To Gramos [Ask]

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Alicia Drey"] [member="Enigma"]

Speeches were beautiful things, in Rave's estimation. Her secondary specialty involved every known variety of Dark Side healing -- Dark Jedi, Nightsister, Sith Magic -- and as Ayra kept talking, Rave devoted painful attention to resolving her body's most pressing problems. She only hit the highlights, because she had to free up time at the end. With about a third of a diatribe to go, her focus shifted elsewhere, to the exhausted Sith Master's gun. That temporary Forcelessness weakened Ayra's aura to the point where subtly alchemizing her weapon's trigger, fusing it with the housing, took only seconds.

"Try to pull the trigger. I guarantee you don't have a fraction of the strength." With a shrug, she holstered the Lonesome Gun. "Tell you what I'll do, though. You want to be something special -- I'll transform you." She bared her teeth in a smile that didn't even get close to her eyes. "And that's not an offer. That's a promise."

***

The Gromas system was headquarters of Mohc Extractives, AEL's largest subsidiary and the one most likely to be raided -- as had been demonstrated many times by many phrik hounds. Thus, a good portion of AEL's armed vessels were on station or near enough that they'd been summoned when the situation began. Meanwhile, rad-suited crewers had managed to board five of the Hammer-B LACs and exit the gutted hangar of the Lethewalker. The frigate itself, having sustained no damage beyond the hangar, was in full battle readiness, though unsure of what to do apart from call in backup.

When the fighters, gunship, and tugs moved toward the Lethewalker, then, it found rather quickly that it had something to do. The Lethewalker was a modified Haran'uliik frigate, a vessel meant mainly for killing the exact kinds of ships that were approaching it. A massive spinal Vulcan cannon spat thirty flak guns' worth of shrapnel cloud at six kilometres per second. Paired ion cannons and mass drivers assaulted the tugs mercilessly. The little frigate could move like a light freighter, dogfight as necessary, and it was studded with quad lasers to boot.

The five LACs oriented on the Subach frigate and began vomiting their complement of HELIX warheads, weapons designed to detonate beyond the reach of the short-range point-defense emplacements on the Kressh. Sixty warheads, each detonating in a pincushion of twenty invisible beams, each beam as strong as a turbolaser and a half -- the Kressh would find itself in the middle of a firestorm equivalent to a broadside from a command ship. Granted, those beams weren't targeted terribly well, but with twelve hundred of them, they didn't have to be. Crosshatched X-Ray lasers turned the local region into some approximation of hell.

Meanwhile, a pair of Azalus flak frigates and two Tegaanalir patrol craft were en route from the other side of Gromas 16, though it would be some time before they could get here.

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Rave Merrill"] |

Ayra squeezed the trigger as soon as Rave lowered her weapon. Mercy. She hated the woman even more for believing her. Nothing happened. Again. Nothing. She felt anger rise inside her like a fiery volcano. Oh how she wanted to scream. Instead she did the next logical thing any woman in her precarious position would do.

She threw the gun at Rave. Not to pass it to her. But to hit her with it. Physically.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Alicia Drey"]

Rave's first instinct was to block, but that block somehow became the disruptor pistol smashing into her raised shaper hand. Beneath false skin, the biot's shell cracked, and pain flared through her, a different kind from the radiation. And healing might help -- though they'd both been seriously irradiated -- but healing wouldn't touch a Vong biot. A reminder, if she needed it, that she'd sacrificed a little too much for her growth.

Against the pain, her fingers crooked into claws, and a faint skein of green spirit ichor connected her hands with the fallen Sith Master. Her goal was to induce a state of mesmerism, to drag the exhausted Drey into forgetfulness and unconsciousness. Though Rave could freely admit that she, too, was tired, if not slumped-on-the-floor tired.

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Rave Merrill"] |

She felt the tug of the spirit ichor form over her mind. Theory was the further a Nightsister was away from Dathomir the weaker ichor was. Another theory was ichor is the force and merely called ichor by the Nightsisters, much like the Fallanasi call it the white current. Either way, it would have the intended effect, if Rave could her concentration long enough.

That was before Ayra had just found the combat knife on her utility belt and in just lobbed it at Rave's general direction. The spinning sound of something metal whooshing through the canopy filled it, alongside the rattles of battle that had just erupted outside. Because it was dark, Ayra hadn't aimed for anything in particular. Just in the area in which Rave was stood at.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Alicia Drey"]

She still had her hand up, and the knife scored a hot line down her naked right arm to the shoulder. The knife clattered off the hatch behind her. Blood spattered on the wall and deck; with a hiss, Rave's spirit ichor faltered, though not excessively; half a galaxy away from Dathomir, after all, Talzin's techniques had still worked on Bardotta. Her spell of mental suppression, focused through gestures, resumed as she took up the slack with her left hand, and a guttural chant rose in her throat. The spell aimed to put Drey down, ease away the specifics of her short-term memory, fog her mind, ideally knock her unconscious.

Despite her earlier threat, and the dozens dead at her hand, Rave preferred not to kill.

 

[Onrai]

With the tugs latched onto the Niathal, as the mass driver rounds began to peck at them, they swiftly moved back towards the Kressh. By the time they were at the ship's hangar, their hull integrities read at twenty percent and twelve percent integrity. The ships were as good as slag now - droids were the only reason they were even able to operate at such low integrities. When this mission was over, they would likely be scrapped.

As for the Kressh itself - it was somewhat fortunate. The HELIX warheads launched at it detonated at such a distance away that even combined their overall impact against the other frigate was somewhat minimal. Shields were reduced to fifty-eight percent as the Kressh's own small craft moved to engage the enemy.

Circe's Kressh, being that she did not have access to all of the Sith Empire and New Order's powerful arsenal, carried only a single wing of four Dominus-class fighters - the same Dominus-class fighters moving now to descend upon the Hammer LACs with their main armament and nippy maneuverability. In concert with these were a wing of Eightgun-class assault fighters, whose octuplet of lasers cascaded over the hull of the frigate with great vigor. Thirty-two lasers, while they were lasers, now aggressively engaged the bigger ship, saturating its shields with bursts of plasma. And lastly were the four ships moving in to make a proper run on the distracted guns of the Lethewalker - four Detritus-class heavy bombers. These ships were ones the crew of the light frigate were likely familar with, assuming they had seen the few Detritii in Fringe service along with the more common Detryte. And as the larger bomber was famous for, each began swiftly offloading its payload of sixteen proton bombs at the ship - 'One two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four...' A total of sixty-four proton bombs had been launched towards the frigate as the laser and ion cannons of the gunship-armed bombers began to rake the shields of the Lethewalker.

The Kressh turned, still recharging its hyperdrive as fast as it could without blowing something - the frigate needed an at least general target area for a hyperspace jump in the event that things got too hot. Angling itself properly, both heavy turbolaser batteries began to launch fusillades of plasma packets at the ship, in concert with two medium turbolaser batteries, six point-defense batteries(primarily supporting the Dominus wing in assailing the Hammers, but also prepared for another potential missile strike), the ship's two ion cannon batteries, and its two proton torpedo launchers. A hefty amount of fire was headed towards the light frigate, and as it was a secondary target, it was more fair game - with the state of the Tyderiums, Circe could scarcely afford to haul another ship away with them.

[member="Rave Merrill"] [member="Alicia Drey"]

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Rave Merrill"] | [member="Enigma"] |

The spell took over her. There was a slight thump in Ayra's general direction. She was dead to the world, metaphorically speaking. At least, not properly dead. Yet. Her only hope now was Circe Savan.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Alicia Drey"] [member="Enigma"]

The rattle of flak, the shaking of grazed impacts, and the rumble of the two tugs sent tremors all through the Niathal-class shuttle. As the tugs dragged the shuttle to its final destination, Rave stumbled over to the unconscious Sith Lord. She placed a tiny drop of her blood on Alicia's scalp, under the hair, and another tiny drop inside Alicia's mouth. Nightsister blood trail, impossible for others to sense.

The tactic relied, of course, on the possibility of Rave's survival. She muttered a Sith spell, then screamed as the most powerful magic at her disposal began fixing her ills. Would it fix the radiation damage? Maybe, maybe not. She'd never tested it against this kind of exposure.

Moderately tired but mostly healed, wearing her blood-trailed due, she waited at the shuttle's hatch with Entropy in one hand, all Alicia's weapons destroyed, and the unconscious Sith Lord snoring gently on human shield duty.

***

That monstrous wave of proton bombs ran straight into a similarly monstrous wave of continuous flak from the giant Vulcan cannon. Sympathetic detonations daisy-chained the explosions; surviving bombs pounded the Lethewalker's shields down to fifty percent, alongside bombardment from the heavy guns and the fighters that were exchanging fire with the quad lasers. The Hammer-B LACs died unceremoniously in the midst of their retreat.

The Lethewalker cut and ran for the approaching flak frigates and support craft. Much faster than the Kressh, it could endure the fighter assault for long enough to reach backup, and use its superior maneuverability to foil the targeting systems and slow tracking speed of the Really Big Guns.

 

[Onrai]

A team of droids moved towards the seriously damaged Niathal. Circe knew that Rave was inside, and at the moment, she wanted to make sure everything would be fine. "Bring the gas." A hovercart slowly moved towards the wrecked shuttle, a large container of ionized gas being connected to a nozzle along with a communicator.

"Alright... Rave, Alicia, we're detecting significant radiation inside the Niathal. At the moment we're pumping some gas into the hallway to help lower the radiation to manageable levels. Regardless of what you're trying to do, Rave, the Force isn't going to be enough to keep you from suffering serious radiation sickness unless you let us get you to a decontamination shower." A small nozzle in the top of the hallway began to spray some gas inside. Were Rave to breathe it, she would find that it did not cause any aftereffects, aside from making the hallway look like something out of a horror film.

"Sit tight for a minute or two until we have a reading that the radiation level's low enough to proceed."

[member="Rave Merrill"] [member="Alicia Drey"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Enigma"]

The moment the gas appeared, and while Enigma was still talking, Rave applied her fine-tuned alchemical senses to learning exactly what the gas was. What would she find?

 

[Onrai]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

It was ionized gas. Literally. There was nothing special about it, nothing hidden in it, and nothing out of the ordinary about it. Anyone could easily and legally purchase the gas from a variety of locales throughout the galaxy. With minimal power on, the only effect, again, that it did have was that everything seemed all smoky and misty. Think a laser tag arena, with all the smoke machines and whatnot fogging up the room. The few working red emergency lights added a blood-like feel to the hallway, maybe a dreamy feel or something otherwise unusual.

While the last of the gas was pumped into the hallway, a droid controlled by Circe got into the shattered cockpit, checking over the electrical systems to see if there was any broken wiring in the hallway from the bashing the Niathal had taken. Fortunately, there was none, and the droid quickly prepared to reroute power from the ship's reactor through the broken wire.

Why would this make sense at all? Well... Ionized gas, unlike gas with no ionization, was a good conductor of electricity. The reactor was putting out more than enough energy to knock a rancor silly, and that was precisely what Circe intended to do. "Alright... We're about to open the door. Radiation levels are normal, so be ready."

And with that order, the droid sent all of the ship's power through the split wire. Being that the entirety of the hallway was filled with ionized gas, including gas that the younger Merrill had been breathing in during the minute or two she had been analyzing the intruding material, and being that ionized gas was more than an excellent conductor of electricity, the result was that the hallway of the Niathal was filled with sparks of electrical energy, energy that would charge into and hopefully knock unconscious anyone inside. Alicia was already unconscious, and weaponless - breathing minimally due to her sleep-like state, but Rave had been actively breathing - not to mention she had a highly conductive sword in one hand and an equally conductive gun at her waist - as well as ionized gas in her lungs, throat, and nostrils. To her, it would likely be similar to being inside the electrical arc of a fluorescent light bulb, with electricity crackling and permeating through her due to the concentration of such a traversable medium. Circe's intention was for the electrical shock to so thoroughly permeate Rave that she would be completely and utterly unconscious from the zap. Whether or not her plan would work, she was unsure - but hey. It was worth a shot, and Circe could always pass it off as an accident.

"The hell... Why isn't that door opening, you blasted droid?"

[member="Alicia Drey"] [member="Rave Merrill"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Enigma"]

As soon as Rave sensed it for what it was -- nothing special, but certainly not radiation suppressor -- an adiabatic shield snapped to life, holding back the gas before it could reach her. Her analysis had taken seconds, not minutes, and she had breathed in none of it, thanks to a kind of shield whose foundations she had used close to every day since she was eight or thereabouts. Adiabatic shielding, an Apprentice power, was absolutely essential for advanced forge use and work with biohazards, and there were very few who could claim to be her equal at alchemy.

Word to the wise. If your elaborate plan can be defeated by an Apprentice-level power that you could easily guess your target has mastered...

Current hummed through the Niathal; Rave's hair stood on end, but resisting this kind of current wasn't immensely hard for a Master. The problem, of course, was that the door was opening now, and she only had so much focus to spare. She rested Entropy against Ayra's throat, holding the unconscious woman before her as a human shield. The adiabatic shield still held, right up until the heavily ionized shuttle's power supply failed and the current stopped flowing.

"Tell Savan," she said to those approaching. "Take me, and my brother will come for me."

 

[Onrai]

The door finally opened, and when Rave stepped out with Entropy at her apprentice's throat, Circe growled. However, she did not break the glass and do something utterly stupid - Instead she walked down the stairs, standing several feet away from the woman known as Rave Merrill. "Congratulations, Rave. You currently have my good friend in your hands and are considering killing her with your Sith sword... a blade I recognize rather well, as only one other woman has ever put her hands on the weapon."

A half-dozen Mirari droids flanked her, and indeed were moving to form a rough circle around the wreck of the Niathal. These droids were armed with old Tenloss DXR-6 disruptor rifles - but why had she chosen these particular weapons? Truthfully, it was less because of Rave and more because of Alicia. Though Circe and her apprentice had an agreement that neither would ever try to kill the other, the Sith Master had always wanted to make sure she had an edge over the other woman, and disruptors were the best way to make sure of that.

"Alright... You know what these are. Disruptor rifles. The sort of thing that can completely destabilize your molecular structure. Even if you kill her, you die too. And right now, I would rather there be no more violence. Seriously - I've seen enough blood shed in my lifetime that it really gets to being a waste of sentient life. Now unless you want to do this the hard way - and I'm more prepared for you this time than last - put the woman down, remove your gun and sword, and put your hands in the air." As she spoke, she prodded at Alicia with the Force, trying to get her to wake up. Maybe it would be helpful, or maybe not, but Alicia at least needed to see this encounter as it happened.

[member="Rave Merrill"] [member="Alicia Drey"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Enigma"]

"Go to hell."

And a screaming wave of incoming fire slammed into the frigate. The Lethewalker was back with reinforcements -- the two Azalus frigates and the two Tegaanalir patrol craft. This world, this system, were as central to Rave's operations as anything, and Circe was very, very lucky to only be outnumbered three to one.

If Rave died, AEL and Mohc went belly up. These folks knew what side their bread was buttered on. Once the Kressh's shields went down, the Lethewalker's ion cannons and the patrol ships' disruption torpedos would get to work crippling this thing, and it would happen sooner rather than later.

"You stay, you die. You jump, my brother comes for you. Give me a ship and I'll give you a pass -- this time."

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Rave Merrill"] | [member="Enigma"] |

She stirred. Slowly. Too slowly. Rave could feel the woman coming back to life, but she was otherwise useless in the grand scheme of things. Ayra could only feel the cold embrace of the Entropy at her throat, hear the conversation and the shake of the Frigate as Rave Merrill's forces went to work trying to disable the ship in order to save their boss. A thought came to mind, one she hoped Pandeima would hear. "Hyperspace jump. Now."

 

[Velok the Younger]

ooc/ Yeah, been waiting at gunpoint, plus now you're saying you want to put the thread on pause for a while. Naaaw. Next time, Gadget.

ic/ When no response was heard, and when Drey moved, the half-dozen disruptor rifles jerked up as one. A vial of Water of Life shattered at Rave's feet, and green smoke enveloped her for an instant as she shoved Drey away. When the rifles got back on target and the smoke dissipated after a heartbeat or two, Rave was gone. Hyperjump or no hyperjump, she would not be found again, and would make her way off the ship as soon as it was safe.

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Rave Merrill"] | [member="Enigma"] |

There was only one response in the entire galactic language of Basic that could summarize how Alicia Drey felt on the floor.


"FOR FETH SAKE CIRCE"

 

[Onrai]

Circe facepalmed as the Kressh went into hyperspace. "She could've done that THE ENTIRE TIME? THEN WHY THE HELL DID SHE ASK ME FOR A DAMNED STARFIGHTER?" Circe ran down to help Alicia up, placing the woman's arm around her shoulders and supporting her. "You are a coward, Rave Merrill. Instead of simply leaving your weapons and taking a starfighter as I intended to let you do, you ran away. Scared. Fearful. You aren't my creator - you don't even deserve to be called a Witch. All you are is a lucky little girl. And the next time, I won't be friendly at all."

Turning to Alicia, she paused. "You did an excellent job, Alicia, and I know neither you nor I expected that she could magically teleport off this ship several thousand kilometers away. Now let's get you to surgery... Nine out of ten says that she's blood trailed you or put some other form of tracking on you. But it may prove useful to us..."

The next plan was perfectly set. Now she simply had to get to work.

(FIN)

[member="Alicia Drey"] [member="Rave Merrill"]