Long time Coming

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

Mandalore, home. Kalyn was finally coming home and meeting her family for the first time in years, she ran years ago to make her own life in the galaxy, and really never looked back. She was finally home, medium sized town, not too big not too small, news gets around here. Kalyn had landed her ship right outside of town, ready to talk to her parents for the first time in a long time. She was walking down the streets she knew so well in her childhood, seeing faces she had not seen in forever. Then something went wrong, gunfire. Kalyn ran in the direction trying to help people, then it hit her, it was nearby her parents house. She ran even faster, she was about to have a panic attack, and when she arrived, her fears had been realized, it was coming from her house. By the time she arrived the gunfire had stopped, and there were strange men around her house, they were talking about "deathwatch", and worst of all they spoke about the people they had just killed, the people they described were her parents.. Kalyn knew what deathwatch was, what it did. Kalyn was overcome with despair, she drew her pistol took cover behind the brick fence, and started firing at the group. She hit one but then they started firing back, there were at least 10 of them. Her parents house was a bit outside of town, too far to be hard by the other townsfolk unless they were out of town or coming into it. Kalyn would not rest until these people were dead.
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]
[member="Melina Tervho"]

 

[Revenchent]

There had been a spotting. Nothing entirely relevant as of yet, but the simple possibility of a Death Watch threat was enough. Having brought an end to five members today already, Cal was on edge. It seemed these people were a real threat, and it was quite likely they were finally making their move. Tal'verda was not entirely ready to repel everything Death Watch could throw at them. Mandalore likely wasn't either.

The speeder had been pulled off its course to Rikital so that they might intercept these interlopers. He and Mel were having a particularly busy day, it seemed. He slipped a new blaster pack into his Verpine and took the controls from the auto-pilot, heading in the general direction of the coordinates he had been given. The homestead was quite a ways away from other shelters. That made sense. They wouldn't attack anything established just yet.

Below, Cal could just barely make out the movement of humanoid figures. A number of men and women had another stranger pinned behind a brick wall across the yard of the home. The chieftain could make out the telltale flash of blaster fire below.

Another mess.

"I'll fly us low. How well can you shoot from a moving vehicle?"

[member="Kalyn Skirata"], [member="Melina Tervho"]

 

[Melina Tervho]

Mel had grabbed her rifle out of the back seat and adjusted the settings on it for the night vision and range. There wasn't enough room in the speeder to sight out the windscreen and so she rolled down the window, propping the rifle on the windowsill of the door as she scoped into the action below.

"If I miss, I'm blaming it on your driving."

She looked back and forth between the scope and the blaster fire below.

"I can't make out hostiles from friendlies in this darkness. I'd rather not take the risk."

She rolled the window back up, and laid the rifle in the backseat, grabbing her gunbelt. She reloaded the mags and slipped it around her hips, struggling with the bottom of her coat a little. She was still cold from the ambush earlier but this couldn't wait. These animals were attacking settlers.

"If you can cruise through the middle, I can pick a few in the driveby, give us some cover and a better shot at hitting the right ones."

[member="Calico Tal'verda"] [member="Kalyn Skirata"]

 

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

Kalyn as she was doing this noticed some people riding up on a speeder, pretty far away, but you could see them there, she had no idea if they were friend or foe, but she would not make assumptions until there were rounds fired directly at her face, but she would be cautious, you never know. She had alot of ammunition on her, she always did, revolvers were not fast to load, but kalyn always kept a pack full of quick loaders, made it much easier to keep firing, She hoped that the speeder was friendly, they probably were, two people were not much of backup, but you never know.
[member="Melina Tervho"]
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

 

[Revenchent]

"If we crash, I'm blaming it on your shooting."

Cal drew in a deep breath and angled the speeder downward. He had never been the best pilot in the galaxy, but he could pull off a maneuver here or there if the need arose. He knew Mel had a good eye and trusted her skill. What he did not trust was his own. The storm was still heavy in this area and the frame of the speeder shook somewhat as it fell lower to the ground. For a moment, it dropped like a stone, but the quick action of the vehicle's engine spooling up saved the occupants from a fiery grave.

It zipped low toward the middle of the settlement. Cal was making a guess here, but he surmised the singular person was the defender, not the attacker. Otherwise he would not have been called. He angled the speeder so that it might have a clear shot over what he perceived to be the Death Watch warriors. Two of the combatants turned their attention toward the speeder and fired.

The hull of the vehicle was host to reflective plating designed for combat. The blaster bolts dispersed harmlessly along the aft end of the speeder, though a few more shots would burn through the reflective layer and find their way to the occupants within. Cal grit his teeth.

"Something tells me they don't like us very much."


[member="Kalyn Skirata"], [member="Melina Tervho"]

 

[Melina Tervho]

The speeder dropped and although her stomach swooned a little, she managed to keep herself focused on her mission. As the speeder cranked in the center of town, a pair of the Deathwatch turned their attention to the halting vehicle and fired, but the plating did its job and Mel did hers. She hit them with enough shots to drop them both, the pair of them hitting the ground like marionettes whose strings had been clipped.

"Get to the girl, get her in the speeder."

In the light of flames and the pressure of a fight, shining in her eyes was the cold, hard look of a killer. She hit the handle on the speeder, and rolled out, before she ran low to the pair she dropped. They were sporting blasters, but one had a verpine in a hip holster. Mel holstered her weapons for backups and grabbed it, hitting each of them with a shot to the chest to make sure they were truly down before she rolled off down the side of a building.

Her lime green coat was left on the ground as she moved, leaving only her black cargos and jacket and her long black hair in the night. She crept along a wall until she came up on one from behind. She fired a shot at his chest, but as her arm was extended, his partner reached out and chopped her arm with his fist. The verpine was dropped in the snow, but she powered back at her assailant with an elbow to his ribcage. When doubled forward, she pulled his knife from his belt and slit his throat, a wash of red on her hands as his life blood spilled out.

He slumped forward to the ground, and she wiped the blood from the knife, carrying it in her left hand, reverse grip while she nicked his E-11 from where he dropped it in the snow.

Four down.

[member="Calico Tal'verda"] [member="Kalyn Skirata"]

 

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

Okay now two new combatants entered the ring. Kalyn watched as another woman came in and subsequently took down four guys, leaving three, including the guy Kalyn had taken down earlier. Kalyn decided to move into the house, she needed to grab something important. She moved into her parents bedroom and found what she was looking for, her childhood picture book, that book contained every single one of her childhood pictures, Kalyn put it in he pack and walked back outside. The other fighters had previded her with the perfect opportunity to sneak by really quickly. She decided to move through the back and flank the enemy, though this involved walking right past her parents corpses, it was not an enjoyable experience. Kalyn cried as silently as she could, she had just looked at her parents corpses, not enjoyable. After regaining her composure somewhat, she wen outside to help eliminate the remaining hostiles. She quietly stepped out the back door and took a shot at one of the deathwatch standing on the back porch, the shot went right through the head.
[member="Melina Tervho"]
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

 

[Revenchent]

Get the girl.

He could do that. Just needed to be a bit more careful this time. He'd already been shot once today. No point in having it happen again.

The speeder came to rest on a crest not too far from the settlement. The remaining Deathwatch filth could have easily destroyed the thing, but their attentions were set upon the combatants. That suited Cal just fine. He slipped his shattergun into his hands and hugged it close to his body, running hunched over in the snow. In the darkness, the reduction of his physical form served to, at the very least, make him harder to make out.

There were two warriors left, though he decided to leave them to Mel. She was a capable woman, as he had seen. Capable enough to impress Galaar, had the man still been alive. The Chieftain cracked an amused little grin as she drove her blade deep into one of the soldiers. The only good Deathwatch was dead Deathwatch.

He followed after the girl. Didn't know her name, nor what she looked like, but he'd committed her bodily form to memory. He was confident he could pick her out among the soldiers.

It was around that time that one of the men found a blaster bolt through the side of the head. The two remaining warriors turned their attentions to their quarry: the girl.

Cal wasted no time in charging up the porch. One half-managed to turn about to the sound of footsteps before the shattergun tore his chest apart. The second had not even begun to turn before his head was nearly severed from his neck by the weapon.

The bodies fell. Cal held the shattergun at his side in one hand, chest rising and falling heavily. Blue eyes shifted to the girl.

"S'alright ad'ika. They're taken care of. Are you hurt?"

[member="Kalyn Skirata"], [member="Melina Tervho"]

 

[Melina Tervho]

The E-11 held in her right and the tactical knife in her left, Mel made a point to take a lap of the property and make sure all threats had been eliminated and to check for survivors. It looked like the Deathwatch had been looking to take the small outpost like cluster of houses and buildings to be their base. From all her experiences today, this was a much more serious threat than anyone was letting on. Including the affable man driving her around the remote reaches of the northern territories.

She walked up to where the girl and Cal were standing on a porch, two more bodies laying on the ground, a growing red halo of their blood spilling out into the snow. Mel could feel the stickiness of it drying around the grip of the knife, and she ventured a glance at her hand. What a mess.

"Clear. There's a couple speeders parked off in the treeline to the west. This many, they were not staying in the tents we found earlier unless they stowed their gear in the speeders. I'm going to check them out."

She nodded to the girl, and took off double time through around the side of the house. She moved quickly, and quietly in case there were more around the speeders.

Both were empty, but their cargo spaces were loaded with survival gear. Looked like they got tired of being cold out in the wilderness and decided to take a small settlement instead. Karking savages.

"There is no place in Manda for you lot."

She searched them for datapads, comlinks and weapons, throwing everything she found in bag she emptied by dumping the clothes on the ground. She left the knife embedded in the tree next to one of the speeders and walked back slowly to where Cal was, the blaster held loosely in her right and her left gripping the bag.

"More datapads and comlinks and some more blasters."

[member="Calico Tal'verda"] [member="Kalyn Skirata"]

 

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

Kalyn was startled by the mans arrival she thought she was going to die until everyone there but her was dead, so she was okay.

"Well i'm fine physically, but mentally, looking at your parents corpses will really do you in one." She said to the man

The man looked like a solider, he looked familiar, though she couldn't put her finger on it. She watched as another woman showed up, saying something about datapads, that was her kind of work.

"If you want i could dig through those, see if there is any hidden information on them, and the commlinks i can use too, they might have encryption keys. Seeing these guys they do not seem very professional, soliders, but not good ones, cracking encryption shouldn't be an issue." She said
[member="Melina Tervho"]
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

 

[Revenchent]

Well shab.

Cal had seen plenty of kids lose their parents. That was the nature of the beast. People died in battle, and that was multiplied by the dozen in war. Still, his heart went out to the young woman. He'd never had any sort of birth parents to influence him, but he understood the pain all the same. He had, after all, brought a number of young men and women into the Tal'verda fold. They might as well have been his children.

"Well, at the least we won't have any shortage of firearms," Cal grumbled as he nodded toward Mel. The woman was a killer, that much he had learned in the veyr short time he had known her.

These days, that was a good thing.

"If you can search through what they have, it might do us some good," he admitted begrudgingly, "But you don't need to do that now, ad'ika. I can send a team for the bodies; get them ready for the proper rites."

He settled a gloved hand on the young girl's shoulder. His voice was full of warmth, though he could not hide the pity from his expression. "What's your name?"

[member="Kalyn Tal'verda"], [member="Melina Tervho"]

 

[Melina Tervho]

While Cal consoled the girl, Mel took the bag and started to rifle through the corpses of the Death Watch men, picking off their comlinks, datapads, or anything else useful that might have some information that the Tal'verda could use to hunt down the threat.

What could possibly convince these men that murdering innocent homesteaders on the outskirts of an inhospitable environment was a good idea? How did they justify the blood on their hands? It was a sad realization that there wasn't so much between the misguided dead men and her before she had turned away from being an assassin. The most heinous crimes can always be justified to those who have no eyes to see the truth. Mel's stomach turned to think that she was once so easily convinced of the righteousness of her bloodshed.

She silently thanked the gods that she had managed to wake up to the horrors of her own deeds but she wasn't so sure she would ever lose the taint of being what she was. Better to use it to the advantage of those who could not defend themselves from those like her former masters.

The two on the porch were stripped of anything of use and for a moment, Mel considered ripping their beskar off. Better that it was melted down and remade into armor for their victims but even with the extreme temperatures of the forge, she wasn't sure it could burn off the stain of dishonor.

She looked up, icy blue grey eyes on the girl, waiting to hear her name.

[member="Calico Tal'verda"] [member="Kalyn Tal'verda"]

 

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

"Kalyn." She said, a bit of sadness as she said this, she would have to think about what had happened today later, now she knew what she needed to do.
"If you guys are heading somewhere, i have a ship landed at the other side of town, big enough to hold all of us, could probably hold your speeder too, if you have any sort of attachment to it. YT-2400. If you guys are fine with it i could get you where you need to go" She proposed.
Kalyn waited for a response from the others.
[member="Melina Tervho"]
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]

 

[Revenchent]

A ship? They really didn't need to be going anywhere off world. The speeder would get them there just fine. still, that meant the girl had some way to get around, to get away from this mess. Breathing a quiet sigh of relief, Cal slipped his Verp back into its holster, and nodded toward Kalyn.

"We have our own way of getting home. My name is Cal, that's Mel. We can give you a ride to that ship. If you have nowhere to go, Kurs'taylir came take you in."

He offered as reassuring a smile as he could manage.

"It's to the north of here."

 

[Melina Tervho]

Mel nodded as kindly as she could to the girl, who through no fault of her own had just lost her family. It was going to be a blow to her. However, nicely she offered, Mel wasn't about to turn over the sack of coms and pads. The girl would be racked with grief over the deaths and her mind would not be clear. Mel knew she would want to help, but these would be best in the hands of someone not so intimately involved in the blood caking them at the moment.

Melina would not come off crisis mode for some time yet. Until they were safely back in the cantina in Rikital, she was in operations mode. She silently wondered how many more raids they would have to quell tonight. These di'kuts never figured on an assassin and the clan leader for being in the area. Death Watch might be a sweeping movement but they were morons for their actions against people who did nothing to provoke them.

Waste.

Mel couldn't stand it.

She waited while Cal and Kalyn figured out the next move.

[member="Kalyn Tal'verda"] [member="Calico Tal'verda"]

 

[Kalyn Tal'verda]

Kalyn was okay at this point but it was nice to know people would take her in. She was willing to go there, any place is better than here at this point.

"Sure, and ill stop by." She said.

Kalyn was willing to stop by, not that she needed anywhere to go, she never had anywhere to go, she was just a drifter. Drifters never had places to go and they never will, they just go around from job to job, living as she wanted, it was a good life, and she did not plan to stop any time soon.

[member="Melina Tervho"]
[member="Calico Tal'verda"]