Session export: [Cleanup Crews]-Probowl
Arnid Vus and Hobs Terin stood in the Oligard estate. A monument had been erected there; it listed everyone who died during the invasion of Cor’neria divided into what clan they were part of. “A lot of good men died here,” Terin said with a sigh. “On both sides,” Arnid said. Terin looked over at the Arkanian, “I know some people who would kill you for saying that you’re right though. I wonder how many of the technocrat’s machine men were slaves or brainwashed, or how many were like you.” “I knew one like me,” Arnid said distantly. “Was she named Layla?” “How did you know that?” Arnid brought his full attention back to Terin. “You named your other droids based on what they did, Lazy is sluggish and depressed and your newer one,” he pointed over to the collegium research droid standing a few meters away,” Aide is named that because he is your assistant. Layla doesn’t fit the naming convention.” “We were… After the Collective started to kill civilians, we tried to get to safety, after we couldn’t find any, we went to take the Dynamic-class freighter I had when I escaped. She was shot in the leg while entering the ship and I couldn’t save her… I should have made her go in first.” “Was she just a friend or…” “I- I don’t know. I’ll never know.” “Too many lost friends…” Terin trailed off. After a few moments of mournful silence Terin asked, “Are you goin’ to help with the reconstruction efforts?” “I will probably be joining one of the expeditions to find information. Some things Harrow said were… Off-putting,” Arnid said, “What about you?” “I’m goin’ to stay here a while. Besides Treath I lost my last friends here too, I doubt I’d be any help to anyone in this state of mind.”
After a few more moments of silence Arnid started walking back toward his ship, Eeno would be waiting there and they would go find a group to explore the ruins with since it would be dangerous to go alone. As Arnid walked by Aide started to follow him and said, “I do not understand this ‘memorial.” “What don’t you understand about it?” Arnid asked. “There are over one hundred quintillion sentients in the galaxy, what makes those few so special that their names should be carved in stone?” “They died fighting tyranny and genocide. They earned their place there.” “Why would you revere the dead? They will no longer care; they no longer exist.” “To remember fond and bitter memories.” “You will remember memories regardless. What makes the dead who died fighting so special? They failed; they died. They did not complete their objective.” “Aide, shut up.” “Do you not have an argument agai-“ “I said shut up,” Arnid said more forcefully. “Shutting up,” the droid said than was quiet for the remainer of their walk.
They had been walking for some time when they approached the Oligard estate at last. Most of the journey there had been on foot, picking through the remains of tanks or buildings, and marking them for salvage efforts. Much of the valuables had already bene pilfered by the Brotherhood’s armies.
“Think we’ll find anything good here, or do you think people will have ransacked it for souvenirs?”
Nat looked down, as her companion - her bodyguard in this particular case - made a short series of hand gestures saying to focus on the mission. Nat managed a smirk at a rather flippant final note, but kept it to herself. She had to imagine how they looked in that moment. Nat towered over most sentients, and her reptilian features gave her a predatory quality that put most sentients on edge. Between her mixed Trandoshan and Barabel genetics, and the pale white skin of genetic tinkering, out of the two of them most assumed she was the more combat proficient of them. Then again, that was the way Sirra preferred it. Short, slender, and unremarkable save for the three stripped markings of Clan Vel tattooed across her cheeks, she was easily forgotten and assumed to be either a talented amateur or a nobody in most combat situations. That usually lasted until Sirra disappeared and started silently killing whatever foe had made the mistake of causing them trouble. Take away the armour, and the average Mandalorian found a way to be far deadlier with enough time and effort.
Nat noticed a second series of gestures, this time as a question.
“You can just message me your question, I won’t be offended,” Nat replied. Sirra shrugged and then repeated the question. Nat sighed. “No. No memories from here. Most of my time was spent in the docks in orbit or Technocrat experimental labs. The stuff they shoved into my brain was… It was just raw info. Engine assemblies, the market value of metals, how to take apart a derelict. Nothing private about this sort of place.”
That particular detail she’d kept to herself since Bolt Squadron had hired her. Eeno might have been a good man, but their need for hard cash superseded any personal morality in this case. Her opinion had been simple in this matter. Agree, take as good a contract as the OUSC would offer to find worthwhile scrap, and hope they would stumble across something worthwhile. Or failing that, some*one* worthwhile to at least cover expenses.
Nat was about to ask Sirra if she wanted to go ahead, before Sirra raised a hand to stop. Nat listened carefully, picking out the noise of raised voices. They exchanged a look as Sirra concentrated, reaching out and sensing the edges of her thoughts. After a few moments she shook her head and made an open handed gesture. Friendlies.
Nat shrugged and then stepped forward, indicating for Sirra to follow.
“Taking in the sights, or are you looking for anything specific?” Nat asked brightly, waving a greeting as they approached two figures standing about a towering memorial to those lost in the battles.
“I would like to ask a question.” Aide said but was cut off my Arnid. “Shut it” Arnid said under his breath before turning to the two approaching and being pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face, “Nat! It’s good to see you here and it looks like you brought along what appears to be a Kiffar if I’m not mistaken, rare to see them away from their homeworld. I’m still employed by the military so I go where I’m told to. What brought you here and who’s your friend?”
“Not dissimilar,” Nat said in greeting, taking a few moments to search her memory for Arnid’s face and then a name to apply to it. “Bolt Squadron’s hired the Hyperion to help with the cleanup. We’re here for, well, anything the clan needs of us right now. Particularly if it’s any grabbing intact Collective tech.”
Sirra said nothing, but offered a brief wave. Nat was sure that the Kiffar’s dislike of spoken word, save for around a few exceptions, was something which was going to come back to bite them one day. At least in this particular case those they were meeting were on the same side.
“Have you seen anyone else here, or is it just us for the moment?” Nat continued, as Sirra turned about and started to keep watch on the door, seemingly more out of habit than need.
Uka stepped forward from where her and Master Edgar had been observing. She looked out over the Oligard Estate. Well, what was left of it anyway.
“It’s difficult to think so much destruction was planned all from a place that seems so… nice. This estate would almost look like a noble’s summer home on Solyiat.”
She turned slowly in a circle. “Yet I can feel so much… darkness in the air. So much hate has seeped into these stones.”
Uka had visited slaver dens and crime-ridden slums in her brief time as a padawan, and yet this place… it was like the hate here was… purer? If such a word could be applied. Not the broad, aimless hate of the dissaffected or victimized. Something concentrated. Focused. Something that had been mediated on for many, many years inside these walls.
“What,” she whispered, to herself more than anyone else, “could do that to a person?”
“Anger,” Eeno came from the memorial, “the searing rage that burns a conscience. I have seen it before and lost so much to it.” He paused for just a moment and said, “too much.”
“Too much stupidity,” Nat said, an uncharacteristic bitterness in her words, but gave a welcoming nod to Eeno. “He suffered a terrible loss. Rage I get, revenge I get, but deciding it justified killing people because of how they were born? Or doing half the things he did just out of spite?”
She gave a dismissive snort, walking about the monument, her tail trailing behind her as she took it in. “My crew is the closest thing I’ll ever get to a family, but if someone killed them? I’d go after the killer, not their entire species or family.”
Sirra said nothing for some time, trying to focus on the outside world. At Nat’s words, she paused and glanced back. A memory telepathically slipped from her mind and passed through the others, of an old fight, defending her home against multiple intruders and protecting those there. A feeling of absolute certainty, of the need to fight and kill, or watch those she cared for die.
“Protection at all costs,” Sirra said, biting back her dislike for spoken word. “I understand it. That would be my burden to bear, not to be fostered upon others. Or raising armies.”
“Now we must mend it’s wake,” Eeno said.
Around an hour later they had prepared to help the citizenry. Coordination with the Brotherhood’s central planning for the operation decided they would be the most useful on the east side of the city, the part other crews had not yet been to. Some genius at the office also deployed a group of six of Clan Scholae Palatinae’s stormtroopers ‘in the same general area but you won’t see each other.’
“So are those lightsabers as hot as I have heard?” One of the stormtroopers who were walking right beside the group from Odan-Urr asked.
Eeno let out a deep sigh, he had been fighting the urge to use said lightsaber on them this whole time and was sure Edgar had the same feeling. “Could you go somewhere else?” “We were given a patrol path to follow I won’t be the one to deviate,” the lead stormtrooper said.
“Fine, we will go that way,” Eeno pointed to the right.
“Our patrol path turns that direction.”
“Then we’ll go left,” Arnid said as he started to turn that direction tripped and fell into the lead stormtrooper.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” the trooper yelled then motioned with his hand to tell the other five troopers to stand down.
Arnid walked away with a smile on his face and pulled out his datapad. His ‘trip’ had allowed him to quickly clone the lead stormtrooper’s datapad and once they were out of earshot of the troopers he said, “I’ll be able to keep us away from white and stupid back there. If I remember right the highest population in the city was this way anyway, that’ll be the place to find people surviving. I—” he caught himself before saying he knew some people there and instead said, “read some maps on the way here.”
Once the tenseness wore off the destruction began to set in, at least for Arnid. He lived here, and the building he lived in he could see was almost a flat pile of rubble. What were once large apartment complexes are devastated with a few half buildings still stadning. He realized the crunch under his feet was the buildings that used to be there undoubtedly with bodies still buried. A cracling noise in his head broke his train of thought and he started to hear beeping. The radio system built into his cybernetics must have been picking something up. As he heard more he realized someone was sending a message in binary. It was repeating and before long he realized it was a call for help. To figure out what directionit was coming from he had the antena pop up out of the top of his right arm and turned it. The clarity of the message differed based on the orientation fo the antena so he found the direction that was most clear and just started walking in that direction.
Aide quickly noticed Arnid’s deviation and said, “You told us to go left from the original path, why did you not inform me you would be deviating?”
“Sorry, I was lost in thought,” he thought about who he was apolagizing to for a moment then rolled his eyes and continued, “I hear a distress signal somewhere in this direction.”
Uka took in the shattered urban sprawl with something like a mix of awe and horror. It deeply unnerved her to see such devastation wrought on a settlement. It disturbed her moreso to know the ones capable of unleashing such annihilation were counted as allies of the Odanites.
And yet not always friendly allies, she thought. It was a war not unlike this one, fought against Odan-Urr, that created Rath Olligard and the collective, was it not? How long would it be until the present friendships once again broke down, and this fury was turned on her homeworld? The idea of seeing Kiast, with it’s soaring spires and grand sky-cities, reduced to the same kinds of wreckage that now pock-marked Cor'neria made her… uneasy.
“H-help…”
The small, whispered voice broke her out of her dark musings. Uka’s head snapped up towards where it had come from.
“This is where the distress signal is coming from,” Arnid confirmed. The house that stood before them – or Uka assumed it had once been a house, for all it now resembled a collection of shattered ferrocrete and broken glass – had been reduced to wreckage.
Uka followed the voice, and soon came to a small door, likely a cellar, on which a twisted metal beam had fallen across.
“Over here!” she called. Then, centering herself, she lifted one hand and began to lift the beam off the door, but it was a strain for her. “This is… heavy… I could use… some help…”
Eeno called to the force and aided Uka, together they moved the beam aside.
After the beam was moved and the dust settled, the 2 odanites moved in to help the trapped civilians. Seeing his clanmates already working so hard in searching for survivors it brough a warmth to his heart and a smile to Edgar’s face that drew a few awkward looks from some onlookers. Realizing this, he corrected his expression and called out to his young padawan while waving to her, “Uka! I’m sorry I’m late. I’m going to patrol this side of the rumble if you need me, I’ll be here.
The senior member of Hoth House was stuck coordinating with the High Councilor and other leaders about the situation and the discussion on how to get aid to the people as quickly as possible. So far, the immediate concern was the search and treatment of any survivors found in the wreckage and then finding ways to get them all into safe temporary housing while the recovery and cleanup can occur quickly. The grey Jedi slipped out of the conference at the first available opportunity; he wanted to be here helping actual people rather than being in a comfortable room with plenty of food talking about it.
It wasn’t long till he came upon a group trying to clear a large boulder from an alleyway that led to the next block. The rock was large and blocking almost the entire alley. The only way past it was single file, and even more difficult to get the heavy equipment and medical personnel down. It didn’t take long for Edgar to focus and help them clear the way with the Force and move the boulder to a safe location that was out of the way for now.
The next couple of hours went the same helping move large objects, clearing paths for research teams and occasionally locating survivors that were either too injured or too far buried to be heard by the volunteers he was helping.
Edgar was eager to use his talents to help others, and he did occasionally get a glimpse of his padawan and the others doing all they could as well.
Uka heaved a breath as the weight was lifted. Then she immediately began helping the small children, a pair of weequays it seemed, out of the collapsed cellar.
“Easy there little ones,” she said, comforting them. The pair appeared relatively unharmed – a few cuts and bruises – but they were crying their eyes out nonetheless. “Now, we’re going to find your mama and papa. Can you tell me where they might be?”
The girl, the older of the two, pointed back into the collapsed rubble. Uka could just make out a dust-covered hand sticking out from under a chunk of ferrocrete. She grimaced.
Sirra and Nat exchanged looks, both glad that there were others more suited to this task. One had never been a child, the other never had a childhood. Outside of Mandalorians and newly crafted droids, neither of them were especially skilled in offering advice to the very young.
If you take them away from here I can clear out the bodies, Sirra telepathically broadcast the words to the other group. She followed it up with an image of adults being prepared for burials rather than being forgotten and left to rot. Ask them if they have any other relatives, or anyone they know at all.
“Arnid call Wrrlerr,” Eeno said then turned to the children, “come here I will show you something.”
Eeno led them over behind a nearby building that was only half destroyed. Behind it he had Nemo start playing some peaceful moments from his past. It only took a few minutes before Wrrlerr arrived on his B-type shuttle.
The ramp lowered and Wrrlerr growled something Eeno could barely hear over the shuttle’s engines. Wrrlerr’s as of yet unnamed polyhedral translator droid floated over and relayed the message, “Master Wrrlerr says there is no sturdy ground nearby. He also says that he brought Torven along since he has kids of his own, bring the young ones on the ship.”
Eeno brought the Weequey children into the shuttle and they began to fly back towards Odan-Urr’s temporary base in the city.
Back at the group Arnid said, “It sounds like Eeno will be gone for a while. Finish up with the bodies and we should probably join him soon. Sun’s going down and I doubt we want to be out here at night, we go back a different way and log a few more spots on the way.”
Sirra said nothing, heading off in the direction of the debris. There was a short pause and then the sound of several tons of masonry crashing to the ground nearby, as Sirra teleported what remained atop of fallen pair to one side.
Three adults, the parents and a friend, Sirra telepathically broadcast to the others. All caught in the fall. No survivors.
Even if an image might have been simpler to broadcast, she was aware most people were not thankful for having the images of the recently deceased forced into their thoughts. Even so, it was hard to break old habits, and Sirra found herself immediately thinking of the best items to scavenge for survival in spite of herself. That was when her eyes picked up details on the other items around them.
They weren’t well off. Most of what is here is utilitarian at best. Get their names, flag the location, and mark them for burial. They will not be the last ones we find before the day is out.