Swarm

[Neesa]

It was clear that Neesa was relatively cautious about her reply. There was a good reason she had called herself a Jedi. In her experience most civilians tended to see Jedi as defenders of the people whilst Sith were terrible despots. Neesa couldn't understand the Jedi Code. To have that much power and to spend it on meditation and looking after those beneath your station made no sense to her.

The Sith language in either written or verbal form was exceptionally rare across the Galaxy so Neesa assumed even an academic was unlikely to know them.

"The blade is imbued. Each rune serves a separate purpose. Isthl helps me concentrate when trying to use the Force," she said, choosing her example carefully. The Blood Rune was hardly conducive to her pretence. What Jedi would have a rune that soaked up blood and used it to track souls? She unclipped the scabbards from her belt. They would be awkward hanging from her waist as they rode. Instead she strapped them across her back. She kept her pistol tucked against her ribs.

"I never really got on with a lightsaber."

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah paused, eyeing the blade out of the corner of her gaze, an appraising up and down.

"Well," she said, pausing for a moment. "Lightsabers always did seem sort of.... innately untrustworthy. Someone'll take their own arm off with one of those things."

She'd seen it happen. It hadn't been pretty.

Standing up, she absently brushed dirt and grease off on her skirt. Retying her boots quickly, making sure the oversized clunkers were as snug as they were going to get, she swung one leg over the speeder and looked over her shoulder at @Neesa.

"Alright, we're all set. It's as quiet as I can make it. Ready?"

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Rather noisy, bright and brash I always thought," she replied as she walked towards the control panel and waved the doctor to walk the bike closer to the garage doors. Neesa pressed her ear to the door and found she couldn't hear anything on the far side.

She slapped the button and the doors started to roll upwards. It seemed excruciatingly slow and noisy to Neesa. She rushed to the bike and slipped onto it. White fingers managed to become even more pale as she gripped the handle behind herself. Keen eyes watched the bottom lip of the door as it moved up waiting for a creature to appear. Nothing did.

As soon as it was high enough the speeder bike gave a low whine as the doctor pulled it out. Neesa didn't really like this. She found she didn't particularly like the way a bike moved, but most of all she didn't like putting this much faith in a stranger.

"You seem calm," Neesa observed. "Do you normal deal with crises?"

 

[Kuzo]

"Of one sort or another," she said wryly. "Though, I'll admit, this one's new."

Handing [member="Neesa"] a helmet, she secured her own a moment later. She didn't relish the slight dip in her peripheral vision, but the idea of riding one of these without one was ludicrous.

She kicked the bike into gear and they were off. She kept the pace reasonable, not opening up the speed to it's full potential. It would be too hard to respond to things showing up in their path, whether they were people or obstacles. Hazel eyes constantly scanned as they slid quietly through the night and out into the congested, but alarmingly quiet, streets.

"I trained with a specialty in emergency medicine," she clarified over her shoulder. "It's not zombies, I'll grant you, but if you can't keep calm in an emergency, you don't belong anywhere near the ER."

She shifted the bike neatly around a stalled speeder, side slipping carefully.

"But, the last few months have been..... interesting. Options seem to be handle it and fall apart later, or fall apart and die." Irajah shrugged. It seemed obvious which choice was the one she'd made.

"I imagine Jedi run across this kind of thing all the time, huh?"

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Careful," she warned.

Neesa scanned the road ahead of them. They were leaving the science and industry park and heading into suburban ground. Even at a low thrust a speeder bike moved too quickly for the spawn that saw them to get in the way.

She'd only needed medical treatment once in her life and the medical team on Athiss had stabilised her and operated on the blaster wound in silence. A medical droid had given her simple instructions for the rest of the week. Neesa wasn't like Vrak or some of the others. She spoke to people in regular careers frequently. The sith often underestimated using that kind of person to gather and move information around. But she hadn't met a doctor before.

"Never anything like this," she admitted, raising her voice over the bike. "I've seen effects like this, but never on anything like this scale." There was just a slight waver in her tone that revealed how much this kind of power unsettled her.

"What is a zombie?"

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah cast a quick glance over her shoulder at [member="Neesa"] at that unexpected tone in her voice. After her initial shock had worn off, the Doctor had quickly made peace with the reality of the situation. The Jedi, it seemed, was still a little shaken by it. She hadn't expected that.

"Oh, sorry," she called back, turning back to keep her attention on the road as she maneuvered. "Um. My father. Both my parents actually, used to tell me stories when I was a kid. About 'Raja and the Monsters'. But, in their stories, the monsters were always my friends. They'd help me solve problems or go on adventures. Zombies were one of his favorites. Second only to a.... a Technobeast named 'Kresh'. A lot of our adventures featured him. Anyway, the way these people are acting reminded me a little bit of the way my dad described what he called zombies."

Irajah knew now that not all of the creatures her father had made up were actually imaginary. But she didn't mention that right now. It didn't seem particularly relevant.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"I see." A cultural reference that had perhaps slipped past her. That wasn't an unusual occurrence. She lived a long way from true galactic civilisation and had never owned a holoset or a book that wasn't an ancient sith tome.

"If it makes you feel worse the person behind this also experiments in an attempt to recreate technobeasts. Clearly she reached her goal through other means."

The doctor took the bike off the road and over the pavement around a pile up of landspeeders. Neesa fell silent as scanned ahead. Nothing moved to block their path, but she caught signs of movement in the periphery as they crossed the junction. The more dense the housing, the more spawn. The epicentre of the spell had been in the city centre in the middle of the afternoon. Some of the office blocks would be teeming with spawn.

"Highway or back road into the centre?" She asked. Perhaps even blocked with traffic they could maneuver through a pile o of abandoned vehicles on the main road, but the smaller routes might have been more open.

 

[Kuzo]

"I didn't think you could *make* me feel worse about her," Irajah muttered, "And then there you go and manage it. Bravo."

She frowned, mulling over the choices. As always, there were pros and cons, but one way seemed, at least on the surface, to be the better choice. She answered after only a few moments of deliberation.

"If you can navigate, back roads might be better," she said slowly. "I don't know where we're going, so it'll be up to you to get us there."

Irajah veered the speeder off of the main highway where [member="Neesa"] indicated. It didn't take long until they reached less populated areas of the city. Less people but also, less lights. It set her teeth on edge as she eyes darted around the largely empty street. The pathway ahead being clearer than the main thoroughfare had been, Irajah opened up the throttle, picking up speed.

She wanted to be out here in the open like this for as little time as possible.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"I know the inner city quite well, but by foot. Not these roads. Still I can keep pointing in the direction of the city centre I suppose," she said. The lights of some of the tallest inner city blocks was visible now. Timed lights, she wondered what would be silhouetted by their glow in those windows once they got closer.

"How many people had the virus? I mean, like, out of a hundred? I don't know if everyone was changed or not, but I haven't seen any who didn't. Doesn't mean they don't exist."

Neesa hadn't been to school. She read sith runes better than aurabesh and whilst she could count she certainly didn't know fractions or understand incubation rates. There were loud noises echoing off the low cloud cover that reached them now. Whether that was any indication of armed citizens trying to fight or merely the breakdown of civilisation and resulting infrastructure problems Neesa didn't know.

 

[Kuzo]

"When they first sent me the data, asking me to consult, they estimated that around 25 percent of the population had it, though only a small number were symptomatic. By the time I got here, there was some alarm because they had realized just how low their original estimates were," she said grimly.

"There was some disagreement on just how far it had spread, but everyone was able to confirm that at least half of the population was actually carrying."

The sound of blaster fire, not far ahead of them, had Irajah slowing the speeder down, coasting along the road as they turned a blind spot.

Ahead of them, a dozen or so figures shambled across the road, after a trio of humanoids. It was too dark to make out many details, but the blaze of blaster fire and the particular retort of a chemical slug thrower told a surprisingly clear story.

Irajah glanced back at [member="Neesa"], concern written clearly across her face. If they stopped, they might be able to help, but would risk everything in the process if something happened to either of them. Plowing through ran it's own risks, both from the infected and the unchecked gunfire.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Slow us down, pull us over," Neesa whispered. "Right onto the pavement." There was a gap between parked landspeeders they went through to reach the shadows of the pavement.

There was another spawn lurking there. Neesa had no patience so she lifted it from its feet with the Force and tossed it over a low wall into a residential garden.

Neesa could get a feel for what was happening ahead now that they'd slowed. The armed men were holding but the little skirmish hung in the balance. Their long term prospects were poor unless they could get one of the nearby vehicles up and running. Neesa didn't want to get shot by a panicked citizen. She also had her cover story to maintain.

"Keep it slow, follow me."

Neesa dropped off the back of the bike and leaned into a hard run. She drew her blaster and fired as she ran. Two of the spawn were dropped and three more peeled away and rushed in her direction. To save power she holstered her blaster and pulled both swords from her back. The change in odds should have given the gun men the edge and clear the path ahead. The young Nagai was confident she could deal with three up close and embark again in a few moments.

 

[Kuzo]

Yeah, she had no intentions of running headlong into that fire fight. Raj was really more the 'duck and run' sort except on rare occasions when she had a truck.

Hmmm.

No reason the same trick couldn't work twice. [member="Neesa"] had said to follow her.

​So, she'd do that. Sort of.

Few of the landspeeders were damaged; most had simply been abandoned. Instead of following Neesa directly, Irajah hoped into one of them. Hoping she was right, she started flicking on the ignition sequence and offered a small whoop of victory when the thing started up.

Carefully, she used the speeder to nose another one out of the way, clearing her path to the beleaguered men. Checking over her shoulder that her partner was doing okay (holding her own just fine, Raj wasn't sure why she worried), she brought the vehicle up with a whine. She didn't really care that the side of it scrapped against the one next to it as she moved forward- it wasn't hers after all.

She couldn't get up the kind of speed on the congested roadway that would have made a repeat of the hangar possible. But she *could* bring it around to the other side of the group and yell at them to get in.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

This was tedious and unnecessary. The doctor had managed to force a landspeeder through the crowd and swing around the group. Neesa hadn't exactly been planning on picking them up. She growled in frustration as one of the spawn nearly caught her.

She was always dancing on the blade's edge. The creatures were powerful and resilient, but she was always a fraction of an inch ahead of them. Twisting and turning on the edge of balance. A lot depended on her not making the wrong move. This time she didn't.

She didn't wait to finish off the last spawn. It fell away with great gouges opened across its chest and Neesa ran on. She angled for the group of civilians and Irajah. They seemed slightly startled by her rushing for them, but they were far more intent on getting into the offer of transport.

"Go!" She called as she dropped into a seat. She didn't spare the other passengers a look.

"It's the other way to leave the city!" One of the frightened men called.

"No," Neesa stated flatly. "We're not going that way. We're going to stop this. If you want to run we'll find you another speeder."

 

[Kuzo]

Irajah's intention had been to get the men in the landspeeder and then pick back up with [member="Neesa"] on the bike. So she was surprised when the other woman vaulted up and into a seat.

Maybe her speeder bike driving had been worse than she thought.

If Neesa had been uncomfortable then, well, it wasn't about to get better now. Irajah gritted her teeth as she knocked into another vehicle before finally clearly the congestion.

"Hells bells! We're not going back to the city! Are you INSANE?"

"Yes," Irajah snapped. "Clearly we are utterly crazy to want to stop this at it's source you sniveling imbecile."

The level of scorn in her voice could have burned the hair off a wookiee.

"Buck up buttercup. Shut up or get out."

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Neesa raised an eyebrow in the direction of the doctor. The Force moved in interesting ways. The assassin had been presented with a group of medical staff. She could have saved a cowardly nurse or an idiotic orderly. instead she'd saved almost exactly the right person for the job it seemed.

"She has swords," one of them stated flatly.

"Why would anyone have swords?" another replied, his voice reaching an incredulous high pitch at the end.

Neesa ignored them both and looked to the oldest who carried an air of calm.

"You are law enforcement?" She asked.

"I am, and he is," the middle aged man nodded, pointing to a younger Zeltron. "We tried to hold the precinct and armed civilians. It didn't last."

Neesa made a snap decision. She didn't care a damn about their prospect, but a few more blasters would help. "We can end this quickly. You must have others in the city you'd want to save?"

 

[Kuzo]

The trio were quiet for a moment. Serious would be an inaccurate way of describing their faces. The expressions there were light years beyond 'serious'.

The oldest nodded curtly at [member="Neesa"] .

"We do," he agreed. "If you two think you can stop this, then, we'll help you. What's the plan?"

They picked up speed suddenly, the vehicle bumping up slightly.

"Besides try to hit as many of these things with the speeder?"

There was a certain silence behind her for a moment.

"Get to a lab where the original matrix for what caused this is. If we can get there without ending up dead, I should be able to create something that can undo it."

At least, she hoped. It was more likely that she'd be able to stop further spread, but she didn't say that right now. It wouldn't be helpful.

"If you need to focus on that..... why are you the one driving?"

Irajah shrugged, glancing over her shoulder at him.

"Because someone had to do it."

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"Don't look at me," Neesa added. She had her blaster pistol out and was checking the power pack again. She knew exactly how many it had left but she was nervous and needed something to do. When there was a tangible threat fear was one of her greatest allies, but not when it was the unknown.

"How far?" The eldest asked.

"Another four miles," Neesa replied. She could tell they didn't like that answer.

"Thats near the centre of where it started. Two miles ahead they drew lines and tried to contain the problem. Cordoned off the inner city and blocked the roads. We'd have to make it on foot the last part."

Neesa looked to the man, digested the information and nodded. She wasn't confident they could all make it, but she had faith in her own abilities.

"I'm Rindall," the eldest added. "Thats Tash and Yillis. You're not police."

This again. "I'm a Jedi," Neesa replied.

Yillis the youngest was shaking his head. He had a thick mop of mousy brown hair and a delicate jaw. He turned to the others, lips pursed. "That's suicide. I'm not going into the city centre. Drop me off and I'll make my own way."

 

[Kuzo]

"I'm a Doctor," she had supplied over her shoulder, keeping her eye on the road ahead. "Doc Ven," she added.

"That's suicide. I'm not going into the city centre. Drop me off and I'll make my own way."

"Alright. You don't have to come. Get out."

Irajah didn't stop the speeder.

Yillis looked over at [member="Neesa"] .

"She gonna pull over or something?"

"Nope!"

Raj's voice was surprisingly cheerful, her head bobbing back and forth slightly. And then she started humming to herself. They weren't going that fast- a good clip sure, but if he was careful he'd be fine. She had no time or interest in delaying further. Besides, if they stopped, she had no doubt that the vague flickers of movement that kept appearing at the edges of the light would immediately converge.

She wasn't going to put them all at risk for one person.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

"What's the escape plan if we can't do it?" Rindall asked.

Neesa looked up at him and slid the blaster back into its holster. Perhaps he was ex-military. He had the look. She needed to come up with a better answer than 'I vanish into the shadows and leave you all to die.'

"Wherever we are we fall back towards the tallest building with the least resistance between us and the entrance. We make for the roof or somewhere we can lock ourselves in. Won't last long on the streets. There should be gunships in the area before too long."

She looked towards the doctor who was still determinedly humming. She had certainly grown some more respect for her. She saw a barricade made of duracrete slabs blocking the road ahead. There were a pair of repeaters mounted on the top, several bodies still draped across it. The checkpoint.

 

[Kuzo]

"Everyone get ready. I'm going to pull us to a stop, but we don't have a lot of time to get moving. Don't leave anything behind, cause we're not coming back. If you are coming with us, this is your stop. If you aren't coming with us, this is your stop. Thank you for choosing crazy karker starlines for all your travel needs. The exits are everywhere. Do not wait to unbuckle and stand up until the speeder comes to a complete stop."

This was where those who didn't want on board could make their exits. Honestly, Raja didn't want anyone here who wasn't all in. She'd do her best to watch their backs- but she expected the same courtesy.

The speeder bumped to a stop lightly against the barrier. As everyone vaulted out, Raj stood up, scanning the area around them before hopping down herself.

"No movement that I can see, but I don't expect it'll last," she said, addressing [member="Neesa"] quietly. It was fairly obvious that the 'Jedi' was the only person she considered reliable at the moment.