Public Yavin: The Vine-Twined Skull

[Shev Skirata]

"Are you two dikuts still alive?"

What a pain in the shebs. If I was offered half a credit to sell you as a zoo animal...

"On our way to you." He said before he realized why she was asking, "I secured the sample."

He made his way toward her on hands and knees no longer sure Kay was following. He wasn't completely sure there was much distance between Sula and him anyway. His hand struck something as the crawled and threw him off balance. His visor hit dirt before he found a hilt stick out of the side wall of the tunnel.

"Better keep that too." He said tucking the knife away before he activated a small helmet light which cast a circle of light that reflected off her visor in the dark.

"Back up Rekali, we found her." He said as he watched for more trouble to come through the walls. With his luck some mega mole or forest worm or leviathan slug would pop out next and swallow them all.

The ground started shaking. The soil and roots began pressing around them as he got a very, very, uneasy feeling about what was happening.

A large swath of ground turned into a sinkhole on the surface as the three person science team got a rare opportunity to experience yavin mega fauna first hand.

Sula Skirata Keratel Rekali

 

[Keratel Rekali]

Cramped in the sunken tunnel or sinkhole or whatever it was, near blind, Kay had just finished respooling his fibercord. The surrounding earth sloughed away to reveal...

"We're gonna need a bigger sample case."

He didn't have a jetpack - did the others have jetpacks? What he had was a repulsor belt, suitable for bobbing around like you were in one-sixth gravity on some asteroid or other. Kay toggled it on and burst from the soil in a great valiant surge. He'd lost both his blasters somewhere in there, but he still had, let's see...wrist rockets.

A hydra head - no, not a head, a decapitated neck - took the wrist rocket to the trachea and split apart in a shower. Another head caught Kay in midair, bit his chest with crushing force, but found its teeth slipping off as Kay bounced onward.

Sula Skirata Shev Skirata

 

[Sula Skirata]

The earth gave way beneath Sula's back and she tumbled with it, winding half buried staring upside down at...

Was that a hyrda?

"We're gonna need a bigger sample case."

Sula wriggled free of the dirt rolling out of the way of a very heavy foot. "I think this one would be better suited in pieces." she replied dicing underneath its belly as a head shot down towards her. "Although, if we can sedate it I'm sure we can find a holding cell big enough for it somewhere." She stood up underneath it, staring up and its abdomen in awe. Its seemed more concerned with fly about its head than her underneath it.

Realisation dawned that Kay might have been being sarcastic. "Oh...."

She pulled her rippers free, they'd made all sorts of noise now. Quiet was out of the question.

"Shev, are we killing this?"

Keratel Rekali Shev Skirata

 

[Shev Skirata]

He kicked his feet and waved his hands as he pulled himself out of the soft jungle loam. His silver armor was caked with an amalgamation of dirt, wet detritus, and zombie fluids. The massive form of a multi-headed mega fauna loomed over them and showed signs of heavy necrosis.

"Shev, are we killing this?"

"Oh, sure." He said, as he pulled his carbine up and let the mud caked weapon drop again to hang at his side. "I'll just ask it to lay down, yeah?"

In spite of his words he pulled out two heavy blaster pistols and began circling left while firing.

"Kay! Ship?!" He called into the comms, he did not have a jet pack. He had feet and a ship, which is usually enough. He was beginning to revisit his opinion that yavin was a pretty place.

Keratel Rekali

 

[Keratel Rekali]

Sula Skirata and Shev Skirata were more than welcome to keep shooting. Kay's noxious encounter with an undead hydra mouth had soured him on the whole encounter. As he bobbed away from enraged additional heads, he realized that they actually did have plenty of samples, and the hydra slime on his armor was sampleable too. He also realized that Shev's request was both timely and practical.

You could outfit a ship with a simple remote called a beckon call, an essential in deep space. While the Skirata twins(?) kept the hydra busy, Kay shoved slime in a case and dug out his beckon call.

His scout ship would start heading right here from where it rested in the jungle. Hopefully the hydra would be dealt with by then.

He added some desultory additional blaster shots.

 

[Sula Skirata]

"I'll just ask it to lay down, yeah?"

Sula frowned beneath her helmet, still not firing at the mass above her head. "I don't think it will listen if you ask it to lie down. Its not domesticated."

She cocked her head watching the muscles of its abdomen. Dead flesh moved in a strange way. She pointed her ripper upwards firing a single shot that sloughed flesh away. The beast didn't react, the nerves were dead.

She fired two more shots cleaving away chunks of it. She scooped up two chunks. One slid into a sample pot, the other she kept in her hand for specific reasons.

Reasons like she owed Kay one.

Gooey flesh lump in one hand and ripper in the other, she made a calculated decision hearing the call for the ship. She targeted one of the legs, firing repeatedly in the same spot till she'd scored a hole through it. Gravity did the rest as it moved, flesh and bone tearing one way as the body began topple.

Shev Skirata Keratel Rekali

 

[Shev Skirata]

NERD! He thought to himself as Kay began to move to a ship far far away, and likely his only chance out of zombie death jungle moon place, and Sula-hoop failed at sarcasm yet again. He emptied a blaster pack into one twisted monstrous face and holstered that blaster.

He watched Sula focus fire on one leg as he kept firing with his other blaster. He grinned behind his visor as the leg grew a hole just above a massive knee.

"Lay down!" He yelled as it took a step and began to collapse.

"Would you look at that it listened to me." He said as he ran toward her and began to push her toward the direction of the ship. "I guess you were wrong."

He continued toward the direction of Keratel as they went and waited for Sula to vigorously expound on the true cause of the beasts' collapse. And for this mess he would adamantly tell everyone he made a giant hell beast laydown while Sula watched.

Keratel Rekali Sula Skirata