Mission 7: Rise of the Machines

Kiaya listens as she orders the crew into the Gthroc,"Everyone get as battle ready as possible. Slyer get all the crew still on planet to gather at the Jedi Temple. Noell get a fighter and get in the sky. Thane get on the comms to Shador and explain the situation, then get Lokhar to inform his friends in the temple they need to greet us with open arms or we will cut our way through them. I did not fight for a decade to remove one emperor to see him replaced by something worse. Stev coordinate our plan to take the temple if they resist."

Invictus finally came down. "Falling in. What is our plan?" He asked, surprisingly easing off on the thinly veiled contempt. "Your vanguard force is in shambles, you will need additional support to avert this doomsday, and as it stands you are in no shape to stand, much less fight." He stowed the lightpike. "...You would do well to rest else you end up like your friend who body-checked a missile to protect the team. Valorous, certainly. Cunning, perhaps less so. Long game--that?" He said with no amount of sarcasm present in his voice. He then pointed to the stimpack. "That needs to stop. The Force will free you from the shackles of our fragile flesh and our pain, trooper. You need only to surrender yourself to it."

Sivu calculates that you have 14 hours. You are not certain how much time passes travelling in a Gree gate.

"Welcome to hell Invictus," Kaiya comms the Temple of the Prophet and the Brother that answers sounds weak and slightly frantic,"This if Captain Admetrium of the New Republic Starship Farstar. My forces need immediate access to your temple. You can provide this access or our X-Wings will crater your temple and then we will walk over the bodies of your brothers to what we need. You have 10 seconds to make a decision 10..5..4.. forget it X-Wings crater them."

"Wait, We will give you any access you need captain. A Shador Prince emerged from the bowels of our temple 30 minutes ago with a contingent of what could only be described as jedi. They slashed their way out of the temple killing guards, priests, monks, and even the younglings. We want no more blood today." The brother sounds beaten.

"Okay, X-Wings take system patrol make sure we don't have any Imperial friends in system. Deltas do a planetary sweep anything with an Imperial Symbol destroy it. Defenders escort us to the temple. Thane tell that Shador High King to send us whatever forces he has." Kaiya is not the woman you knew at the start of this mission. Her uncertainty and timidness has been replaced by a hardness. Stev and the others know that she will be turning herself in for court-martial after ordering the torture and murder of the Imperials on Kolatil. You have seen her haunted look whenever anyone mentioned the missing Captain Ciro. "Everyone choose a ship and load up. Gorak." She approaches the rodian. "I do not have time for your deception." Kaiya raises her blaster and places it in his snout. She is pulling the trigger microseconds from splattering his brains.

For Stev, the scene seems to slow down as the Captain levels her blaster. In his head, he thinks of a dozen different ways that he could disarm her, disrupt her aim, or throw off her balance and make the shot go wide. However, some part of his mind knows that she needs to at least get a taste of the consequences of what she tried to do.

He lets go of the helmet in his hand and, instead of pulling the blaster away, he grabs the barrel and slams it into his own chestplate, taking the full brunt of the shot. While a blaster pistol of that intensity has no chance of actually penetrating his armor, that wouldn't change that she had just lost control, and the consequence was that she shot the man who had informally taken the role of her right hand ever since they both boarded the FarStar.

Stev doesn't want to interrupt what Invictus is saying, since they're both trying to communicate the same point (sans the dismemberment portion, but that's an issue for a later time), so he stays silent. Instead, he looks directly into Kaiya's eyes and waits to see her realize the line she just attempted to cross. The line that he never imagined any New Republic soldier, but most especially her, would try to cross.

Stev just looks on in disappointment as Kaiya walks away. He turns to Gorak and states "I held my end of the deal. You weren't hurt. I expect you to uphold your end after your nap."

He begins marching to the Muvon to reclaim the gear he left aboard when Lodor, who was busy helping the kids collect the various lightsabers scattered across the room, intercepts him. "Um, can you please explain to me why the Captain just shot you? Because I really don't think that's something we can ignore."

"She made a bad decision. I stopped the decision. End of story. Now, I have to prep for combat, so could you please comm Kl'aal so that he can take back command of Field Ops? He's the Warrant Officer, so he's the boss. It's not my problem anymore."

"You really think it's a good idea to hand over command to the guy who's been brainwashed until recently and has absolutely no idea what's happening?"

"Look how things turned out with me in command. It can't get worse." With that, Stev turns his back and walks away, ending the conversation.

Lodor lets out a sigh and mumbles under his breath "Sheesh. Glad to see everybody's uniting at just the right time to stop the galactic threat...I'm sure we'll name our kids after each other. Oh, kriff, he just ordered me to FIND KL'AAL. Why not ask me to just blow up a planet-killing space station? I already did that today, and it was a whole lot easier..."

Lodor continues to grumble as he attempts to get into contact with Kl'aal and pass along word.

----

Tevan, Mikal, and Jen gather up the Inquisitors' lightsabers, and then start working on repurposing the parts for their own sabers, since they seem to have stronger emitters and focusing lenses. After Mikal figures out how to do it, Tevan figures he can replicate the process well enough to apply it to everyone's blades, so he volunteers to do the manual labor while the other two take a break.

He claims he's just trying to give them a rest, but he has another purpose: avoiding Que. After what he saw his Master do...he couldn't look at him again, much less talk to him. At least, not yet. With this busy work, he could hopefully stay away until everyone had to charge into that gate. Once they were in...well, that could be an even bigger problem. Gorak had mentioned a host Sarne was providing, and Locain had mentioned it too. By his reckoning, they could only be referring to one man: Kor, Que's son and Tevan's adopted father. He knew Que wouldn't be able to control himself, so Tevan had to try to center himself now for the upcoming tempest. And, who knows, maybe if they stop this thing, they can help Kor get better. Tevan held onto that hope, because at this point, he needed something positive to believe in.

OOC: It looked like the Inquisitors' lightsabers had the qualities of fully modded Ilum crystals, so could the kids use the parts to upgrade their sabers to those same levels? If so, could they use those to upgrade Invictus' lightpike the same way, if he were to consent to it (they'll make the offer after I know if we can even do it)? Also, we have 10 lightsabers sitting around, so we'll probably want to distribute those to willing members of the crew.

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After finishing his calculations, Sivu quickly strides to the cargo bay of the Gthroc and begins gathering all the sonic emitters he can find and calibrating them to the vibroblades' frequency. Whatever this 'Darkstryder world' was, it could be assumed that it would be filled with the morphing crystals they had encountered today, and he intended for himself and every member of the crew to be ready to handle them.