OBJECTIVE: 2 [Spaceport]
LOCATION: [Abregado-rae: From Sky to Road]
SITH ALLIES:
Mercy
-
Grace
Xan Atropus
-
Veyla Tass
-
Kaelyr
-
Leontis Antalis
-
Astra Sadow
SITH ENEMIES:
Carduul Akahl
|
The Arkanian
"Strictly speaking I didn't throw you." Mercy murmured with amusement. "More like... dragged you with me and then protected you until we reached the bottom. I will accept any consequence you see fit, my darling."
“Any consequence? I’ll remember that, sestra.”
Her response to the giantess was about as deadpan as a brick, ignoring the warm smile, but there was a ghostly smirk that flickered at the kiss of her mouth. Having just been treated to a one-way ticket from orbit to terra firma attached to what equated to an organic bus did not make her the most agreeable. She vividly recalled the last time
Mercy
treated her to the ground in a battle just like this one. At least, her head hadn’t bounced off the ground like a coconut this time, but the larger woman still wasn’t off the hook. Not that easy, not ever.
The sudden hand at the small of her back was unexpected, but more importantly—
Unwelcome.
Srina had been taught since she was old enough to hold a vibrosword that there were boundaries one did not cross without purpose. An opponent crossed them to gain an advantage for close-range strikes. A lover crossed them by invitation, and family rarely bothered to acknowledge them at all.
In the middle of a warzone, a stranger had no reason to be so close.
The faint tapping of nails against her armor near her spine scales caused yellow-gold eyes to brighten with internal flame while her form stilled. Her response wasn’t angered, not quite, but touched with something older and far less reasonable than the Blackwall Empress was purported to be. Her body did not care that
Grace
was smiling, laced with a particular edge of crazy, nor that they were part of the Sith Covenant. All it registered was unknown contact, and any Echani worth their salt did not permit the unknown to enter their guard.
Her head began to turn, the movement slight, almost languid, while armored fingers curled at her side. There was an invisible tremble in the Force, an involuntary response, that made the dust tremble over fractured stone. Just as her gaze landed on the red-skinned Twi’lek—
Before the renegade Sith Lord could seal her fate, Mercy grabbed her by the back of her neck, lifting her up.
"Darling, I am doing this for your own good."
Mercy had just saved her life. Grace would likely never know how sincere those words were, and Srina did not feel the need to enlighten her. The unnatural light behind pale lashes took its time fading. She did not dislike the crazy Twi’lek, as dislike required considerably more familiarity than they possessed…
But she was far from pleased.
The fight ahead reclaimed their attention almost immediately. It made itself known in smoke, shouting, and the heavy concussion of weapons fire while the Graspborn joined the varying formations converging on the spaceport. The front line that Mercy had already cratered was starting to reform, not well perhaps, but quickly enough that her eyes narrowed.
She expected more…
Panic.
There was certainly enough of it. The Dread Queen could feel frightened minds pressed together behind the walls,
but the movement surrounding the port did not seem entirely right. Defensive lines were tightening where they ought to have collapsed beneath the weight of desperate bodies seeking passage off-world. There were too many soldiers and too few departures, death already present, floating in waves.
Many that attempted to escape with any sort of off temperament befitting the newfound threat were simply ousted or executed by his men when made apparent. That was the sort of call necessary in war- to sever a finger so that the hand may survive.
The Sith had only just hit the Spaceport…It didn’t make sense. Unless…
The Mandalorians were executing the people of Abregado-rae all on their own.
Her eyebrow rose with speculation, but she didn’t comment and filed the inconsistencies away for later. It made her itch. She didn’t like not being able to anticipate what an enemy might do, especially when the terrain was not their own. Instead, she took the huge armored hand that Mercy offered to help her step over the broken roadway. She didn’t think about the gesture, somehow knowing that the red-haired woman would be right there. Her battle-sister squeezed that same hand, and then her hulking form was gone, surging toward the enemy with all the subtlety of an avalanche. She was impossible not to see, spot, a walking tank full of murderous joy—Entirely unstoppable.
Srina watched the Sith Lord for part of a second before the broken road began to tremble beneath her feet. A pebble rose, then another, and great slabs of ferrocrete followed while dragging durasteel and shattered barricades from the crater Mercy had left behind. The pale woman barely seemed to notice the weight, and her attention remained fixed ahead while the wreckage started to gather in a slow, unnatural suspension.
Somewhere beyond the Spaceport, she could still feel
Madrona A’Mia
, and the weaving sensation was…Strange. It felt rooted and wet. She could smell damp earth when she followed the thread and knew that the Bloody Bonnet had begun to spread. The smoke in the distance had taken on an odd, sickly green shade, and she knew…
The Hordemother was doing her work. Srina would not let her efforts fail, and her chin rose while she prepared to hold up her end of the bargain. Her battle-sister launched herself into the defensive line, and the Echani raised one hand. The explosive might that her battle-sister hit the Spaceport with was terrifying enough, and her actions would not help them feel any safer.
Just as she was about to launch her attack, something up ahead went desperately quiet in her mind. Srina’s gaze sharpened when two enormous hounds broke from a holding position, and their nearness to Mercy set off red flags. She knew that sensation. The sudden emptiness in the Force had become intimately familiar on Humbarine, and her expression crashed into a coldness that had nothing to do with surprise.
"Sic 'em."
Spike and Dozer, his
Sukkot Hounds, darted out and moved to either side of Carduul. Together, the null field projected by the genetically modified hounds worked pretty much the exact same way as an Ysalamiri. Except these two were huge. With teeth.
Again.
The Mandalorians did seem fond of repeating themselves, the same toys, the same tricks…But it changed very little. Srina was well beyond the reach of the null field, and it wouldn’t have mattered regardless. The Force was a tool…Not a crutch.
She didn’t need it to turn her enemies to slag.
<<Duck, sestra.>>
Her fist closed and the debris split in two, some going high, while the rest went low. It snapped forward as if it were shot from a cannon, screaming through the air, while it melded the wreckage of the first attack into the second. Huge hunks of ferrocrete smashed toward the structure and fortifications behind the Mandalorians with enough force to bring pieces of it down. The rest went low and headed toward the hounds and their masters.
It wasn’t elegant or pretty, but it wasn’t meant to be.
They had not come to liberate Abregado-rae or sway the people back to the Sith. The decision had been made, and she had come to terminate a threat to her people. To remove a foothold and cripple the renegade Mandalorian position so they might finally feel the hand of the Sith Covenant closing around their throats.
Her eyes hardened and metallic gold orbs burned brighter, corruption bleeding slowly through.
Srina did not forgive. She had not forgotten Humbarine. She had not forgotten that they had taken half of Mercy’s face, her voice, and left her wounded enough that Srina had spent weeks watching flesh re-grow in agony. They had taken bloody, mottled pieces of her battle-sister and thought there wouldn’t be hell to pay.
Wrong.
Srina would take everything, their lives, this planet, and toss it into a fething meat grinder.
Her eyes traced the sight of a dropship falling right in the middle of all the chaos, and the ground shook from the impact. The flaming form of
Kaelyr
burst from it and immediately began to unleash havoc. He looked like a demon, wreathed in bright-dark energy, like a shepherd of the apocalypse.
This was their end. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide—The consequence of their actions.
Let them remember
that.
Varin Mortifer
Korar Murrak
&
Braze
Haro Aven
more than stung, it was a gaping wound in Naami's soul and the aspiring Sith knight privately wondered if he'd ever recover from it.
Elmindra Xitaar
and sent to serve away from the Holy Worlds. She'd insisted he shed the weakness of doubt and emotional pain, to harness it to feed his power in the Force. He would only be allowed to return to normal duty, to re-claim his rightful place commanding units, when he proved he was of right mind and properly useful once more.
Leshanna Dromar
, wondering why
Lysander von Ascania
wasn't responding to the holomail thread they used to check in through, and most of all seething about what Haro had done, about who Haro really was. Despite all that, the zabrak was grateful for his battle brother's presence here. Words were still a challenge for him though, it seemed like every time he opened his mouth lately the only thing he could manage was a scream and that was just to hold back the sobs. So he didn't say anything at all.
