Private There Stand The…..Ashes?

[Kayla Ordo-Shan]

The shuttle bucked hard as it punched through the shredded cloud cover, its repulsors flickering against the scorched skyline. Beneath them, Axilla looked like a city peeled open; black scars where towers used to stand, flickers of what seemed like small fires stitching through the haze that drifted over burned-out rooftops.

Kayla Shan braced her boots against the deck plating, fingers curling tighter around the medkit strapped to her hip harness.

"Two minutes!" A pilot called back over the roar of the engines burning through the atmosphere.

Kayla checked her rebreather seal again. The nerve agent alert was still scrolling across her helmet HUD-coded crimson in the corner of her vision. A reminder that just breathing here may her squad in seconds if they got careless in the wrong place. It was possible the agent was dissipated now but, she didn’t know. She doubted if anyone on board did.

She closed her eyes for half a breath, letting the hum and the rattling frame fade under the old routine: oxygen tank check, hypo injector primed, dermaseal patches tight, antitoxin ampules ready, blaster in her side holster.

There is so much wrong here, you should take precautions.

I know.

A sharp drop jolted her eyes open again. The city became visible through the viewports: flickering street lamps trying to outshine the glow of still burning structures, tattered banners from a festival that no longer existed. Somewhere under all that damage, people still needed help. She could hear it already; the desperate squelch of local comms bleeding into her helmet feed: "…medical-we have located twenty civilians under-structural collapse- possible agent residue-help-"

The transmission cut out, perhaps out of range or-

She needed to focus.

Because worse than hearing the transmissions, she could feel the throes of death that wrapped about this world like a serpent. She took in easy breaths, trying to ignore the slow strangulation of all the pain that throbbed about her as they got closer to the surface.

She checked the gauge for her oxygen supply, found it still full. Though she felt as if she was choking.

She adjusted the strap across her chest, tightening it until it pressed bruises she'd count later. You volunteered for this, she reminded herself. Though it didn’t change the situation.

"Thirty seconds!"

The shuttle banked hard left. Kayla caught herself on the bulkhead, boots scraping against the deck. She tapped her helmet comm once. She found her voice as she huffed down a mouthful of air, there was a tremble she tried to disguise. That choking sensation started up all over again-

"Squad, masks sealed, eyes sharp. We hit Sector Six, check the shelters first, triage on the street. If it breathes, it lives. If it tries to stop us—"
Her voice steadied, almost like how her mother had taught her. Acting calm keeps the calm. Even when it's a lie.
"—we end it quick. Understood?"

One by one, four green toggles lit up on her HUD. Ready. Still letting herself believe she could manage this.

A final jolt, then the ramp slammed open with a hiss of recycled air and the stink of burning festival banners. Smoke rolled in, painting the inside of her helmet in drifting shades of orange and ruin.

Kayla stepped out first, boots hitting cracked permacrete, rifle hung from a sling at her chest, kit on her hip, breath steady under the hiss of the filter. The city wailed around her. The taint of death was everywhere. But there was something else here. She could feel it ensnaring her.

Another broken world. Another victim to the Force at work, and for what? How many had to keep dying?

Kayla, you need to let me in. You aren’t protecting yourself.

The voice demanded of her, but she couldn’t…quite acknowledge it. She did as she was trained to, what she knew. Everything was fine. Nothing was wrong-

She motioned her squad file past her down the ramp before she moved.

"Ukatis Medical Response, callsign Echo One. We're on the ground. Hold on. We hear you."

She heard someone in her comms, but after a few steps she felt herself start to freeze up. The tightness of her armor felt like a paralysis, and Kayla soon found herself going to her knees.

Kayla you need to-

But she wasn’t listening.

She couldn’t. The voice on the comm was drowned out, as a haunting silence just overtook her senses. The aftermath of the conflict, the numbers of the death, the killing of this world. At simply seized her, and demanded she look at it head on.

She had no defense. Not from this.

Her sergeant seemed to take notice, and seized her by her shoulders, though Kayla would simply stare through the man as he shook her, trying to snap her back to.

It didn’t work.

Tags: Rayia Si

 

[Rayia Si]

Kayla Ordo-Shan
Location: Ukatis

---

Rayia had been on the ground now for a few weeks, as the monumental task of rebuilding Axilla and the surrounding countryside took on a life of its own. It wasn't merely the fact that they were dragging up pieces of the beautifully archaic buildings like scattered fragments of a stately corpse. Or the difficulty in trying to breathe life into a landscape so ravaged by multiple ravings that their efforts could be described as prickly at best. But Corazona's people had rebuilt time and again. 'They're hardy folk. They have to be,' Rayia thought confidently. At times Ukatis did remind her of Weik in how it shared some struggles.

Rayia's tail bristled, allowing her to sense the spike of movement as it passed over her head. Looking up, she could see the shuttle banking hard through the cloud cover. A trail of unease wafted from it like the lingering fingers of a smoke trail dragged across the sky. Golden eyes tracked it across the sky as brows pinched together. The ship was heading towards a more blighted area of the reconstruction. Nerve agent still lingered there, drenching the area in a filmy fog that clung to its surroundings. And sometimes there were even worse things lingering in the fog. Something was very wrong. 'Understatement of the century.'

Rayia waved away the nagging voice in the back of her mind. Instead, she focused on ensuring the straps to her own mask were fashioned tight. The last thing Ukatis needed was a Felacatian who succumbed to shifting because the nerve agent caused the beast within to lash out. Then she began heading towards the shuttle's crew, sending them through their movements. It didn't take long for her to find them, as she soon flitted into view by the sergeant shaking one of the medics who had fallen to her knees.

At first, Rayia's heart kept to her throat. "Has she been exposed?" She asked of the sergeant, coming forwards to examine the medic. Clawed fingers glided gently over the seal of the breathing mask to see if it had decoupled. But no. The medic's straps were still firmly attached. Instead, Rayia slowly became aware of a slight prickling in the force. And she realized.

Rayia pressed her own mask against the stranger's own. Her fingers, having lingered on the woman's shoulders, became a bridge as Rayia tried to funnel a sense of calm strength through them. There were no words to take away what Rayia suspected the woman was feeling. The planet's wounds welled deep, transmitting pain into the Force. Rayia herself sensed the backlash as if a feverish pus frayed her veins raw and was braiding the fillets. But she was hoping to give the woman something else to latch onto. A reminder of why she came.

 

[Kayla Ordo-Shan]

Kayla didn't hear the sergeant's words, not really.


She could feel everything.


The weight of Axilla's grief was a low, sick pull in her gut, a pounding ache behind her eyes that no breath mask could filter out. The fog clung to her skin, but it was the echo in the Force that made her drop to her knees. It pressed down, pressing through; a chorus of distant screams and soft sobs that bled into each other until she couldn't tell if it was the dead or the dying, or if it was her.

She could see a dead soldier before her, his body still, the signs of a chemical attack were evident on him-and she could feel the pain surge through herself as his body came more into focus.


Her gloved hand was still on a soldier's collar, trying to find a pulse that wasn't there, when her breath hitched in her chest and everything tilted. The black spots in her vision pulsed with the rhythm of the Force, each beat like a memory not her own, each pulse a fragment of another's last breath, another's final fear.

Of course, there was no soldier, not physically. She was gazing into the echos of what had been, unable to shut the conduit off, as the Force just pour the deaths of the populace upon her.


Not now, she tried to tell herself. Not now, not now, not now.


And then there was a weight on her shoulders; not heavy, grounding. Clawed fingers, warm even through the gloves, pressing just enough to remind her she was here, in this moment.

The corpse faded away, as if disappearing back into the aether from where it had been created.

Kayla flinched, breath catching in the filter of her mask as her eyes met the golden ones behind the other mask, seeing her. She knew she was in trouble. She would be found out. Booted from the service-they'd think she was crazy.

Her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists, trying to feel that instead of the pain screaming through the Force.

Kayla's voice cracked when she tried to speak, so she stopped, jaw locking for a beat before she managed a rasp;

"I'm fin-fine-."

She stammered out, her composure collapsing and attempting to rebuild itself. Her eyes closed, letting the contact work, letting that thread of calm Rayia offered sink past the storm. She didn't need to be told to breathe, didn't need to be told she wasn't alone, didn't need false reassurance that the planet's wounds weren't as deep as they felt. If nothing else, the sensation faded, the voices parted, and she no longer felt like she was being strangled by the deaths around her.

She knew. That was why she came.

You need to stay calm-

No, she was outed. Maybe she would just get medical leave, or, some eval? A long, shaking breath rattled through the mask. Kayla opened her eyes again, the storm still there, but a little quieter, like waves crashing just short of the shore.


She unclenched her fists, exhaling a soft, breath that hissed through her mask.

It was time to face the music.
Tags: Rayia Si