Mandalore

[Kalyani Wartide]

Kaly took a moment to catch her breath, her eyes scanning her sister to make sure she was alright. When Mel pointed out the enemy squad trying to slink away under the distraction of the Sith she felt torn about staying close to her sister and going after the enemy. Common sense won out as she caught sight of the Jetii she’d seen the night before up on a rooftop keeping watch. Jaesko and Kaly backtracked and headed after the squad trying to slink away. Kaly paused before the corner of one of the buildings, a sense of danger tingling up her spine. She held her hand up to signal to Jaesko not to rush ahead before she crouched down to peek around the corner. She pulled back just as enemy fire hit where her head had just been. “Can’t go that way…” The girls backed up to a doorway. “Maybe we can go through…” She tried the door, finding it locked. Frustration coursed through her as she glanced at her friend, “Do you know how to pick a lock?” Jaesko shook her head. “Damn!” She looked back the way they’d come, glancing up as she saw something from the corner of her eye. She had caught sight of a Mandalorian disappearing over the top of one of the buildings down the street. The next door they tried was unlocked, the two girls dashing through, pausing when they caught sight of a broken window. The glass had been blown inwards, probably damaged from one of the artillery shells. Cautiously Kaly approached, catching a glimpse of the enemy across in the next building. It seemed like they had pinned down another squad of Mandalorians. Pulling out one of the frag grenades from her utility belt, she pulled the pin, aiming and throwing it out and through the window of the opposite building where the enemy had taken cover. Yells preceded the explosion, everything shaking from the shockwaves that had been sent out.

 

The girls ducked back out of the building retreating back to a broken wall where they took cover. Kaly rested her blaster rifle on the rubble and opened fire as she saw the enemy once more. Her first shots took one of them down, Jaesko wounding another before they turned to return fire, pinning the pair down. Both girls ducked down as bits of broken wall rained down over them from where the enemy shots hit the wall above them.

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

Grateful that the healing trance had taken off the edge of her own muscle soreness, she nodded once before springing into action, full faith in her husband’s ability to back her up as she sheathed her kukri’s and climbed up to the operator's position and began firing on the mercenary lines.

 

Taking a moment to survey their handiwork as the others came up behind them to fortify the position, she turned to Kandor and regarded him for a moment. “You know,” she mused a hint of jest coloring her tone, “I think this has been one of the nicest dates we’ve been on.”

[Moon Knight]

"I'd say we should do it more often," Kandor responded as he intercepted a volley of incoming fire on his shield, "but we'd run out of armies to fight."

 

Of course, that might not turn out to be the case. Somewhere in the middle of all of his responsibilities here as Mand'alor, 2277 had kept him informed on what was going in the greater galaxy. It seemed that his predictions about the Remnant might become a reality soon. This little war for the Sector was perhaps only a precursor to a much greater war unless cooler heads prevailed.

 

It was of no great concern to him, however. He could gain something by accurately predicting what would happen, but he had no stake in the outcome. If war came, the clans stood to benefit. If it did not, they would continue as they had for the last few years -- assuming they made it through the next few days.

 

As another blaster bolt scorched past his head, ShadowFett put aside his ruminations and returned fire, shooting essentially from the hip, using the shield for stability and the heads-up display in his buy'ce for targeting. His practiced technique and advanced technology proved superior to those of his opponent and the man fell.

 

Mirdala's quick work with the turret had swung this engagement in favor of the Mando'ade and the juggernauts could be relocated. Only the artillery had fallen silent, and reports were that the anti-air network had sustained significant damage. It seemed that he and the command center had underestimated the intensity of the barrage. The fact that the shelling had ended suggested that perhaps the invaders wanted Keldabe standing, but why take out the AA guns if not to clear the way for bombers?

 

Either way, Fett was now being signaled that the air support he'd requested was now reaching Keldabe airspace, and he confirmed it a few seconds later with a glance at the sky. As he watched, a mixture of MandalMotors military designs and personal ships swooped over the battlefield towards the forest, delivering a payload of warheads and blaster fire on the artillery positions that Ops had identified by analyzing incoming fire during the barrage.

 

Gesturing to his wife to follow him, Mand'alor headed back down the hill to one of the juggernauts and climbed inside the armored vehicle along with a few dozen other verde that would accompany the it to the place where it was now most needed.

[Terra]

“Blackwraith, time is up, head back to the extraction point, targets in tow.”

 

The young assasin’s crimson eyes rolled as she marched the line of staggering children from their training grounds, towards the granite cliffs that surrounded the ancient city. Her handler was as always disapproving of her games. Terra had before her a half dozen children, led by the oldest boy, a sandy-haired lad of ten, and carried the squalling infant in the crook of her armoured arm. It writhed to be free, with jerky and frightened movements. The dirt began to give way to shattered shale-stone, and their footsteps became loud and rasping in the night air.

 

The oldest boy turned as he came to the edge of the white-marbled granite cliff, fear beginning to drain from his face, setting itself into defiance. His fair skin wrinkled as his expression became a scowl, transforming his tear-stained face, making him look older. His voice trembled, growing louder as he spoke.

 

“We are not going with you. We are Mando’ade. We bow to no one. Especially a traitor wearing our beskar.”

 

Terra slipped her long-bladed dagger from its sheath in her arm, running her thumb across the switch, disabling the humming vibrations, leaving it dark and serrated. She stepped towards the boy, his back to the cliff and the abyss below. Her own voice grated through the voice-synthesizer on her helmet, carrying with it a twinge of mocking laughter. Her grip on the infant tightened, causing its cries to turn into gurgling squeals.

 

“You always have a choice... Boy…”

 

The boy’s stature straightened, and an air of heroism began to emanate from him in true Mandalorian arrogance.

 

“You will leave us and flee back to the hole where you were spawned, demon.”

 

The young assassin snorted in laughter, taking another step towards him, but he stood his ground.

 

“True to your style… Do you fashion yourself a Fett?”

 

The boy curled a defiant smile, his shoulders setting back, broadening his chest

 

“Ye-”

 

She dropped the infant into the gravel, and picked the boy up by the front of his beige tunic. The fabric held his weight as she lifted him up to eye level with herself, her visor beginning to glow a deep red. She turned towards the group of frozen children, casting him beside the infant at her feet.

 

“I kriffing hate Fetts.”

 

Terra rammed her fist into the back of his head, gripping the back of his sandy mop of hair and arching his head backwards. His eyes shone with terror, reflecting the crimson glow of her faceplate. With one fluid motion she plunged the dagger into the pale flesh above his right clavicle, and began to saw with the serrated edge of the knife towards the left side of his chest. His strangled cries became more and more desperate and high pitched as she slowly worked through the muscles connecting his trapezius and sternocleidomastoid.

 

“Kriffing. Hate. Fettsss.”

 

Terra let the words hang from her lips, serpentine in their pronouncement as the boy's cries dimmed. She ripped the knife clean with a gout of blood, and pulled back on his gurgling throat, tearing the flesh clean from bone. With a strike from the wooden pommel of her dagger she shattered the cervical spine and dropped the twitching body headless into the gravel. She glanced across the stunned children and dropped the head beside the infant, which too was silent.

 

“Anyone else? No? Over the cliff. NOW!”

[Nonpareils]

Zalus halted abruptly before he ran into the Force barrier that snapped up in front of him, the Force tipping him off to the invisible wall of hardened air that now separated him from his quarry. Desperate, the Mando snapped off several stun shots followed by a barrage of blaster bolts from her advancing friend, which splayed harmlessly on the barrier. Several other carbine shots barked out from behind him as well from the Red Company soldiers, again impacting and crumpling on the barrier.

 

The Sith paid her little mind, though, she was no longer his largest concern. Rather, he snarled up at the Jedi in restrained rage. He was a much larger threat. The Mandalorians weren't supposed to have Jedi support from what Zalus knew, and this changed the game quite considerably. No matter, the Jedi was a challenge that Zalus would overcome. The Dark Side was a foe that could not be matched. He reached out with malice, commanding the Force to telekinetically erupt in a violent blast at the small of the Jedi's back, aiming to fling him off the rooftop directly into Zalus's waiting blades. He began swinging his nunchukau sabers impossibly fast, spinning and whipping them about, moving to intercept the Jedi like an unholy blender of red glowing death.

 

Meanwhile, Kingsnake had realized their bullets were doing nothing shooting at the retreating Mando, and called to refocus fire on the groups that now moved to flank them. Drunk Uncle drew a bead and began laying suppressive fire at the roof of a building a Mando had taken cover on ((Tresha)). However, just as that happened there was a familiar tink of a thrown metallic object, to which both Drunk Uncle and Highwind instinctively dove away from the blast, but only Highwind managed to survive. She gripped her carbine, rolling and rising to bring it to bear on the most likely source it had come from, but blaster fire caught her in her chest armor, blowing her backwards. While the blaster bolts didn't kill her thanks to her armor, the kinetic force slammed her into a wall, dizzying her a bit. At the same time, Kingsnake and Blackflame retreated a bit down their road, Blackflame occasionally opening suppression fire on advancing Mandalorians while Kingsnake managed to catch one or two in their extremities, slowing them down.

 

The group that had split had their own concerns, though, and as the first shots zipped by them, they split up again, each quickly taking a different route to the looming generator facility via the streets and through alleyways, now just a little over a stadium's length away. Wubbadub even fired two rockets as he advanced at the far edge of the building where it looked like power lines may have been coming out, a little early demolition in case the main show somehow got stopped, but only one managed to impact due to the range at which he was firing.

[Ary the Grey]

I am an idiot.

 

Aryian's subconscious had thought something different, a four letter word that wasn't worth repeating in nice company, but for some reason his mind translated it into that. The Force blast sent him reeling forwards, rocketing him off the roof ledge and forwards towards the Sith who was more than eager to meet him with a lightsaber. But the Force was with him, and the Grey master quickly recovered his senses to deflect two swipes with his tonfa and bounce the third off his armored pauldron before landing behind the Sith in a shoulder roll. As Aryian rose, however, the lightsaber blows continued to rain down on him, and he dipped heavily into the Force, relying on shattered memories of Soresu to defend and deflect each and every blow.

 

But in the back of his mind, Aryian worried. He could not do this alone. This set off a chain reaction even the Grey master could not have fathomed in his current state, reactivating a long dormant implant and sending a message off world. Help was on its way.

[Mellanie Devanus Vevut]

As soon as the Sith turned his attention away from Mellanie, she could hear Araac shouting for her to retreat. It was the smart thing to do. The Sith was twirling his blades, and the Jedi was pulled off the roof down towards those spinning blades. This was a battle way beyond her.

 

But the Jedi had saved her life. She owed him. And that was debt she could not ignore. Jumping to her feet, she retreated across the debris-lined avenue. Leaping through a shattered glass window, she ducked under the ledge. Araac was already there. Comms were down, and there was too much noise for them to hear each other, but Mellanie knew he was worried for her. She shook her head, trying to let him know she was fine. But there wasn't time for more than that. She had to help the Jedi. With a signal, she gestured. Side by side, crouching in the cover of the windowsill, the two of them leveled their weapons at the Sith, Mellanie resting hers on the sill for extra stability.

 

This was a time for careful aim. Once the Sith had his back to them and was distracted by the Jedi, he would get two blaster bolts to the back of the head.

[Tresha Ad'Nort]

A blast whizzed past her head, and Tresha moved to change position, but an explosion on the far side of the square caught her attention and the crossfire ceased once more. Seeing her opportunity, she moved to the ladder on the far side of the building from where she had climbed up, Aryian having plummeted from the edifice. But when she popped up in her new nest, the figures that had been sneaking toward the center of the city were gone from her sight, nowhere to be seen across Keldabe’s pockmarked rooftops.

 

Swearing under her breath, she skittered down the fire escape on the far side of the building, and as she extended her arms to drop down to the ground below, she nearly landed on top of TeVerd and the rest of her company.

 

“Three of them,” she panted breathlessly, “headed toward the center of the city, possibly the shield generators.”

 

TeVerd nodded grimly as he waved off the raised rifles from the rest of the group he’d been leading. “You know who we’re looking for, ad’ika. Lead the way.”

 

Immediately, she set off at a brisk jog, checking at corners for crossfire, the team working together to clear the way for pursuit of the three insurgents who had used the diversion to break the line. They had only gone the length of three blocks when the frantic, incessant wailing of a child caught her ears. Here? This close to the front? They were all supposed to have evacuated the city…

 

She held up a hand to halt the movement of her squad, using her HUD to hone in on the source of the noise, and stopped in the open doorway of a tattered building pockmarked by flechettes. The door swung listlessly on its hinges, and even through the scrubbed air inside her buy’ce, Tresha could detect the iron that hung in the air like fog. With tactical accuracy, the squad began to move through the building, clearing it of any hostiles.

 

A stream of expletives issued forth from one of the back rooms, and without hesitation, Tresha darted toward the sound, stopping just outside the doorway where one of her vode had halted. He faced away from the room, and even though he did not remove his buy’ce, Tresha’s empathic senses needed no prodding to pick up the horror and anguish the man felt.

 

One glimpse inside the room and she needed no further explanation.

 

Bloodied bodies littered the floor, unseeing faces frozen in contorted masks, the fear on their faces the last chance they had at exploring human emotion. Children’s bodies, the oldest no more than twelve revolutions, their caretakers sprawled across a few of them as though they could have protected them from the onslaught that had occurred within these walls. One of them was pinned to the wall by the flechettes that had pierced her, her broken body drooping like a forgotten marionette.

 

Tresha retreated from the room, pulling off her buy’ce as she attempted to keep from retching, but it only made it worse. The stench of death pervaded, and she waved TeVerd off as he rushed to check on her. Moments later, she heard the low sound of his voice spitting curses to the sky. Sucking air in through her teeth for more breaths than she could count, she finally replaced her buy’ce and moved back into the mortuary, attempting to take a more tactical look.

 

The screaming that had drawn her attention had faded to a muffled wail, and between the readouts of her infrared heat sensors and the size and consistency of the puddles of blood throughout the room, Tresha calculated that the attack had occurred within fifteen minutes previous. As her HUD scanned the vitals of each body in the room, she spotted the warmest body. There, in the corner, was the child from whom the wailing had come: no more than four years of age, dark hair and green eyes. Her arms and abdomen had been punctured a dozen times; shock twisted her muscles into spasms. In a heartbeat, Tresha crossed to her, but the girl screamed even louder, choking on the blood that welled into her throat.

 

Holding her breath as she yanked off her buy’ce, she wrapped armored arms around the girl, whose life was fading. “Ad’ika, shhh, you’re safe now,” she lied as she pulled the child onto her lap, a fresh wave of blood staining the girl’s clothes. “I need a medic!” she yelled frantically toward the doorway, but no one in the squad moved.

 

Deep down, Tresha also knew that there would be no point. The girl was dead before they arrived.

 

Hiccupping wails gave way to strangled cries and gurgling gasps for breath as the child coughed, her body tensing, eyes searching Tresha’s face for comfort that would not come. Rocking back and forth, the beroya pressed her hand to the child’s hair, tucking the girl’s head under her chin. The movement was as soothing to Tresha as she intended it to be for the injured child; in the wake of such a horror, what could be done?

 

One last choking, rattling breath shook the child’s frail body, and then she was heartbreakingly still, Tresha still clutching her body, rocking and soothing as a mother would, too stunned to let tears fall. In the too-pale face of the child, a ghost lived that she did not dare acknowledge.

 

“Ad’ika, it’s time to go,” TeVerd’s voice came from above her. She had not even registered movement as he came toward her, and she gave no indication she had heard him. His fingers brushed hers as he knelt down and attempted to pry her off the child’s body, but with a growl, she recoiled, tightening her grip. What she could not bear to admit to him, or to herself: in the girl’s visage, she could see echoes of Mirdala.

 

His words came more sharply. “Udesla, let go. She’s gone. I’ve got her from here.”

 

The familial nickname did what possibly nothing else could have. Looking up to TeVerd’s violet glowing gaze with hollow eyes, she let out a rattling breath of her own. Planting a kiss on the girl’s forehead, she laid her on the ground tenderly. TeVerd’s grip on her elbow brought her to standing again, and when Tresha finally looked at him, from their pupils to their whites, her eyes glinted obsidian with vengeance.

 

A cough from the far side of the room broke her stare, and one of their squadmates knelt at the side of an adult who still clung to life.

 

Picking her way between the crumpled forms of toddlers, she finally arrived at the young woman’s side and knelt to roll her over. With a sputter and a cough that unleashed droplets of blood across Tresha’s face, she clung to life only by a strand.

 

“Vod’ika,” she said urgently, choking back the emotion in her throat, “me’bana?”

 

The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched, and her eyes rolled shut. With a shake more violent than she had intended owing to the frantic need to avenge the wrong that had been done here, Tresha refused to let the woman slip into the next life. “Me’bana?!” she shouted.

 

Her head lolling to one side, the woman uttered fragmented words before her diaphragm deflated, with her last breath defending her charges by giving Tresha the only clue she had to go on. “Dema… gol… ade… hiibir…”

 

She released the caretaker’s shoulders, letting her fall back to the floor with a brief flicker of solemn acknowledgment, and sprang up to her feet, jamming her buy’ce back onto her head. Without a word to the others, she broke into a sprint back the way they had come.

 

Skirting the sounds of blasterfire through the city, she moved south, grateful for the previous night’s rain as she followed the muddy trail of undersized footprints at lightspeed. She could not tell immediately how many of them there were, but it had to be about equal to the number of bodies she had witnessed strewn about the room inside the care center.

 

The huntress had awakened.

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

TeVerd watched his niece silently, sensing both her coolly focused anger and the Huntress he'd helped train awaken within their connection. "Layout the bodies and cover them with those," he gestured to a stack of neatly folded, blood spattered blankets. "Then continue on to defend the generators. I'll back her up."

 

He'd failed her father by leading their team directly into an ambush on Abraxos a little over a year before. He'd be damned if he'd fail his sworn brother's daughter or let whoever had committed the slaughter he'd just left behind go without punishment for their actions.

[Vihk]

Hours waned as the light of midday began to illuminate the battlefield. The MAD-01 watched as reinforcements came and padded the front lines, but the story and picture were the same. Bolts of fire from both sides pushed against one another in a perpetual sea of plasma. Sounds of death and dismemberment filled the short span of no man's land that filled the gap. Harvek, who had recovered from his wounds and rejoined the battle, was the only consistent verde at the droid’s side. The droid filled him in on the enemy’s movements and the two of them worked in tandem to keep the front barricades from falling. Others would come and go, but Harvek and the MAD-01 stood against small waves of mercenaries that threatened Keldabe's 'gate'.

 

Scores of dings, burning metal and scorch marks littered what used to be the pristine midnight blue beskar of the droid’s chassis. And, although his battery power was now at 65%, the droid persisted. Harvek exchanged positions with him and took another vantage point to snipe a few and avoid return fire. If Harvek got in over his head, the droid used his phrik/beskar shield to deflect a few blasts. It wasn’t true trust – at least, not what humans saw as trust – but it was a cohesive pattern that brought the two of them together and kept them going.

 

Even when the MAD-01’s onboard 334-21 processor started to overheat and the droid started to gyrate in a pop-in-lock style motion, Harvek covered him until the processor cooled down and resumed normal function. The droid took minimal damage during his ‘dance’ and then returned to cover when his h.u.d returned to adequate functionality.

 

When they felt that forces at the front barricade were calming, the MAD-01 took small excursions east and west to assist and inform other teams of their progress. The droid would lend a helping blaster or two if needed, but ultimately ran fire support and returned to the frontline as he carried on.

[Moon Knight]

ShadowFett sat perched on the edge of his seat to accommodate his repulsor pack. The insides of the juggernaut were cramped so as to maximize the number of troops that could fit on board. The old war machine was almost indestructible and bristled with weapons; it was capable of changing the tide of a battle wherever it went, and cramming it full of Mando'ade only added to the threat it posed. Indeed its greatest limitation was its relatively low top speed, meaning getting it to the battles it needed to win often took longer than winning them.

 

Currently about forty men were aboard, strapped into seats that folded down from walls and partitions and were close enough together that not only were beskar-clad shoulders often clacking together as the vehicle navigated the uneven battlefield, but there was only a short aisle between one's knees and that of the individual sitting across from them. Mirdala to his left, Fett found himself staring into the visor of a strongly-built verd in well-worn olive green and black armor. He, like the ones seated on either side of him and the one on Fett's right, bore a crest on their shoulder plates that Fett didn't recognize but marked them as members of one clan. They all wore the same green as well, but their secondary colors varied with their temperament. Each of them seemed to be staring at him silently.

 

Mand'alor checked the charge on his assault rifle and then leaned it up against his seat between his legs, gripping his harness and leaning forward to glance toward the front of the juggernaut, hoping to get a sense of their destination. "What's your aliit, vode?" he asked conversationally. He kept his channel to Mirdala open all the time now. She wouldn't be able to hear their answers, but she could at least hear his side of the conversation.

 

Only there was no conversation. The men continued to stare at him silently. Fett noticed a fifth one with the same markings a couple more seats down. One of them twitched a bit, his thumb resting on his holstered blaster pistol. For that matter, they all seemed to have hands near their weapons.

 

"Stoic types, I s--" Fett felt Mirdala tense suddenly. He suddenly jammed his head to the right, his buy'ce smacking that of the man next to him even as the man across from him raised his arm and fired his wrist laser. The bolt splashed against the wall where Fett's visor had been. His climbing spikes flashed out of his left gauntlet and cut his restraint while his right hand fell on his holstered verpine shattergun. He pointed his knee and pulled the trigger, a small projectile coated in cortosis instantly traversing the gap between them and entering the leg of the man who'd fired at him.

 

Mirdala was already on her feet by the time Fett triggered his repulsor pack which sent him bodily into his attacker, climbing spikes first. The man to his right had pulled a knife and jabbed it towards the seam in Fett's armor beneath his armpit, but Fett improvised, deflecting the attack with an old Teras Kasi block with his right gauntlet before delivering an uppercut to the man's chin which would do more to disorient him than actually damage him through his armor.

 

Fett shifted, trying to drag the injured man in front of him by the flack jacket between himself and the other three traitors to his left even as Mirdala was shoved backwards into him. In such close quarters, it was almost impossible to pull a weapon, but until the rest of the passengers found some way to get involved physically, which would be further limited by the cramped space, he and Mirdala were outnumbered and if they weren't quick a wrist blade or holdout blaster could really ruin their day.

[Terra]

The cool caress of the churning waters worked its way through the armorweave that protected her skin as Terra slipped into the Kelita behind her captives, letting the dark waters envelop her to her shoulders. The children bobbed in the water like castaway goslings, paddling with their limbs to keep from drowning. They had little words now, other then gasps, as the water stole the warmth from their bones, chilled from the spring’s distant snowmelt upon the crags of the Urdarbrønn a hundred miles distant. The young assassin hissed out an order as she began to swim towards the opposite shoreline and the safety of the darkened trees that bestrewed the mud with twisted and gnarled roots.

 

“To the shore, quickly now.”

 

The children obeyed timidly, and followed her in a scattered wave of gentle splashes. Mandalorian children had been trained for survival since birth, and swimming came natural to most, as they had often followed their parents on diving trips into the Kelita to harvest Kulgali Barnacles, a staple of the town. As her feet met the soft mud of the bank, Terra turned to wait for her charges.

 

Most were swift to follow, even across the distance of the river, and reached the mud bedraggled and exhausted from fighting the pull of the current. Terra counted her numbers, and looked to find one girl fighting the current halfway across the river. As her strong strokes turned into frightened thrashing, she could see the girl was beginning to lose the battle with fatigue and the strength-sapping cold. Making sure the rest of them had made it into the arms of her squadmates in the trees, the young assassin pushed back into the water, her own powerful strokes closing the gap between them swiftly.

 

With gloved and freezing fingers she locked her grasp into the long locks of dark blonde hair of the thrashing girl with one hand, and scooped about her waist with the other, her armoured arm catching in the pink fabric of the girls small sundress-style pajamas. With measured kicks, she propelled them to the bank, keeping the girls head above the bubbling waters. As they reached the muddy bank she tossed the girl into the shallows, where a tangle of algae and clinging river-moss made a stagnant pool. Terra glanced to the treeline, and to the terrified faces of the children where they were restrained by several commandos.

 

She strode to where the girl was struggling to rise, the mud clinging to her metal-fanged boots, accentuating each step with an ominous squelch. Terra dragged the girl to her knees with a yank on her muddied locks, eliciting a small squeal of pain. With her voice rasping from her synthesizer, Terra slammed the girl’s face into the mud

 

Cursed are the weak in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the dead...

 

She raised the girl back from the mud, goblets of the thick adobe clinging to her face, obscuring her vision. The child coughed and sputtered out a mouthful of mud, desperate for air. As she gasped in a breath, Terra pressed her face back into the muddy algae.

 

Cursed are those who mourn their fallen brothers, for their only comfort will be the scythe…

 

Terra wrenched the girl’s head from the silt and clay, for her to draw another sputtering breath between her sobs of fear.

 

Cursed are the meek, for they will inherit nothing…

 

At the next jerk of the hair, the girl began to flail. The inconsistent deprival of oxygen was triggering an overabundance of adrenaline, sending her fight or flight instincts into overdrive. The girl’s knuckles slammed into the hardened beskar’gam, but Terra was unyielding. The girl’s knuckles crumpled, and her pained yelp was cut off by a plunge into the muck.

 

Cursed are the merciful, for they will be shown none...

 

Terra grabbed the girl’s wrist stretching her arm out straight, showing pale and lithe in the reflection of the stars. The assassin put the weight of her knee through the back of the girls elbow, shattering the arm and pulling crimson-stained bone through alabaster flesh. A multitude of bubbles appeared in the mud, carrying no sign of her screams of agony

 

Despair, for your family, your friends, and your beloved culture will die with you. Enjoy the darkness of your grave.

 

Terra rose from her knees, and stepped through the gnarled roots towards the treeline and the shocked faces that awaited her. She left the limp body to the current, held to the bank by the clinging mud. The waters of the Kelita made the girl’s body bob with the undulation of the current, making it appear like the cast off tackle of a fisherman. A nameless mess of line, her pink sundress, and her limbs the floats.

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

There was no mistaking Mirdala's very Te'verd-like growl of anger as she launched into action against their attackers, sending her assault rifle skittering along the grating.

 

“Hut’unne! Aruetiise!” she snarled, kicking up her voice amp so that the words echoed through the interior of the juggernaut. One of them took a swing at her and missed before the other bodily shoved her back into Kandor’s repulsor pack.

 

Being intimately familiar with her husband’s load out, she didn’t even have to look to find the metal cylinder at his belt. Closing her right hand around it, she activated the shield and shoved her assailents back, leveraging her lower center of gravity and the close quarters to send them tumbling into what she sincerely hoped were loyal Mandalorians.

 

The seconds it took for the two men to untangle themselves was all she needed to deactivate the shield and get in close with her fists and blades. Her size gave her a bit more operational space since her style of fighting was often meant to be this close and this personal.

 

The traitors didn’t go down quickly, however, producing blades of their own and striking at her where they could. Thanks to the Force and years of training, their blows only met armor or air.

 

Suddenly the juggernaut’s forward momentum lurched to a halt as word had reached the driver. The quick shift threw Mirdala forward against them where she took advantage and utilized her hidden wrist blades to end their lives swiftly across their exposed necks as their heads had bent backward during the lurch carried by the weight of their helmets.

 

She didn’t have to be able to hear to sense the continuing action behind her as Kandor fought the remaining attackers and she gave up a quick, silent prayer to the Manda that their luck would not run out this day.

[Moon Knight]

Jamming his heel into the leg he'd already penetrated with a cortosis round, Fett avoided a wild swing with a knife from his right, his mind, his body, and his kit working together to keep him alive. The man neither he nor Mirdala had gotten to yet had managed to pull a holdout blaster, but Kandor limited his opportunity to shoot by using his injured opponent as cover.

 

By now the rest of the Mando'ade on the juggernaut were aware of the situation, and one of them grabbed Fett's right-most assailant by the backplate. Fett used the brief window to draw the beskad'ika that Mirdala had given to him years ago and slash it across the man's midsection. The razor-sharp beskar sliced through his girth belt, finding the seam just under his chest plate, and came away glistening red. He then jammed the blade into the man's neck.

 

The injured man in front of Mand'alor was still putting up a fight, bringing his wrist laser back around for another shot. With his left hand Fett managed to divert the attack by a few centimeters with another Teras Kasi elbow parry and the laser bolt blazed past his targeting rangefinder, lighting up the interior of the juggernaut in scarlet for an instant and then adding to the smoke and chaos.

 

Kandor headbutted the man, knocking him back into the one behind him with the holdout blaster, then lunged over him, bringing his beskad'ika around his side and driving it up into the shooter's axillary artery while grabbing his shooting hand with his own free one. He twisted it hard enough to hear a tendon pop, the same motion aligning his own wrist laser with the man's armpit. With a voice command he fired the weapon.

 

His last target was staggered on the bench, dazed from the headbutt and his leg a mess. Fett didn't pause. He wrenched the holdout blaster from his dying previous target's hand as he fell, brought it deftly around, and fired twice point-blank through the man's T-visor.

 

"Shabuire," he spat. Warm blood pooled on the seats and floor. The pain in his elbow from the earlier speeder crash was flaring up intensely. The juggernaut had stopped and someone had opened the side door, letting daylight in and smoke out.

 

Fett put a hand on Mirdala's shoulder and glanced her over for any obvious injuries. "You okay?"

[Tresha Ad'Nort]

Legs found their rhythm, breathing found its pace, and every fiber of Tresha's being screamed for vengeance. TeVerd was hot on her heels, as she knew he would be: she did not need the empathic bond their family shared to discern his anger, but hers was made all the more potent by virtue of adding his to the fire. Every now and then she stopped where the tracks died out, but every time she picked them up again, the trail of tiny feet leaving dragging footsteps in the wet ground. Desperately, she clung to hope that they might find the children and the demagolka who had taken them before it was too late. Knowing that the little ones could not have moved as quickly as their captor might like, Tresha pushed herself against the protest of her body to intercept them.

 

Mere minutes later, as they approached the cliff face of the city, another small form lay on the ground in a pool of blood: and beside it, the head that should have been attached. The temperature of her blood rose once more.

 

But as she looked around, the trail of footprints ended. Peering down the sheer face of the cliff into the Kelita River below, a small pop of color caught her eye. Procuring her sniper rifle, she used the scope to hone in on the flash of pink.

 

Golden hair framed a broken body like a halo, and for a moment, Tresha wondered if the tiny girl had lost her grip and plummeted from the face of the cliff, or if she had simply been unable to manage the current of the swiftly coursing river.

 

The reddish tinge of the water flowing past the body and the jutting splinters of bone that pierced her petal-soft skin told a different tale, however. Nausea resurged in her belly as Tresha began to scan the treeline for movement, and all her joints went weak with rage. A reflection of muted light off of black beskar'gam caught her attention, and as the rifle shuddered under its haptic feedback as her trembling hands attempted to hold her HUD's target on the perpetrator, she fired.

 

<>

[Terra]

Within the confines of the darkened forest, between the ebony branches of ancient Aspeden Trees, sat Harjav Fieldgrey, an overwatch for his mistress, the insane assassin Terra. He was stationed slightly up-river from the rest of the commando teams. In his muscular arms he cradled a modified squad assault weapon with a midrange scope, chambered for armor-piercing slugs, 7.8 mm in diameter, weighing 12 grams, with 190 grains of gunpowder for propellant. When fired, it would send a three-round burst of slugs in a tight packing accurately out to 1000 meters, at a speed of 950 meters per second, with a hitting power of 3600 joules. His brown eyes scanned the cliff-face and the river as he and the Twins provided cover for Terra’s approach.

 

The glint of unmuted steel reflecting the light caught his eye, and he centered the scope on the approaching pair to the peak of the cliff above. The leader, a woman by the chestpiece, wore beskar’gam of olive drab with tan. He sighted in for distance and sent a panic alert through his HUD to his commander, to evacuate the area as she had just finished her ‘demonstration.’ She would have plenty of time to escape, between their appearance on the cliff and their acquisition of Terra as a target.

 

His rangefinder showed approximately 621 yards to the target, outlined in the orange silhouette from his thermal imaging. His scope adjusted for the drop of the bullet to that range, adjusting up 15 MOA for the distance to keep his pattern tight. He leveled his recital on the woman’s chest and adjusted the sights once more, so that his burst would hit her vitals.

 

“Kriffing half-assed protectors, can’t keep their kriffin’ children safe”

 

(OOC: Armament set up Here

 

(OOC: Overwatch set up Here)

 

-----

 

With each step of her fanged boots, the young Assassin made her way through the tangle of roots towards the commandos, remaining children, and the safety of the overhanging trees. She could still hear the gentle lapping of the water as it washed away the blood from her victim. With a kick, she stepped over a pile of fallen branches and a bright flash of light enveloped the right side of her HUD, indicating incoming hostiles, from Harjav, with linked in footage of real-time targets who were scanning for them.

 

Without hesitation, she flipped on her jetpacks thrusters with the scattered blink of an eye across the menu-screen. She kicked off with her legs, sending herself into a tight dive towards cover as the jetpack’s added thrust flew her to the safety of the brambling trees. The young assassin would fly over the heads of her commandos, and would drop into the concealing darkness of the trees, where her shadowed armour would conceal her, and the angle of attack from the top of the cliff would become infeasible with any hand-held weaponry unable to penetrate the tangled web of meter-thick branches.

 

-----

 

As his mistress jumped to escape, and the familiar sounds of a jet-pack firing hit his ears, Harjav directed fire from his teams to the cliff-face, and pulled the trigger. Three armour piercing rounds slugs would speed at 950 meters a second across the 621 meters, where they would impact in less than a second. He had been admiring the chestpiece of the woman who was carrying the sniper-rifle, her lithe body reminded him of his ex-wife, especially in the armor of a Mandalorian. It was a pity he was about to evacuate her internal organs with slugs, although she would undoubtedly still be usable, which was comfort enough.

 

**Killshot Defense**

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

Jumping slightly at his touch, it took her a half-second to realize that the other three traitors were dead or dying and the fight was over with. For now, she mentally appended to herself, as she offered him a shaky nod and pulling him close to her in an effort to cement the fact that they’d both escaped the event relatively unscathed.

 

“I’m not hurt,” she promised as the others around them began shifting the corpses to the hatch to chuck them out like the garbage they were. “Overclocking on adrenaline after this morning.” Her voice still had an edge to it as she continued to take slow, measured breaths to will her body back to normal.

 

Over his pick up, she could hear the tenseness in the background noise of the command center when a voice she recognized as Lyn, one of the leaders from Sintral, cut in to check in with Kandor to find out the extent of the situation. She was reluctant to let him go in that moment, but she could sense the change in the men and women around them through the shifts in body language and hushed conversations and she knew the attempt on their lives had had a further-reaching effect.

 

As Kandor dealt with command, she addressed the group, “We are both fine and it’ll take a lot more than a few hut’uune to stop us, all of us.” She made a sweeping motion to indicate she meant the group at large. “Grab some skraan and let’s finish getting this mess cleaned up. There’s still a battle to win!”

 

There were a few heart beats and no one moved. “Shift it!” She cried motioning with both arms for them to disembark the juggernaut. Ultimately, they began to move, filtering out of the juggernaut and into the noontime sun. The hulking transport had come to rest alongside a small ridge which afforded them a relatively safe spot to stop for a brief rest and a chance to reset after what had just happened.

 

Mirdala lingered for a bit until everyone else had disembarked and seemed to be lost in thought for a moment before she extended her hand toward her husband. “We should probably join them. We have a long day of fighting ahead of us and morale just took a huge nose dive. Not so much for the attempt on your life, but for the uncertainty it’s raised. Makes fighting that much harder when you’re not sure if you can trust the verd beside you.”

[Raynuk Montar]

Ruling for Tresha v Terra Killshot

 

This one is fairly straight-forward the way I see it. Terra, despite being on the run and leading a gaggle of kiddies into the trees, has had time and opportunity to plan out and cover the retreat. While normally the height of the cliff over the river would be a suitable spot for Tresha to plant a sniper round in Terra's head, precautions were made; specifically the overwatch from Harjav. The moment Tresha appeared at the top of that cliff, any surprise she had was gone. Add to that the fact that Tresha is in full on 'huntress' blinders mode,and appears to be too focused on following the trail, she failed to adequately survey the surroundings and the situation when she arrives. She simply attempted a shot, not realizing the trap she just ran into. And Terra's jet-pack into the trees only further makes the sniper shot more difficult thus...

 

 

KILLSHOT COUNTERED.

 

Tresha has a speeding, armor piercing round that is aimed at her chest from her flank on the open clifftop, and Terra has jetpack-jumped into cover, causing Tresha's shot to miss.

 

Terra gets the next post.

 

Looks like TeVerd might be about to have some deja-vu in the worst way...

[Terra]

Terra angled her body midflight, to keep herself from launching into a somersault, bringing her short burst of jet-jumping to an end, landing behind the line of children, within the trees. Her boots found solid ground, the metallic spiking grinding into the mixture of roots interwoven with shattered stone. From the livestream on her HUD, she could see the woman’s shot go wide, and hear the crackle as it dissipated into the trees above. The smell of ozone began to drift down about them from the scorched air and treebark.

 

------

 

Through his scope, Harjav could see the three-round burst lance out towards the target. Two of the rounds were intercepted by the intercession of a jumping Mandalorian,(TeVerd) but the last struck home. The heavy slug ripped through Tresha’s sniper rifle, shattering it into molten ribbons of slagged steel and razor sharp shrapnel. The slug, having lost most of its power on the rifle, shattered into the Woman’s breastplate, cracking the Beskar’gam and sending chunks of the slug across her chest. Where the armour ended at the pauldron, the slug’s remnants joined the shattered remains of the rifle in rending the flesh through the underarmour.

 

The white-hot phrik-bound steel passed through the leather bindings beneath the pauldron, cutting deep through the flesh, rending the supraspinatus and cracking the clavicle. It was not a mortal wound, but one enough to put her at disadvantage with her right arm. As the woman fell backwards, but still able to observe the river, Harjav made his report as he watched a large crimson stain begin to flow across her green armour.

 

“Two birds, three slugs. Both injured most likely, wind picked up from the ravine… Let’s chalk it up to divine intervention… Armour profile puts the one that shot at you as… One Tresha Ad’Nort. Priority Target.”

 

------

 

Terra smiled at the report of her overwatch, and turned back towards the river, where she could just make out the bobbing form of the dead girl detach from the bank, to be carried away into the churning oblivion of the Kelita. She grabbed the collar of a young boy, she guess to be around seven years of age. She muted her external vocal synthesizer and toggled the private channel.

 

“Fieldgrey, do you think they can see me?”

 

There was a pause, followed by a laugh that Terra could envision coming from his smirking face

 

“They’re wounded but not blind. Demonstrate away.”

 

She tightened her grip of the beige fabric of the boy’s simple tunic. It appeared as though the child enjoyed to dress as a Jedi for bed. Children and their faulty heros.

 

“Keep them in your sights. If they try anything, put them down.”

 

She stepped into view, dragging the boy behind her by the hem of his still-soaking tunic. His eyes were closed, and he appeared meditative, with his thin lips pressed tightly together. His dark flesh was blushed, and her HUD displayed an approximately tachycardic heartbeat, that matched the small shivers that ran along his body. She toggled on her voice synthesizer, and spoke to the boy in a hushed tone

 

“Do you figure yourself a Jeedai?”

 

She spat out the last word with contempt coating her tongue. The boy’s only response was a small mutter, tinged with fear

 

“I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

 

The young assassin felt the cold and unforgiving steel of Kitt Fitt’s lightsaber find her palm, and her fingers wrapped themselves around it. She could feel the grooves and ridges of the simple handle of blued-steel. She held it before his eyes, dangling it from her fingertips as if to tempt him as he braved a peak from his tightly shut lids

 

“I killed the Grandmaster of the Jedi, you know. He died the way he lived, as a milquetoast weakling. Just like your people...”

 

Terra slammed the emitter into his tightly clenched teeth, crushing his lips into them as his teeth shattered into splinters. She thrust the handle to the back of his throat, blocking out his scream, turning it into retching gags. The young assassin glanced up to the cliff, and activated her broad-scrambled comlink. It would broadcast for all the battlefield to hear, scrambled across a dozen relays to keep away any triangulation for aerial bombardment.

 

“Come and bid farewell to your happy fields, where joy will dwell no more. Hail horror, hail death.”

 

She pressed the power-switch, letting the silvered blade chew its way through the back of the boy's tender throat, to exit out the back of his neck. It cut through his vertebrae like a knife through bantha-butter, and with a yank of her hand, Terra bisected the boy’s head, letting the body drop to the shattered granite. Due to the swiftness of the strike, not all of the wound was cauterized, and the boy’s last heartbeats stained the muddy granite with a crimson river. Terra replaced the extinguished handle on her belt and beckoned the squad to move out.

[Tresha Ad'Nort]

As Tresha had crested the ridge, TeVerd had been close, watching the rest of the area for threats so that his niece could concentrate on their quarry. He’d been fighting in wars and battles, both homefront and private, since long before he could remember and his kind could remember centuries. A fine-tuned hunter’s instinct was ultimately what had set him in motion as Tresha had taken her shot at the fleeing assailant.

 

It was that gut instinct that might have saved Tresha’s life as he dove to force her from standing in the direct path of what he knew was coming. He made no sound as two of the rounds passed cleanly through his shoulder and through the back and chest plates along his left side. Clearly, this group had come well-armed and prepared for their opponents. It reminded him a bit too much of the Abraxos ambush that had taken Hwulf to the Manda.

 

“Udes’ika,” he growled out through gritted teeth and a shortening of breath that told him that his lung had collapsed. “Report.”

 

Guttural exhales replaced Tresha’s standard breathing cadence as she lay where the slug round and TeVerd’s bodily interference had deposited her, the well-worn sniper rifle disintegrated into a corpse of mangled steel and shrapnel. Her entire upper body throbbed with agony, the needling shrapnel in her shoulder chafing muscle and bone as she struggled to pull herself upright, panting audibly with every breath. She opened her mouth to respond to TeVerd and found that rage still maintained a stranglehold around her throat. Clutching her right arm to her chest, her left hand fumbled for the WESTAR pistol tucked away on the selfsame side of her body when she saw him.

 

Blackened damage to his beskar’gam and the tilt of his head told her all she needed to know. “Ba’vodu?” she said raspily, her voice oddly strained, as though she was just seeing her uncle for the first time. In her eagerness to pursue the hunt, in the crimson-colored rage that filled her mind, she had utterly neglected the rules of engagement, and her uncle had paid the price.

 

If her poor choices had robbed her uncle of his life, she could not bear to face Mirdala.

 

On hands and knees, she slunk toward him, using only her good hand until she reached his side. Her own injuries seemed to pale in comparison to his, and her horror at the consequences her actions might have incurred overtook her, only to increase as the voice of the demagolka echoed through the again-active comm channels.

 

”Hail horror, hail death!”

 

Injustice paralyzed her as she watched yet another of the ad’ike summarily executed, his only crime his parentage and hometown. Hot tears leaked from her eyes as she regarded the insane cruelty of this woman who disgraced the beskar’gam she wore.

 

Tresha turned her helmeted head back to TeVerd, quivering with pain and shock and rage. “I… I’m… I didn’t mean… haar’chaak,” she trailed off, her voice faltering.

 

TeVerd shook his head, “No.” He took a breath. “You did what you could to help the ad’ike.” Another breath. “Call Rhys. Squad Nearby.” Another. “They can intercept.” He took a few more breaths before looking down and checking himself. “Had worse and you know it. ” Purple, sticky blood continued to seep from his wounds and onto the dust as he shifted back in search of cover. “Sniper could still be out there.”

 

She held up her good hand to stop him from speech, hearing the rattling sound of fluid building in his voice. With a pair of blinks, she had activated the comm channel that would connect her to Rhys and his band of Seekers. “Rhys, it’s Tresha, over.” Her angry tears colored the timbre of her voice.

 

What is it, kid? Rhys’s voice cut in across the channel, the sounds of battle coming across the pickup.

 

She could feel her pulse in her head, the spreading warmth of the blood soaking outward from her shoulder giving her the impression she was floating. “Southwestern perimeter. TeVerd and I are down. We need backup, in pursuit of a kidnapper taking ad’ike into the forest. Possible active overwatch, approach carefully.”

 

Acknowledged. Sending Vy’ika your way for pickup. Sit tight and get cover. We’ll take up the trail, getting data readings from TeVerd’s feed now. A slight pause before a, "you heard the lady, move out" crackled across the comm that was directed at the rest of his team, including one of the other Seekers, Rahg.

 

 

ba'vodu - uncle

haar'chak - damn it

ad'ike - children

 

[Moon Knight]

ShadowFett hesitated at first. Accruing bruises and minor injuries aside, he wanted to push forward and get back out on the battlefield where he felt he could make the biggest difference. There were verde fighting and dying as they spoke, and the assassination attempt by some of Ab'ki's paid-for ver'verde had not rattled him. As long as he had a stash of ration bars in his belt pouches, he could keep going all day.

 

But he couldn't ignore Mirdala's point. She unfortunately had a way of making sense. Although he had been expecting an attempt like this one ever since the original briefing he'd given in the Oyu'baat, the uncertainty could diminish the morale of the troop as it had decimated their numbers. Sitting down with them for a bit of skraan could potentially do a bit of good. Plus, Fett was wary of pushing Mirdala too hard. They'd already been out in the field for several hours and it could potentially be many more before the invading army withdrew from Keldabe soil for a time.

 

So he nodded at her and the two of them headed over to where the soldiers were setting up an impromptu camp, breaking out rations and whatever other portable calorie sources they had. The bodies of the assailants had been dumped unceremoniously in a pile, still in their armor, where they would lay forgotten. The troop was as quiet as the corpses, absent the light banter that had been prevailing aboard the juggernaut mere minutes earlier. The sounds of battle were ongoing but distant; this place was safe for the time being.

 

Kandor pulled off his buy'ce and tossed a ration bar to his wife, then bit into one of his own, finding a place to sit in the circle of verde. "I'll bet if any of you are traitors like them," he said, gesturing at the bodies, "you must be having second thoughts by now. Shab, I would be. Seems a simple mission, doesn't it? Kill Mand'alor and his wife when their guards are down. Everyone's got weapons, it's chaotic out there, and you're totally anonymous in your beskar'gam."

 

He gave a short laugh. "Only there's a problem," he said. He looked around for a second, making eye contact with several of them, then pointed at Mirdala. "She's kriffing scary. In case you missed it she's a Seeker. Let me tell you, I didn't believe they were real at first either, but they're just like the legends. She can sniff out a traitorous thought, see an attack before it's going to happen."

 

Fett stood up. "I sure wouldn't want to take my chances against her. Maybe that's why I prefer to keep her on my side," he said. He managed to get a few amused snorts from the troop. "Tell you what. If you're a traitor and you're waiting for your chance, let me give it to you." He toggled the magnetic lock on his chest plate and it dangled off to his left side. His rifle was on the ground, and all he had in his hands was a half-eaten ration pack. He stood in the middle of the group and slowly turned in a circle. He indicated his flack jacket. "Go ahead. She's sitting down, she might not be able to shoot you in time."

 

After he did a full revolution, making eye contact with each soldier as he did so, he shrugged and resealed the chest plate. "No? Alright then, let's eat and get back out there. Plenty more shabuire to hunt."

[Terra]

The well worn trails in the forest undergrowth began to give way to clumps of sodgrass and thrasher-tails and the hardened clay underfoot was inundated with bramble of Rhododendron. The smell of the River had long ago dissipated to the earthiness of the forest, and now the smell of rot was beginning to cling to every wisp of air. Terra slipped to the head of the shambling row of downcast children, and illuminated a series of lights on her chestpiece. A crackling call on the comlink answered

 

“Blackwraith, this is Tez’Roda of the Ionblast Company. Your passcode ‘tis recognized crazy girl. We picked you up on the sensors a kilometer out. Brought Ab’ki gifts did we?”

 

Terra glanced across the rows of camouflaged sensor arrays that passed on in a circle about her, stretching out in a perimeter around the bog. A few scattered squads of mercenaries approached them, in olive fatigues. Their design reminded her of her training uniform during her time with Piccolo, and a wave of reminiscence overcame her temporarily of the days long past. A small group of them worked, hauling corpses of murdered farmers into a pile beside their lines. She passed the children to the mercenaries, who scurried off to secure them, with the help of the remaining Greyjoys. She commed in on her private line to her squadmates

 

“Harjav, remember our plan. Set them up as a sacrifice to The Great Shadow Father, and deploy yourselves accordingly. I’ll stick here to see if anyone else decides to follow.”

 

The grizzled commando nodded a silent agreement, and followed the squad of mercenaries at a brisk pace. The Twins, along with Aoarn, Bas’ar, and Shen departed after him, following the details of their plan. Terra slipped her buy’ce from her head, letting the stale air cool her face, which was still warm with the exhilaration of bloodlust. The Ionblast company gathered around her, while the Aubern-Haired Tez’Roda approached her with a timidity that was offputting to his men.

 

“Ma’am, do you have future orders?”

 

She beamed him a smile, showing her sharpened and crimson-stained teeth. He promptly winced.

 

“Ionblast Company… I’m sure we will have some tin-cans which will be begging to interrupt Ab’ki’s plans. Man the sensor arrays, and set up fortified positions best you can in this blasted peat-moss and mud. Fire whenever you see resistance.”

 

She pointed to a pair of small mounds, ancient cairns and tombs that hand long ago been buried by the ever-advancing bog.

 

“Set up a pair of E-Webs on each of those hills, but don’t be brazen about it.”

 

She pointed a gloved hand to the treeline, where the darkened and gnarled trees appeared as a marching line of soldiers, forever frozen in time.

 

“This is their only way to us from the battlefield, set up a firing line, Squad-assisting weapons and heavy ordnance, backed up by riflemen. I want visuals and sensor data copied and steamed directly to me.”

 

The young assassin turned to the ginger with the coy smile, the company commander and veteran of several wars, Tez’Roda.

 

“Carry out your orders, I wait amongst the dead.”

 

The man shuddered visibly as she turned and replaced her buy’ce, greeting the blinking lights of her HUD like one would welcome a lover to bed. She watched as he began to pass the orders and their specifics to his battle-ready troopers. Four squads of seven troopers began to spread out, digging small fox-holes in the peat-moss to set up defensive lines. Each squad matched the circular perimeter, offset backwards by seventy meters, well within the optimum range of their blaster rifles and auto-repeaters. One squadmate in each set up a recording device to match the sensor-line, in order to stream scrambled footage from each position to command and to Terra. The Cairns were armed with the pairs of E-Webs, backset by another seventy meters from the defensive lines, allowing for crossfire into the forest within their optimum range, and to target any airborne-craft.

 

Terra approached the haphazardly piled corpses, the stench of their rotting beginning to crawl through her helmet’s environmental scrubbers. There was around fifty bodies in various states of decomposing by her estimate, killed and left to rot in the elements throughout their various raids. The young assassin pulled a heavyset and disemboweled man from the pile, and pressed herself into the embrace of jumbled limbs. She let herself be covered by the rotting blood and gore, feeling the biological sludge embrace her. Almost none of the dead were soldiers by their rotting and dismembered physiques, which made her all the more happy.

 

...For my innumerable evils have surrounded you and my iniquities have overtaken you...

 

Terra hauled the man’s corpse on top of herself, and dug herself deeper into the mass of bodies. She made sure she was well buried, and faced herself towards the forest. She settled into the embrace and primed her jetpack for a high-powered burst, calculated for the combined gravitational mass of the bodies about her. She began to watch the streams of the soldiers as they prepared for battle, and let herself relax, cradled by the dead.

[Kalyani Wartide]

It had taken the covering fire from another squad to allow them to get out from being pinned down though they had yelled out to some of Jaesko’s friends to keep in sight the enemy squad they had been following and take them out if they could. “They’re heading to the generator facility!” Someone yelled as the girls rounded the corner of another building. While the shelling had stopped there was a hell of a lot of damage.

 

“You should've got that looked at Kaly.” One of the others told her. Kalyani glanced down at her right arm and saw that the last shot had penetrated her armour and that there was a blt of dried blood around it. She just shrugged, knowing that her armour would have to come off to do anything about it and that there was no time for that right then. “It's only a graze.” Kaly was more interested in stopping the enemy rather than stopping for something that didn’t currently hurt. Besides, she thought it had stopped bleeding. “We need to find out where they are.” Kalyani searched as they went for an easy way up onto the roof. She found some crates against a wall and climbed up, having to jump up to catch hold of the gutter before pulling herself up and over. Her arm hurt a bit doing that but she just ignored it and kept going.

 

She kept low as she ran across the roof before lowering herself to leopard crawl to the edge so she could see over without being seen herself. She pulled her rifle around so she could line up a target in her sights. Kaly had to slow her breathing so she could control her shot better, the deep breaths serving to slow her heart rate as well. Concentrating on an enemy combatant that looked to be the squad's leader she slowly squeezed the trigger of her blaster rifle, sending the shot to the center mass of the enemy figure below. He fell to the ground before his companions began to return fire. Kaly ducked down from the edge and had to shimmy backwards as some of the enemy shots sent bits of brick and metal flying towards her. The sound of something hitting the roof in front of her had her heart in her throat as she saw that it was a grenade. Fear gripped her though her instincts kicked in and she pushed it back towards the edge of the roof with the Force, all the while back peddling to get out of it’s range. She rolled behind a chimney just as it exploded right at the very edge, sending shrapnel and rubble in every direction. Kaly made herself as small as she could though still felt the biting sting as her armour was penetrated.

 

Kalyani’s ears were ringing and pain lanced through her left shoulder. She could vaguely hear shouts and thought someone called out her name. “I’m up here,” she tried to answer though with fear and pain in her voice the sounds didn’t seem to want to come out. Clearing her throat she tried again managing to make herself heard this time. “I’m here… I’ve been hit…” she groaned as Jaesko made her way towards her, keeping low and out of sight from the enemy. “Shab!” Jaesko cursed, “Baar’ur!! … We’ve got to get you seen to Kal… Come on.” Kalyani fought not to cry out in pain as her friend helped her to get the edge where the others were waiting. She couldn’t use her left arm much and certainly not without a great deal of pain. Somehow they managed to get her down to the ground and onto a stretcher where they took her to a first aid station. When they got her there it was an ordeal to get her armour off without causing more damage. There was a bit of metal sticking out at the back of her shoulder. Kaly blacked out from the pain.

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

((Fett and Mirdala - Northern Ridge))

 

Mirdala had removed her helmet as soon as they’d found a spot to sit and eat. She’d barely bitten into her ration bar when Kandor surprised her by standing up and addressing the rest of the troops, openly daring any of them to challenge him and take his life if there were still living traitors in their midst.

 

Though she sensed no immediate danger to him, she felt her heart leap into her throat and her stomach clench in the tense moments it took him to turn the full circle. It wasn’t until he returned to her side that she relaxed for a moment before kissing him.

 

“Good way to make your point, cyar’ika, but don’t do it again,” she hissed quietly as their lips parted. Her jade eyes had turned a steely olive. “Or you’ll see just how scary I can be.” Her lips quirked slightly in amusement before brushing his briefly again. “It was haran to watch you do that when I couldn’t hear anything beyond your voice,” she added gently.

 

Quickly finishing her ration bar, she’d just donned her helmet when she felt sharp pain echoing through the bond that she shared with her father and cousin. It stole her breath and left her hand searching for Kandor’s, gripping it tightly as she worked to bleed off the pain with the others. S-something’s wrong, she managed as she tried to will her body to breathe through the worst of it. Tresha...and…Buir. Call Vy’ika. Need to focus.

 

-------

 

((Vy’ika & TeVerd - Southwest Cliffside))

 

Vy’ika ignored the pain that continued to echo through him as he brought the medical speeder as far as he could toward the cliffside. The other two medics he’d brought with him jumped out with a pair of hover sleds, each armed and scanning for any possible threats on their path and in the woods and riverside down below.

 

For his part, Vy’ika had kept them both talking as the group finally made their way to the cliff face, his anger flaring brightly when he saw the loss of innocent life that had ultimately driven Tresha to her actions. He couldn’t blame her in the least. He’d have easily done the same thing.

 

If it hadn’t been for his duty to TeVerd and Tresha in that moment, he would have taken up a pursuit of his own.

Instead, he’d patched into the team chatter on Rhys’s and Rahg’s channels so that TeVerd and Tresha could relay as much information as they could to the rescue teams. With an enemy this brutal, the more information they had, the better. He’d purposefully left out Fett and Mirdala from the chatter considering they’d only recently had a second close call that day.

 

-----

 

((Soresh & Vi’ika for Jax Nalesse - Power Station Beta, Keldabe))

 

Soresh Delaavo lowered his macro-binoculars and looked down at the massive sand hound seated beside him before turning toward the other Mandalorians assigned to defend the power station. "Enemy heading our way from the north. Get to your stations and lock down access to the backups. You ((JAX)), man that artillery and don't let them get too close!"

 

He shouldered his own repeating rifle and prepped for a fight.

[KRXXP]

Jax stood at attention while being addressed before shooting a quick nod. "Yes sir." He acknowledged before donning his helmet, making his way towards the artillery. He's never worked with the kind of artillery that the Mandalorians had. Should be just like using a starfighter, how hard could it be? Jax thought to himself as he situated himself, manning the large piece of ordnance. Once he fired it up, he almost immediately realized what he was dealing with. OK, this is nothing like a starfighter...

 

Doing his best to read the interface and quickly study what he was actually working with, Jax was able to make out a map that took up most of the UI. By being able to read coordinates, Jax could aim at the approximate location of whoever comes to attack. However, this required him to rely on someone giving him these coordinates. Jax hoped that someone would be watching out and feeding this information to him. He needed to mark some fresh kills.

[Mellanie Devanus Vevut]

It took a few minutes to set up the shot, but the waiting paid off. "Now!" Araac shouted, and they both pulled their triggers. Mellanie's blaster bolt and Araac's flechette both flew directly for the Sith. Mellanie's was blocked by the nunchaku, but Araac's found flesh, downing the Sith immediately and giving Aryian the chance to breathe.

 

The two Mando'ade didn't hesitate, rolling to their feet and over the windowpane. The street was clear save for a few stragglers, and Mellanie made quick work of them. She trotted over to the Jedi, swapping in a fresh power pack for her blaster as she did so. "Comms are down. Did you see where the rest of the squad went?"

 

Araac reached down and relieved the Sith's corpse of it's nunchaku lightsabers, clipping him to his own belt. An explosion rocked the ground, throwing dirt in their faces, but Mellanie didn't flinch. She just knew they had to keep moving. She had the really strange feeling that Kalyani was in trouble, and she couldn't shake it. It made her want to tear through the city until she found her sister. She pushed the feeling down. Kaly would be fine. She had to be.

[Moon Knight]

Kandor frowned as his riduur fiercely gripped his hand and leaned on him for support, a sudden change from the contented break they were taking from the conflict. He turned to face her as she started speaking over their private link, though he suspected he knew what had happened even before she started. A sense of dread clutched at his heart when she indicated that it was Tresha and TeVerd that were in trouble, and he quickly fought it down. Out here, the chances of the whole aliit making it through in one piece were slim, and they'd all known what they were signing up for when they came out to fight in Keldabe's defense.

 

That didn't make losing friends and family much easier, though. For the longest time, Fett had worked independently, refusing to get attached to anyone, due partially to the sting of betrayal he'd suffered at the hands of Piccolo. He'd hidden behind his mask and when people died, he moved on without a thought. When he'd made a decision to invest in Mirdala and her aliit, it had marked the demise of that mentality, a process which had started when he'd joined the Augury.

 

He clenched his jaw. He didn't need to jump to any conclusions. He opened a channel.

 

"Yeah," Vy'ika answered.

 

"Tresha and TeVerd," Fett said. "Me'bana?"

 

"They're down but alive for the moment. Extract already in progress. Rhys' and Ragh's teams are going to take down the dikute that did this."

 

"Where?" Fett asked.

 

Vy'ika paused. "You two can stay out of this one."

 

"You know that's not going to fly with her, Verdeyuii."

 

A sigh came through the line. "The incident happened on the southern cliffs. We're pulling them to the nearest first aid station. Bring Dika there if she wants to see them. Out."

 

ShadowFett addressed the troops who were finishing their meals and filing back towards the juggernaut. "Something's come up. We'll have to take our leave here. K'oyacyi!"

[Kalyani Wartide]

When Kalyani came to she didn’t know where she was. She tried to sit up only to have pain lance through her left shoulder once more. Groaning she lay back, wincing as she did so. “Ahh you’re awake.” A voice spoke to her left. As she turned her head she noticed a nurse carrying a chart and a petri dish containing a hypospray coming towards her. The nurse checked her bandages, adjusting them slightly - making the patient wince in the process. She placed the dish down and took up the hypospray, pressing it to her shoulder and pulling the trigger and injecting the medication. Kaly took a few breaths before opening her eyes again and asking, “How long have I been here for? I’ve got to get back out there… they were headed to the generator facility… we’ve got to stop them!” The nurse gave her a stern look, “You’re not in any condition to get back out there yet. We had to extract a piece of metal out of the back of your left shoulder. That hypospray should ease the pain soon. What happened for you do to get that there?” The young woman closed her eyes as it played out in her mind again, “A grenade landed in front of me… I tried to throw it away and get to cover only I wasn’t quick enough.”

 

“You were very lucky it didn’t hit anything vital,” the nurse explained. “We had the medical droid to fix most of the damage and packed the wound with bacta. The dressings will need to be regularly changed. You’ll need to take it easy for a while and don’t use your left arm too much. We don’t want the stitches to reopen. You’ll also need to patch your armour before going back out into the field.” The nurse pointed to the corner of the room where her upper armour sat with a large hole in it. At least I had it on… can’t think of how much worse it would have been without any… she thought to herself. She noticed that the nurse hadn’t said when she’d be able to get back out there. Kaly didn’t want to be a difficult patient but she had a job to do and she hated to fail. Seeing the determined look on her face, the nurse relented somewhat, “I’ll see if someone will patch your armour for you while you’re in here. You’ll have to stay another couple of hours at least. We’ll see how you are faring when it gets back as to when we can release you.” Kalyani nodded her head, “I can deal with that…”

[Mirdala Ad'Goran]

((Power Grid Defense Team -- Jax you can use this NPC as your spotter and play this as you want. I'll ping Aryian (Charles) since it's his turn to post the opposition.))

 

“I’ve got you!” a woman in a copper and purple suit of beskar’gam replied as she climbed into the spotter’s seat for the emplacement. She ran a few quick calculations and soon Jax’s HUD was fed the targeting data he needed to get the main artillery in place.

 

-----

 

((Rhys & Rahg - Somewhere over the southwestern marshes))

 

The shuttle rattled and jolted as it met the unstable air currents as another storm birthed itself over the skies of Keldabe. The storms rolling in didn’t help, but certainly provided more than adequate cover for the team mission flight, especially when combined with the angle of the sun as it traveled toward the western horizon.

 

Further below, another shuttle brushed close to the tree tops as though to avoid sensor detection, rushing toward the projected course of the enemy who’d kidnapped and murdered Keldabe’s children. The Rhys’s team had no real way of knowing how far the enemy had set out their perimeter, so they weren’t taking any chances, hence using the two shuttles for the mission. Rhys had made the call to risk the shuttle transports since time was paramount in the recovery of the innocents that were now caught up in the bloody battle for the survival of the Mandalorian capital city.

 

His former training sergeant's daughter had warned of overwatch in the area and their course took them deep into what was likely now enemy-held territory. As a former Arc-Trooper during the Clone Wars and a Seeker for years afterward, battle was nothing new to him or the man seated across from him.

 

For his part, Rahg had always been the type that was itching for a fight and it had served him well as a Commando Unit Omicron during the Clone Wars as well. Though they were part of the same “batch” of cross-bred clones genetically engineered especially to hunt down and deal with errant Force Users, Rhys had never quite come to understand his brother’s ferocious nature, though he’d come to respect its uses over the years. Perhaps they’d all taken some aspects from TeVerd’s genetics and personality since he’d been there to oversee their training since the beginning.

 

Rahg’s Jedi commanders during the war hadn’t been any of the ones that saw value in the clones as anything other than tools to throw at the droid armies. That lack of regard had only served to further fuel Rahg’s animosity toward their kind. It had been TeVerd’s father who’d decided that bringing him into the Seeker ranks was a good idea, a decision that Rhys internally questioned even to this day.

 

The only Force Users that had encountered Rahg and walked away without a scratch, to Rhys’s knowledge, was Noirah, the abandoned Jedi Padawan that Rhys had married, his two children, Mirdala, and now the Jedi Aryian Darkfire. Mirdala had only kept her life because of what she meant to TeVerd and Aryian because Mirdala and Fett had spoken for him. Even now, he could sense that Rahg was just waiting for either Mirdala or Aryian to misstep and give him an excuse to eliminate one or two more of their kind from the galaxy.

 

“Something’s up ahead,” the pilot remarked, interrupting Rhys’s thoughts and the tense battle-ready silence that had settled throughout the cabin.

 

“Any report of the children or other noncombatants?” Rhys asked.

 

“Having to run a targeted scan now. Whatever is on the ground is scrambling the passive array,” the pilot responded

 

“Do it,” Rhys ordered. They could afford the risk of detection by the ground forces if it meant catching up to the children and their captors sooner rather than later.

 

“There are people down there, but all appear to be adult-sized humanoids,” the pilot relayed just as the array lit up with incoming fire alerts for the ship below them. “Solid hit! They know we’re here now.”

 

“That’s the signal ladies and gents,” Rhys said, unstrapping himself from the seat. “Best get ground-side ASAP and engage before we lose our cover.” He clapped the pilot on the shoulder. “We’ll use the other shuttle’s debris as cover for our landing. You keep above cloud cover and we’ll call if we need you.”

 

The rest of the twelve-man team split into their two squads, one lead by Rahg whose primary objective was to handle any ground obstacles that got in their way, and the other led by Rhys whose goal was to find and follow the trail to reach the children as fast and as best as they could.

 

As the ship below them took more hits, the team bailed out of the shuttle utilizing jump packs and the falling shuttle debris as cover as they dropped in on top of the enemy. Enroute to the ground, four of the twelve aimed their grenade launchers at the E-Web emplacements two of them taking shots at each with their helmet systems accounting for the variance in wind, speed, and distance as they managed their descent.

[Tresha Ad'Nort]

Somewhere, in the back of her mind perhaps, or maybe on a far-distant planet where she sought some unknown hunt, she could hear Vy'ika speaking, could feel his eyes on her, could feel the motion of the shuttle into which he had loaded her limp body, could do something other than grit her teeth against the red-hot slice of pain in her right shoulder. Even from here, in the midst of a city-wide battle, Mirdala's worry was palpable. To the best of her effort, Tresha dampened the echoes of pain that ricocheted off of the other empaths in their bonded family. It was likely a futile effort, but Mirdala's focus needed to be single-minded in such a crucial conflict. The hunt did not suffer distraction.

 

Distraction. Any distraction would be welcome, any images to fill her mind other than the slowly purpling form of the angel held fast to the earth as the grave of the Kelita beckoned.

 

Pain dulled her control; not generally given to overt sentiment, she could not seem to find the strength to keep the memories at bay. The stench of death seemed everywhere, but she did not dare remove her helmet lest the rank pungency should overtake her entirely. They were encroaching, the ghosts of these children who even the most elite mercenaries in the world could not protect. They were behind her, and she could not run. They were before her, and she could not look away, even as their bodies disintegrated, their flesh torn into ribbons, their eyes sunken and their limbs twisted, broken, bones protruding, their scarred and frail forms a science museum's worth of drained blood vessels.

 

The jade-eyed girl whose pierced and shrapnel-riddled body she had cradled unto expiration stretched out a pallid hand into the core of her, cold fingers tightening around her heart. The drums of war played in sync with the girl's steps. Clinging to the last vestiges of awareness enough to turn her buy'ce into a soundproof burial chamber, Tresha let out a scream into the magnetically-sealed bucket before the icy fingers claimed her consciousness, rendering her to the oblivion of her guilt.

 

-----

 

When light pierced her eyes once more, sending thunderclaps of pain throughout her skull, Tresha became all too aware of where she was. The large tent, usually reserved for Keldabe market days, had been transformed into a makeshift triage, the first-aid station bustling with medical droids and rainbows of beskar’gam. Casting her eyes in the direction of the oozing wetness she could feel in her wounded shoulder, she observed that the plates of beskar had been removed, though they were not within her line of sight in order for her to assess the damage. The artificially warm apparatus of a medical droid was setting clamps around a jagged piece of her beloved rifle that was jutting out from her shoulder. With a sudden premonition, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away as the metal slid out of her skin with a sucking sound that was exceptionally quiet for how loudly the nerves screamed for relief.

 

As the pain gave way to the soothing warmth of bacta patches that the beskar’ad applied to her wounds, she dared to open her eyes. TeVerd was prone on a stretcher a few feet away, the unmistakable crimson-clad form of Mirdala bending over him.

 

“Ni ceta, Mird’ika,” she rasped sorrowfully. “I was careless. I could have gotten him killed.”