RPlog:Our Private Aftermath

Players: Cassie, Kintor, Lornan, Sandor

NPCs: Kintor's Dog: Buck

Date: February 20, 2006

Overview: Safely aboard the Candor's Redress after the destruction of Cochran, the crew of the Redress and Sandor lick their wounds.

With an amazingly blazing flash, Kintor jump from his crouched stance on the battlefield of Lingons Starport on Cochran to leap frog onto the back of the swoop escorted to his position by Cassie. After watching Lornan's mishap, he reaches around Cassie to lower the thrust of the machine slightly and gun the engine. Almost instantly, the pair races the forty yards to the rear cargo hatch of Candor's Redress, sliding to a hazardous stop once inside. A quick look around shows that Lornan had -for the most part- brought Woden safely into the hatch, and the near-human male seperates himself from the swoop/woman/man tangle with a mixture of a fall and a jump, slamming a balled up fist into a bright red button labelled "Hatch." The man drops to his hands and knees, panting as the cargo doors close, one thought continuing a relentless cycle through his mind's ears and eyes:

Cochran: Base Zero Delta. Total Destruction.

A shudder runs down Kintor's spine. "Lornan. Start the ship. There's no hope." He turns his body to lean against the side of the ship's walls, wiping the sweat and grime of battle from his forehead. The man looks down at the grated floor of the cargo hatch for a moment, frozen, before the body of Sandor catches his eye. Getting up slowly, he walks to the unconscious man, grabbing the medpack used by Lornan only minutes before on his way, and then crouches at Sandor's side. "Cassie, come and help me in any way you can. He ain't hurt too bad." He hopes, anyway. He unzips the medpack and rifles through the contents to begin the first First Aid the man has received.

Cassie sighs, laying her head down on the handlebars of the swoop for a second, her face covered in dirt and grime. She gets up, looking down at Kintor trying to treat Sandor. She's no good at the medical stuff, but she walks to a nearby console and pokes a few buttons. "Cochran...there's...there's nothing left!"

"Mother..", followed by a set of explitives is all Sandor can manage, as he finally comes to. His eyes, his body, his everything is thoroughly groggy, and unaware of anything that has happened on the planet below. What he sees around him doesn't make any sense until, a few seconds later, it registers that he's not actually been killed. Which is definitely a welcome change from what had been on his mind as he fell. "What happened?", he finally manages, the closest he can get to a formal query for a SITREP in his present state.

The more technically-inclined agent steps from the cockpit with a sigh, his hands laced with grease, dirt and blood. "That's what Base Delta Zero means," he says weakly. "We're in hyper. Step aside." Sitting at the damaged man's side, Lornan pulls a bacta pad, a vial of painkiller and some sickly blue serum from the medkit, injecting the latter into the man in hopes of keeping him conscious. Now, he sets about the depressing task of patching the Marine defector. "It's important that you stay awake. You have a concussion. Sleep could end in a coma," Greiko explains in a monotone. "Cochran's been BDZed... in ten minutes there'll be no atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions, millions dead..." a single tear falls on the injured man's stomach as the would-be physician continues his work, sniffing and taking a deep breath to remain composed. "There was nothing you could have done."

Kintor watches as Sandor comes to, despite the grossly failed attempts to heal the man. "You were shot in the chest. Settle down. You're aboard the C-" Kintor is interrupted as Lornan crouches at the man's side, much more medically apt than the former smuggler. He stands and takes a step back. "Right." Sighing, he puts his hands to his hips and watches his newly refound cousin go about keeping Sandor conscious. A head turns as Cassie speaks from a control panel across the room. Turning the rest of his body, he walks slowly towards her, putting his hands on her shoulders when he arrives. "Yeah.." He gives a gentle squeeze and then leans forward to press a button on the display to turn it off. "It's probably better not to look. We saw enough while were down there." Another soft squeeze and the man lets go, sliding to the ground and leaning against the wall. A brilliant orange flash passes through his eyes as his thoughts turn to the memory of the battle just moments before.

Cassie tears herself away from the console and leans against the bulkhead. Her knees buckle, sliding down the bulkhead until she's sitting down on the floor, her knees up against her chest. She buries her face in her hands and starts to sob, crying uncontrollably. "Why! I had it! I hacked in! What did I do wrong!?"

"Nothing," a disoriented Sandor theorizes, trying to sit up but finding the act to be much more difficult than it sounds, even not considering the injuries that he has sustained. He doesn't try it a second time, instead closing his eyes to give his mind the go-ahead to return to the horrific imagry of Yaartsek and Farlex, neither of which have ever been far from his mind since transpiring. In comparison, neither are especially tragic, which perhaps makes the need to produce some form of denial, some escape from his own failure all the more bitter.

Kintor leans his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling, still taking in all that happened in the last hour. It had all moved very fast, and the man is still reeling emotionally. His eyes drop from their spot above him to Cassie as she speaks. "Yeh didn't do anythin' wrong, Cass. Yeh did your job, and yeh did it beautiful. There's no one else I'd rather have slicin' for this crew." Kintor sighs and turns his attention to Sandor. "Don't move too much. You'll only make it worse for yerself. We're meeting the fleet at Calamari. When we get there you can make full use of the exquisite medical bay." He continues to sit as he is, looking between the hysterical Cassie and the wounded Sandor.

In better circumstances, Sandor might grin at the irony. Clearly, were he a safety-conscious individual, he would neither continue to expand upon his treason against the Empire nor serve in the armed forces in general. But right now, one thought is overriding all sense of purpose for the man. 'Danik.'. If only Sandor's plans to put him out of comission could have been implemented sooner, perhaps a less bloody-minded pair than General Stasio and Grand Admiral Kreldin could have led the attack conventionally, and been repulsed. Much of this thought, this passion, is only a vague notion to Sandor, however, who has little knowledge of the details behind what has led him and the other survivors to this position. "Don't go after them without me," Sandor all but pleads, as his eyes come open once more. He only knows the basics, yet this is enough to convince him that his life is worth being put on the line once more, perhaps even thrown away, to keep an idea he now cherishes from being overwhelmed and defeated entirely. Much less the trillions of people that comprise such an idea, each of whom would be a face etched into his mind, if only he could have been there to see the ones who have already passed away. Though the Marine could and probably should manage to content himself on the fact that, it seems, nobody is going to launch a reprisal without him, there is a shock that is difficult to overcome regarding the fact that others might not be thinking on the same line as he is. Of course, that had been a regular occurance while he was in the Empire, and had been both a credit and a bane to the then-Sergeant Major's career, but at the moment he has no idea what might be different. Beyond a few basic things, he has little idea of anything at all, doubtlessly a temporary side-effect of too much adrenaline, concussion, and death in too short a time. "We have to pay them back for this," he offers in explanation, with surprising clarity given all that he's been through. The words don't come especially quickly, however, with most of Sandor's energy being devoted to simply staying awake, alert, and most importantly, alive. "It won't bring anyone back, but they can't keep doing this, and we can't let them keep taking planets." Already Sandor has come to this conclusion, with only the knowledge that the Empire assaulted a civilian area en masse, conducting strafing runs on the noncombattants along with everyone else. If he has any knowledge of what else has happened, it simply hasn't sunk in yet.

Kintor nods as he listens to Sandor. The clarity of the man's voice is a surpise, considering his completely unconscious state only moments before, but Kintor chalks it all up to rage and determination, two factors he is no stranger to. "Aye. Now there's an idea. I been thinkin' the same thing myself. Make the bastards rue the day Kreldin vowed vengeance on the Griffons." Pulling a small datapad from his pocket, Kintor looks over the readout giving detailed information on the status of the ship. "We'll be at Calamari before too long. We'll get you healed up and then take you back aboard to make some plans." Kintor presses a button and stuffs the datapad back into one of his many pockets, then addresses Sandor once again. "I know this much, Woden," A small smile and a wink appears on his face. "Payback's a bitch."