education for centuries, Imperial martial might was inscribed into the world's blood. Professional pilots and officers an export good rare and precious like few others. Hence why it was no surprise that after every change of government, the inhabitants returned to their roots, started a new academy, a fresh generation of recruits to fill the shoes of their forefathers. For it was no secret, every generation on Carida eventually found itself back in uniform. Governments changed. Wars did not.

Therefore it was no surprise that it got unwanted attention. Now laying between the borders of the Sith Covenant and the Mandalorian Empire, the planet was far from Alliance or Imperial protection and sovereignty. A situation that was now being exploited.

Before any ragtag defence could be mounted in orbit, several dropships of Sith raiders had dropped to scorch the Academy. Laying waste to several quarters already, it was in the hallways of the Academy that they were finally checked by the students themselves and their guests. A bloody close combat developed, fighting stretched through offices, corridors, teaching halls, on roofs and through supply cellars. Crumbling busts, the smell of fyzelen and overheated plasma coils, cooked blood and sweat filled the hallways of the Academy. The raiders came in with several companies strong of fanatical cultists under several squads of Sith troopers led by a few Sith warriors themselves. Their mission was carnage. To destroy and annihilate. The living and legacy alike.

In the midst of it, was a contingent of the Shattered Legions. Valerian had come here, merely hours before the attack, to strike a bargain with the Academy leadership, but had quickly found himself committed to its defense. Now he was caked in blood and dust, breathing heavily below his crested helmet as he lead a mixture of cadets and his own veterans to break the Sith raiders assault. Everywhere the defenders were hard pressed, while holding plenty of stocks of small arms, they had only limited heavy weapons and even less fully trained troops. They were pushed back, some holdouts died to the last men while securing the evacuation of the youngest. Even Valerian's own call for reinforcements and aid had not been answered yet.

An explosion nearby briefly deafened the senses, a wild scream followed and several Sith cultists emerged from what was a lecture hall, now charging Valerian and his ragtag unit. His blade rose instinctively as red blaster fire strobed across the corridor, his own weapon discharging. There was no time for orders, no room to be tactical. It was simply a brutal melee. Not the first. Neither the last.

 

[Seo Linn]

The academy smelled like burning circuitry and blood, and Seo noticed that before anything else, not the blaster fire hammering somewhere deeper within the structure, nor the concussive tremors shuddering intermittently through the walls as another section of the outer grounds absorbed bombardment. Those sounds blended quickly into the background, becoming part of the atmosphere the way storms eventually became background noise during long campaigns, but the smell remained distinct: overheated plasma coils, melted wiring insulation, cooked stone, scorched fabric, and beneath it all the unmistakable metallic scent of fresh blood spreading across old military flooring that had likely survived more than one regime already.

Carida endured, and that endurance was precisely the problem. Governments collapsed, flags changed, uniforms shifted colors, yet worlds like this remained trapped in the same cycle until war had worked itself so deeply into the foundation that even the architecture seemed to expect violence returning to its halls.

Seo stepped over the shattered remains of a fallen training droid just inside one of the academy's breached side entrances, her boots crunching against broken transparisteel and scattered shell casings as she advanced down a corridor flickering unevenly beneath emergency lighting. Smoke drifted low enough to obscure the ceiling; someone screamed nearby; someone else fell silent; and she did not slow. The compact blaster carbine in her hands stayed only slightly lowered, enough to move quickly without sacrificing readiness, as a pair of cadets rushed past an intersecting hallway carrying a wounded student between them, panic barely contained beneath the discipline drilled into them. One glanced toward her, eyes wide behind soot and sweat, before disappearing toward the evacuation routes, and the thought that they were far too young passed through her mind without ceremony.

Another explosion reverberated through the structure hard enough to shake dust from the overhead supports, the lights dimming for half a second before stabilizing under strained backup power. Voices echoed ahead, shouting, blaster fire, the unmistakable rhythm of close-quarter fighting where range stopped mattering, and survival became measured in reaction speed rather than strategy. Seo's jaw tightened slightly; she had seen enough collapsing strongholds to recognize the pattern already: defenders falling back section by section, makeshift lines forming wherever they could hold long enough to move the wounded, officers trying to impose order faster than the situation deteriorated around them, and somewhere in the middle of it all, people still pretending this was a battle that could be controlled.

A shadow moved suddenly through the smoke ahead, and her weapon snapped upward on instinct as a cultist burst into view at a sprint, wild-eyed and screaming something unintelligible while red plasma fire erupted behind him from deeper in the corridor. Seo fired once without hesitation, the shot catching center mass and dropping him hard enough to slide across the polished floor before coming to rest against the wall in a smear of dark fabric and blood. She paused for neither satisfaction nor assessment, only movement, angling immediately toward the renewed blaster fire crackling down the adjoining hallway as defenders engaged further inside the academy.

Without breaking stride, Seo pushed deeper into the structure while the battle continued tearing through it room by room.

Thorus Valerian

 

[Thorus Valerian]

Seo Linn​

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Colonies Territory | Carida | New Military Academy
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His sword was stuck in the ribcage of the cultist he had impaled seconds before. Now his combat dagger and the blaster, the latter by now emptied reducing it to crude striking weapon, were his weapons as Valerian fought on pure battle instincts. No agility, no big motions, just pushing on with brute force and unrelenting willpower. The Imperials, students and cultists were pressed against each other in the corridor. Tight. Inescapable. Almost squeezing the last bit of air from there as it filled up with sweat, blood and screams.

Valerian felt like time itself had slowed down. A phenomenon that he usually felt in intense fights, something he something he attributed to years of discipline, experience and cadences drilled into him, allowing him to still make conscious decisions. Sometimes at least. Here and now, he just survived. Earlier he had received a blunt hit to his pauldron, making his arm ache with every movement, a slash across the thigh colored his dark robes even darker.

The last cultist fell. His forehead punctured by a blaster shot from the Stromtrooper behind the Praetorian. Breathing.

"Secure the corners, check the room. Tend to your wounds. Swiftly." His voice echoed from below his helmet, exhausted but still confident. He was a commander, the leader of these men and if he would falter or show signs of dispair, they would fall. Too many already had.

Valerian moved to his sword, his aching arm, probably with a broken collarbone, reloading the blaster before he pulled out the longsword with a gnarly sound of the bloated corpse resisting. He did not look at the enemy, his vision was centered on a few cadets that were trying to save one of their own. One look. The boy was not even 20 and would not see that age anymore. They were trying, but he was bleeding out. He stopped moving.

"Tend to the others, say your farewell." Valerian quickly kneeled and took his dogtags, storing them in one of his pouches. He ignored their broken faces, stains of blood now running with tears of anger and desperation.

He gave his forces almost a minute. Then they moved on. They had to. To find and eliminate the enemy command.

 

[Seo Linn]

Seo reached the intersection just as the last cultist dropped, the crack of the fatal shot still lingering through the corridor while smoke rolled low across the floor and the defenders struggled to reclaim even a moment to breathe.

Her gaze moved quickly over the scene. Wounded cadets. Exhausted soldiers. Blood soaking into old academy flooring already blackened by smoke and plasma scoring. And at the center of it all, the armored commander still moving despite the injuries he was clearly carrying.

Seo lowered her carbine slightly as she stepped into the corridor, boots crunching over shattered plastoid and shell casings. One glance toward the dead cadet was enough to tell her there had been nothing anyone here could have done.

Another distant explosion reverberated through the academy hard enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling.

"You look like you have been holding this corridor together by sheer stubbornness," Seo said evenly, her voice calm despite the chaos surrounding them. There was no mockery in the observation. Only recognition.

Her gold eyes flicked briefly toward the branching hallways where the fighting continued room by room before returning to him.

"I came in through one of the breached side entrances," she continued. "The outer sections are deteriorating quickly, but the defenders are still buying people time to evacuate."

A short pause followed as another burst of blaster fire echoed deeper in the structure.

"If there is somewhere you need another rifle," Seo added, adjusting her grip on the carbine, "point me toward it."

Thorus Valerian