Private The Dark Mans Legacy

[Hacks]

"What about your katanas?" Cato asked, but quickly cut the conversation short. His attention snapped in the direction they had been going. Footfalls echoed down the hall. They nodded to one another, retreated into a doorway and concealed themselves on either side.

The footsteps grew louder. There was a droning buzz in the air as the droids were communicating. It wasn't binary, she knew that much. Just as their movements came to the doorway, Cato mouthed 'one.'

Motors whirred. Adrenaline, blood and coolant pumped through artificial veins. Duracrete shattered underfoot as she kicked off. She burst out of the doorway with inhuman speed, four arms curling around the neck of the first droid she saw. Shoulders twisted, metal arms brought in their elbows to her hip. Metal crunched.

The droids head was ripped from its body, oil and antifreeze exploded out from torn pathways, screws and crumbled microplates scattered across the floor. Hacks dropped the head and whirled about to take on the other droid, an IG unit raised its blaster. She held up her hands, shielding herself as the droid moved to pull the trigger.

 

[Cato Harth]

Hacks launched out first, even faster than Cato had anticipated. In a blink the first of the droids was properly demolished, but the other readied a shot. Cato threw himself in front and raised his palm. As the bolt screeched through the air, it was abruptly deflected, ricocheting off the Force and into a wall.

With his other hand, Cato made a pulling motion, yanking the droid towards him through the air, then shifting his footing again to follow up with a punch as it came within range. The strike, enhanced with the might of the Force, practically disassembled the droid on contact, leaving a mess of parts scattered across the floor in front of them, "You good?" He turned to Hacks with a grin on his face.

Heavy machinery seemed to groan to life within the very walls, like the entire area was coming alive "They uh, probably heard that shot, huh?" The knight popped his knuckles, "Guess stealth isn't gonna be much of an option."

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

The blaster fired and Hacks winced, expecting to feel metal slag off her body as the plasma superheated her cybernetics, yet nothing came. She opened her eyes in time to see Cato deflect the bolt, then dissaemble the droid with a powerful punch. Magic, she thought.

"You good?" Cato asked, Hacks nodded, "Yeah." She walked towards the droid and leaned down to pick up the blaster with her lower right hand, her other three hands resting at her sides. The factory came to life with a deep rumbling of movement as an incomprehensible hive mind woke to the disturbance. "They uh, probably heard that shot, huh?" Cato said, cracking his knuckles, "Guess stealth isn't gonna be much of an option."

"Stealth was never my forte, anyway," Hacks remarked, joining Cato by his side. Unlikely allies on an unexpected mission. Her mind raced to open prewritten scripts and programs to display across her glasses, downloading the datapackets with a remote connection to the CryptNet. She was a walking supercomputer, the AJ^6 unit in her brain connecting machine and mind in unnatural harmony.

"After you," Hacks said, raising the blaster to aim down the hall towards the factory floor.

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato grinned, "My pleasure," He then rushed forward and exploded onto the factory floor with a powerful gust of the Force, throwing aside any nearby droids. A few outside his range began firing, spurring the knight into some fancy footwork.

With supernatural reaction speed, Cato avoided shot after shot, with the luckiest only managing to burn a few holes through the tail of his jacket. A result which, nonetheless, seemed to annoy him, "Ugh. Every time." Fixing or replacing the style was getting expensive.

He then ripped a metal panel off the wall, and used it to shield himself from a hail of energy, "Get to the main computer! I'll keep the bulk of these guys occupied!" Cato shouted to Hacks over the shrieking bolts.

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

"My pleasure," Cato grinned and raced ahead. Hacks followed after him but had no time to intervene in his fight and help him, her mind raced as she began writing script, thought turned to code across her datagoggles. Diagnosis scans of the stolen cognitive module began.

Plastic eyes darted to spy Cato making quick work of the growing horde of droids, a drowning tsunami of metal that threatened to engulf the two of them. She quickly scanned the factory floor and spotted the discarded blades and Cato's lightsabers, she sprinted for them, crashed down on her calves and slid the rest of the way, coming to a halt beside them.

In a moment she was tossing the lightsaber hilts towards Cato, "Catch!", then sheathing her own blades between her belt and waist. A rising crescendo of blaster fire shrieked around her, broken by Cato's shouting, "Get to the main computer! I'll keep the bulk of these guys occupied!" Hacks scrambled to her feet, shouting back to Cato, "See ya on the flip side!"

She glanced towards the stairs, droids swarmed out and down onto the factory floor, joining the frenzy. "I hate doing this," she muttered, then ran for the wall beneath the control room. She couldn't fight her way up the stairs, so she would make her own way. A metal hand punched the duracrete above her head, creating a handhold for which to grip. Powerful mechanical arms lifted herself up, four arms punching holes in the wall, gripping the holes then raising herself higher, and higher.

In seconds she had scaled the wall, then thrust herself through the window of the control room. She rolled into the room with the clash of shattered glass, craning her neck back to see Cato's holding off an overwhelming tide. "He's going to die," she said and swore under her breath, "I'm going to die." Then she heard something move in the control room behind her, KV.

 

[Cato Harth]

Cato spun to see Hacks tossing something through the air, the glint of metal hitting his eyes, "Come to daddy," He grinned as if reuniting with a lost child, launching the large panel he had ripped off into a crowd of droids and catching the weapons in each hand.

The blades ignited, and he became a dervish of white and gold plasma, turning any metal unlucky enough to get in his way into slag. Shots continued to come from all sides, but he kept moving. If any of them struck, Cato was simply too caught up in the adrenaline to notice. Pushing to survive, fight, and win.

"How's it going?!" He called out, hoping Hacks could hear him. The knight stabbed two droids on either side of his, then pulled up to split them in half vertically. "Still alive?!" Another larger droid, trisected with two quick swipes.

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

A hundred cables and wires snaked across the floor from the control rooms terminals, coming to a central dais where KV stood. She was plugged directly into the factory network, and likely her influence reached far beyond these walls. A sleek assassin droid that once operated for the Black Sun Syndicate decades ago, discarded and left to rot in the undercity of the Smugglers Moon. From there she gathered her flock and in time amassed a great hive mind.

Hacks turned to face KV, heart slamming against her chest. In her lower left hand she gripped the droid brain she had confiscated, her Cerberus program uploaded onto the cognitive module. Hook it up to KV, let the fireworks begin, she told herself. She leaned down and kicked off, her cybernetic legs worked overtime as she moved with unnatural superhuman speed. She crashed into KV's chest, lifting the droid off her feet and slamming her into the ground with a skidding thud. As they wrestled on the ground she heard Cato's distant voice but had no time to answer.

Her eyes darted over her shoulder, droids were funnelling into the room, too many to count, arms outstretched to tear her apart. Hacks looked back to KV, metal hands grabbed the droid by its metal skull and snapped it left, exposing the input port she was looking for. The assassin droid struggled against Hacks, but the years of neglect to her own unit body had weakened her. Hacks slapped the module against KVs frame, connecting the module to the input of KV, allowing the droid brains to communicate through a physical connection.

Then the droids were on her, Hacks' felt her arms ripped backwards at an angle they were not designed to move. She shrieked in pain as implants were broken and torn. Her glasses flashed with warnings, her arms had been dislocated, connection to the cybernetics were offline. Hacks kicked as they lifted her off the ground, and then felt the droid holding her up falter. It's legs gave way and the two crashed to the floor. Hacks looked around, the photoreceptors of the droids went offline. They looked to lose their balance and collapse as Cerberus tore through the hive mind, virus spreading.

 

[Cato Harth]

The lack of a response made Cato antsy. Maybe she was just busy. Or maybe she was dead. In any case, Cato tried to pick up the pace, though his continued onslaught was decidedly slowing instead. For each droid he put down, another seemed ready to fill the gap right away. Besides, this much spinning and swinging was tiresome.

“Hacks-!” He made one last effort to call out, when his face was suddenly enveloped by the hand of a large enforcer droid behind him. It used its automaton strength to fully palm his head, then swing Cato overhead and slam him into the ground. It bashed him around multiple times before hucking his body across the room and into a metal wall. “...Not cool,” He groaned, twisting his shoulder which now felt decidedly out of socket.

The army of machines closed in, and accepting that this may very well be it, Cato opted to go out swinging. He brought his sabers back to his side and charged forward, slashing through the enforcer droid leading the pack. The weapon lodged into its chest, but rather than retaliate in any way, it seemed frozen. And as a matter of fact, so too did many of the other droids. One by one they toppled over, succumbing to the virus that now spread throughout the entire system. And with that, Cato finally felt comfortable enough to drop his weapons, and breathe a sigh of relief.

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

[ WARNING: CRITICAL FAILURE. ARMS OFFLINE. ]

Hacks blinked away the warning from her glasses. She lay helpless on the floor, unable to prop herself back up. She squirmed for a moment in the sudden silence that fell over the factory. With a grunt and considerable effort she was able to bring her knees under her and raise herself up, her arms hung limp at her sides.

"Cato?" she called out, "I can't move my arms, they broke them," she said with rising panic in her throat. She stepped over the droids that lay about her, dozens more sprawled throughout the control room. Her plastic eyes searched out a path, briefly glimpsing the still figure of KV, a crumpled mess by the terminals.

"Cato?" she called out again, trying to climb down the steps without her arms to hold the rails or balance herself, walking on uneasy feet.

 

[Cato Harth]

The sudden sound of Hacks' voice made Cato's ears perk up. "Hacks?" The panic was obvious, and unsurprising. He quickly made his way up to her, briefly stopping below the stairs she was now walking down, before meeting her halfway, "Damn. Hey- here, let me help you." He offered himself up as a support to help balance her on the way down.

"You good?" Cato chuckled, hoping to offer some levity in spite of their struggles, "I uh, kinda got my ass handed to me right at the end there. Good thing you came through with the win." He would help her all the way to the main floor, and further if needed, taking only a moment as they reached the bottom to stretch his arms, "It's done now. KV is done."

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

"Hacks?" Cato called, and she saw him move to meet her on the stairs, "Damn. Hey- here, let me help you." She felt an arm move under her shoulder to prop her up, and they both walked down the stairs. "Thanks," she said quietly.

"You good?" Cato chuckled "I uh, kinda got my ass handed to me right at the end there. Good thing you came through with the win." She looked him over and smiled, "Yeah you look like shit, they got you good." She glanced down to her arms, "I got the program in, but then they grabbed my arms, and pulled back," she explained while Cato stretched, then they were walking again. She motioned with her chin a path out of the factory from the blueprints she had accessed earlier.

"It's done now. KV is done," Cato assured her, and they walked out of the factory and back out under the night sky of the Smugglers Moon.