Faction What lurks in the depths (Levant and those interested)

[Brooke Waters]

It’d been some time since Brooke loaded up a ship to get moving. She was actually very hopeful for today. After the showing of the Protectors and the Neo-Crusaders, the Witch decided it was probably best that she did retreat back to the hidden worlds of the Sanctum, what people were now calling the Outback. She had things to do on Arda, and was intending to visit the Laekia Watchtower, if she got there. Her solarship was, instead, going to check on this call for help.

Mezokara.

Small moon, she recalled having visited before.

It was a dark world, not that the darkness bothered her, and keeping it hidden in the Levantine Outback? Not a bad idea. Keeping it away from the Core folks and their grubby hands? Especially with the Rings.

Even better.

The Riptide landed and she could hear the call.

They were wrong. They live in the deep. They are here.

Checking the coordinates? Right. Deep ocean. And she could tell that it was probably in the depths. So much of this world was uncharted. What was out there?

She’d go find out.

Now where could she find a boat to rent in this Port?


OOC: Who doesn't love some creepy deep sea, deep space cults? Lets go see what we can find under the sea.
Life is scary, in the dark.

 

[Cato Fett]

Region: Tingel Arm/Wild Space
System: LST-379 'Coral Dawn'
Planet: Mezokara

Locale: Point Saint Alna

Time: Local Spinward / 14th of the 9th Month – 90X ABY




Cato had arrived on Mezokara aboard Storm 0, the elderly but dependable YT-1930 that'd been rebuilt on its frame at least four times in its long, meanly storied career and now served the Mandalorian as a mobile, utilitarian home. It had made planetside landfall the previous evening twilight, parked at the outermost edge of Point Saint Alna, just north of a few lonely stilt-huts, and within strolling distance of a sporadically pebbled, brightly sanded beach. Upon landing, Cato would've set immediately to work. Wanted to. But local night was close to settling and in truth, he was fatigued by the long weeks spent sprinting up the Spinward edge of the Galaxy.

From Lasan to the tail-end of the Corellian Run, slingshotting from Gamor to Barab I, taking seldom used micro-jump pathways that hurtled the small freighter close to Lowick, Tund, and Garn, finally edging close to the Levant Outback at Hast before turning abruptly once more for the edge of roughly known space. Flying for Mezokara, and the great depths of its cerulean oceans.

~

Overnight, Cato dreamed.

It would take too long and occupy too much space recounting the long aches and pains that'd driven him up the Spinward towards System LST-379. Cato's dreams summarized it all for him, anyhow. Half-dressed on a narrow, purposefully uncomfortable cot, he slid into fitful sleep.

Lasan. The dried out salt-bed of a long extinguished inland sea. Quarry, run to ground, wounded, defiant, virtually foaming at the mouth beside the wreckage of their smote squall-cutter. He dreamt the sublime weight of his songsteel sword in his hands, engaging now with the enemy. The dream couldn't conjure up in any good precision that alloy of strength, speed, reflex, and technical poise he'd employed in that short duel.

Just the final, mortally wounding cross-stroke that opened his prey up. A slicing cut, shoulder to hip. Blood. Deep, arterial, more black than red, hosing onto the cracked salt under their boots. His quarry was dead before the pieces of him dropped to the ground. Then the corpse began wriggling, at a point well past expiration, and Cato was left watching a clutch of fat, pallid worm-things rip free from their host and begin crawling away under Lasan's sweltering, punishing sun.

He walked up and slew them too, under the shock and crack of his boot heel. When Cato looked back at the remains of his bounty, a blank-eyed murderer that had carved up almost a dozen itinerant workers on as many Outer Rim worlds, the blood that leaked from his corpse had spread across the eerie flatness of the great, baking salt-pan.

Blood that leaked and trailed out, impossibly, hideously, to form a strange, obscene glyph, dyed into the salt crystals, and rapidly evaporating as Cato committed it to memory. That had been the first leg in his journey. Next came sifting through his quarry's remains, a soiled data-pad, an old, dog-eared journal, a hundred other clues that brought his mind around to Force-occultism. To the Followers of the Rapture. And to a scarcely visited world called Mezokara.

~

Morning, Cato woke.

His waking routine was curt: a series of strenuous body-weight stretches to wake the blood, a short, achingly cold 'fresher shower, breakfast over a glass of electrolyte-rich water and tasteless nutrient cakes. He dressed: Asahian styled armour-cloth with a layer of thin, near-weightless chainmail, then the overlying armour plating. The beskar'gam. The yoroi, though that was a general term in Asahian dialect. Next, the armament.

Paired swords. Songsteel, light as a raindrop, strong as a black hole's gravity, gently curved and hideously lethal. Then the short hunting-bow and hip-attached quiver. A selection of well-honed fighting and throwing knives that attached to anchor-points across his casement. And additionally, almost as an afterthought before Cato departed, a long hunting spear he took from aboard the Storm 0's small armoury. The spear's haft was Kashyyyk wroshyr-wood and the spearhead itself formed a long tang that fluted down to an ending butt-cap of worn iron.

Armed, armoured, and haunted by ragged dreams, Cato exited down the YT's disembarking ramp and began stalking toward the interior of the now woken and roused Point Saint Alna. Sand and tiny, sun-bleached snail shells crunched under his spiked geta.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The trick here, she had heard exactly what was going on. A bit of a cult, especially around the Rings. Did that translate further into the depths of the planet itself? Brooke wasn’t so sure. But she was hearing that there was something wrong. She wasn’t a Warden, not nearly that altruistic, but she was someone who had bounty hunted for a while. It was somtake ething she could do, rescue and charge to get something out of it.

Beyond that? Selab called for her to check into the depths of certain worlds. Sometimes she needed to make a visit and see what she could find. ANd she’d been here before, met that other fish guy. Makai? Maybe he and her brother would get along. She wasn’t so worried at that at the moment.

A boat. She needed a ship. Looking at her datapad, a quick orbit of the planet helped pin point the request. Under the ocean? She wasn’t sure it was right, but if she chased it down and it ended up like that, she had a few ideas as to how to get down there. She could call in a Mon Calamari ship, with the Dawn Chaser not too far from the system, she knew she could get a Niathal.

But first things were first. The blonde, in blue and tan tunic, reminiscent of the robes she wore for her Witch Clan, made her way down through Port Saint Alna’s main strip. To really call it a main strip was an insult to most major metropolitans. But it had a street, with shops, and the water. What she was looking for was the right vessel. Her datapad was under her robes, her lightsaber right next to it. She had her few knives as well, but this weapon, the lightsaber, was a reminder of her past and present.

That was when she saw the few Mon Calamari and the one Selkath arguing. Someone was looking for repairs of a boat, but the cost was too high. Making her way over, Brooke waved.

“Looking for a charter. Anyone sailing today?”

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

[One second, lady!] The Selkath gurgled. She swept a sea-blue scalp tendril off the length of her scaled snout and renewed jabbing her long, articulated finger into the opposing Mon Calamari's face. [You're trying to squeeze blood from a stone here, Ak-Kuar! This isn't a one-and-done fusion weld, boom, all issues resolved and never again will your poor engine experience power failure. You've - ]

The Mon-Cal held up a heavy claw-and-skein webbed hand. He stood a half-head shorter than the Selkath, his ordinarily salmon-dyed skin and carapace plates coloured a shockingly deep tone of indigo and jet. Knots of mottled scar tissue, like deeply clawed rivulets, swam down the side of his face over a cataracted eye. He was rotund, dressed in high-sea hydrophobic fatigues beneath a long rubber apron, with a belt of cutting tools fastened about the wide circumference of his waist. [Shasa, I'm not asking for the secrets of kolto, I'm asking you for a fething weld-line that'll get my tug back on its feet. Any other suggestion is wasting my time.]

[Your tug needs overhaul, Ak-Kuar. The little diesel-fusion block you're so proud of? Three-million nautical miles over its operative limits, since the last time it got a proper service. That's not counting the problems I've spotted with the tail shaft, the propeller itself, the kort nozzles, even the steering rudder is hanging on by a screw and a prayer, Ak-Kuar.]

[And I'm telling you I do not have the time nor the means to entertain a refit on my tug. I've got orders pending for six tons of quality diamond coral, that needs to be off-world and Core-bound in seven weeks, and then, then, we can talk about a few repairs - - ]

[Don't even get my started on that fething reef poaching, you pirate. You're Mon-Cal, have you no respect - - ]

['Respect' doesn't pay the bills, Shasa, you fething child! I thought we'd have enough friendship to get a repair discount on the engine block cracks...]

[Which is asking me to sign off on sending your tug out with sub-optimal repairs, hoping the mountain of other issues doesn't come avalanching - - ]

"Pardon. Is it possible to rent a cutter or submersible, somewhere here in port?" Came another voice, just behind Brooke Waters while she waited for the pair to pay attention outside their spat.

Shasa the Selkath hissed through a row of blunt, flat teeth and turned to address the newcomer. [Sorry, please, can you both give... Us... A...]

Seemingly from thin air, Cato had appeared. His own physicality was not especially overwrought or overbearing, more compact and lean than brawny and thickset, but his choices of beskar'gam and sharp armament spread across his frame lent a notable, warlike air. An unmistakable presence, which perhaps was the point. The long hunting spear in his grasp was leaned back across one shoulder, the spear-blade wet with a scuff of ocean moisture, catching reflected winks of the bright morning sun. Cato was virtually stone-still, standing aside the scene of their argument.

[What? Mando?] Ak-Kuar finally spoke up. He'd folded his meaty arms over the hefty swell of his belly. [You didn't bring your own boat?]

"No," Cato replied, coolly. "I did not. Hence why I'm asking the loudest and perhaps most knowledgeable pair on the piers here if they happen to know anyone willing to rent out. A submersible would be best. While you're at it - "

He took hold of his belted sword scabbard and pointed at Brooke with the pommel of his longblade. "You can answer her question too. She's been waiting longer than I."

 

[Brooke Waters]

It was easy, to be traveling around. The hard part, that was helping people. Being selfish while traveling, focusing on your wants and needs, that was something else. She had lived that life, and she lived the life where everything was for someone else. The Jedi didn’t fit on her path any longer. She was now a Selabite as her main focus, a Witch and Warden as a follow up. It meant that now she could pick the jobs she was looking for, chase the bounties that worked. And interact with who she thought could help her.

But right now? It wasn’t these folks. She had been looking for a craft, as she hadn’t really put the time in on upgrading the Riptide for more aquatic journeys. It was a solar sail, and it got her where she needed, and if it was what she needed, she could land and hover on the seas when she needed to, but submerged? No, not yet.

She had the hope that a Mon Cal shipwright might take pity on her. An aquatic and her ship can’t? Preposterous.

Listening in on the conversation, she could get bits and pieces. She didn’t speak Selkath all that well, but knew enough of Mon Cala and the rest of the ocean trade languages to make her way through. Brooke caught on to the reef statement. She came to this world before with Makai Dashiell and one of Arceneau’s team to check the reefs, and she had started to plant Blue Corals. If the Mon Cal was making issues with that?

Looking over her shoulder, not noticing the Mandalorian. Where did he come from? She didn’t see any MandalMotors craft anywhere near here. And he was quiet for his size.

“Same. But I have some places to be at the bottom. I've got personal gear in my ship for a few folks.” Brooke stated, taking a step forward. Her tunic was not near as intimidating as the beskar, but she’d change into her actual armor when she needed to, to get going forward into the deep.

They are listening. They can feel us.

She could hear the call in the Force, how did she end up here? The call.

The deep was calling.

She had to get out there and fix this.

As The Mandalorian forced their attention to her, she didn’t blush but did wave it away. The woman did have a bandolier of two knives and a few arcane oddities under the outer layer of her tunic. “Was asking for a charter, but a submersible for rent would be great. I’m Parmathean, so that tells you all you need.” Plus the sheen of almost scale-skin was obvious on her to anyone paying half attention.

The blonde looked to the Mandalorian, wondering what he was after, but not asking in front of these two, especially with words like 'pirate' tossed around.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

[A rental? You've come a long way to the far side of the galaxy, to not bring your own transportation,] The Selkath chortled, now folding her long, lithe arms akimbo.

[We don't rent,] Said Ak-Kuar the Mon-Cal. He'd stuck his wide, clawed hands into equally over-sized pockets catch-stitched into the sides of his work apron. [But this is Mezokara. Keep asking around. Just be on your toes when it comes time to bargain for the rent fair, and don't be surprised at any expense.]

[Offworlders don't qualify for local rates, especially if they can afford the fuel cost to bring them out this far,] Shasa the Selkath added.

The pair, previously at loggerheads, chattered on about price customs in Point Saint Alna. Local trade, and the highly competitive nature between outrigger operators, fisher-folk, and deep-sea dredgers was not only apparent, but evidently a point of local pride. Nearby, shore surf swept up and rolled back. There was a constant, throaty hiss of wave-crests breaking apart against the sunken pier pylons. Cato only partially listened, instead titling his helm-visor round to regard Ms Brooke Waters . He wiped a thread of moisture from his visor with the back of his glove.

She was young, short, trim with an adventurer's athleticism, with almost electric-blue eyes that looked nearly silvertine in the bight local sunlight, alongside that tell-tale sheen of subtly interlocked skin-scales that denoted her inherited hybridization. And like himself, a newer arrival on Mezokara, likewise after a charter float to take herself out into the deeper waters. That was an oddness of coincidence that would have to be parsed out later. Dark, cold dreams of drowning sea water and the nightmarish journal of a slain occultist had pulled Cato back toward Levant space, and needed immediate address.

"Who does operate with submersibles?" He suddenly cut in between the Selkath and Mon-Cal. Cato's hand on his spear shaft hadn't budged but there was a subtle tightening in the knuckles, a shift in his shoulders, hips, and the balls of his feet.

Shasa coughed something into her long, thin hand, shrugged, and pointed behind her further down the docks. Four piers away, secured by docking cables and closest to open water beside the stately lines of a steam-fusion fishing trawler, was a hunched and almost gargoyle-esque submarine boat. Its dorsal plating was knobbed and blistered with armoured domes protecting sensor modules and navigation equipment. Its squat conning tower sat like a truncated blade, affixed with steering sail planes. From what was visible above the water-line, Cato saw that the boat was painted a sulky mustard-orange.

"Who's is that?" Cato asked, gesturing at the sub.

[...That's Old Man Mako's,] Ak-Kuar answered, frowning deeply, in spite of the already heavy frown-lines on his mollusc features.

"Does he rent? Is he open to the idea?"

[...Enough credits flashed in his face, sure? ...Look, Mando,] Ak-Kuar grumbled. [What's with this? Whaddyou and her want chartering for so damn badly anyway? This some prospecting scheme, something like that?]

"I cannot speak for her," Cato tilted his armoured brow at Brooke. "I'm here for the Followers of the Rapture."

[Spast,] Shasa swore acidly under her breath, crossing herself with an old mariner's sign of benediction and temperate waters. [Say no more. I don't wanna know...]

 

[Brooke Waters]

Brooke had her background in many different pies that gave her some credits on hand. Working with the ExplorCorps of Kattada provided legitimacy to her escapades, while bounty hunting and artifact collection gave her the real credits. And saving people? That could be very beneficial, either from reward or from pure salvage.

“Not about to bring my own aquatic crafts out here. This is a bit of a crash-in-and-out job, and I’d have to get a bigger transport for that.” Her star yacht was designed for pleasure and speed, not cargo. It had a way to lock a few people up if she was needing to transport that kind of bounty, but she preferred to not do that. Instead depend on her wiles to get them aboard. She should start adding a carbonite chamber to it. Maybe next overhaul.

“And its not that I’m not like you, yeah?” If they paid attention, they’d see she was an aquatic, though a bit more human than either of them. And the way the Witch worked, the sea was her home and her strength. But she wasn’t about to try to power through these few beings. Not with the Mandalorian speaking up again.

Seeing the yellow submersible, Brooke couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at it. But if it was part of the deal?

“Lets just say I know there is something out in the deep that just isn’t right. And needs fixing.” As the Selkath seemingly dismissed them, Brooke sighed.

“Looks like Mako’s the way to go.” She said to Cato. “I do have some tricks that may be able to get us what we need…” She looked at the bandolier and one of the pouches. “Unless you feel the need to guns-ablaze. I have gear for that too, and I figure you aren’t going to get far without someone who knows waters, yeah?”

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"'Guns-blazing' has its advantages but it feels we're wading into dark waters while half-blind," Cato said. Together with Ms Brooke, they'd turned from the previously bickering Mon-Cala, Selkath pair and were marching under hot, white sunlight further along the length of neatly columned piers. The soft lap of tidal wave breakers smacking up against the piers' sunken ferrocrete anchor-pylons was constant, but not unpleasant. A dragonfly, with a jewelled carapace that shone like glass, darted by their faces before zipping away down the shoreline. "I vote for subtlety. Let's see what this 'Mako' has to say about renting out his sub, or if he'll pilot for us. We'll go from there."

They hopped a short set of beetle-whorled stairs and strode down the narrow span of Pier 9. The submersible in question resembled a discoloured husk of pumice, or if a vast section of old, deceased coral growth had been cut from one of Mezokara's many reef shelves and given a ponderous overhaul into something only beginning to resemble a proper submarine. For Cato, it was like a protozoic Mon Calamarian invention, bubbly and knobbly but without that species' now legendary sense of elegant ergonomics and functional form. A pair of long ballast fuselages were welded and screwed into the vessel's partially submerged flanks, and it bobbed and ducked with the roll of the surf.

It's master laboured on the pier decking nearby, fussing over a blocky, detached module. Disengaged feed lines, greasy with machine unguents and industrial oils, sprawled around his feet. He was taller than Cato expected, a rakish man wearing a burgundy-and-black deep pressure diving suit that looked far too large on his narrow, whip-lean frame. 'Old Man' Mako turned his head at their approach. He appraised them from behind a cracked set of disc-lensed glasses. His eyes were blue, watery, and possessed of fathomless depth.

"Strangers..." Mako said in greeting. He rose off a knee, wiping oil stains off on the knees of his suit. "What can I do you for?"

"You're Captain Mako?" Cato asked.

"Mako. Just Mako. Captains oversee a crew and as you might notice, it's just myself. ...Well, myself and blessed Typhoon here," Mako partially nodded, glancing at his docked, gnarled submarine. "Am I in some sort of trouble?"

"No. But me and Ms..." Cato paused. Beggar for manners that he was, he hadn't paused to ask the young woman her name. "Myself and the Miss here are curious about your ship."

"The Typhoon? What about her makes you two so curious?"

"We asked about if there was anyone local in Point Saint Alna that would be willing to rent or pilot a charter out to sea. Most of the answers were unforthcoming but eventually, they pointed to you."

"A charter? For deep sea diving, I suppose?"

"How about it?" Cato asked.

"Mmmn, depends," Mako shrugged. The heavy, reinforced padding for his dive-suits shoulder-pads hopped almost comically with the motion. "It depends on what you want a deep dive for, how much credit you've got to barter with, and just who the hell you pair really are, to start with. A beautiful young woman? A horror like you, in all that armour and blades? What's this all about?"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

Dark waters were where she and her clan found themselves the most at home. Sure, they lived on a reef on Dathomir, and found their other settlements on Kattada and Arda, warm water worlds, but there were still challenges that lurked even in those depths. She preferred to not use a guns blazing approach. Mostly because of knives and the Force, but she could use her slugthrower when needed. The blonde looked up as he continued.

“I can do subtly.” She made a gesture to the all of him. It wasn’t that she expected Mako to be someone who was humanoid and would find her attractive, that was a skill that only worked on very specific groups. She wasn’t even sure it worked on the Dashiell guy, but she wasnt needing much from him at that point. Now they needed the craft.

As they approached the pier, Brooke was able to take another look at the submersible and couldn’t help but smile. It was rustic, like something she’d have found on some Pamarthe shipyard that had been left to rot and eventually sold off for a minor profit.

“The Typhoon still is a craft, and one that looks well used.” She smiled, no sense in hiding her physical aquatic attributes here. “She’d have a captain regardless of a crew!” There was an excitement in her voice and her Pamarthe accent kicked back in a bit. Now as it came time for them to discuss the trip, Brooke couldn’t help but laugh.

Moving the outer layer of her robes, her bandolier was displaying her blades and, more importantly, the arcane and nautical collections she had there. Tools for her magick. “Can’t always trust a siren, anyhow. Looks first, skills second. Something is down there, calling… Needing our intervention.”

Yes, but what?

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"We're coming at the same problem from different vectors," Cato elaborated. He reached behind to the small of his plated back and tugged a small, square object free from a belted storage pouch. The object was a small book, a journal bound up in well-worn nerf hide with a frayed silk ribbon still attached to the page's glued spine. He held it out for Mako, who took it and began thumbing briefly through scatters of yellowed and ink spattered pages.

"This is...?"

"I took that from a murderer on Lasan, after I chased him through half the sector," Cato said. "That I think he kept as a kind of journal. It's... a rough read. Much of it's bile translated into Basic, that meanders through strange recollections and visions and premonitions. But to the point, the man belonged to something called 'The Followers of the Rapture.'"

Mako's lined face twisted into a frowning knot at the mention. He slapped the cover of the foul little book closed and handed it back to the Mandalorian.

"Every so often," Mako began. "We get trouble in Saint Alna. It's been happening, coming and going, for as long as I've hung around. Something... shifts in the tide beforehand, and then suddenly we have these 'Followers', these 'Enraptured', harassing us in the township. There's vandalism, looting, sometimes violence, but it's all disorganized and we shut them down and shuttle them off-world before they can wreck any real havoc. ...Usually."

"What's changed?"

The old man wiped a sudden line of perspire off his temple with his wrist cuff. "Last few times these 'Followers' have made an appearance, there was no chaos. No vandalism, no looting, no... No caterwauling through the streets spouting nonsense about the future - " Mako paused, suddenly unable to keep a grin from splitting his expression, holding up his arms in mock-jubilation as he mimicked an old memory. "'I can see the fuutuuure!' ...Ahem!"

"Go on," Cato chortled.

"As I was saying, the last handful of occasions these... these cultists, I suppose, have turned up, it's been a horror. Middle of the night, they break into some poor unfortunate's house and before anything can be done, they've performed murder. ...And I mean murder. I saw the aftermath of one of their killings and the interior looked something like a charnel house. Killing that turns the stomach, what we can only guess is... Is ritual," Mako sighed deeply, leaning to put his weight on his hands resting atop his knee-caps. "...And you two are keen on figuring out the how and why of the 'Followers'? Go harrow them in their secret places, that sort of puritanical stuff?"

"It's as the Miss said," Cato nodded again to Brooke, pausing for a blink to swiftly admire the weaponry bandolier hugging her figure and the wealth of eldritch, almost arcanist equipment that his limited knowledge balked at. "Something down there is amiss. It's called us here, in its way, and needs to be addressed. I can't begin to understand if such a thing as 'fate' has its own architecture but if it does? It may be at work here. Which is why we need you and your submersible."

"Well... No," Mako said.

A muscle in Cato's jaw tightened behind the armour-glass of his visor. "No? You won't help us?"

"I'm not getting mixed up with... With..." Mako's hands wrung, his tongue briefly wrestling to find the requisite words. "...I don't want to tangle with folk that make butchery almost look like art. I'm sorry. You'll have to find someone else..."

"Then who else has a ready submarine?" Cato demanded, unable to keep the ice out of his voice.

The old captain did not answer. The hiss and low, hoary roar of the surf washing at the pier pylons beneath their feet was suddenly very loud in the sudden quiet.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The Force worked in its own ways. Or, well, if not the Force, whoever was pulling any and all strings in this galaxy. She was a Jedi turned Witch, she knew the Force controlled a lot, but she also knew there were beings stronger than those who were not in the Nether or any other realm of the Force that could affect things. It was why she began wandering the galaxy, looking for the places where the fabric was thin.

And it seemed that this world may just be it. Odd that the corals didn't communicate it. But this book, that was something she was going to need to see. Written word was so rare in a galaxy where technology was so easy, that if it was written, it has to be valuable. And she was a bit greedy for knowledge.

But the woman kept her tongue, behaving as she could right now. Keeping quiet as she watched the exchange. Followers and Enraptured, they were causing problems. "Vandalism? Any words? Anything about… they and the deep?" She stressed the two words that were ringing in her ear, ringing deep in the Force. And the future. "Was there any more of it?" Her bounty hunting past was showing, investigation of every part of this before moving forward.

As Mako continued, she waved it off. Rituals. That was more on track with what she was expecting. She'd need that armor after all. And maybe a few more shark teeth for her spell. "Something down there is either calling for our help, or calling as a challenge." With the last word, her hand found one of the blades, the one that she received on Arda, a jagged slice of obsidian.

But with the turn down of the sub, Brooke nodded, before looking to Cato and offering a very quick eyebrow. "Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Mako." Brooke turned, and pulled her hood up. She had an idea, but they'd have to work in sync. Pulling a few stones from her pouch, and a small vial that contained an inky purple liquid, she had this ready. Another look as Cato turned with her and they walked.

"Get him talking again. Won't be long." She whispered, very low. With her two hands, she started to float the rocks and the vial, an incantation in Paecnian escaped her lips as one, two, three stones hit the vial shattering it, and all of the contents and the stones descended into the water. Waiting, waiting, she heard Cato and Mako bring up another topic, she wasn't paying attention as she was already summoning the inky tentacles, one to smash on the pier, splinter but not damaging it, two others crawling up the pier.

She took the distraction to dive in to the water. The noise that was being made covering her as she got herself buoyant and kicked for the submersible. She knew she could pilot it. But Brooke also knew she'd not have some of her gear. She could make due, the blonde was a witch of the dathomiri oceans, what she needed was here. But still, the last bit, a message in the Force.

Do not stop them. They are coming to my domain. The deep… the… deep… deep…

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

Mako couldn't be faulted for fleeing. The sight of the first molluscan tentacle, scaled black but with brightly indigo suction rings, sweeping up from the relative shallows and walloping the pier decking drove a spike of ice-water cold fear up the length of his bent spine. The sight of the second and third cephalopod limbs dragging and climbing up at him along the pier itself drained his face almost white. Cato would never say it, but the final touch of a Force-imbued, gurgling and throaty psychic whine was perhaps overkill.

The captain managed to bubble a sputtering, oath-laden curse under his short breath, before turning on his toes and sprinting away toward the Saint Alna township. The slack weight of his oversized pressure suit wagged and swayed off his rakish frame like a banderole caught in a gale. Cato watched after him for a brief pause, feeling a twinge of pity blended with guilt. Poor man, he thought. Understandably skittish and obdurate when faced with frightening unknowns. He couldn't hold Mako's refusal against the old man. And then Cato swiftly shunted the sentiment aside, replacing it with cool, combat-indoctrinated analysis. He quickly sprinted down the remainder of the pier, vaulted the Typhoon's bristling conning tower, and slid down its boarding ladder into the belly of its control rooms.

An issue: his hunting spear was too long to fit through the conning entry. With a soft growl, Cato reluctantly ejected it back onto the pier decking. Now, he could feel it. A kind of keen anxiousness welling in the meat beneath his belly. The musculature of his hands and arms were beginning to want for the weight and feel of his swords. Holding himself up by the points of his elbows out of the conning tower now, he looked for Brooke, whom he understood was swimming below somewhere just out of visual range.

"K'olar, k'olar, we need to go, girl..." He murmured behind his teeth.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

With the arms coming out of the water, moderately solid with the Force enhancing them, they were definitely a summons that only a Witch could pull off. Controlling it? That was a different issue. She knew that it'd not kill, but the tentacles could wreck havoc if left unchecked. And seeing them crawling up the pier was maybe a bit much, even by Brooke's standards. She was the type to let most things go, and work on it at her own pace, but now? Brooke could still hear the call in the Force.

It was an itch, getting deeper into her head. She could hear it when she arrived, now? She could feel it like an itch in her head. It was digging deep, and if she didn't come on her own? The blubreen hybrid would be dragging herself to the depths.

With Mako running, now was the time to take the submersible. If Brooke could, she'd do what she was able to, in order to maybe set up a repair of the now stolen vessel. She was a bounty hunter at times, but that didn't make her lean towards the darker aspects of the galaxy, regardless of what the Force had just done at her encouragement.

But she needed this. And if she didn't move like this? It'd be worse.

She made her way to the submersible and boarded. As the engine started, she saw Cato.

"Are you armed enough?" She could assist, but first, getting this sub moving before her Force summons dissipated…

“Maybe that was a bit much…”

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"I thought, honestly, you'd had something more convincing in mind," Cato said. "Less terrifying..."

He was calling from the sheathe of the conning tower, standing on the entry ladder with a foot and ankle wrapped around the side of a bracing rail for balance. He was wrestling with entry/debarkation hatch-lid, its ungainly weight hopping and slumping as the submarine lolled with the roll of the surf. Briefly annoyed, Cato finally engaged with the muscles of his shoulders and back and swung the hatch-lid closed. Sure hands locked and bolted the air-tight seal, activating interior cabin fans that began gently blowing recycled air throughout the submersibles innards.

The interior was cramped. There were a trio of oblong compartments stretched from the stern piloting bubble to the aft electro-chem engine bay, connected through further hatchways, each space choked with stacked, olive-green equipment crates lashed to the white bulkheads with storage netting and tie-down straps. A pair of secondary deep-dive suits hung from boxy hooks mounted along the curl of the ceiling, beside racks of readied oxygen tanks and a cordoned equipment chest doubtlessly filled with other heavy-pressure gear for sorties along the Mezokaran ocean floor. Cato ducked and kept his shoulders tucked close to squeeze more easily through the hatchway doors, joining with Brooke in the forward control bubble.

"Are you armed enough?"

"Armed enough, for close quarters," He said in reply then, stowing his short hunting bow and box-quiver by his ankles in a small drawer-space beneath his co-pilot seat. The mag-locked fighting knives on his casement provided little issue, though he had to readjust how his swords rode over his belly to get their scabbards to seat comfortably with him. He was busying clipping the seat harness webbing across his chest and waist. "But nothing with any great firepower, though that might be somewhat advantageous. An errant wrist-rocket or repeater salvo could raise more problems than they'd solve."

Cato observed Brooke's touch weave across the console control banks mounted against the forward observation bubble. "At the risk of sounding rude, humour me: you can pilot this sub, correct?"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

She should really try to go back to the convincing bit. She was once a dancer, and Brooke knew more than she cared to admit how easy it was to get most sentients to give her what she wanted without her brandishing her blaster, let alone a knife. But there was something on this world that was digging at her. It was in her mind, in her very aura, and she needed it out. Was it because she was here before?

Was it because of the blue corals she left behind?

Or was there more? The blonde hoped that wasn’t the case.

“There is something going wild here, Mandalorian. Something that needs to be helped, or stopped.” As she looked at the gear, she was probably going to be okay that she left her songsteel armor set on her ship. Hopefully Pell wouldn’t pawn it, or her droids break it down. Brooke did need the pilot droids, and one did have a subroutine to help her on the black market. Bounties, fencing. That sort of thing.

But now? She needed to get moving. Looking at the Mandalorian, she nodded. Close quarters. That was fine. She could probably do what they needed at range, or stall something long enough for him to do his thing. “Yeah, may not be the best to be using repeaters. Looks like we have some fishing gear. I can slow things down enough to dispatch them.” She felt confident on that.

A sputter of the engine and the blonde smacked the HUD and controls again. Analog over digital. It was better, made sure it could survive. As he spoke, she hit a few switches, prepping the sub and pushing the throttle to give a cleaner sound to the engine. As it jerked forward and down, she looked back.

“Of course. Native born Pamarthe, if its on the water? I’m good. And is that armor water tight?"

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"Of course. Native born Pamarthe, if its on the water? I'm good. And is that armor water tight?"

"No, but I can manage," Cato said. "It's light enough, even when it gets bogged down with any soak. I just need to ensure my rebreather is secured."

He paused and hazarded a glance over the shoulder and creaking headrest of his seat. Down the length of segmented, reinforced storage compartments, there was still the pair of secondary deep-pressure suits hanging from their storing rack-hooks, gently swaying with the submarine's locomotion. If their mission so required, Cato decided, he'd shed beskar'gam and don one of the pressure suits. Their bulk and lack of manoeuvrable range-of-motion would be hampering, he knew, the suit-dress being composed of thickly reinforced textiles, rung with weight-belts and ungainly, steel-shod boots vacuu-glued to the pant leggings, notwithstanding the additional weight of oxygen tanks and any further deep-current gear. At best, he'd managed with the wakizashi and a good aikuchi dagger. Cato felt a pang behind the meat of his heart: he missed his hunting spear.

For now, Cato quieted any concerns and settled against his seat's flaked and cracked upholstery. He watched Brooke at the controls, hands weaving deftly, noting the rapid dart of her eyes drinking in the submersible's broad manifold console sensor read-outs. The anterior engine bay thrummed as the sub put on a modicum of speed, its steering-planes angling. Already, the faint streams of crystalline light gently filtering through the ocean surface was rapidly dimming. Cato looked out as they began to drive through what felt like submerged twilight. Schools of small, silver-scaled fish darted in and out of the floodlamp's glare. Soon, there wasn't enough ambient illumination to make out anything in any great detail: just a darkly blue lambency, where Cato saw the shadowed outlines of things, great and small, pull up beside the Typhoon before lazily angling away.

"The Followers of the Rapture," Cato said suddenly. "Mezokara. Things in the 'Deep', calling. All this strangeness. What's your take on it, Miss?"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

He was Mandalorian, wasn’t beskar a heavy metal? Songsteel was light but she was actually glad she didn’t bring it in here. What she really needed to do was invest in cortosis, weave that into her clothes and help defend herself against the lightsabers that were definitely out there. She was always hopeful to not run into it.

“So, not going to sink in that beskar? Good. And a rebreather. I think I saw one in here.” She looked back over her shoulder, there was a chest of emergency supplies. The submersible was moving through the harbor area and she was waiting for the ship to show her it was safe to dive deeper. Gave her plenty of time to see where things were aboard this bucket. She was a Witch and had her Force and magick, but there was a part of her that was feeling more secure with the weapons of the deep that she used.

Her zeffonian alloy lightsaber and knives were fine, but much like Cato, Brooke wished for her larger weapon, her fishing spear. She could summon a fair replacement but it wasn’t something she could hang to Cato, it required her focus.

“I’m navigating on the Force. There is something… something here. The Followers, they’re a cult, yeah? The Rapture, the Rings nearby brought them here… I don’t know what they found though, why would someone with their eyes turned to the sky be turning to the deep?” Unless there was some ancient terror down there, which she felt there may be.

Without the former watchman of the Levantine Spur, there were more than a fair share of issues that arose.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"Mmn," Cato hummed, giving his segmented, do-styled torso plating a knock. There was a dull, almost waxy echo where his knuckles struck the casement. "Not true beskar. Many Mando'ade would gladly spend a decade's worth of contract work to afford a full suit of Mandalorian iron but even our greatest metallurgists and blacksmiths can't mitigate the inevitable weight it brings. This suit is simple duraplast, reinforced. Common enough but it offers good protection and above all, mobility. I don't use guns. I can't afford to be slowed down."

He could feel the weight of the sea beginning to settle around the submarine's outer hulling. Tell-tale creaks, the sound of metal whining and grimacing against the Typhoon's interior cabin pressure, the throaty, rapid bass clicks of bulkhead seals straining with the slowly increasing vise of salt water clenching down around the vessel. The submersible held. Console readouts, the ones Cato could interpret, all showed in the green. The ship was simply easing out a few aches and these paltry harbour depths were no great trial.

"Hmmn..." He hummed again. The back of his helm was almost recessed into his seats' headrest. His mind turned over a gamut of thoughts, appraising each notion as he would the edge of a blade, seeing what was sharp and true and what required further whetstone honing. "Reminds me of an old adage: 'Don't mistake the reflection in a pond for the stars in the sky.' I think these 'Followers', these 'Watchers' so intent on what the Ring can reveal, had their augurs muddled and bewitched. Something perhaps manipulated the signs they were looking for and lured them here, down below into Mezokara's depths. They followed their visions to find out what they believed the Ring was attempting to show them and now, they're caught up in a trap. Made slaves to something..."

It took a beat before Cato could finish the sentence. Something dark had shimmered across his thoughts, causing him to pause. He shook off the feeling of ice-water rippling down his spine and turned to look at Brooke. "Something with a taste for violence, that's apathetic to suffering, and wants very much to push its will over this surface world. Maybe even beyond that."

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

She worked with songsteel in the past, it was doing her well even until today. Time was weird, and it may not be as ancient as some thought. But her revolver? The one that came from her father, and was given to her as the first born? That was a bit older. But also not here. Like the man before her, she preferred her close quarters weapons. If the Force couldn’t take care of it at range? Well, she’d avoid unless she couldn’t.

Little did she know, there was more to that revolver.

“I worked with the Protectors for a time, while they were securing Mandalore, they visited Dathomir. My Clan Mother made sure I met them.” As one who was well traveled, but Brooke was also not a native born Dathomir witch, she found it later. “I’ve seen the weight of beskar, never struck my fancy, since I spent most of my time on water worlds.” And in that water, all the same. And a bit of a stab from a dagger was much easier than even a lightsaber under the waves.

Sitting back as the Typhoon continued its way, she was giving it the control it needed but still had time to focus on what the Mandalorian had to say. There was the difference between what they could control, and any cult followers did tend to get their wires and signs crossed. Does this entrail mean death or life?

All in the Deep serve the Rings

Was what she could hear in her head. Still she looked at Cato. “I’m half wondering if there was some sunken installation, that got lost to time? The Rings aren’t new, and neither are any of these worlds. Could something be down there, calling them? Calling me?”

She shook the thought from her mind. Surveying the man with her, she tipped her head. “So what do you go by?” If they were about to save this world, maybe she should call him something aside from The Mandalorian.

And probably not Sword Boy.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

The thought gave Cato pause. By now, he was briefly thumbing through a thickset, grox-hide bound operations manual he'd discovered in the stowage space beneath his seating. Cato had retrieved it, taking another excuse to triple-check over his stashed hunting bow and box-quiver. The arrow fletching was immaculate, the arrow shafts straight and true as starlight, the bamboo and rattan of the short war-bow in perfect, fine fashion and simply awaiting his touch. Satisfied, as Brooke ruminated aloud, Cato returned to studying the instrumentation banks and control yokes arrayed around their laps and flanks.

"The Rings aren't new, and neither are any of these worlds. Could something be down there, calling them? Calling me?"

He couldn't deny the crystalline ring of truth in her words. Cato stuck a thumb to keep his place in the pages of the manual and closed it over, gently drumming a knuckle on the grox-hide cover and page-spine. The notion of something unknown, ageless, left dreaming in fitful slumber somewhere deep below the bright azure Mezokaran skies above, was sobering for him. Like the slowly darkening draughts of twilight-grey sea water and shadows of royal and indigo blue washing across the Typhoon's cockpit bubble, the thought reinforced in Cato an idea of something potentially immense, alien, and inscrutable. The Rings were not a new super-structure. The worlds within its baleful glare were even older. And beyond the bright lights of the Core worlds, things that existed in defiance of death could have more than likely made nests and dens in the foundations of uninhabited planets.

Again, Cato braced against the feeling of ice-water fluting down the nerves and bone of his spine and backbone. His off-hand gripped beneath the flat tsuba guard of Sunfang, the songsteel Asahian katana that'd been gifted to him. There was a feeling now, gnawing beneath his belly but now chomping at the bit behind his own teeth. He wanted to find this mystery. Find it, face it, and try to stop it.

"...I am Cato, Clan Fett," He replied when Brooke asked. His helmet canted in a little nod. "For whatever that's worth. And yourself? What's your name?"

Brooke Waters