Then We All Died (Tiburons)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFf60ECWpzU​

Rook did not have the authority to tell the commander where to go, but he did it anyway. He'd been tracking the Architects for some time now using Galactic Alliance resources. At first, it had been a simple passing interest; nothing of particular import. The droids weren't doing much other than observing, so far as he could tell. Then something had happened. Two civilian cruisers jumping between Sullust and Onderon had disappeared. Alliance forces had come to investigate, and come up empty handed. There was no trace of the ships: no spaces debris, residual charge from turbolasers, organic matter in the void, or emergency transmissions. They had not jumped to hyperspace. They had not been killed. Something had taken them.

Now, what had taken them was the answer many were asking. Some assumed it was pirates with some form of hyper-advanced tractor beam. Others though the Alliance's tracking equipment simply wasn't up to par. Rook knew better. There was only one force in the galaxy that could make such large vessels disappear without a trace, and he'd assumed they had long since given up their warlike ways. It seemed that was no longer the case.

When he came to the higher-ups with word of the Architects, none had believed him. Why would they? A race of hyper-intelligent sentient droids abducting more than a million people? Preposterous. There was little to no mention of the creatures in the alliance database. It had been like talking to a wall.

The Tyrene's crew had to believe him. They were his crew (well, Starchaser's) and they would at least give his suggestion some thought. Moreover, he knew where some of the bastards were. As previously stated, Rook had been hunting the creatures for quite some time. Sources pointed to an underground factory that was thought to be abandoned deep beneath Mustafar's crust. He couldn't have assaulted the place alone -- if his quarry truly lay in wait there, then he would be killed with relative ease. But with a team at his back? Things were different.

"If we're lucky we'll catch them off guard." He quipped through the squadcomm. A shuttle had departed from the Tyrene and was en route to an abandoned landing pad just above the lab's coordinates. It would just be their team now -- taking anyone else would make the op too cramped. You needed room in places like this. "I dealt with these things in the past. We don't have much on them, save for the fact that they're ancient. There's no record as to when they popped up, but they've come up here and there since before the days of the Old Republic."


[member="Spark Finn"], [member="Ijaat Akun"], [member="Coren Starchaser"]

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Spoiler

There was a lot to consider when you had a command. Even more when you were a sub-Commander and given a team, and the ability to choose your own missions. The Tyrene was Coren’s current command, with the Event Horizon still working on exploration missions, in conjunction with the Sanctum. But lately? He’d been in the anti-Sith mind set, and to do that, he needed his team to trust one another. That was why he had no problem with the investigation. Currently, Sullust and the Alliance were becoming self sufficient and he didn’t need to push anything further.

They were fine.

But his team? They were a unit, and needed to work together. Something that was important to one? That should be important to the rest. Right now, it was volunteer missions, especially with what was on the cards for the day. A race of sentient machines causing abductions… That was something new. The shuttle, one of the Niathals that Coren preferred when he didn’t use his own vessels, was heading out, on direction from @Rook. The team here was a motley crew.

“Can we really catch them off guard?” The Commander spoke, looking at his light repeater, then to the team.

[member="Rekha Kaarde"]
[member="Ijaat Akun"]
[member="Kurayami Bloodborn"]
[member="Spark Finn"]

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

[member="Rekha Kaarde"]
[member="Ijaat Akun"]
[member="Spark Finn"]
[member="Rook"]
[member="Coren Starchaser"]

Kurayami never was a huge fan of shuttles, reminded him too much of his days as a commando with the Republic. Hard to believe that there were non-Forcies more arrogant than those among the Sith ranks, but the Republic had more than its fair share of troopers who thought that just because they finished the same training he had that they were the best of the best and no one could touch them. He wondered if the last thought they had was of how ironic it was that they were usually the first ones to drop in a raid. While he himself was a rather confident person and took great pride in his training and skills, he always knew to assume that the enemy was better than you. Less stupid risks taken in that case.

Here he was though, sitting on a shuttle heading to the surface of another lava planet, Mustafar this time. The galaxy must really have it out for him these days, sending him to planets with toxic fumes for an atmosphere and lava kriffing everywhere. Talk about bad luck. And now they were after some sort of sentient machines, for some reason or another. Once he had heard sentient machines he had zoned out for the most part to be honest, though he had heard bits and pieces about abductions or something? Whatever, he was here because he was a part of this team. Most of the ride was spent in silence with him making sure his weapons were in order and calibrating the scope on his sniper attachment, sans ammunition of course. He may not have had the most common sense of anyone and was just as likely to be drunk as he was sober before an op like this, but he knew better than to wave a loaded sniper rifle around on a shuttle. That was a bad way to make friends although it was a great way to kill annoying squad members 'accidentally.'

He looked up as Coren spoke, wondering if they could catch the enemy off guard. He shrugged as he swapped back to the blaster and slammed a clip home. He turned to face Coren before saying anything, the golden visor the most visible part of his armor at the moment.

"Can we? Sure, anyone can catch these guys off guard, well in theory. Better question is will we? Again we have a good chance, at least if you count out that hulking monstrosity that clanks around everywhere...Rook? Was that his name? The dude who filled us in before this whole thing, I kinda dozed off after hearing about sentient machines and kidnappings. Sounded like a bad holofilm. Course in this galaxy it would turn out to be a thing that actually takes place.

 

[Veronika Tesarik]

Veronika was different than the veteran soldiers whom surrounded her. She didn't know the state of the current Galaxy nor whom all the major players were. She wasn't jaded by the Sith or Jedi as she didn't know which had raided her village. It didn't much matter, what was done was done. She was here now with others. It was different than the forest she was used to but Veronika felt a sense of purpose here.

She stayed silent and listened for most of the trip as others jabbered on about how they were to accomplish this mission. She had caught various creatures off guard during her hunting trips but this was different. These things were machines so they were always on so to speak. There had to be a weakness though tech breaks, right? She didn't know much about tech but she could turn off lights when she went to bed so why not them.

"We can catch them off guard if we work together." She spoke up suddenly. Veronika wasn't terribly sociable but wasn't afraid to speak up. She wanted to contribute and prove her worth. "There has to be a weakness, an off switch." Everything had a weakness, the key was finding this things weakness.

Shrugging she lightly smiled at the crew gathered here. Sure Veronika had her blasters just not as many as her crew mates nor as much armor. The young woman has always gotten by on the minimum and her bow and arrow. She saw no reason why now in the big wide galaxy this should change.


[member="Rekha Kaarde"] | [member="Ijaat Akun"] | [member="Kurayami Bloodborn"] | [member="Spark Finn"] | [member="Coren Starchaser"] | [member="Rook"]

 

[Julius Sedaire]

Spoiler

[member="Rekha Kaarde"]
[member="Coren Starchaser"]
[member="Kurayami Bloodborn"]
[member="Spark Finn"]
[member="Rook"]

Ijaat strode into the bay of the Tyrene, smiling as he yanked a young pilot working on something on his shuttle, effectively conscripting the lad to set the shuttle on auto-pilot to the same coordinates [member="Rook"] was enroute to, the abandoned lab. As was his habit, as soon as the shuttle lurched off after his compatriot, he sat in the drop bay, checking and double checking his weapons one by one. Usually he did this in his down-time, not en-route to a mission. But he had been out of things for a while, and he worried internally he might have lost his edge and done something wrong or missed something.

Clicking the hammers back on the shotgun he carried, he smiled as the sonic weapon began humming as it charged, sliding into a hardcase sheath across his backplate in the small of his back. Next came a small, palm sized hold-out blaster he had recently had his company begin producing. It wasn't terribly effective against organics, but against droids, it was downright deadly. Next came the pair of gleaming DE-10's he had custom ordered based off an old non-working prototype he had found on an excursion, sliding them into harness rigs on his cuisses (thigh plates). Further from that he belted his sword, Jatharesa, onto his hip, the ancient blade weighing heavy in his hand, the mere contact begging for it to be used in his mind. Next came a heavy power hammer in a baldric that hung across his chest, holding the sledge tight to his back with the haft sticking up over his shoulder. The pouches at his waist rattled with other toys as he grabbed a U1-MDR rifle from the bench and stood next to the hatch, waiting as they swooped in. He spoke over the comms.

"Rook- You got heavy support coming right behind you... We ringing the door bell or slipping in a back window this time?"

With that, the Mandalorian closed his eyes, dreading the excruciating pain to come as he willed his biot into action, forming the gleaming cover under his armor that would grant him certain abilities that might be useful in breaching such a place.

 

[Rekha Kaarde]

Veteran? Her? there were many things she may have considered herself an old hand at, but doing this...no. She wouldn't be able to pull some feathers off some hard working twi'lek or barter for some body paint. No. There were times when she had to do things as herself.

Now want to talk about trust issues, she had that in spades. She did her best to hide it behind smiles and sarcasm but the flat truth was she trusted very few people. The ones that she did, well she'd give her life for the others, better be sure they can out run the rancor. Rekha smiled as her green eyes looked aorund.

In her usual over confident sarcasm dripping from each each, "Sure we can"

Rekha was a pilot, smuggler, bar owner and now it seemed some kind of soldier. She preferred pilot and bar to most of the others, well smuggler came in handy, this soldier thing...hmm lot of life and death there.

[member="Veronika Tesarik"] [member="Kurayami Bloodborn"] [member="Coren Starchaser"] [member="Rook"]

 

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Isn't this a motley crew?

With a bit of a amusement, Rook leaned back in his chair. He didn't know most of these folks, but he surmised he was going to soon enough. This little team Starchaser had put together -- the Tiburons -- was just a fancy title for the crew of the Tyrene. A ship he'd come to call home a month or so ago. It was nice enough, though the particular lack of aliens aboard threw him off a bit. He'd expected a rather varied crew, but there was nothing wrong with an all human team. It just meant that they would be easier to wipe out via chemical weapons than anything that went boom.

"I don't know," he stated bluntly, "I know they die like people do. They bleed real blood. It's a little odd to look at. I figure we'll be seeing a lot of that today."

If I'm right.

There was a very real chance that Rook was, in fact, incorrect in his assumption. If that were the case, then these people had disappeared in some other odd, mysterious way, and his suspicions about the old droids would prove faulty. He'd be fine with that. Sure, the rest of the crew would likely hold it over his head for a few years, but he could deal with that.

It was a little harder to deal with the loss of millions of live to the hands of a technologically superior force.

"There's only one entrance on the charts, Ijaat, so unless you want to blow a hole in the wall -- meaning we bomb half a klick of a volcanic mountain range -- we'll be soliciting today." He snickered. "It'll certainly make things more interesting if you go for the latter.

Ding.

The shuttle's landing lights came on. The shrill whine of air brakes whistled through the hull. One moment the shuttle was making a terrible lurch that made Rook feel like he no longer had a stomach, and the next it was entirely still. The back door slid open, revealing a volcanic landscape as far as the eye could see. Lava rivers flowed half a mile below the landing pad, and lit up the mountain range. There was nothing on the pad they had come down to land upon save for a stairwell leading up to a massive, ancient looking door.

Rook was the first to slide of the shuttle. He didn't take the time to wait for the others. His HUD wasn't picking up anything of particular note, save for that door. Odds were that it was rigged. If it went off, his armor could take it. The rest of them? Maybe not. He jogged up to the entrance, gave it a once over, and rapped his knuckles against it.

Nothing.

With a heavy sigh, he flicked his rifle's power cell online, and turned to the rest of the team. The Harbinger's power cell would provide the boost his comms needed to communicate below the planet's crust.

"Right. Who here is good at math? We need this door breached, but too much stopping power could, eh...upset the volcano."

[member="Rekha Kaarde"] [member="Ijaat Akun"] [member="Veronika Tesarik"] [member="Kurayami Bloodborn"] [member="Coren Starchaser"]

 

[Coren Starchaser]

There was a lot of work to be done. Coren had a team similar to this, similar to the Tiburons, actually two of them. Warbird Wing, a group of Imperial washouts, well, wash outs for a variety of reasons, mainly insubordination and not following standard protocol, was assembled, their efforts, personalities and skill sets mixed together, they approached missions from a new perspective and a new angle. It was effective, it was unpredictable and it worked.

The Underground, life with them, was very similar, but Merrill’s outfit was a bit more along the lines of non-military, or ex-military, and not working with the backing of an extensive budget.

This group was to take the best of all sides and blend them together. Familiar faces were here, for sure, and he wanted to get the rest of them up to speed. Rekha and Rook had worked with Coren in the past, and that was enough for him. Ijaat was the same, from the Underground, the other two, new, wild cards, but he was all for giving them the run about.

“We’ll get them.” He nodded.

When the shuttle came to a stop, he watched Rook lead the way out and followed, activating the helmet of his armor system. The teleporter was ready for anything, and so much time on Sullust recently definitely prepared him for this whirlwind. Power Nine pistol to his hand. The commander was ready for just about anything.

Except long division.

Spoiler

[member="Rook"]
[member="Rekha Kaarde"]
[member="Ijaat Akun"]
[member="Veronika Tesarik"]
[member="Kurayami Bloodborn"]