Post by Marshall on Apr 17, 2019 10:00:13 GMT -5
MANDALORE - Tal-Kebii'tra
Tal-Kebii'tra meant Blood Sky in Mando'a. It appeared to be named for the red dust dense in the air and the fact that Tal-Keb was a shelter high above the desert floor in a huge spire that looked like the arm of a splash of liquid frozen in place. There were many such formations, and while it was impossible to see far into the distance, the Mandals who had tried exploring the formations could tell anyone who asked they were trying to survive at the edge of stone and metal that had been molten and sprayed up and outward in a super-heated flash but suddenly chilled to a halt in place.
Tal-Kebii'tra could just as accurately have been named Dirty Tower, or Camp Ugly, or Lung Disease Central, or the One-Star Hotel.
While larger than Tal Ruus, the sheltered side of the wave, where the other survivors actually were, was not much larger, and housed more than twice as many warriors, three thoroughly bound wakeks who were far from being docile, and now also four Hapans.
Only after climbing up the treacherous rise from the desert would the travelers stand a chance of seeing the region's newest tourist attraction:
On the crater-side of the frozen, sky-high wave was a thread that reached toward the unseen stars. It waved slowly in the filthy, red-tinged air, but along certain lengths with a stilted, pained jerkiness. Up close, the thread would prove to be a meter thick and made of incredibly strong and resilient material. Somehow, that incredibly strong and resilient material had nearly been severed, and it hitched up on the other impossible-to-ignore formations above: floating rocks. But mountain-sized, blotting out the yellow sky in clusters, leaving the world below in a shadow of ill-colored twilight not much better than the purer Red through which those from Keldabe had traveled.
The thread was still connected to a stocky dropship via a crumpled and bent guide-arm, and the stocky dropship was made stockier by the fact that it appeared to be missing an aft section of unknown size.
Breis slid from the back of one of Dr Azair's friendly (-er) wakeks when they got close enough for the thread to be seen black against red and purple thunderheads and walked a few yards out, head tipped back, craning to see as far as the Red allowed, to where the floating formations hid the cable from view. He cursed finally and said to no one in particular: "Don't suppose we can climb out...." Which wasn't a question, even if he hoped someone would say yes.
As it happened, the dropship rested above Tal-Kebii'tra itself, no more than thirty or forty feet above the shelter, and a short distance off-center from it. The story the messenger to Tal Ruus told was that it was the ringing thunder of the crash through the rocky substance that had first alerted the survivors that they had company.
At some point during the ride to Tal-Kebii'tra, Solomon had been given cause to bind his right arm close to his form using the same rough fashioned sling he had used during their trip from Keldabe. The night before had passed slowly, and yet all too quickly all the same. The heaviness that took his arm seemed to settle and spread causing Sol to eventually give up what he was clinging to of wakefulness, and give in to the exhaustion that he had been fighting. There wasn't much to see out there in The Red anyway. It was all haze and dim lighting. He didn't wake until the caravan stopped, his head rolling back against the seat he occupied within the speeder. Opening his eyes brought him an interesting view. The cable, and where it led, disappearing and reappearing with the shifting density of the red haze, and the rock formations above them. He was soon to follow others, climbing his way out of the speeder to get a better look. Thirty to forty feet, it looked like. The estimation came with Sol tipping his protected head back to look up that far. "We might be able to," he answered Breis, "At least, perhaps, one or two of us."
Jeryndi hopped out of the speeder when Solomon did... Piloting had been left to him. Medren was right behind... He walked up to join Solomon and Breis. "This...". He made a face behind the grimy, red dust coated helmet. He was silent for a few seconds. "Camp first. Let's talk to the Hapans."
The Hapans wouldn't be far inside.. and for that matter, barely inside the entrance at all. The team was ready to get moving at first light --though 'light' was relative in this case-- but lacked the mounts to make the trip down and back in the quick time frame they hoped for. Thus they waited for the other team to arrive. Their armor would be known to any who had worked with the Hapan Navy in any capacity: feminine, black, mixed with purples... gold emblems featuring the royal crown, NavSec, and a separate SpecOps division. A captain, a tech, and two gunners comprised the team; armed a ready for travel. The two gunners wore slug-thrower rifles across their back, the tech a hand cannon model, and the captain wore both a pistol and a lightsaber hilt on her belt. At that moment, the four were huddled together, with the captain and tech in deep conversation, and the two gunners silently standing by.
The Hapans. Sol's head came down, turning toward the group. He watched them for a moment, gave a glance toward his cousin and started their way. He knew the armor, and the bands that dictated rank and position. "Captain," he called out, wary of the lightsaber that was visibly seen but unable to shake the sense of something familiar. It was faint, like just something about the way the armored woman stood, but it was there, "Sorry to interrupt." Solomon Tekal's right arm still hung in its sling, and it was too late to take it off and approach with the hopes of hiding the infirmary so he reached up and adjusted the way the sling sat to make things more comfortable across his shoulders. His face was barely visible behind the red tinged faceplate of the suit he wore, but his voice, aside from some small augmentation from the suit's filter, would be clear.
Detaching from the scouts who had led them in was a scrap-swathed figure like so many others. That one came down, and from behind Jeryndi, Medren, and Solomon, Breis hailed, "Dorara!"
The figure raised a hand, slipping ahead to greet him. "Glad you made it!" called a husky but feminine voice. They clasped each other's upper arms and dipped in for not-quite-contact of one cheek. "We saw you have six extras... Are any of them...?"
Breis shook his head, and that was apparently enough.
Filter or no filter, that voice was all too familiar. The Captain's body tensed ever so slightly, but relaxed just as fast, shifting her attention around to face the newcomer. Her own face was mostly hidden away within the tinted visor, though her voice, partially mechanized by her own built in comm unit, would help place her for the man. "Solomon Tekal," Liv began, "I'm glad to see you made it safely." Her eyes briefly went to his slung arm, raising an unseen eyebrow within the suit, the word 'safely' losing a bit of its luster. She paused there to glance over at the reunion of Dorara and Breis, observing the exchange for a moment.
All around them, as other survivors emerged from the shelter at Tal-Keb, there were other greetings like the one between Breis Teimar and Dorara. Some were clearly between old friends or acquaintances, teasing and pain shared, but even strangers were being approached. In this, the mood seemed to be that all newcomers, even wholly new faces, belonged to comrades in arms for now. Inter-clan animosities had been obliterated for these Mando'ade the moment the light had gone out over Um-Shara Yaim.
Hovering behind Liv a good distance, Catia stood awkwardly, not sure what to do when she didn't have a job. Or rather: not sure what to do when she had a thousand jobs, but had proceeded as far as she could alone on all of them.
"Tino." He smiled lopsidedly within his hood and moved closer to the group of Hapans as Mandals began making their way out to greet the group Sol had come in with, "Safe enough at any rate. We heard you're having some technical difficulties with your ship?"
Jeryndi had stayed silent for their approach... As had Medren. But he recognized Liv. He'd saved her and two others in Keldabe. To her, he'd said simply, "Glad to see you're okay.". He was taking stock of what was in the camp... And the only weapon he had was not visible from the front. He had a holster, but there was not a blaster there. His son, however, did have a holster and a blaster, too. Jeryndi had refocused on the cable, eyes following it up into the sky.
"I'm going by Black again, officially," Liv commented at Sol's use of her name, though it was intended lighthearted. A nod was given to Jeryndi before Sol's mention of the ship took her attention back. "Less technical and more physical... she took a beating coming down. We lost the land-crawler and took a lot of damage to the outside. Catia here," she paused indicating the Tech standing nearby, "can provide better details." She followed Jer's gaze and nodded. "The cable took a hard hit too. Nearly severed."
As with most of those here, Catia's suit made her appear heftier than she probably was, but hers was no mere envirosuit. Like Liv and the grunts who accompanied them, the young tech wore military-issue, spit-in-the-face-of-the-unknown rugged body armor arranged in the configuration of a suit fit to protect her against the elements. Since all of the elements at Um-Shara had been unknown (or at least uncertain), it seemed to be working for her.
Catia, here, can provide better details.
"Yeah," she breathed through the suit's comms that flattened and lent a metallic quality to her voice, "In technical terms, we picked a fight with a planet and lost." Inside her helmet, she cocked her head. "In our defense, it didn't play fair."
Ava had lingered back during the initial arrival. She was taking it all in, still finding new ways of being surprised at the damage the Red had caused. Unlike Solomon and the others, Ava arrived riding on the back of one of the friendly (ish) wakeks – though not the same one Breis rode.
She dismounted off the crocodilian-like creature gingerly - not wanting to cause any harm. Beneath her gloved hands she could feel the hard scales rub against the protective material. There was a gentle pat of appreciation for the ride the creature had given just before heading towards the group. She arrived just as Catia begun providing details of what happened. One by one she looked at the Hapans until…
“Liv?” Ava blinked as if she believed the Red was playing some trick of the eye.
Within a foot of Liv, Solomon stopped and offered his left hand to the Hapan pirate. He listened, and shifted his attention to Catia, "I'm no stranger to ships, but I'm more of an innards than a mechanic. If you wouldn't mind the help -- my help --" he looked toward Liv with that, including her in that offer. Why? Because of history.
Not in on that history, and not actually looking at Solomon right then, but at Ava who also seemed to recognize the Captain, Catia could be heard to say, "Hey, I'd even accept a drunk ewok's help right now, so welcome aboard!"
Ava’s head shook as if to recover from her shock. There’d be time to talk to Liv Tino later. For now, she moved on with the conversation.
With Solomon offering to look at the ship, Ava asked. “What can we do to help?”
Word had reached back into the recesses of Tal-Keb that a second unexpected group had arrived: jetii. That was how it was relayed, at any rate.
Hapans. Jetii. Enemies of the Mando'ade, new and old, had come to ground zero.
"Introductions first," said Breis, and he proceeded to make them. He did not only introduce the principal warriors, like the zabrak Dorara who commanded Tal-Kebii'tra in his absence, but he pointed to each and every person who showed their face and spoke their name for all to hear. If he did not know the name, he pointed anyway and asked. When the person he addressed answered him, he announced their name as if there had never been a pause until every one had been spoken. Dorara. Ava. Medren. Jeryndi. Solomon. Renda. Y'gell. Tavv'ari. Narion. Ra'aqi. Jujanaj. Ijano. Seri'lan. Mai. Kifta. Liv. Catia. Nora. Grunt2... ("You must have a name." "..." "Your name." "... Buttercup.") Buttercup. And so on, until he ended with his own name.
"Any and all help will be appreciated," Liv echoed Catia's sentiment, just with a little extra diplomacy sprinkled on top. A smile and a nod was sent Ava's way, but before she could acknowledge the woman, a round of introductions was carried out, leading to a pause that the Captain took control of. "Getting our ship repaired is important, but securing that cable is even more so. While a second craft will be sent in..." She paused there, starting to calculate the right amount of time but giving up nearly as quickly, "...half a day's time, the likelihood of it being able to navigate here is wholly dependent on that cable not snapping through completely. That cable is connected to a Golan defense platform in a perfectly synchronized low orbit with the planet, and that is how they can find us again. Or, even if we get our ship repaired, if that cable breaks we won't be able to easily send help back down."
The introductions were.... difficult. But not anymore so than the hard time he had had in presenting himself to Breis Teimar, Jujanaj Azair, and Renda at Tal Ruus. But after that, he was quick to settle back into a comfort zone of sorts: work. What needed to be done, and how to go about it. "Has anyone been up to inspect the damage since you found yourselves here?"
"Nothing up close," Liv replied. "It may make sense to break off a second team to examine the cable closely while the first goes salvaging." The Captain paused there for a reaction, looking to the Mandals to see any objection. She didn't know how dangerous that might be... though four scouts had found her team; she waged it could be doable.
Without being bundled up, Breis Teimar stood a couple of inches over six feet tall. He wasn't just tall, but thick with muscle, and his protective wrappings served to emphasize how much space he took up. "We have enough for that. Our wakeks might be able to help at either task. --But how do you know each other? Don't tell me you're dar'jetii, too."
"We worked together during the Little War, Captain Black, Ava and I." He answered, turning his head to see Breis.
Starting a reply, Liv paused as Solomon answered, and instead let his stand while giving a nod of her own. 'Little War', the name always felt wrong to her... but outside looking in, it made sense. It was over rather quickly, as far as Galactic-wide conflicts went.
Breis had been kidding, of course! What were the chances?
Faintly, Catia could be heard to mutter,
"YoumeantheWarofJustRetributioninwhichthousandsandthousandsofmysisterssufferedvaliantlyunderayokeoftyrannyonlytotriumphandbecomethemostpowerfulSysteminthegalaxy?Thatwar?Thoughtasmuch...." She looked up, though, cleared her throat, and said: "I have some ideas about the cable, Cap! Need some climbers who have better night-sight than me."
Which meant the grunts were out, too. Poor night vision was not rare among Hapans.
The term 'Little War' was something he had picked up somewhere between here and there, heard most likely among the pilots of The Remnant near the end of the struggle. It had never felt "little" at all to Solomon, the fight having taken years off his life and then some. The faint muttering from Catia passed as just a mumble, the words jumbled too close together for him to make out what she's actually said given the distance at which he'd been standing. It was more of he thought he had heard her say something, but wasn't sure. But, then she actually -was- saying something, "I -might- be able to get up there if I'm given a few hours to rest." He offered openly, shifting the weight of his right arm as it hung in the sling just slightly.
Breis was not the only one to glance pointedly toward Solomon's sling. He didn't say anything on that note because there were many ways to hoist a man up to such places with the right gear, because they had sticky-footed wakeks, and because there were plenty of alternate volunteers. To Liv directly, he said: "If you can bring us up to speed quickly about everything we need to know since after this started, do it, because we've been in the dark."
The man assumed that in the interim between their crashdown and this moment, the Hapans had told Dorara and the others at Tal-Keb what news they had. But he wanted to hear it all for himself, and he wanted it firsthand from the head of the Hapan mission.
Likewise, it seemed he didn't have to shout, so that suggested Liv and her party had at some point each taken a pod.
"Might be best to save you for the ground mission, Sol," Liv advised the Tekal, also eyeing his bum arm. She had caught the mumble from Catia and knew the sentiment well... but stayed silent on that matter, keeping focus on the tasks at hand. She started to weigh in more, but Breis' request took precedent and she launched into the tale. Prince Nikolaus led the Hapan efforts immediately after the evacuation had finished, with the 'NotRed' area being discovered at the edge of Kel'dabe... a perfect circular area where the Red simply 'stopped.' He took a team of the best (a nod to Catia) and began experimenting with conditions instead the Cloak, finding the power drain calculation, and other scientific studies. One in particular, which was still being analyzed, was a bizarre reaction when the Hapan capital ship scanned the Witchdoctor: the Red scattered and dispersed in varying degrees and time frames, revealing brief glimpses into the landscape along with odd spiraling towers, much like the one they were now on.
From there, Liv explained the cable: A massive space harpoon had been designed by Niko and his team to launch down from the low orbit Golan station and attach to the planet below, giving a direct line to a known location (approximate as it was, their data wasn't perfect due to the complete lack of visibility of the planet below) and the Dropship designed to follow it down to guarantee the correct landing location. The cable itself was borrowed from a former Buffton mining operation of an asteroid belt that had an unpredictable orbit and gas clouds limiting visibility.
Jeryndi had taken it all in... All the names. Matching faces to names. When he'd been introduced, he'd given a small wave. Medren hadn't... While Olivia had explained everything, he'd listened. His eyes stayed focused on what he could see of the cable. Hands at his side.
Shut down, he took to listening. Those scientific studies were of interest, a lot of it. He'd ask for details on them, including the very big question of "Do they know what it is, yet?"
"Everything leans towards an attack. None of the science adds up to any type of known natural phenomenon, and it defies laws of physics at every turn. Hapan Military decided that all assumptions should be that it was an attack, until it can be proven something else," Liv answered. "And that was our primary mission; find proof of an attack and/or weapon."
Dorara hmphed quietly, and said, "We've got a great big hole just over there you can view whenever you want--but you'll be looking into the same fog you see everywhere else. It's big. It's where the enemy comes from. And it wasn't there before."
Sol looked Dorara's way and then back to Liv, "The proof is rather physical," He said, waving a hand toward the structure the Tal-Kebii'tra Mandals had come out of, "And -really- alive. There are beings -- large and very hostile creatures -- who have come to visit. We have one from the Tal Ruus camp in the speeder. He's asleep. He's what has become called "A Dreamer" -- people who fall into a sleep and won’t wake up."
Listening to Dorara and then Sol, Liv nodded. "Yes, I remember seeing the bodies. The question becomes if they're they're the attackers, or more a byproduct of the attack," she said to the Tekal before focusing on the Mandal leader. "Once we get word back to Command, I'm sure we'll have teams deployed down to that hole to clear out the invaders and learn what's in there. I take it no one's been able to venture in?"
"All I can say toward that, Captain," Sol said in response to the question of whether they were attackers or a byproduct of the attack, "Is that they came prepared for the red haze. They're the origin of the substance that's allowing us to speak like this and not feel so many of the other affects of the red stuff around us." To the rest, Sol had to look toward Breis and the other Mandals. He had no experience with the pit.
"He means the pods," Dorara guessed.
Breis said, "All you need to venture in is gravity, even if you don't have legs. While I was here, we had some skirmishes down the side. We've gotten most of our water from ships we can reach in the graveyard, but we figured... the enemy and their wakeks have to be getting theirs from somewhere. They're humanoid enough to need it, from what we could make of their guts. But those we sent in haven't come back yet." For that, he looked to Dorara, who had stayed at Tal-Keb for the duration of its existence; she nodded.
But she said, "I gotta talk to you about our dreamers, Breis."
Jeryndi had been silent during the exchanges. Through the explanations. Through the questions... He'd listened. He had been watching the wakeks, frowning thoughtfully... "I didn't try to wake them up. I was too tired... but I can try again after I tame those," he said, nodding in the direction of the tethered wakeks.
He'd had a pretty good success with the wakeks named Apur and Edur... They had been calmer and with considerable docility.
Dorara's voice caught in his ears, forcing him to turn his head away from Liv. He looked toward the female Mandal, his brow knitting with concern behind the red tinged face plate of his hood. That didn't sound good.
Given how many pressing topics there were right at that exact moment, Breis cocked his head very subtly at the zabrak as if to ask Is it a secret?
With that cue, as it apparently was not, Dorara lowered her voice and said, "Ours are gone. Vanished. We thought they were taken somehow, but we couldn't spot a sign. No one missed their watch."
"Gone?" Liv couldn't help but echo in surprise.
Jeryndi focused on Dorara. Finally attention somewhere else. Both he and his son had focused on the zabrak as soon as she'd spoken. "How many?" he asked.
"Six," Dorara reported.
"The same six?" Breis asked.
A nod.
Renda was behind them, leaning on Ijano for support, and he asked, "Lim?" but got several simultaneous Nos from those around him who knew. No six-year-olds.
"I'd like for this to get less weird, not more," Catia muttered in her own background pocket.
"Did any of them show any sign of changing symptoms prior to the disappearance?" Solomon asked, feeling a bit relieved by knowing that Lim was not among them.
"No," was the immediate answer out of Dorara's mouth, but then she craned her neck and sought among the faces of those bunched up behind the Hapans. "Grot?"
Grot--apparently a big Mandal who had lucked out and gotten a helmet from somewhere and wrapped it and other bits and pieces into a formidible looking bundle of scraps--shook his head. "Not that I saw." (This he said in Mando'a, which made Breis intervene to outline the cue that the other Mandals had already taken from him: right now, in the presence of outsiders, they used Basic.)
"Why--have you seen this before?" Dorara cut back in, focused on Solomon.
Jujanaj Azair stood behind Jeryndi; he had not missed the topic of the wakeks, but waited to address it.
"No," Jeryndi said. "You said nobody saw anything? Was there, someone on watch over them?" he asked. If there wasn't, there’d be no symptoms to be seen."
The confirmation came from Dorara and Grot, Sol's attention shifting from the big scrap-wrapped Mandal back to Dorara, "No, I haven't." He answered, the Zabrak, giving Jeryndi's 'no' an underscore from his own mouth, and there he went quiet because Jeryndi had asked the questions he was going to ask next.
"I was," Grot told them. "But I wasn't staring at them." He made a curt, defensive cut with one hand toward the crater. "I was on watch for the enemy." To protect them.
Looking toward Grot, and then toward Dorara and finally Breis, Sol asked "Would you allow us to see where they were?"
Dorara shrugged, but she looked to Breis. There was no question who she and the other Mando'ade considered to be in charge here. Breis said, "Nothing's off-limits around here except rooting through the supplies."
He gave a small nod to that, "I'm thinking perhaps we can sense something that's been missed otherwise, some trace in The Force or something." He offered that as both an explanation to Breis and the Mandals, and the Hapans, and as a suggestion to his Force Using counterparts.
"We can try," Jeryndi said firmly. "Especially if we work together." He looked to Breis and hiked a thumb towards the wakeks. "Do you want me to...?" tame them? Was left unasked.
A clear line resolved, separating the Mando'ade from Tal Ruus from those camped at Tal-Kebii'tra: their expressions at the sound of both proposals. Those from Tal Ruus had in no time pragmatically accepted the nature of those among them. To the others, Breis explained the truth by shaving it down to a version of itself that could be encompassed by a single word: "Jetii."
That was all he had time for right then, even though he heard Tavv'ari say, "They're okay."
Ignoring that, he was already telling Jeryndi: "As quickly and as many as you can." A quick check with Dorara that the number here was still three, and he confirmed her nod to Jeryndi with, "Three."
And since his expression had grown five shades more tired at the idea that their sleepers were somehow gone, Solomon got a sigh with his nod. "Do it. Our priorities remain: defense, water, pods, food. Until someone tells me they know that dropship -can- be fixed, or for certain that further recon attempts -will- reach and can get us out of here."
Breis' earlier joke about dar'jetii made more sense to the camp inhabitants now. Dorara, known to have clawed for the eyes of the Prince of Hapes, and then for bite-and-bar with him, studied the newcomers afresh.
Solomon gave Breis a stiff nod. Of those priorities, the pods had only recently been added to Sol's list. The other three had been there on his mind since they'd touched down, and even before that. Now, the idea of them was expanding, the need to figure them out so much bigger now. "Alright." He told Breis, looking toward Ava. If Jeryndi was going to quickly take care of the wakeks -- "Are you okay to help with this?" He asked the only truly ranked Jedi there, not wanting to speak for the soft spoken woman among them.
It had been a relief. Being able to 'tame' the wakeks had been a relief... He could do it. It didn't take much energy or strength... Being able to manipulate emotions when you were an empath was remarkably easy. But it was not something he used on people. To him, it felt dishonest. He'd used it in crowds of panic when calm was needed. Or with people too upset for their own good when it was hurting them to feel it so much... There were benefits to it. But there were more drawbacks than benefits... He knew, he remembered, using it for selfish means at very low points in his life. And he refused to be that person that he knew he had the potential to be... It was easy to manipulate emotions without empathy and the Force. Body language, lies, being able to warp words... Hell, even honesty itself could be manipulative... It was all a matter of perspective and personal integrity. But it wasn't so bad, wasn't so manipulative, when it was a creature. Especially when those creatures were of a volatile nature to begin with. Especially when those creatures were the only reliable means of transport. He didn't trust it to last for long, so he intended to keep an eye on the wakeks to make sure they stayed docile. To Breis, he nodded and gestured for Dr. Azair to come with him... "Shall we?". If for whatever reason that he lost control and didn't get it to work, Dr Azair could control them. Although only to a certain degree.
Though silent, Azair nodded and navigated through a press of survivors to follow. What had worked before seemed likely to work again: he'd steady one individual wakek and keep it calm while Jeryndi used his skills to impress longer-lasting influence upon the creature. The test would come when the doctor unwrapped the beast and they loosened its bonds in careful stages. Like Jeryndi, Azair found this practice to be much easier with beasts. But Azair also found the procedure of interfacing with the animals repugnant, and he was more than happy to share the burden of it with someone else, especially when it might change where they could all go and how freely.
Tal-Kebii'tra meant Blood Sky in Mando'a. It appeared to be named for the red dust dense in the air and the fact that Tal-Keb was a shelter high above the desert floor in a huge spire that looked like the arm of a splash of liquid frozen in place. There were many such formations, and while it was impossible to see far into the distance, the Mandals who had tried exploring the formations could tell anyone who asked they were trying to survive at the edge of stone and metal that had been molten and sprayed up and outward in a super-heated flash but suddenly chilled to a halt in place.
Tal-Kebii'tra could just as accurately have been named Dirty Tower, or Camp Ugly, or Lung Disease Central, or the One-Star Hotel.
While larger than Tal Ruus, the sheltered side of the wave, where the other survivors actually were, was not much larger, and housed more than twice as many warriors, three thoroughly bound wakeks who were far from being docile, and now also four Hapans.
Only after climbing up the treacherous rise from the desert would the travelers stand a chance of seeing the region's newest tourist attraction:
On the crater-side of the frozen, sky-high wave was a thread that reached toward the unseen stars. It waved slowly in the filthy, red-tinged air, but along certain lengths with a stilted, pained jerkiness. Up close, the thread would prove to be a meter thick and made of incredibly strong and resilient material. Somehow, that incredibly strong and resilient material had nearly been severed, and it hitched up on the other impossible-to-ignore formations above: floating rocks. But mountain-sized, blotting out the yellow sky in clusters, leaving the world below in a shadow of ill-colored twilight not much better than the purer Red through which those from Keldabe had traveled.
The thread was still connected to a stocky dropship via a crumpled and bent guide-arm, and the stocky dropship was made stockier by the fact that it appeared to be missing an aft section of unknown size.
Breis slid from the back of one of Dr Azair's friendly (-er) wakeks when they got close enough for the thread to be seen black against red and purple thunderheads and walked a few yards out, head tipped back, craning to see as far as the Red allowed, to where the floating formations hid the cable from view. He cursed finally and said to no one in particular: "Don't suppose we can climb out...." Which wasn't a question, even if he hoped someone would say yes.
As it happened, the dropship rested above Tal-Kebii'tra itself, no more than thirty or forty feet above the shelter, and a short distance off-center from it. The story the messenger to Tal Ruus told was that it was the ringing thunder of the crash through the rocky substance that had first alerted the survivors that they had company.
At some point during the ride to Tal-Kebii'tra, Solomon had been given cause to bind his right arm close to his form using the same rough fashioned sling he had used during their trip from Keldabe. The night before had passed slowly, and yet all too quickly all the same. The heaviness that took his arm seemed to settle and spread causing Sol to eventually give up what he was clinging to of wakefulness, and give in to the exhaustion that he had been fighting. There wasn't much to see out there in The Red anyway. It was all haze and dim lighting. He didn't wake until the caravan stopped, his head rolling back against the seat he occupied within the speeder. Opening his eyes brought him an interesting view. The cable, and where it led, disappearing and reappearing with the shifting density of the red haze, and the rock formations above them. He was soon to follow others, climbing his way out of the speeder to get a better look. Thirty to forty feet, it looked like. The estimation came with Sol tipping his protected head back to look up that far. "We might be able to," he answered Breis, "At least, perhaps, one or two of us."
Jeryndi hopped out of the speeder when Solomon did... Piloting had been left to him. Medren was right behind... He walked up to join Solomon and Breis. "This...". He made a face behind the grimy, red dust coated helmet. He was silent for a few seconds. "Camp first. Let's talk to the Hapans."
The Hapans wouldn't be far inside.. and for that matter, barely inside the entrance at all. The team was ready to get moving at first light --though 'light' was relative in this case-- but lacked the mounts to make the trip down and back in the quick time frame they hoped for. Thus they waited for the other team to arrive. Their armor would be known to any who had worked with the Hapan Navy in any capacity: feminine, black, mixed with purples... gold emblems featuring the royal crown, NavSec, and a separate SpecOps division. A captain, a tech, and two gunners comprised the team; armed a ready for travel. The two gunners wore slug-thrower rifles across their back, the tech a hand cannon model, and the captain wore both a pistol and a lightsaber hilt on her belt. At that moment, the four were huddled together, with the captain and tech in deep conversation, and the two gunners silently standing by.
The Hapans. Sol's head came down, turning toward the group. He watched them for a moment, gave a glance toward his cousin and started their way. He knew the armor, and the bands that dictated rank and position. "Captain," he called out, wary of the lightsaber that was visibly seen but unable to shake the sense of something familiar. It was faint, like just something about the way the armored woman stood, but it was there, "Sorry to interrupt." Solomon Tekal's right arm still hung in its sling, and it was too late to take it off and approach with the hopes of hiding the infirmary so he reached up and adjusted the way the sling sat to make things more comfortable across his shoulders. His face was barely visible behind the red tinged faceplate of the suit he wore, but his voice, aside from some small augmentation from the suit's filter, would be clear.
Detaching from the scouts who had led them in was a scrap-swathed figure like so many others. That one came down, and from behind Jeryndi, Medren, and Solomon, Breis hailed, "Dorara!"
The figure raised a hand, slipping ahead to greet him. "Glad you made it!" called a husky but feminine voice. They clasped each other's upper arms and dipped in for not-quite-contact of one cheek. "We saw you have six extras... Are any of them...?"
Breis shook his head, and that was apparently enough.
Filter or no filter, that voice was all too familiar. The Captain's body tensed ever so slightly, but relaxed just as fast, shifting her attention around to face the newcomer. Her own face was mostly hidden away within the tinted visor, though her voice, partially mechanized by her own built in comm unit, would help place her for the man. "Solomon Tekal," Liv began, "I'm glad to see you made it safely." Her eyes briefly went to his slung arm, raising an unseen eyebrow within the suit, the word 'safely' losing a bit of its luster. She paused there to glance over at the reunion of Dorara and Breis, observing the exchange for a moment.
All around them, as other survivors emerged from the shelter at Tal-Keb, there were other greetings like the one between Breis Teimar and Dorara. Some were clearly between old friends or acquaintances, teasing and pain shared, but even strangers were being approached. In this, the mood seemed to be that all newcomers, even wholly new faces, belonged to comrades in arms for now. Inter-clan animosities had been obliterated for these Mando'ade the moment the light had gone out over Um-Shara Yaim.
Hovering behind Liv a good distance, Catia stood awkwardly, not sure what to do when she didn't have a job. Or rather: not sure what to do when she had a thousand jobs, but had proceeded as far as she could alone on all of them.
"Tino." He smiled lopsidedly within his hood and moved closer to the group of Hapans as Mandals began making their way out to greet the group Sol had come in with, "Safe enough at any rate. We heard you're having some technical difficulties with your ship?"
Jeryndi had stayed silent for their approach... As had Medren. But he recognized Liv. He'd saved her and two others in Keldabe. To her, he'd said simply, "Glad to see you're okay.". He was taking stock of what was in the camp... And the only weapon he had was not visible from the front. He had a holster, but there was not a blaster there. His son, however, did have a holster and a blaster, too. Jeryndi had refocused on the cable, eyes following it up into the sky.
"I'm going by Black again, officially," Liv commented at Sol's use of her name, though it was intended lighthearted. A nod was given to Jeryndi before Sol's mention of the ship took her attention back. "Less technical and more physical... she took a beating coming down. We lost the land-crawler and took a lot of damage to the outside. Catia here," she paused indicating the Tech standing nearby, "can provide better details." She followed Jer's gaze and nodded. "The cable took a hard hit too. Nearly severed."
As with most of those here, Catia's suit made her appear heftier than she probably was, but hers was no mere envirosuit. Like Liv and the grunts who accompanied them, the young tech wore military-issue, spit-in-the-face-of-the-unknown rugged body armor arranged in the configuration of a suit fit to protect her against the elements. Since all of the elements at Um-Shara had been unknown (or at least uncertain), it seemed to be working for her.
Catia, here, can provide better details.
"Yeah," she breathed through the suit's comms that flattened and lent a metallic quality to her voice, "In technical terms, we picked a fight with a planet and lost." Inside her helmet, she cocked her head. "In our defense, it didn't play fair."
Ava had lingered back during the initial arrival. She was taking it all in, still finding new ways of being surprised at the damage the Red had caused. Unlike Solomon and the others, Ava arrived riding on the back of one of the friendly (ish) wakeks – though not the same one Breis rode.
She dismounted off the crocodilian-like creature gingerly - not wanting to cause any harm. Beneath her gloved hands she could feel the hard scales rub against the protective material. There was a gentle pat of appreciation for the ride the creature had given just before heading towards the group. She arrived just as Catia begun providing details of what happened. One by one she looked at the Hapans until…
“Liv?” Ava blinked as if she believed the Red was playing some trick of the eye.
Within a foot of Liv, Solomon stopped and offered his left hand to the Hapan pirate. He listened, and shifted his attention to Catia, "I'm no stranger to ships, but I'm more of an innards than a mechanic. If you wouldn't mind the help -- my help --" he looked toward Liv with that, including her in that offer. Why? Because of history.
Not in on that history, and not actually looking at Solomon right then, but at Ava who also seemed to recognize the Captain, Catia could be heard to say, "Hey, I'd even accept a drunk ewok's help right now, so welcome aboard!"
Ava’s head shook as if to recover from her shock. There’d be time to talk to Liv Tino later. For now, she moved on with the conversation.
With Solomon offering to look at the ship, Ava asked. “What can we do to help?”
Word had reached back into the recesses of Tal-Keb that a second unexpected group had arrived: jetii. That was how it was relayed, at any rate.
Hapans. Jetii. Enemies of the Mando'ade, new and old, had come to ground zero.
"Introductions first," said Breis, and he proceeded to make them. He did not only introduce the principal warriors, like the zabrak Dorara who commanded Tal-Kebii'tra in his absence, but he pointed to each and every person who showed their face and spoke their name for all to hear. If he did not know the name, he pointed anyway and asked. When the person he addressed answered him, he announced their name as if there had never been a pause until every one had been spoken. Dorara. Ava. Medren. Jeryndi. Solomon. Renda. Y'gell. Tavv'ari. Narion. Ra'aqi. Jujanaj. Ijano. Seri'lan. Mai. Kifta. Liv. Catia. Nora. Grunt2... ("You must have a name." "..." "Your name." "... Buttercup.") Buttercup. And so on, until he ended with his own name.
"Any and all help will be appreciated," Liv echoed Catia's sentiment, just with a little extra diplomacy sprinkled on top. A smile and a nod was sent Ava's way, but before she could acknowledge the woman, a round of introductions was carried out, leading to a pause that the Captain took control of. "Getting our ship repaired is important, but securing that cable is even more so. While a second craft will be sent in..." She paused there, starting to calculate the right amount of time but giving up nearly as quickly, "...half a day's time, the likelihood of it being able to navigate here is wholly dependent on that cable not snapping through completely. That cable is connected to a Golan defense platform in a perfectly synchronized low orbit with the planet, and that is how they can find us again. Or, even if we get our ship repaired, if that cable breaks we won't be able to easily send help back down."
The introductions were.... difficult. But not anymore so than the hard time he had had in presenting himself to Breis Teimar, Jujanaj Azair, and Renda at Tal Ruus. But after that, he was quick to settle back into a comfort zone of sorts: work. What needed to be done, and how to go about it. "Has anyone been up to inspect the damage since you found yourselves here?"
"Nothing up close," Liv replied. "It may make sense to break off a second team to examine the cable closely while the first goes salvaging." The Captain paused there for a reaction, looking to the Mandals to see any objection. She didn't know how dangerous that might be... though four scouts had found her team; she waged it could be doable.
Without being bundled up, Breis Teimar stood a couple of inches over six feet tall. He wasn't just tall, but thick with muscle, and his protective wrappings served to emphasize how much space he took up. "We have enough for that. Our wakeks might be able to help at either task. --But how do you know each other? Don't tell me you're dar'jetii, too."
"We worked together during the Little War, Captain Black, Ava and I." He answered, turning his head to see Breis.
Starting a reply, Liv paused as Solomon answered, and instead let his stand while giving a nod of her own. 'Little War', the name always felt wrong to her... but outside looking in, it made sense. It was over rather quickly, as far as Galactic-wide conflicts went.
Breis had been kidding, of course! What were the chances?
Faintly, Catia could be heard to mutter,
"YoumeantheWarofJustRetributioninwhichthousandsandthousandsofmysisterssufferedvaliantlyunderayokeoftyrannyonlytotriumphandbecomethemostpowerfulSysteminthegalaxy?Thatwar?Thoughtasmuch...." She looked up, though, cleared her throat, and said: "I have some ideas about the cable, Cap! Need some climbers who have better night-sight than me."
Which meant the grunts were out, too. Poor night vision was not rare among Hapans.
The term 'Little War' was something he had picked up somewhere between here and there, heard most likely among the pilots of The Remnant near the end of the struggle. It had never felt "little" at all to Solomon, the fight having taken years off his life and then some. The faint muttering from Catia passed as just a mumble, the words jumbled too close together for him to make out what she's actually said given the distance at which he'd been standing. It was more of he thought he had heard her say something, but wasn't sure. But, then she actually -was- saying something, "I -might- be able to get up there if I'm given a few hours to rest." He offered openly, shifting the weight of his right arm as it hung in the sling just slightly.
Breis was not the only one to glance pointedly toward Solomon's sling. He didn't say anything on that note because there were many ways to hoist a man up to such places with the right gear, because they had sticky-footed wakeks, and because there were plenty of alternate volunteers. To Liv directly, he said: "If you can bring us up to speed quickly about everything we need to know since after this started, do it, because we've been in the dark."
The man assumed that in the interim between their crashdown and this moment, the Hapans had told Dorara and the others at Tal-Keb what news they had. But he wanted to hear it all for himself, and he wanted it firsthand from the head of the Hapan mission.
Likewise, it seemed he didn't have to shout, so that suggested Liv and her party had at some point each taken a pod.
"Might be best to save you for the ground mission, Sol," Liv advised the Tekal, also eyeing his bum arm. She had caught the mumble from Catia and knew the sentiment well... but stayed silent on that matter, keeping focus on the tasks at hand. She started to weigh in more, but Breis' request took precedent and she launched into the tale. Prince Nikolaus led the Hapan efforts immediately after the evacuation had finished, with the 'NotRed' area being discovered at the edge of Kel'dabe... a perfect circular area where the Red simply 'stopped.' He took a team of the best (a nod to Catia) and began experimenting with conditions instead the Cloak, finding the power drain calculation, and other scientific studies. One in particular, which was still being analyzed, was a bizarre reaction when the Hapan capital ship scanned the Witchdoctor: the Red scattered and dispersed in varying degrees and time frames, revealing brief glimpses into the landscape along with odd spiraling towers, much like the one they were now on.
From there, Liv explained the cable: A massive space harpoon had been designed by Niko and his team to launch down from the low orbit Golan station and attach to the planet below, giving a direct line to a known location (approximate as it was, their data wasn't perfect due to the complete lack of visibility of the planet below) and the Dropship designed to follow it down to guarantee the correct landing location. The cable itself was borrowed from a former Buffton mining operation of an asteroid belt that had an unpredictable orbit and gas clouds limiting visibility.
Jeryndi had taken it all in... All the names. Matching faces to names. When he'd been introduced, he'd given a small wave. Medren hadn't... While Olivia had explained everything, he'd listened. His eyes stayed focused on what he could see of the cable. Hands at his side.
Shut down, he took to listening. Those scientific studies were of interest, a lot of it. He'd ask for details on them, including the very big question of "Do they know what it is, yet?"
"Everything leans towards an attack. None of the science adds up to any type of known natural phenomenon, and it defies laws of physics at every turn. Hapan Military decided that all assumptions should be that it was an attack, until it can be proven something else," Liv answered. "And that was our primary mission; find proof of an attack and/or weapon."
Dorara hmphed quietly, and said, "We've got a great big hole just over there you can view whenever you want--but you'll be looking into the same fog you see everywhere else. It's big. It's where the enemy comes from. And it wasn't there before."
Sol looked Dorara's way and then back to Liv, "The proof is rather physical," He said, waving a hand toward the structure the Tal-Kebii'tra Mandals had come out of, "And -really- alive. There are beings -- large and very hostile creatures -- who have come to visit. We have one from the Tal Ruus camp in the speeder. He's asleep. He's what has become called "A Dreamer" -- people who fall into a sleep and won’t wake up."
Listening to Dorara and then Sol, Liv nodded. "Yes, I remember seeing the bodies. The question becomes if they're they're the attackers, or more a byproduct of the attack," she said to the Tekal before focusing on the Mandal leader. "Once we get word back to Command, I'm sure we'll have teams deployed down to that hole to clear out the invaders and learn what's in there. I take it no one's been able to venture in?"
"All I can say toward that, Captain," Sol said in response to the question of whether they were attackers or a byproduct of the attack, "Is that they came prepared for the red haze. They're the origin of the substance that's allowing us to speak like this and not feel so many of the other affects of the red stuff around us." To the rest, Sol had to look toward Breis and the other Mandals. He had no experience with the pit.
"He means the pods," Dorara guessed.
Breis said, "All you need to venture in is gravity, even if you don't have legs. While I was here, we had some skirmishes down the side. We've gotten most of our water from ships we can reach in the graveyard, but we figured... the enemy and their wakeks have to be getting theirs from somewhere. They're humanoid enough to need it, from what we could make of their guts. But those we sent in haven't come back yet." For that, he looked to Dorara, who had stayed at Tal-Keb for the duration of its existence; she nodded.
But she said, "I gotta talk to you about our dreamers, Breis."
Jeryndi had been silent during the exchanges. Through the explanations. Through the questions... He'd listened. He had been watching the wakeks, frowning thoughtfully... "I didn't try to wake them up. I was too tired... but I can try again after I tame those," he said, nodding in the direction of the tethered wakeks.
He'd had a pretty good success with the wakeks named Apur and Edur... They had been calmer and with considerable docility.
Dorara's voice caught in his ears, forcing him to turn his head away from Liv. He looked toward the female Mandal, his brow knitting with concern behind the red tinged face plate of his hood. That didn't sound good.
Given how many pressing topics there were right at that exact moment, Breis cocked his head very subtly at the zabrak as if to ask Is it a secret?
With that cue, as it apparently was not, Dorara lowered her voice and said, "Ours are gone. Vanished. We thought they were taken somehow, but we couldn't spot a sign. No one missed their watch."
"Gone?" Liv couldn't help but echo in surprise.
Jeryndi focused on Dorara. Finally attention somewhere else. Both he and his son had focused on the zabrak as soon as she'd spoken. "How many?" he asked.
"Six," Dorara reported.
"The same six?" Breis asked.
A nod.
Renda was behind them, leaning on Ijano for support, and he asked, "Lim?" but got several simultaneous Nos from those around him who knew. No six-year-olds.
"I'd like for this to get less weird, not more," Catia muttered in her own background pocket.
"Did any of them show any sign of changing symptoms prior to the disappearance?" Solomon asked, feeling a bit relieved by knowing that Lim was not among them.
"No," was the immediate answer out of Dorara's mouth, but then she craned her neck and sought among the faces of those bunched up behind the Hapans. "Grot?"
Grot--apparently a big Mandal who had lucked out and gotten a helmet from somewhere and wrapped it and other bits and pieces into a formidible looking bundle of scraps--shook his head. "Not that I saw." (This he said in Mando'a, which made Breis intervene to outline the cue that the other Mandals had already taken from him: right now, in the presence of outsiders, they used Basic.)
"Why--have you seen this before?" Dorara cut back in, focused on Solomon.
Jujanaj Azair stood behind Jeryndi; he had not missed the topic of the wakeks, but waited to address it.
"No," Jeryndi said. "You said nobody saw anything? Was there, someone on watch over them?" he asked. If there wasn't, there’d be no symptoms to be seen."
The confirmation came from Dorara and Grot, Sol's attention shifting from the big scrap-wrapped Mandal back to Dorara, "No, I haven't." He answered, the Zabrak, giving Jeryndi's 'no' an underscore from his own mouth, and there he went quiet because Jeryndi had asked the questions he was going to ask next.
"I was," Grot told them. "But I wasn't staring at them." He made a curt, defensive cut with one hand toward the crater. "I was on watch for the enemy." To protect them.
Looking toward Grot, and then toward Dorara and finally Breis, Sol asked "Would you allow us to see where they were?"
Dorara shrugged, but she looked to Breis. There was no question who she and the other Mando'ade considered to be in charge here. Breis said, "Nothing's off-limits around here except rooting through the supplies."
He gave a small nod to that, "I'm thinking perhaps we can sense something that's been missed otherwise, some trace in The Force or something." He offered that as both an explanation to Breis and the Mandals, and the Hapans, and as a suggestion to his Force Using counterparts.
"We can try," Jeryndi said firmly. "Especially if we work together." He looked to Breis and hiked a thumb towards the wakeks. "Do you want me to...?" tame them? Was left unasked.
A clear line resolved, separating the Mando'ade from Tal Ruus from those camped at Tal-Kebii'tra: their expressions at the sound of both proposals. Those from Tal Ruus had in no time pragmatically accepted the nature of those among them. To the others, Breis explained the truth by shaving it down to a version of itself that could be encompassed by a single word: "Jetii."
That was all he had time for right then, even though he heard Tavv'ari say, "They're okay."
Ignoring that, he was already telling Jeryndi: "As quickly and as many as you can." A quick check with Dorara that the number here was still three, and he confirmed her nod to Jeryndi with, "Three."
And since his expression had grown five shades more tired at the idea that their sleepers were somehow gone, Solomon got a sigh with his nod. "Do it. Our priorities remain: defense, water, pods, food. Until someone tells me they know that dropship -can- be fixed, or for certain that further recon attempts -will- reach and can get us out of here."
Breis' earlier joke about dar'jetii made more sense to the camp inhabitants now. Dorara, known to have clawed for the eyes of the Prince of Hapes, and then for bite-and-bar with him, studied the newcomers afresh.
Solomon gave Breis a stiff nod. Of those priorities, the pods had only recently been added to Sol's list. The other three had been there on his mind since they'd touched down, and even before that. Now, the idea of them was expanding, the need to figure them out so much bigger now. "Alright." He told Breis, looking toward Ava. If Jeryndi was going to quickly take care of the wakeks -- "Are you okay to help with this?" He asked the only truly ranked Jedi there, not wanting to speak for the soft spoken woman among them.
It had been a relief. Being able to 'tame' the wakeks had been a relief... He could do it. It didn't take much energy or strength... Being able to manipulate emotions when you were an empath was remarkably easy. But it was not something he used on people. To him, it felt dishonest. He'd used it in crowds of panic when calm was needed. Or with people too upset for their own good when it was hurting them to feel it so much... There were benefits to it. But there were more drawbacks than benefits... He knew, he remembered, using it for selfish means at very low points in his life. And he refused to be that person that he knew he had the potential to be... It was easy to manipulate emotions without empathy and the Force. Body language, lies, being able to warp words... Hell, even honesty itself could be manipulative... It was all a matter of perspective and personal integrity. But it wasn't so bad, wasn't so manipulative, when it was a creature. Especially when those creatures were of a volatile nature to begin with. Especially when those creatures were the only reliable means of transport. He didn't trust it to last for long, so he intended to keep an eye on the wakeks to make sure they stayed docile. To Breis, he nodded and gestured for Dr. Azair to come with him... "Shall we?". If for whatever reason that he lost control and didn't get it to work, Dr Azair could control them. Although only to a certain degree.
Though silent, Azair nodded and navigated through a press of survivors to follow. What had worked before seemed likely to work again: he'd steady one individual wakek and keep it calm while Jeryndi used his skills to impress longer-lasting influence upon the creature. The test would come when the doctor unwrapped the beast and they loosened its bonds in careful stages. Like Jeryndi, Azair found this practice to be much easier with beasts. But Azair also found the procedure of interfacing with the animals repugnant, and he was more than happy to share the burden of it with someone else, especially when it might change where they could all go and how freely.