Private Embers Over Talay

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

TALAY
MANDALORIAN BUFFER ZONE
HIGH REPUBLIC SOUTHERN SYSTEMS

Smoke rolled low across the broken ridge, clinging to the rock as if it refused to leave, it’s thick darkness melding into the indigo hue of Talay’s perpetual shadows.

Bastila Sal-Soren cut through it anyway.

Her purple lightsaber snapped to life mid-stride, the hum clean and immediate as the first stormtrooper rounded the outcrop. He didn’t even manage a full syllable before the saber tore through white armour in a spray of sparks. The body hit the ground with sparks and the smell of burnt ozone.

From her flank another trooper fired.

Bastila didn’t bother slowing down. She angled her blade, sent the bolt screaming off into the rocks, and took his rifle with a sharp, horizontal cut.

“See,” she called over her shoulder as blaster fire erupted around them, “this is the part where people usually say ‘we should’ve brought Brandyn.’”

A volley of red bolts chased her as she vaulted over a collapsed barricade, cloak snapping behind her. She landed hard among the troopers, saber flashing in tight, brutal arcs. No flourish. No mercy. One went down clutching a smoking chest plate; another was lifted bodily off his feet and slammed into the duracrete with enough force to leave him reconsidering every life choice he’d ever made.

To her right, blaster fire answered back at the coming Stormtroopers, it was quick, it was violent and and very much not from a Jedi.

It was her sister, Blaire. Not the more common of combinations, but when the emergency alert had sounded they had been mid-flight back to Naboo after the Mon Gala N1 race and one thing led to another.

Bastila felt the familiar spike of fear and adrenaline through the Force, threaded with something stubborn and unyielding. Blaire took cover behind a shattered supply crate, leaned out, and fired a controlled burst that dropped one trooper and sent another scrambling for cover with a scorched pauldron.

“Because,” Bastila continued, as she deflected a bolt aimed squarely towards Blaire’s hiding place and flicking it into a rock face before crashing down herself behind the crate with a smirk to her sister, “he would’ve cleared this in five minutes and then lectured us about situational awareness.”

The Imperial warband had turned the Republic outpost into a graveyard by the time they had got here. Burned comms. Torn banners. Clone bodies still cooling where they’d fallen. This wasn’t a patrol, this was ground burning as they retreated from the core. They wouldn’t have stayed here long, not if the two Sal-Soren’s hadn’t rocked up.

Bastila exhaled once, sharp and controlled, and rose from behind the crate, before pressing forward again.

“Left flank,” she called, already moving. “And if you get hit, I’m not carrying you. I’m emotionally available, not heroically."

She didn’t look back. She trusted Blaire, she would work on her own instincts which while not as trained as the three Jedi siblings, were fine tuned and sharpened through experience beyond any of them.

Boots thundered in the distance. Imperial voices cut through the smoke, she could hear orders being barked, which meant the formation was tightening. More troopers? Heavier kit? There was someone competent in charge it seemed.

Bastila angled her blade downward, purple light washing over scorched stone and broken armor.

“On the bright side,” she added dryly, “if we do survive this, Brandyn never gets to say ‘I told you so.’”

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Blaire Sal-Soren EQUIPMENT:

​

 

[Blaire Sal-Soren]

Tag: Bastila Sal-Soren
Attire: Link​

Blaire found the amaranthine miasma of Tarlay to be exceedingly wonderful.

Entering the atmosphere her breath caught at the beauty of the world, her thoughts immediately turning to a gift given to her as a child from her aunt Alora; a fist-sized geode pulled from an ancient cavern on Jedha. Brandyn and Briana had gotten their own as well, of course. For them it was a piece of their heritage as Force sensitive children with a Jedi mother. To her it had been a rock.

She'd not thought of that little thing in an age, and yet, floating gently through a mass of clouds descending toward their landing, Blaire felt the excitement she'd felt as a little girl when daddy helped her crack it open, and wthe wonder at the way the amethyst inside shone and sparkled while drinking in the sunlight.

Blaire followed behind Bast, thanking Shiraya with every step that she had the good fortune to find a sensible pair of shoes aboard the ship. Briana's no doubt. Likely the same went for the personal shield generator humming softly at her hip, the only indication that it was working aside from the slight spectral shimmer surrounding her

A feeling as bitter as the taste in her mouth grew in her gut as she watched great gouts of thick black smoke slithered across their path.

Bastila was heedless, surging forward through the smoke and straight for the flame, her lightsaber cracking to life with an ominous hiss. Bast was fearless and fearsome in equal measure with her blade of purple fire facing down foe after foe.
It would appear The Empire had come to Talay and with it came death. Little more than raiders, the imperial dogs rampaged along the republic's rim, reaving and raiding border worlds with no goal beyond wanton destruction and death.

"See," Bastila called out of the smoke blaster fire erupting around them,"this is the part where people usually say 'we should've brought Brandyn.'"

We should've brought Brandyn. Blaire thought but could not say, her concentration currently occupied by not being shot to death by stormtroopers.

Blaire was a ballerina not a bad-ass. A socialite not a soldier. She hadn't quite mastered battlefield banter the way Bast had.

Baby Bast, The Jedi. Her being here was a matter of duty, she had sworn oaths and vowed to defend the innocent. She had training and experience despite her youth. Blaire had no business at all in a fire fight with imperials and yet here she was clutching her blaster pistol.

An emergency call had come over their comms as they traveled home from Mon Gala.

We have to do something one of them had said. She could not recall which.

No one tells Briana about this they had both said.

Bastila was absolutely nothing short of brilliant. Despite the chaos she moved with total serenity, fluid and efficient, there was no wasted movement as her saber flashed and slashed, cutting trooper after trooper down where they stood or turning their own blaster fire against them.

Occasionally Blaire found the opportunity to take a shot with her pistol, dropping a trooper or two when she did. Blaire may not be a soldier but one thing she knew was how to shoot straight. Her mother had seen to that.

Bastila pushed forward through the thickest of the fighting while Blaire followed doggedly behind her though admittedly off to the side and out of the way. The imps were so focused on Bastilia, and rightly so, that Blaire met almost no resistance. Almost.

Blaire leaned out from behind her cover, a shattered supply crate,her pistol ripping once. Twice. Three times and a pair of white armored troopers fell. Bast fell in next to her behind the crate, her chest hardly rising, like she'd just been out for a leisurely stroll not snuffing out the future of a dozen men.

She said something more about Brandyn but Blaire wasn't really listening.

"Left flank," Bast warned, "And if you get hit, I'm not carrying you. I'm emotionally available, not heroically."

Blaire already had her body angled and pistol raised in the direction of the incoming troopers seconds before Bastila's warning came. She felt them before she ever saw them, though she could hardly explain what that meant, even to herself.

Her blaster pistol ripped half a dozen more shots dropping an enemy or two and forcing the rest to take cover.

The Force had given her a warning loud as a siren. Blaire knew it was The Force but she had no clue how to use it on command nor would she dare if she could lest she reveal her new found affinity to her little sister the Jedi.

A trooper lay unmoving near her feet. Blaire holstered her pistol to scoop up the dead or dying man's rifle.

"If you've thought of a way out of this saucepan…" she started, the sound of more troops bearing down on them growing louder. "…I'm open to ideas!"