Moira meets her first opponent just inside the ray shield. This spice ranger, a Zkarson whose outer hide crackles and flakes with each movement, shoulders through the shield and attempts to bring his rifle to bear on the charging Moira. One swipe of her glassrock saber tosses the weapon aside, one thrust of the other impales the ranger through the midsection. Since he's a Zkarson, however, Moira must, quick as a flash, bring the first saber back around a few times, to slice through layer after layer of that cartilaginous hide, to ensure he's dead or defeated. Once both weapons are free, she advances towards her next opponent.
Her next opponent proves tough to locate. Everywhere she looks, Moira sees only more sand, whipped into a furious frenzy. The shimmering wall of ray shield is a constant, advancing with Stalkchopper, and she works to keep pace with this, lest she be struck by some hidden sniper. Occasionally, a spark of gunfire reveals a small battle, a Secondseed clashing with a nearby spice ranger, and this gives Moira all the bearing she needs.
A few stray bolts sizzle past her. Zeroing their trajectory, Moira spies a vague silhouette, some yards to her left and twists just in time to avoid a second burst of laserfire. She comes barrelling in, sabers spinning, and moves to swat this one's rifle from their hands the same as the first. Her timing, however, is infinitesimally off and, when the next burst comes, the Domino blasts a few holes straight through the flat of Moira's glassrock blade. Her righthand attack thrown way off balance, she swings wildly with the left. Good fortune sends her second blade up through the humanoid's chin and into her skull.
The ranger crumpling to the ground, Moira examines the three holes punched neatly through her blade and grunts in appreciation. She has little time for appreciation, however, as the fighting grows thick around her.
Now that the ray shield's membrane has passed over the shooting line of spice rangers, the full brunt of the Secondseeds goes swinging into battle. They press their smaller foes hard, taking advantage of their superior reach to stay out of the heatblade's way. The sandstorm even comes to their aid, the fierce winds mangling the aim of the second rank of spice rangers, sending their shots wild.
Outnumbered and outmatched, the Gitter fight with every ounce of their considerable strength, their ferocity and abandon far more than Moira was anticipating. To see them, hacking and slicing and stomping, even as they're punctured, burned and shelled, gives Moira's heart of stone a momentary excuse to flutter.
The sound of a heatblade activating snaps Moira from sentimentality. A ranger comes leaping at her out of the sandstorm, thrusting a sword of pure fire straight at Moira's heart. She's dropping to the ground and rolling into a Wheeling Tvorka as the ranger's second blade crackles the air above her. When she lands in a crouch, Moira hooks one glassrock blade around a stray conduit on the leaping ranger's leg and yanks.
Stray fire goes licking across the humanoid's lower half and his screams are somehow louder than those of the storm around them. He slams into the ground, his legs engulfed in flame, and Moira plunges her second glassrock sword through his ribcage.
Some sudden instinct spins Moira around perfectly in time to spot her next attacker. In comes a Qinson ranger, his great curved horns the least of her worries. His opening heatblade routine is vicious, incorporating savage kicks to throw Moira off-balance, and it takes all of her arts to dodge and weave and avoid being sliced, skewered or pummeled. Her instincts scream at Moira to throw up a blade, to parry an incoming blow, but she knows one flick of that white-hot heatblade will slice through glassrock like paper.
She's saved by an unexpected source. A short-hafted spear appears from nowhere to sink into the Qinson's unsuspecting side. Moira follows the spear's haft and is surprised to see Odisseus, of all people, guiltily gripping the weapon's opposite end.
The Ortok would be wiser to keep his distance, protecting the precious cargo as he is. He continues to clutch that sapling to his hip, retrieves his next spear and, seeming to read Moira's thoughts, scrambles back a little ways, further from the thicker fighting.
She's no time to catch the Ortok's eye or express her gratitude, however, as two Stargazers, working in concert, descend upon her at once. Their heatblades scorching the airborne sand, both rangers – a Tegoon with all his beads jangling and a hairless humanoid – weave an impenetrable attack pattern, advancing inexorably toward Moira. With no choice in the matter, Moira goes scrambling backward again, not able to mount even the paltriest defense with her feeble glassrock blades.
This time, her salvation comes from a staggering Secondseed. Its weapons and several of its limbs gone, the cactoid materializes from the storm, bearing down on the humanoid ranger. Seeing the lumbering giant too late, the Stargazer only manages to bring a single heatblade to effect against the Gitter's kneecap before it closes the distance. Wrapping the ranger in a great bear hug, the Secondseed pulps the ranger on its thousand thorns as it knee gives out and it crashes to the earth.
This proves the perfect distraction for Moira. Employing a similar tactics against the Tegoon, Moira lashes out at the aghast spice ranger with a jackboot, snapping the Stargazer's own knee in an unnatural direction. As the Tegoon drops to the earth, Moira draws a saber across his throat, severing both the strings of beads that dangle there and the Tegoon's jugular vein.
The ranger's not dead on the ground three seconds before his carcass is peppered with green ditrogen slugs. Moira doesn't need to turn to know that it's Nemo who comes screaming out of the swirl, Domino ablaze, wasting precious ammunition on the Tegoon's lifeless corpse. She almost voices a word of protest but, at the sound of his maniacal cackling as he races past, Moira knows he wouldn't listen anyway.
Besides, she's got this next ranger to worry about.
Her latest challenge is an adroit Vongrol ranger, her lashing tail incorporated into her heatblade technique. This time, Moira goes aggressive. She allows her opponent a few impressive displays of swordsmanship before she catches the corded whip of the Vongrol's tail around her forearm. One yank is enough to unbalance the ranger, then it's an elbow to stomach and a saber through the teeth.
Prying her sword from the Vongrol's skull takes Moira a moment. As she does, she keeps a vigilant eye, to ensure no one seizes on her second's vulnerability. Up ahead, through the sandscreen, Moira spies a great triangular silhouette that looms like a fell obelisk over the whole battlefield.
Once her sword's free, it's towards this shadow that Moira advances, the Secondseeds pressing the advantage all around her.
Jag can't get a bead on any of the offworlders.
This is precisely what his visor's infrared filter was designed for. Under normal conditions, he imagines the infrared visor would function perfectly and Jag would be able to effortlessly distinguish individuals from the great writhing biomass he sees all around him. Instead, his sensors scrambled by the sandstorm, it's frustratingly difficult to differentiate one flailing fighter – Gitter, spice ranger or trespasser – from another.
This one, the next figure to materialize from the broil and come swinging at him, is pretty definitely a Gitter. Laying about with a bloodstained poleaxe, the native barbarian proves frighteningly immune to all Jag's ditrogen. His opponent smoking and smoldering but not slain, Jag goes leaping backward, only the added boost from his harness keeping him from the poleaxe's deadly range. Finally, only once the Domino's glowing hot and Jag's fingers are numb from firing does the green fire licking the Secondseed do its work, crumbling the cactoid to cinders.
Jag's trembling fingers nearly fumble reloading the assault rifle. How the interlopers managed to corrupt the shattered remnants of the Skyscratch to their power, Jag has no idea. It's a frightening spectacle to behold, these suicidal Secondseeds, selling their lives so dearly.
The ray shield was some contrivance of the Galactic Menace, for certain, one that took the Stargazers entirely too long to counteract. From the mutters among the Stargazers, there was some fear that they'd gone to the trouble of arming the natives too, with something more
deadly than swords and shields. When the lines crashed, however, fearsome as the opposition may be, there was no returning gunfire, the one small blessing the Stargazers could count from this whole catastrophe.
That catastrophe plays out like a horrorshow before Jag's eyes. Everywhere he looks, he sees only blinding sand, screaming rangers and burning Secondseeds. It's a new caliber of carnage the Galactic Menace has brought, its like not seen on Gi for centuries, not since the planet's brutal colonization at the Consortium's bloody birth.
In search of the culprits, Jag lopes around the side of the battle, seeking a new angle on the conflict. Along the way, he sprays a few loose canisters into any cactoid carcass he sees, each one still twitching or crawling their way across the sand, despite the flames that ravage their bodies. From this new vantage, the battle gains another dimension and, for a fleeting moment, Jag actually does catch a glimpse of a unique silhouette, one he's been scanning the chaos for this entire time.
There's a brief opening in the fray, large enough for Jag's visor to distinguish a humanoid figure wielding a pair of blades not made from heat but from actual blade. This is Quicksilver then, Jag realizes, the first mate, in the midst of a deadly dervish's dance. Through an oblique martial arts movement that Jag's sensors can't quite follow, she manages to dispatch one-and-a-half rangers with those swords, leaving one dead and another gruesomely injured.
This is the more view Jag's granted, however, before something more pressing occludes his vision. A ten-foot tower of thorns appears from nowhere, lead by a stabbing spear. Jag scrambles away, part combat roll, part undignified scamper, from that glassrock spearhead, desperately attempting to bring his Domino to bear. Terror wipes away his training and the rookie spice ranger has completely forgotten how to operate a firearm.
It turns out that he has no need, his attacker decimated before it could prep a second stab. A passing spice ranger, some Dhorjedo from Alpha Flight, slices the Secondseed into three servings with quick work from his heatblades. Sparing Jag a contemptuous glance, the Dhorjedo hustles away in search of another enemy.
When Jag looks again, Quicksilver is gone.
He blinks and another figure has entered his sights; not the first mate but one better, the Captain himself. From only his thermal signature, it's somehow not hard to instantly distinguish Nehel Morel, the 34th Galactic Menace, from the rest of the struggling combatant. Hunched over like a cackling goblin, he goes running about the combat, armed with what appears to be a Domino, peppering distracted and unsuspecting rangers with bright blasts of green ditrogen.
How the interlopers managed to get their hands on stolen spice ranger armaments, Jag isn't certain, but he's willing to bet Tav's disappearance on sentry duty outside the Skyscratch canyon is more than coincidental.
On his feet again, Jag starts to jog towards the Captain's silhouette, his purpose renewed. The battle's lines, however, keep shifting against him and, before he's taken a dozen steps, he's intercepted by a small squad of Skyscratch braves, a fierce wedge cutting through Stargazer ranks. Coming to his comrades’ aid, Jag tosses his Domino over his shoulder, snagged by the servomotor and automatically slotted onto his back. Both heatblades live, Jag dodges around the edge of the fray, seeking an opening he can carve his way through.
When it comes – a momentary opening when a Secondseed is slain – Jag hustles forward, sweeping his heatblades this way and that to earn some distance from the other Gitter. To his surprise, he manages to sever a spear straight through the haft before it's plunged through his belly and he even punishes its wielder with a heatblade through the kneecap.
His foe staggering behind him, Jag clears the thick patch of fighting and emerges on the other side – only to discover the Captain disappeared.
He stands there, his teeth gritted in disappointment, when, for a fleeting moment, he spots someone else, the third offworlder, in the press of cactoid bodies.
The Ortoki physique is impossible to miss, especially among so many Gitter and humanoid silhouettes. The long shaft of wood in one paw, Jag supposes, must be a spear – another curiosity, that the Menace's entourage would choose to wield such primitive native weaponry. Of more interest to Jag, however, is what the Ortok clasps in the other paw.
Balanced against the Ortok's hip is incongruously a potted plant.
Odisseus blips his comm twice – long, short.
The fighting continues apace, struggling shadows in the sand. Odisseus watches a suicidal Secondseed shot to ribbons as it twists, hacks and chops with its host of glassrock weaponry. Odisseus watches an unsuspecting spice ranger trampled beneath a stampede of Secondseeds, his skin pierced and torn by the host of spines and thorns. Odisseus watches a dancing figure, undoubtedly Moira by the grace and the glassrock blades, twirl between Domino barrages and deal a jagged end to both gunmen.
All the while, Odisseus hangs back, an uncertain spectator. He's only the one spear remaining and, more importantly, he's guarding the sapling. His highest priority, above assisting in the assault, is to ensure no Stargazer eyes fall upon their most precious prize.
He has a third duty still, beside manning the comm and protecting the sapling. That duty involves Stalkchopper, the Skyscratch's single remaining Firstseed and the cornerstone of Nemo's booby trap.
So much taller than every other combatant, it's not difficult to spot. Towering above the squabbling masses, Stalkchopper too keeps its distance, awaiting the opportune moment, when a path is cleared to its objective. Clearing that path is allegedly Nemo and Moira's responsibility but it's easy to see that the fighting has spread them far afield.
Even as Odisseus watches, Stalkchopper takes its chance.
Lumbering forward on its great shanks, Stalkchopper is heedless of the carnage that rages all around it. It knows only its task, its last great deed, and it plows ever onward towards its destination. It pushes past scads of grappling fighters, ignored by Secondseeds and Stargazers, both with more pressing concerns than an unarmed cripple. It catches a few bolts, stray or intentional, Odisseus doesn't know, but it doesn't slow, even as the green flames start to ripple up its body.
Following a little ways behind, Odisseus spots Stalkchopper's destination, looming like a pyramid through the haze. One of the great triangular Dropcraft stands a short distance ahead, reputedly one of three the Stargazers have parked around the downed Lover. When seen through the sandstorm, it's only a vague shadow, its angular hull suggested but not defined through all the blown sand.
Second by second, Stalkchopper comes closer and closer to the ship. Wriggling the device from his toolbelt, Odisseus takes hold of the detonator.
This duty was entrusted to the Ortok for logistical reasons, hanging back and not embroiled in the battle. Of the three of them, Odisseus is uniquely the worst suited to this tack. He's taken countless lives – most in the defense of his saltbrother, he likes to think – but this, destroying a willing ally for a supposed “greater good” Odisseus doesn't truck with, feels distinctly wrong.
His hesitation nearly costs them the plan, clawed thumb hovering over the detonator and debating issues of morality. It's his comm that shakes him from his reverie, makes him realize how close Stalkchopper has actually come to the target.
The Ortok's comm blips back once – long – and Odisseus presses the button.
The shield projector that's affixed to Stalkchopper's side, the one previously rigged to dud out rather than explode, explodes. It's an explosion of catastrophic proportions, one that happens so suddenly, it seems almost to preempt the Ortok and his detonator. Everything some distance ahead of Odisseus is swallowed in a sphere of flame. As abruptly as it came, the fireball has vanished, leaving a blackened smear, a great smoke pall and no further sign of Stalkchopper.
When the sandstorm furiously swipes away the smoke, there are Stargazers and Secondseeds strewn about, those caught in the edges of the blast. More importantly to Odisseus, however, is the smoldered sides of the Dropcraft, one third of its hull burnt complete
ly away. Ravaged by the explosion, the ship teeters a little drunkenly once before it loses its balance completely, with a teltriton moan, the whole thing tips backward and out of the Ortok's sight.
This is the signal. This is what Nemo and Moira should be waiting for. Assuming they weren’t shot and smoking somewhere, they should both be hotfooting straight for that wreck even now, even as Odisseus stands here gawping.
His hind paws obey the signal before the Ortok's conscious mind can. Odisseus is running forward, the potted sapling clutched to his paunch and his spear forgotten in the sand. At any moment, he could be cut down by a heatblade or perforated by a Domino, Odisseus knows, but there's no other option. Up ahead, in that blackened spaceship husk, is hidden the Ortok's only possible means of escape from this wretched planet.
When a figure does come rushing out of the storm at him, Odisseus bares his fangs, ready to fight with tooth and claw, but it's only Nemo. Looking as crazed as ever with bathrobe flapping and assault rifle slack in his hands, the Captain attempts to scream something at Odisseus – a companionable brag, the Ortok imagines, about how many people he's just killed – but he's completely inaudible over the howling storm.
Moira has been running beside Odisseus for some time before he notices her. A silent specter of death, her forearms dripping with blood, Moira has no need to brag about the people she's killed – one glance and it's clear she's had a red morning. Nemo attempts to shout something at her too but she doesn't spare him a glance, her gaze locked ahead on the emerging silhouette of the ship.
The three of them, bloodied and battered but alive, achieve the foot of the toppled Dropcraft and go clambering into the shipwreck.
Moira is the first to scramble up the shattered hull and vault into the vessel proper.
The explosion tore a considerable bite wound of blackened and twisted metal in the ship's underside and this is no easy terrain to navigate. Moira is especially careful to clear the smoking black metal, ripped to shreds mere moments ago by Stalkchopper's sacrifice.
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