The Red Dawn: Strength from Ashes

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Lord Defender
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The Red Dawn: Strength from Ashes

Post by coronhorn »

Alric Ortega stared at the tactical flimsy that was spread out on the table in front of him, each layer of the map showing different points of interest to the Red Dawn. Some were Star League supply depots, others were the local or regional security hubs, and a handful of them were the underground bunkers that housed the thousands of combat droids that the Star League used in attacks from time to time to keep the populace in a state of fear and stoke popular dislike of the star cluster’s former government the Red Star Alliance. The fact that the droids often referred to as the Red Death by the citizenry and the CSL’s propagandists were secretly maintained and commanded by the Star League internal security was a closely guarded state secret that the star cluster’s rulers zealously guarded and exposing it to the cluster’s populace was now his life’s sole focus because if he could do that he would bring down Alex’is Tre’cov’s whole house of cards. Across the room near the small bunker’s communications suite a young chren girl sat hunched over the console one hand to her ear,

“The last team is in position sir.”

Alric glanced up from the maps and then back down moving the last piece into place around one of the droid bunkers, he closed his eyes and reached out to the Force, he was by no means a fully trained Jedi but he’d spent years under the off and on tutelage of one of the greater Jedi Masters currently in the galaxy and as he listened to its subtleties something didn’t feel quite right,

“Should we commence the operation sir?” the young woman asked again, he could feel her nervousness radiating through the Force to him, even so he couldn't feel anything amiss with the operation, it was something else. Just as he was about to give the go command the feeling crystalised, and his eyes popped open,

“Negative, order fall backs to rally point Delta and sound the evac alarm!”

Confusion clouded the girls face for just a split second before she went to work,

“All units operation is black light, fall back to op base delta!” seconds later the small red alert lamps scattered around the room flared to life in persistent pulses,

“Sir we have alarms in sectors four and five, hostiles inbound!”

Alric cursed something in hutteese that would have made the young girl blush if she’d understood him, this base had served them well for almost a year now, he’d just begun to get comfortable, that alone should have been his que it was time to move,

“Order a full extraction and demo!”

The girl went back to her console and within a few minutes the room reverberated with the first of the small baradium charges that would collapse the caves and tunnels the Red Dawn had called home. A few ticks later the young woman reached under the communications console and pulled the crypto and data modules from it and started for the door, the Force only gave him a moment’s notice of the impending danger but it was enough for him ignite the pale blue blade of his light saber and send the heavy blaster bolts aimed at his chest into the stone roof showing him with debris, the girl wasn’t so lucky, the first bolt destroyed her left arm just above her elbow and the second left a smoking pit in the right side of her torso, a young Chren man that up until that point he would have trusted with his life and had done so on several occasions in the past stepped through holding the offending blaster,

“I guess I was hoping to much to catch you unawares, it was that dammed force that warned you wasn’t it? “

Alric held his blade steady in front of him but was barely able to keep his rage in check as the traitor stepped over the young woman’s body,

“Faren, how could you?” he questioned the rage seeping ever so slightly into his voice giving it a slight quiver. The young man glanced down at the woman and smiled as he looked back at Alric,

“It’s simple, I decided I wanted something more than hiding in tunnels playing at heroics surrounded by a planet of people who will never appreciate what I’ve sacrificed.” The click of him flipping the heavy blaster rifle from single shot to full-auto echoed in the quiet room as two more distant explosions reverberated through it, “It’s over old man, Raytan will never allow you to expose his schemes.”

Alric took a step back to match the younger man’s advance but his ear prickled at the name the traitor used,

“Raytan? Don’t you mean Alex’is?”

Faren gave a disgusted chuckle at the question,

“That spineless mynoc is merely a figurehead, the fact that you think HE is your opponent just confirms how clueless you really are!”

The Force flared danger into Alric mind the instant before Faren raised the blaster and opened fire, good as he’d gotten with his saber he doubted even Master Vos could have deflected all of the bolts the weapon spat from it’s barrel so he did his best to not be where he’d been but quick as he was one of the bolts still managed to sear the calf of his left leg. Blessedly and much to his own surprise the ferocity of the output seemed to take even the battle tested Faren by surprise as the muzzle of the weapon rode up into the roof filling the air with dust and debris and plunging it into a flickering shadow box of targets. Faren let s string of cruses fly and charges where Alric had last been unloading another stream of blaster bolts. He didn’t see the pale blue blade till his head was sitting on the ferrocrete floor staring up at it. The last thing Faren Mar’rel saw was the look of absolute disappointment on his former commander and friend’s face…

Alric Ortega shook his head as he shut down his weapon and moved to the young woman near the door, a pool of dark blood characteristic of the Chren people was pooling under her left arm and starting to dribble out of the crater on her right side, he checked her pulse and it was thready when he could feel it and the Force told him she was fading fast,

“Hang in there Lola,” he spoke to her but the glassy eyes gave no spark of recognition, “This would probably hurt a lot if you weren’t in shock already.”

With that he ran the blade of his saber across the jagged end of the stump that was her left arm and then retrieved the med-kit from the nearby wall and sprayed the chest wound with a bacta spray and slapped a synth-flesh bandage over the whole thing. Clipping his saber back to its place on his belt he collected the two computer modules and strapped them together then slung them over his left shoulder and Lola over his right,

“Just stay with me girl.”

Beneath his feet he felt two more demolition charges go off, that meant all of the primary entry tunnels were gone, all that was left was the emergency evac and the main dormitories, the next three explosions would take care of those, the final charge would destroy the command post he’d just left once the last three blew. It was an automated sequence Faren had come up with to ensure that even if the Leaguers caught them they’d die with them. The irony of that wasn’t lost on him as he moved as swiftly as he could the single remaining shaft that would hopefully lead them to freedom assuming Faren hadn’t totally betrayed them. As he approached the shaft two sentries stepped out of cover and slung their weapons to help, they were a third of the fighting force still in the base, the rest were in the field for the op,

“Sir, what happened?”

“Take her!” he grunted shouldering Lola off onto the first young man, “Faren betrayed us.”

The two soldiers look at each other and then the evac tunnel, “Sir? Will it still be safe?”

Once again Alric reached for the Force listening to it’s whispering voice, “I think so Sargent, where are the others?”

“They never rallied sir.”

Alric ran his fingers through his silver hair and then shook his head, “Damn shame, down the hatch then boys.”

The evac tunnel emerged on the edge of one of the massive subterranean aqueducts that supplied Chren’s capital with it’s water, they were all monitored but he and his men had long ago subverted the equipment in this area that did so and if the Force was with them it would still be so, if not they wouldn’t likely escape the ISB forces that were no doubt part of this attack. Dropping the small inflatable boats into the water flow the tunnel around them shook with three more explosions,

“thirty seconds!” Alric grunted as the four of them dropped into the boat and he cranked the engine, seconds later the tunnel itself seemed to rock as the last demolition charge detonated and a dust cloud was soon following them down the aqueduct towards safety…
Lord Defender
Posts: 8040
Joined: Sat Feb 15, 2003 11:26 pm
Location: locus vacuus fides

Re: The Red Dawn: Strength from Ashes

Post by coronhorn »

Red Dawn Fallback Safehouse Omega: Two Days Later


Alric ran stared at the tally board that was mounted along the wall opposite the single entrance into and out of the situation room of OpSec Omega. Over the last two days only thirty percent of his cell’s previous fighting strength had shown up. To a man they all had stories that had forced him to send some of his people out to start looking for another separate base of operations, he wasn’t sure how deep the damage went but right now he was fairly certain almost all of their operational security had been compromised by Faren. At least half of the men who’d reported to delta as planned had been captured. He wasn’t sure where the others were, as badly as the op had gone he wouldn’t blame them for just fading into the woodwork and disappearing.

“Is it really as bad as it looks sir?”

Alric turned and met the unsure gaze of his new lieutenant, a middle aged Chren who went by the name Warhorse, he wasn’t even sure of his given name and after Faren’s betrayal he wasn’t sure he wanted to know,

“Could be worse or could be better.” He replied with a tight smile, “How is she?”

“Hopper says she’ll pull through, though that hit on her torso is going to leave a nasty scar. That was quick thinking using your saber to cauterize the arm. He says that probably saved her life.”
Alric nodded and turned back to the board, “We’ll see how much she appreciates my efforts when she regains consciousness. Any word from our location scouts yet?”
“No sir, Skitter said they had a lead on a place last time they checked in but haven’t heard from them since.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Couple of hours sir.”

Alric grimaced and shook his head, “Don’t worry sir, the Force is with us.”

He nodded in agreement but he wasn’t sure he believed that anymore, standing to his feet he ran his hands through his hair and let out a huff,

“I’m going up to the roof for some fresh air.”

“Aye, sir, I’ll let you know if anything happens.”


Alric nodded and slipped past the younger man and started for the stairwell at the end of the hallway, they were hold up on the 5th floor of a mostly abandoned tenement structure on the outskirts of Chren’s capital city. The land lady who maintained the building for the owner was sympathetic to the cause and apparently had a nephew who was caught up in the purges that followed the CSL’s take over. He’d had the unfortunate luck of being a security guard at the RSA’s central headquarters. The “security courts” had found him guilty of treason and sent him off to a black hole from which he’d never been heard from again. In the years since the coupe he’d heard countless stories like hers, but most hadn’t because anyone caught telling those stories just disappeared. It galled him to have to watch his adopted home become so much like the Empire he’d fled after the clone wars had ended. It was what kept him going most days, as he cleared the last two steps he pushed open the old durasteel door that opened onto the mostly flat roof of the building. There were two sentries that were stationed under an active cammo tent that started to stand and salute but stopped awkwardly when he waved them off,

“Just getting some fresh air.” He supplied as he moved towards the edge of the roof and propped one foot onto the old brick edifice, this was by far one of the oldest part of the capital city. Some of the buildings dating all the way back to the original colony,

“Wouldn’t stay out there too long sir, there have been a lot of floaters out there today.”

He looked up into the sky, it was mostly blue though the reds of the impending sunset were already starting at the horizon, he studied the patterns of traffic but couldn’t spot any of the lighter-than-air ships that the ISB had started using to maintain nearly constant outdoors surveillance of the populace. Taking a deep breath of the mostly fresh air he sighed and then started for the small tent where the two me sat watching him, the first of the two men held out a pack of tobaccs,

“they’re only milds sir, I can’t handle the heavier ones, they upset my delicate disposition.”

The second man chuckled and punched the first in the shoulder, Alric hesitated and then plucked one out and let the man light it for him, the flavor filled his pallet and the spice buzzed at his senses. It had been years since his last one, settling on one of the remaining blocks arranged under the tent he smiled,

“Nice blend.”

“Thank you sir, I roll them myself.”

He quirked an eyebrow at the pride in the response from the young man and he continued, “The Leaguers tax the pre-mades too much for a man on a living wage to afford them these days.”

“Unless you’re one of the privileged elites.” The other man growled.

Alric took another long drag on his and slowly exhaled,

“That’s why we’re fighting the good fight.” He added, the other two men nodded in agreement and then the three of them finished their smokes with just the sound of the breeze reaching their ears, when the last of the tobacco burned down Alric flicked it into the small buck in the center of the small tent and stood back up,

“So what’s our next move sir?”

“We find a new home and see about replacing what we’ve lost.”

“We’re with you sir.”

Alric smiled the warmth of the spice still humming in his system, “Keep an extra vigilant watch boys, we still don’t know if this location was compromised.”
The two men both nodded as he strode back across the pitch and tar roof to the old rusted door and pulled it open and disappeared inside, he had a call to make regardless of whether Skitter’s team found them something. They’d lost most of their supplies and munitions when they’d evac’ed from their last home…
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