Meanwhile, On Midvinter

[Doctor Yan Korab]

​

Meanwhile, on Midvinter, while the Galaxy was caught in the turmoil of the Omega,

It was snowing, and snowing hard. A blizzard raged on through the lands of the Valkyri, the strong and rugged people, often overlooked or simply forgotten by the Galaxy, often described a Space-Vikings, and although a generalization, there was some truth to it.

Dr. Yan, a surgeon and a hunter among his people, was currently staying in the village of Reykjaa, in the shadow of harsh and frozen mountains, watching the blizzard rage on from behind a window of a rustic wooden house.

He was also naked. Well, almost naked, he still wore his raven-like plague-doctor mask, and the strategically placed furniture would obstruct anyone view of anything inappropriate,

[Runian] "Jan, komme tilbake til sengs" (Yan, come back to bed)

A voice of a young woman rang out from a bedding covered in thick furs. It seems the Doctor somewhat managed to fight through his inability to talk to women finally, although he was still rather germaphobic as evident by him wearing his mask,

[Runian] "Nei, nok herjinger, foul jenta, nå er det tid for å jakte!" (No, enough ravaging, foul wench, now is the time to hunt)

As he reached to pick up his armor and gear, longbow, old claymore, hunting knives, everything he would need out in the harshness of Midvinter,

[Runian] "Aww, jeg forstår, vil jeg være her for når du kommer tilbake" (Aww, I understand, I will be here for when you come back.}

And the woman turned over for a nap as Yan thought to himself,

My life is amazing.

But his thoughts were quickly dispersed as something broke through the serenity of the fluffy snow whirring by outside and the company he kept to warm him up.

A large boom was heard and the sky erupted in light as if the sun just exploded, something akin to fireball could be seen glowing through the clouds and the snow, something Yan recognized before and it made him freeze.

[Runian] "Oh, troll piss." (Oh, troll piss.)

He cursed under his breath,

[Runian] "Hva er det?" (What is it?)

The woman asked, stirred from her rest,

[Runian] "Outsiders." (Outsiders.)

Yan retorted with a hiss before he rushed outside to a balcony attached to the house. He watched the trajectory of the fireball, through a break in the clouds clearly seeing the metallic shape of a space-ship crash landing, until finally it disappeared behind trees in the distance.

The Lake of the Dead,

The Doctor thought to himself as he gave out a whistle to summon his trusty steed, Kur, a Vhaanir, large equine beast capable of carrying even the largest Valkyri in their battle armor,

[Runian] "Jan!" (Yan!)

The woman called out to him from the house, sitting up on the bed, holding up the furs to her chest to make herself decent, he looked back to her from behind the lenses of his mask,

[Runian] "Jeg elsker deg." (I love you.}

She said, Yan nodded,

[Runian] "Jeg vet." (I know.)

He retorted before jumping off of the balcony right onto Kur's back, getting quickly into the saddle and taking in the reigns to hurry his Vhaanir into movement with a nice,

"Hyah!"

Heading towards the crash-landed ship

Gods, that was awkward.

He thought to himself.

 

[HK-36]

My life sucks.

The droid calculated in his mind as he was facing a very angry Gados engineer yelling at him. The mission was simple, the machine was looking into reports of a pirate activity in the sector, usually something he would let the local authorities handle, but this pirate crew was headed by someone with a rather nice bounty on them, so the droid decided to get involved. Pulling some strings with Abregado he arranged for a mock shipment to be transported through the sector, just a trade shuttle filled with Graphite bows, to make it seem as if they were trading but if the shipment was lost it wouldn't be a big loss for the company. Hopefully the pirates would have taken the bait, with HK on board, so that he could deal with them and board their ship, taking down their leader while the Siege Tower, his personal frigate, caught up with them and provided reinforcements. He wouldn't let the traders or himself into a trap without a back-up plan after all.

Well it all seemed nice and good on paper, but something went wrong. During their journey the Gados trader gave in into the nagging of the droid and allowed him to pilot the ship for just a second. That second was apparently enough to the machine to somehow screw it up and get them plummeting towards the snowy surface of a nearby planet, Midvinter.

And there they were, stranded with a shipment of bows, by some frozen god-forsaken lake, trying to repair their ship in the middle of some blizzard, with a very angry Gados yelling at the cloaked and armored droid, flailing his furry arms about while his crew busied themselves on the burnt out engines of the shuttle,

"It is alright, do not worry."

The droid raised his hand to calm the Gados,

"The Siege Tower will not be too far behind, I am sure they picked up our distress signal by now, we just have to hold out until they can send a dropship for us."

The alien engineer grumbled and cursed through his buckteeth before deciding that the machine wasn't worth the effort and moving to help with repairing the ship.

Meanwhile, HK scanned over the white skies and blizzard-ravaged horizon, he calculated what were the odds for other ships to have picked up his distress signal as well, for someone to interfere on his hunt for another bounty, or for the pirates he was hunting to come looking for him in hopes of an easy plunder.

 

[Causstik Rahn]

My life just got a helluva lot better

Causstik Rahn and his Sharp Tooth war band had been pillaging the local trade lanes in these parts for some time. The Trandoshan war band had even earned something of a name as ruthless slavers and mercenaries and now had wanted to try their hand in piracy. For months they had waited in nearby asteroid belts stalking and taking down their prey. Now It was too all pay off, a large shipment of what was only listed as "Rare and exotic goods" was scheduled to come through. The fact that none of the Trandoshans thought this was suspicious was no surprise. What did suprise them was when they got a distress signal from the ship they were suppose to ambush. Causstik rubbed his hands together in delight. He and his miss fit band of ships flew to the nearby planet.

"I will fly to the surface and inspect the wreckage. I want three ships to accompany me," He hissed over the holo-com. He thought about doing a lizard dance he was so excited. Surely the scorekeeper had smiled on him today.

Then the voices whispered Do not forget the real reason you are here. You must not forget your target. I want him alive. [member="HK-36"], [member="Doctor Yan Korab"]

 

[Doctor Yan Korab]

[member="Causstik Rahn"],

Yan's ears were filled with the sound of wind and snow flowing past him, the panting of his mount, crunch of snow under its hooves, and his cloak flapping in the raging wind like wings of some foul beast on its hunt. Although the blizzard was fierce, the hunter knew the terrain well and he was used to such weather, he grew up in it after all. Once the coast of the Lake of the Dead made its appearance through the snow cover, he slid off of his mount, clicking to it with his tongue to order it to stay put in the cover of snow and trees,

It's not too far now.

Yan thought to himself, using the snow and wind to cover his approach as he took the longbow off of his back, along with an arrow to notch it against the bowstring. He crouched down slightly, moving through the snow low to the ground, trying to stay hidden, he didn't knew what sort of beasts or perils were waiting for him once he would reach the crash site.

Finally he saw it, the grey shape of a shuttle forming through the snow, quickly being covered by the blizzard and made white as rest of the terrain, sitting peacefully and solemnly between few trees, no destruction, no fire, already a better sign than what Yan was used to when ships crashed on Midvinter. Slowly inch by inch he stalked closer until finally shapes of the crew appeared as well. Tall beings, a group of them, lanky and furry with beady eyes and two large teeth. Yan froze as he took their grotesque sight in disgust, it was the first time he saw an alien, or at least one that didn't look just like another human. And then there was that armored being, with thick plates covering him and large cloak flapping in the wind.

Yan determined that the being must have been a warrior or their leader, seeing as he was the only one standing around while the others worked. He pushed with his hand on the bow, pushing it forward while he pulled the string back. Yan recognized that he had the element of surprise on his side, and perhaps if he took out their leader quickly, the others would surrender or disperse, make things easy for him. So he took aim at the armored being's head, aiming for his neck, before letting his arrow fly.

 

[HK-36]

[member="Causstik Rahn"],

As the droid watched Gados work, he looked up into the sky, scanning it for any signs of activity, he thought he picked something up, some far off traces, he calculated the odds were it was just an anomaly. He also calculated that it was still pretty likely that it was more than just an anomaly. The droid looked to his Gados engineers,

"We may have company."

The tall creatures looked back to him, their captain grumbled something to the machine,

"No, the Tower would have sent a message if it was them."

HK scanned over the ship, quickly covered by a layer of snow,

"Whoever it is, I doubt they would see us from the sky, the landing was pretty clean and the scorch marks are now under the snow."

He looked aside into the forest,

"I will go off and light a flare further away, stay here, you will be safe by the ship, if trouble starts just run for it and disappear in the trees."

Check the orbit, be on stand-by,

He sent out a message on encrypted channel to some other agent working for him, thankfully the droid still had access to resources other than just his frigate,

The Gados grumbled something back and the droid turned to walk away into the blizzard, but just as he was about to disappear among the snow, something whizzed by through the air and struck the droid on his armored neck, bouncing off of the plates of his armor and metal body. The primitive arrow landed in the snow nearby and the droid looked at it before looking out into the blizzard,

"Did someone just threw a stick at me?"

The machine advanced towards the direction it came from, his scans picked up a heat signature, it looked like something with a beak,

"Chit, a bird-person!"

HK took a gunslinger's stance, not taking any chances with no bird-people, but conducting further scans that quickly show the being was humanoid, but the beak was only an outer layer of armor,

"Gross, it is just a human in a bird costume."

The droid quipped as he quickly advanced through the snow towards the being, his hand extending out to grab the human by his leg and lift him up,

"Hey there little buddy."

 

[Doctor Yan Korab]

Yan was dumbfounded when the arrow simply bounced off of the being, little did he realized just how much denser even basic durasteel was compared to the metal his arrows were made from, or the force his bow could produce,

As the being was advancing towards him, quicker than he expected, Yan at first tried to notch another arrows, swiftly giving up on that plan when the being almost glided through the snow closer and closer with his arm outstretched towards Yan. In panic, Yan stumbled back, his butt and cloak skedaddling on the snow as he dropped his bow, deciding to go melee instead as he took his claymore off of his back, pushing himself to stand up in the defiance of the mechanical being and hoisting the large sword over his head to swing it down on the being and hopefully cleave the intruder in two!

At least that was the plan, he wasn't aware about such things as melee energy shields, which the droid possessed.

 

[HK-36]

[member="Causstik Rahn"]

So when that claymore dropped in its swing upon the droid's head, the machine didn't do anything, still advancing with his arm outstretched towards Yan's legs. The claymore was mere centimeters away from the droid's head when his energy shield lighted up in pale blue light, activated by the weapon's proximity and-

WHOMP

The metal met the force field and the sword was thrown back, the metal shattering in a rain of splinters from the impact, causing more flashes of blue light around the droid,

"Sorry about that."

HK apologized, using the incident to finally close in the distance and grip the man by his foot, pulling up on it hard to get him off of the ground and shake him around a bit,

"Please calm down."

The droid spoke out before dropping the man back down into the snow,

"I did not come here to fight you natives."

From somewhere beneath the cloak, the droid pulled out the black Echani bow he brought with him in shipment, as well as a quiver of equally black arrows, offering it out to the man,

"Here, a peace offering."

He was responsible for breaking the man's sword, so he may as well give him a weapon in exchange. Plus, in all honesty, the droid thought it was hilarious to mess with a planet by giving one being advanced alien technology and seeing what they will do with it. After all, if things go too bad, the droid could always come back and take the technology away, or at least so he thought.

The machine also realized that his time was running low on guiding whoever was in orbit away from the shuttle. He looked back, not seeing the ship or Gados through the raging snow and shrugged, seems the incident took him far away enough. He took out the flare and lighted it up, filling the area with red light and raising a column of colored smoke in the sky to signal a landing zone for a ship.

 

[Causstik Rahn]

One of Causstik's ships discovered the flare before he could. They hailed him on the holo-comm before he could give proper orders. "Sir, we are landing at the crash sight now!" The young warrior cried out excitedly. "FOOL! It's probably a trap.." Causstik pounded his fist on his armrest and ended the Transmission. He hailed the rest of the ships "Land in a perimeter around the flare. We will encircle them then crush them," Causstik said to the rest of his War Chiefs. "Wear something warm.."

The lone Trandoshan ship landed right next to the flare. The drop ramp descended and a dozen screaming Trandoshans charged out of the cockpit. "GRAGH BLARGH AHHH!!!!"

As soon as they exited the cockpit they found there cold blood chilled even more by the winter's snow. "It's cold," one of them hissed obviously.

There charge slowed then finally stopped. They looked around and saw a large droid holding a giant bird by its talons! "Hey! We're cold! Take us to a fire and share some of that bird with us! I'm hungry," A Trandoshan shivered out.

"What about the treasure?" Asked a Trandoshan who was rubbing his arms for warmth.

"Kark the treasure! I'm cold!"

[member="HK-36"], [member="Doctor Yan Korab"]

 

[Doctor Yan Korab]

[member="Causstik Rahn"], @Any Valkyri that want to tag in

The droid picked up Yan like it was nothing and proceeded to shake him up and down by his leg like a bully would to an unsuspecting nerd, lusting for their lunch money.

"Gha-wha-wha-wha"

Was the only sound Yan was able to give out as he was shaken rapidly, the movement causing his arrows to fall out of his quiver and his knives, hidden on his belt and among his clothes, to clash down onto the cold, snow-clad ground.

Finally the droid released him and the hunter stumbled back, panting to try and calm his nerves, catch his breath from the abuse, quickly scrambling to collect all of his knives and daggers,

[Runian] "Hva er du?" (What are you?)

Yan finally spoke out, confused as apparently the alien was offering him a longbow. Reluctantly, he reached out and took the black weapon, along with the quiver, quickly replacing his arrows with these new black ones, somehow both the material they and the bow were made out of felt very alien.

Even though the armored being didn't seemed entirely too hostile, it seemed that Yan's trouble were far from over as now ships would rain down on the planet, one right next to them, and a group of what seemed like lizard-monsters jump out, screeching and babbling in language unknown to Yan.

He used the distraction to compose himself, taking that new bow and lifting it up to nock an arrow against its bowstring and aim for the back of the armored being. He tried to pull on it but it would barely budge, he strained himself trying to push the bow out and bend its shaft, fire off an arrow, yet this new bow quickly revealed to be much stronger than what he was used too. Yan decided he didn't had time for that, giving up on joining combat he ran off into the opposite direction, taking his horn from his belt and tilting his mask up to put its mouthpiece to his lips, blowing into it,

BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

The horn roared out, bellowing into the storm to alarm any other Valkyri who might have heard it, both calling for help and to warn them against the area.

Yan then dove into a nearby pile of snow, hoping the white powder would help him disappear at least for now, he was still able to watch the encounter between the droid and the reptilian aliens.

 

[HK-36]

The droid just kind of stood there with his hands on his hips and watched in amusement as the man scramble for his gear in the snow, like someone watching a chipmunk or a gopher go about their business. The man's voice finally cut the silence as he spoke,

"Hva er du?"

HK stared at him for a second, calculating before finally replying,

"I do not understand your gibberish."

He paused for another moment before adding,

"And I speak most Galactic languages, including dead ones, so you should feel bad."

When the man was reluctant to take the bow from HK, he just motioned the weapon to him, as if saying "Go ahead" to encourage him. Either way the native took the bow and started to look over it, the droid was about to make another quip or jab at Yan's culture but the peaceful first contact was short lived as it seemed that the trap was sprung and a Trandoschan shuttle landed almost on top of them.

The droid turned to face the invaders as a ramp lowered down and a group of Trandoschans ran out, quickly disheartened by the climate. The droid slowly raised his hands in the air to show that he didn't mean any harm, one of them spoke out,

"Hey! We're cold! Take us to a fire and share some of that bird with us! I'm hungry,"

HK nodded to them in agreement, walking closer towards them as the bird-man crawled away, the droid was unaware of Yan's escape or him trying to shoot him in the back with a bow, his arms still raised in surrender,

While he still had time, he sent out a message to his contact on the planet,

We have company, get the Gados away.

Before he spoke up to answer the Trandoschans,

"Of course, it is not a problem."

The droid calmly answered the lizard-folk as his arms shot out towards them.

From the vambraces of his gauntlets two nuzzles would spring out and flame would shot out in a long stream towards the Trandoschans. The burning liquid would quickly cover them, seeping into spaces between their armored plates, between their armor and their body to ash the flesh beneath. Their screams and howls of pain would echo through the blizzard ravaged valley, the machine stepping closer towards them, burning them still to pump the napalm into their ship as well, using the dangerous Flamers his company made. The burning Trandoschan bodies and their ship set on fire would light up through the blizzard like a beacon.

But hey, at least they weren't cold!

Should one of the other ships or hunting parties find the crashed cargo transport they would find it empty, the Gados crew disappeared seemingly into thin air, there were only those low value longbows almost spilling out of the cargo.