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Corellia


Darth Jade

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The Assassin stared into the swirling madness of Hyperspace, dressed in nothing but a chest binding and briefs, cradling her buy’ce in an unarmored arm. She could feel the coolness of its metalwork, the Sith Steel forged by Ason to match her soul. Trembling hands held it to her own head, and she watched the reflection of her crimson eyes in the T-visor’s glow. 

 

You are Dar’Manda. 

 

She wanted to throw the helmet into the depths of the Maw, to seal away her past as if it never occurred. But there was more to her than just armor. She could see the hauntings of her actions in the reflection of her eyes. Her soul was empty. She was drained of life. 

 

You are Dar… No. There was a hunger for more. 

 

Terra turned her eyes into the brightness of Hyperspace’s void, a gnawing hunger sweeping through her. The reflection showed more, it showed ranks of armored Mandalorians before a throne of pure white. Deathwatch and Protector alike. On it sat an Echani woman, the circlet of Mandalore upon her brow, fine blonde hair in a plait on her shoulder. Those shoulders weren’t bowed in grief or dishonor, but straight, as her whole form was. Redeemed. She felt sickness wash over her and the vision disappeared as she collapsed to her knees. There she remained for a moment. 

 

A Mandalorian arose then, her shoulders less bowed, her head held higher. There was a new feeling that was washing through her veins. It felt toxic to her soul, and yet more alive. 

 

Hope. 

 

Turning, she walked into the ready-room, her crimson eyes alight with passion. All chatter ceased, eyes falling onto her with curiosity. All there were of her former Deathwatch, but the shuttle’s pilot, a tall man with skeptical brow and a cup of stimcaf in hand. Her soldiers were all stripped to their undergarments, their beskar’gam laid before them. Terra stooped to her armor, placing the buy’ce at the center of the room. From her ready-bag she withdrew a several large vials. 

 

Taking an offered dish of bronzium from Longkra she poured in the vial’s contents. Black sand of the Kelita, the shattered obsidian and basalt of Manda’yaim’s volcanic past. Forest loam from Keldabe’s woodland. Ash from the beskar forges. Whispers of excited agreement began to swirl through the cabin. Taking a knife from the extended palm of Harjav, she cut into the meat of her palm, a place that had no risk of tendinous injury. 

 

The pilot, a man named Carhaid Lekht, seemed both mystified and disgusted as the Deathwatch began to chant. To the base melody of their chant, Terra began to sing the songs of Kad Ha'Rangir's rebirth, letting the blood drip into the bowl, to mix with the sand and dirt. 

 

“Devastation, regeneration, transformation, that is the best I can do for you...” 

 

She began to mix the components into a dark slurry with the butt of the knife. 

 

“I see a grey gloom on the horizon that promises a powerful star to rise…” 

 

Tears began to fall, running from crimson eyes, to drop into the slurry, the final component of the ancient magic of her people. It was a spell from the days before the last Mythosours were hunted.  

 

“It will make the fires of our purification look like dying embers…”

 

Taking two fingers, she scraped a small amount of the black substance up, and painted her chest and face with the symbols both the symbols of death and those of rebirth. Walking to each of her soldiers, she painted them the same and kissed each twice upon the forehead. The pilot was last, and shied away as she approached, unnerved by her lithe form and the uncivilized nature of the ceremony. 

 

“Become. Embody. Embrace.” 

 

She painted his face and kissed him, his disgust melting with her touch. In a moment he had joined her men, stripped to the waist as they sat before their beskar’gam, swaying to the chant. Stepping into the center of her warriors, she lifted up her helm, the circlet of Mandalore glowing like an ember. 

 

“We were Kyr’tsad, we were Dar’Manda...” 

 

Her words held the last in bitterness, the vile curse of being disowned by their culture hanging above all of them. 

 

“...But upon this battlefield we are reborn as Mando’ade!” 

 

The chant burst into cries of exhilaration, a great whooping, broken by the shrieks of those ready to die and those with no more tears for their own souls. A hyperspace alarm began to blare, and the Mandalorians began to dress. 

 

****** 

 

Master… If the… Sith attack… In force... 

 

She knew what he would say. He had done the calculations and so had she. 

 

Coronet City… Will Fall… 

 

Corsec soldiers would never be able to hold against a full Sith invasion. Terra scanned the Coronet city maps, identifying potential fortifiable positions as well as potential areas that were best suited for invasion forces. 

 

The Blastfield Shipyards and Spaceport

 

Her eyes darted to the enlarged leisure parks that dotted the city like cancerous warts. Too many to hold. Her armored fingers gripped the datatable in frustration, The Shipyards would have some militia forces active. She accessed her own datapad, pulling up numerical data. Rebel forces would have units on shore leave, and the Corellian army would have a presence as well. 

 

The spaceport would be where they would make their stand as The Forelorn Hope

 

Slipping the buy’ce onto her head, she uploaded the map data into real-time streaming on her HUD. The fractal movement of the 360-degree viewscreen made her momentarily disoriented, but after a few seconds her brain remembered the years of training. 

 

“Mic-Check” 

 

A chorus of affirmatives echoed in her ears. Terra’s HUD outlined her squadmate’s forms in her view, their battlefield uplink giving localization data, ensuring that friendly fire was far less likely to happen. Health readouts came next, as well as streaming data from Arna and Longkra’s separate Combat AI, Setapoite

 

Hades was a clear orange outline behind her, and she cycled through his weapons systems, selecting appropriate weaponry for the city-wide battle that was likely to follow. It would undoubtedly be a mess of a battle. 

 

Running the calculations for Corellia’s atmospheric density and gravity with the Hades AI, backed up by Setapoite, the projected weaponry would be visible on her HUD should she decide to utilize it. All her own weapons were updated with the data, yellow firing arcs projecting from the muzzles of the weapons she held. Lekht's voice cut through her peace. 

 

“Landing, begin countdown” 

 

Her squadmates lined up on the landing ramp, shouldering their weaponry. Terra ducked her way past Arna’s Anti-Material rifle, to step to the front of all of them. Corellian security was informed of their presence, as were the military forces. She disengaged her magazine, studying the rounds on her HUD, ensuring it was loaded before slapping it back into place. The landing ramp disengaged and she led her squad into the heart of Coronet City’s Blastfield Shipyards and Spaceport

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Terra let a small breath escape between her pursed lips, accompanied by a hiss of frustration. The sound reverberated inside her confines of her buy’ce, and the Heads-up Display began to shift to accommodate the massive influx of possible targets. The 360-degree viewscreen focused into a line, and the sky of Corellia fell into focus, crimson lines drawing forth from the falling meteors, showing possible impact sites.

A few muttering curses crashed into her ears, the buy’ce’s commlink sparking with the words of her traat'aliit as they began to register targets. A chirp echoed in her mind and Hades began to erase the crimson lines from the viewfinder,

A… Distraction…

The Sith invasion had arrived and had brought a demoralizing meteor shower. Setapoite confirmed that the main threat was far more insidious; the Sith invasion was scattered, which put their concentrated defense at a disadvantage. The AI spoke, giving life to Arna’s mute tongue,

“Reports of… yes confirmed… Assault Tanks near the capital building.”

Terra stood, cracking her back with a quick twist and pointed towards the Corellain capital, a scattered arrangement of towers that dominated the horizon. As the Deathwatch squad broke cover, a storm of crimson blasterfire began to spit about them. The Corellian militia returned fire with their own bolts of green and blue, covering them as they charged towards the capital.

Hades began to parse comlink and holonet relays, gathering intelligence for the invasion of as whole. Closed Circuit Holocamera information began to flash in the corner of the HUD, displaying the battle for Coronet City. Sith locations began to fill in on the Three-Dimensional battlemap.

They were everywhere. At least a dozen Sith supported by hundreds of troops and heavy weaponry. At least one Jedi was marked in the Botanical Gardens, engaging a Sith Lord, but that was the only Jedi that the scan detected.

The crash of a fragmentation grenade shattered the stillness of the squad’s run, marking an increase in the battle’s tempo as they entered the Central Terminal for the Corellian Mag-Lifts. It was swarming with black-armored Sith and the unholy creations of the Krath.

Smack-Crack!

Her traat'aliit roared in a chorus as their weapons spat orange flame. Terra’s voice rang through the Terminal, amplified by her helmet’s loudspeaker.

Oya! Oya! Oya'karir!”

Terra’s assault-rifle churned out a three-round burst of depleted uranium, tearing through into the armor of a Sith soldier who had turned to engage them, the kinetic force throwing him to the ornate stoneway that formed the Terminal’s flooring. Her squad threw themselves behind a series of stonework planters to establish cover as she sent another burst into a running soldier, finding concealment behind a broken pillar. Its ornate carvings had been shattered by what she could only assume was an air-to-surface missile.

A warning beeped in her head, and the fractal HUD focused on an emerging threat; one of the Krath creations had decided to engage the new and oddly armored soldiers. It was a porcine beast with distorted arms that had a series of spines across its flesh, each like a weeping boil, dripping a smoking poison.

Terra stepped from concealment, letting a out a whoop of challenge, catching the beast’s attention with a wave of her arms. It turned to pursue but stumbled as gleaming white bolts of energy began to stitch into its spine. It let out a trumpeting roar, but it turned into a throaty cry as a shattergun round punched out its gullet.

The stern voice of Lieutenant Osgood cut into the carnage, carried through her buy’ce comlink

“Forlorn Hope, move to engage the Sith Command element at the capital.”

Terra’s voice was tremoring with adrenaline as she ran and spoke, her squad charging with her through the fray towards the capital.

“Deathwatch copies.”

Their footsteps were light upon the stonework as they dashed across the mag-tracks, slipping into the smoke and confusion of the terminal battle. The tracks led them into a tunnel, lined with gating and dark as the Maw due to the power-cuts from the invasion.

Immediately, the HUD was alight with the pale green of the inbuilt NODs, which allowed the Mandalorians to skip over the rubble that strewed the tracks. There were a few bodies scattered here, but they were not military casualties, and were in civilian garb. Terra’s boot hit one of the heads as she ran, and what she expected to find to be hard as bone was as loose as a sponge.

Concussion blast. At least they died fast.

Orange light cut through the green of the NODs and the squad discovered the crashed mag-lift from which the bodies had come, burning lightly, half in and out of the tunnel. It was like a serpent of twisted durasteel, caught halfway out of a ranat burrow and decapitated.

A large spire was before them, highlighted in a haze of smoke by the flashes of blasterfire. Coronet’s Capital Thoroughfare.  

Hades confirmed its location, and was within a comfortable distance, delighting in the concealment of the battlesmoke, the rooftops, and the flame. Arna and Longkra retreated into the maglift tunnel’s mouth, scrambling into the twisted wreckage. There, the twins began their rangefinding, reading the windpatterens and distances. Through their eyes, Setapoite began to mark the rangings of tanks and soldiers that fought against the capital defense.

Harjav took cover by a burned-out assault tank, digging his vibroknife into the back of a struggling Sith crewmember, silencing his screams of pain from the flame that had scalded his body. Aorn and Bas’ar took position amongst the shattered granite pillars of the thoroughfare, keeping to concealment.

Terra lifted her rifle and strode forward, taking a knee behind one of the tank’s detached repulsar-lifts. With a slap, the Mandalorian attached the muzzle-brake to the weapon, flipping the magazine out into her hand, exchanging it for one filled with an armor-piercing load. Racking the charging handle, she brought the rifle’s butt squarely into her shoulder, placing the bipod on the wreckage. The HUD displayed the targeting reticle and she placed it on the charging ranks of soldiers, scanning for targets.

Immediately a crimson light caught her attention, filtering through the bodies and blasterfire. Her HUD flipped to 8X magnification.

Sith.

Terra stitched a three-round burst into the officer ranks that had followed their Sith Commander (Qaela) raking rounds into the crowd without much discernment. She followed it with a second burst and angled the fire in an attempt to get the Sith’s attention, to get whoever led them to show themselves. She steeled her nerves and calmed her emotions, letting her finger take up the slack in the trigger.

Terra

To the Death...

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Terra and 5 Deathwatch Tactical NPCs (contracted under the Rebel Alliance)

vs

The Nightsister, Qaela

 

The HUD of the former Mandalore flashed the deep crimson of warning as the Sith’s AT-ST began to fire indiscriminately throughout the Capital’s Thoroughfare. A blackened jet of earth washed through her viewscreen as the walker made a nearby hit and the HUD refocused out to 2 X magnification. The Sith was marked and highlighted with an orange glow on the HUD, indicating a HVT, which was brought to greater attention by the backwash of the crimson blade the Sith held.

 

Hades and Setapoite designated the targets in magnitude of danger, with the Sith as highest priority, outlined in orange on the HUD, followed by yellow for the AT-ST, and finally purple for the dozens of troops in the Sith’s platoon of soldiers. The Combat AIs began to assign suggested targets to the group, based on their loadout. The squad’s comlinks began to cycle through the encoded frequencies, to evade whitenoise.

 

Terra began to track the Sith through her HUD as the Mandalorian began to angle herself to make the Sith’s approach as harrowing as possible. Her mind turned to her training under Piccalo and reinforced by Lord Ar-Pharazon when she had hunted the members of the Jedi Council; called in those days the POSLWJK, the Protocols On Select Loadouts With Jedi Knights. It had been a hard-fought lesson when trying to eliminate force users; keep your distance and terminate them with weaponry that made force usage difficult. The former Mandalore whistled out a command in her fiery tongue.

 

Atiniir

 

The word was Mando’a for “To Endure” but it was also the Deathwatch code for the execution of an L-Shaped ambush, an oft-practiced military technique which enabled the smaller group of Mandalorians to have a fighting chance against the Sith’s familiar numbers. It allowed for the Deathwatch units to maximize their weaponry along the longest firing axis

 

***** NPC ACTIONS: HARJAV FIELDGREY *****

 

To Terra’s left, Harjav selected his CSPL-12 Projectile Launcher and made a mad dash further to her left, picking his way amongst the wreckage of the Sith’s assault on the Capital. Once in a dead-run, the Mandalorian brought up the weapon, while the HUD gave him his nearly straight firing angle. Leveling the firing arc onto the head of the AT-ST, the Mandalorian fired the impact-primed Thermal Detonator, which left the barrel at 290 meters per second, which was angled for the viewport of the AT-ST.

 

KA-CHUNK

 

The Mandalorian, Harjav Fieldgrey dove into the smoking grass and racked the projectile launcher’s slide, inserting another thermal-detonator into the launcher’s tube. He hoped his attack would be successful against the Sith’s walker, but fate was seldom kind.

 

***** NPC ACTIONS: AORN AND BAS’AR *****

 

Far to Terra’s right, the twins Aorn and Bas’ar maintained their cover of the shattered granite pillars and began to engage their target; the platoon of Sith Troopers. The Chiss Mandalorians checked their XAB-32 Heavy Charrics one final time before bringing themselves to a more vulnerable half-standing position. Raising their rifles, they began placing precise automatic maser fire into the Sith Platoon. They were prepared to run or ignite their jetpacks should they be targeted, but they were eager to put down the Sith threat.

 

***** NPC ACTIONS: ARNA AND LONGKRA *****

 

Behind the squad, nestled in the wrecked maglift, the sisters Arna and Longkra, along with their Combat-AI Setapoite maintained their tracking orders. They were tasked with tracking the Sith, and to engage when ready. Arna watched the Sith’s advance through the scope of her Istiglal IST-14.5 anti-materiel rifle, while Longkra called out targeting data into the chat with Setapoite’s voice. The rifle was sighted in to 1000 meters, while weather and gravitational data was taken in by Terra’s combat analysis unit in the field.

 

“Breaching 1500 meters, up one, wind two knots from the southeast, tailwind, left three.”

 

Arna slipped all emotion from her mind, removing the feelings of malice as she had been trained. Her finger took up the slack in the trigger as the targeting reticle bobbed over the target. She kept her breathing to a normal as she waited for Terra to engage.

 

***** PC ACTION: TERRA *****

 

Behind the cover of the burned-out tank, Terra minimized the squad readouts with a blink, waiting for her prey to step out of concealment, which she did, surrounded by her black-clade cadre. The crimson blade was the giveaway, a mere distraction for her mind. They were still at distance enough to give her little concern, but she knew Sith could cover distances swiftly, but this one was slowed down by her insistence of staying among soldiers without the blessings of the force. A chime indicated Hades’ location nearby.

 

Center of Mass.

 

With her slugthrower resting on its bipod, supported by the shattered repulsar-engine, Terra instinctually closed one eye, taking in the full view of the Sith Lord. Something was familiar about the woman. With the slack already out of the trigger, and the reticle displayed on her HUD, Terra breathed out a small sigh of contentment and sent a three-round burst of AP slugs speeding towards the Sith’s chest.

 

((1))

Terra

To the Death...

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Terra’s HUD highlighted the strike on the Sith, and the lightsaber’s extinguishment confirmed the bullet’s damage. There was something peculiar about this Sithling though, it had felt familiar to her, as if the form were familiar. The Sith Forces began to scramble about their fallen leader, like piranha-beetles protecting their queen.

There was… Something…

The Mandalorian took a small breath of anticipation

“HVT, Walker down.”

Harjav’s voice echoing in her ear pulled her mind to the reality. Flashes of armor and weaponry stood out on her HUD. These were not normal Sith troops, but a platoon of assault commandos. The Mandalorian pursed her lips in frustration, her darkmetal teeth grating together beneath her buy’ce. She tasted the metallic burn of sparks. She uncomfortably adjusted the one-point sling her rifle was attached to, the bi-pod retracting with a touch of a button on the stock. Her voice told of her frustration through the gravel.

“Scratch Purple, these are commandos.”

Flurries of movement began to be marked by the HUD and parsed by image-recognition of Hades and Setapoite. The Sith Commandos highlighting readjusted to orange while the 360-degree viewscreen cut to a 180-degree display, emphasizing the newest points of movement. A handful of sniper-teams, firing squads, and something else.

A red hash blinked into existence on her HUD, indicating another HVT. The text-line explanation came with it from hades, scrawling above the slowly moving hash-mark in highlighted aurebesh.

…E-Web…

Terra blinked a command on her HUD, assigning her own sniper-team into action. They would be redeployed for both counter-battery and counter-sniper duty. The Piranha-Beetle swarm parted again in a flurry of blaster-bolts and for a millisecond the Sith’s face was revealed. The HUD captured the still image, a woman in her early years, black of hair, wearing leathers and Dathomiri in origin. Terra’s breathing caught in her throat. Lord Ar-Pharazon’s prize woman and fellow Scorpion-Raider.

Qaela

The rocks and stones of the battlefield around the Commandos formed together into a vast shield, immediately blocking her view of the Sith. Holographic resonance of the shield’s angles in the third dimension was filled in by the viewscreens of her flanking troops, giving the swirling shield of granite and shattered statues the rough shape of a flowing half-dome. The grating voice of Hades churned through her ears, sounding like the corrupted voices of a thousand dead soldiers.

Sith… Magic…

Immediately, calculations began to scrawl to the left of her field of view, and a series of attack patterns blinked into existence, transparently covering the field of battle before her. Terra selected one of the smaller ones, a series of conical orange waves, and blinked an acknowledgement command. Hades sparked laughter and began to proceed. She could almost hear the distant roar. She echoed it in her command.

“Jurkadir, kov'nyn!”

It was another simple command for the reprioritization of targets, and the L-shaped ambush shifted immediately.

***** NPC ACTIONS: HARJAV FIELDGREY *****

The Mandalorian blessed his luck, hearing the unmistakable reverberating detonation of the thermal-detonator as it took down the Sith’s AT-ST. The excitement of victory pulsed through his veins, making him jittery. He could not smell the smoke that curled from the dying grass around him, but in his state, he could only imagine it smelled like a Fawde candle on Life-Day. The thought brought him to one such day ten years past, with little Kyrie singing one of her songs in that nonsensical language of hers while Hayley tried to burn glosswings with the celebratory flame.

A flood of blasterfire streamed over him, cutting short his fond memories, and causing him to crawl swiftly to the cover of a fallen statue. From its form he could tell it was from one of the numerous Corellian Jedi families. They were all the same to him, useless peacemakers who had brought nothing good to the galaxy. He considered his options as the left flank of the Deathwatch forces, and none of them were particularly positive for his own wellbeing.

A shower of permecrete rained down on him as the withering fire from the entire platoon began to fall onto his and his squadmate’s positions. He checked his projectile launcher with a quick sweep of the chamber with his thumb, which settled on the rear of an impact thermal detonator, identical to the one used to devastate the AT-ST. With its ten-meter blast radius, it was a devastating weapon, and one he could use on himself if he were close to being captured. He had no interest in landing in a Sith torture-cell, especially after what that ilk had done to his children.

With a lull in the fire, he scrambled to a better firing position, angling himself towards the spearpoint of the Sith line. A few blasterbolts ricocheted off the statue’s face, but he held his position, taking in the advancing column of Sith commandos. He was nearly in a perfect position being on the left flank of the Mandalorian line to put the entire Sith column under enfilade fire.

Immediately his eyes were drawn to a swarm of stone and statues that made of the Sith’s summoned shield. His HUD displayed the forward progression of the Sith, along with the distance to target.

“Jurkadir, kov'nyn!”

Harjav angled the projectile launcher, watching the projected firing line extend until it alit upon the swirling mass of stones that protected the Sith. He waited a few heartbeats for the sign from Terra, and when he saw a simple arc extend from his position, he calmly pulled the trigger. The shot hardly had an arc, and it sent an impact thermal detonator speeding at 290 meters per second into the left rear corner of the half-dome of stones, where it would unleash pure hellfire in a 10-meter radius.

***** NPC ACTIONS: AORN AND BAS’AR *****

As soon as their charric rounds began to land amongst the enemy, the lovers Aorn and Bas’ar became aware of their folly. This was not an easily routable Sith trooper platoon, full of former criminals and greens, but a fully equipped special forces platoon. Their HUD confirmed a formidable armament amongst the opposition, and Setapoite blared to them an incoming ordinance warning.

As four cylindrical objects whirled through the smoke of the battle towards them, the two Mandalorians jumped backwards, activating their jetpacks with a low-bearing angle so their trajectory did not carry them too high, but enough to escape the explosion radius. The quick burst from their jetpacks separated the pair and set the right flank of the Mandalorian line back an additional twenty meters.

Set back as they were, the pair took up new firing positions, with Aorn taking cover behind a shattered fountain, and Bas’ar finding safety beside an askew landspeeder. Once they had position, they began to stich bursts of maser-fire into the advancing lines of Sith Commandos once more.

***** NPC ACTIONS: ARNA AND LONGKRA *****

From the overwatch position of the wrecked maglift, the Twins watched the battle unfold with grim dissatisfaction. The Sith had lived through their Mand’alor’s attack and though it provided the opportunity for more battle between them, it brought even more danger to their dwindling number. There were so few of the true Deathwatch left.

Arna leaned into her scope, making the adjustments that Longkra suggested, but their HUDs fractionated for a moment and began to highlight a new target as the HVT. Setapoite buzzed as Longkra’s frustration

“…E-web and squad.”

The dark-armored Mandalorian trained her spotting scope and rangefinder upon the red hash on their battlemap, augmenting the targeting data already available. Her voice came again as the words of Setapoite, but with a flat affect. She was calibrating the wind, and since the range was over a thousand meters, the calculation for Corellia’s coriolis effect had to be done.

“1900 meters, up two… right two.”

Arna’s breathing was steady as she brought the reticle to bear on the main housing of the E-web. Taking the dots up and over, she settled the adjusted sight onto the main housing of the Heavy Repeating Blaster, just above the tripod. From their position the bullet from the anti-material rifle would shred the E-web to bits along with whatever was behind and around it.

The Mandalorian was thankful for how far back they were inside the wreckage of the maglift, utilizing the strewn bodies in the interior and cast about luggage as a natural barrier for vision from the exterior. Their firing hole was only about half a meter wide, and they were four meters back from that, which made the position a perfect sniper’s nest.

She settled the butt of the rifle into her shoulder, letting the sandbag beneath it bear its weight, and watched as the bobbing of the scope became reliant on only her heartbeat. All the slack was out of the trigger. The reticle moved in small circles with a pause during the ventricular repolarization. She let out a small breath, let the circle pause, and felt the rifle kick into the shoulder. The rotating bolt and gas reclamation system redirected some of the energy into the reload, which allowed her to start finding her next target.

***** PC ACTION: TERRA *****

The Mandalorian pressed her right hand against the pistol grip of her slugthrower, extending out the weapon into the full extension of the one-point sling, feeling it press into the armor on her back. With the weapon securely held by her right hand and the sling, she dropped her left arm to her belt and selected a grenade from her lineup, her fingers caressing the button layout of her thermal detonator.

Terra watched the dome of stone and rock approach, allowing time for her calculations to finish. With the joint feed from all the Mandalorians in the squad, Hades and Setapoite calculated the average speed of the Sith’s approach, and from that calculated time to arrival. Utilizing that simple information, Terra touched two buttons on the thermal detonator while her jetpack began to preset escape angles. The first of the buttons was the radius determinate, which she set to 10, and the second was the timer.

Selecting 3 seconds, she stood from behind her burned-out cover in a single motion, tossing the grenade underhand at torso-height at the oncoming dome of Sith Magic. There would be an explosive reunion as the Sith closed the gap; Qaela, and both Terra and Harjav’s thermal Detonators.

As the thermal detonator left her hand, Terra’s jetpack ignited, sending her backwards and away at a 35-degree angle propelled by a jump. With the slugthrower rifle at the ready she unleashed a hail of slugs into the exploding world, to end the Nightsister forever.  

((2))

TL;DR

 

Spoiler

 

  • Terra and 1 NPC fire coordinate thermal detonator application at Qaela’s shield dome with 10-meter blast radiuses. Terra’s will hit the front while the NPCs will hit the left side.
  • Additionally, Terra fires slugs into the resulting explosion
  • Mandalorian NPC Sniper fires anti-material ordinance from cover at Qaela’s Tactical NPC E-Web
  • 2 Mandalorian NPCs fire into the platoon of Sith tactical commando NPCs

 

 

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Terra landed lightly on her feet, the battle-churned ground sinking under her armored boots. The field of grass around her was pockmarked with craters, loose soil and shrapnel scattered about from where explosives had torn the peaceful capital thoroughfare into pieces. Smoke curled around her from innumerable small fires that blazed in the dead grass, shimmering like a field of stars against the darkness of the Maw. She stepped quickly behind the ruins of a pedestrian walkway

 

Her HUD blazed with various warnings before a few lines of text displayed her squad’s condition. Bas’ar was reading as injured, a blaster wound scorching his left arm. His vitals were worrying, but not at critical instability. She blinked a command into her buy'ce's HUD, ordering the pair to withdraw and seek medical attention.

 

 Kriffing dar'jetii and their armies…

 

The former Mandalore assessed their situation gravely. They were outgunned and outnumbered, fighting a far superior opponent who had evaded their best tactics. According to viewfinding data from her snipers, the Sith had easily survived their tactical deployment of thermal detonators. Without ysalimari, she felt highly limited in her ability to continue the fight. Her eyes wandered across the battlemap, a small rise in her heartrate displaying on the HUD. She looked for an evacuation corridor.

 

Terra opened her commlink, but her transmission stalled as she felt a burning against her skin. She thought it at first a Sith magic, but it came instead from the mixture with which she had painted herself before their deployment. Of three parts it had been.

 

Blackened river mud, taken from the embrace of the raging Kelita

 

Her hands gripped the pistol-grip of her rifle, the texture of the dark metal biting into the leather of her gloves.

 

Ash from the Bac’arger Caldera on Qat Chrystac

 

The Mandalorian’s heartrate decreased, the pounding of blood in her ears subsiding.

 

The Blood of Mandalore.

 

Terra had painted the mix upon her flesh in the symbols of the Mythosaur and the Jai'galaar. She was both Mando'ade and Kry'tsad, and with the Forlorn Hope she would regain her honor.

 

Stepping from behind cover, the Mandalorian advanced towards the crumbling shield of stone and Sith Magic. She stepped gingerly through the smoking grass, the stock of her battle-rifle dug into her shoulder, the one-point harness taught across her shoulders. The HUD displayed the firing reticle, the crimson hash bobbing with each step.

 

That terrible force of power, the Sith Master Qaela emerged, a smile on her face and with arms up in a mocking act of peace. She was speaking but it was far too distant to hear, but no matter what was said the Mandalorian had little interest in it. She had no desire to be placed under some spell or become bewitched by the Nightsister’s power.

 

The Mandalorian advanced.

 

The words were faint now, and the voice of the Nightsister was like the purring of a Slynthbeast, watching a Nerf wander into its web.

 

“-weak Rebels, inste-”

 

A three-round burst of gunfire cut out the rest of the words. The AP rounds tore a trio of small holes in the pale throat of the woman in a tight grouping, sending a spray of crimson mist and splinters of white vertebral bone onto the troops behind her. The Nightsister seemed confused, wavering on her feet, the words of her plea turning to frothing bubbles of scarlet upon her curled lips.

 

Terra squeezed the trigger again, sending three more rounds into the chest of the Sith, center of mass, ripping through the leather armor. The bullets impacted the ribcage, shattering the bone and robbed of their trajectory, tumbled through the lungs and viscera beneath.

 

The Sith took a step forward and stumbled. Before she could fall, the shriek of a twin ion engine ripped through the sky. Terra glanced upwards in time to see a black blur pass overhead, trailing flame and smoke to impact the Sith SpecOps platoon with a gout of flame.

 

The Sith’ body was thrown along with Terra as both were propelled by the explosion into the rubble of the destroyed thoroughfare. Through the whine of the Tinnitus, Terra heard the pang of blasterfire around her, answered by the bark of Arna’s antimaterial rifle.

 

Kriffing dar'jetii and their ships…

 

Terra’s HUD compiled still images of the Sith Master’s demise along with a recording of the Terra’s POV, along with confirming viewpoints from the sniper team and Harjav. The compiled file was uploaded to the darkstream holonet and sent to the Rebel Alliance Command. Terra opened her commlink, directing her traffic to the Rebel Alliance Ground Commander,

 

“Coronet Capital secured, Sith Command Units on site terminated.”

 

The former Mandalore let out a strained sigh and stared into the sky, her body unwilling to move as she let the battle’s tension bleed from her. She slammed a fist into the smoking ground beside her as she began to laugh, letting all the anxiety and adrenaline release into euphoria.

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Mandalore stared at the darkening sky, listening to the crackling of the numerous fires that crackled across the Capital Thoroughfare. There was an odd peacefulness to the sound. She had listened as the cries of the wounded had dwindled down to nothing as her squad had done the devil’s work; the terrible butchery of the mortally wounded. She let a small sigh escape into the confines of her buy’ce and sat up stiffly, the aches and pains of battle coming to their fullness as the adrenaline was fully washed away.

 

Harjav was busily lining the dead, taking tags and personal effects. A whole platoon of special force troopers, several sniper teams, an E-Web squad, and an AT-ST team were lined shoulder to shoulder and boot to boot in a double line. Their helmets had been removed, showing the unfocused gaze of the dead into the Corellian sky. At their head was the Nightsister, Qaela, her Krath armor stained burgundy from the shots she had taken.

 

Terra stared into the unfocused eyes, looking to the corruption that overwhelmed them in death. Yellow as sulpher, lined with red. Sith always lost their humanity when they gave into the consuming desire for power. Terra stooped, picking up the Sith’s lightsaber from where it was placed on her breast. She stared at the ornate silver design and thumbed it on.

 

Snap-Hiss

 

Blue fire leapt from her left hand, and Terra marveled at its clarity as she swung it in a slow arc about her. From her belt she produced the lightsaber of the fallen Grandmaster, Kitt Fitt, activating it with her right thumb. Arcs of blue and green fire spun about her as she moved through a basic saber-kata, remembering the steps as Lord Ar-Pharazon had taught her all those years ago.

 

Finishing the steps, the Mandalorian deactivated the blades and put one on each of her hips. The latest trophy in a long string of force user weapons she hoped to claim. A grinding static blasted behind her, indicating Hades’ arrival. The basilisk war droid bounded across the field to stand beside her and observe the damages. It broadcasted an incoming distress call, for her to acknowledge.

 

“Draygo--requesting reinforcements aboard Goliath. Will need extraction--repeat, will need extraction from Goliath…”

 

Mandalore frowned, staring at her men as they wearily shouldered their weapons and activated their homing beacons. Within seconds the air broke into sonic booms as basilisk war droids began to fall into place beside their riders. Harjav’s crimson-stained basilik, Thunrydd, came first, followed by the paired olive-drab metallic beasts Korydia and Ǽddyrah which were bound to Arna and Longkra. Aorn and Bas’ar’s Thenkara and Besha’dyr landed last, bound with armor plating of silver and sky-blue.

 

Terra swept her buy’ce from her head, shaking out her sweat-soaked auburn plait, giving them all a smile with her darkmetal teeth. She spoke slowly, her outer-rim accent sweeping the words in a lilting rhythm.

 

“It’s rumored the Dark Lord is aboard the Goliath, and his entire depraved army of filthy mutated beasts. We have secured Corellia, but now it’s time for The Forlorn Hope to take the fight to its natural conclusion…“

 

Each of them slipped into the control saddle of their basilisks and set their course towards the awaiting Goliath. It was time to restore their honor in full, and for that, there was only one course; the death of a Dark Lord. 

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 3 weeks later...

“Orders revised.”

Terra blinked away an array of notifications that began to stack up on her HUD as Hades began to narrow the receiving band on the comlink in order to clarify the audio. A single chime indicated recording activation as the voice continued from Alliance Command.

Les Enfantes Perdus, process code Gamma 23 Zeta 456-23A.”

Hades automatically transferred the information cypher into the Alliance’s unit roster and the code started a download from the command ship. Once the download had finished, the orders were read aloud by Hades, the grating static of his voice shattering the silence of the Basilisk’s flight.

…Proceed to Kessel with all haste. Hunt and destroy any criminal element and Sith forces. Secure or destroy any cache of the illicit glitterstim found thereof…

Warehouses and mines were marked in three dimensions on a projection of the massive asteroid. Terra glared at the oblong formation of rock which made up the infamous drug-mine. She had never tried glitterstim herself, but she had seen its effects on countless souls in her days with Black Sun.

Glit-biters.

The Mandalorian remembered an addict trying to ram a vibrosword through her belly on Ord Mantell, the wild look of hunger in his eyes. His name had been Shen, and she had torn his throat out with her teeth. His blood had made her heart race and it had tasted like the smell of ozone. Ever since then, glitterstim made her nervous, and the thought of going to the heart of its production made her doubly so.

Terra panned through the navigation chart, checking the hypernet for any reports of interdiction before selecting their coordinates. She noted a few abnormal readings from where the Triellus and the Corellian Run intersected and charted a longer route. They would take the Corellian Run out of their current sector, following it all the way to Ryloth before setting into the Death Wind Corridor to avoid the Arkanis area, and rejoining the Triellus around Geonosis. From there it was a straight shot to the Kessel run without foreseen issue.

With the a weary shout of Oya, the Mandalorians leapt into hyperspace, bound for death and glory.

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 2 months later...

It was an odd feeling for Terra, standing on the bridge of a Rebel Alliance Cruiser. There weren’t dead bodies strewn about her this time. No blue circle or flash of lightsabers. This time it was peaceful, but yet a storm brewed within her. She was alone now. More bitterly alone than she had felt since the departure of that Sith Lord, Ason Antilles.

 

Corellia blossomed before her like an Antarian Bellflower, but she felt anger rising in her. Anger and desperation. She had not long departed this world, and yet below on the side of the planet that was shaded in night, fires yet burned. The leader of the Kyr’tsad had not removed her Buy'ce since being spaceborn, but behind the mask the horrors of war were taking their toll.

 

Harjav’s broken body. The blood on her vibrohawk. The boiling of her blood. The lust for death.

 

Her vision swam and her heart raced. She smelled it, the burning spice. The earthy tang of the beast’s blood.

 

Terra’s hands twisted on her bandoleer, twirling the softened leather tassels on her twin vibrohawks.

 

The Xaakzaamheid and its compliments would be on their way to the Corellian system now, rallied by the remnants of the loyal crusaders to war. How strange it was, to fight alongside those she had slain but months earlier.

 

Tamping down the rising emotion that held its grip on her throat, she keyed in her commlink

 

“What are your orders, Alliance Command?”
_______________________________________________
 

Mandalorian Neo-Crusader Destroyer Group [Railguns] |Akalenedat|

Task Force Experience: Green (1xp)

IPM Neo-Kandosii-class Battleship: Xaakzaamheid |20/20|

 

Mandalorian Neo-Crusader Destroyer Group [Missiles] |Bes'bev|

Task Force Experience: Green (1xp)

IPM Neo-Kandosii-class Battleship: Nat’ah |20/20|

 

Mandalorian Neo-Crusader Light Defensive Escort: Suppressing Fire |Cabur|

Task Force Experience: Green (1xp)

IPM Fane-of-Swords-class Frigate Vlissingen |3/3|

IPM Fane-of-Swords-class Frigate Leeuwarden |3/3|

IPM Fane-of-Swords-class Frigate Nassau |3/3|

IPM Fane-of-Swords-class Frigate Vrijheid |3/3|

IPM Jehavey'ir-class Assault Corvette Stavoren |2/1|

IPM Jehavey'ir-class Assault Corvette Oosterwijk |2/1|

IPM Jehavey'ir-class Assault Corvette Jaarsveld |2/1|

IPM Jehavey'ir-class Assault Corvette  Boekenroode |2/1|

Terra

To the Death...

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The Bes’uliik writhed beneath the assassin as she angled the metallic beast towards the darkened station of Centerpoint. Hades was quiet, the combat AI still in mourning from the loss of his brothers and sisters in arms at Kessel. Terra wished she had the time to dwell on their deaths. She had lost her mentor and her best friends in that hellhole, but to let their loss consume her would do their memory disrespect.

 

The immense shadow of the Xaakzaamheid crossed over her bearing, highlighting the crimson light of both Hades’ photoreceptors as well as her T-visor. The Xaakzaamheid was paired with its sister-ship in the Neo-Kandosii line, the Nat’ah, and was escorted by the myriad of Fane-of-Sword Frigate-class starships and Jehavey'ir-class Assault Corvettes. The Mandalorian laid back in the Bes’uliik’s saddle, staring at her assembled fleet, a surprise element that had even taken the Rebel Alliance in shock. Her crusade had fallen into disarray, but the remnants of the Kyr’tsad were still strong, and eager for a war, no matter who it was against.

 

With a squeeze of her armored knees, she sent Hades into a series of looping spirals, angling towards the yawning hanger of Centerpoint station. She had expected turbolaser fire and a thousand Sith warships, but the gods had only gifted her boredom. A droning voice poured over her commlink,

 

“...Sabercat ready to deploy”

 

The Mandalorian let a sigh pass through her lips and rolled her crimson eyes. The Rebellion was dreadfully boring and orderly. She expected nothing less from Raven, but when she heard of Rebellions, she thought of rampaging peasant mobs, things that were much more exciting than asking permission to attack. She keyed in a comcall to her fleet commander, Balorik Ha’gar

 

“Keep a low profile, inserting into Centerpoint now. It will be ours before morning’s light.”

 

With that she dipped the Bes’uliik through the hanger’s gigantic doors, the wardroid’s various weapon systems charged and ready to blast any movement.

Terra

To the Death...

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Mandalorian leapt from the back of the metallic beast, landing lightly upon the dusty decking of Centerpoint’s landing bay. Hades continued to scan the surrounding for any source of life or movement, but the initial scan had revealed nothing but discarded equipment with not even token resistance. The assassin kicked a pile of discarded flimsiplast, sending it in a scattering wave of half-burned paper across the decking. She keyed up her commlink and transmitted all life-sign data as troops began to charge past her.

 

“Alliance Command, no sign of life here, no traps, not a single kriffing Sith.”

 

She could almost hear the shocked and miffed gasps of the Alliance comms teams, muttered rebukes about proper comms etiquette and protocol, and she could not care in the least.

 

“I was promised a battle, we will have to find one elsewhere.”

 

Slipping back onto the writhing metallic plates that made up Hades’ armor, she assigned a Mandalorian strike team to assist the Rebel’s forces, while she returned to the Xaakzaamheid to coordinate with the remainders of her forces.

Terra

To the Death...

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