Into the snake's den. He knew every bit of it to be wrong, a trap, a ruse, whatever it'd turn out to be. Someone would get hurt. They knew too much about him, how he thought, how he acted. They grasped ahold of his vulnerabilities and strained the weakness out of him. They'd already used his marines to prod and pick at his sensibilities. In the wake of Yinchorr, he had to regain lost trust with them, regain his position as their
leader.
Each passing moment, that trust withered away again.
He'd rather he went into this alone, without her, without anyone.
As much as he always echoed that sentiment 'Together' between him, Loske and
Ryv
, it almost always fell to the wayside in these times of desperate struggle. He couldn't ever blame them, there was only so much you could do in these moments but rely on yourself. Certainly after all the times they'd failed the others. Harnaidan, Cassel Point, Ravelin...always, strewn apart, bloodied and wounded, near death to one of them. A horrible pattern, a bloodied wheel that kept turning.
He felt that same inevitable feeling here, now.
“Don’t give her that satisfaction. She’s already got to you by getting us to come to her. Don’t give her any more that she can use against us.”
<"I'm not giving them anything..."> He said, his voice muffled by the inbuilt comm system of his helmet. His frigid expression and focused gaze concealed beneath the painted visage of the Wolf.
<"I'm gonna take it all away.">
<"Anything her and these depraved Sith find precious, I'm going to make burn, I'm going to make them
suffer. If they want to take
my men, the people who trusted their lives to
me and butcher them like animals for everyone to see...then justice will make its due."> Maynard states, a harsh bitterness seeping in his words. There was little straying him from this path of vengeance. He was playing into their hand and he knew it. He didn't seem to care.
He'd place it all squarely on his shoulders, they'd made it personal, to
him. He would see them choke on the ashes.
She stopped him on the approach to the ship, his gaze snapped in her direction, that helmet giving him that false sense of fortified security in himself. Where he might have been far more comfortable being vulnerable around her, now? He couldn't bare to let any weakness shed the light of day. Or now, the starlit foreboding night.
“Hey.”
“Everything moving forward, we can control.”
“Starting with ourselves, okay?”
“You and me. They’re going to regret exploiting the Treicolt name, but May, control. Please.”
Since Yinchorr, since they'd returned from their excursion to Bastion before that...they'd hardly had the time to breathe, take comfort in one another since. One duty bound lurch into the fray after another, that slow crawl of the dehumanization of traumatic effect after another gnawing at his subconsciousness.
<"Yeah..."> How often did they say that between them? How often did one of them end up fastened to life support in the wake of it.
He couldn't bare to peer out of the gunship on its approach, the sounds and sights of this battle, mortal men tangling with indomitable beasts spawned from these depraved machinations of the Sith.
The Pack would endure, the Galactic Marines rained fire and hell unto their enemies through the neon flora of Felucia. All the while...their leader ventured away from them, alone. It was horrid optics, the only validated return would be
Eldaah Aderyn
's head in a bag and the source of the beasts burnt out.
They approached this base, the captain emerging to escort them only making it so far into the interior of the structure before Maynard willed his cobalt saber from his belt with an ethereal pull, a single swipe of the blade rendering him right in two.
A stiff kick to the back sent the corpse trembling to the metal floor with a thud.
<"I'm not wasting any more time with this."> He said, approaching the entrance to the lift leading them down to the depths of the lab. He saw it more fit to pry the door open, his strength enhanced inline with the
Concord Brawn underlayer and his crushgaunts, willing the metal pried apart before he all but descended his way down, firing a pulse from the repulsors fixed to his boots to soften the landing on the elevator car beneath.
His saber carved him through and he descended once more.
He wasn't here to explore or contemplate the scale or scope of this laboratory.
He was here to kill.
Eldaah would not have to wait long and soon enough the door slid open to reveal the pair of them, Maynard willing his cobalt blade to life with a crack of the saber's ignition.