Session export: GJW XVII - Icepick

The skies above Nei'joule were oddly clear. Beyond the rayleigh scattering, there was faint light of explosions and turbolasers, to be sure, but in atmosphere there was nearly nothing happening above the few buildings that managed to get above ten stories. Carmen knew why, of course. Like all of the actual Brotherhood inductees, he knew exactly how bristling with guns this comparatively small town was, mass drivers, anti-air guns, and even some monster of a cannon that would just sweep Star Destroyers out of the sky like a dragon’s tail… Supposedly that was supposed to be his target, up until now.

Now, Carmen casually flew his Storm Tank through the streets at the head of a small caravan, the altitude maxed out and ears shut to try and keep himself from paying attention to the manic screams of the “civilians” that thought charging a half dozen APCs with pistols and knives as an “ambush.” The soldiers manning the cannons of his and the other vehicles either didn’t care or were far better at hiding their discomfort at gunning down swathes of the brainwashed. Carmen had to stop looking back when he noted some others in the caravan had not raised altitude, and as such were now sporting a much more vibrant paint job.

Thankfully, the fighting here was not as dense, and the numbers were not as great, even if those numbers were likely just armed farmers here. Most of the fighting was focused around the spaceport and the Estate, the armies of the Brotherhood not wanting to get mired in the city streets in any great number. However, thanks to a call from the Praetor to the Force-damned Fist, Carmen was to be flying headlong into the Estate wall with no more than 4 people, and a droid, loaded in the back.

“Sir!” His co-pilot pointed out, “Almost at the meetup! You sure you don’t want us along?”

Carmen knew that, of course. He couldn’t get lost anymore with Bebe’s upgraded brain and the H.U.D. he had connected to it.

“No! Stick to the plan and breach the wall to the Sprawl! We’ll handle the rest!” Carmen called back in a moment of quiet.

He didn’t need to shout, but it was for the benefit of all of the troops in the carrier. It was uncomfortable to have this much help at his disposal and throw it all away, but they needed everything they could get to open the Sprawl. Thankfully, it would at least be much more empty in there.

Splitting off from the rest of the caravan, Carmen pulled his vehicle over in front of a comparatively huge, five story building and opened the back door while lowering it to the ground. The cannons swiveled, and the soldiers poured out of the back, but thankfully, it didn’t look like there was anyone to massacre here. The troops moved into the first floor and began setting up defenses for their new forward base and listening post, but Carmen stayed at the controls and lifted his arm to speak into his Vambrace.

“Praetor, you in there? This is Knight Nu'Whin, the ground floor seems secure for now. The rest of the force is moving to blow open the first gate, so we have probably around ten minutes before our window to the Sprawl closes.”

Carmen paused and waited for a response. He knew he wasn’t the best at “comm discipline,” or whatever, but he hoped to the Force that she wasn’t one of those crazy “execute insubordinates” types.

A few heartbeats passed before the comm crackled.

“Praetor Endrin reporting.” The Togorion’s curt voice was partially muffled by the activity around her, voices unintelligible as she stood amongst the troops. “Ten minutes is enough, find your way to the front gate.”

Barafu released the comm’s Active button, watching over the forces of the Iron Legion that had come to this detail with her. Despite Nei'kapo’s armed citizens, there had been little problem in setting up the initial encampment once they touched down. If needed, the Legion could siege the estate, though that was not the plan. No. This was too high of a priority and the FIST himself had agreed to the notion of pushing hard through the defences into the Oligard Estate. If there was a chance Rath Oligard was here, they could cut the head off of the beast before more damage was done. Before he could slip away again.

Other communicator codes were quickly typed in, gathering them into one call. When Barafu activated her comm once more, her voice reached the other three she’d selected for this mission.

“Knight Commander Sulvir, Medic Dulle, Master Ta'var, do any of you have an ETA? We have ten minutes till the gate blows and the team needs to be together before we push through the Sprawl. Nu'Whin has already confirmed location.”

“En route,” the Zeltron medic said, voice devoid of any life or emotion. She had been staring out the shuttle window since entering. Only then did she check her compad. “Touching down in approximately one hundred eighty seconds.” She returned to staring out the window. She has already taken inventory on her items, and her medical bag was set up the same way as it always was. Usually she’d be going around anxiously fiddling with something to keep her busy… But today, she just stared.

The Battle of Brimstone was rough on her, but she recovered. But this… This was different. Every time she closed her eyes, that augmented gaze haunted her. The stink burned her nostrils.

Today she was what they needed her to be; A soldier. A field medic. No rank. Not a researcher in a lab.

She was in shock. Her medic brain knew this. But there was no time for emotional recovery. Not yet at least. On all other accounts she was physically fine, and it was her duty to ensure the mission be completed and the crew remained alive. If only that were what she did yesterday.

The shuttle shook as it sped over the tops of buildings a wove between the taller ones. Inside the sounds it made as it streaked through the city were not much more than a hum, one interrupted as the lights changed from bright to a dull red and the speaker crackled out “Ten Seconds”.

The Shistavanen that had been looming behind Esen began to shift away from her. The medic was bothered, but now was not the time to delve. Emotions would need to be sorted later.

The seal of the shuttle doors cracked, and the inside was flooded with the screaming engines as they peaked to allow a gentle touchdown. Before the dust settled the Knight-Commander stepped out and stood tall, his gaze rapidly assessing the situation around them. Upon seeing no real threats his paw moved from under his cloak, where the hilt of his claymore saber as secured. “We’re good.” He glanced back at Esen as he raised his bracer to speak into. “Cleared to rendezvous with the E-wings, Axion.”

With the two Knights dropped off the shuttle raised and screeched away, the doors snapping shut as it disappeared over the horizon of rooftops.

Doon glanced at Esen once more before stepping towards the Trexler Marauder. With a gesture he motioned to the armored vehicle, casting his voice and gaze across to Teikos as well. “Inside - we need to move fast. Carmen, watch your top cannon.” With a deep breath that tied him to the force, the heavy shistavanen leapt from the earth to land on the left ‘wing’ of the Marauder. The sharp claws of his bare footpaws caught him from sliding too far. From the new vantage point, his attentioned turned to the direction of the Spawl. His minds eye turned to the future, seeing crowds blurred by tension and adrenaline, objects flung through the air.

Carmens eyes narrowed and his face made a joyless smile, “Bebe… did the Praetor just say Dulle and… Sulvir?”

He hadn’t really been in much of a position to fully read the orders for the last hours, but he had skimmed the names. He remembered Esen and Teikos, assumed the former was just a common name, and ignored the rest. What were the chances that he would keep running into people like this?

“Well… this is going to be… something. My boss, my other bosses girlfriend, and some big shot from the Clan?” He slumped over his controls and ran a hand through his hair, “Imagine, what if ‘Barafu’ isn’t a common name either and she’s that Togorian from… Oh, damn, it’s going to be her, isn’t it.”

There was no question there. The Force works in mysterious ways, but its ends could be very predictable.

“Carmen, watch your top cannon.”

He picked up his head as a thump came from the port side.

“Really, Doon? You know we can fit over a dozen fully armored troops in here. That’s like, three Doons.”

He turned to wave at the others by the loading gate, “And to the rest of you, welcome to my lovely cab service, dealing death on the road! Good to see you again, Esen.”

“It is.” Barafu confirmed, stepping onto the tank behind Esen, confirming Doon was secure before closing the hatch. She pressed in the code, watching it slide into place with a soft hiss that was almost swallowed by the roar of battle outside.

“We are ready to go. We need to keep this fight as short as possible.”

She found a seat, her spear kept in hand between her knees as she settled.

Carmen rubbed his forehead and turned back to the console. At least most of these seemed to be… decent from what he had seen before. Unlikely to use him as a shield, anyway. With a sigh, he began prepping the tank to go, lifting the gate and raising the altitude.

“Understood, Praetor. We should get to the Sprawl wall just in time to see it blow. From what the Legion says there shouldn’t be much inside, but when we hit the Estate walls we’re going to have some issues. Anyone who can handle a blaster, get on one of the turrets and we should cruise on in.”

Eugh, he sounded like a flight attendant with that speech. Regardless, he spun the tank around and set it on its course down after the convoy from earlier.

“Any of you got fancy toys that might be helpful? Explosives? Slicing equipment?”

Esen had forgotten that Doon was behind her until he spoke. She didn’t feel like a person, just a hollow shell. She shook her head, clearing her thoughts and readied for touchdown and grabbed her medical bag. One moment she was sitting, the next she was going through the motions on the way to the tank.

She nodded in agreement to the other Zeltron’s statement before taking her seat.

She really needed to get it together, In addition to forgetting about Doon, she had also forgotten her BD-Backpack droid, Vox, until he beeped quietly from her back at the question from Carmen. His sensor peaked up over her shoulder. “Vox seems rather eager for slicing today.” She said before looking around the tank once more to everyone. “Carmen, good to see you again.” She nodded in his direction.

“Pleasure to meet you both, Esen Dulle, I’ll be your medic today, and this is Vox.” She said flicking her head in the direction of her shoulder, and extended a hand to Barafu and Teikhos, committing their features to memory, pausing for a second longer with Teikhos. She must have been really off her game, she could have sworn something about him seemed familiar, yet she had never met him before. Perhaps she was just happy to be working with another Zeltron.

“In the off chance I am unresponsive, Vox here is equipped with a stim dispenser, and medpacs. He knows his job and will act as a buffer, allowing time for you to seek proper medical aid.”

“And I know Doon and the Praetor are best at getting in close. I guess that should work for when we get inside…”

Carmen considered Doons warning. He would have thought it more prudent to man the side turrets but…

“Bebe, take the top turret and keep your trigger fingers heavy.”

The droid responded with a salute and moved to stand in the ceiling recess. The rest seemed to be settling in, so Carmen punched it, blasting quickly down the mostly empty streets. Thankfully, most of this city wasn’t rich enough to afford things like landspeeders, most of the people here lived like ascetics and just walked and used carts for transportation. *Un*fortunately, the convoy Carmen had rode in on had left a bloddy wake behind. He was trying not to look.

As they sped up to the wall quickly growing on the horizon, Carmen grew worried. It was nearly fourty feet tall and metal, obviously something to seperate the rich and poor districts, but not something meant for military defense. The concerning part was that the large gate was blown free, but had only fallen back about halfway.

“Sithspit, the gate’s being blocked from the other side! We were too slow, the small guard presence inside the Sprawl must have set up a blockade!”

True to his theory, he could see explosives being traded back and forth over the gate, and a few guards from inside were climbing up far enough to fire blasters over. Grinding his teeth, Carmen didn’t slow down. There had to me something he could do here, right? It couldn’t end here, getting held up on mooks off the starting line? And Doon had seen them doing something in a fight…

His eyes narrowed.

“Bebe! Aim forward, low as possible! The rest of you hold on, and get ready to get shot!”

He moved a hand to the altitiude controls. This was going to be tricky. Right as they were about to smash into the door, he spun it to the max, coushioning the blow enough to keep momentum. Then he slammed it the other way, bottoming out the Tank on the door with a very expensive sounding shriek.

“Now, Bebe, Fire!”

Understanding her task, Bebe blasted out the top of the gateway, blowing enough off that they might, just barely, have enough room to pass. With that, they were in open air, surrounded by yelling and grenade blasts rocking the armored vehicle.

“Brace for impact!”

Doon crouched low as the transport levitated to make it through the gap, barely avoiding chunks of rock and getting scraped off by the new jagged archway. He snarled, metal claws having dug into the roof of the vehicle as he made a mental note to give Carmen a particularly pointed glare once they were done here.

The explosion of an impact grenade detonating off the airborne rubble brought his focus back to the situation at hand.

The Shistavanen stood as the bobbing vehicle found a steady height above the street. Most immediately thrown objects went wide, sailing behind or crashing under the passport in various explosions. The Knight-Commander was concerned first and foremost with those of the fiery variety. His movements were smooth, reflexive. He had practiced drawing the hilt of his saber while extending a hand at the same time. He reached forward, both to the force and towards the battles topped with flaming rags that were arcing towards him.

It was hardly the best thing he was capable of but with the cold pang of adrenaline coursing through him, the bottles ceased descending. His golden eye scanned the crowd that they were surging through, spotting the snap realization of fear in those that had hurled the Molotov’s.

It would have been easy to turn the projectiles back on the crowd, to leave a screaming wave of flames behind them as they hurtled deeper into the zone.

Did I have that same look of fear years ago?

He couldn’t shake the thought.

For better or worse the bottles dropped where they were to shatter on the empty ground.

The hilt in his other hand screamed to life, spouts of unbound plasma shooting from the edges of the wide blade. With both hands on the hilt, he took a defensive posture against the incoming blaster rounds. With the size and shape of his Lightsaber, it was not difficult to guard against incoming fire.

Down the street was a blockade, stacked crates and garbage that Doon knew wouldn’t stop their progress. They could sail over it easily, if it weren’t for the magnetic mines hidden in the refuse.

“Forward cannons! The blockade is mined. Get rid of it.” He barked over their communications as the great saber snarled a protest against a few cleverly placed blaster bolts.

“They have mines?!”

They were going too fast to be able to safely clear a path through something mined, what if they put something on the back side? They were not supposed to be this prepared.

“New plan! Bebe flip 180 and everyone else hold on!”

With no further warning, Carmen cranked the Storm Tank hard to the side and was greeted by an expensive screech and grind as the sides crashed through the walls of the buildings on either side of the alleyway. Thankfully, it seemd most buildings in this district were quarried stone, as expensive as they were fragile, comared to durasteel or duracrete, but the rich were the rich, no matter the planet. Looking forward, he saw the alley ended in a turn too tight and sharp for the tank.

Fortunately, it was a one-story house.

Pushing the lifts back to max height, he felt the crunch of the bottom of the tank smashing into the sloped roof, followed by the sound of it crumbling underneath them. He pushed the accelerator to max, barely able to keep the nose out of the house as it pushed through.

“Karkin’ kist n’ frakkin’ sithspit!”

Let none say Carmen had a small vocabulary.

“Doon, you still hanging on?”

His only answer was a lound, and probably angry, noise that combined a growl and a bark.

“Glad to hear it, but don’t stop now!”

Another crash sounded as Carmen plowed through the third house of the day and finally broke out onto another street, which he turned down and blasted off at… probably 65% max speed.

“Bad news,” he said in a more normal tone of voice, “the repulsorlifts are half-crushed. We can’t do that again or go full speed anymore.”

Carmen let out a sigh as his goggles corrected their navigation, a line pointing straight ahead in his vision.

“But good news, they probably didn’t plan any defenses for the other side of this suburb so… smooth sailing until we get to the walls? Heh heh hehhh…”

“At which point it may be better to leave the tank behind as a distraction, or trap even.”

Barafu’s voice carried a uncomfortable tenor, using the fact the tank was no longer crashing to find a point to look out with. It wasnt much further to go, even with damaged repulsors. Her tail twitched behind her before tucking back into its place low beside her ankles.

“We make a breach and pose the tank as struggling to function. Slip out before they have people on the ground and make a break to get behind their defenses while theyre expecting us to continue using the tank. If we have any timed explosives, or a way to make the tank self destruct, thatd be better.”

“Any idea on how we’re getting out? We’ll have someone who definitely doesn’t want to be captured in tow…”

He didn’t like the idea of leaving the Srorm Tank here after putting so much effort and money into it, but if he was being honest, he knew he would lose it quickly. He was pleased to see, however, the roof of Raths manor rising over the rooftops in the distance. It seemed there really was no other defenses in the Sprawl.

“Say… you think he has a personal shuttle, Praetor? Something fast or stealthy?”

“Almost certainly. Probably multiple. His paranoia is one of the notable attributes keeping Rath alive.” Barafu paused, an ear tilting in curiosity.

“Why do you ask?”

“HIHIHIHINTerestiiiiing…” Maybe he wouldn’t have to come out in the red after all.

“Which is to say… we need a way out, he has high tech and very valuable ships made just to transport him! Just need to figure out where his personal hangers are.”

“Hm.” She glanced to the others in the cabin, before looking forward to the cockpit. A smile crossed her face, brief but genuine. The team was quickly proving itself as the correct combination.

“Good call. We can ensure to identify the pathway in case reinforcements dont breach the barricade before we’re done.”

The walls of Raths Estate grew large in the Tanks front window. It was significantly larger and… thicker than Carmen had been led to believe.

“Well, it looks like you’ll get the distraction you want…” he began to mumble as he started ripping panels free from the cockpit and pulling out wires.

“The drill I brought isn’t beefy enough for this wall. They probably only told me the width of the gate, which we don’t have time to use now.”

Some wires he cut and resoldered, some he just ripped out and replaced with bits of metal. All in all, this was a very stupid idea.

“This is a very stupid idea, but I’m hooking up every capacitor and both the engines to the drill. By charging up everything once and letting it all out in a big stream, we should be able to blow a hole through pretty much anything, but uhm…”

He dropped the back gate and flipped a few switches, “Well, let’s all get to cover, shall we?”

With some not-si-relaxed hustling along, Carmen managed to get everybody into a nearby house as Bebe flipped another switch in the cockpit that activated the mining laser. It was only supposed to burrow through rock, but the entire Tank crashed to the ground as even the tiny power to the lifts redirected to the beam, as evidenced by blue static and a few arcs of electricity over the whole thing.

Carmen flinched as a white beam shot out and splashed against the wall, metal turning white and blowing away like an oversized fusion cutter. The next minute stretched on like an hour before the drill finally malfunctioned and melted beyond use. Another thirty seconds passed, and he had to wave down Esen from moving to check and see if the crater had gone all the way through.

“Wait, stop! Somethings… somethings wr-”

He was cut off by an explosion that made the world turn monochrome and the wall crack and crumble. The heat singed his soul, and he found himself blinking away near-unconsciousness on his back.

Struggling to stand, he found the Tank was now more of a… metal sheet with some burned bits sticking out. But it did seem the hole went through to the other side of the wall, at least.

“WE MADE IT THROUGH!” He yelled over the squealing of the twn thousand birds the explosion scared off, “JUST HAVE TO CUT THROUGH!”

He almost ignited his lightsaber, but then he saw his hand. How bad it was shaking. Did he think something about birds? Right, tinnitus and shock.

“Maaawp. Maaawp.”

The young Zeltron, overcome by grief and curiosity was not thinking straight. The drill had stopped, it was silent for too long, the haunting noises from yesterday grew louder. She needed to move. To do something to get away from it. She kept close to rubble as cover, allowing the clacking of the debris under her foot to ground her. She took a deep breath washing away the vivid memories. The world around her started to come to, fading back into existence with each step she took. Wait– was that Carmen calling to her?

She snapped her gaze on him, turning her attention away from the tank. One moment she was crouching by some rubble, the next she was… face down on the ground. Her vision was blurry. All she caught was shapes and shadows and all that was heard was a high pitched ringing. Where was she? What happened? Her body moved before she could collect her bearings. She attempted to push herself up, but a heavy weight followed by a sharp pain in her spine stopped her short. Okay…

She lifted the bloodied heel of her palm to her eyes, attempting to fix her blurred vision. Blood peppered and smeared along her eyelids from the motion. What the krick is going on? Her vision slowly adjusted, as Carmen’s features filled her vision. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear anything apart from the roaring in her ears. Maybe the confusion shone on her face, but the Hapan’s attention moved to the towering Shistavanen as he pointed to her back. Doon was here? And… a Togorian? She blinked, and a set of soft, albeit concerned, indigo eyes met hers.

“Do I know you?” She said weakly, but the ringing overpowered her senses and she wasn’t sure if the words actually escaped her. A weight lifted off her back and she felt she could take the deepest breath she ever could. She pushed herself up into a seated position, catching the last glimpse of Barafu and Doon moving a large chunk of wall debris.

A small nudge at her foot, drew her attention down. Vox had pushed her medical bag by her. Right… She’s on a mission. Her gaze flicked to the burning pile of metal where the tank once stood, and it all started to click. She reached into her bag, pulling out a container of drinking water, as she took a moment. “That was… Eventful.”

The sounds of the world slowly started to fade in, but at least the haunting sounds from yesterday had left. For now.

A round of coughs followed the block of duracrete being dropped away from Esen. Barafu leaned away from Doon, ears falling flat as seconds passed before her body finished rejecting the crap shed inhaled.

It was hard to swallow when the coughing finally calmed down, like sandpaper had replaced the walls of her throat but it was enough. Yet despite her efforts when she spoke, Barafu’s voice came with a wheeze, “Sulvir, Ta'var, Nu'Whin, any injuries?”

Other than being in shock and some blood on her limbs that was… probably hers, it had been hard to identify if she had any herself. Parts of her fur were singed, the grey and black tinge meshing into her patterning. Blue eyes scanned each team member who wasn’t already receiving aid.

“We.. dont have long. Anything urgent needs to be tended now so we can move out. At the least, we here may be presumed dead for a time.”

It was a strange feeling, his brain being squeezed back into shape. With a wave of chills, Carmen felt… back to normal. Well, aside from now feeling a tongue of fire creeping up his leg.

“Ack! I… whew, probably should have gone further in that building, huh?”

Looking back, he noted that everyone else had already seemed to have gotten over the whole thing. It payed to be a war veteran, he supposed.

“Right… heh. The wall,” he turned forward and flipped his lightsaber in his hand, “We did get all the way through, but the exit point is only a few inches wide. We’ll have to cut it wider to make it in. Here’s hoping they don’t have an army on the other side, eh?”

He punctuated that jinx by shoving the saber into the wall at the base of the wall at one side. It was nearly a foot of durasteel on both sides, with a core of duracrete nearly four feet wide. Peering through the small hole at the center of the crater revealed a prisine manor and grounds, with tall hedges and decorative plants untouched by the battle that caused ripples in the forcefield overhead. That was the real reason they were here, doing all of this on foot. The shield was projected from towers atop this wall, so by burrowing in, they should be able to get… somewhere at least.

Carmen was about halfway up one side when the sound of another saber crashing to life accompanied a red glow. Doons hulking greatsaber plunged in at the other side of the crater and mirrored Carmens own cut. Despite his head start, Carmen barely finished the first vertical cut by the time Doon finished both his cut and the horizontal cut at the top. Being a giant wolfman helped, sometimes.

“Alright, we’re out of time,” Carmen said as he set his shoulder and pushed against the slab, “I wish we had more explosives or someth-”

As the slab began to fall, Doon grabbed Carmens shoulder and whipped him back against the wall, a bolt of plasma slashing through the air and splashing against the cobbles behind.

“Sniper,” he grumbled, perhaps with a touch of satisfaction.

Carmens heart pounded, but something in him didn’t let him stand still for more than a second.

“Kark. Well. Let me see here…” he pulled out his datapad and quickly began typing, looking from the burn mark on the ground to the space he had been standing a moment before.

Seeming to understand something, Doon raised his saber and stepped out into the hole again, less than a second passing before he had to deflect a scond shot into the sky. Rather than press it, he ducked back into cover and scratched a line into the duracrete a little over Carmens head height.

“Altitude.”

Pausing for a moment, then looking to the mark, Carmen huffed, nodded, and then started typing again before putting the pad away and pulling the rifle off his back. Taking a breath, he focused his limited control of the force into his body. He was never great at it, but he felt his heart slow, his breathing stop, and the last of the shakes dissapear. He looked over and nodded to Doon.

Raising his saber on one paw and two claws to the others with the other, he only said “come,” before charging forward again.

This time, when the shot came, Carmen stepped out and levelled his custom made railgun in one smooth motion. With his calculations, and a force assisted hand, he didn’t even have to look downrange before sighting in the sniper-cyborg atop what looked like a fancy watchtower at the top of the manor. Then, it was gone.

Letting out a breath, and the Force with it, Carmen hustled along with the others, Teikhos seemingly waiting to make sure he didn’t get left behind.

“I’m not sure I like how good I’m getting at this stuff.”

Thankfully, the inside of the estate wasn’t made for defense. Artful hedges and statuary made approach to the manor somewhat easy to do, at least mostly hidden. Doon and Barafu hustled with efficient, trained steps at the front of the pack, with Esen and Teikhos close behind. Carmen himself lagged at the back with Bebe, trying to focus on the Force once more.

In general, it seemed this place had little in the way of traps. That made sense, being the living quarters and command center for the biggest name in the Collective, and since the first line of defense was a living being instead of a turret or a droid, it was likely the “defenses” were just going to be some especially beefed up “Jedi-Killers” or whatever name they had come up with. Pushing through the Force to look beyond, he saw what he had expected. He wasn’t able to fully pick anything out, but it seemed like the lifesigns in that building were all gathered in the first few floors. All save a small cluster nearer to the top floors.

“Do you feel that?” he asked to the other sensitives, “Looks like they have some killboxes at all the reachable entrances, and Rath upstairs, probably with a few big shots and a panic room.”

Doon grunted agreement as he switched out his lightsaber for the beskad at his hip.

“Cortosis likely. Jedi-Hunters as well.”

Carmen got what he was getting at. While apparently undefended, this building was filled with some of the best living weapons for killing Jedi in the galaxy, the Force would be unreliable and lightsabers could be just as dangerous to rely on. Leaving Rath alone was practically begging for someone to use the Force to simply jump up. A trap.

“Well, it was going to come to this eventually. Should we knock?”

Esen gave a sideeye, “Are… you serious?”

Barafu looked as displeased, but Teikhos seemed more at home.

Doon was about to speak when Carmen raised a hand and gave a crooked smile. It was somehow uncertain, yet confident enough to not make him seem bumbling.

“C'mon, I’ve done pretty good today, right? Just give me one more shot in the home stretch. They want us to go in from above, so our best shot is from the front! You three should do just fine, and Esen can take care of the flanks just fine with me.”

Barafu seemed about to speak when Carmen simply… went. He hoped he had proven either trustworthy or valuable enough that they wouldn’t let him go alone. Then, one by one, Doon, Barafu, and Teikhos passed him up to be the first in line, the latter giving an interested smile.

Flicking his comm line closed, Carmen spun as esen ran up behind him.

“Hey, you see that?” he said pointing up.

As Esen followed the finger, he shot a grapple line out of his vambrace and grabbed her around the waist with the other, his jetpack hissing to life. In barely three seconds, they were at the top of the sniper tower, Esen shoving off of Carmen and trying not to stare at the headless cyborg still in here.

“Sorry,” he clarified as he ignited the floor and bagan cutting in a circle, “figured I’d tell them we’d give them a straight fight, then… give them a straight fight. But now Rath is mostly unguarded, eh? Cant turn your back to Doon, right?”

His voice was now far more uncertain. To keep the small army busy, they needed the real fighters downstairs, but… could the engineer and the medic really take the commander in by themselves?

Well, duh. Of course they could. They had to.

“And that, young ones, is how we captured Rath Oligard and stopped the Collective!”

Carmen sat at the front of one of the many training rooms in the new Jedi Temple on Solyiat in front of nearly a dozen Padawan. He had thought regaling the new recruits with tales of the recent war would be impressive and perhaps even grrom these for being taken in by the Clan, but… they seemed to be unimpressed.

“You’re barely older than me,” the eldest, a nineteen year old, responded.

“Why did you skip over all the fighting?” a younger girl piped up, “Seems weird they sent a Knight Commander, a… ‘Praetor,” and an actual Jedi Master for somebody so badly defended…“

"Didn’t the war keep going for weeks after Rath got caught?”

Carmens eye twitched, “Well read little squirts, aren’t you?”

The girl smiled wider, “Master says 'to be wise, you must first be knowledgable!”

He sighed and stood up, “Listen, a lot of the stuff that happened in the manor was confidential. And how was I supposed to tell you about things I wasn’t there for?”

There was a silence for a moment, broken by the youngest. A small boy nearly eight years old.

“Sounds like yer prolly takin’ credit fer a lot a things ya prolly didn’ do.”

“Alright, everybody, back on your drills! Your master will be back in thirty minutes, I better not see you stopping once until then!”

The room was filled with groans as the kids picked up their wooden training sticks and began moving through slow forms. Carmen himself moved to the wall and leaned against it, barely keeping a stormy look from his face. He wasn’t even actually a teacher and he was still fed up with these kids.

Well, regardless of how things may or may not have actually went down, all’s well that ends well, and at the end of the day, the bad guys lost and the war was over. Hopefully there wouldn’t be another one for a long while.