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

[Cato Fett]

'Not good' was a potent understatement.

Cato bent his shoulders back gently and craned his neck around, trying to gain a better view of the foyer beyond. The dirty light of the clawing bonfire and the lengthy, cavorting shadows it pitched robbed some of the detail and dimensions of the chamber. He took measurements from what he could directly observe, constructing a rough outline in his mind's eye, noting the baleful shadows of higher galleries overlooking the grand foyer stairs and its multiple landings as well as the placement of a dozen support columns dispersed throughout the hall. He wanted a quick mental map of the foyer and its features that could be referenced within a picosecond.

He stood up from his crouch, slowly. Soundlessly, he played against the give of his taut bowstring, knocking a second arrow against the string between his middle knuckles. He briefly weighed their courses of action. Assaulting the cretin butchers waiting for them past the time-worn high doors would have several outcomes. It could potentially draw in more trouble and, at the very least, possibly announce their presence to other cultist gangs roaming the great unknown passages cut into the flanks of the submerged basilica. Conversely... They could go. It occurred, sourly, to Cato, that he and Brooke could simply turn on their heels and retrace their way back to the waiting submersible. Climb back to the ocean surface and get off world, leave the strange troubles of this deathless place and its ghoulish caretakers to whatever fate had in store.

Cato blinked the notion away. It reeked of cowardice and failure, a failure to complete his martial duties. It scalded his conscience. He rolled his shoulders forward and let the tension wrapped around his joints and ligaments calm and loosen. Blood was starting to drum inside his ears; he was keenly aware of the hungry weight of his paired swords strapped across his waist.

"Alright," He whispered to Brooke, after motioning her to lean close. "I see no way around them and besides, whatever they're up to, whatever and whomever this is meant to empower... It must be stopped. I'll enter in first. Wait five seconds before moving in after me. If it looks like it's going terribly for me, disengage and get back to the Typhoon. Now..."

-

Now: violence.

Still secreted behind the cover of the vaulting double-doors, Cato drew up the gentle weight of his truncated hunting bow and engaged the musculature of his shoulders, backbone, down to the sinew of his calves and ankles, hauling the drawstring back. Already, the pair of knocked arrows still held in his string-grip were raised high beside his cheekbone. In spite of the seeming simplicity of the motion, the action demanded a great deal of physical and mental coordination. In Asahian bujutsu terms, knocking, raising, and drawing back the bow constituted a complete kata in of itself. Cato sighted down the length of the upper arrow shaft, aiming through the narrow crack between the slightly askew door panels.

He put the leaf-bladed points of his long arrows toward the side of one kneeling cultist. Time slowed to a quiet beat. Then, in sequence with his knuckles, Cato exhaled and loosed the shafts. The drawstring cracked like a bullwhip. Whistling, the twinned-arrows shot true with a whistle as they cut through the smoky air. The upper shaft took the knelt, mewing worshipper through the base of their skull and sliced through the bone and viscera, puncturing with enough preserved force to pass through and ping! off the bonfire's iron crucifixion bar. The lower shaft smashed through the cage of their ribs, puncturing both lungs and the heart. Dead, spurting dark arterial blood and gore, the cultist toppled over onto the floor.

Force Body. Within Cato's physical frame, Force power briefly swelled. His backhand slam-punch against the door panel shielding him actually smashed it free of its hinges and off the doorway jamb entirely. The enormous, heavy ebonwood pane went flying out across the foyer, spinning like a top-toy. It struck a second cultist in the sternum and jaw: perhaps they weren't yet dead but the high-door's sheer inertial weight and whirling momentum ensured they were at least heavily dazed.

The Mandalorian was a blur. Striding out of the cover of deep shadow, he paced now boldly into the interrupted ceremony. His arms and shoulders worked his hunting bow, knocking two sets of arrows and firing as he marched. A cultist flew backwards as they tried to rise from the floor and pull their sawed-off barrel carbine from a shoulder holster, their skull transfixed with an arrowhead poking out the top of their parietal cap. Another gave out a short, haggard cry, their hands clutching at their throat, trying to yank at the protruding arrow-fletch.

Cato's attentions were fixed on the enormous figure on the foyer landing. The 'preacher', in their modified void-suit and fetish-decorated, dark screened bowl helm. The preacher was hurriedly gurgling a string of unintelligible commands to the survivors of their coterie, breaking into a shuddering jog that shook the steps of the staircase. He watched the beast pull something free from behind their enormous shoulders: a great two-handed sword, carved from a single piece of oversized bone, fitted with a sawed edge of polished, wickedly sharp shark teeth.

Loosing a whooping, phlegmatic bellow, the Preacher charged down the foyer steps towards him. With unnerving calm, Cato stowed his hunting bow aside, grasped and drew his longsword from its waiting scabbard, and charged up the staircase to meet with the monster. There was a single, terrific shrilling keen of Asahian songsteel meeting equally indestructible calcium and collagen.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

If she was good for anything it was for vastly understating many things. Brooke was a Witch and looked at things a very different way than even a Jedi, or Mandalorian. She was a fighter, but only when she needed to be, on her terms. And this was not going to be her turf or her terms. Her hand went to the bracelet that she had, a strap of leather and a small coral idol of a larger serpent esque beast. Spectral Summons. She knew that it would help her and Cato should they need it.

As she looked to her companion, she let go of the bracelet, she had another idea first, especially if he was going to be doing some sharpshooting with a bow. She hoped that the arrows could hit and explode, if there was a little bit of chaos, well, Brooke could bring more, or at least make those in there feel like there was more chaos to be had. Providing an echo or two of her and Cato could make two seem like six, or even a dozen, depending how the spell was received in this room.

She moved her hand to the Gem of Arda. There was a hum to it that wasn't there before. She shook her head, dismissing it. This area was weird, it was ancient, but she was hoping it wasn't about to steal her knife, and other gear. The blonde took a quick look to survey the room again. Her years as a bounty hunter gave her at least some ability in traditional combat. A few places to put her and Cato, or at least copies of them. Being with a Mandalorian gave the ease of making a direct copy, while with her, she'd have to obscure her face. Make the copies visible, yet dim. It was going to be a creative bit of spell work.

"I won't be leaving you." She bit her lip, the humming of her knife that rested in her hand almost felt like it was pulling her now. But not to the voice. To something else.

Was something here related to it? A part of it?

"Whatever they're doing, isn't right with the way the Force or the galaxy should be working…"

As her father said, first came smiles, and then lies. Finally was gunfire.

Or in her process, spells. And a lot of them. They were moving, and Brooke took the second to call on the Force, helping to dim herself from vision as she stepped out. As she did, her second action was another spell, a spell of replication, of echoes. As two other Catos in various steps of his assault were backed by other Brookes, each casting a Force barrier equivalent. She was not going to move with Cato, as Brooke saw other cultists. She had the Gem of Arda in one hand, and pulled another knife from her belt. Using the Force, she threw it, enhanced with the Force at one of the cultists who came. Hoping to pull support away from the priest that Cato had his sights set on. Another beat, and a cast and the knife returned to her hand, just as the Gem was thrown, but didn't aim true, instead pulled by some other force.

Brooke eyed the knife but at the same time shook her head, and readied the first blade. Whispering to it, the blade morphed itself into the Lance that was her station, something already charged with the Force, and something that would catch the incoming bone scimitar easily. As easily as she could hold it, as small tremor hit the area, effectively erasing the small echos she had made of Cato and herself. Being sucked away similar to her lamp light.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

The clash of conflicting Force energies and spellcraft produced unseen tumult. A sting of psi-pathic backwash struck Cato in the centre of his thoughts, causing his footing to buckle and his body lurch. Instinct, and possession of immaculately honed reflexes, gave him enough ability to hop and backpedal out of the Priest's weapon reach before the brute could smash him apart. He readdressed his opponent, adjusting his hilt-grip, turning aside a blunt flurry of great, overhand sweeps that were trying to saw him in half.

The backwash continued without abatement. Perhaps at the urging of whatever dark powers were anchored there in the heat of the Basilica, or perhaps as consequence due to the warped, death-bloated nature of the place. A chilling, wintry gale blasted down from the shadow-cloaked ceiling vaults, ripping away the gutted fire from the hideous bonfire piled in the foyer's centre. Light still emanated from the torch-sconces installed in the columned arcades spread throughout the foyer's boundary walls: their small tongues of flame seemed unnaturally extended, playing and gamboling, creating shadows that divorced from the torch-rags and sauntered about. There was a taste of cooked stone and burning metal in the air. Cato thought he heard a distant keening issuing from somewhere beyond, the sound just barely registering at the edge of his senses. A hellish red glow, like the colour of still warm coals, seeped up through the seems between the flooring stones.

The Priest possessed nothing like fine technique or style, but it was massive by humanoid standards and understood its inherent power and speed were enough advantage. The bone-sword in its hands was a discoloured whip, raggedly tearing through the air and smoke in an attempt to reach Cato. It tried swinging low, looking to strike and hook its shark tooth-edged blade into the outside meat of his thigh. Cato countered with a low one-handed block, the other hand pressing hard against the blunt spine of his sword. There was a brief crack of bone rebounding off steel. Then, the Mandalorian surged.

He stepped in, keeping their weapons trapped low, now snapping and slamming his hilt-pommel up into the Priest's darkened face plate, following up with a fierce horizontal cut that slashed through the fiend's cloth-armoured collar. A third slash in sequence opened a terrific wound in his foe, the edge of his songsteel smoothly cutting from their shoulder to hip. The Priest let out a gurgling bellow, in pain, incensed. Bile-black blood spattered onto the dark flagstones beneath their feet. It made a wide backhand swing that could have severed a grown nerf in two, simply trying to gain breathing room from Cato's pressing assaults. He simply somersaulted under its whistling arc, rose into guard, and renewed his attack.

Brooke was somewhere to his rear, he knew, attempting to level her own Force spells in close support. Though he'd felled at least three, as many cultists were still lurking nearby, skirting the edges of his duel. He struck through a blend of sliding guard-blocks, glancing and redirecting the Priest's blows aside rather than catching their kinetic force directly. He guided his blade-point through a liquid riposte that poked a thin but deep channel through the flesh of his foe's ribs. In spite of wounds inflicted, the bestial man-thing refused to give in. It simply convulsed, drawing on seemingly inexhaustible reserves, coming at him through mists of spurting blood and ichor. The bonesword in its grasp made ragged, hawking wails with each long swing.

"I - C A N N O T - D I E," Said the Priest. Its voice was a harsh rasp, like grating metals ground hard together. It brought up the long bone-sword in mocking salute before levelling it down at Cato. "T H E - S A M E - C A N N O T - B E - S A I D - O F - Y O U - A N D - Y O U R - W I T C H I N G - F R I E N D.

"I - W I L L - K I L L - Y O U. T H E N - D E V O U R - Y O U. A N D - O F F E R - U P - Y O U R - M I S E R A B L E - S O U L S - T O - T H E - T E U T H U S."

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

With Jedi training, Brooke was a bit of a sleeper in combat. She had her bounty hunting skills, and her Witch skills, and the way of the lightsaber from the Jedi. If anyone asked, that was what a Levant Force User was. Someone with enough of the secrets of the past to remind those who knew legends of a Force User, but also someone who wasn't bound by an ancient dogma. As she moved, she kept one hand free for spell casting, the somatic movements that helped her body know how to bend the Force, and her other hand moved with the Lance in her hand, only to feel it weaken.

It was a summoned item, and it was better to know that this was not going to last in this area. She caught one of the bone blades on the handle, and could feel the Force flicker in the weapon. Spinning, she dug the tip of the Lance into the rock, in order to block the foe from going at her again. Looking at the Gem on the ground, she whipped her hand, which glowed with a blue ichor magick, as she made to grasp the blade and hurl it towards the one that was hung up on the Lance.

The blade moved from where it was on the ground and hit the man in the hand, missing its true point of purchase, but only to fly further than it did, in a direction that she could feel a pull. The blonde shook her head and ignited the indigo blade that was her old Jedi lightsaber.

This caused a pause in the support that was fighting her. Or maybe it was the voice of the Preacher.

"You'll find we're resilient." She called out, to everyone and no one in particular. She moved to catch the bone blade on her own, rolling over Cato's back in an athletic roll, but getting the rest of the gathered to come to both of them. A whisper of her spell, and a temporary shield blinked into existence, caught one, two slashes of smaller bone weapons, but then was sucked away, to stones near her knife.

Stones that glowed. Not quite the blue that matched Brooke's magick, but definitely not the same eerie glow of the lamplights down here. She tossed a look at Cato before moving to engage the support to the Preacher, part of a plan forming.

"LEAVE YOUR MAGICKS OUT OF THIS TEMPLE"

Came an all too familiar call, as the room shook.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

More commotion from behind. More of Brooke's Force-spellwork battling against whatever malign presence was leeching her powers into the stone walls and warped bas-relief's carved and clawed into the foyer's panelled arcades. Cato listened to the Priest's jagged inhales, who now held up a pallid fist to its throat, trying to staunch the jet-ink blood running down the front of its armoured vest. He could barely spare a glance backwards to check Brooke's own status and progress, managing a microsecond read that let him bow forward over his waist and help her slide and vault across his shoulders. He bent his elbows, cocked his wrists around, and arrested a savage bone-sword blow with his own songsteel that tried to crash into his helm.

They briefly stood close, he and the Priest. Clenched in, their swords locked up in a gritting bind that refused any give, Cato was battling to keep the balls of his feet and the webbed treads of his synthetic sandals from slipping on the flagstones and loose, damp-rotted rugs. He could smell his enemy's rank odour; a fetid blend of unwashed flesh, rotten fish oils, and a strange scent of corrupted ozone. With a snarling bark and a sharp knock with his shoulder, Cato backed the Priest off and freed his sword, snapping the songsteel back into a high-angled guard, the tsuba-guard pressing against his cheekplate. He was a picture of patient stillness, trying to bait the brute into tackling his sphere of defence.

"Y O U – C A N N O T – R E S I S T – M E!"

Undeterred, the giant Priest came at him once more. Again, flailing with nothing resembling great technique, but every high, cleaving blow and each mid-range sawing cut was backed up by punishing brawn. Cato didn't try to match it's strength; for each blow, he simply, smoothly, ducked, back or side-stepped from its reach, pirouetted, or even smartly hopped over the longer underhand sweeps that tried to smash his legs out from under him. He waited, watching the Priest's arrhythmic and hiccuping, uneven battle cadence. Waiting for the ebb, when the flood tide of monstrous, assaulting pressure would finally run its course.

...There! The Priest's bulging shoulders showed a slight but trembling sag. Its gulps for breath were running heavier, louder. It wasn't trundling after him across the foyer floor quite so relentlessly. Cato saw a delayed pause as the Priest gathered strength to raise its bonesword back for another hacking cleave. The Mandalorian leapt forward, lancing with his songsteel. The fan-shape of thekissaki sword point struck up, into wide, bloodless slab of the Priest's throat. Cato felt the razor-edge cut through gristle and ligament, wounding into the larynx box, esophageal tract, and into the spinal bone of its neck. The Priest juddered, rocking back on its heels. Jet-dark gore poured down onto Cato's wrists and forearms.

It managed a spasming half-step back, enough to push itself off of Cato's katana and gather power for one more killing blow. Its great arms heaved, whistling the full weight of the bone-sword's saw-toothed edge down at the Mandalorian's armoured brow. Cato brought his own blade up and sliced upward, side-stepping left as he did. The keening edge met with the meat of the Priest's wrists and sent its now severed hands, still clutching gamely onto the great bone-sword, bouncing across the damp flooring.

Cato watched the pain-dazed Priest trying to comprehend its staggering injury and impairment. "N – O -..."

He snorted tersely from under his armour-glass visor, pulling the length of his songsteel through fabric clenched along the inside of his elbow, briefly cleaning it of offending ichor. He wanted badly to offer up a stinging retort but hadn't the wit for it. The combat still wasn't yet finished and Brooke would require what wits he did possess to help end it. He turned and cocked a wrist down, firing shuriken stars from his gauntlet launcher down the length of the foyer hall.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

Brooke didn’t prep for this eventuality, but it did mean she was going to have to reach out to some of her older, more earlier honed skills. Her lightsaber gave that dark indigo light, the light she converted her crystal to so many years previously through arcane means. Her kyber was still hers, and the connection that she had to it was why she hadn’t hung up her lightsaber for good. And the fact that it was pretty good at separating foe from weapon when her Force skills were not of use to her.

It was working here, if they were to enhance something, but offensive and defensive conjurations of the Force and magick? That fell short. As she continued to fight, her moves almost dance like, in part to her training with a Jedi Master who was Echani, she flitted around the room, gathering the attention on her. Every so often a blast of blue ichor was thrown from her hand, or used to catch a wayward weapon, and it was quickly pulled into the waiting blue beyond the wall.

She could feel the rumbles, and even greater when the Preacher fell. She looked up, Cato was still in the fight, and the voice that she was hearing in her mind was cracking. Weaker, angry.

Another shudder through the temple, stalactites falling around them. Brooke looked to Cato again as she saw stones fall in front of their exit. “There goes our exit.” She muttered, unsure that Cato could hear her. “Cover me!” She called to him, as she moved her lightsaber from her use of Form V into a defensive block. She called on the Force to bind the foes before her, only getting two with a blue whip from the ground, almost tentacle, almost water, before reaching back to her past.

STOP THEM. THEY MUST REMAIN.

To what she learned on Manaan. A power called Waveform. The room was shaking but with what Brooke was doing the sound disappeared, at least temporarily. Propagating out from her were small waves of telekinesis, in the same way waves moved from where a stone broke the water’s surface. It was being sucked away as part of the wall, where her blades kept being pulled to was breaking.

A sleek, almost turquoise stone-like-metal was revealed, highlighted with sandstone, after a few more seconds, more was revealed, not entirely, but the makings of some form of craft was found.

S–SYSTEMS… RE-RE… RE-BOOTING

A voice that was at both verbal but in their minds. Brooke took a second to find Cato. She was going to need to do more to free this… this other being. All the same, another stone fell from above, which seemed to opened a path for others to join their skirmish, and these were armed with archaic crossbows.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

The foyer was disintegrating. Another seismic event quaked its way through the chamber, sending shiver webs of spidering cracks that splintered apart the flagstone flooring. Cato looked up in time to watch a row of shadowed galleries detach from their wall anchors and collapse onto the ground in plumes of rotted, squealing timber. Sections of the vaulted, unlit ceiling plummeted down and further shattered the upset flooring, piling and driving immense anthracite blocks that toppled and tumbled over under their own weight and velocity. The innumerable support columns spread out across the grand chamber collapsed where they stood, broken apart from cascading debris, creating piles of clastic shale and powdered stone. A viciously chilly gale was blowing in now from vents unseen, adding to the maelstrom. Into this upset of chaos, he could spy more of the enemy wading in to try and kill them.

Occultists in their drab uniforms of armoured sackloth habits and patchwork filtration suits were sortieing from enlarged fissures that'd split and rent open sections of the blind arcades carved into the foyer's walling. Crossbow missiles, fat subsonic slug rounds, and narrow beams of blaster bolts hissed and shrieked around Cato. He saw some were reaching for short, heavily notched combat swords and razor-wire draped hand axes. He risked a fast glance over his shoulder to Brooke, who was still busying with her exotic Force spellwork awakening... something... that was nestled and still partially buried in the section of rock wall behind them. He caught Brooke's eye.

"Cover me!" He heard her shout over the keening wind.

"As you say!"

An onrush of unwashed bodies and dull, oily weapons surged through the green mica mist and bounded over toppled colonnades. A crossbow bolt thudded and skipped across one of Cato's sode-pauldrons. The enemy, the 'Rapturists', were baying obscenities from behind cracked and missing teeth. Under his breath, he murmured a swift prayer to the spirits of war and drew his secondary shortsword with his off-hand. Over the bark and shriek of slug-throwers and primitive crossbow fire, the Rapturists crossed the final handful of meters separating them and leapt to tear him apart.

Cato's world became a blood-soaked whirl of concentric spheres, where every motion and action was simultaneously attack and defence. He parried through ragged axe-blows and hacking shortsword and machete strokes, flowing now into the combat rhythm. His helmet canted slightly to dodge a well-aimed slug-shot, swinging his longsword out to make a liquid crescent-slash that sliced or smashed aside another half dozen firearm rounds out of the air. He struck out with the shortsword, severing errant limbs that strayed too close and too far into his killing circle, gliding his longsword about through a lethal and kinetically balletic kata of cunning feints, curt parries, and ferocious ripostes. A Rapturist fell over, disembowelled and dying on his knees. The one beside him screamed before Cato cut the cap of his skull free. He turned and caught a third with a mean cross-guard, snapping their machete in half with a twist of his arms and blades, following up with a high, almost stomping kick that broke the Rapturist's sternum in and sent the fiend sprawling back by a good ten metres.

More bodies pressed in and hemmed close against his bladework. The dead now piled about him in a rough semi-circle, sometimes two or three bodies deep. He raked his swords through a howling cutlist that left the fanatic in two twitching pieces. Another cross-parry bashed his foe's heavy two-hander axe down into the flagstones, twisting back over his hip and shoulder to smash a free elbow into their windpipe. Wherever Cato turned, another handful of leering, goggled zealots appeared to harry him.

The songsteel swords sang out. Rapturists fell, sliced from shoulder to hip or brow to balls, the Mandalorian's immense strength propelling his twin-blades' nanomolecular-sharp edges through armour and musculature. A mist rose from the carpet of hot, spilled gore.

CEASE YOUR STRUGGLE

"Ne'johaa! Shabuir!" Cato cursed back aloud. In a lull in the melee, he chanced a quick look toward Brooke. "How's it looking...??"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

She was going to have to start moving with some ranged weaponry. She had a few items, but they were all in her ship. At the very least, she should start carrying her sling around again, a bag of small stones she could enchant wouldn’t go amiss either. She had to look to the Mandos for this. What she really should have was an energy bow, like the rest of the Dathomiri favored. She just tried to not come with her weapons, because she was not like the Jedi.

She was going to fight that until she died.

As a Witch there were other skills, and her lightsaber and daggers were symbols of who she was as a person, before the Witch title, maybe the bow and her lance were the symbols of her as a witch… But unlike the Jedi she was able to use her mind a bit better. And with Cato here not being the typical Mandalorian, the pair were a pretty good team. Having to be clever and creative. Their targets were not the brightest, but the voice behind it all? She could feel it moving.

That was when she recognized it wasn’t quite a crumble so much as the room and passages were being squeezed. The blonde looked up, and could see a dark red skin, and he felt that if they were in the water, there would be a bio luminescence to it. Not unlike what she was seeing where the Force kept getting pulled to. Brooke recognized that the power was being weakened by the time it got to the friendly voice. A ship?

But the beast was definitely pulling the Force away. And Brooke could sense water… That’d pose some threats. “Cato. The arm.” She pointed, and used the Force to cast a brilliant, if very temporary blue light up to the arm before turning and throwing another blast of Force energy to the wall. Sure, he had to keep the rest of them busy, but, also that. Please and thank you. This one with more strength than the others.

YOU SHALL NOT ESCAPE. Came the first voice, more tremors, more squeezing. And water.

P-P-POWER RESTORED. S-SSEVERAL ORGANICS LOCATED. B-B-EGINNING START UP. Brooke could feel the ship in her head. She reached out to Cato, could he feel it? The necklace she wore, with a shard of the obsidian from the ruins of Kilani-Plotti, was glowing, and being pulled to the vessel. She knew it was a ship. Brooke pushed this to Cato in her mind. She didn’t think it’d take off without her, but she knew it wouldn’t move with the monster still here.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"Arm? Arm??" Cato cried. He was busied levering and prying his shortsword free from being stuck between a set of broken and sandwiching rib bones, finally giving the dying Rapturist caught on his blade a brusque shoulder-check that sent them wheeling back. With a moment's lull and time enough to catch a gulp of cold breath, Cato swung his helm about to follow Brooke's brief spell of Force-illumination.

"...Ah."

Before whatever influence could siphon away Brooke's spellwork, he caught a fast glimpse of a massive, fleshy trunk slowly extruding itself through the crumbling gaps and forcibly enlarged cracks in the brickwork of the foyer's ceiling. Its chromatophoric hide glistened where the light caught it, reminding Cato of the healed flesh of burn victims, the skin flush red and glinting smooth. The great trunk seemed to flex. The dimensions of the foyer trembled under its straining grasp, the arcade faces and remaining colonnades buckling in. Ominously, water streams were starting to pour in, spurting from spigots formed in the widening fractures. From somewhere unseen issued a grand, phlegmatic bellow that shook the meat of their diaphragms.

The Mandalorian rallied. A severing whirl of kill-stroke blade sequences slew a half dozen Rapturists in half as many seconds, following in with another tightly economical series of velocities that struck heads free from shoulders and sent more sprawling, howling while clutching at severed wrists, elbows, and knees. It was enough to grant himself and Brooke breathing room. Precious seconds. He jammed his blades away into their scabbards and pulled the hunting bow tied round his shoulders and torso trunk free, reaching for his quiver.

Cato possessed nothing like traditional Supercommando firepower. That didn't necessarily connote he came unprepared. From his strapped waist-quiver, he pulled three arrows shafts from their small girdle-locks, their arrow-heads proper kept shielded under hard, orange bakelite shrouds. He busied quickly slipping the shrouds free, revealing a trio of almost spade-like tips that glinted a dull, matte brown in the ill cyan light. Baradium points. Explosive warheads. An old-fashioned adaptation of modern synthetic substances to more traditional weaponry. Clutching their fletching between his knuckles, Cato rose to his feet and knocked all three arrow-shafts to his hunting bow's pullstring, hauling back hard on the polyethylene line.

YOU WILL -

"Please be quiet," Cato grunted through gritted teeth.

Modulating his breathing, engaging the long muscle and sinews of his back and waist to aid his arms, he cocked the aiming line of his bow upward and centred on the largest tract of exposed mass along the great tentacle. The glistening, overlarge limb seemed to writhe and contort, as if sensing imminent pain and danger. Now hanare, the release of the bowstring. Now zanshin, the almost endless beat as his attention and focus followed the flight path of his loosed arrows. Cato let go with his fingers and felt the bowstring snap forward. The trio of baradium-tipped arrowheads shot like forks of felling lightning. There was a distant, almost soft pulse and spume of blood mist where the arrow shafts struck through and penetrated deep into the flesh of the molluscan arm. Then: ignition.

What detonated the baradium arrowheads was a chemical reaction triggered through direct impact. Within the great trunk's wriggling flesh, three bright points of light detonated with a concussive shudder. Hanks and chunks of almost bloodless meat, together with a deluge of almost acid-green ichor, burst from overhead and fell wetly onto the wreckage of the half-crushed foyer chamber. Punishingly, psionic wails of full-throated pain, mixed with keen rage, assaulted the edges of their minds. It was enough to send the remaining Rapturist scattered about the chamber to their knees, tearing at their faces and eyes with broken fingernails and keratin claws. The too-large tentacle, wounded, appeared to slither up and out of sight.

P-P-POWER RESTORED. S-SSEVERAL ORGANICS LOCATED. B-B-EGINNING START UP.

Cato turned over his waist to look. Through Brooke's empathic touch, he could hear the thing now. Unbidden, the Force-psychic tinge opened his mind's eye, created a rough psi-graph outline in his thoughts that resembled the smoothed planes and fins of a combination submersible and starship. He noted the glittering obsidian sliver hanging from Brooke's necklace was lividly aglow, bouncing with telepathic energies. A sense of innate, machine-like intelligence radiated from the still half-buried construct. He reached up beneath his visor-glass to pinch and rub at tired eyes.

"We've bought maybe a few minutes to breathe. I think," Cato said. He looked around at the structural carnage. "We can't stay here at any rate. Can – whatever that is – get us out of here?"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The joys of working with a Mandalorian. Being that Dathomir was part of her chosen world until she was given title of Wayfinder of the Blue Coral Divers. It still kept her busy with Dathomir but also as a witch clan's representative off world. And that meant playing nice with certain groups. Namely Mandalorians who came calling. She didn't deal with the Neo-Crusaders. They were fanatical.

But Cato she could work with. He was methodical. She didn't have the inkling in the Force or otherwise he meant to hurt those who didn't deserve it. Smiling inwardly, she was glad the two collided on this path. And now? With the water coming in. She couldn't just hold still even if she wanted to admire the way he entered combat.

His weapon choices were reminiscent of a Witch all on its own. She was about to change her own Force powers to try to quiet the beast that was out there, but the explosion that Cato created seemed to do the job. Still using the Force, Brooke was throwing spectral blast after blast at the ship. Using more of the Force than she had in months. Feeling the ship getting stronger. More lights coming on. And with the next tremor from the rallying beast, a door opening.

"It'll fly. It'll fly us out of here." She didn't know quite how. Or where they'd go. But it was designed for flight. Pulling the necklace off she handed it to Cato. "It's going to need this. And I'm going to need you to put me on board." She made eye contact with his -visor, at least, her eyes showing the seriousness of the situation.

Stepping into the crumbling room, she was not whispering, not muttering, but chanting a spell now. One that if they knew an ancient Pamarthe dialect, spoke of ice and lightning. Of troubled seas and troubled times. As she chanted the room got colder. Shards of ice were forming, supernaturally from the water in the room, while anyone with hair could feel it stand on end as lightning, warm and yellow, not sickly and purple, sparked around her.

Aiming her intention through the rock, the ice shards continued to break the stone, as one, two, three stones popped out of her satchel and all be disintegrated as the blast of lightning fell from her hands and up to the creature.

COORDINATES SET. READY FOR DEPATURE. DESTINATION: ARDA. Intoned the voice of the construct. Sounding almost fully restored. The room filled with the sound of a spooling… something. Part engine. Part warming stones.

The lightning and ice continued as Brooke appeared to relax, stumbling and reaching out for purchase.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

"It'll fly. It'll fly us out of here. It's going to need this." He felt a small, almost negligible weight pushed into the palm of his hands. "And I'm going to need to need you to put me on board."

"Wait. Wait - !" Cato stuttered, trying to reach out.

There was no time. No time at all. Cato scarcely had a moment before his sore and tired wits could catch up with Brooke's intentions. Quite suddenly, with little warning, vast tracts of welling Force power blossomed over him, clubbing his mind over with a kind of numbing psychic cudgel.

What followed within the Mandalorian's skull was a kaleidoscope of nearly incomprehensible imagery. Swirling colours. Rapturous hues. Hellish and heavenly imagery. Dislocated daydreams. Torturous, splitting, sundering nightmares. Breakdowns of angles and mathematics, at least to his Euclidean mind. Cato's physicality twisted and contorted in the real world, trying to reply and compensate against the innate, inlaid imagery suddenly driving itself into the framework of his mind's logic-centres. His was body bent over, knotted at the waist, shoulders, and arms, trying to remain anchored to Brooke's Dathomirian spell-work. Dislocated whispers of vaunted Parmathean spell-power drove a spike of ice into the root of his cervical nerves.

"W-W-Wait!", Cato mumbled through a wealth of spit.

His hands reached down towards his waist-band. Found the weight and texture of his sword-hilt, clenching down tightly against the shark and ray-skin gripping adorning his blades' long hilt. Cato juddered, pulling his longsword free, flexing the might of his arms and shoulders as he plunged the length of his katana down into the broken foyer stonework. It was enough to steady him, keeping Cato briefly anchored as the deep-water foyer cracked and split apart.

"Brooke! Goddamnit, Brooke, wa - " Cato heard his own voice briefly shout.

Again, there was little time to wait at all. Cato reeled, struggling to keep the blunt edge of his longsword's spine anchored to the rupturing flooring. He watched Brooke Water's arms raise to an unseen source. Watched them reach towards the submerged heavens, grasping at a piece of creation's wrath, and smash it's fury across the expanse of their deep sea arena.

Ice

Fire

Lightning

Tendrils of primordial wrath exited from Brooke's outstretched palms and lanced into the meat of whatever presence was trying to crush them into pulp. The great dimensions of the foyer jerked and vibrated; it's natural anchors of proper, three dimensional columns buckled up against the reach of that great, unseen force trying to smash it down. Again, the Mandalorian heard some unseen presence wail, contort, and laugh like a villain, feeling a length of cthonic intelligence try to grapple with the altogether too weighty presence clenching around the dimensions of the foyer.

The space finally 'gave up the ghost'.'

Cato looked up; a vast, incomprehensibly great essay of molluscan flesh and hide shuddered and withered away from Brooke Water's spell-touch. Against the onslaught of ice and lightning-fire, it possessed little defence. Possibly, the Mandalorian thought, it never imagined it would have to contend with a witch. A real witch.

"Black gods..." Cato heard himself gasp, looking up at the brief corona of darkfire surrounding the flare of Brooke's snaking hair strands. For a long moment, between the breadth of Cato's exhales, she looked immortal: beautiful, unstoppable, unknowable. Cato felt a little recess of his heart ache at the thought of it.

COORDINATES SET. READY FOR DEPARTURE. DESTINATION: ARDA.

A tremulous impulse of psionic nerve-infographs pierced itself through Cato's thoughts. He briefly held a mental scan of some odd, bio-electric construct awaiting their command. Brooke's great violent, psionic efforts had revealed a length of sea-green hulling still recessed against a block of anthracite blockage. Cato looked down at what appeared to be a sort of bronzium hatchway. The eye of metal hatchwork irised open, beckoning them to enter.

"And I'm going to need you to put me on board."

Cato remembered Brooke's final instructions before she had to surrender to the weight of her spell-casting. His clenched fist held up the thrumming, glowing stretch of obsidian necklace. He had to wonder: what did a Dathomirian witch see, as she underwent the flows and currents of her own Force-projections? What did that great tide of unknowable soul-power exact from her? Cato blinked, unable to do much else but hold very tightly onto Brooke's forearms and torso. He hauled up hard and clutched her chest and shoulders to his own. Cradling her against his waist and chest, Cato hurtled into forward.

He sprinting forward, down a rung of shallow stair-steps. Down a length of brass and bronze stairwell rungs that invited them into what appeared to be a sort of decompression chamber. Cato sat his rump against a short rung of metallic brass stair-steps, clutching Brooke's form against his armoured chess. An irised hatchway turned and closed behind them. He peered up at the valved, recessed room; the great brass and cyan-steel iris that'd admitted them onto this strange vessel had closed up tightly and was now admitted nothing else.

A great, warbling voice over the PA system said: [PASSENGERS ACCEPTED. DEPARTURE CALCULATED. WELCOME ABOARD THE NAUTILOS. PLEASE -

"Oh shut the damn hell up!" Cato cried, still holding Brooke over his waist and chest. "GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The power was flowing through her, and she knew it was from her and the Force. She was the conduit for the storm. She was the center of the storm, the reason for its being. And like many of her clan, she knew every aspect of the storm, but like so few, she was able to bring all the aspects. The chamber was cold, yet hot, filled like a live wire of electricity, all while slowing down and feeling like time was coming to a stand still. The power was some of the strongest she'd ever had, the blonde had never burst three of her so-called Force Batteries. The stones that circled her and were disintegrated.

The Blue Coral Divers of Kattada and Arda, the two settlements she helped to relocate, were masters of enchantment and imbuement of items. Stones on bracelets to help with wayfinding at sea, hunting under the sea, clarity of thought, simple Force enhancements to every day life that were able to be recharged by simply existing. Some of the larger stones were to provide that burst of energy and focus, others held a bit of Force healing, or an explosion of sound. The ones that she exploded were the energy and focus variety.

It was more than she was used to, and more than she could rightfully contain in herself without the fainting. As the blasts were moving, she felt the beast that was holding them. Pushing herself through the pain and the winding mind that was feeling like it was seconds from breaking, she could sense the positive feel from their vessel.

As the darkness fell, she could feel Cato carrying her, and the voice of PASSENGERS ACCEPTED…

***

When she came to, the vessel was already launching, and appeared to finally get to sunlight as the vessel continued to speak UNEXPECTED OBSTACLE. DEPLOYING COUNTERMEASURES. She knew that Cato or her could probably master a vessel that they just found, but as she looked around the room it seemed like one large room, with a small seat and unfamiliar controls. Stumbling to her feet, she looked to Cato then out the window. What she hadn't expected was that spectral ghost arm-tentacle reaching up for the ship, they were what, only a few hundred meters out of the hole she could see.

The ship seemed alive, as it moved, with a methodological approach, weaponry to point back, firing what seemed like almost a volcano like burst, that hit the arm and exploded. Several more followed…

Vong tech?

Shortly, another blast of power hit as the ship lurched forward to space.

ENTERING HYPERSPACE.

It was much too early, but Brooke was still woozy and couldn't respond as the ship definitely moved in the Force, launching them into hyperspace. It would be several minutes before Brooke looked around again, seeing stone work inside the ship, were they crates?

“What do we have here?” She muttered as she stood up. Steadying herself before looking to the Mandalorian. “And thank you.”

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

Cato nodded wearily, somewhat absently. He was seated back in a high-throne chair situated against a sleek row of glossy console banks and exotic instrumentation installed beneath a wide-set, ultra-panoramic viewport. Twists and curls of washed out blue light emanated from the gently winding lightspeed tunnel beyond, lighting the interior cockpit walls with odd blends of shadow and colour. There was a low purr of cycling engine-sound lightly vibrating up through the deck-plating. It was an altogether stately vessel, Cato thought, at first impression. A somehow elegant blend of ascetics, function, and naturalist decor that reminded him of Mon Cal ship design.

"No need to thank me," Cato said. "I'm only sorry we didn't kill that... thing. Didn't get to the bottom of whatever that horror down there was..."

He reached up, tucked a hand beneath the jaw-plate of his helmet and undid the anchor-straps and metal clasps keeping it secured. The helm slewed free, bouncing twice across the decking before rolling back to an awkward halt against his ankle. Beneath, the taut flesh of Cato's face had greyed out from exertion and spent adrenaline. The long tracts of deep scar tissue down the left-side of his skull were were bloodless, milky and sallow. Sweat had matted his hair down almost to his thick eyebrows. There were odd stipples of indigo bruises orbiting his sunken eye-sockets, blemishes of burst capillaries where the strain and agitation of close melee and Brooke's own storm of Force power had ruptured pinpricks of blood below the skin. Darkly green eyes, flashing emerald strobes when overhead cabin lamps fell upon them, looked out toward the Witch as they quietly recuperated.

"But we are alive. The Rapturist, if not beaten, are at least well stung and will have to lie low for a time," Cato said, forcing a smile he didn't wholly feel. "Maybe with some luck, they'll never recover and quit that strange place. ...Oh, hell. The submarine. The Typhoon! Poor Captain Mako, how's he going to get that damned thing back??" He broke into a bark of incredulous laughter.

"Maybe that old man was right. He knew if he let us get away with that sub, he'd never see it again! Oh, damn it all," Cato shook through another chortle, letting his head hang and lean back against his seat's felt head-rest. "Ahh... We'll make it up to him. In someway. I don't know... I've had to quit fights before but this one feels more bitter. We weren't done, but we couldn't remain either..."

He gestured up at the seamless, coloured bulkheads, at the vessel's banks of recessed glow-strips that fed comfortingly bright light onto the bridge deck, at the peculiar yet imposing, almost regal combination of natural and synthetic materials that constituted the ship's hulling, framework, and instrumentation. The closest comparison that came to his thoughts were Vong biot-form ships, with their vorik coral forms grown from carefully engineered genetic blueprints. What providence birthed this strange star-shuttle, Cato couldn't say.

"At least, we're not empty handed," He noted, rapping the bottom of a fist against his seat's arm-rest. "What is this ship? Before... Before, I felt you somehow link together our thoughts. Yours, mine, and this vessel. Have you any idea what it is, it's make or model? I've never seen the like before."

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

Brooke was taking a few minutes to look around and gather her own bearings. The ship was safely in hyperspace, and they were going out to the world of Arda. She had no idea the ship’s capabilities and how long it’d take, but at least knowing the target location. Hopefully the ship had updated maps. That would be embarrassing. How old was this ship? Didn’t matter at the moment. She shook her head as she admired the interior the ship. Definitely gave her Mon Cal vibes, which was a good thing to the semi-aquatic hybrid, who had a soft spot for organic designs.

She had pulled part of her robes around herself to double up the fabric and keep her arms and exposed skin warm. Burning that hard with the Force surely took it out of her. “It happens. I’m not sure that was a fight we would have been able to get out of. From what I felt that even with the ship’s… what was that…”

“MAGMA CANNONS.”

Brooke was interrupted by the sound/feeling of the ship’s communication. She looked up. “Like on Vong and Sekot ships? No, nevermind. You can hear us? Anyway, with that blast, the thing still felt… alive, and healthy.” Running a hand through her hair, she shrugged. Watching him remove his helmet, she tipped her head, Mandalorians all had their own belief on that. He had definitely taken the brunt of the physical violence, she had engaged a little, but had done her best to support them. Someone had to find their way out.

“I think we can count that group of Rapturists to be down for a while. I don’t know if there are more, I assume so… But these won’t be doing much.” As for the monster? Oh, frak, and Captain Mako… “I don’t… I don’t know. I think I can probably get him at least something newer than that sub, used and drop it off. I do need to get a shuttle out there to pick up my ship. And yours?” Sighing, it was feeling really strange to not finish that fight, but, yeah, that was something primordial.

As she mused with Cato, the blonde was running her hands over the almost gold-plated coral-like stone. This ship was engineered, but she wasn’t certain it was quite organic… Some of the lights were even crystal, false kyber, maybe? Synthetic definitely.

“I don’t know. The ship is ancient. I can tell that, the crystals aren’t something I can recognize, well, not all of them.” She stepped up to one near what she saw as the control module. “This one I’ve seen…” She revealed her necklace and the knife that was called the Gem of Arda. “These come from the planet Arda, the necklace I found in the ruins of an ancient city there. Lots of Force tech and various things…” Looking at the controls. “Ship, can you tell us about yourself?”

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

Cato pushed his palms down against the arm-rests and rose to his feet. The effort woke a note of pain in his haunches and reminded him of a duo of rancorous knots beginning to tangle and snarl behind his shoulder blades. He was suddenly, too sharply aware of the smell of drying blood, spent cordite, and cooked armour-fabric now wafting off his figure. He looked down, noting a handful of flesh wounds and heat-scorched rents and tears where enemy fire had sliced through his hakama pant-legs. The back of one hand was skinned across the knuckles. Almost annoyingly, a barb of splintered metal had somehow driven down through the top of his left foot and would require extraction, disinfection, stapling, and finally proper bandaging.

Ignoring the sharp bite of hurt, he strode over to the vessels central piloting consoles and instrumentation arrays. He wanted at least a vague understanding of the vessels control mechanics, in the event -

[IN THE EVENT OF EMERGENCY, INSTRUCTIONS WILL BE PROVIDED]

The Mandalorian started. The voice, presumably the vessel's on-board intelligence, had a blunt approach to psychic communications. Akin to smacking his grey-matter with the psionic equivalent of a thin, wood paddle. It left a sour, achy after-note on the back of his tongue. Cato blinked hard and massaged his temples with a hand, still inspecting the console banks. He touched a slender steering-yoke that looked like a marriage of machined rose-gold steel and polished maple, its various function buttons and studs made out indigo crystal.

"Alright. In an emergency, you'll broadcast piloting cues?"

[YES]

"Can you communicate verbally? I mean, non-psychically?"

[I HAVE SPEECH REDUNDANCIES]

"So, yes. Do you have telecommunication capabilities? Can you sync with the holonet, broadcast messages?"

[POSSIBLY]

"Why 'possibly'?"

[HOLONET UNCLEAR]

"It's unclear whether you have reception or unclear as to what the holonet 'is'? Are you lacking definition?"

[I AFFIRM]

"Can you be modified to accept a proper communications suite in order to transmit messages galactically?"

[POSSIBLY. POTENTIALLY. A REFIT WOULD BE REQUIRED]

“Ship, can you tell us about yourself?”

Cato felt a smile slip, looking where Brooke lounged by a centrally mounted control module, noting the identical profiles of her Ardan crystal pendant with some of the vessel's own crystalline hardware. Of course she would have the emphatic flair to engage with the vessel on a more personable level. There was a brief latency while the vessel seemed to collect itself.

[I – AM – NAUTILOS. SERDAR CHARIOT OF THE FOREBEARERS. MY KEEL WAS LAID IN THE GREAT ORBITAL SHIPYARDS OF - ] A pause. Cato felt a psi-wave roil over them, less then gently probing their hippocampus memory cells. [ - ARDA. THAT IS ITS NAME NOW. I AM – WAS – ONE OF THOUSANDS.]

"Nautilos," Cato spoke up now, pitching his words toward the wan, cream coloured ceiling panels overhead. "What was your mission? What were you tasked with?"

[PROTECTION. SUPPORT. LONG DISTANCE CREW SHEPHERDING.]

"...How did you end up on an ocean floor?"

Another pause, the silent beat heavier now.

[CANNOT RECALL. PRESUMPTION: I WAS TAKEN.]

"How? How can a starship be snatched out of the void and left to rot in the dungeons of some mad 'god'-thing?"

[CANNOT RECALL]

"Can you possibly extrapolate."

[I CANNOT]

"Well damn," Cato sighed. He tapped the side of his jaw with a finger, suddenly thoughtful before glancing across the instrumentation panels. "Nautilos, do you accept commands?"

[SPECIFY]

"Do you have any music in your... memory banks, if that's the word? Can you play anything? I'm curious."

[I AFFIRM. SPECIFY YOUR SELECTION]

"Serdar's discretion," Cato replied, quietly amazed something as potentially utilitarian as a ship-borne artificial... or blended organic intelligence had anything like 'culture' embedded within it's nano-crystallite consciousness. After a moment, emitting from unseen speakers installed throughout the length of the piloting cabin, a string of notes began to sound, morphing into a full soundtrack that played its arrangement while the vessel continued piloting itself.

"I'll be damned..." Cato muttered.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

Starting to feel better, the blonde looked around more. The ship really was a work of art, and she could see a bit of the similarity between the ship and the ruins her and her kind had found on Arda. Maybe it was worth letting the Selabites know? She wasn’t sure. Was it that different from a Sekotan ship, or a Vong ship? What she was not expecting was for the ship to maybe read thoughts? Not being able to pilot it did add some small concerns, like the Alliance TwinTails, the ship may not operate how it should and instead fight for its own survival. But if they were inside it? That was fine.

Maybe it wasn’t a combat ship?

Taking a second to center herself around the migraine and vertigo she was feeling from the use of the Force, Brooke listened to Cato all but interrogate the ship. It seemed at the same time ancient and advanced.

“I know a few people who specialize in such retrofits… Or we could visit Zonoma Sekot?” Brooke spoke, more to the ship than Cato, not everyone knew of the secrets of this galaxy, least of all a living planet.

SEKOT COULD PERHAPS WORK

Well, that was something. She listened again, and heard the ship speak of itself. A Chariot? Maybe a shuttle? And a great orbital shipyard? Looking to Cato as she allowed him to finish, the blonde laughed. “This thing must be ancient. I don’t recall any tech remotely close to a shipyard on Arda. Unless it was all migrated away…” Or destroyed.

“Nautilos, if there are no beings that you would call owners currently located, what would happen to you?” She had a feeling that someone could use a ship like this, or the Levant Sanctum could try to replicate what they had here… “And were you used during your time with the… cultists?”

It was the only word she had.

I CAN ACCEPT OTHER COMMAND. AS FOR UNDER THE CULTISTS. UNCERTAIN.

That was going to be a bit bothersome. She looked to Cato. “Maybe we found a new pet ship, could bring it to Arda, see if anyone local would use it, or…” She shrugged.

“Are there any other items aboard this ship?”

I CAN OPEN THE ARMORY, IT IS SPARSE. CONFIRM?

“Confirm.”

At that, a wall panel slid open and there were several small arms, and martial weapons, all made from a gold stone like material, and all brimming with the same indigo-blue stones. Even Brooke’s eyes went wide at this.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

Cato watched the bulkhead panelling slide back and out of sight on unseen rails, the panel metals rippling like gel. That they whispered into discrete recesses without even a sigh of electro-servo motors was briefly disquieting. Something inherent to the Nautilos' design played with established laws of atomic and molecular physics, slipping or circumventing said laws to accommodate functions, features, and spaces that would otherwise be challenged by the vessel's interior dimensions. Cato had to wonder if there wasn't an additional space of dimension at play, something invisible but present that their crude senses couldn't properly detect or interact with.

The weaponry stowed behind the panel-doors on their individual storage racks were sublime. He'd never seen their like, though they were reminiscent of some the rare Vong thud-bug tube-'guns' he'd encountered in open-air melees and a chance back-alley duel that sported an even rarer Sekotan bi-form dagger. Cato plucked an object off of the rack; it resembled an oblong swirl of gold and iridescent alloys fitted with cerulean stones and topaz gems. He touched what he thought was a control stud. With a wet jug!, the oblong of metal split and serrated into a leanly truncated carbine, replete with subtle holographic aiming sights offset with an accompanying ammunition counter. Its weight was stolid, comfortable, maybe three pounds at most and did nothing to hamper its handling. Depressing the same unlocking stud folded the rifle back into into a smoothed lump.

"Remarkable," Cato murmured, replacing the weapon and selecting another. This time, a telescoping polearm with an ejecting halberd-like blade of coruscating blue energies. "I've seen folding firearms before but they always looked like they were trading off real function in order to be discrete, concealable. No mercs I've ever met enjoyed them. These... These might be the real deal.

"But they couldn't have been easy to produce in the first place. I wonder if they can even be replicated, even in our day and age," He said, again replacing the polearm back into the storage cage and pulling away what appeared to be a simple if ornate set of rose-gold knuckledusters. Flexing his fingers into the gripping rings, Cato almost started when a trio of half-meter long claws of liquescent metal ejected from a plate laid across the back of his hand. "Spast... Maybe that's a good thing. Hate to run into a punk with a folding handcannon."

Another flex and the long claw-blades disengaged, funnelling back into a storage trap hidden within the knuckle-duster's armouring. Cato looked over at Brooke, who seemed equally agog at the armament rack. "So now, Brooke... What do we do with all this? What do we do with this ship?"

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

Brooke wasn’t the weapons expert that so many in this galaxy were, but she knew a few things. She’d even helped test and design certain types of weapons. Mostly for undersea hunting, and consequently combat. Part of it was more her skill, taking something, imbuing it with a power for the water, and sending that to other Witches, and sometimes, other Force users, not so much the Jedi. They favored their lightsabers, but she did imbue a knife that could open most locked doors. But she still had to admire what she’d seen.

It’d taken the energy weapons she’d seen on Dathomir and ramped it up, maybe even inspired those. Ancient but still clean. She’d seen the likes of it, in the way that one Coreworld Pop Star could inspire others. “Ship…Sorry, Nautilos, what are these?” Her eyes had found two that sparked her interest, but the first one she picked up was what appeared to be a gold-with-sapphire inlay hilt, almost of a lightsaber, but as she moved it from the rack, it called to her, and a tighten of her grip made it telescope out. Not too organically, but not too technologically, a mixture of both.

UNSURE. DATABASE IS OUTDATED.

“You’ve seen things like these?” Brooke looked to Cato. She’d seen the bow, it seemed like a more solid energy bow than the ones that the Dathomiri used. Maybe it would be coming home with her, should the ship allow. As she looked to Cato, she was thinking the same thing.

“I mean, I’d hate for this to get out to the galaxy. We’re heading into Levant Space. It’d maybe be safe there, but I don’t really want anyone who may be looking for a quick credit to sell Nautilos… or the weapons.” Imagine if this was in anyone else’s hands? Levant space was fairly free, and happy, but it wasn’t a utopia.

Cato Fett

 

[Cato Fett]

Cato caught himself staring off at some middle-distance beyond and behind the weapon's rack. His hands played idly with another telescoping rod, apparently a vicious but sublimely balanced truncheon fitted with sweeping guard-prongs that could snatch and break a vibrosword out of an enemy combatant's grip with a flick of his wrist. Like it's brethren still seated in their wall-mounts, it was gorgeously machined, malicious but très sophistiqué. The detailing mattered little in the moment. Brooke's sentiments towards the possible exploitation of the Nautilos' wondrous technologies had steered his thoughts down dim and sombre tracks.

"Could you imagine if an outfit like Seinar or Kuat Engineering got their hands on something like this? Hell, if Blastech was given the chance?" Cato murmured. "Even if they didn't rip this ship apart to get at its innards, it'd get stowed away in a vault somewhere and never see the light of day again."

And if an enterprising warband got a hold of it? Or a nimble thief with an even nimbler mind and no requisite conscience? The Nautilos was no world-killer but the potential of re-engineering its inherent molecular and atomic properties, how it seemed to slip through physical laws with little impediment, had staggering possibilities. Possibilities the great galactic powers, from the Alliance, to the Sith, to the foetid and bastardized 'Crusaders', would jocky hard to capitalize on. The gross excesses of the old Paplatine regimes centuries past brought to light the chilling idea of something like a Death Star, only fitted now with mercurial and almost antediluvian technologies that could shrink it's glaring bulk down to something as manageable as a ship-of-the-line Star Destroyer, with no loss of firepower.

Cato forced a wad of spit back to take some of the icy dryness out of his throat. He rubbed at the sealant rim fixing his visor-plate in place with his helmet, like a man trying to massage an ache out of his brows. What to do, he thought? Where to go?

"...Arda," He said suddenly, straightening up. Cato turned and peered back at Brooke. "Arda, we take this ship to Arda. If rumours are correct, there's a witch coven of water sorceresses like yourself establishing itself there. This ship, this Nautilos, responds well to witches then it does to blunts like me, or perhaps even Jedi. Maybe they can help conceal it. There's endless oceans there, perhaps even deeper than Mezokara's. Certainly they're unmapped. And even more certainly, no pays Arda any heed nowadays. That could work. That we could do."

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

A new ship being brought to Arda would be nice. She loved her solar sailor, it reminded her of being back on the seas of Pamarthe, or even Arda, but this ship? It would be a whole different approach. What she didn’t want was to claim it without giving the actual offer to Cato. He did just as much work, even if he was more the type to be focusing on the weapons, and probably something that was more of a gunboat that Nautilos. This was more a yacht, she felt. An armed one, and an intelligent one, but a yacht the same.

“Having those two names attached to this ship? Hells, I’d probably not even let Starchaser get his hand on these.” Starchaser Enterprises, like Silk Industries, were two big builders of ships, especially in the Outer Rim, and as much as she was employed with the former, giving them access to whatever else was under this ship’s hood? “It gives greater chance for the Forerunners to grab it, or any pirates.” Not something she’d want to deal with fighting against.

“Arda it is. And that coven? Yeah, thats… my fault.” Looking down at her feet, she raised her hand. “Left Dathomir, been searching for a home among the stars. Actually that was why I was on Mezokara in the first place… The seas, and that voice. I may have to put out an update to some maps that maybe… just don’t go.” She licked her lips as she nodded. “Though, salvage, you have an equal claim…” He seemed like a good Mando. But she did shudder at the concept of an ancient Ardaian gunboat.

Cato Fett