Private Adrift

[Aether Verd]

DERELICT SHIP
"What was lost is now found."​

They shouldn't have found it.

No beacon. No distress signal. No registry ping. Just a silent, angular hulk drifting along the outermost fringe of Mandalorian space—too intact to be wreckage, too quiet to be friendly.

It was Vorn's sensors that caught it first. A faint energy signature. Faint, but wrong. Like a heartbeat that shouldn’t be there.

Now it hung in front of them. Suspended in the void. A starless silhouette.

Aether Verd stood on the edge of the Kom’rk’s bay doors, golden visor fixed on the derelict. No words yet. Just the hum of systems charging, the clink of beskar shifting as his Supercommandos prepped behind him.

The ship was old. Scarred in places. Some parts scavenged, others scorched as if by ion fire—but no signs of life, no comm traffic, no IFF tags. Whatever it once was, it wasn’t Mandalorian. Not anymore.

He exhaled through his helmet.

"Could be a trap," Vorn muttered behind him, low and half-amused. "Could be salvage."

"Could be both," Aether said.

Then, louder: “We go in. Secure the bridge. Mark anything that looks like it shouldn’t be awake.”

He turned to face them—eight warriors, handpicked, unshakable. Then back to the drifting tomb beyond.

"Let’s see what ghosts cling to this hull."

And with a gesture, the boarding clamps released.

Mandalore moved.

Red Mobius

 

[Red Mobius]

The Dha'Parjai had been intended to be the single biggest contribution to The Mandalorian Enclave made by Clan Mobius.

Even though it was adrift, and damaged, parts having been scavenged somehow, it was still more than capable of restoring to working order, provided anyone cared to do so.

It's halls and passages were silent, no sign of any crew, any signs of fighting would be minimal at first, especially close to the bridge. A bolt crater here, a long dried bloodstreak there. Nothing a seasoned Mandalorian had not seen before.

Most of its big guns were still intact, only the composite laser systems on the side had suffered any significant damage. But it was still lifeless. All systems were shut down.

Save for one, one system deep in the engineering section that...invaders that had recently arrived were just on the verge of getting into...

In the darkness of her own mind, Red Mobius, tormented prophet, floated, barely aware...

Suddenly there was a great quake across her mental landscape. Red perceived something walking towards her.

Something gigantic. Taller than the tallest skyscraper on Coruscant. It was clad in great bronze Mandalorian Armor, which had billions of individual helmets of different make, also Mandalorian, seemingly carved into its impossible surface.

The blackness became alive with green flames and Red shuddered because she recognized this figure. It was the same one that had restored her sight on Nar Kreeta, when Clan Mobius had rescued her.

She found herself standing on the palm of its armored hand, looking up in terror and fell to her knees, bowing her head at what she knew was a manifestation of the Oversoul.

Red Mobius...it said softly but with a deep baritone in her head. As I watch upon all Mandalorians, so now does my gaze once more fall upon you. Know that all that has transpired for you is because of necessity.

Red looked up.

"What...what do you command of me?" Red asked.

You are to play a part in exterminating a great evil that threatens all children of the Taung. The Oversoul answered. A vile pack of abominations known as The Cult of The Brain Demon

"I...was tracking them!" Red exclaimed. "I was looking for whatever I could on them...I had visions of them slaughtering my family!"

If you are righteous, and stand by the Resol'Nare, you may yet succeed in saving them The Oversoul replied. But you will not remember this moment, for the Brain Demon sees all dreams...it was necessary to pull you here so we could talk.

"How am I to defeat them?" Red asked desperately.

The gigantic head of the manifestation leaned down.

Fight them as a true Mandalorian would... The Oversoul commanded.

Rip and Tear...until it is done...

Red snapped awake in her cryo pod as it started reviving her, seeing a shadowy shape outside her casing.

Confused, disoriented, she wasn't sure what to do until she saw the shape of a blade being drawn.

Instinct and fear forced feeling back into her legs, and with a mighty kick, dislodged the cryopod cover off, smashing the surprised Swordfighter Fragment that had been about to murder her to jelly with a sickening explosion of white blood and yellow organs against the wall behind it.

Red stumbled out in medical scrubs, coughing as she fell to the deck plating, instantly recognizing this as the engineering deck of the Dha'Parjai.

But everything was powered down, and she couldn't seem to remember how she had actually gotten here.

Where was her clan?

Everything was dark. Minimal power only...and this jury rigged cryopod.

What the hell had happened?

Red dared not touch the fallen weapon of the abomination, knowing such things to be cursed. Everything was deathly silent.

Red immediately went looking for a weapon, not knowing where her standard ones were. She decided to try for the deck's security wing, opening doors with the hydraulic based emergency release. She knew the ship like the back of her hand...it has been her home for months as she helped build it up. It was testament to how good an engineer she was that the ship, though significantly damaged, could still be restored to rather decent fighting condition AND have a reasonable chance of winning.

Red made her way to the security barracks for this deck, winced in the dark of the passages as she tried to stumble about. It was nearly pitch black.

But she finally reached the entryway, hitting the emergency release. She could barely see but she remembered the layout well enough that she knew where the storage area was, prying it's doors apart with brute strength, spotting a flashlight and immediately grabbing it and turning it on...

The storage area was bathed in dry blood. It was mostly empty, save for one storage locker that she yanked open.

It was a set of her clan's Mobius Steel Armor, fitted for a female. She stripped off her scrubs, prayed to the Oversoul that it fit, and put it on, relieved that it wasn't tight fitting.

She spotted a fallen Pistol of Mandalorian design in one corner and picked it up, her new helmet's targeting systems went active and she saw more evidence of battle and blood while inspecting the pistol. It was empty. No clips.

The same could not be said of the sheathed Mobius Bes'Kad on a nearby weapon rack. She grabbed it immediately, unsheathed it and clipped the sheath itself to her belt along with the holster for the empty, bloodstained pistol.

What happened here? Red thought desperately as she left the barracks, heading to the central power plant, a Hypermatter Annihilation Reactor. From what her flashlight showed, this whole deck was awash in long dried blood and what looked like bits and pieces of bodies. Something horrifying has taken place.

She went to an emergency maintenance console, powering up by ripping away it's back panel to do some hotwiring, and looked at the readouts.

REACTOR ANALYSIS: MINIMAL OPERATION CAPACITY. MAIN POWER JUNCTIONS TO NEARLY ALL ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS DISCONNECTED.

LIFE SUPPORT: MINIMAL

EXTERIOR COMBAT SENSORS: INOPERATIVE.

MAINFRAME: INOPERATIVE

CREW STATUS: UNKNOWN. UNREGISTERED LIFESCANS DETECTED ON VESSEL. LIFE SIGN NUMBERS: 50

WEAPON SYSTEMS: INOPERATIVE

INTERNAL SECURITY SYSTEMS: INOPERATIVE

WARNING: UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL APPROACHING BASED ON FEEDBACK FROM EMERGENCY EXTERIOR HANGAR CAMERAS...

Red swore under her breath at the results. She had no idea who could be approaching...and all she knew were that the abominations were already aboard...

Red decided to start with trying to get the lights running...



Aether Verd

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

DERELICT SHIP

The scanner was the first to speak.

Aboard the Resolute Dawn, it projected the data in stark clarity: numerous lifesigns. No tags. No transmission logs. No biosign identifiers. Just... presence. Alive, yet shrouded in silence.

Aether stood motionless at the holotable as the reading stabilized. Beside him, Vorn adjusted the feed, rerunning the spectral trace. No changes.

“All living,” the technician confirmed. “But if they're trying to hide, they're doing it well.”

Aether’s visor remained fixed on the projection, golden light cast over drifting hulls and ghostly pings.

“Get the pod ready.”

Moments later, the Mandalorians were aboard the drop shuttle—a boarding spike outfitted for hull breach insertions. It hissed, clanked, and then fired, a silent missile hurtling from the Resolute Dawn toward the derelict vessel.

The impact wasn’t loud. It was final.

Steel met steel. The boarding pod buried itself into the side of the drifting hulk, fusion cutters grinding away to carve a perfect circle before the ramp released—steam hissing from the seal as the entry corridor came into view.

Dull. Red-lit. Reeking of death.

Behind Aether, eight Supercommandos moved as one, beskar armor silent save for the shift of plates and the faint click of safety mechanisms. They’d checked their weapons twice before launching. Now, they were ghosts with guns.

The Resolute Dawn hung in the void behind them, with Kom’rks flanking at a distance—ready to extract, ready to fight. But for now, the Mand’alor was leading them forward.

Into the unknown.

By their reckoning, the security sector was nearby.

The hallway was drenched in rot and memory. Dried blood had painted the walls in desperate streaks. Pockmarks lined the durasteel where bolts had struck and stayed. One section looked like it had exploded from within—shards of plating warped outward.

“Someone fought back,” murmured Jare, kneeling beside what might’ve once been a ribcage.

Ahead, the door to what looked like an armory lay ajar—barely held in place by warped hinges. Aether pushed it aside with one hand.

Inside, scattered gear. Rusted lockers. Dented plating. And there—on a rack untouched by time or ruin—lay a beskad.

The warrior beside him froze.

“This is...” they said, voice low with recognition.

Aether stepped forward, eyes scanning the blade’s craftsmanship. “Then this was no random ship.”

He picked up the beskad, turning it over once before setting it gently back in place.

“Our people were here.”

The Mand’alor turned back to his team.

“Eyes sharp. Weapons ready. If any of ours still live, we will not leave them.”

A pause.

“And if something else lives here…”

The visor tilted toward the bloodied floor, the mangled remains, the silence so loud it felt like breath in the dark.

“…we put it down.”

He signaled forward.

The hunt had begun.​

Red Mobius

 

[Red Mobius]

"Okay...deep breaths...deep breaths..." Red muttered as she worked and auxiliary console.

The first order of business was getting the lights running and making sure the doors would open. Then there was the matter of booting up emergency power to the bridge systems.

A rumble across the ship told her whoever had arrived had docked. She was still blind sensor wise.

Red carefully started the boot up process via the emergency systems...

REACTOR AT FOUR PERCENT...SIX PERCENT...TEN PERCENT...

The lights on engineering deck turned on, so did the lights on the rest of the ship...

She stood up, mouth agape in horror, pulling off her helmet in shock.

The dessicated corpses of the Foreign Legionnaires of the Enclave military were everywhere on engineering. Many had somehow been nailed to the ceiling to form perverse pentagram shapes. She saw only a few Mandalorian corpses, but they weren't her clan...

Not all of them...

Red rushed over to the armor of a fallen member of her clan.

It was Tomrik. She had once scored a great victory with his aid over a Zeffo Guardian. He had been...dismembered, and left to rot where he fell. It had obviously been many years since this had happened.

Red forced herself not to cry. She only swore revenge, searching his corpse for anything she could use, finally coming across a blaster clip from his belt that she immediately loaded into her pistol.

"It should have been me, Tomrik..." Red swore, the Survivor's Guilt already swelling up within her, as she carefully removed the still intact Ka'rta Beskar from what remained of his breast plate, putting it in a pocket.

"By the time this is over... they're gonna wish it had been." she vowed. (A saboteur in Paris: 7000 XP)

Red stood up headed back to the auxiliary console. She had to see where the main power feed to the bridge had been severed so she could try to effect repairs.

(THIS plays)

A hideous feminine laugh echoed through the deck and burst of purple flames erupted. Red didn't need to think before she opened fire at what bursts she could hit.

It was Rakghouls. A of them. These deformed maladies charged at her, all slavering mouths and diseased jaws. Two of them went down from head shots and then Red was running for the upper levels of the deck, on the monitoring platforms, ten very fast beasts still chasing her. She shot three more than drew her Bes'Kad two preserve her remaining two shots.

She delivered a heavy swipe as the first Rakghoul leapt for her. Her Bes'Kad slicing it in half length wise, then grabbing one of the severed halves and using it as a club to smash in the head of the one behind it, and savagely hacked away without mercy at the rest. There was no finesse to her technique. Just rage. The last one tried to run but she managed to grab and behead it.

A quiet snarling sound behind her made her wheel around and run the Rakghoul that had tried to rush her through but it was still snapping for her face as she kicked it off her sword into the crowd of Rakghouls behind her, before she was forced to leap off the platform to avoid being overwhelmed by the ravenous monsters, going into a controlled roll as she hit the floor. She noticed a cryoban cooling tank nearby as the monsters leapt off the platform after her. She drew her pistol and fired at the tank, scrambling away as she fired.

The explosion of cryoban gas flash froze a small number of the safety railing and power coils close to the reactor...and many of the Rakghouls in mid-leap, causing the frozen beasts to shatter on impact. Red shot up to press the attack rushing down the remaining ones and brutally hacking them apart.

She stumbled back, armor splashed with Rakghoul blood and viscera. She ran back to the auxiliary console, checking what to repair and where.

A few essential junctions on this deck were disconnected. Though notably not severed. But she had barely survived the Rakghoul ambush. She wasn't certain she could effect repairs while under constant attack.

But she couldn't, wouldn't abandon The Dha'Parjai. Her clan's wealth, her own blood and sweat had gone into every inch of the five kilometer warship. It was supposed to be her Clan's contribution to the Mandalorians.

So that left only one thing...

She would hunt down all threats.

She would not rest until the abominations were purged from this vessel.

But there was one repair that absolutely had to take place.

She had to repair the mainframe connection junction on the deck above her.

Red checked what internal cameras were still functioning...and spotted a team of Mandalorians going through the place. They would never restore the computer unless that junction was repaired. She couldn't talk to them...internal comms were down. She didn't have a com-link, either. She would have to find one. Or make one.

This deck had plenty of forges, workbenches, and molecular furnaces. There had to be some scrap she could use.

Red went through the deck, spotted a Multigadget in the hands of a dead legionnaire and picked it up.

"This should make things a little easier..." she remarked, going to look for a bench, disturbed by the eviscerated, mummified corpses and blood before she finally found a work bench and spare parts, immediately getting to work on building a communication device.

She didn't make anything fancy, just something that would get the job done. It was block and bulky, made in haste and no small amount of fear. She had no time to even make encryption protocols.

Red then spotted something in the hands of a long dead foreign legionnaire...

A type of rotary shotgun . She remembered these. They had seized a shipment of them trying to get smuggled to Kestri. Red had liked them enough to keep their schematics on hand. It had quickly become a popular shotgun in her clan.

Red pulled it as respectfully as she could from the corpse's hands, inspecting it. Looked like it still worked. Even looked like it was missing only two shells.

"Better than nothing..." Red thought out loud.

Red took the comlink and opened a channel.

"This is Red Mobius, chief engineer of the Dha'Parjai...can anyone hear me? Be warned...this channel is NOT encrypted..."

Aether Verd

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

DERELICT SHIP

It began with the sound.

Skittering first. Like claws on durasteel, distant and uneven. Then came the low chitter: wet, wrong, buried in the vents above and behind. The Supercommandos kept moving, rifles raised, tight formation. Aether led them forward without pause, though his grip on the beskad at his side had tightened.

The hallway narrowed. Lights flickered. Walls told stories in blood.

More bodies now. Legionnaires. Mandalorians. Some torn apart so violently their armor was fused to the walls. Some had been strung up, others arranged in crude displays of mockery or ritual. None of it was fresh, but it didn’t need to be.

“You see this,” Jare muttered behind him, “and you understand why vengeance is sacred.”

Aether said nothing. He didn’t need to.

They advanced another twenty meters before the ceiling broke open.

A snarl, a crash of metal, and a shape dropped straight into their path. Claws spread, jaws gaping, eyes glassy with hunger. It lunged toward the front line, but it did not make it far. Blaster bolts tore it apart mid-leap, the Supercommandos cutting it down in a storm of fire.

It hit the ground twitching.

Aether approached the corpse as one of his warriors scanned it.

“Rakghoul.” the reply came. Flat. Clinical. Dreadful.

Aether looked down at the ruin of the thing. He’d read reports. Fought offshoots. He knew what they were capable of if left unchecked.

He turned away, activating his wrist comm.

“This is Mand’alor to the Resolute Dawn. Do we have Defoliators aboard?”

A pause, then the crisp reply from the command bridge.

“Affirmative. Three. Stored in Pod Six.”

“Run full scans of the derelict. I want a tactical readout. Give me points of infestation, and ideal deployment sites. These things are a plague. We burn them out. Preserve the ship. Erase the rot.”

The Defoliator was a weapon of brutal precision. Confederate-built, Mandalorian-hoarded. It did not distinguish between soldier and parasite. It simply erased all that bled.

It was what this ship needed.

Aether turned his gaze back toward the darkened corridor ahead. They would keep moving until that report came. Then his comm crackled.

Not the Resolute Dawn. Not one of his own.

“This is Red Mobius, chief engineer of the Dha'Parjai...can anyone hear me? Be warned...this channel is NOT encrypted...”

Aether lifted a hand, halting his warriors.

He keyed into the frequency, voice calm but firm.

“Red Mobius. You’re heard. This is Aether Verd, Mand’alor of the clans. You are not alone aboard this vessel.”

He gave a short nod to his team, signaling them to form a perimeter.

“Are there any other survivors with you? What is your situation? I need to know what happened here, and how this ship came to be overrun by Rakghoul. Anything you can offer may help save lives.”

There was no scorn in his tone. No accusation.

Only urgency.

And something quieter beneath it.

Hope.​

Red Mobius

 

[Red Mobius]

"Mand'Alor?!" Red said in surprise.

I musta been in that cryopod a long time... She thought

Red had to think quickly. It could be a trick, but no true Mandalorian would lie about something like that. But even if he was lying, she would still take him over this wretched infestation.

"There are no survivors. At least, not where I am...The last I remember, I was with a small number of my Clan and a lot of Legionnaires. We were taking the Dha'Parjai to Kestri on her maiden flight to present it to the Enclave Leadership for evaluation and inclusion in their navy. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in a cryopod, surrounded by dead crew. I found one of my Clan Members down here. I have no idea why I was placed in cryosleep OR how long..." Red answered. "All I know is these things want me as dead as they want you."

Red glanced at the smashed up corpse of the Swordfighter Fragment.

"As for how the Rakghouls got here...I had to kill a foot soldier of this Sith offshoot called The Cult of The Brain Demon. They supposedly threatened The Mandalore System during the Gulag Plague. They're sadists." she added.

"I'm barely properly armed. As for the ship systems, we're down to minimal life support. Power has been disconnected at key junctions for multiple essential systems. You can't even get the mainframe online unless I effect repairs..." Red explained. "This ship is a prototype Subjugator Class. Like a Non-Superweapon version of the Malevolence from the Clone Wars."

Red darted around as she heard strange sounds and whispers.

"I don't care what we have to do to purge these animals. But I'm not letting them have the Dha'Parjai..." Red vowed. "I can fix the junctions. I even know where they are--"

A flash of purple flame caught the corner of her eye as a catsuit clad Swordfighter Fragment swung her sword for Red's helmet. Red rolled out of the way, firing her shotgun and making the human looking woman who looked like a supermodel expertly flip out of the way of the buckshot.

"Come and get me, Hut'uun!!" Red shouted at the cracking fragment as she dodged a bolt of hissing green energy that exploded a panel behind her, firing again.

"Mand'Alor! It's one of the Cultists!" Red shouted as she dodged a string of green bolts that warped and exploded the deck plating.

Aether Verd

 

[Aether Verd]

Assets: Beskar'gam | Basilisk
Darksaber | Resolute Dawn​

DERELICT SHIP

Aether listened.

Helmet tilted slightly. The old habit of listening with more than ears.

Red’s voice came ragged and alive, barbed with disbelief and the grit of survival. Cryosleep. Dead kin. Fragment cultists. Rakghoul infestation. A prototype ship drifting through darkness with no explanation and too many corpses. It was a puzzle written in blood, but her words began to piece it together.

The Cult of the Brain Demon.

He remembered the name. Barely. A footnote in some crisis log during the tail end of the Gulag Plague. Never thought they’d survived. Never thought they’d matter.

He was wrong.

The moment she shouted, he heard it in her voice: fear and fire in the same breath. Combat. Immediate.

“Red Mobius,” he said, keyed direct to her frequency, “I hear you.”

He rose, already moving.

“Hold your ground. Reinforcements en route.”

Then, to his warriors: “We move. Now.”

The Supercommandos responded without a word. Formation tightened. Weapons drawn.

He opened a secure channel back to the Resolute Dawn.

“Defoliator One: prepare for deployment. Tight-burst, directional payload. I want it surgical, not scorched-earth. Mark coordinates Theta-Three and Echo-Nine for sweep zones. This ship is salvageable. That engineer is not optional.”

He cut the feed.

The hallway stretched ahead like a throat waiting to swallow them. Aether pressed forward anyway, beskad drawn, its weight a familiar promise in his hand.

“She’s got contact. Fragment,” he said over squad comms. “The cult’s not dead. They’re puppeteering what’s left.”

He reached the corridor junction and paused, checking the map overlay Red had pinged before comms scrambled again.

“She’s trying to fix the junctions. That gives us power. That gives us control. But only if she lives long enough to finish the job.”

The ship groaned again.

Above.

Behind.

Everywhere.

More claws in the vents.

Aether moved faster.

This was no longer a recon op. No longer a cleanup.

This was a rescue.

And Mand’alor never left his own behind.​

Red Mobius

 

[Red Mobius]

Red was driven back by the Swordfighter Fragment, barely evading her sword attacks. The gun had been kicked from her hand and her armor was already barely withstanding mere scratches from the sharp sword her opponent used.

Foul witch magic in that blade of hers, Red mused, still on the verge of panic as she struggled to come up with a plan to live.

Red grabbed a large maintenance wrench and swung with all her might, and knock the sword out of her hand.

(THIS plays)

This resulted in a brutal retaliation from the smirking, rotten eyed fragment, whose muscles swelled unnaturally.

Rock hard fists crashed into Red's armor and helmet, sending her flying.

Red tried to get back up only to have lightning fast blows delivered to her chest and helmet, followed up by a powerful kick that hurled red into a support beam. The Fragment retrieved her sword immediately and rushed Red down...

Red looked up, a crack in her helmet's visor revealing one of her eyes as she saw the snarling abomination try to drive it's point through her skull.

Red's hands clapped the flat of the glowing sword, preventing it from moving any further as Red, teeth gritted in rage, stood up, forcing the blade point to the side of her...

...and into a nearby electrical conduit.

The Fragment screamed as she was covered in electricity, unnatural, metallic shrieking escaping it as Red scrambled away from the beastly abomination.

But it wasn't done yet, and hurled hurled a bolt of pure green, manifested hatred blindly, but landing close enough to Red on the deck plating that she was sent hurling into the safety railing nearby, feeling one of her ribs crack as the plating on her armor failed.

Only the pure determination to survive allowed Red to dodge the next bolt of hate, which exploded a console nearby. This time, though, Red fell to the floor as the Fragment, now missing an arm, and completely burnt looking, staggered towards her with the sword.

"Ready to die?" it taunted as it approached, raising it's sword.

Red spotted an aerosol can of disinfectant nearby, and remembered her Multigadget had fusion cutter tech built into it.

Just as the Fragment reached her, Red rolled over on the deck and pulled a Rorschach.

"I was born ready, motherfether..." Red snapped

The Fragment screamed as the high powered nozzle met the flame of the fusion cutter, sending a stream of fire out towards the Fragment that completely engulfed it. Red emptied the can into the burning creature, before grabbing her wrench and clubbing it as it burned. One good, solid whack and it was over.

Red staggered back, having difficulty breathing and fell backwards, armor dented and with gashes torn into it.

Red started to black out but forced herself to stay awake. To get knocked out here was to die.

Red spotted her shotgun and staggered to it, picking it up. Six rounds left...

"One shell for every action... appropriate..." Red thought out loud, in regards to the Resol'Nare...


Aether Verd