Location: LZ Ashfall, Oricon
Entorage: -
House Vossan Guard x 8
Tags:
Vas Aleksei
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Tiber Fel
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Captain Charles
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Orinn Darge
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Rasha Popova
Direct Engagement:
R'ayne Asara
The shuttle descended through Oricon’s poisoned atmosphere with none of the reckless speed of the transports feeding troops directly into the fighting. Its pilot held to the edge of the widening Imperial corridor, slipping between the burning trails of incoming craft and the fading blossoms of anti-air fire as orbital guns methodically tore the remaining emplacements apart. Ash scraped across the hull in a constant metallic hiss. Every few seconds, the troop compartment was washed in dull green light as another naval salvo passed somewhere above them, followed by the distant tremor of impact rolling through the volcanic crust.
Kaelya Vossan stood without holding the restraints. The black plates of
Hoshikiba shifted subtly with the motion of the craft, fitted tightly enough to move as an extension of her body rather than the ceremonial shell its polished lines might have suggested.
Hoshirei rested against one hip, its familiar weight balanced by the sheathed length of
Kagekiba at the other. She had brought neither a full Inquisitorial detachment nor a conventional infantry escort. Only a small honor guard of House Vossan had accompanied her: disciplined figures in dark armor marked with the angular sigil of her bloodline, their weapons checked and held ready beneath the crimson glow of the compartment lights. They were not numerous enough to seize ground. They had not come to.
The shuttle struck the landing zone with a hard, controlled impact. Its ramp lowered into a furnace wind carrying powdered basalt, burnt propellant, and the distant stink of opened bodies. LZ Ashfall had begun to resemble an Imperial position, though only in the loosest sense of the term. Stormtroopers moved between landed craft and fresh defensive works. Wounded men were dragged through the ash toward improvised aid stations. Officers shouted into unreliable comms while engineers planted beacons, unboxed equipment, and tried to impose order upon ground that still shook under bombardment. Beyond the perimeter, the battlefield flashed through the haze in broken glimpses—blaster volleys, lightning, and the shifting colors of lightsabers swallowed almost immediately by smoke.
Kaelya stepped from the transport first. The Vossan guards followed in two tight files, boots striking black stone with practiced uniformity before they spread around her in a restrained protective crescent. Their formation drew glances, but not for long. Oricon offered too many immediate dangers for anyone to waste time studying another noble house’s soldiers.
A different presence claimed Kaelya’s attention. Near the landed transports stood a hooded woman in black and red, crouched before a reinforced containment crate that trembled beneath repeated impacts from within. More crates were being brought down around her, each accompanied by labor crews who moved with the careful avoidance of men carrying something they did not wish to understand. Sounds came from the containers—scratching, guttural whines, and low vocalizations possessing just enough awareness to make them more unsettling than the noise of simple animals. Kaelya stopped several meters away.
Her gaze moved from the woman to the nearest crate as its frame shuddered against the ground. Whatever waited inside was alive, hungry, and touched by arts with which Kaelya had more familiarity than most Imperial soldiers would have found comforting. The Force clung to the cargo in warped layers. Alchemy. Manipulation. Living forms compelled into shapes dictated by ambition rather than nature. Not necessarily a problem. Not yet.
One of her guards shifted his rifle a fraction toward the crate. Kaelya raised two fingers without looking back, and the weapon immediately returned to a neutral position.
“Hold,” she ordered. Her voice was quiet, but the guard detail settled around the command as though anchored by it.
Kaelya regarded R’ayne Asara with a measured expression, neither openly hostile nor impressed by the spectacle. There was little value in announcing suspicion where none had yet been warranted, and less still in pretending that creatures engineered for war were beyond Imperial utility. The woman had arrived beneath the same standard. That did not make her trustworthy. It merely made any reckoning premature.
“The landing zone already has enough frightened men with weapons,” Kaelya observed, her eyes briefly returning to the violent motion within the crate.
“I assume your darlings know which uniforms not to tear apart.” The words carried no accusation. Only expectation.
Before any answer could settle between them, Kaelya turned slightly toward the senior guardsman at her right. Captain Arven Krail had served House Vossan long enough to understand that her instructions were often given with fewer words than other commanders required.
“Krail.”
The captain stepped forward immediately.
“My lady.”
“Move ahead of the perimeter. Find the point where the line is weakest, not where it is loudest.” Kaelya lifted her gaze toward the ash-veiled battlefield.
“The 501st is forcing an eastern route. Rampart holds the western ridge. I want the space between their pressure and the cult’s response. Something narrow enough to cut, important enough to matter, and overlooked because everyone else is trying to win the entire field at once.”
Krail glanced toward the distant flashes marking the engagement zone.
“Reconnaissance only?”
“Assessment,” Kaelya corrected.
“Do not begin a battle the rest of us cannot reach.” A faint inclination of his helmet acknowledged the distinction.
“Take Saren and two others. Establish contact with Imperial forward elements, confirm what the drones cannot see, and report a viable approach. Jedi, cultists, fortifications, unstable terrain—mark all of it. Avoid commitment unless required to withdraw.”
“Yes, my lady.” Krail signaled three guards from the formation. The four of them departed at once, moving through the landing zone toward the outer perimeter with their rifles low and their spacing widening as they approached the ash. They did not join the great body of soldiers surging toward the central engagement. Instead, they disappeared along its edge, using landed gunships, basalt shelves, and half-built defenses as cover until Oricon’s murk swallowed their silhouettes entirely.
Kaelya watched them go. A broad advance would eventually carry the Empire toward the ruins. Tiber Fel and the 501st would see to that with all the violence such work required. Naval guns would strip away fixed defenses. Infantry would hold the ground beneath the smoke. Kaelya had no intention of duplicating their effort merely to prove she could stand in the same fire. Her purpose was narrower.
Somewhere within the chaos there would be a seam: a command trench whose loss would break a section of the cult’s defense, a concealed route into the ruins, a Force adept directing zealots from behind the line, or perhaps a Jedi element so exposed that one precise strike could collapse the balance of the entire engagement. Such opportunities rarely announced themselves. They had to be found before less disciplined hands buried them beneath artillery and corpses.
Behind her, the House Vossan guards tightened their formation as another transport descended through the ash. Kaelya remained at the edge of the landing zone beside R’ayne and her restless cargo, looking east toward the broken flashes of the war.
“We will not be needed here for long,” she said, whether to the hooded woman or merely to those gathered around them left unclear. Her thumb rested lightly against Hoshirei’s hilt.
“When the line opens, I intend to be inside it.”
Ronhar Tane
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Cardtiger
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Kaelya Vossan
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