The Bone Machine (See OOC)

[Torjesgo]

[POSTING FOR TYGER TYGER]

Deep Space
Just outside Polis Massa

The music had a tinny quality to it as in came in over the hyper-relays, distributed itself through blown speakers, and rebounded off the old, metallic walls of the Far Star’s interior -- but this was hardly a problem. It added an authenticity to the tune, stripped of production value to reveal the rawness and weight that kept record enthusiasts resurrecting the bloated corpse of vinyl decades after obvious obsolescence.

It was this rawness, this old-timeyness that spoke to Milo’s task at hand: Scrubbing the pile of maggots festering in a pretty giant, pretty disgusting clump of rotten flesh from the deck of the main recreation area, left for him by his new crew member, Akk Akk.. The flesh itself succumbed easily to the friction of the pushbroom, but it was the maggots in their scattering flight that made the job difficult. As some inevitably got away, it’s likely what also made the job fairly routine.

Milo never used to have bugs on his ship.

At least he’d gotten used to the smell.

The center holocom emitted its own music, the melody so foreign and exotic that Milo could not identify what it was at first. If not for the flashing indicator light, he may have never. Glancing to the side, Milo answered with a “Proceed,” stifling Tyger Tyger’s customized ringtone and patching the holocall through.

“Tyger Tyger! How are you?”

It was Watcher-Four, smug as ever. A knowing grin leveraged between two haughty cheeks.

“Oh, are you busy? I suppose I could call back later…”

Milo’s eyebrows furrowed in irritation, feeling a tug at his decades of military brainwash. Though he was no longer “active” in the Imperial Navy, he still felt somewhat beholden to chain-of-command.

With a majority of the maggots poisoned by bleach or ground into the deck floor, the job could be put on pause for now. Milo brought the pushbroom to a full-vertical posture, leaning on it casually as he addressed the hologram.

“I was just taking a break.”

“Good…Good. I would hate for the security of the Galactic Empire to be an inconvenience to you.”

“No. Never.” Milo muttered begrudgingly like a scolded child. Watcher-Four, however, didn’t appear to know that his efforts at humor were being interpreted as condescending by his audience. He didn’t know, or he just didn’t care.

He let Milo marinate in the crushing silence of realized subordinance for a moment.

Shifting gears, Watcher-Four inspected nails through gloved hands and began his brief.

“We have received intelligence that a particularly gifted Scientist and aspiring doctor – gifted despite his decision to throw with the Confederacy – has been sighted on Karideph conducting investigative research on the recent…hrmm…”

Watcher-Four paused noticeably, not quite sure how to phrase it. He didn’t want to say “Blackwing.” He didn’t want to say “Mnngal-Mnngal.” He didn’t even want to say “Zombie.”

“…rabid civil uprising. I trust you have heard from the holofeeds about the recent, horrid bouts of mass-cannibalism?”

Milo feigned ignorance, attempting to work Watcher-Four’s previous hesitation. Perhaps he could work more information than was offered to the press. His smirk betrayed his intentions. “I haven’t. Mass-cannibalism?”

Watcher-Four’s grin suddenly inverted, calling his bluff.

“No matter. The local movement seems to have overrun his designated testing area. You will uncover all you need to know soon enough.”

Milo could detect that, on some invisible scale, he had ascended in Respect. On another one, however, he had also increased in Threat.

Kriff.

“Vesto Weary’s pattern-of-life data suggests his location at the time of encroachment to be at the coordinates I am sending you now. It is highly likely to probable that the Confederacy will be sending their own agents to rescue Weary – after all, he is the heir to Weary Spacia Goods and there is even reason to believe he is being groomed as their Director of Research and Development…”

Milo could have sworn he heard the sound of a shoe hitting the floor. He waited for the other one.

“Tyger Tyger, you have been tasked –“ Milo winced, the phrase binding him to the job by Spyworld contract. “—with the rescue of Vesto Weary, Esquire, dispatching or profiling any Confederate agents you should encounter, and recovering all readily identifiable research regarding this –“ Watcher-Four rolled his eyes, clearly figuring Eff It. “—‘Zombie’ situation. You are to leave the doctor unharmed and amiable, lest he be unwilling to share Confederacy battlefield capabilities with his new BFFs, the Galactic Empire.”

“Roger…,” Milo agreed with a hint of reluctance.

Watcher-Four let out an exasperated sigh, bored with Milo’s despondency. “Of course, you will be handsomely rewarded for your efforts,” he placated. “And who knows? Perhaps even promoted –“ He blackmailed.

“How does Lieutenant Milo Nox sound?”

It sounded great, appealing to Milo’s dreams of becoming a Naval Officer prior to his father’s unfortunate death…and yet…

This was the first time Watcher-Four had used Milo’s real name. He had been found out. Milo just stared for a moment.

“Tyger Tyger, what is it we say when someone awards us with a grand opportunity?”

Watcher-Four would answer for him.

“We say ‘Thank You’…,” he trailed off into an echo, inspecting his nails dismissively once again, “We say ‘Thank You.’”

“…Thanks,” Milo murmured from the bottom of Watcher-Four’s pocket.

“Oh, don’t mention it. You’re so very welcome.” That awful grin had returned.

“Break a leg, sport.” And with that, Watcher-Four vanished from the holoscreen.

Milo stared at the floor for a moment – the mash up of eroded rot, crushed maggots, and bleach, a macabre Rorschach for his life right now as it hit the proverbial wall.

With a sigh of ambivalent nature, he pushed the intercom button, speaking to his co-pilot in a mash-up of Galactic Basic and picked-up Kaalese.

“Akk Akk, set a course for Karideph” was the gist.

 

[Torjesgo]

[POSTING FOR VESTO WEARY]

The Eolas on Karideph.

The pounding had stopped for a moment, just long enough to write a few more bars. Vesto chewed on his spacia-wood pencil, tapping his foot rhythmically, but far too quickly for the piece he was working on today. Delicate spacia paper, afforded to him by the manufactories of his former company, lay strewn on the glossy black upright.
He set his pencil down and returned to the melody, weaving subtler notes into the chaotic mess of overtones.
It sounded like a happy funeral.
This was the fourth song he had written this week. Last week had been much less productive. In the beginning, the thumping was relentless and nearly drove Vesto mad. After having given up on his experiments, which he did not often do, he settled on composing a symphony—a present to whoever slaughtered the husks guarding his soon-to-be dead body.
He swayed back and forth, fingers dancing across the white and black keys. His mind wandered away from the swamp prison for a moment. The melody built to a crescendo upon an ascending arpeggio, teetering on the last notes of the verse with staccato, but before he could resolve on a deceptively bright cadence, the pounding returned.
He slammed his fists into the keys.
“Could you at least bang on this worthless ship in time! I am trying to working here you know!”
The very wraiths strangling the life out of him were now unmercifully robbing him of his last moments.
He let out a sigh and slumped over, laying his head on the keys which replied with a cacophony of dissonance.
He tried to organize some of the papers, but the futility of the task enraged him; the simple reminder of his now ineffective wealth infuriated him even more. He crumpled up what he had been working on and threw it across the room, and kicked a few more crumpled pieces that lay on the floor.
Vesto walked to the now not-so-cooled storage of the Eolas, trivially looking for something to sustain him. He rifled through the shelves.
“Sulfamethoxazole, triclocarban, triclosan. Who in the cosmos packed all of this?”
He opened a jar and sniffed, then sampled a bit with a digit. He quickly sputtered the bitterness from his mouth.
“There has got to be some food in here...”
He rearranged each jar and box, looking for some hidden container, hopefully labeled ‘Food’. He finally settled on some citric acid, which he dissolved in water.
“At least now I won’t get scurvy.”
Though, scurvy might be more fun than this, he thought.
The room was hot; the ship had lost power days ago. Luckily and ironically, most of the items in his cooler didn’t require cooling. He realized then that he might be taking his work too seriously, if instead of ingredients for meals he packed ingredients for experiments.
He set the glass down and began pacing, running his fingers through his air. Gazing into the nearby mirror, he noticed he hadn’t shaved in some time. Bits of black carbon dust powdered his face. He rinsed it off in the sink, abandoning his plans to save as much water as he could—he couldn’t stand to be that filthy. He looked back in to the mirror and spoke to himself:
“I am too stifled to work, to compose, to write. This damn ship… can’t even provide a modicum of comfort in these last moments.”
He pulled off his last clean shirt and wiped his face with it, partially to dry his face and partially to cool off.
Then the pounding ceased again and Vesto approached a small port hole. He peered out of it, frowning at the sight of his damnation.
“My entire life of work and study for these… these mindless things…”
He pouted, then chuckled, then laughed, then cackled.
“Damn it… Damn it all.”
He leaned back against the cold carbo-steel and lowered himself to the floor.

 

[Akk Akk]

In a metal box with windows, aka Far Star.

Space was still a very strange sensation for the Atuli Kaalonian to try and comprehend. Oh, he understood that it was the sky without it being restricted to the planet, but the very idea that there was so much out there after his life had been so concentrated in underground tunnels was just a concept that he’d never dealt with before. It had kept his hulking form up during the nights as the sounds of the ship were so very alien and the bed itself was unlike anything he’d touched before.

The Hutts that had controlled him had at least brought him up more to speed of what was going on. Otherwise his only technological interaction was primarily toting a heavy blaster but even that knowledge was limited as there were other Kaalonians who would deal with the reloading and the cleaning of it. All he had to do was carry a heavy piece of metal and fire blindly around it at whatever was in front of him. The pulling of the trigger was, essentially, all he knew how to do before being imprisoned with the Hutts.

It was from those sluggish beasts that he learned of real technology. The lighting that filled their buildings, the food that they produced, and all manner of flickering images that would appear seemingly at random from surfaces. It had all been very, very, overwhelming for the Kaalonian and he was relieved to be to the point that the concepts were at least somewhat familiar now even if their purpose and use all the time was not.

Akk Akk still had mixed feelings about traveling within space, especially in this contraption. The glass before him still worried him that it would break as they were moving. From what he had seen during his stay with the Hutt was that glass broke very easily and he wasn’t sure why they would have so much of it. At the moment, he was even testing that theory, standing over the controls with his hand pressing against one of the panels to make sure that it didn’t break from whatever was on the other side.

All the stars as they shot by while they were traveling had him paranoid. He didn’t understand how they were among the stars while traveling like this as it still seemed very surreal but Tyger Tyger had assured him that they were not dead more than once so it was hard to argue the point too much. Still, it was enough that he was pressing his hand onto the glass to continue to provide his own strength to making sure that it didn’t start moving on them. He had seen videos of starships exploding and he didn’t want to be any part of that.

The mess that he had left for Tyger Tyger had been unintentional and Akk Akk wouldn’t realize it happened until the issue was brought up or he was reaching around to touch a part of him and found that some of his had gone missing. The flesh that had dropped off had been jarred lose while they were still on Kaalonia and had finally rotted enough to drop down from across his shoulder blade to expose another layer of skin beneath with minimal coverage over the muscle. Every movement of his form could be seen and veins were bulged out through the thin layer. While such a wound could prove fatal from infection to another being, to the Kaalonian mutant subspecies it was a nuisance. Said nuisance rarely would need maintenance unless it further sustained a wound, in which case other flesh could be sewn over it if it didn’t heal any or just covered with fabrics.

His people didn’t usually live long enough for it to become a problem years later so the impact of this on the Kaalonian subspecies was unknown beyond their mid to late twenties. Most of his kind would be killed in combat as their brutish size and strength made them perfect shock soldiers against their smaller kin.

This rotting flesh syndrome, on top of his furred body and his subterranean lifestyle, had done nothing to endear his scent across the galaxy. The Hutts and some of their grunts hadn’t seemed to mind it, but many of their guests and more well dressed individuals hadn’t seemed sold on it. It never bothered his own kind due to their naturally diminished sense of smell, but it was usually enough to clear a room pretty easily. They reeked of walking death without counting in the potent nature of unwashed fur that had bathed more in the blood and remnants of others than in tubs of water.

Add onto that the powerful digestive acids and that gave them one hell of a repellent when it came to communicating with others.

Regardless of those scents, Akk Akk was here on a ship with the human who had gotten him off of Kaalonia. For that he was grateful to Tyger Tyger and had been trying his best to comprehend everything that he had been taught. It wasn’t easy, some of it was extremely complex and so different from anything he had done before. His whole life was usually solved by the theory of hitting the problem with a bigger stick. The ship was pretty big so when it was a problem he had learned quickly he couldn’t just hit it with a stick, though he’d done a good job of causing trouble in the quarters he had been given because of it as the first night had seen the end of the chair in there and the desk as well.

He had felt regret after it had been done and for the life of him couldn’t remember why he’d done it in the first place. It was a moot point now, but it had been the first lesson on the ship that proved the bigger stick theory didn’t work.

So when Tyger Tyger called him up on the intercom, the Kaalonian jumped from where he was standing. He hadn’t pulled his hand from the window but it certainly felt like it had moved from his own motion. It had him looking to the glass in front of him with a pair of wide eyes before looking back down to the console in front of him while Tyger Tyger’s voice rang out from it.

This was something he was supposed to know! It wasn’t supposed to be very hard, he could do it! Akk Akk’s eyes darted to his hand on the glass and then back down to the console as he brought his hand up. This task could be completed! He just needed to remember what button it was.

This one?

He pressed it and the ship didn’t explode, the lights didn’t go off, and there wasn’t any screaming from the rest of the ship. He’d done it.

He had pressed the right button to get the communicator to fire up.

Now he had to battle in his mind how he was going to respond. He didn’t know much more than a handful of words of basic or Huttese, so his response ended up being entirely in Kaalese as he knew nothing else, “[I shall.]” It was a simple answer but the effects of it were ringing in his thoughts.

This was really going to be a feat if the Kaalonian could figure out how to do this. The navigation was something that Tyger Tyger had started to teach him and Akk Akk wanted to be able to do it so that Tyger Tyger could stay doing whatever task was currently occupying him. The problem was that he didn’t really know what he was supposed to do. The intercom was enough of a challenge, now he needed to try and find something he’d never even heard of on a machine that he had very little knowledge of.

Akk Akk’s thoughts and heart were filled with regret as he didn’t think he was going to be able to do this. Shame flooding through his thoughts as the great big lummox, or so his lack of knowledge on the subject could imply, had to depress the button again. “[I don’t remember how…]” He kept his word choice as simple as he could as he knew that Tyger Tyger didn’t know Kaalese just like Akk Akk didn’t know basic very well. Simple had been the best route and while he enjoyed hand motions as well in communicating, speaking over the metal boxes that were throughout the ship made such a thing impossible.

That left him standing there, worried about the response he would get for that as well as worrying about the perceived shift in the glass that his hand was resting on. A situation he would have to bring up to Tyger Tyger upon his arrival, no doubt. The great beast was adorned in little more than a armored pteruges that hung down near his knees. The rest of his body was exposed to the eyes. The dark fur on his form housing uncountable number of pests while swaths of fur were missing where flesh had fallen out and never had the fur regrow.

 

[Torjesgo]

Polis Massan space, aboard the Far Star

Milo had been standing behind Akk Akk, announcing himself with a gentle clearing of his throat. Of the spoken Kaalese, the only word he really picked up on was “Don’t,” and even in that, he only really understood it as far as “No.” The Kaalonian was at a loss as to how to use the Starmap, and when Milo sympathized with his situation, he realized he should have expected as much. He even felt a little bit ashamed for asking Akk Akk to do it.

Their travels together had been lonely, to say these least. Divided by towering language barriers, the two did not really seek out each other’s company, coming together almost exclusively for shared meals and abysmal failures to make conversation. It was a lot of courtesy laughter and smiling and nodding despite not actually having any idea as to what the other was saying beyond a few important words. He was patient, if not condescending or even a little ethnocentric – his mind rife with thoughts like, “Poor little guy” and “He’s trying so hard” for the Kaalonian’s growing up in elaborate, dark, savage tunnel systems, and now trying to adapt to the modern world of the Galactic Empire. In many ways, he regarded Akk Akk as a child. Ironically, Milo had no idea that his crewmate truly was only seventeen.

Still, the fact that they tried at all was the only thing that mattered.

“Not a problem,” he attempted to say in Kaalese, hoping to alleviate some of the inherent anxiety present in the moment. What he had actually said was “[No breach of law committed.]”

It was easy for Milo to identify with Akk Akk. The jarring change of lifestyles, the universe seemingly multiplying infinitely in size on a dime and swallowing everything up, taking your life and the person you thought you were with it.

Replacing you with something else.

“I’m still a little new to this myself,” he concluded, in Basic.

The words were an echo of Milo’s father, this same situation suddenly feeling so very familiar to him. Could he have been on this ship before, when he was very young?

Milo’s eyebrows furrowed in contemplation as he moved behind the giant Kaalonian to engage the Starmap, attempting to keep himself small so he wouldn't actually have to touch the rotting monster. Setting the course, he slid into the pilot’s seat and proceeded to assist the auto-pilot in guiding the Far Star away from Polis Massan space and toward Karideph. Bordering the viewport window, Milo noticed some words he had never really seen before.

I am that eternal fire which burns in the hearts of all things.

He didn’t know it what meant.

Karideph
Not far from the Eolas

The intelligence received from Watcher-four’s shop was shown to be reliable as the Far Star passed over the immobile vessel of Vesto Weary mired in a crowd of undead. Milo opened fire upon several of them at the fringe, but found he could not take out the entire mob without potentially upsetting (read: “Obliterating”) the Eolas and its occupant; its prisoner.

The explosion of artillery shook the ground and called additional zombies to the location.

With all the shambling corpses and dilapidated gardens, landing the Far Star would be complicated to impossible without clearing some of the area first. As the ship hovered above the zombie horde, Milo attempted to explain this idea to Akk Akk, using a claw-shaped (though it was supposed to be the Far Star’s landing gear) hand touching down on a cargo crate to represent the process as they gazed out the cargo door upon the monsters below.

“[Empty],” he told Akk Akk, pointing down at the terrain. “[Make perish.]” Milo made a gesture with his hands, pretending to eat his blaster rifle like it was corn on the cob. He then raised the blaster up a bit in one hand, clutching it by the barrel. “[I clothe.]” Grabbing at the wall, he tried to use one-arm to lift up Akk Akk’s own blaster cannon stolen from the Hutts, but found it was much too heavy and only succeeded in knocking it from the rack.

“Sonofakath.”

Fortunately, the safety was on.

 

[Akk Akk]

The sound from behind him had the hair on the back of the Atuli Kaalonian’s neck standing up on end. His head swung to the side to look behind him at the human that was on the ship with him. It was odd to even call the other creature something other than surface dweller. That was what everything that wasn’t Kaalonian and he had run into had been called for his people for so long and it was how he’d been raised even with the influence of the surface dweller. That term started to lose it’s meaning when he had seen the first starship that the surface dwellers had. Then they became off-worlders. A term that meant nothing to him even while he had used it because he’d never used space flight.

Even off-worlders started to fluctuate as to how effective it was. As he had been told by many of the ‘off-worlders’ who spoke Kaalonian, they had been born on Kaalonia. So not only were they off-worlders but they were also surface dwellers of his homeworld. They weren’t Kaalonians though and it wasn’t long before the closet meaning to unknown in Kaalese became synonymous with alien to represent these strange creatures inhabiting their world.

So the alien that stood behind him and spoke up was just that; unknown. Yes the man had rescued the Kaalonian and for that Akk Akk was eternally grateful but it was difficult to convey one’s thanks when there was such struggle to communicate. So he tried to remain as helpful as he could be on a ship of things he didn’t understand.

The words that Tyger Tyger spoke didn’t make perfect sense, but as he thought about them and stepped to the side to keep from blocking the human, he was able to understand the meaning behind the message. The alien was a lot different from the Hutts that he had dealt with and their subordinates who had cared for him. Cared was too strong of a word as he was only cared for to the extent not to cause real damage and to remain presentable for what they wanted. The helmet he’d gained during his time with the Visindj Hutts was in the quarters that he had provided, if for no other reason that possible use down the line.

Eyes flowed along with Tyger Tyger’s movements to the pictures and buttons that darted across what he had been expected to manipulate. His ears lifted slightly when the human said something else though it was completely lost on the Kaalonian.

His attention turned to the glass again and he pressed his hand firmer on it once more. It was very alarming…

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Akk Akk, even if he had been able to program where they were going, he had no idea why they were going there. He didn’t even have any suspicions about it. The human had helped him escape from the Hutts so he wasn’t overly concerned about being sold into slavery again as it seemed a rather elaborate thing to do in order to get a Kaalonian. It wasn’t his place to plan, anyways. The metal crate they were in wasn’t his and with his lack of knowledge about it or anything else the Kaalonian just deferred to what he expected was the superior knowledge of Tyger Tyger.

Nervous was an understatement for the Kaalonian as they approached the mass of figures on the platform before them. Not for the mass of bodies moving around, that was child’s play and no different from trying to move through the tunnels on Kaalonia had been. No, he was much more worried about that glass in front of them again and then was giving a verbal yelp when the cannons on the ship they were in roared out.

The Kaalonian removed his hand from the glass and took a step back. He would risk the glass shattering to not press against it when that sound was made again. Akk Akk was tense and ready to reach down to cover up the smaller human if it did look like something was going to come through the glass. That wasn’t the case, however, and they were quickly moving about the ship to where all the cargo and supplies were held.

His large figure towering over the alien, Tyger Tyger, as he watched the ramp lowering down to display the creatures that were moving about below. They were larger than Kaalonians but they didn’t appear to be quite as vicious while shambling about together like that. There were no sounds of metal clattering together, death cries shrieking out, and the sounds of cowards trying to fight to the back of the lines while an immovable wall of flesh pushed towards one another.

It actually made him feel like he was back on Kaalonian in a sense, even with those differences. Tyger Tyger grabbed Akk Akk’s attention though and he watched the human playing with his hand on a box, completely lost to the concept that was trying to be conveyed. When there was a slight exchange of words, he was still questioning what was going on. Especially as he watched the alien try and eat his rifle. That earned a brow raise from the Kaalonian along with a bit of a smirk that he couldn’t believe that Tyger Tyger wanted him to eat his blaster.

Akk Akk wasn’t even sure if he could because of the material it was made of. When it was held out to him, he started reaching to it before Tyger Tyger was grabbing the larger cannon off the wall. When it clattered to the ground, it made a little bit more sense though he was still uncertain to the eating part so did his best to try and ignore that and focus more on what else the human had said in his broken Kaalese: ‘Make perish’, ‘empty’, and ‘I clothe’.

After a moment to hoist the cannon up across his arms, he looked at Tyger Tyger while his brain was running through what had been said. His eyes shifting away from the human and to the sound that was outside of the ship and it started to click a bit. The eating a blaster still didn’t, now did attacking the box with his hand, but a blaster cannon and a bunch of gargling aliens started to click.


“[Make perish,]” he repeated more for his own confirmation of what the human had said. A second to flip the safety of the cannon off and then he flipped the heavy leather strap up and over his shoulder to free up his left hand. His oversized fingers adjusted to the customized trigger guard for the heavy weapon before he leveled it down to the creatures in front of him.

When he depressed his finger down and the first bolt fired out, it raced down to strike into one of the beasts to send it to the ground with the black ooze being ejected from the cannon shot. It seemed to get the attention of the alien creatures on the ground. There was an assortment of sounds then and that capped it off.

It was just like home. With that the Kaalonian leveled his cannon again and braced himself for more extended firing. His hand moved down to grip the handle on the blaster before his finger started working that trigger for all it was worth. The cannon reported in quick bursts as his finger went as fast as he could manage it. The red flashes lighting up the interior of the hold.

Akk Akk’s eyes turned to look throughout the hull for something to grab to throw as he could feel the adrenaline of the moment starting to coarse through his veins again. This was combat, mundane combat, but it was combat again. His body had grown up in combat, his mind nulled to death through it. What fear he could hold was tempered by the companion standing beside him and the sight of the creatures dropping when the heavy gun struck into their bodies.

His hunched forwards form starting to shimmy along the ground slowly to the edge of the ramp, his foot going out to test the angled surface as he wanted to get down there and into the fray. Cannons were what he was born fighting with, but when two walls of flesh collided it was the fray of bodies slamming against one another and the scent of death that made a fight a battle.

 

[Torjesgo]

[POSTING FOR TYGER TYGER]

Milo joined Akk Akk in the sport, leaning out the cargo ramp, one-hand gripping the interior for safety as the other dangled a rifle at the crowd, firing into it and felling one zombie, and then another. From the safety of the skies, the game lost meaning, and he could tell from the bloodlust radiating from his compadre that their skill levels could shoulder more.

He tapped Akk Akk on the side with the barrel of his gun briefly, withdrawing the weapon before he’d turn and see it aimed at his face. “[I lower],” Milo stated confidently, sure of his vocabulary, and departed back inside to return to the cockpit of the Far Star.

After a few short moments, “Hold on,” sounded from the intercom and the starship began to bank slowly left, at a mild angle so it turned in a slow corkscrew toward the ground. The cannons rang out, firing again but at a new fringe of the horde that had grown from all the noise. The earth shook beneath the violence.

A number of the zombies flew into each other, cast about by the turbulence and heat of the Far Star’s engines as it achieved a safe jumping distance from the ground. Milo sounded from the intercom, this time speaking Huttese, unbeknownst to him, offering a phrase that basically amounted to “[Sic ‘em].”

It would not be long before Milo would reappear in the cargo bay, providing cover fire for Akk Akk. A few of the undead managed to sneak around the giant Kaalonian and attempted to scale the ramp only to be dispatched when Milo drew his scattergun from its leg holster and blasted them into black pulp from the collarbone up.

 

[Akk Akk]

The sound of a second blaster starting to roar to his side only filled the beast with greater confidence about the situation they were in. It may have been an elevated position they were fighting from but with it only being two versus the rest of them he wasn’t exactly in a position to complain too much about it. His thoughts still drifted to the desire to hop down there though and really get into the fray. To use the girth and size that he had been blessed with to take it to the horde that was below them.

He didn’t know why they were shooting them, nor did he particularly care was the reasoning was for it. Tyger Tyger had mentioned for it to happen and the human was as much of a deserving leader as either the Hutt or the Prince before him. The human had actually done something to earn that right to be a leader whereas he’d been kidnapped by one and born into the other, both as an unwilling participant.

Once he was poked into the side, his finger stopped with the blaster cannon and the large Atuli Kaalonian was turning his head to look at what had poked him. Body was tense before there was relief that it was just the human and then he was being informed of what went for as much of a plan as the two of them could really communicate to one another. Akk Akk nodded and adjusted himself to get a better grip on the ship so any movements wouldn’t send him over the edge.

He locked his legs with a little bit of worry and used the blaster cannon to help support him rather than keep firing upon the beasts below. The sound of the human’s voice preceded the sudden moving of the ship and Akk Akk took a cautionary step back so he didn’t end up falling down to the swarm below and be at their mercy rather then jumping down on his own terms.

Akk Akk’s eyes roamed the room and he moved away from ramp to pick up what looked to be some sort of piping. It wasn’t attached to anything, he double-checked before picking it up, and then he was balancing it about in his hand before finding a satisfactory hold. He left the blaster cannon hanging loose from his shoulder before heading back to the loading ramp before the sound of the ship’s cannons were roaring out and lighting up the mob below.

When they were lower to the ground, the Kaalonian got a running start and pulled the pipe up and back over his shoulder. A mighty grunt from the beast before his arm came over the top and he sent that makeshift spear hurtling into the first beast it hit, running right through it and into one other before it lost enough momentum to keep going through anymore.

His free hand dug up where the handle of the blaster cannon was at it roared out as he gunned down the first three almost immediately before his momentum carried him into the first ones coming towards him. His mass allowed him to bully right through them. His fingers grabbing onto the nearest one’s throat and throwing the humanoid like a ragdoll into another one.

The cannon letting loose in his other hand a the adrenaline fueled assault had him tucking the butt of the gun more into his arm to free it from his shoulder and begin swinging it to bash into the skulls of the monsters. No words came from the great monster, rather snarls and grunt of exertion as the cannon was turning less into a cannon and more into a great club.

Akk Akk’s left hand grabbing up another one of the beasts and swinging it like a floppy club against the swarm before him. The creature’s fingers failing to find effective purchase against his hide and when they did, they would pull off occasional clumps of fur or rotten flesh.

 

[Torjesgo]

[POSTING FOR TYGER TYGER]

The undead kept coming, milling around and clawing up at the ramp like a bunch of feral concert-goers with Milo doing his best to keep them at bay with stomps of their fingers and scattergun blasts to their faces, found that he was developing a process, a rhythm. BAM, STOMP, KA-CHK; BAM, STOMP, KA-CHK. And what’s more, it was beginning to synch up with the slaughter by Akk Akk.

BAM, POW POW POW, STOMP, ROAR, KA-CHK.

It was working. This was simple. And in this newfound confidence, Milo – Tyger Tyger – got better. Got faster.

They were a machine, the two of them, rending bone from tendon and heads from bodies in the combined savagery of lasers, slugs, and brute force. It took nothing to garner that last splatter of black from the crowd hovering about the ramp.
The Far Star safe for now, Tyger Tyger threw his scattergun arm up toward his face, bending his arm at a 90-degree angle and using it to support his blaster rifle as he laid the barrel upon his forearm. Opening fire from his dueling-pistol posture, he found his shot much more accurate than when he was one-handing it and decided to stick with it, picking off with precision zombies that lurked at the edge of Akk Akk’s massacre; Milo’s carnage only mere pittance to the God of Death in comparison to his co-pilots. Milo had only really been observing the Atuli Kaalonian with his peripheries until that one moment where he had to give pause, watching the great beast grab a former human being and throw him as if it were nothing.

And he froze, lowering his guarded aiming posturing, completely outmatched by the horrors offered from the galaxy.

Of course, he would come to remember that Akk Akk was on his team.

Tyger Tyger grinned, his confidence restored. With a spirited “Yeaaaah!,” he began to fan the trigger, taking his prey to pieces in a storm of decapitation, dismemberment, and exploding gore.

 

[Torjesgo]

[POSTING FOR VESTO WEARY]

Aboard the Eolas

Vesto jolted awake from a hazy sleep. He rolled, stumbling to his knees. He crawled a few feet before standing, then swayed, trying to remember what had woken him.
A dream, he thought.
It seemed his mind had offered him a glimmer of hope while he wasted away: a ship roaring overhead, decimating waves of the husks that imprisoned him. A metal chariot with angels of death, come to liberate him from his prison. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and his vision focused. He chuckled at the thought of his deliverance. Nothing will save me now. No one will even find me here.
And then he realized something...
The steady pulse that had become as much a part of him as his own heart pumping the blood through his veins, the pounding that had acted as the tempo of his last moments, the endless clamoring that had reminded him he was alive, had ceased.
I must be dead then. He savored the thought for a moment. I certainly feel dead...
He turned his head, placing an ear forward to confirm his suspicions. He walked towards the small porthole, trying to make as little noise as possible—he didn't want it to return; he wanted to be dead. He peered through the small window, expecting to see an expanse of white nothingness.
Disappointment, relief, and shock hit him like an ocean wave made of sand.
A ship... hovering carefully above hordes of the creatures, blasting, annihilating, eradicating his ‘captors’. He thought he could see a giant rat-creature and a man, side by side, punishing the endless swarms of the things. Must be dreaming again. He frowned, then checked his hands, counting his fingers. 1, 2, 3, 4… 10. He slapped himself a few times. Ow. He returned his eyes to the duo, who seemed determined to put an end to each individual fiend.
The sight left him unable to think. He continued gazing at the carnage, as an involuntary smile crept onto his face.

And then his ship moaned, startling him, forcing thoughts to re-enter his head. He stumbled as the floor of the Eolas began to shift. It put Vesto on his rear, hands reaching out to steady himself.
The caves, he thought. Their weaponry must have done some structural damage.
A blast landed nearby, erupting dirt and debris to shower the Eolas like rain on a tin roof. It shook the inside of the ship and forced Vesto onto his stomach. He covered the back of his head with his hands, fully expecting to be obliterated by incoming plasma.
Are they here for me, too? Some goons sent to stop my res—
The floor tilted again and the ship wailed like an orchestra composed entirely of mangled horns. Vesto sprinted to the door of the Eolas, preparing to flip the manual hydraulic override.
If they're not trying to kill me, I'd better stop them. But if they are—
Another blast interrupted his thoughts. Instincts took over and he flipped the override. Hydraulics hissed, and the door of the Eolas plummeted towards Karideph.
He stepped halfway down the ramp, waving his arms in the air, jumping up and down, attempting to signal the others to stop digging his grave.

They seemed to notice...

And they weren't the only ones.

 

[Akk Akk]

The chaos, it was a welcoming sensation. A feeling that he was comfortable in, something that was familiar. So different from the metal box that he flew around in with the human. So normal compared to being bound in chains and put on display for that massive slug creature that had held him before. Conflict was an action that he could relate to and while these enemies were larger than the Kaalonians he was used to engaging, their mass was not so great that he couldn’t continue to have his way with a body once it was in the great beast’s hand.


They may have been light like his companion species, but they didn’t fight the same. There weren’t enough claws and teeth digging into his flesh, enough scratching and kicking when he’d grab one of the monsters before him. They may have had the devious desires within them but the bodies they inhabited weren’t built with very much for natural weaponry.

Akk Akk’s form was already large, but in combat he would stand up fully to throw his weight around and to toss the creatures to the sides. This would take him from his usual slouched form to provide an even more impressive figure as the Atuli Kaalonian waged his battled against the grabbing hands and biting teeth of the creatures around him.

The club in his hand, the blaster cannon, was dropped to free up his second hand. The beast clenching his fist to crack it across the skulls of the beasts around him. They didn’t die from the impacts like he had expected they would and instead the swarm kept coming at him. What had been crushing and killing blows against normal adversaries wasn’t having the desired effect against these things. Instead he had to focus more on breaking parts to keep them from continuing to come at him.

The Kaalonian found the most effective way to do that was to pick up one from the ground and to swing it across it’s companions. The results were amusing for the oversized creature as the sickening sound of the impacts were audible over the growling, the moaning, and the blaster fire echoing from behind him. His ears weren’t focused in on that, however, instead he was far too into the sound his damage was causing and zoning out on everything else.

Battle was enthralling and these creatures just kept coming at him. He could feel as the muscles in his body worked to send the abominations soaring into one another, to send sprays of that black goo (of which he could only assume was some sort of blood) through the air when it would happen. It wasn’t quite a blood lust running through him, but it was fun and familiar to him.

It was certainly reassuring to have someone else there with him even with how much fun it was. It was a different mindset to know there were others standing with you in combat. Though his other wasn’t really standing with him, in fact, Akk Akk was suddenly keenly aware he wasn’t sure just where his buddy was.

Akk Akk hesitated, as that was suddenly a concern, turning himself halfway around to look for his friend on the ramp of the ship still. He didn’t get much more of a chance to make sure that he was there before he felt one of the things leap up onto his back, completely pulling his attention away form trying to locate Tyger Tyger. A loud growl from him as the creature’s arms were wrapped around his neck and his moment of weakness he could feel more of the creatures closing in on him.

The Kaalonian’s hands came up in a panic and grabbed at the creature that was there. His grasp moving to fling it up and over himself to get it off of him, the unfortunate side effect being it was a projectile that was heading directly towards the loading ramp of the ship. He couldn’t worry about that now, his own life was in more of a danger than it had been as more of those things were getting on him now.

His teeth clenched as the beast reached to start pulling the human sized creatures off of him while their hands dug and pulled at his flesh and fur, teeth biting where they could on him. One of the monsters he pulled off of him brought some of his flesh with it and he could feel the burning sensation that not all of that had been rotted away and some good flesh had been pulled from his form.

An agonized cry when he felt a set of fingers dig into that exposed area before he reached back and crushed the wrist of whatever had done so. His body no longer in the bliss of the battle, he could feel the rush of panic setting in to the horde that had bided its time and now struck when he had been distracted and looking for his friend.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

The mark was alive. Milo could see as much as Vesto emerged from the Eolas, flapping his arms as though he were trying to take off independently of his ship. It was to no avail, however, and as the surrounding horde took notice to the hiss of hydraulics and the flailing of limbs, it seemed that our not-quite-Icarus was still destined to be ripped back toward the ground to feed the dreadful dirt.

Enough of that.

Milo reset his sights, sending a barrage of red blaster fire to impede the wild undead charging the featherless scientist. Contrary to the rumors surrounding Tyger Tyger, the man who shouldered the mantle now barely held the distinction and medal of a Sharpshooter at the Academy – a peasant’s badge declaring for all who knew how to read it that Milo Nox could hit you with a rifle about 3/4s of the time (provided, of course, half of those shots were supported by cover). The streaks of scarlet light ricocheted off the Eolas, blasted grass up from the land, and would periodically – PERIODICALLY – shoot out the kneecaps of encroaching zombies, providing Vesto Weary less with a defense, and more with a mild impediment.

Luck happened as a runner tripped over a crawler and fell face first into a round, but no scientist should ever base any decision of consequence upon such miracles.

Particularly as the cover fire quite suddenly stopped.

Milo strafed left, narrowly avoiding a zombie sent careening toward his head by the terrified Akk Akk. “Sithspit!”

They had been a perfect killing engine – so unfortunately precise that one jump of a gear would send the whole of the clockwork spiraling madly out of control, tearing itself asunder with every new step. With the sickening cracks of splintering bone, the soaring lifeless broke upon the ramp’s telescoping pillar, sounding the alarm that the machine had a wrench in the works and that Vesto was, once again, entirely on his own.

Milo stomped the skull of the nearby corpse and opened fire at those descending upon the Evil Chewbacca to his Evil Han, his rifle resting upon the fore of his scattergun arm for added balance. He hopped off the ramp, abandoning the fluttering ship to approach the mass and possibly pull some of the aggro away from Akk Akk.

A few strafed out and were quickly dispatched, his arm becoming unhooked to allow his scattergun to explode the oncomer. And then another. And another, the spread blowing off half of the torso and sending the undead spinning in Milo’s direction only to be sent properly tumbling over with a sidestep and a Sparta-Kick. Now close enough to the crowd, Milo sent in a few more scattershots, successfully perma-deathing quite a few of the front row…

…and garnering the ire of the second. The privateer’s eyes widened in the instant realization of being outmatched.

“Aw, Hell.”

He was off like a shot, running as fast as he could to the safety of the Far Star. With a mightly leap, he threw himself upon the cargo ramp, throwing his scattergun into the hold to free a hand to grip with. The zombies grabbed and thrashed and as a mob, took hold of his boot, dragging Milo back down the ramp toward the ground. He one-handed his blaster rifle, sending back unaimed shots, felling a few more dead before realizing he couldn’t hold on much longer.

Taking his gun into a proper two-handed grip, Milo fired with burning adrenaline at his assailants as he was dragged down the ramp into a waterfall of erupting black goo.

@[member="Akk Akk"] @[member="Vesto Weary"]