This Crude Matter (open to the Republic's Jedi)

[Tydeus of Tion]

The waves of telekinesis dissipated upon collision, neither opponent seeking to gain supremacy in the matter. Yet, the tenacity in the young Knight's storm-cloud eyes did not give a hint of yielding to this unknown foe.

Ryan Korr took a step forward, but a sudden, creeping onset of dizziness caused him to waver, head spinning. He held his off-hand to his temple, grimacing at the bile rising in his throat. The words of the enemy assaulted his ears. He could feel the taunt in them, the sly darkness, digging toward the heart of inner truths.

Control? Ryan's life had been a swift, painful education in all that which he did not and could not control. The galaxy was composed of individuals who acted on their own volition, directed perhaps by the Force toward some great end, but an end which Ryan could not yet see, an end which he perhaps might never see. Did it really take the loss of his childhood temple-born friends, the betrayal of two masters and an enslavement beneath the Vong to come to understand all this? No. It had taken more and even still was not yet finished. He doubted it ever could be. For who could come to understand the deep workings of the Force? Not him. Yet, he followed the Will of the Force, but not blindly as those who turned their backs on him had when presented with auspicious visions of the future. He would not compromise the lives of others for a premonition, but neither could he ignore such sendings of the Force. This dissonance was his great paradox, his unsolvable puzzle of which only one piece had he come to understand and put into place.

In the vast galaxy and in all time and space only his own actions were under his control.

"Malacia," he said through teeth gritted against a churning stomach as his senses sought to overwhelm him with a flood of information. He could feel his blood pulsing through his body. He could hear the cry of his capillaries as they struggled from his run. The tides of his body, so complete in unison and so complex in function, were being used against him. But his opponent grew arrogant in his perceived control over another, for at the core of it this malcontent master sought to use an ability made famous by Jedi.

"No power born of light can be mastered by the dark."

While struggling to right the equilibrium of his body, Korr extended a single hand. From his palm poured forth sheer brilliance, a radiant white light that cascaded across every surface of the room, chasing out the shadows and surely adhering to its name of Force Blinding and obfuscating the vision of his opponent, whether by searing his corneas or causing him to avert his vision.

Malacia required line of sight to operate, as Oppo Rancisis himself had noted. [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] no longer had that luxury.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Adele Adonai"]'s voice amused Rave, but did not distract her beyond a quick verbal note on who, exactly, had stolen these things to get them here in the first place. A Jedi ghost claiming ownership of the artifacts raided from Korriban during its conquest? Priceless.

She appeared to have lost [member="Corvus Raaf"] and @VlPER; [member="Kana Truden"], it seemed, was blitzing for the hangar where [member="Marcello Matteo"] had overwatch on the guard droids.

With a grin, Rave touched the familiar mind of her pilot, and ripped open a turbolift shaft. She jumped in.

The droids began swarming back into the transport in a stream of nondescript astromechry, vanishing one by one as they entered the cloaked ship. For the moment, they were giving away the exact location of the Sekairo. The praxeum ship was still in hyperspace; Rave and the transport's pilot could have no way to know that it was about to revert; their intention was something else. When the larger vessel hit realspace a moment later, then -- while Rave was still falling down the turbolift shaft -- it came as a mixed blessing. Only half the droids were aboard, time was of the essence, and the Dark Masters had not succeeded in getting back through the security lockdown.

So when the transport abandoned them, unknowingly seconds in advance of whatever Matteo had planned, it was with the express intention of, among other things, making Jedi shake their heads at these idiots and/or remind each other to stay alert for unspecified nastiness. The cloaked transport vanished through the hangar field, leaving maybe a dozen astromechs behind. Expensive, but an acceptable loss. Their memories pretty clearly contained the interior of a Fringe stealth transport's cargo bay, the face of Ket Van-Derveld, and the masked and armored figure that had appeared once before, at the battle of Eriadu. The droids themselves would be something of an intelligence coup; Republic forces had never faced this model before, it having been created after O'reen and the Treaty of Telos. They would find cortosis, Ssi-Ruuvi paddle beamers, EMP protection, sonic weapons, and highly advanced facial recognition. Not a frontline combat model, by any stretch of the imagination, but the GT-F0 had its uses.

Fringe, not being Baktoid, did not have self-destructs in its droids. On balance, despite the situation, that couldn't really be regretted where the big picture was concerned. And that, too, would tell Republic analysts something about their intended use.

Meanwhile, the base of the turbolift shaft rushed up at Rave; she used the Force to slow herself and take the fall, and her powered armor helped with that. Now a good two hundred metres below her most active pursuers, she burst into the belly of the ship and entered the nearest glasteel observation deck she could find, leaving a handful of injured in her wake. Glasteel bubbles covered the Kenobi-class. As tough as durasteel, it resisted her lightsabre gently as she began drawing a three-sided aperture on the window. Somewhere out there, the stygium-cloaked, gravitically-modulated, thrust-trace-damped transport had just burst from the hangar and vanished. It would be suicide for the ship to stay close; Jedi at the defensive guns would be able to pick up on the natural anxiety of the professional little crew.

Her mind spiked out a message to [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] as she cut.

Get out however you can. Ship's away.

Her suit could withstand vacuum for a time, but breach would lead to many, many more decisions, variables and risks. Ket had no such suit, but he was pretty much infinitely resourceful, and he'd known this contingency plan.

 

[Marcello Matteo]

((OOC: Apologies for the delay - been busy with work.))

Marcello arched a curious eyebrow as the droids were seemingly set to purpose the instant the Praxeum reverted to realspace. Calmly, he intoned another command to the supervisor next to him. "Deactivate the secondary shield and the magnetic shield."

Ordinarily, Marcello would have expected the man to do both at the same time. However, he clearly thought that deactivating one system at a time was more beneficial. Before the energy-barrier was brought down, it rippled with the obvious passage of...something through the field. Throwing the man an irritated glance, Marcello motioned for him to continue. "Today." As the last remaining barrier between the inside of the hangar and space dropped, Marcello's glacier-blue gaze fell back to the hangar floor. The vessels in the hangar had been chained down with spacecraft tie-downs. Any gear was supposed to be secured at all times but of course...people occasionally rushed through things and did them improperly when danger was imminent. A handful of largely superfluous items were ripped out of the hangar bay but most stayed put.

Marcello's focus, however, was on the droids. He doubted that even anti-grav thrusters on droids would be very capable of keeping them rooted against the force of massive depressurization. Hell, he wasn't even convinced the spacecraft chained down would hold for very long against that kind of force.

On the bridge, the Captain rubbed his temples slightly as he watched the crew silence alarms about what was happening in the hangar. "Jedi..." For the time being, none of [member="Rave Merrill"]'s actions had exactly set off massive alarms. They, however, undoubtedly would. Fortunately most ships came with automatic integrity measures designed to keep the entire ship from depressurizing. Several steel bulkheads wouldn't stop her from advancing to other areas of the ship, but it would make it a little more difficult.

As Marcello surveyed the progress of the depressurization, he spoke another simple command to the Captain. "Captain. Lay in a new course. Nearest defensible Republic system. I want to be able to jump immediately upon giving the command." Given they were already in Republic space, it wouldn't likely be a long journey. He, of course, had no idea holes were being cut into areas of the ship.

"Very well, Master Matteo..."

[member="Ket Van-Derveld"] | [member="Corvus Raaf"] | [member="Kana Truden"] | [member="Ryan Korr"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

With security teams breathing down her neck, Rave finished the simple three-line cut and closed the door behind her. Decompression alarms wailed as a Force leap and a gust of cold wind carried her out of the glasteel bubble.

Her armor had a Force-based photokinetic stealth effect, enough to hide it in the dark, and she amplified it while scattering her presence. Sensors would acquire her, and quickly, but the quick little stealth transport was already on its way.

Ket really was on his own, but they'd both known this was a possible outcome. They'd agreed to guard each other's half of whatever the take might be, and whenever he got to safety, by whatever means, there'd be a Sith tome waiting for him as promised. From what little she'd seen of it, it was right up his alley, or at least in line with the project he'd mentioned.

She vanished into the belly of the cloaked Sekairo, and the little ship leaped to hyperspace, decloaking as it did. Stray, Force-guided, or lucky fire smashed against the relatively fragile hull as the jump elongated it into a bar of pseudomotion, and alarms blared inside the Sekairo. Once she was certain there was no decompression event in progress, she sat down heavily, armor peeling away, and let out a long, slow breath.

"That was too fething close, and gave away way too much."

"If you say so, ma'am," said the pilot, his voice tight with tension.

"You did good, though."

"If you say so, ma'am."

OOC/ Looks like we've wound down. Thanks for participating, folks. I've been talking with some of you and I know some fun has been had on all sides, so I'm glad this worked out. I don't doubt Ket will keep things going for a while, but I'm out.

[member="VlPER"] [member="Corvus Raaf"] [member="Kana Truden"] [member="Marcello Matteo"] [member="Ket Van-Derveld"] [member="Ryan Korr"]