The Spice Mines of Kessel

[Terra]

They came shrieking out of hyperspace, entranced by their time in the dancing stars. Terra was at their head, laid back upon the saddle of the night-black basilisk, her eyes swimming as the stars stopped their cavorting to fall back into their reality. Her pupils stayed dilated, the rush of the bersærkergang still upon her. The kiss of the gods. She let out a singular howl, rising in her saddle and Hades began its arrhythmic dance of death.

 

Basilisks were like starfighters in their abilities, but their tactics were far more irregular. Hades moved through the stars like a spasmodic hyped on phetaril, making a capricious approach of swirling loops and sideways thrusts. Terra screeched again, shattering her own ears the lights of her HUD turning into irregular waves of iridescence. In her mind she was the jai'galaar itself, the murderous shriek-hawk that defined the Deathwatch.

 

The work of hyoscyamus niger upon her physiology was truly delightful.

 

The cry was picked up by Arna and Longkra’s AI, Setapoite emitting a static-borne wail into the vacuum of space. Harjav, Aorn and Bas’ar added their gravelly voices to the din. Hades burst all their voices into the all-com, adding his own screech to bring the warcry to its fullest. It was a sound that had not been heard since the fall of Coruscant and the high tide of the Mandalorian Crusade.

 

There was a hail, the sound of a young man’s panic-laced voice.

 

“Unidentified spacecraft”

 

A yellow highlight appeared on her HUD, marking an old retrofit RX4 patrol craft that angled its route towards the swarming Basilisks. It stood them and the surface of the spice-world. Terra breathed in, her eyes growing wider. She could smell the fear. Her teeth ground sparks onto her tongue.

 

“This is patrol ship HDV Garrote. You are not showing any transponder code, please identify.”

 

Hades pitched into a spiral, the matte-black metal giving off little visual. Green lightning filled Terra’s vision as the Basilisk spiraled closer, the warning shots becoming a panicked from Garrote’s twin-turbolasers. Her attack from waited until predetor and prey were close enough that escape was impossible. Terra could see the shocked faces of the pilots through the viewscreen as the duel Taim & Bak KX5 laser cannons spoke, lancing through shields like they were made of bantha-butter to peel away the hull beneath. The cannons did not stop until the ship was in glowing pieces.

 

Terra’s wild eyes turned to the planet below.

 

Oya…

[Terra]

Terra’s eyes began to water as she was washed in the brilliant color-storm of the X-Wing’s battle as Hades passed through, rocketing both the ship and its rider towards the pockmarked surface of the spice asteroid. She lulled her head back, letting the slight gravitational pull of the decent lay her back in the Basilisk’s saddle. The radiance of the Maw Nebula reflected in her dilated pupils, the snaking lines of iridescent mercurial purple and yellow helium painted upon the background of red hydrogen. She breathed in a lungful of recycled air from the lines that connected her beskar’gam to the shimmering blackness of Hades’ armor.

 

…Master…

 

The Mandalorian stretched, arching her back and cracking her neck with a tug on her buy’ce. Setapoite’s sarcastic voice cut into her mind.

 

…There is Cryterkyh processing plant at… 45.72, -95.432. Target priority alpha. Adjacent to main city and the Rebellion's warefare. 

 

Terra’s HUD displayed the planetary topographic, and the image spun to highlight a deep crater on the northwestern hemisphere. The processing plant was set into the southern face, taking advantage of the crater wall to be eternally in shadow. According to readings, the plant had four access tunnels from landing pads and uncharted access points from the innumerable caverns that ran throughout the asteroid. The processing center itself was an immense, underground monolith as high as 15 stories throughout and roughly a rectangle seven-hundred meters on its longest side and three-hundred on its shortest. The relatively weak sandstone of the roof would be supported by durasteel crossbeams and pillars of permacrete spaced every 10 meters.   

 

The Mandalorian took a sideways glance at her explosive ordinances and her mind began to churn through mental math. They would be hard pressed to bring down two-hundred and ten square kilometers of even sandstone with their paltry supply. Harjav whistled the team’s awe at the sprawling complex map. There would be innumerable machines and supply-crates of glitterstim, all photoactive and hazardous.

 

The squad of Basilisk-riders turned their metallic beasts toward the northwest hemisphere, dodging x-wings and criminal fighters as they made their approach. The blaring of a small alarm caused Terra to wrench about in her saddle, a beam of light from an anti-infantry turret scorching through where her head had been an instant before. Four DF-9 batteries and two 1.4 FD P-Towers were identified, disguised into the crater’s irregular edge, spitting forth their fire against the oncoming Mandalorians. The fire of the defense batteries was irregular and uncoordinated, evidenced by the spaced and terrible targeting. Terra’s teeth ground out sparks.

 

How I wish I had the Xaakzaamheid and her railguns…

 

Hades’ claws dragged against the sandstone as it flattened nearer to the surface to avoid the combined fire. Even ineffective fire could get lucky.

 

Terra selected the Taim & Bak KX5 laser cannons that were mounted under the Basilisk’s forward arms while she unslung her own slugthrower. With a blink, she sent bouts of red flame into one of the DF-9s, and as it exploded, she aimed in on the fleeing gunnery crew. Their anti-vacuum suits each had an explosive mounted on the belt which kept her finger from the trigger of her rifle. Her voice rang out over the crew-comms, as she winced

 

“Gunnery is slave crews, use ion.”

 

Hades toggles the H9 Ions under the nose and her fire turned to an electric blue. Within seconds, the rest of the basilisks opened up with azure flame, gutting the remaining defenses without loss of life. Banking down, the basilisks landed upon the northmost landing pad, surrounding a Xebi-Class freighter whose crew was desperately attempting to load black plasticene-wrapped glitterstim into the hold.

 

Slipping from the saddle, Terra sent a three-round burst through a Twi’lek trooper, her lekku twitching as she hit the ground, her useless blaster pistol skittering across the decking. Harjav put a bullet through a Quarren holding a fragmentation grenade and Aorn put down the remaining defender, a Mon Calamari who seemed to be about to surrender. The squad secured the area, disabling the loading droids, shutting down the engine block, and sealing the ship for it would not do for anyone else to claim the disabled ship as a prize.

 

Terra turned to the yawning tunnel and activated her commlink to the Rebel Commander,

 

“Forlorn Hope moving to disable Cryterkyh Plant, will report once secure.”

[Terra]

A blaster shot tore through the darkness of the approach tunnel, searing through the infrared projected darkvision of Terra’s HUD, causing the Mandalorian to wince in pain. There was a follow-up flash and report from Arna’s rifle, and a gurgling cry of pain. Terra’s HUD flipped to thermographic setting, pulling wavelengths through the voltage-tunable, quad-color quantum-well infrared photodectors with effective wavelength switching for more reliable temperature sensing. She had no desire to be blinded again in the heat of battle.

 

Terra stared down at the gurgling Rodian gunman, crumpled against the tunnel wall. Half of his thorax had been ripped out, scattering the wall and floor with chipped bone and blackened blood. He took a rattling breath, preparing a call for assistance, but with a flick of her wrist, the Mandalorian brought the sharpened butt of her tomahawk into his throat silencing his forever. With a twirl, she sent the dripping ax end over end into a running Wookiee. The distance was off, and the polished handle smacked the beast in the muzzle stunning him for long enough for a vibroblade to take its head off, swung by Harjav. The man tossed her back the tomahawk with a disapproving shake of his buyce. The older man had little love for primitive weapons.

 

Terra slid the handle back into her belt, bringing her hand back to her rifle’s angular foregrip as she stepped up to cover the branching hallway as Hades analyzed the battlemap. They were closing on their destination quickly, but there was little data on what resistance they were bound to meet. A shriek brought Terra back in time to see a knife-wielding Twi’lek filled with the silver light of maser rounds. She fell hard, twitching in the dust.

 

Rounding the corner, the team cleared their corners, stunning a few huddling slaves and binding them with stuncuffs. Terra stepped to an overlarge blast door, made large enough to fit a handful of Hutts through it at the same time. Hades' grating voice came echoing from behind them as he prowled through the tunnel

 

….Reading…. Requires at least two thermite charges…

 

Mandalore swore, staring at the locked durasteel through her scanning HUD.

 

If only I had the kriffing force....

 

Terra glanced down at the gleaming hilts on her belt

 

Oh.

 

The assassin released her left hand from the foregrip, bringing the single point sling to its full taughtness against her back, letting her right hand handle the rifle’s weight. With her now free hand she slipped her oldest acquisition from its belt loop, cradling the handle in her palm, letting the polished surface pick up the glimmer of light that her thermal imaging displaced. She had remembered taking the weapon, many years in the past from the body of the Grandmaster himself, Kitt Fitt.

 

Snap-Hiss

 

As the lightsaber ignited into a silvered emerald blade of pure energy the door opened to reveal the shocked faces of a trio of Weequays. Terra shrugged, shoving the barrel of her rifle through the teeth of the leading soldier, blasting his spinal cord across the decking while the lightsaber made smoking, bisecting heaps of his compatriots.

 

The emerald light of her lightsaber showed a long line of red-lighted machines, like the weaving stations of primitive cultures. Glitterstim processing racks.

 

With a wave of her hand, Terra brought the world back into its false darkness, extinguishing the lightsaber and spreading out her team. Arna and Longkra began to work their way towards the nearby western wall while the rest of them began to push ahead with Hades staying near the entrance, to guard from any incoming forces and relay information to the Rebellion as needed.

 

Terra slipped a thermal charge from her bag with her left hand, lobbing it onto the nearest support pillar, taking in the immensity of the facility while it primed. It was an impossible task.

[Terra]

Almost as soon as the thermal charge’s magnetic coupler sealed it to the nearest support post, there was an ominous stirring in the air. It was a chittering scaly sound, like a nerfhair brush scoring carbon from durasteel. The team of Mandalorians immediately flattened themselves against the hulking machinery.

 

“…Sound Profile…”

 

Terra’s eyes flicked around her 360-degree viewfinder, desperate to find the source of the sound before the source of the strange sounds found them. She placed two fingers forward with her left hand, and the squad continued to advance, sweeping their firing lines with a determined urgency. Setapoite's sarcastic voice echoed in through the squad-com.

 

“…Profile matched, Large Arachnid. Multiple signatures, above.”

 

Harjav was the first to make the sighting, his visual signature fed into the live battlemap. There was a single Energy Spider, creeping across the vaulted ceiling, and Hades outlined its signature with a pale-yellow glow across all HUDs.

 

Terra’s hand moved again and the squad picked up speed moving towards the center of the facility. Arna and Longkra continued their westward flanking in a wide sweep. Terra could hear the muted footsteps, all the sound profile of Lethydd Stealth Boots, but there was one more than she had remembered. According to the battlemap, they were almost directly below an air shaft. The assassin flipped her battlerifle’s selection switch from burst to automatic fire. A sultry voice followed, one all too familiar as a face appeared on her rear viewscreen

 

“Hey bitch,”

 

Why in the seven hells was Zalis of all people here?

 

The woman continued, as Terra marked her with a violet outline on the squad HUD, indicating a HVT

 

“You look like hell.”

 

The Mandalorian gritted her darkmetal teeth, tasting the sparks that flew onto her tongue. She hadn’t been fond of the leadership style Zalis had shown as Black Sun Vigo in the days after Smash’s fall, but she had liked the woman. Her battlemap blinked an update. They were mere meters away from the skid-break that marked the center of the facility and the entrance to the deep mines.

 

“And you, look more beautiful than all the gems of Gallinore.”

 

Behind her was a twisted mag-lev mining truck, still smoking from whatever outbreak of energy spiders had recently come to pass. Her finger pressed the trigger of her rifle, pulling up a few pounds of the slack, for she would need to be quick in her execution. 

 

“Have you-”

 

Terra’s gravelly voice never finished the sentence as a looming, yellow-hued form leapt from the ceiling towards them. She reacted swiftly, bringing her rifle to bear on the creature on its swift decent while backpedeling to find cover. A quick depression of the trigger sent a line of slugs to smack into the Energy Spider and she dove behind the wrecked truck. To her back was the looming tunnel to the deep mines.

 

Arna and Longkra were to their west, approximately 100 meters away, finding cover in the looming pallets of mining supplies at the corner of the clearing where their fire-arcs might find their greatest opportunity. Aorn and Bas’ar were closer, around 30 meters to the west, kneeling at the durasteel retaining beam. Harjav was closer still at 5 meters, on the other corner of the mining truck. They kept their stealth, not wanting to risk exposure

[Terra]

Terra watched her slugs find placement in the spider’s thick hide, but with relatively little effect. The Mandalorian knelt, her darkmetal beskar grinding into the irregular stonework that adorned the flooring of the enormous cavern. She placed her rifle’s barrel on one of the truck’s destroyed repulser-lifts and managed another three-round burst of fire into the spider’s bulk as it began to charge her position. She was about to give a firing-order when another voice cut through across all com-frequencies.

 

“The spiders don’t want you filthy rebs touching their stuff either. Maybe it is time to go.”

 

Terra blinked a tracing command to Hades, and the combat analysis package in her jetpack began to work in tandem with the dual AIs that the Deathwatch squad had brought with them. Half of the 360-degree field of view from her helmet began to fill with the approaching spider and the Mandalorian depressed the trigger a second time. Hades indicated a new signal on the battle-map, with a life-signature scan attached. Aorn’s grave voice cut in with interpretation. 

 

“…Signature closely matches a Hutt or Troig lifeform, moving fast from the North”

 

The combat AI designated the oncoming signature with an orange glow, indicating an oncoming threat. 

 

A shower of sparks indicated the bladed claw of the arachnid skipping over the hull of the truck, causing Terra to flatten herself against the stone, the spider’s attack missing her by a hair’s breadth. She scuttled under the chasis of the mining skip as Zalis’ attack on the spider drove home. The Black Sun vigo’s sultry voice echoed around her

 

"Don't waste blaster fire, it only eats the energy you moof-milkers"

 

Harjav’s irritated voice called out into Terra’s ear as the man angled himself further away from the energy spider, flattening himself against the destroyed mag-truck’s hull.

 

“What in the seven hells is a moof?”

 

Setapoite’s sardonic voice burst through the squad-coms, and a holonet article popped up on Terra’s HUD

 

“A Moof is a thick-hided, cloven hoov-”

 

The Mandalorian blinked a temporary silence command through the HUD with a roll of her eyes.

 

…Thwack…

 

The sound of a vibroblade splitting open carapace came from directly over the Mandalorian’s head as she rose on the other side of the wrecked mining skip. She glanced up to see the energy spider bellow in rage and make a hasty retreat, leaping and shivering from the pain the combined attack had made. Terra crouched again, turning her attention onto the oncoming threats. Longkra began to rangefind for the team, while Arna settled the long barrel of the Istiglal IST-14.5 on its bipod, nestled between the storage pallets for a 180-degree firing arc. Longkra had her carbine in hand, kneeling besider her twin to provide close-medium range support against any oncoming troops.

 

Now behind Terra, the spider retreated into the far south of the cavern, where Hades would deal with it as needed. The rest of her team began to angle themselves to defend against humanoid attacks, keeping silent in their cover. Terra slapped a fresh magazine into her battle-rifle and the ammunition indicator on her HUD updated with the armor-piercing count, the reticle bouncing through her vision as she adjusted the single-point sling to allow for a better firing arc.

 

Mandalore opened up her own all-com, broadcasting her gravely voice. Her intonation was grave and tinged with a deeper desire, for honor, and for death.

 

“As they say… μολὼν λαβέ..."

 

The assassin let out an audible sigh. 

 

"Having come... Take.”

[Terra]

“…Grenades incoming…”

 

Terra cursed and reacted by instinct, leaping backwards and to her right, and activating her jetpack with a blink of crimson eye. The micro-blast from the jetpack’s angular propulsors helped her to keep upright and not fall into a tumble in the chaos of the EMP-grenade’s detonation. Maybe she would survive unscathed afterall

 

A searing pain ripped through her concentration as she slipped over the wreckage, a blaster-bolt searing the flesh on her left thigh as it was partially deflected by the darkmetal. The energy of the blast caused her coordinated jump to fall into a flailing fall into the dusty stone. Pain coursed through her nerves and her buy’ce muted the cry of pain that followed as her armored form skidded across the stone in a shower of sparks.

 

Blasterfire echoed again from her right, the familiar discharge of Zalis’ pistols. The Mandalorian winced, recording the position on the battlemap as her 360-degree thermographic viewfinder picked up the Black Sun Vigo’s movement.

 

The assassin turned the skid into a roll, coming up onto her knees beside a processing loom favoring her right leg. She extended her rifle out with her right hand on the pistol-grip, the single-point sling pressing into her back and leaned further to her right, pressing herself against the massive glitterstim loom. She steadied her stance by gingerly extending her left leg to bring her into a crouch. Her left hand fished a C-23 fragmentation grenade from her belt while flipping the three-second arming switch in a fluid motion. She let the first second pass while her darkmetal teeth ground sparks on her tongue. 

 

The Mandalorian tossed the grenade overhand in a high angle over the processing loom towards Zalis and then leaned out from cover to send a three-round burst of slugs towards the woman’s chest.

 

Harjav was not so lucky as his Mandalore and caught the brunt of the EMP-blast and dropped to the decking like a stone, blinded by the sudden interference on his HUD and instinct telling him that the safest place for a blind man was flat against the earth. He clawed at his buy’ce with one hand to remove his blindness as his other checked the priming on his impact-grenade launcher. A searing blaster bolt tore a jagged line across his right shoulder, and he screamed into the unforgiving stone.

 

The launch of the grenades flipped targeting priority within the team’s HUD. Hades and Setapoite, working in tandem, had designated the Troig as the far greater threat with its unique orbital insertion armor and heavy weaponry.

 

Aorn’s crimson eyes narrowed, his 360-degree HUD narrowing to a 90-degree spread and flipping to 3x magnification. His rifle’s barrel steadied against the rusted durasteel beam that provided him cover and supported the tons of stone 15-stories overhead. The garish orange glow of their team’s newest HVT showed from the support-pillar, and even before the flashes of crimson light leapt from the Troig’s position to strike towards his Mandalore, his fingers were taking up the slack on the trigger of his XAB-32 Heavy Charric. He whistled out a singular note, high and warbling like that of a shriek-hawk signaling for a joint attack with its flock.

 

Four streaks of azure light burst from his weapon, the maser rounds angling beyond where the two-headed beast gripped the pillar and where the bulk of the Troig's center-of-mass must be. Beside him, his lover, Ba’sar, leapt backwards from the pillar, jumping across a deactivated production line under the cover of his fire. The Mandalorian worked to achieve a better angle on the hulking Troig, holding his own fire until the beast would inevitably flush from its cover.

 

Further to the Northwest, in the heart of stealth, the twins Arna and Longkra began to assess the Troig through their enhanced viewscreen, mediated by data-flow from Setapoite. Longkra’s rangefinder was out, assessing range-on-target in compatibility for slug-drop with her sister’s Istiglal IST-14.5. The 14.5×114mm cartridge would put intense power on target as an anti-material round. Longkra listened to the tone of her sister’s breathing, soft and steady, a whisper in her ears. Setapoite spoke, interpreting the rangefinder’s data

 

“One-hundred and three meters to target, no reticle compensation.”

 

Arna began to take up the slack with the timing of her breathing, settling the bobbing reticle on the massive form of the Troig.

 

((1))

 

:TL;DR:

 

Spoiler

 

TLDR: 

• Terra takes a hit to her left lateral thigh
• Harjav's electronics disabled and takes a wound to the posterior right shoulder
• Aorn fires four maser rounds at Shrimps
• Terra tosses a frag grenade at and shoots three slugs at Zalis

 

 

[Terra]

Aorn’s eyes widened, the scarlet of his eyes paling as the creature he had just shot seemed to glow with all the fire of a diamond-boron missile. He let out a low whistle as the two-headed beast launched forward and the Chiss began to scramble further westward, followed by his lover Bas’ar. As his feet cleared a pallet of the raw spice in a leap, a searing pain ripped through him and he seemed to jump sideways from the energy of the blow, but he never noticed.

 

Bas’ar cried out in rage as he saw his love fly sideways with the impact of several high energy bolts from their opponent’s blaster cannons. The Chiss knew before that black-armored form clattered onto the unforgiving stone, sliding in a motionless and twisted heap, that Aorn was dead. His cry of rage turned first into desperate grief, then to acidic, frenzied sorrow. Honor was as gone as his love. The light had gone from his life and now there was only darkness.

 

The last of the Mlatti'viwe Clan, that bitter mercenary, became in that moment, one of the bersærkergang. He embraced the baser nature of sentience and rushed headlong towards his enemy, that starblossom of fire upon the horizon and howling like the madwolfe he had become. Bas’ar let loose as he ran, setting his XAB-32 Heavy Charric Rifle to automatic fire and held the trigger down the reticle upon the enemy that roared like a comet overhead. Onwards he would run, to meet his enemy with fist and blade, to exact his revenge.

 

The Twins fared better, their cover protecting them from the ravaging from the sky. Arna followed the missile of a Troig on its trajectory through her 2-x magnification sight. Setapoite ran trajectory calculations on her HUD and projected a possible landing zone for the beast, but the mute girl knew the beast would never live to reach it. She felt Longkra’s emotional distress as Aorn fell. She heard Bas’ar’s mournful howl.

 

The slack was all gone.

 

She let out a breath slowly, swinging the rifle in a leading arc on its bipod, selecting a single-dot reticle lead and muted out the world, letting the chaos fall into silence. She watched the two heads sail through the air, backlit by the rockets that propelled it. Longkra advanced Northwest to angle off the beast and to support Bas'ar's headlong rush to oblivion. 

 

All Arna heard was the beating of her heart in her ears.

 

When the breath was gone from her lungs, she finished the trigger’s pull, sending a 64 gram, full-metal jacket snapping through the glitterstim soaked air for a hopeful taste of her opponent's lifeblood.

 

Her mute lips formed the words to which her AI gave voice; "Oya"

 

Harjav struggled against the stone, choking against the dust, reeling from the pain from his wound. His buy’ce was now discarded, the EMP having done its treacherous work. Without it, he never saw the thermal detonator whose explosion sent his body tumbling amongst the broken machinery with a wash of flame.

 

The pain in Terra’s left leg caused her to shudder, her darkmetal teeth washing her blood-flecked mouth with coppery sparks as they ground together. Her HUD displayed the chaos her team was in, but she could only tune it out and focus on the fight ahead. She would bury the bodies later.

 

A warning displayed an arc as a grenade sailed overhead, and Terra began to move, limping backwards to angle to the east and away from the resulting explosion. A hail of blasterfire cascaded into the processing loom she had made her cover an instant before, cracking through its containment field and igniting the raw glitterstim beneath. The resulting explosion sent Terra falling backwards to slide across the stone. There was pain from her right hand, but nothing seemed serious.

 

The assassin spared a glance down to assess herself as she turned her slide into a backwards somersault. Her battlerifle was completely slagged, the slugthrower’s buffer-tube completely fractured and the handguard and trigger assembly twisted and useless. She leapt out of the backwards somersault with a microfire from her jetpack, landing heavily on her right leg, knowing her left could not be trusted.

 

A massive splintsteel crate was to her east, and she leaned against it with her right shoulder. She slipped one of her FWG-5 Flechette Launchers from its holster with her right hand, while her left selected a vibro-tomahawk. The pistol’s grip was bound in leather stripling and was familiarly worn. Terra leveled the pistol before her at eye level, bracing her right hand with her left forearm. The tomahawk extended up to the right of her pistol like the wing of the Aurebesh letter trill. Hades began to focus purely on her datastream, adding his own interpretations to what her input systems picked up and the world seemed to stretch out before her and brighten like she was under the hands of the gods themselves. 

 

The temporary cover of the crate looming above her, Terra leaned out to peak eastward and towards Zalis’ last known location. Her system picked up the slight sound of running footsteps first, an instant before her HUD registered a flash of movement within ten meters. Without a second’s thought or hesitation, Terra depressed the trigger on her flechette pistol twice in rapid succession with the targeting reticle settled on the hazy form. The first shot would send a blast of thermite-inlaid explosive darts towards her opponent, followed by the second, a hail of armor piercing darts forged of darkmetal.

 

((2))

 

::TL;DR::

• Spoiler

   

  • NPCs Aorn and Harjav knocked out of the fight
  • Shrimps has automatic fire from a charric and a sniper's bullet to contend with
  • Terra's main weapon disabled
  • Zalis has two flechette shots coming at her at close range

   

   

[Terra]

Bas’ar, mad with his broken love rushed ever onwards towards that two-headed beast. Towards the robber of his happiness, the killer of his joy. He was a madwolfe embodied, beyond care or concern for his fate. He dashed the Heavy Charric to the stones at his feet as he ran, disgusted in its inability to even scratch his enemy. 

 

He could see his fate. 

 

With his right hand he pulled a heavy vibrodirk from his belt, and with his left his heavy blaster pistol. 

 

He could see Aorn now, as he was meant to be, smiling and alive, not broken in the dust on a forsaken world. He was farming the fields of Kald’retham with the starlight of Chald’edha reflected in the sweat on his brow. It was lovelier than any sight he had beheld in his mortal life. 

 

As the missiles came, Bas’ar fired again and again, throwing the dirk end over end at the beast’s giant head. 

 

He would walk with Kad Ha’rangir at long last. 

 

The last of his thoughts were of his honor and his love. 

 

---

 

Arna nestled the butt of her marksman’s rifle into the armor of her shoulder, feeling its rubberized stock sealing into the beskar. Her shot had found its mark in a way, but the anti-material round had not incapacitated her enemy like she had intended. Setapoite began running the calculations for a follow-up shot, the data scrawling in crimson aurebesh across her magnified vision. 

 

She settled the targeting reticle on the beast as it rose to engage her comrades. One of its heads seemed to dangle like the paralyzed appendages she had seen growing up in the trauma-wards on Ord Mantell with her sister. It disgusted her, much like the patients had. 

 

“...No reticle compensation required…”

 

Arna watched in growing dread as the beast burst into missile fire and a resounding warning began to blare in her ears. She started to let out the rest of her breath and took up the slack in the trigger. Longkra’s mute tongue was given voice by Setapoite, and the grief and worry was apparent

 

“...Get out of there ner’vod!” 

 

Arna whistled a single defiant note, turning it into a feline hiss as she fired one last time as the missile came, sending her sniper’s round towards the beast’s center of mass. 

 

---

 

Longkra’s boots dashed sparks upon the stones as she sprinted after Bas’ar, knowing all too well the rage she had heard in his bellowing roar. The mission had gone all to the Seven Corellian Hells, OpFor was much stronger than anticipated, and Terra had been separated from their side. Without Mandalore amongst them, they were fracturing in the face of only one lowly beast. 

 

Longkra’s breathing echoed inside her buyce as she pushed farther west, trying to flank the Troig and cut it to pieces. Her AI barked out a warning in her native Huttese

 

...Missiles... 

 

The woman leapt without a second thought, activating her jetpack in full burst as she did so, her cybernetic unit transmitting her thoughts of warnings to her sister through the mouth of Setapoite. She twisted her body, the heat of the missile’s backwash burning away part of her exposed plait. The scent of burning hair was nauseating. 

 

Longkra’s slugthrowing carbine barked out a stream of durasteel FMJs as her jetpack brought her away from the missile’s explosive wash, directing three bursts of slugs at the beast’s chest and face. There was no time to mourn now. All that could be done now was to fight on or embrace death with dignity.

 

---

 

Terra watched her shots pass through the haze of the battlefield, cursing her own bad aim. Her crimson eyes flicked up to her ammunition load on the HUD, analyzing the ammo stack, assuring herself in her nearly full magazine. There wasn’t time or need for a safety reload. Her hand gripped the leather that adorned the pistol’s grip, the familiar feel of it a reassurance for her troubled mind. 

 

She could tell her team was beginning to lose. Life-sign displays for several of her team were displaying dim readings. Hades was roaring. 

 

The haze of the battlefield showed the form of Zalis, unphased from the flechettes and on the attack. A flurry of crimson stiched across her cover, searing through the splinsteel container, charring a line of carbon across her darkmetal. The container groaned as it began to collapse, the weakened metal shrieking and failing.

 

Terra staggered from the sparse and reducing cover that the splintsteel container had provided, grinding her teeth against the pain that coursed up through her leg. Her eyes widened as she saw Zalis’s roll again, and the Mandalorian brought her pistol up. 

 

Spast.

 

A line of pain seared across her ribcage, as Zalis’ vibroknife skittered across the seventh rib, slicing through flesh and fracturing bone before reflecting into the dusty stone with a shower of sparks. The Mandalorian let out a serpentine hiss of pain, pushing on her injured left leg with as much strength as she could muster to close the distance and sidestep the oncoming kick. She would not fall now. She could trust the left leg to push her off, but not to catch her in this final step.She separated her hands, bringing the vibro-tomahawk in an arc to her left with all her strength

 

If this is to be the end, may I die with honor. 

 

As Terra stepped around the kick with her right leg, she brought her flechette pistol closer to her own body to maintain control, leveling it at the Zalis’s oncoming abdomen as she moved past the kick. With all of her momentum applied to her strength, Terra angled the tomahawk’s arc in an attempt to catch the woman just under her right clavicle. As she swung, she hammered the trigger of her flechette pistol, a last desperate attempt to put down her former friend.

 

((3))

 

::TL;DR::

 

Spoiler

 

• Three attacks made against Shrims
• Two NPCs down
• Terra takes vibroknife damage to her ribcage
• Terra swings a tomahawk at, and shoots at Zalis from almost point-blank range

 

 

[Terra]

The vibrotomahawk bit deep into the flesh of Terra’s opponent, ripping through the muscular tissue and rending the bone beneath into splinters. The Mandalorian winced as she saw her flechette pistol’s rounds impact the beautiful woman’s abdomen, spitting shards of metal throughout her pelvis and intestinal tract. Zalis dropped like a stone, immediately unconscious from the combined pain and internal trauma.

 

Terra steadied herself, staring at the shuddering woman through crimson eyes masked behind her T-visor. With a fluid motion, she reloaded her pistol and holstered it, along with the bloodied tomahawk, before kneeling beside the woman. She reached into her battlepouch, selecting a bacta-injection spray and jettisoning its contents into the abdominal wound before reaching up and detaching her buy’ce, slumping to sit on the bloodied ground with a clink of her armor.

 

The Mandalorian shook out her dirty-blonde plait and stared into her reflection in the reverse of the data-steaming HUD. Every member of les enfants perdus was dead, broken on the stone of this criminal world. All but her. From between her hands, she could hear the final signals of Setapoite, a death rattle as the Twin’s cybernetic units finally lost power. She took Zalis’ fair hand in her own armored one, watching a droplet of blood roll across the freckled fresh, a crimson river overflowing its pale banks.

 

Leaning her head forward, Terra licked the droplet away with her scarred tongue, tasting it. Savoring the taste of purity, of blood untainted by Geki’s infernal poisons. A desperate loneliness welled within her, blending now with her exhaustion to create a strident resolve. A bitter copper. 

 

One enemy remains.

 

With unsteady movements, the assassin dragged herself to her feet, slowly straightening to stand fully. She gritted her darkmetal teeth and slipped her buy’ce back onto her head, locking the environmental seal and taking a deep breath of the recycled oxygen. She stepped silently, in a crouch, ready to dive and escape as needed.

No one knows I’m alive. I have that on my side at least.

 

Reaching down, she took the slugthrowing carbine from the detached hand of Harjav, ripping the rigored fingers from the stock. She stepped beside the smoking wreckage of what had been the man’s former cover, shielding her back with a stout pillar of duracrete and sorted through the dead man’s ammo pouches.

 

She slipped a few impact grenades into her own belt, loading the underslung launcher on the carbine with a Calgary-3 variant of the G-20 “glop” grenade, meant for riot control. She checked the rifle itself, a beautifully maintained Daimier-Pusch-58 from before the Clone Wars. Harjav had purchased it with a bounty pay-off on Force Sensitives he had collected from a Sith Lord. She turned it in her hand, admiring the engraved names on each side of the weapon, mirroring each other. “Kyrie” and “Hayley” in scrawling Aurebesh

 

Your daughters I presume. I’ll make you and them proud.

 

With the firing reticle adjusted to the new weapon, she began to inch her way closer to the center of the facility, keeping her eyes open for any movement. It would not do to give away the element of surprise.

[Terra]

The last Mandalorian alive on Kessel stepped through the dark and lifeless rows of spice processing machines, limping slightly on her injured left leg, but steady in her determination. Her breathing pattern had stabilized, and the taste of Zalis’ blood was still fresh upon her scarred tongue. Her darkmetal jaw ground slowly as she considered target approach vectors. The question now remained; where was her target? 

 

Terra strained to hear any small movement, but there was not but silence. She tightened her grip on the rifle in her hands, her finger twitching against the stiff slack in the trigger. Harjav had always had a thing for stiff triggers, all snap with little give. She would need to keep it in mind for any fights in the future. She leaned heavily on a duracrete pillar, lolling her head up to stare at the yawning expanse of stone overhead. 

 

A voice, bestial in its growl, ripped through her silence. Her jaw set, sending red-hot sparks onto her already burning tongue. 

 

“Your life is forfeit, you meager worms! Die.”

 

And so the enemy reveals himself. 

 

The Mandalorian stepped away from the pillar, watching streaks of light begin to appear on her HUD, indicating firing arcs. All were parabolic in nature, as though from a launcher. Her combat utility package ran a quick parabolic trace pattern, locating the main firing location. One of the firing arcs appeared centered on her location, part of a determined line of fire meant for maximum effect on multiple targets. 

 

Terra began to spring from the ground, igniting her jetpack in a maximal burst to move past whatever explosive radius the grenades would be able to put forth. If they were the same from the last exchange, they would be EMP grenades, and Terra had no desire to play in the dark. 

 

The leap would have been perfect, but the left leg did not quite put out the same effort as her right, sending her into a leftward arc, instead of a vertical jump. Her feet skimmed the duracrete of the pillar she had been using, and she kicked away from it in an upward motion, but it only served to angle her up into it. Desperation began to dig its claws into her heart and she felt its chill in her veins. 

 

I will not die on this kriffing rock.  

 

The Mandalorian skidded sparks up the duracrete pillar as her chaotic leap caused her to skip like a stone on a placid lake. Her already wounded side began to burn as it was dashed on the unforgiving stone. As gravity overcame her upward trajectory, she activated her jetpack and kicked back, soaring away from the pillar and her enemy at the same time ten meters in the air. She was reflected in the blue fire of the grenade’s explosions and some of her natural fear faded. 

 

The tracing complete, the combat AI highlighted the Troig’s location, and through a magnification of her HUD, traced a golden line about its form, a beast kneeling behind a destroyed processing loom. 

 

The Mandalorian settled the reticle on the exposed portions of the Troig and let forth two swift bursts of fire from the slugthrower, stitching the air with a total of six rounds towards the beast. She terminated the jetpack with a blink of a crimson eye, and let gravity embrace her once more. 

 

((1))

[Terra]

The Mandalorian spun as she fell, her passage creating roiling waves in the spice-smoke laden air. Her 360-degree HUD display was beginning to fill with a lot of erroneous data, and she blinked the data-streams away in frustration. Her team’s basilisks were mourning, and with their neural-links now disabled they were sending data into the void. Even artificial intelligence wasn’t immune to the stages of grief. 

 

Terra’s crimson eyes flicked to her target on her HUD, the orange-outlined Troig in its jumpsuit. A surge of powerful hate flared inside her heart. She reclassified it into a beast, denying it humanity. What she fought now was no more human than the Trandoshans that had tried to sell her into captivity. But there was something more to this fight, something darker was rising to the surface inside her, surpassing the code of honor that she had built as she had joined the Rebellion. 

 

She didn’t care anymore about taking captives. She didn’t care about this useless glitterstim that smoked and burned around her. She didn’t even care for the Rebellion now, or her friend who had sent her and her team on this suicide mission. All she wanted now was revenge for Harjav. For the twins. For the lovers. Her jetpack microfired, slowing her descent. 

 

Tears unbidden clouded her vision, making the outline of the troig swim and shimmer, but as she blinked, three glowing orbs shifted around the beast. 

 

Kriffing… 

 

She fired her jetpack again, angling herself back and away again, but the missiles were faster than the falling Mandalorian. Two of the missiles spun off to impact the ceiling and do the strike team’s work for her, but the third impacted the duracrete pillar before her. The missile’s explosion took the pillar full on, smashing it into splinters of rock and slagged steel and cratering out the ceiling above it in a torrential downpour of fractured stone. 

 

Terra herself was beyond the direct explosive blast radius, but the wave of shrapnel had a much longer reach. The darkmetal chestpiece was showered in splintered stone, some of it spalling into the flesh of her stomach to cut the pale skin in deep gashes. A larger splinter of the stone chewed into the muscle of her left thigh, digging into the muscle belly and causing the woman to shriek in pain as she crashed into one of the many pallets of processed spice. The rifle fell from her grasp, hanging limply from the sling around her shoulders. 

 

The assassin rolled and tumbled from the pallet onto the broken stone, clutching her left leg as it cramped and spasmed about the injury site. The already injured leg was now doubly so, and as she rose to one knee, the woman resisted the temptation to pull the sliver of stone from the injury. She had seen at least one spacer die from removing a knife from a wound, exsanguinating due to the blade being the cork popping from the proverbial bottle. 

 

She breathed in a ragged breath and steeled her nerves. 

 

Terra shuddered against the waves of renewed pain and eased herself forward, laying the battlerifle across the shattered plasticene containers of glitterstim like they were the sandbags in a trench. Checking the fuel supply of her jetpack, she began to angle her field of view back towards her enemy. 

 

The battlefield was now strewn with fractured rock from the ceiling and shattered equipment. The missiles had done the work that she had been assigned; the destruction of the processing plant. She could retreat now with an accomplished mission, but there was only revenge left now. She would drag the beast into the hells of Sabre’tah with her bare hands if she had to. 

 

Terra had previously triangulated the Troig’s position, and with Hades combing her buy’ce’s camera pickups it did not appear the beast had moved. She hefted Harjav’s rifle and watched the firing arc from the impact grenade launcher. It was currently loaded with a Calgary-3 variant of the G-20 “glop” grenade, which would do perfectly. She snapped the rifle down and unloaded a burst of slugs onto the Troig’s position to pin him down, letting the rifle’s recoil raise the angle until it reached proper angulation and depressed the secondary trigger, sending the impact grenade towards the beast. It was time to flush the beast out, or to kill it in its lair.

 

((2))

[Terra]

Terra’s crimson eyes narrowed as she watched her grenade make impact, spraying its adhesive in a fountain of multicoloured foam. She let out a small breath between her gritted teeth. Her eyes wandered to the various alerts that began to appear on her HUD. Her heart seemed to be racing. 

 

--ENVIRONMENTAL TOXIN LEVELS--

 

Her eyes narrowed. She was feeling extraordinarily warm, and her heartbeat was sounding a drum in her ears. 

 

--Systems infiltration at catastrophic levels--

 

The Mandalorian blinked at the alert, opening the full notification with an explosion of sanguine aurebesh. 

 

--The drug known as Glitterstim has infiltrated into your environmental scrubbing unit- 

 

Kriffing not now! 

 

The assassin began to gingerly move backwards on the leaking glitterstim containers, favoring her right leg heavily. Her eyes were drawn back to her prey as she saw the beast eject from its armored shell. Her mind toyed with the idea of skinning the beast alive for its transgressions, and it contorted her mouth in a cruel smile. 

 

These are not honourable thoughts. 

 

The crimson eyes narrowed.

 

These are the derangements of the Sith. 

 

The Mandalorian began to curse herself for dishonoring the deaths of her squad. 

 

This is not who you were meant to be. 

 

Terra’s smile faded as she staggered to her feet, focusing on her breathing as she fought with the corruptions of hate and the onslaught the spice was having on her senses. A bolt that blossomed in the color of fire scorched past her head, and then the viewscreen went blank as a disruptor bolt ripped through the warfare processing center of her jetpack disconnecting her from Hades and the combat AI. 

 

Kriffing…

 

Terra ripped the buy'ce from her head in a snarl of rage, exposing her flushed face to the sweltering environment of the glitterstim processing plant. She gasped a breath, her senses overwhelmed by the rush of spice that piqued her nervous system. The pain her wounds began to produce nearly crushed her and her vision swam with tears as the grief of her loss came in unstoppable waves. 

 

Kriffin… Spice...

 

The assassin shouted a cry of anguish, finally losing the control she had carefully crafted around her emotions, the walls about her rage breaking like a dam over-flooded. Her cry became a shriek as her left leg gave out and she slammed herself again a fallen scrap of duracrete, the shattered stone scraping along her beskar’gam with overpronounced sound, nearly deafening her. 

 

It killed Harjav. 

 

Shaking hands clung to the rifle’s stock and handguard like it was the last handholds of the brink of insanity, and they were slipping. 

 

Aorn. Ba’sar. 

 

The Mandalorian stared at a slowly widening dribble of crimson that ran from her armored side to splash amongst the lumps of steaming spice about her, bubbling into a blackened pool that stank like the backend of a Ragnet

 

Was that from Zalis? Did the Troig do that? 

 

None of her wounds were life-threatening, at least not yet. A few tears joined the sanguine river, diluting its purity with evidence of her grief. She still had a mission, and all it was now was to kill. The Rebellion had designated the mission for minimal enemy casualties. Any opponent she was supposed to bring in for questioning and processing.  

 

Arna. Longkra

 

Terra stood, favouring the right leg and sighted, through the smoke and destruction, along the iron sights of Harjav’s rifle. She pulled with all her might against the pistol-grip and the handrail to bring the rifle to her shoulder and to keep it steady. She closed her left eye and let the front sight come into focus in the ring, letting it waver over the mass of adhesive foam. 

 

I don't care what I'm supposed to be. No prisoners. 

 

The slack in the trigger taken up, she let the front sight rest on the figure of the Troig. She heard nothing but the tachycardic thudding of her heart. Mandalore let out another shriek, a mix of pain and predatory triumph, and slammed the trigger again and again, hammering a burst of slugs at the Beast with every pull. 

 

((3))

 

((OOC: Great job, this was a ton of fun.))

[Terra]

The Mandalorian continued squeezing the trigger, letting the recoil take the rifle wherever it pleased. She could not see past the tears of rage that streamed down her bleeding face, to drip and mix with the sweat to absorb the drugs. Within a moment, the rifle spoke with nothing but the rhythmic clicking of a magazine devoid of ammunition.

 

Terra dropped the rifle, letting it rest on its sling across her heaving chest, the heated barrel glowing faintly orange and giving rise to steam. It took all her energy to start walking, her armor felt unbearably heavy and her joints as if they were greased with sand and lead. She could barely pick up her feet to avoid stepping into the blood-soaked mud which was all that was left of her men.

 

She left them undisturbed but for the tears she let mix with their remains, and still her rage built. Her fists clenched and her pace quickened, for she could now hear its ragged breathing. Adrenaline began to pump through her, washing aside some of the placidity the Glitterstim had forced into her.

 

The assassin could see it now, sprawled in the disintegrating adhesive foam, blood leaking from several gunshot wounds. One of its legs was snapped by a shot and she could see the bone protruding from the flightsuit. One of the heads was clearly unconscious, while the other looked at her through bleary eyes, in shock from the wounds.

 

Kriffing Akk Dog.

 

The Mandalorian stared at the chunk of ivory bone, highlighted in the Troig’s iridescent blood against its alien flesh, protruding like a marble pillar from a macabre landscape. She placed a bootheel onto the wound and began to add weight to the bone until she could hear it grate against the muscle beneath in a wet snapping. She met the bleary eyes and smiled, showing the inhuman features of her darkmetal teeth. A reflection of her soul, animalistic predation hidden behind an athletically beautiful face.

 

She slipped a tomahawk from her belt and leaned on the beast’s wounded chest, staring deep into the eyes of the conscious Troig. Her eyes were crimson and held no emotion but malice. When she spoke, her voice was gravelly and devoid of humanity.  

 

“You killed my family.”

 

The Mandalorian pointed with the tomahawk to the broken body of her Sniper, Arna. She shrugged derisively.

 

“So, I will take yours.”

 

She hacked down again and again on the protruding neck of the unconscious head, all while staring into the conscious eyes. She could have made it fast by activating the vibration, but she had no desire to quicken this. The eyes began to fade as her cuts began to hit the bone of vertebra, sending up splinters of gore-laden ivory.

 

 Terra paused only long enough to administer a bacta injection to keep the beast alive, before finishing her work. She kicked the severed head away from her, watching it roll awkwardly in the dust.

 

-Snap-Hiss-

 

 

The destroyed facility was alight with the azure flame of Qaela’s blade as the Mandalorian cauterized the wound. She made it slow and painful work.

 

“You will live with your loss, as I must.”

 

Terra stooped, picking up the severed head and placing it on the wounded beast’s chest.

 

“May you always remember.”

 

With that, she limped away to collect her men’s beskar and to deliver Zalis to Rebel custody. Within moments, she was astride Hades and on her way back to Nar Shaddaa, followed by her mourning, riderless basilisks.