Post by Marshall on May 2, 2019 9:29:23 GMT -5
"We go. Anyone we--"
A wrenching, keening scraping came from above--the Astrala--
--Mandal weapons raised--
--three fired--
--at a large blotch that plummeted down from the opening in the ship.
It hit with the thud of tremendous weight, shooting superfine red dust into the air in every direction, instantly having the same effect as a smoke bomb dropped right at the edge of the gathered group.
The smaller wakek let out a shriek and reared; the larger arched its back in alarm.
Two of the shots had come from the ground; the third from the opening.
Whoever was up there was either not a good shot--
When the red dust shot into the air a blink later, Azair let out a shout in the same second as again the blaster discharged from above.
--couldn't see them,
The smaller wakek yanked back; Azair's tendril snapped taut; the larger wakek whipped its tail around to speed it in a turn so that it could see what was happening; the tail threatened Liv, Breis, Solomon, and Catia.
If they didn't sense its flat-sided sail of muscle coming, were too distracted, it had the strength to smack them ten feet through the air.
He had barely gotten four words out before things shifted in his senses, and exploded in the world around him. That sound, two Mandals firing and a third coming from the ship. He was only just reaching for his blaster when the red whipped up in the landing of the large thing that had jumped from the ship. The cry from Azair, the shriek and alarm from the wakeks, it all felt like it had happened in the same exact moment. One large eruption of energy in a world that had previously been standing still and something big and heavy was quickly moving his way. There was so much at once, and the one thing he picked to focus on in just that split second was what felt like a wall speeding toward him, Catia, Liv, and Breis. Leaving his blaster right where it was, the change of direction for his hand happened just as quickly as he had reached for the weapon. His palm was pointed into the red, in the direction that the wakek's tail was coming from, fine invisible fingers reaching with that out stretching of his hand, moving to curl around the mass of muscle and sinew that was quickly coming toward them and closing around it. His aim was to hold onto that tail long enough for Breis, Catia and Liv to get themselves into motion. He could have tried lifting the tail, but care had to be taken. Azair was still on the beast.
Liv shot a hand out to snag Catia's arm and pull her down with all her might, dropping flat, causing even more dust to stir up into the air. A mix of the sounds and her own sensitivity propelled the move, before she could even consciously picture exactly what was coming at her back.
"Hey!" Catia started to yell--but it might not have been at whoever was slamming her to the ground. It could have been to the whole fucking planet of Mandalore.
One didn't have to be Force sensitive to react before one knew exactly what sounds meant. A giant thrashing predator nearby could do wonders to kick up instincts and speed.
Breis Teimar himself spun, stumbling backwards one step--two--weapon there, ready--
--and worthless against a wakek tail.
He fired anyway, could barely see in the dust being thrown up by every single motion by every single living thing out there, but did have time to have the sight of his weapon's bolt insignificantly striking a wall of flat, plated tail burned into his vision as it grew bigger, coming at him fast--too fast--
The clan head in that last second cringed, bracing, forced to just take the hit--
It came.
Two seconds later than it should have.
The man had no idea that that, and the slight weakening of the bludgeoning, was thanks to Solomon who had narrowed his focus down on the tail.
He did not stop it. And the wakek had not aimed at them; it had gone mad; it simply whipped its spine in the other direction. Hard to see--impossible--but Azair was still up there--his big form seemed curled forward, clutching itself--
In that same instant:
The heavy thing that had first dropped from the dropship had not moved again. The Mandals were in chaos, blinded, and since most of them lacked good breathers they were choking on dust that sang down their throats and up their nostrils and down into their bronchials with every hurried breath--
More blaster fire in the blinding red.
Azair let loose an unholy shriek of agony.
The ground quickly became a close friend of his. The wakek tail, though slowed, still had enough force behind it to throw Solomon off of his feet. Landing was the only moment of recognition he had that the tail had hit. There was pain radiating from his midsection, causing the trunk of his body to feel like it was burning. His right arm was pinned beneath him in the landing, his right shoulder aching under the pressure of the weight of his body and the force of his landing. All he could see was a dust cloud so thick there was nothing to see through it. All he could hear was the sound of movement, but that seemed like it was coming from somewhere far away from him.
Solomon's cable-leash jerked taut! The wakek, meeting resistance, whipped blindly, thrashing its great tail back the way it had come, the tip now catching that connecting cable and in the blink of an eye after all the slack snapped out of it, Solomon was dragged--thrown--back out toward the Red in the direction from which he and the Mandals had come.
Before that moment, Liv dropped her slugthrower in a desperate grab for her lightsaber hilt with one hand, and for the connector at Catia's shoulder with the other, seeing what was coming--the words "Cable!CABLE!CABLE!!" bursting out of her--then Catia shrunk away from her and vanished in a cloud of red dust. Liv scrambled for her slugthrower in the dust, found it, and launched herself up to pursue.
She was the only one who had disconnected.
The Mandals and her grunts were tangled together on the far side, being dragged and trampled. The grunts had the best armor, could breathe, and had straps on their weapons so that they could not be dropped, but they couldn't see, could only hear shouts, could sense on an animal level the immensity of the panicking, furious wakeks, and had both grabbed their cables in desperation to try to get free just before they too had been dragged as the smaller of the two wakeks broke loose--broke Azair--and made a dash into the dust.
The reels of every cable whirred wildly, smoking--the lengths spun out, caught, tangled with each other, twisted, knotted, jerked out longer as the wakek writhed and twisted in its run, trying to free itself of all the things pulling at it, breaking its stride--
The larger of the two wakeks shied and bucked in the same direction--away from whatever had hit the ground, away from the Astrala, away from the unseen shooter--and Breis had just started to wheeze and scrabble up to his hands and knees when he too was jerked-to, pulled forward with all the strength of the big beast, flung out wide like a worm on a fishhook by a particularly fearsome jackknife motion.
The ground beneath him was pulled away, the second landing didn't come any softer than the first had. This one, though, had him waking up a bit. The stun of being tossed the first time was followed by the realization that twice could become a third time, and then more after that. The wakek was out of control, and everything was a mess! He rolled to his side on landing, getting his left hand on the clasp of the cable he'd hooked to himself to wrench it free. He had to get free, and he had to get to his feet. Those were goals one and two.
Impossible to see, and it wasn't getting better, but worse. One thing was certain: the wakeks were making headway, running, still close to each other judging from the noise. Nothing and no one was stationary. Every bump, every turn, every tangle of lines, sent Mandals, Hapans, and dar'manda skittering out, twisting tighter together, or crashing into each other--or underfoot as the wakeks fought to get free, enraged.
Liv ran as hard as she could, following the noise, the roars, the screams; her armor protected her from the suffocating dust and it would probably by her a few seconds if she found herself clamped in the jaws of a wakek, but it couldn't pierce the red to help her see.
She had barely any warning when a shadow came at her, a pair of boots flying at her face. She dove aside and down, and never stopped: clawing up, digging forward, and the clotheslining cable that had passed overhead with the unfortunate person met--
--her armored grip, and with all her strength she held on and was snapped forward off her feet when its reel suddenly stuck.
Whoever it was--she had a subconscious flash of the dirty treads of a Hapan military-issue armored boot--never even saw her, slung on exactly as they had been, dragging and plunging forward all the dust, ash, and grit the team had walked across earlier.
The Mandals were done shouting because most of them were having a hard time breathing. But one of them, attached to the smaller wakek, screamed the first part of a scream--and only the first part.
A dark shape moved sharp-quick in the wake of the trailing salvagers, leaping onto helpless bodies as they swung this way and that.
Free from cable line, the snap of it ripping out of his hand just as he got it loose from his suit, Sol ignored the feeling of emptiness in his chest and the ache that came from moving around a midsection that had been just smacked with the solid mass of wakek tail. He pushed himself up in the cloud of dust only to duck back down to avoid the passing of a heavily wrapped body overhead. There was no time to wonder who that had been. All he had seen was a dark shadow flash over him from somewhere above. What came after that were the heavy steps of a pair of wakeks going mad. He rolled, bringing his left hand up to hold his right arm in place through the motion, to carry himself out of the way of the stampeding animals. HIs roll ended with him on his stomach, cringing and coughing to reflate his lungs. The protection that his own suit offered was not minimal, but if the dust continued the way it was the filters on it would struggle. He could already taste the Red building up against his tongue. Ignoring it, and the wheeze that came when he pushed himself up, Solomon had to pause and duck back down, laying his upper body across his left knee to avoid the line from someone else who had been thrown. It was never going to be a good enough time, but with his left arm holding his right close to his chest, keeping the sling from bouncing his arm around, he pushed into a sprint in the direction the large animals had gone into the cloud that surrounded him and the rest.
Liv's goal was the wakek, and she breathed in a little extra strength so that she could climb the cable horizontally up toward the stuck reel, despite spinning over and over, dragging out, catching, entangling in another cable that could well have taken an unarmored person's head off. She just needed to get close enough to split the side, pierce the heart--
Blaster discharge from the far side, clear as day. Clear as day anywhere but here.
More than one desperate Mandal managed to get out a blade to cut their lines. Thtwang! --then a poof of red, and they were left behind.
It was like running through smoke, and in the chaos there was no time to clear the air. He had to keep moving toward the sound of the charging beasts. There was so much action, too much to continue with his senses stretched out as they had been so he brought them back toward himself, keeping his focus on what was coming at him and how fast it was moving. He dodged a Hapan flying through his path, jumping back and ducking down to avoid the whip overhead. He had thought had recognized Buttercup's armor, but it was gone too quickly for him to know for sure. Moving again meant jumping over a line that had slammed into the ground not a second afterward, Sol heading through the cloud to where it looked like it ended but then it was gone again, flung away by a turn of the wakeks. There was no standing still. The moment the line was snapped away, and the body at the end of it, Solomon pivoted and took off again for the rampaging creatures. It was an almost blind run, led only by the noises and the shaking of the ground as the beasts trampled everything beneath them into a thick cover that was only made worse by flailing bodies and whipping cables.
Liv climbed hand over hand, then balled up her strength for a concentrated second so that she could lunge up the line one last time and grab onto the wakek's harness just above one of the reels. She let go with her other hand, and instantly was dragged alongside, feet leaving a high wave of more red in their wake, her body knocked and whipped around every time the reptilian monster thrashed. Her free hand closed tight about her lightsaber hilt, snapped it to press hard into the monster's side, and activated it, ripping it backwards through inches of muscle, bone, and guts.
The big wakek arched backwards, flinging a big body from its back. Its scream became a gutteral groan as it missed its stride, legs flailing, and landed to skid hard, in a stifled spin, to a halt.
The smaller wakek, harness lightly to the other, dragged to the side as its partner fell, and it screamed that hissing, high-whir scream. It limped, fell, and then got up to tug at the big dead one, yanking the corpse along in fearsome jerks along the ground in the cloud.
Something solid hit the ground off to his right. The large shadow caught his attention as much as anything else that had come close to him had. He moved toward it, breaking the cloud with his own body only to kick up more behind him. The noise that the wakek had let loose had him turning his head that way for just a moment. It wasn't too far away in the cloud of dust, ash and red. He could do nothing for that with how far away he was from the creatures. What he could do was continue toward the body that had dropped but not been snapped back out into the cloud.
Shoulder and side dug into the dust was the big insectoid body of Jujanaj Azair, with a ferocious blaster-burn crater in his chest near his right shoulder. Crispy-edged exoskeleton and gooier innards collected red and made mud of it. The black eyes were unseeing.
The vine-like part--the Azair part--was partially still wrapped about the head and body, and moved feebly, with two long trailers of itself flung out behind. Both were frayed and snapped through, or they would no doubt have been much longer.
He approached as cautiously as he could while running, that was to say that Sol was ready to do what he had to do if this body proved itself to be neither Mandal, Hapan, or Eyith. That it formed into the now familiar shape of Dr Azair when he got close enough was both a kind of relief and something worse. Back down into the dust he dropped, hovering over the exoskelital body of Azair's host, apparent wounds taken in by sight. He was careful to be gentle, to not shake or move the bodies just yet, "Doc, you still with us? Dr Azair?"
No answer. The bipedal body was breathless beneath its makeshift wrappings. The big eyes collected dust and dulled, not blinking any of the settling debris away.
The vine seemed to be trying to unfurl, but the movements were stiff, jerky, and very small, a thing limited by barklike textures and twitches empowered by something other than animal muscle.
Liv heaved to catch her breath. She had to look down to see that she was covered in guts and wakek blood, because her armor was just that good. She eased down until she had footing, then looked up--riderless saddle--and back along the taut cable she had climbed, unable to see far enough to determine the state of the person attached to it, or to the other two played-out cables. Her chain was there; one of the remaining two was loose with slack. So two people still connected on this side...
A masculine scream sounded from the far side of the big wakek, where she could hear the huffing grunts of the smaller wakek. Liv's attention snapped that way and she made to leap with Force-gathered strength to the top of the corpse that blocked her view even more than did the Red.
What to do? How to help? He knew nothing about Eyith's beyond that they were symbiotic, and by the look of the big insectoid that Azair had been connected to half of the relationship was dead. The other half? Those small twitches took a moment to be recognized as movement of any kind. He made a choice, and removed his left gloved awkwardly, reaching out scared fingers to gently lay them against the barklike texture. His focus had been on what was coming toward him, and now he focused it down toward Azair. It was, he hoped, going to be a way of communicating. The invisible connection, an open gateway between two gardens surrounded by barren land. How could he help?
Alive.
Not a word communicated, just knowledge. Solomon's bare hand touched no dead thing when it touched the tendril. Pain and shock drifted around like dust on the wind, but Jujanaj Azair was alive. The vine seemed to stir toward the contact, but with no greater strength than before.
From somewhere out behind Solomon, hidden by pluming dust, someone groaned. Coughed. Coughed more. Wheezed out a curse. By the sound, a male someone.
Liv sprang, landing in a three-point crouch, just barely in time, and with barely enough visibility to make out a shadow alighting on a supine armored body in a crouch of its own and firing into the helmet with a blaster at point blank range. The light from the bolts lit up the edges of the helmet.
He wasn't a healer, what was he supposed to do?! He was better at taking lives, not making then whole again! The flash thought threatened to repeat itself at the sense of Azair’s shock and pain. How to help was turning into him looking back toward the sound of the wheezed curse. If he could hear that then who ever it was wasn't far away. "Doc needs help!" He made himself say before turning back to focus on the symbiote. What did he know about things like this? He knew that panic in someone else could make things worse for the affected. He had to breathe, he had to remain calm. The gate between those two gardens was still open, and through it would be blowing a cool breeze, a calm sensation of as much peace as he could muster right then.
Wheeze, cough, hack, gasp--Breis hand one hand over his mouth and nose; his wrappings had come partially free in the mayhem, and he couldn't see, could feel the tears from his watering eyes caking up his face, but little by little he was getting to the point where he could take shallow breaths. The world was filled with noise; groans, wakeks... Weaponsfire? Breis still had a weapon holstered, but the first thing he did when he could move was the thing that would have been the stupidest thing in the world an hour ago: he worked with clumsy fingers to get his cable disconnected. His whole body felt like it was on the verge of fraying apart with one wrong move in any direction, and Red be damned, he didn't think he'd survive a second bout of whiplash. A warrior knew when he'd be worthless in a fight, but a warrior also knew that there were other ways to contribute until one could get back in the action, and he lurched to his feet and tried to follow the nearest voice-- "Doc needs help!"
Everyone needed help.
Nora went limp. Good armor was not proof against a shot to the face. Five rapid shots total that she didn't stand a chance of fending off; four to melt and punch through her powerful visor, and the fifth to melt and punch her between the eyes. The dark figure who'd killed her got up and pounced over ten feet to do the same to the Mando, Nen, casual as casual could be.
The smaller wakek jerked the body of the larger again just as Liv fired twice with her slugthrower, fouling both shots.
A black, blank faceplate zeroed in on her, the lithe body of the murderer twisting, sinuous, in red-stained black that was collecting tiny clots of dust wherever it was spattered with blood.
Which was everywhere.
His efforts with Azair continued, that breeze blowing from one garden to the other, passing through the gate between them. The doctor wasn't alone, and he wasn't going to be alone as long as that gate remained open. He still hadn't tried to move the symbiote, not wanting to make any injury worse, or to cause any by accident. "What can I do?" He couldn't tell if what he was doing was working to bring any comfort at all, but he was going to keep doing it.
Sense of Azair there. A two-century old Eyith presence, weakened. Too alien when divorced from his symbiote to return sharply defined, recognizable impulses. What was there was vague: the pain, the shock, and if that abated some then Solomon could count it a success. There was no real heartbeat to slow or pulse to check for; no lung-based respiration to measure; no face to read for expression; no hand to hold; the Eyith equivalent of a brain was completely alien to a mammalian nervous system. Without Skirix, Jujanaj Azair was helpless and the definition of a fish out of water.
Hunched over, Breis staggered toward the sound of the voice. Breathing was a trial, the thing that would sink him right then and there if he didn't concentrate, so he didn't call out or curse again, but he shuffled until he could see the crouched form of someone not trying to kill him (he assumed), and sank heavily to his knees next to Sol. Have to go, he wanted to say. Have to help them. What a luxury oxygen was. The Red seemed to burn in his throat, in his own very human lungs. He fought to get in enough air to have a little to spare to say: "I-- -- --him." A word lost in there to a toneless wheeze, but Breis Teimar was gesturing for Solomon to go-- "H-elp them."
Liv aimed again, but the smaller wakek wasn't quitting, and when the murderer shot back, in s contortionist's move, red stirred, and it was clear he, she, or it could easily disappear into the Cloak if he got too far-- So Liv leapt again--this time to get herself between the still-alive Nen and his would-be killer. Her lightsaber seared into life with a sharp snap and the furious rising drone and crackle that had once been known throughout the galaxy.
The form that dropped next to him, knees crashing into the ground causing a rise of dust that lifted up and seemed to stay suspended before lessening, got his tense attention. On recognizing Breis behind the thick clot of red all over his face, Sol gave a small nod. He didn't break his touch with Azair until he caught the motions from Breis to get going. He was withdrawing, closing that gate with one last hopeful sense of Azair not being alone before shutting it completely and rising, glove going with him. His hand was now covered in red, the stuff sticking to sweaty skin, and gathering against old scars as much as dry dirt would have. "I'll be back." He told Breis before darting off, holding his right arm close, to where the sound of blaster fire had come from.
To keep Liv on defense, and from using her slugthrower, the dark-clad assailant fired continuously at her as it glided seemingly effortlessly backwards, forcing her to deflect with her lightsaber. No doubt, that was not the hoped-for outcome! The shots were aimed dead-center at her, at first, and around that after the first few times the bolts met her blade in angry bursts of light. He, she, or it didn't want her on defense, best-case. He, she, or it wanted her dead.
She pursued, looking for an opening to turn defense to offense. She was past the wakeks--couldn't use them as shields--and she sensed Nen trying to rise weakly behind her, rasping for breath behind his cloth-tied breather. Her concentration narrowed down to a laser-fine point so that she could work the blade high; low; keeping it in impossibly in the path of a random pattern of chest-tight shots.
Materializing into ghostly view behind the murderer as she followed it away from Nen were two figures on the ground, grasping at each other. She couldn't see clearly in the dust, but guessed one of them had to be Buttercup by what little could be made out of the silhouette. Buttercup, kneeling with someone else, the pair leaning into each other.
"Behind you!" she shouted to them, even as their enemy seemed to notice them too--with them out to its left.
The killer's blaster fired at her twice more--were the bolts dimmer? Was the kick softer?--then swung down and low aimed at the pair. At one of the pair. At whoever that was not sharing the same armored silhouette.
Liv saw the black faceplate tilt, cocking to the side as if to ask her What now?
Distance had been covered quickly, the continuous shots leading the way for him through the cloud that had been kicked up. And with them was the whine-hiss and crackle of a lightsaber being swung through the toxic air. He didn't see any of it until he was sliding down the aft leg of the larger dead wakek, and what he saw then were flashes of a blade of a familiar hue, and blaster bolts being fired. And then, -Behind you!-. His feet in the dirt, Sol was off at another sprint, still ignoring the weighted ache that felt like a fist squeezing around the middle of his body just to keep in motion. He was heading toward that all too familiar voice, and the black-red shadow that was holding a blaster.
When Sol first became visible as an oncoming blotch and slowly began to sharpen into his true definitions, the figure--still retreating, though Liv had slowed--twitched the blaster lower and fired once before resetting aim to the kill shot.
A voice barked out hoarsely--wordless, gasping, the sound wrung out of a tortured, choked throat--
It belonged either to Catia or Tavv'ari, and since Catia had armor, it had to be the latter.
The shot was a warning, though not a word had come from the shooter.
Liv stopped short.
The blaster in the killer's hand had once belonged to Solomon Tekal.
Coming closer the definition of the sound became clearer. He'd fired that blaster enough times on that setting to recognize the pitch-whine of a shot when it was fired. And even as that became apparent other things were filling in for him. Liv had stopped moving, and the black-red being was taking on a familiar shape. What he saw off to the side, what caused him to slow to a stop within distance of being fully seen, were the two bodies that the figure had fired at. His senses were expanded around him again, a hand out stretching to hold the immediate area in its palm. Within the veins of it were the familiar lives of those who still lived from Tal Keb. This being before them was like a blemish on the skin.
Nen faltered on his feet, back by the still-living smaller wakek, but had lost his weapon in the first snap of his cable, which had pulled him clear off his feet. When the Mando turned, the first vision besides struggling wakek that he made out with any clarity lay ten feet from him, being buried by dust. One of the Hapan grunts, with her visor caved inward.
Farther out--the farthest out, it seemed--the dark figure continued a slow retreat. Now that there was a moment, though the loosened dust was gusting up with the rising wind, it was easier to make out the killer. No larger than Solomon, with a nimble build and a full-body suit and helmet that seemed to be a mix of light armor and dense mobile material of some kind. The figure--the runner from Solomon's encounter; the thief who took pods and targeted wakeks; the attacker from whom it was said Tavv'ari had taken a beaut of a sniper rifle; the killer who had slain survivors keeping watch--seemed to have acquired a whole belt of pods. There were cases along the belt that matched nothing else, and pods that hung from wires or string. The thief did well.
The black faceplate twitched between Liv, Solomon, and the hostages. Liv, Solomon, the hostages; Solomon, Liv, the hostages... When it turned to Liv, Buttercup lunged.
Not at the figure, but to put her armored body between the blaster and Tavv. "Shoot him!" she roared.
A wrenching, keening scraping came from above--the Astrala--
--Mandal weapons raised--
--three fired--
--at a large blotch that plummeted down from the opening in the ship.
It hit with the thud of tremendous weight, shooting superfine red dust into the air in every direction, instantly having the same effect as a smoke bomb dropped right at the edge of the gathered group.
The smaller wakek let out a shriek and reared; the larger arched its back in alarm.
Two of the shots had come from the ground; the third from the opening.
Whoever was up there was either not a good shot--
When the red dust shot into the air a blink later, Azair let out a shout in the same second as again the blaster discharged from above.
--couldn't see them,
The smaller wakek yanked back; Azair's tendril snapped taut; the larger wakek whipped its tail around to speed it in a turn so that it could see what was happening; the tail threatened Liv, Breis, Solomon, and Catia.
If they didn't sense its flat-sided sail of muscle coming, were too distracted, it had the strength to smack them ten feet through the air.
He had barely gotten four words out before things shifted in his senses, and exploded in the world around him. That sound, two Mandals firing and a third coming from the ship. He was only just reaching for his blaster when the red whipped up in the landing of the large thing that had jumped from the ship. The cry from Azair, the shriek and alarm from the wakeks, it all felt like it had happened in the same exact moment. One large eruption of energy in a world that had previously been standing still and something big and heavy was quickly moving his way. There was so much at once, and the one thing he picked to focus on in just that split second was what felt like a wall speeding toward him, Catia, Liv, and Breis. Leaving his blaster right where it was, the change of direction for his hand happened just as quickly as he had reached for the weapon. His palm was pointed into the red, in the direction that the wakek's tail was coming from, fine invisible fingers reaching with that out stretching of his hand, moving to curl around the mass of muscle and sinew that was quickly coming toward them and closing around it. His aim was to hold onto that tail long enough for Breis, Catia and Liv to get themselves into motion. He could have tried lifting the tail, but care had to be taken. Azair was still on the beast.
Liv shot a hand out to snag Catia's arm and pull her down with all her might, dropping flat, causing even more dust to stir up into the air. A mix of the sounds and her own sensitivity propelled the move, before she could even consciously picture exactly what was coming at her back.
"Hey!" Catia started to yell--but it might not have been at whoever was slamming her to the ground. It could have been to the whole fucking planet of Mandalore.
One didn't have to be Force sensitive to react before one knew exactly what sounds meant. A giant thrashing predator nearby could do wonders to kick up instincts and speed.
Breis Teimar himself spun, stumbling backwards one step--two--weapon there, ready--
--and worthless against a wakek tail.
He fired anyway, could barely see in the dust being thrown up by every single motion by every single living thing out there, but did have time to have the sight of his weapon's bolt insignificantly striking a wall of flat, plated tail burned into his vision as it grew bigger, coming at him fast--too fast--
The clan head in that last second cringed, bracing, forced to just take the hit--
It came.
Two seconds later than it should have.
The man had no idea that that, and the slight weakening of the bludgeoning, was thanks to Solomon who had narrowed his focus down on the tail.
He did not stop it. And the wakek had not aimed at them; it had gone mad; it simply whipped its spine in the other direction. Hard to see--impossible--but Azair was still up there--his big form seemed curled forward, clutching itself--
In that same instant:
The heavy thing that had first dropped from the dropship had not moved again. The Mandals were in chaos, blinded, and since most of them lacked good breathers they were choking on dust that sang down their throats and up their nostrils and down into their bronchials with every hurried breath--
More blaster fire in the blinding red.
Azair let loose an unholy shriek of agony.
The ground quickly became a close friend of his. The wakek tail, though slowed, still had enough force behind it to throw Solomon off of his feet. Landing was the only moment of recognition he had that the tail had hit. There was pain radiating from his midsection, causing the trunk of his body to feel like it was burning. His right arm was pinned beneath him in the landing, his right shoulder aching under the pressure of the weight of his body and the force of his landing. All he could see was a dust cloud so thick there was nothing to see through it. All he could hear was the sound of movement, but that seemed like it was coming from somewhere far away from him.
Solomon's cable-leash jerked taut! The wakek, meeting resistance, whipped blindly, thrashing its great tail back the way it had come, the tip now catching that connecting cable and in the blink of an eye after all the slack snapped out of it, Solomon was dragged--thrown--back out toward the Red in the direction from which he and the Mandals had come.
Before that moment, Liv dropped her slugthrower in a desperate grab for her lightsaber hilt with one hand, and for the connector at Catia's shoulder with the other, seeing what was coming--the words "Cable!CABLE!CABLE!!" bursting out of her--then Catia shrunk away from her and vanished in a cloud of red dust. Liv scrambled for her slugthrower in the dust, found it, and launched herself up to pursue.
She was the only one who had disconnected.
The Mandals and her grunts were tangled together on the far side, being dragged and trampled. The grunts had the best armor, could breathe, and had straps on their weapons so that they could not be dropped, but they couldn't see, could only hear shouts, could sense on an animal level the immensity of the panicking, furious wakeks, and had both grabbed their cables in desperation to try to get free just before they too had been dragged as the smaller of the two wakeks broke loose--broke Azair--and made a dash into the dust.
The reels of every cable whirred wildly, smoking--the lengths spun out, caught, tangled with each other, twisted, knotted, jerked out longer as the wakek writhed and twisted in its run, trying to free itself of all the things pulling at it, breaking its stride--
The larger of the two wakeks shied and bucked in the same direction--away from whatever had hit the ground, away from the Astrala, away from the unseen shooter--and Breis had just started to wheeze and scrabble up to his hands and knees when he too was jerked-to, pulled forward with all the strength of the big beast, flung out wide like a worm on a fishhook by a particularly fearsome jackknife motion.
The ground beneath him was pulled away, the second landing didn't come any softer than the first had. This one, though, had him waking up a bit. The stun of being tossed the first time was followed by the realization that twice could become a third time, and then more after that. The wakek was out of control, and everything was a mess! He rolled to his side on landing, getting his left hand on the clasp of the cable he'd hooked to himself to wrench it free. He had to get free, and he had to get to his feet. Those were goals one and two.
Impossible to see, and it wasn't getting better, but worse. One thing was certain: the wakeks were making headway, running, still close to each other judging from the noise. Nothing and no one was stationary. Every bump, every turn, every tangle of lines, sent Mandals, Hapans, and dar'manda skittering out, twisting tighter together, or crashing into each other--or underfoot as the wakeks fought to get free, enraged.
Liv ran as hard as she could, following the noise, the roars, the screams; her armor protected her from the suffocating dust and it would probably by her a few seconds if she found herself clamped in the jaws of a wakek, but it couldn't pierce the red to help her see.
She had barely any warning when a shadow came at her, a pair of boots flying at her face. She dove aside and down, and never stopped: clawing up, digging forward, and the clotheslining cable that had passed overhead with the unfortunate person met--
--her armored grip, and with all her strength she held on and was snapped forward off her feet when its reel suddenly stuck.
Whoever it was--she had a subconscious flash of the dirty treads of a Hapan military-issue armored boot--never even saw her, slung on exactly as they had been, dragging and plunging forward all the dust, ash, and grit the team had walked across earlier.
The Mandals were done shouting because most of them were having a hard time breathing. But one of them, attached to the smaller wakek, screamed the first part of a scream--and only the first part.
A dark shape moved sharp-quick in the wake of the trailing salvagers, leaping onto helpless bodies as they swung this way and that.
Free from cable line, the snap of it ripping out of his hand just as he got it loose from his suit, Sol ignored the feeling of emptiness in his chest and the ache that came from moving around a midsection that had been just smacked with the solid mass of wakek tail. He pushed himself up in the cloud of dust only to duck back down to avoid the passing of a heavily wrapped body overhead. There was no time to wonder who that had been. All he had seen was a dark shadow flash over him from somewhere above. What came after that were the heavy steps of a pair of wakeks going mad. He rolled, bringing his left hand up to hold his right arm in place through the motion, to carry himself out of the way of the stampeding animals. HIs roll ended with him on his stomach, cringing and coughing to reflate his lungs. The protection that his own suit offered was not minimal, but if the dust continued the way it was the filters on it would struggle. He could already taste the Red building up against his tongue. Ignoring it, and the wheeze that came when he pushed himself up, Solomon had to pause and duck back down, laying his upper body across his left knee to avoid the line from someone else who had been thrown. It was never going to be a good enough time, but with his left arm holding his right close to his chest, keeping the sling from bouncing his arm around, he pushed into a sprint in the direction the large animals had gone into the cloud that surrounded him and the rest.
Liv's goal was the wakek, and she breathed in a little extra strength so that she could climb the cable horizontally up toward the stuck reel, despite spinning over and over, dragging out, catching, entangling in another cable that could well have taken an unarmored person's head off. She just needed to get close enough to split the side, pierce the heart--
Blaster discharge from the far side, clear as day. Clear as day anywhere but here.
More than one desperate Mandal managed to get out a blade to cut their lines. Thtwang! --then a poof of red, and they were left behind.
It was like running through smoke, and in the chaos there was no time to clear the air. He had to keep moving toward the sound of the charging beasts. There was so much action, too much to continue with his senses stretched out as they had been so he brought them back toward himself, keeping his focus on what was coming at him and how fast it was moving. He dodged a Hapan flying through his path, jumping back and ducking down to avoid the whip overhead. He had thought had recognized Buttercup's armor, but it was gone too quickly for him to know for sure. Moving again meant jumping over a line that had slammed into the ground not a second afterward, Sol heading through the cloud to where it looked like it ended but then it was gone again, flung away by a turn of the wakeks. There was no standing still. The moment the line was snapped away, and the body at the end of it, Solomon pivoted and took off again for the rampaging creatures. It was an almost blind run, led only by the noises and the shaking of the ground as the beasts trampled everything beneath them into a thick cover that was only made worse by flailing bodies and whipping cables.
Liv climbed hand over hand, then balled up her strength for a concentrated second so that she could lunge up the line one last time and grab onto the wakek's harness just above one of the reels. She let go with her other hand, and instantly was dragged alongside, feet leaving a high wave of more red in their wake, her body knocked and whipped around every time the reptilian monster thrashed. Her free hand closed tight about her lightsaber hilt, snapped it to press hard into the monster's side, and activated it, ripping it backwards through inches of muscle, bone, and guts.
The big wakek arched backwards, flinging a big body from its back. Its scream became a gutteral groan as it missed its stride, legs flailing, and landed to skid hard, in a stifled spin, to a halt.
The smaller wakek, harness lightly to the other, dragged to the side as its partner fell, and it screamed that hissing, high-whir scream. It limped, fell, and then got up to tug at the big dead one, yanking the corpse along in fearsome jerks along the ground in the cloud.
Something solid hit the ground off to his right. The large shadow caught his attention as much as anything else that had come close to him had. He moved toward it, breaking the cloud with his own body only to kick up more behind him. The noise that the wakek had let loose had him turning his head that way for just a moment. It wasn't too far away in the cloud of dust, ash and red. He could do nothing for that with how far away he was from the creatures. What he could do was continue toward the body that had dropped but not been snapped back out into the cloud.
Shoulder and side dug into the dust was the big insectoid body of Jujanaj Azair, with a ferocious blaster-burn crater in his chest near his right shoulder. Crispy-edged exoskeleton and gooier innards collected red and made mud of it. The black eyes were unseeing.
The vine-like part--the Azair part--was partially still wrapped about the head and body, and moved feebly, with two long trailers of itself flung out behind. Both were frayed and snapped through, or they would no doubt have been much longer.
He approached as cautiously as he could while running, that was to say that Sol was ready to do what he had to do if this body proved itself to be neither Mandal, Hapan, or Eyith. That it formed into the now familiar shape of Dr Azair when he got close enough was both a kind of relief and something worse. Back down into the dust he dropped, hovering over the exoskelital body of Azair's host, apparent wounds taken in by sight. He was careful to be gentle, to not shake or move the bodies just yet, "Doc, you still with us? Dr Azair?"
No answer. The bipedal body was breathless beneath its makeshift wrappings. The big eyes collected dust and dulled, not blinking any of the settling debris away.
The vine seemed to be trying to unfurl, but the movements were stiff, jerky, and very small, a thing limited by barklike textures and twitches empowered by something other than animal muscle.
Liv heaved to catch her breath. She had to look down to see that she was covered in guts and wakek blood, because her armor was just that good. She eased down until she had footing, then looked up--riderless saddle--and back along the taut cable she had climbed, unable to see far enough to determine the state of the person attached to it, or to the other two played-out cables. Her chain was there; one of the remaining two was loose with slack. So two people still connected on this side...
A masculine scream sounded from the far side of the big wakek, where she could hear the huffing grunts of the smaller wakek. Liv's attention snapped that way and she made to leap with Force-gathered strength to the top of the corpse that blocked her view even more than did the Red.
What to do? How to help? He knew nothing about Eyith's beyond that they were symbiotic, and by the look of the big insectoid that Azair had been connected to half of the relationship was dead. The other half? Those small twitches took a moment to be recognized as movement of any kind. He made a choice, and removed his left gloved awkwardly, reaching out scared fingers to gently lay them against the barklike texture. His focus had been on what was coming toward him, and now he focused it down toward Azair. It was, he hoped, going to be a way of communicating. The invisible connection, an open gateway between two gardens surrounded by barren land. How could he help?
Alive.
Not a word communicated, just knowledge. Solomon's bare hand touched no dead thing when it touched the tendril. Pain and shock drifted around like dust on the wind, but Jujanaj Azair was alive. The vine seemed to stir toward the contact, but with no greater strength than before.
From somewhere out behind Solomon, hidden by pluming dust, someone groaned. Coughed. Coughed more. Wheezed out a curse. By the sound, a male someone.
Liv sprang, landing in a three-point crouch, just barely in time, and with barely enough visibility to make out a shadow alighting on a supine armored body in a crouch of its own and firing into the helmet with a blaster at point blank range. The light from the bolts lit up the edges of the helmet.
He wasn't a healer, what was he supposed to do?! He was better at taking lives, not making then whole again! The flash thought threatened to repeat itself at the sense of Azair’s shock and pain. How to help was turning into him looking back toward the sound of the wheezed curse. If he could hear that then who ever it was wasn't far away. "Doc needs help!" He made himself say before turning back to focus on the symbiote. What did he know about things like this? He knew that panic in someone else could make things worse for the affected. He had to breathe, he had to remain calm. The gate between those two gardens was still open, and through it would be blowing a cool breeze, a calm sensation of as much peace as he could muster right then.
Wheeze, cough, hack, gasp--Breis hand one hand over his mouth and nose; his wrappings had come partially free in the mayhem, and he couldn't see, could feel the tears from his watering eyes caking up his face, but little by little he was getting to the point where he could take shallow breaths. The world was filled with noise; groans, wakeks... Weaponsfire? Breis still had a weapon holstered, but the first thing he did when he could move was the thing that would have been the stupidest thing in the world an hour ago: he worked with clumsy fingers to get his cable disconnected. His whole body felt like it was on the verge of fraying apart with one wrong move in any direction, and Red be damned, he didn't think he'd survive a second bout of whiplash. A warrior knew when he'd be worthless in a fight, but a warrior also knew that there were other ways to contribute until one could get back in the action, and he lurched to his feet and tried to follow the nearest voice-- "Doc needs help!"
Everyone needed help.
Nora went limp. Good armor was not proof against a shot to the face. Five rapid shots total that she didn't stand a chance of fending off; four to melt and punch through her powerful visor, and the fifth to melt and punch her between the eyes. The dark figure who'd killed her got up and pounced over ten feet to do the same to the Mando, Nen, casual as casual could be.
The smaller wakek jerked the body of the larger again just as Liv fired twice with her slugthrower, fouling both shots.
A black, blank faceplate zeroed in on her, the lithe body of the murderer twisting, sinuous, in red-stained black that was collecting tiny clots of dust wherever it was spattered with blood.
Which was everywhere.
His efforts with Azair continued, that breeze blowing from one garden to the other, passing through the gate between them. The doctor wasn't alone, and he wasn't going to be alone as long as that gate remained open. He still hadn't tried to move the symbiote, not wanting to make any injury worse, or to cause any by accident. "What can I do?" He couldn't tell if what he was doing was working to bring any comfort at all, but he was going to keep doing it.
Sense of Azair there. A two-century old Eyith presence, weakened. Too alien when divorced from his symbiote to return sharply defined, recognizable impulses. What was there was vague: the pain, the shock, and if that abated some then Solomon could count it a success. There was no real heartbeat to slow or pulse to check for; no lung-based respiration to measure; no face to read for expression; no hand to hold; the Eyith equivalent of a brain was completely alien to a mammalian nervous system. Without Skirix, Jujanaj Azair was helpless and the definition of a fish out of water.
Hunched over, Breis staggered toward the sound of the voice. Breathing was a trial, the thing that would sink him right then and there if he didn't concentrate, so he didn't call out or curse again, but he shuffled until he could see the crouched form of someone not trying to kill him (he assumed), and sank heavily to his knees next to Sol. Have to go, he wanted to say. Have to help them. What a luxury oxygen was. The Red seemed to burn in his throat, in his own very human lungs. He fought to get in enough air to have a little to spare to say: "I-- -- --him." A word lost in there to a toneless wheeze, but Breis Teimar was gesturing for Solomon to go-- "H-elp them."
Liv aimed again, but the smaller wakek wasn't quitting, and when the murderer shot back, in s contortionist's move, red stirred, and it was clear he, she, or it could easily disappear into the Cloak if he got too far-- So Liv leapt again--this time to get herself between the still-alive Nen and his would-be killer. Her lightsaber seared into life with a sharp snap and the furious rising drone and crackle that had once been known throughout the galaxy.
The form that dropped next to him, knees crashing into the ground causing a rise of dust that lifted up and seemed to stay suspended before lessening, got his tense attention. On recognizing Breis behind the thick clot of red all over his face, Sol gave a small nod. He didn't break his touch with Azair until he caught the motions from Breis to get going. He was withdrawing, closing that gate with one last hopeful sense of Azair not being alone before shutting it completely and rising, glove going with him. His hand was now covered in red, the stuff sticking to sweaty skin, and gathering against old scars as much as dry dirt would have. "I'll be back." He told Breis before darting off, holding his right arm close, to where the sound of blaster fire had come from.
To keep Liv on defense, and from using her slugthrower, the dark-clad assailant fired continuously at her as it glided seemingly effortlessly backwards, forcing her to deflect with her lightsaber. No doubt, that was not the hoped-for outcome! The shots were aimed dead-center at her, at first, and around that after the first few times the bolts met her blade in angry bursts of light. He, she, or it didn't want her on defense, best-case. He, she, or it wanted her dead.
She pursued, looking for an opening to turn defense to offense. She was past the wakeks--couldn't use them as shields--and she sensed Nen trying to rise weakly behind her, rasping for breath behind his cloth-tied breather. Her concentration narrowed down to a laser-fine point so that she could work the blade high; low; keeping it in impossibly in the path of a random pattern of chest-tight shots.
Materializing into ghostly view behind the murderer as she followed it away from Nen were two figures on the ground, grasping at each other. She couldn't see clearly in the dust, but guessed one of them had to be Buttercup by what little could be made out of the silhouette. Buttercup, kneeling with someone else, the pair leaning into each other.
"Behind you!" she shouted to them, even as their enemy seemed to notice them too--with them out to its left.
The killer's blaster fired at her twice more--were the bolts dimmer? Was the kick softer?--then swung down and low aimed at the pair. At one of the pair. At whoever that was not sharing the same armored silhouette.
Liv saw the black faceplate tilt, cocking to the side as if to ask her What now?
Distance had been covered quickly, the continuous shots leading the way for him through the cloud that had been kicked up. And with them was the whine-hiss and crackle of a lightsaber being swung through the toxic air. He didn't see any of it until he was sliding down the aft leg of the larger dead wakek, and what he saw then were flashes of a blade of a familiar hue, and blaster bolts being fired. And then, -Behind you!-. His feet in the dirt, Sol was off at another sprint, still ignoring the weighted ache that felt like a fist squeezing around the middle of his body just to keep in motion. He was heading toward that all too familiar voice, and the black-red shadow that was holding a blaster.
When Sol first became visible as an oncoming blotch and slowly began to sharpen into his true definitions, the figure--still retreating, though Liv had slowed--twitched the blaster lower and fired once before resetting aim to the kill shot.
A voice barked out hoarsely--wordless, gasping, the sound wrung out of a tortured, choked throat--
It belonged either to Catia or Tavv'ari, and since Catia had armor, it had to be the latter.
The shot was a warning, though not a word had come from the shooter.
Liv stopped short.
The blaster in the killer's hand had once belonged to Solomon Tekal.
Coming closer the definition of the sound became clearer. He'd fired that blaster enough times on that setting to recognize the pitch-whine of a shot when it was fired. And even as that became apparent other things were filling in for him. Liv had stopped moving, and the black-red being was taking on a familiar shape. What he saw off to the side, what caused him to slow to a stop within distance of being fully seen, were the two bodies that the figure had fired at. His senses were expanded around him again, a hand out stretching to hold the immediate area in its palm. Within the veins of it were the familiar lives of those who still lived from Tal Keb. This being before them was like a blemish on the skin.
Nen faltered on his feet, back by the still-living smaller wakek, but had lost his weapon in the first snap of his cable, which had pulled him clear off his feet. When the Mando turned, the first vision besides struggling wakek that he made out with any clarity lay ten feet from him, being buried by dust. One of the Hapan grunts, with her visor caved inward.
Farther out--the farthest out, it seemed--the dark figure continued a slow retreat. Now that there was a moment, though the loosened dust was gusting up with the rising wind, it was easier to make out the killer. No larger than Solomon, with a nimble build and a full-body suit and helmet that seemed to be a mix of light armor and dense mobile material of some kind. The figure--the runner from Solomon's encounter; the thief who took pods and targeted wakeks; the attacker from whom it was said Tavv'ari had taken a beaut of a sniper rifle; the killer who had slain survivors keeping watch--seemed to have acquired a whole belt of pods. There were cases along the belt that matched nothing else, and pods that hung from wires or string. The thief did well.
The black faceplate twitched between Liv, Solomon, and the hostages. Liv, Solomon, the hostages; Solomon, Liv, the hostages... When it turned to Liv, Buttercup lunged.
Not at the figure, but to put her armored body between the blaster and Tavv. "Shoot him!" she roared.