Invasion Double Tap | TSC Invasion of COV-held Abregado-rae

[Feydrik Munin]

​

Equipment: Crushgaunts, Wristrockets, Disruptor Pistols, Disruptor Rifle, Beskad, Beskar Knives, Jetpack Rocket, Flamethrower, Personal Shield

Yuri Maji received his message. He turned to the TACMAP displayed on a hologram on the roof he was on. He crossed his arms, observing the battle space. The Sith were on the move, scouts reporting movement. They were, however.... in a bind. The infected were already here. And the spread needed to be contained. Feydrik tapped his crushgaunt-adorned fingers on his bicep armor, before raising his head high.

Then he spoke. The Mandalorian Commanders in the field would be relayed the message, along with the aerial assets he was employing.

"Any infected are to be pacified. Use disruptor rounds and cryo-weapons. Fuel-air weapons, if you have them. We stop the spread here. May their Gods have mercy on them."

He said openly to his Commanders over their secure line. He turned his head to the approaching Sith formation coming to the factory. They marched with haste, but the outer defenses of the Mandalorians, now uncontested mostly, erupted into a hailstorm of fire. Slugthrower rounds and disruptor bolts tore into Sith lines, cryo-weapons and targeted aerial attacks away from the factories at the approaching enemy repelled their meager assault. The Mandalorians were dug in, and their aerial superiority at the moment was unchallenged. A coordination that the Sith were not prepared for- and that their plague could not reach.

Feydrik turned his head as he received a scouting report.

"Two Sith sighted nearby sir. Engaging civilians."

Feydrik pursed his lips. Perhaps the Sith came to the same conclusion that he did about infected or potentially infected people. He tapped his biceps. On his perched position, he was secure. He turned his head.

"Send a Commando team after them. If they want a fight, give them one. Take troops with slugthrowers and shotguns. I want this over quickly. Don't give them a chance to block even a single strike."

He waved his hand and put the Supercommando squad to task to go after Anet Raine and Calyx Sundrift . They were on a nearby factory, but close enough to cause concern, given that his rooftop perch and Command Center was paramount to their tactical success at the moment. The Supercommandos were equipped with shotguns, slugthrowers and their elite expertise, fieldcraft, training, and experience- each one was a deadly combatant to face.

He turned his head as another wave of enemy troops fell to their coordinated and more dug-in positions return fire and the BDA reports came in over comms. He wondered if they had Sith troops that could match the Mandalorian's iron will, much less their tactical superiority at the moment. He partially wondered if it was a lure, a trap, or bait. He refused to send his troops out from the factories, however. He would not chase an enemy, especially in this environment. Their disruptor weapons had been instrumental in defeating the plague-masses and infected, reducing them to atoms and nothing more. The cryo-weapons were also effective. He turned his head on the roof, looking at the battlespace displayed to him currently.

"Ensure that our compatriots receive this information in-depth." He said to the naval detachment over another secure channel. He looked up at the sky, his horned helmet watching the orbital strikes hit their targets on the ground, incredible precision meeting incredible firepower. He turned his head back to the map, back to coordinating the impressive amount of troops on the ground that remained, largely, uncontested. Already, reports came in about their wanton destruction of potentially and infected people. With little regard for checking if they were or were not, the airborne nature of the plague meant that destruction was better than chance. They had no facilities for testing, no facilities for quarantine. Denying the apparatus of the enemy's cowardly bioweapon fuel was better than their current alternatives.

In short, the Mandalorians in that sector began destroying civilians, infected, or not. The Sith had unleashed something too dangerous for the Mandalorians to even chance infection. His word was absolute and final. Clan Munin and the rest of the Mandalorian ground troops would be put to task.

Kill.

Them.

All.

 

[Lily Rhodes]

Tags: Madrona A’Mia Revna Marr Darth Strosius Vess Sadragen​

Through the red haze, Lily saw her, her amethyst saber flashing against the incoming tirade of mandalorian fire. She hated it, hated that she was here, that she was not only standing among pyres of twisted flesh, but defending it. Vess should have been anywhere but here, she was too good, too kind and gentle.

The world blinked around her as she moved, teleporting to be beside her, her own blade dancing alongside hers as the web in her mind pulsed with something dark and hungry, but it passed as quickly as it had come, revealing the person beneath it.

<< “Revna?” >>

Of all the places to run into family…

The thought was interrupted by the deep whump of a tank firing, the shell striking one of the pyres higher up, raining flesh and fire down around them. But the fire didn’t incinerate it, it made it bloom, deep red mushrooms blossomed and pulsed expanding the flesh where it landed.

Lily should have felt panic, she should have felt horror, but it had died with her connection to the Hordemother, the eerie calm the tree felt was oddly infectious, she couldn’t claim contentness, because she was far from that, but calm? Calm she could use.

The pyres bulged, great masses exploding from them spewing out flesh reavers that took to the skies in a great horde, a handful of them hurtling around the pair slamming into mandalorians as they crested into the dropsite, hauling them into the flames and devouring them where they were acid melting through armour.

She reached for Vess wanting to pull her away when Mercy’s voice sang along the telepathic connection and she flinched.

These Mandalorians aren’t brain dead like some of them. They are plotting something.

Plotting? What could they possibly be plotting against this? Against the monstrosity she had helped create. Bile rose at the thought, burning her insides as she fought to keep it down, self revulsion threatening to tear away the calm that wasn’t hers-

"Oh, the strain they put you under." Cruelty whispered into the abyss that separated them. The cold voice of space kept them apart, but the mind knew no such limit. "With no care if your mind will snap or break."

The voice was wrong. It was wrong because it shouldn’t have belonged to the person it came from. For a moment, he was before her, golden eyes unsettlingly familiar.

"Listen - be careful around her... I know you know she's dangerous, but not for the reasons you think.

Lily took an involuntary step back, back from Vess, back from the man that was both Mercy and not Mercy.

"What are you?" She whispered.

"I cannot help you the way I wish, Lily of the Roads." Bastardizing her last name not on purpose, but because her power lay in the forging of paths that others could traverse. "But I will help... however I can, to steady you, when the moment gets darkest."

Then he was gone from her vision and the red fog rolled in closer, obscuring Vess from her sight.

“Vess?” she called, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

 

[Fenn Stag]

FENN STAG

Spaceport

​

He grunted as he was showered with rubble, the wind knocked from his lungs and leaving him disoriented, leaving Veyla Tass Veyla Tass suddenly alone for a brief moment while he was recovering his bearings.

Fenn stood tall- shrugging off the cloak he hid under. His Beskad slid into his hand from the sheath on his back, parallel to his jetpack. His crushgaunt adorned left hand curled into a fist, and he rolled his cybernetic arm, the servos whirring as the Beskar-weave arm activated, flexing and moving. An impressive piece of machinery, much more well-built and well-designed than most cybernetics. Fenn marched forward, not quite walking, not quite running. He rarely moved too quickly when he did not need to, every action designed to conserve or expend energy. He learned in the Kaggath and showed many others the price of doing too much too quickly to gain an edge- so now, he lumbered almost. His slow pace betrayed his speed and ferocity, his speed.

His words were venom when he spoke, distorted by the helmet. His rage grew, a white-hot cutting torch in a sea of darkness.

"Get. Up."

His command to the Sith to face him would unnerve most warriors. Perhaps Fenn could have just pointed his flamethrower down at him and ended him, or cut him in half with the Beskad. Fenn wanted the fight. Fenn liked the fight. Fenn had a hatred for Sith, for Jedi, even after everything. He wanted to test his mettle. Test his strength. And who better- than a Sith warrior, to test one's strength?

Fenn drew the Beskad's blade across his armored vambrace, a light spark, but to test the blade's sharpness. A light cut in his Beskar showed him that it was still sharp, and the action even sharpened the blade somewhat. He sneered beneath his helmet. He wanted that Sith's heart.

 

[Anet Raine]

Robes | Mask | Lightsaber
Calyx Sundrift Feydrik Munin
​

Anet was different with her mask on, and this was the first time Calyx had seen her with it; her connection to the Force restored.

'We weren't going to stick around, Anet.'

She snickered and stepped towards him. It was probably good that his eyes were anywhere but facing hers. For staring into her mask too deeply, for too long, could invoke a feeling of uneasiness.

There was no interruption from Anet. She allowed her companion to express his doubts. It didn't concern her that he was a coward, because she knew he was a survivor.

When he was finished, he could see the bottom half of her mouth curve into a grin. "We're Sith, Calyx. We may not be warriors in the traditional sense, but..." She reached out and took his hand in hers, and leaned in to whisper. "We're killers. We're good at killing... Stop for a moment, listen to the world around us. Abregado-rae is screaming." She stepped back, but still held his hand.

”Weave, little one, find my mark upon those across the land and in the sky. Reach out to them and weave them more tightly into our working.”

So Lily weaved, the telepathic web finding those who were familiar first, those she had touched on Humabarine before she chased others, any who bore the protection were pulled into an intricately woven web where thought and power travelled and at its centre?

She felt that presence before, on Humbarine, and like that time, Lily would note the sick glee that Anet felt then, but this time, there was an underlying confidence. It was the game she played with Calyx. Her hopes. Her desires for him. He had the potential to be a great Sith, if only someone - someone like her - pushed him down the right path.

"Let's go," she yanked him along.

The fighting outside continued. The advanced group of 'Sith soldiers' was slaughtered in numbers. A nice stalling tactic until the actual force arrived. She assumed the Kestrans were well aware. Though it was fine for her, too, if not.

The Sith Covenant's advanced forces were fodder. Light on their feet; armed for a quick fight. Drilled to die. They would serve well enough to slow the enemy down, until the heavier troops of Mercy's legion arrived.

Those heavier troops had finally arrived, and the Mandalorians wouldn't find things so 'uncontested' anymore.

"You hear that?" Anet slowed for a moment.

It was the sound of TIE Hunters roaring overhead. Squadrons sent to deliver payloads upon the entrenched Mandalorians. An opening move, followed shortly by the arrival of Sith Legionnaires. The troopers meant to flank the enemy position, while smaller squadrons fanned out, systematically approaching factories and other (likely) fortified holdouts. They'd breach, kill, move on. Of course, little in war went perfectly as planned, but the Kestrans would find a stark contrast to the fodder they faced up until then. These were disciplined, conventional, and well-equipped soldiers with experience fighting in the Core. Urban combat was... to say the least... their specialty.

But Anet wasn't concerned with that. She was more concerned by the sound of soldiers breaching their location. Super Commandoes. Of course, they'd have arrived at a volatile nest of toxic fumes and leaking gases. A labyrinth of sabotage and failsafes. Calyx's most excellent work.

"Time to go!" She dragged him along, breaking into a sprint down one of the catwalks. It was exhilarating, really, to be so close to death.

From Calyx's perspective, it appeared that she was leading them right into a steel wall - and she was. Instead of impacting it, they'd phase through together and fall to the alley below. Anet caught herself in a roll, stopping only when she slammed against a nearby building with a grunt. Bruised her shoulder. She laughed.

"Come on... They must have someone in charge. Let's go pay them a visit."

She was having too much fun.

But the reality of battle set in. She pulled him to the side, hiding in the shadow as a squad of disruptor-armed Mandalorians stormed across the street.

In short, the Mandalorians in that sector began destroying civilians, infected, or not.

They were firing on civilians. Anet tilted her head. That was odd...

She and Calyx had arrived in disguise and had plenty of time to snoop around Abregado-rae. The way she understood it, the Kestrans had broken bread with the locals, forming an alliance of necessity. She didn't have time to figure out where many of the natives had vanished off to in the wake of the battle, but this was of interest to her. Were the Mandalorians betraying Abregado-rae? Offering camaraderie in one hand, while their soldiers began to massacre them wholesale? Of course, there could've been many reasons, but in the chaos of battle, with fear and anxiety on the mind... she wondered how the local defence would feel once they realized.

 

[Naamino Zuukamano]

Outfit
Belt of Strength, Field Com-Scan Link,
Weal & Woe
Kor'ethyr Issued Kainate Trooper Armor
Armor Permissions

Ally: Varin Mortifer
Opponents: Braze & Korar Murrak ​

Cold, resolute aggression coursed through Naami as he channeled more Force blasts at the now exposed mix of factory workers, security and refugees fleeing the SIth reckoning. There was a part of him, deep beneath the sturdy armor and second skin, buried under tattooed flesh and muscle swollen from years of brutal training at the academy, some latent sense of unease at how simple it was to snuff out so many lives. People he'd never met, who'd never done him wrong, hadn't really even done anything to the Order that he served. Just… civilians lost amidst the chaos of war, whose average and simple lives were caught between the Sith Covenant and some fringe group of Mandalorians.

That secret worry, a small and nagging sadness, was soon re-buried beneath Naami's trained stoicism and inborn pragmatism. What use was it to fret? The path ahead was set and those in the way hadn't moved when they should have.

In short, the Mandalorians in that sector began destroying civilians, infected, or not.

Even the bucket heads knew, were practically aiding he and Varin in their mission to clear the industrial sector. With a heavy exhale, Naami trudged forward with all the momentum of an avalanche. Beginning slow, then picking up speed into a full force run, Naamino Zuukamano was a sight to behold as he entered the already smoking warehouse at a full sprint. Not bothering to draw a saber yet, the big zabrak bowled into two guards and began to swing open handed strikes or low, devastating kicks into the legs of anyone that looked like they had martial prowess.

His non conventional but still brutal attack was meant to further demoralize and cause panic. He wanted thsee fools to run, to scatter themselves in every direction to get picked off by Sith and Mando forces alike. His orders were to destroy the means of production, so Naami intended to carve a path of destruction through the building until he reached the heart of the place. The scream of TIE hunters overhead urged him onward, along with a rising blood lust the likes of which spurred on a competitive spirit between himself and his battle brother.

 

[Carduul Akahl]

Tags: The Arkanian , Mercy , Srina Talon

The lance of the poleaxe hit in a beautiful cry of a song, though it didn’t seem to budge his opponent for the moment. How curious. Yet, it would not be the first time he would have to adapt mid-combat. It certainly would not be the last. That armor likewise would not be able to sustain the flesh beyond. His weapon would angle towards the spiked blunt end once more as they met armor-to-armor. The sudden duck of motion had been attempted to be countered, the lance she allowed herself to be stuck against leveraging against her body to force her upwards into the debris like a lever. Not that it would do much, he reckoned.

Regardless of the result of such, he used that same leverage to place himself aside from the path of the debris, with a simple flit backwards from the sole of his foot. The dogs and Arkanian, were another matter.

“A talking one. More common than I thought. I wonder what sort of path led you here, at the mouth of an abyss.”

A blur, and she had moved faster than any ‘normal’ being. Yet, there had been a sudden tilt of his head backwards, an ever-so-slight shift in movement that had allowed him to coil away from the blow in graceful motion. The first adjustment is never perfect, regrettably- the jettison of a jetpack made up the difference to avoid what was almost a clean hit, instead grazing in a harsh scrappe! gainst the side of the mask.

The Crusader could sense the force of the impact as the fist rose in front of the helmet in a narrow miss, akin to any weapon. Impressive.

Immediately following, there had been a surge forwards again. In an attempt to exploit such movement, he had stepped rightwards, to swing directly into the Sith’s left side with the hammer pick’s end towards a hopefully exposed mid-section.

For all but the trained eye, it was hardly a flicker of movement before the whole exchange of blows was done. What were blurs was something in the realm of possibility. Such a movement was not typical of those who bore Beskar, yet that dance had been natural for him.

“Was there once a being behind the wretched husk I now face, that may have been the source of that humor?”

In so asking, Carduul had flitted from close proximity to unlatch a hand from the poleaxe—extending its range as it whirled over himself and directly towards the lower ankle. In the same motion, a searing heavy blaster bolt was sent from sidelong towards Srina Talon from the unoccupied wrist, aimed center-mass. It was a distraction, nothing more, as the woman engaged in a firefight with his second.

“Or do you still manage to carry some form of thought beyond your own consumption?”

The words punctuated a retaking of his weapon in both hands.

He could feel the flare of battle. The yearning of it all. Oh, how glorious it felt. How splendorous. All kept in that cool facade of a helm, a veil from the world that hid himself and his features, as instinct would be his only fuel—his only true way to stand a chance.

 

[Braze]

Tags: Kjartan Hammer-Hand | Careena Fett | Zavar Kelborn | Vrirrig Awaud | He-Who-Walks-Between | Tytos Saxon | Gel Karn | Feydrik Munin | Romul Saxon
Battle Buddy: Korar Murrak
Foes: Varin Mortifer | Naamino Zuukamano

​

FIELD ARSENAL ☰ ACCESS EQUIPMENT RECORD

ACTIVE LOADOUT
☑ Equipped / At Hand • ▣ Stored • ■ Used / Destroyed​

---

01 // ⚙ DROIDS

#01-A // COMPANIONS	STATUS
G.I.Z.M.O.
G.I.D.G.I.T.

#01-B // BATTLE DROIDS	STATUS
B.L.A.S.T.A. MF-B • MF-BO • MF-F • MF-FB​
C.A.T.C.H. BG-MkI • CES-G • GLMMkI​
S.P.A.R.K.

02 // ⚔ LIGHTSABERS & MELEE

#02-A // LIGHTSABERS	STATUS	#02-B // CRYSTALS	STATUS
Calypso — Hand-and-a-Half / Board Saber		Amplification
Corsage — Dueling Foil / Blaster		Frostheart
Mysterious Lightsaber		Mindshatter
Requiem — Light Foil		Phantom Ghostfire
Nightshade — Kunai Shoto	☑	Serenity's Touch
Echos of Eternity		Tiger's Fang
Resurgence — Two-Handed Crossguard		Tyrian Crystal
Saber-Claws Gauntlet — Right Arm	☑	Entropite	☑
Sentry — Parrying Dagger		Mestare
Twilight — Polearm		Obscura Crystal
Whirlwind — Chain Kama		Starfall Crystal
Hot 'n' Heavy Compensator
Troublemaker's Trickblade
Retribution — Lightsaber Lightwhip
The Voice of the Wind — Krysteel Ninjato
The Night Saber
Training Lightsaber	☑

#02-C // MELEE / UTILITY	STATUS
Vulptex Fang Utility Survival Knife	☑

03 // ⬢ ARMOR & COMBAT SYSTEMS

#03-A // ITEM	STATUS
Phoenix Fire Armor V2.0	☑
Anti-Toxin Face Mask
Utility Belt	☑
Feilong Repulsor ×2	☑
Vixen's Vambrace ×1 — Left Arm	☑
Phantom Mist Projectors	☑
Saberbreaker Gauntlets ×2	☑
Saberbreaker Shin Guards / Heel Blades ×2	☑
Space Wizard Pattern Boots ×2	☑
Protective Cloak ×1	☑
Protective Poncho
Braze's Dueling Cape
Too Hot to Handle — Desert PPE

#03-B // INTEGRATED VAMBRACE TOOLS​

Flame Projector	☑
Plasma Cutter / Breaching Tool	☑
Grappling Line	☑

04 // ◇ ACCESSORIES & JEWELRY

#04 // ITEM	STATUS
BCA Solid State Hologram Tool Band
Eshan Charms ×3
Iroai Amulate
Lightveil Circlet ×1	☑
Nite Night Nails	☑
Sunfire Signet / Compass Ring ×1	☑
Carved Kyberite Pendant
Echani Silver Whistle
Seer Stone
Jedi Crusader Pendant ×1	☑
Obscura Oculi — Cloak Charm ×1	☑

05 // ⌖ RANGED WEAPONS & ORDNANCE

#05-A // ATTACHMENTS Quiver Trigger • I.S.P.Y. Scope • H.A.R.M. Shroud​

#05-B // WEAPON	STATUS
Chill Out Rifle ×1	☑
Phantom — Marksman Lightsaber Rifle
Chiru Tranquilizer Rifle
Czerka Ranged Ion Blaster — C.R.I.B.
G.O.O. Gun

#05-C // THROWABLES & ORDNANCE​

DEVICE	LOAD	USED	LEFT	STATUS
TG-02 Trihexalon Grenade	3	0	3	☑
Thermal Detonators	5	0	5	☑
C-22 Fragmentation Grenades	5	0	5	☑
G-20 Glop Grenades	5	0	5	☑
WW-41 CryoBan Grenades	5	0	5	☑
Concussion-EMP-Sonic Grenade	3	0	3	☑
Glimmergas Grenade	3	0	3	☑
Blackout Grenade	3	0	3	☑
E.G.G.S.	—	0	—
Dye Egg	—	0	—
Explosive Egg	—	0	—
Psych Egg	—	0	—
Sabotage Egg	—	0	—
Smoke Egg	—	0	—
BA-K177 Kamino Saberdart	—	0	—
Telescopic Stun Grenade Staff	—	0	—
Serenity Flashbang Incense	—	0	—

06 // ✚ MEDICAL, CHEMICAL & CONSUMABLES

ITEM	LOAD	USED	LEFT	STATUS
Aspha Serum	5	0	5	☑
Bota M9-A2 Berries	3	0	3	☑
Trauma Spray	3	0	3	☑
TSS-FAK First Aid Kit	1	0	1	☑
Thermite	5 lbs	0 lbs	5 lbs	☑
Essence of Zeltros DUST Compact	—	0	—
FSP Besh — Advanced Force Suppression Drug	—	0	—
Reanimation Serum Aurek	2	0	2	☑
S.I.N. Devaronian Blood Poison Nail Polish	—	0	—
TS-N Healing Serum	—	0	—
Trauma Care Package	—	0	—
Trauma Kit	—	0	—

07 // ✦ VEHICLES & STARCRAFT

#07-A // STARCRAFT	#07-B // VEHICLE / SYSTEM
Mud Duck — Payday-Class Light Frigate • Werlaara Stealth Suite	Deluxe W.A.R. T.O.R.T.L.E. • Werlaara Stealth Suite
Ashwing — Starfighter Interceptor • Werlaara Stealth Suite
Phantomray Stealth Assault Interceptor • Werlaara Stealth Suite

08 // ▣ MISCELLANEOUS & ARCHIVE

#08 // ITEM	STATUS
RIP-Cell — Power Cell	☑
Survival Kit
Vixen's Vault
A Study in Opposition: The Devouring, Feed Not the Mirror
The Study of the Blade
The Silent Bloom: A Guide to the Secret Language of Flowers
Lock 'n' Shock™ ×4	☑

---

PREPARED IS A RELATIVE TERM.​

Braze smiled at the sight of the familiar, towering figure of Korar Murrak . He greeted him in kind, then settled into attentive silence as Romul Saxon launched into his rallying speech.

The pocket-sized prince finished checking over his gear, then twisted the cap from a large flask. He raised it up and cheered before he tipped back his helm and took a healthy swallow of black-cherry and vanilla-infused tihaar, rich and almost syrupy on the tongue before the liquor’s strength hit the back of his throat.

He coughed sharply, narrow shoulders hitching once beneath all that armor... Recovering what dignity he could, Braze extended the flask toward the towering man beside him.

“Fine day for Sith to die, huh?”

 

[Mercy]

MERCY

EMPRESS | WARLORD | STAR-ARM

Location: On the ground | Objective: Create an opening

Direct Allies: Srina Talon

Other Allied Forces: Xan Atropus | Veyla Tass | Kaelyr | Leontis Antalis | Astra Sadow | Grace

Sith Enemies: Carduul Akahl | The Arkanian​

.

This was the thrill that Mercy enjoyed the most. A good battle, where she could let go of everything else and allow her body to do the talking. The clash of muscle, the beat of weapons, dodge, parry, hit, a dance of an endless cycle. She could do this all day, she could do this for the rest of her life and Mercy would be happy.

That was the danger. This wasn’t her anymore, Mercy was no longer a butcher on the field, she was a ruler first and foremost. And her Sith needed her more, than she needed the joy of battle pumping through her veins.

Look, sestra, they even talk. Mercy thought towards Srina with a smirk as Carduul spoke up and attempted to lodge her upward with his weapon.

He’d learn the same lesson that Solipsis had when the latter tried to wrestle her to the ground. Attempting a competition of strength against Mercy was like trying to move a mountain.

“You will pop a vein thinking so hard.” Mercy quipped. “Whatever I was before pales in what I am now. The end of this planet… and the next.”

Her voice spoke in the distance between them… but it echoed throughout the telepathic connection that Lily Rhodes had formed between all of those that wore the boon of the Hordemother.

We are the end of this planet… and the next one. And the next… It promised them all, forcing them to come to terms with this nightmare that Mercy was painting with every dead Graspborn and Mandalorian body hitting the ground. Their bodies cut open, their wounds exposed, perfect meals for the infection vector to consume and expand.

Then the Force disappeared as the remaining hounds came in proximity. The nightmare was cut short for Mercy, leaving nothing in her mind but the shape of Warform, everything else was quiet and it was almost eerie for the Sith Lord.

While the Dark Side being distant did not worry her, its sudden absence did make her create distance between them. It was always an uncomfortable thing when the externality of the world suddenly disappeared.

Yet her movements remained economical, surprisingly so for a frame as large as hers. When Carduul attacked, Mercy moved hardly more than necessary to deflect his blows. First to her side, she shifted away, elbowing right on time to move the direction of his weapon away from her. Earning herself another cut along her carapace, but responding by an armored slap towards the side of Carduul’s helmet. From anyone else that slap would have been an insult, but one slap from Mercy had sent Meliant flying right into a wall and then through it.

The one to her ankle, she moved, but not towards Carduul even though she wished to rip his head off.

Incoming, sestra. The thought didn’t leave her skull. The Force was gone and she hadn’t bothered establishing a neural link with Srina yet. Stupid. But she didn’t have time to be angry about it.

Suddenly her frame blurred again, revealing it was not the Force that made her move so fast.

Her hand moved to wrap around the throat of one of the hounds, whose fearsome teeth sank into her flesh, meeting fierce carapace. It hurt all the same, pain flaring through her sensory nerves and making her feel even more alive.

“Catch-” The only warning Srina would get before she tried to throw the mongrel towards her.

The bubble would shrink almost immediately as Mercy turned towards Carduul, standing between him and his target, right as he fired his shots. She took them in the chest and stumbled back against Srina, something cracking underneath the armor and pain surging even further in her body.

You could have avoided that. A voice scolded her right along her spine. But Mercy hadn’t wanted to.

“Tell me, Mando.” Mercy called out, breathing through the pain of cracked if not broken ribs. The fracture wasn’t the worst part of it. It was her own body snapping them back into place to begin the healing process.

“Why are you playing these games? Stalling us, hiding behind stratagems… I thought I was clashing against blooded warriors who had no time for tricks…”

.

ERASE THE PAST

 

[The Arkanian]

GODKILLER​

THE ARKANIAN
TAG: Carduul Akahl | Mercy | Srina Talon
GEAR:
Mandalorian Armor + Modular Wrist Attachments (Flamethrower, Whipcord, Dart Launcher, Wrist Rocket), Jetpack (with big missile), Stouker concussion rifle + 3 power cells, Holdout Disruptor Pistol (boot), Dissuader Pistol + 2 mags (hip), Crushgaunts, Hifold Sensory Package, Cortosis Dagger (chest), 'Nades, More 'Nades, Even More 'Nades (bandolier), Raw Cortosis Dust in a Lil' Baggie (belt), 2 vials of Trihexalon (belt), aerosol canister of Droid bio-assault spray (belt), Voidstone good luck rock on a necklace.

Unit: Haran's Hounds

Named NPC Companions:
Spike and Dozer (Sukkot Force Hounds)

The Echani Empress.

Yes. It was her. Srina Talon.

Which meant that this other one in the disgusting armor must be her lapdog. So these were the Sith he was fighting. Not just random warlords but the Sith Order itself, come out from beyond the Black Wall.

The Arkanian had no time to dwell on that.

One shot from his concussion rifle missed, the next struck something he did not understand.

The silver-black shade of her armor became darker, and a dense absence drew across her guard, rather than a brilliant flare of energy, and in a fraction of a second—

The shot struck.

Darkness rippled. The force of it drove through the shield, through armor that was designed for energy rather than blunt force trauma, and tried to shove her back into the crater.

Huh. That's a new one. Neat.

The weapons manufacturer appreciated the device, whatever it was, before things abruptly got worse.

alchemized ice formed from ambient moisture in the air. They tore outward in a widening cone, swallowing the space between them in white-blue crystal with the intent of obscuring both friend and foe.

Ice climbed and spread across everything it touched.

Well...Everything but the dogs.

"What?"

Shapes like ice crystals rolled outward, blanketing everything. He tried to jetpack up, rockets flaring. Too slow.

One of his feet got snagged by the fast-forming ice, fixing him to the ground like a needle through the butterfly.

"Oh hell."

He deactivated his jetpack and reached down quickly, grabbing ice sticking his leg to the ground and squeezing with his crushgaunts. The beskar whirred and ice shattered. The Arkanian stumbled backward, ice shards all around him, coating the floor and everything nearby.

Huh. Just like home.

Then there came a crack as an object struck him in the torso faster than thought. Faster than sound.

Srina fired the shatter weapon, and depleted-baradium AP rounds ripped toward the enemy at a high velocity. It might not be enough to rip wholly through beskar, but it was vicious enough that whatever lay beneath it would still feel the impact. Armor could refuse to break…

The depleted baradium round, capable of piercing many things, could have punched through him had he been wearing anything but beskar. Or had it been aimed at one of the gaps in his armor. Instead it felt like getting punched in the stomach by a Mantellian Savrip.

"Ffffuuuuu-"

The Arkanian doubled over. Something broken? Something definitely bruised. Deep and to the bone.

He fired wildly with his concussion rifle at Srina Talon, just trying to buy himself a second.

“Was there once a being behind the wretched husk I now face, that may have been the source of that humor?”

"Just, KILL THEM," Haran wheezed, struggling for breath.

In that moment, the armored one sought to grab one of the hounds. Dozer.

Suddenly her frame blurred again, revealing it was not the Force that made her move so fast.

Her hand moved to wrap around the throat of one of the hounds, whose fearsome teeth sank into her flesh, meeting fierce carapace. It hurt all the same, pain flaring through her sensory nerves and making her feel even more alive.

“Catch-” The only warning Srina would get before she tried to throw the mongrel towards her.

Ah.

Were it so simple.

But a Force User without the Force must rely only upon their innate abilities. And what innate abilities are those? Haran knew that to train all your life to become a true expert with a rifle and pistol meant thousands of hours of training. Constant practice. The Force worked much the same, he believed.

All that time.

All that training.

All that reliance on strength and power assisted by the Force.

And then suddenly, in an eyeblink, gone.

It would be like ripping all the musculature out of a power lifter and then expecting them to lift the same weight they could before in the same heartbeat.

Dozer though? Dozer was trained to kill Force Users. To hunt them down. To pin them to the ground. To rip off their arms and legs while they sought to draw futilely upon a power that was simply no longer there.

So Dozer, the multi-hundred pound Voxyn-Ysalamiri hybrid reptomonster terror, twisted out of the way as the bigger Sith attempted to grab her.

The two dogs continued to circle. After all, the Arkanian had not commanded them to actually attack either of the Sith. Yet.

Wheezing, the Arkanian activated his jetpack and roared passed the dueling Carduul and Behemoth, unclipping a grenade from his belt as he did and tossing it to his Alor, into the null field projected by the two reptomonsters. The Glop grenade could immobilize the oversized sithspawn so Carduul could finish it off with a proper chop.

"Glop. End 'em."

Then he was rocketing on and heading straight for the empress. He fired his concussion rifle one handed, another two-shot burst aimed to keep her on her toes, then he extended his offhand and a whipcord shot out. He aimed for her legs, trying to snag one and then take them both up into the wild blue yonder.

 

[Korar Murrak]

Friend: Braze

Korar was leaning slightly against kovita's side, his helmet hanging on one of her tusks. He sat there listening to the speech Romul Saxon gave, wasn't half bad. When the alor addressed him and braze korar gave a large smile and pushed some fur back from his face.

"Indeed it does alor, and shall I fall this day I'll fall like my father before me, fighting to the end and taking sith with me." korar said. His father was on fangol a few years ago, killed by a sith that he took out with him.

As Braze coughed from the drink korar let out a deep rumble of a laugh, taking the flask from him korar almost drank the entire thing before forgetting he should probably share, if the little guy can handle more. "It is, then again when is it not. Also good choice in drink."

 

[He-Who-Walks-Between]

Nothing…
Nowhere...
Nihil​

Far away. So far away.

Across the void. Across the rift. Across all comprehension, beyond sight and sound.

Still there dwelt emotion.

Fate.

Destiny, in all her hundred arms and thousand eyes.

Still... Ceria was skeptical. How would they bypass the external defenses? Where would they commit their boarding action? They knew nothing of the ship's internal layout, let alone the scope of its defenses. And any attempts to scan the Tyranny were a struggle in and of themselves. The advanced countermeasures, coupled with a massive DER projector, made sure of it.

So much anxious fretting.

So many bewildered guesses.

Ahhh, yes. And what was this? He Who Walks did walk ahead as the Aing-Tii walked, between what was and what is and what could be.

Amidst the Flow.

Amidst the change.

Inspecting the possibilities like curiosities.

But this. This was new.

He began to spin a web around the Tyranny, a lattice, that would capture interference. Almost immediately the Vice-Admiral would feel the tension ease in her mind.

Ȉ̸̠n̶̫̆̆t̶̠͓͌r̴̨͇̆͋i̵͍̠̽̀g̵̛̭͂ǘ̶̩i̷̟̪̾̚n̷͖͔͂͗g̸̭̽̕
​

Another spun a web, but lacked understanding.

It was not their minds that would suffer, but their bodies.

The enormous tear in the fabric of reality above Abregado Rae howled in the Force. A passageway.

A tomb.

A destiny.

Those Who Dwelt Within amassed.

Could they sense it yet? Did they comprehend the depths of their error?

The Way is Open.

Ä̷͚̻̝́n̴͍͚̐c̸̰͋̐̈e̷̢͆͠ş̴̱̙͘t̷͓̙͒͑́o̶̞̳̾͆͋ŗ̴̹̘̓͑͝s̴̰͉͊.̸̲̀


​

Tytos Saxon Gel Karn

 

[Kamon Hourn]

---

​

LOCATION: ABREGADO-RAE
TAG:
ALLIES: Siv Dragr | Vreegan Fett
OPPS: Arris Windrun | Quinn Varanin​

​

KAMON HOURN
THEME​

"Command, Fett. The drop site is the source of the plague. They're feeding live captives into the biomass to expand it. Mark this grid for orbital bombardment the moment ground forces pull back."

“Great...” Kamon mused to himself, half bemusedly and half genuinely. At least they knew where to shoot, and that was somewhere to start. He motioned for the squadmate he had previously dispatched to acquire cryo weapons to halt as Siv’s voice bled through again.

. "My ship," he ground out over comms. "Sending you the coordinates. Send a pilot; they'll be able to supply us."

Hourn glanced at his tactical display, and saw the blip of Siv’s ship appear brightly. He motioned for the Commando to get moving, along with another of the group. The pair rocketted away to intercept Siv’s craft. Meanwhile, Kamon set about coordinating their plan of attack. “Brash, Valen; I want both of you to assume overwatch duties at our current POS. Slugs and disruptor rounds are the rule of the day for now, until we get our hands on that Cryo ordnance.” He turned to the others - five in number, outside of the two who set off for Siv’s ship and the other two he just deployed on overwatch. “We’ll make the main assault, but we aren’t just going to throw ourselves against the plague.”

He paused, making eye contact with each of them in turn. “We get in position for when the signal is made, and stabilize the line. Siv is bashing his head against a wall out there and he needs help.”

In due course, the Commandos returned with Siv’s ship, and began distributing the cryo weapons around. Most were of basic quality, but Kamon entered Siv’s personal locker. He pulled out a specialized shotgun and a light repeating blaster both of which of exceeding quality. Kamon strapped on a bandoleer of cryo packs, and ushered the rest of the squad in. “Let’s get this karkin show on the road.”

---

THEME​

Siv’s ship surged through the cityscape, with the landing platform open. Kamon primed his newfound light repeating blaster, and began peppering the area around Siv’s location with high velocity cryo fire. Kamon’s voice echoed over the comm frequency: “Someone call for the cavalry?”

​

 

[Srina Talon]

OBJECTIVE: 2 [Spaceport]
LOCATION: [Abregado-rae: ...Fuck in the air again?]
SITH ALLIES: Mercy - Grace - Xan Atropus - Veyla Tass - Kaelyr - Leontis Antalis - Astra Sadow
SITH ENEMIES: Carduul Akahl | The Arkanian

We are the end of this planet… and the next one. And the next…

The spaceport was getting crowded.

Srina wasn't thinking of the sheer number of bodies looking for a way out, though, there were plenty of those. The zone had become a convergence point for every miserable thing Abregado-rae had to offer, from the red growth creeping closer to the strange fire burning above. The air tasted like scorched metal and somewhere beneath it lingered the wet, earthen scent that belonged to the Bloody Bonnet.

She disliked the distraction, but she disliked several things in the moment. Mercy being on the other side of a nullification field left something empty behind. A ragged pit where the giantess ought to be. She couldn't feel her maddening joy, reply to her taunts, or even know how the Warform was faring on her maiden voyage. She could see her battle-sister, but even her sight was a poor substitute for the effortless certainty she was accustomed to.

Srina did not like that at all.

The hounds had carved an obnoxious hole in the area, although it would not affect her entirely as intended because of the Counter-Field built into her armor. Once she knew where the barrenness began, she could treat it like any other piece of terrain rather than something unknowable. She had spent enough time around Ysalamiri to recognize a canine offshoot no matter how much it had been altered. It was…Inconvenient, but manageable. There were walls one couldn't walk through, fires one shouldn't stand in, and these ugly mutts were no different.

Freezing wind whipped ivory hair around while her rifle-toting opponent seemed lucky as his beskar held, and the shatter weapon missed anything soft. The man inside folded around the impact, and from the yelping curse that had him momentarily spinning out? Yeah, his breastplate held…But that energy, that sheer vector of intolerable force, had gone somewhere.

It had still delivered every miserable consequence she intended.

In the same motion, a searing heavy blaster bolt was sent from sidelong towards Srina Talon from the unoccupied wrist, aimed center-mass. It was a distraction, nothing more, as the woman engaged in a firefight with his second.

Her head tilted slightly while she followed his form, flying, with the aid of a jetpack…But hawkish eyes snapped toward the tin man Mercy was fighting, just in time to catch the turn of his vambrace in her peripheral vision. Her forearm lifted with considerably less urgency than the weapon probably deserved, and her Kavacha activated once more. The now compact shield bloomed, but the energy struck a sudden wall of bone.

Mercy had placed herself between them, as always, and Srina let a hand fall to touch the exoskeleton that made up the Warform. The alabastor woman seemed almost offended by the throwaway attack, but it would be hard to discern what was actually crawling beneath her skin. "Sestra...", she breathed, not annoyed, but...Not quite pleased. She didn't want another Humbarine.

She could not tolerate another Humbarine.

The shield disappeared as quickly as it formed, though she didn't retaliate. Not because she lacked the inclination but because the Mandalorian had something considerably larger and angrier occupying his immediate future. The other one, the man with the rifle, who coincidentally made a blaster shot feel like a pea shooter—Hadn't been forgotten.

How could she when he was rounding on her again, holding high ground, with that accursed weapon?

She dodged the first few lazy shots, likely as intended, but rather than back away from the nullification field, she stashed the Vora and tried to lead the enemy away from Mercy . She was just too large a target, and she didn't want her battle-sister getting pinched. The Echani had half expected to see a flying mass of fur and teeth shelled in her direction—But there was no flying puppy. She adapted, and her priorities shifted. The course she now took wasn't a straight one while she cut through slabs of ferrocrete, making sharp changes in direction.

It forced any attempt to track her to continually reacquire.

If the Mandalorian fired…She would make him choose his shots carefully.

She held her right arm out toward one of the hounds and her thumb brushed against the ND-012 "Ri Qorit" Disabler control. The tool had been designed by her husband to deal with Ysalamiri, and these beasts were plainly something else, but the emptiness they produced was too familiar. It felt the same, and there was only one useful way to discover whether the similarity went any deeper. Try. It emitted one pulse at close range…

But she didn't stop moving. One moment she was running…and the next? She disappeared beneath the great beast. Her knees folded and silver-black nanite scales hit the pavement while momentum carried her into a low slide. The creature's considerable body passed overhead, but the maneuver brought her beneath the one place they were most vulnerable. Where claws, teeth, mane, armor, and those obscene jaws offered less of a threat.

It was powerful, that was true, but she was small, unbearably fast—And not the Sith Lord it was focused on. Her hands crossed at the wrists once more and two pressure switches depressed.

Snap-hiss.
​

Artemis and Diana ignited together. Twin lengths of light appeared beneath her forearms, and Srina opened her arms as she passed beneath the canine, driving both blades into the softer underbelly, before dragging them apart with the forward motion of her slide.

Nothing in her stopped, nor did she turn to look at the result. Whatever happened, happened. The moment she cleared the creature, she rolled to one side, pushed up, and kept going—

He fired his concussion rifle one handed, another two-shot burst aimed to keep her on her toes, then he extended his offhand and a whipcord shot out. He aimed for her legs, trying to snag one and then take them both up into the wild blue yonder.

Until a whipcord snapped toward her from the sky. It caught her in the lower leg and tightened against her armor while the scales started to scream in protest. It was a foreign object, it did not belong. A foreign material, it did not belong. The sudden pull stole her footing, but Srina folded with it rather than fighting. Her body bent in ways it should not, and one hand struck the ground while she turned through the fall. She was dragged several feet before her other hand closed around the cable just as she was pulled into the air.

Yellow-gold eyes followed the fibercord whip back to the Arkanian.

Oh.

He had tethered himself to her.

Artemis could have severed the line…But there was no sense in fighting the pull when her opponent was kindly offering to do the work for her. For the second time that day, someone had decided that Srina Talon belonged in the air without consulting her.

Wonderful.

One hand remained curled around the fibercord, thankfully armored, so it wouldn't turn the flesh of her palm to raw hamburger. She didn't try to hold him back, and instead held on to keep her body from tumbling uselessly at the end of it. She drew herself close and let natural inertia pull the line tight, causing her to swing beneath him. It was violent enough that anyone else might have lost their lunch from the nausea, but the wintry woman just waited for the inevitable arc.

Then…She used it.

Her body swung forward beneath him, then behind, and physics carried her up along the curve of the tether while twin sabers waited at her wrists. He had seemingly wanted to…Drag her? Maybe dangle her for a feast for his beasts? Bash her into walls? Drop her?

All good options, really.

But…She was Echani, at heart. She liked to be close…

And he'd just brought a Sith with two lightsabers into striking distance of his jetpack.

Spoiler: Equpiment

Armour Saber Ring Ring Terentatek Body Gloves HG-54 "The Vora" Class Hand Cannon Holding Aces Popper Echo Implant NPC Units (On Standby) Drake "Vaelcryx" (On Standby)

Spoiler: TLDR

Lots of words...But didn't really do much. Deflected the shot from Cardi B, attacked a puppers, and got snapped up for a sky trip.

 

[Zandra Ruus]

Location: Street level, Abregado-Rae
Tag: SL-0182
Tag: Yuri Maji
Gear: Beskar'gam (gadgets in Bio), Beskads and combat knife, Deflector Shield, Razorline Projector, Amulet of Solitude, Rugrut Sniper Rifle
NZ-BG.400 Blaster Pistol, 3 Anti-Personel Mines

,

It didn't take long for everything to go to hell, it never really did in combat. There was a sound, one that was almost imperceptible over the sounds of distant slugthrower fire. Zandra didn't know what the sound was, only that it brought chaos with it. The serum had made the fungal creatures affected even larger and more aggressive! Something was going on, and she was about to find out

"That can't be a good noise..." She turned her head to see some positively massive examples of the fungal creatures trundling towards her squad. They would soon be surrounded and consumed if they didn't move out soon! "Squad! Break engagement and head into the office complex!"

Her squadmates heeded her commands, expertly moving towards the nearby office building. It would be their stage now, and soon it would be covered in red, one way or the other. The rampancy of the fungal creatures was an unknown variable, one that had to be accounted for. However, the objective remained: clear a path for the armor.

To that end, Zandra began setting up mines around the entrance of the office complex. They were powerful enough to tear through heavy personal armor. It would slow down the parasites, but it wouldn't stop them. She left herself three mines just in case, it would be a last resort.

They drew closer, lumbering and making noises Zandra dared not think about The creaking, squelching masses would be there soon. They had to find the sources of the rampancy, they had to flush out the Sith elements hiding among the fungus. Fire would be nice, but burning the whole city would probably cook B squad up too wherever they were. They needed something strong, but controllable.

Zandra pressed her fingers to her buy'ce, trying to send a signal out to the Fleet assets. "Zandra Ruus calling for immediate air support, grid reference 28K I need rocket strikes along the street, the heavier the better! Will mark friendlies with IR strobes, watch for the 7-story building. Anything else that moves is clean shooting!"

The battlenet was full of other such calls, some of lower priority, others higher. All of them were from the battle for Abregado-Rae's streets. She would need to hold in place until the eventual rocket barrage. She was thinking of how that might happen, until a series of explosions sent glass flying.

The enemy was here, the lobby of the building was going to be full soon...

 

[Tytos Saxon]

S T O R M B O R N
Lialic System​

Allies: He-Who-Walks-Between | Gel Karn

Fate began to grow. Concentrate. Lines across Tytos's forehead contracted, deepened as he strained himself against the void. The tug of the ancestors, the cosmic ley lines spun as a web -- could they see it? Could he see it?

The shaman exhaled, slow, controlled. The instinct in his body to fight washed away and became like the tide, ebb and flow, no longer fighting the cosmic cords but moving along with them. Then he opened his eyes, and they glowed green. The talisman on his chest burned bright.

Ĭ ꕷꗛꗛ.

Morphing.

İ s̨̺̬͍͚̎͋̅ͣ͛ͨe̵̯̖͚͔̐̽̄ͣ͢ę̸̜̹͊ͮͨ.


The Manda! The Ancestors!

w̨͍̰ͥ̊̊̇ȇ̵̘̥̼͖̞̽̿̈́ s͆̈è̢͍̑͋ͬ̚e


Y̸̴̯̤ͧ̽̿ͣ̈O̷̡̙ͯ̏͒̍͒͢͝U͇ͬ͌̅͘.
​

Meanwhile, A'Mia was distantly aware of fearsome Revna following lines of the web to find unwelcome interlopers. Without words, she swayed where she stood and sent forth her righteous support of the culling ahead. To mow down a field of simple folk, separating proverbial wheat from chaff was one thing. It needed doing and the plague labored on. The Mandalorians though? They required specialized violence.

The center of the horde.

Few refugees, little panic, guard yourself, sons and daughters. A plot is afoot and we do not know the parameters of it.

Suspicion. Realization? Too little. Too late?

“Vess?” she called, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

Fear.

The Way is Open.

Ä̷͚̻̝́n̴͍͚̐c̸̰͋̐̈e̷̢͆͠ş̴̱̙͘t̷͓̙͒͑́o̶̞̳̾͆͋ŗ̴̹̘̓͑͝s̴̰͉͊.̸̲̀​

THE HOSTS.

"GAHH!" Tytos roared as images, emotions, and senses all flooded his system faster and faster, overloading his senses. His neck crooked backwards, his head and eyes shooting upwards as green energy spilled over from them. Then blackness. Tytos's eyes were shut.

He tentatively opened them again. The ship. Dull humming in the background, the smith still busy with his work, though looking quite startled by Tytos's outburst. The talisman hanging from his neck had cooled, becoming dormant once more. "Apologies," Tytos coughed, breathing slowly. His senses were slowly returning to their baseline, but he could feel that there were pathways open now that previously had been shut. "Smith, it is time." The shaman rose with a sweep of his cloak and a gate opened before them, a rift through the nether and force that opened into...

The bridge of He-Who-Walks-Between .

Tytos left the gate open behind him. The smith had to follow, the poor lad. Tytos had chosen him for their original mission, not knowing what fate the Manda lied in store. But who was he to question the ancestors? "Bring your tools," he said to the Smith before turning to He who waited on the bridge. "They will be needed."

"Vod." The same voice He would have heard before, spoken now, not thought. "The time has come. The ancestors watch us."

 

[Ceria Kesyk]

MERCY'S TYRANT SQUADRON
IN ORBIT // ABREGADO-RAE
Cruelty | Yuri Maji | Iris Beroya | He-Who-Walks-Between | Tytos Saxon | Gel Karn​

Spoiler: Fleet Composition

Lead ship: Tyranny

Main body:

• Tenacious-class Heavy Star Destroyers​
• Grand Victory-class Star Destroyers​
• Silencer-class Siege Destroyers​
• Ardent-class Fast Frigates​
• Tu'kata-class Sith Raiders​
• Thrantin-class Corvettes​
• Various smaller support ships​

The Field of Blades.

Infernal afterlife of the Sith and Dark Side spirits. Ceria remembered what Mercy had told her. How her Lord Empress had fought a great duel there.

Whether she fell today or decades from now, she knew she had already claimed her place. The Field of Blades would welcome her, not as kin, but as sovereign.

The Vice Admiral rose from her chair, stumbling. At first, her feet dragged her - possessed against her will - towards the viewport. Towards the great, burning rift and clockwork that lay beyond. For her Master, her Lord Empress was a sovereign of not one, but two domains. That one day… when fate saw it fit to deliver Mercy from this existence unto the next… that Kesyk, too, was promised a place by her master’s side.

Ceria wasn’t a Sith. She couldn’t command the Force as they do - no matter how she curled up at night, weeping to be blessed as they were, if only to please her Master more. Yet, she could still feel its call; she felt the Field of Blades move through her. An impulse of hate and violent glee surged through her veins.

He began to spin a web around the Tyranny, a lattice, that would capture interference. Almost immediately the Vice-Admiral would feel the tension ease in her mind.

Her possession only ended once Cruelty wove his protective web. She snapped out of it almost instantly and looked back at him with confusion. As if he had denied her destiny. Some blood trickled from her nose. She wiped it.

With hands clasped behind her back, the Vice Admiral marched past him, towards the lift.

“With me, if it pleases you, My Lord.”

She descended into the bowels of their great leviathan, reaching the command deck proper at the end. It was a fortified center, deep below the armor and hull. Viewscreens lined the walls, mimicking glass, though the artificiality of their image was difficult to ignore. A stern captain stood at the center, and trusted lieutenants all managed their substations.

A pair of Sith acolytes meditated near where they exited, centering the minds of the crew and officers within the room. Though many of them still looked utterly tense, and Kesyk herself was feeling no better. Still, she maintained a calm exterior, despite the mess inside.

“Status report,” she commanded.

One officer turned to her. “Nearly half their force is forming around a trio of star destroyers. Some cruisers, many frigates. I--”

“Brace!”

Solar ionization cannons unleashed volleys against the Tyranny, punching holes all along the deflector shields, which did little to dissipate the attack. The molecular shields, however, held firm, capturing that energy and cycling it into the power banks.

“Return fire.”

The Tyranny’s main batteries recalibrated - aimed at the enemy fleet.

“They’re giving us a lot to work with… Scrambling EW teams and deploying countermeasures.”

Although the Tyranny was well-equipped to handle enemy jamming, such instruments weren’t miraculous, even on a dreadnought. Occasionally, the gunners had difficulty locking onto their targets. Streaks from the turbolaser and ion cannon were completely missing. But adjustments were being made, and as the barrages continued, their accuracy climbed.

“Where’s our God’s Eye?”

“Fifty-five percent operational. Broad and narrow spectrum sensors are live. Establishing the battlespace now!”

The holographic projectors reoriented, providing information on the fleets. Kesyk noticed something immediately. A concentration of their efforts was spent not on breaking down the landing corridors, but on providing orbital bombardment and air support.

“I see…” She murmured.

“Hold fast - stay the course. Let’s give their fleet something to work with, but our first priority is to deny them low orbit. That’s for us, isn’t it, captain?”

"Yes ma'am." The officer grinned psychotically and turned to the bridge crew, barking his orders.

A pair of heavy destroyers, escorted by fast frigates, changed course and made headlong for the Mandalorian fleet that was hounding them. Tyrant’s retaliation was certainly outnumbered and out-gunned, but more than enough - by Kesyk’s calculation - to act as a sand trap.

Meanwhile, along the Tyranny’s belly, two Silencer-class Siege Destroyers hugged the dreadnought like calves to their mother. They would be most difficult to detect against the Tyranny’s sensor-scrambling shadow, and their advanced sensors and targeting systems had little trouble finding their marks… Their main guns were designed to tear through shields and armor alike, with fortress-shattering firepower. The Silencers opened fire - intent on knocking out Kestran ships providing orbital support.

Spoiler: Fleet Actions

• The enemy's solar batteries are effortlessly punching through the Tyranny's deflectors, leaving holes in some areas. The molecular shields, however, are holding firm for now, soaking up most of that damage.
• The Tyranny's EW countermeasures are in a knife fight with the enemy's EW attacks. Initial accuracy from the Tyranny's main guns has been hampered, but is recovering.
• The God's Eye is partially operational. Sensors have established a map of the battlespace and are beginning to collect essential intel. Particularly stealth vessels may remain hidden for now.
• Two heavy destroyers and some fast frigates are charging Yuri's formation. Their goal is to keep the Mandalorians occupied while the Tyranny makes for low orbit.
• A pair of siege destroyers are unleashing their capital-killer guns against the Mandalorian capital ships currently providing orbital support.

 

[Cruelty]

MERCY'S TYRANT SQUADRON
IN ORBIT // ABREGADO-RAE

Kjartan Hammer-Hand | Yuri Maji | He-Who-Walks-Between | Romul Saxon | Tytos Saxon | Iris Beroya

Ceria Kesyk

True eyes were open.

The mind was a mercurial thing. Under duress, under pressure and above all else, under harm, it could split itself into many pieces to compartmentalize the experience that was being suffered. His siblings had been good at this. As they suffered existence, they split their minds into ever smaller pieces. Let one side feel the pain, so the other did not have to. Once it became too much, split again, then again. Until the creator grew bored and discarded you.

This was the way.

So even as true eyes explored the pathway that Lily Rhodes had forged, Cruelty was here in the moment as well, looping the lattice around the Tyranny to shield Kesyk and her crew from the worst harms of the Netherworld. They would suffer, yes, but they would not lose their minds after coming in such close proximity.

It was during his craft that Cruelty finally became aware of the other.

The presence was arrogant, brazen, but the Lord of the Sith did not disregard him. For even an arrogant fool could do much harm, to themselves, but also to those around them.

For now Cruelty... watched, baffled, because it had been his assumption that arrogance was the domain of the Sith alone. But it seemed the Mandalorians had been infected by that same plague his Creator was so well-versed in. As if a foreign disease had attached itself to them, turning them into that which they professed to fight.

“With me, if it pleases you, My Lord.”

"You have your path, Vice-Admiral, I have mine. If you require me... just think my name and I will come with alacrity."

The interruption passed and he went back to his observations.

He saw more hints of that, the deeper he immersed himself into the network that Lily had forged on the planet. Riding the waves of her connections meant that Cruelty did not need to guess, he could come in close on the action, and witness the depravity and bravery in equal measures.

It left him with more questions than answers... but it also showed him a path to assist his Creator... even if she'd hate his machinations, if she ever found out about them.

Romul had evacuated a vast majority of Gado natives to transports that now awaited his signal in the bowels of the port; many chose to flee, but many more had chosen to fight for their home. Romul would not begrudge them that right. Arming them the best he could, they dwarfed the Saxon commandos and other assembled Mandalorian forces.

The blooded warriors had allied with the natives. They armed them. They relied on them for their bulk and mass.

While each planet devastated was a heartfelt loss, it too, was something that would ultimately have to be seen as a price paid for the greater crusade. A stance taken often in the past, and one he has found himself having to re-adopt more, of late. Frustratingly, that made him more befitting of a tactician’s position and purpose.

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 people of Abregado-Rae were not Mandalorians - Their safety and ability to live after the conflict was concluded was not even a consideration to Sindel, or the Iron Covenant for that matter, something that Sindel appreciated since his conscription; He would be given freedom to conduct his experiments and treat those outside of the Mandalorians and the Iron Covenants as his lab rats. They would simply move on to the next port of call.

In short, the Mandalorians in that sector began destroying civilians, infected, or not. The Sith had unleashed something too dangerous for the Mandalorians to even chance infection. His word was absolute and final. Clan Munin and the rest of the Mandalorian ground troops would be put to task.

Kill.

Them.

All.

The blooded warriors treated the natives with such disregard. Desiring to experiment on them, executing those they deemed suspect, killing them all.

Cruelty's false eyes opened and watched the retreating form of the Vice-Admiral for a moment, then towards the Graspborn cultists nearby.

"I need three." Voice quiet, defeated, knowing what he must do and loathing that this was the path that had to be taken. "Choose among yourselves, Children of Her. Then kneel." Cruelty did not elaborate to the Vice-Admiral or anyone else on the bridge. But soon enough three of the Graspborn pulled away from the procession and knelt before the Throne.

The misshapen, disgusting copy of a fake legacy looked down on the piety on display.

"I am sorry for this." Cruelty promised with true heaviness in his voice... and then his hand swiped, cutting three throats at once, the blood splattering across his face. His eyes closed again and before three wayward souls could disappear into the Netherworld, he seized them with his mind instead. Unlike in life, they did not submit easily here, because souls were amalgamations of many lives lived. Some pieces of them were loyal, others... less so.

Cruelty did not begrudge them this fight, even as he broke them, because he understood compartmentalization better than most.

Then using the power of death, the connection that Lily and A'Mia had built all on their own, Cruelty allowed a piece of his mind to dissolve and spread through the surface of Abregado-rae.

His presence, buoyed by Graspborn sacrifice and the work of the Roadmakers, began to infect that which Romul Saxon and others had sought to jealously hide so long.

Cruelty did not bother with the Mandalorian minds. They were calcified, infected by rage to the extent that they had begun to mirror the cruelty of the Creator without sparing a second thought to it. Instead he burrowed down into the minds of the natives hidden under the ground.

A civilian did not become a soldier just by being armed and given armor. And a population was not a unified beast that would all move in the same direction, simply because you wished it to be so. He fed the doubt that already existed, the fear for those that had not been able to evacuate, the rage that they felt even as their knuckles clenched white.

And then... Cruelty became his namesake with a heaviness to his heart.

The Lord of the Sith showed them images, confirming their worst fears, of Mandalorian armor and Mandalorian arms... killing them all. Their brothers and sisters. Their family on the surface. He fed them the worst instincts the Iron Covenant felt in these moments and set their passions aflame.

What was worse than a civilian population armed to the teeth and afraid?

One that was buried deep under ground, in metal boxes. And a large portion of them realizing that the very people they had thrown their lot in with... was currently killing their family, because they didn't care about them at all.

Romul wished to unleash them on the Sith... but the Sith had found them first... and were making sure there would never be unity between those disparate people again.

 

[Calyx Sundrift]

Objective III: Destroy the Factories
Tag: Anet Raine | Feydrik Munin
Equipment: Lightsaber, Specter Vibroknife, Desevro Acolyte armor, Amulet of Many, Gravetail vibroblade, Glitter bombs

He felt an urge to move away the closer she got. Unlike their previous moments together, Anet held the Force now. She was so firmly nestled in the dark side that the sight of her filled him with awe and dread.

It made his skin crawl.

When he was finished, he could see the bottom half of her mouth curve into a grin. "We're Sith, Calyx. We may not be warriors in the traditional sense, but..." She reached out and took his hand in hers, and leaned in to whisper. "We're killers. We're good at killing... Stop for a moment, listen to the world around us. Abregado-rae is screaming." She stepped back, but still held his hand.

Her grin was unsettling, as if she were savoring some dark secret. Enjoying something that, to him, wasn't funny. He gave her hand a slight squeeze as it found his, and managed a thin, tight smile. He'd liked having her near him before. But now, the sound of her breathing already felt too close, a constant reminder of her unsettling presence.

Then, something brushed against his consciousness. It was fleeting, passing over him as the Amulet of Many shielded him from detection and linkage through the Force. A drawback to the Sith's mental collective, and a potential liability in their grander plan. But it was as much a blessing, for his shielded mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, trying to figure out how to please Anet and avoid conflict.

But the decision was torn from him. Anet already had them moving before he could raise another protest.

Each footstep was another drumbeat of urgency, echoing through the empty stairwell as they raced to the top. "Then what's your plan, killer?!" he managed between ragged breaths. "We can't accomplish more than we already have! Or hell, do you mean to-" They crashed through the door, out into the open.

Calyx slowed.

"Kill the world..."

Black smoke poured out of ventilation shafts. Containment walls groaned against the pressure. A jarring rattle from the reactors beneath shook the walkways. Sunlight dimmed under the black smoke. And red snow rained from tendrils of sickly, glowing-green clouds that spread like blotted veins through the sky.

He held out a hand and found that it wasn't snow. Aghast, he stared at the clumps of flesh that nestled in his gauntleted palm.

His chest tightened. Dread rose in his throat like bile, choking him as his heart raced out of control. His mind spun, a thousand thoughts colliding at once, none of them clear enough to grasp.

The implication drowned out everything else. The turbolaser fire. The Mandalorian squadrons that shot by under volleys of Sith troopers. The screech of TIE Hunters soaring overhead. The red miasma that kept. On. Falling.

He stood there, paralyzed, watching the bloody clumps clot together in his palm.

They're killing the planet.

And- and I'm involved.

He grasped the railing to stay upright, unable to think straight as his mind spiraled.

All those people...

Walon, three years from retirement. Stern-faced Roda. Karr, gleaming with pride over his baby daughter. All of them swollen, mangled corpses in his mind's eye. Deformed by these growing, festering red lumps that oozed pus and blood.

He whispered softly, a sound lost in the violence. "Do you see this, Acier Moonbound ?" It was his one anchor to sanity. That he wasn't alone. Never alone. "Could I have stopped it?" His fist closed. The clump crushed until sickly slime dripped from his fingers. "Could we have?"

Their Dyad, the strongest connection attainable in the Force, couldn't be without purpose. Was this it? Were they meant to stop whoever was responsible for death on this scale?

The Force shuddered as he desperately demanded answers. Yet it wasn't the Dyad's bond that answered him, but the telepathic web of the Sith that couldn't fully grasp him. He kept slipping through, reducing their communications to whispers on the wind.

And one above all, stood out. A voice, distant but unmistakable. Proud, commanding, and terrible, even reduced to something as small as a single thought.

Her voice spoke in the distance between them… but it echoed throughout the telepathic connection that Lily Rhodes had formed between all of those that wore the boon of the Hordemother.

We are the end of this planet… and the next one. And the next… It promised them all, forcing them to come to terms with this nightmare that Mercy was painting with every dead Graspborn and Mandalorian body hitting the ground. Their bodies cut open, their wounds exposed, perfect meals for the infection vector to consume and expand.

The horror settled in his stomach. There was a source to this evil. Somewhere in the carnage lay a single, terrible point on which the whole future of the Sith seemed to turn.

Is that it, Acier?

The monster we're meant to stop?

"Time to go!" She dragged him along, breaking into a sprint down one of the catwalks. It was exhilarating, really, to be so close to death.

Grief, anger, and disbelief still raged through him. Anet's voice barely reached him. Her tug moved him, moved legs that felt heavy as lead.

His mind didn't clear. The impending doom was still strong in the Force. Whenever he touched it, he found it weeping in a million voices he couldn't ignore, while the dark side brimmed at his misery.

Dazed, he let himself be led by Anet to a dead end, unable to summon the focus to question her.

And then-

From Calyx's perspective, it appeared that she was leading them right into a steel wall - and she was. Instead of impacting it, they'd phase through together and fall to the alley below. Anet caught herself in a roll, stopping only when she slammed against a nearby building with a grunt. Bruised her shoulder. She laughed.

-they were through.

Air rushed past him. The ground rushed up to meet them.

Instinct kicked in, drawing on the well of guilt and resentment to lord over the dark side like he never had before. The Force didn't even whimper as his descent slowed. Just enough to land soundly, but not without a stab of pain.

Anet was laughing. But he hadn't uttered a word.

Once more, she moved him, pulling him aside as the Kestran Mandalorian forces thundered by. From their hiding place, he glimpsed them raise their rifles, mowing down the very people who, crying, pleaded with them for help.

Their cries faded with each trigger pulled.

They trusted you. Heralded you as their protectors.

Anger boiled beside his grief. The dark side greedily burned it all, offering cold detachment and raw power.

Trust.

He'd trusted someone in this cesspool of terror and death.

Calyx turned to her. Loomed over her. "Did you know?" His voice was a low hiss. "Did you?"

 

[Pax Velloran]

Western Freight Annex | Abregado-rae Spaceport

Berth Cresh-Seven | Open to Tags

The boarding ramp reached the floor with a hollow metallic thud. Pax waited a moment before stepping onto it. Nothing shot at him.

That seemed promising.

The landing bay smelled of burned wiring, fuel and something harsher that the Larkspur's filters had apparently been doing him the courtesy of keeping outside. Beneath it lingered another smell that took him a moment to place. Damp earth. Wet vegetation, perhaps. Neither belonged inside a freight terminal.

Smoke hung near the ceiling where a damaged ventilation unit struggled to pull it away, its fans producing an uneven mechanical rattle every few seconds. Emergency lights had replaced most of the overhead illumination, leaving the freight annex in alternating stretches of pale white and dull red. Near one wall, a reddish residue had gathered beneath an intake vent in irregular patches that looked distinctly out of place against the duracrete. Pax gave it a second glance as he passed.

Somewhere beyond the bay, an automated announcement repeated instructions directing passengers toward a terminal that Pax was reasonably certain no longer existed. He stepped down onto the duracrete and glanced back at the shuttle.

The Larkspur looked appropriately unimpressive beneath the emergency lighting. That was reassuring. Pax keyed the ramp controls from his comlink and left it closed behind him, though not locked. If circumstances required him to return quickly, he had no intention of losing several seconds arguing with his own security system.

His datapad placed Berth Cresh-Seven a little less than three hundred meters deeper into the freight annex. Close enough. Pax adjusted his coat and started walking. The blaster remained beneath it, easy to reach without advertising its presence. The lightsaber was farther back along his belt, concealed beneath the same dark fabric and, if everything went according to plan, destined to remain there. Anyone seeing him from a distance would find little more threatening than a civilian carrying a datapad through a place where civilians increasingly had no business being.

That was more or less the idea.

The first corridor beyond the landing bay had been designed for cargo crews rather than passengers. Broad doors opened onto loading platforms on either side, many of them abandoned in various stages of work. One held a line of sealed containers still locked onto a repulsor pallet. Another had been emptied so quickly that several crates remained in the middle of the floor where someone had apparently decided they were no longer worth taking.

A small cargo tug rolled slowly past the intersection ahead.

Pax stopped.

The machine reached a collapsed section of corridor, waited several seconds for an obstruction that was unlikely to move on its own, then reversed with a polite warning tone. It traveled perhaps twenty meters in the opposite direction before stopping, recalculating, and returning toward the same blockage.

Pax watched it try again.

"Good luck," he said and continued past it.

The deeper he moved into the annex, the more apparent it became that the port had not simply stopped functioning. Parts of it were still working perfectly well. Doors opened. Routing signs updated. Cargo systems continued requesting instructions from employees who were no longer present. Other systems had begun changing. A terminal at the next junction flashed an access restriction Pax hadn't seen from orbit. Civilian routing information had been replaced by a temporary traffic-authority notice, and several adjacent corridors were now marked for restricted movement. Whoever was taking control of the spaceport had not reached every corner yet, but they were getting closer.

Pax checked his route. Cresh-Seven remained accessible. For now. He had almost crossed the junction when the doors opposite him opened and delivered considerably more people than the freight annex had been designed to accommodate.

Civilians spilled through in a hurried column beneath the direction of two armed personnel wearing sealed helmets. Most carried whatever they had managed to bring with them. Bags. Cases. One man had a blanket tied around a bundle against his chest, while a woman behind him pushed an elderly Gado forward on a repulsor pallet meant for cargo. Nobody appeared interested in the distinction anymore.

Pax stepped aside and let them pass. Several were coughing.

That alone would not have meant much in a building full of smoke, except that one of the armed escorts kept waving them away from another corridor sealed behind temporary barriers. Warning strips had been fixed across the entrance, and someone had sprayed a broad line of white marking compound across the floor several meters in front of it. Beyond that line, the duracrete was stained dark red.

Pax looked at it for a moment.

The nearby wall had been scorched nearly black around what appeared to have been a small fire. Whatever had burned there was gone, but the red growth wasn't. Thin, irregular clusters had worked their way through cracks in the damaged surface, thickest where the wall had taken the most heat.

One of the escorts noticed him looking.

"Keep moving."

Pax met the visor for half a second.

"Gladly."

He continued toward Cresh-Seven. The wet, earthen smell followed him for another corridor before the ventilation system managed to exchange it for smoke and overheated circuitry. Pax wasn't certain that qualified as an improvement. A distant impact sent a faint tremor through the floor. Dust shook loose from a ceiling seam farther ahead, followed several seconds later by the muted sound of weapons fire somewhere outside the structure.

Nobody appeared particularly interested in his corridor. Pax preferred to keep it that way. Berth Cresh-Seven looked almost disappointingly ordinary when he finally reached it. The loading bay was wider than the one holding the Larkspur, built to service medium commercial transports rather than passenger shuttles. Yellow guide markings crossed the duracrete beneath an empty docking position. Cargo restraints had been retracted into the floor, while a pair of loading arms sat folded against the far wall. One inspection gantry remained extended where it had last been used, suspended over empty space.

There were no scorch marks. No overturned equipment. No red growth creeping from the ventilation system. No obvious sign that anything unusual had happened there at all. After the corridors outside, the absence was almost conspicuous.

Pax looked around for several seconds before approaching the customs terminal beside the bay.

"Here we are."

The terminal accepted his first request and displayed exactly what he already had.

Far Wanderer.

Varlo Industrial Transit. Six crew. No passengers. Four containers of industrial control assemblies added to the final manifest before departure. Pax scrolled past it. The public record had already told him everything it was going to.

The local berth system was less cooperative, but still alive. He worked backward through its menus until he reached the automated loading records. Commercial ports weighed almost everything whether anyone cared about the number or not. Freight charges, fuel calculations and structural limits all depended upon knowing what a ship actually carried, and computers tended to remember those measurements long after people had decided they were unimportant.

The Far Wanderer had arrived at Cresh-Seven with a recorded mass consistent with its previous route history. Pax opened the departure measurement, then the manifest, then the departure measurement again. He frowned. The declared cargo accounted for most of the difference.

Not all of it.

Pax brought up the individual loading events and worked through them one at a time. Replacement machinery. Electrum-processing components. The four late industrial-control containers. Fuel and consumables. Everything had an entry, and everything added together reasonably well until the final departure mass appeared at the bottom of the record.

There were still just over four tonnes unaccounted for. Four point three, according to the loading cradle. Pax leaned one hand against the terminal and worked through the figures again. Measurement error was possible. So was undeclared equipment, inaccurate cargo weights, fuel entered under the wrong heading or any of a dozen mundane mistakes made every day at freight terminals across the galaxy. The problem was that nothing else associated with the Far Wanderer had been particularly careless.

He transferred the loading record to his datapad. The mass discrepancy went into the file without an explanation attached to it. Pax moved on.

The berth's security system had retained considerably less. Most camera footage was inaccessible from the terminal, either because it had been moved elsewhere or because the local network had begun failing before the recording cycle finished. Access events had survived, however, including the automated count taken whenever someone crossed the boarding gantry.

Pax opened the final hour before departure. Crew boarded and departed several times while loading continued. Dockworkers came and went. A customs technician accessed the ship shortly before the scheduled inspection and left again three minutes later. Then the boarding sequence settled. Pax compared the final entries to the manifest.

Six registered crew.

The access counter showed eleven individuals aboard when the Far Wanderer cleared the berth. Pax checked the final entries again. Dockworkers and customs personnel were logged separately as temporary access, and each had registered an exit before departure. The eleven remaining aboard were departure boardings.

The manifest listed six crew. Five people were missing from the paperwork. Pax transferred the record to his datapad. The four point three tonnes had given him something wrong with the ship. This was different. Cargo could be misweighed, mislabeled or quietly added to a manifest. Five people required considerably more effort to overlook, especially on a ship whose inspection had been waived shortly before it departed.

Pax brought up the boarding entries again. Counts were useful. Names would be better. He selected the passenger-processing reference attached to the boarding log. The terminal paused. A spinning status icon remained on the screen for several seconds before disappearing behind a simple access notice.

LOCAL ARCHIVE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED

Pax tried the security record instead. Same result.

He opened the system information and traced where the request was being sent. The berth terminal held counts, measurements and temporary access events, but biometric processing and customs authorization records had been retained by the annex's internal archive. The directory gave him a location. Two levels below.

Pax looked toward the corridor behind him, then back at the screen. That explained why he hadn't been able to reach it from orbit. It also meant he had come this far to discover that the information he actually wanted was somewhere else.

"Naturally."

He disconnected the datapad from the terminal and slipped it beneath his coat. Somewhere outside the bay, metal struck metal with a sharp crash. Pax turned toward the sound, listening as it echoed down the adjoining corridor before fading into the larger noise of the spaceport. Voices followed this time, distant and indistinct, then the sharp mechanical bark of something firing several corridors away. Nothing came through the door, not immediately, anyway.

Pax glanced at the empty berth. Whatever the Far Wanderer had carried out of Abregado-rae, the berth had given him everything it was going to.

The archive was two levels below.

Pax headed for the stairs.

// END RECORD

 

[Leontis Antalis]

LEONTIS ANTALIS
Outfit/Armor

The first thing Leontis heard as the assault vehicle eased into Astra Sadow's operational perimeter was that Violet One had found trouble. Not resistance. Trouble. "Say again."

The tactical officer repeated the report without looking up from the console. "Violet One reached the control-tower access level. They were engaged from concealed positions before they could breach the inner corridor. Two casualties. They are pinned but still combat-capable."

Leontis' expression tightened. That was precisely the sort of thing he had hoped to avoid. Not because he had expected the tower to be empty, but because the entire point of sending Violet One ahead had been to avoid getting bogged down in a firefight. Apparently the Mandalorians had opinions on the matter. "Put them through."

Static hissed briefly before the squad leader's voice came over the command channel. "Violet One."

"I have your situation."

A pause. "We lost two on the approach. Enemy is dug in around the tower access. At least two firing positions, possibly more. They're using the civilians and architecture to obscure angles."

Leontis glanced at the tactical display. Of course they were. "Do you require reinforcement?"

The answer came quickly. "Negative." That earned the faintest lift of one brow. "We can handle it. We just need time."

Leontis considered the response for several seconds. There was a temptation to send another squad. A commander was supposed to reinforce success and prevent unnecessary losses. A noble was supposed to avoid wasting expensive troops. Both instincts pointed in the same direction. And yet...

Every unit he diverted toward the tower was one less unit controlling civilians, securing the terminal, or supporting the ion cannon. Worse, it risked turning a surgical operation into the exact sort of grinding engagement he had ordered Violet One to avoid. "Very well." His voice became colder. "Do not make me regret that answer."

A quieter response followed. "You won't."

"Good." Leontis leaned closer to the transmitter. "Your objective remains access, not casualties. If they want you staring down a corridor exchanging fire, then you are standing where they want you." A beat. "Change the problem."

The squad leader did not answer immediately. Leontis continued. "Find another route. Maintenance access. Ventilation. Service lift. Exterior gantry. Cut through a wall if you must. You are not being paid by the blaster bolt."

That finally earned a dry acknowledgment. "Understood."

"And Violet One?"

"Sir?"

"Bring the wounded back if you can."

A pause. "Understood." The channel closed.

Leontis sat back. Two casualties. Not catastrophic. Still irritating. Worse, it supported Mercy's warning. The defenders were not merely holding territory. They were shaping the assault, inviting certain approaches and punishing those who took them. That made every apparent opening suspect.

He opened the command net. "All units, updated standing order." Troops continued moving through the terminal approaches while his voice passed through the formation. "Quiet sectors are no longer to be considered clear sectors. Assume every unchallenged corridor has simply not decided how it intends to kill you yet."

There was something satisfying about converting paranoia into doctrine. "Advance continues. Civilian processing continues. Do not allow localized resistance to pull entire formations off objective." That was the important part. The main force was still making progress.

The heavy engagement continued elsewhere, where Mercy, Srina and the Mandalorian leadership appeared increasingly determined to destroy one another personally. Leontis had no intention of interfering. Let them. Every minute Carduul and Haran spent trying to kill Sith Lords was another minute they were not organizing a conventional defense against Chandrilan infantry.

"Maintain the containment lanes," he ordered. "Search detainees before transfer. No unprocessed civilian approaches officers, command vehicles, communications personnel or technical teams."

The recent ambush deeper inside the spaceport had made that precaution non-negotiable. "Heavy clothing gets searched. Armor gets confiscated. Vambraces, unusual cybernetics, military equipment, anything concealed beneath civilian dress—assume hostile until proven otherwise."

His gaze shifted toward the prisoners inside his own vehicle. They had already been searched twice. Leontis was considering a third. The assault vehicle slowed. Astra's operation was considerably easier to identify now. Scientists, hired security, equipment and temporary structures had begun spreading through the area rather than clustering together. Sensible, given that half the battlefield seemed capable of producing explosions large enough to remove buildings.

The ion cannon dominated the background. Its massive stabilizers had driven into the ground and the weapon continued unfolding itself with all the elegance of industrial machinery waking from a very long sleep. Leontis approved. That was the sort of weapon he liked. Large. Useful. And operated by someone else.

The transport came to a halt. His four House Guardsmen dismounted first. Only then did Leontis emerge. His boots touched the ground carefully. The gesture would have appeared dignified to anyone watching. In reality, Leontis was acutely aware that the atmosphere outside was trying to murder him. He looked toward Astra Sadow .

"Miss Sadow." Behind him, the rear compartment opened. Chandrilan troopers began escorting the prisoners down. There were six in total.
A port security officer.
A customs official.
A woman carrying Port Authority credentials.
Two civilians whose clothing and documentation suggested considerable wealth.
And one particularly offended man who had spent much of the journey explaining how damaging his detention would be to several prominent shipping concerns.

Leontis indicated them with one hand. "As promised." The prisoners were handed toward Astra's personnel. "Healthy as far as we can determine. No obvious symptoms." He glanced toward the loudly protesting businessman. "One is particularly confident in his own importance, which may make him useful scientifically or merely exhausting."

Leontis stepped closer to Astra. "Do whatever you need to do with them." No flourish. No euphemism. They were resources now. His attention shifted briefly toward the scientists preparing to receive them. "If your people discover anything useful about infection rates, symptoms, incubation or treatment, I expect that information forwarded to my command channel immediately." That part mattered considerably more to him.

"The men still inside that spaceport need to know when their filters stop being sufficient." He tapped the edge of his helmet. "And I would very much like to know when mine begins." The humor had thinned considerably.

Astra had promised equipment. Leontis was ready to collect. "I believe you mentioned having something available." One of the Guardsmen beside him turned slightly, as though the very idea of Leontis replacing part of his immaculate ensemble offended House Antalis doctrine.

Leontis noticed. "Yes." He looked toward the Guardsman. "I know." Then back toward Astra. "I have reconsidered my earlier position regarding facial visibility." That was as close as he intended to come to admitting a mistake. "Temporarily."

A mask would be preferable. A sealed helmet would be tolerable. A full environmental suit would be humiliating. Death remained worse. Marginally. While Astra's personnel dealt with the equipment, Leontis returned briefly to the tactical display on his wrist.

Violet Two had reached the ion cannon crew. Good. "Violet Two, status."

"Connection established. Cannon crew is receiving our traffic data."

"Excellent." Leontis glanced toward the enormous weapon nearby. "Begin feeding them every outbound vessel identification we have. Civilian craft get disabled where possible, not destroyed."

There was a pause. "Military transports?"

"Disable if practical."

Another pause. "And if not practical?"

Leontis smiled faintly. "Then practicality wins." He closed the channel.

The larger advance continued. That was the part of the operation he refused to allow anyone to disrupt. "Main force," Leontis transmitted. "No change in objective." His voice passed through Chandrilan and allied units alike. "Continue toward the departure infrastructure. Keep processing civilians. Identify port personnel, technical staff, corporate leadership and government officials."

He looked toward the terminal complex. Somewhere within it, Violet One was bleeding for access to the tower. Somewhere else, Mandalorians were waiting among civilians. And beyond all of it, the world itself was slowly becoming hostile to organic life.

"Do not let the enemy convince you that every firefight deserves to be won." His voice remained calm. "Some firefights exist to keep you from noticing what actually matters." A pause. "Take what matters." Leontis lowered his arm.

He looked back toward Astra. " Mercy believes they are plotting something." His eyes moved toward the spaceport. "I agree." Not because he understood what. That was the problem.

"The absence of refugees is too convenient. The ambush at the tower was prepared. We already know Mandalorians are hiding among civilians." His expression became thoughtful. "They are trying to decide where we look." That conclusion bothered him considerably more than simple resistance.

"So I intend to stop looking where they point." He gestured toward the tactical display. "We continue collecting people. We continue taking systems. But from this point forward, every route is treated as compromised until our own reconnaissance clears it."

His gaze returned toward the ion cannon. "And once that weapon is operating, I want traffic control connected to it whether we own the tower or not." Leontis gave a small shrug. "If they intend to deny us the tower, then we make the tower less important."

That was the advantage of not being emotionally invested in how victory was achieved. He merely cared that it was. A technician approached with the promised environmental equipment. Leontis looked at it. Then at Astra. Then back at it. There was a long, deeply offended silence. "Tell me that is the temporary option."

Grace | Xan Atropus | Veyla Tass | Srina Talon | Kaelyr | The Arkanian | Carduul Akahl

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