39:6:30 GrS
Sanctuary of Ignato, Lettow, The Core Worlds
"Again!" Ignato's ghostly voice called out. I stifled a groan and cautiously stood back up, ignoring the pain in my back from hitting the stone floor.
I didn't say anything to my ghostly mentor, instead I got into position. Feet square with my shoulders, knees slightly bent to absorb the force of the impact and fists clenched forward. My left fist was palm up in orientation and extended in front of my body. My right fist was drawn up near my face, the knuckles almost touching my cheek.
The opening stance of Teras Kasi, the Way of the Steel Hand.
Ignato didn't bother telling me that the test was starting again, the quickly approaching block of stone was signal enough. Damn yartock was controlling again.
I focused, narrowed my attention to the stone and my fists. The stone was rushing closer and closer and closer until finally it was right in front of me!
Bam, bam! Went my fists, shooting forward in a rapid double jab and when my fists didn't start bleeding from impacting hard rock and the pillar had two fist shaped indentations in them, I knew that I had done it again.
I focused on the feeling of the Force flowing through my arms and congregating in my fists. The Force did as I commanded, bolstering bone and flesh to grant them superhuman durability and strength behind the blows. This rock crushing power was the true nature of Teras Kasi that the Palawans had wielded against the primeval Jedi.
More stone columns flew at me from the gloom of the chamber. I beat back three with my fists, filling the chamber with the noise of crunching rock. Then another came at me from behind. I broke my grounded stance and slammed the ambushing stone backwards with a kick. The pace only quickened from there and I drew myself deeper into the Force to keep up with the onslaught.
It obeyed my commands easier now than it had three weeks ago, such were the immediate benefits of true training from a knowledgeable master. But still, this test was not one I was supposed to pass and eventually a head shaped stone caught me in between my shoulders and sent me face first into the floor.
A spectral hum broke the following silence.
"That will be enough of this for today, Tirones." Ignato's staccato words floated down. Since he couldn't leave the square confines delineated by his pyramidal grave mound, my training had been arranged to occur in his sanctuary.
""Understood Mentor." I panted as I climbed to my feet once again. The yartock released its control of the boulders and pillars, the stones thudded to the ground all around me.
"Now we move onto the Force. Lift the stones and make the stones orbit around you" Ignato commanded.
I wiped sweat from my brow and reached out with the Force, bending its power to my will. One head sized stone rose with a gesture as I brought it level with my eyes, then with effort I sent it orbiting around my head. Then I grabbed a smaller rock and, with more effort than before, made it join its larger kin in orbit about me. Now I was keeping one hand thrust out to channel the Force into keeping the rocks moving. With my shaking free hand I grabbed another head shaped stone and brought it up to join its fellows.
The orbit was shaky now, stones dipping and wobbling as I struggled against the strain to keep them aloft. Both my hands were outstretched, grabbing onto the Force to prevent the stones from disobeying my will. For a minute, then another minute, and another minute I held the fragile orbit up. Then a fourth stone roared at me and I had to drop the other three to grab hold of the fourth.
The clatter of stone against stone was the noise of failure.
"Hmm, better." Ignato opined. "At rest, Tirones."
I lowered my arms and straightened up, hooking my arms behind my back.
Ignato stopped his pacing to stare down at me from the crest of his burial mound.
"What did you do wrong?" He asked me. I was no stranger to self critique, although Ignato's version of it was far less painful and torture prone than the Citadel Inquisitorius' way.
"I did not adequately broaden my focus when moving the rocks." I said. "I allowed my vision to limit itself to what I was already doing, not considering outside interference."
"An adequate response Tirones, however you still make the fundamental error I have been attempting to correct you of since we started: you grasp too hard" Ignato lectured. "You were taught to wield the Force in a completely self sabotaging manner, this much has been revealed to me, yet even after I corrected your technique, you continue to approach the use of the Force in this wrong manner."
"My apologies, Mentor." I said, and suppressed the frown my lips began to twitch into. Ignato had a different way of teaching than what I was used to but he still demanded my entire attention and nothing else when training.
"Bah, apologies are wasted air. Correct your mindset and you will see the results of your own labor in understanding the power of the Bogan." He commanded. I bowed and affirmed that I would do better.
Ignato was silent for a beat. "That will be enough direct tutelage for today, Tirones. Continue on your progression with Teras Kasi, and restudy the Gronda Stomp. Your kick lacked the explosivity it should have. Your understanding of the Charging Wompa and the Aryx Slash are satisfactory for now."
"Your main weakness continues to be your incorrect manner of commanding the Force, I have taught you the proper techniques to use, it is your task to master the correct way to command the Force. Meditate on this failing and what I have taught you tonight. There will be a review tomorrow." And with that, Ignato vanished from sight, though I could still sense him present in the chamber, and I felt a rumbling beneath my feet as the exit to the chamber was revealed again.
"Thank you for your instruction, Mentor." I said before bowing again. I held the pose for a handful of heartbeats before straightening out of the bow and exiting the underground chamber. The fairly lengthy walk back to the surface gave me time to reflect.
It had been a busy three galactic standard weeks, and not just for me. My fleet's component of Imperial Army units had been busy expanding Captain Zeffo's landing zone into a proper base for them to exist outside of the holds of the ships. Scout companies had been busy mapping the planet, armored battalions were doing needed maintenance of their vehicles and the infantry were taking the chance to perform drills in actual dirt and mud instead of the simulated variety.
The 666th had disembarked with me, Commander Atten wouldn't have allowed any other arrangement, though my stormtroopers made their home directly in the worn down paving stones and stubby walls that were the sole above ground remnant of the mighty ziggurat that had housed the Legion of Lettow once. So it was into the camp of my loyal troopers that I entered, and a quick jaunt across the way from the entrance to Ignato's underground sanctuary, I was at my own quarters.
"Sir." Atten saluted when he saw me enter.
"At ease Commander." I responded, waving for him to stop saluting as I passed him. I grabbed a towelette from a stack of its fellows I had gathered for this purpose and patted away the sweat that was on my face and neck from the six hour long practice spree. I rolled my shoulders experimentally and winced at the pain coming from between them. Yep, that was going to be a nasty bruise. Blasted ghost, making me practice in full armor at all times because 'that's how the Legions trained'.
An effective long term approach, I understood, but a damn annoyance to be saddled with in the present.
"Anything to report?" I asked Atten, throwing the towelette into a basket as I spoke.
"Integration of the odds and ends the regiment took on from the fleet continue apace, sir. Currently they're at eighty-six percent success rate on running courses and regiment wide drills. I will have that at one hundred percent by the midpoint of next week." Atten informed me. "Live fire drill results are on your desk for review and punishment as well. The ninth company was the worst in the regiment by two points, and the fifth company was second to last."
I sniffed, looking at the results myself on a datapad. "The usual punishment details then, with respect to the regiment being in an active combat zone."
"Of course, sir. Captain Masal tight beamed his latest report to your desk twenty minutes ago." Atten added, before departing. I smirked at the anticipation he was giving off in the Force.
Atten was a good stormtrooper and every good stormtrooper enjoyed giving punishment detail. Every stormtrooper also hated being on punishment detail, which was a month-long bracket of the worst duties that needed to be done in the unit. The first place group didn't get anything, for the curious, they just got the satisfaction that they were performing at the expected levels for a trooper of His Imperial Majesty's Stormtrooper Corp.
For this month. Because now they had to train for next month's performance review and Commander Brik Atten, I had learned over the years, was a master in the art of assigning truly miserable punishment details.
My spirits appropriately buoyed and my muscles aching slightly less, I sat down on the mediation mat I set up in my quarters and began to read over Masal's latest report from the front.
It continued to not go well despite Masal's best efforts. Three weeks of the fleet launching attacks into Teradoc's territory in the deep core and we weren't making any progress.
Loyalist naval lines were continuing to collapse and planets that we remained in control of were under increasingly tighter siege. Our stronghold in the region, Ottabesk, had managed to force Teradoc's turncoats into a few fortresses near the poles. The traitor's had promptly set up strong defense shields and hunkered down for the long haul. Then the ships above Ottabesk had been destroyed in a blitz led by Teradoc himself and Ottabesk was forced to activate its planetary shields while the hostile fleet overhead blockaded the system and periodically tried to break the shields with bombardments.
And this was the planet we were supposed to be winning on, according to the COMPNOR reports Masal had forwarded over to me.
My fleet had been trying to do a repeat of the raiding campaign we had waged in Harrsk's territory but Teradoc had matched Masal at Hakassi and Ojom, sending my fleet back to Lettow to rethink our approach after each engagement. Reports from the intelligence sections in my fleet were also reporting that Teradoc was pushing back rival warlords to the galactic west of the loyalist lines. When it rains, it pours.
Though I hated to say it, Kosh Teradoc was on a different level and we didn't have the numbers to attempt an attrition strategy. I didn't even want to think of the show of displeasure the Grand Inquisitor would inflict on me for asking for additional forces.
So yes, I knew my fleet wasn't defeating the breakaway warlords, which in the eyes of those who held my leash, meant I was failing. Nothing I wasn't already aware of, the reports from Imperial Center had begun expressing their subtle displeasure with my lack of victories two weeks ago.
Not that this prevented whoever received my fleet's reports from turning around to Imperial HoloVision and trumpeting about how much they were doing to punish such notorious traitors like Blizter Harrsk and those who had followed him into warlordism in the Deep Core.
Hypocrites. At least I got to a minute amount of pleasure from seeing a tiny blurb on the holonet about the brave actions of the Deep Core Defense Fleet and its commanding officer every three days or so. Those fat nerfs on Imperial Center had to give something concrete to the moronic masses in order to back up their claims that they were 'doing something'.
I snorted at that. The closest anyone with any iota of real power on Imperial Center had ever been to the Deep Core was when they fucked a whore dolled up in Thoadeye makeup….
There's an idea.
I levitated another datapad over to me. Turning it on, I projected the navigational charts of local space. Then I projected a map of military use hyperlanes that my fleet and Teradoc's forces had been dueling along for the past three weeks.
Then I switched the maps to the region to the galactic north of Hakassi, where a planet only known for its exotic makeup styles lay. A single hyperlane made the journey from Thoadeye down into Teradoc's burgeoning stellar kingdom, an old mining route according to the records. But the survey from last year marked it as still intact.
"Couldn't be worse than what we're currently doing." I muttered before standing up and making my way over to the comm terminal. I keyed up the line up to the Adamant. Soon enough, Captain Masal appeared on the holoprojector. He looked haggard but not a thread on his uniform was out of place.
I forwent a greeting to get right down to business."Captain, I believe now is the time for a new approach to the Teradoc problem…"
A/N - Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd I'm back?
Been a while. Hasn't it? But what can I say, the uptick in some quality Star Wars gave me a hankering to write SW again and here we are, back in the Galactic Civil War with my favorite Inquisitor. This chapter mostly went over the material side of what Andorak is up to, next chapter we'll be getting into the gritty about what Ignato has been teaching him.