[Unchained Malady] Team Slice and Dice
For Competition: The Unchained Malady: Turning the Tables
Snapshots:
Shanree Argentin: (3729)
Tasha’Vel Versea: (14192)
Dasha ‘Jala’ Talus: (15558)
Aylin Sajark: (14505)
Marakith Skyhook Ship Hangar
Marakith Skyhook, Aeotheran
“They just keep coming!”
The scent of blood and sweat permeated the battlefield in front of Tasha. The Unchained soldiers and some of Naga Sadow’s warhost forces already lay bloody and motionless on the Skyhook’s hanger platform. The Marauder’s eyes were blazing with hatred at the onslaught of Unchained foes still moving forward. So many casualties and lost dreams.
“What a waste of life.” Tasha spat as she lunged forward with her lightsaber.
The violet blade angrily came alive with a crackling snap-hiss as she swung the blade downward, cutting one of the Unchained soldiers down. She whirled the blade in her hands as she danced around the battlefield, taking out anyone who came near her. Her hatred towards them continued to feed her ever growing violent ferocity, however, they still kept coming as if they were a continual tidal wave.
Tasha ducked and weaved to avoid slugthrower shots as she used her blade to dodge blaster fire, but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep up before tiring out. They were steadily closing in on her. She managed to jump behind a large sheet of metal to get some cover, although she was stuck in place. It was the first time in a long while where she felt like there was no escaping death.
She could hear the turret and laser fire blasting from the outside of the skyhook. No doubt, the war host ships were keeping busy with Unchained’s fleet.
If she were to run, the unchained squadron’s troops would gun her down immediately. Her thoughts turned to her daughter and the current situation. She couldn’t die yet. Somehow, there had to be a way out.
Varashi, her varactyl, was around the hangar hiding, waiting for her whistle command.
The sapphire skinned Twi’lek wiped blood from her mouth and looked out at the numerous Unchained forces still firing in her direction. Getting out of her situation would take a stroke of luck.
Suddenly rockets soared through the air and randomly dropped around, sending up big clouds of dust and dirt. A few of the Unchained were unlucky and got hit by them, sending them flying.
Whoever was the one that fired off the rockets, the Twi’lek hoped they were on her side. She then heard blaster shots fill the air around her and more dying people.
“Keep your filthy hands of my sister!” A nautolan in blue and orange screamed as she rocketed by and dropped a grenade between a group of enemies. When she landed near the Twi’lek she grinned widely.
“Aylin? What are you doing out here?” Tasha asked.
“Oh, you know, saving a friend. Just like she is saving us.” Aylin said with a chuckle as she motioned towards Ankira who was taking out Unchained as soon as they popped up. But even then they kept marching on.
“We need to get moving!” Ankira yelled above her shooting.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Aylin said as she glanced from their cover towards the enemies.
Tasha nodded, “But how? We are pretty much locked in place and it doesn’t seem like we will get a pause in their advance anytime soon.”
“Any time now!” The Mandalorian in white urged them.
Aylin tossed a smoke grenade between them and the advancing Unchained before pulling Tasha along under cover from Ankira’s shots. They both ran and quickly caught up to Ankira who nodded at the Twi’lek in a greeting as she kept firing away.
A heavy battle droid, used for security, roared into view as it squashed a few Unchained in its path. It charged towards the group of ladies before it suddenly veered off back into the mass of encroaching Unchained.
Dasha was buckled firmly in one of the passenger seats of a speeder that skillfully avoided the bullet-hell of blaster-fire. She seemed to be using one of her datapads as a remote control. Problem is, it was touch-based, so to the normal observer she seems to be repeatedly trying to work with a semi-malfunctioning datapad.
Ears pinned in stress, she screamed, “All this noise is causing latency!” As she madly tapped and drew on her datapad, trying to control the hunk of machinery.
The droid’s top half started spinning about crazily as it started firing its various armaments, thankfully, missing the group due to distance.
“I think I got it!” Was all she could say as the heavy weapon finally came under control and started mowing down Unchained. That is, before parts of it started to glow as the metal fused from overheating. It eventually seized to move.
The stunted Sephi looked up at the radiant droid before she yelled out, “Duck!” All the Taldryans knew to hit the deck and Tasha was just yanked to the ground.
It wasn’t even a moment before there was a large explosion followed by a robotic limb flying over the group as if shot by a railgun.
Her ears poked up out of the speeder’s edge first before the rest of her head appeared. Surveying what happened, her ears deflated as she realized, “Oh…. Right… I had to bypass systemic safeties…”
No one seemed to care as the group piled into the speeder and a young male Twi’lek gunned the gas to get them a bit further from the uncaring Unchained.
The Sephi held back a squeak as she was thrown sideways in her seat. Her fingers barely managing to hold onto her datapad.
Zakai handled the Speeder with deft precision. This was the sort of thing he’d never have gotten into with his Master but here, with Dasha, he was nearly having fun. It was a release to be so free. His right hand dropped from the steering yoke to the repulsor throttle bar beside his leg.
“Hold on!” he managed between his grinning teeth.
The Speeder raced forward, pulsing with power, sending them head-long towards a shipping container. At the last second he yanked on the yoke, pulled the throttle back, and yelped as the craft swept sideways to the right. He slammed the throttle bar to its stops and enjoyed both the restrained squeak of fright from his passenger and the wind racing around the viewscreen as the craft straightened out and shot forward out of the line of fire that chased them.
“Want to do it again?” he asked the Sephi girl.
She swatted at him frustratedly, “We nearly died! I had everything under control!”
Zakai’s witty retort was cut short by his comlink, “Biask, you there? I need a pick up.”
“Yeah, we’ll come get you old man. Hold tight”, he shrugged to Dasha and corrected their course across the skyhook’s exterior shipping district.
Shanree waited patiently until the speeder showed up. Unsurprisingly the young Zakai had found the girl he followed around like a Nek pup. Shanree jumped in to the back seat and clapped the two youngsters on the shoulder, “I really can’t leave you two alone, can I?”
Dasha pouted at the over-familiarity of the grown man while Zakai rolled his eyes, “We need to get back there. Naga Sadow needs every Tal we can throw their way.”
“You all are a very lively bunch, but yes he is right. The whole skyhook is being overrun with the unchained soldiers and I am not sure how long we can repel these invaders. Though it is nice to fight alongside others. A couple of you look a bit young to be fighting wars, but war is never kind.”
Tasha’Vel looked at the group and smiled. “Well if you all are ready to fight, I can bring some of them to us.” The Marauder let out a high pitched whistle. From fifty yards away, a turquoise colored varactyl with deep purple and blue feathers crawled quickly along the right side of the wall till it came within ten feet and leaped down in front of Tasha. It looked at the group curiously as it waited for Tasha to mount it’s back. The equite took the reins and bounded out towards several soldiers firing at one of the war host’s battalion troops.
She took out her lightsaber and threw the deadly blade into the small group. As it whirled around in an arc, two of the soldiers were cut down as the rest scrambled to turn around.
“Catch me if you can boys!” She taunted as the blade returned to her hand. She then redirected her Varashi and bounded towards the Taldryan group. The group broke off from the Warhost battalion and began to chase after the Twi’lek. In their minds, she was just one and could be picked off easier than a larger group of soldiers.
“I hope they are ready for a fight, cause they are certainly about to get one.”
Tasha continued to zig-zag her way towards the group, weaving and dropping her body lower to avoid slugthrower bolts and laser fire from her pursuers.
As Tasha lured the Unchained towards the group of Taldryan’s they soon found their error in believing she would have been an easy target. One by one they were picked out by either being shot down or cut down by lightsabers. Warnings were going off and more of the Unchained came to look for their missing group. Running into the same fate as their others, soon they came with a better plan of attack and came with heavier reinforcements, causing the small group to stay put.
“If we want to get the skyhook back into our possession we need to get to the main console so we can slice into it,” Aylin said as she nudged Dasha.
Dasha nodded, “We could, but won’t we be running into more of them if we do? It doesn’t seem we can get past them that easily now”
“Of course,” Aylin said a little too happily, “But that is what we got them for. Seeing Kiran fight, I think he just wants more of it. And I think the big fluffy puppy also likes to play more.”
Ankira shook her head slowly, she had no idea how she could stay so happy in a situation like this. “You do realise we need to be serious about this, right Aylin?”
“Oh, but we will do serious things. You guys will be doing the fighting, we will be doing the slicing, simple as making noodles.”
“We first need to get there,” Tasha said as she petted her varactyl who was eagerly moving around.
"Time to get to work then!’
The Sephi went to the nearest terminal and got to work obtaining a map as the bait and kill tactic continued.
With the map Dasha had obtained, she found where the main terminal is and started pointing in directions to orientate herself.
“So… it’s that way then up a floor somehow. Lifts might be an issue.”
Someone called back, “How big of an issue?!”
“As in there’s only 1 major lift in service near us and I bet it’s well guarded.”
"Well? Let’s get going then!’
Dasha somewhat walked into her fellow teenager and blushed. She lowered her voice and sputtered, “S-sorry! Erm…want a drink later?” The shorter figure turned visibly pink as she cleared her throat and worked on focusing on her task.
Kiran happily headed that way as they moved through the hallways carefully engaging only one group at a time towards the lifts before Dasha pointed up, “It would be about here after we go up a floor.”
That was all that was needed for Aylin to grab the stunted woman and put her on her shoulders, 'Well, cut us a hole then."
Dasha yelped in surprisel but did as she was told. Lightsaber in hand, she activated it through the ceiling and got a yelp in return as she cut a large circle and the pair barely dodged the chunk of metal in time.
Next thing most of the group knew, Dasha yelled out in protest as she flew up the hole thanks to a team-boost by Aylin and Ankira followed by a large amount of blasters going off as the enemy spotted their target. Something cracked in the usually docile Sephi as she darted out of view; not even a moment later, the group heard some screams. One by one the team made their way up and ended up joining a seemingly never ending stream of Unchained responding to the intruders.
“Dasha! Get slicing!”
“I AM!” she growled back.
“The OTHER slicing!”
A quick shake of her head, she snapped out of her trance and went to work on the main terminal.
It didn’t take long before they could see the fruits of their labor as the security droids coming towards them in the next wave started… dancing.
“Oops, wrong program.”
Zakai’s red lightsaber blade whirled around before him. Blaster bolts were intercepted and deflected back from where they came but the volume of fire was increasing.
“Cooome onn, Dasha…” he said between gritted teeth.
She said nothing but he could feel her thoughts, which were usually so wild and fleeting, and how focused she was on this one task. He’d seen her slice into places they shouldn’t have had access to and knew she could do this. She just had to do it sooner than later.
Kiran and Shanree too were deflecting bolts of coherent light, together with Zakai, acting like a protective forcefield around the young woman. Shanree looked around between attacks and didn’t like the tactical landscape they found themselves in. They were in the open, a space entered from narrow corridors all around them created by piled containers, support girders, and piping.
The last security droid perished with a ping and a smoking hole in its circuitry. There would be no rest though. The air filled with the noise of reinforcements.
“We need to get moving”, Kiran looked over his shoulder, down one of the approaches to their location.
“–annnnnd done!” Dasha popped up and pressed the access button on the door.
Zakai passed her through it with a grin, “What took you so long?
"Well the good thing is she got it working,though we should probably move quickly before we get overwhelmed by reinforcements.”
Even as Tasha spoke, several footsteps were approaching the group.
The Twi’lek looked at everyone, though they were young, they certainly had spunk. She was reminded of a younger and more carefree self.
If they worked together,these teenagers were far stronger than they could imagine. Aylin had also been a nice surprise. It had been far too long since she last saw her Nautolan friend. If it wasn’t for her and Tali, she probably would have gone insane with that Sith Spirit still in her. She grinned, it was good to have a few friends you could count on when things went downhill. A blaster bolt zipping by, however, brought her back to reality.
“At this rate, I don’t know how much longer we can hold them off.”
She turned her gaze towards the faint sounds of laser turrets firing outside. A terribly fascinating idea popped into her mind.
“Think we can get back to the hangar?”
Dasha rolled her eyes and started tapping things into the terminal. All doors except those that would be in their way slammed shut. A Wilhelm scream could be heard nearby as an unfortunate unchained soldier got themselves caught.
“Now the finishing touches…” The Sephi muttered as she changed the access codes and put the entire station on security lockdown. Lights turned off and red emergency lights came on.
Some scowls appeared on some of the team members while a small grin on others. A cheery, “Time to go!” came from Dasha as she already packed up her tools; she looked like a girl as she skipped in reverse of their route and seemed to be missing as she ‘fell’ down the hole.
The group followed with a chuckle though Zakai felt a pull on the force and broke into a sprint for the hole just as Dasha went down into it. There was a surprised yelp as blaster fire sputtered out.
By the time the rest of the group made it to the hole, Zakai had already swung down and taken care of the leftover Unchained in the near vicinity.
With all side passages locked down, the group was near bored on their way to the hangar. Zakai and Dasha walked side by side behind everyone else.
At the hangar, more Unchained reinforcements had arrived. The group were hiding to one side before the hangar doors.
Aylin sighed and accessed the control panel, typing in the new admin password Dasha had put into the system, “Really, Dasha? Your new password is ‘Glitter’?”
The stunted Sephi was already somewhat pink with blush as she shrugged.
The veteran slicer had no issues closing the hangar door by them and ejecting their enemies out the airlock.
“Now for the plan,” Aylin said with a grin as she looked around the hangar.
Several containers were stacked around as were tools and some fuel containers. The longer she looked at what was around the wider her grin went. She mumbled to herself a little as she moved and drew things in the air.
“Got it!” She exclaimed enthusiastically.
The rest of the team were looking at her as if she had lost her mind, some might argue that that is the case.
“What did you got?” Dasha finally asked.
“We are going to turn Tasha’s ship in a torpedo,” Aylin said happily and started to move the fuel containers.
“Care to clarify a little more?” Zakai asked, “we aren’t all like you.”
“Oh… right. I need these fuel containers on the bow of the ship. Someone needs to get the ship flying and straight into the other ship so it will explode in an even bigger fireworks. Bonus points if you get the weapons to fire as well.”
“Uh… right. How are we going to get them up there?” Ankira asked.
Aylin pointed to the Force users, “they can get them up there.”
“Guess I’ll be on guard duty then, since I can’t help you with any of that,” Ankira stated.
“Just as important,” Aylin said happily and went off to get into the bow of the ship with a burst of her jet boots.
“She really is crazy,” Zakai muttered.
The team set off to help Aylin with her plan. Soon the fuel containers were set on the bow of the ship where Aylin secured them. Dasha set off to program the ship to power full ahead and linked the ship to her datapad. Tasha made sure none of her valuable items were on the ship.
Zakai and Shanree located various canisters of varied explosive substances around the hangar. Forgoing any thought of showing off they used The Force, both being rather talented with telekinesis, to pull them towards the ship. Once they had a small collection they turned to lifting them into the air, again with The Force, until they were pressed up against the aging ship where they were secured quickly by Aylin and Tasha.
Shanree was the first to hear the clank-clank sound echoing across the hangar. Turning to Zakai he winked, “You finish up here.”
“Huh? Hey, wait!” Zakai called after his friend, unable to follow with his hands in the air, telekinetically holding another canister against the ship.
Shanree jogged across the hangar, his eyeless face sweeping back and forth as he searched with the Force-sight his people, the Miraluka, were gifted. He didn’t need it at first though as the noise was consistent and repetitive and therefore easy to locate. It lead him back to the corridor they’d emerged from. The blast door was malfunctioning, opening a small bit then closing heavily with a metallic ring. The Grey Jedi was almost disappointed it was something so mundane; the light saber hilts in his hand, which looked like wooden fighting sticks, suddenly felt goofy.
He plunged a pale green light saber blade into the control panel which stopped the malfunctioning door and, as an added benefit, locked it behind them. He turned from the blast door, prepared to jog his way back to the group, when he was physically frozen in place. Standing there was a Duros male in a dark robe, the hood pulled up over his face. His arms and legs were wrapped firmly from the elbow and knees down so that his voluminous robes gave him a puffed-up appearance. Had Shanree not been Force Locked in place and more concerned about how to free himself he might have found the Unchained’s costume humorous, having become accustomed to the dramatics Sith and Dark Jedi went to prove their Darkness.
A red blade snap-hissed to life in the dark figure’s left hand and then it started to advance toward him. Shanree struggled to free himself but to no avail. The Duros’s raspy voice was sweet and predatory, like a spider’s, “Try, try to escape. It won’t work…”
It definitely seemed that way. His arms and legs, his trunk and his entire body were held firmly in a single place unable to move. Shanree frantically looked around with his Force sight but found nothing he could fling at the alien. It came to him in a sudden moment of inspiration. His eye’s locked with the Duros’s. The alien reacted swiftly, its light saber sweeping around to the right to cleave the object hurtling at him. There was nothing there, though.
The Unchained’s momentary lapse freed Shanree, who lunged into his counter-attack. The Duros had realized his mistake and was already pivoting to reestablish his Force Lock on the Miraluka but Shanree was too fast. He closed the distance between them with preternatural agility with his two light sabers, still in hand, swinging in time with the motion of his arms. Two pale green blades slammed into a single crimson red one perpendicularly over the Duros. He was strong and the attack did not stagger him. In riposte the Unchained leapt backward and flung his other hand forward, blue arcs of lightning shot towards Shanree. The Miraluka deflected the charged attack with his left hand saber and used the motion to bring his right hand round. This attack too was blocked but it brought the two of them back into contact which was what Shanree wanted.
Shanree lashed out with his feet, double-kicking from the hip with impressive speed. The Duros took the first kick to the ribs but blocked the second with his forearm. The Unchained Dark Jedi swung his red blade about but it impacted a pale green one. Shifting his stance fluidly Shanree feinted another barrage of kicks to which the Duros jumped away from in preparation for. Shanree continued his shifting momentum into a spinning backhand swing of his other light saber now at perfect distance from its target.
To his credit the Duros was fast and his light saber came about to deflect the attack upwardly, over his shoulder. Shanree’s palm, usually pressed down on a pressure plate-activator switch, cupped outward momentarily. The pale green saber vanished with a receding hiss-snap, but only for the barest of moments. Shanree’s saber blade never made contact with the Duros’s and so his hand, holding the hilt, continued to sweep across. He again gripped the saber hilt, and the activator, igniting the blade once more with a snap-hiss. The green-white saber speared the Duros and both fighters stood in place for a moment.
Shanree’s other saber was held behind him, cocked at an intentional angle. His feet were splayed in a Teras Kasi stance. His right hand was held outward, holding the light saber that was killing the Duros. The Alien stood frozen for that moment too, shocked at the outcome of this encounter. He stared with his big eyes, confused, into the Miralukan’s empty eye-sockets, eerily illuminated in this dark corner of the Hangar by the glow of their light sabers.
Zakai came running around the corner of a bulk transport container, his light saber hilt in hand, looking ready to leap into a fight. Shanree was just disengaging his weapon, and pushing the now dead Unchained to the ground, “Ah come on! I didn’t even get to see you fight him!”
His breathing a little higher than it was before, his age was catching up with him despite his athletic shape, Shanree grinned at the younger man, “What took you so long?”
Zakai scowled at the call-back, “Come on. Aylin says to stop wasting time, we gotta go.”
The two of them dashed back to the ship, which now sported a small assortment of various types of improvised explosives on its forward prongs, and met the rest of the party there. Outside the hangar’s containment field’s blue glow were the distant flitting of turbolaser fire as the Clans’ navies matched the Unchained’s own.
Shanree looked at his datapad, “Okay, everyone get onboard.”
They all looked at him confused but he continued talking over the first noises of their protests, “My ship is arriving outside, but it-- it won’t fit in here.”
He managed to chorale everyone on board and told Zakai to get in the pilot’s seat. Tasha jumped into the copilot chair of her own ship and started programming in her final commands. As they exited the hangar and slid into space they were quickly met by a yacht that slid up alongside them. The sleek, beautiful form of the S-161 XL, and its out sized rotating stabilizer wing, looked like a racing vessel next to the aging YT freighter. The S-161 extended its transfer umbilical which Zakai aided in securing to their ship.
Shanree and Zakai left Tasha in the cockpit alone for a moment. She looked like she was still inputting the last commands to the ship’s auto-pilot but both men could feel her sadness at the ship’s parting. With everyone at last aboard the S-161 they broke off from the other ship and watched as its engines lit up and the craft rocketed off on a pre-programmed course around the planet. It would sling itself, using the planet’s gravity well to gain as much velocity as possible. They would not be sticking around to see if their plan had worked out however. Shanree had spent quite a lot of his inheritance on improving this ship but it was not meant for a warzone. He permitted Zakai to work with the ship’s AI Brain to get them to one of the allied rendezvous zones. For them, this battle was over.
The saloon was dark and full of smoke. It was clearly a Spacer Bar, judging by all the Aliens sporting corporate and personal logos. You could tell from their collective lack of uniformity in any manner; no shared beliefs, no shared fashions, no shared origins, and no shared team affiliations. This was just the place they happened to be at this time. They were passing through. A lot of people were passing through these days, the barkeep noted to himself.
A stranger sat at the bar nursing a glass of Rylothian whiskey, watching some video over and over on a datapad. At first the barkeep wasn’t interested but the man constantly replayed the video over and over emotionlessly.
“Hey there, Buddy”, the Barkeep asked the man, “whatchya watchin there?”
The stranger looked up at it surprisingly with gleeful eyes, “I just came into a lot of money. My wicked Sister joined some dumbass cult and died a few days ago, the family Lawyer sent me this…”
He slid his datapad over, it was much nicer than any of the ones someone from around here would have had the Barkeep noticed. The video showed a Star Destroyer engaged in some sort of battle. The video suddenly shifted and zoomed in on a small YT freighter of some sort that was hurtling towards the capital ship. He was confused, wondering if the small ship really intended to suicide itself fruitlessly into the side of that warship. The explosion that resulted was not at all what he expected. The freighter’s velocity, and added combustibility, resulted in a brilliant explosion that tore a chunk out of the side of the Destroyer’s wedge shaped hull.
The Barkeep handed the datapad back to the stranger and reached to the top shelf for his only bottle of Corellian whiskey, “Almost looks like a Space Shark took a bite out of that Imperial.”
The stranger chuckled and finished his glass so that it could be filled up with the better stuff, “I wonder whose ship that was.”
End Run-On