Kingdom Under Fire I

[Boric Redstone]

"The Commonwealth is dying."

A man as wide and tall as a Houk, but as human in appearance as the average Corellian, stood by a docking bay. His eyes darted from the conversation to a ship that was being waved into port, the CNS Agincourt. They were hundreds of meters below it but even then the size of the vessel, small compared to other galactic empires, was still large enough to throw a blanket of shadow over the asteroid-based port. "With sustained wars on every front?" Locklear spoke loudly, "They expended most of their fleet during the battle of Omega. It was a matter of time."

Locklear was just as big in muscle as Boric and Pierre, albeit he walked with a limp and half his face was motionless. He had almost lost all motor functions during the operation and trials, thankfully he left with just a bad leg and his face somewhat paralyzed. Better than others had fared. Far better. Boric and Pierre were among the lucky ones to come out of that station alive. Pierre piped up with a heavy tone, "What's done is done. They tore down the Kingdom of Alexandria, and now the galaxy tears them down. The Gods have turned a blind eye to them, and so they should."

"But what are they doing here, this far from home," Locklear said. While the three of them had only stepped foot on Alexandria for the first three years of their life they still considered that world their home. Their ancestral line, dating back ten-thousand years, was deeply rooted in the soil of that world. The Redstones were an old noble house of Alexandria, now reduced to roving mercenaries, living day to day. While they had been insignificant to the king in their time, limited to the businesses of counts and barons, they had held the most sway in the council of small nobles and by far the richest for their quarries of gems were vast and prosperous.

"I don't know, but it can't be good," Boric said at last. Locker near-hissed, "Maybe they are still after their missing Lord of Admirals, Horus." There was little love shared between the former nobles of Alexandria and the current rulers. There were many who only saw it only as a grab for power, but many more had wanted freedom from the rule of kings. The reasons Horus had for disposing of the nobles, the commoners cared not. "I'm going to go investigate, you two stay by the ship," Boric said and gestured to a small rusting freighter that looked on its last legs.


| [member="Jackson Mills"] |

 

[Jackson Mills]

Jackson was exhausted. He hadn’t looked in a mirror in a while, but he expected that he probably looked every bit as exhausted as he felt. The Commonwealth had been under fire for so long, and he had been deployed to the frontlines in every major operation for the last few months. Although he was now stationed on the Agincourt once more, that didn’t mean that he could relax. In a way, it was just as stressful as a normal deployment. Lord of Admirals Horus was still missing, and the Command of the Alexandrian military and government had decided that it was time to end the mystery. Either he was alive or he wasn’t, and they were going to find out.

Staff Sergeant Jackson Mills wasn’t of high enough rank yet to have been clued in on mission specifics. He didn’t know if they had a lead, one way or the other. All he knew was that they were taking a now tired combat frigate into unfriendly, unknown space. Their goal was to remain quiet and stealthy, but to release their firepower if needed. The increased emphasis on stealth, however, meant that his platoon of Marines were more likely to be deployed on strike missions, and the fact that they were in a combat frigate meant that they were at an extreme disadvantage if any rival ships were encountered. Jack didn’t know much about space combat, but he did know that the frigates were made for combined fleet actions, not independent fighting.

‘Oh well, that’s why we make the big bucks.’ He thought to himself sarcastically as he finished clipping his armor pieces together. He grabbed a rifle and ammunition from the wall rack in his quarters. On this deployment he was unlucky enough to end up in a ‘hotbunk’ living situation. One small room with four beds assigned to eight Marines. When Jack was on duty, another Marine would be sleeping in his bunk. It was the only way to get enough people onto the small frigate and remain actively crewed each watch cycle. He exited the quarters and began the walk to his duty station. They were getting ready to dock with Zenith Prime to top off on supplies before trekking out into the unknown, and Jack had drawn guard duty for the airlock, along with Corporal Nez.

He found the Corporal already standing at the airlock when he got there. “Ready for an exciting day of standing, Nez?” He quipped, throwing up a smile and doing his best to forget his exhaustion.

“You bet, Sarge. Who knows, maybe something will happen today” Nez replied, with a half smile.

“Come on, Corporal, now that you’ve said it it wont happen.” Jack replied, and as he did so the light over the airlock turned green. As the inner door opened Jack once again changed his face and demeanor, but this time it was from jovial Sergeant to impassive guard. He closed the inner door, then opened the outer door which lead to the bustling station beyond. He took the left side of the airlock, and Nez took the right. Jack stood, rifle across his chest, and settling in for a long, uneventful watch.

 

[Boric Redstone]

Through winding corridors that crisscrossed far above the ground below, Boric slowly found his way through. The corridors were designed for humans and a bit of extra space above their caps, not the forced-genetic mutation of a human crossed with a Houk. He sagged his shoulders, slouched his back and hung his head low to fit through the walkways. Each step was thunderous and every now and again someone would come walking towards him and be forced to squeeze around him. He looked a horrid beast, half-man half-monster for surely someone of his size and to still be human was impossible.

Though he could blame the Commonwealth for that, and much more, he bitterly thought. A sword half as tall as a human hung from a scabbard strapped around his hips and a pistol as large as a grenade-launcher was holstered across his chest. The barrel was big enough for a child to fit his fist into it. He wore armor as big and as unwieldy as his own stature. The armor was coated in a fine yellow with a tabard showing the Redstone house sigil, a single black fist raised in the air on a white field. Defiant to the last. Those were the sacred words of his lineage, forgotten to war and ruin.

Ahead was the airlock to the CNS Agincourt. The door opened and two marines of the Commonwealth stepped out. One of them was a muscled man with the look of someone who had seen his fair share of combat, with a buzz cut suggestive of brown hair. Alexandrian for sure, he had the bearing of one. A proud people, all of them. Their firm military heritage was among the oldest this far in the Unknown. Corellians may rule the skies with their natural knack for flying, the Alexandrians could temper any battlefield to their will. "Hail," Boric said, a more formal greeting he had learnt from his studies of his forefathers. "A bit far from home, aren't we?"

 

[Klesta]

The months following the attack of the Black Tie Syndicate on Alexandria were pretty challenging to her: combat sorties that amounted to nothing, aborted missions, but in the last month or so, things were looking up. Yula managed to score three kills in her last combat sortie, and allowed her to get a chance to see whether the Sith factions truly have improved in the area of starfighter combat: if Elom was any indication, their elites were similar to what non-Sith factions would field as regulars. Also, she has an idea where her fellow Commonwealth troops should not be looking for the Lord of Admirals: the Stygian Caldera, Maridun, Sometimes knowing where something was not could be just as useful as where that something could be. So she opened a channel to the CNS Agincourt, hoping that she would actually be able to play a role in the search for the Lord of Admirals, as supposedly sponsored by the Command of the Alexandrian military. Obviously because she was deployed so far away from the home base of Alexandria in an attempt to retaliate from the BTS attack on Alexandria, she couldn't be privy to the details of the mission, even though she was in the Alexandrian Military's good graces after the defense of Alexandria. Despite this, she has no official standing among the Alexandrian Military. Hopefully the Lord of Admirals wouldn't be in the hands of those Sith factions that result from the fracture of the Sith Order, she thought.

"CNS Agincourt, this is Yula. After helping out in the defense of Alexandria, helping out in the search for the Lord of Admirals would be the least I could do to help Alexandria in this time of need"

[member="Jackson Mills"] [member="Boric Redstone"]

 

[Jackson Mills]

Jackson had barely been on shift for a minute, and already he was confronted with trouble. The enormous hulk of a man before him was human, but barely recognizable as such. His weapons were large enough to put a melon sized hole through him, combat armor or not, and his armor was thick enough to render the MM101 assault rifle in his hands as little more than a noisy pellet gun. If this man decided to take issue with them, there would be little he could do other than seal the airlock before being turned into a fine pink paste on the bulkhead behind him. What’s worse, the man appeared to be an old Alexandrian loyalist, judging by his choice of greeting and his accent.


There were many enemies of the Commonwealth, as had been clearly demonstrated by the last few months of punishing, multi-front war, but nobody had a longer lived or more passionate distaste for the Commonwealth than the loyalists. Decades ago, Alexandria had been removed from the reign of a monarchy which had lasted for millennia by a civil war, from which the Commonwealth had been born. Lord of Admirals Horus had lead the revolt and established the Commonwealth as a military government representing the will of the people. The loyalists to the old crown had continued to fight against the Commonwealth, first openly, but gradually declining to terror attacks and guerilla warfare. Jackson’s family had been firm revolutionaries, and both of his parents had served under Horus during the early days of the Commonwealth.


The man now standing before him was a walking, talking symbol of the old monarchy’s power, something that Jackson had been raised to rebel against. Still the man was Alexandrian, and that alone was enough to stir a slight feeling of camaraderie in his mind. They were both men of Alexandria who were roaming these distant, alien shores. He decided to talk to the man then, but not to let down his guard. He couldn’t do anything if the man attacked him and Corporal Nez, but if that was his fate then he would remain disciplined and belligerent to the last.


“Good morning, Sir.” He said with a respectful tone, but not returning the old greeting. That was a tradition of monarchy, and hadn’t been a custom he had been raised to accept nor trained to use in the service. “Yes we are. The Corps has a way of bringing us to new and exciting places to die these days.”