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Adaska C. Raythe

Adaska Raythe

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SOCIAL INFORMATION BIOGRAPHY PERSONALITY & TRAITS APPEARANCE THE FORCE POSSESSIONS ROLEPLAYS

  • Name: Adaska Callan Raythe

    Alias(es):
    • Current:
      • Adalheidi “Heidi” Sarrin
      • Ada (Nickname)
      • Dash
      • Daska
      • Heidi (Nickname)
      • Jain Meen
      • Raythe
      • Wraith (Nom De Guerre)
    • Former:
    Title(s):
    • Current Titles:
      • Lieutenant
    • Former Titles:
      • Agent
      • Shadow
    Faction(s):
    Rank:
    • Current:
    • Former:
      • Agent/Shadow (Imperial Security Bureau)
        • Warrant Number: 41/4182
    Citizenship:
    • Current:
      • Coruscanti (By Birth/Descent)
      • Corellian (By Birth/Descent)
    Birthworld: Hesperidium

    Residential Address:
    • Current:
    Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

    Marital Status: Single

    Languages Known:
    Voice Sample: Victoria Atkin - Evie Fyre (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate)

    Vocal Emulation/Distorter: Victoria Atkin - Void Elf Female (World of Warcraft)

    Immediate Family:
    • Maternal Family:
    • Keiran Vinthern -Grandfather
    • Viera Vinthern – Grandmother
    • Kimberley (nee Vinthern) Raythe - Mother
    • Paternal Family:
    • Andor Raythe – Grandfather
    • Ellayne Raythe - Grandmother
    • Gideon Raythe – Father
    • Siblings:
    • Garrick Raythe – Junior Brother
    • Orson Raythe – Junior Brother
    • Valko Raythe – Junior Brother
    • Valeska Raythe – Junior Sister
    Associates:
    • Yuri Orlov - Commissar-General Imperial Confederated Systems, Antagonist.
    • Secondary Associates:
    • Anton Tresku - Friend, SHADOW program.
    • Aria Royt - Fencing Instructor and Blademaster.
    • Aron Kyne - Friend, SHADOW Program.
    • Emile Dorin - Friend, SHADOW Program.
    • Hans Mersa - Tactical Operations Division Officer.
    • Frederikke "Rikke" Creedmoor - Childhood Friend.
    • Fyodo Kruul - Imperial Security Bureau, Inspector-General.
    • Gerhard Dunke - Magistrate, Turhaya Eve Dueling Judge, Turhaya Champion.
    • Hahn Kadsson - Officer Commanding, CSF Triumphant.
    • Hyun-Shik Pak - Friend, SHADOW Program.
    • Istvan Toth - Friend & Teammate, SHADOW Program.
    • Jaesa Lagerfeld - Ulrik Lagerfeld's Wife, Secondary Antagonist.
    • Jaedyn Strom - Former romantic suitor and Superior.
    • Jon Edelmann - Former romantic suitor and Friend.
    • Kan Su - Kamonian Physician.
    • Kehree Balosar - Friend, SHADOW Program.
    • Laith Rankin - Friend, SHADOW Program.
    • Leon Graumann - Friend & Teammate, SHADOW Program.
    • Lukan Viktaro - Tactical Operations Division Officer.
    • Raquelle Tipani - Rival.
    • Seamus Maeghon - Former subordinate, Tactical Operations Division.
    • Sulyvahn "Sully" Locke - Mentor, Public Order & Riot Division.
    • Trevas Lagerfeld - Son of Ulrik Lagerfeld.
    • Ulrik Jorhan Lagerfeld - Childhood Friend, former lover.
    • Vengar Santi - Torturer, Midnight Detention Facility.
    • Vindo Garnier - SHADOW Program Instructor, Imperial Security Bureau.
    • Yorath Veko - Friend and Rescuer.
    • Zaid "Sallahu" Salah Ad-Din - Kandaran Physician, IMC Atrisia.
    Beast Companion(s):
    • N/A
    Force(s):
    • N/A

  • Chapter I: The Old Family

    Adaska Ellin Raythe commonly referred to by her friends as “Dash” or “Ray” is an Imperial Security Bureau Agent. They found the beginnings of their career within the humble Coruscant Security Force after graduating from the University of Coruscant with an undergraduate degree in Policing and Criminology where she graduated with honours. Adaska hails from an extremely wealthy and politically influential Coruscanti-Corellian "Old Family" with a history several hundred years old with its’ prominence coming to the fore approximately eight decades before the Galactic Empire’s rise; some scholars believe that the Raythe family existed long before that though surviving historical evidence to support the validity of this claim is scarce. Instead of being born and raised on Coruscant proper, she was afforded a rather luxurious upbringing on Hesperidium where her Father, Gideon possessed the family's most ancient seat in the form of a charming Gothic Estate.

    During her formative years as a child, Adaska was noted to be somewhat of a loner which contrasted sharply to the behavioural characteristics that both parents had hoped to instil within the scion of Raythe, compounding her aversion for the idle small talk endemic within aristocracy was a noted and distinct fondness for the various house-keepers and other personnel employed by the Raythe Family on their estate grounds which left many of her parents’ friends mortified at Adaska’s mere acknowledgement of “Such Lowly and Simple creatures.” At a young age and thus she became known as an empathetic albeit somewhat Aloof and Enigmatic Child who struggled to foster social relationships with other children whom she appeared to irritate; this was due to her nature as a forced blank.

    Attending a prestigious private school on Hesperidium for the progeny of the Corusca System’s elite, as a student, Adaska was generally ostracized cruelly by other children. However, in the absence of social distraction, the growing girl found greater focus within the realm of study and as a result, excelled particularly in the fields of ancient history and the development of interstellar jurisprudence. Adaska being rejected firmly by girls due to her “Weirdness” found an opportunity to find acceptance among the boys of her class after she protected Dale one of her male classmates from bullies several years their senior by throwing her body over his body and taking several punches and kicks in his defence before the bullies relented at the intervention of a teacher.

    The “weird” Adaska finally found social acceptance and was widely praised by her peers for the act of selfless heroism which even the luxurious Primary School’s faculty found surprising given the ruthless reputation the Raythe family possessed in professional and commercial circles. Adaska settled into a friendship group consisting of herself, Dale, his kind sister Rikke, Jon, a scrawny nerd who was enamoured with computer systems and security and Ulrik an athletic child who possessed a solid bond with Jon. The five formed a tight friendship that Adaska’s parents were pleased to see her finally form social connections despite the usual difficulties observed. However, she had finally found friends Adaska sometimes noted that her presence had a marked adverse impact on the stress and irritability of Ulrik, Dale, Rikke and Jon.

    Suffering from a generalised anxiety disorder leading into her adolescence Adaska’s academic performance deteriorated noticeably as the importance of social appearances and networking became so invasive with Kimberley and Gideon both dragging their eldest child to galas, functions and art galleries sometimes to the teenager’s protests, attempting to find reprieve from persistently forced socialization by explaining the crippling gut-wrenching fear she often experienced when lost in the colourful masses of Corusca elite. Thankfully, Ulrik and Rikke were never too far from their dear friend Dash and steadied her when the panic attacks sent her eyes flicking around wildly and threatened to steal away all breath. Ulrik and Adaska began developing a budding attraction to one-another around this time which Jon would observe and covet enviously attempting to win the Aloof enigmatic Adaska’s affection by instructing her in computers, programming and slicing.

    The relationship between Ulrik and Adaska grew closer with their arrival into senior studies on Hesperidium where the two consummated their romantic feelings for one another and became one-another’s high school sweethearts with the former keen on making a difference within the Core and arguing for greater equality and wealth redistribution which made the idealist wildly unpopular with his own and Adaska’s parents. Adaska was taken by Ulrik’s fiery passion for a change though. Despite the face, their relationship did not survive long after they were both admitted into the University of Coruscant. Ulrik went on to study Intergalactic Politics and Commerce. At the same time, Adaska’s interests sucked her into the Justice Faculty enrolling in an undergraduate course in Intelligence, Justice and Policing.

    Kimberley and Gideon both frowned upon their daughter’s decisions in terms of romance and education forcing her to take out a student loan as a subtle show of disapproval that Adaska much to their chagrin welcomed openly and threw salt into their wounds by announcing her desire to join the ranks of anonymous and faceless Coruscant Security Force Officers, an institution while old and honoured in the eyes of Gideon would bring neither Wealth nor Influence to the Raythe family and did his best to dissuade tenacious daughter from the chosen path with little effect, Gideon told himself he did such things in an attempt to protect Adaska from danger. However, the truth was the Father wished to see her play the dance of commerce and politics to be ruthless and cunning he would be disappointed that in time Adaska proved herself to possess more the warm compassion and pure intellect.

    Chapter II: Winter's End

    Adaska joined the Coruscant Security Force through their undergraduate entry program at the spry age of nineteen barely old enough to volunteer. At this point, Ulrik had gone into the banking sector with Jon also joining Coruscant Security Force though as an unsworn employee, Jon continued to harbour his feelings for Adaska and his decision to volunteer for CORSECFOR was motivated in-part to remain in close contact with his school-friend who he covertly viewed with tacitly reined adoration. Adaska graduated from the Coruscant Security Force Academy as her class' student of merit for both academic and physical performance which earned Gideon's begrudging approval finding his cynicism unable to withstand parental pride while the sight far less moved Kimberley. However, she did not treat Adaska coldly despite her disappointment to see her first-born at the age of twenty years old and unwed to an appropriately wealthy suitor. Adaska found herself working in the Uscru Entertainment District and quickly found herself re-assigned to the Public Order and Riot Division before even completing her Field Training Period; some speculated this was in response to the complaints from fellow Staff who would consistently claim to experience irritation and elevated stress in Officer Raythe's presence.

    Working within the Public Order and Riot Division reduced the responsibilities of Adaska for interacting with citizens and investigating petty crimes. However, as a trade-off increased the frequency, she was required to employ force when detaining or arresting suspects, it placed high stress on the young officer. When combined with her pre-existing anxiety disorder, Adaska turned to a hobby arguably more dangerous than alcoholism or death sticks...The compulsive high-intensity exercise which was her admirable attempt for a "Healthy" solution to the excess serotonin being produced within her nervous system but over months it resulted in her being dangerously underweight and waifish thin. In this period, Adaska was regularly prescribed antibiotics to bolster her immune response when battling viral infections; her immune system wasn't done any favours by her hermetically sealed Coruscant Security Force Uniform or Powersuit. Adaska's exercise obsession came to the point where she collapsed on duty and had to be rushed to Yularen Public hospital where her brother Garrick Raythe attended and unsuccessfully attempted to persuade his older sister to move-in with him, with Adaska stating in proud warmth "I'm supposed to look after you little brother, not the other way around." Garrick did make contact with Ulrik though who contacted Adaska and managed to steadily wean her away from the Gym with Jon's aid the latter successfully seized some of her valuable time by persuading Adaska to play online holo games together.

    It was within the Coruscant Underworld that Adaska had her first exposure to Force Sensitives and was called into a complicated domestic and political hostage situation involving a lightsabre wielding force user sworn to a mysterious communist organisation called "The Winter Revolution" among the hostage taker's victims was the mans' estranged wife and adult son. They had joined a budding political party called Coruscant First such was his fanaticism the Communist Insurgent named Helian. In support of Tactical Operations Division, Adaska and her Public Order and Riot Officers were responsible for evacuating residents out of the apartment towers adjacent to the target building and clearing nearby streets, she enforced and maintained the cordon for approximately eighteen hours when negotiations broke down after CORSECFOR did not fulfil Helian began shooting and slicing his way through the seventy Coruscanti Citizens he was holding. Tactical Operations Division team consisting of sixteen heavily armed and armoured officers breached the hotel's lobby where every single one of them was cut down after Helian had killed seven Civilians with a further two shot and killed inadvertently by Coruscant Security Force Officers. The Twenty-Four Public Order and Riot Squad officers in the immediate vicinity including Adaska charged valiantly towards Novastar Hotel's lobby, she was slower than the sharpest men on her platoon but quicker than many and arrived to see a bald man standing fifty meters away from her among a macabre ocean of bodies.

    Adaska paused at the scene she never saw anything of its' like in her brief albeit distinguished career; it wasn't a freeze. However, no she had been through more than four-dozen uses of force and the Academy itself where they had thrown her in the worst possible scenarios imaginable, nothing could have prepared her azure eyes for the sight of a claret-red lightsabre hovering above the severed helmet of colleagues whom she considered friends. Right then and there is when Officer Raythe decided that among the galaxy's myriad of criminals those who wielded blood coloured swords of plasma were the worst, Adaska stormed Helian she neither screamed nor ordered him to surrender he gave no such opportunity or leisure and rushed to meet the small woman his blade reached out to find its' mark at her collar in a throw, and that's when it inexplicably shrieked recoiling inside the hilt which bounced from Adaska's armoured body harmlessly with an impotent clang, Helian's pride and smug grin contorted into agape horror and dread before Adaska shot him in the chest twice. Helian's ruination brought Adaska neither pleasure nor release from a heart rent with guilt that she couldn't save her friends from their deaths and spent the next three weeks on paid administrative leave. At the same time, a critical incident investigation was performed, and Adaska fell into a depressing hopeless mood and only improved after it was ruled the use of force on her part was "Justified".

    For a while, Officer Raythe contemplated resigning from the Coruscant Security Force though was talked into remaining by Dale, Jon and Rikke the three of whom graciously dropped what was happening in their busy lives at the time to support an old and beloved friend, not that they took long to arrive on Coruscant given the speed of interstellar travel within the Corusca sector's locale. Adaska at the urging of not only her friends but younger siblings who had observed their sisters' deteriorating mental health recommended she participate in a mental health action plan. Adaska surprisingly agreed despite an initial stubborn reluctance having insisted dishonestly up until being confronted by Jon, Ulrik, Rikke and Garrick within her apartment. Fortunately, around this time Rikke moved into the same Coruscant district as Adaska while working for the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation which was based out of Geonosis and moved-in with her long-time friend. Rikke was the extrovert to Adaska's introvert and dragged along the traumatized friend to Masquerade Balls where Adaska learnt the safety and thrill of anonymity; Masquerades became an exception to the rule in regards to the scion of Raythe's usual avoidance of gatherings gilded in wealth or prestige. It was at these black-tie Masquerade ball events that Adaska's exposure to Coruscanti Nationalist and Humanocentric views increased dramatically, something influenced directly by Rikke who while possessing compassion also held deeply rooted bigoted anti-non-human sentiments.

    Chapter III: Lady of Cinders

    A couple of years pass and Adaska had long since been discharged from out-patient Psychiatric care and acquired more appropriate and effective coping mechanisms when compared to the historically exhibited compulsive exercise and solitary confinement to her apartment. Life for Adaska Raythe looked to be improving. She received a promotion to the rank of Lance Corporal from Senior Security Officer within Coruscant Security Force; it was around this time that the Sith Empire and First Order were actively fighting a protracted war with the Galactic Alliance. The latter was putting up what Adaska thought was an admirable struggle against an odious and evil government despite her misgivings about the Galactic Alliance's domestic tithing and taxation policies. Adaska joined the budding political party of Coruscant First and with contributed a percentage of her fortnightly salary as a donation to the party. However, she was never an active participant within the organisation itself preferring to avoid the limelight of overt political activism. After the Sith's successful assault on Thyferra, they turned their wrath-filled gaze to the Galaxy's crown jewel within the Corusca Sector and Adaska's home.

    The Battle of Coruscant was long, bloody and brutal on such a wanton scale that Adaska and the entirety of the Public Order and Riot Division were recalled to duty such as Lance Corporal Raythe's sense of responsibility that she placed the obligation higher than an appointment with both of her estranged parents. Coruscant Security Force supported the Galactic Alliance Defence Force in protecting Non-Combatants including wounded soldiers from the GADF from the Sith Empire's merciless and guiltless fury; the fighting started before the light of Coruscant's star ever touched Galactic City's innumerable spires. Raythe led her Public Order and Riot team with quiet resilience following the death of her superior early into the conflict, meeting his end at the barrel of a Sith Sniper only to be quickly avenged by the team. Adaska and two full surviving squads of Coruscant Security Force Officers led a few hundred Non-Combatants from the Galactic City down into the relative safety of Coruscant's subterranean underworld after fighting tooth and nail to save as many Citizens from an obscenely violent slaughter. Unfortunately for Adaska, her Officers and the Citizens of Coruscant came to pique the odious dark interest of Sith Lord Kor Vexen.

    Monstrosities born from Sith Magick were sent sprawling through Galactic City to hunt down Adaska. Her surviving teams of Officers attempted to hold off the unrelenting tide of Sithspawn thanks to Adaska's status as a blank in the force their grotesque pursuers couldn't come into proximity to either Adaska, her fellow officers and the Citizens they were expecting without experiencing pure overwhelming revulsion and fear, two emotions not usually solicited in the abominations born of Sith Alchemy. Adaska and the Sithspawn both found one another to be Anathema and as Incomprehensible as an enigma when the former focused on the latter, her mind found that itself unable to interpret their appearance. Thus they looked like excessively ugly hounds and distorted twisted Human corpses akin to zombies unable to view the products of force-imbibed alchemical processes. The Sithspawn's siege never relented, and it was only through their extreme aversion experienced in Adaska's presence that kept her mostly unharmed, armed with a Riot shield and a short-barrel DC-15A she desperately attempted to protect the rear of their column. However, exhausted and having fought for hours, she regretted her inability to protect them all.

    The Sithspawn ocean receded and it appeared that the Officers and the surviving Citizens might indeed lose themselves into the dark security of the Underworld, an illusion that was broken by the appearance of Lord Kor Vexen who maneuvered himself and a Praetorian Guard of his most excellent troops to confront the surviving Officers and Coruscanti Citizens, appearing before Adaska and her nine surviving Officer and the odd one-hundred and fifty remaining frightened Citizens, as the highest ranking remaining Officer remaining above the spent and injured Coruscant Security Force personnel Adaska bravely stepped forward to proudly challenge the giant and his entourage of dark warriors who wilted and waned painfully their bodies relied upon Sith Magicks for constitution being disrupted on a molecular level in the blank's presence and though Lord Vexen was pained, disgusted and infuriated in equal measure presence by the woman's existence he remained composed and offered her an insult which Adaska retorted to with the bleak omission that she had long been a disappointment to those who mattered most to her, what followed was a brief albeit viciously violent encounter where Kor Vexen unable to manipulate or even perceive the force in Adaska's presence engaged in a melee with the woman and her officers alongside his own Troops.

    Never was there much hope of success, the professional war-hardened Sith Troopers and their Master slew each Riot Squad Officer while only receiving minor injuries, Adaska endured the longest as per her skill and by Vexen's design. Kor hefted the defeated Adaska up off the floor his gargantuan armoured hand clasped around the woman's helmeted head; he would have secured a grip around the comparatively tiny Officer's throat were it not for the obstruction presented by the ballistic collar. Kor held Adaska over a railing hanging precariously above a gaping lightless pitch-black abyss waiting to swallow the Officer, Vexen's voice smouldered with cold fury and outwardly filled with barely contained loathing and disgust offered final insult to the creature before ordering his Troops slaughter those Citizens she'd tried so desperately in vain to protect, ensuring the "Imprecation" remained long enough to witness a gratuitous murder of those who Kor quietly considered barely worth meeting an end at the hands of his warrior-elite. Lord Kor Vexen then snarled towards Adaska and pitched her over the railing down into the large abyssal black portal that awaited below.

    Chapter IV: Umbral Tidings

    Gerad Naahan on the distant shadow world of Umbara received word of a Coruscant Security Force Officer who stood toe to toe with a Sith Lord and several Sithspawn within the Coruscant Underworld, having come into possession of this information through the myriad contacts across the galaxy that the woman had been referred to as an "Imprecation" and "Blank" sensing an opportunity Gerad Naahan ordered his Chapter on Coruscant to locate and secure the wounded Officer believing that he might be able to exploit the characteristics of an "Imprecation" For his gain. Fortunately, before Gerad had even issued the Order, Nika Satari a newly-minted Captain of the Umbaran Cartel had located a crippled Adaska in a fetid alleyway the lenses of her helmet cracked, flickering wildly, unable to walk and whimpering in pain several bones fractured from a fall she wouldn't have survived were it not for the canopies. Metal pipes slammed into during the descent onto a level notorious for its' gangland killings, spice deals, drug deals, martial law and minimal Coruscant Security Force presence. Nika drew a switchblade and held the helpless Adaska's throat against its' precipice and threatened the Officer though quickly realized after assessing the woman's condition through the rain and darkness that she was already suffering pain far in excess what she could inflict upon her.

    Instead, Nika Satari took the opportunity to humiliate Adaska and clumsily removed the Coruscant Security Force Officer's power suit cutting through parts of it as necessary and inflicting further lacerations upon Adaska's body in the process, leaving the woman cruelly to crawl along the refuse covered alley towards the neon-light filled street waiting at the other end dragging her minimally clad bruised and torn pale visage through filth with desperate whimpers, heart pounding so forcefully she could feel it beat against ribs to the coarse concrete beneath the breast. Adaska was left dragging herself aimlessly along the street-paths feebly begging those who passed for aid with all the desperate strength her lungs could muster. Still, nobody cared, what most saw was a spice-addled wretch without the use of her legs begging for credits. Adaska's status as a blank did not help in pleading for aid, with most ordinary people being irritated and unsettled through her mere presence. Salvation comes in many forms, and Adaska's arrived in the form of the crimson neon-lit Caduceus cross of a derelict local medical centre, the sight of what appeared to be filth covered corpse stumbling through the door of their clinic shocked the administration staff into silence initially until Adaska's consciousness finally slipped. She smashed her nose against the white tiles of their reception room.

    Doctor Derosa, a female physician, working at the medical centre attended the emergency immediately from their office and ordered that the unknown female who lacked any sort of identification be directly admitted to the centre's emergency treatment room where Adaska was quickly submerged into a bacta tank given her injuries where she remained unconscious for approximately seventy-two hours at which point the fractures and lacerations had sufficiently healed that the amniotic sarcophagus was drained. Adaska has given a double-dose of the wakeup stim at which point Doctor Derosa assessed the 'Jain Solo' for other injuries and quickly diagnosed the woman with transient global amnesia that was steadily subsiding with each passing hour, Derosa concluded that the amnesia was a direct response to the head trauma Jain had appeared to suffer as a result of blunt impact. A local charity which provided clothes for the many local impoverished citizens attended the clinic at Derosa's request and provided Adaska with some clothing, before being discharged Adaska disclosed to Derosa that she was a Coruscant Security Force Officer and that payment for treatment would be remit once she managed to find her way back to headquarters within Galactic City.

    It would never happen, Nika Satari having received orders from Gerad Naahan tracked down Adaska to the clinic by interrogating locals at knife-point before arriving with armed thugs and associates demanding that Dersosa surrender her patient. The doctor bravely refused and remained unflinching when one of Nika's associates pointed a blaster pistol towards the bronzed Human woman's face, inspired by the physician's courage Adaska stepped forward and surrendered herself to Satai and her thugs peacefully. Surprised by their courage, Nika permitted Derosa to live as the Doctor had also been reliably paying the Umbaran Cartel protection money as part of their criminal rackets. Adaska was brought before Nika at the Umbaran's social club where the latter told the former she would serve the cartel as an assassin, Adaska flatly refused to be used as a tool by the Umbarans, Nika refused to be goaded by Adaska into killing the Coruscant Police Officer being able to identify that's what the depressed woman desired. Instead, Nika warned Adaska that this far down in the Underworld the latter wouldn't survive and would beg for death before the end. Nika ordered that all shopkeepers and other services in the local districts refuse to serve "Callan" or "Jain Solo" the two aliases she had insisted on using and send told shopkeepers a holo still of the woman before releasing Adaska, certain that starvation would push the woman into service to the Umbarans following Gerad's wishes.

    Identifying the man as Umbaran, Adaska concluded Nika Satari must have sent them and resolved to kill the Umbaran Captain, knowing the vengeful Coruscant Security Officer was coming to Satari. However, a psychopath was not without cunning and surrounded herself with several heavily armed ex-Umbaran Militia, spice addicts addicted to the cartel's product who desperately needed a fix and local children taken from their parents. Adaska to Nika's pleasant surprise managed to kill the ambushing Umbaran Militia in a brutal firefight involving simple blowback semi-automatic slugthrower rifles and pistols without harming any of the spice addicts or children as Adaska confronted Nika, the latter ordered her surviving hit-men to start executing the children until Adaska surrendered and as the first had the barrel of a pistol pressed against their temple the desperate Coruscant Security Force Officer immediately surrendered to Nika. Nika and her men then turned Adaska into their slave torturing her and using the woman as their plaything, Nika identified keenly with Gerad's intel that Adaska was capable of severely weakening force-wielders and used the captive as a means of murdering Jedi who was taking actions against the cartel and this continued continuously for six months.

    The constant proximity of Adaska to the members of the cartel steadily began driving them towards madness due to the effect she had on the Midi-Chlorians in their bodies, Nika Satari's behaviour was becoming concerning she was paranoid and violent in excess for what was tolerable even amongst blood-thirsty criminals with Nika in her mind malaise began to order the Cartel's own hugely successful associates murdered believing them guilty of under-performance. One of Nika's soldiers named Markus came to Adaska. He confided in his enslaved prisoner that he was concerned about Nika's sanity and that he had placed the associate's corpse somewhere the Coruscant Police would find it, Adaska told him that they wouldn't since they were non-existent this far away from the Galactic City so deep in the Cosucant Underworld. Markus knew they wouldn't either but secretly hoped they would as Markus was not only concerned about the impact Nika's insanity could have on their cartel but also because he desired to succeed Nika but could not bring himself to murder the woman. Nika became increasingly unpredictable as did all others who were always close to Adaska and this was only exasperated when the Captain locked her hostage into the Umbaran's secure social clubhouse where Nika could keep a close eye on her.

    Markus' desire to see Nika killed only intensified in response to Nika's paranoid outbursts and the string of unprovoked murder of associates and even children whom she believed in her insanity to be informed on the Cartel's activities. Detective-Sergeant Veko who had been investigating a pattern of murdered Jedi in and around level 1317 contacted Colonel Locke a senior officer within the Coruscant Security Force and told Locke that he believed that a mysterious "Skinny brunette with piercing blue eyes" Was involved in the suspected Cartel murders of Jedi who were attempting to curtail organised crime within the Coruscant Underworld, Veko suspected that the woman could be a Dark Jedi or Jedi herself. They had been taken hostage and was being used to help identify or track other Jedi based on available surveillance footage which gave the impression that the Umbaran Cartel Soldiers were using coercion. Colonel Locke and Detective-Sergeant Veko secured a warrant. They mustered a large breaching team consisting more than fifty exceptionally heavily armed and armoured Tactical Operations Unit personnel and a further one-hundred similarly armed and armoured Public Order & Riot Division Officers supported by Walkers and Juggernaut tanks to assault the heavily fortified social club on level 1317. Amongst the Tactical Operations Unit Division Personnel rostered to participate in the Operation was a rookie Security Officer Kyle Whir who had only recently transferred over from General Duties to the Elite Specialist Division.

    A trained negotiator and Detective-Sergeant Veko resolved to attempt to bargain with Nika Satari and try to achieve a peaceful resolution. The pair entered the Umbaran Cartel's Fortress-Clubhouse with the option of "Summoning" The nearby Cavalry who was a scant three-hundred meters away cordoning off the adjacent streets. Detective-Sergeant Veko identified the beige robe-wearing skinny-looking brunette as a missing Coruscant Security Force Officer Adaska Raythe and activated his silent duress alarm just before the street diplomacy turning sour with Negotiator Doug Katta being shot and killed by Nika, in the same sound the Tactical Operations and Public Order and Riot Division breaching team slammed into the Clubhouse via its' doors and used their juggernaut tanks as battering rams and were given Orders by Colonel Locke to "Detain all suspects and liquidate any who attempt to resist." Given that martial law was in effect the highly trained elite Coruscant Security Force Officers executed their orders with cold professional efficiency. Markus saw his opportunity to usurp Nika in the breach and attempted to shoot his Captain, Veko who thought he was aiming at the nearby Adaska shot Markus through the head, Nika was ironically saved by a Coruscant Security Force Officer.

    The First Responding Officer to the Firefight between the embattled, outgunned and out-manned Veko and the Umbaran Gangsters who covered Nika's escape through a nearby tunnel was none other than Kyle Whir whose arrival dramatically tipped the scales in favour of the trio with Kyle Whir firing and landing six shots into and above the clavicles of their Umbaran targets in time it took a regular human to open their eyes. During the intense battle within the Umbaran Compound, the Underground section where Veko, Whir and Raythe were located ended up collapsing under the overwhelming violence and force levelled by the Coruscant Security Force. Kyle Whir used their superhuman physique to save Adaska as their priority, Veko survived. However, the Detective-Sergeant was severely wounded necessitating the replacement of his right leg beneath the knee with a prosthetic and left foot respectively. Lance Corporal Raythe and her two companions were excavated from the ruins with Raythe being immediately rushed to a hospital on Level 5127 where the sun shined down upon Galactic City. Adaska was kept under the supervision by not only Coruscant Security Force Riot Officers who jealously protected their friend from any threat real or perceived much to the chagrin of hospital staff who found their every action near the injured woman scrutinized heavily.

    Adaska emerged from the Sith Empire's siege of Coruscant scarred and traumatized experiencing humiliation and trauma at the hands of unapologetic cruel sadists, after recovering from her physical injuries Colonel Locke compelled Adaska to receive intense Cognitive Behavior Therapy with one of the better Psychologists available to the Coruscant Security Force and was additionally referred to a Psychiatrist for Psycho-active medication. Locke was more than happy to have Lance Corporal Raythe placed on restricted duties and transferred to Level 5127 where she would be away from the hardened criminals and kept within the safe confines of a Public Order and Riot Division Station for the duration of her recovery for however long that might prove to be, as it turned out the process took eighteen months worth of sleepless nights and Adaska calling for Rikke, Jon or Dale in the small hours of the morning for their company and as good friends who heard stories about her ordeal through references on the Holonet were sympathetic and more than happy to oblige, although growing older with the onset of parental and professional responsibility made the provision of emotional support sometimes tricky. Gideon and Kimberly both contacted their daughter, moved deeply by her ordeal the two-faced with the grim reality they nearly lost their first-born decided their pride was worth distinctly less than Adaska's life and for the first time in Adaska's life was given parental support at a time where she wouldn't accept it.

    Chapter V: Eye of the Strom

    Grief, Stress and Depression took a vicious hold over Adaska's mind in the immediate months following her rescue from the Umbaran Cartel, her treatment was so vile, humiliating and degrading that Adaska's was initially diagnosed with a condition so rare that most Galactic Physicians would be utterly ignorant of its' existence and was one of "Post-traumatic Vocal Disarticulation Conversion Disorder" which resulted in Adaska becoming mute and necessitating that she participate in Galactic Sign Language classes so that she could communicate with others. Adaska desperately wanted to forget the whole ordeal and would angrily lash out at anybody who attempted to discuss the details of what happened while a prisoner and only begrudgingly began engaging in counselling after Colonel Locke confronted the now decorated Lance Corporal Raythe and informed her that unless Psychological counselling was accepted as per Coruscant Security Force and Department of Justice policy, she might as well hand in a resignation letter because until the psychologist provided clearance, she'd remain disarmed and on station duty. Naturally, Adaska disliked that idea even more than she furiously hated exploring the pain and trauma she experienced and would need to confront the truth that what was keeping her closed about those experiences wasn't justified anger but a response to her pain and distress which could only be resolved with the help of others.

    Adaska in light of being saved by Officers from the Tactical Operations Division resolved to join that highly elite and specialist outfit out of a belief that acquiring the skills they had to offer might be beneficial in discharging her sworn duties to protect the citizenry of Coruscant but started at a distinct disadvantage when compared to her peers, firstly Adaska was still on restricted duties on account of her current mental health state combined with physical inadequacy which was exacerbated by the malnutrition and abuse suffered at the hands of the sadistic Nika Satari and her underlings. Adaska was permitted to enrol in the Tactical Operations Division training course by Colonel Locke who believed that it would serve as a useful distraction for the woman from Operational Law Enforcement duties while receiving intense treatment and offer an opportunity for socialisation with new Officers whom Lance Corporal Raythe had never encountered previously, unfortunately for Colonel Locke the traumatized Adaska kept to themselves and made little effort initially to engage their fellow trainees. Adaska was met with a mixture of pity for the traumatic experiences she had endured and resentment from some others for her privileged status and wealth, jealousy from trainees who coveted one quality or another and even a level of attraction from co-participants.

    Approximately twelve months later Adaska was on the road to recovery after being intensely medicated with Anti-Psychotic and receiving constant Psychotherapy, she was transferred from Coruscant's Federal District to aboard one of Coruscant Security Force's many Ardent-Class Fast Frigates for Corusca Sector Border Patrol and was one of twenty-four Tactical Operations Division Officers stationed on the CSF Triumphant. However, she was promoted to Senior Sergeant the still mute and wordless Adaska remained subordinated to a Lieutenant Strom who developed a robust unrequited attraction to his subordinate and frustrated with several angry rebuttals to the advances and entreaties attempted to woo his romantic interest. While on a standard search pattern the CSF Triumphant's communication Officer on the bridge received orders from CORSECFOR Headquarters on Coruscant to determine and assess the causation for a total loss of subspace transceiver contact with a star-destroyer sized Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation mining vessel. Adaska was dispatched aboard an old Lambda-class shuttle with three other Coruscant Security Force Officers which included: Lieutenant Strom, Security Officer Mersa and Security Officer Viktaro. The four heavily armed and armoured officers were joined by an Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation Computer Specialist named Raquelle Tipani.

    The Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation requested the attendance of Coruscant Security Force claiming such a communication blackout should be impossible and could only be the result of a horrific accident or corporate espionage. In the latter case, they thought it is prudent for a welfare check to be performed and in the following dispatch a repair crew to repair any damaged equipment and believed two birds could be slain with one stone by petitioning CORSECFOR as the premier local law enforcement organisation to investigate. They were armed with the knowledge of the IMC Atrisia's last known position based on a civil mining traffic contact report. Aboard the Lambda-Class shuttle CSF Hyperion, Adaska quietly spent the several hour journeys to the last known location of the IMC Atrisia watching a holo-message sent to her by a frightened and visibly distraught Dale. He was allegedly working aboard the IMC Atrisia as a Physician. Raquelle Tipani rudely interrupted Adaska's quiet concentration an didn't care for the reminder that she could look him up once they were on-board taking it as a crude suggestion from Raquelle that Adaska and Dale's relationship was anything but platonic.

    Scowling Adaska placed her helmet overhead and surveyed the IMC Atrisia which appeared from behind an asteroid its' hulls' running lights mainly offline which was suspicious in of itself. Lieutenant Strom and Tipani attempted to make comlink contact only to receive an unintelligible, garbled message in reply to their query ostensibly confirming those earlier suspicions of Corporate Sabotage. Strom ordered Mersa and Viktaro who were piloting the CSF Hyperion to initiate the automatic tractor-beam guided docking procedures with IMC Atrisia. Unfortunately, while the CSF Hyperion was steadily being swallowed into the IMC Atrisia's dorsal hanger bay, it was thrown off course by a piece of Durasteel that had been torn straight off of the latter's hull dramatically altering the Hyperion's course onto one of collision. Officer Mersa desperately tried to keep control over the Hyperion his wrists almost breaking on the flight controls while struggling against the Goliath Strength of a Star-Destroyer-sized vessel's tractor beams. The modified Lambda shuttles' Quadanium canopy shutters closed over the transparisteel and the Hyperion crashed silently screeching across the Atrisia's ventral hangar floor and only coming to a stop after slamming into a hanger wall through several cargo crates.

    Lieutenant Strom calmly ordered that Mersa report on the damage to the Hyperion, Mersa replied that they had lost comms, auto-pilot and port-side engine during the crash which Strom acknowledged kindly and then refocused his team. Adaska remained silent and used her hands to sign "I'm fine" towards Security Officer Viktaro, the five crewmen aboard the Hyperion disembarked onto the Atrisia and entered the arrival and departure lounge to find it utterly absent any signs of life or activity from the local crew. Strom disdainful of Tipani and suspicious as to the reason for the conspicuous absence of any sentient activity on a star-destroyer sized mining vessel requested that Adaska whom he knew to be a proficient slicer breach the flight lounge's computer. The mute Senior Sergeant acquiesced wordlessly and entered the lounge's security booth breaching its' network security which temporarily served to lock Adaska within the security booth but still within sight behind a Transparisteel partition from which behind she communicated with Mersa using Galactic Sign Language. Mersa remarked it appeared the internal tram system was online but that there was significant damage to internal operations including the communication array, hyperdrive and life support system which were both offline, although based on the ship's current atmosphere the latter had to have been disabled recently.

    Running lights within the reception room began flickering an amber-orange the strobes rotating wildly; Lieutenant Strom cautioned everybody that it was a simple Quarantine likely triggered in response to foreign contaminants on their armour and clothing. Adaska's pale blue eyes struggled to make out the silhouettes within the lounge. However, she observed in silent fear as what appeared to be a humanoid dropped from the ceiling through a shaft stalked up beside Mersa before embracing the man in a flurry of slashes with Lieutenant Strom loudly cursing followed promptly by the unmistakable tibana thrum report of blaster shots from not one but two DC-15A Short-Barreled rifles although two quickly became one with the sound of two monotonous flat-lines ringing through Adaska's helmet. The woman's limbs went frozen solid like a statue at such a swift termination of life, the visage of Sith Lord Kor Vexen replaced her vision. Adaska for a precious few moments was left paralysed hanging precariously above a void hearing his smouldering voice again only to be pulled from that flashback by the strength of a rigour mortis grip of what appeared to be a man with more claws than hands clasping around her ballistic collar a pair of cracked and bloodied teeth gnashing at her metallic visor slits.

    Adaska utilised many textbook defensive tactics and no sooner than she had pushed the man away and made an astonishing mental note about the horrific injuries and outward mutation his body displayed at least two other similarly warped men burst from mechanical cavities through the ceiling, they howled and chortled in a bestial challenge with crimson fluid flowing from their eyes which despite being pursed shut seemed to result in minimal hindrance when it came to assaulting the isolated Coruscanti Police Officer. Terrified and fearful for her life, the voice of Lieutenant Strom cut through over their local comlink "Raythe! Get the hell out of there!" He commanded in a tone filled to the brim with nothing short of panic. Adaska pivoted in both feet without even bothering to draw blaster from a thigh holster and fled with the three men with each passing moment their features resembling less Human or Near-Human men and some ghastly pale subterranean beast with an increasingly bow-legged gait, their eyes squint with spines and grows bursting from limbs. Leaping into an open elevator at the end of a short gangway Adaska frantically pressed the lowest level available to her hoping to escape the hideous creatures following in pursuit the doors slid shut. For a moment there was neither the cacophony of quarantine alarms or barking cries of mutant-men.

    That was until one of them in a display of cannibalistic savagery began prying apart the lift's doors open in a show of immense unnatural strength sufficient to overcome the springs that kept a hermetic seal on a starship's turbolifts. Adaska composing herself and with nowhere left to run drew her DC-15A Blaster Rifle and readied it with iron-sights placed firmly into the dribbling and roaring monster's chest and shouted the warning so loudly throat threatened to break on it "Police Officer, stop or I'll shoot!" The snarling spiny humanoid with its' thick truncated limbs and cavernous maw lunged towards Sergeant Raythe. So she shot it several times sending it several places back towards the doors it had pried open which struck without warning slamming shut through the monster's torso bisecting it above the waist and leaving a twitching bloodied mass on the floor for a few moments before an eerie silence descended as Adaska plunged deeper still within the darkness and horrors that awaited her within the IMC Atrisia's belly. Entering an empty machinist's shop, she found its' chief inhabitant dead in a small pool of his claret life-fluids slumped against a table, above which was a warning scribbled in the Machinist's blood "It spreads through blood!".

    Realising that 'it' had to be whatever had caused the real-time mutation in-front of her eyes. While not a Biology Major understood enough to determine the infectious nature of her quarry, she kept this in mind. She assessed a holographic schematic display projected by her Powersuit to try and locate a method of rendezvousing with the yet surviving Lieutenant Strom and Tipani whose vital signs spoke of alarm and duress albeit not injury. Adaska fought her way through the tight winding corridors of the dirty maintenance deck, a desperate battle against the Pale Ghouls that assailed the mute woman from every direction, it was the cacophony of beasts versus the silent perseverance of a wraith who struggled to survive and yet lived long enough to reach the deck's tram control station and raised its' shutters revealing Tipani and Lieutenant Strom on the station itself, Tipani expressed shock and approval that Raythe had survived it was at this point that the confusion genuinely set into the CSF Hyperion's survivors. "What in all the hells were those things was that the crew!?" A question Adaska had herself pondered and concluded with a wordless 'Yes'. However, she humorously made the Galactic Sign Language gesture for it, answering Tipani's rhetorical question.

    Lieutenant Strom snapped at Tipani calming her down and then addressed Adaska promising to help her find Dale and get him off the ship ordering Sergeant Raythe to return to the Dorsal Hanger Bay where the CSF Hyperion was still waiting for preparing the shuttle for immediate departure. At the same time, Strom himself and Tipani journeyed along with the tram car towards the fore of the ship where its' bridge was located in the hope of finding members of the crew or perhaps better assess the situation aboard. Adaska moved back through the maintenance wing with the utmost caution the fate of the team and the machinist's ominous warning held very close in mind ever keeping her carbine length blaster rifle at the ready for what she had begun thinking of as "Ghouls" about their hideous twisted mutilated physiques and voracious maws filled with rows of crooked teeth. Select Ghouls she thought looked Human or Near-Human in some cases, resembling whatever they had been before coming into contact with the infection. However, most were pale near translucent squad bow-legged incredibly muscled macabre monsters. Arriving at the hanger Adaska looked over the Hyperion's wreckage and doubted, the craft was space-worthy. However, as the hold was vacant, Hyperion ostensibly was their only chance at instant salvation.

    Boarding the Hyperion and carefully avoiding the myriad electrical cabling hanging from transformers and Clipsal switches Adaska gingerly took up the Pilot's position before sparing a frightened glance over left-shoulder fearful that a Ghoul had been creeping up on her flank. Though once she peered out over the shuttle's nose those icy blue orbs sitting behind the two teal glowing eyeslits of her powersuit's helmet came face to face with one of the grotesque creatures wearing the tattered and broken remains of a Coruscant Security Force Tactical Powersuit. They recognised its' putrescent features as once belonging to the formerly handsome Viktaro his once cute face mutated into a scaly snow-pale skull with his sharp knife-like teeth gnawing hungrily at the Transparisteel canopy separating them. Right as Adaska initiated a complete systems check the Hyperion's solar ionisation reactor core was breached and kicked off a train reaction and alarms sounding through the shuttle's hold commanding all occupants immediately evacuate. No sooner than Adaska had cleared the hull, the reactor catastrophically exploded and sent her flying across the Hanger's floor. However, she screamed neither in fear nor paid heed due to her vocal dis-articulation.

    Springing quickly up off the ground with heart beating like a frenetic drum shouldering their blaster rifle Adaska wheeled in the direction of the charging Viktaro. Many other Humans turned mutated Ghouls, to the traumatised Sergeant's credit she did not flee from them this time and stood her ground before those charging beasts and fired a steady stream of Tibanna-infused azure bolts into their flesh. Rage was one potent anaesthetic, and Adaska stepped backwards carefully while continuing to lay down the fire until it was only her and the twisted Viktaro with the former using her agility and lithe build to quite literally stay barely out of arms reach of Viktaro while firing her weapon from a hip position and any others for that fact which kept her away from the shiny claws where hands should have once been. Adaska shot the tormented and possessed Officer so many times his right arm came off at the elbow and left was detached at a shattered clavicle and yet continued fighting it was only when she dismembered him at the left knee that Viktaro's rage finally gave way to a long and pained pause. Not permitting her comrade and friend to suffer Adaska offered him a wordless prayer and shot the creature through its' massive cranium.

    Returning to the tram station, Adaska sent Lieutenant Strom a text message over their TEAMNET informing him of the Hyperion's destruction and Viktaro's infection. The reply beckoned Sergeant Raythe to the bridge where they could discuss their next move within the vessel's conspicuously empty bridge. Adaska sat in the eerie silence aboard the train while its' metal wheels screeched along the Durasteel tracks the full terror and dread the likes of which the Coruscant Security Force Sergeant had not felt since being Nika Satari's prisoner she found the solitude leaving her feeling bereft and hopelessly unable to shake the sight of Viktaro's powersuit draped over what had become of him, Adaska shivering and convulsed violently and rung her bloodied wrist nervously in ice draped gauntlet stained with the deeds performed against monsters that had once shared humanity with the Sergeant. Even though her Powersuit remained sealed against the Atrisia's atmosphere, her throat dry heaved involuntarily, the mind creating the stimuli where none in reality existed. Arriving at the bridge deck, Adaska rose from her seated position and steadily made her way through the ship's onboard security would have made a biometric security check.

    While moving along the narrow hallway towards the bridge bulkhead door proper a great fist several times the width of Adaska's torso punched through the metal wall to her left its' clawed fingers grasping for her desperately. To avoid its' palm, she dived down towards the floor and then glanced back at the chest-sized hole punched through that cavity and locked gaze with a sunken set of black spheres set into a mutilated skull that looked like it was the product of several crabs being crushed together in a hydraulic press sharing a single massive mouth flanked by a hard calcified mandible on either side that Adaska witnessed. At the same time, that brute attempted in futility to push its' giant squat apelike torso through that comparatively tiny breach. Entering the Bridge revealed a large well-lit roughly cube-shaped room with terminals flickering amber warnings. The significant impacts of space debris could be felt through the floor, that's when Adaska resolved in that moment escape wouldn't be so easily achieved as most small craft would be easily destroyed by contact with an asteroid or other deep space debris. Strom invited Adaska down to the Captain's nest where they could discuss their next move.

    Taking a simple service elevator down to the Captain's nest and found herself standing in a rotunda-shaped room with empty escape pod portals, one was still present and the Coruscant Security Force Sergeant without thinking made a beeline for what ostensibly was a portal containing the last empty pod. Inside what had been Security Officer Mersa threw itself up against the airlock's canopy and began bashing against the thick bulkhead in a futile attempt to assault Adaska in a psychotic rage, blood was jetting from his pursed shut eyes and nostrils uncontrollably his throat shrieking at a truly Inhuman pitch and tone. Lieutenant Strom watching through the series of Closed-Circuit Surveillance Cameras jettisoned the Escape Pod and mused over their Comlink that the virus was incredibly virulent and that the infected "Just didn't die". Adaska stood for a moment permitting herself a few seconds to breathe and in a state of calmness wondered if ejecting the pod with an incredibly infectious Coruscant Security Force Officer was truly wise and thought was it her she would have merely kept Mersa kept contained within the locked escape pod. Adaska opened the bulkhead through manipulating its' holographic lock prompt and stood beside Lieutenant Strom who was busy typing away at the Captain's console.

    Lieutenant Strom informed Sergeant Raythe that Tipani had gone to the ship's computer centre claiming she was capable of finding her way there independently, Raythe thought that was arrogant and reckless in equal measure and even somewhat disrespectful, thinking that as the creatures had felled more experienced and professional combatants like Mersa and Viktaro, a sensible non-combatant with minimal combat training or experience would dismiss such an expedition as an invitation for further tragedy to strike and signed her concerns to Lieutenant Strom with her hands. Strom shot a soft, friendly smirk to the silent Raythe and explained that it had been his decision as to when Mersa, Tipani and he arrived at the bridge the computers were all disconnected remotely from the mainframe and thus asked if Tipani would be comfortable with going to the data centre which surprisingly Tipani answered with a 'Yes' after she departed Lieutenant Strom placed an infected and deteriorating Mersa into the escape pod. Lieutenant Strom assured Adaska that Mersa entered of his own free will and she believed the Commissioned Officer. Strom informed Raythe that based on the limited logs he could access the vessel's Captain, Captain Grom Volkov was located within the Medical Deck's morgue and was deceased for several hours before their arrival, Strom told Adaska that they required the Captain's identification card and neural interface device so that full access overall systems and records could be obtained.

    It wasn't unexpected for Lieutenant Strom that Raythe volunteered to go down to the Medical Deck given that Dale, her friend, was a Physician. He'd previously promised his attractive subordinate that he'd help her find Dale earlier at the tram station, a promise that would hopefully be fulfilled. However, in truth, Strom wasn't too sure given what they had encountered up until this point in the sense that there was a distinct lack of any other non-infected survivors. As Adaska turned to leave Storm took a moment to warn the woman that he had been up to the upper level of the bridge and caught a glimpse of a massive creature that was "Really big." After making her ascent on the modest service elevator, Adaska walked in her typical short, careful gait towards a pair of thick open Bulkhead Blast doors behind which was the vacant biometric security station passed earlier. Just as the somewhat at ease woman came within two arms' length of her exit a quarantine siren began blaring throughout the bridge signalling the presence of contaminants in the local environment, her brief survival aboard the Atrisia had been sufficiently long to understand what that meant; the arrival of Ghouls. Armed with her Short-Barrel DC-15A, several tools repurposed into weapons and ammunition scavenged from Vikaro, Adaska placed herself in the centre of sizeable cube-shaped room up against an elevator shaft and waited with biting anxiety for the enemy to reveal itself.

    A great Ghoul with a reddish complexion and standing at least nine feet in height on its' knuckles and hind legs burst through the bulkhead door, its' appearance horribly mutated its' sharp mandibles roared furiously in her direction, and the comparatively tiny Adaska was left stunned at its' chitinous hide effortlessly ate the shots fired from her Blaster Rifle Carbine, what followed would have been comical were it not a life and death situation with the lithe and dexterous Coruscant Security Force Officer attempting to keep her distance from the Brute Ghoul which nonetheless ended up cornering the woman within the Storage room and after delivering a brutal punch to her Torso knocked Adaska violently onto her arse. Struggling to crawl from the monster it wrapped a broad set of claws around its' meals waist but not before Adaska pulled a Durasteel cylinder from her duty-belt, hefting her helmeted skull towards its' fetid maw she ended its' hunger permanently by throwing a potent riot control gas down its' gullet with a clenched fist. The Ghoul Brute dropped Adaska onto the floor who watched as the monster recoiled in pain howling and shrieking only for its' stomach to be blown open onto what had been a relatively clean floor absent signs of struggle. Panting and wheezing heavily from the powerful punch delivered to ribs Adaska took the opportunity to shoot the felled brute several times in through head while standing triumphant over the blackened ruin of its' demise.

    Standing victorious over the disgusting beast Adaska allowed herself to release a well-earned sigh, collected herself wordlessly and then walked back to the Tram Station and journeyed to the Medical Deck where she held out hope to find and rescue Dale. Arriving at the Medical Deck, an early observation made how much dirtier the ground was. The keen Adaska concluded it must have been an idea of high activity during the outbreak of whatever virus caused the mutation of men and women into the Ghoul monsters. Finding the path to the hospital's bulkhead blast door obstructed by what appeared to be a makeshift welded Durasteel barricade, Adaska decided it best to search the nearby medical centre for a plasma torch which she knew were popular in hospitals and medical centres for reasons she didn't understand but all the same thought one could be used to cut through the Durasteel barricade thanks to the intense heat they generated. Journeying towards the clinic, Adaska heard a dull thud from down the windowless hallway tentatively approaching she rounded the corner with rifle raised in anticipation of finding a target and witnessed a shirtless man thrusting his skull against a supportive I-shaped quadanium support beam.

    Walking forward quickly Adaska reached out with her armoured gauntlet towards the man who turned to reveal his eye sockets hollowed, streaks of blood oozed from the orifices of his head both natural and those created from the repetitive motion thrusting his skull into the I-beam. It was in that moment she understood, the survivor was committing suicide, and she simply watched stunned by such sheer will for an end, doing nothing to obstruct the man as he heaved back. One last time thrust face into the beam's edge. Adaska shivered, overwhelmed with pity and terror in equal measure both azure spheres stood paralysed while assessing the grisly injuries rent and carved through flesh like broad strokes of a paintbrush upon what had been a beautiful picturesque example of Human Physique. Continuing through the Medical Deck, she decided it best to conserve what remaining ammunition remained hesitant to rely upon the tools repurposed as weapons she'd scavenged across the mining vessel; fortunately, it was revealed to Adaska through her skulking the Ghouls possessed poor eyesight in comparison to her own and appeared to rely she thought on their other senses. Smelling like the strong acrid metallic scent of blood and death, Adaska was like a shadow and managed to successfully locate the storage room.

    Wrenching open a white plasteel crate it was here that the desperate woman found a plasma torch and transmitted footage of it to Lieutenant Strom from her left-shoulder mounted high-definition camera who then suggested Adaska use said torch to slice through that Durasteel barricade. Musing quite grimly that it couldn't have done much good since they detected minimal Human or Near-Human life signs aboard with the Hyperion's scanners after landing in the Hanger, carefully avoiding the Ghouls roaming hungrily through the medical deck's darkness Adaska returned to the deck's lobby where the hospital's bulkhead door still sat obstructed by the makeshift welded barricade. Cutting through it clumsily on more than one occasion Adaska almost injured herself but never slackened not when Dale could very well be on the precipice of death within the hospital somewhere, Tipani contacted Sergeant Raythe and informed her that according to ship work rosters she'd managed to decrypt within the mainframe it appeared that Dale and two other doctors named "Kan Su" and "Sallahu" according to Tipani the former being a Kaminoan Biologist and latter a Surgeon from Kandara. They were both rostered to be working. Adaska didn't think much of the two and was instead selfishly focused almost exclusively on finding Dale and Captain Volkov's body within the morgue.

    Caked on the floors and walls of the hospital was blood and signs of a struggle and yet a distinct absence of bodies. However, Adaska knew that without a doubt there must have been fatalities based on the quantities of dried dark crimson fluid and given she passed the head bashers body on the way back from medical centre concluded that the virus could not mutate or otherwise survive and successfully seroconvert a deceased host. It was a comforting grim truth to keep in mind, a method for preventing one joining the Ghouls in their insane, mindless fury. Moving through a surgical ward, Adaska searched with keen sharpness for signs of other survivors. However, all she found were more bodies and Ghouls who desperately attacked the Coruscanti Woman, bursting from ventilation shafts through her will to survive and armed with purpose-built weapons and industrial mining tools used as offensive implements she successfully reached the morgue and found Captain Volkov on an autopsy table still wearing his uniform, Adaska concluded that the Physicians on the deck were in such a frenetic situation they couldn't organise essential autopsies presumably due to the sheer influx of new casualties. Assessing Captain Volkov's body, she noted that several stab wounds were visible through his Navy Blue merchant officer's tunic and concluded the man had almost certainly been murdered.

    Captain Volkov parted with his identification card without protest in death's obliviousness through the neural lace buried at the base of his skull would need to be forcefully extracted. So Adaska set about the grisly task of taking a surgical saw to the back of his head. It was a struggle not to close her blue eyes and what little colour was in her complexion drained as flecks of bone were flicked and thrown along the morgue floor. Reaching into the circle-shaped hole bored into the man's skull Adaska wrapped her dainty fingers around the surgically-implanted mechanical device and removed it with a harsh tug. No sooner than she had turned towards the exit a Ghoul with onyx-coloured skin and glowing claret eyes burst down through a ventilation grate in the ceiling, the reaction from Adaska to this new foe was absent the surprise and fear which had been the hallmark of earlier encounters with these creatures. She stared at it coldly while heartbeat soared and pores swear profusely and shot the beast through its' wide open maw.

    Disheartened with being unable to locate Dale or any other survivors, Adaska returned to the bridge and Lieutenant Strom within the Captain's nest, Strom remarked on Adaska's dishevelled and bloodied appearance stating that all he thought it would take for the infection to enter her bloodstream was one cut from a Ghoul that broke the bodysuit's surface and skin that lay beneath. Strom bid that the mute Sergeant Raythe be careful, he then used the identification card and neural interface device secured by his subordinate to achieve top-level security clearance for all ship systems. The rumble through the hull floor told a story that the space debris field the Atrisia moved through was only intensifying. Strom commented that unless they could re-activate the mining vessel's point-defence system, they would not survive twenty-more minutes of such violent bombardment. With Strom and Adaska, the only two wearing vacuum-rated suits the latter volunteered for a dangerous walk along Atrisia's dorsal hull towards one of the point-defence gunnery stations to buy time for Tipani and Strom to bring the automated-capability back online as somebody with high-level systems access had inexplicably disabled it.

    In a stunning display of valour and bravery, Adaska ran through a service access trench at the same time asteroids. Other space debris slammed into the Atrisia's dorsal hull at incredible velocities with its' shields offline the courageous Senior Sergeant was left utterly to fortune's mercy. However, as luck would have it, there were several compressed air reservoirs and electrical generators exposed along Atrisia's body. Adaska intuitively used these as cover in a display of admirable resourcefulness and determination. Arriving at a gunnery station through an airlock slightly burned but without any breaches of her powersuit, Adaska took up the point defence cannon controls and manually engaged the space debris and asteroids for ten minutes while Tipani desperately tried to get the automated defence system back online remotely offering words of encouragement to Senior Sergeant Raythe despite their initial animosity. With its' hull integrity taking a vicious beating, beads of sweat-soaked through Adaska's hair and trickled down her face behind a stoic faceplate the gunnery station itself narrowly avoiding destruction on more than one occasion, right as a substantial rocky planetoid came within a few gravball fields distance of position and Adaska released hold onto hope Tipani brought the multitude of gunnery stations online with the automated capability restored.

    The Atrisia's myriad point-defence cannons shot bright green lances across the void of space clearing a path through the debris field for the drifting mining vessel. Tipani contacted Adaska and congratulated the Senior Sergeant on their accomplishment lavishly praising them for having saved their lives and any other survivors who might still be aboard. Allowing herself to breathe a sigh of relief a holorune in her helmet-mounted-display warned that the oxygen concentration within the ship's atmosphere was being reduced to a dangerously low level. Tipani disclosed that she believed something sufficiently large possibly a Ghoul was occupying the hydroponics and life support deck which was poisoning the vessel's atmosphere and consuming such a volume of Oxygen it was capable of affecting the entire star-destroyer sized ship. Tipani disclosed to Senior Sergeant Raythe that she possessed a double degree in computer science and chemistry, with the Sergeant's help they could create a poison to disable, neutralise or kill the "Super" Ghoul in question. Agreeing with Tipani, Adaska returned to the tram station and drove to Medical Deck once again to find a Laboratory, she arrived and found the deck in a ritualistic poise with uninfected corpses laid down in cult-like pose Adaska thought it looked like somebody was offering the dead up to the Ghouls.

    With contamination spreading throughout the Atrisia at an alarming speed, Tipani warned Adaska that it was spreading faster than initially projected and pleaded with the Senior Sergeant who was safe and secure within their powersuit to hurry. Complying with the instructions to secure the necessary chemicals required to create a weapon Adaska ran back to the reception area of the medical deck, she gave no regard to stealth this time the desperation of fighting against the clock overcame sense. Senior Sergeant Raythe cleared the floor methodically and ruthlessly, fighting like a wraith dressed in claret-stained armour with nothing held back despite being of a diminutive size when compared to her Ghoulish burly scaled foes. Brandishing a Laser saw to cut down any of the beasts who were so bold to try and rend the Officer with their claws and teeth, her initial fear and trepidation had given way to fury, fury born of the thought the Ghouls in their homogeneously hideous mutated appearance were responsible for the death of Dale. When Adaska finally reached the security barricade previously cut open a mysterious hollow peaceful sounding masculine voice rung in over the deck's intercom system taunting the woman and claiming that "You cannot interfere with the force's plan, the son has a future envisioned for all."

    Annoyingly as Tipani observed the doors had their security locally reprogrammed and disconnected skillfully from the vessel's computer mainframe forcing Adaska to use the slicing and programming skills Jon had taught her all those years ago, given years had elapsed one could forgive the Senior Sergeant for a certain clumsiness in manipulating the network's security systems; fortunately, Tipani reliant on Raythe's success for survival verbally coached the wordless Adaska through the process. Entering the Medical Centre under the direction of Tipani made her way through imaging diagnostics taking a shortcut through zero-gravity therapy to reach the centre's laboratory where she acquired a sample of highly poisonous Cytotoxic chemicals that Tipani hoped to disperse in an aerosol solution to kill the massive Ghoul creature suspected to be in Hydroponics and Life support based on the existing ship logs the swarthy woman had access to within the Atrisia's computer mainframe. Finally to enhance the effectiveness of the poison Tipani tells Adaska they will need a sample of the virus causing the Ghoul mutation and guides the Senior Sergeant back through the security barricade into the hospital with records indicating a sample was placed into cold storage.

    The struggle to the hospital's cold storage sample room was nothing short of dangerous with the Ghouls increasingly incensed by the blank Adaska's presence her very being anathema to the nature of their creation. A mysterious accented voice continued to taunt the Senior Sergeant in her advance towards Cold Storage fighting desperately through several mutated crewmen knowing that those lives still aboard the IMC Atrisia were now the responsibility of her and Lieutenant Strom and to a lesser degree Tipani who surprised Adaska with the overt concern about survivors although Adaska was reasonably sure that Tipani never truly cared about others, but knew compassion and empathy were two qualities of Adaska's that could be leveraged or exploited. It was within cold storage that Adaska came face to face with Doctor Sallahu a Kandara physician from behind a transparisteel partition. Sallahu informed Adaska that the future would belong to those who could wield the force and all others would serve as soldiers to bring about a lasting Sith Empire, with Ghouls being the purest expression of such servitude. Sallahu released a new previously unseen species of Ghoul upon the Coruscant Security Force Officer, one that stood straight and rigid exhibiting higher intelligence than the more simple beasts.

    With dexterity, agility and physical power comparable to a seven feet tall athlete the force-sensitive "NeoGhoul" was halted in its' attempt to kill Senior Sergeant Raythe by unregulated macabre terror and unyielding pain as it came within proximity to the woman shrieking and howling loudly. At the same time, Sallahu watched with bleak amusement and piqued interest. It didn't take long for the Sergeant to realise that the Hunter appeared to share the intelligence of a man yet possess the chitinous resilience of the earlier fought brute when receiving concentrated carefully aimed blaster fire. Empty-handed without the samples contained within cold storage, Tipani located other tissue logged as having been collected by Doctor Sallahu which according to an inventory database were still located within the Intensive Care Unit. Pursued by multitudes of Ghoul monsters Adaska desperately fought through the myriad locked bulkhead doors with Tipani managing miraculously to reconnect the medical deck's security to the central mainframe. However, given they were locked, it took the woman significant amounts of time to open each bulkhead on Senior Sergeant Raythe's approach. Doctor Sallahu is revealing in the pursuit that he had created two NeoGhouls.

    Bursting into Doctor Sallahu's office within the intensive care unit, Adaska made the horrifying discovery through experimental audio-recordings left by the man that he had intentionally created those monstrosities from testing on Human survivors during the initial outbreak first as a search for inoculation and then steadily driven into madness by the situation along with an accompanying absence of antipsychotic medications. In another audio recording, Adaska listened to Doctor Sallahu remark that Doctor Kan Se was a "misguided fool" for continuing to search for inoculation and treat the wounded knowing that seroconversion by the virus was all but guaranteed even in the presence of small viral loads given the prolific reproduction and aggressive behaviour is demonstrated. Within Doctor Sallahu's office, Adaska located a wall-safe and correctly concluded that the sample logged into the inventory would likely be there given Tipani's statement about logs referencing Sallahu and Se attempting to synthesize an inoculation from infected tissue. Adaska used a slicing kit located around her hips in duty-belt to breach its' security and carefully secured the sample in a hard-case, Tipani congratulated the Senior Sergeant and stated they now possessed everything required to fabricate the poison. Lieutenant Locke contacted Adaska through substantial interference and informed his subordinate that he had gone down to the Ship's life support and that he could hardly breathe the toxic air as his suit had been breached and asked that Adaska attend as soon as possible.

    Sallahu, suspicious of what the interloper was attempting to achieve, Sallahu tries to kill Adaska through venting the local atmosphere on the medical deck out into space disabling the local redundant life support and locking Tipani out of local access using administration privileges for the medical centre to override the computer mainframe's access to systems. Tipani informs the frightened Adaska that she can rectify the issue at the Biometric Security Station for the Medical Deck just fore of the Tram station where she can manually close the opened valve and re-enable life support, with limited time worth of oxygen reserve Adaska walked through the now silent and empty hospital observing ice grow over the corpses of Ghouls and what little eviscerated partially devoured uninfected dead remained. With less than sixty seconds worth of oxygen left within her powersuit Adaska successfully hacked into the security station's terminal and opened the isolation valve and reenabled the deck's redundant life support generator before registered Doctor Sallahu as dead within the ship's mainframe permanently rescinding his administrator-level access with instructions from Tipani. Adaska then moved through the cleared out deck back to the Pathology Laboratory and synthesized Tipani's designed poison using the Cytotoxic Drugs and Sample of infected tissue with the more sciences-educated woman's aid. Tipani confirmed that a crewman's log reported that at some point during the Atrisia's expedition into deep space a large creature referred to as a "Leviathan" made its' way into the Hydroponics deck where it proceeded to consume not only the crew but the crops growing within.

    With the poison created and with Tipani's help, Adaska set out to confront Sallahu where he was allegedly hiding within the Medical Deck's Cryogenic and Stasis Laboratory where terminally-ill accident casualties were usually contained. Entering the Laboratory and armed with conviction to subdue and hold Sallahu she would be left disappointed to find him within a control booth behind a pair of Durasteel doors and transparisteel. It was here that Sallahu revealed his ambition to bring the Ghouls aboard the IMC Atrisia to Coruscant where he would be able to subdue the Galaxy's heart and see all the unworthy prepared to serve a resurgent Sith Empire. Sallahu stated that he admired the female officer's courage and perseverance but noted that resistance to the force's supremacy and the creatures being utterly futile. The two Neoghouls created by Sallahu burst into the Cryogenics room through ventilation shafts and began their assault upon Adaska. At the same time, Sallahu escapes, resourcefulness carried the Senior Sergeant to victory. She managed to position the two unarmed Neoghouls within the Cryogenic freezing chamber. She shot a liquid nitrogen reservoir trapping them in ice so cold it slowed all cellular movement within it, using this desperately purchased time Adaska hacked into the control booth where Sallahu had stood and closed off the chamber and initiated the "Subject Preservation" module freezing the two Neoghouls in a block of ice.

    Breathing deeply with heart up in the throat, and astonished Tipani contacted Adaska and asked rhetorically if she was okay with the latter answering with her typical wordless silence. With Lieutenant Strom's fate keen in mind, Adaska boarded a nearby tram at a tertiary station and headed immediately to the Life support deck where she would also find the Hydroponics farms and her wayward superior. Adaska approached an exhausted and bloodied Lieutenant Strom in a sapling room, she was concerned and approached without a weapon in hand clasping her first aid kit he mistook her for a Ghoul in an oxygen-deprived hallucination and only ceased in his murderous intent once he heard the metallic din of her gasp piercing the veil cast over his gaze. Even as Adaska closed the distance, Strom used his left-hand to clasp her twig-like wrist and beckon she study him more closely. "It's over for me Dash got sliced up by a brute. I'll be one of those things before too long." Adaska sadly lingered with the man for a moment, Strom stated he would not ask the Sergeant to kill him prematurely and promised to use what life remained in him to try and get Raythe off the Atrisia if she promised to end him when the time came. Adaska reluctantly agreed and permitted the man a brief hug before Tipani chimed in and told Strom to leave the Hydroponics deck due to its' atmospheric composition which was unsuitable for supporting Human life, Strom in his pride disliked being ordered around by a Civilian Consultant but after initial recalcitrance agreed.

    Adaska was informed that the Leviathan was within food storage but that to kill it they would have to flood the entire hydroponics deck with an aerosol poison. However, Tipani anticipated this and instructed Senior Sergeant Raythe to get into the life support control board where it was possible to introduce the cytotoxic venom into the local atmosphere where it could kill the Leviathan and hopefully stop the beast from tainting the entire vessel's atmosphere with toxins. Adaska was silently concerned with the poison's potential to kill any vulnerable survivors left on the deck but grimly acknowledged the complete absence of survivor encounters to this point and capitulated to the probability that extremely few among the one-thousand four-hundred crew compliment were likely alive given the limited inventory of blasters and slug-throwers aboard. While on the way to the Life Support Control board through the towers and elevators Tipani contacted Senior Sergeant Raythe and confided that she did not trust Lieutenant Strom and believed he knew more than he was letting on, the mute Adaska merely listened but did not necessarily accept or share Tipani's suspicion but thought it prudent to keep them and Tipani's disclosure keenly in mind. Proceeding through the Air Filtration room, she entered a Hydroponic grow chamber and was confronted with the Ghastly scene of piles upon piles of partially devoured bodies; it was a sign of an increased organisation that Adaska found profoundly unsettling.

    While through an expansive refrigeration storage room stacked high with grates a gargantuan Leviathan drag tentacle attacked Adaska and attempted to drag her towards a bloodied abyss punched through the wall with its' strength, she desperately fired at the indigo-coloured featureless arm coiled around left thigh. Placing enough shots eventually into its' connective ligaments to earn a pained reverberating rumble, giving the Adaska a vindictive throw into a hard Durasteel crate in its' retreat back through the pitch-coloured portal she coughed violently and made several pained groans with her compressed ribs moving back into position painfully. After a short journey, Adaska arrived at the Life Support Control board's large reinforced durasteel doors and with Tipani's help entered the executive officer access codes to get inside where she located the Atmosphere Control System and discovered that the circulation of fresh oxygen and air filtration system had been suspiciously disabled. A giant beast couldn't have done that, no. It had to be intentional, she concluded. Adaska restarted the oxygen recycling and air filtration system which lifted an automated bio-security lockdown over food-storage where the Leviathan was supposedly located. With that done and listening to Tipani's careful and methodical instructions, Adaska successfully introduced the viciously poisonous cytotoxic poison in an aerosol solution into food storage exclusively, saving potential survivors in other parts of the deck which left the Senior Sergeant relieved.

    Tipani in a shocked panic report that the Leviathan was not killed by the poison but with it still alive there was a very potent risk it could use its' tentacle-like limbs to attack survivors and continue to release toxins into the atmosphere. With the oxygen recycling system now online there was only finite time they had before it breaking-down or spreading throughout the ship faster if the filter cartridges weren't rated for the unidentified toxin it was emitting. Adaska was given the unenviable terrifying task of going down into food storage personally to finish off the significantly weakened Leviathan. However, after reviewing crew logs regarding its' physical characteristics, she was quietly convinced of her death aboard the IMC Atrisia. A long solemn walk followed unusual for its' absence of Ghoul contact. Adaska arrived at the round bulkhead door for food-storage pausing at the door and attempted to listen to whatever was on the other side with no success, taking a deep breath she cycled the airlock and walked into a gravity-less large receptacle lightless and dark like the void, a single source of light in the form of Adaska's visor slits versus impermeable darkness. A pair of furiously hungry claret orbs burned through the night straight across space from Adaska and the battle between David and Goliath began in earnest.

    Using the zero-gravity environment and her Powersuit's mounted thrusters to her advantage Adaska in a display of dexterous agility skillfully avoid the Leviathan's tentacles and aimed at the glowing oozing orange blisters on its' body hoping they represented a weakness in its' chitinous hide. Fortunately, it did and as a product of Sith alchemy to be in Adaska's presence was painful and delirium-inducing in the extreme making what would usually be savage and precise attacks and predation over a Human clumsy weak fumbling sufficient that the Senior Sergeant sincerely hoped and believed it possible she defeat and destroy the grotesque inhuman monstrosity doubtlessly responsible for dozens of the crew's death. Throughout their struggle Adaska could hear the tortured cacophonous cries of those poor souls trapped within the Leviathan's blisters, crying out for an end to their tormented existence at the end of the Officer's blaster, she knew what that kind of unmoderated hysteria and terror felt like she'd experienced it and lived with it in the heart every day since being rescued from the Umbaran Cartel's captivity. Adaska's constant manoeuvring took a tired toll on the woman. At the same time, Leviathan in a fattened lethargy made no such physical exertion and becoming accustomed to the pain caused by Raythe's presence focused, snatching a tentacle around her ankle it dragged her flailing and screaming towards its' field-sized sword-teeth filled maw.

    That's when the sound of a high-velocity rifle shot rang out. Leviathan's grip around Adaska slackened limp she desperately pulled free with her suit thrusters and searched for the shot's origin and found the dual-slits of a Coruscant Security Force helmets grinning malevolently through the darkness. Landing on a pair of magnetised boots in the abyssal silence, she bounded across food storage's floor. She heard the familiar gravel-laugh of Lieutenant Strom. "Only one of us is dying today Dash." He said grimly with Adaska putting his arm around her nape and shoulder floating with the man out the airlock back into artificial gravity's embrace. There the two sat, with Strom sitting slumped up against the bulkhead door after it raised towards the ceiling his helmet on the floor to reveal a pair of bleeding eye sockets and streams jetting from his nostrils.

    "Not got much time, used what was left of it to do something good." Adaska knelt and listened wordlessly; she hated goodbyes moreso when thrown into an elixir of so many other emotions: Anger, Remorse and Pride. "Going to cash-in on that promise now, Dash." He smiled grimly towards Sergeant Raythe, a woman who had stolen his heart mercilessly. "My last order to you as your Superior is to prevent me turning." His smile was false and fragile "And as a friend, to stop this suffering. I want you to remember me as I am not as I'll become. Please. Take my ammo and tools just give me this mercy." Beads of sweat rolled out of Adaska's palms and forehead uncontrollably, she was being asked to kill a friend and spare him the mindless damnation and hunger of a Ghoul.

    Clearing the short-barrel DC-15A Blaster Rifle Carbine from its' holster Adaska with a finger against receiver pressed the muzzle gently against Lieutenant Strom's temple just beneath were his crown of dark brown hair ended. Their eyes were closed and together braced for what was coming, Jaedyn Strom was calm and resigned to death he knew it was death at the hands of somebody whom he trusted and loved quietly or turn into something that would kill and feed on others. Adaska's wrist twitched and tremored, her skin formed a thin membrane of sweat between itself and bodysuit with eyes pursed poodoo and teeth grit Index finger steadily pulled trigger towards palm stopping when she felt the first-stage tick over and bit bottom lip so hard it drew blood. "Take care of yourself Dash, you'll beat these mutant bastards and get through it all, you're a survivor. Never forget that." Jaedyn Strom's kind words would be his last, Adaska kindly ending the Lieutenant's life with a single-shot to the head and dared not look at his eyes or the wound created instead she carefully slid Strom's helmet back over his head and laid him on the floor delicately. She was placing both palms together over Jaedyn's breastplate before daintily taking whatever ammunition, weapons and tools he possessed before departing. Jaedyn Strom died happy knowing that Adaska, the woman he'd coveted and loved would live to continue fighting and survive another day.

    Chapter VI: Triumphant Ghosts

    Tipani earned Adaska's silent agreement when she suggested they needed to launch a distress beacon out into deep space so that the CSF Triumphant could be alerted to the dire situation aboard the IMC Atrisia. Senior Sergeant Raythe journeyed to the Mining Deck deep within ship's belly where Tipani had informed her that a small asteroid was waiting to be smelted down into Zirconium and Durasteel Ore and could be re-purposed to carry a distress beacon. With space debris not too far away, it would be essential to tether any distress beacon to an object that could withstand the interstellar travel inherently involved. Adaska is told that the tag in question would be located inside a maintenance division within the Mining Deck and that the Asteroid could only be launched from the Processing Operations Control Room, thus with that in mind, it seemed natural to the Sergeant the distress beacon would need to be received first and on the way to elevator shaft passed through a room filled with personal protective equipment which left Adaska wondering if the vessel had been over-taken so quickly by the Ghouls or communication of its' spread been so poor that the Atrisia's crew were caught utterly unprepared by the creatures.

    The mining deck elevator reached its' precipice with Adaska standing on the opposite side of its' redundant Durasteel doors; they parted open to reveal a shipboard Security Officer dragging himself towards Senior Sergeant Raythe on two bloodied elbow-stumps his navy blue overalls streaked with blood and ebony complexion torn to shreds with one hazel eye looking, up-to-the woman. He made it around three feet in her direction before collapsing face-down in a crimson arterial pool of his own making. Surrendering any hope she might have had of saving the man Adaska checked the man's vital signs and felt the distinct cardiac rhythm of a dying man. The roars of approaching Ghouls echoed up and down elevator's shaft, uncertain of its' origin she hastily nominated the large cargo gondola to descend into hell's maw. Though the lowering into the Atrisia's belly Ghouls leapt from ventilation shafts as open-topped cargo elevator passed by them, leaving the steeled and numb Adaska to slay and kill every single beast that dared in its' daftness to feast upon her flesh. Though Segreant Raythe had begun the operation aboard Atrisia filled with fear, dread and terror that anxiety had given way to anger and a furiously burning desire to see the wretched monsters and virus that created them utterly eradicated.

    Arriving onto the maintenance division's sub-deck within the dark recesses of Atrisia's stomach, Adaska was forced to ride a Gondola system above a lightless void the end of this journey couldn't have come fast enough and upon reaching the other side Tipani remotely disabled maintenance storage doors' security permitting Sergeant Raythe to shamelessly pilfer many supplies inside including new power packs for her Power Saw and the distress beacon necessary to plant onto the Processing division's interred asteroid. Adaska rides the Gondola back across and then ascends using the mining deck's elevator up to sub-deck 'B' where according to Tipani, Adaska would be able to physically access the asteroid as it was held within the ship's hull and suspended above the hull floor by a series of tractor beams and from there access Processing Operations Control Room. It sounded simple enough, but Tipani who had access to the closed-circuit surveillance cameras warned Senior Sergeant Raythe that it was full of "Those hideous monsters" Adaska not seeing any other option of getting off their distress signal with Hyperion destroyed. The Atrisia's communication array offline entered Sub-Deck B brandishing DC-15A with keen sharpness learned from Tactical Operations Division.

    Fighting through hordes of horrors Adaska reaches the processing bay and observes an Asteroid being held in a field of Tractor beams, given it was a Zero-Gravity environment within the rules itself she used her suit-mounted thrusters and floated off any vertical surfaces away from the present Ghouls and attached the distress beacon to Asteroid's ferromagnetic coating before making a frenetic advance on the Operations Control Room where she launched the Asteroid and was then abruptly locked inside by a quarantine protocol being triggered leaving a shocked and frightened Tipani scrambling to rescind quarantine to little success instead forcing Adaska to engage and destroy several Ghouls, some of whom were wearing what remained of their armoured Durasteel Mining and Engineering power suits in close-quarters using her laser saw to bisect and dismember the creatures brutally. By the time Senior Sergeant was done her muscles were left aching and found herself knee-deep in virus-carrying blood and severed limbs, a stunned Tipani stuttered nervously on a congratulation and softly reminded Adaska that they needed to repair the Atrisia's communication subspace transceiver and receiver so that the vessel itself could hear and send replies to their distress signal.

    Rising back up through the mining deck on its' primary large cargo elevator Adaska's weary and forlorn pale blue eyes caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a Neoghoul brandishing a curved sword threateningly and running a sharpening stone along the rusted blade's length. Sergeant Raythe was taken back by this sight as up until this point she'd not witnessed any Ghoul brandishing a weapon and disbelieved the view so much she suspected it was a fatigue-induced hallucination of some type as the creature's appearance from what she could see through the thin veil of smoke and steam that precipitated throughout the mining deck was nearly identical proud-standing Bipedal Neoghoul, one she recalled imprisoning within Cryogenic stasis on the medical floor. Boarding the Atrisia's tram system she spent a couple of minutes utterly absorbed within her thoughts which were taking a decidedly abyssal macabre turn while the rail-line carried her along the nearly two-thousand-meter longship, alone in the silence with nothing but the occasional ambient roar or snarl echoing through the tunnel. There was never much hope of finding survivors she thought, and Dayle was most likely dead and in a teary malaise tried to begin accepting the idea of never seeing him again. Adaska rose from her seated position once the team arrived at the subspace and Hyperwave communications station, elevated above and just aft of the bridge.

    Wasting no time in her goal of the Communications Control room, Adaska takes the deck's lift to its' highest level and is forced to walk down the interconnecting flights of stairs while fighting through Ghouls who Adaska wordlessly observed as to be evolving their near translucent scaly spine-covered skin was hardening, not to the levels of a Brute or Neoghoul but sufficient that simple bladed weapons were likely going to have a hard time injuring or harming them the speed at which this occurred left Senior Sergeant Raythe wordlessly wondering whether it was possible for any naturally evolved species to react to changing conditions in the environment so quickly and made the educated guess that it was not a reasonable conclusion that the virus responsible for seroconversion of Humans and Near-Humans into Ghouls was biologically engineered potentially as a weapon. However, she couldn't begin to wonder about its' origins. Tipani contacts Adaska and alerts the Coruscant Security Force Officer that she successfully breached the security on the Communications Control Room's door as it had been previously locked by an unidentified party within the ships' logs which she claimed to find suspicious. More sinister implications for their survival was made when Tipani contended that there was a local tap into their comlink frequency, so it was highly likely somebody, possibly a survivor or even Sallahu was eaves-dropping on them and urged Adaska be careful in the communications array.

    On the way to the Operations Command Gondola walking through a narrow hallway, Adaska witnessed a crewman wearing the garb of a shipboard corporate security officer drag his ravaged and gored body along the dirty, fetid floor towards her; his pained grunts ceased rolling over so that his eyes were turned towards ceiling. Engaging two unusually large and tall Ghouls and leaving them as smoking ruins with her Laser Saw in the narrow hallway Adaska proceeded to board a Gondola and take it to the Communications Control Room which she entered without incident. Assessing the communications array below from behind the transparisteel partition, she noted that several of the array modules had been physically displaced from their mag-lock mounting points or been physically damaged. As it stood, there was one of twelve modules that were in-position which explained to Adaska why the message earlier broadcast to the CSF Hyperion was unintelligible and garbled, thinking on that for a moment knowing what was aboard the vessel she entertained the possibility somebody might have been warning them to maintain a safe distance to preserve some sort of biological quarantine. Of the twelve modules sitting on the Communication Array's floor approximately six of them in total appeared to be in working order, Adaska disabled the artificial gravity in the array before taking an elevator down to it and entering the variety through a bulkhead door.

    The gravity-less environment made it easy for the tiny Adaska with her branch-thin limbs, rendering the array modules without weight thus she efficiently carried them and placed every module working or otherwise into their designated positions and aligned symmetrically with the centre Hyperwave and subspace transceiver and receiver that rose to the Array's closed ceiling. Completing the task Adaska departed through the airlock bulkhead taking the elevator back up to the Communications Array, she activated the array's power and immediately a message played on the control panel and from the holographic projectors on her power-suit from a Coruscant Security Officer who Senior Sergeant Raythe recognised from his voice as Security Officer Seamus Maeghon "This is CSF Triumphant to IMC Atrisia message: broadcasting on all frequencies, in response to your SOS. We retrieved life pod number eleven and are en-route to your location. This message will loop every ninety-seconds until you acknowledge." The message was dated for several hours ago which left both Tipani and Adaska in a panic with the former immediately attempting to contact the CSF Triumphant and Officer Maeghon replied but instead of being in his station's seat he was desperately pulling himself up before the view-screen with a large muscled Ghoul wearing the armour of a Coruscant Security Force Officer looming behind poised to strike and then the feed ended. It was too late, and Tipani lamented with a mix of irritation and disbelief that the Triumphant's crew opened the pod with the infected Hans Mersa aboard.

    Tipani composed herself on the video message with Senior Sergeant Raythe and warned Adaska to brace and hold onto something, as the Triumphant an Ardent-Class Fast Frigate was placed on a collision course with the several-times larger and heavier mining ship. The impact was cacophonous, Adaska held onto a fixed chair that quickly became unfixed when the vibration and stresses received throughout the hull sheared the bolts securing it to the deck leading Senior Sergeant Raythe to collapse onto her arse with neither grace nor warning. Fortunately, she received no injuries other than being wildly embarrassed by the possibility her poiseless fall had been captured on closed-circuit high-definition cameras that were scattered throughout the ship. Rising from her fallen position Adaska was contacted via video-link by an irritated Security Officer Kyle Whir who informed Senior Sergeant Raythe that they were still alive and aboard the crashed CSF Triumphant and that before the collision the Frigate had received orders to detain the Atrisia and contain the spread of the infection, which Whir stated dryly they'd failed to achieve given that Ghouls had overrun the Triumphant. Kyle Whir then suggests to the Senior Sergeant that they fulfil their directive to contain the infection by destroying the IMC Atrisia and CSF Triumphant by detonating the later's Solar Ionisation reactor, a suggestion that Adaska accepted with a smiling scowl. Kyle Whir and Adaska Raythe agreed to Rendezvous inside the Triumphant's ruination within the IMC Atrisia's ore cargo hold.

    With Tipani's input Adaska realises they could use reactor ignition parts and the coaxium aboard the CSF Triumphant to repair a modified and luxurious executive CR25 Transport sitting inside the IMC Atrisia's small-craft repair bay number nineteen which would permit them to escape the doomed IMC Atrisia—entering the Cargo Hold with a purpose to board what had been her home for several months while under the care of Coruscant Security Force psychologists, Adaska mentally steeled herself for the scenes that awaited, imagining the Triumphant's hallways coated and draped in thick crimson blood and slick ichor torn from mutilated bodies of comrades and colleagues. Officer Kyle Whir contacts Sergeant Raythe and warns her to be extremely careful aboard the Warship as it had been all but wholly overrun and that many of the infected were wearing at-least partially intact powersuits and that this would make them difficult to kill due to their heavy Reinforced Durplast Armour plating. Tipani disabled the gravity within cargo hold so that Adaska could use her thrusters to manoeuvre successfully up to the Triumphant's airlock and cycled through the redundant doors. Opening the second bulkhead door, the metallic scent of blood and charcoal death was palpable even through her Mark three powersuit helmet's advanced filters. Tipani takes the opportunity to anxiously remind Adaska that all the parts and coaxium she would need to obtain were in the engine room where the Triumphant's reaction thrummed contently. Though Adaska's silence made it difficult to gauge, Tipani worried that Sergeant Raythe's mental illness would make her unstable and present an obstruction for the IMC employee to fulfil her ambitions and designs successfully of particular attention and concern for Tipani was unaccounted for the variable of Security Officer Kyle Whir.

    It didn't take long for Adaska to reach the aft cargo bay and its' recovery cranes correctly suspecting that if the crew was going to receive an escape pod from another vessel, it would be done here. Around the IMC Atrisia's empty pod eleven where Hans Mersa had once Viciously lacerated and disembowelled Corpses of uniformed Coruscant Security Force Officers wearing their regular operational uniforms and utterly unarmed and ill-prepared for the mutated Hans Mersa as it appeared. Adaska noted that the presence of corpses suggested that the Ghouls first rampaged through an area clearing it of life before collecting bodies for feasting as observed on the IMC Atrisia where there was a distinct lack of corpses saved for concentrations or "stockpiles" of them where Ghouls congregated to feed their ravenous appetite on the muscled, lean bodies of Coruscant Security Force Officers. Kyle Whir reached the warship's bridge in the short period where Adaska entered the ship and then discovered IMC Atrisia's pod number eleven and proceeded to override the security systems of the Triumphant and successfully opened every single door aboard the Frigate. Riding an elevator down from the hanger and cargo deck down towards the habitation deck, Adaska is contacted via video feed by a Long-Necked Alien who identified itself as "Kan Su" physician aboard the IMC Atrisia it was obvious Doctor Su had been the 'local tap' listening in on their communication channels aware of who Adaska, Tipani and Kyle were along with their plan to repair the CR25 Transport in the crow wing's executive shuttle port.

    Doctor Kan Su implores the Senior Sergeant to permit him to join them aboard the transport as he possessed samples of an inoculation serum successfully synthesised aboard the IMC Atrisia during the initial outbreak. They believed that with the Coruscant Government and IMC's help, they could mass-produce it and prevent this nightmare from reoccurring. Begging the Coruscant Security Force Sergeant, Adaska shocked by the Physicians outward interest in the greater good of the Corusca Sector earned a level of trust from Senior Sergeant Raythe and allowed her initial suspicion to give way to the opportunity presented and offered Kan Su a wordless nod of their helmeted head. Adaska arrived on the habitation deck and made an immediate beeline to the local Armoury where she found a largely unmolested supply of weapons, tools and armour shamelessly taking the opportunity to exploit the absence of a Quartermaster's store clerk and pilfer as many supplies and munitions she could comfortably carry within the myriad of pouches on her Powersuit. Sufficiently armed to engage a small platoon Adaska continued on her way towards the primary drive deck passing through a hallway connecting armoury to a nearby infirmary. Outside the Infirmary, she witnessed a mutilated Coruscant Security Force Officer slumped against the wall beside infirmary door in the middle of transforming into a Ghoul. Without hesitation or outward remorse Adaska levelled her blaster towards the tortured man and shot him several times, an action she found particularly unpleasant and difficult to perform in equal measure.

    Inside the infirmary, a somewhat grimly surprised Adaska found no bodies which again hinted towards the Triumphant's crew being unable to perform basic triage during the chaos of trying to presumably locate an infected Hans Mersa who rampaged through the ship. Moving through the barracks, Sergeant Raythe allowed herself a moment of vanity and retrieved her fully charged personal smart tablet from her bunk receptacle given that it contained copies of holo-stills and other digital memories that she treasured. Fighting her way through Ghouls who were once colleagues Adaska found herself confronted by a mutated Security Officer Saemus Maeghon who leapt out of a ventilation shaft on the wall and clasped his clawed hands around her shoulders in an attempt to secure a grip around her thin throat which failed thanks to her powersuit's rigid thick ballistic collar fortunately and roared furiously towards her faceplate with a split jaw that burst forth through his transparisteel visor and duraplast helmet. Adaska's S-1 Vamblade leapt forward from its' housing attached above left vambrace. She pushed the impossibly sharp double-sided blade through the space between Maeghon's ballistic collar and chin through the mutating Officer's throat which sent the monster recoiling and vomiting its' virulent bile across the floor in cacophonous death throes. Sparing a moment Adaska offered a brief but sincere prayer over Seamus' soul before continuing towards a flight of service stairs and taking them down deeper into the Triumphant's belly towards the drive deck where the reactor waited.

    Reaching the Drive deck and moving into its' atrium Adaska breathes a sigh of relief witnessing Kyle Whir attempt to persuade and calm a General Duties Coruscant Security Force Officer to aid them. However, in uncontrollable panic, the Officer flees after witnessing a blood-covered Adaska walking in their direction. Kyle fully capable of catching the man thanks to their superhuman Physiology, beckoned their comrade to stop with no success, they fled through a bulkhead door. "Damn, it." Adaska heard Kyle say as she approached Whir who turned to face Senior Sergeant Raythe with their tandem amber-glowing eye lenses, Adaska mused on the helmet's design and the significance of a Security Officer so new to the organisation being a Tactical Operations Division Marksman, it was something unheard though reflecting on Kyle having rescued her from the Umbaran Cartel Adaska permitted herself to feel somewhat safer with Officer Whir's company. Sergeant Raythe mused wordlessly to Whir in sign language that the Drive Deck was separated in two by a thick transparisteel partition to protect the crew from releases of ionizing radiation through the deck and that they'd need to take an elevator up to the undivided portion of the floor to access both the Reactor maintenance storage room and Hyperdrive Compartment. Whir replied through their hollow metallic vocal distorter. "I suggest we separate Sergeant; I'll get the parts we need to repair the Cee-Ar twenty-give likely to be more mutants there." Adaska, reluctantly agreed worried it would appear she'd cowardly taken the more natural route, it was her aristocratic vanity talking and she could identify that but couldn't shake the feeling all the same. Though, there was never any doubt from Raythe that Whir would succeed.

    While fending off an assault from colleagues turned into monstrous devils Adaska ran across the connected level of drive deck and then down a flight of stairs towards the Hyperdrive Compartment and frenetically opened its' large shielded bulkhead doors which made a horrifically unpleasant dry grinding whine while moving across a pair of rails cruelly cracked during the violent collision with IMC Atrisia. Locally locking the compartment's door to slow down the ingress of Ghouls, Tipani then contacts Adaska and provides instructions from the IMC Atrisia's maintenance manuals on how to disconnect the warship's hyperdrive and then remove its' precious coaxium reservoir of the valuable resource. Removing the coaxium samples into a hard-case on her person, Adaska contacted Whir and informed them of progress made with Whir confirming that they'd reached the Reactor's control room and used Hahn Kadsson's neural interface device to start a self-destruct sequence for the Triumphant's solar ionisation reactor which Tipani protested fiercely, Kyle Whir coldly replied "Apologies Ma'am, but our orders are to contain the Infection aboard the IMC Atrisia by any means necessary. We'll have three hours to evacuate, and then the Triumphant explodes." Adaska unable to speak allowed their silence to confer tacit approval when Tipani attempted to turn to the Senior Sergeant for a reprieve, Raquelle Tipani's recalcitrance to destroy what was most assuredly a doomed ship and biological superweapon raised hairs on Adaska's nape.

    Raythe and Whir fought their way to the nearest airlock together with latter making Ghoul-killing look effortless, Adaska's retinas tracked the woman's bio-metric data displayed on runes, astonishingly despite being besieged by unrelenting hordes of armoured Ghouls Officer Whir's heart-rate scantly increased over sixty beats per minute, an impossible feat leaving Adaska to conclude that they were a cybernetic organism. Kyle and Adaska narrowly escape the Triumphant into the IMC Atrisia's cargo hold with the latter's lungs heaving deeply in a mute's analogue to joyous laughter, she was elated to be alive and finally have the means of returning home. Returning to the Tram Station, a confused Kyle Whir took the ride's opportunity to question Senior Sergeant Raythe as to what had happened aboard the IMC Atrisia and the woman explained as best she could with Galactic Sign Language which in all fairness was precious little but Adaska also took the opportunity to caution Whir against trusting Tipani disclosing that the woman had attempted to "drive a wedge between" herself and Lieutenant Strom. Adaska believed Tipani knew precisely how and why the outbreak started given her access to all the ship's logs but had chosen not to disclose that information, possibly out of a mistaken belief that Raythe wouldn't notice caught up in her myriad objectives across the Atrisia.

    Chapter VII: Ardent Zeal

    Following their narrow escape from the CSF Triumphant Kyle Whir and Adaska Raythe arrive on the crew deck with a purpose to repair executive CR25 Transport within the executive officer's shuttle compartment and use said hyperdrive equipped craft to escape now that the Triumphant's reactor was set to explode in three hours due to a cascading fuel containment failure set into action by the ruthless Kyle Whir who wanted to ensure that the containment was complete, tactfully Whir had not disclosed how the to self-destruct was going to be achieved suspecting that Raythe or Tipani might realise the precariousness of their situation and panic. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them. Tipani contacts Senior Sergeant Raythe and informs them that they'd pinpointed the CR25 Transport in question within the executive officer's lounge but disclosed that its navigation computer had been wiped with a copy of its' programming and database being suspiciously compartmentalized into three different data storage discs secured across the crew deck. Raquelle irritated informed Raythe and Whir that the Crew Deck had been severed physically from the computer mainframe in a suspected act of sabotage, Tipani gave Raythe and Whir the option of finding an executive officer's code cylinders or individually hacking every locked door on the deck. Senior Sergeant Raythe opted for the former option and the two Coruscant Security Force Officers set-out through the eerily deserted floor.

    On their way to the mess hall where Raythe hoped to locate a deceased executive officer and their code cylinders, she and Kyle Whir noted that there were several ritually posed corpses draped in sheets and flanked by scented candles. Whir darkly pointed out that the atmosphere was "Romantic" with a dry chuckle which Adaska did not appreciate in the slightest, thoroughly traumatised by her experience aboard the IMC Atrisia. Sergeant Raythe noted that some of the deceased crew appeared to have perished by their hand will simple slugthrower pistols found near the bodies. Adaska made an exact point to order Whir to empty the guns of their magazines and seize one weapon both for herself and the Security Officer. The pair took an elevator up to a Cat-walk which overhung the mess hall through a transparisteel ceiling, and Kyle commented that with so many bodies they were bound to find an executive officer's uniform among them. However, Adaska thought that it would be silly to believe in certainty. Tipani contacts the couple and informs them of a storage device being inside the Mess Hall on the person of a deceased security officer who was according to biometric logs should still be there, moving towards the Mess Hall's locked bulkhead door entrance Kyle and Adaska were confronted by the scene of Doctor Zaid "Sallahu" brandishing a Syringe filled with some amber-coloured liquid at a crewman wearing the garb and bronze-coloured ribbed armour plating of an IMC Engineering who was bound, gagged and secured to a Durasteel chair.

    Desperate to save the man Raythe immediately set about trying to breach the bulkhead door's security while Kyle beat their First Order-issued G-12A Blaster Rifle's stock against the Transparisteel partition with a strength that shook the floor's deck plating but proved insufficient to breach that veil. Doctor Sallahu pleaded with the pair to "Cease their struggle" and "Embrace the future, like this courageous Martyr." The religious fanaticism infuriated Whir who viciously replied in a metallic snarl. "I'm going to kill you with my bare hands." Bravado and threats proved ineffective in deterring a zealot with conviction, Sallahu plunged the syringe's length into his victim's bicep, and its' contents plunged into his sinewy limb. The crazed Kandara turned his hazel spheres skywards with arms held out and proclaimed "Let this man be taken as a servant of Bogan and serve the will of the force." He then departed to a nearby elevator and disappeared; it was about this time that Adaska after a painstaking two minutes managed to breach door's lock followed closely by Whir they approached the bound man and tore the electrical tape from mouth's skin, immediately he shouted. "Getaway! Getaway!!" Raythe understood the man's meaning and thrust herself towards the significantly denser and stronger Whir whom she bounced off gently; Kyle asked what the Senior Sergeant what she was doing before the man's porcelain features began contorting his bones shifting like a formless mass before the very eyes.

    Spines erupted from the man's bodysuit his ribbed armour blasted from his already considerable musculature which increased in density to grotesque proportions with steaming claret-coloured fluid jetting from nostrils. Plate-coloured skin began physically hardening what were terrified screams deepened into a throaty roar with teeth rising from his gums visibly like blades. Knowing full-well what was occurring Senior Sergeant Raythe shot the man several times in his torso even holed his Durasteel Chair found itself unable to contain its' mutated prisoner. He snapped its' arms before grabbing one of its' legs hefting it up over his skull and slamming it down over Adaska's helmeted head sending her down onto the deck. Though, before the Engineer turned Neoghoul could exploit the opportunity to finish Senior Sergeant Raythe, Kyle Whir jolted forward and slammed a closed fist straight through its' clasping teeth with such force the Security Officer secured a one-hundred-kilogram grip over its' spinal cord and effortlessly lifted the similarly sized creature standing at six and a half feet tall clear of the deck floor. Its' clawed fingers scratched in shrieking futility at Whir's orange lenses with the glee of a sadist Kyle or another entity that inhabited their mind chuckled outwardly. "This one's different, hardened skin? It won't save you." Whir stated with pure coldness before throwing the beast into a cratered floor and then crushed its' skull beneath their boot like the roof of a weighty beef pie.

    Briefly inspecting their armoured gauntlet, Whir was quietly disappointed to find several tears through their bodysuit and gave an irritated sigh glancing over their shoulder to find Senior Sergeant Raythe recovering dizzily rising in their Duraplast enclosed feet while clasping at their helmeted head with off-hand, Whir silently approved of Adaska's insistence of keeping master hand secured around their DC-15A's pistol grip little habits like that had no doubt contributed to the woman's survival aboard IMC Atrisia or so Kyle thought. "We've got to keep going." They said plainly, and Senior Sergeant Raythe nodded their head, which made Whir smile behind a blank faceplate, Adaska noted Whir's bloodied gauntlet who brushed off the woman's concern stating. "Got time before issues hit." Reluctant to abandon such a valuable ally and forsake a comrade to what could be a lonely painful death and transformation Raythe decided to stand with Whir until the end and follow Lieutenant Jaedyn Strom's example. The pair went down an elevator to the mess hall's lower level where two of Doctor Sallahu's Neoghouls attacked them with melee only to be cut down by a Laser Saw wielding Adaska Raythe and Kyle Whir whose shots were so precise as to go through the beast's top lip and into brain stem killing one of the two instantly. Raythe identified the deceased Officer as identified by Tipani and searched them for the data device and located a storage stick and in a stunning change of luck two Executive Officer code cylinders, and provided one to Kyle Whir.

    Returning to the Mess Hall's upper floor, the pair of Officers were contacted by Doctor Kan Su who informed the couple he was inside the crew deck at a Security Station and wanted to meet them and discuss their escape once Raythe and Whir had recovered all three of the storage devices. Adaska and Kyle move from the Mess Hall through to the Recreation Hall and unlock a nearby ship turbolift with their executive officer code cylinders and then take it to Aurek Block's accommodation area from where the pair moved through the accommodation blocks searching the bunks of the ship's junior executive officers and division leaders steadily discovering the storage devices amidst their belongings. There were not too many Junior executive officers aboard the massive IMC Atrisia given it was crewed by a modest one-thousand four-hundred personnel which helped to narrow the Officer's search who used their policing training and skills to efficiently and methodically speed along the physical searching process. Unfortunately for Raythe and Whir the third and final storage device was found by Tipani to be located within Besh Block's crew accommodation units, Besh Block according to Raquelle had been breached during the movement of the IMC Atrisia through the debris field leaving it in a vacuum state, which Whir ostensibly could not enter due to their breached bodysuit. Having fought fiercely beside one-another and coming to immensely respect Adaska's survivor instinct and rank superiority Kyle offers to join the Besh Block's accommodation units alone and retrieve the storage device which Sergeant Raythe unsurprisingly turned down the offer and thought it strange that Whir would even offer and when inquiring as to why Kyle would say such a thing the significantly taller Officer answered. "We don't know what could be behind that door; I haven't seen one survive or die in space yet, and given what I've seen thus far, nothing would surprise me."

    If Sergeant Raythe could have vocalised laughter at Whir's weak and dry jest they would have, the couple agreed to permit Adaska to enter alone with a begrudging Kyle waiting behind. Moving through the darkness with nail-biting teeth-chattering anxiety, with the guidance of Raquelle Tipani the woman managed to locate the final data storage device within an ice-covered locker hinting towards extended exposure to space's cruel and cold touch which chilled Adaska even through her powersuit's bodysuit and its' rather advanced environmental control systems. Kyle and Adaska make their way back into the Commons Lobby where Doctor Sallahu traps the pair of Security Force Officers claiming that they'll be unable to escape like the latter did earlier on the medical deck and viciously unleashes every single Neoghoul he has created including the two Adaska had earlier frozen within the Cryogenics laboratory. Ghouls and Neoghouls poured into the Commons Lobby from ventilation shafts. However, the Officers stood back to back and engaged every single monster who came their way, the Neoghouls surprisingly armed themselves with slugthrower pistols similar to the ones found earlier amidst ritualistically posed crewmen. The latter had ostensibly taken their own lives. Even in the face of gunfire did neither Adaska nor Kyle slacken or visibly wane. However, they did seek cover behind some plasteel crates. Tipani worked to the best of her abilities to lift the quarantine lockdown maliciously triggered by Sallahu and eventually succeeded through not before Kyle Whir added several gunshot wounds to their growing list of injuries. With the biological lockdown lifted, Sergeant Raythe checked the injured Whir's condition with the latter brushing off attempts to treat them saying. "I'll heal, we can't afford to slow down now." Though this might have appeared actions of heroic Bravado, Kyle was tacitly concerned the CSF Triumphant's reactor fuel containment might catastrophically fail and explode in several megaton-sized nuclear fusion detonations and wisely placed their survival as a higher priority over treating gunshot wounds from relatively low-velocity and low-calibre slugthrowers.

    Doctor Kan Su contacts Kyle and Adaska inviting them to meet him the executive officer's lounge. However, Tipani warns the pair that the physician could quite readily be as unhinged as Sallahu reminding Sergeant Raythe that the two physicians were colleagues and acquaintances of Dayle who was suspiciously absent. Crossing the commons areas' catwalk and into the executive lounge security checkpoint, the Officers found Kan Su behind a thick Transparisteel Security partition. Kan Su explains that escape thanks to the arrival of Senior Sergeant Raythe and the repair crew is now possible thanks to the supply of Coaxium and the clever use of the doomed Triumphant's reactor as a bomb with which to use to destroy the Atrisia however Kan Su distrusting of authority explained that she possessed several samples of both an inoculation serum that he fabricated and the virus which created the Rakghoul mutation and asked the Officers to promise that they'd see the cure and viral samples handled appropriately and take care to ensure they did not fall into the wrong hands. Unable to speak Raythe made the motion "I'll do my best to make sure that happens" In Galactic Sign Language but Kan Su not understanding made Kyle speak on Sergeant Raythe's behalf. Visibly relieved and releasing a deep sigh, Doctor Su revealed they were the ones who sabotaged the life support and asteroid defence system in an attempt to see the ship destroyed. The infection stifled as they'd lost hope of it otherwise being contained.

    Though neither Raythe nor Whir couldn't condone the Doctor's unlawful homicidal actions, they both accepted it for the pragmatism and creativity displayed when faced with such an unprecedented crisis. Doctor Kan Su instructs the pair to find the CR25 Transport in the executive shuttle hall, with it being the last serviceable small-craft on-board the Atrisia it was their only chance of escape. Making their way into the shuttle hall after Kan Su lifts the security on hanger's bulkhead door Adaska and Whir enter the Odyssey the CR25 Transport through its' open port-side airlock door with the former breathing audibly as if a weight had been lifted off her breast. Quickly she pulled each of the three data storage sticks from her thigh-mounted Hardcase and uploaded the nav files into the navigation computer while Kyle jealously guarded his Superior. Permitting her the necessary time to additionally go down into the transport's hyperdrive compartment, under Tipani's exact instructions placed the CSF Triumphant's coaxium into the IMC Odyssey's hyperdrive. With that done the Transport was a spaceworthy vessel but still secured through a series of magnetic locks which Kyle and Adaska unlocked from either side while embattled in a vicious engagement fighting against Sallahu's Rakghouls which he was attracted to the executive hall through playing a cacophonous opera dirge over the public announcement system.

    Killing a dozen monsters who attempted to kill them Whir and Raythe, Kan Su boards the Odyssey while his rescuers' test-fired transport's engines from the hall's flight control centre, with magnetic locks, released Kan Su manipulated the vessel's elevator and told Whir and Adaska to meet him on the dorsal hanger's flight deck. Tipani urged obedience as Kan Su now possessed exclusive dominion over their last desperate means of escape. While returning to the deck's tram station, the zealous and cooly insane Doctor Sallahu contacts Adaska, Kyle and Raquelle via video link and in a final show of faith in the force's great plan injects a massive dose of the Rakghoul virus into his arm before the eyes of Raythe and Whir who halted and placed themselves in a textbook triangle of safety before unceremoniously gunning the mutating Doctor down in a hail of precise and merciless Tibanna Plasma. Even twitching on the floor, Adaska who had nearly been viciously murdered and torn apart by creatures born out of a nightmare because of Sallahu marched with fury unmistakable up to his half-mutated ruined form and delivered a single shot into his bloated cranium through an eye-socket. Sitting in the Atrisia's tram, Kyle knew pain and understood that it wasn't the time or the place to attempt and offer to counsel. Adaska's journey aboard the IMC Atrisia would ostensibly conclude where it began above the blackened mark left by Hyperion against hanger floor.

    Tipani contacts Whir and Raythe after they arrive at the flight deck and informs the pair she was going to make a run for it to join them from the computer mainframe at the bridge, a biological quarantine is triggered within the flight lounge's reception area. Adaska would find herself back where her ordeal began. However, this time as the Rakghouls burst through ventilation openings in the ceiling and walls, the grotesque monstrosities found themselves more the hunted than the hunter. Taking a position against the bulkhead door leading out onto the flight deck's raised Jetti, Adaska and Kyle destroyed more than two-dozen Rakghouls and Nekghouls that came for the Blank and her former Death Trooper companion, the combination of their abilities complimenting one-another spectacularly in a desperate final struggle against creations of an ancient Sith-Lord. With the final demon keeling over quarantine lifted and Adaska's run towards Kan Su who waited on the jetty told of severity and fear that deliverance would be cruelly stolen away. It was, in the form of a single gunshot fired from the Odyssey's open port-side airlock door into Kan Su's back. With the ray-shielded hanger door opening, Tipani revealed her true colours and stole the transport right out from under Whir and Raythe the latter of which dared to fire at its' engines in futility. At the same time, Adaska cradled the dying Kan Su in her arms. "The samples!" Shocked the long-necked alien with its' thin lips cried feebly before expiring in a drawn-out breath.

    Gloating at Whir and Raythe from over their shared visual-link, Tipani claimed that her Sith Masters had been searching for the "Rakghoul Plague" For a long time and that it was created by that ancient order of dark side practitioners for the creation of a loyal and devastating army. Tipani claimed to have been concerned earlier that she wouldn't be able to collect suitable samples of the virus. However, that Doctor Kan Su went a step further and gave her a "Bonus" With the presence of an inoculation serum which could be used to immunise Sith Troopers against the virus' effects. Raquelle Tipani claimed that she had been surprised and thoroughly impressed by Whir and Raythe's combat performance. However, as Coruscant Security Force Officers, they were a liability that couldn't be trusted and risk surviving. Referencing Whir's injuries Tipani apologised and said: "It's a shame you'll have to die by either your hand or Sergeant Raythe's or turn into a Rakghoul, Whir." To which an apparition replied in Kyle's hollow metallic distorter-warped tone. "Not before you." Tipani briefly addressed Adaska and confirmed the woman's suspicions stating that Dayle had died by his own hands two hours before they had even arrived, making a disrespectful and decidedly belittling 'Hmph' at that before ending their call. Desperate for a solution, Adaska's icy blue eyes darted around the flight deck. They spotted a control tower above reception with her mind going back to the tractor-beam guidance system. Without the time or will to explain Senior Sergeant Raythe charged towards the mast up a flight of scaffold stairs and virtually ran through its' Durasteel Door to the control panel.

    Once the display for Atrisia's tractor beam arrays was visible on the hololithic projection that's when Whir who followed lazily realised what Senior Sergeant Raythe was trying to accomplish and said after giving a genuine hearty chuckle. "That poor bastard never stood a chance with you, Sergeant." Remotely seizing control over the Odyssey using IMC Atrisia's tractor beam arrays a furious and frustrated Tipani contacted Whir and Raythe again and claimed that it "Wasn't over" with an escape pod visibly shooting out from Odyssey's aft portion. Adaska was so utterly wrathful that her vocal dis-articulation was overcome with a tsunami of rage that frothed like an ocean dripping from lips. "You're right Raquelle, this isn't over we'll be right with you." The heavily accented speech coming from Raythe's annunciator earned a wordless smile from Whir who watched with a toothy grin as the CR25 Transport thrummed modestly back into the hanger. Making a beeline for the Odyssey Adaska and Kyle boarded and predictably found none of Doctor Kan Su's lifesaving serum to administer to Kyle and immediately departed into the cold liberation of space tracking down Tipani in an adrift escape pod approximately five kilometres from the IMC Atrisia. Predictably Raquelle refused to surrender the samples and threatened to destroy them; Whir agreed to stay behind and try to negotiate with Tipani while Adaska floated quietly towards the escape pod in her powersuit and listened to Whir's comical verbal conflict resolution skills.

    Rather than make one final demand for peaceful surrender from the confessed Spy, Adaska without warning grabbed the escape pod's manual release handle and released its' safety and peeled the weightless panel off into space exposing Tipani's unshielded skin and lungs to the void's embrace. Raythe's eyes didn't stare at the suffocating Raquelle or the ice rapidly forming across the surface as Whir might have in their latent sadism instead Adaska secured a professional grip on the Durasteel case containing Kan Su's samples and used boot-mounted thrusters to glide towards IMC Odyssey sparing a glance back to witness Raquelle's hands in a clawed rigour mortus with nails clasping desperately towards throat in a motion that grew visibly weak and frail ending in deathly stillness. Boarding the Odyssey, in the company of somebody now well and indeed considered a friend Kyle Whir removed their helmet and commented in their typical sardonic dryness. "Looks like you've saved my life, Sergeant." Adaska was left speechless and stone like a statue while holding a vial of Kan Su's serum utterly stunned by the feminine facial features and working-class accent of somebody whom she'd assumed based on Physique and demeanour had to be something of a brutish man but found the truth far more palatable. Swallowing Adaska replied in her painfully aristocratic elocution "Yes well, fortunately for you, I'm not a banker and therefore impose no interest on my debtors." The two men shared a laugh as a toast to what would become a friendship held dearly to Adaska's heart; its' birth celebrated in Triumphant's spectacular beautiful revenge upon IMC Atrisia utterly obliterating the vessel on a tide of emerald green and ice-blue dancing waves of Cronau and Cherenkov radiation across space's abyssal planes.

    Chapter VIII: Reunion Tour

    Despite their arguably heroic actions upon returning home to Coruscant Adaska was not given a heroes' welcome and instead placed on administrative leave. At the same time, a critical incident investigation was launched by CORSECFOR's professional standards branch and their prosecutors attempted to collect any evidence that could have supported criminal charges including their helmet camera footage from the "IMC Atrisia Incident" humiliated on the psychologically untenable ground already though she was speaking again the traumatic experience just survived left Adaska Raythe as a ruined recluse who was in such a state that Gideon Raythe himself journeyed to Coruscant to care for his adult daughter who while resilient had been reduced to a shipwreck. Gideon moved-in with Adaska and for the first time behaved like a Father from a well-adjusted family and used the opportunity to try and build a relationship with her. Though Gideon believed his presence to be beneficial, its' immediate impact on Adaska was undoubtedly mixed. On more than one occasion, Gideon had to help his daughter. The latter would often be found overcome with guilt and slashing her wrists while crying. Gideon could do nothing but listen sadly as his daughter sliced through the skin over her wrists while describing creatures and scenes that existed for him only in the most macabre holo-films and her perceived failure to save Dayle her first real friend who she felt loved her unconditionally.

    While on Administrative leave Adaska received appropriate financial support from Coruscant Security Force and Gideon Raythe who lovingly coerced his daughter into attending psychological counselling and for the second time in her relatively short-life was later referred onto a Psychiatrist and medicated heavily with Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor stims which to Gideon's relief helped reduce the severity of his first-born's symptoms and suicidal ideation. One evening while tactfully explaining her experiences aboard the IMC Atrisia, Gideon displayed an unusual show of adoration and said to his daughter. "Dash, I love you, and I couldn't be more proud of what you've accomplished and survived" Never before had Adaska frequently heard either of parents express love and pride in her character and work. However, in her most dire need of it, Gideon provided and was uplifted by Adaska's dedication to seeking professional treatment for dealing with the trauma received. The inquiry began in earnest, and Adaska and Kyle were both independently interviewed by Professional Standards Branch. The latter queried the two woman about their actions and demanded justification. Adaska tried to defend herself calmly; the vocal disarticulation inconveniently returned unpredictably when she is under extreme stress. "Why did yourself and Officer Whir destroy the ship, was it not possible that other survivors could be on-board." Well-rested and confronted with the reality her actions might amount of the death of innocents, Adaska projected the contents of her stomach onto the table between herself and the interviewer.

    Apologising profusely with an unintelligible stutter the interviewer struggled not to display a level of pity for Senior Sergeant Raythe and offered the woman a tissue which she accepted with tears streaming down her face. Composing herself with the nobility of an aristocrat ignoring what had just transpired with look turned an embarrassing scarlet "There was no sign of other life on-board, and where I did encounter survivors they expired shortly after that. So I concluded that by the time the Triumphant's reactor detonated there couldn't possibly be any further survivors." Scribbling down Senior Sergeant Raythe's answer a quick intermission was taken to clean up the mess of Adaska's makings with the woman taking an opportunity to down some of her anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications. The interviews between Adaska and her smiling, gentle interrogator continued over three excruciating sleepless days were to her credit Adaska managed not to disclose anything too incriminating or damning. Coruscant Security Force's prosecutors examined what evidence they had available in the form of Kyle Whir and Adaska Raythe's helmet recordings. They believed they had insufficient evidence to successfully prosecute and convict either Officer, anticipating they would both plead a duress defence which they were uncertain could be overcome. The Prosecutors discussed all of this in front of a thoroughly disgusted Colonel Locke who found it abhorrent the Officers were flippantly discussing charging and convicting a woman who had been through what Senior Sergeant Raythe was forced to endure aboard the IMC Atrisia.

    Fortunately, thanks to Kyle Whir's interview results and the intervention of Colonel Locke into the critical incident and subsequent criminal investigation, no criminal charges were levied against either Officer survivor of the IMC Atrisia. However, Adaska Raythe was sternly reprimanded for their actions by Professional Standards Branch and shared this fate with Kyle Whir but was mercifully spared a reduction in rank and pay-grade though the pair were informed what occurred aboard the IMC Atrisia was going to be subject to the official secrets act and the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation's owner, Daan Sarnova who unknown to Adaska was a personal friend of Kyle informed Whir and Raythe through Colonel Locke that the families of the incident's victims were to be compensated and that the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation had come to an agreement with Coruscant Security Force not to pursue the organisation through the civil courts. For twelve weeks Adaska was placed on administrative leave and urged to receive intensive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy by Colonel Locke who noticed the signs of self-harm wordlessly upon Senior Sergeant Raythe's narrow wrists and asked whether the woman whether or not she was coping and what Adaska would do if she couldn't with the woman cryptically replying "I don't know, but my Father is looking after me at home so I should be okay." Knowing Raythe wasn't alone reassured him he wasn't going to have to make a phone call to the ruthless Lord Gideon Raythe that his daughter had died.

    Twelve weeks passed with a frenetic pace with Adaska seeing steady increases in mood and return to a neurochemical balance approaching baseline and normal after more than two years of unrelenting violent physical torture, abuse and combat. Gideon only doted on his daughter with extreme pride to observe her resilience in real-time, parental supervision and made it a point to use his rarely used culinary skills to prepare Adaska dinner in the evenings. Having her meals prepared almost exclusively by servants and professional Chefs as a child, cooking became something the pair bonded over with Gideon offering to teach his daughter how to cook given the sheer amount of hours they were cooped-up within her apartment the Collective Commerce District on Coruscant's highest level. It was absent the familiar opulence, but Gideon's daughter had always somewhat been a champion of "The People" those same commoners who had tortured and abused her, he would never share her compassion and love for society's impoverished dregs. Dash found a new outlet through cooking, and it became something of a hobby for the aggrieved woman who felt instead spurned by the very organisation she'd fought to serve so faithfully. Jon and Ulrik visited Gideon and Adaska at the latter's residence in a surprise visit which lifted her spirits into the heavens. However, it did not outwardly show through her outwardly dishevelled and depressive appearance.

    Through Adaska's recovery, she picked up several new hobbies, including Target Shooting and Fencing. Kyle Whir who had revealed herself to be Kyli Graf was responsible for coaxing interest in target shooting out of Dash. At the same time, Gideon helped his daughter enrol in Fencing lessons where she demonstrated an aptitude for melee combat, a decidedly noble pastime. Adaska used the hobbies as a means of escaping from her apartment, showing a renewed interest for activities that told or recovery from the depressed state that ordeal aboard the IMC Atrisia had left upon the woman. Determined to return to the Coruscant Security Force as a more efficient member of a Tactical Operations Division team Adaska's target-shooting focus remained on short-barrel blaster rifles like the DC-15A and DC-17 Hand Blaster, essentially honing her close-quarters combat fighting skills. Towards the end of the inquiry into the IMC Atrisia incident, Gideon Raythe invited his daughter to enter a Hesperidium-hosted Corusca duelling festival called "Turhaya Eve" Where participants from the working-class of Coruscant up to scions of nobility competed under the light of Coruscant's moons for a generous credit prize and trophy constructed from song steel with Gideon claiming it was an effective way of networking with aristocrats and that he'd front the admittance cost for her to compete, even though he quietly knew she could pay for it herself Gideon wanted to tactfully gauge whether or not she would accept a gift from him after years of rejecting such attempts.

    Initially reluctant to perform in front of a crowd, Gideon realised he'd neglected to mention as per the festival's tradition the Participants wore Atrisian masks with a design of their choosing ensuring anonymity. Gideon struggled to stifle a smirk as Dash's recalcitrance turned to something vaguely resembling enthusiasm and agreed. However, Gideon tactfully concealed the fact that the competition's winner was required to reveal their identity he withheld this not because Gideon thought his daughter of all people would lose no he was too proud for such defeatist thought. Rather, Gideon hoped to aid his daughter in overcoming her social anxiety which had long gone unchallenged it baffled him that Adaska could survive the things she had and work within a unit whose sole function was to execute high-risk warrants and perform counter-terrorism operations yet still found herself unable to stand before a large gathering of people without collapsing into stuttering and sometimes even a blubbering mess. Gideon finally returned home after Adaska's administrative leave to the Raythe Family's prestigious estate on Hesperidium informed Adaska's siblings and her mother of Dash's upcoming participation in the Turhaya Eve festival which excited the scions the majority of whom had lived uninteresting careers in the services sector or politics were jubilant at the opportunity to watch their Officer sister fight.

    Ulrik, Jon and Rikke were contacted by Gideon. The three organised their lives tactfully so they could attend with Kyli Graf or "Kyle Whir" as they had also been known purchased a spectator's ticket wishing to watch their friend perform in the annual tournament. Adaska returned to her work as a Coruscant Security Force Officer. After a brief period of six weeks being on light duties, she was permitted upon her kind Psychiatrist's recommendation to perform all operational responsibilities and thus Colonel Locke still concerned about what he could identify as signs of sleeplessness hinting towards an incomplete recovery put her back on with Tactical Operations Division resuming duties as a shift commander though transferred to the relatively quiet level 5127 and Galactic City. Kyli Graf living as Kyle Whir managed to get conveniently put onto Senior Sergeant Raythe's shifts and the newly minted Sergeant did their best to keep an eye on superior's mental health. During a lunch break, Kyli and Adaska sat together within their Panther Police interceptor at a fast-food restaurant and as two friends do discuss their romantic lives with latter disclosing that she'd only ever had one real love in Ulrik Lagerfeld, a childhood friend. Kyli revealed that she too had little in the way of authentic romantic experiences beyond lovers but claimed to desperately fancy a man who took short notice of them, shamefully disclosing that she had been diagnosed with Psychotic Disorder but chuckled at their shared romantic failures saying "At least we can be broken and lonely together." A statement that earned a wry smirk from Adaska even though she'd tried to suppress it.

    Training with Aria Royt a veteran and decorated duelling instructor intensified in the lead-up to Turhaya Eve with Aria correctly guessing knowing her client's last name and the fact said the festival was held on Hesperidium that Adaska was going to enter as a participant. It was in that moment Royt claimed to have previously registered the festival herself in years-long passed and climbed successfully to third place which while not the top certainly wasn't a position of ignominy and was how she became one of the better Coruscanti Dueling instructors claiming it was usually the fate of those who aspired but failed to attain. Roy flattered Adaska by claiming that the woman possessed a tremendous natural talent for the sword and offered to provide Senior Sergeant Raythe with free duelling lessons until the fall of Turhaya Eve festival if Adaska agreed to wear Royt's Atrisian mask to the festival as it had been passed down through her family and worn by every competitor who entered themselves into the content and would permit the honoured Raythe family to retain the hand-made Mask should Adaska win first place. Enamoured with the mask's enigmatic and mysterious design, Adaska decided then and there that she had to have it and would duel one hour before every shift with Coruscant Security Force and one hour afterwards before returning home. Dash threw everything she had into the lessons, seldom before in her life had anything made her feel so breathlessly alive never savoured the taste of air so sweetly than when doing the dance of blades and hearing that grind of blade edges meeting.

    Three days before the Turhaya Eve's beginning Adaska took leave from work and returned home to Hesperidium and more specifically Wilmore Villa where she had grown up and only once she'd passed the tall cast-iron gates after entering what surprisingly had been an unchanged security code for the last ten years with the sound of her boots' heels scraping across the asphalt of the road leading up to the villa itself, the servants tilling opulent property's grounds paused and stared in frightened disbelief as the woman who walked confidently across the black path towards the grand manor's lacquered oak door absent any caution and anxiety while advancing towards a pair of Security Guards wearing Coyote Brown blast armour over the Olive Drab and Khaki uniforms ubiquitous with House Raythe's paramilitary forces armed with Blaster Rifles who ordered the woman to halt and identify herself ten meters from her family home. Adaska replied without pride or malice "Senior Sergeant Adaska Raythe, Coruscant Security Force." Stunned the two merely looked at one another before one of the two Guards challenged Adaska to prove her identity to which she without irritation complied walking towards the pair and reaching into the left pocket of her jeans and producing a small zip purse and plucking a Coruscant Security Force Warrant Card and Warrant Badge for inspection and giving a genuinely polite "Here you are, Sir." to the older-looking of the two Officers.

    Pair of weary, tired green eyes went wide and cigarette clasped between the top and bottom lip jolted skywards which near caused Adaska to break into a chuckle before he could even apologise for any inconvenience caused Gideon interrupted his concentration by pulling the heavy oak door open and merely looked towards that Senior Officer with an unblinking smouldering gaze. Adaska addressed her Father "Leave him alone, Father." She said curtly, which earned the faintest most fleeting of smirks that would be missed by anybody not familiar with Gideon's subtle social queues. Entering her ancestral home Gideon ordered several of the Raythe house-servants to retrieve Adaska's belongings from her Airspeeder which she insisted remained outside and parked on the street, her unusual behaviour as it did historically astonished Gideon and Kimberly's employed house staff though it was a pleasant astonishment. Adaska most certainly lacked the calloused ruthlessness of her parents, and this showed in her communication with those workers, using the honorifics "Sir" or "Ma'am" when addressing them which was always dignified. Forced to endure a meeting with both Gideon and Kimberly in the same room, the latter interrogated her daughter, distraught. That made the very act of breathing difficult. Still, Adaska already knew why Gideon hadn't just told Mother as to the purpose, he wanted to hear his daughter speak those words herself with conviction.

    The pain of a Mother wracked by loss and betrayal bled from Kimberley's lips. However, it readily softened as Adaska explained everything she'd done in the last ten years since completion of secondary schooling at the age of sixteen. Kimberly had long viewed Adaska with a lens tainted through all these years by the now-grown woman's teenage political activities where Adaska and Ulrik in spiteful rebellion against authority became uncomfortably friendly with the ideals of Socialism and then ostensibly spurned her duty to the family's myriad political and professional interests for academia and a mind-numbing monotonous middle-class existence. Kimberley realised that she had been wrong about her daughter and permitted a hatred for an ideology which threatened her family's legacy to cruelly reject daughter and all of their excellent works which brought honour if not wealth to their family. Adaska had adopted a more mature and balanced approach towards politics and had been liberated from the foolish impulsive prerogative of youth a fiery furnace of unrelenting psychological torment and pain. Kimberley would never release the hold on the belief that her daughter was worth more than Law Enforcement but was proud all the same of the possibility her daughter ascending through the ranks of Coruscant Security Force's Commissioned Officers and tearfully asked Adaska forgive their failure to be there when she needed it most which Dash hesitated to grant only to recall something Ulrik had once said to her "Sometimes you have to remember to forget." Accepting Mother's apology, she shared a hug with both Gideon and Kimberly.

    Garrick, Orson, Valko and Valeska returned home from across the Corusca sector and joined their parents and the eldest sibling for a feast which Gideon and Kimberly had kept unusually low-key and exclusive for the family as a sign of respect for Adaska's mental condition. Gideon quietly noted tell-tale signs of self-inflicted lacerations upon her daughter's left wrist after she removed a leather glove from hand to better manipulate cutlery and observe the appropriate etiquette. Adaska had spent too much time with Coruscant Security Force, Gideon thought amused by the contrast of his eldest daughter's jeans, white blouse and a leather jacket when contrasted with the threads worn by the other scions of Raythe family. He suspected that Orson and Valeska disapproved quite sharply of their sisters' casual dress. However, Gideon couldn't help but admire Adaska knowing full-well she suffered from social anxiety and yet worked up the courage to not only remain so dressed but also eat in such excellent company recalling such a thing would have been impossible when Adaska was a child. Oh no, she would have locked herself somewhere and refused to be presented. Gideon had prematurely allowed his fatherly guard down and was left unprepared when a well-intentioned Valko asked cheerfully what Adaska's most recent case was and she replied dryly "Oh, you know. Routine ship-boarding turned into a bloodbath with only another Officer and I getting out alive." An uncomfortable eerie silence fell over the dinner table. Adaska's eyes went hollow seemingly gone mentally for about fifteen seconds at which point she calmly stood excused herself and retreated into her quarters where she struggled against scenes from the IMC Atrisia through all night and refused to see anybody.

    What followed was a typical night for Adaska, sleeping no more than an hour at a time and what sleep she did obtain was plagued with nightmares, memories from her time in the Umbaran Cartel's custody and the ordeal aboard IMC Atrisia. The morning arrived, and a ragged Adaska dragged herself downstairs before all other members of her family into the Kitchen where she seized her Father's favourite coffee mug and filled it to its' brim with one litre of coffee with an unhealthy amount of sugar contained therein. The sun's light had not yet touched Hesperidium's surface when Gideon found his daughter tiredly nursing a coffee with black circles around her almond-shaped blue eyes. Identifying the stress plain on Adaska's face Gideon recalled one of his daughter's favourite adolescent and young adulthood pass-times in strenuous cardiovascular exercise, only having recently finished her coffee she buried face into an elbow and made a long-drawn-out petulant groan before whining a weak "Okay" and with her jaw-length brunette hair hanging loosely and uncombed joined Gideon on a pre-dawn run around the Raythe family estate. During their term Adaska complimented her Father's fitness comparing him to a Spry Tauntaun, Gideon carefully pried as to what happened over dinner in the previous night and asked her not to condemn Valko too harshly given his youth, Gideon went as far to claim Valko looked up to Adaska, a thought they made her decidedly uncomfortable.

    Thinking on what Father was saying as the pair of them ran across the pleasantly smelling cut grass, she replied: "It's fine, the problem isn't Valk it's me." Gideon listened intently while endorphins flooded his middle-aged body. For a Human Male who lived in luxury, he was rather physically robust, silently he approved of Adaska's introspection she had grown into a self-aware woman, and it filled breast with pride. The two ran about two-kilometres with Gideon having to ask his daughter to slow her step on more than one occasion to accommodate the age disparity which Adaska ever compassionate and sensitive to the needs of others complied with graciously. Standing on a golf pitch, Gideon queried what Adaska's next move would be with the Coruscant Security Force. Whether or not she would continue receiving counselling, Dash replied "I'm not supposed to be taking meds and working, but without them, I can't sleep and have the nightmares. I wish this had never happened to me, Father, I should have listened." Hearing that admission from Adaska smashed his heart into pieces, but Gideon made a point not to wear his sadness on the face. However, he placed a large supportive hand over her narrow shoulder, clasping it gently. At the same time, the two journeyed back towards the Wilmore Villa and told Adaska to invite "Kyle Whir" and Aria Royt up to their estate so that she could get some practice before the festival's arrival came with the next morning.

    With the rising sun came a new day and the day where Adaska would test her skills against the finest of the Corusca sector with guests from Corellia in the Turhaya eve festival, instead of spending the morning resting or entertaining her vanity the scion of Raythe spent the morning going over techniques and strategies with Aria Royt. Though, with the participants being anonymous, Adaska or Aria could not anticipate what kind of opponents she would be expected to engage. The duels themselves were not scheduled to begin until the evening after dusk had fallen. Darkness descended over Hesperidium for an evening of exceptional swordsmanship with every entrant to be provided with the same type of Coruscanti sabre of a design millennia-old and placed within a gladiatorial arena equipped with energy suppression fields that prevented death, even though in ancient history participants would be expected to risk grievous bodily harm and death such was not the way of the modern Corusca Sector but all the same those spectators were expected to observe the traditional austere silence while seeing the skills of those courageous combatants. It was an open secret that the Turhaya Eve was used as a means for Aristocrats, Heads of State, Heads of Government and Prominent Military Officers to identify talented and disciplined swordsmen. They might make for excellent officers or even more grimly, Assassins. Among the Spectators in attendance was a quiet Galidraani Lord named Theodore Royce-Clarke.

    The participants were universally dressed in dress clothing with their faces hid behind Atrisian Masks, the same could not be said for the spectators; however, who sported a mixture of masked and the unmasked. Adaska's opponents were often significantly older or younger than the woman, and this gave her a balanced advantage of a youthful physique and sufficient experience that with discipline and focus could prevail over the impatient, inexperienced and out-endure weary older men and women. Many of her first foes were easily beaten, that exhibitionist who thought to try their hand, couldn't win unless they threw their hat into the ring. Adaska doubted they expected to be humiliated by a limber woman with wrists like twigs and limbs shaped like pencils, but she triumphed again and again. It took everything the woman's parents, siblings, and friends had not to cry out Adaska's name in public from their seated position in the stands of sandstone arena. Even Kyli Graf with their insanely sharpened senses and nervous system found Dash's performance to be positively engaging wielding the blade with such dexterity you could be forgiven for believing it just an extension of the limb. Aria Royt sat in utter silence, assessing and determining the soundness of every move made by her star pupil in Adaska Raythe. Aria aspired to have a pupil win the Coruscanti-Corellian Turhaya Eve festival finally. At one point Adaska's over-confidence nearly cost her a victory, attempting to lock blades and parry the strikes of a significantly taller and more robust Human male-ended in disaster when the man struck her down into the floor.

    Such a sight audibly stole the oxygen from Kimberly's lungs to witness her daughter come to viciously close to defeating, but as a survivor and still armed and yet to be incapacitated by the blow meant Adaska could continue fighting. Fortunately, her opponent a clean-cut Upper-Class Coruscanti Aristocrat permitted the woman a brief reprieve to rise from the Arena's stone floor before offering a short, respectful bow to which Adaska replied in kind before re-adopting a duelling stance. The next time the handsome gentleman lunged towards Adaska she performed a breath-taking spin in her shin-high boots delivered a swift kick to his sinewy breast before ramming her blade's precipice into his throat with such force he was sent unconscious face-down into the floor which caught Lord Royce-Clarke's attention, knowing that the man who just unceremoniously ate the sand was a ranking member of the Imperial National People's Party. Adaska slid away from her blade into the sheath and approached the downed man kindly and rolled him over into recovery position only to find his mask broken, revealing features of a man known underneath; Ulrik Lagerfeld. Paramedics in attendance quickly arrived to treat the dazed Ulrik who rolled so that his azure-coloured eyes looked up at the moment and groaned out the words "Good one, Dash." Adaska couldn't help but release an uneasy brief chuckle yet stood over his prone body stunned and staring until beckoned out of Arena.

    Provided a brief reprieve Aria Royt came down into the Arena's bowels to provide Adaska with some insight into the last opponent standing between her and victory, Aria claimed to have been studying how the man moved intensely claiming it could not be natural and openly suspected they were a force wielder. Aria made the situation sounds as if it would be hopeless for Adaska to succeed. However, the experienced and highly trained Coruscant Security Force Officer cryptically stated "Don't worry, I've dealt with them before." which elicited a stunning response from Aria "What do you mean?" She asked, seeking clarification to which Adaska replied. "I've had a Jedi suspect once before that I needed to subdue. If I did it once I can do it again." Summoned back up to Arena, Aria wished Adaska the best of luck. Returning to the stone of Arena, Adaska studied her quarry from across the fifty-meter odd distance once the pair advanced towards one-another Dash's icy blue eyes considered what appeared to be signs of facial tattoos on the foe's pallor. Once Raythe came close to the man, a man whom the spectators had watched viciously dominate and overcome his opposition time and time again he retreated away from Adaska whimpering pathetically which stunned their audience who were unable to experience the terror, dread and cell-ripping pain that made him feel like every single fibre of body was alight and burning with furious intensity.

    Confused herself by the man's hysteria Adaska overcome by adrenaline and the fight instinct snarled "Fight me!" In his direction before lunging towards him, surprised and stunned by the overwhelming pain shooting through the nervous system he desperately attempted to raise his sabre but found the diminutive woman who was a whole foot shorter chop his arm at the elbow utterly disabling the nerve conduction to the arm and then delivered a swift strike to the right side of his neck sending him flopping down unceremoniously onto his back unconscious. Stunned the spectators took a long moment for anti-climax to set-in, Adaska ever disliking attention kept her icy spheres on the Arena's floor not meeting any other's gaze even as the middle-aged Magistrate Gerhard Dunke known among the aristocracy of Corusca as a legend for winning the Turhaya Eve championship at the age of sixteen himself presiding over the duelling competition rose from his seat within the box reserved for festival officials and extremely prominent dignitaries, including High Chancellor Tanomas Graf of the Imperial Confederated Systems who sat quietly behind Gerhard Dunke. Silence hung over the anticipating crowd with Gerhard standing and gesturing towards the still masked and anonymous Adaska Raythe and gave the order. "Champion, remove your mark and reveal yourself!" Dash's breathing becomes ragged and distressed, feeling a sudden weight press down over sternum, finding herself unable to breathe. Gideon and Kimberly watched with the former immediately understand what was occurring; he had seen it before. Adaska was having an anxiety-induced panic attack.

    Keenly interested several of the spectators couldn't restrain themselves from leaning forward curiously, eagerly awaiting the woman wearing crimson of a demon over her features to reply, and reply she did. Thinking of her family's honour, Adaska said the shortest word in Galactic Basic. "No." Gerhard Dunke was taken aback by her answer, the woman before him on the Arena's stone and sand had been the first he'd seen refuse in over fifty years of living. "No?" Dunke, a criminal court magistrate from Metellos scoffed at her defiance. "I do not believe I was making a request of you, or do you mean to wish to continue fighting?" This time Adaska's icy blue spheres rose from their position fixated on the floor, Gideon sighed at the display which eerily reminded him of the defiance he received from Adaska when she was yet an adolescent. "I'd rather fight you than remove my Mask, Sir." She declared with genuine pride which threatened to jerk tears free from Kimberly's eye sockets. Gerhard Dunke addressed the crowd directly and queried whether or not they wanted to see the "Old Blade of Metellos" face off against "The Woman with the Horned Mask." Which was met with a resounding "Yes" from at least several dozen spectators? Gerhard complied with crowds' wishes and immediately began his journey down through the Arena's belly where he retrieved a duelling sabre and appeared before Adaska Raythe.

    For seven whole minutes did the comparatively inexperienced Adaska with fewer swordsmanship skills but ridiculous raw talent endure with Gerhard Dunke, despite having the appearance of a middle-aged man heading towards advanced age there was a reason why he won the Turhaya Eve's duelling championship at sixteen she'd thought and learning rapidly through the initial two minutes why. Even though it might have appeared to the untrained eye that Adaska gained the upper hand a few times during the encore an instructor like Aria Royt could identify that save for precious few moments Dunke was in absolute control over their duel's tempo and perhaps even toying with the woman. However, as Adaska successfully parried his thunderous blows and moved like a lithe shadow, Gerhard couldn't help but admire the woman's tenacity. Gerhard wasn't alone in his admiration both Theodore Royce-Clarke and Tanomas Graf were stunned by the woman's bold determination and Adaska nobly endured for a full seven minutes fighting the superbly skilled and talented Magistrate Dunke who used his sabre's hilt to disarm the young woman flinging her blade deftly across Arena before smacking his elbow into the woman's face she collapsed onto her back with Mask rolling up clear off her visage for the pale moonlight's shafts piercing through a layer of cloud to reflect off her frosty blue eyes gently. Gerhard slid his sabre away and offered a hand to their newly minted Champion, Adaska regarded it anxiously for a moment before taking it daintily and rising from the stone with a slight groan brushing off her black and gold embroidered greatcloak before Gerhard Dunke asked Adaska's name in an aside. She replied "Adaska of House Raythe-Vinthern" and then Gerhard with his voice booming proclaimed the surprisingly timid Adaska the Bright Star Festival's Champion for 856 ABY.

    Tanomas Graf, the High Chancellor of the Imperial Confederated Systems, Count of Coruscant and Head of Government of the Corusca Sector's Government, honoured Adaska Raythe by presenting her in front of all the spectators a Mastercraft telescoping Phrik Shortsword its' fully extended design modelled after blades used in truly ancient Coruscant's aristocratic circles. However, she was experiencing a mild panic attack and struggling to speak without stuttering she managed to gracefully accept the gift before the spectators and a credit prize of three and a half million credits along with a Turhaya Champion Trophy with the mantle-piece modelled after the Corellian Confederation's Star. Upon leaving the Arena's gladiatorium her family and friends met the woman beneath the Arena's stone floor in the basement where each one of them embraced Adaska in a tight genuine hug jubilantly congratulating the humble and quiet woman for her victory. Ulrik Lagerfeld sheepishly stepped forward, and Adaska unleashed a playful chastising tirade upon him and even dared to query a smiling and laughing Ulrik "How did the stone and sand taste?" To which he shot back in front of their friends and family "Why don't you tell me?" Instead of turning her complexion scarlet in embarrassment, a truly happy and ecstatic Adaska burst out into a haughty belly laugh which brought a quiet smile on Gideon and Kimberly's face to see their daughter experiencing earnest joy. Moving across the festivals grounds beneath pale moonlight with her new beautiful sword wrapped around her narrow waist, several spectators accosted the rather anxious Adaska through a protective barrier formed by her friends and family with a few passing business cards and contact details to "Lady Raythe" with offers of employment with Military Officer Commissions, Royal Bodyguard and even a few Suitors all of who found Adaska to be unpleasantly startled by their advances which Gideon and Ulrik were quick to quash.

    Having observed Adaska's performance and the stunning defeat of a man who had near effortlessly dispatched all other competition and who Tanomas keenly concluded had been trained by either the Sith or Jedi previously, Tanomas Graf tasked Theodore Royce-Clarke with persuading the scion of Raythe to join the Imperial People's National Party and attempt to see her moved towards employment with the Imperial Security Bureau, aware that the Bureau was interested in locating suitable individuals talented in subduing Force Wielders for something called the "SHADOW Program" Theodore enlisted the aid of Ulrik Lagerfeld for this purpose, as Ulrik had joined the party and used his political and business acumen to see its' influence spread Lagerfeld himself occupied something of a high position. Ulrik disdained the thought that Theodore would use Adaska's recruitment into the party to promote the rising star given his previous romantic relationships with Adaska, concerned that his former lover and a dear friend would rightly view it as manipulation and knew from what Adaska had told him about the IMC Atrisia ordeal that of many things taken kindly and forgiven by Adaska betrayal was seldom on that list. Theodore arrived and introduced himself to Adaska, her friends and family and asked to speak with the Bright Star Eve's champion alone a request that Ulrik unsurprisingly openly encouraged Adaska to accept given Theodore's station as the Imperial Confederated Systems' Foreign Minister an idea seconded by Gideon and Kimberly. Trusting her Father's judgement, Adaska secured a hand on her new Telescoping sword's pouch. At the same time, she and Theodore strolled through the Festival's grounds together.

    Theodore complimented Adaska's skill and talent with a blade in the highest most favourable terms which she accepted with fresh courtesy but also retorted with "If I was as good as you are so kind to praise me, my lord. I might have fared better against Lord Dunke" Theodore waved away such harsh self-criticism dismissing it as overly harsh replying. "Lord Gerhard Dunke won the festival when he was Sixteen, grew up on streets alongside alien beggars and dregs. However, through a show of Human resolve and responsibility fought his way up into Aristocracy." It was evident from Theodore Royce-Clarke's tone that he admired the man. Adaska asked, "Why did you want to speak with me, Sir?" Directly and Theodore chuckled and pinched his moustache in a stroking motion between index finger and thumb. "You're disciplined and determined, and I have it on good authority that you are a Coruscant Security Force Officer. Is that correct?" That revelation caused Adaska's feet to halt, she froze, and Theodore studied the woman whose facial muscles relaxed into a slack blank expression querying "Is something wrong, Lady Raythe?" Which snapped the attractive young brunette from her malaise. "My Apologies, yes that is true." Adaska answered curtly, which made Theodore smile, he then went on and claimed that the Imperial People's National Party needed "Young men and women." And would "Lead Coruscant and the Core into a brighter future." If his long monologue about Human responsibility for the galaxy and Core Nationalism wasn't enough Theodore revealed Ulrik was a member of the Party which seemed to be a decisive feature of Adaska agreeing to obtain party membership.

    Sensing an opportunity Theodore tactfully broached the subject of employment with the Imperial Security Bureau and disclosed that the Bureau was looking for people like her with a talent for combating "Mystics and Sorcerers." Theodore saw that he'd piqued Adaska's wordless curiosity and continued claiming its' members were paid a truly lucrative salary and provided with some of the best equipment and training available to any Law Enforcement and Intelligence Officer in the Galaxy. There was just "One significant catch." Furthermore, Theodore revealed, "I've been informed that Agents entering this special task-force are required to undergo a mind-wipe to prevent manipulation by the subjects of their investigations." That ended Adaska's aspirations to join the Imperial Security Bureau's anti-force-wielder task force immediately with her replying tactfully "It sounds like noble work, though I do not think that I am suitable for it at this time, Lord Royce." and thanked Theodore for his kind words before proceeding to excuse herself from the conversation so that she could return to her family and friends. Aria Royt thanked Adaska with earnest sincerity for their victory as it had brought the Royt and Raythe families honour, Aria laughed jested "I've already heard people asking who trained the 'Raythe of Hesperidium'" Though she did not laugh at the comment, Adaska couldn't help but smile genuinely. Keeping their promise, Aria permitted Adaska to keep the Royt family's mask as a token of their time together and as a sign of appreciation to Adaska for being a disciplined and determined pupil. Returning to the Raythe family estate in the company of Kyli, Jon, Rikke, Ulrik, Aria joined by siblings and parents.

    Without the fear of public judgement and pressure laid over her shoulders, Adaska joined her family and friends dancing and drinking until dawn celebrating the woman's skill as a swordsman and upcoming position as a Lieutenant within Coruscant Security Force. Ulrik and Adaska stumbled together clumsily into a vacant bedroom with oak floorboards with the bitter winter morning's touch reaching through a window heralding the coming of a new day, bold and drunk on the intoxicating revelry the pair embraced and allowed the embers of their passion for one another to ignite again on the fuel of Adaska's success and an aching mutual attraction. The promotion to Lieutenant upon returning to Coruscant was mainly the responsibility of Colonel Locke's who for Senior Sergeant Raythe's sake wanted to get her away from Operational Law Enforcement duties and see her placed into an Administrative and Tactical Leadership position and have their proper sacrifices and service recognised tacitly, with Colonel Locke's recommendation Adaska also received the Coruscant Security Force Director's Commendation for meritorious service even though internal politicking attempted to derail the award being bestowed. Though she would never openly proclaim it, Adaska donated all the credits won as part of her Turhaya Eve champion's prize to a memorial and support association dedicated to the families of the victims aboard the IMC Atrisia and CSF Triumphant as a sort of moral penance for their perceived failure to save anybody from that nightmare. Frederikke as Dalye's sister received a portion of these credits, never knowing that Adaska was responsible for her winning the funds.

    Chapter IX: Adaska, The First Shadow

    Though she had won great honour for herself and family at the Bright Star Eve Dueling festival Adaska's quality of life in the long-term did not improve, she was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant within the Tactical Operations Division and more often than not found herself not deploying with her Officers and trapped within the station and kept under Colonel Locke's careful supervision, and in her paranoia, Adaska believed that Locke and many of the other Officers did not trust her given the secrecy surrounding the IMC Atrisia and CSF Triumphant's destruction. The Nightmares continued in the absence of her psychoactive medication unwilling to treat her Post-Traumatic Stress and Anxiety if it came at the cost of her employment with Coruscant Security Force, it was all she had done for ten years. Ten whole years People raised a child nearly to adolescence in that time and yet still Adaska continued to serve it was all she had ever known, and without serving a Law Enforcement Organisation, her education was worth little. It was fortunate if Adaska could sleep four hours uninterrupted little alone eight, with the majority of her sleep coming in short one-hour bouts unable to achieve the deep rest rapid eye movement provided to a weary and scarred Psyche. Outwardly, Adaska held her appearance together behind a painfully cultivated professionalism. However, a damn with holes through its' wall would break to the water's pressure eventually, and Adaska like a damn did break. All it took was a severe and heartfelt push.

    One evening Frederikke Creedmoor, an old and dear friend and mutual acquaintance of both Jon and Ulrik called Adaska's chatter in the small hours of the morning. A fully alerted and caffeinated Lieutenant Raythe answered having only recently finished night-shift to arrive home at their Coruscant apartment within the Collective Commerce District. In a panic Rikke exclaimed uncontrollably "Ulrik is married!" again and again, Adaska who had been slouched back on a comfortable leather couch sat-up and placed a glass of white wine aside to hold chatter strictly up against ear, in her fatigue, it didn't quite register and wearily interjected. "What are you talking about Rikke?" To which Frederikke repeated herself steadily "Ulrik has been married for three years." It then sunk in "What!?" A furious Adaska exclaimed with the wrath of a hellion scorned. "Tell me you're joking Rikke." The smouldering outrage was so intense that Adaska snarled her words like a wolf coiled on its' haunches ready to strike. "I can't believe he'd do this to you, I'm sorry Dash, but Ulrik is married. He's got a son too." Incensed at the betrayal but also in a state of disbelief. "Show me Rikke; I need to see it myself." Rikke complied with her friend's demands and sent copies of images with Ulrik and his Tall and Dark-haired wife from a publication that focused on politics, business and professional development. Adaska's hands tremored uncontrollably with eyes looking down over her Chatter's square liquid crystal display.

    Frederikke apologised again to Adaska and asked "What are you going to do?" her answer was received when the latter terminated their call and immediately rung Ulrik who did not answer on the first attempt with her digital handset ringing out. Adaska tried again, and this time a tired Ulrik answered and was lashed with a dirge of cruses from the furious Adaska shrieking at the treacherous man for about five minutes utterly interrupted before pausing to drink some water to soothe throat ripped raw. "I can explain," Ulrik said in a mild dryness with a neutral expression on his face that could be heard through chatter's microphone. Adaska permitted him to continue suspecting she would approve of nothing he could try first to justify infidelity to his lawful spouse and secondly keep the fact he had a Son to his spouse from Adaska given their long history of friendship and mutual romantic interest. "My wife and I are separated; we lived in the same house in different rooms. Our parents arranged our marriage; I don't love her." Not contented with Ulrik's feeble excuse, with fists clenched so tightly the joints of her fingers threatened to break under the strain she angrily retorted with an audible scowl. "I don't care if you're separated, you're still married Ulrik with a young son. What we've been doing this whole time has been wrong, and you let me live in ignorance, knowing I would have wanted to know the truth." Ulrik was left speechless initially, the guilt and denial began setting in. "Who told you?" Desperately he asked with voice shattering painfully on the question.

    Infuriated that Ulrik was ostensibly more concerned with his social standing among the aristocracy being ruined should his affair become public knowledge Adaska merely replied. "A mutual friend, it changes nothing. I know the truth now, we're through, I don't want to see you again Ulrik, and I don't want you contacting me." And with that, an emotionally numb Adaska terminated the call and proceeded to block and otherwise close off channels that Ulrik might be able to use to contact her including their shared Holonet Social platforms before sending Rikke a message that "It was done, and if Ulrik tries to talk to me through you. I don't want to hear or know about it."

    Furthermore, with that Adaska decided it would be best if she finished the half-full bottle of white wine sitting on the Oak Coffee table in front of her couch, retiring from her couch to her ensuite bedroom two hours later as the light of Coruscant's sun touched her residential apartment tower. Adaska cried hysterically sobbing loudly she retrieved her Coruscant Security Force Tactical-Operations Division issued-combat knife that was stored in wardrobe and dragged its blade across her wrist several times, punishing and chastising herself for the perceived sin of being romantically involved with a married man, a man whom she had confided in at times of vulnerability and relied upon for support. Uncertain that she hope and survive such a heinous betrayal, Adaska recalled the suggestion put to her by Theodore Royce-Clarke at Bright Star Eve to join the Imperial Security Bureau. Believing the Special Anti-Force Wielder Task force's mind-wiping regimen might offer an escape from her life, she resolved to join the shadowy Law Enforcement and Intelligence Organisation.

    A few hours passed and changed into her smart-casual clothes Adaska left her apartment block in Airspeeder towards the Imperial Security Bureau's headquarters on the fly there Gideon Raythe called his daughter, she didn't need to be clairvoyant to know what the subject of their conversation was to be "Yes, Father?" Gideon's demeanour was calm and collected in his opening, sitting his own bedroom's balcony at the Raythe estate enjoying a glass of single-malt scotch. "So" He began taking a sip of the amber-coloured liquid. "Ulrik." Gideon knew his daughter could be relied upon to explain herself, suspecting accurately that she was likely furious. "I'm finished with it all Father, Ulrik, Locke, Work, all of it. He betrayed me, I love Ulrik, and he used me as a bloody mistress!" Gideon listened actively to his daughter for all the twenty-minutes it took her in the sky-lanes of Coruscant to reach the Imperial Security Bureau's headquarters, that's when Adaska told Gideon that she intended to lodge an Agent application with the Imperial Confederated Systems' Imperial Security Bureau the thought shocked Gideon who enquired with his daughter as to why she appeared so darkly earnest to join the Imperial Security Bureau when she already possessed what looked like a rising career with Coruscant Security Force. That's when Adaska revealed she was going to try for a special type of agent working in a task-force where a Mind-Wipe was a mandatory policy on induction into the unit, such an extreme measure frightened Gideon and inquired as to whether his daughter would remember her family or name to which Adaska replied to the effect of uncertainty. But claimed that she needed to escape from the nightmares, flashbacks and sleepless night unable to take medication and continue working Adaska saw it as the only option.

    Offering to get Adaska to Hesperidium's most exceptional psychologist and psychiatrist, Gideon was somewhat disheartened and hurt although not surprised when the daughter turned down his keen proposal claiming. "You don't understand, I don't just want to treat the symptoms I want it to end, This is what I want, it's all that I'm good for, I know You, Mother and all the others will be hurt. Nevertheless, I've decided that I'm not going to continue dying a day at a time, either I forget it all or I end it all, permanently." Every fibre of Gideon's being wanted to fight this impulsive rash decision that Adaska was making to join the Imperial Security Bureau especially given that allegedly she would not even recall who or what she was before signing-on, an idea he had never heard of and left Gideon deeply suspicious about what kind of work his empathetic, compassionate and courageous daughter was going to be doing. Though for the first time in his life Gideon felt utterly powerless, there wasn't any way for him to bargain, Adaska was uninterested in the material wealth of her family name and cared nothing for politics or business. Unable to face the rest of her family, and on the verge of crying while sitting in the airspeeder ports of the Imperial Security Bureau. Adaska requested Father be the one to inform the family and friends except for Kyli whom Adaska claimed she would tell herself, given the knowledge that Kyli's own Father was the High Chancellor. There might be an opening in the future for Kyli to keep the Raythe family informed as to their daughter's health and safety if the worst should come to pass as Theodore Royce described it at the Festival of the Bright Star and Adaska recall nothing.

    Provided with some pages of paper to complete at the Imperial Security Bureau headquarters, Adaska noted in the lobby as just how austere, clean and technologically advanced the building appeared to be, it left her thinking the Bureau was undoubtedly ahead of Coruscant Security Force when one considered the level of sophisticated technology existed just in what amounted to a glorified administration and recruitment building. As an Officer for CORSECFOR though with the Imperial Confederated Systems' take-over of Corusca's government Adaska had heard that the Imperial Security Bureau's headquarters offices were just a facade for a massive facility constructed beneath its' tall towers were where the 'real' Law Enforcement and Intelligence work was performed. The Two receptionists working at the front reception desk behind a transparisteel security partition weren't officers and initially treated Adaska with contempt and indifference that was until she handed them an application with her Coruscant Security Force badge and Warrant Card, their attitude changed sharply at that moment and exceedingly more helpful. Calling a Recruiter to Reception to speak with Adaska, a man wearing a white-caped uniform and with brown coloured hair and blue eyes kindly attended and introduced himself as "Assistant Superintendent Vindo Garnier" Superintendent Garnier looked over the Agent Application and smiled warmly commenting that Adaska was an "Extraordinarily experienced Officer." with "A lot to offer the security bureau." That compliment from a distinguished executive officer was welcome, given its' sincerity.

    Superintendent Garnier asked Adaska politely to submit supplementary supporting documents to her application as soon as possible an order which she complied with curtly and proceeded to return home and send the supporting documentation to Superintendent Garnier, little did Adaska suspect that Assistant Superintendent Garnier was in-truth responsible more precisely for recruitment and training of the special-purpose anti-force wielder specialist unit as mentioned by Theodore Royce-Clarke. It was no accident that the other recruiters had sent Superintendent Garnier down to meet the woman after-all her history made her a model applicant and more than likely would, in the end, be made responsible for turning the woman into a Shadow. For what it was worth Adaska felt overwhelmed by the torrent of emotions flooding through her: Excitement by the Prospect of being an Imperial Security Bureau Agent, Fear that her application might be rejected for whatever reason and furious anger at Ulrik's betrayal of her confidence and faith. It took several weeks, approximately six between the initial lodgement of Adaska's Agent Application to join the Imperial Security Bureau and receiving a call from their recruitment branch to begin the healing process, which she almost failed due to the apparent signs of self-harm upon her body but despite the recommendation from the contracted government physician that she was unsuitable for the training she progressed. Superintendent Garnier was carefully following Adaska's candidacy through the process and ended up being responsible for performing Adaska's pre-employment interview during which he used a device designed to detect deception.

    Asking why Adaska wanted to join the Imperial Security Bureau, she answered honestly proclaiming. "I want to join the Anti-Force Wielder Specialist Unit." Which surprised Assistant Superintendent Garnier as he believed the unit was only recently formed on the director's orders. They hadn't even widely began internally advertising for it, leading the man to conclude Raythe had contact with somebody intimate with its' creation or at-least familiar with its' existence. However, he did not openly enquire as to how Adaska knew he merely recorded her responses to the interview questions. Concluding the interview Superintendent Garnier had already decided he was going to recommend Adaska Raythe continue through to the process, the SHADOW Program's pool of eligible recruits was painfully minuscule, and the Security Bureau couldn't afford to waste potential workforce for it. Garnier thought that if it weren't for her inclinations towards self-harm and a strong history of mental illness, she would have been about as an ideal candidate that they could have asked for given Raythe's background with Coruscant Security Force. Attending the Physical Capacity Test on the appointed day, Adaska had the opportunity to meet the men and women among them were two men she immediately built a rapport: Istvan Toth and Leon Graumann. Identifying the two men as being decidedly from working-class backgrounds she inquired as to their origins and discovered that the middle-aged Istvan Toth was from the Coruscant Underworld and had been raised by his deeply religious and spiritual Grandmother after Umbaran Gangsters killed both parents as a child while the staggeringly young Leon Graumann was the son of a Corellian Tradesman and Exoatmospheric Arc Welder.

    Becoming fast friends Adaska, Leon and Istvan positioned themselves so that they'd undertake the exercise tests together and encouraged one-another openly. Istvan initially distrusted and disdained Raythe somewhat for her upper-class background which was evident through her accent but rapidly warmed to the woman in response to her "Realness" which was a welcome challenge to what he'd long held as a preconceived notion on how Aristocrats were supposed to behave, not that he'd met many in his life much less speak to them. Their warm acquaintance and open communication would result in future carry over to their careers as Imperial Security Bureau Agents and team-mates during training. The trio at the end of the day's assessments exchanged chatter contact details so that they could message one-another throughout what little remained of the recruitment process. Adaska, Leon and Istvan were personally interviewed individually by Inspector-General Fyodo Kruul as were all prospective candidates for the Shadow Program as they were to become some of the most dangerous weapons of the state if successful. The questions Fyodo Kruul asked Adaska revolved around her willingness to spend extended periods away from her family and friends if necessary, to which she replied that there were ten years where she had limited contact with immediate family and came to rely on her friends and colleagues for emotional support, moreso the latter given limited face-to-face contact with the former. Adaska said that she'd "Always been something of a loner, Sir." Which made Kruul smile only briefly before concluding the two-hour-long interview.

    The letter of offer for employment as an Imperial Security Bureau Agent within the "Special Forces High-Intensity Asymmetric Warfare Direct Action & Unconventional Weapons Program" arrived via hand-delivered mail at Adaska Raythe's workplace. At the same time, on-duty with the Coruscant Security Force which raised many questions from her Tactical Operations Division subordinates, although none questioned the miserable pariah of a Lieutenant directly leaving that unenviable task to Colonel Sulyvahn Locke who confronted Lieutenant Raythe within her office ominously closing the door behind himself before angrily querying why a Security Bureau Agent was handing the woman a sealed envelope, noting such things were often bad omens as the paper was used for very few applications. Adaska sipped smugly at the beige hot sugar-laden solution within the ridiculously over-sized white ceramic mug and opened the letter with the aid of a knife with an aristocrat's precision skimming the letter signed by Inspector-General Fyodo Kruul himself; Lieutenant Raythe revealed she'd received a formal offer of employment with the Imperial Security Bureau to which Locke asked dryly. "You're leaving us?" Adaska wordlessly nodded before explaining that she couldn't continue working within Coruscant Security Force at present due to her ongoing mental health issues, angrily Adaska also yelled at Locke. "Our prosecutors thought about putting me behind bars; the Director did me no favours during the critical incident enquiry where I was treated like some heinous crime." That visibly hurt sully given he'd given it his best to protect Adaska during that period and earnestly apologised with sad intonation that he'd failed to protect her from Professional Standards Branch's zealotry. Adaska re-assured Locke that he had no reason to apologise but that it didn't matter much now with Adaska's upcoming service with the Imperial Security Bureau and read-out the conditions of employment one of which was that she submit to a mandatory mind-wipe procedure and consent to surgical and chemical alteration.

    Sulyvahn thought it was suspicious and accurately observed. "You're not going to be any ordinary Agent." A statement that Adaska nodded in agreement with, treasuring Raythe's competent and most professional service along with her resilience he invited Adaska out for low-key dinner within the Collective Commerce District given that in a few short weeks she'd be at the Imperial Security Bureau's Academy on nearby Utrost, she accepted the Colonel's offer and in a quiet night out toasted Adaska's service to the Coruscant Security Force together with Sulyvahn promising to keep an eye on Kyle Whir for the soon-to-be absent Adaska for which Mentor received thanks, Sulyvahn expressed his regret more than once that Adaska was leaving the organisation but expressed sympathy for the lack of ongoing support provided by CORSECFOR and the traumatic experiences related to their service. Painfully, Lieutenant Raythe disclosed the memories of those ordeals was one of the reasons she was "Running" away from the Security Force which Locke nodded and revealed that "He suspected as much" and that his suspicion was confirmed when Adaska disclosed that she would be receiving a mind-wipe as part of her Imperial Security Bureau Academy attendance. The Raythe family did not celebrate the offer of employment. Rather Gideon and Kimberly silently mourned and blamed the cruel galaxy for pushing their daughter into a place where she believed being stripped of her identity or death were the only two escapes from suffering. Given that it was the lesser of two tragedies they accepted it without resisting. However, they found no comfort in the thought all the same.

    Swearing an affirmation of fealty to Emperor Sheev Palpatine and loyalty to the Imperial State on Coruscant within Imperial Security Bureau Headquarters that was witnessed by Gideon and Kimberly along with her siblings who decided to attend since it was considered to potentially be one of the last times they saw their Adaska alive. Gideon took custody of his daughter's testament to be delivered to their family solicitor in the event of her death. Limited by what property could be made and retained to the secretive training facility on Utrost, Gideon presented his beloved daughter with the Telescoping Phrik Shortsword she had won at the Turhaya Eve festival which she was begrudgingly permitted to keep by Assistant Superintendent Garnier. Escorting the twenty-four trainee Agents to a CR25 Transport was Superintendent Garnier and several armed Imperial Security Bureau Agents. They remained within the passenger compartment at all times. The journey to Utrost was a solemn and quiet one even though Leon, Istvan and Adaska had been reunited, they all knew what awaited them once landed on Utrost. A mind-wipe to eliminate their memories of what would become a previous life, they were to be given over to Imperial State not just in body but also mind. Each trainee had signed the dotted line and consented to that mind-wipe and the implantation of a Structural Inhibitor Chip to prevent them from directing aggressive hostility towards their chain of command and make them more vulnerable to suggestion and obeying their lawful superiors.

    Arriving on Utrost and within the Imperial Security Bureau's training academy. Adaska and the other candidates each signed another informed consent waiver on holo-video with Superintendent Garnier presiding over the knowledgeable consent interviews before being taken individually into their own "Neural Reconditioning" Rooms and secured onto a reclining chair as part of her memory wipe process. At that moment her anxiety spiked with a semi-circle durasteel dome placed over her diode-covered head the woman began to panic and as crackling electric currents were pulsed through her skull she shrieked and begged for a reprieve from the agonising pain and claimed to no longer want to be an Agent as she was forced to relive the entirety of her horrifying life in memory. However, her resistance and terror subsided with the pain after a few seconds, and the Neural Reconditioning and Purge continued for five minutes at which point Adaska Raythe's body went slack and limp for sixty-seconds before regaining consciousness. The Neurologists then took an assessment of her Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Theta brain waves. Results indicated that the traumatised Adaska Raythe's neurology had successfully been returned to behaviour consistent with a baseline human of sound psychological and physiological health. A costly price had been paid in the currency of all memories treasured or otherwise from before this moment. However, Adaska had finally been freed of her tortured existence and sleepless nights, reborn as what she would have been absent torment. Immediately following the procedure's success, Adaska and the other candidates were taken directly on gurneys to the on-site surgical wards where their Structural Inhibitor Chips were implanted to prevent uncontrollable hostile aggression from being directed to their lawful superiors per the SHADOW program's requirements.

    Recovering from their surgeries the candidates were discharged and sent to mixed-sex dormitories with what little property they had arrived with, amongst Adaska's property was the Telescoping Phrik Shortsword but as she didn't recognise it consistently left it behind in her locker. Taken to a flash-training classroom every candidate had useful skills and education they had acquired in their lives before the Imperial Security Bureau imprinted into their nervous systems which profoundly disorientated Adaska, inexplicably obtaining abilities, skills and proficiency in several languages without being able to recall how they had been learned. After being re-equipped with historically acquired skills, Adaska and the other candidates were filed into an expansive auditorium and congratulated on taking the first steps in a career with the Imperial Security Bureau by the tall and proud man that was Superintendent Garnier; he explained to the trainee Agents that they would become the protectors of Coruscant and all of her colonies, the blades in the dark who with patience maintained vigilant watch and struck down threats to their states' existence. Adaska was reacquainted with Istvan and Leon whom she'd met during the recruitment process and as before the three quickly became friends with Leon strutting up to Adaska after the welcome briefing had been concluded with a toothy grin and with daft confidence introduced himself to what in his green eyes was an attractive woman, even though the trainees had been ordered to return to their barracks for lights-out immediately. Desperate to save the young-man whom he had befriended the white-haired Istvan intentionally slammed into Leon's shoulder and delivered a stern warning. "Didn't you hear what they said about talking?" Rather than argue Leon complied with a quiet Adaska deciding to remain close to Leon and Istvan.

    Adaska and her budding friends were woken up in their dorm room by Assistant Superintendent Garnier and his staff screaming at the top of their lungs for the trainees to get out of bed for reveille with sluggish men and women being doused in ice-cold water from buckets carried by the trainers who also brandished stun batons to 'encourage' any who failed to be roused from their bed at all. The process of bastardisation and dehumanisation begun for the volunteers with everyone herded onto a conveyor belt-like livestock or machines and proceeding through like a production line being washed in a high-velocity soapy spray before being rinsed in icy-cold spittle. The trainees went straight from this into their physical training gear, performing relentless calisthenic exercises as individuals and in small teams all through the morning until exhaustion till around noon at which point they were permitted to retire for food and sent to the Academy's bistro. Istvan, Leon and Adaska sat together with the three discussing their shared confusion and disorientation with Leon and Adaska both experiencing transient childhood memory retention. At the same time, the much older late fifties Istvan couldn't recall anything from before waking from surgery. After their fifteen minutes provided to eat and drink had expired Superintendent Garnier and his trainers herded their recruits through a prestigious marble-floored courtyard into a classroom with holographic terminals where they met a masculine Artificial Intelligence construct with the proud appearance of an Ancient Atrisian Praetorian named Somo who would be responsible for providing the trainee Agents with the formal education portion of course.

    Somo ran the men and women through a lesson in ancient history concerning the Clone Commandos of an obscure unit called Clone Force 99 who once fought for the core-led Galactic Republic, explaining that the unit's teamwork and exploitation of their natural physical traits according to what limited historical texts survived documenting their actions permitted the Commandos to overcome staggering odds. While listening to Somo's lesson, Adaska and the others were served with kinds of milk and freshly baked muffins the exhausted and lithe woman scoffed down a chocolate-chip muffin rather unceremoniously and with a body that would be considered by most physicians underweight left still very hungry, so Adaska successfully pilfered an extra muffin from a male trainee who possessed handsome features and a ghastly pale complexion named "Aron Kyne". Assistant Superintendent Garnier wordlessly noted the display of cunning, musing that such guile was more befitting an Intelligence rather than a Law Enforcement Officer and that the initiative was a positive characteristic he could mould into something usable the danger of such behaviour was that she exhibited defiance to operational parameters and went "Off the Grid". However, Garnier thought it didn't necessarily mean she might go rogue in the future. Some continued their lesson explaining that packs of predators overcome great pray through teamwork, discipline and co-ordination. After concluding their lesson, the trainees were taken on a ten-kilometre run to burn off their lunch-time snack which caused several of them including Adaska to violently heave and wrench up the contents of their stomach onto the trail.

    Arriving at their destination the trainees were confronted with a series of cube-shaped shifting obstacle-course pits with piston-arms in the wall appearing to telescope out and recess back into the holes. Assistant Superintendent Garnier told the trainees they were going to perform a team-building exercise and split into teams of three, the trainers dictated the sides, and unsurprisingly due to their natural affinity for one-another Adaska, Istvan and Leon were placed into a semi-permanent group together called "Gray Team" named by Superintendent Garnier who thought it appropriate that an Agent with the last name 'Graumann' be placed into such a named team. It was obvious that Istvan wasn't enthusiastic about being put on a team with a pair of "Spring Tauntauns" but alas the middle-aged man wasn't about to argue with Superintendent Garnier. Leon, with his awkward Coruscanti-Corellian intonation ever the competitive young man asked earnestly. "What do we get if we win, Sir?" Which prompted Superintendent Garnier to answer dryly. "You'll win dinner, trainee Graumann." Raising a hand to straighten his cap's peak, Garnier re-iterated calmly. "This is a team-building exercise; you don't win unless everyone makes it out of the pit. Agents in the field rise or fall together, and so will you here." Descending on a Repulsor pad down into the pit, Leon, Istvan and Adaska studied the presently flat walls. Garnier took the opportunity to remind them "Oh and by the way, anybody gets knocked out by the pistons? Automatic failure for the whole team."

    Taking off with the pistons reaching back and forth from walls, noting that Istvan wasn't keeping pace Adaska paused and tried in futility to get Leon to cease his bounding rise up and out of the pit. Istvan wasn't hesitant, recalcitrant or even uncoordinated as far as men in their late fifties went he was surprisingly fit but not enough to keep up with a man and woman three decades his junior. Adaska's advanced halted and she pivoted in boot-heels backtracking to move beside Istvan up to their salvation that waited above using those pistons as steps. Leon was the first to crest up and over the edge. He only then paid thought to his team-mates and turned around, offering a hand down towards the rising Istvan and Adaska who were following several seconds behind. Angrily Adaska swatted Leon's hand aside telling him to "Get out of my way." At the same time, helping the older Istvan or "Pops" as she'd affectionately dubbed him up and out of the pit. Superintendent Garnier shouted "Time!" They were the third to last team out of the hole, far from a poor performance given that Istvan was the oldest trainee and by a large margin of about eighteen years at that. Leon's zealous earnestness came to cost Gray Team though, leaving his teammates behind Garnier angrily failed them and forfeited their mess privileges for that evening and while the other exhausted trainees boarded an airspeeder. Adaska, Istvan and Leon were forced to run the ten kilometres with the ostensibly indestructible Superintendent Garnier back to the Academy's trainee accommodation unit located within the barracks. After arriving back, denied dinner each of them was given six litres of water to drink leading up to Light's out.

    Another dawn arrived with much the same regimented dehumanising routine playing out through the morning exercising intensely under the morning sun's touch and treated to a breakfast at the Academy's Bistro. Leon and Istvan noted in shock that Adaska had finished a hearty carbohydrate meal complete with steak, rice and pasta before they'd even gotten halfway through their plates. Marched off to their lesson with Somo, they were instructed in the hunting behaviour of Loth-Wolves and how they quintessentially personified the primacy of the pack organisation over any single individual or member. After concluding this valuable lesson in teamwork. Taken to the pit obstacle course by Superintendent Garnier and their trainers who informed the trainees they'd be placed in the same teams as the previous day Adaska angrily confronted a stunned Leon and punched him in the throat leaving the young man down on his knees and gasping for air, he accepted it glibly with Istvan grasping the younger woman's shoulder in an attempt to prevent her from continuing any assault on Leon. "What's going on here? " A trainer armed with stun baton pushed himself through the gaggle of recruits with Leon rising to his feet with a grunt. "Nothing Sir." He answered in ragged breaths. "Just resolving a disagreement." Garnier watching allowed the teams approximately five-minutes to strategise warning them the pit's programming would be more complicated than on the previous day. Adaska threatened to push Leon clear off the pistons if he refused to help her and Istvan again which an embarrassed Leon apologised for sincerely with the somewhat bitter Adaska challenging him to "Prove It."

    Taking charge boldly, Adaska claimed that Leon would be better suited for helping Istvan up over the pistons. At the same time, she was fast. She could reach the top first and throw them down a coil of safety rope she'd observed being tied to mechanical winch to rescue any recruits who might have injured themselves. Istvan expressed concern that Superintendent Garnier might view such behaviour as cheating. However, Adaska dismissed his concerns claiming "They want to see our work together as a team and planning. So let's get this done, the right way this time." Beginning the exercise Adaska launched forward of Leon and Istvan deftly leaping across those pistons that shot out of the wall quickly with the two men aiding one-another to prevent being knocked clear off, Garnier watched on with his weary spheres in wordless approval, every single team had learned from their deficiencies and failures. Adaska reached her pit's peak first of any other organisation and climbed out to pitch a thick rope over its' precipice which Leon and Istvan clung to desperately while Adaska manipulated a geared hand-crank raising the pair, a trainer moved forward with his stun baton ready and made an angry objection to Trainee Raythe's resourcefulness but was publicly halted in their advance by Superintendent Garnier who ordered the man to desist. Leon and Istvan crested the pit shortly after that with Adaska rushing over to help the pair of men; their teamwork made Gray Team the third team to successfully escape the obstacle through various techniques. Garnier was quietly pleased with Gray's performance and permitted the faintest smile to rise in the corners of the mouth when he watched the three reconcile their differences and warmly congratulate one-another, starting what would be a lasting friendship and successful team of Agents.

    Months of gruelling training passed, and the trainee agents persevered together through the multitude of injuries suffered across the most impossible and difficult scenarios their trainers could devise progressing to a point in their training where it was no longer a sufficient challenge for their trainers to play the part of opposition forces. Instead, the "enemy element" was performed by full-time professional Soldiers from the Imperial Army's "Phantom Company". On one such exercise the Imperial Army provided plain-clothes Troopers to play the part of insurgents, the Twenty-Four trainees were thrown out into the wilderness one-hundred and forty kilometres from the Imperial Security Bureau Academy. Without arms or armour with only necessary first aid supplies, they had been given the impossible task by Assistant Superintendent Garnier of returning to the Academy within twenty-four hours of being scattered throughout dense woodland while being hunted by small squads. The trainees of Blue, Gray, Green Team and Red Team devised a cunning and somewhat comical plan where the fifty-year-old something Istvan Toth would approach one such squad protecting a landed CR25 Transport complaining of chest pains before proceeding to act out a dramatic cardiac arrest to cause a distraction permitting the leaders those four teams: Hyun, Adaska, Laith and Kehree to direct their fellow team leaders and trainees to adopt ambush positions to commandeer the large dropship quietly.

    Istvan played out his role admirably with the Imperial Soldiers initially believing it to be a ruse confronted the "Old Codger" angrily, Toth chuckled defiantly at the younger man's gumption which prompted the soldier to demand to know what his prisoner found to entertaining before stating "You're all bunched up." At which point a large stone thrown by the impressively muscled Hyun hammered into the soldier's skull signalling the beginning of a brief but violent confrontation where the three remaining soldiers were overwhelmed beneath a volley of stones trying in vain to shoot the trainee agents. Boarding the CR25 Transport soldiers were protecting, Laith took up position in the cockpit after the last trainee had boarded his plethora of skills including the education necessary to operate and fly interstellar spacecraft competently. Laith successfully flew the men and woman aboard HMIS Mysterio to the Imperial Security Bureau Academy where a Superintendent Garnier congratulated them for a resounding and unexpected success. Superintendent Garnier angrily summoned the designated team leader of all eight teams involved in the unauthorised seizure of the HMIS Mysterio and those Imperial Soldiers. They had now been hospitalised due to the actions of his trainees. After having to liaise with a thoroughly upset Army Colonel who was rather distraught at the thought of losing several soldiers to worker's compensation with his division commanders bristling at the thought of having to continue the wounded Troopers but such was the law. Feigning a heightened level of outrage when the eight trainee-squad leaders walked into his office Garnier demanded to know "Why did you assault soldiers of his Royal Highness' Army?"

    Bravely stepping forward the fiery Kehree, squad leader of team red declared proudly. "We could not positively identify them as Imperial Assets, but they were combatants. Thus given their lack of identifying insignia, we decided to engage and neutralise." Quietly Garnier listened paused his piercing gaze crawled across the single rank of assembled leaders. Unwilling to let Kehree take the fall for their schemes alone, Adaska bold and right stepped forward and declared. "It wasn't just Kerrie's idea, Sir." She began. "I was apart of the planning from start to finish if you are to punish trainee Balosar for the assault I would share the responsibility." The others stepped forth one-by-one and declared their involvement deciding to go all-in, which stunned Superintendent Garnier with their genuinely unyielding cold resolve, these were the fruits of the training staff's hard labour, behind the single-file of SHADOW Agent trainees a tall man entered rounding the trainees. The rank plaques adorned on his pristine white double-breasted tunic, introducing himself as Inspector-General Fyodo Kruul, Garnier asked Kruul what he would have done with the trainees given the severe nature of the assault to which Kruul replied calmly. "They behaved according to the rules of engagement and laws of war as legislated by parliament. Dismiss them at your leisure Assistant Superintendent Garnier." Nodding his copper-hair covered head Garnier dismissed the eight team-leaders with their leadership over respective squads becoming solidified with them each formally promoted to "Trainee Squad Leader" in recognition for their initiative and teamwork.

    Use of lethal blaster settings, live slugthrower ammunition and full-contact disarmed fighting became the norm as Adaska. Her colleagues continued their SHADOW training, coming towards the end of initial training, increasingly dangerous scenarios and practice exercises were demanded to be performed by Assistant Superintendent Garnier and Inspector-General Kruul. They both sought to mould their Shadows to be the galaxy's most excellent hunters. Hunters of all prey for as blanks with this level of training no enemy was truly safe from their predation. One of the lessons the Artificial Intelligence Somo gave Adaska, and the other trainees in primary training's tail-end were one on the topic of "Force Blanks" Disclosing to the trainees in no uncertain words that their physiology was an example of this phenomenon. Somo used a provisional curriculum to instruct the Shadow Trainees in limited ways to consciously channel and harness their inherent abilities to be more effective Agents. The first fatal casualty of their training course was incurred around this time, Adaska engaged in a vicious disarmed fighting duel during a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape scenario with an Imperial Army Instructor in a simulated office environment complete with decks, tables, chairs and bookshelves. The Instructor attempted to secure the trainee Agent's head in a hip-high chokehold. Using her impressive lithe flexibility, Adaska used a hand on the inside of man's elbow to narrowly escape the hold and proceeded to kick the male instructor in the groin before clasping the side of his head and slamming his neck against the edge of a table with such force it severed the Human man's first and second cervical vertebrate's killing the Soldier instantly.

    Killing an instructor, a soldier doing his sworn duty attempting to train her up to be the best SHADOW Agent possible Adaska experienced a profound and terrible sense of guilt. She mourned the deceased Sergeant secluding herself at the obstacle course in the bottom of an obstacle pit where the wept dignified tears over her 'mistake'. Assistant Superintendent Garnier and Inspector-General Kruul discussed whether or not it would be appropriate to discipline Trainee Agent Raythe for her performance with the two unanimously agreeing that such an idea would be counter-intuitive given that the training scenario was designed as a survival and evasion scenario. Adaska had done everything necessary to survive even if that meant brutally killing a man in disarmed fighting. Leon and Istvan managed to persuade Adaska to leave the obstacle pit after a long and meaningful conversation which enhanced the woman's friendship with her teammates and subordinates, thinking that if there was a feeling of love exclusive to the family it existed between herself and the twenty-four trainees on the SHADOW course together. The only thought that frightened the reforged Adaska Raythe was the thought that she might be taken away from the men and women whom she had grown to love during the Eighteen Month course, knowing that the Core Imperial Confederation's ambitions would call her off to serve all Adaska could hope for in the mean-time was that Gray Team wouldn't be disbanded upon the conclusion of their gruelling training. After completing the SERE portion of their course, the Agent Trainees moved onto counter-interrogation techniques, which Istvan helped coach the significantly younger woman and Leon sharing his method of dealing with attempts to manipulate, exploit or indoctrinate him. "Interrogation resistance starts with your way of thinking, your mind has got these little spider holes in it crawl into one, and the torture will hurt, but it won't break you." The experience of Counter-interrogation and viewing of associated training materials during related lessons left Adaska to resolve that she would never subject another sentient being to torture.

    One morning in the forth to last week of their course during the morning's initial lesson the now uniform-wearing trainee SHADOW Agents were briefed by Somo that they would each be Surgically, Chemically and Cybernetically augmented as part of their employment and that these augmentations would make them far beyond Human, but to earn it and prove themselves worthy A final assessment would have to be satisfactorily completed, an evaluation that would simulate the retrieval of a High-Value Target from behind hostile lines. Somo told the Twenty-Four trainee agents that they would be participating in a "Capture the Flag" exercise against the professional Imperial Soldiers of "Phantom Company" for the eleventh time, it was at that point that Assistant Superintendent Garnier entered the room followed closely behind by his trainers and supplemented the information conveyed by Somo that the trainee Agents would be thrown into the field for a period not exceeding fourteen days where they would be provided full combat kit including powersuits camouflaged appropriately and expected to seize Phantom Company's flag from within their Company-Lock successfully. It would be no easy feat given that Phantom Company was the size of a reinforced Army Company with more than one-hundred and fifty personnel within its' ranks, though like wolves the Agent Trainees of the Imperial Security Bureau would methodically hunt and dismember their larger prey and thus prove themselves worthy of the title of the coveted "Shadow" title.

    Leading Gray Team once again Adaska, Leon and Istvan deployed into Longspear valley, a mountainous valley ten kilometres wide at its' broadest point and the twenty-four trainees clad in camouflaged Imperial Security Powersuits went about immediately setting up a Base of Operations amongst the mountainous terrain and myriad caves. Laith and Kehree took their Shadows out to perform reconnaissance on Shadow Company's position with Gray Team and Blue Team among those who remained behind with Adaska and Hyun agreeing to forage for local poisonous berries and search for venomous reptiles. Leon managed to successfully capture a viper whose fangs produced a potent neurotoxin that induced partial paralysis into its' victims, leaving them defenceless seeing as several of them were issued with Tranq-25 High-Velocity Slughthrower pistols that fired non-lethal rounds Adaska ordered the stims contained within the tranq pistol cartridges be substituted with the Viper's neurotoxin and the tranquiliser compound placed into their first aid kits as a supplementary analgesic in the event of an emergency or where a trainee sustained severe injury. Hyun seconded this motion and commended on it as being sound and resourceful. Laith and Kehree returned from their reconnaissance-in-force with a pair of prisoners, two ARC Troopers; a man and a woman who had been sent to hunt down and identify the Agent Trainee's base of Operations. Laith and Hyun politely questioned the two captured Commandos who appeared to be no fans of Phantom Company's Officer Commanding openly disclosing that its' Captain was under pressure from their Regimental Commander to end the embarrassment and beat the Imperial Security Bureau's "Pet Project".

    Precision slugthrowers carried had been carried by the captured ARC Troopers, after Kehree assessed the weapons' functionality she intuitively modified their ammunition by Kehree to contain the viper neurotoxin retrieved by Adaska since they had a much further effective range than the pistols Assistant Superintendent Garnier had issued them. With the Precision Rifles and Laith's intelligence the Trainees convened in a clearing with Laith and Kehree giving a briefing on Phantom Company's position and its' attendant defences including fixed guard posts and dynamic patrols using sticks to draw a diagram of the positions into the mud, Team Leaders from every team were responsible for the briefing. It was decided that Black Team led by Emile Dorin, Gray Team led by Adaska and Green Team led by Hyun would be the breaching team for the perimeter. Undercover of a dark pre-dawn sky blanketed in clouds, with additional supplemental camouflage thrown onto her kit with Gray and Green Team's members dragging themselves along the foliage to the edge of an unsealed rocky road and peered over it towards the razor-wire fences. Peering intently towards the redundant wall of barbed wire fences with a sterile zone between them, Hyun passed Adaska a sensor jamming device to the woman and asked her to "Do the Honours." Hyun called "Execute" three times over the comlink to Laith Kehree At which point Adaska, turned on the Infrared and Ultra-violet 'white noise' generator it would prevent the sterile zone's sensors from identifying their breaching manoeuvre buying them a few minutes to get through the redundant fences. Hyun provided surveillance over-watch spotting soldiers roving through the perimeter for Laith and Kehree who would plant precise shots through the clavicles between the breastplate and chin; such was the deadly marksmanship drilled into the Agents.

    Cans filled with caustic acid was sprayed onto the Durasteel chain-link fence with Adaska and Emile loudly tearing a large hole through the first fence, fortunately, a thunderstorm began raging above with droplets of rain showering down over the six Agents. Istvan growled lowly and remarked, "I'm getting too old for this kind of thing." Which forced Leon to suppress a chuckle and Emile to chastise him. "Quiet" Emile glowered angrily at Istvan's breaking of noise discipline. Punching through both chain-link fences, Black and Gray's team stealthily danced through Phantom's Company lines making their way towards the munitions dump where Adaska confronted Phantom Company's young quartermaster and armourer who while uniformed was unarmoured, he was handsome, or so she thought with sandy blonde hair and green eyes. Holding a steaming coffee just in front of his chin on a frosty morning the soldier sat stunned in his seat, Adaska smiled slightly behind the vague skull visage of her Imperial Security Bureau Powersuit she said: "Put that down, we don't want you to get burned." Glibly complying Adaska cooly thanked the young man before shooting a dart filled with paralysing neurotoxin intro his chest leaving him stiff, albeit breathing on the floor. Emile, Adaska, Istvan and Leon with Black Team's two other members raided Phantom Company's warehouse of its' Non-lethal riot suppression, C-14A & C-10 Stun Grenades. With Phantom Company's base yet sleeping, each member of the infiltration team took as many grenades as could be carried and was taken by Emile with rigging the Grenades under the floors of Phantom Company's barracks demountable so when the alarm was inevitably sounded the awakened soldiers would be disorientated or incapacitated.

    Coordinating over their comlink channel each trainee used four grenades as part of an improvised explosive device charge to detonate in five-minutes at which point Adaska assessed the hololithic widget on her holographic helmet-mounted display for the local time and realised that Phantom Company would be due for their parade in two minutes. The six trainee agents ran through the expansive company-sized base earning the attention of a few sentries whom Kehree and Laith's teams couldn't dispatch due to the firing angles. The charges exploded all across the camp, sending Imperial Soldiers stumbling through a field with their eyes forced shut. Lungs burning by Cyanide Nitrile gas which wafted through rain-filled air, the disorientation wouldn't last long Adaska thought because the rain would wash the contamination off the soldiers' skin, she was the first to arrive at Phantom Company's flagpole. She found two semi-armoured men raising the Imperial Army's Standard, struggling to sight the targets while on a running platform she started firing at the man with the standard draped over his shoulder's torso hitting him twice in the back which prompted the second man to pivot in his boot heels. "Halt!" He ordered, levelling his blaster's muzzle towards the charging agent. However, Adaska didn't heed his order, merely pushing harder off her boot heels harder. That's what she heard a dart whizz pass her head and watched its' fins land straight onto the man's cheek sending him paralysed down into the much, Istvan's throat chuckled "Not bad for an old man huh?" Leon and Black Team arrived with Adaska stuffing Phantom Company's flag into a pouch on her powersuit.

    Soldiers pursued Black and Gray Team on their cacophonous escape with them firing live ballistic ammunition and lethal-setting blaster bolts in their direction, Leon remarked on it claiming. "Doesn't surprise me at all with how much we've kicked their arses!" Adaska chastised Leon to remain focused, the seriousness and determination of Phantom Company's dirge were amplified when the six Agents heard the unmistakable birth-cry of an enormous displacement combustion engine roar within Warehouse. "Tank!" Emile shouted as they reached the fenceline with Green and Blue teams desperately attempting to provide covering fire for Black and Gray. Managing to escape, Adaska, Leon, Istvan, Emile, Anton and Vihan fled into the woods alongside Blue, Green and Red Team While the others had already departed to secure the Rendezvous Location with Assistant Superintendent Garnier and the HMIS Mysterio. Phantom Company pursued the Agents on foot for approximately two-hours before ostensibly breaking their ground-search and using Banshee Dropships to perform aerial reconnaissance above the dense forests and using fog lights to cut swathes of light through the dense foliage. The Trainee Agents arrived at their rendezvous point an hour and a half early. They patiently waited in an ambush position in the clearing's treeline; Assistant Superintendent Garnier came at the designated time with a Security Team, Gray Team elected to present themselves with Adaska pulling Phantom Company's Imperial Army Standard from the pouch where she had stuffed it and gave its' white, black and red colours. "High-Value Target secured sir!" Garnier pulled a cigar from his lips and flicked a string of Ash from its' end before ordering "Reveal yourselves" To the other Trainees suspecting they had secreted themselves among the treeline. They had been given fourteen days to complete this exercise and done it in three.

    No congratulations were forthcoming though, Garnier merely ordered the Trainee Agents aboard the HMIS Mysterio and returned to the academy where their training continued with emphasis on melee and disarmed fighting. They needed to learn agility and balance, and so the Trainee Agents participated in full-contact sparring matches where they stood in canoes while duelling with Pugil Sticks or duelled with Blades in arenas equipped with energy suppression fields. Mirroring the environment, Adaska had unknowingly fought in the Bright Star's Eve Festival; she had only become more skilled and dangerous since winning its' championship, Assistant Superintendent Garnier gave written permission for Trainee Agent Raythe to use her Telescoping Phrik Shortsword which she did with ruthless efficiency, beating all Twenty-Three other trainees in blade-to-blade combat which quietly delighted Garnier. With their graduation from initial training upon them, Inspector-General Kruul hosted the Trainee Agents in an auditorium and congratulated them on coming this far but warned them that even with their gruelling primary training being over it would only become harder as their advanced training and operational deployments began with Assistant Superintendent Garnier stepping forward claiming they had each "Created new lives for yourselves and forged a new family bound in the fire of warfare and conflict." Garnier also disclosed to his trainees that their Surgical Procedures were fast approaching and in a week would be taken to an undisclosed medical facility to undergo the agreed Classified Surgical and Chemical alterations, warning the trainees that there was a risk for fatalities from the procedure in the event of any deaths their next-of-kin would be notified.

    The day of their augmentation procedures arrived, and each trainee had to come to terms with the possibility of their deaths. On the trip to this undisclosed location aboard the HMIS Mysterio, Adaska asked Istvan how he managed to cope with such nail-biting anxiety that had possessed all the other albeit far younger Trainees and Istvan replied frankly. "Death is inevitable; I'm old. Not sure if I'd come to grips with my mortality before this, but after what we've done and trained to do? I'm at peace." Adaska found his acceptance of death profoundly unsettling, with Adaska replying. "I don't believe in any sort of pre-determined destiny mysticism, we make our fates in this galaxy, and I'll fight until my last breath. Even if I find myself standing alone." Istvan smiled at that, it sounded like something Leon might say, and the blonde offered a fist reaching pass Istvan exclaiming with fierce approval. "Too right sister!" Adaska indulged Leon's gesture, and the three found themselves arriving on Coruscant's highest level at the Imperial Security Bureau headquarters and were taken down to its' secretive lower levels beneath reception. Taken to a Pre-operation room, Adaska and several trainees had their bodies shaved and incision lines burned into the surface of their skin with lasers and heavily sedated, Assistant Superintendent Garnier and Inspector-General Kruul made the rounds through the operating rooms sharing last words with each of the twenty-four candidates of the SHADOW Program's first successful class. However, Garnier did not outwardly display it he was proud beyond words that up until this point none had fallen. Regardless of their augmentation's success or failures, they were all already heroes in his eyes.

    She was prepared to undergo the augmentation procedure and laid across a cold operating table with a respirator over the bridge of nose and IV drip inserted into her arm's vein. Garnier smiled slightly to see the then bald woman, thinking back on to her effectiveness with a blade and the day she walked into the headquarters' lobby to apply how far they had come to this moment. "How are you feeling, Agent Raythe?" Adaska looked through the turquoise visor of the full-face oxygen-mask and replied shakily. "Anxious, Sir. What's going to happen to us?" Assistant Superintendent leaned down towards Adaska and supportively clasped her wrist in a gentle, almost paternal grip and replied. "You'll be more than what you are." No reply was solicited from Adaska the woman's icy blue eyes rolled into the back of her head overcome by the anaesthetics touch and lulled into a state of utterly oblivious unconsciousness. The Procedure's team was staffed by several Anesthetists, Chemists, Bio-technicians and Surgeons of various species including Humans and Near-Humans who used precision Automated Robotic Armatures that performed the manual labour side of manipulating Adaska's unconscious body with surgical tools under the direct input of those medical professionals. The intense surgical and biochemical procedure took approximately seventy-two hours to complete from start to finish with dozens of Physicians, and other Medical Staff left exhausted, it was a resounding success. However, twenty-one were successfully augmented with the remaining three experiencing complications that would leave them requiring rehabilitation.

    Twenty-One days passed between the procedure's conclusion and Adaska being brought out of a medically induced Coma, finding that all others yet laid unconscious. With the assistance of a Nurse, Trainee Agent Raythe wrapped in bandages stumbled on a pair of unusually long legs to Assistant Superintendent Garnier who was enjoying a Cigar outdoors. Garnier turned and flashed a smile filled with coffee-stained teeth towards his pupil, offering the woman a hand to shake, and cooly congratulated her stating. "You've passed through the abyss and emerged as this agency's First Shadow Operative, congratulations Agent Raythe". A week later every single team of Trainee Agents assembled at the Imperial Security Bureau Headquarters on Coruscant. Before a memorial dedicated to the fallen crested by a statue of Sheev Palpatine, each trainee took their Oath or Affirmation of office to serve the Emperor and Imperial state, officially obtaining their Law Enforcement Powers & Responsibilities across the entirety of the Core Imperial Confederation's Dominion and graduated the first training for the SHADOW program. Though, it turned to be that Adaska's fears about being split from a now youthful-looking Istvan Toth and earnest Leon Graumann were unfounded. The three of them were to serve the state together, at least for the beginning of their advanced training. Three of their number who had been crippled by the augmentations would be rehabilitated and used as Instructor to assist Superintendent Garnier at the Academy on Utrost. Issued with a Suit of Mark/IV TYRFING Powered Infiltration/Assault Armour and trained in its' use Adaska and the other Shadows' already impressive physiological capabilities was dramatically enhanced by their Powered Armour.

    Chapter X: Dark Sparrow

    During her advanced training period Adaska was required to demonstrate competency in Close Personal Protection and thus was alone placed on the personal protection detail of an Imperial Confederated Systems Senator, specifically the Senator for Coruscant Ulrik Lagerfeld. It was a cruel twist of fate that Adaska would be obliviously assigned to guard a man and former friend. They had been familiar with Adaska since they were children. However, that didn't stop him from betraying her confidence in the past when using Adaska as a mistress. Ulrik struggled with his guilt looking upon Adaska's face every day to know that his former lover who had turned to hate him was now responsible for protecting not just his life but the life of his son and apathetic wretch of a wife. Ulrik didn't know the precise details of the SHADOW Program but heard through what mutual friends she had that Adaska's employment with the Imperial Security Bureau was contingent on a memory wipe in a mysterious way Ulrik reflected that it was a joy to be forgotten by the woman he had betrayed but also made no attempt to re-befriend Adaska, viewing himself in hindsight with the harshest terms feeling as though he was unworthy of her friendship and love. The same could not be said for Trevas Lagerfeld, Ulrik's cunning and staggeringly intelligent five-year-old son who was enamoured with the mysterious woman who protected his Father, Trevas would often politely invite Adaska to play games of strategy with him including Dejarik, Holochess, Holochex which Trevas usually beat Adaska at with the child magnanimously offering them significantly older woman tutelage which she'd accept with quiet amusement.

    It was some small consolation to Ulrik that Adaska would play and entertain his son when returning to his residence on Coruscant, regrettably finding himself too busy to juggle his senatorial responsibilities feasibly and parenthood even when at home. Ulrik's wife Jaesa, a native of Carida, was jealous of Adaska, viewing the woman as a rival to her beauty and a threat to her own family's political prominence was Ulrik to dissolve their marriage in favour of his bodyguard. Ironically, Jaesa was utterly oblivious to Ulrik's historical extra-marital affair with Adaska all the same Jaesa thoroughly disdained Agent Raythe. Adaska was often present when Ulrik Lagerfeld when he was visited by other senators and members of the party, Ulrik's political activities and rivalries did not go unnoticed by the woman. She noted that many of the policies he wished to pursue were egalitarian and liberal, making him a natural ally and personal friend of the Imperial Politician and Imperial National Party Whip Druwor. In the meetings both in public and private that Ulrik hosted with his partners they often spoke about attempting to introduce into the Party and Parliament constitutional amendments that would make it possible for opposition parties to be formed and for protections in the Constitution to be extended to Non-Humans. Ulrik's political activities within the party garnered so much attention that the Cabinet Minister responsible for all the intelligence agencies including the Imperial Security bureau Commissar-General Yuri Orlov met the Senator for Coruscant over lunch and offered an oblivious Ulrik a bleak warning that there was little hope he could drum up support within the Party Room or Senate for his private member bills aimed at greater oversight for the intelligence community or Non-Citizen protections.

    Little did Adaska as Ulrik's protector suspect but the Commissar-General Yuri Orlov was fed intelligence about Ulrik's reformist activities by Jaesa Lagerfeld. The latter had grown so desperately jealous of her husband's bodyguard she wanted to see him thwarted. Yuri Orlov was a member of the "Purist" Faction within the Imperial National People's Party and privately wished to see the Parliament's power curtailed rather than expanded to abolish it altogether and turn the Imperial Confederated Systems into a Stratocracy as the Galactic Empire at the height of its' potential. Yuri Orlov was responsible for initiating a clandestine program with the administration of the Imperial Security Bureau providing the Umbaran Cartel led by Gerad Naahan with weapons and intelligence hoping to use the criminals as a means of weakening the state's enemies and to collect information on his political rivals. Feeling threatened by Ulrik Lagerfeld's draft proposals for reforming the party and its' structure, Yuri arranges to have the Umbaran Cartel assassinate Senator Ulrik Lagerfeld in a targeted attack and use fabricated intelligence to advise High Chancellor Tanomas Graf that the Corellian Confederation was responsible for the assassination. Ulrik requested politely that Adaska hand-deliver a copy of his proposals to political allies across the Corusca Sector, it was strange and not one Adaska was obliged to obey yet still believing that his reforms might do some good for the Imperial Security Bureau and public trust within the organisation, she flew to Hesperidium and then to Metellos and Utrost before returning to Coruscant with the replies of other senators and assemblymen on her person.

    Arriving back at the Imperial Parliament on Coruscant within Galactic City's Federal District, Adaska returned four days earlier than had been scheduled by Ulrik, not wanting to neglect her duty to protect her charge. The Coruscant Security Force Officers wearing their exclusive Senatorial Field Dress protecting Parliament greeted Agent Raythe warmly, a few even recognized the woman. However, none remarked on this to her, walking towards Ulrik's officer from the Parliament's speederpool she was intercepted by Trevas who begged Agent Raythe for a game of Holochex and Adaska promised the five-year-old boy a game. However, after she had completed her assigned task. Trevas sadly accepted that and walked beside Adaska towards his Father's office, stepping inside the luxurious and expansive room Ulrik's office appeared to be more like a residence as opposed to strictly being an office space. It was a truth of Imperial Politics that many of their Bureaucrats and Politicians often became so busy that they slept on the Parliament's premises overnight between heated hearings and debates. Trevas grabbed Adaska's hand loudly after opening the door and dragged the uniformed Imperial Security Bureau Agent behind him "Look whom I found Father" Trevas exclaimed, with Agent Raythe smiling sheepishly permitting the young boy to enjoy his moment. However, seeing Ulrik scowl at the way he pulled on Adaska's hand was force enough to release the woman's palm. Yuri Orlov who had been talking to Ulrik on the balcony when Adaska and Trevas entered excused himself politely moving towards the door but stopped to offer Adaska a cordial greeting.

    Beckoning Adaska to the balcony Ulrik the pair shook hands with Trevas standing dutifully behind them, wordlessly a letter passed between the two and Ulrik hastily opened it. His eyes began scrolling through the High Galactic script and gave a disappointed sigh. Claiming that his political friends had abandoned their support for his proposed amendment to the Intelligence and Security Services Act claiming that there was little hope of them securing the help of the Moderates within the party who would be instrumental in getting any motion passed up successfully through the Assembly. That's when Trevas broke Ulrik's monologue and drew attention to the fact that his office's door-lock had inexplicably malfunctioned and open, thrusting an index finger in its' direction Adaska's brows furrowed. She took some steps in that direction away from the Balcony. She paused in the office's "Lounge Room" listening intently her sharpened senses perceived the distinct noise of footsteps. Pivoting, in her boot-heels Adaska, shouted, "Hit the deck!" Towards Ulrik who stood on the Balcony only to watch an azure coloured blaster bolt whistle through his throat sending a stream of hot arterial blood over her face. Simultaneously a cloaked Nika Satari lunged forward with light bent around her very form, brandishing a long metal baton she struck Adaska over the back of the skull with a hard snapping sound, the force so violent baton bent over Agent Raythe's practically indestructible head. Thrown towards the floor with a concussion and put in a state of unconsciousness Nika lunged towards a defiant Trevas and subjected the poor child to a hand-held stun device before swooping him up in the light-bending cloaking field vanishing entirely with him clasping weakly back towards his Father's corpse and Agent Raythe who laid, her face streaked with Ulrik's blood.

    Regaining consciousness shortly after that, Adaska immediately scrambled towards Ulrik and cradled the dying man in her arms. Attempting to speak Adaska placed one of her pale hands over the gaping wound beneath the chin, listening to him gurgle violently she pleaded with her charge to "Stay with me." Ulrik's last act while his soul still inhabited his body was to reach up feebly towards Adaska's cheek and clasp it with weak affection before he went entirely slack. Covered in his blood, Adaska looked up towards the office door hearing the comforting voice of Commissar-General Orlov approaching followed behind by what sounded like several pairs of armoured footsteps. Orlov and Jaesa burst into the room, followed closely behind by four Coruscant Security Force Officers including Colonel Sulyvahn Locke and Sergeant Kyle Whir. The latter two saw Adaska clasping onto Ulrik with a Blaster Pistol drawn in her hand, stricken with disbelief and grief Kyle and Locke were stunned that the woman they had both once counted as a friend could have been capable of such a thing. Jaesa immediately began babbling and crying her false tears "Look at what she has done!" Orlov concurred quickly. "The Agent has killed the Senator!" Locke ordered Kyle and the other two officers to keep their weapons trained on Agent Raythe. Jaesa looked over both shoulders and lunged towards Adaska poised to strike "What have you done with my son!?" One of the Coruscant Security Force Officers wrapped an arm around the woman's waist and threw her back into the room harshly leaving Locke, Whir and a Corporal to keep their blasters trained on the treacherous Agent.


    "Her bodyguard!" Jaesa could be heard wailing and shrieking, Adaska stunned steadily rose from her seated position with palms held up and towards the Officers and Kyli is a sign of submission, she had no intention to fight. "I'll see you shot for this, traitorous scum. Take her!" Orlov ordered, with Locke glancing to the tall and powerful Kyle Whir. They arched the stock of their rifle back into the air before slamming into Adaska's face sending her down in a pathetic, limp and unconscious heap. Waking in a dark room illuminated dimly by ceiling lights, a small fire raged in a barrel with its' top removed, trying to move her limbs Adaska found herself restrained in a Durasteel and Leather throne with wrists bound in heavy metallic sheaths that stretched from wrist to elbow, a bald man stood above the barrel with a long dark metal rod clutched in his hand hung above the bonfire's dancing flames, its' tip glowed a fiercely bright orange. With an Apron draped over his portly figure, his throat made a repulsive noise and spat on the dirty concrete floor. "I've had a lot of customers in that chair." His heavy fat footsteps thudded against the floor with sizzling iron held in right-hand. Adaska remained utterly silent threatened with the boiling implement, recalling Istvan's advice to find those little spider-holes in her mind she desperately secluded herself. "But never one so tough and beautiful." Licking his porcine lips and snorting loudly, he continued. "Not going to bother asking questions or make demands, that's for Orlov. I just want to hear you scream and watch you squirm in that chair." Adaska's icy blue spheres glared wordlessly at his face in silent defiance. Her interrogator merely smiled at that and pressed the shrieking Iron against Adaska's sinewy bicep and scream she did.

    For two hours did the correctional facility's interrogator Vengar torture Adaska, burning and beating the woman trying in vain to get anything out of her except screaming. Orlov entered the "Enhanced Interview" Room with a hefty tome held under his arm Jaesa Lagerfeld followed closely behind the man. Orlov placed his book on a table and took up a fine pen in his hand and began writing while Jaesa strolled up to Adaska with a grin so wide and smug it threatened to split her head in two. "You, miserable queen." Her voice glowered looking down from above at the battered and bruised woman. "I noticed the way Ulrik looked at you." Jaesa gripped Adaska's chin and lower jaw in a vice-grip and turned the Agent's entire head in an attempt to force eye-contact. "What did he see in you that I lack. What." Knuckles lashed into her cheek so hard that Adaska's head whipped to the right her gums sprayed a rain of blood from mouth onto the floor before coughing violently, and yet she did not speak. Orlov finished with drafting the written confession and tore it from the binder it laid in, walking towards Adaska who was slumped forward, Vengar took a fist-full of the woman's brunette hair and used it to jerk her head and eyes up. Dangling the parchment in front of her eyes "This is a confession, to the murder of Senator Ulrik Lagerfeld." he began. "I want you to sign it so we can get this over quickly." Adaska's reply came in a contempt-field cloud of spittle that she flung over the delicate hand, some of her claret blood landed on Orlov's cheek which he calmly wiped with a plain handkerchief before turning to Vengar. "Hit her again." He ordered, and the obese ape drew the long iron from flaming barrel pressing its' precipice against her right arm, she growled painfully.

    Orlov expelled Vengar from the room, leaving only him and Jaesa within, he addressed Adaska directly. "Raythe," He said softly placing a supportive hand atop her shoulder, Adaska breathed genuinely pursuing her icy blue eyelids together shutting them to his face, she wanted to twist Orlov's small head from his overly well-dressed body. "Senator Lagerfeld is dead, and Trevas has been hidden. No one will ever know the truth of what has happened; everyone believes you killed a Senator." Jaesa mocked Adaska claiming that "The Core needs strong leadership from men and women who aren't afraid to get blood on their hands to guide and control the weak and poor masses. It's our place to rule this galaxy." Listening in wordless silence, Adaska meticulously recorded the conversation within her mind hoping for the day where she might use their bravado to see justice served. "It was never personal Agent Raythe, in truth we planned to have Ulrik killed while you were gone. But having you take the fall looks more convincing and less suspicious. The people and courts need a boogeyman, and now they have one." Orlov placed a palm over his double-breasted greatcoat roughly where his heart would be if he had one, leaning in carefully towards the woman and her welted face he whispered into her ear. "Thank you for being there when we needed you; we could have never done it without your contribution. Tomorrow you'll be in front of a firing squad though and unfortunately forgotten." Ever a parochial snob, he offered a parting smirk. "Goodbye, Agent Raythe." Orlov straightened and threw the bloodied confession into the bonfire walking towards the exit he hollered for Vengar to take Agent Raythe to an isolation cell, Jaesa followed behind Orlov but paused to deliver one last closed-fist punch into Adaska's mouth.

    Dragged on her knees from the Interrogation Room to an isolation cell and hurled behind its' cold durasteel bars, Adaska turned the cell's running light's off and huddled in a corner. They were frightened, though yet not broken by the torture. She immediately turned mind towards escape, but without tools or time of which she had little before they simply executed her for murdering a Senator, it seemed that all hope was forlorn for Agent Raythe. Sleeping for about six hours, her rest was interrupted by a Detention Officer who was gently tapping their baton against the cell's Durasteel Bars exclaiming "Wake up Raythe, you've got some mail!" Adaska rose cautiously from the cold concrete slap they had been sleeping atop in their bloodied trousers and tank-top tentatively approaching what seemed to be an unusually luxurious tray with no food on its' surface but a folded letter with a brass-coloured key sitting atop it. Picking up the white parchment in hand caked in a thin veneer of dried blood Adaska's bloodshot icy spheres read the anonymous message explaining that the key was their cell's key and that within the interrogation room where she had been tortured there had been some plastic explosive stashed to blow open the Detention Centre's outer blast door and to leave following a river outside and to trail it into the centre's subterranean sewer system where some "Gear" had been issued. The letter's author disclosed that the Detention Guard had left a weapon on the table outside her cell door, using the key to unlock their cage Adaska hastily ran up to the table and picked up what was unmistakably her Phrik Telescoping Sword. Adaska mused that whoever this "Friend" as they were more than passingly familiar with the woman.

    Skulking through the shadows, Adaska rather comically in the act of retribution strangled each of the Detention Guards within her cell's wing and proceeded to secure the unconscious men in her cell after stealing their keys. Making her way to the Interrogation room with revenge on her mind, she was disappointed not to find Vengar still there but located a cardboard box filled with mountable and highly malleable plastic explosives. Continuing through the Detention Centre quietly she finally got close to the gate; there were too many Officers so in a display of resourcefulness Adaska used one of the short-range radios taken from one of the men locked into her cell to call an emergency response to the Interrogation Room claiming there was an "Officer Down." Which sent legions of uniformed Detention Officers sprinting towards Interrogation Room leaving an opportunity to enter the gate area, it took the augmented Superhuman little difficulty to overcome the scant two Detention Officers working at the Gate-House, Adaska took great care not to inflict fatal injuries but left them battered with broken bones as a compromise. Exploiting her thorough SHADOW Program training, she planted the plastic explosives up against the thick vehicle gate portal and set a timer for fifteen seconds and took cover within the Detention Officer's guard station. The bombs detonated with such violent explosive force the seven and a half meter tall and three-meter high grate was sent hurtling for fifty meters before slamming into a cliff-face. Alarms sounded throughout the Midnight Detention Facility.

    The sweet tropical breeze kissed her bloodied face. Adaska wearing a pair of worn and scuffed boots leapt from the narrow mountain road and fell down a perilous drop into the river that waited beneath which was used as sewer drainage in an example of genuinely archaic sewage treatment, which testified to its' young life and rapid construction in Adaskas mind. Floating down-stream along the river's bank the sound of barking hounds and shouting Detention Officers could be heard through the valley even as the escaped fugitive identified the sewer treatment centre's opening in a stone cliff-face, swimming towards it weakly she permitted herself a moment of reprieve before entering the subterranean waste recycling facility through an airlock and accurate to the promise within Adaska located a letter detailing that a supply cache would be found further within the treatment plant's tunnels and to continue through it until coming to a beach where a man named "Jon" would pick her up and bring her to the author who was again merely titled as "A Friend". Crawling through ventilation shafts quietly to avoid Detention Officers Adaska eventually did find some "Gear" which turned out to be water, first aid supplies, her favourite model of blaster rifle and tranq slugthrower pistol along with a full suit of Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation Made Mark IX Katarn Battle Armour. Locating another note on the crate's lid Adaska read its' contents which revealed the "Friend" was a group of people who claimed loyalty to Tanomas Graf and the "True Empire" stating in their letter to be aware that she, Agent Raythe had been framed for the murder of Senator Ulrik Lagerfeld and desired strongly to meet the woman equating their purpose as being in-common. Wordlessly agreeing, now armed and armoured Adaska had little difficulty engaging and neutralising Detention Officers with the Non-Lethal setting on her Blaster Rifle, refusing to kill what could potentially be misguided servants of the state.

    Salvation came after climbing, crawling and wading through the fetid treatment centre's water. Adaska's white Katarn Battle Armour had been dirtied and approached a lone Lambda-class Shuttle that waited patiently on the golden beaches of whatever mysterious world she stood upon; a man waited at its' ramp armed with a blaster rifle. Calmly walking towards the man the full weight of her exhaustion and injuries began to settle in pulling Adaska towards the underworld. Jon, as he had been called, appeared as a gaunt man with dark hair and hazel eyes; he waved towards the Trooper excitedly. "Dash! Adaska Raythe! It's me, Jon, I'm a friend." When she'd come close enough, he slung the rifle over right shoulder and rushed to aid a friend whom he had known throughout his life. Struggling with the armoured weight, his breaths were ragged when offering some encouragement. "Stay with me Dash." Jon implored in a highly palatable tone "We've got a hot shower, warm beds and crispy bacon waiting for you." Placing Adaska in a chair within the cargo hold and draping a blanket over them, Jon took up his position in pilot's chair. He took off from the sandy pebbleless gold beach. He shot out over the lush green forests before arching up towards Atmosphere, taking an unconscious and battered Adaska to Byss. During the Hyperspace jump to the planet, Jon with as much care as his atrophied underdeveloped physique would allow moved Adaska from her chair onto the modest infirmary's lone bed where she would later awake approximately five hours later to immediately draw her blade, stumble from the infirmary and confront a stunned Jon. He successfully talked the distraught woman out of murdering him successfully persuading her that he was a friend.

    The pair landed on Byss without incident after narrowly passing through customs with Jon presenting the forged identification he'd received from his co-conspirators. Bringing Adaska to a semi-rural community on Desolation Lake approximately forty-five kilometres outside the Capital City within a warm and homely pub called the "Icy Maiden", Theodore Royce-Clarke introduced himself to the exhausted and disorientated Agent Raythe along with Druwor the Party Whip for the Imperial People's National Party. The pair explained that they believed Adaska was innocent of murdering Senator Lagerfeld and that the Commissar-General Yuri Orlov was responsible for conspiring to murder Moderate and Liberal members of the party and using criminal organisations to execute his designs with plausible deniability while attempting to purge personnel within the Imperial Confederated Systems' intelligence apparatus. The party itself whom he believed would be particularly staunch in resisting his attempts to seize party leadership and change their policies to usher in a renewed stratocracy. Druwor stated that he was aiding Theodore in the building of a coalition of trustworthy Loyalists to thwart and destroy the Purists' radical ambitions and ending their influence within the state and party. Theodore claimed he had witnessed Adaska fight in the past. He tried flattering the weary Agent by claiming that they could not do much without individuals like her, needing her skills, talent and training to win physical battles against the Purists. In exchange for her support, Theodore and Druwor pledged to get Adaska a pardon from the High Chancellor, Immunity from Prosecution for any crimes committed in their mission and finally to help fulfil her primary task and rescue Trevas Lagerfeld whom they believed to be held somewhere by the Umbaran Cartel. Adaska predictably agreed without hesitation.

    They were wasting little time in seizing the opportunity of having a Shadow at their disposal Druwor and Theodore armed and armouring Adaska with the most excellent weapons within the Imperial Confederated Systems' vast armouries and state contracts. With intelligence from their contacts within the Purist Faction, Druwor and Theodore sent their ally to Brentaal IV to investigate the crash of His Majesty's Imperial Ship Endure, which had allegedly been the result of an operation carried out by an organisation called the "Children of Carida" which during the Operation's briefing Druwor and Theodore disclosed that the terrorist Paramilitary Organisation was covertly funded, trained and armed on an initiative started by an Imperial Socialite at the direction of their lover Commissar-General Orlov to fight other insurgent groups and give the Imperial Confederated Systems justification to engage in so-called "Security Actions" But privately in pursuit of their political ambitions was also performing attacks on the private residences and business interests of Moderates and Liberals held on Carida and elsewhere. Clad in her TYRFING Powered Infiltration Armour, Adaska assuming the fabricated identity of "Jain Meen" A licensed Coruscanti Bounty Hunter and took the short journey to Brentaal IV and arrived at the crime scene at the same time as an advance force of Imperial Military Commandos. Adaska entered the crashed diplomatic cruiser's belly and searched methodically for survivors on the lower deck but found herself being disappointed. Climbing up a turbolift shaft through a dangling durasteel rope towards the three-hundred-meter ships' upper floors, she walked briskly in the direction of the bridge.

    Arriving at the bridge, Adaska heard a voice calling for aid and encountered a surviving member of the diplomatic's cruiser staff; Ambassador Kaiso. Adaska recognised the man and his prominent station and attempted to dutifully render the Ambassador first aid which the dying Kaiso dismissed as pointless and elected to grip the woman's wrist instead and pleaded with her to listen to his dying words. Adaska assessing the man's condition acquiesced to his demands, Kaiso stated that his saviour should investigate Gun Fourteen Bee at the local Defence Force's Nemesis airbase for this Gun Battery was responsible for blasting their shuttle out of the sky. He believed the Armoured Giant could find out who was indeed responsible for the crime there, stating that the local government would never authority such an action being cautious and respectful to the power of the Imperial Confederated Systems' broad military capability.

    With the political and bureaucratic influence of the Commissar-General over the Imperial Security Bureau reaching feverish levels becoming rather frightened by the ongoing developments and what they could mean for the Party and Imperial State, Druwor manipulated the party's calendar with the deferment of High Chancellor Tanomas Graf so that a party would be held on Coruscant within the Imperial Palace to celebrate their victory over Yasha Cadera's Mandalorian Empire as a means of concentrating large amounts of the Upper Echelons of Imperial Society into one place. On the invitee list was the current Director, Hali Saro of the Imperial Security Bureau destined for attendance. Druwor and Theodore concluded that it would be necessary to remove the man from office and gave this task to Agent Adaska Raythe, stating that she would prefer to avoid outright killing the man, the two men enlisted the aid of Kyli Graf. The latter had expressed sympathies to their cause in the past. She liaised with the Party's celebrant responsible for the actual party preparations to hire several dozen high-class escorts under the proviso of "Entertaining" the hard-working men and women of the Imperial Confederated Systems' government. In truth, Kyli had a disproportionate of Twi'leks hired knowing that the married Hali Saro was renowned quietly for having a historical weakness for alien women and Druwor, Kyli and Theodore hoped this might give the opportunity Adaska requested to drum up a salacious scandal that would ruin any wedded politicians career. Setting off to Coruscant, Adaska was equipped with a Stealth Field Generator and provided the High Chancellor's daughter as a contact for sources of intel regarding the Palace's interior.


    • Big Five Personality Traits:
      • Inventive
      • Efficient
      • Energetic
      • Friendly
      • Nervous
    • Social Traits:
      • Chaotic
      • Lustful
      • Forgiving
      • Selfish
      • Truthful
      • Gentle
      • Rational
    • Personal Traits:
      • Empathetic
      • Paragon
      • Cautious
      • Bon Vivant
      • Valorous
    • Triad Traits:
      • Dark Triad:
        • Machivellianism
      • Light Triad:
        • Humanism
    Personality: Adaska Raythe is resilient, capable and intelligent born into a wealthy Coruscanti-Corellian Family she possesses an unusual amount of empathy for somebody of an Upper-Class Lineage that stretches back roughly two-hundred years. Adaska possesses a strong admiration for integrity and despises dishonest work, words, deeds and deception which can be seen as somewhat ironic even hypocritical given her occupation as an Imperial Shadow.

    Despite having a strong streak of compassion and empathy ingrained into her character, Adaska possesses a disturbing capacity for killing especially those individuals whom she has persuaded herself to deserve death. Adaska possesses a binary sense of morality, viewing the world in terms of “Good” and “Evil”. However, she defines what each is along the lines of her moral compass; she cannot tolerate or abide by the targeting of Non-Combatants—often altering deployment behaviour to minimize collateral damage and unnecessary casualties.

    After becoming an Imperial Shadow and being subjected to the mandatory pre-training memory wipe Adaska became significantly more bold and outgoing but also cold and ruthless due to the psycho-social conditioning provided to the woman by the Imperial Security Bureau. As a Blank, Adaska usually leaves “Normals” irritable and anxious with her presence and thus possess few in the way of good long-term friends and experiences trouble with connecting and nurturing meaningful social or romantic relationships.

    Part of Adaska is emotionally vulnerable beneath her steely exterior and dislikes forming attachments partly because attachments in her mind could be broken. The thought of losing somebody she loves or cares deeply about is one of the many things that induce severe anxiety and terror into the woman, so she tells herself that she prefers and is better suited to the life of a loner as a psychological harm minimisation strategy.

    Though she bears a title of honour through a prestigious family name Adaska is pragmatic when necessary, willing and able to use whatever means necessary to achieve the desired outcome with the notable exception of torture which she despises and anybody who practices it. Adaska isn’t opposed to wet work, and through her advanced paramilitary training and desensitization exercises performed as part of her employment with the Imperial Security Bureau has become entirely apathetic to the sight of blood. Adaska’s willpower is strong although she isn’t without self-doubt or a self-critical streak. In terms of body-language Adaska has a marked tendency to place her left hand on the hip while talking to others, something psychologists attribute to her aristocratic upbringing.

    There are some unusual quirks, habits and likes that Adaska has developed over her young adulthood, as examples of this she actively disdains Sushi, Smoking and dismisses Heavy Isotope and the similar Herglic Rage-Metal music as just being “Obnoxiously loud noise.” although on occasion approval can be found through the slamming of her boot against the floor in harmony with a particularly violent rhythm when in a foul combative mood herself openly preferring the genres of Jazz, Quenk Jazz, Leap-Jump and Opera pieces. On occasion Adaska can be heard at the moment she thinks to be alone singing melancholic and tragic Opera pieces. Adaska loves watching Opera performances at the Galaxies Opera House within the Uscru District in Coruscant’s Galactic City.

    [STRENGTHS]
    • Living Blank: Adaska is counted among the exceedingly rare virtually unheard of “Force Blanks” A repulsive “Soulless” being who not only possesses no presence within the living or cosmic force but whose very existence is anathema to that mystical power. Adaska is untouchable by the Force itself and in practical terms renders her all but immune to force-based abilities and usually partially or wholly disrupts phenomena attributable to the Force or Midi-Chlorians in her vicinity with the effect of Adaska’s void being experienced in a radius of approximately one-mile with the results becoming more pronounced and noticeable the closer one is in proximity to the woman, with at least one immensely force sensitive man in the past even experiencing a fatal brain haemorrhage. The effect of Adaska's "Soulessness" also impacts Khyber-Crystal based weapons such as Lightsabres which generally fail to function at all in her presence. Additionally, as a new one phenomenon exhibited is that incidental acquaintances often fail to remember Adaska's appearance, features or very existence which is useful for her work as a Shadow.
    • Post-Human Warrior: Surgically and chemically augmented Adaska’s physiology grants her capabilities far beyond that of a Baseline Human which includes but is not limited to: Running at sustained speeds over sixty-two kilometres per hour, incredibly fast-twitch response reflexes which are on average three-hundred per cent faster than a baseline human, physical power far more than what her already considerable physique would suggest, practically unbreakable bones and the ability to see in low-light conditions like a nocturnal predator.
    • Slicing Skills: Trained first by Jon and then by the Imperial Security Bureau, Adaska is a talented and skilled slicer who with enough time can bypass most digital security systems with machine-like efficiency. Secure areas do not remain that way for long after Adaska arrives or wants to gain access to a location, it will become a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ and she accomplishes this effectiveness through precise application of her training and specialist slicing equipment. However, the results are invariably the same given sufficient time.
    [WEAKNESSES]
    • Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation: With bones that all but practically indestructible Adaska is a complicated patient to provide traditional cardio-pulmonary resuscitation forgiven that a necessary step for compression to be useful is the breaking of subject's ribs. Outside of a hospital setting without specialist machinery or incredible amounts of mechanical force, the provision of CPR to an unconscious Adaska who is not breathing under field conditions is extraordinarily difficult.
    • Indiscriminate Abilities: For all the advantages that Adaska possesses as a Force Blank, it also has several consummate drawbacks in that she cannot consciously manipulate or control the ability’s focus. As a result, her presence just as impacts those who might count themselves as a force-wielding ally to Adaska as a hated enemy. Also, as a Force Blank, the atmosphere which surrounds Adaska inspires unease and irritability in force-wielders, and this is felt more powerfully by those sensitive to the force and can escalate into outright hostility.
    • Nerve Agents: Even though Adaska possesses an enhanced Physiology and nervous system with a corresponding weakness to poisons, chemicals and toxins she does not have any additional protection from Nerve Agents which target the nervous system and enter the body via inhalation or skin contact. All Adaska's physiology will do for her if successfully exposed to nerve agents is a longer potential survival time before succumbing to cascading cardio-pulmonary paralysis.
    • Posttraumatic Vocal Disarticulation Conversion Disorder: Despite having had her memories wiped or buried Adaska's PTVDCD can still be triggered subconsciously by experiences that resemble or have the potential to 'surface' the trauma she experienced at the hands of the Umbaran Cartel, and this results in her inexplicably being able to perform usual speech and is generally accompanied by symptoms of extreme anxiety consistent with a panic attack. Adaska's random inability to speak in response to the battlefield or other traumatic stimuli can have severe consequences in situations where she does not have access to a vocal emulator or droid intelligence which might be able to speak on her behalf.
    • Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Partly due to her significantly modified nervous system and nerve architecture and nerve conduction Adaska possesses an acquired sensitivity to excessive or abnormal magnetic activity and High-Frequency Short-Burst Electromagnetic Pulses which can result in any of the following: seizuring, sudden and short duration unconsciousness, temporary impairment of memory, transient hearing loss, unexplained mania and transient albeit intense discomfort and pain.

  • Slender and Lithe, Adaska possesses a limber albeit powerful physique rippling with unusually dense and defined musculature that is well suited for the clandestine nature of her work. Her steps are light and careful and virtually noiseless against whatever surface she is crossing even in the absence of ambient noise, Adaska’s beautiful well-kept light brunette hair is generally kept cut in a jaw-length style and left freely hanging for the most part as it's’ short enough to not usually interfere with the obtaining and maintenance of a helmet’s hermetic seal with a pair of almond-shaped startlingly bright sapphire coloured eyes contrasted against noble milk-pale skin she could be considered quite attractive. Adaska thanks in part to her lifestyle leading up to becoming a Shadow which kept her delicate complexion away from the sun in combination with the Chemical and Surgical physiological augmentations received has left her with a healthy visage belonging to a young adult unmarred by scars or blemishes. Adaska’s facial features are rugged and angular with numerous men and woman alike finding her quite attractive or beautiful; she is identifiable when wearing a full Coruscant Security Force Powersuit, or DARKSABRE Powered Assault Armour System through her distinctive gait which as aforementioned is short and careful making next to no audible report with those cautious, watchful steps made as if every movement was measured and painstakingly thought-out before being executed consciously.

  • Force Sensitive: Blank
    Force Rank: Blank
    Force Alignment:     Blank

  • Armour & Clothing:
    Weaponry:


 
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