9.120 - The Vanguards: Rapture

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

How long had it been since he'd slept?

Cirr blinked, sitting a bit straighter in his seat, snapping out of a mental lapse as he blinked the relentless urge out of his heavy eyes. Quickly, he chased down the last few gulps of caf in his mug, now cold and unpleasantly alkaline. Still, the stimulants within began their work, and he could at least think again.

His desk was a stack of datapads. Duty rosters. Orders from Dac. Inventory of spoils from an Imperial freighter they'd sacked two days ago. Tech manuals. Theory textbooks. A Koensayr-Meorrrei catalog. Fleet charts. He made a half-hearted attempt to sort them and stack them off to the side. Immediately in front of him was his desktop computer, and a message draft he'd been putting together to send to his mother:

Mama,

I thought about trying you on the holo. I'll talk to you later, but I wanted to write you. Not sure if I'd be able to really say this, and I'm sure we'd talk for a while about other things anyway.

I'm scared. Every day. I don't even know why most of the time. I'm still getting used to the idea of two hundred people looking at me and thinking I know what I'm doing. I know how to make things work, but those things are engines, power plants, machines. Those things. People aren't machines. They ask questions, tough questions. They worry. Then they look at me. How do you get behind that? You lead thousands of people and act like its nothing at all to you. I'd kill to have your poise. I run drills, I make people turn in reports. I expect improvement. We can always do better. Everybody works hard, and I've got an amazing crew, but it feels like there's something I should be saying and I'm not able to say it. I'm scared they'll find out how scared I am_

Cirr stared at the opening of the letter blankly, watching the cursor blink at the end of the last sentence he typed. Blink. Blink. Blink.

He hit enter a few times, and added more text.

This letter is shit. Complete shit. Grow up you big baby_

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Captain Raurrssatta?"

The bridge chime. Mallin. Cirr looked at his chrono. Always too late. He closed his eyes, thinking about the bed in his quarters. The blankets drawn tight and the pillows arranged like military habit. Pristine and unused.

He looked back at his shitty rough draft, and saved it. Incomplete. To unfuck with later. Only after removing that eyesore from his sight did he answer the comm.

"Rreporrt."

He'd reached an undestanding with his comms Lieutenant. This wasn't a trivial interruption. Mallin had as much interest in seeing Cirr get a full night's sleep as he did. Neither of them were getting their wish right now.

"Picking up a distress signal from the Gordian frontier. Imperial territory. Quality's in the tank, but you might want to hear this."

He was already on his feet.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"We picked this up on the holo about ten minutes ago. It ran on a short repeat cycle and then we lost it completely."

Cirr stepped to the comm terminal, and nodded for Mallin to play the message.

"...reading this... ...evacuation... ...ion cannon... .... ...Rebel ship... ... ...they're taking everyone alive... ........."

Confusion settled on the Cizerack Captain's face.

"Show me the orrjigjin pojint."

Mallin brought up triangulation data that had been taken from both Novgorod and the nearest Alliance sensor buoys. The Gordian frontier was a theater of combat that command considered "fluid", in the sense that combat operations were common. Alliance warships operated openly in skirmishes and raids, and while planets rarely changed hands, it was fleet priority to lock down the Imperial Navy in a tit-for-tat engagement through the entire six sectors of the frontier.

"Here, sir. Karalon."

Cirr looked at a blip on the star map he'd neither visited nor heard of. It hadn't come up in any fleet briefings. It wasn't a raid priority for any flotilla or sortie, at least nothing he knew of.

"Get me data on Karralon. Can we clean that trransmjissjion up?"

[MARCUS]

The console adjacent to Mallin's station activated.

"My onboard quantum irrationality algorithm may be capable of restoring data packet integrity. Unlocking remote access at your terminal, Lieutenant."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr waited for Mallin to work, and he shook his head.

"No, its not any better. The transmission could be disrupted at the source."

He looked over his personal terminal on information from the planetary databank. Karalon: breathable atmosphere, modest population of approximately 1 million centered around settlements on the southern continent. No real strategic assets or military significance, aside from being a habitable world on the frontier. Of course, the data could be old, and the Empire could have amassed resources there as a staging area.

"Malljin, get me Captajin Terrjius. Put hjim jinto my offjice."

He exited the bridge, ready to consult his flotilla commander for some added perspective.

[Soto Terius]

Corellian Brandy was not a thing to be rushed; and yet every time Captain Terius poured himself a glass, something would happen that forced him to finish it in haste.

He sighed, the blinking light on his desktop intercom proving that today was no exception. He reached for the controls, offering a grunt as the talk button was pressed. His comms officer knew that noise well. "It's Captain Raurrssatta from the Novgorod, sir," a voice said; or at least tried, butchering his attempt at the Cizeri name. "Priority One."

Another grunt followed. Priority One. Every kriffing time someone contacted him, it was Priority One. It was if the entire Alliance military was concerned that he'd simply ignore them, or ask them to call back later if they flagged their transmissions as anything less.

"Patch him through," he muttered with a sigh, already on his feet and smoothing out the front of his waistcoat, in preparation for the life-size holo-ghost of Cirrsseeto to appear.

His mind strayed to his abandoned glass as the projection manifested. "This had better be important, Captain," he uttered with a scowl.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"jI'll be brrjief."

Cirr noted the contents in Terius's very near vicinity. He understood the need for solace and how scarce it was for Captains.

"We'rre gettjing a brroken djistrress sjignal on the wjirre frrom the jImperrjial ssjide of the frrontjierr. Karallon."

His ears tilted upwards inquisitively.

"We'rre not rrunnjing any sorrtjies anywherre nearr that system, arre we?"

[Soto Terius]

Soto's eyebrows climbed. Why the hell would anyone be out near Karallon? There was nothing even remotely of value out in that part of the Frontier, and unless a patrol ship had stumbled a long damn way off it's designated route -

He shook his head, firmly. "I don't have any ships out that far, Captain. And while I can't vouch personally for the entire Alliance Navy, I'm not aware of any other operations in that region either."

He frowned, studying the Cizerack's face carefully for any clues on what might be clanking away in that felinoid brain of his.

"What makes you think that we do?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"The djistrress sjignal mentjioned jit was an Alljiance shjip attackjing."

This wasn't good. There was still such a thing as plausible deniability, but usually you put up a firewall so that if the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, it was quickly dismissed as something not to worry over.

This didn't feel like that sort of thing. They were flying blind.

There were a million questions in his head. He tried to rationalize away his concern.

"jIt could be a trrap, but that's a poorr lurre forr us, no?"

[Soto Terius]

Indeed it could have been a trap, but Soto shared Cirrsseeto's scepticism. An Imperial lure would never have claimed that the Alliance was conducting the attack; and if it was pirates attempting to lure the Empire into an ambush, they would certainly be in for a surprise when they realised how overzealous the Imperial Navy could be when the word "Alliance" was mentioned.

It occurred to Soto that, as much as they wanted and pretended to be, the Alliance Navy was far from a match for it's Republic ancestors. While the Judicial Fleet in which Soto had once served - or even the Navy during the Clone Wars - might have considered it their duty to investigate such mysteries, the Rebellion simply didn't have the resources to play research and rescue as a matter of course.

And yet, something about this sat wrong with him. Some might have called it some vague Force insight, but Soto was Corellian, and didn't give a damn about that kriff. He called it guts, and instinct; and right now his gut was telling him that something wasn't right.

"I suggest we deploy a fast ship with a can-do crew with the skills to deal with just about anything, and see if they can't get to the bottom of all this." His arms folded across his chest, his eyebrow quirking with hidden meaning. "Any idea where I might find a ship like that, Captain?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr gave a nod, already moving for the door.

"Expect my rreporrt soon, Captajin. Raurrssatta out."

The channel cut, and he spared little time beelining for his chair. Sitting, he nodded to Ensign Saine.

"Coorrdjinates forr Karralon jimmedjiately."

He punched a control on his arm rest to open a channel to the ship.

"All hands, thjis jis the Captajin. Yellow alerrt. Engjineerrjing prreparre forr hyperrspace jump."

The energy level on the ship was organic. People who were moments ago waiting for a task to be performed were now buzzing with purpose. Backs were turned to him at duty stations as crew members began the check down for battle readiness and for engaging FTL.

[John Glayde]

All hands, thjis jis the Captajin. Yellow alerrt.

Those were not good words. In fact, they were the exact opposite of good words: a foreboding, uncomfortable opposite. They were the kind of words that had him leaping out of his bunk, grabbing the first shirt-like object that he could find, and bursting into a rapid stride down the corridors before he'd even finished dressing himself. They were the kind of words that made march to the nearest access ladder and climb, all to avoid the uncomfortable few seconds waiting for the elevator to arrive.

He was on the bridge in just shy of a minute; it only took a few seconds longer to settle himself into his designated chair. A knot of frustration bunched in the back of his mind. He was the XO - didn't that make him important enough to not get these surprise situations sprung on him any more?

He pushed that shred of irritation aside, and set his mind to the task at hand.

"So, Captain," he said, throwing Cirrsseeto a sidelong glance. "What's today's galactic emergency?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"jI'm not surre..."

Cirr's voice was distant, and not at all paying much attention to his XO, as he was no doubt too busy trying to figure out the answer to that very same question. As an afterthought to make sure that Glayde caught the same contagion with the enigma they were investigating, he played the broken comm message again, this time for Glayde to hear.

"...reading this... ...evacuation... ...ion cannon... .... ...Rebel ship... ... ...they're taking everyone alive... ........."

[Regan Altink]

Down in engineering meanwhile, Regan was in his element. It wasn't that he relished the prospect of a hyperspace jump into possible danger; it was just that situations like this gave him the opportunity to bark orders at people, and he was pretty fond of doing that.

"Inertial compensators!" he shouted, already part-way through the check-list that needed to be run through before an engine this large could sling the ship into FTL.

"Online, and in the green!" someone shouted back. Tink didn't much care who.

His eyes swept the next item out of habit, even though he knew the list by heart already. "Driver coils!"

"Charging! At ninety-five... ninety-seven... one hundred percent, L.T!"

Regan nodded at himself in approval. "Field emitters!"

There was a pause before responding. That was a bad sign. "Ninety-three percent, sir," came the reply, a slight grimace in the engineer's tone.

The Lieutenant span from his console, bounding down the steps that connected his slightly elevated platform to the desk below. He strode across to where the engineer was standing and, taking a moment to brace himself, hefted a boot solidly into the side of the offending piece of equipment.

The engineer's eyebrows climbed slightly. "Ninety-eight percent, sir."

"Tha'll do," Tink muttered, marching back to his post and clambering swiftly up the ladder. Dumping himself back into the battered but comfortable chair, he jammed a finger into the intercom beside his console. "Engineering tae Navigation; we are go for FTL on y're command."

*

Back on the bridge, Ensign Saine turned slightly in her chair, directing her voice to the Captain.

"Engineering reports go for hyperspace, sir."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr carefully sat back in his seat, fingers fully grasping the arm rests as his claws instinctively stretched out, biting into the guards just enough to keep him grounded. His nostrils flared as he took a deep breath, his attention fully forward.

"Go."

Novgorod slipped the bonds of realspace, snapping into the great nothing as the envelope into the impossible physics of hyperspace took them.

In a bang, they were gone.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan had grown unusually sensitive to hyperspace jumps. The sudden disruption in place would cause him to wake at the drop of the hat. When that nap turned to yellow alert, well, it was time to visit the bridge instead of rolling over since his unofficial shift wasn't for another 2 hours.

The overgrown slicer-Jedi looked like he had just gotten out of bed, which was apropos. Half of his brown hair stuck up, and the other half was matte against his skull. He yawned wide when he came up the service lift. He had only paused for a glass of water and a mouth rinse. The vague realization of barefoot came to, but he didn't care. Chalk it up to being a Jedi, and therefore eccentric. At least he had on pants and a shirt.

He waved at Cirr in a sleepy quarter circle.

"Captain, mornin'."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Everyone made eyes, and those eyes tracked to Cirr, who waved off their worries. Jedi. Comes with the territory. You would always get something interesting. As long as they weren't blowing up the ship with a force powered hiccup or something, and as long as they could get the job done when it needed to be done, they were good people. Creative, strange people, but he'd back their play.

"Morrg, betterr get some caf jin you."

Fortunately, a stall at the rear of the bridge had a utilitarian dispenser, usually for keeping night watch from becoming zombies. A Yeoman with a moment of idle time quickly pressed a durasteel thermos into the Jedi's hands.

[MARCUS]

MARCUS piped up with a bit more information.

We are investigating an attack on an Imperial colony within the Gordian frontier. An incomplete distress signal was recovered, potentially implicating Alliance forces."

[Morgan Evanar]

"Thanks." He muttered to the Yeoman, and yawned.

"Oh." Morgan said at MARCUS's explanation and drank some of the caff before he sat at the console. He grabbed a headset and MARCUS played the message back. He played it again. Morgan's face looked like had smelled a Hutt fart. He pulled up the message and ran it through a visual signal analyzer.

"Strobe jamming?" Morgan suddenly felt disquieted.

[John Glayde]

John didn't particularly know what strobe jamming was; it sounded like the kind of non-gun and non-shooting thing that he generally left to one of his specialists. It wasn't that he was an unintelligent neandathal or anything - he left it to Onashi to tick such boxes on their the Alliance equal opportunities checksheet - but science most definately was not his forté, and he found the convoluted terminology nigh inpenetrable.

The fact that the Jedi apparently understood it all was decidedly unfair, in his opinion. While he was well aware that most Jedi these days weren't the kind of pyjama wearing, glowstick waving characters from the holomovies, and that most of them had lived perfectly normal lives as perfectly normal people before their Force sensitivity switch had been toggled on, it just didn't seem right that they had magical powers on top of everything else. It all made Glayde feel uncomfortably mundane.

"Whatever it is," he chipped in, deciding that he needed to contribute to the discussion whether he had anything constructive to say or not, "It kriffed that transmission up good and proper."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr nodded.

"Rrjight. So now we go jin closerr forr a betterr look."

Which, in the back of his head, caused alarm bells to sound. While he didn't particularly mind going to Imperial worlds, he preferred to do it with a gun blazing. Sneaking around, getting danger-close to a trouble zone that might suddenly snap shut with a couple of star destroyers made him rightfully nervous.

"Captain, we're coming up on realspace terminus."

Ensign Saine prepared her checkdown to switch from hyperdrive to sublights.

Cirrsseeto gave Morgan a glance. It was understood that where they were about to go, they did not want any attention drawn to them.

[Morgan Evanar]

"MARCUS, full passive." Morgan still chewed on the fact that someone used strobe jamming, a practice that had fallen by the wayside since before the Clone Wars. Modern communications jamming was either done by full spectrum blackout, or a game of counter-wave cat and mouse. Strobe jamming could be effective (it worked well here) but it was power inefficient if you knew the other party's relative communications protocols and frequencies. It required large, general EM bursts on large chunks of spectrum. Hence the "strobe."

"We're dealing with either old equipment and/or an unknown 3rd party. I would guess pirates flying Alliance colors." He said out loud, for the crew's benefit.

[MARCUS]

"Your hypothesis is likely. The Alliance Navy is built upon mainstay equipment that 'common market', which is to say there are no organizational controls to restrict their proliferation. A 'false flag' incident should not go unanticipated, as it is an endemic weakness to the Alliance.

It is an organizational inefficiency, but one that is unlikely to be solved in the near future."

The monitor refreshed, clearing off the previous dialogue.

"This conversation is not relevant to our task. Systems emissions now optimized for stealth approach. Be aware, our emissions mask will hamper sensor capability. Recommend visual approach for efficient data gathering."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Rrjight."

He glanced to Glayde.

"Guess we go forr a closerr look then. Get yourr shorre parrty ready."

Novgorod pulled into a polar orbit of the planet, keeping indirect line of sight with the main settlement while maintaining distance. If nobody was looking for them, they were unlikely to be found.

[John Glayde]

Shore party. Glayde could have hugged him.

Fortunately he didn't; good sense and military decorum kept his response limited to a curt but enthusiastic: "Aye, sir."

He hesitated, part way through firing the nerve impulses to his legs that would send him marching out of the bridge, and down to the barracks level. This situation was very much a mystery; and while the selection of people skilled at destroying things was at an all-time high, he was a little low on people skilled in putting things back together again.

He never thought he'd find himself lamenting the absence of Alexander Tur'enne.

His gaze settled on a console; he never knew where to look when addressing the damned computer. "MARCUS; how would you feel about coming out for walkies?"

[MARCUS]

The console patched into MARCUS's terminal on the bridge, and a response was delivered promptly.

"My bipedal module is available for the completion of secondary tasks. I will meet you in the hangar bay."

[John Glayde]

Glayde shot a wry glance at the Captain, a rhetorical comment tumbling from his lips. "Can we requisition more of him? I could do with more people on my team who are that obligingly compliant."

He didn't stay for a response; a nodded salute was offered before he made for the hatch, tugging the comlink from his belt as he went. His mind searched through the over-abundance of skilled individuals that populated the ship's lower decks. Missions that required explosions were easy to select personnel for; but reconnaissance missions with absolutely no clue of what awaited you was something different entirely.

He flipped the device over to the military frequency designated for his team, and thumbed the talk stud.

"Dirge, Onashi, Porter; grab your gear and meet me on the hangar deck. We're going on a field trip."

[Serasai Onashi]

If there was only one good quality about Onashi, most people would be hard pressed to find it; and that was for the reason that they were looking for good qualities. Or one of them, at least. They bypassed certain qualities that one Serasai Onashi, mercenary and all around bad-ass (self described), had trained up.

He was usually very punctual, arriving right on time to everything for which he was summoned, down to last second.

He was diligent. His blaster and gear were always well kept, and the engraved "Vera" on a plaque on his blaster's stock stood out well, though it didn't shine. That would be bad on the battlefield.

And, despite his usually cocksure demeanor, he wasn't one for boasting; his actions bore him out well enough, both on and off the battlefield.

Even still, Dirge was there before him, looking as distractingly gorgeous as ever. It was too bad she was all business; she could probably be a wildcat in the bunk, and it was unlikely that he'd ever know.

"I can't ever get to the hangar before you, Dirge," he said, shaking his head. "Do you bunk here, or just have some secret turbolift you can get to that takes you directly here?"

[Maren Dirge]

Dirge stood at the hangar decks weapons bench, her back turned to Onashi. She slapped a fresh reserve of tibanna gas into a blaster pistol, the cannister releasing a satisfying hiss as it locked into place. The pistol joined its twin in the holsters on her hips as Maren turned to face the least convincing SpecOps operative she'd had the pleasure of working alongside.

“You're still here.”

It was a statement, not a question, spoken with just a hint of weary irritation.

[Sam Porter]

"No. No no no no no."

The voice carried across the small expanse of Novgorod's hangar bay, rife with aggravation and impatience.

Samantha Porter had to keep herself from reaching out and slapping the man beside her with annoyance.

"The green wire goes there, and the yellow goes into that port. The red gets twisted around the blue one, and those get plugged into this cap."

She snatched each wire as she spoke, swift fingers completing each task as she explained.

"You're damaging my calm," was her last grumbled retort as she flipped the device over to check its' underside and make sure the paneling was securely fastened.

Satisfied, Sam turned it back over. Exposed wiring was soon enough covered by another plate, and this she screwed tighly into place.

That's how you do it. Get it right next time, eh? Last thing I need is to be blamed for a dud package."

Glancing over her shoulder, the blonde made a face at the small group beginning to assemble.

"Or a package that goes of prematurely."

Oh, she'd heard the call for the shore party, but her comm had been angrily switched off and slammed to the deck as she did her best to explain the delightful innards of her trade to the poor crewman that'd been assigned to her. They called her a 'special case', but considering the nature of her arrival aboard Novgorod she couldn't really blame them.

She had somewhat talked her way onto the ship, but that was neither here nor there. She was aboard. What's done was done, and if she wished to stay, then she'd have to deliver.

At least her situation was in better standing than that of Ledo Prent. The bastard. If there was ever a man that needed to be shot of of an airlock on principle alone, it was him.

Another glance over her shoulder, and Sam gave a groan. She lifted herself up from her crouch, bomb in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, and with a resigned sigh, set both atop the crate that'd been designated as hers.

The crewman stood also, giving her a disgruntled look, but she waved him off.

"You can go away now."

Sam jerked a thumb in the direction of the assembling group.

"Looks to be I'm going with them and well... " she looked him up and down.

"... your jumpsuit is red, and you know what they say about that."

[MARCUS]

MARCUS approached the sass-mouthed demolitons expert, and quickly examined the parcel in her possession.

"This mission is investigative in nature. The chance that we will be needing high explosives seems unlikely."

[Sam Porter]

As if the droid was a carrier of the Gungan plague, Sam snatched the package away from him.

"I don't recall saying anything about taking my party favors with me," she snapped defensively.

Her height at least put her eyes on the level of the thing's glowing, ocular receptor.

"Do you?"

[MARCUS]

The droid took on a posture that was designed to accentuate his misunderstanding.

"You have not. My comment was based purely on observation."

MARCUS gestured to the Comet where the other members of the shore party were stepping aboard.

"Our discussion is inefficient. We should embark immediately."

[John Glayde]

"Indeed we should," Glayde cut in, derailing their discussion before Porter decided to punch MARCUS.

It wasn't that he had any problems with the two going at it per se; he was sure that the droid - or whatever he was; Glayde wasn't entirely sure what the correct terminology was, and was reluctant to subject himself to the lengthy answer he'd no doubt get if he asked - was more than capable of handing himself. He just knew that Porter was too; and from what he'd heard she tended to punch for the face, and the presence of MARCUS as a scientific platform would be somewhat redundant if she dented his sensors.

Marching through the hangar bay without stopping, he led the way into the shuttle, the rest of his team filing in behind him. Again, he was silently greatful that the Novgorod came packing shuttle pilots; the less time he spent behind the controls of one of these bastard clap-traps, the better.

A glance in Onashi's direction suggested that the Lieutenant was inclined to agree.

"Strap in, boys and girls," he instructed, selecting one of the crash couches and following his own advice.

[MARCUS]

MARCUS prepared to step in, alongside Dirge and Onashi, and paused in front of Glayde.

"Major, a moment please. The probability of combat operations on our reconnaissance mission is distinct. This module contains uninstalled subroutines designed for small unit combat. The Captain has declined to install these programs, perhaps to insist that I divert all resources to the primary task.

With your command of the shore party, doctrine dictates that you determine the course of outcome. Shall I install?"

[John Glayde]

Glayde blinked at the automaton, silently cursing the fact that he insisted on phrasing things in such a damned long-winded way. It wasn't hard to decipher his meaning; it would have just been nice if it wasn't necessary.

The question seemed simple enough: I have combat protocols. Should I install them?

Something about what MARCUS had said gave him pause, however. The Captain has declined. While the Major was predisposed by career and training to want every last scrap of tactical advantage that he could get his hands on, he was well aware that the Captain had significantly more experience dealing with this walking talking program than he did. If the Captain had declined through lack of necessity, that was one thing; if it was because he knew something that the Major did not, that was another matter entirely.

You're not just a soldier anymore, Glayde, his mind muttered at him. You're a Navy XO too. Make a smart decision; do what's best for the ship, not just what's best for the mission.

A question occurred to him. "How long would it take to install these subroutines, MARCUS?"

[MARCUS]

The bipedal module's visual receptor narrowed its iris slightly.

"Installation would be immediate."

[John Glayde]

Glayde nodded.

"Well then, MARCUS: it's probably best to wait. It would be -" He searched for the best word. "- illogical to clutter up your memory banks with unnecessary subroutines."

"If we need you combat-ready, I will order you to install them," he assured. "But you are only to install them on my express instructions; is that understood?"

[MARCUS]

The droid nodded in affirmation.

"Affirmative."

Without further delay, he strapped himself into crash webbing inside the shuttle, just as Porter, Dirge, and Onashi had already done. Once Glayde strapped in, they were ready to launch.

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi ignored the dialogue between Glayde and the droid (he had no better term for it, and he truthfully wasn't thinking too hard about any possible distinctions between a droid and whatever was conversing with his commanding officer), and strapped himself into the shuttle, sharing a look with Glayde indicating his preference for riding shuttles instead of flying them.

He was of the personal opinion that flying anything save for, maybe, a snub fighter was better left to droids.

"Let's get moving then," he said, a bit of impatience leaking through his expression of continuing cynicism.

[John Glayde]

On orders from the bridge, the shuttle pilot engaged the repulsorlift, hefting the unaerodynamic block of a shuttle from the deck, and easing her out through the magnetic containment field that held in the hangar bay's atmosphere. Ion drives pulsed into life, sending the ship hurtling through space towards the planet below.

As the ship began it's furious shaking, Glayde idly remembered the barely-stable and allegedly stealth ship that SpecForce had sent him on a mission to Dar Akuz in. He'd thought that shuttle was a death trap. This one was worse.

The shuttle itself seemed oblivious to the distain felt towards it by it's occupants however, hurtling along like a brick hurled towards the window that was Karalon's upper atmosphere. It smashed against the upper surface belly first, sending a jolt through it's passengers, and sending a plume of burning oxygen trailing off into space, making it look from a distance every bit the comet that the Novgorod crew had nicknamed her.

Luckily Glayde had a strong stomach, else the violent shaking stood a damned good chance of fulfilling the vomit part of the nickname too.

The sound barrier burst, and a few thousand feet later the fires went out, the brick tumbling to fly face-first again. Glayde hoped to any gods that were listening that the repulsorlifts hadn't just been roasted off; nothing about the shuttle's descent ever felt controlled, and Glayde had no desire to suffer the indignity of dying in a metal box that hit the ground too hard.

To his credit, the shuttle pilot coralled the Comet with ease, riding her like an enthusiastic nerf herder on the back of a rodeo bantha. His control shifts weren't the smooth and graceful transitions that one reserved for a responsive shuttle; they were bold, confident movements that slapped the ship into submission. Assuming they survived landing, and made it back to the Novgorod alive, Glayde vowed to buy the kid a beer.

From his vantage point, Glayde could see little; but the glimpses he snatched through the viewport caught him by surprise. Karalon was a beautiful place, with clear skies of blue, and architecture of ice white. It looked every bit the ideal of a peaceful, safe world that the Empire promised to all it's citizens; practically a postcard for everything remotely positive about the Imperial regime.

A knot twisted in Glayde's stomach, as he remembered the snatches of transmission and the accusation it levelled against the Alliance. Had secret elements of the Rebellion sunk so low that they would attack the innocent people on a tactically meaningless world like this?

Sometimes, he thought bitterly. I'm not sure who the good guys are in this war.

That thought haunted him the rest of the way to Karalon's surface.

*

Glayde took point, leading the crew up the long approach to the colony. Through their entire descent, the shuttle hadn't been challenged: not by landing control, or by airborne patrols. Glayde would have loved to have given all the credit to their pilot; but the comm channels had all been quiet. Too quiet.

His grip tightened on his blaster rifle, already pressed against his shoulder, his eyes sweeping every nook and concealed corner for signs of the ambush that his gut told him was waiting.

"Spread out," he ordered, voice loud enough to be heard by the team, but not so loud that it disturbed the eerie silence of what seemed to be a deserted city. What was going on here? Had the citizens fled to bunkers during the alleged Alliance attack? Were they all cowering in their homes like characters from some nerf herder gunslinger holoflick?

He glanced with half an eye in the direction of the droid - the only unarmed member of his contingent. "You picking anything up, MARCUS?"

[MARCUS]

The bipedal droid module paused, slowly panning around.

"There are high levels of ionizing radiation and electromagnetic interference. The sensor suite on this module is limited to one hundred meters."

Hunching down, MARCUS projected a holographic map of the city from his single eye.

"Please note: map of Karallon City. We are here. The prefect's office will be located here. I suggest starting our search at these vectors for high value intelligence. Suggest Dirge, Maren to lead."

[John Glayde]

Glayde threw a glance in the spook's direction, offering as much of a shrug as he could without dislodging his rifle.

"You heard the -"

Damn. The need for terminology came crashing back. Was it a droid? An avatar of a larger program? A subroutine with legs? A ghost in a machine?

"- man," he settled upon. Did MARCUS even consider itself masculine, or was John simply imposing that persona onto the software because of it's name?

It was making his head hurt, and so he decided not to bother thinking about it, ever again.

"You're on point, Dirge. And since you're such a fan of chasing ass, Onashi - cover our six."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi grimaced but settled the butt of his blaster rifle into his shoulder and watched as the team stalked past him into the city proper.

He did have to give Glayde credit The views of Dirge, Porter and Tallen's asses was amazing.

"This place is entirely too quiet," He grunted after following a floating piece of debris with his sights. "It's almost like slavers came in and took the whole city."

[Sam Porter]

She felt like she was simply... here. As a spectator and nothing more. There was a sort of disinterested glaze to her eyes as Sam gave her surroundings a look-over, and she made a disgusted face at nothing in particular.

She hefted the rifle she lazily carried just a little higher as her boots scuffed along the debris-strewn road. It felt like going home almost.

It made her want to drink. Heavily.

With the duffel slung loosely over her shoulder Sam resisted the urge to simply turn around and walk back the way they'd come, march her way onto the Comet, and wait there until they were ready to light out.

Wasn't a bad idea, all things considered. Of course things never happened how she wished them to, and the blonde grumbled an incoherent jumble of expletives as she continued on.

[Maren Dirge]

Maren lead the party as they moved into Karalon City proper, her eyes sweeping the width and height of the street before them.

There was a touch of Alderaan in the architecture, with its white towers shaped like pieces from a holochess board. From a distance, it had all looked pristine and untouched but as they moved through the streets on foot, the marks of humanity became visible. An speeder cab parked haphazardly in the middle of a road. A foot cart abandoned on a ped-way.

Holographic billboards displayed an endless parade of images: military propaganda, adverts for the latest gadgets and twenty-foot high smiles beaming down on empty streets. In spite them, there was silence. Not merely a lack of sound but an oppressive silence, as if something had fallen over Karalon City and was smothering it, forcing all of the life out of it.

No sympathy. This is an Imperial world, Maren reminded herself, as she followed her mental copy of MARCUS' map and edged around a street corner, bringing the tower of the prefects office into sight.

[MARCUS]

MARCUS approached the main gate of the Prefecture behind Dirge, as the rest of the team followed closely. There was no enemy resistance, and while that would normally cause guards to lower, everyone was on edge. This wasn't right. The other shoe was just waiting to drop.

The main gate was sealed. MARCUS attempted to bypass it at the control terminal.

"This interface is not responding to commands."

Carefully, the droid pointed a finger at the access console, which sprouted a screwdriver. Working the plate off the terminal, he fished through wires.

"Establishing manual bypass."

Eventually, the splice worked, and the blast doors peeled apart in three layers, granting access within. MARCUS followed Dirge in, and once they arrived at an interior plaza adjacent to a fountain, he paused.

"I am detecting a holonet terminal still active on the network. Six levels up. Its signature shows origination of the distress message."

[John Glayde]

Glayde's eyes swept the plaza, eyes falling on a plethora of tactical vantages and potential ambush sites. It was something that had bugged him about the Empire even before his loyalty had begun to falter: for such a heavily militarised culture, almost everything they built was a strategic nightmare. It was bad enough that their terrifying planet-destroying space weapon had been successfully infiltrated by a kid in pyjamas and an old man in a bath robe; but this place was ridiculous. It was like the interior designers had staged the ultimate nightmare battlefield, with huge planters and stone features scattered at the optimum points to give the officer responsible for defending it nightmares for his entire tour of duty.

Glayde's attention finished it's sweep, and turned briefly to his new infiltration specialist extraordinaire. "Good job, MARCUS," he offered; he'd almost not bothered, but until he knew what exactly it was that he was dealing with, he saw no reason to treat the droid-esque member of his team any differently from the rest.

He turned to Maren. "Take Onashi, and see if you can work a defensive miracle with this jumbled mess down here. I want to know the second anything hostile shows up... the signal will be a loud explosion, followed by gunfire."

"Porter," he added; "You're with me. We're going with MARCUS -" His eyes flicked back to the automaton. "- who is going to find us a route up to that terminal."

[Sam Porter]

She rolled her eyes, masking the reaction as one of looking upwards toward their target.

"Whatever you say."

Re-situating the duffel, she let out an annoyed breath while licking her lips and wondering just what her role in this was supposed to be.

Information retrieval, the droid had said. Then why was she here?! She wasn't a specialist in that particular area. It made her want to slap that thing upside its' metal head.

"Lead on, then."

[MARCUS]

The droid beeped an affirmative, his processors already teasing out possible solutions to their task.

"Proceeding. The turboshaft access to our destination is in this direction."

The three team members moved as one, heading to the lift which similarly had to be bypassed to function. Eventually it was done, and the group was on their way to the Prefect's office itself. Barring their path this time was another blast door. MARCUS moved to bypass, and paused in the middle of his attempt.

"Error. Physical interruption of interface. This access terminal has been severed from its mechanism. Cause unknown."

He looked to Glayde, then to Porter.

"An electronic bypass of this door is not possible. We must seek alternatatives."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi watched the droid, Glayde, and Porter make their way off, before turning back to Dirge, taking in the scenery and their surroundings. It was too bad that they were on a mission. Alone time with Dirge wasn't something he got often.

"Well," he said after a moment, shouldering his blaster rifle and clapping and rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "Let's get to work, shall we?"

[John Glayde]

Alternatives, MARCUS had said.

John eyed the blast door suspiciously, contemplating his options. From what he could decipher from MARCUS' description, someone - or something - had essentially sealed the door shut. Questions of who, and whether it had been done from inside and out, were particularly pressing: John was inclined to guess the former, but the only way to know for sure was to find the answers lurking inside the inaccessible room.

Behind the blast door.

Blast door.

A sidelong glance was cast from Glayde, towards Sam Porter. "I need a large hole made, Miss Porter," he said casually, with the kind of incidental tone of a man who wanted to temporarily borrow someone's blaster cleaning gear. "Think you can do anything about that?"

[Sam Porter]

A devilish grin.

"Thought you'd never ask," came her swiftly mumbled answer, though her tone was certainly one of relief.

Her rifle was set carefully to the side, and Sam eased the duffel from her shoulder, making a point of looking at MARCUS while she set it down and opened it up. She had desperately wanted to slap him upside his head, but decided against that action as she supposed it would be 'unprofessional'. Didn't mean that she could leave him with a parting verbal shot at least.

"A purely information retrieval mission, eh?"

The contents of her duffel - to anyone else - would seem to be nothing but a mass of jumbled detonators and haphazardly stored mines. To her, there was a system to it, and she reached into the pack's innards. Deft hands shoved each piece aside, occasionally pulling out one or two in the process, and it wasn't long before she'd retrieved what she wanted.

Rising to stand, the blonde stepped over the duffel and up to the blast doors.

"Did you know," she talked as she worked. It helped her to think.

"... that at least twenty-three percent of holocopier faults in the galaxy are caused by people sitting on them and copying their backsides?"

She gave a cursory look over the barrier between them and wherever it was Glayde wanted to be before once again setting to work.

"Can you just imagine that?"

One button set each detonator's magnetic grip, and as if she cared little for their placement, Sam stuck each one to the metal surface of the doors. She went to each one, synchronizing their blast times.

"That means that somewhere, someone right now is making a holocopy of their rear."

Stepping away, Sam smoothly scooped up her duffel, and reaching out, she took up her rifle while shooing her two teammates away.

"Come on then boys. Since we can't be the ones to add to that statistic, let's go ahead and make sure we're not dumped into that lovely statistical pile of poor sods who didn't take cover from their own explosives."

[MARCUS]

MARCUS complied, although he tried to run with all the loose ends Porter was spouting, so as he ducked behind a support structure outside of the blast zone, he pontificated.

"Non sequitur. A comedic element designed to introduce absurd and incongruous dialogue into a situation. I question the timing of this attempt."

KA-BOOM!!!

Rising from his protected area and shrouded by a sudden enveloping cloud of dust, the droid appeared not one bit startled by the sudden explosion.

"Detonation intensity 10.5 megajoules. Sufficient for breach."

While the organic members of his team had to cope with the blinding dust in the aftermath for at least a few seconds, MARCUS casually cut through the abyss by switching to infrared as he entered the neat aperture punctured into the door by Sam's bomb.

"There are sixteen humans within the command bunker. All appear to be upper echelon Imperial staff.

All deceased. Probable cause close range gunshots to the temple."

Glayde's voice carried from outside.

"They killed themselves?"

MARCUS's processors accelerated, testing out possible outcomes.

"This outcome seems likely judging from the pattern of dermal cremation. Major, the room is clear of threats. I suggest entry."

[John Glayde]

John cursed under his breath as he clambered through the breach, eyes sweeping the mausoleum they had just unsealed. One thing that MARCUS had neglected to mention was the smell; the tell-tale sickly sweet medley of early-onset decomposition with a dash of singed flesh and ozone.

The Major had seen enough battlefields, enough bodies, and enough self-inflicted blaster wounds for the sight to not phase him in the slightest. That fact in itself was unsettling; but he set it aside, making a note to lament it in the company of alcohol later on.

He drew up alongside MARCUS, his blaster rifle almost completely lowered: there was no one left alive in here to be a threat to anyone any more.

"Are you equipped for forensics, MARCUS?" he asked, realising that he was almost completely unaware of the full extent of the walking hardware's mission potential. "Can you calculate a likely time of death?"

[MARCUS]

A dull sounding buzz-beep emanated from the droid.

"I possess a full anatomical database but have no onboard tools on this module to perform anything beyond a cursory visual examination."

MARCUS gestured to the computer at the center of the room, it's screen still flickering a warm glow.

"The data on this terminal may still be intact. It may offer the information you seek."

[Sam Porter]

Thank you, Porter.

Good job, Porter.

Perfect spacing, Porter.

With a stormcloud of annoyance souring her features, Sam stalked after the other two, making sure her duffel was once more thrown over one shoulder and across her back.

Her rifle, still angled downward, seemed to tip lower as she stepped over the rubble and remnants of the blast door.

The scent that assaulted her nose was one that she instantly decided she could do without smelling ever again - and the sight to match was filed away as well as something that she never wished to see again. She followed Glayde's lead on this one, sweeping her gaze over each body that littered the area like some sort of macabre display of art.

"No one deserves to go out like this," she murmured to herself.

[John Glayde]

John rose an eyebrow at that.

"No one deserves to die on their own terms?" he countered, turning his gaze on her for a moment. "No one deserves to be allowed to choose the quick and painless option?"

The Major's mouth drew into a thin line. "I've seen enough mass suicides to know, Miss Porter: whatever they were locked in here and hiding themselves from, these men all decided that a death by their own hands was an infinately more preferable option."

That didn't shift the unsettling feeling in his stomach, however. What exactly had terrified the Empire so badly that an entire population had fled and it's leaders turned this room into their own mass grave?

He shook that thought aside, turning back to MARCUS. If the console they'd stumbled upon really was the source of the distress call, maybe it could offer the answers to some of those grim and uncomfortable questions. He jerked a head in it's direction.

"Any chance you can pull the full distress call out of the recording logs on that terminal, MARCUS?"

[MARCUS]

"This terminal's circuitry is undamaged by the external ionizing radiation detected in the city. Given this facility's priority, it may be shielded."

The module began a cursory examination.

"This unit is still logged in. Opening and copying media."

A series of holo-images began to appear on an emitter as an audio file played.

"Attention all Imperial stations. If you are reading this, we are issuing an all points evacuation on Karallon. Enemy attack is commencing. Heavy ion cannon strikes have disabled all shielding and defense systems. Unkown vessels. They conform to no Rebel ship on record. Dropships have begun ground assault. Mixed elements of droids and unknown aliens. They're taking everyone alive. This is General K~~~~~"

MARCUS rose from the terminal, now facing Glayde.

"Transmission from this terminal ends. Unknown interruption."

[John Glayde]

Each word added an extra grim weight to the force dragging down on Glayde's innards. Evacuation. Ground assault. Unknown aliens. It sounded like the plot for some cheap science fiction holonovel - the kind too trashy for even Onashi to read - and if Glayde hadn't seen the abandoned streets, and wasn't in a room with a dozen corpses, he'd have almost thought it was some sick joke.

"Check the communications logs."

Words were tumbling slowly from Glayde on autopilot, his years of experience compelling his mouth to speak while his consciousness mind tried to rationalise what he had learned.

"Pull out tactical information. Video feeds. If it's even vaguely connected with this attack, I want it downloaded and brought back to the ship with us. The Captain is going to need all the information we can find."

His hand strayed towards his comm, but it would be of little use. The same ionising radation that had interfered with the Imperial distress call would no doubt prevent them from holding a coherant conversation with the ship.

Besides, Glayde mused grimly. The Captain needs to hear this in person.

"Grab what you can," he finished, with a curt nod in MARCUS' direction. "And lets get the hell out of there."

[Serasai Onashi]

"Help me with this," he grunted to Dirge, shouldering his rifle and picking up a large container that had been left open and empty. They pulled it between two duracrete planters containing quaint, thin trees.

"You can't tell me this doesn't bother you," He said, looking around, a frown creasing his features. "I'd think it was a slaver attack, but this place is far too big and well defended."

[Sam Porter]

An acidic glare was sent Glayde's way, but Sam kept her mouth clamped firmly shut. For now.

Later though?

Oh hells, that man was going to get an earful.

The blonde settled for simply marching herself back out through the blown blast doors, mindful of her footing. The stench was still nothing to easily ignore, but Sam set her mind to the verbal whipping she planned to give the XO, and with dark thoughts circling her mind she picked her way over the blackened and jagged threshold and into somewhat fresher air.

[MARCUS]

The group moved out the way they came, through the ruined blast door. Meeting up with Onashi and Dirge, they left the Prefecture completely, headed back towards the city proper.

"Major, I have completed analysis on some of the recovered data fragments."

His visual receptor glowed as a hologram of a strange-looking ship emerged.

"Forty seven of these vessels were observed by Imperial commscan. Given the telemetry, they are likely to be heavy cruisers of an unknown origin."

The hologram cut off as quickly as it was displayed, and the MMU continued onward.

"Recommend dissemination of data immediately. The implications of this attack are profound."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Well, you know what they say about planets like Karallon. If there is a bright spot in the galaxy..."

"...there are many bright spots in the galaxy. They are called stars, Lellan," De'Ville snapped. She was doing her best to tolerate the SpecOps team she had been put in charge of, but Lellan's tendency toward excessive chatter was not endearing him to her. "We need to keep moving. Whatever made that explosion needs investigating."

"Yes, sir," Lellan agreed. He looked at Grenn, who just shrugged, hitched up his blaster rifle, and followed De'Ville through the trees. Lellan groused under his breath but fell in line, head on a swivel for any unusual noises. Mano and Fli'lik brought up the rear. Thing was, there weren't any weird noises. Just regular forest sounds with regular insects and small avians, and the occasional sign of rodentia. Lellan hated rodents, especially small ones; the smaller the more he hated them. But the normality of the forest only served to cause the unease of the SpecOps team to grow, not lessen.

Fli'lik, an attractive green skinned Twi'lek who wore her bodyglove like a, well, a glove, held a scanner up, tapping the screen gently. The handheld device beeped softly. "Long range picked up a contact headed this way from the west. Looks to be a small group, could be hostiles, might be natives." She sounded unconvinced. "If we go silent they'll travel right by us."

De'Ville checked her own scanner as she walked. The blip they were following was still a ways ahead of them, south of the town they had just put behind them. "We need answers. Whoever this is might have them." She gave out short instructions, and the team split up, disappearing into the trees and shrubs. She took her own position with her back against an expansive and scratchy trunk, blaster held ready. With a slow exhale she let her senses expand into her surroundings.

The noise of the incoming group was much less than she might have expected, the footsteps sounding cautious. Voices were low, conversation limited. Too quiet. Much too cautious. She grabbed at her throat mic, subvocalizing, "We're blown. Go now, go now!" and leapt out, pointing her blaster at the nearest humanoid, her finger on the trigger.

There was a lot of commotion and Lellan was shouting about someone's questionable ancestry, and then she met the eyes of John Glayde and yelled, "Friendlies, friendlies, do not shoot!"

[John Glayde]

With the exception of MARCUS, who was still very much unarmed, the blasters of Glayde's team snapped up ready to fire the second there was even the slightest hint of sound or movement from the undergrowth. It was only the vaguely familiar flash of warpaint around the eyes that stopped Glayde from pumping the leaping figure full of blaster.

"Hold your fire," he ordered, calm but clear. His hand reached out to grab the arm of Sam Porter, already in the process of prepping a grenade that would surely make a crater of the supposedly covert team. He fixed Sam with a meaningful look. "They're on our side."

He let the rifle drop - not all the way, but enough to at least seem a little less threatening. His eyes picked out the shapes of the rest of the SpecOps team as they stirred from cover; exactly where MARCUS had reported in his usual deadpan mere moments before. Glayde made a mental note to discuss weaponising the whatever-he-was with the Captain when they got back: the automaton was proving to be particularly useful, and a damn sight more reliable and predictable than most of the people Glayde found himself working with these days.

"Lilaena De'Ville," he spoke with a nod, an identification for the benefit of his teammates who hadn't met the uniquely-decorated probably-human before. It wasn't a friendly greeting: one uttered because social conventions demanded it, and with a tone that suggested he wasn't in a mood for conversational stall tactics.

It hadn't been more than a few weeks since the mission to Dar Akuz, and the Novgorod hadn't been back to Bothawui since: the bulk of Glayde's mission team - as well as Porter, who they'd stumbled across in an Imperial holding cell - were still stuck aboard, and if Glayde's new role as Executive Officer was anything to go by, that didn't look to be something that would be changing any time soon. De'Ville however had somehow managed to secure transit off the ship; and now here she was.

"You want to explain to me why you're skulking around in the shadows on the outskirts of a ghost city?"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"I could ask you the same thing," said De'Ville, a ghost of a smile touching her face. "However, I am just glad to see some friendly faces. This planet..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked around at the uniformed and alert Rebel soldiers, most of whom she knew. Some were securing the perimeter, others talking quietly or using the time, like Lellan, to relieve himself almost out of sight in the forest. She narrowed her eyes at her team member's back, and turned her head back to Glayde and the droid.

"The answer is mostly classified, but what I can tell you is that Intel has an agent on Karallon. They lost contact with him a few days ago. My team was dispatched to locate and retrieve the operative, if we were able.

"We passed through Serass City, to the east." De'Ville jerked her head in the direction Glayde's team had been headed. "It has been completely emptied. No sign of the agent, no sign of anyone." She shifted her weight, hitching up her utility belt and tucking her short hair behind her ear. "We were headed toward this area of farmland," she indicated the area on a well worn flimsi map, reinforced for durability but already folded and re-folded too many times. "Initially Karallon Capitol, where you just were, was where we were going, but we picked up a faint signal from our missing operative coming from the south."

[Serasai Onashi]

"So we've got a signal, but no life signs whatsoever except for us," Onashi said, standing straight and walking off a few steps to form a part of the perimeter being set up.

He walked right next to the twilek. She looked serious, so perhaps a little levity would be off the mark. Especially in these circumstances. But Onashi was a man, a man with needs, and those needs needed to be fulfilled, billions of missing people or not.

"I feel like I'm walking around in a horror holo," he murmured to her. "Cities weren't meant to be that quiet."

[John Glayde]

Glayde decided not to ask how someone went from working for SpecForce to working for Alliance Intelligence in a matter of weeks. He tried to keep his nose out of spook and spectre business as best he could, in the vain hope that they'd return the curtosy. It wasn't a plan that had succeeded so far; but it caused marginally fewer headaches than the alternative.

News that Alliance Intelligence had an asset on the planet filled him with a strange sense of dread. Karallon was for the most part a largely unremarkable place; and while Glayde was no stranger to working for an organisation that played it's cards close to it's chest, he couldn't shake the feeling that maybe someone knew a lot more about what was going on here than anyone realised.

A frown crept onto his brow, as his mind strayed briefly to MARCUS and the comm reports he had downloaded. "This isn't really the time or place to be comparing notes about what it going on here," he pointed out. A thumb jerked over his shoulder in the direction of the automaton. "We've got urgent intel to report in, and I can't risk the Alliance not recieving it... but there's a good chance that this missing man of yours is holding more pieces of the puzzle."

His gaze swept around the group, a moment of hesitation gracing his features before they settled into a resolved decision.

"I need to get some altitude to clear this comms interference, but Onashi and Dirge will stay planet-side to help you find your lost asset." He fixed De'Ville with a knowing look. "If you'd be so kind as to drop them off on the Novgorod when you're done, maybe we can bring each other up to speed, and work out what the hell is going on down here."

[MARCUS]

MARCUS nodded curtly in agreement with Glayde's assessment.

"Major, I recommend immediate debarkation. Analysis of Imperial naval doctrine suggests 94.4 percent chance of retaliation with overwhelming force. It is likely they intercepted the same message fragment and have derived the same fallacious understanding of it that we have."

With that, the droid accompanied the SpecForce ground commander and Sam Porter back the way they came, to the waiting dropship.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She opened her mouth to say something...anything, but Glayde, the blonde woman, and the droid were already turning on their heels and disappearing into the forest. Lilaena looked at Onashi, already hitting on Fli'lik who was looking at him a little incredulously, then at Dirge. "Good thing we have room for one more in the shuttle."

"I'll let you share my seat," Lellan said to Maren, grinning. De'Ville did roll her eyes then, and snapped her fingers.

"Time to get moving. We have a clock running on us now." Her team shouldered packs and they made their way through the trees and undergrowth as silently as they could. The forest wasn't quiet - the insects and avians were still making the usual sounds - but the planet was eerily silent. No comms noise. No speeder commotion. No ships flying overhead.

De'Ville couldn't mention that there was a spectacularly wrong feeling to Karallon in the Force. The closer they got to the signal in the south the worse it was.

[Serasai Onashi]

She cast him a sidelong look, but Onashi was pleased to see it wasn't full of disdain.

There was room to work. Onashi didn't hide his smirk, but made sure to keep an eye out on the underbrush.

The twilek seemed ready to respond, but De'Ville's command to move out interrupted them. Onashi didn't mind.

They settled into a loose line as they jogged across the landscape, himself in middle behind De'Ville, and just in front of the twilek, while Maren shared point with one of De'Ville's group. They were making good time to their destination, but Onashi could feel the tension rise, and while he wasn't anxious, he wasn't keen on facing an entire legion of Stormtroopers with only the few of them here.

Onashi grunted and looked up. The sky was getting crowded with birds, of various types, but most seemed to be larger, carnivorous birds. Vultures.

"That's a lot of carrion-birds," he said. The twilek was nearest him; she looked up as well. One of the others of De'Ville's group grimaced.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville looked up at the avians, and nodded in agreement with Onashi. "We are almost to the signal."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," muttered Lellan, from his position bringing up the rear as the party moved southward. Lilaena agreed with that too, but didn't say anything. Almost unconsciously the group was slowing down from the jog they'd started out at as the trees began to thin and a clearing began to emerge in front of them.

Dirge and Grenn paused just in front of her, and the team took suitable cover as the Zabrak inched into the open plain, blaster rifle held at the ready. De'Ville could feel the vultures in front of them, hundreds if not thousands of the creatures making a vast imprint in the Force. Grenn waved them forward, and one by one the Rebels stepped out from the tree line, their weapons held ready.

"I... I..." Grenn couldn't take his eyes off of what was in front of him as the others walked past him. De'Ville surveyed the plain with cold eyes, while Mano took a knee to her left, retching dryly. Lellan was speechless, for once, but he kept walking out into the clearing, swinging the butt of his blaster rifle at the avians and scaring them off the mounds they were gathering atop.

Onashi and Fli'lik stopped next to De'Ville, the sensitive Twi'lek putting a hand to her nose for a moment. The plain was vast, and it was almost completely full of piles of dead bodies.

"I think we found our agent."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi had seen some morbid things in his life. A man searching or his arm, finding it, and running off the battlefield; a blast crater from an orbital bombardment that wiped out a town of five thousand people; he had even participated in a mass execution, fighting an armed insurgency on a Corporate Sector planet.

Those weren't nothing in comparison, but sheer scale of death was something he had never seen before.

Mountains of bodies littered the vast plain, some mounds taller than the trees that bordered the grasslands.

One of De'Ville's men kept walking, smacking away the carrion-birds with the butt of his rifle, and screamed.

"Get away! Get away! That's not food!" he yelled, his face contorted into a furious expression.

Onashi looked over at the twilek, who was visibly sick at the sight of the corpses. He'd smelled this before, and worse too, though these people weren't more than a day dead, or the smell would likely have covered the entire area.

"Graaaaaaaaahh!" the Rebel yelled, panting and bending over. Onashi turned to De'Ville.

"I don't think the man's alive," he said. "No one seems to have survived. We need to go."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Normally I would agree," she said, scanning the horizon that writhed with flapping wings, and then looking down at the padd in her hand. The signal still blipped gently on the screen, somewhere in front of them.

"Take Grenn and Lellan, find the agent's body to confirm he's actually here. A quick scan of the body should suffice to convince Intel." Her eyes kept getting drawn to roughly the center of the plain, where the wrongness kept pulling at her. "Fli'lik, you're with me. Mano - " De'Ville looked back at the sniper, who was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, still kneeling on the grass.

"You and Dirge stay here. You see anything moving that's not a scavenger, you radio." He nodded, pushing himself up to his feet and squaring his shoulders.

Lellan had given up flailing at the birds, and the eaters of the dead swooped back down, squawking noisily as they landed on the corpses, sharp beaks flashing. De'Ville jerked her head at the Twi'lek, and the woman nodded, following her into the piles of the citizens of Karallon.

She was focused on whatever it was that was drawing her toward the center, her body following her eyes and picking it's own way through the bodies. There was enough of a space between mounds that they did not have to step on any of the dead, but the occasional arm or leg would block the path and needed to be stepped over. De'Ville flinched when Fli'lik touched her shoulder.

"Look," said Fli'lik, pointing to the side. "Look at their faces." Her voice was quiet.

Lilaena stopped her trek, and turned to see what she was talking about. The bodies seemed unharmed, other than being dead. There were no pools of blood or sticky wounds, except for what could easily be traced to the post-mortem work of the scavengers. But the faces...

...each face that she could see was stretched into a grimace of horrific terror, mouths agape, eyes open and unblinking. Fli'lik shuddered, behind her.

De'Ville reached out and touched one on the forehead, reaching out with the Force. "What did this to them?" She snatched her hand back almost as soon as she touched the cold, slick skin, and her head snapped back to where she had been headed. "We need to hurry. The fleet needs to hear this."

"But what are we looking for?" asked Fli'lik, lengthening her stride to keep up with De'Ville.

"I do not know yet," ground out the Dark Jedi between gritted teeth as she ran toward the wrongness.

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi grunted and accepted the pad that indicated the missing agent's body, looking at it and up at the two men who were to help him.

He looked at the mountains of dead and realized what she'd actually said.

"How am I supposed to find a single body in this?" he shouted after her. De'Ville didn't answer, seemingly absorbed in her task. He turned back to Grenn and Lellan, a decidedly irritated expression painting his features.

"Well," he said, looking at the pad and then at the piles of bodies surrounding them. "Let's start looking then."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

There was a clearing in the midst of the bodies, large enough for a good sized freighter to set down. De'Ville and Fli'lik approached it cautiously, the grotesque that surrounded them giving way to empty space.

Not quite empty. A trio of what might have been tables were sitting on the other side of the clearing, one upended toward the sky. De'Ville jerked her head toward them, and Fli'lik nodded in reply. The two women jogged across the expanse, where once native grasses and flowers had grown and bloomed, now a muddy expanse of trampled flora, criss-crossed with footprints and drag marks. Without being asked the Twi'lek took out her datapad, using the built in holocam to record visuals as they approached.

This was, as a mystery writer might put it, a Clue.

De'Ville felt every fiber of her being screaming at her to get away, but she put one foot in front of the other and stood before the tables. They were split into three segments, a large upper half with the lower half split in two, with adjustable restraints. At least thirteen centimeters thick, the tables were obviously some sort of tech, with sockets and plugs that lay empty. She couldn't bring herself to touch them, looking at the one that was on end. The restraints lay open, as though whoever had used it hadn't bothered to close it down after the last body had fallen from it's cold grasp.

"Torture devices of some kind?" she managed. "I have never seen their like." Fli'lik scanned the table, recording everything they could glean from a sensor sweep, and De'Ville's foot kicked a tiny cylinder. She bent and picked it up, holding it up to the light. It was nearly empty, a few drops of a clear liquid still contained within. It appeared very similar to a syringe, minus a needle. Double checking to make sure she couldn't be pricked, De'Ville secured it into a velcroed pocket.

"Look," said Fli'lik, pointing beyond the three devices. "I was recording the ground, and... well... look." Her lekku were twitching, signing something that De'Ville couldn't translate even if she'd wanted to. The soft ground was dented with imprints from the tables' support system, where perhaps a hundred of them must have stood. For what purpose, she could only guess at.

"Keep recording." De'Ville touched her throat mic, transmitting to the others. "We're heading back to Dirge and Mano. Any luck finding our man?" While she waited to hear from the other team, she forced herself to touch the table in front of her.

A blinding wave of terror washed over her, and she flailed backward, her ears full of silent screams. She bent over and threw up.

[Serasai Onashi]

"...I think we have," Onashi said in reply, looking at a pile of bodies with distaste, and wiping off sweat from his forehead.

Lellan and Grenn were standing on either side, trying desperately to get the growing smell of decay from their noses. Onashi had pulled out his pipe and lit it to cover the smell, puffing away and crossing his arms.

"Kids," Lellan said with disgust. "They did... whatever they did with kids."

"I think we deserve something for having to dig through a pile of children's bodies," Onashi grunted, nudging the dead agent's body with his foot.

Both men on either side looked more ill than they had before.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Great," said Fli'lik in response to Onashi while De'Ville took a deep breath and wiped her mouth. "See you in two."

She pulled De'Ville to her feet and they double timed it back to where they'd exited the forest. The rest of the team was waiting, and they silently took their positions, making good time back to where the shuttle was waiting. The slaved recall for the ship wasn't working with all the interference in the atmosphere, meaning it was a hot run through the trees for long, excruciating minutes.

Grenn threw himself into the pilot seat and the shuttle was taking off almost before the ramp was closed. "I guess we're rendezvousing with Novgorod, since we picked up some strays," De'Ville said, a half-hearted attempt at humor that fell flat. No one was in the mood to point it out, however, and the ride to the black was tense and quiet.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Captain, the shore party is aboard, sir."

Mallin put an end to an eternity of waiting. Cirr exhaled, rising from his seat.

"We can't stay herre. Sajine, plot a courrse to get us back to Alljiance terrrjitorry."

"Captain, Major Glayde is informing us that they've linked up with an Intel element on Karallon. Part of the shore party liased with them to complete some ground reconaissance."

The Captain glanced back at Mallin, who wore an inscrutable expression. No sense in killing the messenger, so to speak. Frustrated, he took his seat again. The moment he had clearance from his hangar chief that the Comet was secured, he patched a line through.

"Majorr, don't keep me jin suspense herre. jI want yourr team up herre and rreporrtjing now."

[John Glayde]

"Keep your ears on," Glayde grunted under his breath, weaving his way through the swarm of technicians that were approaching the landed Comet to do whatever it was that they did. He didn't know. Didn't much care. He just found it intensely frustrating.

Forced to stop by a mechanic who wasn't paying enough attention for his liking, Glayde grabbed him firmly by either shoulder, and manhandled him clear of his path before marching onwards, navigating the path of least resistance towards the turbolift.

His hand strayed to his ear, and triggered the comlink wrapped around it. "Copy that, Captain," he replied, managing to scrub a little of the frustration from his voice. "We're already on our way."

A glance around him revealed that his companions weren't progressing through the herd of mechanics quite as swiftly as he was. He turned around, still moving towards the elevator but facing the opposite way as his lips pursed, and a loud whistle blasted between his tongue and palette. "MARCUS," he barked, jerking his head at the automaton. "Heel."

[Sam Porter]

It wasn't really a meandering pace that she'd adopted, but it was certainly nothing that could be described as hurried either. More to the point it was a halting gait that involved a bit of careful navigation.

How many damn mechanics did this ship need?!

It was frustrating, but nothing that couldn't be worked around, and she knifed her way through the herd of bodies around her. She wasn't that far behind Glayde; she was close enough to to see the impatience in his gaze at least. It made her scowl slightly.

"I'm here too you know," she grumbled beneath her breath, disgruntled as she pushed her way past him and closing the rest of the distance between herself and the lift.

[John Glayde]

"Yes," John shot back as she passed. "But you're big enough and ugly enough to work out what to do on your own."

His mind added an afterthought. And whistling for you to follow is a sure-fire way of getting punched in the face.

Glayde followed her into the 'lift, waiting with an arm stuck through the doorway until MARCUS had clanked his way in to join them, before snapping it inside and jamming the controls that would take them to the bridge. Like most things on the Novgorod, the turbolift was a lot smaller and more cramped than he would have preferred: when you spent most of your career serving on Star Destroyers or at ground garrisons, you grew accustomed to being able to move around the place without smashing your elbows into everyone else.

The ascent was quick - there weren't exactly many floors for the elevator to negotiate - and with a hiss the doorway slid open to reveal the bridge. Glayde was the first out, stepping his way around MARCUS who had positioned himself the optimum distance between Sam and John; which put him almost exactly in the way of the door.

He met the Captain's eyes across the bridge, and tossed a curt nod at his commanding officer. "We might want to use your office, sir."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Without further ado, the Captain snapped his fingers and gestured to the ready room adjacent to the bridge. He wasn't going to mince words, and he needed to know what was going on immediately.

The three members of the returning shore party filed in after him along with his senior staff. Evanar, Tallen, and Vek Vek were all summoned, and Cirrsseeto wasted no time.

"What the hell jis gojing on down therre?"

Without the luxury of aggressive sensor scans while under the shroud of E-WAR, Novgorod had a limited view of the planet below.

[Mara Tallen]

She remained silent, entering the room and leaning against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Amber eyes cast across the room, managing to not linger on Morgan too long. She met Glayde's gaze and arched a brow, questioning gently with her expression.

Cirr's voice cut through the room quite handily, and she managed not wince. He didn't often raise his voice...when he did, it was completely justified. She waited and watched to see what the ground crew said in response.

And was thankful she'd been on the Novgorod the entire time for a change.

[John Glayde]

Glayde didn't have an answer to that. So much about what had happened was difficult to fathom. Abandoned cities. Alien invasions. Offices that became mausuleums. There was more to unwravel on the planet, he was sure of it; and maybe the Intel team would stumble across it. That was his hope; his main reason for leaving Onashi and Dirge behind. Whoever was cutting De'Ville's paycheck, it was Intel who were calling the shots on her little mission; and Glayde knew all too well that once they had their mits on a situation, the people who actually needed to know what was going on in order to stay alive could kiss being in the loop goodbye.

His mouth drew into a tight line. "It's perhaps best if you watch, sir."

He shot a glance at MARCUS. "Play the full transmission."

[MARCUS]

On Glayde's command the droid recalled the full audio message that was intended for anyone to hear, and that had been disrupted at the transmission source by heavy ionizing radiation.

"Attention all Imperial stations. If you are reading this, we are issuing an all points evacuation on Karallon. Enemy attack is commencing. Heavy ion cannon strikes have disabled all shielding and defense systems. Unknown vessels. They conform to no Rebel ship on record. Dropships have begun ground assault. Mixed elements of droids and unknown aliens. They're taking everyone alive. This is General K~~~~~"


As the droid played the message, he also displayed holographic readouts of the unidentified vessels that had likely assaulted Karallon. The fleet was fairly large. Forty eight ships in total. Four ships corresponded to a Battle Cruiser (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shree-class_battle_cruiser) configuration, while another sixteen appeared consistent with designs for Light Cruisers (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wurrif-class_light_cruiser). The remaining twenty-eight ships were likely Picket Ships (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fw%27Sen-class_picket_ship) though confirmation was impossible with so little data.

Further examination of the data detected small craft (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Swarm-class_battle_droid) among the fleet formation in huge numbers. Their dimensions made them too small to be conventional fighters, so their function remained a mystery.

The droid said nothing, allowing the other members of the shore party to offer introspection of their own to the Captain.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan's eyes were wide. While 900 meters wasn't normally a massive ship, their design meant they were huge. Unlike the wedge or elongated ships of the Rebellion or Empire, these ships must have tremendous internal volume.

"MARCUS, give us a closer view of those cannons on the ridge." The droid complied. They were fortunate that the holos were in high resolution.

"Those look like Ion Cannons to me. The structure is all wrong for turbolasers. 24 of em, and 24 of something else. It's got a lot of what I would assume are tractor beam projectors, judging by the location of the hangers." Morgan ran his finger across the bottom of the holo. It was obvious that those were doors.

"12. Now I realize this is all guesswork but I'd put one of these up against any of the bigger cruisers, short of something like the Executor. That's a big hangar, and we have no idea how deep it goes with something of this volume." Morgan took a deep breath and sat back. It was all, at best, a good guess.

With the strobe jamming and ion bombardment, the sensor logs were likely garbage. Morgan asked anyway.

"Anything useful from the sensor logs?" the Jedi asked.

"No." MARCUS stated simply.

Morgan nodded grimly.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr rose from his seat, palms placed on the desk as he looked at the holograms. His ears angled back as he frowned, but otherwise gave no room for the cool dread in the pit of his stomach to overtake him.

"We don't have a goddess-damn forrce jin ten sectorrs that can counterr that."

His blue eyes moved from holo to holo, rapidly shifting as he tried to make sense of it all. Who was behind this? He'd never seen a ship configured even remotely in this fashion. The weapon blisters were vaguely similar to Mon Calimari specifications, but these ships were uniquely ovoid in ways that the aquatic aliens simply did not design their cruisers. The armament was wrong. The bays were wrong. As an engineer, he looked for precedence in design to give him a clue as to origin. He had nothing here.

He pointed at the sections Morgan had indicated, looking to his Jedi colleague as they tried to put brain-power together.

"jIon cannons. Trractorr beam prrojectorrs. Who desjigns a shjip wjith thjis as thejirr majinstay arrsenal?"

The Captain looked to Glayde, that sense of dread now knotting him in the middle as he tied up loose ends.

"The message sajid they werre takjing people aljive? Why? Why that many people? The rradjiatjion saturrated arround the cjity, that's got to be frrom an jion bombarrdment."

All they had were questions. Nothing was making sense.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"This is the Momin, requesting clearance to dock with Novgorod." De'Ville pulled her finger off the comm button, and looked out the viewport at the larger ship looming ahead of them.

Grenn was headed straight for it, broadcasting the current codes for clearance. It was always a little fiddly, approaching a warship for the first time. Thankfully the Novgorod was quick about granting permission, and they were soon directed to an appropriate hangar. The shuttle slid through the glittering shield that protected the landing bay from space, and the Zabrak set it down gently.

"Come on," De'Ville said to Onashi. "We need to talk to the Captain."

[John Glayde]

The Captain looked to Glayde, that sense of dread now knotting him in the middle as he tied up loose ends.

"The message sajid they werre takjing people aljive? Why? Why that many people? The rradjiatjion saturrated arround the cjity, that's got to be frrom an jion bombarrdment."

You're the engineer, sir. I'm just the man with the gun.

That was what Glayde wanted to say. His knowledge of spacecraft was minimal. He knew what he had to, and he'd made a point of learning how to tell one from another; but he was still learning. This Executive Officer gig was a long way from anything he'd ever wanted to be. I don't have a fucking clue, sir, was what he meant to say.

"Your guess is as good as mine, sir," is what came out.

He frowned, arms folding across his chest as he stared at the holo, trying to find something that struck any chord of familiarity with him. Something about the fleet made his skin crawl; like the uncomfortable motion of an insect swarm. That in itself was an uncomfortable notion: ion cannons and tractor beams sounded like they were meant to disable and capture. There were far too many critters in the galaxy that incapacitated their prey and dragged it off to be consumed later. That definately wasn't a prospect that Glayde wanted to dwell on.

"We encountered another Rebel team on the planet," he added, picking his words carefully. "They were present under orders from Alliance Intelligence, to locate a missing asset. I didn't want to delay getting that transmission to you so that you could warn the rest of the fleet... but I left Onashi and Dirge down on the planet to supervise De'Ville and her team. Hopefully it'll give them an added incentive to share their findings, rather than the usual zip-lip intelligence approach to things."

[Mara Tallen]

"Osi'kyr..."

Mara murmured under her breath, amber eyes wide as she watched the holographic display of ships, and only barely held her tongue from letting loose with a more colorful string of curses.

She'd never seen anything like it, nor heard of anything remotely similar, and between her father and her uncle, she'd heard hundreds of stories of countless battles that had raged across the 'verse.

But this? Gods...the implications were staggering.

She pushed off of the wall and clasped her hands behind her back as she took a few steps closer. Her eyes tracked the tiny little craft that darted between the larger ships. They moved...in a disturbingly organic way that reminded her of a flock of birds. Mara glanced over to Cirr and shook her head slightly to indicate she had nothing to add to the discussion.

[Sam Porter]

Much like Tallen, Sam found herself without anything meaningful to contribute to this entire exchange, but it didn't stop her from staring, half way between being mesmerized and completely put off by the holographic sight. It was enough to make her skin crawl, that much she at least knew.

Pulling her gaze from the image, the blonde sent her eyes to Glayde, wondering exactly was being said behind that polite answer to the captain's inquiry.

She stood, most of her weight on one hip and both hands stuffed into the front pockets of her trousers. She wasn't military - or at least didn't consider herself a through-and-through saluting uniform jockey, and as such made no effort to act the part. She was only hear by the good graces of her own boastful words and the trusting nature of the Alliance.

Which frankly meant she was holding on to her new 'position' by the barest of threads.

She gave a sniff, looking back to the holo.

Gods but those are damn ugly.

Of course it went without saying that they were damn intimidating as well.

[Serasai Onashi]

He hadn't needed to say anything to De'Ville's command, so he said nothing. He followed the woman up to the bridge, where they were directed to the ready room.

Porter, Glayde, and MARCUS were there, and the Captain was flanked by Evanar, whom Onashi was simply dying to spar. It had been some time since he'd been completely outclassed in weight lifts even in ratio to his size and weight; he guessed even one hit from the tall E-WAR technician would put him out.

"Can someone tell me why an entire planet's worth of bodies was piled up in an area maybe fifteen to twenty kilometers square?" he asked as he entered. "And then, if it's not too much trouble, why we didn't know they were there?"

He grunted, leaning back against a wall.

"The sheer amount of carrion-birds should have shown up on scans, that's for damn sure."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr's face blanched as Onashi delivered a bombshell, and a confirmation of his worst fears. His tail twitched as his mouth suddenly turned dry. The Captain swallowed, and when he spoke to Onashi, it was a low and careful sound.

"What...djid you say?"

His mind was already sifting through the macabre calculus of it all. Karallon was home to over a million beings. They were all killed? Exterminated?

Gravity gently pulled him down to his seat, and he looked at the surface of the table.

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi frowned slightly, a bit miffed his question had been ignored.

"It looks like the entire population was picked up and placed in a plain about twenty kilometers square," he repeated. The sight hadn't been a good one, but he'd seen similar things on a smaller scale, and had heard of even larger acts. "All of them dead."

[MARCUS]

Now it was MARCUS's turn to exercise disbelief.

"A mass execution of this scale would be highly inefficient, aside from the value derived from psychological impacts. A Base Delta Zero orbital strike would achieve the same wholesale loss of organic life and would likely take far less time to complete."

He began running subroutines to simulate the events in question, to try and craft some possible answer to Onashi's question.

"If no technological assets were seized or destroyed, and great care was taken to live capture the planet's entire population for slaughter, it would stand to reason there is an objective the aliens are after beyond simply genocide."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville let Onashi talk, and she walked to the conference table where a standard holoprojector was inlaid. She pulled a slim cord from the projector and plugged it into her datapad. The footage Fli'lik had shot on the surface came up, the holo shaky and blurry at first.

She stared at the flattened clearing amidst the piles of bodies, the scale of it hard to fathom and the wall of the dead easy to mistake for something else. After all, the brain wanted to resolve the shapes into something that made sense, not thousands of dead.

"We found this space in amongst the dead," she said, breaking in as the droid paused in his speech. "There were three items of strange tech, tables of some kind." De'Ville pointed them out on the hologram, and then the holo focused in on them, going over the tables in a close up before panning over the rest of the muddy plain. "I cannot guess as to their purpose." Yes I can.

She fished the vial out of her pocket and set it on the table. "I found this, too."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan stared in frozen horror. His hands covered his mouth.

"Oh no." Was all he could manage, and slowly shook his head. Staggering numbers were numbers, but to see the piles of bodies was a special terror of it's own.

Technology. Technology was a firm place for his mind to go. He went to attention, and leaned close to the holo. His mind searched for some detail that might explain the genocide of an entire planet. He reached out and reversed the holo to focus on the tables and froze the frame. They were not in the literal center of it all, but that fluid and those tables were the only hard links to why a million people were making a sea of dead.

"Those tables are the how. We need to figure out the why." Morgan said.

"Do we have any EM readings? Anything?"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville nodded, accessing the datapad and bringing up the readings from the sensors Fli'lik had been running during the recording. "Enhance-Scan general purpose, so I don't know how helpful it will be."

She stood straight and looked at Onashi. "We have an identity scan of our dead Intel agent. It's basic, but the medical officer might be able to use it to try to figure out what killed them."

[Serasai Onashi]

Onashi shrugged and pulled the datacard he'd taken from the scanner and tossed it onto the table.

"Most of the information you'd probably find on a child's body, not the agent's. For what it's worth they all seemed to be aware of what was happening to them, if their expressions were anything to go by."

[Vek Vek]

Silent until this point, Vek Vek stared unblinking at the hologram of the exam table. His large dark eyes flicked down to the vials on the table as he listened to the others.

"Examination table. Restraint harness. Intravenous delivery mechanism."

The doctor's eyes flicked back and forth as he considered what was before him. He quickly took the datapad from DeVille, glancing over the readings. Occasionally, Vek looked back to the vial, or to the holo, and then back again.

"Skeletal musculature fully contracted, readings highly abnormal. Suggest electrolyte imbalance to cause universal and contradictory firing of flexors."

His eyes again rested on the vial.

"Must test, must test. Theories. Nervous system altered. Why?"

The doctor frowned, thumbing through the PDA back and forth.

"Cadaver research not feasable. Reverse engineer and synthesis."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirrsseeto wasn't content with idle speculation here. He pointed a finger at his doctor.

"Go. Fjind out. jI don't carre how, but we've got to know what the jinvaderrs werre up to."

His eyes again returned to the images before them, and he considered the bantha in the room. The next time, this could be an Alliance world. Or a world with many more people.

His XO was silent on the issue. They both were thinking the same thing. He could see it on Glayde's expression.

"We fjind the ones rresponsjible forr thjis, and we kjill them. Thjis jisn't enemy of my enemy. Not wjith a mjilljion people dead and tossed asjide ljike garrbage."

His jawline tightened as his ears drew back even farther.