Objective : Access the Nexus
Equipment: One(1) shoto lightsaber, One(1) standard E-11D blaster carbine, One(1) industrial-strength syntherope (50m), Two(2) standard thermal detonators, One(1) Imperial trooper helmet with standard comm connections
Team: Five (5) Eclipse soldiers, trained in stealth operations. Led by Sergeant Dag Velardi
Tags:
LE-03 (Leigh),
Taozi Fuyuan
,
Loreena Arenais-Valhoun
,
Kalic Daws
,
Ingrid L'lerim
,
Takui
,
Kaze,
Ripley Kühn
Proximity:
Darth Carnifex
,
Second Son,
Iasha Rha
,
Maou
,
Maijan Paisea
Interacting:
Lunafreya Solidor
"So what's up there, Sarge?"
The other men depended on him to take the lead now. So Dag had screwed up all of his courage, stuffing the bad feeling in his chest down to his belly and plugging his nose, and climbed up to stick his head out of the hole they'd cut in the ritual room's floor. Barely. In truth, it was just the top half of his head and the tip of his blaster rifle, scanning the room for the threat the Ghost had promised would be there.
"We..." he blinked once, twice, three times, then turned back down to his men.
"We're in a corner, looks like. Four folks in fancy robes around some kind of altar? Lots of flashy lights, a pot full of something foul--"
He winced as a shrill, ululating sound pierced the air, interrupting him and scattering his thoughts. Gods, the s
tench...the way it hung in the air, thick and greasy like smoke, made it hard to focus, didn't it? He poked his head up out of the hole again, finding the source of the noises.
"Guess they're taking the fact that this is a ritual room seriously. They don't seem to have noticed we're here at all."
"That'll change in a second."
The Ghost was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back of the storage room, flanked by two of the men, and was twisting at her gloves to pull them loose from her fingers. When her hands were bare, they ghosted upwards. They hesitated for a second, trembling slightly, before unclasping the helmet's security latch and pulling it loose.
And...well, Dag Velardi had known since the Post that the Eclipse Rebellion's infamous Ghost was female, but seeing it confirmed here of all places was the detail he hadn't expected during this mission.
She was thin. Sharp-featured. She was was pale, unhealthily so, in the way someone who was supposed to be tan looked after far too long a winter. Dag might have called her pretty with some care, but not in the way women should be pretty, in the soft, flushed way of flowers or summer fruit. If that had ever been a possibility, the nest of puckered scars warping her left eye would have destroyed it forever. If this woman--barely more than a girl, maybe even young enough to be his daughter--had any beauty in her, it was the kind that cut as much as it invited. A drawn knife, catching the sunlight.
"I'm going to do what we came here to do," she said quietly, fiddling with the helmet in her lap. Her voice was...weirdly feminine without the helmet blocking it.
"I don't know what will happen once it starts, but it'll definitely get their attention."
The storage room had gone very quiet. Dag climbed down from the hole, feeling self-conscious again. Something about this, about the Ghost laying her face bare before them, felt somehow significant.
"Can't we just wait until they go, then? Minimize the risk?"
She shook her head.
"I'm afraid not. Whatever they're doing, if they finish first, we won't be able to get anything today." Her right eye flicked up to Dag's.
"You can feel that, can't you?"
The Sergeant couldn't find an answer. The knowing look in that eye--a cool, utterly calm grey, dark leading to bright, the knife in the sun again--seemed to twist in his gut like panic.
"It's okay. I know you don't want to admit it."
Dag's throat was so tight he could barely get out any words.
"..It stinks, ma'am," he finally croaked.
"Stinks like sithspit."
That, inexplicably, made the Ghost chuckle. She cocked her head at him wryly, with pity.
"Not a bad way to put it, Sergeant. But that's why I'm going to have to depend on you again. You're the one that's going to have to say hello."
She ignored his clearly mounting panic and shifted a little, settling into her seat on the floor as if half-ready to melt into it. Her hands, once spidering across the surface of the helmet she'd removed, now sat in her lap, limp, half-curled. Her eye slid shut. Her face slacked, the lines around her mouth smoothing out. Her lips parted on the exhale, and for a brief second Dag Velardi thought he smelled...
Ozone?
"I trust you," she said, as dreamily as if she were half-asleep.
"So tell our friend up there--"
***
In the end, Dag couldn't jump up out of the hole with any grace. Instead, he clambered up one arm at a time, hoisting his whole weight upwards on his biceps until his knees were free. He'd had to leave his rifle behind, but that was
fine, he told himself, that was the plan, it was
just fine, not crazy at
all. As another soldier pulled himself up, he huffed once and hoped to the Gods that whatever Force nonsense the Nexus had pulled would hide the fact that his ears were burning like crazy.
"Oi! You!" He yelled at the people at the altar, feeling like a fool.
"Fancy Lass! If you--if you take this place too lightly, your blood will be in its fists!"
