The Sum of All and By Them, Driven

[Aver Brand]

Content to let [member="The Major"] lead the way, the merc kept pace a couple meters behind. You know, in case the area in front of the weirdass tower turned out to be a minefield or something. The gal was nice an’ all, but if she could help it, it’d be her bloody parts she’d be rinsing off her plates, and not the other way around.

Not that most mines would escape the scrutiny of the thousand-and-one scanners crammed into her helmet, honestly. Thing was kitted out like the bunker of a doomsdayer working with the budget of the galactic 1%.

Aver was only a paranoid streak away from that sort of thing. She had the credits and the reinforced hideout down pat.

All musings aside though, the tower didn’t look as dead and abandoned as she’d like. With some judicious zoom and a couple of hand-picked curses in Huttese, the merc elaborated on the situation.

There was a particular brand of exasperation to her tone. “It’s cultists.”

Her favorite.


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty thought about that for a moment.

He had a long and not particularly friendly relationship with cultists. They were always trying to do something weird with Shards. Either they tried to grind them into powder and snort them (a hellaciously bad idea, given the nasty things silicon does to the lungs), tried to sacrifice them to the Force or some crap like that, or once, memorably, used them as, well, penetrative aids. The Shards in question that time had been baffled, but mostly unharmed.

Fortunately, they tended to be fairly easy to deal with. Most cultists came from upper middle class families, usually people with more money than sense, or practical combat experience. The very poor tended to stick to a few tried and true cults that had more to do with healing warts than summoning eldritch beings from beyond the veil. The very deadly tended not to form cults, unless it was to some god of war, in which case they stuck to more mundane tasks, like wearing cloaks of skin and drinking the blood of their enemies.

Something about this place screamed money, and that screamed cannon fodder. And, lo and behold, Rusty had brought a cannon. A very lovely cannon, who hadn't had a chance to properly turn a cultist into a cloud of slowly expanding mist in quite some time.

"Well, on the bright side, we don't have to feel guilty about killing any of them, am I right?"

No one could deadpan quite like a Shard. It helped that he wasn't alive in the biological sense.

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

“Presumably. Of course, if these cultists were actually protecting the galaxy from energies beyond our comprehension through rituals, then it could be unfortunate if we killed them.”

Food for thought. It would be all too ironic if this triumvirate of agents acted rashly and ushered in the final doom of this galaxy. The whole series of unfortunate occurrences could begin right here on this sunny, cheerful field beset by the evil looking tower. Overthinking was a favorite hobby of Sybil, and now she pondered that if all were judged by their outward appearance, then wouldn't Rusty the robotic weapons master look a bit. Well…. evil? In fact, the Brand also imprinted an intimidating gash upon the eyes —like that you wished not to see in your closet. Although in Sybil's case she probably would appreciate seeing the operative in her closet. Possibly?

Ah! What a beautiful day! But work was to be done, and pay needed to be earned.

“There's some kind of energy reading up ahead. Shields perhaps, or an alarm system. Shall I investigate?”

As a skilled slicer, it wouldn't take long for her determine what sort of danger laid ahead. Still, perhaps one of the other two would like to display their expertise?

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

“Fat karkin’ chance.” Aver shrugged, though they probably wouldn’t see it anyway. “We could always just ask them real nice to hand over the chaingun.”

Her lips split into a grin behind the helmet. “You know, ‘cause that tower’s just screaming ‘Come chat, we have tea and crumpets’.” The merc gestured forward with an open palm. “Go ahead.”

First rule of staying alive long enough to enjoy the payout – let others walk into the line of fire for you. ‘Sides. Woman looked like she could handle herself.

[member="Rusty"] | [member="The Major"]

 

[Rusty]

"Slice away, madam," Rusty said, an electronic cackle bubbling up from his vocabulator.

He could practically feel Gertrude tensing up, waiting to sing. It had been oh so long since she'd had the chance. And now was looking like the perfect time. Cultists made such pretty splatter.

The gunsmith had always had a habit of anthropomorphizing his weapons, but Gertrude was special. That wasn't just his imagination. He'd had some Force sensitive dude look over the thing, and to both of their surprise, the massive gun really did have a soul, or something like it. She wasn't aware, precisely, but over time, she'd gained something like a personality. It was strange, a phenomenon that couldn't really be explained, and not being Force sensitive himself, not something he could directly detect. But, in moments like this, on the edge of battle, he swore he could feel her excitement.

"I'm gonna kill some cultists, I'm gonna kill some cultists..."

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

Happy to oblige, Sybil produces a data-pad from her chest pocket before beginning to furiously type away on the touch screen with darting thumbs. Her good cheer appears to be smeared by a complication in the software, and in an effort to concentrate the woman bends one knee and begins to rest upon it. Without a doubt, the Fallanassi behaved in a peculiar fashion. Something invisible to the naked eye was plaguing the space right in front of her nose, since she kept squinting the way one does when they see a shifty co-worker who always asks you for space tissue when they clearly should buy some on their own time.

"At the ready!" She spoke to her companions. A beat later, she punches a key. . . .

A defensive shield begins to falter from their side of the tower and peels away in a wash of static and hyper-violent cyan. A vibration touches the dirt beneath their feet, and then a clump up ahead explodes upward with an audible electric hiss. Not too far from that now smoking spot, a clearly over designed turret pokes up and begins to spin as it levels for the singing robot.

"Auto-turrets!" The last syllable of her utterance is drowned out by the hefty roar of the blaster discharging.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

The merc observed as [member="The Major"] worked her techno magic, interest veiled behind the impassive phrik faceplate. Slicing was a common enough skill with her associates that she’d never bothered learning it herself. Push came to shove, she could always use one of those portable scramblers or spikes or whatever.

Usually Aver just held a gun pointed at someone long enough for things to happen. Worked like a charm every time.

Slicing?... apparently not so much.

The turret sprung up, spraying blaster fire at the mildly amused trio. The merc, who’d prudently hung out in the back, now brought her wrist-mounted shield to bear. Folding her body to the side, she presented a narrow target and the shimmering energy field, bouncing bolts back into the sky.

Inexorably like time and tide, Aver began advancing on the spewing turret, deflecting the occasional burst of blasterfire when [member="Rusty"]’s gleaming metal ass failed to entertain it for a few moments.

 

[Rusty]

As soon as the turret turned its affection towards [member="Aver Brand"], Rusty did a thing.

That thing was simple. He had been lying prone being a convenient hilltop, letting the bolts smack into it instead of his face. Once the bolts stopped trying to eat his face, he popped up, leveled Gertrude, and fired thrice.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

The phenomenon couldn't properly be described as gunshots. Each blast from her barrel had a physical presence, something akin to a being buffeted by a pillow the size of a speeder truck, having been swung by a giant. Rusty's face was locked in a metallic rictus, the default expression utterly appropriate in the face of the pure joy that suffused his being. This was what life was about, not sitting in an office all kriffing day, staring at spreadsheets and balancing budgets.

No, life was about sending 17mm projectiles screaming towards a target, each carrying the kinetic energy load of a car crash, concentrated on a needle-sharp tungsten point. Life was about watching as the rounds ripped through the semi-armored plating of the turret, watching the power generator's containment measures fail, watching a ball of actinic fire race upwards, searing the very air with its intensity.

Life was about a Shard and his gun, going on an adventure.

What else could he ask for?

[member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

Sizzle! Crack! Pop!​

What a gorgeous day!​

​

The appointed slicer had been busy digging her face into the dirt. It was pretty. Pretty dogged. The First Order's live fire exercises during boot camp had throughly instilled the proper reflexes. Preening and form had no place when turrets spat calculations at you in the form of blaster bolts.

At some point Rusty the robotic craftsman had returned fire, and this revealed that the Major was indeed somewhere behind him. What could she say? He was solid cover. Very solid. Literally made of metal composites. She doubted a few bolts pinging into his skeleton would do little more than make scorch marks, and also turn his great mood sour.

Not so, he was as happy as a robot could be when it came to the concept of termination.

Explosions and staccato shots thumped out the rhythm, and Sybil was eager to add her own trumpet to the concert. The incoming fire died out, and now eight rather pleasant fires dotted the landscape in front of the tower. Without warning, a starfighter departs from near the top of the tower. The loud and iconic whine its engine made placed it in the realm of the TIE model. A roar later, the craft was listing upwards, turning lazily like a distant bee meandering about its choice flower. Speed increased, and now the craft was looping into a wide turn that no doubt was a set up for an attack run on our three intrepid "heroes."

Wasting no time in waiting for her teammates to pull out an anti-aircraft gun from their proverbial pants, the slicer equips her ridiculously long rifle and levels at the craft in a prone position. If one looked, they could see she was actively trying to press her chest, legs, and hips into the dirt as much possible.

The glasses glow, the barrel point drifts and then rests still for but a moment.

Exhale.

!KRRAAAAOOOWWWW-SHUUU-SHHHUSH-shhhaaaahhhh!​

​

One would be forgiven for thinking the logical thing. Of course nobody could hit a speeding fighter without a rotary cannon. The craft appeared to even still be flying right at them. Seconds later the fighter sputters barely 30 meters overhead, begins to blossom in smoke, and strikes the ground further behind the trio. Flames lick the cockpit as debris roll down the plain.

"Have a happy landing, you f***..."​

The now sniper extraordinare looked rather angry. Internally, she was fuming that she had set off the alarms which activated the defenses accidentally.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Aver observed two separate and separately powerful items of well-crafted technology explode in short succession. With a big boom. (Several, in one case.) And, invariably, with a triumphant yell of glee and excitement.

Briefly, the merc wondered who, exactly, she’d brought along for the roadtrip. [member="Rusty"] alone was a handful – [member="The Major"] just made it worse.

Half a gesture away from facepalming (faceplatepalming?), Aver marched right past the smoldering hole where a turret used to be. Even the deaf would know they were coming now. They’d thrown stealth out the window, buried it in a pile of black powder, doused it with gasoline, and threw a match on the fething pile.

“If y’all are done blowing shet up…” the merc threw over her shoulder without looking back. Didn’t need to, what with the pineal sensor, but it was the principle of the matter. She kicked a piece of bent, charred metal from her path and continued straight for the tower at a light jog.

Close-quarters had always been more her cup of tea. Or blood. Or spilled entrails.

Whatever, take your pick.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty turned to regard [member="Aver Brand"] with, well, the exact same expression he always had.

"No. No I am not."

By now, the cultists were starting to boil out of the tower like ants from an anthill. Which, when you think of it, is sort of a weird expression. Where else are ants going to boil out of? Why were they described as boiling, anyway?

While Rusty contemplated the mystery of analogies, about twenty cultists took up firing positions in front of the tower. Within moments, the air filled with blasterfire, the bolts so thick, a beskar flea could hop from bolt to bolt. The Shard quickly took cover, his shirt smoking from a couple of fresh holes. He wasn't pissed about the holes, however. He was too busy having the time of his life to be angry.

"Man, I didn't know how much I missed this stuff. Guys! Guys! Wanna see if I can make one pop like a zit on a Hutt's ass?"

[member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

Rusty got ever more giddy by the second, and Sybil supposed that as long as someone was having fun then her royal fuck up wasn't too huge a problem.

As a platoon of cultists angrily chattered between one another and poured more fire up towards the trio, the sniper decided that it would be best to swap barrels in order to enable her warhammer to fire repeated shots. Besides, these guys didn't require anti-vehicle grade bullets.

Cool as a cucumber, but visibly irate, she opens a strapped bag tightly wound against the inside of her greatcoat and pulls out the second barrel. Breathing evenly, she begins this process -which would only take her about thirty seconds. She had a lot of free time. A lot of free time alone.

It would be highly useful to have a magic bullet right about now. Only in dreams, right?

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Well… if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

She briefly considered her selection of grenades. Bolts whizzed past her chosen boulder of a cover, sending spalling and sprays of dirt up into the air. [member="Rusty"] was to her left, entirely too excited for a droid. Excited enough for a shard? Maybe. The merc had no clue about those.

[member="The Major"] was replacing her barrel. In the middle of a firefight. Joy.

Aver Brand, smack in the middle, crawled downslope, than back around again, belly-first in the dirt just below the crest of the hill. Her souped-up HUD helpfully provided all the necessary calculations as she cooked the thermal detonator. Dangerous practice, that – but one that’d served her well for over three decades nonetheless.

With a private grin, she lunged up and chucked the grenade at their welcoming committee.

See how they liked her housewarming gift.

 

[Rusty]

[member="Aver Brand"] didn't make the journey alone. Several 1,000 grain bullets crackled over her head, suppressive fire courtesy of Gertude. The massive rifle wasn't quite a machine gun, wasn't quite a sniper rifle, and wasn't quite sane. It spat out bullets at a steady, deliberate tempo, each one striking with enough force to turn an armored plate into a crumpled wad of scrap metal.

As it turns out, if you hit an unarmored cultist, they really will pop like a pimple, as three on the right flank learned when Rusty shifted from suppression to aimed fire. The first one didn't know what hit him. One second, he was spraying his blaster across the idyllic countryside. The next second, he was sprayed across the idyllic countryside.

His buddy turned, surprised to find himself soaked, not to mentioned pelted with splinters of bone and scraps of cloth. The motion saved him from being completely obliterated, but the shot took him in the jaw, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. If Rusty had to guess, the impact had driven the teeth up into his brain. He'd seen it before.

The third tried to drop his blaster, but before he could turn and run, a massive bullet tore through it, and then through him. The detonation of the tibanna gas added even more energy to the blood spatter, and the entire area within fifteen meters found itself coated in a glistening sheen of red.

And then the thermal detonator went off, and the middle of the formation vanished in a ball of plasma as intense as any star.

Very nice.

Rather than shifting fire to take out the left flank, Rusty was content to keep their heads down with more suppression. He wanted to see how [member="The Major"] used that fancy rifle he'd built.

 

[The Major]

In a galaxy filled with homicidal -though apparently righteous- driods and full bloody Force blown hyper assassin cyborgs, there probably wasn't a lot of appreciating for what a well trained human body could accomplish with a lot of time. Hefting a 2 meter long rifle in two hands and swapping around a total package of 6.7 kilos was no small feat. The woman clearly had a significant amount of strength to throw around in those limbs.

Swap complete, a magazine slots into the left side of weapon at a 45 degree angle with a satisfying click. The slicer/sniper puts another magazine into her mouth, clamping down upon the composite material with her canines. How fortunate that there were others here to give out suppressing fire. Truly, teamwork gave the enemy other targets to shoot at.

The most important thing of all was to remain calm. Collected. Once again her glasses glow a telltale blue. Her hindquarters wiggles just a bit as her angle of prone shifts slightly.

Sight. . .​

!BUHDAMN!

This round appears to ricochets off one cultist's left ribcage and exits, spinning end over end until it was crashing through another man's mouth a few meters behind the first.

!BUHDAMN! BUHDAMN!

The first passes through a cultist's aim, shattering his aiming left hand into flying fingertips and flicking through his center chest with an audible pop. The second of the grouping struck somewhere in that selfsame man's hood. Results: catastrophic.

!BUHDAMN!

This one thunks into a fourth cultist's groin -overpressure shearing off most of what god had offered him.

After the grenade and automatic fire, this was turning out to be too much for the defenders, and they began to holler and run back inside.​

!BUHDAMN-BuhDAMN-BANG-BANG-BANG!

Forecast: thunderstorm. Loud and thrice as deadly. This grouping wasn't perfect. No human could be. Some shots hit low, pinning legs, slicing knees, and just missing another's cheek.

!BUHDAMN-SHUA-shhuushhh!

Soar free, and provide sweet release; center mass through a lad's spine, sending him a-tumble in the sun kissed fields.

"Puh-thoo!" The huntress spat the magazine in her mouth with a jerk of the head and a push of the tongue, catching the box with her right hand. In one motion, she firmly nudged the release of the magazine catch, shoved the spent box out, and secured the fresh one home -never taking her left off of the weapon's barrel. Pulling the cocking handle back to ready, the Major was ready to dole out divine punishment once again.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

It was key to wait for the other psychopath lady to stop shooting. Not that it was a good idea in general to waltz in front of someone holding a gun. But there were varying degrees of bad ideas, and this one was at the very bottom – right next to calling [member="Rusty"] ‘Rust’.

The last shot rang out from [member="The Major"]’s oversized boomstick, and Aver shifted into pursuit. They had them on the defensive, and there wasn’t a better moment to close the distance. Like a dogged bloodhound with the scent of a wounded animal on the air, the merc followed after the retreating platoon.

Well. More like a fireteam, now.

No, really – a bunch of them were streaking flames behind them as they ran back for their tower.

Aver was, to their great dismay… faster.

Someone else might’ve let them scream. The merc just cut them down, plain and simple. A kukri was one of the finest blades an aspiring hack ‘n’ slasher could invest in – perfect balance and weight distribution for that sort of thing.

Plus, plastoid armor vs alchemized durasteel?

Unfair odds were the best kind to fight with, Aver had always maintained.

 

[Rusty]

It was all over except for the screaming.

BOOOOOM!

One final shot from Gertrude, and that was over too.

The Shard sauntered up to the base of the ridiculous tower, fully aware that anyone inside was likely planning something, and not caring in the slightest. If this was the level of opposition they could expect, they'd hardly have to try. Long years of experience told the Shard that they were basically just waiting for the other shoe to drop at this point, but that was the nature of things.

Without a word, Rusty dug a sealed packet from a pouch on his belt. It was an experimental product, a cleaning cloth that would remove blood and other contaminants from a blade and apply a thin layer of protective oil at the same time. He passed it over to [member="Aver Brand"] and considered the structure for a moment.

"It stands to reason that they've got some more surprises on hand in there. For the life of me though, I can't think of what they'd want with something like the chaingun. Usually these sorts go after artifacts of a more mystical nature."

[member="The Major"]

 

[The Major]

The sniper was the last to arrive at the base of the tower, her eyes constantly jabbing this way and that in order to examine the nearest kills. While her teammates concerned themselves with preparing to take the tower proper, the Major stripped some equipment off the cultist who made it the closet to hiding back into the tower.

She also opened its mouth with her thumb and index finger, swooping down to peer down, as though to examine if the subject in question had cavities. Now sporting a standard ion blaster and a few detonators, she regards her comrades briefly. Instead of quips, she let them do the chatting while catching her breath and dusting off her coat and trousers as meticulously as one could without a lint brush.

Now that she thought it about, she was really digging the modified blade. And also the rifle who was called Gertrude.

Dare it be said? The First Order agent felt a little. . . lightly armed compared to these two war machines.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Eyeing the packet like it might blow up in her face – a completely justified concern when it came to RCFC products – Aver eventually pilfered it from his grasp and broke out the cloth. “Interestin’,” the merc hummed before taking the moistened fabric to the blade.

Boots crunched across the crisp grass behind them, and then [member="The Major"] was standing next to the jolly metal pair. Battlefield looting – the pan-galactic pastime that transcended the borders of nation and occupation alike.

Aver canted her head to the side as she considered the looming black structure. Five floors? Hard to tell – pompous folks like these, they loved a high ceiling. Gave them more space to build massive statues and hang trophies on the walls, the merc figured.

“Well—” she puffed out a breath, folding the cloth again. “It’s Yoda’s, innit? If there ever was a chaingun you could call mystical, it’s gotta be this one.”

Her gaze dropped from the top of the tower back to the reinforced blast doors (black) arching before them. A meter of solid turadium, looked like.

“[member="Rusty"], you wanna do the honors?”

It’d be downright selfish if Aver kept all the explosives to herself, after all.

 

[The Major]

"It looks like the top floor is already open." Sybil casually pointed upwards while Rusty calculated which set of explosives to the blow the door with. Looking up, one could indeed see the hanger space where their attacking starfighter materialized from. Perhaps the ones operating the locking mechanism now laid dead on the lazy green -and crimson splattered- plain.

Even with a concentrated explosion to mask their entrance, it seemed all too likely a trap set up to just waltz in.

After all, Rusty did not exactly specify if the chaingun was in working order.

"Not that I wish to seem impertinent, my most honorable Lady." Qualified the Major, always polite. Internally, she figured the Brand would either get a kick out of continuously being referred to in such a way, or get irate. Hopefully, not too irate with that kukri in her hands. "Either way, I'm going up."

!PFFT!​

​

The morbid markswoman quick shots an admittedly small grappling gun towards the upper floors. Once it clicked up above, she set the line to pull. This along with walking up the side of the structure enabled her to quietly advance. Clearly, she was quite comfortable with heights and climbing, for her elegant black clad limbs gave an almost alarming semblance to a spider slickly dancing upwards on its web.

[member="Aver Brand"] [member="Rusty"]​