The Moon of Jaguada

[Bulthos Dorrir]

Without a word and a salute that came just shy of outright mockery, Bulthos unstrapped himself and strode after Ke'Cholo.

The first thing he noticed as he stepped off of the freighter was the sheer heat of the desert moon. His brown coat was made of a rough suede leather, and it went from cozy to caustic in the space of a few seconds. The second thing Bulthos noticed was the temple off in the distance; for all his misgivings about their Duros companion, he'd landed them a safe distance from the temple, well out of range of any automated defenses that might - somehow - still be operational after over eight centuries. Standing almost like a beacon against the flat of the desert sand, the Sith temple before them had to be absolutely massive. Not long after seeing the temple itself, Bulthos could somewhat make out the shape of alterations that clearly hadn't been a part of the building's original design. The Confederate listening equipment. It had to be.

"Righ', best bet now," Bulthos said, doing his best to ignore the heat, "woul' be t' go in through the CIS way. Easier on the slicers, an' it's go' t' intersect wi' the actual temple a' some point, considerin' who the renovators were..."

While not an especially far distance to travel, the scorching temperature was already starting to wreak havoc on Bulthos's body. He was secretly, desperately hoping they wouldn't have to walk the whole way.

 

[Placeholder 04]

There was a camp here. Whoever occupied it had long vacated the area, or so it seemed. Mephirium took some time to rummage through it. He was not a scavenger by any means, but this planet did not receive visitors often. It was quite likely that these strangers, whoever they might have be, had come to pillage the abandoned temple. They wouldn't be the first, and they most certainly wouldn't be the last.

The Sith Lord rummaged through some of the scattered belongings before growing disinterested. There was nothing here that he could recognize as a means of identifying the missing explorers. A pity. He might have taken the time to let their families know that they had perished.

Shaking his head, Mephirium turned back toward the wastes. They stretched as far as the eye could see, though Mephirium knew they ended eventually. The Dark Side hung over this section of land like a suffocating blanket. Little grew, and what did usually died. Only the hardiest plants and beasts wandered this land. Mephirium had already dealt with a number of them on the walk to the temple.

Compared to the politics he had been delving into recently, the excuse to dip into unabated violence had almost been refreshing.

Sighing, he turned his attentions back to the temple. Perhaps another hour's meditation would help him clear his mind. He took a single step and - something was wrong. The Sith Lord's wheeled about and his hand fell to the lightsaber at his hip. He could see nothing, but he certainly felt the shift.

Others had come to this forsaken place.

His hand fell away from the weapon. There was no point in encouraging hostilities if they were not necessary to begin with. After a moment of thought, he decided these strangers would be coming for the camp. Content with such, he sat down in one of the abandoned chairs, drew back his cowl, and allowed himself to enjoy the planet's scathing heat until these strangers eventually arrived.


[member="KeCholo"], [member="CazoaMani"], [member="Bulthos Dorrir"]

 

[GreenEve]

[Location - The Moon of Jaguada]
​

​

Cazoa was the last to leave the ship; save for Worrir and Ghaacko, who would remain behind on guard duty. As soon as the hull door had opened, thick hot air slapped her in the face. It took a moment to adjust to the feeling of hot air in her lungs – the ship had been a comfortable temperature; it was an odd feeling to say the least. Though usually blisteringly dry, the air about them held a little moisture; she smelt rain soaked dust, and electricity; the kind of atmosphere before a storm. The sky directly above was a brilliant blue without a cloud in sight. But as her eyes travelled to the east, Cazoa saw the dark purple clouds seeping closer and closer, lightning dancing between the giant plumes.

It seemed they had landed in a large valley – jagged sandstone cliffs towered up out of the orange dirt in the distance, the wastes were littered with large rocks and hardy desert shrubs. The immediate area felt void of life-force - no circling beasts looking for an easy meal, not even a scurrying bug in sight. Cazoa figured anything with even the slightest common sense would have taken shelter from the incoming storm.

A quarter of a mile from their position, the missing ship shimmered in the heat in front of a huge lone rock. They began the short walk to the vessel, their boots crunching against the orange dust. Cazoa walked in silence, concentrating her focus on sensing any danger around the band of pirates. All she felt was an eerie Darkness shrouding the Moon, and the edginess felt among her company. Gradually she was becoming more accustomed to their individual life-force. As for herself, she felt like something was waiting for her, not a person, nor a creature, but something bigger. A big pay cheque, she hoped.

As they drew closer to the ship, Cazoa turned her attention to the horizon. There was a break in the valley edge, and in the gap loomed a majestic-looking archway carved from the surrounding sandstone cliffs. She guessed it served as a gateway to the ancient temples. There they were, just beyond the gate; three grand triangular structures lying in wait, clustered at the end of a cut in the cliffs.

The heat was blistering, small drops of sweat formed on Cazoa’s top lip. As she trudged along, she almost wished the violent purple clouds would unleash their respite right there and then.

Soon enough, the crew reached the missing ship. Cazoa knew it was empty – she would have felt any life-force that might have been inside. She didn’t announce it though, who knows how the crew would react to her weird abilities. She pulled a pistol from its holster so as to look a little more concerned that there might have been danger.

‘Can someone get this baby open?’ Cazoa asked, breaking off from the group.

She scanned the area around the ship, looking for any signs of struggle. Nothing; absolutely nothing – no footprints, no blood, no bodies half buried in the dirt. She raised her free hand to her brow, shielding the sun from her eyes, and squinted out at the temples. Her gut told her that the missing crew were there, dead. She flanked back to the group, the hull of the ship had been hacked open.

‘The storms have erased any traces the crew might have left in the dirt,’ Cazoa said to whomever was listening. ‘The only logical place to head to next would be the temples.’

Cazoa accompanied a few of the pirates onto the ship, weapons raised, clearing each section. As she had suspected- it was empty. She took it upon herself to head to the cockpit to try and patch a message through to Pali. Most of the ship’s electrics hadn’t been fried from the heat, but the impending storm was interfering with the frequency she needed to send outgoing messages. Even though her knowledge of radio signals and the likes were limited, she knew she needed a frequency boost. She programmed the ship’s computer to scan for any outposts fitted with radios that the crew might have set up upon their landing. Luckily, the computer picked up one signal, and she managed to draw enough power to transmit her message through the violent clouds above.

Little did she know, instead of transmitting the message off planet, her limited technical skills had ‘accidentally’ transmitted to the radio that had she used for a boost. The radio resided in a makeshift outpost camp. There, a lone figure sat basking, not only in the sun, but in the Moon’s Darkness….

‘Pali,’ her voice called out, electromagnetic interference from the storm garbled her voice. ‘Made it to….of Jaguada…no sign of crew...landing zone…ship intact…no additional mercs yet….storm...not far out...find them...heading to temples…contact you.’

[member="KeCholo"]
[member="Bulthos Dorrir"]
[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

[Placeholder 04]

The voice struck him. Drawing up to his full height, Darth Mephirium turned his attentions to the radio within one of the tent. He hadn't paid the device much mind when he'd rummaged through the camp. He was looking for people: names, titles, what have you, not old transmission equipment. Yet now, the voice struck him. It was soft and feminine, but more importantly, he felt that shift. It was only a hint of what was to come, but he knew it was the presence he had felt just moments before.

A moment's pondering brought him over to the radio. He keyed the transmit button. "Their camp has been abandoned. They are within the temple." The transmission came out garbled through the other side, but the message was still quite clear. He did not wait for a reply; the cyan light of his lightsaber filled the little ten and carved right through the radio.

Their curiosity might bring them here, or perhaps not. The woman had said she intended to make way for the old temple. Mephirium had perused it extensively, though there were levels he had not dared to delve into on his own. Perhaps that was where this missing mercenary crew was. If they were ordinary scavengers, they would not know of the temple's dangers.

In other words, they were likely dead.

Shaking his head, Mephirium strolled back out into the open. His eyes narrowed as he took in the distant storm. That was going to be a problem - he intended to leave sooner rather than later.

It seemed he had an excuse to stay and observe this shift in the force - this young woman who had spoken over the comms. He was, admittedly, quite curious.

Satisfied, Mephirium settled down into another of the abandoned chairs and hid his lightsaber within the faulds of his cloak. His attire was vaguely Sith in design, but many on this world wore such trappings. He would let the mercenaries assume whatever they wished.

[member="CazoaMani"]

 

[GreenEve]

After transmitting her message, Cazoa stood to return to the crew. She had stepped one foot out doorway of the the cockpit when she heard a man’s voice over the radio. It came through distorted but coherent enough to hear his words –

"Their camp has been abandoned. They are within the temple.''

Shocked, she flew back to the ship’s computer. This was not Pali’s voice, she would recognise it anywhere, distorted or not. Did it belong to one of the missing crew? A survivor? A Mercenary due to meet them? If so, weren’t they at the landing zone? If the voice belonged to one of the crew, why hadn’t he contacted Pali? Could the raging storms of the past weeks have jammed communication? There was a break in the turbulent weather though – that much was evident when they had landed into a furnace.

‘Hello?!’ she cried urgently, pressing the transmission button. ‘Can you hear me? Are you one of Pali’s crew? Are you injured?’

No response came, only static.

‘Hello?’ she repeatedly pressed the transmission button. ‘Do you read?! Hello? Anyone?’

She fumbled desperately through the computer controls, searching for an answer as to why the radio had gone dead. The screen told her the signal of the radio wasn’t accessible – she concluded it must be the storm blocking the frequencies. Her fingers tapped the computer screen and pulled up the coordinates of the transmission. It was located near the temples, at the mouth of the cut in the cliffs. The gateway. If there was a radio, then there was surely an outpost.

She stood in a blur, hastily making her way back to the crew. Upon returning she noticed a shift in the air around her – the clouds had licked their way to the hot sun, covering the land in shadow, the electrified air felt slightly cooler, a breeze growing as rolls of thunder shattered the skies, the ground below her vibrated with every crash. It was disorientating.

‘I heard somebody on the radio,’ her words came fast, her grey eyes darting between Bulthos and KeCholo as she spoke. ‘I sent a message to Pali, but someone else responded, a man, I don’t know who he is. The coordinates place the radio just inside of the gateway over there.’ she gestured at the arch now looking ominous in the shadow.

‘The line went dead,’ Cazoa continued. ‘Storm must have blocked the channel. The crew must have set up an outpost, the man said that they had abandoned it, and were in the temples.'

Who did this voice belong to? Whoever he was, his life-force was too far away for her to distinguish him friend from foe. She guessed it was another quarter mile before they reached the gateway, and another mile to the temples. By the look of the heavens, she knew they would not make it to the temple in time before they became blinded by rain - not ideal conditions for scouting. But they could make it to the sandstone arch, and there must be some kind of housing at the camp, sheltering the radio equipment. And whoever the voice belonged to.

She felt an odd feeling deep inside of her - not something that she could definitively give a name to. All she knew is that she had to get to the gateway.

A drop of rain landed on her nose, as if to confirm her urgency.


[member="Darth Mephirium"]
[member="KeCholo"]
[member="Bulthos Dorrir"]

 

[Bulthos Dorrir]

"An' we're jus' goin' t' believe 'im now?"

As Ke'Cholo's crew made entry into the abandoned ship, Bulthos opted to stay outside despite the worsening heat; without a weapon, going blindly into a ship that he had no knowledge of was a suicidal move at the best of times, and the old pirate had been on enough desert worlds to know that he wouldn't die of heat stroke before making it to the temple pyramids. It was only after the armed crewmen gave the all-clear that the Human stepped aboard, and was immediately grateful that they hadn't powered down the vessel in their absence. Cool air washed over him like a wave, and he stayed inside the ship's bridge as Cazoa attempted to make contact.

The ship had - at one point, anyway, given the obvious alterations the crew had made - been one of the ancient Starlight-class freighters. Their communication systems weren't the best, especially not given their age, but they should have been more than adequate enough to punch through a storm that was only just starting to form. The storm itself was another thing entirely, and that had Bulthos worried. Rain wasn't unheard of on desert worlds, but it was incredibly rare at the best of times. And even then it proved only to be a light drizzle. It was nothing like what the pirate was seeing now; dark clouds rolling in like an invading army, lightning cracking and roaring like broadside batteries, and wind and rain starting to howl with the unified voices of countless ghostly soldiers. This was no ordinary storm. Bulthos had barely made it outside to investigate - noticing, oddly enough, that the ambient temperature had been considerably lowered - when Cazoa had stepped out behind him barely a minute later and revealed that someone had answered her on the comlink, prompting the older man to ask his question.

"Lass, I'll be' you anythin' tha' your mystery man was the fellow tha' did 'em in. Somehow go' wind tha' there'd be a search party - an' thanks for tha', by the by - an' waited for more o' us t' come in like nerfs t' the slaugh'er.

"Now," Bulthos continued, "I'm no' sayin' we no' go an' say 'achute', bu' I vote we le' the heavy guns go in first."

 

[GreenEve]

‘Agreed,’ she said to Bulthos.

The man spoke truth; this mystery voice over the transmission might belong to somebody who had in fact caused the crew to go missing. It would do the company good to be cautious, Cazoa did not doubt it. Either way, the storm overhead would push them on towards the archway. There she was sure they would find their next clue to the crew’s whereabouts.

Cazoa looked around at the band of mercenaries. It would be unwise to test their strength.

The desire to discover who this mystery voice belonged to tugged at Cazoa.

‘To the gate, then?’ she addressed everybody. In the ever-growing dim light, Cazoa noted a few big boulders around two hundred metres from the sandstone arch. ‘Perhaps we can split into two groups, as Bulthos said – heavy gunners can clear the area, and the rest can provide a surprise attack if things go south.’

She paused as more raindrops fell onto her face.

‘Shall we?’

[member="KeCholo"]
[member="Bulthos Dorrir"]
[member="Darth Mephirium"]

 

[KeCholo]

''We'll cover you'' Ke'Cholo said motioning to his crew. He drew the DL-44 from his cloak and gripped it tightly. ''You two confront whoever that is, and if things get sour we'll provide you all with escape'' Ke'Cholo looked over to see his crew gearing up and grabbing their preferred weapons, he himself took the scattergun, his two DL-44s, some thermal detonaters, and some night-vision macro binoculars. ''Ready?'' he asked [member="CazoaMani"]

 

[Bulthos Dorrir]

Bulthos was really starting to wish he'd taken Ke'Cholo up on his offer. He'd love to know how the Duros and his men planned to provide an escape route from behind, no discernible cover, and two (alleged) friendlies in front of the target. Even if the captain was being sincere - which the actual captain rather doubted - by the time he was in a position to fire, Cazoa and Bulthos himself would likely be beyond help. A few seconds was all it took to reduce someone into a bag of meat, bone, and gas.

"Sounds grea', does it no', lassie?"

With an over-acted smile, Bulthos strode over in the stranger's direction, doing his best to hide his fear. He'd been in spots like this before, true. But in all that time, Bulthos had at least two measures of security to him. The first was his weapon; a DE-10 strapped to his right thigh, ready to be drawn and fired in the blink of an eye should talks go sour. The other was his crew, who usually already had guns trained on whoever it was Bulthos was going in to talk to. Piracy 101, really; always have more guns than the other guy. For the first time in many years, Bulthos was at an open and genuine disadvantage. And that troubled him somewhat.

----------

High above the planet, a black and yellow CR90 Corellian corvette appeared in realspace above Jaguada. Aboard, a Bothan peered at the moon below the ship, keeping one eye on the desert satellite and one on the communications console. The helmsman steered the ship starboard and angled it slightly, making ready to travel along what the navicomputer calculated was the easiest path downward, but a single hand raising from the Bothan caused the pilot to stop in his tracks.

They weren't to move. Not yet. Not until they had something to go on. Captain Dorrir had said Jaguada. And while one could hazard a guess as to where he'd be going on such a desolate little rock, it was still a lot of ground to cover.

And hell to pay if they were on the other side when the call came in.