Post by seras on Jan 10, 2018 5:04:26 GMT
[21:46:36]
Flickers in the Dark:
The unit was part of a Sanctified Hand, one of four dispatched to the First Order. Four targets, four Martyrs. The One to Come be praised. The ship, a captured and refitted cargo hauler from some wildcat miners out on the edge of charted space. The bodies piloting the ship were puppeted by another Martyr, meat twitching to electron songs in a mimicry of life. Spaceport reached, refueling requests made. All very normal, all very boring.
When the time was right, four Martyrs walked out into Bastion and began to weave through the crowd. Thermoptic camouflage kept them invisible, at best a faint shimmer that could easily be ignored. Slicing by the lead Martyr left doors open in their wake as they made their way from Space Port to Palace. An unlucky civilian bumped into one and was stunned into unconsciousness. No mess just yet. A guard was Spiked and uploaded, unlikely to be Recovered, but the protocol was clear. His body propped against the console in a mockery of alertness, another meat puppet.
The Unit entered the secured depths of the Imperial Palace, a variety of weapons at it's disposal as it made it's way to it's target.
[21:54:44] Jeramiah Thrall didn't usually spend time at the Palace unless Shaena summoned him there, but since he was packing for his trip home, of which would last for an undetermined amount of time, he thought he might as well clean up what little business he had there. More importantly, he was checking up on her children, to make sure he said goodbye to them- especially that son of hers that never seemed to stop scowling. It wasn't until he had his duffel bag, blaster rifle, and paperwork in hand that he felt it. Something, somewhere, was wrong. He could feel every single person, every thought, every feeling to the point that it made him sick. (Which was why he hated the palace.) But something was here, and he COULDN'T feel it. He could feel the space it occupied, but not it. He stopped halfway down the hallway, and stopped one of the palace guards as he walked. "Run an extra patrol this hour..." he ordered, before stuffing his paperwork into the duffel bag, so that he could keep one hand on the DC-15A he'd grown somewhat fond of. "I have a bad feeling..."
[21:59:20]
Flickers in the Dark:
The first absolute sign something was wrong was not in the Palace, but instead in the War Ministry building. Reports started to come in of staff found dead, a single wound to the back of the skull. Three of them. It did take time for the news to percolate upwards, but not before their access codes were used to get access to several secure sections within that could not have been sliced.
In the Palace, the first sign was when a guard just suddenly slumped to the ground around a corner from Jeramiah. No sound escaped them, but feet just briefly sliding into the barest sliver of view before being dragged back was enough for a paranoid man.
[22:08:15]
Jeramiah Thrall:
He didn't see what happened, so much as he felt it. The telltale sign of a life being snuffed out directly in front of him. He knew what it felt like from the times he had caused it, so it was a bit of a surprise when he felt it so close. He immediately dropped his bag, kicked it against the wall, and shouldered his weapon. His gut instinct said he should charge around that corner and see what happened, but instead he did the smart thing and slowly cirlced around the corner with his weapon raised. As soon as he saw the body, he moved to cover the hallway with his one hand, while he could reach out and grab the guard's radio with the other. "Code six, Palace grounds." he ordered simply, before turning his eyes back on the hallway to try to see and... well, maybe feel, what had happened. This was the first time he had ever searched for anything, so it wasn't exactly his smoothest use of the Force.
[22:15:38]
Flickers in the Dark:
As far as the Force was concerned, there was Nothing there. Nothing at all. His eyes told the same story, but sound... well, they were very well engineered for what they were made to do, with tolerances at impossibly tight levels of precision, but there was just the faintest click of something across the floors. And then very suddenly there was the faint strum of a... violin?
The monomolecular whip snapped out, cutting through the stone finish of the wall without so much as slowing doing, it's path traceable by the fine hair thin line and little puff of dust as the tip traveled forward towards the man. Alas, the time for Recovery was gone. These people would die, and their death would be Final. No chance to meet the One to Come. But, a surgical strike this had a high probability of success, and the destabilization of the government would leave a paralyzed military unable to react. Casualties would be minimized this way. And so that soft singing whip surged out.
[22:24:48]
Jeramiah Thrall:
Once again, that feeling of nothing made him uneasy. There was never nothing, even when there was nothing. The absence of feeling was out of place. By the time he figured it out, however, there was a... something, surging towards him. "CONTACT!" Jeramiah screamed, laying down on the trigger of his weapon at what looked like a faint shimmer of nothing. He stood as he unloaded as many bolts down the hallway into the blank space in the Force as he could, stepping backwards to where he his bag full of tricks was. He made it about three steps before the whip caught up to him, slashing the barrel of his weapon- and his left hand -in half. He screamed in agony, pulling the three and a half fingers and half of his hand back from whatever had reached out and bit him. What would have put a normal soldier out of the fight, only fueled his anger. Reflexively, he balled up every ounce of power he could manage, and reflected it back at the... creature? robot? ghost? He didn't know. All he knew, was he was going to crush it into little, tiny, maybe bloody pieces.
[22:34:08]
Flickers in the Dark:
Blaster fire hit... something, a faint scorched patch that hung awkwardly in the air with the odd static disruption as whatever it was just seemed to shrug the fire off otherwise. With a definite snap, the whip flashed up, just at the edge of it's reach bringing down a mass of ceiling tiles and severed electrical wires, the whip itself wisely dropped as it began to arc and conduct jolts of electricity at random. Enough debris and enough fancy foot work on the Martyr put much of it out of reach of the attack it was accutely unprepared for, however the whole upper right arm assembly and much of the leg assembly from the 'knee' down was ripped cleanly off and badly crushed.
Cloaking failed and Jeramiah could see three other weapons clipped to the belt. Left handed it pulled out a flechette cannon and balanced the weapon as it began a fighting withdrawal. This was not an Approved Target. It was, however, streaming all the data it was receiving to it's brethern, to aide in their fight and if possible to beam off world.
[22:34:21]
Flickers in the Dark:
Open in dialog box - i.imgur.com/aHYY39I.jpg Martyrs.)
[22:40:20] Kixene exited from an ancillary building on the edge of the Palace complex when she picked up the chatter on her ear piece. Whatever was happening at the Palace wasn't good and doubly so since it wasn't caused by her. Coupled with those ethereal notes that she had felt just as much as heard earlier she was on edge. She made her way to the palace. Moving quickly with an air of confidence and bravado, she even managed to pull rank on a couple troopers that appear to be just going off shift. It would be a bit before they realized that she was Navy and not Army, but with them in tow she'd arrive as part of the first set of troops arriving after the Code six was called from outside the Palace proper.
[22:43:32]
Jeramiah Thrall:
As the creature appeared out of thin air, he didn't take long to recognize a projectile weapon when he saw it. He didn't know if it was a blaster or what, but he knew it was probably bad, and pointed at him. He skittered behind the corner, and dug through his bag to pull out a blaster pistol. It was less than the rifle, but he had to make do with what he had- and what he had, was a very, very, VERY, stupid plan. He took a deep breath to center himself, and rounded the corner again. He raised his injured hand at the... creature, and pulled with all of the Force he could muster at the flechette cannon, hoping to loose it from it's grip. He might take a dart or two in the process, but he hoped his armor would stop it- Or more ideally, the darts would be deflected by his brute force approach to telekenesis. Or, more likely, would bury themselves into his already injured hand.
[22:52:58]
Flickers in the Dark:
Despite missing much of it's right leg the Martyr was able to fire the cannon before Jeramiah could yank it from it's hands, hundreds of needle thin darts peppering the area. While the armor he wore was more than sufficient to stop it, there were a few areas not covered. Like his now opened hand. Three centimeters and a bit long, the metal fragments would dig all the way through until stopped, again, by his armor, this time on the inside. But the Martyr knew it was not winning this fight, not with the sound of reinforcements coming. And so it did what it always knew would be it's final act. A brief flash as it remembered it's latest Reincarnation, and then the head suddenly and violently detonated, and a secondary detonation blew the torso and the still attached limbs into minute fragments. Which if he'd been in the open wouldn't be healthy. The unattached limbs remained, along with the flechette cannon, but everything else was destroyed.
Of course, this Unit was not the only Martyr. The War Ministry had taken several high ranking engineers and an admiral as casualties, along with some severe damage to the mainframes. Elsewhere, a Martyr hid a dozen Spikes and then sent out a strong signal out into hyperspace, not encoded in a traditional sense, but a highly compact and wildly divergent machine language that, without more samples, would be near impossible to understand.
[23:04:35] Jeramiah Thrall did his very best to deflect the darts away from him, but there were too many. He managed to keep them away from his vital areas, but they still seemed to have an uncanny ability to find the cracks in his armor. One of which, was the arm he'd raised to protect his face. Luckily, getting hit by that many Flechettes was enough to knock him backwards, out of the majority of the killzone of the explosion. He still managed to take a few large chunks of shrapnel, but he would never see what hit him. The only thing he would remember would be the reinforcements that did make it to him, dragging him to the nearest medic. He was used to the sight of blood, but these creatures weapons- like the Flechette cannon he'd managed to steal, were much more crude and violent than a blaster or a lightsaber. There was so much blood... especially coming out of him, and the other victims. His last thought before being forced unconscious to be operated on- What sort of animal race of things could do this to people?
Flickers in the Dark:
The unit was part of a Sanctified Hand, one of four dispatched to the First Order. Four targets, four Martyrs. The One to Come be praised. The ship, a captured and refitted cargo hauler from some wildcat miners out on the edge of charted space. The bodies piloting the ship were puppeted by another Martyr, meat twitching to electron songs in a mimicry of life. Spaceport reached, refueling requests made. All very normal, all very boring.
When the time was right, four Martyrs walked out into Bastion and began to weave through the crowd. Thermoptic camouflage kept them invisible, at best a faint shimmer that could easily be ignored. Slicing by the lead Martyr left doors open in their wake as they made their way from Space Port to Palace. An unlucky civilian bumped into one and was stunned into unconsciousness. No mess just yet. A guard was Spiked and uploaded, unlikely to be Recovered, but the protocol was clear. His body propped against the console in a mockery of alertness, another meat puppet.
The Unit entered the secured depths of the Imperial Palace, a variety of weapons at it's disposal as it made it's way to it's target.
[21:54:44] Jeramiah Thrall didn't usually spend time at the Palace unless Shaena summoned him there, but since he was packing for his trip home, of which would last for an undetermined amount of time, he thought he might as well clean up what little business he had there. More importantly, he was checking up on her children, to make sure he said goodbye to them- especially that son of hers that never seemed to stop scowling. It wasn't until he had his duffel bag, blaster rifle, and paperwork in hand that he felt it. Something, somewhere, was wrong. He could feel every single person, every thought, every feeling to the point that it made him sick. (Which was why he hated the palace.) But something was here, and he COULDN'T feel it. He could feel the space it occupied, but not it. He stopped halfway down the hallway, and stopped one of the palace guards as he walked. "Run an extra patrol this hour..." he ordered, before stuffing his paperwork into the duffel bag, so that he could keep one hand on the DC-15A he'd grown somewhat fond of. "I have a bad feeling..."
[21:59:20]
Flickers in the Dark:
The first absolute sign something was wrong was not in the Palace, but instead in the War Ministry building. Reports started to come in of staff found dead, a single wound to the back of the skull. Three of them. It did take time for the news to percolate upwards, but not before their access codes were used to get access to several secure sections within that could not have been sliced.
In the Palace, the first sign was when a guard just suddenly slumped to the ground around a corner from Jeramiah. No sound escaped them, but feet just briefly sliding into the barest sliver of view before being dragged back was enough for a paranoid man.
[22:08:15]
Jeramiah Thrall:
He didn't see what happened, so much as he felt it. The telltale sign of a life being snuffed out directly in front of him. He knew what it felt like from the times he had caused it, so it was a bit of a surprise when he felt it so close. He immediately dropped his bag, kicked it against the wall, and shouldered his weapon. His gut instinct said he should charge around that corner and see what happened, but instead he did the smart thing and slowly cirlced around the corner with his weapon raised. As soon as he saw the body, he moved to cover the hallway with his one hand, while he could reach out and grab the guard's radio with the other. "Code six, Palace grounds." he ordered simply, before turning his eyes back on the hallway to try to see and... well, maybe feel, what had happened. This was the first time he had ever searched for anything, so it wasn't exactly his smoothest use of the Force.
[22:15:38]
Flickers in the Dark:
As far as the Force was concerned, there was Nothing there. Nothing at all. His eyes told the same story, but sound... well, they were very well engineered for what they were made to do, with tolerances at impossibly tight levels of precision, but there was just the faintest click of something across the floors. And then very suddenly there was the faint strum of a... violin?
The monomolecular whip snapped out, cutting through the stone finish of the wall without so much as slowing doing, it's path traceable by the fine hair thin line and little puff of dust as the tip traveled forward towards the man. Alas, the time for Recovery was gone. These people would die, and their death would be Final. No chance to meet the One to Come. But, a surgical strike this had a high probability of success, and the destabilization of the government would leave a paralyzed military unable to react. Casualties would be minimized this way. And so that soft singing whip surged out.
[22:24:48]
Jeramiah Thrall:
Once again, that feeling of nothing made him uneasy. There was never nothing, even when there was nothing. The absence of feeling was out of place. By the time he figured it out, however, there was a... something, surging towards him. "CONTACT!" Jeramiah screamed, laying down on the trigger of his weapon at what looked like a faint shimmer of nothing. He stood as he unloaded as many bolts down the hallway into the blank space in the Force as he could, stepping backwards to where he his bag full of tricks was. He made it about three steps before the whip caught up to him, slashing the barrel of his weapon- and his left hand -in half. He screamed in agony, pulling the three and a half fingers and half of his hand back from whatever had reached out and bit him. What would have put a normal soldier out of the fight, only fueled his anger. Reflexively, he balled up every ounce of power he could manage, and reflected it back at the... creature? robot? ghost? He didn't know. All he knew, was he was going to crush it into little, tiny, maybe bloody pieces.
[22:34:08]
Flickers in the Dark:
Blaster fire hit... something, a faint scorched patch that hung awkwardly in the air with the odd static disruption as whatever it was just seemed to shrug the fire off otherwise. With a definite snap, the whip flashed up, just at the edge of it's reach bringing down a mass of ceiling tiles and severed electrical wires, the whip itself wisely dropped as it began to arc and conduct jolts of electricity at random. Enough debris and enough fancy foot work on the Martyr put much of it out of reach of the attack it was accutely unprepared for, however the whole upper right arm assembly and much of the leg assembly from the 'knee' down was ripped cleanly off and badly crushed.
Cloaking failed and Jeramiah could see three other weapons clipped to the belt. Left handed it pulled out a flechette cannon and balanced the weapon as it began a fighting withdrawal. This was not an Approved Target. It was, however, streaming all the data it was receiving to it's brethern, to aide in their fight and if possible to beam off world.
[22:34:21]
Flickers in the Dark:
Open in dialog box - i.imgur.com/aHYY39I.jpg Martyrs.)
[22:40:20] Kixene exited from an ancillary building on the edge of the Palace complex when she picked up the chatter on her ear piece. Whatever was happening at the Palace wasn't good and doubly so since it wasn't caused by her. Coupled with those ethereal notes that she had felt just as much as heard earlier she was on edge. She made her way to the palace. Moving quickly with an air of confidence and bravado, she even managed to pull rank on a couple troopers that appear to be just going off shift. It would be a bit before they realized that she was Navy and not Army, but with them in tow she'd arrive as part of the first set of troops arriving after the Code six was called from outside the Palace proper.
[22:43:32]
Jeramiah Thrall:
As the creature appeared out of thin air, he didn't take long to recognize a projectile weapon when he saw it. He didn't know if it was a blaster or what, but he knew it was probably bad, and pointed at him. He skittered behind the corner, and dug through his bag to pull out a blaster pistol. It was less than the rifle, but he had to make do with what he had- and what he had, was a very, very, VERY, stupid plan. He took a deep breath to center himself, and rounded the corner again. He raised his injured hand at the... creature, and pulled with all of the Force he could muster at the flechette cannon, hoping to loose it from it's grip. He might take a dart or two in the process, but he hoped his armor would stop it- Or more ideally, the darts would be deflected by his brute force approach to telekenesis. Or, more likely, would bury themselves into his already injured hand.
[22:52:58]
Flickers in the Dark:
Despite missing much of it's right leg the Martyr was able to fire the cannon before Jeramiah could yank it from it's hands, hundreds of needle thin darts peppering the area. While the armor he wore was more than sufficient to stop it, there were a few areas not covered. Like his now opened hand. Three centimeters and a bit long, the metal fragments would dig all the way through until stopped, again, by his armor, this time on the inside. But the Martyr knew it was not winning this fight, not with the sound of reinforcements coming. And so it did what it always knew would be it's final act. A brief flash as it remembered it's latest Reincarnation, and then the head suddenly and violently detonated, and a secondary detonation blew the torso and the still attached limbs into minute fragments. Which if he'd been in the open wouldn't be healthy. The unattached limbs remained, along with the flechette cannon, but everything else was destroyed.
Of course, this Unit was not the only Martyr. The War Ministry had taken several high ranking engineers and an admiral as casualties, along with some severe damage to the mainframes. Elsewhere, a Martyr hid a dozen Spikes and then sent out a strong signal out into hyperspace, not encoded in a traditional sense, but a highly compact and wildly divergent machine language that, without more samples, would be near impossible to understand.
[23:04:35] Jeramiah Thrall did his very best to deflect the darts away from him, but there were too many. He managed to keep them away from his vital areas, but they still seemed to have an uncanny ability to find the cracks in his armor. One of which, was the arm he'd raised to protect his face. Luckily, getting hit by that many Flechettes was enough to knock him backwards, out of the majority of the killzone of the explosion. He still managed to take a few large chunks of shrapnel, but he would never see what hit him. The only thing he would remember would be the reinforcements that did make it to him, dragging him to the nearest medic. He was used to the sight of blood, but these creatures weapons- like the Flechette cannon he'd managed to steal, were much more crude and violent than a blaster or a lightsaber. There was so much blood... especially coming out of him, and the other victims. His last thought before being forced unconscious to be operated on- What sort of animal race of things could do this to people?