Wake Up

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

"Is that what it takes?" Kira spared a few moments to cast her husband an amused twist of her lips.

"Bats to get you feeling creeped out?" that was rather amusing to say the least. Granted, it likely wasn't really to that effect, but with everything that had occurred in the last few minutes, a little bit of humor wasn't going to hurt.

"Here I thought you'd be on the top of that foodchain buck-a-roo." that was a distinct reference to his Garhan linage. If anything, he'd occasionally spent doing to her what the vampireic version of the tiny little bloodsuckers fed for sustenance. A faint flashback took the Lorrdian back to Exocron, the circumstances of that first time, and what had subsequently followed. Then the blush of heat that had nothing to do with that of the torch she held recalling just how energetic he would be after.

A half brush against her neck at the tiny marks there was an unconcious gesture, not meant as judgement but more with affection. Holding her torch up high, something glittered in the distance. And along the walls. There were scattered lines of crystal and pale white material. Kira was never good with ores, she she had no clue what it could be.

She did know, however, what the two whine of powercells meant. Yup, they were not alone here.

The burst of bubble of protection was instinctual, the bolts falling harmlessly upon the iridescent blue sphere protecting them.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"I am the food chain, my love." What exactly that meant...Soliael didn't know, but the instant the bubble erupted in front of him the former False God began to build his own burst of energy. Unlike Kira he didn't try to protect, he didn't need to. Instead he would prove his statement correct. The blaster shots that flew towards them erupted from two separate guards, one a Gamorrean and the other a Kel Dor, both of them holding blaster rifles tightly nestled in their shoulders.

These weren't standard pirates.

They were soldiers.

Their stance, the way they held themselves, it was all a good clue, signs that Soliael could easily recognize. He frowned slightly even as reality began to warp around him, the very air shifting as he once again folded space in on himself and disappeared from Kira's side. A breath later and he came into being behind the Kel Dor, pulling his arm around the aliens throat and digging his fingers beneath the creatures mask. He held his hand there firmly, pulling the man to the side and wrenching with a sudden snap.

Plasteel flew away, a loud hissing resounding as the creatures mask began to leak. The Kel Dor panicked for half a second, dropping the rifle. Soliael kicked the weapon before it fell to the ground, sending it flying directly towards the Gamorreans skull.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

It was the loud, crunching sound of Plasteel that made Kira wince. The Kel-Dor visibly panicked, and for a moment the Lorrdian would stare in shock at her husband. For Kira, that was a bit too violent. Especially considering that the pirate still required his breathing apparatus to breathe.

No words were said, but the purse of Kira’s lips would express her displeasure. It was always her mannerisms and gestures that would relay her state of mind and thoughts on a particular matter. The children knew that their mother was a very expressive woman, and learned that Kira may not be vocal when she was upset, she would certainly make it clear by a mere glance.

Kira turned up right beside the Kel-Dor, a touch of the Force rushing between them as she murmured a statement that would calm him. If he panicked he was more apt to suffocate quickly. A simple mindtrick would have sufficed to neutralize the threat.

Not cracking his breathing apparatus.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"Oh he'll be fine." Solaeil said as he Gamorrean fell to the floor with a kind of odd squeaking noise. The pig like creatures were not very graceful, and when injured they usually tended to give up the fight rather then continue on. Soliael had never much liked them, though that was mostly because every single member of the species that he'd ever met had always tried to kill him. From what he understood they weren't usually too intelligent, though the females tended to rule, perhaps he'd only run into males.

"Just seal the mask." The former false god said. "A bit of cloth and he'll survive."

Kel Dor wouldn't die immediately if exposed to regular air, and their masks were solid enough that small patch fixes worked just fine.

Soliael of course also expected the man to have spare parts laying around somewhere, if only because every Kel Dor he had ever met usually did. Their existence on most planets depended on the masks that they wore, so of course they were rather paranoid about the small plasteel objects being damaged beyond repair. It wasn't uncommon for them to have a replacements.

That all being said, the man was a pirate...Soliael doubted he'd offer Kira and himself the same courtesy.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

Kira thinned her lips at that. The half glare she gave Sol was comically one a wife who isn't so pleased would give to her husband. Of all places to have such a disagreement, it would be here. And yes, this was the extent of any disagreement between them. Soliael and she did not actually fight. They had moments of varying opinions, but they always talked things through.

The only time Kira had ever been truly upset has been when Sol had returned home and their little girl had clearly been affected by the events of Geonosis.

"Check out the crates," she told him, focusing on the Kel-Dor to secure his mask. Sol's concerns were correct; the chances of the pirate giving them the same courtesy were low. However, for Kira, just because of that chance didn't mean she was simply going to walk away without helping.

Force was dealt out based on the degree required at the time. In her mind, there were other paths that could have been taken. At the end of this, she didn't want anyone harmed anymore than required. A contrast to what the former false god is capable of doing.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"Don't think We'll find anything new." Soliael said, but did as he was asked.

The creates weren't anything too fancy, just boxes really, not unlike the ones that rested on The Freya. He wandered over to them with a slight apathy, using a simple swipe of his hand to call upon the force and tear open the lid of one of the footlockers. "Oh."

What was inside surprised Soliael.

What he found wasn't blasters, wasn't disruptors, wasn't even powercells, no, what he found were sonic mines. Destructive and powerful enough to take out entire capital ships sonic mines were usually used by Bounty hunters to trap a vessel within a certain area of space, they were also used to cause a hell of a lot of damage. Inside of the atmosphere the things were strong enough to take out several skyscrappers in a single blast, though he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen them.

It seemed a lot of firepower for some pirates.

Soliael shifted slightly, then opened another crate. He found more of the same there, half a dozen Seismic Charges.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

Clipping a tube back into the Kel-Dor’s mask, Kira was satisfied that the pirate would be alright. A bit of a mind-trick and he wouldn’t remember quite just what had happened to him. For all he knew, he accidently tripped and fell face first into a crate… and smashed a bit of his mask onto the corner.

“Well, at least here’s hoping you belive it,” Kira would utter under her breath, coming up from one knee to stand. Blue eyes would dart over to her husband, catching him with a confused, startled expression.

“What is it?” she asked, matching his expression with one of her own. The ground would crunch under her feet, the petite blonde moving to stand at his side to take a peek herself.

“What the…” well this didn’t make sense. Sticking her right hand in, she took one of the sonic grenades.

“Sonic grenades?” she’d never actually been introduced to the more violent types of tech in the galaxy. The only reason she gathered that much was by the aurebesh sigils detailing them as such.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"Seismic charges." Soliael corrected. "They're bombs, well more like mines really."

He'd used them before. "They take in all of the sound around them, implode, then explode in a massive singular wave. They're a bit...wonky at times, usually they're used in space to clear asteroid fields or stop convoys, but they're also extremely effective against capital ships. They have a habit of...slicing into things, just cutting it apart. When a ship doesn't have any shields and can't maneuver all that well they can do a lot of damage."

He shook his head for a moment.

"They haven't really seen a lot of use over the last few decades." Soliael thought for a moment. "In the atmosphere one of these things can level a few skyscrapers in a single blast."

It wasn't accurate to say that the charges cut, not exactly anyway, but they could do quite a bit of damage.

That wasn't even mentioning how expensive the damn things were.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

Okay, so not sonic grenades. Not too much a difference, of it all turned into kinetic energy. Granted, Kira was no soldier. Being unaware of what seismic charges were was not surprise. None the less, her eyes seemed to grow wider and wider the more Soliael elaborated on just what they were… and the damage they could inflict.

“That’s… “ she began, her jaw dropping only to snap shut.” That’s terrible!” one could already see her mind working on what they could do to dispose of these.

“They can’t have these here… if only one can level a handful of skyscrapers…” oh yes, her mind was ticking. She bit her lower lip. But how would they be able to --

Turning, Kira panned her gaze to span the length of the cavern. There were dozens of crates. How to fix this.

Oh, easy! The Lorrdian Jedi Master would snap her gaze back up at the former false god. She had an idea!

“We can make them inert, can’t we?” she was speaking of D's manipulating them to becoming duds with the Force.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"Uhh...not really." Soliael said as he looked down at the charges and then down to his wife.

"Anything I can do to them they can fix." His hands scooped up one of the devices. "I could fry the circuits, but they could just replace them for a few penny credits. I could take the core, but that could just be fixed by adding a new one. I could short out the timer sequence, but then they could just rig some remote detonators."

He tapped his foot, then scratched his chin. "These things are pretty easy to fix, that's what made them so popular with bounty hunters back in the day."

Soliael knew of a few people who had used them, and in fact he found himself wondering why they weren't used more often. They were destructive, relatively cheap, and of course they were difficult to break. Unlike many other kinds of ordinance they couldn't easily be sabotaged and mishandling them or setting them off by accident was incredibly difficult. These things were solid, and in truth Soliael half wished that they hadn't existed in the first place, would've made things easier.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

Okaaaaay! So that was not a valid option!

Kira went rocking on her heels and she set her shoulders straight. "Great," she huffed under her breath, trying to think of another idea. Honestly, she never really worked with these kinds of things. Her experience was limited. Times like these she usually deferred to her husbands judgement.

"Then... what should we do?" she asked him. The seismic grenades were pretty dangerous. This many was likely enough to level a city planet by Soliael's description of their potential damage. Having them here was not going to do anyone good. Who knew where these pirates were going to be sending the charges, or worse, were they going to be using them on Rishi? What about a neighboring world?

Surely they wouldn't go to the Rishi Maze with this?

It didn't bode well at all.

"We can't just leave them here." her mind was thinking of other options. They couldn't just blow them up -- that would... well, the damage alone...

Yeah, not an option.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

"We could just blow them up." Soliael said with a shrug. "We're still a few miles from Raider's Cove, and there's no villages around here."

The Island would likely be a bit more flat, but other then that...well mostly everything would be okay.

"The explosion won't be any bigger if there's multiple of them, they don't work that way. To make them effective you have to place them apart so their blast zones don't overlap with one another." Soliael explained a little more about hows the charges worked. They of course took in the sound around them, and well...without adding too much science into the mix there was really only so much sound to take in, so if they exploded upon one another the charge would only be as destructive as one single explosive.

Confusing, kind of, but it worked out.

He shrugged. "Other then that, I dunno."

They could take them, he supposed, but that would be a lot of work and they would likely have to disable more of the pirates.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

Was that really the safest option?

That was the unsaid question directed at her husband. Was it viable? It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Sol; she did, with her life. It was just that their options seemed to be rather limited as it was.

“Well… we don’t know how uninhabited this particular island is…” granted, it was very doubtful any Rishi villagers were anywhere near a pirate outpost. That was rather risky, even for Kira. Curling her fingers around the crate, she let them drum for a moment.

“But… it also isn’t viable for us to take them all with us.” shouts came down from the entrance. A reminder that they were not alone and talking about it was just wasting more time.

“What do we need to do to set them off with the minimal amount of damage?”

Kira was placing the decision on Soliael based on his knowledge of these grenades. He was far more well informed than she.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

Soliael shrugged. "Just detonate them."

He shifted looking around for a moment before settling his gaze on Kira.

"Well, A bit more complicated then that." Soliael admitted. "We have to pile them together as closely as we can, then set them off. The explosion will be the same as with a single mine because they'll all detonate at the same time, thus they'll only take in a certain amount of sound. The blast will be pretty big, probably big enough to collapse this cave and take out half the island, but it will do it on an even plane."

He was trying hard to explain it, though he realized it didn't make much sense.

Seismic charges were odd things, really odd. They didn't act like traditional explosives. When they went off their blast was...well on a singular level. It didn't bubble out in all directions like a normal explosive, instead it went off on a single point of a y axis, that was to say, in a straight line depending on how the charge was placed.

It was all very confusing.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

While he was explaining it, and to a degree it did make sense, the expression of growing perplexity over his face didn't do much to soothe over Kira's apprehension.

"So.. we don't know what could happen. It is all variable." that wasn't something she was too keen on risking. Plus... Her attention would drift over to the unconscious pirates they had knocked out earlier. If we gathered them up and then blew them up...

They would all die.

Kira wasn't sure if she could handle that in her consciousness.

"Regardless, if it is done.... it will likely effect this cavern for sure and the area surrounding it?" a plan was already taking shape in her mind. One where perhaps they could find some way of getting as many of the pirates away from the area so they would not be harmed.

Of course Kira would make this more difficult. And of course, she would consider the lives of these men. This would probably be another headache for her husband due to her bleeding heart.

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

Soliael nodded. He was pretty sure that the blast would be enough to take out the cavern and the surrounding island for a couple hundred meters. Tree's, rock, pretty much everything would be leveled once the soundwave blasted out. There was a good chance that whomever was in the way was also dead, though in truth Soliael actually had no idea how much Seismic mines effect organics, but he assumed that it was none too pleasant.

"Yeah." He continued. "The island will be made flat."

Well, not really. "Kind of. It's more like...well the blast will only work on a level place, so it will be kind of like someone cut through everything with a giant sword."

That was the best explanation for it.

"It will all just kind of...drop because a piece of everything is missing." That was the best explanation Soliael could come up with.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

"Okay," well that made it clear.

Made it perfectly clear that they would have to make sure as many of the pirates scrambled out of here. The majority had scattered due to Soliael's earlier antics. However, who knew how many were still left. Kira did not want them to be harmed. They had to get fair warning. The fact that she was even considering this would likely annoy her husband.

Then again, he probably already expected it.

"Then we'll need to get as many people clear from here." she told him. Unless they could move everything to some other area all at once...

Well, that was unlikely. Even Devin wouldn't be able to do that.

Her attention went panning over to the Kel-Dor and the Gamorrean. "They can't be left behind to die."

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

This was where that morality kicked in once again.

"I know." Soliael said with a heavy sigh. There wasn't really any point in arguing with his wife, she would just go on and on until he eventually relented anyway, at least where this was concerned. He knew better than to try and convince her it was okay for him to kill people. "Unfortunately I doubt they'll vacate at will."

That was simple fact.

The pirates had built their outpost here for a reason, whether that was location or something else Soliael didn't know, but he did know that this place likely had a purpose, and not one that was all too pleasant. That wasn't even counting the fact that more then likely there was some sort of capital ship sitting in orbit now, one that belonged to this group of pirates. He had taken down the first gunship that they'd sent, and there was no doubt in his mind that they would soon be sending more.

"We have to think of something quickly." Soliael prompted, his own mind beginning to work.

 

[Kira Talith]

[member="Soliael Devin Talith"]

That www the issue. How would they be able to ensure as many sapients were as far away from the origin point as -- Kira gave a pause. A furrow of her brow deepened, and she began to suck on the fullness of the corner of her lip, nibbling it nervously. It was a possibility, but she'd never tried it before. It wasn't really her speciality. It also was dabbling a bit on the darkside. Okay, alot on the Darkside. Advanced shows of mass mind tricks like that were not the best things all around.

Kira shook her head, already dismissing that option. "Well..." Her right foot began to tap nervously, mind racing. A half twist of her torso and she would scan their surroundings. The cavern had few things save the crates, lights, and a few hangin klaxons --

"Oh!!!" A sudden burst of awareness hit her. Quickly, the Lorrdian pointed to one of the Klaxons, a potential answer to their predicament. "They have these. I bet we can use the alarms and klaxons to warn away as many as we can!"

 

[Soliath Devin Talith]

[member="Kira Talith"]

Soliael eyed the Klaxons. It was probably the best idea that they had, honestly it was the only idea that they had. In truth he couldn't really see it working, mostly because the pirates that wanted to flee had likely already done so and those that weren't quite ready to flee were likely sticking around regardless of what was gonna happen. He frowned slightly, not really wanting to say that to Kira.

"It could work." The former False god slowly said.

"I think..." Soliael started. "I think we should try to recall them."

He offered a small nod to one of the pirate's radios. "Their command ship will be in orbit now, that's where the second gunship came from. If we can fake the signal and broadcast it to everyone, we might be able to get them to pull out. The Klaxons going off at the same time will help selling the point, like they're gonna take out the site from orbit."

It was a dangerous play, but it would be worth it.