Private Rogue Protocol Op: 'A Higher Noon'

[Glade]

Rogue Protocol Op: "A Higher Noon'
Planet: Echelon Prime
District 3: Blackline Direct. Corporate Controlled.
Target: Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower – Climate Control Grid Schematics
Keyrunner: Circuit | Echo-ID: CR9 | Undervine Alias: C99IT
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro | (Switching to Ghostkey on heist)

Dazzling night lights shimmering in a duracrete jungle of towers, District 3 was cleaner than most, with its rough edges. Buildings were sleek, and corporate, shimmering reflective black glass across Vertaplex Noon like it was polished yesterday. The crew's stealth shuttle hovered tucked out of sight and sensors. Circuit's jobs always looked smooth on the surface; PR and media cover-ups were his speciality. But Nayus Engineering was one of the Big Fourteen on Echelon, which meant this wasn't an easy pull. All in the timing.

Inside a stealthed black shuttle, a rare mix of crew, professionals and chaos, some wore more neon than sense, others armor with Echelon flare; a few carried markings showing the world who they were, others non at all. Chronicle sat still, true to his name, watching time tick down on his wrist chrono for zero hour.

"Still a bad idea," Juju muttered, their resident 'bad feeling girl,' living up to her title.
"C'mon, last time you guys hit a magtrain with drop packs," Crash, the new Echelon rookie with too much confidence, laughed, nudging GhostKey , who only managed a thin attempt at a smile.
"Last time Trix died," Sickle told the new kid bluntly. Her showy green hair, scuffed jacket, and anarchist patches disguised how much she actually cared. Glade, strapped into the pilot's chair, reached over and gave her friend's arm a little pat. Sickle didn't look up.

New faces in the crew's mix: Crash, the rookie; Hound, former paramilitary, armored and silent, Trix's replacement, who had a lot less to say. Finally, the outside hires: Varo Jhicaro and Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze, both here for the paycheck. Including the pilot, a crew of eleven. With two five-man teams for the ground heist.

Glade popped her lips and sighed. "One minute. Get'cha selves strapped up guys. Window's kinda short." Their window, the brief moment when Echelon's traffic control would be misdirected and the nearby building light dimmed, should give them the perfect blind spot to slip in clean. Chronicle nodded as the countdown hit zero.

Savant a quiet chiss and their defacto leader, tapped twice on the cockpit door. The shuttle silently glided into position, stealth fields engaged. lining up just above the rooftop. Even with all this prep, getting too close would trip Nayus sensors, good as they were, so they'd prepped two stealth ziplines, maglocked anchors ready to fire across the gap.

The lines hissed out, snapping silently into the tower's rooftop. Score one for the team, one for safety clipped to their waist. Wind buffeted the shuttle, light rain threatening to start, but Glade steadied her hands, she'd clocked a lot of pilot hours now. 200 feet / 60 meters between them and safety.

Juju worked interference on her slicing deck while Sickle clipped in first.

Hands to grip the bar for descent, "never wanted to live forever anyway," young Ghostkey joked to whoever was closest; watching the city stretching far below and following after the anarchist.

The stealth lines were thin, too thin to trip most sensors.

Or so they hoped…

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Tags - Glade / Varo Jhicaro

[

The being who called himself Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze did not join a crew so much as descend upon it—as though drawn from a deeper, older shadow that the galaxy itself tried to forget. His arrival was not heralded by introductions or negotiations, but by the slow, suffocating awareness that the air aboard the ship had changed. The lights flickered. The hum of the hyperdrive seemed to falter for the briefest instant, as if some unseen pulse had passed through its circuitry. And then he was there.

Tall. Lean. Clad in armor that seemed older than the concept of allegiance. It bore the Kryze sigil, yes—but distorted, twisted into something unrecognizable, as though time and will had warped it beyond the honor of Mandalore. His armor was not polished beskar, but darkened, as if it had been bathed in smoke and then left to rust in the void.

His helm was faceless save for the thin slit of his visor, which glowed with a hungry crimson gleam, the color of decay and decision. His presence brought with it an aura of pressure, as though gravity itself thickened in his proximity. Crew members found their breathing shallow when he passed; their thoughts stuttered. Some swore they could hear faint whispers in his wake, though none dared admit to what those whispers said.

They learned quickly not to speak his full name. Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze. Even syllables carried weight when attached to him. He allowed them to call him simply Chaidth.

And yet…when the crew faced danger, it was Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze who stepped forward first. When others flinched from the void, he gazed into it as though it were an old friend. His loyalty was not warm—but it was absolute, cold as iron and just as unyielding. Where he walked, shadows lengthened. Where he stood, silence deepened. He was a retinue of a curse wearing beskar.

"Mortality is a myth," the black armored Mando said, his eyes watching the others through his visor. "Only fools want to live long enough to hear songs and fables of their exploits. Fools!"

Spoiler: Weapons Loadout

• Ranged Weapons
  
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers)
  • Widowmaker (Sniper Rifle)

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Rogue Protocol Op: 'A Higher Noon'
Gear: In Bio | Interacting With: Glade , Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze

It was one of the smoother shuttles that Varo had ridden on. Compared to the rattle-rattle of military drop ships that were shaped more like bricks than starcraft, and the high-class luxury shuttles which had a nice velvety smooth rumble to them - the stealth shuttle was somewhere between the two, a sliding glide that vibrated there in the low hertz range. His eyes closed, his head hanging, a thin marcan herb cigarra hung between Varo's lips, a thin stream of orange smoke rising from its lit tip. The man appeared to be asleep, that thin cigarra threatening with every breath to slip from his lips and burn his person.

It was a little paradoxical, given his attire - the black specforce armor svlete and formfitting, his black great coat concealing a chromium pistol and two chromium electrobatons that looked polished and well maintained. Between the weapons, tactical harness, gauntlets, and the utility belt, he looked ready for anything the heist had to throw at him. The consummate professional. But it was the dark bags under the eyes, the unkempt stubble, the cigarra, and the fact he had had his eyes closed for the entire ride, that spoke to something of a contrarian streak compared to the others here.

"One minute. Get'cha selves strapped up guys. Window's kinda short."

"Bout that time, all the time, it seems like." The phrase made no sense, but seemed to hold some meaning to the man. Straightening Varo pushed out of his seat and double-checked his tactical harness. When he was satisfied, he took an extra long drag on the cigarra before he pinched the end out between his fingers - flicking the butt out of the shuttle, the wind carrying it away from the building and its sensor net.

Hands to grip the bar for descent, "never wanted to live forever anyway," young Ghostkey joked to whoever was closest..

"Leave the jaded nihilism to us older types. Can you even drink yet Sparky?" Varo made sure his rig was set, before gripping his own respective bar. "Probably got some sweet thing back home crying her eyes out - think of that, and you'll probably live to daylight." Varo thought about it, then shrugged. "Probably."

"Mortality is a myth," the black armored Mando said, his eyes watching the others through his visor. "Only fools want to live long enough to hear songs and fables of their exploits. Fools!"

"There's that Mando'ade zealotry." Varo pantomimed tipping an invisible hat to the imposing man. "But let's save the suicidal last stands and the 'It's a good day to die' speeches until after the mission, yeah Smiley?" Varo seemed unconcerned in the Mando's presence, indeed the only thing that seemed to make him nervous was the hint of a storm on the horizon. "Bogan's Billiard Balls, a storm is always bad luck."

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower: Roof and Zipline Access.
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze
Chronicle lined up, ready to go. "Agreed. Time's the only thing that counts." It might have sounded like a joke, but he believed it, down to the millisecond. He hoisted off after the others. One by one, the crew exited the shuttle, gripping tight as the lines moved under weight. Ibis moved with her usual artistic flourish, turning her descent into a performance.

Varo Jhicaro
Sparky, Ghostkey grinned wide. "Old enough to flatline the Crownline bank node," he called, as if that meant anything to anyone. Too eager to prove he belonged. His grin slipped. "Yeah, but I always buy her something nice." Then he was gone, sailing along the thin line. "Don't look down, I hear it's a long way!" he joked, completely at home crossing stupidly high gaps, like the Wroshyr climbs back on Kashyyyk. Street runners on Denon or Echelon always started too young. Most didn't last.

@All
A light wind buffeted the stealth shuttle. Glade steadied it with practiced hands. So stealthy, an unexpected speeder zipped by, nearly clipping them. She cursed, adjusting the nose down, then up, to avoid collision, sending a ripple through the ziplines. "Hey! What'cha you doin? Read the signals, we're committin' honest crime back here," she snapped under her breath.

The wobble hit Hound next. He grunted, fighting to correct. His top catch buckled, and he dropped onto the safety line, continuing to descend but scrambling for a grip with gloved hands. Ibis flipped mid-air, turning herself vertical and reaching for him, moving like the dancer she was, but would it be enough alone?

Ghostkey landed clean. Sickle was already slicing through the door, sparks flickering as her cutter bit in, snagging on thick reinforced Duraplast, it looked like she could use some help! Chronicle dropped and setup, his deck coming to life to take over from Juju. She clipped in last, packing her slicing deck up just as an unexpected sensor ping flashed across their readouts. Not routine, unpredictable. It pulsed through their sensors and decks like a heartbeat.

"Echo it," Savant ordered from the line, comms catching the rush of air. Chronicle's fingers blurred across his slicing deck, faster than most could follow, working to loop the sensor and camera feedback. If it held, they'd have ten minutes of sensor loop to blind the readings.

Roll 1: Ibis stabilizing Hound's descent
Roll 2: Chronicle masking sensors

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower: Roof and Zipline Access.
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze stood in calculated silence, his visor reflecting the pale gleam of the city's neon sprawl as Ghostkey and others began launching down to the waiting rooftop below. He observed the motion with detached precision—the taut cable, the shifting of weight, the efficiency of the trajectory. Every movement spoke of practiced instinct rather than thought. His gaze lingered not out of admiration, but analysis—measuring timing, leverage, and potential vulnerabilities. To him, the act was not acrobatics, but data: another entry in the silent ledger he kept on those who called themselves allies. The Mando observed his other allies as they readied themselves for the crossing, his expression unreadable beneath the helmet's visor.

Ajalurk-Chaidth positioned himself upon the shuttle's ledge, his figure carved in stark silhouette against the pale gleam of distant lightning. The wind coiled around him like a living thing, tugging at the edges of his cloak and whispering in tongues only the restless might understand. He moved with mechanical precision, gloved hands gliding over the cold surfaces of his sidearms—each click, each metallic whisper, a ritual of certainty; their polished bodies reflecting the stormlight like the gaze of a watchful predator: his sniper rifle remaining attached and slung across his back. Every motion bore the gravity of habit sharpened by war; of a man whose survival had long ago become an art of discipline and paranoia.

His visor tilted toward the chasm between himself and the building—a dark gulf of wind and flickering neon far below. The distance was not impossible, but it demanded respect; many had fallen for less. For a moment, his gaze lingered on the abyss, as if measuring not merely space, but the unseen thread between life and death stretched thin by arrogance. Then came the low growl of ignition. The jetpack flared to life with a flare of blue fire, its glow casting him in ghostly hues. With a controlled exhale, Ajalurk-Chaidth stepped forward into the void. The roar of the thrusters drowned out by the city's murmurs, and his form became a streak of motion cutting through the gloom—a black specter gliding between realms: his two revolvers aimed forward, preparing for the unseen surprises.

He landed upon the rooftop with a resonant thud, the durasteel beneath his boots shuddering from the impact. For an instant, he stood in silence, the stormlight catching along the edges of his armor like molten veins. Then, with a measured turn of his head, he surveyed the skyline once more—ever the observer, ever the tactician, untouched by awe, as if even the heavens themselves were just another field of battle to be crossed. Ajalurk-Chaidth stood on the rooftop as the wind whispered against the steel building, carrying a faint metallic scent that did not belong to the storm—studying with patience of a hunter reading tracks of the surrounding areas as he said, "That was entertaining."

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Rogue Protocol Op: 'A Higher Noon'
Gear: In Bio | Interacting With: Glade , Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze

They began their descent, zipping across the stealth lines, shadows on shadows in the night. The kid, Sparky, was a newbie - it gave Varo a little nostalgia for those days, back when things seemed brighter, fresher, and less complicated. There was a purity to youth that seemed to get dimmed by experience and age. “What am I, seventy? Not even thirty yet.” Varo muttered under his breath. Taking ahold of the descent bar, Varo leapt into the darkness, the building rushing towards him - the wind whipped at him as he flew down the line, and somewhere in the back of his mind he worried over the storm.

Perhaps it was that very worry that made him lose his grip when the ripple passed through the line. Teräs Käsi reflexes and kung fu grip were great, but they worked a little bit better when you could see the threat coming at you; but that was what cybernetics were for. Time seemed to slow as his body filled with adrenaline and his alacrity implant came online. Varo’s hands blurred as he let go of the slide bar that had broken loose, and whipping down to his side he unholstered one of his electrobatons. Crossing the baton over the line, he used it as a makeshift slidebar, the building whipping up at him at speed.

He had no choice but to hit the ground hard; rolling into the impact, he used his forward momentum to arrest himself out of the roll, transitioning into a flip that landed him with one knee on the ground. Barely recovered, he spun around to see how the others had fared - the success of the mission depended on the unique skills each member brought with them. Even a single loss could mean the difference between success or failure.

Ibis flipped mid-air, turning herself vertical and reaching for him, moving like the dancer she was, but would it be enough alone?

Varo moved without thinking. Flinging himself into a full tilt run towards the edge of the building, he fell backward and simultaneously fired his grappling line - the propelled hook arcing out to try and latch around Hound’s limb or rig. As it arced out, he landed on his back, his momentum sliding him forward until his feet brought him to a stop on the building’s raised roof edge. Bracing himself, activating the magna grip function of his boots, he prepared for the jolt and strain of Hound to fall. briefly, he looked upward - from his perspective - to see what the rest were doing.

Sickle was already slicing through the door, sparks flickering as her cutter bit in, snagging on thick reinforced Duraplast, it looked like she could use some help!

She’d have to manage on her own - Varo was a little preoccupied. Besides, he was more of a micro-tool and laser-lockpick kind of guy. “Where’s a lightsaber when you need one?” Varo cackled into the air, the wind already seeming stronger to him. “Sparky! Help with the door or the slicers. I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” It was less an order, and more a way to get the kid to focus - a matter of fact allocation of the resources they had. Varo wasn’t force sensitive, he knew that, but he was inordinately lucky when it came to certain things. Sometimes, a cold ball would form in his stomach, warning him of something, or someone. In his youth, he had always dismissed the odd feelings. Now, he had learned to listen to his gut, and right now his gut was screaming at him that something bad was about to happen.

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon: Roof-1 Level / Level 461
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics - Safe Window 10 Minutes
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

Varo Jhicaro
Ibis succeeded… in making it worse. Her reach clipped Hound's hand and sent him spinning on the safety line, definitely not our Dancer's finest moment. He flailed, boots scraping air, the second safety line straining under the sudden weight. Varo's grapple fired true. The line caught, whining as it reeled in. Hound slammed against the building's side with a grunt, then steadied himself, armored fingers locking on the edge, looking for a hand up. "Appreciate the save." It would have been far worse if not for that!

Chronicle paused his slice long enough to help Varo in hauling the big man up. Once secure, his deck lit again, code lines scrolling faster than he could blink. GhostKey nodded to Varo and dropped beside Sickle, helping guide the cutter's final pass. The lock hissed, melting apart cleanly, barely a sound. Chronicle's sliced feed crackled with static. "Cameras still live," he corrected. "Need more time, on a different circuit." Neural-jacked in mid-walk, he pushed on, faster, but less safe.

Last on the line, Juju agreed with Varo Jhicaro over comms, because of course she did! "Bad feeling. Told you." The storm approaching now moving to moderate rain over the rooftop, giving Glade a future concern in staying stealthy and hidden.

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze
Just as Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze landed, the roof access slid open right on cue. Vertaplex Noon's internal corridors were a slick corporate charcoal grey, with clean lines, and mirrored parallel sections, sometimes with nothing but Tranparisteel between them. Every passage compartmentalized for containment and safety. Two teams and two routes, now one clock running down.

Team 1 - Data Vault Team: Sickle, GhostKey, Varo Jhicaro, Ajalurk-Chaidth, Juju
Team 2 – Mask Team, Cameras, Sensors, Distraction: Savant, Chronicle, Ibis, Hound, Crash

Chronicle clicked his chrono. "Ten minutes." That was their loop window before everything lit up again.

@All
If and when team one descended, their first corridor opened into a narrow junction, their path a floor grid of panels, with the faintest trace of blue barely visible, magnetically turned on. One misstep would spike the alarms.

Sickle crouched, her face-painted smirk twisting, hand to her knife. "Pressure grid. Typical corpo control freak stuff, can't let a girl walk without permission."

Jacking in to this deck, Ghostkey moved to slice it but he was stopped, something was slicing HIM. A stealthed drone around the corner, its field barely visible past the panels, just enough of an edge to see, best he could do was freeze it from sounding the alarm. "Frakkers, the plates are weighted for footsteps, got'ta to be a way to test which ones are snitching on us." The faintest vibration of dust or not along their surfaces; others gave no obvious surface clue either way.

Savant's voice cracked in over comms, "Quiet and smooth." Easy for him to say! Team 2 moved in parallel in the other corridor, Hound, their close quarters specialist, taking point to lead them safely. Crash, the rookie, was all jitters and grins, morale high after the rooftop save.

• Roll 1 Chronicles Ongoing Camera Slice
• Roll 2 Team 2's Challenges
• Roll 3 Storm Growth Outside (intermittent Roll)

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower: Roof and Zipline Access.
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze moved with a mechanical grace born of unease, his visor whispering with static as alien patterns shimmered across its surface. The floor before him seemed to breathe—metallic panels flexing with unseen will as his scanners unveiled the spectral outlines of pressure plates buried beneath. His visor pulsed with dim, ghostly light as he shifted to deeper scans; the readings bled into his HUD like living ink, revealing faint echoes of motion, droids lying dormant, lifeforms pulsing behind the walls, and the unseen gaze of surveillance constructs watching from dark corners. Each detection felt less like machinery and more like sentience, an ancient, sleepless awareness stirring at their intrusion, its attention pressing against his mind like a tide of cold inevitability.

Ajalurk-Chaidth stiffened, the static murmur of his visor deepening into a dreadful harmony of warnings. Through the flicker of spectral data, he beheld them, shapes stirring in the void beyond sight, dormant droids slumbering in false stillness, slowing waking. His voice, distorted through the comm's static, came as a low, reverent whisper; a warning delivered to souls who did not yet grasp the immensity of what waited beyond. "Movement…ahead," he breathed, as the darkness seemed to lean closer, listening. "They're not entirely dormant...merely waiting." He felt it, the oppressive weight of awareness pressing down, as though the unseen watchers had already marked them for discovery. "Droids."

He narrowed his gaze, the dim glow of his visor flickering as spectral readings twisted into half-formed shapes. The silhouettes ahead were indistinct, limbs and frames obscured by static haze, as though reality itself recoiled from showing their true design. Were they service droids, forgotten attendants of some derelict age, or battle constructs: rusted husks still dreaming of slaughter? The data wavered, unreadable, tainted by interference that felt almost sentient. A cold thought slithered through his mind: perhaps they were neither, but something born between machine and nightmare, waiting in that haunted stillness for the signal to awaken.

Turning first toward the one called Ghostkey, then toward Varo Jhicaro, with the dim light of his visor painting spectral reflections across his armor, the air thickened with static and unseen movement. "Ghostkey…Mr. Jhicaro" he murmured, the names carrying a weight that seemed to echo through the cold corridors. "What's the plan?" The question hung between them, heavy and uncertain, as though the shadows themselves awaited the answer. Around them, the silence pressed closer; alive, listening while the advanced machinery of technology thrummed faintly over the place, as if mocking their fragile semblance of control. "I can handle the droids efficiently, it will unfortunately be loud but unseen...however," his mechanical words echoing in the near-silent corridors, leading his head back to those pressure plates, "there's that problem. There's no cure for weighted footplates, no matter how 'invisible' you are. And these corridors are too narrow for flight."

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle
  • Moonshadow (Slugthrower Scatter Gun)

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower: Roof and Zipline Access.
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

Varo grunted as the Hound’s weight pulled him forward. Gritting his teeth, he braced against the edge of the roof, his boots magnatomic grip holding him fast like cement. With a high pitched whine the ascension winch in his gauntlet reeled the large man in, albeit at a slower weight than Varo himself. “Could…use…some help!” Not a half-second later, another member of the team was there beside him, helping the big man over the edge, and Varo sighed in relief. He was technically capable of some pretty impressive feats of strength; but armor shattering punches required this pesky thing called momentum. If he didn’t have the mass and acceleration, combined with proper leverage of muscle, he was about as strong as the next guy.

"Appreciate the save."

“Falling from a height is a bad death. Try to go out in a blaze of glory, yeah?” Varo replied with a wry grin. Standing, Varo deactivated his boots and reeled the rest of his line in, the cord whipping across the ground until the hook slotted back into his gauntlet with a click. Turning, he joined GhostKey and Chaidth, both contemplating the expanse of corridor before them. Utilitarian, stark, and likely full of traps, it reminded him distinctly of the training floors used to teach him footwork - those floors equipped to deliver an electric charge if you weren’t fast enough.

Frakkers, the plates are weighted for footsteps, got'ta to be a way to test which ones are snitching on us."

“Ah, hells.” Literally one of the worst types of traps they could come across. There were ways to get around security turrets, sensors, and patrols - but a static trap that depended on something low-tech, like weight, presented a very different type of obstacle. Kneeling, Varo pressed his cheek to the floor just outside the corridor, eyeballing the panels at floor height. Faintly, he could see a dim blue glow, and a faint vibration which disturbed some of the plates. Tellingly, the glow reminded him of magnetics, and he noticed there was a slight amount of dust on some of the panels. “Well…at least they’re not calibrated to the microgram, else the dust would be setting them off…”

"Ghostkey…Mr. Jhicaro" he murmured, the names carrying a weight that seemed to echo through the cold corridors. "What's the plan?" The question hung between them, heavy and uncertain, as though the shadows themselves awaited the answer. Around them, the silence pressed closer; alive, listening while the advanced machinery of technology thrummed faintly over the place, as if mocking their fragile semblance of control. "I can handle the droids efficiently, it will unfortunately be loud but unseen...however," his mechanical words echoing in the near-silent corridors, leading his head back to those pressure plates, "there's that problem. There's no cure for weighted footplates, no matter how 'invisible' you are. And these corridors are too narrow for flight."

“I need to get get some sensor implants or something. Can't wear a helmet 'cause it frells with my sensory mods.” Replied Varo, scratching his chin absentmindedly. His opinion of the mando had improved however - the few mandalorians he had met tended to not strategize and simply plowed through their problems. It was nice to be working with a professional for once. “Based on our combat ability, between your ranged skills and my melee skills we should be able to handle anything they throw at us...that said, if we go loud before we get into the vault, the odds of pulling this off go down substantially…meaning we need to be smart about this.”

Varo sighed, irritated. As Chaidth had mentioned, it was too narrow to fly down; likewise, the corridor was too long for Varo to wall-run. Teräs Käsi allowed him to do some amazing things movement-wise, but he could only defy gravity for so long. “What a pain in the shivs. I’ve got a stupid idea, though...” Taking out a small utility knife from his belt, Varo walked over to an exposed roof pipe and began scraping the knife against it. After a few long moments he walked back to the pair with a handful of metal shavings. "Chaidth, can you tune your HUD to micromagnetic fields? If we can establish a pattern in the first two rows of these panels, we might reveal a path."

Carefully, Varo began sprinkling shavings, the shavings not seeming to interact visibly. If they were lucky, though...maybe Chaidth could pick up some field interactions on the EM band. Of course, if the designers were smart, they would have put in false panels, false paths, and even non-contiguous routes. Likely the correct path was some winding thing that doubled back on itself and required hopping to distant panels.

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon: Roof-1 Level / Level 461
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics - Safe Window 10 Minutes
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

@Team 2

"Nine Minutes." Chronicle's reminder came in.

Through the thin transparisteel divider, Team 1 could see Team 2 hunkered low. They'd pushed ahead only to find themselves hiding from a pair of ceiling turrets and cameras. Hound shielded the group in cover, Chronicle's deck still not singing his tune; he was losing the camera fight, data bouncing between network nodes faster than he could keep up, and now under a security trace.

Crash crouched by a port, trying a bypass on the turrets and closest cameras, Ibis flipping and rolling between their turning fields of view to get closer to the guns.

"Encountering trouble. One minute to correct," Savant relayed. Pointless protocol, as they could see each other anyway. "Man, this place is a straight-up fortress," Crash muttered, hands still jittery across the access panel. "Corpo's got more eyes than a HoloNet comment section."

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze

Ghost's neural battle continued the Droid's freeze, strain visible across his face, one bead of sweat forming, but he held the sliced-lock. The droids tried to edge slightly around the corner, still stealthed, their fields like a hazy heat barely visible. "Gonna glitch the droid's cloak," voice primed with the effort. The field dropped for just a second before raising, Nayus models, practical, built for maintenance but recycled for defense, the Echelon way. By the looks of GhostKey, he wasn't going to be able to hold them much longer for the Mandalorian to act.

"Juju, you wranglin' that noise, or lettin' the corpos hear us busting their metal?" Sickle, their anarchist muttered.

Juju grumbled under her breath but nodded, already dragging her deck interface up. "Running a dampener," she said, fingers whirring. She launched Aether, a low-level AI-Drone she'd written herself, a digital mimic designed to eat signal chatter and mask their noise. The air around them crackled faintly as her drone deployed, cloaking their actions under a cloudy, white, synthetic noise. Comms were the only thing they could hear clearly. Good thing they had a storm overhead for a backdrop!

Varo Jhicaro

Sickle had her knife out already, eyeing the grid below like a problem to cut up. "Got a theory," she muttered over comms, sliding the blade between two tiles. She flicked her wrist jack open and sent a pulse through its hilt. The knife buzzed current along its edge; a faint line traced the safe plates before they shifted, rearranging on the fly. "Can you dance to a corpo beat?" she asked Varo Jhicaro . The design was a trap designed to catch thieves who thought they spotted a simple pattern. Maybe Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze's HUD could track its movement, but either way, at least now Varo could see it. If those droids went down first anyway.

Timing was everything: stealthy droids creeping closer, shifting pressure plates, slicing strain, and then an isolated control box for the floor on the other side. What could go wrong?

Outside, the storm had taken a turn. Rain moved almost horizontally, thunder speaking its own language. Glade's voice tried to speak above the howl, "Gonna need t'find'a safer perch, wind's gettin' kinda wild up here."

Roll 1: Chronicle vs the Security Trace (Critical Roll for Team 2)
Roll 2: Juju's Sound Masking
Roll 3: Strain on Ghostkey
Roll 4: Crash's Slice

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower: Roof and Zipline Access.
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

"Got a theory," she muttered over comms, sliding the blade between two tiles. She flicked her wrist jack open and sent a pulse through its hilt. The knife buzzed current along its edge; a faint line traced the safe plates before they shifted, rearranging on the fly. "Can you dance to a corpo beat?"

"I hate it when Corpos actually know what they're doing." Replied Varo dryly, the remaining metal flakes in his hands falling to the ground. Varo took in the shifting pattern, his eyes flicking from panel to panel as the pulse highlighted them briefly. Varo shed his greatcoat, then his tactical harness, batons, and sonic blaster. Stretching briefly, he breathed deep, his eyes unfocusing as he backed up a few steps.

Varo's heart-rate spiked, and his breaths came in controlled gasps - a technique known as tidal breathing - which outwardly appeared as hyperventilation. His over-oxygenated blood began pounding in his ears, and he felt his senses sharpen like a razor and his muscles tense and spasm. Like a coiled spring, he tensed, constrained motion and potential. "Dance with me, Sickle."

Varo moved. Blurring with motion, he leapt forward, flinging himself into the corridor. In a cyclone of movement he spun like a top, feet shooting out like pistons to propel him into a forward flip. Hands slapping down on an illuminated panel, he sprang from a handspring into a sideways flip - a movement that made no sense given his momentum, and only achievable through the immense power in his muscles. One foot shot out, kicking against a panel not a moment before it went out, continuing the momentum of the flip until he hit the dividing wall.

Dimly, he was aware of weapons fire, the team laying down suppressive fire on the cloaked droids. Even now, one sparked, its cloaking field failing, before slamming into the ground, quite dead.

Legs pumping, he seemed to defy gravity as he appeared to run up the wall diagonally, one hand placed on the wall for balance. As gravity took hold once more, he used that hand paired with a kick to shove himself off the wall, spinning himself into a cartwheel. Thud, his gloved hands impacted a floor panel just before it activated, thud thud, his legs kicked a staccato pattern as he spun like a dervish.

With a final flip, landing in a crouch, Varo found himself at the end of the corridor. Strangely, it didn't seem like he was winded, and only a thin sheen of sweat could be seen on his face. Running over to the control box, he appraised it with a critical eye. Varo was no slicer, but he had a fair amount of technical ability. Opening the control box, he brought out his micro-tool kit from his utility belt; sticking his hand into the birds nest of wires, he disconnected the k-spline, then reversed the sensor and power feed connector plugs. Satisfied, he reconnected the k-spline, the box beeping twice before the floor powered down, the hum of the flooring decreasing until it was no longer audible.

"Floor deactivated!"

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

The stealth droids—those spectral machines of silence and precision—moved like wraiths through the shadows, unseen by mortal eyes. Every flicker of motion, every faint emission of heat, every shudder of displaced air became a sigil in his gaze.

He tracked them not as a hunter follows prey, but as a revenant traces lost souls through the veil of the living. His breathing was steady, mechanical—almost ritualistic—as he marked each phantom target for dissembly.

"Floor deactivated!"

When the floor shuddered and its dark mechanisms disengaged with a hiss, Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze moved with dreadful precision, his hands tightened around his twin pistols, the grip firm, reverent, as though clutching relics of divine punishment.

The HUD’s sanguine glare reflected across his visor as the first stealth droid flickered fully into view—a shimmer of metal and deceit half-concealed by invisibility. Without hesitation, his fingers coiled, and the silence was broken by the shriek of powerful slugs escaping into the land of the living, followed by the thunderous roar of kinetic fire. The twin muzzles flared, their brilliance cutting through the gloom like twin suns dragged into a tomb.

The first droid convulsed midair, its cloaking veil unraveling in a cascade of sparks and black smoke. The scent of scorched metal mingled with the cold, reconstituted air of the complex. Shadows danced upon Ajalurk-Chaidth's armor as he advanced, one boot striking the trembling platform, cloak fluttering like the wings of some ancient carrion beast.

His movements were not born of panic, but ritual—each shot an incantation of violence, each recoil a verse in a requiem only he could hear. The deactivated floor yawned beneath him, a hungry defiance trying hopelessly to reconnect; only to sputter and surrender—yet Ajalurk-Chaidth stood covering the others, the gunsmoke haloing him like the breath of a vengeful god.

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze lowered his smoking pistols, the acrid haze curling around him like a spectral mist. Through the dim light, his visor glimmered with a faint crimson pulse, casting brief reflections upon the shattered walls and smoldering metal husks of the fallen droids. His voice emerged low and metallic, forged from restraint and wrath in equal measure.

"It's time we move out," he murmured, the words carrying the weight of command and foreboding alike. "Lest the noise we've birthed slithers through the vents and reaches ears not meant to hear us."

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle
  • Moonshadow (Slugthrower Scatter Gun)

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon: Roof-4 Level / Level 458
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics - Safe Window 8/10 Minutes
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

"Eight minutes," Chronicle confirmed over comms, his voice straining but synced.

@Results

Ghost popped the neural jack out, taking a moment to blink his eyes back to the real world. Juju checked his vitals over her deck, "alright, I'm alright," the kid hopped up with a grin, but you could see Nayus tech had bitten him back. Like so much scrap-tier tech, Juju's ad-hoc dampeners fried worse than leftover womprat burgers on an empty stomach; a drone rose right into view before crashing out. The roll of her eye said it all. The sound carried across their corridor and the next.

On Team Two's side, Crash had completely botched his turret slice, only Chronicle's final counter-trace had worked. His face was pale when the feedback ebbed, neural port smoking lightly from the strain. "Trace looped back. Their slicer's flatline," he whispered. Ibis took her cue and slid her way through turret fire to ionize both with a grenade.

@Team 1 Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro

Sickle fell in beside Varo and Ajalurk-Chaidth as they reached the descending stairwell. "You dance cleaner than a corpo lie," she said to Varo, passing him and off down the stairs. Three flights to go. GhostKey flicked hair from his eyes, speaking to their watchful mando. "Nulled those droids easy," he complimented, still hiding the tremor from the slice in his fingers.

Divering the teams, two, three levels down, the tower opened up into a wide circular room. The last lock before the vault door and the security room guarding it. This would make entry quiet or loud.

Memory Vaults – Corporate Grade.

Three Glass pillars, each with a screen ahead of them.

"Verification required. Emotional signature authentication." Juju stomped her foot at the automated AI voice, "talk to my therapist," she flung her head back looking at the ceiling, then squatted down, trying to slice.

Every pillar reacted to the person closest to it. Not memories, but a reflection of whatever they were that the AI could pickup, pulse, breath, micro-expressions, posture. A digital mirror expressed. Might be a fast moving Varo, high energy after the plates, a tempestuous dark battlefield for Ajalurk's drawn weapons, Sickle's knives slicing back at her, and Ghostkey's slicer deck hacking into the wall.

GhostKey's fingers hovered over his deck, eyes narrowing as the readout scrolled. "What the frak. It's reading us," he said. "Behavioural profile, mood map, loyalty testing, next level suit psyche software." Disgusting. Couldn't actually reach into their heads, and it didn't seem to care what they wore, just how they acted.

Sickle picked her teeth with her knives, tapping the glass. "Passwords ain't enough, they want your soul."
Three pillars needed three good performances, maybe two at a push if Juju managed to lock one out. A light flashed a distance behind them, maybe someone in the stairwell was checking what was going on.

Roll 1 Nayus initial Security Response to the shooting noise vs the Storm Outside.
Roll 2 Juju's assistance on their emotional lock.
Roll 3 Team 2's advance to the central security node for the upper floors.

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze turned his helm slightly, the faint gleam of light tracing the ridges of his visor. His voice, calm yet resonant with void-born gravity, slipped through the comms like an echo from deep space. "Efficiency is the language of the infinite, Ghostkey. The quicker something falls silent, the longer the stars may listen." Then, outside his norm: He let slip a laugh-coarse and cold; only stopping when they reached the final obstacle standing between them and payday. And something odd, unfamiliar: a trio of Glass Pillars.

As Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze drew near the closest Glass Pillar, the atmosphere thrummed with frequencies his sensors could not categorize—neither mechanical nor organic, but something interwoven between physics and faith. The pillar seemed to rise like a monolith of frozen light, its surface alive with circuitry that pulsed in time with distant quasars. When his gauntlet brushed against it, a surge of data and memory flooded his neural implants, ripping through layers of perception. He saw battlefields stretched across the exoskeleton of dying moons and planets, fleets burning in the vacuum as their crews screamed in languages older than light. Armies of flesh and alloy clashed beneath fractured nebulae, their demise broadcast across the cosmos as static prayers.

Death appeared to him not as void, but as design—a sentient algorithm that harvested conflict to sustain the architecture of the universe. Its voice was the hum of collapsing stars; its face reflected in the fractured visor of every fallen warrior. War is the maintenance of existence, it told him, each syllable reverberating through his blood and code alike. When the vision broke, the Glass Pillar stood dormant once more, its glow fading to a soft azure pulse. Yet deep within his mind, Ajalurk-Chaidth carried the residue of that revelation: that every act of violence, every spark of annihilation, was not destruction at all—but the machinery of creation continuing its endless calibration. And haunting him further, was the realization that not only did these worlds seem unknown to him, but they also felt strangely familiar; a sense of deja-vu creeping over him.

Ajalurk-Chaidth turned toward the others, the eerie glow of the Glass Pillar behind him, brushing his armored hand against the sheen surface of the pillar. "These pillars," he said, his voice carrying through like a low growl of thunder through steel, "are abominations—machinations that twist the laws of cosmos and soul alike. They breathe intelligence into madness and call it enlightenment. These are not natural."

Then his visor caught movement—a flicker of orange breaking through the endless blue haze. A torchlight, wavering far in the distance, its warmth alien amid the quiet, sterile terrain. It danced like a living thing, a contradiction in the wasteland of circuitry and ash. Ajalurk-Chaidth's gaze narrowed as he recalibrated his optics, silent algorithms scanning the unknown flame. "We're not alone," he muttered, the faint crackle of his voice merging with the distant hum of the pillars; and for a moment, between the ghostly glow of the artifact and the living fire beyond, the battlefield of science and spirit seemed to tremble—caught between revelation and ruin. "I'll handle our uninvited guest," he added over his shoulder, moving with long strides toward the stairwell.

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle
  • Moonshadow (Slugthrower Scatter Gun)

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze

GhostKey's fingers hovered over his deck, eyes narrowing as the readout scrolled. "What the frak. It's reading us," he said. "Behavioural profile, mood map, loyalty testing, next level suit psyche software." Disgusting. Couldn't actually reach into their heads, and it didn't seem to care what they wore, just how they acted.

Sickle picked her teeth with her knives, tapping the glass. "Passwords ain't enough, they want your soul."

Varo contemplated the pillars as he buckled his gear back on, having run back briefly to pick it up off the floor. Jacket held in one hand over his shoulder, he shook his head slightly. While he wouldn't voice it aloud, he was actually familiar with the technology. Long ago, before the Panathan war, they had used similar devices to measure the loyalty of agents like Varo, specifically those who had the Epicanthix ability to block out telepaths. Varo had quickly learned they weren't foolproof however, and combined with Teräs Käsi training, one could steel and guard the mind to show only what you wanted to.

Varo walked up to a pillar, placing a hand on it. He thought about the brutal Sith regime, the red armor, the regimented lifestyle of sleeping, training, fighting, eating, repeating. He thought of the unquestioning loyalty - no, not loyalty, fanatical zealotry - that had been ingrained into them at every moment of every day. He thought of the horrors he had perpetrated in their name; the civilians he had shot, the houses he had burned, the rioters he had run over in tanks. He thought of the brutal war campaigns that he had marched in, all in the name of painting a galaxy red to satisfy the greed and lust of a blood-parched tyrant.

Varo stepped away from the pillar, far enough so that it couldn't read him, before it register his deep and enduring shame. The Sith had brainwashed an entire species, and many would say he was blameless, but that didn't erase the memories, and didn't ease the guilt of perfect hindsight.

Ajalurk-Chaidth turned toward the others, the eerie glow of the Glass Pillar behind him, brushing his armored hand against the sheen surface of the pillar. "These pillars," he said, his voice carrying through like a low growl of thunder through steel, "are abominations—machinations that twist the laws of cosmos and soul alike. They breathe intelligence into madness and call it enlightenment. These are not natural."

"I agree. One's mind should be their own." Replied Varo quietly, disturbed.

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon, Data Vault Access. Roof-4 Level / Level 458
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics - Window 7/10 Minutes
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

"Seven minutes," Time ticking down.

After watching wide-eyed at the displays the others faced, the rookie slicer was shaken, scratching absently at the neural jack behind his neck. Abominations, he thought. Man and machine, mind your own. Made him think about too many things.

On his screen flashes of a few old jobs, close to red-lining slices, and undernet runs like a digital prison. He looked at both the other's pass their pillar's key, "Nice. Easy!" the kid remarked, shaking it off. GhostKey tried to fake the mindset of a corporate suit, chin high, with that smug stride he always saw, pretending like he's better than everyone. The system answered with an image of a teenager who didn't know any better, then an overpaid actor, and finally a spoiled kid.

GhostKey tried again. This time the feed spat out an angry executive demanding better service. "Yeah, easy," he muttered, mostly a lie to himself; it didn't scream corporate loyalty. The vault door cycled with a low buzz, light creeping out of its seems. Juju looked at Ghostkeys pillar, clearly not right "Never got through their security," she added, suspicion creeping in. "Got a bad feeling about this one." But then she always did.

"Watch your back," GhostKey called after Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze, who moved to intercept their visitors. A pair of Nayus light-duty guards were climbing the stairwell, torches running cones of light in the dark. No alarm yet, nothing serious... yet.

Inside, the next room had more sterile white than a hospital. Blue terminals lined the walls, glass panels hung from the ceiling, along them scrolled lines of data, information processed to move to the vault itself. It almost looked Echani if not for all the lightshow. The upper level ran circular to stairs at the end, overlooking a lower level below. The data vault door below, sealed by heavy glass and shielded fields. Guarding its centre, motionless, stood a hulking X-50 Oppressor Droid, an upgrade of the old model with deflectors and what looked like rotating slug throwers. Powered down.

"Seems clear," Juju whispered, stepping forward. The instant her boot touched the frame, she got a blue jolt, and she hit the ground hard. Sparks crackling across her deck's line.

"Frak!" Sickle bolted forward, sliding down to her side. She yanked a bypass hydrotool from her belt and jammed it into the panel. There was a violent crack as the field went out. The lights snapped from blue to red, then died altogether. Juju still breathed, but it was hard to tell how badly she was injured at a glance.

GhostKey moved to help but coulld barely move her. "Varo, you got her?" The worst part was, she'd been their vault-lock specialist. Well that or the robot inside. Which was now… coming online, shields, guns and all. Maybe they had seconds to shut if off, maybe they didn't. Did Varo have a plan? Nobody else had noticed yet.

A burst came through comms, Savant's terse Chiss accent: "Team Two at control. Distracting all feeds. Do not linger." They had cover for now.

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

The two guards climbed the spiral stairwell, their boots ringing like muted chimes against the metal steps, as their conversation drifted upward, half-whispered, half-boastful—rumors of a new prototype weapon circulating through the black markets of the Outer Rim. One spoke of it as though it were mythic: a star-core filament rifle said to bend gravity around each shot, ripping small holes in space as it fired. The other chuckled skeptically, saying no weapon forged by mortal hands should tamper with the threads of the universe unless its maker wished to be swallowed by them.

It was there, amongst the shadows tucked into the fractured corner of the stairwell's landing, Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze watched them with the predatory stillness of a figure carved from night; hidden deeply by his beskar'gam's stealth field device. His visor flickered with faint spectral readings, translating every word, every heartbeat, every vibration of their steps. The guards sensed nothing; the cosmos hid its chosen hunters well. While they idly speculated about illegal star-weapons, he gauged the rhythm of their ascent—waiting for the precise breath between sentences where silence would fall, and he would rise from the dark.

Ajalurk-Chaidth moved the instant the guards reached the landing, slipping from the shadow like a fracture in reality. Before either man could draw breath to speak, he seized the nearer one by the collar of his security uniform and wrenched him sideways into the wall. The impact was muffled—just a soft grunt and the dull thud of metal—but it stunned the guard long enough for him to drive a precise elbow into the base of the guard's skull. Not hard enough to break anything, merely enough to unravel consciousness. The man sagged, slipping quietly to the floor as though the universe itself had decided to dim him for a moment.

The second guard barely had time to register motion. Ajalurk-Chaidth pivoted with silent grace, catching the man's wrist mid-reach for a holster. A sharp twist disarmed him, the weapon whisked away before it could clear the leather. Ajalurk-Chaidth stepped behind him, one arm hooking around his throat—not to crush, but to constrict. A controlled sleeper hold, practiced a thousand times in darker corners of the galaxy. The guard struggled for only a heartbeat before his muscles gave out, his body going limp in the Mando's strong grip. Lowering the guard carefully to the ground, he then quickly checked their pulses—steady, alive, oblivious.

"The guards are no longer a threat," he said, looking over his right shoulder in the direction of the incapacitated employees, as he returned to the others; his voice carrying that low cosmic resonance that always seemed to hum with distant nebulae. "They'll be out for a while, but breathing. The path behind is clear."

Ajalurk-Chaidth swung his head forward, catching sight of the downed female. He knelt beside the fallen figure, helmet tilting as he studied the shallow rise and fall of her breaths. "What happened to your friend while I was away?"

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle
  • Moonshadow (Slugthrower Scatter Gun)

 

[Varo Jhicaro]

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze

GhostKey moved to help but coulld barely move her. "Varo, you got her?" The worst part was, she'd been their vault-lock specialist. Well that or the robot inside. Which was now… coming online, shields, guns and all. Maybe they had seconds to shut if off, maybe they didn't. Did Varo have a plan? Nobody else had noticed yet.

Varo cursed, bending down to hook his hands under her arms, dragging her to a wall to prop her up. He got flack for packing a trauma-kit in his utility belt, but he had used it more times than he cared to count. Fishing the kit out of a utility pouch, he opened the kit and took out a small mediscanner out of the collection of small devices. Running the blue laser grid it emitted across her forehead, the scanner spoke in a small tinny voice as it began diagnosing her. //Rhabdomyolysis detected. Elevated levels of creatine kinase and creatine phosphokinase detected. Increased albumin and globulins. Decreased sarcomere constituents...//

The scanner droned on, Varo not really understanding most of it beyond that her vitals were all over the place. Eventually it ceased its diagnosis, spitting out a string of alphanumerics as a treatment plan, which was what Varo had been waiting for. Trained in battlefield medicine, the alphanumerics were shorthand that troopers would memorize, so that they knew what to administer and how much; taking out a chromostring injector, he pressed it to the woman's neck, injecting the liquid inside. Next, he administered a bacta vial - a form of bacta concentrate - into the same spot on her neck. He finished with a small neuro-stimulator, attaching the adhesive device to her temple.

Ajalurk-Chaidth swung his head forward, catching sight of the downed female. He knelt beside the fallen figure, helmet tilting as he studied the shallow rise and fall of her breaths. "What happened to your friend while I was away?"

"Concentrated electroplasma pulse from the floor. She should live, but she's probably out of it." Varo contemplated the woman, then the droid in the center of the room. Even now, it was beginning to initialize; servos whirring, shield generator charging, photoreceptors glowing. If it came fully online, it would mean a hard fought fight. Moving quickly, Varo detached a small disc from his utility belt, activated it, and slid it across the floor so that it stopped just under the droid. The ion scrambler blinked for a second, then released a withering barrage of ionic energy as ropes of lightning, sending shadows flickering throughout the room.

As soon as he tossed it, Varo's hand came down to his heavy sonic pistol; raising it, he thumbed the pistol to its maximum setting, disintegrate, and pulled the trigger. A sound like a thousand nails on chalkboards rang out for just a second as a narrow beam distorted the air - but Varo didn't see the result, instead already turning to the other two. "Light it up! We won't get another opening!"

 

[GhostKey]

Location: Vertaplex Noon, Data Vault Access. Roof-4 Level / Level 458
Target: Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics - Window 6/10 Minutes
Tag: Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze | Varo Jhicaro
Crew Status: Ajalurk-Chaidth | Varo Jhicaro | Glade | Ghostkey | Sickle | Chronicle | Ibis | Juju | Savant | Hound | Crash

"Six minutes," Chronicle on time as ever. Their safe window for clear extraction ticking down.

@Team 2
"Picking up some corpsec heat," Ibis breathed over comms, light and dancer-soft. Her neural jack carried faint sensor echoes and jamming traces into all their channels, as their escape artist slipped into her distraction routine. She was definitely leaving neon graffiti tonight, a pure artistic sensor-jamming.

Team 2 wasn't in deep yet, but they were juggling problems.

@Team 1

With Ajalurk-Chaidth clearing their rear, they weren't stuck in a pincer. And Varo's move hit the droid before its full power cycled up; its left arm hung dead, singing and twitching in ion shock. But at the far end of the lower level, in front of the vault door, the guardian X-50 Oppressor still turned toward them; half-working shield raising, its lumbering bulk a threat even half readied.

"Data Vault Intrusion Detected.
Threat Analysis Incomplete.
System Compromised.
Executing Lethal Response."

Sickle moved inside, going high left across a walkway, our anarchist's eyes all daggers and payback, in her hand she clutched her pistol, a custom job, firing downward, cracks spiderwebbed across the shield's field as it threatened to shatter. The Oppressors good arm spun up to retaliate, slug fire shredding glass panels, sparks and shards raining down, lost data signals meant for the vault. Sickled ducked behind a console station, while glass and ricochets peppered the left walkway.

Ghost dragged Juju inside the threshold in case the door closed and sealed. She slumped against the half-wall, unconscious but alive. "Thanks," he told Varo quietly, the kid shaken up but okay, memories of Trix dying beside him on the last job. "Owe ya one. Just... tell me she's getting out of here after this."

He moved high on the right side, opposite Sickle, dipping low and snapping up to fire in short bursts, then dropping again as ricochets hissed overhead, "Chaidth!" he yelled over the gunfire. "Think anyone's gonna remember this tin corpse's name?" Bold words for a kid pinned down by a hundred rounds of metal, flinching sideways as one nearly took his ear off.

The vault door stood behind the Oppressor, thick glass and corporate arrogance. So close Ghost could taste it. But glass meant a fragile layer; one wrong boom and half the data behind burned up too. Sickle's usual home-made explosives were way too unpredictable for this kind of pretty fragile corpo architecture. An engineering trick to put such a big target in front of the prize.

 

[Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze]

“And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon‘s that is dreaming.” — Edgar Allan Poe​

Location - Vertaplex Noon / Nayus Engineering's Tower
Objective - Data Vault - Climate Control Grid Schematics
Tags - GhostKey / Varo Jhicaro

[

In the hush between distant cannonades, Ajalurk-Chaidth Kryze crouched beside Ghost, switching out his revolvers for his scattergun. "We should give the droid a name," he said, the words carried with the solemnity of a ancient spoken oath, "to give factual substance to our war stories on those drunken cantina nights." There was no flourish in his voice—only the weight of someone who knew that names were not conveniences, but bindings of purpose and spirit.

Ajalurk-Chaidth 's gaze drifted to the battle droid pacing ahead, its metal frame moving with a precision that mimicked discipline yet betrayed no true will. He studied it not as one might appraise a machine, but with the seasoned scrutiny of a warrior-scholar who had assembled and disassembled a hundred such constructs; and survived twice as many.

He traced the subtle joint articulation, the rhythm of its scanning cycle, the micro-second pauses between servo adjustments—each one whispering a story of its inner mechanisms. His mind summoned old schematics and battlefield memories like spectral tutors, guiding his observations with the patience of one who knew the hidden language of gears and conduits.

Then he recalled it: A hunter's gaze, forged not in instinct but in circuitry. And with a quiet certainty settling into him like a blade sheathing itself after victory, he concluded that the droid bore a heat sensor—an unseen beacon capable of tracking prey by the very warmth of their blood.

"I have an idea," he bellowed over the rising sounds of war. He raised his arm, the vambrace of his wrist-flamethrower catching the light with a hungry glint. "I will draw its gaze," he declared, voice low but carrying the steel of command. "The machine seeks targets by the warmth of life." The flames that slept within the device seemed to stir at his words, as though eager for release, eager to carve a path of luminous wrath across the room to greet the metal nuisance.

He looked from face to face, measuring their resolve, ensuring no heart faltered. "When the beast of metal turns to me," he continued, "you will strike as the shadows strike—swift, silent, and without mercy. Its armor is strong, but not invincible. Let its focus be my burden, and its fall be our triumph."

As he braced himself to step into the droid's line of sight, he cast a sideways glance at Ghost and let a wry grin tug at the corner of his hidden mouth. "Tell me, Ghost," he murmured, voice low with mischief, "are you even old enough to drink?" As the jest shimmered between them, Ajalurk-Chaidth stood up quickly, directing the newly enflamed serpent-like tongue toward the droid: effectively and successfully seizing the machine's attention.

Spoiler: Gear Loadout

• Armor
  • The Black Devil's Armor

• Weapons
  • Veritas et Iustitia (Dual Revolvers
  • "Widowmaker" (Sniper Rifle
  • Moonshadow (Slugthrower Scatter Gun)