("Love Theme" Plays)
Hadrian fought brutally to protect his Mother, bent on making sure the various security teams pouring in, and they seemed truly endless.
He conserved his chain gun and blaster cannon ammo, shooting only when he could inflict the maximum amount of damage on the max number of individuals.
His war protocols strained to the max, his design pushed past it's limits as he poured fire and killed with his bare hands to keep them from his mother, defending them with all the ferocity of an organic son.
His Phrik Alloy fists and enhanced strength smashed and battered through rib and face when the chaingun and blaster cannon ran dry, his procured red Lightsaber dashing through face and torso, even as more of his armored shell was blasted off, most of his remaining weapons had failed.
Still the enemy advanced from all sides, Hadrian delaying them by dual wielding their own Rifles against them. Then he lost his left arm to a grenade he tanked, but he was only momentarily knocked down. One of his photo receptors was gone. But Mother was still vulnerable.
Hadrian refused to give up, even with a newly acquired sense of mortality as he defended both his charges without complaint, shooting rapidly and accurately at any vulnerability, exposed heads, joints, grenades.
One of his knees was damaged by a heavy armor piercing round, he killed the attacker, but there were so many more...
He grabbed a grenade launcher and fired it's last round into an approaching team the had been firing, most of his torso plating was gone.
When he had no time to scavenge for weapons, his martial arts programming kicked in, brutal, one handed Stava attacks crushing neck and limb, swinging his legs, straining his servos, while Xiphos grew ever more consumed by the desire to affect the Quintessence in the Reactor, Contributing yet more of her power in the same way The Amalgam did...
She
could not, would not fail Csilla.
And then...
a shudder...
Xiphos felt something in the Quintessence start to change, which, combined with
Ingrid L'lerim
's sabotage, the ship efforts of
Gallius Orcana
,
Albrecht F. Herlock
,
Erika Richthofen
, the Shield Generator getting disabled by
Elpsis Kerrigan
, all the insane stuff the NIO under
Irveric Tavlar
and
DECEASED Erskine Barran
and
FN-999 and many others, caused Joy in her.
The whole complex shuddered from the combined might of the Galaxy and the Light and Dark Side of The Force.
Hadrian had his hand blown off, reverting to well timed blows with a broken limb and his legs, one of which was damaged, when his attackers all stopped, the shaking of the station noticeable.
The Ritual of The Amalgam and Darth Xiphos ceased.
Both stood up, knowing the station was coming apart. Both were exhausted.
But both still had juice left.
The Amalgam let loose streams of weak lightning, the ritual having exhausted much of her power. She heavily injured but didn't kill the stunned attackers, and drained the life from their bodies.
Xiphos, not caring about vermin who had attempted the death of a world, immediately went over to her Son, who was sparking everywhere, but still standing.
"Can you run?" Xiphos asked.
"My Leg can sustain only so much strain. It will likely fail halfway to extraction." Hadrian answered.
"Then I'll carry you halfway..." Xiphos said, refusing to even consider leaving her First Son behind.
Xiphos hefted the Golden Murder skeleton up, picking up a Mandalorian Disintegrater from one of the corpses, while the Amalgam whistled, finding one of her favorite rifles, a DC-17m .
The Amalgam started to move forward.
"Leejun!" Xiphos called out.
The Amalgam turned. Only her daughters could call her by her old civilian name and be permitted to live, to say nothing of avoiding torture. Anybody else who tried it was a dead person walking.
Xiphos stared at her, and even though the station was in it's death throes, The Amalgam heard every word.
"Thank you. Even though you shall die at my or Uri's hands...thank you." Xiphos said hesitantly.
"You no longer hate me?" The Amalgam asked in genuine curiosity.
"Part of me will
always hate you..." Xiphos growled. "But I shall view your death as a mercy killing going forward."
The Amalgam seemed oddly affected by this as Xiphos began running. Her comlink blared.
"Lady Xiphos! We need to leave, now!" One of the War Knight's still defending her ship yelled as he beheaded another security team member.
The pair ran for their lives, as the station shuddered, pieces falling, catwalks collapsing behind them.
Things erupted in violence, even now, fanatical maw warriors dedicated to hindering those who had helped wreck Mercy Station.
The Amalgam demonstrated where Maple Harte had gotten her gun skills from. Her shots were fired in short, precise burst, sniping people while on the run, even shooting grenades out of the air, others being killed by Xiphos's Pistol fire, her shots breaking down the bodies of more of these vermin as they ran. Xiphos felt her body burn from exhaustion and injury, but there was no chance to stop. About half way, she got relief by putting Hadrian down.
"Go, my Son!" She told him, and Hadrian took off running with her and The Amalgam, Xiphos shooting maw warriors trying to flee.
Even the Fanatics were forced to give up eventually, if only so they could continue being fanatics another day.
The Amalgam took off in a separate direction.
"Can't wait to join you for the next slaughter, Daughter!" The Amalgam teased. "See you around..."
Xiphos could not stop to reply as she ran to the hangar she had landed in.
The security teams that had attacked The Shadow Bride were dead, or fled before the might of the few remaining War Knight's. Only a few Stealth Knight's had survived.
"Where's Syd?" Xiphos asked just as Hadrian's leg failed and fell off as he finished running up the entry ramp.
"We don't know. Xiphos, The station is coming apart--"
"I CAN'T LEAVE HER!" Xiphos shouted back. She reached out to Syd, only to find her bond strangely dampened, muted on Syd's end.
Syd! Syd, flee my Love, FLEE! Xiphos pleaded telepathically.
Meanwhile...
Syd Celsius was forced to cut off the attack on
Tegan Starfall
, forced to agree with the Assessment of
Starlin Rand
. And Laertia's telepathic plea, the first in a while she had truly felt like the old Laertia, cut through her.
Syd looked at Tegan. She struggled not to shudder at the reflection of past cruelties barely on the verge of being remembered.
She made sure Starlin escaped. But then she flew to where the remaining children were. Some were still alive, miraculously. She quickly scanned them with both her Force and Magical senses to make sure they were still alive and not some cruel spell based trick by Starfall. She didn't put anything past someone approaching Darth Phyre's level of cruelty.
Most were still unconscious. But Syd had enough strength to do this.
Whispering ancient spells to aid her Force phasing ability, she phased the drained bombs out of their bodies, the litany of purification breaking any remaining magical enchantment tying them to Tegan, in case she had magically booby-trapped them some other, unforseen way, taking no chances with the person who had been originally overseeing their use as weapons.
But she could only take so many.
She hefted two on her shoulder, both unconscious, and tied another two by the wrists on each arm, then the legs.
She screamed in pain as she flew upward, phasing through the hull of the hangar to the one where Xiphos's ship was, not sure if she could even bare facing the love of her life. It was worse than even she could imagine.
Syd screamed as she phased through multiple levels while flying, the strain of keeping not only her molecules, but those of the children she carried coherent testing even her ancient will.
But she achieved it, phasing through the exact deck where Xiphos waited. Syd collapsed, unconscious from having saved over ten children that once had bombs in them, but the cords she had telekinetically tied to her limbs to carry them had cut into her flesh, causing her to bleed badly. Even her armor seemed taxed by the strain, burned and singed in multiple areas.
Xiphos and the others immediately rushed to them, undoing the bonds and carrying them aboard., Dragging Syd aboard, who regained consciousness partway, uttering a spell that would temporarily protect the rescued children from the Dark Side, half out of confusion from bleeding out, half out of paranoid instinct.
"GO! GO!" Xiphos shouted.
The Shadow Bride lifted off and flew out into the cold of space just as the hangar utterly collapsed.
Meanwhile...
The Last two of Jester Squadron, Jack and Mark, streaked the trenches on the final approach to the laser. The station was shuddering, rippling on its outer hull.
"My Targeting Computer is out!" Mark exclaimed as he told a hit. His armor barely held as he fired back, destroying the turbolasers.
"Put on....a
happy face!" Jack advised with a mad cackle.
"Wow, that sure is helpful, Jack..." Mark complained, but he compensated by using his own built in targeters.
"Fire! Even
one more ounce of damage could make all the difference!" Jack exclaimed.
"I wish I had the Force...smooooth sailing..." Mark grumbled as he fired his last missile at the Tributary Beam emitter. Both pulled out and away, as explosion s fully consumed the trench they had been racing down. They could not see if it would hit or not.
"Well, it's time to retire!" Jack exclaimed with a cackle as both streaked away from the station, unsure if all the effort would pay off.
Meanwhile...
The chaos of the ground battle ended up separating Maple from
Lirka Ka
, and she ended up, along with Miranda, contending with dozens of warriors of the Maw.
She went through a dozen rifles in the Blizzard as she relentlessly killed her opponents, The Golden Eye as merciless and brutal as the Black Knight despite having a completely different approach to combat and The Force.
The lithe Adept, flipped, weaved and twirled like a a Hawk bat, her bolts finding weak points in armor, she was on her last clips when Miranda, the Plus Prototype, arrived, dual wielding Light Machine guns, most of her Nanite Disguise Sheath had been ripped away by various detonations, exposing her ebon skull and red photo-receptors, the bits of Nanite sheath that remained clinging to her in frozen globs, and she gunned down Maple's immediate attackers.
"We're pulling out!" Miranda called gleefully.
"Did we win?" Maple asked, her armor also badly damaged, cuts and bruises and burns everywhere.
"I think so. Intercepted some communications. Mercy Station is badly damaged. All evidence points to an inevitable failure. I...I think we beat it..."
The deadly Assassin Droid looked around.
"I've never saved a planet before..." Miranda said to herself.
"Welcome to the Luke Skywalker Club." Maple replied dryly.
The Assassin Droid gave a squee of delight.
"I've never been in a club before!" Miranda exclaimed joyously. "Hey, more bad guys!"
Maple wheeled around, and both she and Miranda watched each other's backs as they fired at attackers from all sides, Miranda's machine gun flashing, Maple's pistols sending out deathly shrieks that disintegrated matter.
But there were endless numbers closing in around them. Maple's pistols ran dry and she began flinging debris with her mind, large pieces that she had to constantly fight her insanity from interrupting.
Miranda resorted to hand to hand combat, her Phrik Alloy fists bashing in skulls and ribcage, procuring a Light Repeater and shredding into approaching forces, even as she took heavy damage.
And then, blaster fire from above.
(Shadow Bride's Theme Plays)
(Theme: "Shoot To Thrill" by AC/DC)
The Shadow Bride swooped in, it's laser and missile fire ripping apart the enemy all around them. Maple and Miranda stood, in silent awe at Laertia's death ship as it Tony Starked the living chit out of anything it's weapons pointed at. In seconds, their problems were over.
The ramp opened. Xiphos poked her body out.
"GET IN!" Xiphos yelled.
Both sprinted for it. Miranda made the jump due to her chassis granting unnatural strength, Maple due to the Force.
Xiphos clasped the exposed shoulder of Miranda's chassis.
"You have made me very proud of you, Daughter." Xiphos said earnestly, which earned her a hug from the droid. Then she stared at Maple.
Xiphos clutched Maple's arm.
"You truly are a Sister, Maple Harte." Xiphos said to her.
Maple nodded uneasily as they went inside, the ramp closing.
"Get us into space!" Maple exclaimed.
"No." Xiphos said as they both ran to the cockpit.
"No?! Why the hell not?!" Maple asked as Xiphos sat in the cockpit.
"We can't leave..." Xiphos explained coldly. "Without saying
goodnight..."
Xiphos gunned the engines, real low to the ground, and the Shadow Bride took off, firing all it's laser cannons, shredding fleeing Maw Warriors close to the ground in a twenty-one second surge that left piles of Maw dead in the Bride's wake before launching into the air and streaking high over the Battlefield.
Chiss fighting to win the ground war watched the Fury-Interceptor inspired ship rip through their enemies with a loud piercing whine from its engines in atmosphere, emptying the last of it's missiles into the Maw, laser cannons shredding the enemies of the Chiss below.
One Chiss soldier just stared in awe as it flew by, a somber machine for killing the wicked, the whine of it's engines the herald of their doom as it fired, tearing into enemy forces still trying to harass the NIO, giving otherwise sworn enemies breathing room as it did terrible damage to missile and artillery sites before, finally, concluding it's final rampage of the day, launching into the atmosphere.
Maple sighed and went to the back, seeing if she could treat the injured children as the Shadow Bride linked with the remnants of Jester Squadron.
Xiphos spotted the Amalgam's Phantom Class Yacht fly by hers, feeling the Dark whispers of The Amalgam in her head before it went into hyperspace.
For a dark moment, Xiphos wasn't sure she wanted to kill The Amalgam anymore.
She shook it off. She could pour her heart out in a journal.
The Shadow Bride streaked into hyperspace...
(Exit Post for all characters)
The Mongrel
| BotM
