Open Space and Hyperspace

*Sa Tiva clucked her tongue slightly, before reaching for a handful of creatures that would consume the man's deadened flesh and make the ragged wound easier to manipulate. The beasties looked like maggots and writhed pale and somewhat luminous in the light of the vivarium. She reached for another creature, this one looking a great deal like an eye. It was one of her own creations - off script from the shaper texts. While it followed the cell line of a plaeryin bol, instead of a poison gland, the creature held the optic nerve connections of a humanoid eye. But unlike the human eye, it used the unique combination of the heat pit to see in infrared rather than the normal visible spectrum of light. It wouldn't be able to be toggled on or off like a robotic implant - those mechanical monstrosities these people used. It was superior in some ways to the plaeryin bol - he would still be able to see. Getting used to the signals might take some time.

She waited for the maggot like creatures - she liked to call them debride worms - to remove the remaining bits of the man's eye. They were efficient with their business, methodic and quick. She clicked through her nails to find the correct grafting tool that would connect the nerve of the ulandoor bol to what remained of the human's optic nerve. She delicately settled the creature into the socket and set several other specimens to weave the skin of his face back together. Her nekmehl skittered over the ragged surface of his face spinning material much like glistaweb, but far more motile. The nekmehl mandibles bit into his flesh and wove patches of new skin across the gaps. The small area wouldn't be fully blaster proof, but it would easily dissipate burns or other energy away from the tender nerves below.

While the creatures worked, she sprayed a small bit of pheromone across his face to keep them focused on their task.* "This eye, the ulandoor bol, it is new but similar to a plaeryin bol. It does not hold poison, but instead will allow this man to see heat." *She waved a hand over the nekmehl again to waft the pheromone. They would take a couple of more applications to finish their work.* "The glistaweb skin will be tougher than what he is accustomed to, and in time will incorporate more of his natural skin tone as the cells become integrated."

*She looked over his face once more before continuing.* "The acid was neutralized before it could do much bone damage. His muscles will need time to reknit under the gilstaweb. It would be wise to give him that time." *Once more she wafted the pheromone across his face. Then she reached into a bin to pull out a series of creatures that exuded balms or tinctures.* "Let these rest on the wounds two times daily for a cycle- the black one fights infection and the blue one helps with swelling, though it may increase pain."

The battle for the Kiffex system had been a tough one. The enemy had managed to scrape up a Star Destroyer and a small escort fleet, and they had given the Vegemite forces quite a battle above the twin world to Kiffu. The enemy fleet was scrap, and the Star Destroyer was a floating hulk, boarded and captured by Mandalorian boarding commandos.

The conflict had moved from space to ground, centered around the Deadend Prison complex down on Kiffex's surface. Surface to Space cannons had made a dropship assault suicidal, until the bombardment of the surface had suppressed the defenses sufficiently to make the attack option a viable one. The initial assault had been via drop pod, and while successful, casualties had been high.

Amaranth and her advance teams had already penetrated the prison utilizing personal cloaking devices and holoshrouds, while integrated field disruptors allowed them to bypass energy shields and secure a route deep into the heart of the enemy's defences. Dropship assaults were bringing down the second and third waves of the assault by the time the enemy realized there were hostiles inside their lines.

As luck or providence would have it, it was Amaranth's team that broke into the command chamber first, with blasterfire stitching back and forth between the defenders and her assault teams. She lost half her team making the entrance, though the enemy's casualties were almost total. Finally the enemy leader leapt into battle, a black blur of robes and crimson lightsaber that flew across the room and decapitated Amaranth's second in command.

Kriffing chakaar! Amy swore, barely getting her beskad into line to meet the Sith's bloodshine blade as it came for her. By Kad the sithspawn was fast, as she blocked once, twice, thrice, before the darksider leapt away to reassess his attack, yellow eyes glowing. Amaranth glared back, hatred and vengeance in her eyes. She didn't have to fear the kriffing dark side.

They were alone in the chamber, the only sound left the humming of the Sith's weapon. The two warriors circled one another, looking for openings. Amy saw hers as the Sith leapt in to attack again. She raised her blade high to meet the first cut. A whizzing sound followed a thump, as the glowing lightsaber crackled against the good Mandalorian Iron of the beskad, the Sith's glowing yellow eyes went wide with surprise.

Die slow, you hut'uun. Amaranth said, as realization dawned in the Sith's eyes. His blade sputtered out as it fell from his paralyzed hands. A moment later the Sith too fell to the floor in a heap of robes and slack muscles. Malkite Themfar poison was rare, expensive, and extremely deadly. Paralysis followed by death was assured, which was why many Mandos chose to coat their knee darts with it. The last thing the dying Sith lord heard was Amy's boots on the floor as she walked away, his Sith saber a trophy hanging from her belt.

In the cold black depths of the void, a marauder-class corvette emerged from the winding corridors of hyperspace somewhere between the Obroa-skai and Myrkr systems. The hull of the light warship had been stripped of paint and appeared to be corroded in sections, evident by the chemical clouds that vented from leaks in its thin armoured plates that made the ship look as though it were exhaling at times. Across its surface, out-of-place mechanical bulges stuck out from the poorly maintained corvette, like tumours bulging against a cancerous host's skin.

Seated in the command throne on the bridge of the 'Poisoned Breath', was a roguish looking human with a slicked back crop of greasy black hair and pale alabaster skin. A gruff layer of stubble on the lower half of the man's face added to the effect, though what was really remarkable overall was the man's eyes. Instead of the blue lined orbs he had been born with, his eyes had been replaced with luminous photo-receptors that glowed a sickly green as though possessed.

"Begin separation sequence." He said from his chair, before leaning in so that he could observe the screens of the malnourished officers seated in front of him. A shudder ran through the men's bodies as they could feel the cyborg's glare move from the nape of their neck to the dimmed projections they were managing.

All across the hull, a shudder and groan sounded throughout the vessel's frame as those metallic boils demagnetized and floated away from the corvette. Three solar paneled wings coated in a filmy layer of reflect polymer extended out from the drifting tumours. As the wings peeled away from the main body of each object and locked at their full extension, each device was revealed to be a communications satellite, numbering a dozen in total.


A signal was sent to each satellite and the booster rocket connected to them. Primitive chemical fueled tubes burned in the airless void, accelerating each object forwards and away from the Poisoned Breath. Six were boosted towards the Obroa-skai system, another six towards Myrkr. For now they didn't transmit, didn't beam back any collected data to a singular source. They just sped quietly towards their target destinations, their carefully synchronized time pieces counting down towards some unclear deadline.


Maneuvering thrusters spun the marauder corvette around until the bow of the craft was pointed back the way it came. Engines flared to life before hurtling the warship back into the hyperlane as it entered lightspeed travel.

Wayland - Australis Space, Near Myrkr


Wayland was beginning to show the signs of wear and tear as the second full day of exercises continued. Each landing and beachhead attempt destroyed acres of forest and set fires and tore up the ground with explosions and blasts, as the commandos deployed firepower in their simulated assault attempts. By the second day, the opposing force, made up of Foreign Legion in their thousands, were getting their own work in.

The opposing force had been outfitted with AT-ATs and AT-STs as well as E-web repeating blasters to augment their infantry, of which they had about fifteen thousand. Not all of them were engaged at once, of course, with the foreign legionaries needing to rest in between exercises, unlike the Commandos they faced, who only got to rest in between restarts. Each exercise had to move to a different area of the planet, which was left in ruins by the expenditure of turbolaser blasts and explosives.

Kaine's shuttle arrived in orbit as Carnifex rose up for a restart of the exercies. Today's score was four successes in a row for the attackers. Carnifex's crew were by now comfortable with diving into the atmosphere, and the commandos had adapted to the quick drop and beachhead assault well. The shuttle docked with the Destroyer, and the Field Marshal went among his troops for the next exercise.

Unfortunately for Kaine, he was one of the first simulated killed during the descent, taken out by a turbolaser blast from the ground along with a dozen others. He crossed his arms in a harrumph, as the other Commandos chuckled and guffawed at his misfortune. Soon enough though, the ship achieved its stable low altitude, and the holds emptied of personnel and cargo at a speed that astonished the Alor. Left behind with the other dead, Kaine shrugged, and though he wouldn't interfere, decided he wanted a better view, and leapt out of an open hatch to watch from the ground.

Unfortunately for the Commandos, this exercise the AI had changed its tactics once more, deploying some as yet unseen Clone Wars era battle droids on the side of the defenders, augmenting their infantry, which seemed endless to the commandos who numbered in the hundreds. The few tanks and the support fire from the Carnifex weren't enough to hold back the tide, as the beachhead was assaulted from three directions by columns of heavy walkers, while two infantry formations enveloped the area, with huge droids among them.

The commandos had successfully deployed their prefabricated base, and the Carnifex had successfully blasted out dead ground all around, the lines were unable to hold. The heavy weapons of the defenders were too much once they penetrated the shields, and casualties mounted quickly. The exercise was ended soon after, with a win for the defenders. The first of the day, breaking the winning streak of the commandos, and giving them a new enemy approach to consider. Failure was a good teacher, and the commandos of Clan Australis were all good students of the arts of war.

Kaine left the commandos in reboarding for another try. While the ten companies and their equipment were restocked aboard the Destroyer, which would then climb back to orbit for a new descent, the Alor went off into the jungle to join the opposing forces. He'd be an observer rather than participating himself, and was able to follow the entire battlespace via an uplink to the Clan's AI in his helmet HUD. Wandering through the jungle, he moved between Foreign Legion units and battle droids, all redeploying to the next exercise zone a dozen kilometers to the north.

The next exercise would begin, and another area of Wayland's otherwise pristine surface would be torn apart and blasted to ruin in the name of training.