Forbidden Planet

[Velok the Younger]

MUGG FALLOW​

NEAR FRINGE TERRITORY​

UNKNOWN REGIONS​

A derelict halo surrounded the deadliest world in the 'verse. The starships came from centuries, millennia of hijackings -- not just of the vessels, but of their crews' bodies and minds. Each one was a trophy, unused, worthless to the almighty and insidious being that lived on the planet. Sixteen years ago, one such trophy had fallen into the being's many, many hands. And Seren wanted his ship back.

His shuttle projected a force cylinder, a tube-shaped force field; air hissed out, pressurizing the emptiness in moments. The field adhered to the derelict's hull, compensated for its irregularities, and gave him the chance to get close to the frigid hull in just his shirtsleeves. No man alive could do delicate work in a space suit.

Six minutes put him inside the space hulk, a conglomerate of ancient vessels drawn together by gravity here by one of Mugg Fallow's Lagrange points. A couple of large ships had joined the hulk after his vessel, and covered it. With luck, the old beacon would lead him true, and he'd find his ship capable of blasting free. At which point, he could only hope that he could expunge the gray goo from his ship while evading whatever ships were still powered, and crewed by the recently assimilated.

Inside, the hulk was fairly dark, lacking in gravity, and pressurized -- an oddity, but one that made sense. The assimilative entity he sought to avoid was biological, in its way, or at least it consumed biomass rather than deckmetal or electronics. The air was cold and thin, but breathable. Gloved hand over gloved hand, he pulled his way along/up/down the crumpled corridors of the hulk, watching for patches of amorphous gray in the light of his headlamp or the occasional sickly glow.

[member="Ordo"]

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

There were few thing the big man liked more than a good ship. The blackness of space seemed to stretch into the hulls of the myriad ships whose names were mostly forgotten but not all. His ship was here somewhere the old YT-2000 that had carried him through years of life in the unknown regions. He however had to find it the hard way...one wreck at a time. His armor's sensors worked to project a short range map overlay into his vision as he moved hand over hand in the zero gravity hulk on his way to the hanger.

He could hear the sounds of movement and quickly pressed himself to the side to avoid likely another mindless assimilated crewer like the last ship. He drew his saber as he waited for it to draw closer and pushed off the wall and sailed forward aiming a boot at the beings head.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

Metal rasped gently on metal, like a man in armor pushing off a bulkhead for a zero-gee kick. The comparison didn't occur to Seren until a beskar'gam boot crushed his headlamp; between touchpoints as he was, he couldn't change trajectory regardless. But that was all right. The boot did it for him.

His head snapped back, neck stiffening, a reflexive movement that transferred brand-new rotational momentum to his whole body a little faster than the kick would have otherwise. That was just instinct, no advantage or disadvantage about it. It still took him the same moment to bring up his lanvarok and fire twice. Durasteel discs whined off bulkhead or armor in the dark, and the shot's equal-and-opposite added to his backward momentum, skidding his upper back along the deck. His feet were off the deck, between him and his attacker.

For the moment, advantage other guy.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

The kick landed and the light winked out with it he felt his body rotate as the man's likely would too. He continued on his course but was pushed diagonally at likely a 20 degree angle. A metal disk shot passed his head a moment before another hit his chest plate. He looked in the darkness for the man. His hand dropping to his vibroknife and pulling it. He listened for a thud but a scrape worked just fine. He drew back his hand as tossed the knife at the sound a moment before he ignited his burnished orange lightsaber.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

The vibroknife hummed and skirled, a sound as good as a light to a man who'd spent the last sixteen years in the dark. Seren slapped the deck with his right palm, and the thrown knife buzzed under him, skittering on deck plating and drawing a line of fire up his shoulderblade. The slap threw him up, turning gently, and a burnt-orange blade hissed to life beyond his feet.

Now facing the deck, he shoved off with his left, hard; he crossed the passage, and his bootheels hit the ceiling/floor/wall just as his own weapon found his hand. The lightstaff activated, a cold blue sheen radiating from each blade, and between that and the orange glow he got a good look at the man in armor. For the moment, his rotation was nil, his boots against the bulkhead, body slanted back from his opponent.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

The lightsaber of the other man gave him a view of the man he now looked toward. His eyes staring at the person bathed in cold blue light. Ordo pushed his foot forward and kicked back against what may have once been a ceiling and pushed himself sailing through the air at the man.

Two behemoths in the dark fighting for what territory, life, fear, in any case in silent darkness they would clash where neither ear could hear nor eye could see. His hands both on the saber's hilt as it rose over head in the crashing avalanche of the djem so form. The orange blade aimed directly at the crown of the mans head. (I think]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

The blade came down at him, and he shoved off the deck behind him, propelling his head and torso up to meet the sabre. Head, torso, and lightstaff, actually. The blades clashed, and Seren's free hand, the one that had just shoved against the deck, found itself reintroduced to said stretch of ambiguously directional sheet metal. In effect, he'd bounced up to meet the strike and been bounced right back by the transferred momentum of the block.

Zero-gee. Not just for the thousand-mile-high club.

He could presume that the rebound momentum would send Ordo reeling back, maybe even frozen in midair, a long drift away from the wall or ceiling. Regardless of what the net momentum wound up being, Seren shoved off from the deck again. His boot-soles got a moment of traction, just barely enough to angle himself square to Ordo, not leaning back or forward. With a careful isometric balance, not relying on contact with anything solid -- bless the massless blade -- he twisted his lower body right and his upper body left. His lightstaff settled into a two-handed grip, thumbs two fists' width apart and left arm pulled in tight near his left hip as backstop. The right blade lashed out laterally, courtesy of the twist's moment of inertia, his right arm powering forward.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

Ordo's arms went out to the side as the impact of the blades sent both men back. His body tilted back as the opposite of forward overhand slash was backward rotation. His offhand went up to brace himself as his head moved toward the wall that he had just pushed off.

His left hand stopped him from crashing head first and held as the rest of his body continued rotation until his toes struck the wall with his back to the man and he was now inverted with respect to his opponent's position.

Ordo pushed himself to rotate himself to face his opponent but was slower than he should have been. His Orange blade moved to block as he turned but didn't make it as the blue right side of the saberstaff struck his left side chest and sent him back floating in the direction the man's swing had been going.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

Seren hissed; his breath made a little cloud, but had nowhere to go. He'd scored a hit, a lightsabre hit, but that armor had held. By the helmet...beskar'gam. His own space suit had an armor rating of zero.

But the chill inspired him.

Affecting another's body, armor, or personal weapons was a tricky business, best saved for endgame or when distractions were involved -- or when facing someone who lacked the Force. His boots resting loosely against the deck, Seren faced his upside-down opponent from about twice sabre range. Enough distance, especially when compounded by zero-gee, to try something on another plane entirely.

Mentally bracing himself for a struggle, he did his level best to leech heat from Ordo's breastplate. His goal wasn't just to cool it, but to chill it hard enough to be a serious problem for skin, maybe even organs, right through the bodyglove. Whether Seren had the time to make that work, whether Ordo would or could counter what he was doing, he had no idea.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

Ordo felt like the cold hand of death had gripped his cheast as the two faced off and in moments his breastplate was giving off icy mist. He let go of his saber quickly and watched it sit there in the zero gravity air infront of him. His hands went up and hit his shoulder quuquick releases and the chest and back plates fell away. He reached out to the floating chest plate and slapped it into a vertical spin and shoved it toward the man.

He used his paltry skill in Telekinesis to call his lightsaber back to his hand and re-ignited the orange blade. He pushed himself back at the man following the breast plate with a horizontal slash from right to left.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

The chilled breastplate crashed into him at an odd angle, bruising his knuckles on the sabrestaff, then flipping to dig corner-first into his shoulder. His boots lost their tenuous grip on the deck, and he floated back. His right blade came up and around, right to left, but he had to twist his lower body to the right again, to balance out the twist. The other man was strong -- very, very strong -- and though Seren's block did the job, it threw him to the right, knocked his upper body back, and twisted him that way, the point of contact being about a metre from his centre of mass. It also bent his upper body to the right.

Roll. Pitch. Yaw. But a fight wasn't a matter of dimensions and coordinates; his legs were drifting left and forward, slowly but inexorably, and he was turning right, also slowly, also inexorably. More, there wasn't any bulkhead within reach, and his opponent was currently off to his left and down, just by a bit, relative to Seren's perspective. In a few seconds the big man would just chop him in half from left side to right. Simple simple.

He fixed the yaw issue temporarily by powering out his backstopped left hand from its position down by his hip. His left blade slashed out, as far as he could reach it, aiming at the back of Ordo's right hand on the retracting sabre.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

Experience in zero-g combat would have likely saved him a lot of trouble. However, without a basilisk war droid his zero-g was minimal at best. His hand ran into the man's blade and quickly became usless as the blade split the seams of his gauntlet.

His saber was tossed from his hand as the momentum changed hand he pulled his hand away from the blade. His eyes narrowed behind his mask and he gritted his teeth against the pain but there was little more he could do. He focused on the man's saber and used the only trick he could think of, he used the force to yank the blade. He knew he couldn't pull it from the man's grasp but in zero-g he would perhaps be distracted until Ordo could retrieve his weapon. It wasn't looking good.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

The pull latched onto the sabrestaff, which was drifting to a position off to his right of a line between him and Ordo. Immense gratitude and relief washed over Seren as the Force-pull functioned like a tether, reversing his yaw issues with a yank that nearly tore the sabrestaff from his double grip. As the pull drew both him and his weapon closer, he spun around the temporary anchor point -- not fast or hard enough to turn it into a kick, but enough to store the extra yaw by pulling his right hand back to his floating ribs.

And then shoving it out again, sending his right blade crashing out at the armour joints near Ordo's left hip and leg -- a strike powered not just by a counter-rotation of his lower body, but by the force of Ordo's pull. His mind found the Force-activation nub on the side of his lanvarok, and a third disc sprang free, ricocheted off the bulkhead, and slashed back in Ordo's general direction. It was a shot in the dark, literally -- more a distraction than anything. If it connected, it still had his armour to deal with.

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]


Ordo jerked his body reflexively as he tried to pull his saber to him but inexperience was a terrible thing. His body rotated just at the right angle that the thin metal disk connected with Ordo's exposed throat. The wind pipe quickly closed and his hands reached for his neck.

The already dark space slowly grew blacker at the edges of his vision, once again his eyes closed and he began to drift limply in the ships corridor.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Ordo"]

Wary of a ploy, Seren lashed out, crashing the tip of his sabre against Ordo's beskar breastplate. The motion shoved them apart; Ordo to drift in the dark, Seren to catch a warped pipe that ran along an equally warped bulkhead. He arrested his momentum with a wrench of shoulder and back, lightstaff held before him in a loose guard.

After a few interminable seconds, he decided that the bigger man wasn't faking it. Now stationary, he doused his sabre, and the space hulk descended into darkness. He let go of the bulkhead and called back his razor-sharp lanvarok discs, well-attuned to him over long years; he caught them deftly, without sight, and one was slick with blood.

Part of him wanted to move on to the next lethal obstacle between him and his old ship. Part of him wanted to burn the big man to ash inside his armor. The part that won out kept him floating there in the dark, waiting as Ordo bled out.