Remnants of a War

Bretharr Bargall

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Outside the Palace of Alderaan

Bretharr stood outside the breach which he had created during the battle, and witnessed the destruction and carnage created by the battle. It had been a bloody and brutal assault. Pretty much the entire Republic armour wiped out, with zero air support. A travesty of tactics. Any grunt knew to always provide air support in large scale assaults like these. None was given. Bodies lay strewn across the once green field surrounding the palace. However, one loss was especially hard. His commander for pretty much the duration of the war, Talos Barrenfist, dead. The death had shaken him to his core, emotion almost overcoming him. However, he knew his duty, and crying over his body wasn't something he imagined Talos would've wanted him to do. He continued assisting the others in cleaning up the wreck of the battle. What would happen now? A parade? A few pretty speeches from the Senate? Medal Ceremonies? There were endless possibilities. Bretharr wasn't interested in any of them.
@Herrith
 

Agrafena Landis

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Léon clenched the hand of a man that was bleeding out. He could do nothing but give him some morphine and hope that he died without pain. The medical team that came wasn't much of a medical team. Two people and a couple field medics picking through likely hundreds of wounded or worse. He let go of the hand as the man slowly faded away and took his tags, tucking them into an already full pouch of identification tags. His fists clenched as he turned to Aggie, who was gathering identification papers from a couple combat engineers who looked like they had the intention of blowing something up...till part of them got vaporized in what looked like a plasma explosion or thermal detonation. Landis picked up the ash near one of them in a gloved hand and let it fall through her fingers as she exhaled.

This wasn't a victory. The Republic might mark it as one--but this was a slaughter. They didn't even have air support, and from the looks of things minimal armored vehicles. She checked the pulse of someone who may have been alive and shook her head, taking his tags and standing up from her crouch. Landis looked down and gathered her gear, amazed at the sheer silence of the wasteland. Her head moved to Léon and she whistled, pointing to the palace.

"Come on Léon..they'll send out more teams for the tags...we did everything we could."

He looked toward her and clipped his helmet to his belt.
"Did we? We weren't here for this...it wasn't even a fair fight. This was a massacre."

"I know, Léon. I'm sorry. Let's go."

The two silently approached the palace, finding a man with a thousand meter stare looking their direction. All she could manage was a shallow nod as she scaled rubble up to the breach in the wall.
 

Bretharr Bargall

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As Bretharr looked round, he saw a female Lieutenant who gave him a shallow nod. He would walk towards he. He needed some conversation to get his mind off this... Tragedy. Thousands of deaths, for a gain of a planet which should've been the Republic's anyways. He hoped that the Senators wouldn't go easy on the Hutts. He, and probably most of the Republic military, wanted revenge. He wanted something to make up for the thousands of lives lost. The Chancellor was a military man, he would know what his former comrades wanted. As he approached her, he merely nodded, before saying
"Need a hand?"
 

Agrafena Landis

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Aggie pulled herself up with a hand from Léon, finding a Republic trooper ask her if she needed help, presumably with gathering identification. As for now, no--they had just tried to save who they could, with no avail.

"I'm afraid our work's done...casualty collection should do the rest..as for us, I think we've done all we could. What was the battle like?"

Landis handed her bag of dog tags to Léon and nodded toward a tent set up that was collecting ID. People needed to send word to families, if the dead had any.
 

Bretharr Bargall

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Bretharr heard her response to his offer of help. He had meant with getting up the debris, but never mind. Apparently she was collecting dog tags, and saw the bag of dog tags she held. So many... So many poor people dead. The Republic had won a costly victory. But was the cost too high? He did not dwell on those thoughts. Or tried not to anyway. The constant sight surrounding him of battle was... Certainly not helping. He was sort of reawakened from his little trance when she asked him about the battle.

Ah the battle. A truly chaotic thing which he never wanted to see again, take part of. But he knew there were probably many more battles to come. Some probably even larger than this. He recounted the basic events from his perspective to the Lieutenant, before saying

“The battle might’ve been won far more quickly and easier if there was just a squadron of air support. Something to help cover us in the skies. But no. Whilst all our air cover was thrown into a pointless venture above some Sith scum” he spat the last 2 words with distaste and disgust
“Men were cut down by 2 Hutt freighters. Butchered like animals...” He then sighed.

“Perhaps that is the burden of command. There are many different viewpoints. As a commander, perhaps it a responsibility to not get personally affected by some of those under your command. Because they will always be negative. So many what ifs, which dwell on the minds of the rank and file, and the commander is the only way through which the men can vent this.”

He always wanted to get re-promoted after his demotion back to his former rank. Now he wasn’t so sure

“Maybe being a private is the best way to go. Maybe...” He stopped. He had just realised that he was probably being quite rude, not letting the female speak. Oh well.
 

Agrafena Landis

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Aggie watched while her partner lumbered off toward the tent, silent as ever, if not more so. Something about him now was more...quiet? Reserved? Not to say that he wasn't before but...just the way he walked. Maybe this scene had hit him harder than she had expected. Maybe it had changed her just as much. She'd have to conduct an evaluation as soon as she could get around to it. Her ears refocused on the soldier, followed by her eyes while she nodded to his speech.

The chain of command was complicated...and sometimes people had false illusions of where resources were most useful. Evidently the illusion here had hurt the Republic more than it had done good. Landis had worked with Lieutenant Barrenfist once before, along with his people. They were good men and women...a few of the faces she'd seen pale and distant on the battlefield were ones she had seen before. And he was gone too. Her fists slowly clenched and loosened as she took a breath.

The man suddenly cut himself off, probably thinking about manners. She didn't care. It was good to let go and talk about this stuff, especially when one was so personally involved. He had lost his brothers, sisters, his commanding officer, and she'd lost someone she'd hardly known. Léon was more hurt than her by far. Was that normal, to be so shaken by this? Maybe it was because the soldier blood didn't flow through her veins...she was a scientist, first and foremost, after all.

"I understand. I'm just glad I'm commanding a small unit--nothing large like..Lieutenant Barrenfist had been in command of. It isn't easy to move on from this stuff..and I hate to say that I've seen worse."

Agrafena wiped her gloves and then took them off, clipping them to her belt while she looked back toward the carnage. The soldier was probably trying to be respectful, seeing as her rank was so...up there. She didn't let it get in her way of having a normal conversation, as normal as a pathologist with multiple other scientific degrees could get.
 

Bretharr Bargall

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Bretharr nodded as she talked about her previous experiences. Perhaps he was blabbering like some young child, pathetic in his slobbering. It appears that she agreed with him about commanding a large unit. It seems that she didn't really want to command a large unit like Barrenfist. Whether she held these thoughts before or after the battle was something he wondered, but he didn't really mind nor care. His civilian lifetime seemed like... A lifetime away. What had happened to his innocence, on his farm, living peacefully and happy with no care for anything in the world. He decided to not continue on this negative attitude. Whilst it most definitely didn't seem like it, this was 'supposed' to be a glorious victory for the Republic.

"So. What do you think's going to happen now for us?" He asked quietly
 

Agrafena Landis

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Aggie looked up before glancing back to the tent as Léon came back to the two, nodding to the soldier that had been looking for conversation. She stared at Léon for a few moments, having what looked like a silent conversation. Landis flicked her wrist and nodded, watching while he patted her on the shoulder and headed off to where a couple people were drinking and paying their respects. She looked back to the man she was talking to and inhaled a shallow breath.

"Well...we'll have an hour to grieve, 22 to relocate, and 1 to fight before we get our asses kicked. Rinse, repeat. Till we're bone dry and down a few kriffing hundred more."
 

Bretharr Bargall

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Bretharr would nod back to the soldier who had nodded to him. He didn't know who he was, but he must've been part of Agrafena's company or something, noting his pat on her shoulder. When she responded in a... relatively sarcastic way, he allowed himself a small chuckle. Some humour was needed to lift this sorry situation. He had a few responses in mind, but didn't want to say them. They were most likely disrespectful, and he didn't want to be screwed anymore than he was. Instead, he decided to draw the conversation to their newly found allies.
"Do you think the Chancellor's done the right thing by chumming up with the Sith? I think its kinda ironic how he was picked for being a man to reject outside influence, and now he's doing whatever the Sith want him to do." He said with a tang of... Resentment. He hated the Sith, for destroying his previous life and now... It seems his current life would be corrupted to them as well
 

Agrafena Landis

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Landis let her heart skip a couple beats as she realized that she hadn't allowed herself to understand how the Republic was now technically the Sith's plaything now. She knew from the other soldier's tone that he likely had similar beliefs to her in not feeling so friendly toward the Imps. Aggie hated them--she would have rather been dead than under the orders of a bunch of monsters hell bent on removing freedoms and stifling justice while putting in control under an iron fist. Now the pang of leaving the Republic or looking for fellow defectors came back to her. Would Léon come? All he knew was this job, after all. How far would she go to take him with her? How far would he go to stay?

"I think the Chancellor made a choice, and he is going to have to live with the consequences as will we all."

Aggie chose her words carefully--for all she knew, this guy was putting on a show to bait her into something bad.
 

Bretharr Bargall

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Bretharr would nod at her answer
"Hmm, a prudent enough response." He would say. A neutral response to say the very least. Perhaps... A bit too neutral. She probably held a different view, but he would not go squirming around in one's thoughts. Or at least he wouldn't intrude on one's privacies. Drink might make her inform him of her actual views, but still.
"Any plans to head to Coruscant soon?"
 

Agrafena Landis

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Aggie raised an eyebrow, curious to the odd reply, especially coming from a private talking to a lieutenant. She crossed her arms and stood up slightly straighter. He then asked her if she was planning on going to the shining jewel of the galaxy.

"Me? Coruscant? You must think I'm popular or something. No, me and Léon never go in that far...at least not often."

She glanced Léon's direction to make sure things were well. So far so good.
 

Bretharr Bargall

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He made a little chuckle as Aggie made her own response towards his own response. She probably felt he was trying to stitch her up.
"Don't worry, I'm not trying to get you for high treason or something like that. But you're not the best at adopting a neutral stance when you don't believe one." He said, with a genuine smile.
"Ah fair enough. A shame. I was hoping to get you a drink. Probably going insane." He said, waiting for a response
 
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