Mission [Tarkin Initiative] Staging Ground

[The Arkanian]

STAGING GROUND

"There isn't much in the data banks about the Helska system. There's not an easily inhabitable planet among the seven, and no one's taken the time or trouble to build one up. None of them even have names—just Helska 1 to 7."
―Garth Breise[2]​

Helska System,
Helska IV
Imperial Redoubt - Glacier

Nothing grows on the surface of Helska IV. It is a cold and barren wasteland, where the only atmosphere is beneath the ice shell in pockets.

Its inhospitable and horrific conditions mean it is not suitable for colonization. Life is supportable only in ice caves scattered across the planet, near its inner sea.

Which is why it now serves the aims of the Tarkin Initiative.

The secretive imperial organization has converted one such ice cave into a formidable redoubt, not dissimilar to the rebel base on Hoth.

Ammunition stores, weapons caches, and vehicles have been offloaded into the redoubt from the Tarkin Initiative's small fleet in preparation for a campaign into Braxant.

But deep within the massive ice tunnels, there is something amiss.

The imperials delved too deep and awoke a nightmare centuries old. Centuries ago, the Yuuzhan Vong used Helska as a foothold on the galaxy when they launched their extragalactic incursion. It was thought that their presence on the planet had been extinguished completely, but deep in the ice… they remained.

They have a yammosk.

And hundreds of warriors.

And they are coming.

OBJECTIVE ONE - IMPERIAL REDOUBT GLACIER

OOC:

Spoiler

>FEND OFF THE INITIAL WAVE. FIGURE OUT THAT A YAMMOSK IS COORDINATING THE ASSAULT. ELIMINATE IT

​

"His leg," sobbing, uncontrollable, "I can't put his leg back on."

An army trooper stood by a corpse he'd carried half a kilometer back to the nearest bunker. He held the corpse's dismembered leg in one hand, limp. His helmet lay discarded on the floor. His eyes a red wreck.

A stormtrooper stood next to him.

"Trooper. Focus. What happened to your platoon?"

The disheveled man's terrified eyes looked up into the emotionless helmet of the stormtrooper.

"I could hear it. In my mind."

"What?"

"Yuuzhan Vong."

Behind the trooper is the sound of Vong war cries and the stamping of hundreds of feet.

OBJECTIVE TWO - SKIES OVER HELSKA

>SURVIVE<​

Hundreds of coral skippers rush out from ice caves across Helska and race for the Tarkin Initiative's Naval Task Force stationed in orbit.

The swarm threatens to overwhelm capital ship point defenses.

Desperately, the Tarkin vessels scramble TIEs to get into the fight.

Now, they are in a race against time. Can the Naval commanders and TIE pilots hold out against the swarm long enough for the ground elements to identify the yammosk coordinating this assault and eliminate it?

TAGS: Amni Kazda Keldan Andro Jaryg Syn Shen Crell Althea Varrick Kaspar Halak Diocletian Mecetti Marion Edrane Fel Tiberius Korvan Kroeger Hall Mannarra Malcolm Sularen The Agarian Aetius Pestage Tavian Rhyse Abraxas Colt

 

[Althea Varrick]

STAGING GROUND

Objective ONE
Beneath the glacier​

Locaton: Underground in the ice caves hiding out from the Vong
Tags: OPENA
Objectives:

Spoiler: objectice specifics

Dr. Varrick came down her because her department detected something large and organic. She didnt know it was Vong. But now the bulk of Horde have mostly left the caves to assault her people, she is still tracking... something... down there in the crevasses. Come help her eliminate or learn from a powerful foe.

They had lost contact with one of the advanced teams hours ago, they had found several sealed doors, ancient and huge. Opening them had not been been a challenge, what came out of them. Now that was a different question. The Vong surged out, hundreds of warriors whose only purpose was to wipe the planet clean of non-vong life. Something spurred them forward and epsilon team went down quickly, she had seen some of their last images and the fight was short and brutal.

Althea had had the good fortune to be investigating elsewhere, tracking biosignals through narrow caves. She had escaped the wave of vong that surged outwards and were now likely fighting the Initiative on the surface. The were likely stragglers down here, but if they took care they could continue to investigate as they tried to make their way back to the ship.

Althea was fascinated though, the single mass bio signature had divided and now there was two distinct signatures. One moving rapidly away towards her finely base and another. Harder to make out, much deeper in the tunnels. The Xenonbiologist had her theories, a blood chamber, some of bioengineeering facility? Perhaps one of their fabled over-mind bioweapons. She had to know, the research opportunities were too much. So instead of ordering her team out. She had ordered them deeper, into the belly of the beast.​

 

[Adrienne Halver Fel]

STAGING GROUND

The technician standing in front of the bank of computer screens fidgeted with his cap as he studied the readouts. Normally these screens would be off limits to someone of his status (to wit: none). This was the space that had been claimed by Adrienne Halver Fel for intelligence forerunning and diplomatic preparations, two operations that went hand-in-hand. The point was to identify those who were inclined to support an Imperial incursion into the target hex, and those who could be leveraged into doing so, then applying the appropriate leverage to make it so.

Not that the technician knew any of that. Operational security, et cetera. That was why this part of the facility was so far from the others. Isolated. Cut off, if one was feeling prone to thinking in terms of horror films. The upshot being that the two women in the room -- Adrienne and Marion Edrane Fel -- were blissfully unaware of the horrors going on elsewhere.

What he knew is that the striking older woman in a black tunic and slacks, wearing a black overcoat with fur trim on collar and cuffs and black gloves, was not seeing the information that ought to have been on the bank of computer screens. And he knew that she was not happy about that.

"Apologies, ma'am," said the technician, turning his cap in his grip. "I assure you that the monitors are set up appropriately. The issue is -- if you'll forgive the technical jargon -- there is interference along the line from the data transmitter. So the data is being received, but somewhere along the connection there is some sort of... problem."

Pale eyes lingered on the technician, traveling down his coveralls until they reached a dark grease stain on the left thigh of his coverall, where they stayed for a moment before going back to his face. "And?"

"Ma'am?"

"What are you doing to resolve this interference?"

The technician flinched at the glacial tone of the woman's question. "I sent a repair party out, ma'am. I expect to hear from them at any moment."

Adrienne's eyebrow arched and she remained silent for a moment, letting him squirm. Then: "What aren't you telling me?" And before the technician could speak, she raised a slim-fingered hand. "Don't. What aren't you telling me?"

"I -- I should have heard from them half an hour ago."

Adrienne tugged absent-mindedly at a glove and chewed the inside of her cheek and her lips drooped minutely into a little frown. "And the connection in this part of the base is too degraded for you to follow up." She paused a moment and then added: "Or rather, more accurately, too degraded to know whether your messages are not getting through, or are getting through and not being answered, for reasons indeterminate." The technician nodded hesitantly. "Take us to the other part of the base. If something is afoot I'd prefer to be where the guns are."

This last point was belied by her producing a compact blaster pistol from an inner holster.

"Now," she snapped at the technician. "Marion, come."

OPEN for interactions | Marion Edrane Fel​