Quarantine Moon: Orbital Drop on Orsonian

[Ashin Varanin]

Quarantined Moon 'Orsonian'
Shri-Tal System
Silver Jedi Space

The S90 MAAT was common as dirt in this territory - not in bulk, but a frequent sight. This one in particular had paid a visit to the Companions' sanctuary after a contact had stumbled on something frightening in a Tion Cluster exec's collection. Its flight plan took it near Orsonian, the quarantined moon, ostensibly accessible only by drop pod.

The little ship, telesponder reading Friendship Is Magic, deviated from its flight plan and landed. Elsewhere in system, someone presumably noticed.

Ooc: Fair notice to [member="Thurion Heavenshield"], [member="Iella E'ron"] or whoever

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The S90 MAAT had been designed at her behest, and designed to hold a lot for its size. Armor, artillery, soldiers, supplies -- an S90 could take and hold a good-sized town solo. This one, apart from some droids, was empty. Well, some droids, a couple warm bodies, and Ashin, and her very favorite long gun: an ArmTech railgun sniper complex. She set the gun between the two seats of the Silk cargo speeder; the vehicle had excellent cargo capacity, but only room for two.

"Now, if this survey data matches up well with the scans we got on our way down and the report from the, ah, contact, what we're looking for is the next valley over. Remember, they're sentient, and they've been closely associated with hive minds. Malevolent or at least deeply apathetic toward, well, mammals." She opened the door and ratcheted the driver's seat back a couple of inches to accommodate her five-eleven frame. Repulsor seatbelts hummed to life, a comforting quasi-tangible pressure across her waist and torso. A gesture brought out a quartet of Mandal Hypernautics battle droids to guard the ramp.

The speeder's hovertrailer held the incendiary.

"Oh, and Anders...watch the skies. The natives are reclusive, but under the orchids' influence, who knows what we could be dealing with in terms of temperament. Six limbs - four hooves, two wings -- and a nasty-looking cranial horn. Force alone knows why the Silvers keep them contained on this world -- genetically, they're the same species as the rest of the system's natives, different race is all. So let's be nice." She patted the massive sniper rifle. "When possible."

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Zombie flowers and flying unicorns.

No really, that's what the mission is about. On the sheer amount of ridiculousness of this place alone, the entire planetary body ought to be jettisoned into a local star, but for the potential for it belching the thing back up. Here I am sitting beside [member="Ashin Varanin"], Master of all things and I'm tapping my fingers against the fabric of my tan combat trousers. Bucket whistles from behind the Mandalorian battle droids, he's carrying one of his favourite Viscera Scatterguns, and I have to admit Bucket's packing more heat than a sexually promiscuous Mando'ad Field Marshal on Child Support day.

"Hive minds I can do something with. If I can get close enough to their wavelength, I can assimilate enough of their thought processes to act and speak on and into their behalf. Or at least let them think you and I are plants like them. Does that make the rest easy enough for you?"

"Did you say cranial horn? How many do I get to shoot?" Bucket pipes up.

"You do know what a unicorn is, right Bucket?"

"I do now. Maybe. What, it's like a pony that shoots rainbows isn't it?"

"Happy hunting, Rainbow Bot. Don't shoot them unless they're going to eviscerate us, kay?"

"Boring arse unicorns."

"Sorry about Bucket. His AI has grown enough to hit a rebellious streak. Word only, he's loyal as the end of time. Right, Bucks?"

"Yeah, yeah, you love me I know it. I'll be good."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

With [member="Anders Sivas"] riding shotgun and that claptrap droid of hers ensconced in the back, Ashin hit the accelerator and the speeder leaped off across the landscape of Orsonian -- the Orsonianian landscape, perhaps. Their banter susurrated across the edge of her attention as she closed in on the ridge of dead land that surrounded the valley in question. She pulled the landspeeder and its precious cargo to a halt near the top of the ridge, under cover of a pair of massive boulders. The route between them wasn't. Shouldering her Mando-built long gun, she went hands-and-toes up the scree escarpment to the edge.

Through the scope Warren Valik had built her, the scope that showed the truth of all things, she looked down on hell. It looked an awful lot like a poorly tended garden of black flowers -- metaphorical, perhaps, for how the Silvers had handled this world. They'd put down a Blackwing-variant outbreak forcefully, then quarantined the entire moon. That was it.

Flying zombie unicorns patrolled the skies. With a moderately imaginative curse or twelve, Ashin descended the escarpment and told Anders everything.

 

[RHTC 560 Broonto]

"How peculiar." Broonto said out loud as the readings streamed into the computer. He had been having trouble with remembering things recently, which showed further degradation in his systems. Although, somehow, saying things out loud made things...stick. Sometimes, he forgot he was a droid with how advanced his A.I. had developed, and how far his programming had degraded. The readings showed some very strange outputs, as well as some sort of winged species native to the planet. They correlated with spikes of unknown radiation. Further scans showed another ship recently landed on the surface. It was all very...odd. He ran a quick set of calculations, and couldn't determine any reason why a group would want to be there. "Maybe...they need help?" He asked himself. It was the most likely event. The Wayward' s cargo hull was empty, and the odds where not in favor of the ones on the planet.

"Well then, it's settled." He said to himself. With that, he plotted course to their landing site.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

[member="Ashin Varanin"] s face carries the years she's spent around empathy, she speaks level and sometimes terse to my ears and I love it. I sit back in my chair and check the blaster pistol strapped to my hip. The grin I usually plaster on my face has faded, this isn't the time to hide behind bright smiles, but time to knuckle down. "Okay Ashin. Let's do it. I'll start in on the flowers, pacify them so we can go to it."

Bucket's gone quiet, checking its guns and hitting the ground first. I know by its silence the danger level raised a whole bunch in its mind. Bucket's only job is keeping me alive, its' nature as a gift still makes me feel a bit more invincible than I ought, but here? I'm okay with that.

I hit the ground and lower my hands toward the flowers, my mind flooding with thousands of distressed voices. "Nngh." Opening up to the plants isn't as simple as figuring out which folk in a battle zone are about to do something devious to my military boys and girls, I hiss and plant my knees on the ground. "Hush." I call outward, feeling horrified by intrusion, impregnated by a controlling evil taint.

My eyes shut and all I can see are clusters of roots vibrating in purple and sickly green underground. Usurper, release, heavy feet. Danger. Preserve. Release.

The hive mind is slicking into my head, and finally I start to whisper empathically, mentally and vocally into the valley. "Hush, sleep. The danger's not real. The valley is empty. The valley is safe."

The flowers begin to quiet, lulling and primed for picking. . . or so I hope. Behind me, Bucket clicks the safety off and points toward the sky with its gun. "The heck are those dots in the sky? Aw man! I hate dots in the sky!"

 

[RHTC 560 Broonto]

The Wayward shuddered, and sighed. The landing legs hugged the ground, finally bringing the ship to rest. Broonto looked very peculiar, at least to himself. For the first time since his reactivation, he was in full battle gear. The drones had been secured on his back, and the sniper rifle, which he had handles carefully, as if it was going to bite him, was strapped across his shoulders. He made a final diagnostic of the landing area. He was no more than 30 meters away from the other ship, and further examination showed that it was intact. Several droids stood at the entrance ramp. He couldn't tell how advanced they where, but he was wary. If they where battle droids, they would attack, and he would be forced to destroy them. He didn't want to disassemble them senselessly. So, he decided on the most rational course of action. He activated two of the spare drones and sent them out the cargo ramp to look for the owners of the ship. He watched their remote feeds as they flew out and beyond.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="RHTC 560 Broonto"] would find an S90 MAAT landing craft, its closed ramp guarded by a quartet of Guardian recon droids. Droids and drones had been sent here more than once; droids weren't the priority hostiles. Blackwing zombies were. The Guardians did not fire.

***​

Ashin left [member="Anders Sivas"] to the challenge of handling a hive mind of sentient beings numbering in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. The droid's callout gave Ashin a vector; crouching behind the speeder, she sandbag-braced the ArmTech railgun on the hood and zeroed in. Valik's truthteller scope gave her a sickness in the pit of her gut as she watched the infested Orsonians close in. Not towards the valley, but towards them.

"Bucket-" It was the first time she'd ever said the droid's name, so far as she could remember, or addressed it at all. "Those are confirmed hostiles. I'll handle everything farther than three hundred meters; you nail any that get past me, past that threshold. Watch out, Anders. This may send a ripple or two into the hive mind, depending on if they're connected."

Her railgun bucked, and a flying zombie unicorn became a tumbling mess of wings and legs and black fluid. Another shot, another dead undead, and her shoulder was already killing her.

 

[RHTC 560 Broonto]

Surprisingly, the droids guarding the ship did not fire on the outbound drones. They made no move to attack the Wayward. He slowly walked down the ramp, taking in the data he had gathered. The droids still did not fire as he approached them, and he was able to survey the ship up close. It didn't appear damaged, so. A crash was out of the equation. So, could it have been a problem with the crew? "Where are the crew?" He asked himself, quickly looking through the drone cameras. He paused on one, zooming in on a large creature plummeting to the ground, a sizable wound in it. "That must be them." He said out loud, pinpointing their location with the drones. They could help the group while he was in transit. The drone viewpoint quickly shifted as they gained hight, firing at the nearby creatures. If he moved at maximum speed, he could arrive in a short amount of time, and he peeled out of the landing zone, servos whining as he made his way toward the fight.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Nnnggghhh." Threads of the hive bucked against my will. They knew what truth was, they could feel the depressions of feet on the ground, of ships pressing into the earth. My head cranes to the side, mouth opening as my teeth clench. "Ssshhh. It's okay! It's okay."

Soon there will be nothing but the hive's whispers threading into my brain. 'Usurper. Release. Usurper. Drain their soil. Release & infect. Control.' My mind is a tailspin into the plural voices of the unholy 'we'. A pandemic drift of blistering threads piling into my mind. I pant and stick my hands in the dirt, feeling for the threads my blank closed eyes see. 'The Valley is safe. The soil is rich and all is quiet. We are safe.'

I feel my neck pop from the twist I've got my head in, as Bucket's gun goes off in the background. "Got it, Boss. Boss Varanin? Master Boss? Naw, that ain't right. On your four, [member="Ashin Varanin"]." Bucket drills out, holding up his gun and firing twice. "I've got the shots."

Good old Bucket. Having the droid around is a safety tether to better times, when [member="Jared Ovmar"] woke me up in the mornings with a stroke from the back of his fingers and the settling of his weight on my side. It's those feelings of safety and security, of a blissful contented peace that I spread through the valley floor and the hive. The peace spreads and spreads, I trust in the potency of the memories and their representations in the flora of this quarantined moon.

My physical self pants a quick groan. "They felt it! They definitely felt i--nngh!"

I throw my mind back into the hive mind as a new threat comes veering in. [member="RHTC 560 Broonto"] is streaking across the valley, the rustle of his passage tearing at the fragile petals of the flowers. I calm my breathing and continue my mantra, bathing the empathic and mental connection to the hive mind with safety and trust. My eyes open, yet I see nothing but the roots, the petals, the strings of connections the flowers have to the zombie unicorns. 'Hush, we are safe. We are secure. We are permanent and immoveable. We are in control.'

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="RHTC 560 Broonto"] [member="Anders Sivas"]

The empath was babbling, which meant good things. Ashin's wife was a little less loquacious, but marriage to a high-end empath came with a certain set of experiences. Some of those experiences entailed barriers going down, filters burning up-

The sniper rifle bucked against her shoulder again; she lowered it and slipped into the driver's seat again. "That's it for the first wave. Plenty of wings on the horizon, though. Time to take and time to give."

The plan involved taking the speeder up over the ridge of scree, and down into the heart of the valley of black flowers. Once there, she'd unload the trailer's payload -- a massive incendiary charge -- then fill the trailer and the back of the cargo speeder with as many black orchids as she could grab with her mind.

 

[RHTC 560 Broonto]

There. He could see a speeder, and could make out two or three humanoids finishing their engagement with the native creatures. The two drones streaked over head scanning for immediate threats. The closest creatures where incoming, but not here yet. He slowed down, entering their area with less speed than he had racing through the valley.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Yo, Boss Master Empress Varanin, who's Tin Can Man?" Bucket says to [member="Ashin Varanin"], of the entrance of [member="RHTC 560 Broonto"]. I barely take notice beyond the sound of Bucket's voice, the way his boot-like appendages shift on the ground.

I breathe in. I breathe out. The valley quiets. "The valley is still. Flora's ready." My voice is as calm as the hive, a reaching and sun-glowed peace of healthy seasons and plenty of rain. My job is to keep the valley still, I concentrate and keep reaching into the hive mind to ensure the Master Varanin and Bucket and the Mando droids can get the job done with minimal danger.

Warning shots hit my ears and I flinch. The valley flinches. I dig my hands in the earth and call to the memories of better times. Fields of flowers in Naboo's glades. The Brothers of Cognizance had this temple built to Compassion on the riverbed of a dried up stream. I spent my summers and spring times soaking up the sun. It's a blissful memory released to my mind from the lock box of ages, brought to resurrection by [member="Mikhail Shorn"]'s backward attempt at rectifying his sins. I project the dense and nourishing spread of sunlight across the valley floor and into the air, calling for all creatures to react as they would to calm breezes and a nefarious trick.

Hey, we're gonna blow this place up. At least I can give the flowers not lucky enough to be plucked by the Unholy Gardener Empress of the Hand a decent last memory before they go kaboom. "Now would be a good time, Ashin."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="RHTC 560 Broonto"][member="Anders Sivas"]

'Working on it, working on it-" She bit off the last part as the uneven slope kicked the cargo speeder's undercarriage. Her teeth jolted impact by impact. The trailer fishtailed, torquing the speeder to a conflicted halt. She braced her feet against the sloped metal behind the pedals, took her hands off the wheel, and closed her eyes.

And ears. That droid could TALK.

Around the speeder, the ground began to tremble. Waves of distortion radiated through the flowertops from the speeder. A silver canister slid from the trailer on hoverjacks.

"Almost there."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Telling a field of psychedelic zombie-making flowers that there are no footsteps interrupting their nap time is kind of like telling a bunch of kids the sky's green. Sure if you're on Sump the sky probably is green. But on a planet where the sky is blue tricking a hive mind into believing with certainty that the sky turned colour is a feat.

Trying to tell a field of psychedelic zombie-making flowers that there's no gigantic land speeder pummelling into itself is sort of like telling those same kids that they're not suffocating to death in a fire. "Oh this is gonna sting in the morning, yep." I chuckle more out of the growing strain than humour. The hive mind panics, frothing with the nervous shunts of electronic language bursting through the roots underground. In order to keep control, I block out the universe and tie myself into the hive with such fervency that I deprive them of the sensory perception to feel what's happening to themselves.

This trick comes to you via a boat load of personal vulnerability. Bucket, now's the time you earn that yapping brain. [member="Ashin Varanin"] should have little problem with the flowers as long as I'm undisturbed.

~ Bucket ~

"Jeepers." was all the artificially 'intelligent' death bot said as Ashin nearly ditched the land speeder in a jack-knife. "Ah, was that canister supposed to do that? What happened to Buddy Boy the Bubble Droid? Why am I talking?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

"Yes."

She bit out the word, eyes shut, and hundreds of pounds of dirt and flowers began throwing themselves into the back of the two-seater hover truck, conveniently burying the droid. The trailer filled up too, with a weight far exceeding the capital-grade incendiary she'd just deployed. The dirt held bones -- inhuman bones -- and odd helical horns.

The speeder accelerated for the ridge, its repulsors chugging against the injection of biomass. Even the dirt here was comprised of decomposed undead, retired flowers, and assorted things that had once been living. Though it looked and smelled like any other dirt, it had a Force resonance to it that she found fascinating.

Or would have, if the speeder wasn't having so much trouble getting back up the ridge.

The incendiary went off, and the shockwave helped. White fire filled the rearview as comprehensively as it filled the valley.

"Don't look back. Pillar-of-salt risk non-negligible."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Yes what? Ye-mmmmrrffggllemmrrrmmmhhrrgggg" the droids audio box was excized from the air when Ashin's bundle of dirt and flowers cascades on top of its bulk. The droid in question, well buried and incapable of motion was supposed gone guarding me. C'est la vie, n'est pas?

As the plant matter poured into the speeder bed, my link with the flora became far less assertive and far more of a garden hose level of water spray in a city wide fire. My eyes blanked out. I yanked my hands out of the dirt and as my eyes opened I saw what Ashin's warning recommended against. "No, no! I don't want to be a pillar of salt! That's ok! Holy mother of cognizance tha-woa!" I fling myself into the passenger side of the speeder and glare over at the Empress of Incendiary Weed Control. "Life's a party with you around, isn't it? Remind me to take you up on more shindigs." Half holding my breath, I will the speeder to get past the conflagration of the valley. And by will I mean cushion the shocks with telekinetic buffers to give more control to Ashin without the dang thing jackknifing.

 

[Flint Michigan]

While an S90 MAAT and it's inhabitants had engaged a plethora of flying undead horses another ship was busy crashing off in the distance. It wasn't an 'official' job, but rumor had it SSS was contacted by the branch of a major weapons company to obtain samples of the between-life-and-death creatures that inhabited the Silver Jedi's moon. It went against Flint's better judgement to take a job like that, but to take an opportunity to damage the jedi? The bonus they were offering for this job? Worth it to a man who'd lost his fiance to the arguments of the Force. What with Orsonian being quarantined and all Flint figured the best way to get in and out was to look like he had crashed on moon and then escaped. The problem was, he was being just a tad too convincing that he was crashing. If he didn't know better he'd think he was crashing. All he had to do to stop it was pull a few levers hear and there . . . .


Creaak

It stuck. The lever stuck. Dang it he needed that lever to move. He took another hand out and began to crank at the lever, trying to force it's way down. Flint was a strong man, but the lever was stronger, refusing to budge. His old ship finally hit the ground, and while the safety straps stopped him from flying he could feel a hell of a bruise coming on. Darn old piece of crap YT freighter. Sighing deeply he began to unbuckle himself from the ship and get his equipment ready. It was going to be a bumpy ride, and who knew if he'd be able to fly off into the sunset.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"] [member="Flint Michigan"]

The speeder truck and its trailer skidded into the cargo bay of the S90 MAAT, a few degrees short of true jackknife. Evil dirt and sentient flowers spilled from the open-top truck bed with the force of the slide and the final tilt. Sivas' telekinesis helped with stability.

The guard droids filed in. "Ma'am," said one, "this ship was investigated by scanning drones and a droid of unknown make, eight point three minutes ago. They left nothing. Two civilian starships have landed within twenty kilometres since you disembarked."

She clambered from the truck. "Get the labor droids in here, strap this down. We're going to run the quarantine. Wonder if those jokers know the locals will try to keep them grounded. "

 

[Kitt Solo]

[member="Flint Michigan"]

She winced slightly, hitting the release-switch to the crash webbing over her shoulders and waist. She was in the rec-room when that little itch in the force told her to strap in or she'd end up more than a little bruised. She couldn't say the same to the sabaac table, though.

"Gorramit Flint!" She hollared from down the hall and rolled her tender shoulders. "Crashing means I gotta fix MORE things."

She frowned. The amount of fear she sensed in this place was as thick and sticky as a bayou.

"What exactly have you gotten us into this time?"

Fingers curled around one of her scattered MK2 bolters. Hopefully he wasn't sitting dead or half-dead somewhere on the ship.