Law in War [Alkor]

[NightSister]

Walalla​

​

Aria had a dislike of being disrupted.

She also had a dislike of Sith in general.

So when a large group of angry Sith disrupted her mission by appearing almost out of nowhere, leaving her with no choice but to scuttle away and hide before she could be seen, she went very quickly from her usual cheerful self to grumpy and irritable with a burning desire for a drink. Scouting missions were supposed to be easy.

Having only recently become a Scout for the Silver Shadows, the sort of missions that Aria could carry out alone were mostly scouting missions on neutral or faintly Darksided planets, with the occasional infiltration op. At times this made her roll her eyes and mutter to herself about a promotion, but when the scouting missions turned into hide and seek with some troublemaking SIth - who, if she had to guess, were of the chaotic radical sort - it made her decide that she was quite happy to remain on the boring missions a little longer.

She was on a remote, dark-age planet which probably had two datapads across the entirety of its small population. Where she was, there were several wooden villages forming settlements around the area, all of which were charming and some even quite large but would be powerless against the Sith who were - could she smell fire? - alright, against the Sith who were burning them down. Why couldn't a group of those civil and educated types of Sith who liked to drink nice wines have landed on the planet? Why a team of aggravated cultists who doubled as pyrokinetics?

Unless hidden somewhere on this wasteland of a planet was some kind of shaper who could put out or even redirect the angry orange flames, Aria didn't have long before the villages were ash and she became the next target. She rummaged in her pockets for the small compact datapad she'd brought with her - Voss was too far away to radio the Shadows for help. Only one other option. Fiddling about on the little screen, Aria set up an open network and began tapping hurriedly.

//Begin transmission...//

Villages on Walalla being burnt down - no defense. Need urgent help.

//End transmisson...//

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"You can negotiate costs later," the woman barked back at him, "get the job done, and they'll owe you. It's a simple business transaction, bur'cya." Her blonde hair was pulled tightly back into a single braid that fell halfway down her back, swaying left to right across her armor plates. She jabbed a metallic finger to his chest and the low thrum of beskar on beskar resonated through the room. "God, Keira was so right. You're hopeless." Her tight smile betrayed the humor she found in the situation as she teased him. "Remember, vod'ika? A beroya has to earn his keep."

"I understand the premise," he spoke calmly as he pulled the buy'ce overhead and it locked in place with a snap and click. His vocal unit shifted the sound of his words to a more mechanical tone than usual. "I was under the impression that we liked to receive payment up front, or at least partial payment."

"There are exceptions to every rule," Asha waved him off. "Don't waste time with semantics, especially when they haven't even agreed on a total. Think about it. This is a big job- things getting burnt down, people dying- we can ask for pretty much whatever we want. Provided you do the work, of course."

Alkor grunted noncommittally as he headed for the hatch. "I am jumping in now," he ignored her comment as his HUD buzzed to life. Explosions peppered the ground beneath them as he calibrated his scans and locked on to the signal. Seven clicks out. The young man clicked his helmet from the outside and estimated the least busy route to the target. "Asha, keep the ship ready for heated extraction. I will light a signal flare when I've got the package."

"You're no fun," she shook her head and sighed. "No reaction at all. Are you really a man?"

He paused, and the T-visor lingered on the woman. "I assume that you are not asking about my anatomy."

"Get. Out." She spoke in annoyance through her fingers as the gauntleted hand slid down her face. "I'll see you once you're finished with the mission, Centaris. Re'turcye mhi, cyar'ika." Her lips pricked upward in amusement as she knew that he struggled with the language, and would not understand what she'd said. He dropped from the ship with a single glance back as he plummeted toward the dirt below.

"I will have to ask Keira what that means," he muttered as his boots hit the ground.

He linked the source of the transmission to his comm unit and began to speak. "This is..." his voice lowered a bit as he spoke the callsign he'd been given by his adoptive sister, "Guyliner." The former Jen'jidai cleared his throat. "We received your request for aid, and I am en route to your position. If possible, give me an update on your situation and remain behind cover."

The message ended as Alkor vaulted over a sizeable hunk of debris and broke into a jog. The sounds of gunfire and subdued detonations rang out all around him. "Five minutes to contact," he murmured.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Still crouched behind a boulder as the temperatures rose and the crackle of the flames grew louder, Aria was beginning to panic. Walalla was as remote as they got - you could fit half the galaxy between this one and any of the important planets, and even if somehow somebody was nearby it wasn't as if people just sat around their comms waiting for the chance to pull a Jedi out of a tricky situation. In fact, the more she thought about the less likely it seemed that her transmission had been effective. She could hold her own against - she risked a look over the edge of the boulder; they were far off but she counted at least six - against six Sith of undefined abilities...right?

Her fingers were twitching as she began to summon a small flame to reassert her ability when a static crackle alerted her to her buzzing datapad. Letting out a sigh of relief, her shoulders sagged and Aria pressed a button to replay the message. Guyliner? Had she heard that right? If not for the situation at hand, Aria would have laughed. Well, she had a codename too - hers was better, she thought to herself - but onto more important things: this Guyliner was on his way, and that meant she might make it out alive after all.

Rapidly, Aria enabled the comms and she brought the device to her face. "This is Gladiator," she said quietly, offering her own alias - in a funny way, she was almost pleased; there hadn't yet been cause during a mission to use alias, and the reveal felt rather dramatic; "Six or more Sith with indefinite powers, and every town in sight is on fire. Still no resistance being offered. I am on the outskirts and will remain until further notice." Just restraining herself from ending with 'over', Aria ended the transmission and after looking around again to ensure that focus was still off her, allowed a small smile - now that help was coming, it was easy to put the danger to the back of her mind and concentrate on how like an action holodrama this was. Not now, Aria, you could die! Blinking as the wind carried the smoke and caused her eyes to water, Aria ran a hand through her hair - weren't the characters always supposed to die in style?

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

The first shot hit duracrete and ripped out a sizeable chunk. Its report caught their attention. Perfect.

Alkor's HUD blazed with sudden activity as heat signatures rose at an unnatural pace and flames licked the air around him. If not for the incredible melting point of Beskar and its resilience to heat combined with the heat sinks and thermal displacement gel incorporated into the bodyglove, he might have been cooked alive. Unlike Force Adepts, Mandalorians dealt with the magic of Sith in more technological, adaptive ways. Though it was a loaner, this suit had kept him alive on more than one occasion. Alkor had begun to appreciate the culture of the Mandalorians more than any Force Tradition he had ever been faced with.

"Well, at least I know they want to kill me," he mused as his aim assist painted the closest target. He lined up the shot as force guided flames converged on his form. With a quick squeeze, the round closed the distance between them and tore the cultist a new hole six inches wide. The man ceased to concentrate as warmth slicked his chest and his widened gaze traveled down. "Udesii," he repeated Keira's favorite word. "You won't feel that one for much longer."

A second shot sounded, and the Sith folded. His comm registered her message just as the man died. "Confirmed, Gladiator," he replied, I have your position locked. Will suppress as needed. As for the burning localities, I am not versed in dealing with fire hazards, but I can provide cover for you while you do." Several other Sith had retreated behind cover when they realized that their assailant was a fully kitted Mando, wary that their tricks had limits.

His signal from Asha gave him a rudimentary readout of the village's topography, which included the positions of his new friends. "Five bogies on the move," he called out. "Be advised, they are falling back toward your position."

Alkor watched the feed for a moment as Asha's voice resounded around him. "You need to worry more about the integrity of your armor, Alkor. You can withstand heat and pressure longer than people without it, but you can't take attacks like that indefinitely."

"I get that," he replied flatly. "I had a shot. I took it."

"Don't get killed." It was not a request.

"Kriff off," he retorted curtly. "I'm working."

Asha was silent for a long moment before she replied. "Gar shuk meh kyrayc. You better come back alive." She cut the line and Alkor sighed.

He saw one sprint across the open field from one small, burning home toward another. "Gotcha." He picked up his pace and jogged toward the spotty patch of cover. Several blasts of heat jetted toward him, and the Dark Jedi skidded on his knees to narrowly avoid a shot that his proximity alert picked up a split second before. "Feth," he cursed. "They have weapons? Or-"

His readout suddenly blossomed with an unnerving number of red blips. Alkor swallowed the dryness of his throat. There were far more than six.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Just moments after Aria had hit a button to end the transmission, gunshots echoed amid the crackle of flames, announcing that her anonymous saviour had landed. Her comms buzzed again, with the man's voice on the other side offering cover so that she could do her bit in dealing with the burning villages. Though Aria could conjure fire - to an extent - extinguishing flames that weren't of her own creation, with the Force at least, wasn't something she'd done before. Still, she wasn't going to just sit back while people died.

"Confirmed." Aria got to her feet as she gave a brief reply into her comms. A hand called up her lightsaber hilt, though she refrained from activating it just yet - the mission might be toast now, in more ways than one, but it was a stealth operation, and so stealthy she would be.

Nearing the center of the pandemonium, Aria looked about for anything she could do to save a few lives. Immediately her attention went to the cries of a family, stuck in a building that was slowly being devoured from the flames. Likely there were fifty others like this, but pragmatism took a backseat for now as she raced towards the building. With the help of the Force, a jump brought her up to the windowsill, which she kicked in without difficulty, and a somewhat weak but fairly stable Force-barrier kept the flames at bay for now. She rushed through the corridors to where a father hugged two crying children while the mother flapped a carpet at the fire, trying to put it out.

"Hey, it's okay, it's okay," Aria said hurriedly, channelling her barrier using more strength to try and let it absorb the flames. "Follow me, okay? I'll keep you safe."
Until her energy ran out, the flames would keep their distance wherever she went, or that was the idea. Gesturing with her head for the confused family to follow, Aria kept within close range as she led them down the flight of stairs, her strength waning just as they exited the house.

"Are you all okay?" Aria asked, looking worriedly at both the two boys and their parents, who all seemed shaken but unharmed. "Oh, thank the Force. You all stay safe, and if you know where I can find a fire extinguisher then -" blank faces. "Okay, nevermind. You take care of yourselves!"

Dashing off, Aria had to roll her eyes - did this ridiculous, remote settlement really have no way of keeping themselves safe? Still, she felt proud that she had truly and properly been a Jedi, the kind in old tales, the kind that saved lives.

Aria's gaze fell on a man in a Mandalorian suit of armour dodging bullets. Wait, they had guns? The massive fires weren't enough? Karking Sith. She snapped out of her mental rant - that would be Guyliner, whatever his real name was. A Mando? Just her luck. Still, as long as she didn't flaunt her allegiance to the Silver Jedi perhaps they could get along.

Enough for now. He was dealing with the Sith and she was dealing with what the Sith had left in their wake, and there would be time for introductions once their respective jobs were complete. Aria turned her attention back to the burning houses - perhaps she could save a few more lives.

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

More fire raced across his field of vision as Alkor ducked behind one of the burning homes. He did not take the time to look for the Jedi, instead prioritizing the enemies that had scored several good hits on his armor. The integrity still showed green, though some systems reported heavy strain as energy cells diverted their flow to offset the damage. It was difficult for him to get used to, not simply swinging a lightsaber or being too nimble for an accurate shot to glance. When the heat shifted just above his skin, Alkor was oddly aware of it. It was wholly different from sensing it from afar.

It burned, though not badly enough to scar. Pain was the only familiarity he found in all of it. That was constant, regardless of how it was inflicted. "Kriff," he cursed softly. He waved his right arm several times in an attempt to abate some of the sensation. It was not so much that it hurt as it was annoying that the nerves twitched and ran down his reaction time. User errors.

This time when the proximity alert flashed, Alkor anticipated it. He raised the shotgun once more, and as the foot soldier turned the corner and leveled his blaster, the Mandalorian fired. One quick shot, and the spread mutilated his victim. Specks of flesh splattered and blood splashed back onto the T-visor of Alkor's beskar'gam. He threw the standing corpse aside as he peeked out from cover.

Blaster bolts rained down on the body that fell out ahead of him. A score of infantrymen lost their nerve when something frightened them that way, even with discipline and proper training. It was obvious that these Sith were ill prepared for a real war. They did not come equipped for Mandos.

"Fething Sith," Alkor muttered. "They don't care who they shoot. They're just shooting."

The already mangled corpse was melted, warped, and torn apart within seconds. Alkor grit his teeth. Loyalty meant nothing to these scum. They had no bonds, and their fear drove them to kill anything and anyone in pursuit of survival. They were stripped down to the barest, weakest part of their humanity and forced to adapt to unreasonable situations. Whatever Dark Lord had decided to send them to the slaughter had earned his special place in hell.

And Alkor would be glad to send him there.

It was not as though Alkor wasn't a monster in his own right. He had no misgivings about killing, and his finger had not wavered once from the trigger. The darkness was not something he ran from or fought off. He understood the entity that drove these men all too well. The difference was that he chose not to slave himself to it. There had been a time where he watched his own brethren as they fell prey to their own desires, as the darkness twisted them and claimed theid souls. That was the moment Alkor Centaris lost his taste for it all.

He hardly called himself a Master of the Force. He didn't want that. It was forced on him. The darkness was his only legacy, and he hated it. The light was a bad joke as well- the only thing he had ever watched Jedi do was pontificate about morality and stamp their feet indignantly like children. Alkor was a monster, a killer, more machine than man. But he embraced that part of himself.

As he gripped a thermal detonator from his belt, the Corellian exile mapped a trajectory with his aid assist and tossed the blinking, beeping ordinance. Asha's voice boomed in his ears. "Hey, moron, they're trying to put out fires, not make more."

"I'm getting paid to kill Sith," Alkor shrugged. "I'm killing Sith."

A brilliant haze of orange painted everything ahead of him, and the tormented screams of four men as their flesh came free from blackened bone combatted Asha's response. "Your job is to protect the target and extract her, Alkor-"

"Sorry Asha, I couldn't hear you," he interrupted. "The Sith were being too loud. They're dead now. What were you saying?"

"You're infuriating." Asha tapped out a command to switch over so that [member="Aria Vale"] was on her frequency. "Hey, listen, I'm sorry about this- he's a little... ah... okay, he's really strange. We're going to get you out of there, so please make sure we still get paid?"

"Are you really calling me strange?" Alkor asked. "You were the one sitting on my lap when we were talking to-"

"Yeah, so, if you could just shut up and focus on the job, that'd be great." Asha cut Alkor off from the channel, and spoke to Aria alone. Her face burned from embarrassment. Did he have no shame? Or was Keira right- was he just blind? "Like I said, he's an oddball, but he's not bad at this. You've got nothing to worry about."

She hoped.

"Hey, did you just cut me off?" Alkor asked. "Asha? Asha."

He let out a grunt as another wave of blaster fire ripped toward him. This could take a while...

 

[NightSister]

Amidst the ever-present chaotic noises of the fires, Aria heard a buzz from her comms as an unfamiliar woman spoke - his pilot? Partner? Both? -wanting to ensure that payment would be on its way. Feth - Aria hadn't even thought about payment. She had money that she could wire them, of course - Jedi or not, she wasn't so impractical as to take off on a mission unprepared - but how much was an extraction like this worth? How much would they want? Aria was hardly the person for negotiating over money; her eternal desire to avoid conflict had the potential to end with her paying them twice what the mission was worth simply to appease. But she could worry about that later.

Some more bickering, and then the woman was back on the line to reassert Aria both of her safety and of [member="Alkor Centaris"]'s eccentricity. Aria had to smile at that. Even she, who was a million parsecs from socially adept, was able to detect something. Girlfriend, she assumed, or wanting to be. She already liked the woman.

"You'll get your money," she said into her comms, "uh, Miss. Sorry - what should I call you?"

As she waited for the response, Aria's gaze fell on what looked like a convenience store. The roof was on fire, but she only needed a minute to go in and out - but she could potentially come out with a fire extinguisher. A convenience store would have an extinguisher? This planet could only be so defenseless.

As it turned out, the store did have an extinguisher, but it also had a roof that liked collapsing at the worst possible moment, and Aria left the burning building with a fire extinguisher in one hand and a blackened area around her forearm. As long as she didn't touch it, the pain was manageable, but only just so. There was little she could do about it at the moment, so she turned her attention to the surrounding fires. She fiddled with the fire extinguisher - how did you get these to work? - and ended up spraying herself in the face with whatever it was that was actually in those things before managing to start putting out the buildings.

But the fires were spreading faster than Aria could put them out, and Aria had to keep glancing over her shoulder to check that her presence hadn't brought about any attention from the ones causing the fires. She gathered that while she was putting fires out, Guyliner was keeping the perpetrators at bay, but no matter what his girlfriend said, holding off against as many Sith as there appeared to be was no easy task. As difficult as it was for Aria as a Jedi to turn her back on a burning settlement, it did seem as though she would have to end up doing just that. She was paying for an extraction, besides, not a firefighter.

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"Call me Asha," she told the other woman as the Mandalorian flipped the scanners over and did a short range skim of their immediate surroundings. Several more red dots appeared immediately. "If you want to hurry out of there, Alkor would probably be grateful to you. I think these shabla cultists are pretty set on razing this settlement to the ground. Your call, though." She pulled the ship high and prepared for a flyover- their blasters wouldn't be able to do much damage through deflector shields, but the people still on the ground weren't so lucky. "Just be aware, they're flooding the area and you only have a finite amount of time before you'll have to move to a safer extraction point."

-----------------------------------------------------​

Alkor watched as several disfigured creatures with cloth and strange tribal masks obscuring their faces appeared from behind a nearby building, their lambent eyes trained on him. "Sithspawn," he murmured as the abject wrongness of alchemical transmutation echoed in the Force. It was a sensation that unnerved the most steadfast of soldiers, and only masters of darkness understood the origins of. The creatures appeared human, but the energies that lay within were anything but. "Asha, get this comm back online- now."

He grit his teeth as the nearby explosion of a rocket jarred him and only his sonic dampeners managed to prevent shellshock from setting in. Several bodies folded and crumbled around him the flames licking at their fragile forms. This was far and away different from wanton slaughter. This was something else entirely than the combats he was accustomed to. Alkor had seen hell, but he had never been on the receiving end.

Not like this.

"We have got to move," he flipped his comm over to local and transmitted his voice on open audio. It amplified his words and carried them to [member="Aria Vale"]. "If we stay here, they will overrun us."

He had turned and started running in her direction, and multiple volleys of fire wracked his beskar plates. The HUD flashed yellow in warning. "You fething moron, the Mandalorian woman hissed, "that armor is going to fail on you if you keep going like this. You're-"

The plate went red, and Alkor let out a grunt of pain. It shuddered, hissed, and crackled as the gray plate twisted and contorted He could feel it clawing at his flesh. Alkor grabbed at the mechanism that locked the armor to his person and it fell away from his torso. "Alkor!" Asha protested. "You do not remove your armor in the middle of a warzone!"

Alkor ignored her. Another gauntlet stripped away, and he tossed it aside. "Oh, you stupid... I'm getting Keira on the line righ-"

The helmet hit the ground with a thud. Leg plates clattered to the dirt, pauldrons joined them, and Alkor stood in naught but his bodyglove. His head was tilted backward, and the heat from the blasts had bit deep. The hide that made up his underlayer of armor was ruined. "I should have done this my way to begin with," he spat. A hand rose to his shoulder, and he ripped at the fabric that weighed him down. It tore away without resistance and sloughed off him.

The Dark Jedi stared into the face of his aggressors with a pensive look. Their darkness was familiar. The anger that boiled over from them felt like his own.

"He has discarded his armor," one of the creatures growled. "Take him."

Two of the beasts exploded into motion. Alkor watched as the inhumanly fast constructs rushed at him, their limbs elongated and razor sharp. A shrill scream escaped one.

-----------------------------------------------------​

Asha swept the ship overhead, but sustained suppressing fire from below made it too dangerous to fly too low.

"Hey, listen, you need to get out of there. I'll bring the ship around," Asha spoke to Aria again as she watched in disbelief as Alkor stood in defiance of a host of Sith. She saw the cultists divert their attention to controlled blasts that set homes ablaze. She shuddered. Everything about this, about the chill that crept down her spine, about about the despair that felt palpable here made her want to vomit.

"This is wrong," she whispered.

-----------------------------------------------------​

​

A ring of fangs blossomed open in front of him as the creature flung itself airborne. Alkor let out a ragged breath.

Snap-hiss!

 

[NightSister]

Aria sighed as the woman - Asha - confirmed her fear; there was little that could be done to save the settlements, and to sacrifice their lives for it would be pointless. She didn't like it, but the desire to save the lives of others above her own stopped at the point where those others would die anyway.

"Copy," she said reluctantly. "Let's get out of here."

In a few minutes, she guessed, either Asha or - Alkor, had she called him? - would show up, but she still had time to delay the inevitable. Shaking up the fire extinguisher, Aria sighed and ran over to a street of flats, all of which were in flames.

Aria could hear another urgent warning coming from her comms - there was no time left to play the hero. Another sigh, and she set down the extinguisher in the hopes that one of the remaining locals would decide that they could do something against the raging fires and stop being so fething defenseless for a moment.

Her hand went to the comms to respond accordingly, but she was interrupted by more chatter over the line - remove armour? What was she talking about? - then a crackle of static from Alkor's side of the line indicated that his comms were no longer in use. Were all Mandalorians like this? No wonder they and the Jedi had so many quarrels. Aria raised her eyes to the heavens.

Another buzz of electricity from her comms - Asha this time. What she said was absolutely right - they needed to go.

"Agreed," she replied simply. Aria craned her head backwards, scanning the sky for the ship the woman spoke of. The clouds were thick and the sky was hazy from the smoke, but she could make out something amidst it all, a starship remaining a careful distance above the fire as it spread rapidly through the streets. Looking around, Aria dashed to a large clearing free of trees or buildings to set ablaze where Asha could hopefully land safely, and waited with bated breath for the woman to fly down, feet readying to leap aboard hurriedly.

Then her thoughts went back to whatever the argument had been that had ensued over the line earlier, and her finger returned to the button on her comms. "What's happened to your friend?"

[member="Alkor Centaris"]