Mission Far Cry

[Inland Empire]

...​

FAR CRY

The IMPERIAL REMNANT and the DUBRILLION PLANETARY CONGRESS remain locked in a bitter stalemate. Starved for men, resources, and morale, neither side can pacify the other.​

​

The efforts of the Remnant's ROYAL INTELLIGENCE COMMISION have recently uncovered a hidden facility within a remote quadrant of the planet. Collected data suggests that the facility is connected to the former Imperial Moff of Dubrillion: CORNELIUS VEED, who vanished several months prior to the Empire's marked decline.​

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Desperate to seize any possible advantage, agents of RICO has been dispatched to scout the facility... Only for their mission to be commandeered by the SOVEREIGN PROTECTORS.​

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Dubrillion sits on the precipice. Even the slightest shift in the balance of power could spell an end for the conflict.​

​

This is one stone the Remnant cannot afford to leave unturned.​

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Isar | Ferenc | Orestyn Carda | Valerius​

 

[Valerius]

DUBRILLION - SOUTH POLE
ABANDONED IMPERIAL BLACK SITE

The base was slowly losing power. The turrets that flanked the landing pad must have been the first to go. Then the stealth field generator went next. That was how RICO had found it. But the doors were still magnetically sealed, and that meant Valerius and his party were left standing on the landing pad in the dead cold.​

​

Valerius didn’t like to be left idle. As a matter of fact, the longer he watched their grimy technician - Lieutenant Geppert - fiddle around trying to open those doors, the less he liked it. Geppert unscrewed a nearby panel, connected his datapad, and started tap, tap, tapping away.​

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Personnel shortages meant that there was only a 50/50 chance Geppert knew what he was doing. Either way, this was taking too long, and Valerius eventually came to loom ominously behind him.​

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“How much longer?”​

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“Uhhh, security’s pretty tight. Sir. Proprietary stuff. It can be cracked, just, uh,” Geppert attempted to avoid looking directly at Valerius, “Could take a while.”​

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Valerius felt a pulse in his forehead, “Specify.”​

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Geppert fumbled, “Er… Thirty minutes. Maybe twenty.”​

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“Fine,” said Valerius, and he smashed his fist through the control panel.​

​

The technician gave a little yelp and flinched away. Valerius gathered what he felt to be a fistful of wires and tore them out. There was a quick crack of sparks, then a steady discharge of smoke. Gears churned, and the doors slowly rumbled apart - perhaps for the first time in decades.​

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“Wh… How…?” Geppert warily got to his feet.​

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Valerius discarded the torn wires and, observing grime and bits of debris stuck on his gauntlet, wiped it clean on Geppert’s coat, then shoved him towards the waiting shuttle. “The Force. Get back on the ship.”​

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Geppert was - after all - also the pilot, so he obliged and went away.​

​

A small storehouse waited for them inside: crates and storage containers were lined in neat rows along the walls. The interior was near totally dark, lit only by faint red emergency lights. More doors were faintly visible in the gloom.​

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Preliminary scans had shown how deep the facility ran… This would be a long probe, unless they could find the control room in good time.​

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Valerius half-turned to the remaining party: his two fellows and the spare from RICO. “Are we ready?”​

​

Isar | Ferenc | Orestyn Carda​

 

[Isar]

Scarlet armor glinted in the dim red glow, a contrast to the stark industrial pallors of the warehouse. Durasteel and plastoids. The bones of empire. Bones indeed. Arkos did not know what he expected. The small storehouse did not whisper of slumbering grandeur, yet he felt the hollowness in his chest of an absence.

How far had they fallen. The glow did not reveal the full extent of pockmarks and scars across his armor, but it was and he knew it. He knew the armor’s state of ill repair, caused by duraplast factory shortages and failing supply lines, reflected their larger state of being. How many of his friends fell in an idiotic conflict against the Alliance while Ashlan crusaders and Mawites ran around crucifying people?

How long could the Fel Imperium live on borrowed time?

Arkos took a step forward, causing the expandable lightstaff at his hip to clack against the duraplast thigh armor.

“Yes,” he said, doubt hidden behind a helmet, though he knew they could sense it. “Do you expect a fight, sir? There shouldn’t be anything down there but droids and defense turrets…”

 

[Ferenc]

Valerius | Isar | Orestyn Carda​

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---

It had been Ferenc's cell that uncovered the facility. Thus, he was responsible for accompanying his betters as they were first into the unknown. He was late to step in behind the others, turning to watch as the pilot retreated back into the craft and into warmth. Stepping into the storehouse was like crossing a threshold, entering a place he didn't belong. It sent a bad vibration, like a tingle, up his spine.​

​

Ferenc reached a hand up to his chest and switched on a personal light. A fluorescent glow surrounded him but didn't cast in any particular direction. He was dressed practically for field work, in dark colors, and wore appropriate layers for the biting cold. He wore a tightly secured chest rig, where his light was attached, over a well-worn short coat.​

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"This place is like a petrified corpse," Ferenc comments after Arkos, and thinks that security wouldn't be up and running until they found a way to restore power in the facility.​

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He takes the glove off of his left hand, his shooting hand, and stuffs it into a pocket over his thigh.​

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"I'm ready."​

 

[Orestyn Carda]

Ferenc | Valerius | Isar

Carda missed the old days.

When they had access to a whole apparatus of intelligence, military and engineering at their finger tips. Dependable men and women who would serve the Empire's glory and lay their lives on the line just to complete their mission. Now... now they were reduced to this. Having to personally oversee a critical mission, because the rank and file were either useless or dead or disappeared.

"Even a petrified corpse can hold danger within." Carda muttered as he stood at their rear and watched their pilot rush back towards the ship. In the old days he would have protested, urging his betters to keep him in the line of fire, because that was just how it was done.

Now? Not even a single attempt to stay on the frontlines of this mission.

Despicable.

"Ready as I will ever be, Valerius." Stepping past Ferenc and his... son. "Let's get this over with." It made little sense to send the boys first. They didn't have disposable bodies anymore to throw at a problem. Even his son was worth something more than being cut down by a recessed security system operating on an emergency reactor somewhere deep in the guts of this facility.

The facility was as dead as the scans had showed.

Whatever reactor was powering it seemed to be shut down. This was good and bad. Good, because it meant they wouldn't have to deal with automated turrets, ray shields and other nonsense. Bad, because how useful could this installation be, if it hadn't been used in all this time?

"I hesitated to suggest we split up." Since that was the start of any total party kill. "But perhaps-"

A sudden noise drew his attention. Several crates slid off the racks and broke apart on the floor. His lightsaber ignited immediately, but attempting to pierce the shadows bathing the facility in obscurity proved difficult. "We are not as alone as we assumed." Carda mentioned with what seemed to be a spring in his step.

Clearly this was going to get more interesting than he had been afraid of.

 

[Valerius]

"There's always going to be a fight," Valerius replied, only slightly more patient with Arkos than Geppert, "Why else would we be here?"​

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Anyone who had the resources to build a big, stupid fortress like this usually included a painful gamut of security measures. The only thing that remained to be seen was how much of these features still had the benefit of being powered. Valerius could just barely make out the silhouette of a bulky turret mounted in the corner of the ceiling. Dead and inactive. A good sign, which was rare enough on its own these days.​

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Something scuttled and knocked crates off the racks. Valerius snapped around, hand extended. Behind the shelves, something lifted off the ground, and then launched forward towards Valerius. Its flight path knocked another shelf before it came to a dead halt, floating weightless just in front of the Sovereign Protector.​

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A squat little maintenance droid. Valerius didn't recognize the model. It struggled in the air, attempting to train its photoreceptor on everyone at once.​

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Valerius almost smiled, but something about the droid's pointless struggle against the incomprehensible phenomenon that was the Force reminded him of, well, everything about his life. "Only a droid, Carda. Don't get excited." Valerius briefly considered crushing it and tossing it out into the cold, but the thought of doing so only made him sad.​

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"We'll need to split up," he said, electing to just move on to what Orestyn had been saying before, "Cover more-"​

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The droid interrupted with a series of shrill beeps. Droid binary. Thoroughly incomprehensible to Valerius, which brought out a scowl from him. "What's it saying?"​

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Isar | Ferenc | Orestyn Carda​

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[Ferenc]

Valerius | Isar | Orestyn Carda​

---

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Ferenc's hand immediately found his blaster, snapping to it like metal to a magnet. His grip only relaxed when he saw the harmless droid floating before the Protector. He paced around to where the droid had been pulled from and calmly raised his hand to take the pulse in his neck, idly curious about his heart rate.​

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One of the crates that had been knocked down had spilled its contents. Ferenc stopped there, his light shining down over the mess, and he began to sift around the junk with the toe of his boot.​

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"What's it saying?"

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Though he had a few, Ferenc decided it'd be a waste of time to question the droid. Better to be forceful with it, he also decided.​

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"Nothing useful. It wants to be scrapped." Ferenc's hand drops from his neck. "The Lieutenant can come to retrieve it. Pick through its memory on the ship while we continue."​

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Geppert was nothing, if not versatile.​

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Bringing things back to how they should proceed, Ferenc finds himself agreeing with Orestyn and Valerius.​

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"I say finding the control room and generator comes first. Bring this place back to life, then go from there."​

 

[Isar]

“Copy, let’s move out.”

Picking up his helmet, he slid it into place. The heads up display came to life, filling his vision with readouts of those around him: middle aged humanoids.

Arkos thought of the things it did not tell him. Of their more than moderate ambitions. Of their sense of confidence. Whatever the fate of the Empire, these men still stood stern as steel.

 

[Valerius]

Oh, it wanted to be scrapped. Decommissioned. How touchingly human. Didn't it know if you let yourself be scrapped, the enemy wins? And worse still: you lose. The dream dies forever and it was all for nothing in the end. Who could stand a thing like that?​

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Kaul suggested it be left for Geppert. "Why wait for him?" He stepped aside and flicked his wrist towards the open blast doors, and the droid launched in that direction like a thrown ball. It smacked into the landing platform and skidded for several meters. Not too hard. He could hear it whine faintly from where it landed at the foot of the ship.​

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There. Now Geppert could take care of it. Perhaps he'd be good for something after all.​

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"Carda, take Arkos through the north doors," he said, "Since our Assessor is feeling helpful, he can follow me east. Keep your comms open."​

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If they were going to fumble blindly around this facility, they might as well cover as much ground as they could.​

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Isar | Ferenc | Orestyn Carda​

​

 

[Orestyn Carda]

Valerius | Isar | Ferenc

Head tilted as he watched the drone fly off back from where they came.

"Sure." Clipped tone as Ores accepted Arkos being assigned to him. "Follow, Petty Officer." Carda still was unsure about this practice. Adding numbers to the Sovereign Protectors that were barely out of their diapers. But perhaps it would be a good way to grow up quickly for the lad or die trying, which would result in a similar conclusion.

"Petty Officer Arkos, when did you join our ranks?"

Ores asked quietly as most of his attention was on the road north. The doors were frozen halfway through an emergency shutdown. It would be a tight fit, but Ores managed it.

On the other side of the half-closed doors was a larger platform. It was a sizeable elevator that was used to draw supplies downward into the depths of the facility. Downward. "The reactor room will most likely be at the lowest part of the facility. Difficult to get to, protected." After all, this was an Imperial facility, not one made by the moronic Sith or Maw cultists, there would be logical employed in its construction.

And yet, the elevators would not work in the current state of the facility.

This was not a problem for Ores who engaged his lightsaber and cut a hole in it. The cut metal fell down and the Sovereign could hear it cascade against the surface all the way down. "Are you familiar with using the Force to cushion your landing, Petty Officer? Follow my example." Eyes closed briefly to regain his attunement to the Force.

Then without another word he stepped forward... through the artificial opening and disappeared into the shadows beneath.

It seemed like Arkos had no choice but to follow along.

 

[Ferenc]

Valerius | Isar | Orestyn Carda
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---

Neat trick, Ferenc muses inwardly as the droid is cast into the cold for the Lieutenant to collect, Wonder what he can do to men.​

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Having seen how Orestyn and Valerius had subtly side-eyed and curtly spoken to Arkos on the short skip over to the facility, Ferenc felt chosen as he fell half a step behind the Sovereign Protector. Maybe there was no meaning to it, and he was overthinking what was actually just the nature of world-weary old men. Ferenc almost felt bad for the kid.​

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Their footfalls echoed off the lifeless walls, Valerius' heavier than Ferenc's. They passed what felt like infinite doors, some open and others closed and turned several corners without a word to each other. The Assessor entertained himself with the prospect of being stuck in some endless beyond-place, walking the same empty hall for the rest of time.​

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Ferenc opens his mouth to comment, but the pair rounds another corner, and he suddenly stops. Before them was an improvised defensive position. Stacked crates. Barricades made from anything out of nearby rooms. Blaster marks scarred the walls. Destroyed security droids and old, lifeless bodies littered the ground. And at the end of the hall was a tightly sealed blast door.​

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Silently, Ferenc takes a cautious first step forward. "Inform the others, Sir?"​

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He stops at the first droid, which was inactive on its front, laid overtop something. Leaning down, he quietly grunts as he rolls the droid over and uncovers some poor bastard that had been crushed underneath it. His face was twisted and frozen in an agonized grimace.​

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Ferenc's demeanor sours, and he steps over the body, then the droid. He slowly maneuvers around corpses and chassis, taking time to survey the scene without holding up Valerius too much.​

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"Looks like garrison got into it with the security droids," Ferenc says, making a disagreeable noise.​

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[Valerius]

Valerius had nothing to say. He was present in this chthonic network of hallways, sure, and eyes fixed on the space ahead of him, but his thoughts were elsewhere - as they so often were when faced with the tedium of military life. Sometimes you do nothing but wait for something to happen. Other times you had to walk. Forever.​

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The conclusion of this sad, silent pilgrimage was the sight of a skirmish. Dead garrison soldiers and trashed security droids. Ferenc asked him something, finally reminding Valerius that he was not alone.​

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"Make the call," Valerius replied. He stepped carefully over the deceased.​

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They'd been dead for some time and - sealed in this tomb in a frozen wasteland - had essentially mummified. There were no scavengers or insects in this place to break them down. No soil for them to sink into. What a thought: dying here and not even being able to disintegrate back into nothing. Just stuck in this wretched, flawed material plane, as his brother might have said.​

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Valerius picked his way closer to the door and ran his fingers over the surface. Magnetically sealed. Probably one of the few things still fully powered, which meant cutting through was a poor option. He looked for a control panel and found it: with the added decoration of a dead stormtrooper slumped over next to it. Jet black armor with a brilliant golden stripe.​

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No, that was a novatrooper. Veed had kept a fireteam of them as his personal guard. Unlucky end. Valerius would have traded a hundred of their current lineup of bedwetting conscripts for a single novatrooper.​

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"Moff Veed had this place built," Valerius said, following Ferenc's observation, "Yet it doesn't seem he was in control."​

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Curious. Who could have stolen his hideaway from under him? A co-conspirator? Valerius knelt down and snagged a keycard from the novatrooper's belt. They would need a little bit more power if they wanted to get through. Perhaps Carda had found the generator by now.​

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Valerius stood again. "We must be close to the command station. Tell them to keep an eye out for more droids."​

Ferenc | Orestyn Carda | Isar​

 

[Isar]

"I joined right before the offensive against the Alliance," replied Arkos, gaze on the hallway ahead as they stalked through the haunted corridors.

He felt a pang at the memory, even as he spoke the words. His mother told him not to join. Begged him not to join. But he did anyway. He thought he'd be fighting Sith. Instead, he found himself amid a company of fallen friends in a war that made no sense.

Growing up around the garrison, he thought it would be different.

When they tousled his hair and showed him how to shoot they never mentioned what it felt like to see your best friend's body cut in half by e-web fire. Or how the blood never quite got off the crevices of your armor.

They reached the elevator and Carda set to work carving a hole with his lightsaber.

"I've had some instruction, sir."

He watched Carda disappear into the darkness below, then he followed suit, lowering himself over the lip of the shaft, then letting go. Drawing on the Force, he centered himself. He landed hard, plastoid clacking, going to one knee even as he bent low to absorb the impact.

Arkos grunted, then looked around, his HUD switching to low light night vision. He saw motionless figures littering the corridor ahead.

"Guess it didn't fall without a fight. You think there are any survivors?"

 

[Ferenc]

Valerius | Isar | Orestyn Carda
​

---

Doing as instructed because he was incredibly amicable, Ferenc raised a hand to his chest rig to switch on his comlink.​

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"Carda, Thorn. Kaul here." He said, then waited a beat, "We found the aftermath of a skirmish. Security droids are to be considered hostile."​

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He eyed the keycard in Valerius' hand, then the door keeping them in place.​

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"Closing in on command, but we're stuck 'til power's restored." Ferenc drops his hand from the comlink and steps up to the dead novatrooper.​

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"Does he have a datapad?"​

 

[Valerius]

"Does he have a datapad?" Valerius turned his head slowly. Something about that question he didn't like. It almost sounded to his ears like a command. And he was not in the habit of receiving those lately. "If he does have a datapad, give it to me," said the rat to the lion. A vision of slapping the Assessor intruded in his mind's eye. Backhanded. The distinction is important.​

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But he banished it as quickly as it arrived. Roughing up the spares should only be done when absolutely necessary - not just because he was in a testy mood after ruminating on the novatrooper. Discipline, discipline, discipline. "Without that," his brother had said once, "We're just Sith in white armor." Valerius hovered a hand over the novatrooper, whose body jerked as the datapad he had crumpled over forced its way into the air and into Valerius' waiting grasp.​

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"He does."​

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He depressed a button with his thumb. The screen flickered to life, despite itself. Imperial gear was often derided as blocky and inelegant, but it worked well past its expiration date. Not unlike the Empire itself.​

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It wanted a passcode. Eight digits. As convenient as his trick with the door was, it could not be applied equally to all pieces of technology. "Locked. Here," Valerius passed the device off to Ferenc as if it were a dead thing beneath his notice.​

Ferenc | Orestyn Carda | Isar​