The Freaking Blizzards of Castameer (The Kathol Outback + open)

[Tarok Vassket]

[member="3X744"] [member="Bryce Bantam"] [member="Kytra Odran"]

In the crisp, clean white snow the trail of scarlet patches where a stark contrast. Tilzi's half shuffle to try and escape came to a sudden stop. Her right hand was plunged into the snow, almost immediately going numb as it melted and saturated her glove. Sharp needles of pain stabbed at the joints after a moment, but we're a distant throb to the agony in her side.

"Stopped them flanking us," she growled. It might have been to Kytra, but it was also to herself. She had been caught out, her unfamiliarity with the situation exposed. Grinding her teeth she forced herself back to her feet. At least it wasn't a man who had come to her aid. She might even accept assistance getting back to the downed ship. Begrudgingly.

The blaster fire overhead was thinning out, but the battle between the Kathol underground and the Sith forces coming from the front was only becoming more fierce. As the edges if her vision started to darken she told herself that perhaps a bit of bacta would get her back into the feet. If they lost she wouldn't want to die in a med-bay.

 

[Tabigarashu Madara]

Hirou turned glittering black eyes to the indicators, watching intently once Three started to fire.

Being short, the Nezumi had no real idea of what was going on out there- there was simply no way to see much from this vantage point. The idea that they were shooting at people was a rather nebulous one to the little creature. Nezumi guns, after all, were meant more to startle someone enough to allow them to escape. Not to *kill*. This was Hirou's first experience with anything like this, and, fortunately, they didn't really fully understand the implications. Yet.

So when the needle started to creep up in to the yellow zone, Hirou leaped up, doing an excited half twist in the air before hitting the controls again. Putting their back in to it again, Hirou scrabbled to push the venting lever, back feet occasionally losing purchase in the process. But the Nezumi was dogged in their persistence, and despite it being a full body effort, did everything in their power to keep the turret from over heating while Three did...

Well, whatever exactly it was Three was doing.

[member="3X744"]

 

[Leos Palle]

She narrowly avoided being pinged by the incoming fire from [member="3X744"] and [member="Tabigarashu Madara"], but that was alright because his fire nailed a squad of troopers that she hadn't managed to get to with her lightsaber. Pros and cons. At least she didn't get hit herself. Jumping out of the snow again, she flipped up and over the fire, propelling herself hire with an application of the Force to the ground below her, and landed on the other side in time to throw her lightsaber at a group of troopers that were trying to sneak up on the injured [member="Tilzi"]. Stinking bastards had no spines and were going for the injured rather than fighting her. That's what you get from Sith and their minions, though.

Her blade swung through and cut down one trooper as she reached another in time to snap his gun hand up and force his finger to fire a bolt into his chin. The others turned to fire on her but she used the fallen trooper as a shield, and pulled her saber back to her hand. Once she had it, some simple redirection of blaster fire had the men deceased in the snow. Or, at least, stunned. She walked over and made sure they were going to stay down before she ran over to Tilzi and reached to help her move.

"Let me help you get back," she said, attempting to slide an arm around her waist. "We'll win this battle, but I don't want any of us dying to do so."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Ahead of him, even as the snowfall closed in and vision deteriorated, he could make out the thermal outlines of a figure fighting for their life. Help arrived, as was natural, from the Outback forces in the vicinity, though who they were and why they were there he couldn't fathom. This was [member="Jorus Merrill"]'s crew, not his own. A gnawing at the back of his mind said the droid brain was itching to unleash it's anger, and he resolved to wipe it as he strode forward on stubby, armored legs.

[member="Kytra Odran"] seemed to be attempting to help [member="Tilzi"], who had, it seemed, bitten off a bit more than she could chew.

But if anyone in this unit could handle the pressures of an immense frontal assault by a disciplined, organized group of Sith, it was the walking striding through the gale force winds at their back. <MOVE.> He says, the loudspeaker tearing through the din of battle at decibels not meant for human ears. <THERE WILL BE NO MORE DEATH TODAY.>

This seemed to be counteracted by the harsh burp of his rotary blaster as it spooled up and launched a blue stream of death across the advancing positions of the Sith, melting snow and bodies to form a perimeter of steam and burnt flesh. Stepping in front of the group, the short, prehensile limb that made up his left 'arm' rose, it's four digits contracting as the underslung flamethrower hissed inaudibly.

A flare of light heralded a gout of flame erupting across the snowbanks and into the still advancing Sith, a few choice screams telling him a few more poor, pathetic souls had gone to join with the Force. But they weren't going without a fight, and blaster fire began to scour the gunmetal paint covering the walker, leaving black scorch marks in their wake, scarring the hull with every deadly caress of their condensed gas.

With the metallic behemoth forming a bulwark against the Sith, their retreat was now 'covered' for the foreseeable future.

[member="3X744"] [member="Tabigarashu Madara"]

 

[Tarok Vassket]

[member="Kytra Odran"]

Tilzi made a noise that could have been consent. It didn't matter, she accepted the arm around the waist and held on with her right arm tightly. At over six foot, Tilzi wasn't very light, but she put everything she had left into taking some of her weight on shaky legs.

Tilzi had only attempted to pick off a small flanking force. Even if the Sith had deployed more men to that side, but the bulk of their force was still regrouping to the front. They weren't out of this yet, even with the walker decimating what was left of the flanking force.

"Go," she uttered as they reached shelter. The ship had a basic medical droid and someone had reactivated it and gathered some goods in Hylo's fortress.

 

[Leos Palle]

Kytra helped [member="Tilzi"] back to the line, where she at least wouldn't be immediately targeted by the Sith forces and could get some medical attention. The woman certainly needed it. Despite her height, Kytra was able to help her without too much struggle. The benefits of the Force were many, and the added strength was often welcome to her in combat, but saw practical uses outside of it as well. Like this.

"Yes, dear," she said, offering a playful smirk as she released Tilzi from her grasp and turned to look over the battlefield.

The Sith weren't yet beaten. Numerous as they were, this wasn't really a surprise to her. She did offer a wave of thanks to [member="Sarge Potteiger"] for the cover he had provided them. Then she was racing off again, heading for the right flank, hand held out in front of her as she kicked up another column of snow, obscuring her movements visually so that she couldn't be easily targeted. Stray blaster shots that made it through were deflected up and away as she drew down upon her foes. Force the enemy towards the center, because they lost their flank, and it would make it all the easier for a good strafing run to lay waste to them.

Her yellow saber bit into one body after the next as she continued to move in a whirlwind of motion. Standing still made you an easy target. Running around among their number, with snow clouded up around them and a lightsaber swinging into play was a good avenue to cut them down without getting too injured. She took a few strikes of fist or boot from close proximity, but most were too focused on using their blasters to draw a blade against her. Their loss.

 

[Bryce Bantam]

While the fighting continued hot and heavy around the crash site Bryce had fought his way back to the foundry district. With most of the Rogue sith forces stuck back trying to hold the airbase, Bryce had been able to work through the remaining stragglers and found exactly what he was looking for. Parked within one of the many ore shacks was an open topped skiff. While not the best for cold weather climates it would do to make the journey out to crash site and help those who needed to be rescued.

It did take Bryce long to hotwire the thing, throw some blankets and a few space hearts from the guards shack in and set off for his friends. Shoving the thing into max speed he hoped he would be able to make it to them soon. Before they froze or were overrun...

 

[Tarok Vassket]

The medical droid left operable was of limited intelligence. Perfectly capable as a medical responder, but with little devotion to simulating a personality or rapport.

If Tilzi had been more focussed she would have taken more pride in making it flinch away. The bacta gel had been soothing, but the paste with formed an artificial skin over the wound and pulled it tight hurt like Sisteth poison.

"You must remain stationary for..." it tried in its monotone voice. Tilzi was already sliding off the fold out bed and moving for the remains of their ship. She swore under her breath the entire way. She knew she could pull and energy bow without opening the wound, so she went searching for a weapon. Whilst the blaster fire was more sporadic the sounds of the approaching troopers was getting louder. It seemed that in small groups they had closed on the ship more successfully than in their main rush.

Tilzi found a light carbine with an electronic sight. She didn't use modern weaponry often, but this was simple enough. With no shortage of determination she managed to reach the hull of the crashed ship. Pressing herself up against a piece of fuselage she tried to turn her pain into focus and reached out with the force to find some targets.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

He'd just finished taking this damned ship apart, and now people were trying to blow it up?

People, Sith, whatever the case may be... let's get one thing straight.

Wrecking this ship was his job. No one else's.

And he didn't exactly need a whole lot of help in that department either. With a grunt, the small youngling knight ripped the motivator from out of the hyperdrive. Which, what kind of chop job had they installed on this tug anyway? It looked like a .357 Calrissian had fethed a Class 4 hyperdrive and this was the ugly lovechild of two technological extremes which ought to have never been combined.

Lugging the motivator over to a different part of the interior, the tow-headed Jedi kid started pulling apart the shield generator. What did hyperdrive motivators have in common with shield generators? Not a whole lot. Was he thinking this through clearly? No, not really. Was it statistically probable that he was only going to make things worse? They were stranded on an ice planet with hordes of marching Sith. How could it get much worse?

That all being true... he had a theory.

The hyperdrive motivator produced an angular confinement field. The shield generator produced a deflector screen. Now, normally those two had nothing in common... except at the moment, the shield generator was totes busted and so he had part of a busted hyperdrive and part of a busted shield generator. And no replacement parts. So, they were making this up as they went along.

Now, if he could get the shield generator to resonate it's deflector pulse along the angular confinement field produced by the hyperdrive motivator... then it was possible that they may be able to polarize the hull plating to produce a sort of ray field that would help shield against the incoming blaster barrage.

In theory.

It was also possible he was just wasting time trying to cobble together junk with more junk, producing yet more junk. Now with overly complicated circuitry.

He had a fusing pen stuck in his mouth, a spanner in one hand, and a spare capacitor in the other. Why were there spare parts? Were there supposed to be spare parts?

He had no idea. But this didn't seem to belong anywhere at the moment. Or, no where important anyway.

Setting the fusing pen aside, the boy took the fusing pen out of his mouth and started soldering the circuitry. When he'd finished with that, he stood up, looked at the capacitor, and then just chucked it over his shoulder. Standing on his tip-toes, the boy reached up to flip the lever that would energize the Frankenstein hyper-shield-whatchamacallit.

Brushing the snow off his HoloLink, the boy called into the comlink. "Hey, Jorus, I just got the ray shields on line... I think."

At least nothing had caught on fire.

Yet.

[member="Jorus Merrill"] | [member="Tilzi"] | [member="Bryce Bantam"] | [member="Kytra Odran"]​

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Tabigarashu Madara"] [member="3X744"] [member="Tilzi"] [member="Teagan Stoirm"] [member="Sarge Potteiger"] [member="Kytra Odran"] [member="Bryce Bantam"] [member="Lok Munin"] [member="Kimiko"] @[member="Niko Minuro Ike"][member="Skairus"]

With an unhealthy snap-crackle-pop, a shield bubble rose around the crashed vessel and the other defensive positions. From above, in the lone starfighter, it looked like an oblong pill, and a bitter one for the Sith. A hard cold wind was clearing the storm away, revealing ranks of dead Sith troopers and smoking gunship wrecks. Now Sith artillery and at least one starship began to fire in earnest, but their fire splashed against the jury-rigged shield harmlessly.

"You fething did it, Sor-Jan," Jorus said, wheeling the old fighter. "Nicely done-"

The distant artillery position exploded in a firecracker string, and here came the Underground: a dozen light and medium freighters. The Millennium Falcon had gone off to its master, but Bryce Bantam was here, come down from orbit. The Sith starship took disabling fire from shield-ignoring Conqueror ion cannons, and plowed into the snow beside the Underground ship in a hail of escape pods. The Underground ships made a second pass, wrecked what remained of the artillery, and settled down around the crashed vessels in a semicircle. From up here, he could see frigid and wounded Undergrounders being loaded into the freighters, along with salvaged and captured military materiel. He could see familiar folks - Noomay for one. Other Undergrounders were charging the disabled Sith vessel; most of its crew had evacuated, but maybe some resistance remained. He switched channels.

"All Underground units, we're pulling out. From what I'm picking up on comms, the battle where we were headed is won, the Omega's shields are down, but it's charging up and coming down. We need to move -- everyone in the transports, fast as you can, or mop up that Sith ship and use it for evac. We're done here."

 

[Bryce Bantam]

Well, rescue ships... interesting...

Even thought it seemed his heroic flight over was not really needed Bryce was still trying to make himself useful. With the Rogue Sith forces in full retreat at this point, Bryce had gone back to his roots and began caring for the wounded. As he did he passed a force-sensitive Bereth-aku medic who seemed to go by the name Noomay. Bryce really did have time to chat as he continued to look for wounded and it wasn't long till he found one wounded spell weaver hold up by a bulkhead a rather common-looking light carbine in her hand.

"Well fancy meeting you... feth, your hurt." Bryce said has he came over to her.

For better or worse, (most likely worse) Bryce went into full-blown medic mode. Taking out his kit he pulled a can of bacta spray and began to try and treat her. As he did the gel began to freeze in the cold.

"To karking cold [member="Tilzi"] , let's get you to some place warmer so I can treat that."

If she let him Bryce attempted to pick her up gently like a groom would a bride, he planned to carry her carefully over to a waiting transport. That is if she let him...

 

[Leos Palle]

Ahh, thank goodness for reinforcements.

As [member="Bryce Bantam"] arrived, he might notice that their downed ship was still broadcasting the greatest hits of Underground Revival (at least Sor-Jan hadn't ruined that!). At present it was playing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnY8C77EQKU

For her part, Kytra had raced out of the way of the incoming ship fire so she didn't get accidentally blown into kingdom come. She ran across the snowy surface of the planet and back to their downed ship, seeking safety within the shield. Once inside, she breathed a sight of relief, deactivated her saber and fell over onto her back. She wasn't exactly injured aside from a wide variety of knicks and scrapes, and one blaster shot to her lower left abdomen that was more of a graze than a full hit. It hurt like hell, but it could have been worse, and she was just happy for a reprieve, which allowed her to ignore it for the moment.

Eventually she stood up and started herding people to the newly arrived ships so they could get out of there considering what Jorus had just told them. If that thing was going to crash into the planet, and fire at the same time? Yeah, the planet was screwed and so were they if they stuck around. She spotted Bryce and [member="Tilzi"] and waved at them briefly, but she kept doing what she could to her people onto one of the transports before she would follow suit.

[member="Jorus Merrill"] [member="Sor-Jan Xantha"] [member="Sarge Potteiger"] [member="Tabigarashu Madara"]

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

"...and use it for evac. We're done here."

The small clone stood up on his knees in the seat. "Come on, Tabi. Mister General Merrill says it's time to go." the child offered, extending a hand out for the mouse-person to jump on so that it could scramble up his arm if it wanted. "So... so, like, we need to... we need to get to the... the transport ships," the boy explained.

The Nezumi could ride on his shoulder, or settle back down in the make-shift nest at the open throat of the child's bodyglove.

Making his way down from the gun turret, the child started making his way through the wreckage toward where other Underground personnel were running toward the transport ships.

[member="Tabigarashu Madara"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"]​

 

[Tabigarashu Madara]

Hirou came bounding over, still intensely pleased that what they'd been doing worked.

"Whups!"

Scampering back a couple mouse-sized paces, the Nezumi grabbed up their rucksack. Settling it over one shoulder, careful to keep things from clanging together, Hirou resumed the cheerful bounding. One jump brought them on to Three's hand, then a scamper up his arm. It wasn't even a consideration, where the little creature was going to ride. It was cold. Hirou dove, face first, in to the open neck of Three's jacket. Reaching back out with a tiny paw, the Nezumi pulled their tail in behind them quickly.

Shifting around a bit, Hirou's nose came popping back out of the opening. They could get used to this.

[member="3X744"]

 

[Tarok Vassket]

[member="Bryce Bantam"]

"Already...got treated...fine." she growled. She had been wedged against a torn piece of outer hull when he found her, blaster half depleted. Pushing him away, she planted one hand - her left, still caked in her own dried blood - on the hull and tried to push herself to her feet.

She didn't even manage to her knees before it gave way and she had a shaky, and painful, descent back down. Tilzi ground her teeth in frustration.

Amber eyes turned up to regard Bryce. Pain came in many forms. From the icy shards where tendrils of the cold found routes to her skin, to the constant heat from the blaster wound in her midriff and now a dull throb from the slip.

"Alright," she whispered. "One hand." But as she was helped up she found she had to lean most of her weight into him. At least he was warmer than the metal deck.

"Why did you get married?" She asked, voice faint and trembling.