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The plan to head straight into the mess and arrive in the middle of the fleet had been a crazy one. So crazy that Vesper and himself had agreed to a contingency plan.
In case of shit hitting the fan, break glass.
He didn’t think they’d actually use it, or he wouldn’t have agreed to it, but it was too late for second guessing their past wisdom. The fleeting battle… was going relatively well, all things considered. The Mandalorian fleet was holding up remarkably well for a force that had been caught with its pants down and was being pummeled from both sides at once. The Covenant Fleet had not ceased their barrage, in fact, they were still throwing thousands upon thousands of batteries straight into the mix. On the radar lights were winking out as some of them hit home, while others did not.
But it was still too close for comfort. His gaze met Vesper only once, did Tavi imagine the quiet nod she gave him? He wasn’t sure and neither was there time to ask.
The Netheric Wayfinder was already plugged into the systems for exactly this purpose. He swiveled his chair and cut his hand with a little sacrificial knife. A moment later the brass metal was being bled on as he started a slow, low incantation. It woke up so fast Tavi suspected it was eager to do its purpose.
The Crone had woven the web projected by Lily Rhodes
deeper into the foundation of the area. Isolating it as a sub-network in space, to protect the fledgling mind of the young mentalist. That was to say, when Tavi began to work, the fleet received its new commands, herding any Mandalorian ships towards one specific spot… and at the same time kept their own distance as best as they could.
The rift opened with little fanfare for such a devastating creation. Even as Mandalorian ships and their larger fleet were trying to flee the system, to jump away, a huge carve split real-space open and revealed the mayhem of the Netherworld behind it.
It was the Field of Blades and it was hungry for battle-hardened warrior blood to join its masses.
Anyone with a mind for battle, for eternal glory, with stubborn determination to immortalize themselves in the annals of glorious warfare would find themselves drawn to the rift.
The Crone protected the minds of her own fleet as best as she could, but some began to drift towards that nightmare anyway. Who would protect the Mandalorians from their own hunger for glory?
Tavi was feeling weak. Discontent began to spread through Mother Mercy as the horror of the Engine spread through the ship. He did what he could, as did the navigators, but there was always a cost.
Banderos suddenly slapped both hands over his ears. Someone at the weapons pit began to sob. Another crewman stood up from his station, calm as you please, and tried to walk toward the viewport as if there was no glass there and no void beyond it.
Two corsairs caught him before he could crack his skull open.
"Hold the line!" Tavi barked, though he wasn’t sure if he was yelling at the crew, the navigators, or himself. "Nobody gets to lose their mind until after we get paid!"
He was about to say more but spat blood on the floor instead. The Engine was still sapping him, the ritual still on-going, even as his mind stretched to its limit to protect the Vanguard.
The Gra'tua Dral's siege emitter fired, an ultra-powered stellar roar, a gravitic shear with combined EMP effect intended to significantly disrupt sensors, shields, electronics, and spatial stability. The wave surged outwards directly at the Mother Mercy, and would hopefully offset the battlecruisers course altogether, as well as disrupt its shields and electronic systems temporarily. "Hard bank portside!" Gallius roared with it. Their timing had to be exact. If a window were created, they had to seize it.
It was only luck that Mother Mercy possessed molecular shielding right when it needed them most. The burst of the siege emitter burned through their shields, dropping it to critical levels and would have burned through it fully, if the flagship only had regular shields. At critical capacity the hull of the ship began to incur rapid damage from the return fire it was taking in.
Somehow he managed to stumble towards the controls as Mother Mercy absorbed the shockening blast. Then his Captain awoke to the fact that her First Mate was not doing his job.
“Yes, ma’am!” Point blank the cannon suddenly roared in return fire, right as the ship’s helmmate activated the SLAM engines to offset the Mandalorian’s ships attempt to chase them off course.
In that moment the Mother Mercy was upon them. It began their ramming procedures… as it tried to shove it into the same rift it had created a moment ago.
The wrathful storm overhead brought about an onslaught of terrible winds, enough to tear the wings of the TIEs still battling within. Not the Baron’s Avenger, which nosedived towards the ruined district below.
It was odd, really, he thought, staring out the viewport - to see the rest of the ecumenopolis illuminated by the lightning and turbolaser fire, largely untouched on the horizon. Indeed, the city stretched on and on, an urban sprawl separated only by pockets of polluted wastes, where the rust of districts past lay buried.
He didn’t have time to take in the beauty for more than a second, however. His attention returned to fighting the controls of his battered TIE. Flames continued to spread, as electronics began to pop and sizzle inside the cockpit.
“Come on…”
“Come on!”
Hands, clad in the black gloves of his flight suit, desperately dashed from one area of the console to another. Ion engines began to fail. Weapons were offline. Shields had been defunct for a while now. All he had left was desperation and a lot of talent.
The Avenger scraped against the windows of a skyscraper, wobbling down the narrow space above a causeway that cut straight across the city. He followed the duracrete, gliding his craft low, low, lower. Until it touched down (something between landing and a controlled crash), skidding across the abandoned lanes, then coming to a stop.
He sat there in silence for a moment, soaking in the disappointment that his opponent fled, before departing the craft and disappearing into the embattled city.
An interdictor sat dead in space until it was obliterated by Mandalorian fire.
The Imperial Blockade continued to close around the corridor, but at that point, it wasn’t even a strategy; they were trying to consolidate their forces that remained.
Aboard the Serrated Claw, the self-promoted Lieutenant continued to spit orders. Adrenaline filled him so completely that he could feel his heart rapidly beating behind his ears.
“Everything! Fire everything!” He screamed at a gunner.
His hands gripped the command console as the enemy fleet continued to unleash the power of its heavy guns.
An ensign spoke up. “Enemy ECMs are locking up our firing solutions.” Her neck snapped in his direction. “And they’re charging hyperdrives.”
The Lieutenant scowled and lurched forward. “Why did they come here?! And do we know anything about this other fleet?!”
Another officer answered. “It’s preliminary - but the signature and profile of their battlecruiser identifies it as a Sith Covenant vessel, sir. Some kind of magic ship.”
Magic?! The word infuriated the Lieutenant. He despised the Force and all those who had it. He despised the glory and the attention showered on the Dark Side Elite, and he despised that perverse church dedicated to their primacy.
But there wasn’t time for his hate to fester.
Aboard the remaining interdictor, a crew of Imperial engineers grew frantic. “Something’s happening! Systems overloading. Repeat. Systems are--“
The gravity well generators exploded in a brilliant blue light. The shockwave pulsed outward, crashing into a nearby Star Destroyer on the move. The blast impaired several engines, causing the destroyer to teeter towards the Serrated Claw. From the flagship’s bridge, the officers and crew watched in horror.
“Move. Move the bloody ship!”
The Serrated Claw tilted, slow in doing so; it wasn’t sluggish by any means, but it was still a twenty-two-hundred-meter warship making a snap maneuver. The crashing star destroyer slid across the battlecruiser’s dorsal hull, splitting heavy armor and breaching bulkheads beneath. Thousands of crewers were exposed to explosive decompression - ripped and pulled into the vacuum of space. Most were killed instantly by the extreme forces, but others were forced to experience agonizing seconds as oxygen was drawn from their lungs.
The star destroyer made it across, with huge chunks missing along the front and sides, but avoided a far deadlier collision.
“Damage report!”
“Breaches across multiple bulkheads… Deflector shields online… Batteries thirteen through fifteen are destroyed… Fire suppression online and engineering teams scrambled.”
The Lieutenant’s ire turned to the Mandalorian ships as they began to withdraw, and then to the Sith forces enveloping the battlespace. He squeezed the command console so hard that his fingertips split open and bled over the screen.
“Forward full! All ships forward full! Power to engines and weapons, form a wedge on the Claw!”
Survivors of the Defense Fleet formed a desperate, final charge, giving chase to the Mandalorians as they prepared for hyperspace, and then plowing towards the Sith line. All batteries fired, and all remaining starwings joined the sacrificial act… Save one - when the interdiction fell, Colonel Draltia and her Glaive Squadron punched to lightspeed. She wasn’t about to die with the rest of these idiots.
Ahead of the Serrated Claw’s charge, a rift tore realspace apart. “Brace! Brace!” The helmsman screamed.
But it was too late, the imperial flagship, which looked more like a derelict now from all the oncoming fire, was too little too late to slow down, and was swallowed by the Netherworld.
END
OBJ 1:
The Baron performs a controlled crash - he's knocked out of the fight but survives.
Rancor and Null Squadron have been destroyed.
Most of the NPC forces of the Humbarine Defense Force caught in and around the storm are being torn apart by it.
OBJ 2:
All Defense Fleet forces not part of the main line of the blockade have been destroyed or are otherwise too damaged to fight.
Both interdictors are destroyed - one sending a shockwave, thrusting a crashing Star Destroyer across the Serrated Claw.
A damaged Serrated Claw, "captained" by a zealous and hellbent officer, orders the rest of the fleet into a wedge formation. The battered, surviving force makes a sacrificial charge to do as much damage to the retreating Mandalorians as it can, then plow into the Sith line.
Glaive Squadron takes advantage of the break in interdiction to jump to lightspeed.
The Serrated Claw is swallowed by the rift and sent to the Field of Blades.
As the crown of the tower began to fail beneath him, Garza did not react with panic or surprise. The realization had reached him long before the structure itself surrendered to gravity. Deep within the vast archive of memories he carried, countless lives had already recognized the signs. Engineers understood the strain spreading through compromised supports. Architects recognized the subtle shifts in load distribution moving through the framework. Demolition specialists identified the deliberate targeting of structural weak points. Individually, those memories meant little, but together they formed certainty. The tower was dying. More importantly, someone had chosen to kill it. That realization lingered within him far longer than the collapse itself. The destruction of the firing position was not random resistance. It was calculated. Coordinated. Purposeful. Whoever orchestrated it understood that the ships mattered and had taken action to preserve them. There was a strange irony in that. Throughout his existence, Garza had watched civilizations devote extraordinary effort toward preserving lives while paying comparatively little attention to preserving memory. The people below were doing exactly what countless others had done before them. They were saving what they could see. Ships. Families. Soldiers. Civilians. Yet the archive knew how these stories ended. It carried the memories of refugees who had fled burning worlds, of exiles who had crossed entire sectors seeking safety, and of survivors who had sworn never to forget where they came from. The first generation always remembered. The second remembered most. By the third, details began disappearing. Traditions weakened. Names shortened. Stories changed. A century later, descendants often carried only fragments of what their ancestors had once considered sacred. Survival and preservation were not the same thing. The galaxy confused the two constantly. Garza did not.
The structure groaned beneath him as entire sections of the crown began tearing themselves apart. Durasteel supports buckled. Observation decks collapsed inward. Communication arrays twisted free from their mountings and vanished into the streets below. Garza released his grip only moments before the upper levels sheared away completely. Thousands of tons of wreckage cascaded downward in a storm of metal, glass, and shattered architecture while the ancient leviathan launched himself clear of the collapse. For a brief moment he existed between the towers of Humbarine, silhouetted against the eclipse-darkened sky while debris rained through the city beneath him. One claw struck the side of a neighboring structure and drove deep into its framework. The impact shattered entire floors and sent cracks racing through the exterior facade, but the building held long enough for him to stabilize himself and survey the city once more.
From this new position, the pattern became impossible to ignore. The archive continued assembling fragments gathered from countless lives, and each new connection revealed more of the truth. Military officers remembered evacuation corridors designed to move large populations through hostile territory. Logistics coordinators remembered extraction procedures intended to maximize survival during planetary emergencies. Pilots recognized escort formations protecting vulnerable transports. Intelligence personnel understood diversionary tactics intended to draw attention away from primary objectives. The hidden civilization beneath Humbarine was not escaping through luck. It was being shepherded toward safety by organized hands. The ships themselves were not the true obstacle. They were simply the final stage of a much larger effort.
As Garza watched another transport rise into the darkened sky, he found his attention drifting away from the vessel itself and toward the process surrounding it. Ground crews loaded passengers. Security forces established defensive perimeters. Coordinators directed movement between districts. Pilots carried families, records, histories, and generations of accumulated memory away from the world below. What disturbed him was not the evacuation itself. Countless lives had survived because someone had chosen to flee rather than stand and die. He understood that. The archive carried memories from refugees, exiles, and survivors stretching back farther than many civilizations had existed. Entire peoples had endured because they abandoned burning worlds. Yet the archive also carried the endings to those stories. It remembered what happened afterward. The first generation preserved everything. The second preserved most of it. By the third, details began to disappear. Names were shortened. Traditions changed. Old loyalties weakened beneath the realities of new lives and new worlds. A century later, descendants often remembered only fragments of what their ancestors had once considered sacred. Survival and preservation were not the same thing. The galaxy confused the two constantly. Garza did not.
The people escaping Humbarine believed they were preserving themselves, but Garza knew that many of the memories they carried would eventually disappear into the vastness between stars. The archivist remained somewhere within the city, and the trail leading toward them still existed, yet every successful departure threatened to pull another thread from the tapestry before he could reach it. The second tower trembled beneath his weight as the decision finally settled within him. Remaining above the city no longer served any purpose. The destruction of the first perch had revealed something far more valuable than a firing position. It had revealed the shape of the evacuation itself. The ships were not merely transports. They had become moving archives carrying histories beyond his reach, while the individuals organizing those departures had become the custodians of a civilization already standing upon the edge of extinction. Perhaps that was why he found himself increasingly frustrated by the efforts unfolding around him. Not angry. Frustration implied expectation, and Garza expected nothing from mortals beyond their nature. They were trying to save lives because lives were all they could see. They measured success through survival rates and evacuation numbers. They counted bodies rescued and ships launched. None of them were considering what would remain fifty years from now. None of them were thinking about the stories that would be lost when communities scattered across dozens of worlds. The archivist understood. Of that much Garza was certain. Somewhere within the city existed another soul who had spent years fighting the same battle against oblivion. Finding that individual had become more important than the transports themselves because the archivist represented continuity. A living bridge connecting past and future. Every memory Garza gathered seemed to point back toward them. If he wished to preserve what remained, he could no longer watch from above. He would have to descend into the evacuation routes themselves.
When Garza released his grip and dropped from the tower, the city seemed to recoil beneath him. Wind howled across ancient scales as he fell between skyscrapers and through corridors of flashing emergency lights. The impact when he struck the ground rolled outward through the district like an earthquake. Streets shattered beneath his weight. Vehicles bounced across fractured pavement. Nearby structures groaned as dust and debris erupted into the air. Yet even before the clouds began settling, Garza was already moving. The memories within the archive guided him forward, revealing likely extraction points, fallback routes, and launch zones through the accumulated experiences of those he had already consumed. Logistics officers remembered where evacuations would be staged. Pilots remembered preferred flight corridors. Coordinators remembered contingency plans prepared long before the invasion began. What had once been hidden was now illuminated by the countless lives residing within him.
The first landing zone emerged ahead through the darkness, illuminated by emergency lighting and crowded with personnel desperately attempting to move transports into the air. Engines screamed as one vessel lifted from the ferrocrete, carrying with it another collection of lives preparing to disappear into the stars. Garza accelerated toward it, his immense form shaking the district with every step until the transport finally cleared the surface. Its ascent lasted only moments. One massive claw swept upward and struck the vessel across its underside, crumpling armor plating and destroying its stabilizers in a single motion. The transport rolled violently before crashing back toward the landing zone amidst fire and debris. Explosions rippled across the platform as fuel ignited and wreckage scattered across the extraction site. Personnel fled in every direction while the ancient leviathan closed the remaining distance.
When Garza reached the shattered transport, he tore through the ruined hull with deliberate purpose rather than mindless destruction. Twisted sections of durasteel were peeled away and cast aside as he searched through the wreckage. Survivors attempted escape through ruptured compartments while fire spread through the vessel's interior. There was no triumph in the act. The people trapped within the wreckage would have called him a monster if given the opportunity, and perhaps they would have been correct. Garza had long ago abandoned any expectation of being understood. Few could comprehend the weight of carrying entire civilizations within a single mind. Fewer still could understand what it meant to watch those civilizations disappear one after another despite every effort to preserve them. As he peeled back sections of twisted durasteel and reached into the shattered vessel, he found himself wondering how many of the lives before him would have vanished completely if he had not intervened. Their descendants might have survived. Their bloodlines might have continued. Yet the memories themselves would have drifted apart and faded. Within him, at least, they would remain whole.
Then the memories arrived.
Faces surfaced. Names followed. Histories unfolded. Generations of stories carried by the passengers joined the endless archive already residing within him. Parents, children, couriers, teachers, mechanics, and descendants of hidden bloodlines all became part of the collection. As the newest memories settled into place, fresh connections immediately emerged. New names. New locations. New references to individuals still alive elsewhere within the city. Most importantly, the trail leading toward the archivist grew stronger. The hidden civilization had surrendered another fragment of itself, and that fragment pointed toward the greater whole.
The newest memories settled uneasily amongst the others. A father worried about whether his children would remember where they came from. A grandmother who had spent years preserving family records that no official archive acknowledged. A pilot who believed he was saving his people by carrying them away from the world below. Their hopes lingered within him alongside their fears, and for a brief moment Garza found himself confronted by an uncomfortable possibility. Perhaps they were not entirely wrong. Perhaps some fragment of their civilization would survive beyond Humbarine. Yet the archive answered that doubt as quickly as it arose. Fragments were not enough. Fragments became myths. Myths became stories. Stories became distortions. Given enough time, even truth surrendered to distance. If preservation was possible, it required completeness. It required memory. It required someone willing to carry the burden of remembrance no matter the cost.
Garza lifted his head from the burning wreckage and looked deeper into Humbarine. More transports waited. More evacuation routes stretched through the city. More coordinators worked desperately to move people beyond his reach. The hunt had evolved beyond ships and towers. He now pursued the evacuation itself, following its pathways through the city while gathering the memories it threatened to carry away. Behind him, flames consumed the remains of the transport. Ahead of him lay the hidden civilization's final attempt at survival. Between those two points moved Garza, carrying the weight of countless forgotten peoples and pursuing what he believed was the last opportunity to preserve another before history erased it forever.
For Garza did not see himself as a destroyer. He saw himself as the last witness refusing to let an entire people be forgotten.
The voice began as a whisper, or maybe not even that. Vesper might have misheard something -- or a bit of static that sounded suspiciously close to the word -- but the second word was no whisper, could not be mistaken for feedback. Traitor. Usurper. Mutineer. Worthless. Killer. Betrayer. You got them killed. You sacrificed good men for your own glory. You traded their lives for credits. You are unworthy.
The voice was hers, but not hers. It was Tavi's, but not Tavi's, whispered like a lover would whisper sweet nothings. It was Xiralan's voice, and not his, cold as a grave and twice as judgmental. It was auntie's and not hers at once. A chorus of voices rising to condemn her as the ship plummeted closer and closer to the Nether rift.
Her breathing became labored, but she refused to break.
It's not real. It's not real. They're not real. Vesper nearly doubled over the command console. "More speed!" she roared, and when the helmsman was too busy losing his mind from the effects of the Nether engines, she staggered off the command pedestal, seized a fistful of the helmsman's shirt and yanked him away. Proximity warnings and shield alerts blared a cacophony, joining every thought in her head that screamed that piloting a spaceship into another spaceship could be a bad idea.
She ignored them all, slammed the throttle forward, and keyed the safety override. She leaned over the console and put a bloody hand -- how had it gotten that way? -- to the public address key. "Brace! Brace, brace, BRACE!" Her prey this time was larger, heavier, decked out with the Force only knew what kind of technomagic plating, so precautions seemed prudent. She kept calling the order until her voice was hoarse.
The voices joined the chorus: You'll kill yourself. You'll kill them all. How many will die to satisfy the greed and ego of Vesper Thrace? How many will you sacrifice to the ego of Mercy just because you never had a mother? How many until you realize that the emptiness is not inside you -- that it is you? You are a greedy, hungry, void. You are nothing. You will never not be nothing, Vesper Thrace.
Never.
Never.
She let out a grunt that joined with the creaking, the shuddering, the protests of a ship reaching its very limit as forces tried every trick to stop it. The last thing she saw out the viewport was the vast, super-hardened prow of the Mother Mercy hurtling toward the Mandalorian flagship, showers of sparks and flame erupting along different planes, but the prow -- glorious and bloodthirsty -- as proud and hard as ever it had been.
Then everything went white.
END
Baby's first existential crisis (today) due to the Nether rift
Some of Mother Mercy's bridge crew going cuckoo bananas
They ram now? They ram now!
Left the result ambiguous because who knows what could happen
Thanks for having me Romul Saxon
, I had a great time
Objective: 1 - Slaughter the Mandalorians
Armour: Marwolaeth Ddu
Armour Configuration: War
Equipment: Lethal Pursuers, Vibrosword
The Mandalorian continued to live up to the coward reputation that Eira had branded him with. Fleeing with another onto a ship, it was frustrating in a manner but also demonstrated that these were not people of honour, that they had no combat integrity. They were weak and over reliant on a name to make them seem far more formidable than they actually were. Eira was expecting to be fighting elite warriors, instead she fought someone who was weaker than a normal bounty hunter, just had a few more tech toys to play with.
Eira brought down devastating bolts of pure lightning upon the escaping shuttles nearby her. Sending some crashing down from the skies. Her fury was boundless at this point. She had been robbed of her victory, while some might still see her actions as victorious since she was not defeated and the opponent fled like a wounded dog. Eira did not hold his armour, did not bring complete and utter humiliation to him in order to ensure that there could be no doubts in her victory. For now, Eira just ensured that any that escaped did so with little to no allies or refugees. Fleeing the world was not acceptable and Eira made sure the storm only worsened in her immediate vicinity.
Until her body ached and the Force felt drained from her body, Eira controlled the storm around her as best she could on her own. Others would have sought out allies to help or coordinated in order to maximise the efforts in bring the ships down in chaotic crashes. However, the young Sith was too angry, too bitterly infuriated that she had another enemy slip through her fingers when she was attempting to clench victory. It stung that she could not live up to the reputation or honour of her Master, that she was not the powerful first apprentice that Quinn deserved. Maybe she was not worthy of her Master, maybe she should step away from being Quinn's first apprentice.
Quinn deserved the best, falling to her knees, panting hard. Was Eira really the best? Right now, she didn't feel the best.
Removing her mask, Eira breathed the air unfiltered, feeling the dark chaos around her a little more once again. Thoughts still lingered on what Eira's path should be and whether it was the path she was on. For now, her work was done. There was little else she could do beside bringing in the Mandalorian that she had captured. Placing the mask back on, Eira went in search of the potentially dead Mandalorian she had first crossed paths with.
The Dark Forces didn't appreciate Astra's handling of the turbulent currents that churned above. Or so it would seem with the way lightning bolts slammed into the face of the building in which she stood. Was it trying to scare her, or coax her out into the monsoon that had developed from the unrepentant conjuring and stirring up of hot air and concussive forces against the thermal conductivity of the planet's surface?
Not one to be trapped indoors due to weather, Astra pulled out a small rod that looked like a collapsed fan or a pair of chopsticks fastened together. With the flick of her wrist, the device was flung away, popped open, and circled back like a boomerang. Unlike a toy, however, this disc curved upward until it settled a few inches above the crown of Astra's head.
Umbrella secured, Astra hopped out of the hole her body had made and plummeted toward the surface of the planet.
Moments later, she appeared out of the shadows along side the Commander of the Third Detachment of the Legion. Man didn't even look surprised. Used to people like her appearing out of thin air was he? Though, in her case, it'd merely been an unlit alley. "Sitrep."
As the man regaled her with the intimate details of the Detachment's causalities, armament, and efforts to kill Mandalorians as they fled the surface of the planet, Astra's burned gaze turned back toward the city. That was when the sky light up. What had become as black as night was then as bright as day. it lasted only a moment. A transport tumbled from the lance of raw energy from Garza Inari
hurtled at its engines. And it wasn't the only such instance of such a display.
Astra drew in a deep breath and kept it from being loudly expelled. With a sharp nod, her attention turned back to the Detachment Commander.
That's when he mentioned the orbital bombardment. A concerning phrase. Especially in war when you knew the hostile force had an actual fleet above to make it quite the spectacle. Astra was late to the information party, however, as nearly as soon as he'd said it was known that the bombardment began.
Astra couldn't help but notice the fire was relatively concentrated on a singular location. Which was good for the people of Humbarine. The surviving few that couldn't get to the Undercity due to all the rubble and destruction. Unlike Madrona A’Mia
and Efret Farr
who were among those fashioning protections against it, Astra had the benefit of obviously not being close enough to the intended target for the bombardment to matter. If you ignored the way the ground shook and jumped under the assault.
At least the rain would keep the fires from engulfing the region.
Hopefully there wouldn't be many rapidly-constructed new entrances to the Undercity made in the midst of the flurry of activity. People might suddenly remember Humbarine wasn't just a planet-city, but had more than one level.
Especially Garza. Astra would need to make sure the Force veil kept his keen sense of history and fate from sniffing them out.
Really, aside from the planet not exploding, the only good news came when Riffraff Ranat
's broadcast was mentioned. Apparently their signal hadn't gone unnoticed by the military folk mindful of the possibility people might coordinate riots. Such an insightful rebelious figure in the Covenant. Smooth talker too. Astra could see great potential in her participating in other outings. Ideally ones that didn't involve a scorched earth policy.
"Gather the troops, Commander. Time to go check in on our 'friends' below." Pointless for them to be shooting at the ships that were all but out of range still.
A gloved finger tapped her lips for a moment. Perhaps she'd use some of the latent energy in the skies above from the storm as others had to find and snuff out witnesses. Garza dropping Mandalorians ships -- didn't matter if they were, the Humbarine administration could claim it regardless -- was good for the propaganda. Anyone that saw the titan tearing open fallen ships to devour or otherwise being participant to the death of non-Imperial and non-Mandalorian persons -- which would not play well for the propaganda -- would need to be erased. For the good of Humbarine's future, of course.
With the Legion assembled, Astra started back the way she'd come toward the unexpected entrance to the Undercity. The work was never really done. She didn't complain; it was good to have something to make with her own hands. Long as no one went with the "screw it, I didn't like you anyway" finale in desolating the entire hemisphere.
Darkness. For a fleeting moment, Yolaghun wondered if he had died. There were no stars, no distant vessels, no familiar glow from Humbarine below. Only the blackness surrounding him and a harsh blue-white light shining somewhere close enough to fill the narrow space around his body.
Then the young dragon realized that the light was coming from between his own scales.
Yolaghun shifted. Warped metal scraped against the battered plates of his armor as his claws found purchase against something solid. He pushed, and the darkness parted reluctantly around him. Two enormous sections of the Spirit Breaker's shattered hull peeled away from either side of his body, their edges beginning to soften beneath the heat radiating from his scales. The void opened before him, revealing molten wreckage and broken armor plating drifting across the remains of the battlefield. The wounded Star Destroyer was gone. Only an expanding cloud of debris remained where it had once fallen toward Humbarine.
Yolaghun slowly pulled himself free. Parts of the Drahr'gam had blackened beneath the detonation, while other plates had warped or broken away entirely. Plasma-blue light blazed between his scales and spilled through the damaged seams of his armor, shining from his eyes and open jaws. Arcs of excess energy crawled across his body and snapped outward into the void, briefly illuminating the debris surrounding him before vanishing into the darkness. Everything hurt. The unbearable pressure inside him had not faded. The energy he had torn from the dying reactor still surged beneath his scales, searching for any path through which it might escape.
The Hammer-Hand had asked for time. Yolaghun had given him every moment he could.
Ahead, the battle continued. The young dragon's gaze settled upon the largest enemy vessel he could see. The dreadnought loomed beyond the scattered wreckage, vast enough to dwarf the ships surrounding it. Mandalorian batteries hammered against its shields while the Covenant fleets fought to hold the withdrawal corridor open. Layered barriers rippled across its immense silhouette, flaring beneath distant volleys before fading back into near-invisibility.
Starfighters streamed toward and away from openings along its hull. Yolaghun watched as the dreadnought's shielding shifted around the traffic passing through its hangars. Each squadron crossed the barrier through carefully timed apertures that opened and vanished again almost too quickly to notice. For the briefest instant, one portion of the shield withdrew entirely to admit another wave of vessels into the battle.
It was not enough time to fly through the opening. Yolaghun did not need to fly.
The thought came without warning. He had crossed hyperspace before, surrendering himself to its currents as naturally as smaller creatures might swim through water. He had never attempted anything so short or so precise. Less a journey than a single step across the darkness. The aperture began to close, and Yolaghun acted on instinct.
Space folded around him. For one impossible heartbeat, the stars stretched into lines of light and vanished.
The dreadnought's hangar erupted into chaos as Yolaghun appeared within it in a burst of blue-white radiance. His claws struck the deck hard enough to tear through durasteel. Momentum carried him forward between parked fighters and launch equipment while warning klaxons screamed throughout the cavernous compartment. Nearby machinery flickered and died beneath the arcs of energy snapping across his armor. He dug his talons into the deck and brought himself to a halt as security shutters began to descend across adjoining passages and automated turrets snapped toward the sudden intruder.
Surviving personnel scattered for cover while the emplacements opened fire, filling the hangar with streaks of blasterfire. Some bolts splashed harmlessly across the beskar plates of the Drahr'gam. Others struck the exposed scales between them, bursting against armor grown to endure the violence of the void. Each impact scattered the plasma-blue radiance pulsing through Yolaghun's body into brief, crackling halos of light. The barrage hurt, but it did not slow him. The pressure inside him had already become unbearable.
The rage came easily then. Yolaghun thought of the warriors who had fallen aboard the Spirit Breaker. He thought of the vode who had given their lives so that others might escape Humbarine. Mandalorians who had held their ground in the name of honor, duty, and the Mando'ade even as the ship died around them. The dreadnought had come to make their sacrifice meaningless. He would not allow it.
Yolaghun raised his head toward the depths of the enemy vessel. White-blue light poured between his teeth, brighter and hotter than any plasma he had unleashed before. The glow swelled until the surrounding hangar vanished beneath its radiance. Turret fire continued to hammer against his armor, but each new impact disappeared into the brilliance gathering around him.
The Spirit Breaker had given him everything it had left.
Yolaghun gave it back.
Starfire erupted from his jaws. The blast tore through the hangar at point-blank range. Parked craft, launch machinery, and deck plating vanished beneath the incandescent wave. Bulkheads buckled beneath the pressure. Power conduits burst one after another as the dying fury of the Spirit Breaker drove deeper into the dreadnought's interior.
Yolaghun held nothing back. The stored reactor energy poured out of him in a violent torrent, carrying heat, plasma, and radiation through the wounded compartment. The first wave annihilated the immediate hangar complex. What followed punched farther inward, tearing through internal structure and racing along ruptured conduits toward the central artery buried within the dreadnought's depths. Whether the starfire reached the reinforced spine, Yolaghun could not know. The glare swallowed everything ahead of him. But the dreadnought's fighters would not be launching again anytime soon, and whatever remained operational deeper within the vessel had been given something far more urgent to worry about than the Mandalorian withdrawal.
The release finally began to subside. Faint arcs still crawled across Yolaghun's scales, but the crushing pressure beneath them had eased enough for thought to return. Around him, the ruined hangar opened toward the void through a widening breach. Atmosphere, debris, and fragments of shattered machinery rushed outward into space while surviving systems struggled to contain the devastation spreading inward.
Yolaghun did not remain to see whether they succeeded. Space folded around him once more, and the young dragon vanished.
He returned to open space beyond the dreadnought's hull in a flicker of blue-white radiance. The wreckage of the Spirit Breaker still drifted across the battlefield behind him. Ahead, the gravity wells were gone and the surviving Covenant ships had begun their withdrawal. Yolaghun hurt. Parts of the Drahr'gam hung broken or warped around him. Heat still burned beneath his scales, and faint arcs of excess energy continued to snap outward into the void until the last residual energy dissapated. But the fallen had been answered.
That was enough.
Yolaghun gathered his wings close against his body. The stars stretched around him one final time, and the young dragon vanished into hyperspace with the Mythos Fleet.
OBJECTIVE: 1 [Belly of the Beast] LOCATION: Humbarine City [Belltower Destroyed - Ground Level] SITH ALLIES:Mercy SITH ENEMIES:Imperial Scum/Faithless - Iron Covenant? Siv Dragr
| Sahan Dragr
The smell of burnt flesh was so strong that not even her rebreather helped.
Srina became aware of it when her hand rose and brushed across what remained of Mercy’s face. The gesture had been instinctive, drawing her battle-sister close, while she took everything the Titan had to spare. And then some. Her strength, her hate, her joy, her madness… When the wintry woman pulled her hand back the glove of her armor came away slick with more than just the rain. It was coated in blood, red and char, with bits her mind wouldn’t let her think about. Ruined flesh clung stubbornly to bone and dark paths carved into Mercy’s arm turned the nanites of her armor crimson.
Srina couldn’t turn around to look at the larger woman…
Her eyebrows drew together slightly and her expression melted into an aching sorrow that few would understand. The Blackwall Empress was known for expressing nothing, for the perfect, endless serenity in a gaze so frostbitten that it was nearly painful to look at her for too long. What Mercy
had offered barely resembled words and the attempt had dissolved into something rough and broken. It was the growl of an animal…But with the soft pressure to the back of her head, her face in her hair—
The Echani understood.
The same way she understood the arm around her waist. The same way she understood the sacrifice made by the body that kept placing itself between her and things that could and should have killed them. The weather had turned absolutely foul at her behest and when the red light came crashing down like the hand of some deranged god—She didn’t look away. The brightness that came afterward should have been unbearable but fully blown pupils and an onyx sclera didn’t notice.
How could she?
Srina was on the edge of being swallowed, not by the storm, but by the power swirling inside that was generated from Mercy. Even as the light died down from the first colossal strike, ruby-red energy continued to spread through the cloudbanks into branching webs. It wasn’t looking for targets but it did draw from her thoughts about forcefully imposing Order upon Chaos—Which meant it sought to level the playing field. To destroy it. A forking burst snapped down from the sky where a flood of Graspborn were cornering their prey and turned the whole area into ash. It did not discern friend from foe and simply devoured that which had the unlucky chance of existing beneath it.
That was the truth of war. It was not kind, nor fair, and it never would be. The storm came for their enemies and it came for them…But, not everyone had a Mercy watching their back. The sky above them opened up and Srina braced as the Core Empress caught the lightning that was headed toward them with her Star-Arm. The world narrowed violently. More flesh burning. More skin cracking. She could feel the woman’s muscles seizing beneath the currents at her back, but that only lasted a moment, before she was further enfolded against the taller woman—And all the power of that lightning strike was pressed into her body instead.
It turned the diminutive creature into a livewire, making her gleam with darkness that had been made liquid and touchable. It was too much…It was too much. She felt entirely solid while also being as insubstantial as air and it was disorienting with a laugh in the back of her mind that was not her own. It was maniacal, full of joy, full of hate…Belonging to the woman at her back.
“Mercy…”, she breathed, voice tight, but there was a malevolence to it that didn’t usually exist. There was an abhorrence for this place that had begun to blister deep beneath her skin and the confrontation with the Mandalorians hadn’t helped in the slightest. Her expression went cold while the sky held her focus. She could not let the wounds of her battle-sister distract her. Not now. “...Again—”
The soft growl came with an overtone of many voices but it took less than a heartbeat for a second volley to scatter down where she had last witnessed the dull shine of a beskar’gam. There was something in her that wouldn’t seem quite right but everything in her knew the truth. She needed to expel some of this power, use it, regardless of the White Noise. The Dark Side would not wait for her body to heal and it didn’t care who held her upright. The double tap…It was for good measure.
The younger Mandalorian still had his jetpack. No, she had not forgotten them in the fray. They made themselves part of the problem and she could no longer allow the distraction.
Slowly…She began to feed might back into the storm so that it might trickle through the mental binding that Lily Rhodes
was providing. Her mind drifted through the others and she found it increasingly difficult to separate one disaster from the other. The weave that had been created stretched through the varying warfronts like strands of silver caught in a hurricane. She could feel the girl breaking…But there was nothing she could do about that, now.
Srina could only focus on the devastation she had wrought.
She knew that Mercy
heard it too and her eyes finally rolled down to the sky to land where the Mandalorians had once been. There was too much happening, too many dying, she couldn’t differentiate their presence anymore from that of a stray dog. The chance of survival was thin but not improbable, especially, not with the plethora of technology she’d witnessed. She would feel the burn of the White Noise for days, weeks, to come. “Just a little more…”
“Stand with me a little longer, Sestra.”
Her heart was beating like it had the wings of a hummingbird. As if it might explode from her chest…But that couldn’t happen. They had to stay strong, see this through, even while others began to redirect the power of the storm for their own means. She could feel Tamsin Starfall
adding to its strength and her eyes closed. There was a battle in the sky, skirmishes on the ground, and what appeared to be an orbital bombardment amidst the ferocious ripping and tearing of their enemies. She reached up and touched the phylactery around her neck that belonged to Darth Carnifex
with the knowledge that he could handle himself…But, he might not hear the warning.
“And then you can rest. Then…We can watch it all burn.”
Until there were no more Faithless on Humbarine, until these Mandalorians were forced to turn tail and run. That really was the only option, even if they didn’t know it yet. They had insinuated themselves where they did not belong. They had squandered her patience regardless how many times she had informed them they were in the way. They had reaped what was sown and compounded consequence over and over…
So…If their legs found the strength to carry them? If their technology spared them? If they survived what came next— They could flee…Or die.
The distinction mattered very little.
Her eyes remained closed only a moment longer before something changed. It was a sensation that made her skin tingle and the Dark Side twisted strangely around the district for a moment. The area where the Mandalorians had gone down went calm and her attention snapped toward the source. Through smoke, freezing rain, and ruin—She saw him. The boy that kept protecting the elder.
Doing…Something. Playing with his toys?
But the Blackwall Empress could only see him for a split second because in that moment a wall of concussive force started to tear across the crumbling streets between them. The rubble of the belltower was hit first and already weakened structures folded inward. Duracrete shattered, cratering, while the shockwave swept toward them at terrifying speed. It flattened everything in its path while the storm above illuminated it in ferocious flashes of light…It was coming right for them.
Srina felt her jaw tighten. She was exhausted, pulling at the seams, while trying to contain all the negative energy she had taken in. The effects of the White Noise still burned through her nerves like poison and there was precious little room for error. The truth had only barely formed before she felt movement behind her, the seconds ticking away, while Mercy’s arm tightened around her…And the pragmatic need to counter every problem on her own dissipated.
She remained still. She stayed exactly where she was…And she let the shockwave come.
Because she trusted her battle-sister.
Their willingness to bolster one another regardless of the cost was a strength not a weakness. It was an ouroboros effect that left them with a constant pool of might to draw from. They consumed…But they also fed one another without thought. Without hesitation. Shadows gathered first on the edges of her vision, fluttering like ravens, and she felt an invisible pull…Sensing, only Mercy. Not some ancient and unknowable power source but the same woman whose blood still stained her armor. The same woman whose ruined face rested against her hair. The same woman who had caught lightning with her bare hand. The same woman who had shielded her over and over…
Darkness unfurled from behind them in a violent rush.
Wings?
They were massive and terrible, beautiful, but entirely unholy with the stain of screaming souls that had been torn asunder and stitched back together. The wings spread wide enough from Mercy’s back to blot out the battlefield and then folded inward around the two women just as the shockwave arrived. Srina reached out and threaded her fingers through that of the golden Thronegrasp, despite her aversion to it, and pulled it around her as strands of living night started to rip and tear at the fabric of reality.
The shadows closed over them like a door slamming shut and the world beyond vanished beneath the black. She could hear nothing. See, nothing. There was nothing but darkness and the phantom sound of something terrible ripping apart the surface.
When a body was damaged enough, when nerves had flared over and over in pain, at a certain point the mind became detached from its effects. It became a certain white noise. Ears full of buzzing as the mind detached from the body, because it was the only way to survive with your sanity intact.
Mercy knew what pain was, she had been good acquaintances since the fighting pits of Nar Shaddaa. As an acolyte she had punched a Leviathan in the face, breaking her whole arm, but didn’t let that slow her down. Every battle she went in, she held nothing back and as a result the Sith Lord often walked off the field in tatters. It was the way she liked it. It was how she felt like she had truly fought a worthy battle.
None of them compared to this nightmare.
But none of the fights were as important as this one either.
Throughout all of it she had always fought for herself alone. For her glory, for her name, for her power. Even on Coruscant, when she had fought back-to-back with Srina, or on Brosi when they had fought side-to-side, it had all been done to further her thirst for victory and might. Only after Brosi had Mercy recognized Srina as hers. Not by blood, but by claim. Her sister, her person that she could trust to have her back beyond anyone else.
Pain, even the one that tore her muscles to shreds as her body contorted, was meaningless in the face of that kind of realization.
The world around her was a blurred vision. Half of it was red from the blood seeping into her eye, half had been black but was now strange. She saw after images, lines, smears of impressions that were meaningless to her tormented mind.
Every line attached to the wavering mind of Lily Rhodes
and through it is accessible to Mercy as well. The young girl buckled under the pressure of Mercy’s madness, even while Srina attempted to steady her presence and give her a foundation.
Lily closed her eyes, reaching again for the anchor, clinging to the scent of jasmine and rain, unsure whose anger belonged to whom, where did her hatred end and the others begin. She didn’t know, all she knew is she had to hold on.
Poor girl… Mercy’s raspy voice boomed through the lattice she had formed. She could not whisper, she could not sign. Every word coming through like that of a horse rampaging through the river. If I could help you weather my storm, I would, but this was never my domain. But perhaps it could be yours… if you apply some of that huge fucking attitude of yours to it.
And then the Mountain’s gaze left her and looked onto the efforts of those around them. She felt pride, swelled bright, easing her own madness and giving way towards joy. And joy… was easier to weather than furious corrupted wroth.
Astra reached out to it to guide it. Shape it. Contain it. In giving it a definition all that rage being fed into it could grow stronger. More ravenous. It wouldn't spread out and become diluted over an even greater distance.
The power of the soul one of the strongest things in the universe. Her eyes turned a bright white as held her eyes to the storm. The Demon, no The Goddess of Destruction poured everything she had into the storm.
His teeth gritted from pain as flames erupted from his back, a hitch from his chest as he held it, and funneled every bit of that energy into the clouds. Sucking away the cool air, moisture fell from the condensed clouds in pockets of hard rain. Black rain mixed with ash fell and from the pull of cool air came massive gusts of hot winds.
She'd attempt to tap into entire sensor suites aboard enemy vessels caught within her web. To have them begin eating themselves alive with contradictory data.
Ace pulled and the storm responded, crimson clouds churning harder. Lightning forked between blackened clouds as another current of power joined the growing maelstrom.
Lifting my hands to the storm above, riding the connection that had already been established by the other sith, I added that sun-hot fury to the storm.
She could not offer them assistance. Not in the way the Blackwall Empress could, but she could offer them… her spirit. In Mercy’s mindseye she ripped through layers that held her mind back and allowed it to surge forward.
Each and every one of them would be imbued then. By the indomitable will that possessed Mercy, that animated her, that allowed her to push forward even when half her body was burned and half her face was gone.
Make yourself proud.Her voice boomed in their minds, rasped and in a harsh growl. Show this Mandalorian filth that we have claimed this world. And no Empire crest or Mythosaur sigil will grace its streets, ever.
She wished to say more. Mercy had always been a yapper, only acceptable because who would tell a Mountain to shut the fuck up for once?
But Srina’s mind wrenched her back into the present. Eye flared open and she saw the danger a second before Srina did. Mercy’s physical body was floating between life and death there, constantly renewing, constantly dying. The Netherworld had never been closer than now.
The rift opened with little fanfare for such a devastating creation. Even as Mandalorian ships and their larger fleet were trying to flee the system, to jump away, a huge carve split real-space open and revealed the mayhem of the Netherworld behind it.
It was the Field of Blades and it was hungry for battle-hardened warrior blood to join its masses.
Anyone with a mind for battle, for eternal glory, with stubborn determination to immortalize themselves in the annals of glorious warfare would find themselves drawn to the rift.
The Field of Blades beckoned and even more so now that a rift had opened in space to draw their foes in. Her wings followed soon after, arriving as a shadow that deepened and cloaked the area in its screaming wake.
Mercy did not think, she had no capacity to anymore. Her wings moved themselves, wrapping around them both and jerking them one phase out of reality. It was not the same thing as entering the Netherworld, but the difference or even the significance was lost to the Mountain.
All that she knew was that they watched as the shockwave burst through them, leaving them more or less unharmed… if their state could be named such.
Around them was the Field and yet it was not. Sand, swords, cogs in the sky, but also ships… sinking into the amber skies from space. And streets, overlaid with the desert of blades.
A tornado… that made Mercy’s remaining eye blink.
Do you fucking see that? She tried to say to Srina, but it came out as a wet sound of flapping flesh and dripping blood.
Thronegrasp, her arm, the one that earned her the moniker Star-Arm, moved before her mind did. It suddenly sunk into the flesh of Srina, the arm that held the frost artifact. Roots digging under her skin, drawing from the power hidden in the Blackwall Empress, as if the desert had drained its vitality and it needed to be restored greedily.
Then it moved Srina’s arm without head or concern.
Mercy’s head went to rest against Srina’s once more. A slight shift. I am sorry. I cannot stop it. Not now, not like this. It tried to convey.
Then Thronegrasp squeezed and manipulated the power in that lithe arm. Frost exploded from the ring and the wings brought them one phase-step back into reality at the same time.
It was so graceful, so well-timed, perhaps it was Srina’s mind wrapped around Mercy’s flesh that allowed them this one effort.
The super-cooling forced the newly-made tornado to soften, weaken, to join its brethren and sistren in the clouds. To disperse… and this would have consequences too, in time.
But Mercy was heedless as Thronegrasp moved once more. Tracking the flight of the Mandalorian and his father as they tried to flee.
If only they had fled immediately… but they had tried to kill them as their last act.
Let it be their last act, Mercy thought. And then the ring roared out once more, sending sub-zero frost through the sky to catch them as they flew. To rip through them, taking advantage of that one jetpack had to carry two grown men with fully loaded armor.
Is it done, sestra? Her body asked as it shifted against Srina. Are you happy as I promised you would be?
<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.>
For a moment, Jericho did not answer. His attention remained divided across eleven bodies and the tactical display shared between them, following the Covenant dropships as they climbed through the storm one after another. The word stabilizing offered less certainty than he would have preferred, but it was enough. Siv was alive. Sahan had him aboard the Kyr'yc Saca. The remaining vode on the ground were still Jericho's responsibility.
<Understood.>
Behind the withdrawal corridor, the damaged crown of the tower finally surrendered. Entire sections of the upper structure sheared away beneath the accumulated strain, spilling durasteel, shattered transparisteel, and broken communications equipment into the avenues below. Garza released his grip before the collapse could drag him down with it, launching himself toward a neighboring structure and tearing through several floors before anchoring himself against the damaged tower.
Jericho tracked the movement only long enough to confirm that the leviathan no longer possessed a stable firing position above the Covenant withdrawal route. The intervention had accomplished exactly what it needed to accomplish. Garza remained alive, but he could no longer fire freely upon the escaping transports. Every moment he spent reacting to the collapse gave another dropship time to clear the skyline.
Besh and Cresh rotated the captured batteries back toward the lower flight lanes immediately after their strike. Heavy cannons resumed their disciplined bursts through the storm, forcing the surviving hostile fighters away from the narrow avenue while the final Covenant dropship lifted from the ferrocrete below. Gold remained close to the boarding zone, crouched amid the rubble with her armored wings folded tightly against her frame and her cannons tracking anything that descended beneath the temporary umbrella.
The remaining branches converged upon the landing zone. Isk and Grek had already been there, while Aurek, Esk, Herf, Dorn, Forn, Jenth, and Krill emerged from the surrounding streets and rooftops as their final routes closed across the tactical display. Besh and Cresh remained at the batteries until the transport lifted from the avenue and climbed beyond the captured towers toward the wider Covenant withdrawal corridor.
Jericho watched the transponder until it cleared the lower skyline and joined the other dropships rising toward the fleet. Only then did Isk open a direct channel to the Basilisk as the scattered branches continued gathering around her. <Confirm the corridor is clear.>
Gold's sensors swept across the avenue, the surrounding rooftops, and the allied transponders receding through the storm. Her claws flexed against the fractured roadway while her engines climbed toward a launch-ready howl. ://: Last transport is clear. No vode remain within the avenue. :\:
The extraction corridor had held. The wounded were aboard. The last Covenant dropship was already beyond the city, and nothing remained on the ground except the Jerichos who had stayed behind to ensure that everyone else escaped first. <All units. Regroup.>
Besh and Cresh relinquished the manual controls of the captured batteries and left the emplacements behind. Their guns continued cycling through their final targeting routines as both figures crossed the perimeter toward Gold. The others gathered without ceremony beneath the crimson light bleeding through the unnatural storm, identical suits of darkened armor converging through the smoke and rain until eleven identical men stood together within the otherwise empty avenue.
No spoken order passed between them. None was required. The first two figures stepped close, and their silhouettes crossed through the drifting smoke, seeming to fold inward as the distinction between them simply ceased to exist. Another followed, then another. Dark plates, rainwater, shadow, and substance passed across one another without any visible seam or mechanical separation. There was no flash of light, no dramatic discharge of energy, and no obvious moment at which one body ended and another began.
The gathered figures diminished one by one until the storm swept through the space where an entire squad had stood moments before. When the smoke shifted again, only one Jericho Dragr remained beside Gold.
Jericho climbed into the Basilisk's cockpit and secured himself into his seat. Gold unfurled her wings with a metallic snap, scattering rainwater and loose debris across the fractured roadway as her engines surged toward full power. The captured batteries continued firing behind them, guarding an avenue that no longer held anyone left for Jericho to extract.
Gold launched last. The Basilisk tore upward between the ruined towers in a violent burst of heat and displaced air, her wings folding into a narrower flight profile as she banked across the skyline and accelerated toward the open withdrawal corridor. Jericho stared as the ruined district fell away beneath them, watching the tactical display as Gold carried him after the departed dropships.
Garza remained visible through the storm behind them. The ancient leviathan clung to the second tower only long enough to study the wider evacuation pattern unfolding across Humbarine City. Then he released his grip and dropped between the skyscrapers, his immense form descending deeper into the city rather than pursuing the Covenant withdrawal.
The civilian channels erupted moments later. Fragmented distress calls bled across the wider tactical network from another landing zone as emergency transponders multiplied across Jericho's display. Through the smoke below, he saw a transport rising from a distant platform before it vanished amid fire and debris, dragged back toward the civilians still attempting to flee Humbarine.
Jericho watched as the distress traffic dissolved into interference and static. There was no satisfaction in what he saw, but there was no uncertainty either. The diversion had worked. Garza had abandoned the Covenant extraction corridor and descended into Humbarine's civilian evacuation network in search of another target.
Those people were not his vode. The Iron Covenant had not come to hold this world, and Jericho could not save every life still trapped beneath its burning sky. There was nothing he could accomplish by returning alone to pursue a leviathan through a city they had already committed to abandon. His people were clear. Siv was aboard the Kyr'yc Saca. Sahan was waiting with the fleet. The avenue behind him stood empty.
Jericho tapped two fingers against the ironheart set into his chestplate.
<Mission complete. Take us home.>
://: Withdrawal vector acquired. :\:
Gold banked away from Humbarine City and drove toward the open corridor. Hostile fire streaked through the storm behind her, but the Basilisk did not slow. Her cannons answered with a controlled burst before her engines carried them beyond the lower skyline and after the withdrawing Covenant vessels.
Humbarine fell away beneath them. Fires burned across the streets where the invasion had carved its scars into the city, and the wounded skyline disappeared beneath layers of smoke and crimson storm clouds as Gold climbed toward the fleet. Jericho remained silent throughout the ascent, watching until the battlefield became another fading world behind them.
The corridor had held. The vode were clear. That was enough.
Blood rushed in Lily’s ears as another thrum of power pulsed through the web, coming from her anchor, from the jasmine and rain, the woman she didn’t know, the woman who’s song was keeping her from being lost beneath the tidal wave of darkness.
Lily curled tighter into a ball. How pathetic. How small. How insignificant she was in the presence of titans. She was nothing but the web, nothing but the thread and all the thread gave her was agony but she couldn’t let go, she couldn't pull away. The lattice work of her own making had taken on a life of its own and it would not let her go.
Pain peppered her back her side as something sharp embedded into her skin, but it was so indistinguishable from everything else, Lily hardly noticed it. She didn’t even notice Arris go flying past her.
I have told you before, Lily, the mind is a dangerous place.
That voice.
Lily opened her eyes. Sonere was sitting next to her, the Nagai’s legs were crossed and she wore that same infuriating smile that said she knew every word you were about to say before you said it. But Sonere wasn’t here, Sonere was on Jaibrek, behind the Blackwall in the Firefist galaxy. Which meant this was a hallucination.
Great.
She tried to get up, to face the woman who had torn open her connection to the force, the woman who had made her into this. But pain that wasn’t hers seared through the web and she crumpled again.
You have to let go.
“I… can’t.” Her voice was strangled.
Let go, Lily.
Lily closed her eyes and shook her head. She wasn’t real, she was just the result of a desperate attempt by her subconscious to save itself.
A yelp of pain split her lips as Mercy practically bellowed through the web at her. As if she didn’t have enough to contend with without her taking notice.
If I could help you weather my storm, but this was never my domain. But perhaps it could be yours… if you apply some of that huge fucking attitude of yours to it.
A noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob passed her lips.
Fuck off, Mercy. She retorted. But she didn’t. She did something worse, something unbearable. She unleashed herself on the web, burning through the lattice work, reaching out to the Sith, pouring her spirit, her will into all of them, pushing them forward.
Lily screamed. She had to hold on, she had to survive this, she'd told Vess eh'd be back...It was too much, too much power, too much darkness.
The web exploded, shattering into a thousand pieces, a thousand thoughts that screamed through her mind. The sweet cold dark relief of unconsciousness seized her, and Lily went still, curled in a ball in the middle of a battlefield.
The silence after the bombardment was more deafening than the shockwave itself.
Romul had created a small crater in the thick ferrocrete wall, all that was left of what had been a tall building. The landscape was hardly recognizable now. The rampage of Carnifex's monstrous leviathan, the Force Storm that only multiplied in ferocity, artillery bombardment pockmarking the city, and finally, the orbital strike itself. If Romul had overwatch he would know if it had hit. But there was only static in his earpiece, and a faint ringing leftover from the shockwave.
A hand emerged into his view. Romul did not hesitate to clasp it. Dragus pulled him up from the crater, Romul groaning with exertion, his jetpack's thrusters fighting furiously to support the weight of the massive suhrbir. They alighted on the ground several meters below. Torrential rain had extinguished most of the fires. Deep pools of water polluted by fallout chemicals were forming in the craters and on the irregular surfaces across the rubble. Romul looked at Dragus, who supported the Alor, the massive warrior's arm hanging around his lieutenant's shoulders. The Alor'ad's characteristic gold and crimson Saxon beskar'gam was hardly recognizable, black and carbon-scored. Behind them, the dropship Dragus had descended lay crashed, the craft's body deformed.
The names of the pilots who hadn't survived would be remembered, along with the rest of their fallen vode. "Casualties?" Romul grunted as smoke curled off his armor. Red warnings flashed on his HUD. There was humming overhead as another dropship descended through the storm to retrieve the fallen.
"Less than the Sith would like," Dragus responded grimly. "The last dropship will extract us. I've already called it in." Romul bent over, retrieving his fallen warhammer from the ground. This operation had cost them. But their vode had not been left abandoned.
That was what it meant to be Mandalorian.
There was no sign of Carnifex. Romul hoped that the bombardment would soon be over, and the time for mourning would come -- and then, retribution. Soon, the hum of ship thrusters emerged through the pounding of rain, growing louder and louder until a dropship emerged from behind the carcass of a half-collapsed tower, searchlights cutting distinct white beams through the rain and fog. It lowered to the ground, churning up dust and spraying liquid. The two Mandalorians boarded through the open side doors, Dragus holding his blaster at the ready should any approach them.
"Up," Romul ordered, weariness faint in his voice, as he grasped an overhead hanging grip, one after the other, to move through the dropship interior. The thrusters roared to full power as the dropship's pilots immediately took to the air. Humbarine City quickly receded as the dropship climbed steeply into the sky. Romul watched the burning city below, hanging out from the side bay, without saying a word. His cloak, now tattered and burnt, streamed out from behind him in the wind. Another battle for the ledger. More names that would be immortalized. How many before they were through? The ever-growing cost of war weighed heavily on the Alor.
A moment longer, and Romul grew weary of Humbarine. He moved from the side bay to the cockpit, using the overhanging grips to stabilize his movement against the weaving of the dropship through heavy anti-aircraft fire. Flak explosions boomed all around them, and as the ship climbed into the higher troposphere, the storm began to engulf them. The two Mandalorian pilots sat calmly at the controls, a marvelous display of discipline given the unnatural storm that raged around them. "Status report," Romul asked.
"We're the last dropship out, Alor,"one of the pilots reported matter-of-factly. "Stormcatcher array is holding against the storm. Even our sensors can barely make out anything until we break into the stratosphere."
Dragus had made his way into the cockpit as well, not to miss any of the action. "We're the last ship reporting out, Alor. 12% casualty rate. Hectur's last transmission indicates he has fallen." Romul did not say anything, but only filed away a solemn promise that the next Sith he slew would be in his fallen vod's name.
The dropship climbed further into Humbarine's atmosphere. A blip emerged on the pilot's sensors; a TIE fighter streaking out of the top of the storm, bits of black cloud trailing from its twin ion engines, roared towards their starboard side. From under its black circular hull, it fired a blue proton torpedo, the anti-ship missile detaching and rapidly gaining speed relative to the fighter. The Mandalorian pilots responded without hesitation.
"Bogey at 9."
"Already saw it."
The dropship's automated anti-projectile system kicked into gear, tracking the torpedo headed its way and launching its own to counteract it, a humanly-impossible feat that resulted in the two colliding in a spectacular explosion, though it was dwarfed by the storm now below them. The TIE streaked through the explosion, only to collide directly with the dropship's topside dual laser cannons. It, too, exploded, debris careening on a downwards arc towards the surface.
Free of their pursuer, the dropship continued to climb upwards. Romul watched as they were slowly engulfed by the black void of space, entering Humbarine's lower orbit and leaving the storm-riddled surface behind them.
---
DIRECT POV TRANSITION TO OBJECTIVE BELOW
---
Objective: Establish Orbital Supremacy Establish a corridor for withdrawal
Romul's dropship transitioned from one hellscape to another. The dropship wove through dogfighting Imperial and Mandalorian starfighters towards the two Ha'rangir-class Star Destroyers that hung in low orbit. Their broadside was facing towards the planet below, and Romul could see through the cockpit the bright blue flare of their ion engines as they slowly pivoted in space to face away from Humbarine. Behind them was a vast line of Imperial ships, though it was not the same strong blockade that they had faced when they had entered.
It was a dying line. Broken formations, crippled vessels trailing atmosphere and debris, the Imperial blockade had been ground down over hours of sustained fighting. But dying things could still bite. Even as the Haran and Kalden completed their turn, the Imperial remnant flotilla surged forward. Turbolaser fire stabbed through the dark in long red lines, a symphony of light that in the vacuum of space was unaccompanied by sound.
Mandalorian comms were ablaze now that there was no storm to interfere with them. "Hold the corridor," Gallius's voice cut through static. "Interdiction field is collapsing; thirty seconds, maybe less."
The dropship banked hard between the Haran's ventral hull and a tumbling cloud of fighter debris, close enough that Romul could see the scoring on the Star Destroyer's armor, long black carbon scores, scars of the fierce fighting that had taken place over the past couple of hours. Hours. This operation had not endured even a day, yet Romul had felt he'd been fighting for weeks. Why was he so weary? Cannonfire thumped briefly against the hull of the dropship as it dipped in between debris and enemy fighters, deftly weaving this way and that at full speed.
Then the Gra'tua Dral came into view, and the word for what he felt became something else entirely.
The battlecruiser that approached her was enormous. It had been entirely unaccounted for when the Mythos Fleet had arrived. It was not Imperial by any means, and to make matters worse, it appeared to be on a ramming vector for the Gra'tua Dral, engines flaring at full thrust. Romul's eyes widened with the surprise of a commander who'd seen space battles play out for generations and recognized the unconventional when he saw it. Beyond it was a massive rift, something that Romul had never seen. Imperceptibly, he felt a tug towards it. Battle. Glory.
He closed his eyes. Clarity of purpose flooded his mind, and a warrior's disciplined, honed to a fine point over decades, took control.
He did not know what Sith witchery this was, though his instinct attributed it clearly to them. But he knew that at a fundamental level, the Sith did not understand the Mando'ade. They did not understand what drove them. They did not fight out of fear, nor honor, nor bloodlust, nor glory; though all were emotions experienced by the children of Mandalore, that was not what made their iron hearts beat. It was aliit. Vode.
"Mythos Fleet, prepare for hyperspace jump on my command."Gallius's voice rang clear through the storm of comms.
Romul leaned forward, putting his weight on the back chair of the dropship pilot. "Get us to the Gra'tua Dral," he rumbled. It was a command in all but name.
The pilots recognized the urgency. "Engaging overcapacitor," she said firmly, pulling a lever at the console. The four Mandalorians -- the two pilots, Romul, and Dragus -- all collectively jolted back as the ship lurched forward, all power diverted to the ship's thruster systems, Romul's grip tightening at the backrest of the pilot's seat so hard it squeezed the soft synth-leader till he felt firm plastoid.
The Gra'tua had tried to turn. Romul could see that in the geometry of it, but there hadn't been enough time and space. The Mother Mercy struck along the Gra'tua's port flank in a grinding, shrieking collision that lit up the dark. Hull plating sheared away in long curling ribbons, secondary explosions walking up the Gra'tua's side as weapons batteries detonated, the two ships locked together for a long, terrible moment before momentum and mass separation tore them apart.
The Mother Mercy drifted, trailing fire. The Gra'tua Dral held. She was bleeding, but her vengeance was as bright as ever.
The dropship dove for the Gra'tua's hangar bay at full burn, threading through the debris field the collision had scattered across the approach lane. A chunk of hull plating the size of a house tumbled past close enough that Romul could see the Imperial markings still visible on its surface. The pilot said nothing. Hands on the controls, eyes forward. She was a good pilot.
The hangar bay was chaos when they touched down. Damage control teams running about, a secondary fire suppressed but not extinguished in the far corner, klaxons blaring loud throughout the bay. Romul was not flustered by the pandemonium; it was almost a given in pitched battle. With a clang, he dropped from the dropship to the hangar bay floor without even waiting for it to land.
"Olarum, Alor." Gallius's voice buzzed in Romul's ear over a private comm channel.
"I'll give the order to jump," the Old Boar rumbled. "Await me at the bridge."
He crossed the hangar at a pace that was not quite a run, making it to the bridge in two minutes through corridors that smelled of burning insulation and ozone, and stepped through the blast doors to find Gallius already looking at him.
Through the viewport, Humbarine loomed below. The storm was visible even from here: a dark mass eating the planet's surface, veined with lightning, wrong in the way that only the Sith could make a thing wrong. And below the Gra'tua, the last Mandalorian transports were clearing the engagement zone, Jai'galaar wings folding in around them like cupped hands.
"Count," Romul said.
"Eighty-six percent of ground forces confirmed aboard. The Hammer-hands and Beroya's fleets are ready for jump. All ships online are accounted for." Gallius stood rigid, watching his Alor. Romul strode past him towards the front of the bridge, each footstep heavy against the metal flooring.
"Fleet status."
"We are mobile, shields at twenty-two percent. Extreme structural damage port-side. The Haran and Kalden are intact. We've lost the Tal'galaar." Gallius said the last part flatly. No grief made it into his voice; all Mandalorians were prepared to die. Their memory was honored in glorious, righteous death.
Romul looked at Humbarine one more time. He let himself see it in his mind's eye: the burning city, the storm that had swallowed it, the thing perched on the tower still picking at the sky. The cost of what they had come here to do, what they had done... the cost. There was a debt here owed. He finally turned away from the burning world. The Sith could have the wreck they'd made for all he cared.
"All vode. Prepare for hyperspace jump."He announced over all Mandalorian comms, his voice deep and firm, iron steeling his command.
He waited for the acknowledgments to come back over comms: the Haran, the Kalden, the frigates, the carriers, the Hammer-hands Fleet, Beroya's -- somewhere Brent Warnel's yelled something incomprehensible and enthusiastic. He waited until the last one landed.
Then, to all vode: "Jump."
In a fraction of a moment, hyperspace took them. The storm, the burning city, the endless Sith fleets: all of it fell away into the blue-white tunnel of faster-than-light travel and was gone. Romul stood at the viewport and watched the hyperspace lines for a long time. The bridge was quiet around him. The battle was over. An uncomfortable void had settled around the Mando'ade as their guard slowly came down, out of danger ever so temporarily. Romul did not say a word.
A blade had taken the Iron Covenant. It would be returned.
Tags: Efret Farr
, Casimir Thorne
& ALL GROUND FORCES with personal devices equipped w/ speakers
Despite the way the very city now seemed to shake, they were still live.
Thankfully the academy students helping them out on air were quick studies. They flowed well together and bounced points off each other to create a narrative she thought Arris and Mercy would be proud of. Wherever the hells they were, assuming a building hadn’t been dropped on them.
Regardles, Riffraff’s datamap was getting spottier but the moment and her grasp on real time events shakier as the events raged on. Then suddenly, her colleague leapt up.
Pulling her mind back to her body, she stood. <Continue,> she bade everyone, though she was only certain that Riffraff understood. Her eyes hardened to help communicate her sternness; this wasn't a suggestion or even a request. <Whatever happen, you-all continue.>
Ever the professional, Riffraff kept commentating. She circled back to highlight current bounties, then encouraged people to send news of what was happening on Humbarine to their friends and family elsewhere. She was careful to keep a lot of the tone speculative while maintaining the stilted narrative against Imperials and Mandalorians alike.
A rain of clattering sound and more city shaking rumbles sounded, and though they were muffled it was clear that the conflict was starting to get a little too close for comfort. Ever the
:: Well folks it seems that our broadcast might get shut down early so I‘ll leave you with those thoughts for now and end on a little number topping the charts on Coruscant. DJ Rift out! ::
With that, the ranat let the music roll and started hastily unplugging her gear. Their work today would hopefully be impactful enough to create waves amongst the populace — not just on Humbarine but on worlds near TSC influence. Sith had historically gods awful PR and Riffraff, con artist that she was, enjoyed a challenge.
For now though? It was time to get out while the getting was good. Besides, she’d heard talk of some kind of after-party.
The bodies delvin commanded had long since been dropped and he no longer commanded them as he walked through thw streets. Tending to wounded sith troopers and civilians as the storm continued raging he could sense the injured sith through Lily Rhodes
web and could feel her torment and the pain of others as he whent to work bandaging wounds and healing those he could. As he made his way through
Humbarine giving medical aide to sith.
Delvin felt the web shatter and but didnt mind having his mind to himself anymore. As he whent to his work of healing people.
Humbarine moved around him in a blur of noise and motion.
Casimir paid little attention to any of it. His thoughts remained fixed on Deep Well, Nazar, and the growing realization that Efret had become far more difficult to leave behind than he cared to admit. The explanation remained convenient enough. She knew things he did not. She represented his best chance of finding Kaelis. Those facts were true, though recently they had begun to feel incomplete.
Pain tore across the left side of his face with enough force to stop him mid-stride.
The sensation arrived without warning. Agony spilled from temple to jaw as though molten metal had been poured across exposed flesh. Instinct drove his hand upward. There should have been blood. There should have been ruined skin. His fingers found neither, and by the time he understood that the pain had already vanished.
Its absence did nothing to calm him.
Casimir stood motionless while the crowd continued around him. The memory of the sensation lingered with impossible clarity, vivid enough that he could still trace its path across his face. Nothing about it felt imagined. Nothing about it felt distant. The certainty that it had not originated from him settled into his chest before reason had the opportunity to offer an alternative explanation.
Whatever connection had begun forming between them remained difficult to define, yet his thoughts turned toward Efret immediately.
The realization dragged old memories to the surface.
Nearly twenty years had passed since Kaelis disappeared, but the fear accompanying that loss had never truly left him. It lingered beneath everything. Every lead he chased. Every rumor he investigated. Every world he crossed. Time had taught him how to function with the wound. It had never taught him how to close it.
For one terrible moment the past and present became difficult to separate.
Someone important to him was hurt.
The thought arrived before logic and rooted itself deeply enough that nothing else seemed capable of dislodging it. Casimir closed his eyes and reached into the Force. The connection felt faint and uncertain, but concern, grief, and pain echoed strongly enough for him to recognize their source. Whatever had happened, Efret was alive. That knowledge should have brought relief. Instead it sharpened the unease growing inside him because pain severe enough to cross whatever existed between them was not something he could dismiss.
His eyes opened and every other concern immediately lost significance.
The Echani moved through the city with a purpose that left little room for patience. Questions were brief. Directions were shorter. People either answered or found themselves left behind as he pushed deeper into Humbarine. The connection remained indistinct, but it provided enough to follow. Concern. Determination. Resolve. None of it resembled panic, which somehow made the situation worse. Efret was moving toward danger because she had chosen to.
That possibility only accelerated his pace.
The university district emerged ahead as the trail finally narrowed. Casimir felt the disturbance before he saw it. Power gathered somewhere beyond the buildings, bending the Force into a shape large enough to command attention from across the district. Students and civilians hurried through the streets while conversations gave way to anxious glances skyward.
Above them, a barrier was taking form.
Recognition came immediately. Even from a distance he could feel the effort being poured into it and identify the person sustaining it. Frustration, admiration, and concern tangled together as his gaze settled on the growing shield. Whatever had happened, Efret had once again placed herself between danger and everyone standing behind her.
The decision was entirely in character, which did not mean Casimir had to like it.
His pace quickened as the university grounds spread before him. The need to reach her overpowered everything else. Questions could wait. Explanations could wait. Whatever threat was descending on the city could wait.
By the time he crossed into the central courtyard, the barrier had grown into a translucent arc hanging above the campus. Students clustered near buildings and beneath overhangs while faculty attempted to maintain some semblance of order. None of them held his attention.
Corrupted eyes found Efret immediately.
She stood beneath the barrier with her stance planted firmly against the stone, arms raised toward the sky while the Force gathered around her in visible waves. Even from a distance Casimir could see the strain. He could feel it.
The phantom pain still lingered in memory.
Without slowing, he crossed the remaining distance toward her.
Vesper Thrace
|
Emissary of Strife
Romul Saxon
|
Kjartan Hammer-Hand
|
Seva Beroya
Lily Rhodes
deeper into the foundation of the area. Isolating it as a sub-network in space, to protect the fledgling mind of the young mentalist. That was to say, when Tavi began to work, the fleet received its new commands, herding any Mandalorian ships towards one specific spot… and at the same time kept their own distance as best as they could.
