Mission Nothing Beside Remains (Tarkin Initiative)

[Tydeus Shorn]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

"Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the level sands stretch far away.” ​

ATRISIA
0300 hours
Insertion Squad Aurek

//Loading mission data//
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//Mission Brief: Secure DS3 wreckage site. Retrieve data cache. Minimize mission footprint. ROE: defensive posture//

The stealthed shuttle’s engines seemed far too loud in the black of night as the ramp lowered and the operatives of the Tarkin Initiative took up firing positions to secure the landing zone.

Tydeus came down the ramp wearing a frown to accompany his new attire: the red and black armor of an Imperial Knight.

When last he’d been on Atrisia, it was as an ally of the Ashinas and the Lightsworn. Now? He did not know.

Sith warbands ruled the Core. All was lawless and chaos.

He hoped that the Ashinas would see reason. The need for a firm hand and order. But the Jedi philosophies clouded their minds.

Grinding his teeth. Tydeus surveyed the wreckage of the Death Star on the planet’s surface, a stretch of devastation where pieces of the moon lay scattered like slag heaps the size of mountains. Amid all that debris lay the data they sought, protected in a black box of phrik. It would have survived the crash.

Tydeus turned to the others.

“Find it.”

Daedalus Tarkin | Keldan Andro | Amena Kader | Aymeric Prendergast

 

[Sid Berik]

RECK TEAM
​

ATRISIA
0300 hours
Insertion Squad Aurek


Sid had recently escaped Coruscant- but found quick solace and was recruited by the Tarkin group. He still was apprehensive about them, but so far, they'd been generous with their protection and their rescue, and, importantly, they'd been asking him to lead a new team.

His company of Troopers, scattered to the wind. He had no idea where they were. He'd put out a message, and hopefully, they'd come back to him. His boys needed to come home. For the time being however-

He stepped off the ramp. Atrisia was a special battlefield, and littered with the wreckage of the recent-dead ghosts. It had shattered the Alliance to break the Empire. Such was the way of things. Sid crouched down as the shuttle sped off, his new sleek-black armor blending into the shadows. He looked up at the Imperial Knight- another order of Force Using Sith types. He still didn't trust them fully, and had little interest in gaining any for them. He checked his TACPAD, scanning his eyes beyond his helmet.

"No movement."

Came his distorted voice from beyond his helmet. So far, they'd not been detected. He'd prefer them to do without force users. They tended to complicate missions, what with visions, grudges, and their inability to seemingly do things quietly. But he'd play nice, for the time being. He was back to being a soldier, his rank gone. He wasn't here to make decisions, to make choices yet. He still had a lot to prove to the Tarkin group, and they to him.

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

ROTTWEILER​

ATRISIA

The impact site was a scar on the face of Atrisia. Where there should have been the rolling green hills and serene pagodas of the countryside, there was only a jagged trench of scorched earth and twisted, blackened durasteel.

The Fourth Brother stood at the edge of the crater, a silhouette of sharp angles against the morning mist. What the Imperial Knights see as a site of recovery and duty, and the Ashinas see as a tragedy, he sees as a graveyard of echoes.

His eyes; once the clear blue of a Coruscant sky, now a sickly, sulfurous yellow, were closed. He ignored the chirping of Atrisian birds and the distant hum of Imperial dropships. Instead, he sought the death-screams, for the stains left behind.

When the DSIII went down, it wasn't just a mechanical failure; it was a psychic tectonic shift. Thousands of souls had been snuffed out in an instant of fire and gravity. Aymeric reached out and grabbed a handful of that lingering trauma.

Fear. Absolute terror. The smell of ozone and burning oxygen.

He felt the final, desperate thoughts of a technician in the communications hub, his fingers melting onto the console as he tried to stabilize the black box's containment field.

There. Deep beneath a collapsed support strut, buried under three meters of Atrisian clay and radioactive cooling fluid. The signal was faint, but to a man who had been broken by Tarkin, the scent of agony was as clear as a flare in the night. A sharp, rhythmic pulse throbbed in Aymeric's temple, a psychosomatic reminder of the neuro-shackles Daedalus Tarkin had used during his re-education.

As he moved toward the burial site of the black box, the Fourth Brother's hand tightened on the hilt of his Inquisitorial blade. He could still hear Tarkin's voice, cold and clinical, echoing from the two years of silence in his lab: "You are a tool. And a tool that fails to find its mark is simply a scrap."

He wouldn't be a scrap. Not again.

Amena Kader | Sid Berik | Tydeus Shorn​

 

[Galen Dooku]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS: MISSION TO ATRISIA

//: WRECKAGE OF THE DEATH STAR III
//: ATRISIA
//: 0300 HRS

The words cut through Dooku's focus on the vista like a vibroknife. "Find it." He of course knew exactly what they were after. They all did. A black box containing sensitive data beneficial to the Initiative. Curiosity lingered in his mind, but Galen didn't need to know what it contained—the shadowy Emperor's desire for its return was enough to guide the Knights footfalls.

Beneath his boots, shattered transparisteel and gnarled metal crunched. It was difficult to eliminate the sound of their presence, but Galen suspected resistance would be light... if it even showed at all. There was no Alliance left to thwart the Initiative's asset procurement team, at least not any with access to the technology needed to detect their shuttle. The Sith were like rabid dogs, too busy picking the bones of Coruscant clean to care about Atrisia. No, this mission should be standard procedure. Still, the lightsaber hilt that hung from his belt remained within hand's reach should it need to be wielded.

"No movement."

Galen nodded.

"Killed in the splintering, if not before," he noted, stepping over what appeared to be the charred chest plate of a stormtrooper. The man it encased was nowhere to be seen. Galen noticed another piece, half of a helmet, but a metallic groan in the distance snatched his attention. The Knight's eyes narrowed, blue orbs scanning the wreckage for any sign of trouble. It was likely just debris settling, but caution was key.

"Watch for GADF or loyalists," Galen ordered. "There's still many who would follow Solipsis, even in his absence."

TAGS: Aymeric Prendergast | Sid Berik | Tydeus Shorn​

 

[Keldan Andro]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

KELDAN ANDRO
DEATH STAR WRECKAGE
ATRISA

Even several months after its spectacular defeat at the Battle of Atrisia, the shadow of the Galactic Empire still loomed large over the galaxy.

The fabled "Third Death Star", which had inspired so much fear and terror, had been destroyed in its debut battle, scattering large pieces of its wreckage all across the planet where it now rested. Such a crippling blow to the Empire had undoubtedly play a large role in its accelerated collapse, and with the Sith threat spreading across the Galactic Core, the remains of the Third Death Star were promptly forgotten, left to rust and decay free of any outside powers or intervention.

At least, it had been until Keldan Andro had been summoned to the world.

Granted, his orders had come directly from Tydeus Shorn himself, and he would have answered his summons no matter what the man had told him to do. But on a deeper level, something just felt...off to Keldan. It was almost as if the Death Star was calling to him, beckoning him to come and explore its remains, tempting him with promises of untold riches and possibilities of gaining power far beyond his wildest dreams.

It was such a foreign concept to him, so alien, so unusual, so...wrong, in many respects. Since Keldan had just recently discovered his Force Sensitivity, he was not yet used to the way that it affected him, which was one of the main reasons that he had decided to join the Imperial Knights in the first place. Keldan sincerely hoped that they might be able to teach him how to best use and control his powers, how to utilize the force to his benefit and how to best understand it, because at the moment, he was very much a novice in nearly all things force related.

Regardless, Keldan has a mission to do, and he would see to it that he accomplished that mission no matter what Atrisia and the Death Star might have in store for him. As he made planetfall, he exited his vehicle, opening up a secure communications channel with the other Imperial operatives that had been dispatched on this mission,

"No movement", came an observation from Sid Berik .

"Killed in the splintering, if not before. Watch for GADF or loyalists, there's still many who would follow Solipsis, even in his absence", replied Galen Dooku .

Keldan responded in turn.

"Understood, I'll be sure to proceed with caution. Be careful in there, something about this place seems...off".

His warning issued, Keldan began to venture deep into the bowels of the Death Star's remains...

TAGS:
Galen Dooku
Sid Berik
Aymeric Prendergast
Tydeus Shorn

 

[Lareva]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS​

Lareva tasted something bitter looking upon the wreckage from the ramp of the landing shuttle. Here, a planet that had escaped its fate, whose people lived to call it home. She saw nothing remarkable about it, nothing that pre-ordained it to temporal protection. It was not particularly beautiful, as far as she Lareva was concerned. Its culture was irritating more than interesting. The stranglehold the Jedi views had over them spoke poorly of their intellectual capacity and ability to reason.

All in all, an unremarkable little place, and yet blissfully intact. The gods had a sense of humor.

Nostrils flared, and the Chiss huffed softly before descending down the ramp fully.

The place felt wrong to her, too. It seemed a wound in the Force, something so unmistakably dark, so unambiguously menacing, should not exist. It spit in the face of the very idea of balance. And yet, there, too the gods seemed to have a sense of humor. No sooner had the men who built this monstrosity that lay in mountainous pieces been beaten back from Atrisia, they themselves had been unseated from Coruscant. The more things change, Lavera thought grimly, the more they stay the same.

Stybla'rev'anya checked her blaster pack one final time, holstered the blaster, then knelt and adjusted the fastenings of her boots before standing again. She approached Tydeus Shorn , standing behind him and to one side for a moment, looking where he looked to see what he saw. After a moment of this, she proceeded toward the wreckage. The sooner they found what they were after, the sooner they would be able to get away from this open sore in the Force.

Galen Dooku | Sid Berik | Aymeric Prendergast | Tydeus Shorn​

 

[Tydeus Shorn]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

"Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the level sands stretch far away.” ​

ATRISIA
0302 hours
Insertion Squad Aurek


Tydeus nodded at the words of Knight Marshal Dooku, though he made no move to unclip his lightsaber hilt from his belt or pull his blaster from its holster on his thigh.

"Trooper, establish perimeter security. I saw the fire discipline in the brief, but if you suspect a threat..."

He left the rest unspoken.

There were rules, then there was what was necessary.

Turning to Lareva, he could feel her unease in the Force. Small wonder. This place might become a Wound. But Tydeus himself was a walking Wound, bearing all the dead of Tion with him wherever he went. It left him with few friends and of those nearly none wanted to be in his presence for long. He knew why. He felt it every waking moment of his existence. The dead were a millstone around his neck. A weight he must bear. He could rest when he had killed Kaine and put their souls at ease.

But in the meantime, order needed to be restored...

"We should not let the initiate wander off," he muttered to himself, following Keldan Andro deeper into the wreckage.

He passed by the shape of a fallen walker, noting the sigil on the side of the burned out husk that was still half visible. "Mahporeem," he shook his head and wondered what might have been if the Empire had not been seduced by Sith. Having an inquisitor with them made him uncomfortable and he cast a glance at the "Fourth Brother." Dark Sider. But that wasn't what he felt right now.

Something felt... off.

That was when he saw them, three shapes standing on top of nearby rubble, barely visible in the darkness. Armed and Rodian.

"Scavengers," Tydeus warned into the bone conducted commlink he wore on his ear and throat. "We're not alone."

Then the shooting started.

Galen Dooku Lareva Sid Berik Aymeric Prendergast

 

[Sid Berik]

RECK TEAM
​

ATRISIA
0303 hours
Insertion Squad Aurek


Sid looked among the wreckage. He found only ghosts there. He didn't want to think about the ghosts. He didn't want to think about his dead friends again.

It was Sid who shot first. He stood up, tucked his rifle into his shoulder, and fired. Red blaster bolts, hate and discontent respectively, fled from his rifle into the enemy, rapidly and without precision. The idea was to gain quick fire superiority rather than accurate return fire. The scavengers shot wide and unprepared, and the first two targets came into his view. He ran a box drill on them both with near surgical precision. He was fast, and lethal.

Sid's feet turned, digging his outward foot into a turn, and his inboard foot leapt outward. He moved fast and low, his arm pumping to not take cover but to engage the enemy. He didn't move to cover- he moved closer. Imperial Commandos and Stormtroopers were the lethal for a reason. Deathtroopers however, were on another level. They were fast and precise, aggressive and violent. It was on display here. He didn't shy away from the enemy, he pushed them. They weren't expecting that, nor would most. Criminality and scavengers didn't scare him much, if at all.

He wanted to take his anger out on someone, something. People picking at the bones and corpse of his former countrymen were to be given no mercy.

 

[Keldan Andro]

NOTHING BESIDE REMAINS

KELDAN ANDRO
DEATH STAR WRECKAGE
ATRISA

As Keldan continued to move his way through the wreckage and rubble, he couldn't help but feel in awe of all the destruction that was surrounding him.

When the Third Death Star had been destroyed, it had been complete and total annihilation of the super sized Battlestation, its remains visible for miles and miles around. Nearly ever square inch of the planet had some form of the Death Star's wreckage upon it, and Keldan could scarcely step more than a few feet forward before stepping on melted Durasteel or the remains of some of the unfortunate souls who had served aboard the station to the bitter end, choosing to die in the name of their false emperor rather than save themselves.

It was all so eerie, seeing some that had caused so much grief and devastation up close, having been reduced to nothing but a veritable mountain of scrap metal. He honestly didn't see anything worth saving, though his gut told him to keep moving forward, as the treasure that he sought was much further away from his current position.

Stepping over a smoldering mound of twisted steel and tangled bodies, Keldan happened to notice some movement up ahead of him. Carefully gripping the hilt of his Crossguard Lightsaber, Keldan moved forward to investigate, stepping slowly and deliberately with each passing step. Directly in front of him was some sort of jet black Astromech Droid that had been covered from top to bottom in rubble, beeping softly as it tried and apparently failed to free itself from its trapped position. Keldan couldn't believe his luck! Perhaps this droid held a clue to the answers that he had been seeking! He stepped forward to free the poor droid from its improvised prison.

"Well look at you, your poor thing! You're an awfully long way from home, what happened-"

The droid, upon hearing Keldan's voice, immediately sprang forward, freeing itself from the rubble it had been trapped under with ease, and using its side mounted G-41 Imperial Heavy Rotary Blaster, began firing wildly at Keldan in an attempt to kill the Imperial Knight in training! Keldan barely had enough time to activate his lightsaber as he began deflecting a torrent of blaster bolts heading at him, trying his best not to redirect the bolts back at the droid. In desperation, he cried out toward the droid:

"Wait, wait, WAIT! I'm friendly, I mean you no harm!"

The droid ignored his pleas and continued attacking, though whether it was because Keldan was a wanted criminal on Mahporeem or because the droid has sustained damage was unclear. Not content to just blast Keldan to bits, the droid then activated its NZ RPER-800 HEAVY Missile Launcher, firing a single projectile toward Keldan. In response, Keldan jerked his left arm to the side, using the Force to send the missile flying off toward a piece of jutting debris. The droid fired three more missiles at Keldan, who jumped behind a large piece of sheet metal as the droid resumed firing at him with its rotary blaster cannon. Sighing to him, Keldan did a somersault over the droid, who tried but failed to engage him as he floated overhead. At the apex of his jump, he thrusted his lightsaber downward directly into the Astromech's rotating dome head, instantly destroying it as he leapt back onto the ground.

He turned around, expecting more of a fight, but the droid had been permanently disabled, smoking and on fire from where Keldan's lightsaber had struck it. So much for getting answers. Deactivating his lightsaber, Keldan pressed onward, deeper and deeper into the wreckage field around him...

TAGS:
Galen Dooku
Sid Berik
Aymeric Prendergast
Tydeus Shorn
Lareva