Log:Sith Empire: Red Bridge Over Trouble

Sith Empire: Red Bridge Over Trouble

OOC Date: December 10, 2021
Location: Coruscant
Participants: Sith Empire: Tamsin Cas, Midne, Tarq Najjic, Imani, and Darth Ferren

The blockade and siege of Coruscant has continued for well over a month now, with the Sith Empire gradually securing various sectors of the planet under their control, the fleet of Bloodmoon-class destroyers beating back any First Order Resurgents that have attempted to enter the system to support the beleagured garrisons on the surface. Few locations on the ground remain in the Order's control now, with the Citadel at the center of them.

The Citadel is something of a feat of engineering, a giant megastructure created from four star destroyers and then wedged down into the sprawling cityscape of Coruscant. There is only one way to access the Citadel aside from landing in the shielded area: the Long Bridge.

Aptly named, it stretches almost a mile long, an angled ramp from the city to Citadel, so wide it's been used to stage public executions, and studded with guard towers and turrets along its length.

At the bottom, heading a platoon of red-armored Sith troopers, stands Darth Ferren, unlit lightsaber in hand. "Today, we strike down the last obstacle between us and the Citadel. Today we walk the Long Bridge." It will be a long walk.

Tamsin Cas, in the month or so since the siege of Coruscant had begun, had seen much more of the planet than she cared to. From its supply depots to garrisons, its transmission towers to its devastated cityscapes. She was not, however, entirely turned off from the sight of the planet. If by that, what was meant, constant reader, was that she had accepted the mission and made the journey down to the surface. She had asked no questions beyond what was relevant, and made no attempt to offer her own opinions on how they should approach the problem. No, tonight, she was quite happy to be a cog in the wheel of progress, which would, in time, grind down their enemies and render the planet fit for consumptio---occupat--use. Fit for use. For now, she waited, behind an slightly to the left of where Darth Ferren was preparing to lead them on that long walk.

Stepping off the shuttle, SN-6428 positions herself a few steps behind the Councilors, and many more before the troopers. She holds a black and red blaster rifle at ready-rest and bears The Mark across the chest of her red-plated trooper armor. Her step has purpose, though not quite a march in-step with what the troopers behind her will soon show, hers is more reflective of the calculated and resolute cadence of those Councilors that she walks with. She dips her head in recognition of each of the Councilors before her, a silent 'ready' signal from her end. The recon specialist looks past her leader after he announces the mission, eyes narrowing behind her helmet at the megastructure in the distance. Slung over her shoulder is a loaded, primed and ready sniper rifle, though the more ordinary blaster she carries in her hands suggests she's more ready for a close-encounter than anything. The Mark turns to survey the troops as they get in position and ready to march and offers the group a single nod in response, meant to address the group as a whole. She wasn't their leader, but neither was she among their ranks. She would cross this bridge with the Councilors tonight, and defend them as the situation called for.

"Tarq Najjic looks forward to different battlegrounds. Will be nice to see inside of Citadel again, though." His purple-embroidered black cape rises behind him, tugged back slightly from where he stands balanced on the concrete barrier edging the bridge, one foot up on a crosspiece. The smooth bridge gives the wind time to speed ever faster, and it catches the cape, setting it to billow majestically. His lightsaber hilt is in his hand. At Darth Ferren's words, he flips the switch, the crimson blade gliding out with its trademark 'wrrrn', buzzing slightly as he flips his wrists and fingers around like an angry group of well-disciplined bees.

"Time to make breach, so may enter it once more." Whatever piece of classical literature he's trying to allude to, he's mauling it, and it wasn't that apt to begin with. At least he /looks/ like a Byronic hero, lips set firmly, eyes slightly narrowed, staring into the future with blade in hand.

The future looks like the Citadel and this mile of road that rests atop broken buildings.

Not a force user, not a trooper, Imani stands out in her own unique armor among these Sith. Dark in hue and designed for movement, but sturdy and well made. As you would expect from the Sith. She stands among the others, looking ahead first, then around to the others. "Glad I chose my comfortable boots today," she says cheerfully, then slides her helmet into place to eclipse the sunny expression. Once that's in place, she pulls her weapon free, ready to attack when the time to do so arrives.

Ironically, at one point there had BEEN a breach in the Citadel, and it was a Problem for everyone. Now, though, it rises firm and steadfast in the middle distance, the object of their affections, if such a thing could be said about a three-kilometer-high megastructure.

Of course, the Sith Empire was not without vehicles to assist in the climb, but there was a statement to be made, and three Force-wielding lunatics at the head of a red tide made it more effectively than some random walker mechs.

And so, the walk began.

Ferren steps off up the Long Bridge, the others behind him, and for the first few minutes, the hike is a silent one. The incline is steep and the going shortly raises heart rates despite the silent, abandoned guard towers that line the bridge here. Indeed, it's oddly silent, with only the distant sounds of the city below filtering up to them. Perhaps the First Order has simply retreated from this end?

Tamsin, helmed, robed, though currently hands free, began the walk without question, trusting that Ferren, for the time being, would remain ahead, and the troopers behind. But she did not allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security, as she took one step after another. When she spoke, it was already a ways into their forward progress, "Something is waiting in the guard towers ahead of us." The set they were approaching now, "I can't pin down anything more specific." Sadly, the Force did not speak in absolutes, only probabilities. "Some danger to us." It was the best she could do.

At Tamsin's warning, SN-6428 slows in her stride and brings her rifle around for a moment to aim at the guard towers. Notably, the safety remains on, suggesting that she's only using it to get a glimpse ahead. Her rifle moves from one tower to another, across the bridge, and it's on the second tower that she lingers. "Movement," she says to the Councilors, a few paces behind them. "Looks like First Order armor, something white between the window slits." The Mark slings the rifle around again and paces quickly on the incline to catch back up with the Councilors. "You're right, Councilor. I suspect an ambush."

There's something ill ahead, to be sure. After everyone else reports, Tarq's attention drops to a few chunks of rubble between them and those guard towers waiting to open fire on them. He crouches, reaching in with his free hand to sift through the dust and grit. After a few moments, he rises and power-walks to catch up to the others. "Thought there might be improvised explosives," he explains, drawing a kerchief from his utility belt and rubbing vigorously on his dirty hand before tossing it over his shoulder. "Is no sign of such. Am disappointed in them."

The Sith troopers following them crush the handkerchief beneath their boots. "Are /supposed/ to be counterinsurgency-trained. Though," he admits, "Suppose does not include insurgency. Never expected boot - to be on other /foot/."

The hike is silent and Imani trudges along in comfortable silence so long as it lasts. When Tamsin speaks, she looks up at the indicated tower then laughs. "I think everything in that direction is probably a threat to us. It's okay though, everything right here is a threat to them." She listens as further information on the threat is relayed, twirling on a heel to look back at Tarq as he crouches down. She doesn't stop, there are a few backward steps to keep her up with the group, then a spin to right her direction when Tarq's investigation concludes. "Maybe they want to avoid blowing up their own stuff if they can manage it? I'd expect more bombs if we get closer to success."

"If it's an ambush they want, then let us give it to them," Ferren announces darkly, striding ahead towards the towers and activating the red lightsaber in his hand as he goes. Nothing immediate happens. Maybe they /were/ just being paranoid.

Then abruptly, all hell breaks loose as a fusilade of fire rains down from the tower Ferren is approaching, as well as its opposite on the far side of the bridge. The windows on the lower level fill with First Order stormtroopers while a squad appears above the protective flashing on the top deck to open fire as well.

Alerted to the ambush, the Sith platoon backing the Councilors opens fire in return immediately, but the distance is still too far for Ferren to infiltrate the tower.

Tamsin, who was moving at the same speed as the rest of the troop, was, perhaps, in the midst of her own calculations, when the attack began, and the sound of blaster fire filled the air. Did she stop moving forward completely? Not as such, but she did move to draw her saber, the blade hissing out, casting its signature crimson hue like water at her feet. A glance, as she sought out a single trooper, a flick of her fingers, still beneath the sleeves of her robes coming just before a piece of the rubble lifted from the ground and sent itself at the trooper in question, impacting the armor with a sound thud. "Range-finding."

SN-6428 expected the fire as much as the troopers behind her did, and she's already running for cover as the red blaster bolts fill the air on either side of her. A particularly large pile of rubble is within reach and it's that pile that she runs to, going semi-prone upon it and resting her blaster rifle on a flat piece of duracrete to stabilize it. As she sees the rubble from another pile soar through the air toward one of the fortified soldiers, she follows up with a flurry of bolts from her own blaster, striking the trooper in the same location the projected rubble had just struck him in.

Tarq's lightsaber is already out, but as the fusillade rains down towards them and the Sith troopers, Tamsin, and Midne return fire, he just raises his saber a bit, glances left to see where Midne has taken cover, then moves to keep himself between her and the tower everyone hasn't engaged with yet. Lest you be too quick to declare him a hero of the Empire, he does this to maximize the chance he'll have enough blaster bolts heading towards him that one will be optimally placed to be sent back where it came from. That he is making himself more likely to be shot at than the one member of the Mark with them is probably incidental.

Probably. He twirls his lightsaber around in a lightshow that has to draw the eye, if only to make the First Order stormtroopers think 'what does he think he's doing?' Drawing your eyes and hopefully your fire, that's what!

Imani is tall and slim in the wiry sort of build that lends itself to speed, so she's quick to duck for cover when the firing begins, putting herself sort of behind those with the magical ability to deflect things like blaster bolts. Unlike her, and her only trick of absorbing them into her flesh in the form of wounds. Which is far less impressive, and hurts a lot more. She is, in the process of trying to avoid injury, careful to not get /too/ close when the lightsabers are out. She's seen what those can do, too, and she'd rather get shot.

"What does he think he's doing?" one of the First Order troopers atop the tower questions the other, pointing out Tarq spinning a lightsaber like a majorette in a parade.

"Trying to draw your fire, focus up!" her companion replies, taking a potshot at one of the Sith troopers who actually have guns.

"Well it's working," she fires back, firing back at Tarq and missing by a mile.

When Ferren finally reaches the tower, he doesn't enter, but digs the ruby blade deep into the blocked door, sending a slow cascade of molten durasteel running down it before giving the weakened barrier a sharp kick and clearing the path for his team of talented killers to ingress.

As Ferren made his choice of which tower he intended to make entry into, Tamsin, still with saber in hand, pointed down at a low ready, turned her attention to the second of the two. This time, she did stop her forward momentum, as she focused all of her will on the task at hand. The sound of screaming steep rent the air, as one of the walls of the tower ripped away from it's structural members, the metal peeling away like the skin of a fruit worked free of the core, exposing what might have been hiding inside, as it waved, or tried to, in the mind that whipped the bridge.

When the tower is breached and those with the red lightsabers begin to breach it, SN-6428 fills the space between they and the First Order troopers with suppressive fire. It comes close to hitting one of the troopers, and maybe she was even trying to hit him, but at the very least her barrage of blaster fire may serve to keep the trooper effectively suppressed. Once the Councilors are inside, SN-6428 stands from her semi-prone position and jogs ahead to make entry behind the others.

Why would you stop spinning your lightsaber, once you've started? It's clearly working? Tarq has not been shot yet, and neither has anyone else. He gives an approving nod and smile to Tamsin and a glance at the tower wall coming down before he dives through the point of entry Ferren carved. His blade twirls to the left and the right, covering his sides and menacing a trooper who knows /exactly/ what he's dealing with and is backing away while shooting from the instant he saw Ferren's blade slice into the door. The blade whirls back to silence the blaster by bisecting it and scoring a diagonal blow that separates most of the trooper's neck.

It's enough of the neck. He shifts to the side to make room for those following. "Get 'em, Imani," he encourages with a smirk.

Ingress is an option, and Imani isn't one to turn that sort of thing down. Especially not when her boss was so polite to open the door for her. She bounces on the balls of her feet a couple of times, then charges in through the opening into the tower, weapon in hand and ready. She's fast, and eager, this is the stuff that she's pretty good at, and it shows when she closes the distance between her position and a trooper in no time flat, driving the pointed tip of it into a weak point on the armor with a brutal efficiency. The weapon is yanked back, and then driven in a second time just to be sure the job is done.

It was never going to end well for the ambushers. Once Tarq and Imani are inside, Ferren follows, and with a sort of disinterested finality maneuvers the last remaining defender around the interior, cornering them in the tight confines and summarily chopping them down. It's done with no fanfare or emotion.

With one tower evidently cleared, the one opposite is still manned by a handful of troopers on the roof, though the Sith platoon has been picking at them one at a time (while suffering a few losses of their own). It's when Tamsin pulls at the durasteel plating on the side of that tower that the timbre shifts from the bassy thomp of blaster rifles to a metallic wail.

The plating shears the rest of the way off as something from the inside bursts out, and the clanking feet of an First Order AT-ST slam heavily onto the metal bridge, left, right, left, right, the main twin blaster cannon at its 'mouth' pivoting and taking aim at Tamsin while the secondary weapons look elsewhere.

Oddly, perhaps, Tamsin had not moved from where she had stopped on the bridge. Perhaps she trusted the rest of the team to handle clearing the tower Ferren had made entry to. Perhaps she was simply hellbent on bringing down the second tower. Whatever the reason, the result was the same. A lone dark robed figure standing on the bridge in direct line of fire for the AT-ST that clomped its way out of the tower she had unpeeled like a piece of fruit. Once again, it was one smol-ish figure against a mountain of a machine, and Tamsin remembers lessons learned once upon a Tarq dream. The saber flipped from her hand, spinning like a top across the distance as Tamsin aimed with her eye and with her mind, the blade spinning out to impact the blaster cannon mount that was now aimed at her, before her will called the blade back into her hand. She was too far from it to see if she had done any damage at all.

As the walker emerges with a spectacle from the structure, SN-6428 is stepping out of the previous tower her group had just stormed. As red blaster fire fills the bridge in both directions, The Mark watches Tamsin's saber soar through the air toward the walker, analyzing the situation from her own point of view. Her red helmet hones in on the tower the walker emerged from and she sprints through a brief lull in blaster fire as troopers re-prioritize their targetting. Her destination: the second tower. As she sprints she passes just below the walker, continuing past it and toward the enormous door the walker had just opened for her. Inside are some troopers, which she doesn't hesitate to engage. Her aim's off, as usual, but she's commit now.

Tarq comes out of the cleared tower after Midne, seeing the recon trooper run for the other tower while the AT-ST 'stares' down at Tamsin, whose lightsaber hits the guns. Did they have any effect? Ask a maintenance tech, about whose job Tarq is entirely ignorant.

Instead he sprints at the walker, then leaps into the air. Was that meant to be an easy vault onto its top? That isn't what happened. He sails right onto the front of the AT-ST by the window ports of the cockpit, hanging onto the edge with one hand and finding good balance points for his feet before driving his lightsaber up to the hilt into the armor of the AT-ST, which starts sloughing off in sections, revealing - more armor. This is meant to stand up to a lot of punishment. When the guns start rotating, however, he has his ever-so-useful perpendicular surface taken from him, and he pushes off from the wall in a half-somersault bringing him back to the ground. "/Still/ hate these things."

After the successful routing of the troopers in the tower, Imani is feeling pretty good about the mission so far, but then she hears the ominous clomp of heavy footfalls and some of that good feeling melts away. She spins away from the mess inside the tower and makes her way to the makeshift door to look out, head tilting back slowly to take in the full majesty of the AT-ST. "It must feel pretty great to drive one of those. I should try it someday." That someday isn't today, however, because her objective shifts to ruining the day of the driver inside that particular vehicle.

Not that she can do a lot all at once to something like that, but the seemingly futile objective isn't going to stop her. Oh no. As always she charges headlong into battle with a confidence that is supported by her general success in doing so, and not dying in combat yet. Tarq launches up like he has springs in his legs, and she tracks his progress while she approaches from the lower half, choosing a leg and trying to do enough damage to it to mess up the superior gyroscopes of this particular design. As with armor, she aims for the weak points, joints, spots where there might be wires, anything that can undermine the capability of this machine. She... doesn't do a whole lot just yet, but she's only just started. She might be able to make this work, or more accurately, not work eventually.

The AT-ST dominates the scene, now, with small-arms fire from the platoon of Sith troopers peppering the heavy armored plating with maddeningly little effect. Luckily, there are more than small arms here, there are also medium-sized arms attached to lightsabers and a chain-whip.

Stomping around on its big plate-feet, the walker glares balefully with its single viewing slit down on the attackers, the twin cannons pivoting as the feet shift and shuffle, trying with difficulty to track the close targets. The designers clearly had ranged encounters in mind, likely assuming no one would be stupid enough to get that close, and without something like a lightsaber, probably no one would. The armored plating holds up under the onslaught, for now, but every attack leaves a line of glowing orange carved through the thick metal rapidly fading to black.

Inside the ruined tower, now beginning to list worryingly to one side, a pair of stormtroopers intercept Midne's dash to the roof. "Stop right there!" one yells, while the other simply jumps straight into "Blast 'em!" while following their own advice and discharging a shot at the Mark-bearing trooper.

Tamsin somehow managed to evade the damage from any attack that came in her direction. Well, not somehow, she evaded it through sheer luck, the force, and by dint of moving away from where she had been standing, as she charged ahead to engage the two stormtroopers who were now harrying the Mark stormtrooper. The AT-ST was indeed taking the greatest amount of attention, but there were other dangers to consider, especially for those who were in the thick of it. A quick duck and jive saw her past the AT-ST and inside the remains of the tower and trying to get a good hit in on one of the troopers. Once, twice, it evaded her, but not the third strike, as the stormtrooper was cut down.

Storming brazenly into the tower probably wasn't the best way to go about it, but time was of the essence to SN-6428. Brazen is often time necessary, but sometimes it comes at a cost. This time, the cost was taking a hit directly to the Mark emblem on her armor. SN-6428 grunts to herself as she takes the hit, the armor's ablative coating absorbing most of the hit, though there's going to be some patching up to do afterward to be sure. She fires back as she makes for cover, her shots hitting the cover of the guard that was still standing.

Tarq joins Imani in attacking the legs, choosing the one for himself that she is not already jamming her chain-whip into. He goes for broad swings to put strength of his shoulders behind them, for this is not a nimble target. The first swing bounces off the walker's reinforced armor to no effect, but the follow-up scores deep into the 'foot'. There's a bit of molten red on it. Still, it isn't falling over yet. He rolls his eyes and stabs straight upward, hoping, perhaps, to catch either the pilot or gunner right through the pants. Alas, though there is a fresh smell of burning and another black mark, it is not to be.

"We should--" Imani starts, then pauses as she swings her weapon again. CLANG. "-- get one of these --" She swings again, trying to do damage to the leg to disable it. "-- to ride around in." CHOP. There is never any chance that her chain whip is going to be as effective as something like a lightsaber, but there is noticeable damage now at least. Something to mark her progress as she tries to David this Goliath. "Could show up in one. Makes a statement, you know?"

The dance with the chicken walker waltzes on, with the beleagured mech beginning to stumble in its stride, still struggling to draw a bead on any of the close-ranged attackers.

In frustration and perhaps no small amount of spite, the pilot jerks the yoke backward and the left foot kicks out with a vengeance, catching Imani bodily on the big plate and punting the Councilor into the air, towards the edge of the bridge if fate is kind (to them, not Imani).

Ferren makes no attempt to soften the blow, ignoring that it's even happened and continuing to carve chunks out of the increasingly unstable legs. "Now is probably the time to pull whatever clever tricks you've got locked away in that devious head of yours /out/," he barks to Tarq as he steps away from the leg strut that comes in too close for comfort, the 10 meter tall walker's sheer size both its best defense and worst handicap.

Now this was just getting to be a problem. Stormtroopers on right of her, an AT-ST on the left of her, and no forward momentum to show for it. Tamsin, darting to the side to avoid the shot the came to her from the remaining stormtrooper still hiding inside the building turned to consider the shotput blow to Imani and ducked out of the tower for a moment, moving in close enough to attempt to get in a few good strikes to its kicking foot. That was an insult not to be borne. Attention would simply need to be divided, for now. Three good strikes, but it did not remove the offending foot.

Enough messing around with the legs. Their legs are made of something incomprehensibly strong. Called upon to use his clevernesse, Tarq glances upwards, narrows his eyes, and opts for brute force. From a standing position he jumps to the top, landing at a crouch, and carves into the spot by the cockpit glass that he already began working on, then works the cut back towards the top-hatch, then a bit further - and the hatch gives, falling into the cockpit below. No one else is up there, they can't see what's going on inside, but the red lightsaber gives a different tint to the view slit as it whirls around in there, to the tune of a pair of screams. One scream ends abruptly, then the body of the pilot comes sailing up and out of the AT-ST to land next to Midne's tower. His eyes stare sightlessly at the sky. Then the last scream becomes a choke, then continues as the gunner launches from inside at high velocity - aiming in the direction Imani was kicked.

Live by the fling, die by the fling. If Imani wants to murder that guy, he's still breathing. Never let it be said he never gave her a gift.

Then Tarq himself soars out of the cockpit, landing lightly on the ground, but he's breathing heavily. "Tarq Najjic is /so angry/ and there are only two of them to kill!" he yells. Then he blinks slowly once, takes a deep slow breath, and says, "Sense pain. Who got shot? Let us take five, yes?"

Imani's life hasn't always been this exciting. Her formative years were far safer, nice world, nice family, it's hard to say what exactly went wrong with her. (Or right, depending on who you ask.) Even when things got more exciting, she never imagined that she'd ever get to experience what it was like to fly, not once, but twice. The first time the takeoff was a bit gentler, even if the landing was rough. And in a tree. This time, however, it's rough from the start, as she finds herself kicked so hard that she's thrown off of her feet and through the air, doing a full flip, and then hitting the bridge where she slides another few feet.

She is still on the bridge, but she isn't immediately moving. First her spirit has to catch up to her body, and then the body has to catch the breath that was knocked out of her, and only then does she move. Small at first, just a flex of her fingers, then her arm, and then she manages to roll herself onto her back as she spends a moment trying to refocus her vision. There is a meaty thump of a body landing near her, but if there is to be murder, it shall have to wait. She's still not entirely certain she's currently alive.

When the AT-ST finally falls in a heap, collapsing down on itself, Ferren immediately moves to keep walking. There isn't a second force of stormtroopers pouring down the bridge to stop them, though.

Instead, there's something else.

Splitting the air with unexpected force, a wave of pressure washes over the bridge, shooting tiny debris into the air. It's followed /after/ by a deep percussive BOOM that makes the ears ring, the sound a secondary wall of force behind the first as a gout of smoke blasts skyward from the bridge.

When the smoke begins to settle, two things are clear; the Long Bridge just got shorter, and the Sith Empire will not walk into the Citadel today.

Shake off the dust.