Yavin IV's Open Terrain

"I've had better mornings," Anita remarked dryly, "As I'm sure Telen here has.  And I'm sure we're bound to have many more better mornings."

She smiled - a slightly shakey smile, but one she hoped might help the Captain feel a bit more at ease while she performed the action that would give the Captain his mobility back. "However, I'm sure we'll deal with this and soon have you safely back in the capable hands of the Praxeum's medicenter, never you fear."

Before she used the lightsaber she turned to the Captain and added, "I've heard people say it helps to close your eyes and imagine yourself at a beach. This will only take a moment." She nodded to Felia, indicating she was ready.

It wasn't as hard as she had expected, to cut the bit of metal free. She moved the lightsaber in a calm, deliberate manner, firmly gripping the piece of metal below the cut to keep it from moving too much around the wound.

Then it was done, the metal was broken in two, and Felia was applying the bacta patch the spurting wound. Looking down, Anita noticed in a detached way that blood had splashed onto her arm. She grimaced slightly, thankful that the dim lighting made the red color harder to see. She could pretend it was dirt, or maybe some oil. She brushed it off on the side of her tunic, before moving the lightsaber to her belt so she could free both hands to help the blood covered Felia. 

"Is there any long bands of gauze in the medical bag?" she asked, helping Felia apply pressure to the bacta patch (noticing with some disappointment she got more blood on her as she did so) while Felia went for the syringe. "If we're going to be climbing back up, I think we should try and use some gauze and wrap it around his upper torso, it will help keep everything . . . in place."

She reached one hand over squeeze the soldier's arm in a comforting gesture, as years of watching her mother and other politicians play the role of comforting and caring diplomat came to mind, guiding her actions. "You're doing very well," she said, in what felt like a comforting voice. 

Well ain't that a sight He'gai? Ali muttered over the squad comm-channel. She stood with her fists resting on her hips, beside the massive trunk of one of the many trees crowning the hilltop to which they had just scaled. From the ridgeline, dense forests filled the landscape as far as the eye could see. At the center of this impressive view, the Great Massassi Temple reached for the sky, ancient in its design, though young in its years. Ali had still been serving as part of the Yavin 4 Defense Force when the new Temple had been constructed at the site of the old, which had been destroyed by the Yuuzhan Vong during their failed attempt to conquer the Galaxy.
Ali felt oddly nostalgic for a brief moment, remembering the training exercises her unit used to run across the moon's terrain, for days and weeks on end. Many of GALSAF's soldiers were former Y4DF that had resigned after Ander Tagira had been expelled from the Order years before. It was a bizarre feeling, having trained with those soldiers for years, only to return as conquerors of a kind. Ali frowned slightly at the thought; she didn't particularly feel like a conqueror, nor did she care to be one, unlike most of the Mandalorian Clansmen that had served as the core of their allied forces. Those Mando'ade¹, "Mad Mandos" was the term Ali preferred to use, were out for blood in exchange for crimes committed by Force Users that were centuries old. Mandalorians sure knew how to hold a grudge.
Personally, Ali didn't much care if the Jedi or Sith were guilty of anything. The fact that wars had been fought over them for thousands of years was motivation enough for Ali to want to help remove them from the Galaxy. Simply killing them all wasn't the right answer though, she believed. They deserved each other, like a crotchety old couple. Ali just wanted them to tear each other to pieces somewhere else, instead of ruining everyone else's day because they couldn't get their osik² together.

Sergent Huff He'gai, 4th Platoon's lead NCO, stepped up beside Ali and let his rifle hang from its clip on his shoulder. The Quarren shrugged, the beads of water coating his armor plates reflecting slightly in the light Yavin Prime shed on its moons at night. I'm more worried about the Jetiise³ holed up inside that temple, Hadrix. He'gai replied, turning his helmeted head away from Ali as he surveyed the area. Ali and her platoon had been tasked by GALCOM to secure a Mandalorian artillery cannon that had been dropped by the Massassi River's North-running arm after its carrier vessel had been shot down by Jedi fighters. The cannon itself was said to still be intact and operable, and it was Ali's job to get the damn thing set up on the East Bank of the river to provide support for their forces marching on the Great Temple.
Ali frowned slightly, the cannon was large, to be sure, but the shield protecting the Jedi stronghold wasn't going to cave to a few shells. Overloading the shield would take more firepower than they had thought to bring, even amongst the fleets in orbit, even if they could get them all in tight enough to fire on the thing simultaneously. Ali knew the purpose of setting up the cannon was to harass any Jedi forces that strayed outside that protective bubble, but she also knew the Jedi weren't going to give them that chance.

For a moment, Ali chewed on her bottom lip beneath the helmet adorning her head. Even if they did get that cannon set up, they had no anti-aircraft weaponry to support the position, leaving it vulnerable to the Jedi's air forces. Little good it would do them getting the damn thing operational only to have some Dragon Squadron yuppie fly by and drop a bomb onto it. Ali shook her head, then reached for the grip of her rifle and started off down the North face of the hill.
The rest of the platoon followed her at a decent pace, ensuring no more than two commandos were visible within line-of-sight at one time. The cover of darkness certainly helped, and most of Ali's platoon knew the terrain from their time with the Yavin 4 Defense Force, which certainly made navigating the forests much easier. Ali knew the Lord Commander had dispersed the former Y4DF personnel evenly among the commando ranks, ensuring that an expert on Yavin 4's terrain was always close by. For Ali, that person was herself, and a handful of others, like Sergent's Willam Defay and Huff He'gai. Sergent Tun Bilyers had been a CorSec agent before enlisting with GALSAF, however, and knew little about the moon that couldn't be found on maps.

Captain Bariq Shane, Fox Company's commanding officer, had reached Ali several hours before after her gunship had dropped them off nearly seven kilometers away, leaving her with the orders to secure the downed artillery cannon. Why the Mandalorians couldn't provide the manpower themselves, Shane hadn't been able to say. Laziness, Ali suspected. Some Mando'ade liked to do all the fun shooting, and none of the heavy lifting required.
Ali made her way through the foliage and undergrowth, keeping an eye on the commandos to her right and left. They maneuvered down from the ridgeline in a triple-file formation, three columns of nearly ten soldiers each. This maximized their maneuverability, though provided much less all around security. Ali hated file formations, placing one soldier in front of another was the best way to get them both shot by the same round, but the terrain demanded it for the time being. The banks of the river would be more open, but too much so to allow more than a handful of her commandos to remain out for too long at a time.
Nearly a half hour later, Sergent Sylas reached Ali over the comlink with a sighting of the Mandalorian artillery cannon. It was roughly a kilometer out, sticking half out of the canopy almost 300 meters off the bank of the river. Reorienting their direction of travel, Ali brought the platoon to rest in a circle formation around the cannon. Each commando picked up a security position within the undergrowth, ensuring they were hidden from any outside prying eyes. Aside from Jonn, Sergents He'gai, Defay, and Bilyers were the only commandos who accompanied her to the center of the circle formation where the cannon lay.

One of its legs had been damaged in the fall from the sky, and another was missing entirely. The rest were all in shape, though the hardware responsible for recoil compensation looked a bit beat up, raising doubts that the weapon would be able to recover properly from each firing cycle. Ali stepped up to the massive cannon, slapping a gauntleted hand against the hull, which rang with a dull thud. The cannon's long barrel stuck up through the canopy, disappearing from sight. Roughly 3 meters of it looked to be sticking out in plain sight. The body of the cannon had crushed a large area of undergrowth in its fall, but only a pair of trees had actually been felled by its sudden arrival. The rest of the area had branches and foliage strewn about, but the area remained pretty well intact. On the upside, this helped hide the cannon from visual or sensor identification. On the downside, it meant they wouldn't be moving the artillery piece without cutting down a slew of trees first, which Ali wasn't planning on doing.
We're setting the bitch up here. Ali decided, looking around the group of NCO's on either side of her as they too checked over the situation. Each squad give me two men, everyone else holds security. We'll need two cut up a couple of these trees it looks like, to provide new supports for the cannon. Ali motioned towards the pair of trees that had been crushed beneath the artillery piece. Sergent He'gai nodded, releasing his rifle from his grip and comming his squad. Defay and Bilyers stepped away to do the same.
Some moments later, six commandos arrived from the depths of the forest around them, their weapons strapped to their chests and various cutting tools held in their grasp. Ali grimaced briefly as she pulled the helmet from her head and clipped it to her belt. As the commandos got to work making measurements and preparing cuts, Ali reached for her pack of cigarettes and drew one, lighting it. Defay grabbed one of his own, lighting it off Ali's.
"Do you ever have your own lighter?" Ali asked, chiding him casually. The man finished securing his buy'ce⁴ to his belt before taking a drag of the cigarette, smoke drifting from his nostrils as he replied. He shook his head, taking a sip from his water supply. "Nope. That's how I remind you you're always needed, Hadrix." Defay jested, causing Ali to roll her eyes as she pulled from her cigarette. "Gar cuyi di'kut, Defay⁵." Ali retorted. The other commando chuckled quietly to himself, then picked up a cutting device and got to work.
A few short hours would be all they needed before sunrise hit and that cannon was up and running, or so Ali hoped. She finished her smoke before dropping it to the ground, crushing the filter-less cigarette with a booted foot. "Always more work to do," she muttered to herself, wondering briefly if she would survive this war long enough to see Crystaall Sehefadu again.

1: Mandalorians [Plur.]
2: Excrement, lit. "shit"
3: Jedi [Plur.]
4: Helmet, lit. "bucket"
5: "You're an idiot, Defay."