Time briefly dilated. Dust and motes of facet-faced crystalline ceased tossing end-over-end and held suspended in the long negative space not yet breached between Cato and his assaulters. The Falleen closed his hands round his hilt’s control studs, the Barabel and Nightsister adopting venomous Juyo stances, all blades angled close, parallel to their eyes, and pointed for Cato’s throat. Their lunges closed the last few paces, blows staggered, roughly coordinated but lacking in firm cohesion. Time resumed. A gale of hard light and steel flew at him. Cato blinked, exhaled, and vanished all thought save for a small, coldly comforting notion of imminent demise. Mind of No Mind.
His daisho drew free. The blade folding had been patterned with sparing webs of fine cortosis. Not enough to short-out a proper laser sword but so their cuts wouldn’t melt through the steel altogether. Their techniques were finely tuned and savage, their strength awing. Cato folded through a trio of narrow parries from the Barabel and barely afforded a guard for the Nightsister at his flank, countering in spinning whirlwind strokes that drove through the pair and away from the Falleen attempting to hazard his backside. They skidded across the flooring, all but chasing Cato towards a far corner. Blows rained close, hemming in at every escape vector, battering at his guard and forcing him back pace by pace. He backpedalled, wrenching parries with ferocious desperation, at a loss for their immaculate speed and precision. The Nightsister was fairly trilling and the Falleen crowed booming laughter. The Barabel just hissed, bashing at him with over-head strikes. Mind of No Mind.
This was in error. He was allowing their aggressive energies to overtake him, control the tempo and rhythm. Whether or not their power was Force-enhanced was irrelevant. He was raised Mandalorian, inculcated and inducted into the secret places of Asahi’s most lethal, most dangerous ryu. Command the skirmish, he thought. The issue was the dizzying array of abundant threats incoming at virtually every angle, between the spans of single seconds. It confused and slowed his responses and weakened his ability to counter properly. Mind of No Mind. Cato ejected all but rudimentary self-awareness and refocused on survival. He settled on the Falleen.
Old wisdoms told Sith fed on aggression. Cato defaulted to a slippery defense, sliding his blades in sharp, oblique parries that redirected their physical energies. He guarded with the longsword on a perpendicular angle and caught the Barabel’s blow squarely on whining steel, twisting her flow inward toward him and away over his hip. She briefly gasped and stumbled to arrest her floundering. Room opened, briefly. It was enough. Cato rounded on the Nightsister. Feinted, interrupted the rhythm of her broken staccato drum-blows, forcing her to guard and reorient. Her next slash was countered and answered, reversing his short-sword to ram the pommel-butt through her solar-plexus and smash her back off her heels. Ashin’s directive hadn’t been clear on whom she addressed. If he landed a killing blow, fair chances told he would not be leaving the phrik chamber intact. The Nightsister rolled herself away, choking and sucking for air.
The Falleen flourished his double-blade in a close, swirling kata and came on viciously, charging and leaping. Cato’s jetpack flared. They met with feet off the ground, exchanging a handful of mid-air blows that left sparking after-images. Landed, spun about. Before they re-engaged, the Falleen simply loosed a hand and shunted it, palm forward and flat. An unseen concussive wallop decked Cato in the centre of his torso-plate. It tore him off his footing, tossing him leg over rump across the chamber to impact with the impervious walling. Cato felt something crumple and give in his jetpack’s housing; sparks were vomiting over his shoulder from some compromised system. Breathless, vision swimming still, Cato groped to his elbows and depressed a small safety-catch. The jetpack weight shifted, loosened from his spine.
Again, the Falleen came on, the Barabel close behind. The Nightsister was swaying back to her feet. He jammed a thumb down on a small control nub on a gauntlet. The jetpack sputtered but shot off his casement like a slug-round, impacting squarely with the Falleen’s midriff. The Sith Knight folded over. The double-blade hilt slipped out his hands and bounced off through a drool of blood.
Murmurs within the ring of observing practitioner grew steadily silent. The Barabel and Nightsister matched their strides, separating to mount a pincer formation. Cato groped and pulled his katana into grasp. Through lancing cracks, fiendish strokes and counter-strokes, he got to his feet in the midst of their renewed rush. The Barabel blitzed in, gnashing her longsword down across his gauntlet, the Nightsister trying to fence through his guard and skewer a blow where the plates met along his ribs. A strike washed sparks onto the decking, knocking off Cato’s helm. Bright, red pain edged his vision; missed a guard and took a shallow stab in the meat surrounding his liver. That invisible force came to bear once more, grasping him in enveloping, unseen fist, hurtling him upward into the overhead bulkhead girders. His frame bounced once, twice. Was dropped ingloriously to the floor. A boot-toe kicked in under his jaw and came to close to tearing his head free. A crying ring of cold-blooded rage; the Barabel sat his katana in her jaw and with a heavy clench-bite, snapped the steel to pieces.
There was agony in so many untold places. He couldn’t submerge from the pain. Cato still possessed enough control to not cry out, climbing to his feet, his hands fallen away to the sides of his hips. Somewhere in the rafters, he’d taken an injury and now warm blood poured out of his dark hair. Mind of No Mind. Breath was still yet being drawn. Wait, he told himself, just wait. Cede nothing to the foe, not even on the brink of defeat. Like a Nexu sensing a nerf foal with a broken limb, the Nighsister sauntered up for the winning blow. Into range. Cato counted her steps and offered a very small, very quiet smile. It gave the Nighsister momentary pause.
He stepped in. Cato’s fist hammered down her right forearm and dropped her arm away, the same fist cracking his knuckles onto the span of her nose-bridge. With her head thrown back, he grasped her left arm and twisted it out, down, pulling the limb up through a circle ‘till it went over his brow, leaving her torso trunk and belly vulnerable, her balance off-set. His foot snapped in and kicked her left leg out, her own weight projecting her to the phrik decking. As her shoulders rebounded off the plating, Cato fell with her, plunging the point of his elbow against her temple. The Nightsister ungainly flopped into unconsciousness.
The Barabel raised her clawed fist. Cato rose with it, entrapped in her Force Grip, breath crushing in his throat.