Public Almost a World Breaker

[William Thule]

The sudden galactic shift did a lot of things that Sal Katarn did not quite understand. Something to do with the repositioning of stellar bodies and dark matter and extra dimensional rifts and other science-like terms that did not rightly fit into his Firrerreon skull. But he understood a few things.

Things like a shifting galaxy hid some things and uncovered others, just like sand. Makes sense, right. Things like an ancient Hutt-built planet-killing railgun‘s long dormant beacon going active. Well. Not actually planet-killing. More like planet-denting. Sounded like one of their smaller models. But yeah, that part Sal understood alright. Including the part after.

The part about that relic weapon‘s beacon being broadcast to every karking moon-eyed smuggler, two-bit pirate, and nation-building defense fleet within the entire sector.

And organized crime syndicates, like the Black Sun. Like the ship he was on right now. The Vigo in charge of this operation gave a briefing earlier to the syndicate’s “repo” team. Ship sensors indicated that they were not the only ships en route to the formerly hidden system. And that was just the ships the sensors could see. No telling what other stealth ships were on their way.

So, to recap, there was a big railgun out there in deep space capable of spitting out slugs of such size and velocity that it would smash giant space stations like eggs. An unknown number of parties were on their way to seize it. And they had absolutely no idea why the Hutt railgun had come back online after thousands of years dormant.

Hutts called them planechangas. Built them during the Cataclysms. Probably caused some of ‘em. Now one of them - albeit a smaller version - was out there, a literal loose cannon. Up for grabs. And damn, did the Black Sun want their hands on it something fierce.

Sitting in the cargo hold - which doubled as the ship’s armory - Sal cracked his neck and looked at a young tattooed Mirialan sitting next to him, a big ole’ black sun emblem tattooed right onto the kid’s neck. Heh. We all make choices.

The kid’s knee wouldn’t stop jumping up and down. Sal’s lips twitched.

“First time?” He rasped.

The kid frowned. “For what?”

“Yeah.” Sal shrugged.

“It’s old, so, it’ll probably be empty,” the kid looked sidelong at him, “right?”

“Sure. Empty.“

The ship’s deck lurched under their feet, marking their arrival out of hyperspace. A red light immediately started flashing, followed by a klaxon.

Sal smiled at the wall.

* * *

If you want it, come and claim it. Planechanga

 

[In Rhan]

In just happened to be in the area. It was strange how that kept happening.

The waves had lit up with news and inquiries - something big had been hyperdropped out in the middle of nowhere, something potentially valuable. Then something potentially ancient. Then something potentially dangerous. Over the course of twenty minutes, the inquries had become less about curious excitement and more various interested groups gathering information, that information being relayed down the line to... who knew. In had a couple of ideas. She was in a position to get there first, but that wouldn't last long.

The Dancer in Green slipped into local space swiftly, her domestic cargo safely abandoned some distance away in a sealed container for retrieval later. The Besaid-Class freighter's skipdrive ran buttery smooth but the sublight engines hitched a little.

Planechanga. A brutal word for a very old gun. A long tube designed to drive metal at such speeds that anything they hit would be turned into interesting physics unless it were something planetoid or larger. It was the sort of machine that In personally believed shouldn't exist, nor one that she was eager to trust to even the best-intentioned government. After all, nearly any of them would find a reason to put it to use or study it to make a better one to put to use. In's mental calculus was simple, efficient, and she'd already arrived at a conclusion before she realized her intention to carry it out. The Planechanga had to be destroyed.

If the Wardens of the Sky wouldn't do it for the good of the Galaxy, if the various Jedi who claimed to be allies of the ways between wouldn't do it for the good of the Galaxy, SOMEBODY had to. Leaving this thing behind would mean inevitable station-or-planet cracking at some point in the future, and In could not conscience billions of deaths for her inaction.

So she had to destroy it. Somehow. Possibly by directing it into a sun, possibly by finding some way to fail the reactors. She'd have to figure it out on the way, because she likely had less than a couple of hours before some military clown showed up to 'secure the asset' for a flag.

In piloted her ship on an aggressive course, noting the various fweeps and alarms that suggested an automated defense was coming online. Her fingers flew across the controls, twisting dials and flipping toggles - routing power to try and narrow her profile and make her ship harder to lock onto while she engaged in evasive maneuvers.

 

[Niysha]

Every time In got involved in something, there was about a fifty-fifty chance that Niysha would be within spitting distance. Part of that - a huge, demonstrative part - was because she lived on In's ship and crewed it as co-pilot. An only slightly smaller part was their recent, fraught, and high-drama partnership that had landed them in no less than four life-threatening situations in the recent past. But at some level, Niysha was quite well aware that In was just a straight-up disaster magnet, and disasters tended to attract old, dangerous, powerful gizmos.

Normally the old, dangerous, powerful gizmos in question were hand-sized. They'd found two Sith artifacts, some cool plants, a holocron, a couple of neat Rakata statues, some weird algae... all of it was easy enough to understand. Easy enough to study and digest at her own pace. This was not one of those times. Their quarry this time was an old, dangerous, powerful gizmo the size of a capital ship with the firepower to leave craters the size of mountains in unsuspecting planets.

Naturally, In had opinions about this. She was the "can't sit by and do nothing" sort, and her heart was in the right place. That might've been enough on its own to get Niysha involved, though this time, the two of them agreed on at least a couple of points. A weapon that big was literally too dangerous to allow to exist; it would be the peak of hubris to assume that she and In could hold onto it for the indeterminate future, and anyone else who secured it couldn't be trusted not to do something impressively stupid with it.

When she was in motion, In Rhan was a woman possessed. Niysha might as well not have even been there. Still, she did what she could. The Dancer was a one-woman, thirty-odd plant with a funny hat on its leaves show, but the Miraluka sometimes did enough work as a copilot to merit consideration. Right now, that work boiled down to quieting the poor, screaming Dancer as it threatened a collision course with an archaic, possibly non-functional superweapon.

The Miraluka sailed into her seat beside In at a solid glide, prepped for a landing operation, because they'd basically absolutely need to dock with that monster to do anything about it. "Batteries are holding. Garuda's a bit hot, but there's really nothing we can do about that right now," she reported, flipped two toggles of her own and twisting a dial down. "I know we're in 'make it up as we go along' territory, but it'd really help if we at least knew where to start forming a plan."

In Rhan

 

[William Thule]

The weapon sat in the midst of the absolute blackness of space. Sal stared at it through silvery-blue haze of their ship’s hangar shield, the Mirialan kid next to him, the rest of the Syndicate hit squad checking their gear as they moved quickly through the hangar to board a shuttle.

The Planechanga was an enormous, long tube of a station.

“It looks like a -“ the kid began.

“Yeah.”

Sal kept moving for the shuttle ramp, once inside he sat with the rest of the motley crew as their pilot took them out and straight for the station - apparently ignoring sensor alerts indicating arrivals into the system and a lot more chimes that might have been lock on alerts.

The kid fiddled with his gun, his knee rocking again wildly. “Do you think when we get down there’ll be-“

“Yeah.”

Sal closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bulkhead. At somewhere north of 60 (been enough places that diluted time for long enough that he really couldn’t be sure) Sal was old for a human, middle aged for a Firrerreon. The streaks of gray In his greasy, blonde hair showed it. He would say he was getting too old for this chit, but what else was he supposed to do… pack up and go be a moisture farmer? Tried. Didn’t take.

So, decked head to toe in as much Akure gear as one person could possibly wear and cradling his slugthrower, Sal tried to enjoy the ride down to the giant tubular space station and hoped if turbolasers or a missile greeted them on the way end that it would at least be a quick end.

“When we land, our Sakiyan needs to make it,” he rasped.

“Why.”

“He’s the slicer. He knows this tech.”

“I thought we were going to take the station.”

Sal opened one eye and stared at the kid.

“Nope.”

In Rhan Niysha

 

[Tilon Quill]

So she had to destroy it. Somehow. Possibly by directing it into a sun, possibly by finding some way to fail the reactors. She'd have to figure it out on the way, because she likely had less than a couple of hours before some military clown showed up to 'secure the asset' for a flag.

In Rhan was, as in most cases, entirely correct. She'd barely needed to make the case at all. See, Tilon was currently struggling with the extent to which being a Jedi was part of his life, and the opportunity to be a budget Luke Skywalker for a day appealed to his sense of balance. Or rather, his guilt, because he was more private citizen than Jedi in terms of day-to-day time commitment. He tended to feel like he should be doing more. So: value menu Skywalker.

He settled the little North Ridge in on the flank of the Dancer in Green and warmed up the twin heavy ion cannons strapped to the roof.

"Quill here, made it after all. Don't let me get in your way, you two, but I'll watch your back."

Or stunt on the unsuperweapon as opportunity demanded, but In Rhan and Niysha knew him well enough to hear the subtext so why bother saying it.

 

[In Rhan]

Niysha's presence was expected, centering, comforting. The Miralukan saw problems In couldn't she often moved with a degree of prescience to solve them long before they became issues. In the months since their partnership had begun, In had come to rely deeply on the Miralukan scholar. Really, she aught to tell her that. In made a mental note to take Niysha somewhere nice if they survived this so she could express that. Somewhere with less ferrets than the last place they went on a date.

Tilon Quill 's presence, however, was entirely unexpected. Wasn't he supposed to be deep in Companion Grek right now? Not that she minded the backup. Tilon was solid in a crisis, and In agreed with him more often than not - especially when it came to the important things. Things like this. With Tilon AND Niysha at her side, In really couldn't help but feel bad for the world-ending station from several epochs ago.

"Good to see you, Tilon." In sighed, sounding audibly relieved. She brought The Dancer In Green closer to the North Ridge, flying slightly closer in formation than was usually advisable. The Pantoran woman's awareness of her ship bordered on proprioception most of the time, especially when she was locked in. And In WAS locked in - she took a breath, centered herself without really knowing what that meant, then grinned as she leaned into the flight yoke. Focused. Thriving. In: her lane.

Almost simultaneously, a wall of dense battery fire erupted from the ancient station. While there were several crews circling the Planechanga, The Dancer and The North Ridge were the first to cross over the invisible, automated line of engagement. 16k year old turbolasers weren't the MOST threatening weapon In had had fired at her, but capital weapons were capital weapons. The Dancer in Green plunged into the wall - and once In had made it clear the dance floor was open, other scavenging teams followed suit.

"We're not the only people here, Niysha - see if you can get us any friends or ID our enemies." In directed pointedly. "I trust your instincts" She leaned over the yoke, dipping the ship into an almost lazy aileron roll. The Dancer was a bit more than six times longer and four times wider than The North Ridge, and her shields and hull were made to absorb considerably more punishment than a shuttle could. "Tilon, stay in my shadow until we get close. I want your torpedos ready to deal with any especially nasty crews that might move to gank." She normally wouldn't be worried about being picked out of a crowd like this, but they HAD been the first to cross the line of engagement.

"I'm gonna come in under the belly and loop around the Planechanga once, see if we can spot any weaknesses to press. If not, we're landing by the fueling storage on the back of the tube, three-quarters down." She directed.

 

[Niysha]

Shield tech wasn't Niysha's strong suit, but was nothing if not a studious understudy. Sensor tech also wasn't her strong suit. Fortunately, she'd had a lot of practice with that recently, in the Dancer and elsewhere. Being left in charge of both was entirely understandable and more than a wee bit stressful, but In had far more important things to worry about than staring at computer screens and slowly twisting the shield dial to make sure ancient turbolasers didn't vaporize half of her favorite plants.

With a calm that belied her mild, inexperienced scramble, Niysha flipped two comms channels open and began twisting through frequencies, trying to find anyone actively trying to reach them. The first few seconds, she concentrated very intently on just sensors and communications to teach her body the basic muscle movements required. After that, though... she had far more important things to do that only she could do. While In was a much, much better pilot, the main reason Niysha's position on the Dancer was safely secured in the copilot's seat was so she didn't fall over when she needed to leave her body behind.

With a deep breath and a mission in mind, Niysha let herself slip away. The space around her was distorted, though "around her" was far too generous. There was nothing around her, and nothing around that. There was nothing for a hundred meters. The amalgamated cloud of cognizant perception that frequently identified as Niysha noted a tiny speck of something beyond that, and identified the beating heart of the North Ridge, and Tilon Quill within it. All formed and shaped. Real and present. And so very, very small in the ocean of endless absence that drowned them.

Somewhere in that endless ocean was a small island of activity and power. The higher consciousness that once was and might once more become Niysha identified it as the object they were chasing, un-small enough to be a space station. Entropy cloaked it like a glove, with a thin layer of time sprinkled atop like so much dust. How much of that time continued into the future was lost in the swirling, chaotic infinity of the Force. As dispersed and irrelevant as it was, the ambient motes of dust that comprised what other tiny motes of dust might call Niysha couldn't form that chaos into anything understandable.

A miniscule speck of Something alighted within the unending Nothing that the station swam in. Another ship. That made three. The formless mass of feeble intent that sometimes called itself Niysha alighted on that tiny, delicate world to find its way deeper. Tiny beating hearts of life within. They were surrounded in a field of anxiety and uncertainty, but with none of the malice that a pirate crew normally seeped in. The ship had a soul. And it was...

Niysha fell back into herself. After a moment of breathing quietly and shaking her fingers through her hair to remember what being a body was like, she turned her attention back to the sensors and comms. "Got something. The station itself is too obscured to check, but there's another ship out there. Not pirates. I'll search for their frequency."

William Thule Tilon Quill In Rhan

 

[Tilon Quill]

"Tilon, stay in my shadow until we get close. I want your torpedos ready to deal with any especially nasty crews that might move to gank." She normally wouldn't be worried about being picked out of a crowd like this, but they HAD been the first to cross the line of engagement.

"I'm gonna come in under the belly and loop around the Planechanga once, see if we can spot any weaknesses to press. If not, we're landing by the fueling storage on the back of the tube, three-quarters down." She directed.

Got something. The station itself is too obscured to check, but there's another ship out there. Not pirates. I'll search for their frequency."

"Sounds like a plan."

The North Ridge's slim profile and relative maneuverability were its main defenses in most situations like this. Letting the Dancer tank freed up attention that Tilon could put into weapons and sensors. So far he didn't see the other boat in question.

The dual heavy ion started its slow chug. It could brute-force its way through the ancient shields just fine, losing maybe fifty, sixty percent of its strength to do so, which left each shot at least equivalent to a capital-scale ion blast — enough to cripple a turret.

One emplacement in particular got them dialed in; over the course of three tries, Tilon slewed out from cover to snipe it, not an easy task with a dorsal mount. But that big gun went dead, giving them a somewhat safer approach vector for the moment.

 

[William Thule]

The shuttle started to rock violently. Not turbulence. No such thing in the great big vacuum of space.

"AA Lasers," Katarn grunted, eyes closed.

Probably smashing into the shuttle's shields. It was an old boarding craft model. As in, older than Sal himself. But they had torn out the insides and upgraded it, or so the Sakiyan promised. High powered shields, mainly. Important for most ships, sure. A sight more important for boarding craft.

"AA," confirmed the shuttle pilot, "Weapon's defenses are online and firing."

"We good?" Asked the kid.

"Sure. Pilot's Iktochi."

A thousand year old defense grid versus a souped up shuttle with an Iktochi pilot? Should be a walk in the park.

The boarding craft rocked again beneath another hit.

Should be…

Sal wondered who, or what, was manning the grid. He guessed they could be automated. But if he recalled his history rightly, the Hutts back then weren't too keen on artificials. Something to do with a Despot's droid army.

Which meant someone probably beat them to the weapon system first.

Or maybe they were the ones who had activated it and its beacon.

Either way, sounded like they would have company on arrival. Assuming they didn't get blown apart on the way in.

Sal's eyes, now open and alert, took a better gander at the assault team. Mirialan kid looked like he knew his way around a blaster, even if he was a little green. Heh. The rest of their team consisted of another Mirialan he'd work with a ways back, some mean-looking Niktos, a Jilruan cult assassin, a Neimodian terrorist whose bounty poster had been up on every guild wall for mass murder, the Sakiyan, and then about ten Rodians.

"Lotta Rodians," Sal muttered.

They were sporting assault gear, full combat armor, repeating blasters, bandoliers of grenades. The bug-eyed batch were locked and loaded. Sal thought he recognized one with an overly large rifle from his days in the Kajidic. Pretty sure that was a famous megafauna hunter. Forgot his name. Had what looked a mite like terentatek teeth strung together in a necklace. Neat.

"Taking us in," said the Iktochi, hitting some sort of after-market accelerator that slammed them all into their crash webbing.

The ship burst through the defense grid, shields flickering from a few more hits, and barreled straight for an access hatch that looked to be outside the field of fire.

They were going to have to space walk. Katarn grimaced and reached for his helmet. The thin suit he wore underneath an Akure flak vest and belt would hold up, like as much.

"Helmets on," said the Iktochi.

Sal slid his over his head and locked it into place. Air hissed. He looked out the back toward the ramp, unbuckling his crash webbing, and waited for the signal.

”Someone’s trying to get us on the line, one of the other ships out there,” said the pilot, the comms coming in through Sal’s helmet speakers.

“Patch them to me...” he waited a minute then said, “Who is this?”

Tilon Quill | Niysha | In Rhan

 

[In Rhan]

In swooped, she curved, she swept. Keeping Tilon Quill in her shadow would have been an easy thing to do, but keeping him in her shadow while giving him opportunities to fire his dorsals was a little trickier. Luckily for In, Tilon was an exceptional pilot. Even more luckily for In, so was she. The nose of The Dancer in Green dipped, then rose - approaching the invisible horizontal plane that defined the horizon, the exact middle of the Planechanga. The Dancer breached this line like a great oceanic beast plunging into open air, spinning twice before leveling out. Such a showy maneuver was sure to draw fire. It also gave Tilon a clear firing solution.

In had no way of coordinating her maneuvers with the Sharuka aside from her radio. Like dancing, talking your way through a strafing run meant you weren't doing it fast enough, that you had deficiencies in chemistry or experience that communication couldn't fix alone.

As they approached the bristling station, In flared her reverse thrusters to break and get between The North Ridge and the turbolasers, The Dancer eating a few shots across the broad back of the ship - one of the more armored parts. It rocked, but held steady. The surface area helped defuse the fire across the golem-plating armor. This gave In enough time to skim just below the Planechanga's belly, close enough that she imagined she would have been able to stand on The Dancer's shoulders and brush her fingers against the ancient durasteel installation's exterior.

No easy open ports, no gaping holes in the hull, no conveniently open ship bays. Some of the other crews were already cutting their way in.

"Like last time, Tilon." In exhaled slowly, screaming past the ventral laser batteries and up the distal side. In indicated her intention with a quick shot from her lackluster weapons, followed by highlighting the fuel port and attached maintenance access umbilical with the floodlights she kept for salvage operations.

Fire the shot, and I'll be a heartbeat behind it.

Niysha

 

[Niysha]

It wouldn't surprise anyone that comms also wasn't Niysha's strong suit. Middling skills across the board in space, really. Fortunately, sweeping frequencies for which one was live was the sort of thing you let a teenage apprentice do to keep them useful during ship-to-ship action. Eventually she got a response that didn't involve screaming violently for her death in Huttese, Rodese, or Binary. Clearing up the signal took a minute or so.

In was busy coordinating with Tilon. That left Niysha to deal with whoever they'd picked up. Headphones on, hair only slightly in the way. Her voice, low and calm, wasn't the usual kind of radio operator tone. "This is the Dancer in Green escorting the North Ridge, approaching from 190 by 75." She gave a few seconds' pause to let whoever was on the other end of the line process, then picked back up where she left off. "We'll be within range in a couple of minutes, with intent to board and disable. Small crew, but we've got the experience to make up for it."

That was only a little bit of a lie. Niysha had never known and couldn't concieve of a more experienced spacer than In, Tilon was equally impressive, and Niysha could at least hold her own. This wasn't the first impromptu boarding intervention the three of them had done recently, either. She had a feeling they'd be relying pretty heavily on that experience.

"Sensors indicate you're already breaching. If you're also trying to clean this thing out, we'd prefer to work with you instead of fight you for it." And if they were trying to capture it for their own uses, then they could deal with that when the station-ship-gun-thing was properly clear. Probably very briefly, possibly in a manner that would make In and Tilon give Niysha askance looks for a while.

Tilon Quill William Thule In Rhan

 

[Tilon Quill]

The ship burst through the defense grid, shields flickering from a few more hits, and barreled straight for an access hatch that looked to be outside the field of fire.

"Like last time, Tilon." In exhaled slowly, screaming past the ventral laser batteries and up the distal side. In indicated her intention with a quick shot from her lackluster weapons, followed by highlighting the fuel port and attached maintenance access umbilical with the floodlights she kept for salvage operations.

Eventually she got a response that didn't involve screaming violently for her death in Huttese, Rodese, or Binary.

'Like last time' was a clear enough reference once the Dancer's spotlights pinpointed the right area. The North Ridge carried exactly two weapons systems, both nonlethal: an oversized dorsal ion mount and a launcher for coma gas torpedoes. He triggered the launcher and sent a pair of slowish hull-piercing torpedoes to do their work, then slewed up hard out of a turret's sights. They were fire-and-forget weapons, thank the Force. Counterfire burst one into vapor, but the second flew true through a fluctuating shield gap. He got a little notification — useful feature — that it was welding itself to the hull and deploying coma gas as intended.

On a vessel the size of the Planechanga, the gas would only knock out a few compartments and corridors, a localized area.

"Dancer, Quill. One torpedo did its work." He began charging up the ion mount's capacitors. "For now I'm on the turrets with a line of sight."

Otherwise boarding would not go so hot.

 

[Isur]

Karkarodon were not typically one of the space faring species. Not least of all, on smaller vessels. They were a hunter species, sure, but it didn’t tend to extend to piloting. A bounty hunter in his own right, Isur was aboard the shuttle with William Thule outside the Hutt weapon. Isur wasn’t so certain on the Hutts, a land animal, but he knew the Quarren, another bit of a gangster aquatic species, and know how to handle them. It would probably very similar. Where they were now?

Isur stepped up to the team, looking at the shots being fired. “AA?” The Karkarodon was in an ill-fitting space suit, one he was borrowing for this particular raid. A long blaster rifle in his hand, slung across his shoulder, above his dorsal fin.

“Going to board without ship?” His Basic was a little clipped. Not due to any intelligent issue, but due to his aquatic nature, and the plethora of teeth. And there was an excitement in the hunter. Especially with the call for helmets on. This he had to make sure fit properly. Spacewalking wasn’t unlike being in the water.

But much more dangerous.

He turned to Sal who was waiting for the contact.

“First.” He stated as he stepped to the shuttle’s airlock. His axe in hand, and rifle now in a back holster, the Karkarodon leapt towards the Planechanga. No idea who they’d be running into, but as first wave, he had to be ready.

William Thule

 

[William Thule]

"Sensors indicate you're already breaching. If you're also trying to clean this thing out, we'd prefer to work with you instead of fight you for it."

“Mighty affable of you,” Sal snapped his fingers and mimed writing to the Sakiyan, who just nodded once. “We’ll play nice if you do, Dancer. See you on the inside.”

Enough time and a datalink and the Sakiyan could give them whatever information most public and some private holofeeds had regarding the Dancer in Green and its companion vessel. Sal would leave that to the slicer.

They had other things to work out. Like how he had forgotten the massive, ax-wielding karkorodon in his count of the assault team.

“Going to board without ship?”

He looked up at the uncomfortably large alien.

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it neither.”

The lights turned red inside the shuttle. The entire team loaded into the airlock, flushed, and then opened the exterior hatch. One by one they floated down through the intervening vacuum of space, propelled by small directional jets from backpacks they wore.

The Karkarodon may have been first out, but one of the Nikto was the first to take a plasma torch to the outer hatch. After a minute of cutting through the ancient metal, they were through and into the station’s airlock. It cycled ominously, strange clankings.

Gingerly, Sal drew out his pistol and used it to nudge the door open the rest of the way.

Inside, he saw a long service corridor stretching off, surrounded by pipes and whatnot. They piled into the corridor. Overhead lights gasped to life, one at a time, as they walked, then died of in their absence, leaving the trail back a pit of blackness.

“Uh. Katarn.” The Iktochi pilot’s voice crackled in his ear.

“What?”

“We have a situation out here.”

“Yeah?”

Was it just him, or did something move up in the shadows and to their right?

“Yeah, Katarn. The station is powering up, I am detecting major energy readings out here. And… there’s some sort of distortion field it is producing just in front of its rail cannon’s terminus.”

“Speak basic.”

“There’s a wormhole. The station is forming a wormhole. And its cannon is aiming right at it.”

Katarn frowned. “Huh.” Didn’t know they could do that. He might’ve had more time to process some of the implications, but just then he caught another glimpse of movement and spun. From underneath some pipes a shape crawled, wearing ragged clothing, its features odd - eyes on either side of a squat, oblong head. It stared at him. He stared back.

Recognition.

“Oh shit.”

Down the hall, screaming.

“Flesh Raiders,” Sal grunted into his comm.

Then the creature hurled itself at him with a snarl.

Tilon Quill | Isur | In Rhan | Niysha

 

[In Rhan]

"Dancer, Quill. One torpedo did its work." He began charging up the ion mount's capacitors. "For now I'm on the turrets with a line of sight."

Otherwise boarding would not go so hot.

Ordinarily, parking your freighter with intention to board a heavily defended ship - within clear firing arc of a turbolaser battery - was foolhardy. In having full confidence in Tilon Quill 's ability to destroy/disable that canon and her confidence in The Dancer's ability to tank a couple of hits until he did didn't make it not foolhardy, just less so. When Tilon's coma torpedo hit, just as before, In was right behind it - landing beside the impact site mere seconds after it began discharging coma gas. Her shields were aligned towards the dangerous gun, and the Pantoran woman was already out of the pilot seat and at her cargo door with a riot shield and her blaster by the time her docking clamps deployed and made contact with the supply umbilical. "I'm out - catch up when you can, you two." In barked over comms, her toolbelts jangling with every step.

Radio chatter about a wormhole. The station doing something odd. Completely unacceptable to delay.

The umbilical connected with a sharp hiss, and In passed through into the dark, hostile ship as a boarder. The sort of place where solitary women died, honestly - In watched too many horror movies to not be aware of that. Tilon's coma gas reduced visibility considerably, and there wasn't much to begin with.

"Dark down here. Power is on." In reported. "Floor feels a little...slick? Got a bad feeling in my gut." She murmured. "Moving towards where I think the fuel reservoirs are."

Niysha William Thule Isur

 

[Niysha]

From her position on the Dancer's comms, Niysha had perspective on a few things. First: the encouraging, ever-welcome, and no longer surprising competence of Tilon Quill. Their relationship may have gotten off to a bit of a rocky start back on Calimancha, but none of them were in their best form then. Everything since had been smooth. At least, smooth by her and In's standards, which tended somewhat north of "complete debacle" in any given moment.

Second: the other raiding party. "Roger that, friend. See you inside." They didn't identify themselves; suspicious, but not incredibly so. A lot of hyperlane drifter types tended to be far more casual with each other than In had taught her to be. For the moment, it looked like they weren't going to be a problem. That was particularly relieving, considering the everything else they were dealing with at the moment. When push came to shove inside the ship, they'd sort it out from there.

And third: the reports coming in. Wormholes were high-concept stuff. Niysha might be able to struggle together some basic understanding of what was happening if she saw it in person, but this far away, there was nothing she could do but make a note and move on. "Flesh raiders," though, was far more actionable. That was a personal, infantry-grade problem, and In might have been walking into it. Niysha had read a thing or two about them in the old Sith Order's archives, when her relationship with Ignus had allowed her slightly greater access. They were violent, and exceedingly primitive.

They didn't fly spaceships.

Her fingers sailed slowly across the command console in the Dancer's bridge. All power to shields, with a small amount on life-support. If they were both leaving the ship - and they absolutely were - then the ship would need its defenses as high as possible. She set alerts, linked them to her datapad, and hopped out of the cockpit. "Tilon, I'm catching up with In. Dancer's in turtle mode. I think there's something spicy in there and I'm not leaving her to face it alone."

Niysha considered that Tilon had gassed the entire area near the Dancer's boarding umbilical and, in a moment of preparation, grabbed a gas mask. With that, it was down the hatch and into the bowels of an ancient Hutt battleship. When her boots alighted on the slick floor that In had mentioned, the Miraluka took a moment to search her surroundings for anything that reminded her of In, then used that as a guiding star to forge on ahead.

"Place could be filled with savages, In," she spoke quietly into her comlink. "Like, literal bloodthirsty savages. Be careful. I'm right behind you."

Tilon Quill William Thule Isur

 

[Tilon Quill]

“Yeah, Katarn. The station is powering up, I am detecting major energy readings out here. And… there’s some sort of distortion field it is producing just in front of its rail cannon’s terminus.”

“Speak basic.”

“There’s a wormhole. The station is forming a wormhole. And its cannon is aiming right at it.”

“Flesh Raiders,”

"Dark down here. Power is on." In reported. "Floor feels a little...slick? Got a bad feeling in my gut." She murmured. "Moving towards where I think the fuel reservoirs are."

"Tilon, I'm catching up with In. Dancer's in turtle mode. I think there's something spicy in there and I'm not leaving her to face it alone."

A blatt of comms traffic threw off Tilon's ion strafing run. He missed the essential shot and looped around hastily for a second run at the big turret trying to scrape the Dancer off the unsuperweapon's hull. The comms were in a language he didn't recognize, which was rare. It tasted a little like Shyriwook and Old Selkath, a very little, but felt simpler than either.

He made the shot and killed the turret, and only as he reoriented on the distortion forming off the prow did he start getting an unsettled familiarity about that language after all.

"Turret's killed," he said on comms. "I'm taking a look up front."

He sent a heavy-capital-scale ion blast or two into the machine on general principle on the way. But interrupting whatever was going on up there, getting line of sight on vulnerable systems, would probably involve staring down the barrel.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

From the command chair, Ashin looked at the Planechanga down the familiar ridgeline of a coal-matte Star Destroyer one century old. Little vessels skittered around the Planechanga's vast hull, but nobody of substance was here.

"Comms, broadcast, system-strength.

"This is Ashin Varanin aboard the Chimaera. I will lay claim to this vessel. Anyone who would contest me, state your case or play your move."

 

[In Rhan]

"Savages?" In questioned quietly, her expression and tone a little incredulous. "Like, in space? How would they even be here. This ship is thousands of years old."

The Pantoran woman kept her shield up and her blaster ready, moving through the increasingly familiar murk of Tilon's coma gas. She was dimly aware that Niysha was making her way to support her, and was keenly aware that the Miralukan woman could absolutely locate her without help. Niysha could likely pick her out of a crowd with those incredible non-eyes of hers, it'd barely be a problem. So, as time was of the essence, In kept moving deeper into the ship - following signs she couldn't read towards what she hoped were fuel reserves.

"This is Ashin Varanin aboard the Chimaera. I will lay claim to this vessel. Anyone who would contest me, state your case or play your move."

In's comm unit crackled as somebody dominated the airwaves with what she couldn't know were capital-grade transmissions from a capital-grade ship. After all, In was already deep in the bowels of the Planechanga - far away from The Dancer's sensory equipment. As a result she was mostly annoyed by this intrusion. "Ashin who? Yoka to chaa, wermo. Get off my frequency and play bandit queen somewhere else." In complained, as though adressing an impolite child.

A heartbeat later, In was blindsided by a drowsy Flesh Raider swinging an equipment locker at her. A glancing blow had been enough to send In sprawling across the hallway, briefly knocked senseless.

 

[Isur]

He was always going to try to go first. He was bulk, he was fish. His skin was not great to touch, and a bit resistant from harpoons, and hopefully blaster bolts. But that was just without him even trying. Isur saw the move they were making and felt actually comfortable with it. Space wasn’t that different from the sea. Aside from the lack of any way to get oxygen.

The comms came to life as Isur landed himself. Wormholes did not concern him. Isur was a hunter, he was here to be an enforcer, thats why he worked with Black Sun. Thats how he got paid.

What he saw when he looked up was something bizarre, a… species he hadn’t seen before. Almost aquatic. Didn’t really matter, honestly, it would bleed. There was a low growl, not something one would hear in the water when he swam up, but all the same. Isur had his wan-shen and swung it as best he could, more a short slash and a stab into the first flesh raider.

He didn’t have the name for it of course.

As the axe made purchase, so did his teeth into the arm of the being.

“Bleed like others.”

William Thule Tilon Quill