Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Nothing Personal

Lev Orlova

An irredeemable soldier haunted by his sins.
We didn't care who it was, or why we did it.
We'd seen worse back home.
Lev was jolted awake as the dropship detached from the hangar bay of Gruppa Taktikal Solution's strike carrier, The Black Raven. His eyes turned to the holoprojection of the planet below being displayed in the center of the advanced dropship. 15 men decked out head to toe in sandy-colored combat gear, from regular infantry men to some with power armor and heavy blasters, looked silently at the dull red display in front of them. It provided the only lighting within the dropship as few conversed quietly with each other, checking and rechecking their equipment and weapons.

"Grallan 5."
The display showed in fuzzy Yaziksmert text. It was, like most of the planets they visited in their contracts, a relatively unknown backwater that was abused for its resources by whomever could exert their power over it. Usually, it was the Hutts. And like most of their other jobs, the locals had gotten rowdy, inspired by some charismatic type and lead into an armed revolt against their masters who treated them as "employees" on paper but slaves in actuality.

Grallan 5 was a mostly barren world, a dustball with relatively cool weather, strong winds, and an extremely large supply of ores used in the process of creating durasteel. A week ago the Hutt enforcers were forced from the mining outposts into the main colonist settlements, where they were meeting the same level of hostility in the form of mass riots, but were atleast able to somewhat hold their ground. All of the 1st Company, 1st Platoon of Gruppa Taktikal were being deployed in key enemy controlled villages where the rebellion had started to clean up the resistance, find the trouble makers, and execute them. Once the mines, the main moneymaker of the Hutt that owned this planet, were secure, the teams would pivot towards the large miner settlements and enact surgical strikes on key leaders.

Easy. It had been done in this same fashion several times before, to the point that some of the men were experiencing deja vu on nearly every drop. But, what they did not take into account was that despite their hush-hush operations and air of mystery they shrouded themselves in behind the cover of a "legitimate and legal" PMC, was that they were being investigated on a massive scale by several official agencies spanning a few different powerful factions. Even now as they were descending into the atmosphere, their dropship was being tracked by the team sent to gather intel on them, [member="Delila Castillon"], the lone exporer, [member="Kiyron"], the former black ops operative and freelancer, and [member="Kaiden Rohn"], the veteran soldier.

What the Czelosmertian mercs never would have suspected either was that this drop would be the catalyst to the eventual dissolution of Gruppa Taktikal, every man jumping ship to save his own skin lest he spend the rest of his life in a max security prison. As the designated team leader of this team of statue-like killers dubbed Voran 1, Lev himself was of particular interest to these groups. Having been marked as "Unidentified senior lieutenant of Gruppa Taktikal Solutions," finding out his identity as well as proving the allegations of war crimes would help the effort to take down Gruppa Taktikal tremendously.

The dropship shuddered violently as it entered the atmosphere, jostling the men around briefly. The pilot clicked on the intercom and announced in a curt, monotone voice,"10 minutes to drop site."

The small, unnamed mining village was the quietest it had been in years. The mining equipment had finally fallen silent, and people went about their business tending to the village as if they had never been slaves. It consisted mainly of Rodians and some Twi'Leks, whole families that had either been swindled into this "occupation" or brought here out of debts owed to the Hutts. Able bodied men, with a few courageous women, stood watch over the settlement of about 50 mud-dried hovels set in a semi circle around the entrance to the mines. Their village was the head of the resistance, and they were absolutely sure that no one knew that. Tymor Kweetep, the uppity Rodian and defacto leader of the resistance movement, made his rousing speeches to the locals from his hovel here while directing resistance cells within the settlements. He sat looking over a holo projection of the main settlement that contained the only spaceport in the planet, and their main hope of escaping this living hell, no idea that within a few minutes the whole village was about to be forcefully dragged right back into their living nightmare.

As the watchmen lazily looked around the craggy outcroppings around them, they took no notice of the two black dropships descending almost directly down onto them. The wind, as if paid by the Hutts as well, blew especially hard today, scraping sand against any exposed parts of their bodies. Something of a higher pitch whined above the whistling winds. At first it was easily ignored, until it grew louder and more intense. The villagers looked around, and suddenly a cry rang out, whooping in Twi'Lek and basic across all the camp, people pointing up at the two black vultures descending upon them with great speed. Small arms fire was offered in their direction, but it did nothing to stop the speeding dropships as they leveled out and began to quickly decelerate while remaining parallel with the ground.

Inside of the dropships, the sound of the loud blasts from the blaster fire hitting the hull filled the compartment. Lev turned his head and nodded to a power armored soldier to his right. The soldier returned the nod and slid open the door, air rushed out as the compartment decompressed. The soldier lifted up a massive heavy blaster, so massive it was only usable by a mere man due to his suit's hydraulics, and began to rain down fire on the village, with the second dropship doing the same. The noncombatants scattered into the hovels and took cover, as the return fire from the ships was largely in discriminatory.

From the center of the village, a lone Twi'Lek jumped out of an underground hovel and lifted up a rocket launcher, hefting it up with some difficulty. Lev screamed over the comms as he saw the rebel lift the rocket in his dropships direction,"Launcher, launcher! Evade, evade!" The dropship swerved suddenly and launched a slurry of flares and chaff, the soldiers inside cursing as they were in danger of falling out of the open door in this maneuver. The rocket swirled past the tail of the dropship, and the rebel was swiftly cut down by blaster fire from the doorgunner of the other dropship.

The dropships continued to circle the village until they were just a few feet off the ground. The maneuver was done in a manner that both of them would end up on either side of the village, enacting a two pronged attack on the unsuspecting rebels. The mercs poured out of the dropship, and as quickly as it had landed it took off. Each of the groups fanned out into three five man teams, able to cover the entire width of the village as they cleared forward. It was quick, brutal, and efficient. The armed rebels stood no chance, as unarmed slaves were roughed shoved to the ground, regardless of age, and barked and cursed at in broken Galactic Basic before being restrained.

Lev's adrenaline was pumping as he dropped another rebel that tried to get the jump on him by popping around a hovel. His team followed close behind him, clearing the small mudhuts as they moved. Suddenly his power armor operator, Garid, screamed out while clearing the hovel to his right. It was a bloodcurling scream, and Lev turned just as he felt a wave of heat engulf his right side. The power armored man busted out of the mud hut with ease, engulfed entirely in flame as he did. He batted and swatted at the fire before collapsing into the dirt, convulsing in pain as he screamed. Out of the hole stepped a rebel holding a makeshift flamethrower made from some mixture of volatile chemicals and mining equipment, ready to blast Garid with another wave of melting flame. Lev raised his blaster to his hip and fired into the Rodian, continuing to fire into the rebel even after he had dropped to the ground.

Two men rushed up to Garid, throwing dust on him, ripping down a blanket from inside one of the hovels and slapping him with it. Lev watched on as his men slowly stopped the fires as Garid's powerarmor pack exploded in a small green flame. The two men flinched as the electrical fire licked their gasmasks, backing up. Garid now only moaned, his nerves completely singed off, his powerarmor twitching and whining. Lev shoved his mercs aside, raising his blaster barrel to Garid's face, his breathing mask was completely melted and adhered to his face from the heat. He put two bolts in his former squadmate's head, and the groaning stopped, only the power armor continued to whir and whine.

It was just then that Lev noticed that the rest of the village was silent, and that the team leader from Voran 2 stood beside Lev silently. Lev looked up at his accomplice, who nodded to him,"Village is secure, but we can't find the ringleader." Lev blankly stared at his colleague for a brief moment from under the anonymity of his tinted breathing apparatus. He looked around the village to see his men posted up in key locations watching over all the detainees, then turned back to the Voran 2 squad leader. "Round them up here."
 

Kiyron

Guest
K
"Signal is still strong," Kiyron said, eyes glued to the display. The dropships were still showing clear signs of their location from the tracking technology. Evidently, they hadn't thought to check for such beacons. Then again, who would? Why bother placing a tracker on a dropship? They weren't stealthy, no matter how many wished they could be. "Chance in vector and velocity." He noted, double checking the location a grid coordinate map hovering next to it. He widened his fingers and zoomed in on the coordinates. "Looks like a village. Must be one of the resistance holdouts. Any of you get sat feeds on the area?"

It was likely not going to be possible, but there was always a chance. They needed evidence, identities, anything concrete and solid enough to bring to the courts. Get a legal inquiry going and bring the company to justice. If there was anything to bring them to justice for. Grapevine gossip rumored that there was, but that wasn't enough to bring a guilty verdict. No, they needed hard and incontrovertible evidence. Tracking these ships and their commander, one of the senior lieutenants, if the intel was right, was crucial to getting that data.

He leaned back in his seat and tightened the belt before looking to [member="Kaiden Rohn"]. "Any more word on this from higher up? Or we still shooting blind?" That was what concerned him. They lacked the intelligence details that would have functioned for a more formal military operation, but this was recon. His specialty, when it was wilderness. Not tracking ships and using technology. No, he preferred his eyes, his ears, his sense of touch, and his nose for detecting where things were, especially when they weren't meant to be there.

And he liked plans. But they had no plan as of yet because they had nothing to make a plan with. The contractors were too well equipped and too well disciplined for a small team to move in clear out by themselves without intel. No, these were professionals, probably the equal of most galactic superpower's soldiers. That was why they had been deployed on this op. Be the eyes and ears on the ground to get the data, then, officially, withdraw and turn over the intel so it could move up the chain and be appropriately responded to. ROE was primarily observe and do not engage. That was safe enough to work with, until something went catastrophically wrong as they always did.
 

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