OBJECTIVE 1: BELLY OF THE BEAST
LOCATION: Humbarine City | Belltower
ALLIES: Siv Dragr | Iron Covenant
ENEMIES: Srina Talon | Mercy | Sith Covenant | Imperial Forces
The
Manda'hlirata flared across Sahan's HUD before the storm fully broke. Dark Side resonance gathered overhead in a rapidly tightening mass, feeding through the clouds and the ruined district beneath them until warning glyphs crowded across his visor.
<Dad, incoming!>
Siv did not seem to hear him. Perhaps the storm swallowed the transmission amid the interference. Perhaps the old man was too injured, too exhausted, or simply too stubborn to register anything beyond the threat bearing down on his son. His hand closed around Sahan's pauldron and shoved him violently toward the alcove formed by fallen durasteel and ferrocrete.
The push would not have carried Sahan far on its own. Siv was barely standing, and the Golden Dragon's armored frame had weathered far worse. But the tone behind the command reached somewhere deeper than reason. Sahan had heard it long before he became Clan Dragr's Forgemaster, long before he built armor capable of carrying him through battlefields at Mach speed. Back then, Siv's voice had meant danger was coming and his son needed to move. A thought sent his microthrusters flaring as he turned with his father's shove and drove himself into the narrow shelter a heartbeat before the lightning came down.
The entire district vanished beneath a blinding wash of crimson and white. Rain flashed into steam. Thunder struck without delay as branching current tore through the rubble and transformed twisted metal into a web of crackling arcs. For an instant, Sahan could not see his father through the glare. Then a secondary arc leapt across the metal-rich debris and converged on the alcove.
Sahan raised both gauntlets on instinct. The antitamper fields came alive immediately, drinking in the electrical fury as it crashed across his armor. Blue-white current crawled over gold and orange-red
beskar, spilling from plate to plate while warning glyphs erupted across his visor. The fields caught much of the energy, but not all of it. Electricity bled through the armor and raced along his nerves, sharp enough to lock his muscles beneath the flightsuit. His shoulder still throbbed where Mercy's ice pike had struck him. The added pain should have made the moment unbearable.
Instead, something else came tangled within it. The storm above Humbarine was steeped in rage. Hatred and violence saturated every pulse of energy flooding through the armor, and for one dangerous heartbeat the sensation was exhilarating. The thought brought Mercy to mind. The redhead had sacrificed flesh, blood, and the integrity of her own connection to the Force to protect Srina. The Dark Side had taken whatever attachment bound them together and sharpened it into something self-destructive. She was tearing herself apart to remain useful to someone who kept feeding the storm. That was the nature of the Sith. They called it strength when all it did was consume them.
For one fleeting moment, Sahan could almost understand the appeal. He looked at Mercy.
Almost.
Then his HUD updated.
ANTITAMPER FIELD OVERLOAD
EXTERNAL ENERGY ABSORPTION: ACTIVE
POWER CAPACITY: 400%
<How about that.>
Sahan drove both palms forward. The gauntlet-mounted shockwave generators discharged together, dumping the armor's excess power into a brutal pulse aimed straight toward Mercy and Srina. Rain, darkness, and airborne rubble ripped outward with it as the overcharged blast tore through the ruined battlefield far beyond the generators' normal output. Sahan did not wait to see what became of either Sith.
<Hey, Dad. Did you see that?>
He turned back toward the alcove. Siv lay motionless in the rain among the rubble, steam rising from the ancient
beskar'gam as the last arcs of electricity crawled across it and died.
<...Oh, feth.>
For one raw instant, the fury inside Sahan threatened to become something wild. Then it narrowed into something colder. He had spent enough time entertaining the Sith and their games. He was finished with Humbarine. He had no concern left to spare for its Imperials, its Sith, or the civilians caught beneath the ruin they had all made of the city. His concern began and ended with Siv and the remaining
vode.
Sahan's right vambrace snapped toward his father. The cord launcher fired through rain and drifting smoke, and the grapple caught against solid armor plating. A hard burst from his repulsors reeled Siv into the shelter of the alcove, behind the thickest remaining barrier of fallen durasteel. The cover only needed to hold for a few more seconds.
O'dteyase barked several times into the broken foundations of the tower.
Force-breaker rounds burst against ferrocrete and twisted metal at the base of the growing vortices, releasing pale clouds of Void Stone dust into the churning air. The unstable currents caught the powder and pulled it upward through rain, steam, darkness, and flying rubble.
A full spread of whistling birds followed.
Burbr'tracyn charges burst throughout the ruined structure, swallowing visible light in expanding pockets of unnatural darkness.
Tracyn'senaar birds detonated against one side of the wreckage while
Htagir'senaar CryoBan birds erupted across the other. Heat met cold. Rain flashed into steam. Ice fractured. The small vortices already churning around the ruins twisted together into something larger and considerably more violent.
Then the
Starfire plasma-caster roared to life. Blue-hot plasma poured from Sahan's gauntlet as the Golden Dragon accelerated around the shattered tower in a tightening spiral. His wake drove more air into the rotation with every pass. Srina's lingering ice, the rain, the surrounding storms, and the electrical fury still clawing across the district all became fuel for something none of them had intended to create. Stone softened. Durasteel ran molten. Darkness, steam, Void Stone dust, and superheated debris twisted upward together until the last remains of the belltower began disappearing inside the blackened column as though some unseen giant had lowered a lightsaber through its heart.
The plasmanado became something more than fire and wind. Void Stone dust laced through its lightless core, threatening to gnaw at the Force wherever it passed and fray the curse around its edges. The same dust threatened to foul any attempt to seize or disperse the vortex through the power that had helped create it. Blue plasma burned inside the darkness, visible only in brief and terrible flashes before the accelerite swallowed the light again.
The Sith had filled Humbarine with storms. Sahan left them one they could not easily command.
His HUD marked the surviving Iron Covenant transponders across the district. Sahan gave the growing vortex a final shove away from those signals and toward the surrounding ruins. That was the only concession he made. The plasmanado tore loose from the fallen tower and began carving its own path through Humbarine City, feeding on the chaos around it as it moved. Storm winds strengthened the rotation. Rain continued flashing into steam against the plasma buried within. Rubble, molten metal, darkness, and Void Stone dust climbed higher through the blackened column as it swallowed abandoned barricades and damaged buildings. Whatever else failed to clear its path would have to fend for itself.
Sahan did not look back. He returned to the alcove, caught Siv securely beneath the arms, and launched himself through the storm. A waypoint already burned across his HUD several blocks south: the
Kyr'yc Saca, its location resolved through the shared tactical network and Siv's transponder handshake. Siv's ship remained locked inside an Imperial impound facility, close enough that the Golden Dragon reached it in moments.
The exterior wall stood between Sahan and his father's ship. It did not stand for long. A focused shockwave blasted inward through ferrocrete and durasteel, opening a breach large enough for Sahan to carry Siv inside. He crossed the impound through smoke, alarms, and scattered debris before the gunship's boarding ramp finally cycled open at his approach. The ship was still functional. It had survived many encounters. It would survive one more escape.
There was no medical bay waiting for them. Sahan improvised. He laid Siv down inside the cargo compartment and released the emergency catches on the old man's battered
beskar'gam, pulling away damaged plates and ruined electronics as quickly as he could without worsening the injuries beneath them. Then the gold and orange-red armor around Sahan opened along its seams. He stepped free of the plates in his underlayer and guided the suit around his father instead. The fit was imperfect. It did not matter. The diagnostics and biorestorative systems came alive around Siv immediately, mapping the damage and beginning whatever treatment they could provide while Sahan ran for the cockpit.
He hated piloting. Armor moved with him. Every correction was instinct translated immediately into motion. A ship felt indirect by comparison: intent filtered through controls, screens, and layers of machinery that always seemed one step removed from his own body.
At least he knew this one. Sahan had spent enough time aboard the
Kyr'yc Saca to recognize every control, every familiar display, and more than a few of its particular quirks. He had probably opened half of its access panels himself at one point or another. That did not make him enjoy flying it, but it meant he did not need time to learn the machine while Humbarine collapsed around him.
He dropped into the pilot's seat and flooded the dropship's systems with a copy of his familiar copilot subroutines. The vessel's own navigational intelligence and automation-management systems took some of the workload, but the storm outside was too violent and the battlefield too unstable to trust entirely to software. Sahan wrapped both hands around the controls and brought the engines online himself.
The impound doors were still sealed. The
Kyr'yc Saca answered with both forward turbolasers. The blast tore a far larger exit through the facility than the one Sahan had made on foot. Ferrocrete, durasteel, and Imperial equipment vanished beneath the gunship's opening volley as its shields flared and its precision drives hurled it forward into the storm.
Sahan opened a channel while the old gunship climbed through rain, lightning, and the collapsing skyline.
<Jericho. Gold. Dad is down. I have him aboard the Kyr'yc Saca. His condition is stabilizing for now, I hope. Finish getting the vode clear and withdraw when the route opens. Don't stay any longer than you have to. Humbarine isn't worth it.>
The tactical ordnance jammer came online immediately after the transmission, flooding hostile targeting systems with interference as the Vidhar cloak folded around the gunship and swallowed it from sight. Allied transponders burned across the tactical display above the atmosphere.
Nau'braar Astrocartograph Command's jump calculations were already waiting inside the astrogation computer, while the ship's interdiction-countermeasure package swept the withdrawal lane for lingering anomalies.
Sahan guided the cloaked gunship into formation with the surviving Iron Covenant fleet and held position while the last
vode cleared the planet. When the withdrawal order came, the
Kyr'yc Saca would jump with the rest of them.
Humbarine burned below. Sahan did not spare it a second glance.
Arris Windrun
|
Acier Moonbound
|
Lily Rhodes
|
Varin Mortifer
|
Vess Sadragen
|
Quinn Varanin
|
Mercy
Romul Saxon
|
Carduul Akahl
