Private The Terror of Forming (Corek/Zambrano)

[Yasha Cadera]

The planetoid had coordinates and no name, it was too small and difficult for the casual observer, potential colonist or even spacelane enthusiast to bother about. Sequestered in the middle of a nebula, the gravitic anomaly which caused a significant amount of rock and spatial detritus to form into a slowly spinning sphere was of interest to few beyond the Mandalorian-turned-scientist, who stood in comfortable modified beskar'gam, her right arm both fully displayed and fully vongflesh. Yasha Cadera checked her simulations and growled with a satisfied grunt at the positive response to the artificial magnetosphere she'd fashioned to keep a limited atmosphere in place.
"It will do for now, if my speculations are correct, the planetoid will slowly begin to build its own magnetosphere and hold atmo without our interference. Noah, check the moisture levels? Is the loam we brought retaining the water?" The vongflesh didn't feel the relative chill, rippling in green and yellow mottled scales, with one bulbous eye blinking lazily out of what was once Yasha's right shoulder. Breathing through her helmet, she let her body take the slack of this relatively quiet time, while members of House Cadera's Terraforming Research team continued to ply a variety of experiments.

If they made some of them work, the amount of energy necessary to complete terraforming projects across the Galaxy would reduce a drastic amount. "It's still far too expensive… still."

A sniff of the air inside her helm. A ripple in the vong arm. The scales solidified, fingers worked into claws. "Ambrose, security report."
The old Gurlanin Ambrose Cadera grumbled and limped to his security outpost, running diagnostics of the immediate sector surrounding the experimental planetoid. "Running… it's probably the wind, pup."

"I felt something..."

"This entire planetoid is put together with bits of gravitic string. I'm surprised you're not feeling it dance up your spine… Alor, comfort your wife before we all chase budding nightmares which turn out to be rocks." There was a grin in his voice, covered as his face was in his helmet. Even in his elder years as he was, the old Death Watch gurlanin wore his Beskar'kandar as spic and span as a Mandalorian's never dying pride.

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Noah Corek]

Yasha Cadera - Darth Carnifex ​

When his wife had pitched the idea of going to some planetoid out in the middle of nowhere to help her conduct some experiments he had to admit he was somewhat skeptical. It took them far from the safety of Alderaan first of all, something he hated doing for Yasha, and there weren’t any House Corek supercommandos currently available for guard duty. But Yasha, being his wife for almost twenty years, knew exactly what to say and exactly how to say it to wrap her husband around her finger.

Yasha had given him a crash course on terraforming on the trip to the planetoid so he knew what to do but still found himself out of his element, his degrees were in history and mechanical engineering not horticulture. Reading the datapad he looked to his wife and nodded. “Moisture levels seem to be holding where you said you wanted ‘em…again kinda hard to tell…not really trained or educated in this kinda stuff.”

Swiveling his head over towards Yasha, he observed her through the visor of his buy'ce, an eyebrow raising as he saw the scales on her arm solidify. He swiveled his bucket once again to gaze at Ambrose, rolling his eyes when the old gurlanin called him ‘Alor’. “You better be careful not to let my mother hear you calling me that Ambrose…she ain’t marching on yet.” Chuckling despite himself he made his way over to his wife, hand reaching up to the cup where her cheek would be under her own buy'ce. “Cyar’ika? What’s wrong?”

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"They were detected leaving atmosphere during the second rotational quarter. The ship's ID didn't register as belonging to the Noreks, but biometric comscan confirmed the presence of an enhanced Epicanthix aboard the ship. Our agents in Alderaan's regional flight control gave them permission to depart the system, and we've passed along the description of the ship and its potential occupants to our agents at every possible destination along their last known trajectory."

Those very same destinations were brought up on the holoscreen, the most likely highlighted with their names, populations, and the disposition of their government. Covertly, the Alderaan agents had scanned the ship as it was leaving for hyperspace. They managed to capture the ship's rotation, it's angle, the direction in which it was facing, and then they compiled it with the data pulled from the ship ID, including the vessel's maximum reserve of fuel.

All of that had been fed into a bestial machine, a monolith of whirring tapes and clicking electronics. Right now, it was brute-forcing the numbers to narrow down the most likely locations for their journey. There were few machines in the galaxy as sophisticated as this one, the result of decades of precision research and engineering. With it, none could escape the clutches of the Dark Lord for very long.

Especially those He kept under close watch.

The machine spat out a stream of code, interpreted by the cybernetic technicians hardwired into it as coordinates. They punched those coordinates into the holomap, and a small planetoid was narrowed down out of hundreds of possible destinations. The machine was certain that this was their destination. The Dark Lord needed nothing else, He could feel it in the ebb and flow of the Force. They were there, alright.

"Prepare the ship, I will venture forth alone."

Darth Carnifex rose from His throne, the titan-architect of the Sith's glory, and strode forth with unwavering resolve. His ship slipped away from the Malsheem minutes later, disappearing into the chaos of hyperspace and hurtling towards a meeting with destiny.

The ship emerged from hyperspace, clad in stealth and sensor-muffling tech, and silently stalked towards the unsuspecting planetoid.

Yasha Cadera | Noah Corek ​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Perhaps a jig, old man." Yasha grit her teeth to prevent the gnash she wanted to give. In their compound on Alderaan, life was a wondrous dream, there was nothing but her research and her family, two spouses and children growing into almost respectable professions… Jr notwithstanding… she was docile, lulled into the security Noah spent considerable earnings to maintain, while Ale'ika soothed the savagery from her marrow.

Here, on the planetoid, with atmosphere so thin and the lethal permanence of open space as close as a burnt few plasmic fuses, or faulty wiring, or miscalculation, Yasha Cadera was waking up. Her right arm twitched, the yellowed eye swivelling through Vong meat as amber eyes swept through the HUD in her buy'ce in an unending pattern. The twinge in the air… biot roiling, the skin shifted from yellow to dark green, protuberances grew into spikes, which undulated slowly in and out of the flesh.

"You're an engineer, that's a machine. I was confident my riduur could handle the interface." She clucked her tongue, a sound more alien now, after almost two decades since Mandalore. The sound rattled down the arm, almost a laugh. "How fast until Ambrose is turned into the rug under your mother's favourite reading chair?"

Ambrose growled with a snap of his jaws under his buy'ce, then rumbled out a deep chuckle. "I still see… no, it's nothing."

A blip on the screen, then gone. Another, then it dissipated. Ambrose bashed his fist against the side of his scanner panel, and the hologram fizzled then stabilized. "The nebula's playing tricks on you, shadows in the dark, pup… nothing more than shadows."

Playing into Noah's hand, Yasha chittered. "Nothing. Nervous about these experiments, I need them to work, but it's risky. Push too hard, the planetoid could come apart. No, this is just nerves. Ambrose is right… but… Maggi and Girak-Kaine are still off Alderaan, aren't they? I always get a bit… twitchy when they're not home. Grown men now I guess. Maybe I'm just empty nesting."

Little did Ambrose know the blips weren't bits of interference. Doom acometh, and as Ambrose leaned against his sensor array, the blips became one and a vector blinked into being then dissolved to naught. "Did we order that resupply? I'm hungry for more'n tac bars."

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Gunnr Zambrano]

Gunnr cuddled a whimpering Nanaya in her lap. One of Gunnr and Koe's triplet "Little Princesses", Nanaya was first to her initial growth spurt. As the child's jet black hair pasted to the side of a flushed, but pale cheek, Gunnr smiled down at her, and tucked the offending strand back into the girl's braid.

Curled into her mother's side, Nanaya tried her best not to cry. She would conquer this pain, as she would conquer all pains which came after. Gunnr fuelled the girl with confidence, but none of the analgesics most mothers would dote upon their children. No, Nanaya must feel it. She would know pain. She would know how to defeat it when it inevitably came again.

Ninlil and Erezi hovered, one engaged in a holo, the other brushing her doll's black hair with her fingers, attempting to tell which sibling which strand came from, or maybe this one? This was her father's. A simple toy crafted with locks of the Zambrano family's hair cut into a totem. Erezi would grow to know her family's presences in the Force all the stronger. While an act of affection, Gunnr commissioned the doll as a tool. The Little Princesses would become as strong, or stronger than their siblings, or they would find their paths much less pleasant in the deadly hierarchy of the Sith.

A soft ping caught Gunnr's attention. Amidst the multitude of docking procedures and logistics of their roving domain, anything remotely important was flagged. 'Koe? Where's he gone?'

Far be it for Gunnr to question her husband, no one could affix that force of nature into a capsule of any size, as much as some tried, and at times even death attempted and failed to truly separate them. Another set of pings. Gunnr's brow furrowed as one courtier made a case for the suspension of punishment for their offspring in this smaller court, and Nanaya clasped some of Gunnr's ginger hair.

Gunnr's eyes narrowed all the more, when she opened the info packets to Koemi's private comm and they were locked. Encrypted beyond her reach. A wave of her hand, and the courtiers were en masse telekinetically pushed a few centimetres. "Leave. All of you."

The room emptied as if survival itself were on the chopping block. "Girak-Kaine, a moment."

A young man bowed out of the shadows, cloaked in black robes cut similar to his father's. Girak's eyes flickered from emerald to red and black. "I wouldn't worry, father knows how to come home to us."

"Always perceptive. Why don't I know where he's going?"

"Do you always?"

"No, and I'm content with my lot, but… why am I being shut out?" Treachery was oxygen in perpetual recycle on Malsheem, but Koemi did nothing without reason. Gunnr presented the holo. "A vector toward the core? If it were conflict, he'd have told me, and who does your father have on a watch I can't see? What can you divine?"

"Thousands of reasons, ma'ada. Anything from running late, an elaborate game, to plotting our deaths. But knowing father… it's because he doesn't want us in his business. So why not conduct ours, hm?" Girak-Kaine lifted Nanaya out of Gunnr's lap and cradled the girl like an infant, humming a Panathan lullaby.

"You coddle her too much."

"I love all my sisters, and some of the half-ones too. Pain is best shared, isn't it little one? Hmm? You're strong, eh, Nana?" Girak-Kaine rocked his youngest full sibling, a dashing grin as wild as his father's when the weight of the cosmos didn't damn it on his chiseled, but youthful face. "Keep being this sweet and I might have to take ma'ada's offer of eligible ladies sincerely. You might get those grandchildren years sooner because of the Little Princesses."

Heart tugged in her chest, Gunnr pursed her lips and rose. She kissed her tired and pink cheek, and peered up into her son's eyes. "Slay thy secrets upon my altar, Girak-Kaine. It would be something indeed, for you to distract me with the idea of your happy, yet fictional, marriage. What are you keeping from me?"

"Shadows and fiction, mother… A ghost of nothing… a bit of science, I don't know."

"Slay thy secrets, son." Gunnr plucked her daughter from Girak's arms, and set her in the ever present decraniated nursemaid's hands. "Lest they become the dragon which ends you."

"Don't follow. Stay home, with us." An old pain wracked Girak-Kaine's brow. For a second he was five again, clutching a piece of armour Gunnr didn't recognize. Magnus clung to the ears of a statue - or maybe… no there were no helms like it… Opening her eyes, Gunnr swayed, bicep caught in her son's grasp as he steadied her. "Please, this once stay home."

"I will never abandon him. I cannot, I will not. No… every instinct tells me something isn't right." Gunnr missed the crestfallen crumple of her son's face as she spun on her heels and pressed a private line on her comm. "Othyn. Ready my ship. Taiya, you have the Seneschal's Throne." She paused at the hatchway, chin angled back to where Girak-Kaine stood. "Magnus is on the way, I trust?"

"Yes. But we all ought to stay here. There's no threat father cannot conquer on his own. No… infamy just… mother!"

"Hurry up, or I leave without you!"

 

[Noah Corek]

Yasha Cadera - Darth Carnifex
​

He chuckled at Yasha’s response to Ambrose about dancing and shook his head. “It has been awhile since we’ve danced cyar’ika…perhaps a nice slow dance or maybe a Sullustan tango?” He shook his head, snickering at his own joke before his head once again swiveled to his wife when her comment was made.

“Am I an engineer? Yes. I am a mechanical engineer. I can fix just about any mechanical which this definitely doesn’t fall into the category of. Is it a machine? Yes but not the type of machine I usually work with. This is for terraforming, something that I am distinctly lacking of knowledge in.”

He let out a barking laugh at Yasha’s summation of what his mother would do to Ambrose. “Eh she wouldn’t turn him into a rug…hide’s too tough, she’d probably just turn the pelt into a wall decoration as a warning to the others.”

Noah chewed his lip underneath his buy’ce as Yasha laid out her frustrations and anxieties about this project and about the twins. “Yasha, I’ve seen you on dozens of other projects and at each and every one of them you succeeded, I have no doubt in my mind that you will conquer this one as well. As for Maggi and Gigi they’re supposed to be back in a couple weeks. Besides, we're not empty nesters yet. Alexander and Cahira are still at home, Morgan stops by every now and then and maybe Junior would too if he wasn’t afraid of what you’d say…”

His comment about his namesake might have been a little more biting than he intended but it was an argument the three of them had had many times before. His buy’ce turned towards Ambrose and shook his head. “We ordered for two days from now…Asha is handling it and you know how she is with keeping to timetables.”

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The stealthed ship pivoted before it came within visual distance of the planetoid, pirouetting in space before launching a capsule towards its surface. It then darted towards the furthest edge of the system, where it would lie in wait like a hungry predator. Quickly descending through the thin atmosphere, the capsule's navigational thrusters engaged and began to gently descend towards the ground. As it landed, the buffeted the ground to cushion the impact before going silent completely.

Bifurcating metal hull split apart as recycled air spilled out like fog, covering the ground in a heavy mist. Rising unencumbered from the capsule, Darth Carnifex wore the terrifying visage of a grinning skull, where sockets where eyes would have been glowing bright crimson in the twilight gloom.

Stepping over the capsule's side, the Dark Lord's bladed cloak cut deep gashed into the metal shell as it was dragged out and over. Thousands of rhombic metal pieces were interwoven across the external surface of the cloak, each one stamped with the faded crest of a Mandalorian clan or family. The horror of Hammerfall was writ across the Dark Lord's form, for He did strip the dead of their armor even as they lay freshly hewn. His butchery personified into a malicious cloak of scintillating steel and glittering daggers, for the hem of His cloak was lined with long, sharp beskar blades; enough to cut down to the bone with frightening ease.

The Dark Lord moved like a Shadow, blanketing in the umbral power of the Dark Side.

Closing in like a hungry beast.

Ready to dig deep of its chosen prey.

Yasha Cadera | Noah Corek | Gunnr Zambrano ​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"You want to take me dancing?" Voice thick through her buy'ce, a bit of Yasha's Panathan lilt peppered through. Leaning her helm against Noah's, Yasha breathed deep and swayed her hip a little, arm still constricting and relaxing in its rhythm. "Once this is done. We'll grab Ale'ika, and go dancing. Maybe invite the ad'ike for dinner, make a proper family table."

Ambrose gave out a bark, and Yasha's arm rattled in scale-clanking laughter. "I would make a plush rug!"

"Yes, the softest on Mustafar... I'd better conquer this one, it would make…" Yasha leaned back and away from her spouse, busying about one of the cloud seeding fields, checking nutrient levels, as another thrill trickled down her spine. The biot clenched, fingernails turning into talons. "Junior knew my hatred of Jeti'ise. His failure to heed my warning is on his head, not mine… I suppose Alexander and Cahira could use their buir'e more than they get us… put better sense in their heads... but invite Jr to dinner."

The argument was an old one, Junior running off to the same people who caused such pain. Yasha clenched her jaw, a low rumbling growl echoed out of her ribcage on its own accord. Her neck cracked twice in the same direction, buy'ce contorting a bit too far for the Yasha of memory, another 'gift' of the Biot. Her body followed, a squirming flow of movement on instinct, as if half of her were puppeted by sinuous strings.

Ambrose snapped to attention, pulse rifle raised in the direction of Yasha's turn, a tight growl and guttural noise and four other members of Yasha's remaining gurlanin bodyguards snapped to, leaving experiments to echo in formation. The air became as charged as static particles near water, each hair standing on end awaiting the predator, the apex beast whose presence the Gurlanin felt on instinct.

A glimpse of void-black cloak hemmed with metal. The thunder of hard boots.

One long hiss chittered out of Yasha's vongshaped arm, as inhuman as the particles deprived their grave after Hammerfall. The body of Mand'alor the Infernal, child of Panatha and secret lover of the Dark Emperor contorted and woven through a mockery of his beloved, by the biot of his own design. A gift meant to preserve Yasha's life worked better than expected, clinging to the ghost of the Infernal locked in memories gleaned from sympathetic pathways, deciphered by a most alien being.

The Biot kept her alive, without understanding of what life for a woman was, learning piecemeal, educated by habit and routine. To preserve Yasha's heartbeat was to preserve itself.

The final unwitting mockery of both Noah Corek and Kaine Zambrano's love. She had loved him, once. The Dark Lord. Before he split her spine in two and stole the soul out of a woe-begotten child of Mandalore. Now, the entity which watched in grumbling, furious horror would take, and take and take, until she could harrow her soul out of fingers dead as the world under their feet.

"Zambrano."

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Gunnr Zambrano]

"Scan again." Gunnr leaned forward in her chair, elbows on muscular thighs covered in spidersilk and armourweave.

"Scan thirteen more times if you like, only signals in the sector are a few clustered ships and what I'd guess are scientific equipment. A few weapons, nothing beyond standard scan for an expedition. Given the gravitational array around the planetoid in the middle, it's… an educated guess. Father could be anywhere in the parsec, if he kept a straight vector at all, and didn't bound about." Othyn offered the hologram readings to his mother with a sweep of his hand, shrugging short at his older brothers, when they motioned for him to cut it out.

"Terraforming experiments! Without me!? I scarce believe. Othyn, increase speed."

"A couple seconds one way or the other won't make a difference, mother." Othyn mumbled, after twin glares from his older brothers grew into infinitesimal burns on his uniform lapel. The prim officer cleared his throat, sitting straighter in the pilot's seat. "The… ah… nebula is rather… interfering? I'd better slow down? Or turn round… For safety... oh... no, interference... brace for... things?"

"Your father made it down in his ship, sans naval officer. Prove your worth, Commander. Get me down there… the three of you are acting far too strange. If this is you lot being duplicitous, I'd better get you acting lessons."

"Don't lot me in with them, I was having a perfectly ordinary day at the shipyard retrofitting the Behemoi. Not my fault the twins have the finesse of a krayt dragon."

"What if it's a surprise? You wouldn't want to spoil it." Girak-Kaine licked his lips, staring directly into his mother's eyes. He maneuvered between Gunnr and the scans, while Magnus bent down to Othyn's ear. "It's father, he's likely making an attempt at affection, we should go. None of us want him to pout, if it's spoiled."

Gunnr's eyebrows quivered, posture relaxing into the throne-like chair built to take her ample Epicanthix hips, and watched her sons. Othyn's fingers uncurled, shoulders remained perfectly straight, but for a tense muscle in his neck peeking out of his prim uniform. The young man glanced constantly back at his brothers in the reflection of the transparisteel viewport. Making his way backward to the wall, Magnus stalked the intimate space. More wary of the twins than their mother, Othyn seemed listless, unguided. Whatever the twins' reasons, they didn't belong to him. "Othyn, love. Analyze the situation, please?"

A grunt from behind was silenced with the raising of Gunnr's hand. "One word, Magnus. Tempt me more, it would be wise."

Othyn cleared his throat again, fingers playing across the control panel as he ran rudimentary scans. Something she taught him to do to keep busy, buy time. "Perhaps a gift. Some new technology he wants to array you with, if successful… or father could be upset at your lack of progress. He could be testing your skill by hiring others and pitting your latest projects against this one. Has he lost confidence in you, lately? There are… more recent wives. Are you losing his affection? Unlikely, but in which case, trampling on his secrets is not the way to endear him. Although, the twins are acting rampagingly strange, so I doubt it's a lack of faith, or lust. He doesn't take us into his confidence, so if it is something they know and we don't..."

"Have you met Magnus? He's always strange." Girak-Kaine warbled, "Father hasn't lost affection, that's more preposterous than your usual morbid speculations. Mother, it's clearly a surprise! A gift! We should go."

"Oy!" Magnus puffed up his chest and kicked one foot over the other, leaning against the wall. "I'm not strange! I'm belligerent!"

"Am I lying?" Girak-Kaine glared at his twin, identical but for the muscle Magnus put on which eluded him.

"... feck. Can we go? I'm missing training. Was taking on ma'ada's elites. This is a waste of time. Othyn, do us all a favour and trot us back to Malsheem, eh? Our little pilot."

"Leave Taiya too long with the legal cases, she'll start decraniating the lot. You know how she gets with minutiae." Girak-Kaine sang, eyeing his brothers with baited breath.

"Fair point. Maybe I'm being paranoid."

"... as I was saying…" Othyn kept his officer's hands on the controls. "If they do know something and aren't being belligerent because it's two past the witching hour, it might have to do with the Mandalorians on the surface."

"Othyn, be quiet!" Magnus roared.

"I respect Mother more than I fear you." Othyn glared back, voice calm and quiet. "The transponders match known Mandalorian tech. One hails from Alderaan… hm. Isn't that intriguing, don't you two venture to Alderaanian space now and again? Or is it a mistake of our flight records? Given father's history, I doubt this is a pleasant chat or nip around the experimental garden."

"Othyn I will end you!" Magnus seethed, stomping to his brother's pilot seat.

"Say no more. Say nothing more!" Girak-Kaine growled with an uncharacteristic gnashing of his teeth. The space inside the ship grew darker, signal lights and dials dimmed. The hull whined.

Gunnr worked the word around in her mind, Mandalorians… Alderaan… the touch of plague-like fingers clung to her spine. She winced in her seat, clenching both arms as the ship grew darker. As dark as a chasm beneath Dromund Kaas.

"What, a tantrum, Gigi? Over the buckets? We don't even know if father's there! Is that i-" Othyn barely got out a chuff when his throat began to constrict. He garbled and reached for his brother, a wash of telekinetic energy buffeted off Girak and smacked into the co-pilot's chair, bending it on its mooring.

Girak-Kaine clenched hard and Othyn was flung from his seat. Magnus pounced, slamming Othyn into the wall, before he could mount a proper defence. Magnus' longer arm wove around his neck in a choke more school-grounds than battlefront. Restraint and restriction, without lethal intent. "Stop… bloody… talking. Don't mention the bucketheads, don't ever, don't you ever… you don't remember Mand-"

"Maggi." Hovering over the controls, Girak-Kaine started hyperspace calculations back to Malsheem, only a glance to their catatonic parent, as he took Othyn's chair. "Enough. We're going home."

Koe left without word, without trail beyond what Othyn's wayfaring talents could divine. Her firstborn children refused her, rare petulance indeed, defending an intractable line. One they committed to in the violence of their kin, and Gunnr's mind kept spinning into the words, Mandalorian. Alderaan. Terraforming.

A row of sunflowers planted in caustic soil, in front of rebuilt ruins. Her fingers clenched into the chair, metal bending under her touch. "No, they were Faratha blossoms in front of the Temple of Nussyn, where I studied, on Panatha. I and mother, a lauded Priestess and Heir of House Fitz-Kierke, when treacherous Aunt Aditya went off with a marauder… She died, I think. Aditya… like father, defending a Zambrano prince on a hunting excursion. Bittersweet pride, but you have his dagger now, don't you Magnus? Reforged the grip to fit your hand… I was so proud, when Koe gave it to you. When you were ready for it." Whisper soft memories flooded her, happy but hard working times. Family dinners and etiquette lessons with her grandmother, Grandfather Girak taking her sailing, where they hunted for halberfish as lethal as them. "Koe took you two hunting, when Taiya was born, for my favourite Panathan meat. Do you remember? I suppose Othyn was a toddler, then."

"I remember, mother." Magnus loosened his grip on Othyn, another unclosed sore in his voice his younger brother didn't understand. The smaller Epicanthix son struggled to get his chin under Magnus' loosening arm... get some grip... "Punch it. Fast as the ship can go."

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Noah Corek]

Yasha Cadera - Darth Carnifex ​

Noah chuckled at her question and leaned his buy’ce further into Yasha’s own with a grin underneath it. “Mmmm I wanna do more than just take ya dancing mesh’la but I won’t scandalize the old man by saying it out loud.” He grinned under his helm at his suggestion and then smiled at Yasha’s idea. “I’d love that cyar’ika, it’s been years since we’ve had all the kids over and at the table for dinner, it’ll be just like old times.”

He laughed at Ambrose’s outburst and shook his head. “Maybe a blanket old man, something thick and hairy for the winter months!”

The man felt a pang when Yasha detached herself from him, the same pang he felt in the morning when her or Alex left the bed, though to be honest Noah was usually the one who left the bed first most mornings. He almost reached to rub the bridge of his nose through his buy’ce when Yasha rehashed the same argument they had had since Junior had left almost eight years ago now. “He didn’t join the Jeti’ise darling, he joined the Alliance army, two separate organizations. Besides, the army is what made me the man I am today, that isn’t such a bad thing is it?”

He hoped that the reminder of him would sooth her worries about Junior, despite her words he knew that it wasn’t hatred she had toward their son for leaving but simply a motherly worry about their son.

His own neck snapped towards the direction of Yasha and her bodyguards and he quickly made to follow them, bringing his rifle to bear as the armored boots of his beskar’kandar stomped after them.

When they finally reached what had set them on edge Noah’s blood ran cold and for one of the very few times in his life he felt genuine fear as he saw the black cloaked figure, knowing the only person who’d follow them to such a desolate place, Yasha’s uttering only confirming whom it was.

“Carnifex..I’d ask what you’re doing here but after your little attack on our home on Alderaan it ain’t hard to figure out…

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The towering figure stood there, silent and still as a pillar of polished obsidian amidst a landscape of ash. Armor stamped with the runic geometry of the ancient Sith shone like burnished steel in the wafer-thin atmosphere, reflecting the glint of distant stars. Terrible rictus sneer leered horrendously from beneath a metal brow upon which a crowned halo of evenly spaced spikes had been beaten into place.

His fingers, lobstered with flexible armor plating, slipped sensually around the heft of His lightsaber. Drawing forth the weapon, a crackling snap-hiss heralded the bright crimson beam of energy which protruded from between the forked obsidian stone.

"I have come to close the circle."

The mechanically augmented voice flowed unnaturally from every direction, assailing them with a bombardment of words and syllables that were like the grinding of glacial ice. He angled the blade towards them, plasmatic energy sparkling with barely contained rage. It was more than a weapon, it was an extension of the self; a conduit for hatred and violence, of which it had gorged itself greedily.

Without another word, the Dark Lord flung Himself towards the group with nightmarish speed, moving far swifter than one of His stature might indicate.

Yasha Cadera | Noah Corek | Gunnr Zambrano ​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Armies are soft. We should have thrown him into the Netherworld for a while, and made him fight his way out. A few incursions with plenty of rations is poncy living. He'll grow… flabby and… inefficient." Yasha pouted, one last pout forgotten to the towering infamy which stalked the group.

Ambrose and the gurlanin opened fire, expletives and yelps echoing through the comms at how fast the monolith was, a moving mountain crashing with the velocity of an avalanche.

"Noa'ik… I know you won't obey, but please ner runi." Yasha bent her buy'ce in Noah's direction, "Make it to the ship. Let me do this for you. Ale'ika cannot lose us both, it would kill her. Go." Scion of his darkest domain, Darth Carnifex was as mighty a sight to behold on the tiny planetoid as he was the first time she saw the Dark Lord in action. Shrill terror bathed the place, thundering into Yasha's ribcage at the beat of her heart. She gave one look toward Noah, and the decision was made in her heart. Her riduur would make it, he would be alright after a grieving while. They had twenty more years than they ought… maybe it was enough. There were so many other loves. "Let me be called to where the brave live forever."

"Kaine!" Yasha chittered and a thin shriek echoed out of her right arm, she spoke between blasting shots from the ballistic rifle Noah made for her, tracking where she thought Carnifex would come, straight for her. For the one he came to lay in finality, in yet another grave. "Betrayer! Lord of lies!" Another volley, which pocked the earth by Tila, no. "To Manda with your circle!"

He was too fast.

Yasha dropped the firearm, and yanked her dagger-long beskad free.

"Rrraaah!" The once-Infernal hell child sprinted into the clash, no less hungry for blood as she'd been as a youngling in the Netherworld. Her gait was strange, puppeted limbs cranking, loose sinew locking in place by habit before she pounced, beskad in one hand, the talons of her vongshaped arm her other weapon.

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Gunnr Zambrano]

"Mmh-mo-mother!" Othyn eked out from under his much larger brother's sleeper hold. If the microcosm of the ship grew darker still, he couldn't tell if it was the ichor of the twins' powers, or the loss of blood flow to the head. What Othyn could tell, was he'd touched upon a raw, unexposed wound. Another layer of secrets he, unworthy son, remained in ignorance about.

The weight of Magnus' mammoth body was flung away. Othyn coughed and shifted across the floor to the nearest corner, one hand ready to defend himself. Magnus wasn't so much as lifted but flung into the wall by the hatch, and as Othyn shook his head to clear it, he saw their mother and Girak-Kaine in a gaze-locked battle of wills.

"Koe is on that planetoid, I can feel him, and so can you."

"Mother, don't. Come home. I command it." Girak-Kaine whispered, raw power fluctuating in ripples outward from the stronger twin, and Othyn felt himself floating atop the command, swaying in its waves. He crawled back to the helm and pulled his strangely tired body into the pilot seat, coordinates set for Malsheem. Magnus swayed in his brother's wake, released from their mother's telekinetic push.

"Girak-Kaine, my love, my tragic little boy." A mother's soft fingers drifted across his cheek, and Girak-Kaine nuzzled, pressing his palm over her hand to keep her there. Gunnr smiled, lifting up on her tip toes to kiss his brow of untidy black hair. "If it were any other than abandoning my immortal love, I would be swayed. Othyn. Take us down. Near but not on top of your father's position."

"M-a'-" The spell broke. Girak-Kaine's radiant waves of commanding power ebbed into the ether of the planetoid, a beacon his father could, no doubt, notice if he felt outward.

"Do it." Gunnr's usually lilting voice turned to gravel. Othyn mutely set unsteady fingers to the controls. One breath, and the shake subsided and Othyn was once more the dedicated officer of the House. A being built to follow orders.

"If you value our mother, you will not obey." Girak-Kaine seethed, and Othyn paused… then set course for the planetoid beneath their heading.

"Well done, Othyn." Gunnr set her hand on a warm shoulder, a tight momentary smile for her third-born son. "We will resolve this, once I've seen to your father."

The planetoid's surface lingered under the viewport, near enough spotted figures were visible on the ground. Magnus struggled against the invisible, he and Girak-Kaine in silent conversation. When the figures grew limbs, bolts and wild motion, Magnus shut his eyes with a bellow.

"You didn't drown!"

"Magnus, no!" Girak-Kaine barked, spearing his twin in the gut to send them both toppling over with a bang that shuddered and rocked the ship. Compensators roiled, Gunnr widened her stance and grabbed onto the wall one-handed. Othyn hit the all stop, the ship hovered, Gunnr's heartbeat along with it.

"What the deuce!?" The admonition was staccato fire against Gunnr's chest. She searched the ship for an open hatch or hole in the hull, anything which vented the atmosphere her lungs missed. The secret laid in last throes, and Gunnr veered backward into the wall by the main hatch.

"Let father end it! Come home! Be with us, ma'ada! Choose us, plea-!" Magnus stumbled to his feet as his voice died under Girak's hand.

He was five again, gripping a… no, no helms came in that fashion, it must have been a statue of a beast like a wolf. Clutching a piece of armour like a stuffed bantha, Girak-Kaine cried. The heft of her spear weighted in hand as her children tried to cling to her knees. Pleading… then, her body hit the water. She couldn't breathe, fading senseless into the dark…

 

[Noah Corek]

Yasha Cadera - Gunnr Zambrano - Darth Carnifex ​

Noah looked towards Yasha with his visor meeting hers, behind which was a steely gaze. Every instinct and fiber of the man’s being told him to run, that this was hopeless, that he was going to die but in his mind he was transported twenty years into the past. When Yasha had bid him to take the children to be safe on Alderaan.

He sat in the parlor of their home, Morgan clutched in his arms while Alex soothed Junior next to him both barely out of their toddler age and yet crying because they could sense even their parents worry about their mother.

When word finally reached him Noah did the most shameful thing he had ever done, he had quickly foisted Junior onto Alex and had retreated to his workshop, hours later they would find him, fists bloody and tears streaming down his cheeks.

With this memory in mind he came back to the present, visor still bearing down on his wife and he uttered a single word. “No.” He looked towards Zambrano once before turning back to Yasha. “I let you go once before and it is a shame I have lived with for the last twenty years. Never again. If you die today then it will ONLY be after I’ve passed onto Manda myself.”

As he turned to face Carnifex and raised his rifle he glanced towards Yasha again and spoke. "Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde. This was the vow I made and the one I will keep.”

With his resolved spoken he slapped a magazine of his custom hand loaded solid beskar slugs into his rifle and quickly let loose on probably one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The helmet cut Him off from all but the Dark Side of the Force.

He could not see, the helmet had no visor.

He could not hear, save for the even cant of His breathing.

Yet, paradoxically, in spite of all this. He could see. He could hear. The Force flowed through Him, enriching every fiber of His tremendous being. It didn't matter that His ocular and aural senses were diminished, they could deceive Him otherwise, but the Force was truth. The Dark Side was luminary, it cast its inverse light upon Him and all veils were thus lifted. So, He did not need His eyes to see, nor did He require His ears to hear. The Dark Side was all that He ever needed.

His faith was unwavering.

Mechanically, He advanced upon the group. Slugs weaved around His body, knocked off course by the faintest adjustment in their momentum. Laserfire found the crimson of His blade, battered aside to harmlessly burn into the ground around Him. The tide of the fight flowed around Him, He mastered it as He had mastered many other things. He could control its flow and direction, navigating it like a superior sailor navigated the turbulent ocean.

All to funnel the one He directly sought right into His waiting grasp.

Sheathing His lightsaber, the Dark Lord rapidly charged towards the Hell-Child. They clashed mid-charge, bodies tangled in a brawl of fists and blades. Instinct quickly replaced rational strategy, the Dark Lord's century of combat experience taking over; the brain was too slow to process such speed and ferocity. It had been honed over a thousand battlefields, dozens of wars meant to cut Him down to a wickedly honed weapon of cruelty and violence. He sought at all moments to rip the armor from Cadera's body, to strip her of her only protection.

And leave her bare before the Butcher.

Noah Corek | Yasha Cadera | Gunnr Zambrano ​

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

"Do not glorify death in a battle long past, ner runi. She needed you to guard the most precious beings either of us have. Our children. Alex. He never leaves work unfinished, and is a patient man. Our family was more important than Mandalore, it still is! Stubborn old mythosaur… rrgh!" Another volley, the chaos of blaster fire and solid slugs peppered the planetoid. It shook under foot. Noah repeated his wedding vows, and the skin around Yasha's exposed Vongflesh arm roiled in spikes.

He was almost on them, the epitome of the Dark. As dangerous as the hammer, which fell. And Noah, perilous Mandalorian, was the pinnacle of the Mando'ade. Father, inventor, diligent warrior honed by more battles than most beings would see in three lifetimes.

The push and pull of her life, Noah's strength and gentility, Kaine's raw, exposed might.

"We will meet our forefather at the same table. Cover me. He's too fast for you." Noah's safety melted into a wife's hope that she could defeat the monster, who once overwhelmed her with his grace, the dignity of their mutual heritage. With promises of safety from all alarum.

Teeth gnashed in an animalistic snarl as they clattered together, Infernal and Butcher. Armour met Sith robes, the cape with its deadly edges momentarily sweeping across both their bodies like the curtains which hung once in the Panathan palace, where they rested, her armour laid in state, after defending her ancestral planet.

The clang and force knocked any hope of breath out of Yasha's lungs, armour whining and HUD blinking in crimson warnings. Through the small space between, Yasha's snarling turned feral, teeth seeking purchase and contained only by the buy'ce, which restrained her.

Vongflesh hardened and stabbed repeatedly at Carnifex's stomach, talons pointed into stiletto-like claws, seeking any soft flesh. Any purchase.

Legs wrapped around the horror's waist, the Lady was wild. A curse of the hellscape they both survived, he in his glory and she in the shadows, mother clutching her to a panicked chest. Beskad angled upward, she sought the meeting of helmet and neck, as he buffeted her.

As her left pauldron flung off her armourweave jumpsuit to land spinning by Noah's feet.

His hands ripped at her beskar'gam, she stabbed and sought openings, as under the power of his grip, her breastplate bent in a sickening groan. Yasha roared and stabbed, bashed her buy’ce against Carnifex’s black helm so hard the visor cracked.

Kaine’s instinctual attempt to rid her of her defences smacked across her shoulders. Yasha’s head craned back. His grip was enough.

Her buy’ce rolled backward, to the ground.

There, the once beautiful face. There, amber eyes remained, the right milked by the yellowed sclera of the Vongflesh, which migrated across the right side of Yasha’s face like a symbiotic weed. Canine fangs sought to dig bone-deep into Carnifex’s hand with a predator’s death-shake. Rid him of one of his weapons. Draw blood.

"You made me! You gave me function, I fulfil it! Keep her alive. I have done no more than you bid upon my first day!" The seething croak of language echoed out of contorted lips, green filaments of the biot in mockery of the mouth she used to lilt in Epicant.

 

[Gunnr Zambrano]

"Nooo!!" Girak-Kaine whipped around and reached for their wide-eyed mother. As silent as her once-grave, Gunnr Zambrano worked her lips, hit the hatch control, and stepped into the air below. "Take us down!"

"Down where!? Into a battle, that planetoid isn't exactly stable, one swift kick and the thing'll crack! What in the…"

"By Nereus' bulge, I will strip your spine from your bones, Othyn!" Magnus roared, reaching the edge of the hatch.

"Nobody told me it was that kind of secret! I thought you two had some… cursed love affair with light sided Nancy, not 'oh by the way mother died by Mandalorian hands!' You could have mentioned this was a blood feud and I'd have taken us to fething Naboo!" Othyn set to the controls, righting the ship and swerving toward the ground.

"You're the perceptive one. If that's what you got from this, your skills are as weak as your arms." Girak-Kaine tried to leap off, but Othyn's stabilization had taken them too high… or maybe the planetoid beneath them was moving… shifting round…

"Besom beroya! Vod." Magnus pointed out the viewport. "Buir."

"Ambrose Aran'e. They're going to get killed. Othyn take us down."

"Since when do you two speak Mando'a?!"

"We were born on Mandalore." Magnus mumbled, as he scooped Girak-Kaine against his side with one arm, took a long stride and leapt from the perfectly functioning ship.

"You what!? What is going on!? Why didn't mother drown!? Who killed her!? These aren't little… oh there they go. Bunch of muscle-headed tosspots!" Othyn watched his brothers leap off the end of the ship, and with a groan and re-jigging of the dampeners, went to hover in view of the battle. "Oh we'll answer everything Othyn, just wait here and we'll bring everyone up for a cup of tea and some steak bites… Taiya's not old enough to… I wonder if cousin Adara knows… no. Head down, orders obey. Don't get curious, Oth. Curiosity kills runts like me… I'm not landing on that planetoid, it's liable to explode."

---

She was falling. An exhilaration took her lungs, the beauty of open atmosphere burrowed into the freefall. No fear, her phobia of heights was cleansed with all horrors, when Kaine plied her resurrection.

Gunnr landed cushioned by the Force her Koe taught her with flirtatious jabs to control, before a litany of captured Masters took over. It was instinct now, strengthening the body and using telekinesis to slow her momentum enough to compensate for freefall. Nothing more than a trick for apprentices in atmosphere and gravity so thin. A stray blaster bolt whizzed past ginger hair, then another. The battle raged in front of her, too far for contact, too near to remain ignorant of the Clan Corek and Cadera crests on the Mandalorians' armour.

The thickness of battle was on Kaine's shoulders, his cape swayed like a guillotine. A creature struggled in feral desperation, joined to her Koe like a sick growth.

'You didn't drown!'

And it made sense, his hatred. The jabs at even defeated Mandalorians, the taming of their precious metal. That such a cape existed… that he held her by his side while the Mandalorian captives were culled… such peace he found in the act.

Vengeance.

The crest on Noah's armour penetrated her sight, Gunnr's mouth dropped open and she wobbled in the low gravity and lower oxygen. The voice from the male's helmet, thick and desperate. Familiar. The flash of green vongformed skin, talons sliced at the air.

Gunnr's eyes cranked open. A whisper barren on open lips. "Koemi?"

Twenty paces behind, Magnus landed with Girak-Kaine clinging to his shoulder. The twins towered over the landscape, each past ten feet in height, but still relative youths by Epicanthix standards.

Girak-Kaine moved first, reaching for Gunnr as one of the beskar solid slugs hit him square in his forearm. He hit the ground in a spin, cradling his arm. "Gh-ah! Mother, no!"

Noah Corek Darth Carnifex

 

[Noah Corek]

Yasha Cadera - Gunnr Zambrano - Darth Carnifex ​

Noah barely listened to the words spoken by his beloved as his rifle recoiled against his shoulder over and over again, despite the man not even feeling it as the adrenaline of combat took over. It was a feeling that Noah Corek was all too used to, blood hammering in his ears, muscles on autopilot: pull the trigger, release the trigger, let the trigger reset, reacquire the target and repeat.

This was a process that had been drilled into his head since he was old enough to handle a rifle, a process he had done thousands if not millions of times before but at this moment it was the key in his mind to preserving his love, his life and his sanity.

The rifle clicked empty, Noah swearing under his breath at the rookie mistake of not counting his shots and not noticing the tracer round that soared out indicating he only had two rounds left. Dropping to his knee he thumbed the magazine release, grasping at the webbing on his chest for a new magazine before inserting it and slapping the bolt release and continuing the fusillade of fire.

While reloading Noah quickly keyed up his comm to Ambrose and the other gurlanin bodyguards. “Ambrose! Take two guards and attack Carnifex on the left! The other three attack from the right! Divide his attention and give Yasha some breathing room!”

He observed Yasha’s struggle from his position, the intermeshing of the two Epincanthix as they fell into their melee. Every once and awhile he’d have a clear shot and send it towards the Dark Lord.

His face grimaced as he saw the vongflesh taking control, he hadn’t seen it take that amount of control for at least two decades now and it sent a shiver down his spine like when he’d first seen it.

Noah lined up another shot and fired but as he was about to let another one loose he heard the telltale shake of something impacting behind him. Growling as he wanted to keep his focus on the battle in front of him he reluctantly wrenched his focus from there and swept his rifle behind him, aiming at the new target.

His eyes focused on the red haired giant before him, finger tensing on the trigger, knowing that this wasn’t one of their entourage and therefore most likely with Carnifex. Just as he was about to let a slug loose he saw past the woman and took in the two even taller beings behind her, Girak-Kaine and Magnus.

“Gigi! Maggi! What the hell are the two of you doing here!? Leave! Let me and your mother take care-” The words died in his mouth as he saw the slug, one of his slugs, impacted into Girak-Kaine’s arm. “GIGI!”

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Anger lent Him great strength.

The more He tore from her body, the more His anger grew. She was a corpse, little more than meat animated by a foreign will. No, not her, it. He would not dare grace this monstrosity with the regality of identity, it was nothing more than lab-grown spores; a cancer yet to be excised. That it still puppeted the corpse of someone who He loved incensed Him to no end, His rage burned terribly inside of Him.

Together, they fell to the ground in a great sprawl, a frenzy of motion as the larger warrior sought to pin the Infernal beneath Him. She bit and clawed at Him, but His armor was too tough for her; not without true weapons. He knocked her dagger away with a backhanded slap, trying to pin her Vongarm down to the ground with all of His strength. He saw that blasphemous eye glaring back at Him, the wrongness of it melded into what had once been her supple flesh.

Then it spoke to Him. It spoke to Him through her, He could hear its voice so cleanly. All He could see was red then. He wrenched His arm back, coiled fist careening down towards the face of Yasha Cadera. He would break that mocking edifice, make it unrecognizable. Nothing would have stopped Him, not until all that remained was puled flesh and broken bone clinging to His armored fingers.

But, then His attention was torn aside. When He eyes met what had drawn His gaze, He realized that there was one thing that may yet stay His hand.

"Koemi?"

He didn't realize how shallow and uneven His breathing had become until then, how it thundered in His ears. At some point, that strict composure He'd spent decades cultivating had crumbled completely. True rage had taken hold, and the facade of the noble lord had cracked and the true butcher had shone through from underneath.

"You should not be here."

It wasn't accusatory or commanding, His voice was laced through with confusion and melancholy. He hadn't wanted her to see this, He tried to shield her from all that she had once been. But now it'd all come to a head, and she was here -- staring at Him as He ground her past into dust beneath His fist.

"They should not be here. It is not meant for your eyes. Let me finish my work, and we can all return home."

Noah Corek | Yasha Cadera | Gunnr Zambrano ​

 

[Girak Zambrano]

"That…" Girak-Kaine grit his teeth, nodding to the vongformed creature snarling under Carnifex's straddling body. Black veins pulsed around his eyes, as he set his hand to the wound, cauterizing it with a small crackle of lightning and loud grunt. He worked his fist, index finger not tracking, the tendon likely bruised. Something to repair later, but nothing permanent. "… Is mother's ghost. Buir, in this? My Father isn't wrong."

Silent as his twin was loud, Magnus scowled with a grimace beyond his years, this once-child of Mandalore, trained in the Mandalorian way by a loving Buir, who didn't care whose blood roiled hot as a star's plasma, through Magnus' veins. His boots struck the dirt, and he settled between Noah with his back to the Dark Lord. Stance set, lightsaber in one hand, beskad in the other.

The ink black blade of his lightsaber ignited, he eyed the sweep of gurlanin who had guarded his mother from the time she was a small, orphaned child. "Mother's stubborn. She could feel your turmoil, and moved half the Galaxy… even through us. I failed you, Father. Blame me, not Girak-Kaine or Othyn. I couldn't stop her." Chin fighting a wobble, Magnus raised his weapons, voice grim, attempting an adulthood he and his brother were barely breaking into, at their Epicanthix age. "I've got you... If you ask it of me…" He couldn't finish, holding in a guttural stuttered breath as Darth Carnifex admitted the act was not meant for their eyes. A woeful, unadulterated relief poured through Magnus to his twin, a bit of mercy from their sire.

The gurlanin snarled, inching closer to Magnus, until Ambrose began to sniff at the air…

"Remember when Maggi and I were angry, we terrorized the compound, lashing out. Unfocused. More confused at how you could love us, when you hated our Father. How you could have the space in your heart to care for us all? You taught us love expands, it has no limits." Shoulders rising, Girak rose and stumbled to angle his shoulder in front of Gunnr. "Not even for him, Buir. He has a pure love! That should terrify every being in the universe, for there is nothing he won't attack or tear down to rescue her. To love her. You and he share that, at least… he will always do right by our mother. By your wife. So will you. That… thing is her memories, it's fuelled by her pain, her shadow! A Vong's testament is pain, its religion is agony! It's not…"

Girak-Kaine rocked his weight to the other foot, panting as he let the black energies encircling his eyes to focus. "Buir. Take off your buy'ce and let her see you. Look at my mother. We needed you and you were always there. Even when it killed her for you to care for us. You might have been ashamed for not dying on Mandalore beside her, but Buir, I'm your son. We're your children and we needed you. We're also your sons, Kaine Zambrano. And as we breathe, we will do right by you both. She needs you now, to love her, not the memories of what she was, when Mandalore broke her. That isn't our mother. Kaine Zambrano did right by her, Buir, he's doing right by her now. You're pointing a rifle at one of the loves of your life. Put it down, Buir. Take off your buy'ce, and let her look at you.

If you cannot have anything but hatred for him, have faith in me."

Ambrose's buy'ce crashed to the ground. The old gurlanin shook as his transformation overwhelmed the bipedal form he wore in beskar'kandar. Shoulders at Noah's chest, the furred alien snuffled and sniffed, licked the air with a forked tongue, this eater of humanoids. Magnus' breathing quickened. He edged closer to the line of violence as Ambrose sniffed, then crept closer to Girak-Kaine and Gunnr.

"… pup?"

Noah Corek Gunnr Zambrano