Private Beneath the ice

[Laphisto]

The shriek of atmospheric entry gave way to silence as the LAHT gunship leveled out, its repulsorlifts humming against the churning icewinds of Mizanrs. Through the frost-rimmed canopy, the terrain below was a vision of death cracked ice fields, collapsed structures, and the yawning mouth of a crater that had recently torn itself open, exposing what lay beneath.

"Commander," the pilot's voice buzzed in. "Subterranean anomaly confirmed. Reading decaying power signatures, partial EM flickers. Facility breach is recent looks like the glacier collapsed after some type of earthquake gunnars one and two. eyes open. scans are pikcing up EM interfearance"

"Copy," came the gunner from the port side, gripping the handles of the mounted LO-27R. The heavy weapon tracked the landscape below, infrared highlighting flickers of movement rusted droids locked in looped routines, some still dragging lifeless limbs through the snow. "I've got visuals on damaged automata. No live heat signatures."

"Doesn't mean nothing's awake," said the starboard gunner grimly, checking the arc of his own LMG. The snow swallowed everything here, even sound. The LAHT dropped into a hover, kicking up a cloud of powdered frost and debris. Below, the ice cracked in concentric rings around a fractured vault entrance reinforced durasteel split down the middle, with one heavy blast door barely hanging onto its track. Past it, only dark.

Inside the main cabin, Laphisto stood, watching. Still. His armored hand rested on the edge rail near the port side door, eyes locked on the crater's edge as if the planet itself were staring back. The Force was quiet here. but not silent. It whispered. Something had been made here. Something that didn't belong to the galaxy anymore. The gunners adjusted their grip, sweeping their arcs in slow, methodical patterns. Steam hissed off the hull. And Laphisto stepped forward taloned feet hitting the ice with a heavy crunch. followed by five lilaste order soldiers. one of which was Commander Tarian.

M mooney

 

[mooney]

The wind was singing in broken static, whispering through the frozen hollows of a planet long abandoned. Ice crackled beneath clawed feet as Moony trudged across the icy wasteland. Her tall masked form moved slowly, reverently, like a memory walking through a dream.

Snow fell in sheets, blurring the outline of areas she already traveled, Each step took her past shattered droid torsos twitching with dying sparks, or what looks to be her kin in different stages of growth before death. She did not weep how could she ? Her breath steamed into the cold air,She was alone.


Her horn short , curved, and glowing with a dull red pulse—ached with the cold. Her tail dragged behind her, leaving a slow trail in the snow. The cryo-pod she'd emerged from weeks ago was now a hollow tomb, its glass canopy cracked and covered in hoarfrost. No others had opened. No others had stirred.

Were they all dead?
Were they ever real at all?
What was she to do?
Were was she to go?

Moony crouched beside a collapsed droid, its optical lens flickering. It buzzed a broken phrase She placed a clawed hand on its chestplate before she could understand what the droid phrase was saying the lens gave out and Silence answered.

She rose and moved on. For hours—days?—she wandered. Hunting. Searching. Hoping. She'd send telepathic pulses into the wind waiting for kin to answer back, but she received nothing.
Until—

A voice.

Faint. Not the voice of metal.
Real. Living. Distant, but approaching.

Moony froze. Her mask tilted in the wind's direction.
She heard it again—more than one. Murmurs. Laughter? A name? The sounds danced across the frozen plains like ghosts.

Kin?

She took a step forward.

Another.

The voices faded—then sharpened again.

Not droids.

Not her own thoughts

Someone was alive.

She didn't run. Not yet. Instead, she lowered her head slightly, claws flexing, the acid in her throat simmering from both fear and anticipation.

She whispered a word in Oiri. The wind shivered in response.
Whoever was out there wasn’t kin something different what was it?

 

[Laphisto]

Laphisto grunted softly as the wind howled across the plateau, snapping against his armor like a living thing. He reached out with the Force, letting its faint threads guide his steps as he and the soldiers moved toward the yawning entrance of the exposed lab. A low rumble rose in his throat half instinct, half unease as he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the shearing cold. The facility loomed before them: ancient, fractured, half-buried in the ice like the bones of something long dead.

As he stepped across the threshold, his taloned feet scraped against metal flooring half-choked in frost. The hum of power was absent no lights, no warmth, only the echo of their own presence. His lone ear twitched upright, alert. He scanned the darkened corridors slowly. "This place…" he murmured, voice low and dry, "it feels older than anything I've walked in a long time."

He paused, letting his gaze trace the broken conduits and half-collapsed walls. "Might predate the Republic itself. Or… maybe the earliest breath of its founding." The wind outside faded into a muffled moan behind the thick blast door remains. Inside, only silence and something beneath it. Watching. Waiting.

M mooney

 

[mooney]

icy winds whispered over the skeletal remains of the ancient lab structures, sweeping snow in soft spirals across the frost-hardened ground. Her breath fogged the air behind her mask, moony low, silently.

She'd heard it, more clearly

Voices.

She crouched behind the remnants of a rusted stabilizer cyro-pod, long since bent. Her glowing horn dimmed as she concentrated, masking her presence beneath the shroud of snow. Her vibrant , iridescent hair fluttered in the chill. The snow was an ally now.

Crunch.

Boots. Multiple sets. But someone else the prints look almost like her own — shadows moving inside the place she wondered into days ago, they looked confident Too confident. Too clean.

Her claws flexed, digging slightly into the ice. They clearly were enemies they wanted something and it wasn’t her.

She moved closer to listen in to find there reasons for being here.They were speaking — something about signatures, thermal spikes, a " Republic itself? Earliest breath of its founding " She didn't understand all of it, but they were searching. Probing. She kept her distance, tail swaying low to the ground.

 

[Laphisto]

The air inside the facility was still but not dead. Frost clung to every surface like a second skin, reflecting ghostly silhouettes in shattered transparisteel panels. Laphisto took a slow breath, the rasp of cold biting against his throat. His claws curled slightly, tensing as he knelt near a fractured terminal, fingers brushing over a layer of brittle ice "Commander. Keep your formation tight. This place isn't empty."

His voice wasn't urgent but there was something beneath it. A flicker of certainty. His eye narrowed, the Force whispering through the silence like thin smoke through cracks in old stone. Not danger. Not yet. But presence. Faint. Watching. Listening. He stood again, slowly. "Something moved," one of the soldiers said, adjusting his grip on his rifle. "Port-side, near the old vault section. Might be residual droid activity."

Laphisto didn't answer right away. His gaze shifted, lingering on the snow-drifts pushed into the corridor by recent wind. There faint drag marks. Not uniform like a patrol droid. Too careful. Too deliberate. The snow still held the impression of clawed feet. His taloned hand moved to rest near the hilt of his broadsaber, not drawing it not yet.

"No droid walks with fear," he murmured under his breath. "And whatever left that print… doesn't want to be found." He turned slightly, speaking louder calm, but clear, not to his men this time. "You can stay hidden. I won't chase you. But I know you're there." The wind moaned faintly behind him. His words hung in the air like frost. truth be told he was bluffing. something felt odd in the force like there was another presence there but he wasnt one hundred percent certain

M mooney

 

[mooney]

The silence after his words was vast. A stillness too complete to be natural. And then… it shifted.

Somewhere deep within the corridor near the old vault, ice cracked softly — like brittle bones under her weight,
The scent of their breath. The heat of their bodies against the cold air. She could feel his presence better now — not like the others. Measured. Sharp. Almost dangerous.


The shadows moved. She stepped into the corridor's edge, no longer cloaked in full darkness of the snow, only in her silence. Her form was tall — imposing — glimmering faintly with frost. A mask of silver covered her face, horn spiraling back like frozen branches. Her breath hissed through the slits of her helm, curling like vapor.

"You talk too much. Your too loud”

Her voice was distorted — warped slightly through the vocal modulator of her mask, as if ice itself spoke. Not mechanical. Not droid-like. But something ancient and hollowed out.
She didn't attack. Not yet. Her claws flexed slowly at her sides, and her long tail swept behind her like a living spear. With tuffs of fur fanning about.

"You shouldn't have come here, what are you?."

Her tone was not rage — but confusion with a bit of uncertainty and wonder . Like a ghost guarding a forgotten grave. She took a slow step forward, snow cracking beneath her weight, the corridor's light glinting off her pale clothes it was old almost torn and in tatters.

"These don’t belong to you. Nor your people. Leave. While you still can."