9.120 - The Vanguards: Rapture

An acidic glare was sent Glayde's way, but Sam kept her mouth clamped firmly shut. For now.

Later though?

Oh hells, that man was going to get an earful.

The blonde settled for simply marching herself back out through the blown blast doors, mindful of her footing. The stench was still nothing to easily ignore, but Sam set her mind to the verbal whipping she planned to give the XO, and with dark thoughts circling her mind she picked her way over the blackened and jagged threshold and into somewhat fresher air.

The group moved out the way they came, through the ruined blast door. Meeting up with Onashi and Dirge, they left the Prefecture completely, headed back towards the city proper.

"Major, I have completed analysis on some of the recovered data fragments."

His visual receptor glowed as a hologram of a strange-looking ship emerged.

"Forty seven of these vessels were observed by Imperial commscan. Given the telemetry, they are likely to be heavy cruisers of an unknown origin."

The hologram cut off as quickly as it was displayed, and the MMU continued onward.

"Recommend dissemination of data immediately. The implications of this attack are profound."

"Well, you know what they say about planets like Karallon. If there is a bright spot in the galaxy..."

"...there are many bright spots in the galaxy. They are called stars, Lellan," De'Ville snapped. She was doing her best to tolerate the SpecOps team she had been put in charge of, but Lellan's tendency toward excessive chatter was not endearing him to her. "We need to keep moving. Whatever made that explosion needs investigating."

"Yes, sir," Lellan agreed. He looked at Grenn, who just shrugged, hitched up his blaster rifle, and followed De'Ville through the trees. Lellan groused under his breath but fell in line, head on a swivel for any unusual noises. Mano and Fli'lik brought up the rear. Thing was, there weren't any weird noises. Just regular forest sounds with regular insects and small avians, and the occasional sign of rodentia. Lellan hated rodents, especially small ones; the smaller the more he hated them. But the normality of the forest only served to cause the unease of the SpecOps team to grow, not lessen.

Fli'lik, an attractive green skinned Twi'lek who wore her bodyglove like a, well, a glove, held a scanner up, tapping the screen gently. The handheld device beeped softly. "Long range picked up a contact headed this way from the west. Looks to be a small group, could be hostiles, might be natives." She sounded unconvinced. "If we go silent they'll travel right by us."

De'Ville checked her own scanner as she walked. The blip they were following was still a ways ahead of them, south of the town they had just put behind them. "We need answers. Whoever this is might have them." She gave out short instructions, and the team split up, disappearing into the trees and shrubs. She took her own position with her back against an expansive and scratchy trunk, blaster held ready. With a slow exhale she let her senses expand into her surroundings.

The noise of the incoming group was much less than she might have expected, the footsteps sounding cautious. Voices were low, conversation limited. Too quiet. Much too cautious. She grabbed at her throat mic, subvocalizing, "We're blown. Go now, go now!" and leapt out, pointing her blaster at the nearest humanoid, her finger on the trigger.

There was a lot of commotion and Lellan was shouting about someone's questionable ancestry, and then she met the eyes of John Glayde and yelled, "Friendlies, friendlies, do not shoot!"

With the exception of MARCUS, who was still very much unarmed, the blasters of Glayde's team snapped up ready to fire the second there was even the slightest hint of sound or movement from the undergrowth. It was only the vaguely familiar flash of warpaint around the eyes that stopped Glayde from pumping the leaping figure full of blaster.

"Hold your fire," he ordered, calm but clear. His hand reached out to grab the arm of Sam Porter, already in the process of prepping a grenade that would surely make a crater of the supposedly covert team. He fixed Sam with a meaningful look. "They're on our side."

He let the rifle drop - not all the way, but enough to at least seem a little less threatening. His eyes picked out the shapes of the rest of the SpecOps team as they stirred from cover; exactly where MARCUS had reported in his usual deadpan mere moments before. Glayde made a mental note to discuss weaponising the whatever-he-was with the Captain when they got back: the automaton was proving to be particularly useful, and a damn sight more reliable and predictable than most of the people Glayde found himself working with these days.

"Lilaena De'Ville," he spoke with a nod, an identification for the benefit of his teammates who hadn't met the uniquely-decorated probably-human before. It wasn't a friendly greeting: one uttered because social conventions demanded it, and with a tone that suggested he wasn't in a mood for conversational stall tactics.

It hadn't been more than a few weeks since the mission to Dar Akuz, and the Novgorod hadn't been back to Bothawui since: the bulk of Glayde's mission team - as well as Porter, who they'd stumbled across in an Imperial holding cell - were still stuck aboard, and if Glayde's new role as Executive Officer was anything to go by, that didn't look to be something that would be changing any time soon. De'Ville however had somehow managed to secure transit off the ship; and now here she was.

"You want to explain to me why you're skulking around in the shadows on the outskirts of a ghost city?"

"I could ask you the same thing," said De'Ville, a ghost of a smile touching her face. "However, I am just glad to see some friendly faces. This planet..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked around at the uniformed and alert Rebel soldiers, most of whom she knew. Some were securing the perimeter, others talking quietly or using the time, like Lellan, to relieve himself almost out of sight in the forest. She narrowed her eyes at her team member's back, and turned her head back to Glayde and the droid.

"The answer is mostly classified, but what I can tell you is that Intel has an agent on Karallon. They lost contact with him a few days ago. My team was dispatched to locate and retrieve the operative, if we were able.

"We passed through Serass City, to the east." De'Ville jerked her head in the direction Glayde's team had been headed. "It has been completely emptied. No sign of the agent, no sign of anyone." She shifted her weight, hitching up her utility belt and tucking her short hair behind her ear. "We were headed toward this area of farmland," she indicated the area on a well worn flimsi map, reinforced for durability but already folded and re-folded too many times. "Initially Karallon Capitol, where you just were, was where we were going, but we picked up a faint signal from our missing operative coming from the south."

"So we've got a signal, but no life signs whatsoever except for us," Onashi said, standing straight and walking off a few steps to form a part of the perimeter being set up.

He walked right next to the twilek. She looked serious, so perhaps a little levity would be off the mark. Especially in these circumstances. But Onashi was a man, a man with needs, and those needs needed to be fulfilled, billions of missing people or not.

"I feel like I'm walking around in a horror holo," he murmured to her. "Cities weren't meant to be that quiet."

Glayde decided not to ask how someone went from working for SpecForce to working for Alliance Intelligence in a matter of weeks. He tried to keep his nose out of spook and spectre business as best he could, in the vain hope that they'd return the curtosy. It wasn't a plan that had succeeded so far; but it caused marginally fewer headaches than the alternative.

News that Alliance Intelligence had an asset on the planet filled him with a strange sense of dread. Karallon was for the most part a largely unremarkable place; and while Glayde was no stranger to working for an organisation that played it's cards close to it's chest, he couldn't shake the feeling that maybe someone knew a lot more about what was going on here than anyone realised.

A frown crept onto his brow, as his mind strayed briefly to MARCUS and the comm reports he had downloaded. "This isn't really the time or place to be comparing notes about what it going on here," he pointed out. A thumb jerked over his shoulder in the direction of the automaton. "We've got urgent intel to report in, and I can't risk the Alliance not recieving it... but there's a good chance that this missing man of yours is holding more pieces of the puzzle."

His gaze swept around the group, a moment of hesitation gracing his features before they settled into a resolved decision.

"I need to get some altitude to clear this comms interference, but Onashi and Dirge will stay planet-side to help you find your lost asset." He fixed De'Ville with a knowing look. "If you'd be so kind as to drop them off on the Novgorod when you're done, maybe we can bring each other up to speed, and work out what the hell is going on down here."

MARCUS nodded curtly in agreement with Glayde's assessment.

"Major, I recommend immediate debarkation. Analysis of Imperial naval doctrine suggests 94.4 percent chance of retaliation with overwhelming force. It is likely they intercepted the same message fragment and have derived the same fallacious understanding of it that we have."

With that, the droid accompanied the SpecForce ground commander and Sam Porter back the way they came, to the waiting dropship.

She opened her mouth to say something...anything, but Glayde, the blonde woman, and the droid were already turning on their heels and disappearing into the forest. Lilaena looked at Onashi, already hitting on Fli'lik who was looking at him a little incredulously, then at Dirge. "Good thing we have room for one more in the shuttle."

"I'll let you share my seat," Lellan said to Maren, grinning. De'Ville did roll her eyes then, and snapped her fingers.

"Time to get moving. We have a clock running on us now." Her team shouldered packs and they made their way through the trees and undergrowth as silently as they could. The forest wasn't quiet - the insects and avians were still making the usual sounds - but the planet was eerily silent. No comms noise. No speeder commotion. No ships flying overhead.

De'Ville couldn't mention that there was a spectacularly wrong feeling to Karallon in the Force. The closer they got to the signal in the south the worse it was.

She cast him a sidelong look, but Onashi was pleased to see it wasn't full of disdain.

There was room to work. Onashi didn't hide his smirk, but made sure to keep an eye out on the underbrush.

The twilek seemed ready to respond, but De'Ville's command to move out interrupted them. Onashi didn't mind.

They settled into a loose line as they jogged across the landscape, himself in middle behind De'Ville, and just in front of the twilek, while Maren shared point with one of De'Ville's group. They were making good time to their destination, but Onashi could feel the tension rise, and while he wasn't anxious, he wasn't keen on facing an entire legion of Stormtroopers with only the few of them here.

Onashi grunted and looked up. The sky was getting crowded with birds, of various types, but most seemed to be larger, carnivorous birds. Vultures.

"That's a lot of carrion-birds," he said. The twilek was nearest him; she looked up as well. One of the others of De'Ville's group grimaced.

De'Ville looked up at the avians, and nodded in agreement with Onashi. "We are almost to the signal."

"I've got a bad feeling about this," muttered Lellan, from his position bringing up the rear as the party moved southward. Lilaena agreed with that too, but didn't say anything. Almost unconsciously the group was slowing down from the jog they'd started out at as the trees began to thin and a clearing began to emerge in front of them.

Dirge and Grenn paused just in front of her, and the team took suitable cover as the Zabrak inched into the open plain, blaster rifle held at the ready. De'Ville could feel the vultures in front of them, hundreds if not thousands of the creatures making a vast imprint in the Force. Grenn waved them forward, and one by one the Rebels stepped out from the tree line, their weapons held ready.

"I... I..." Grenn couldn't take his eyes off of what was in front of him as the others walked past him. De'Ville surveyed the plain with cold eyes, while Mano took a knee to her left, retching dryly. Lellan was speechless, for once, but he kept walking out into the clearing, swinging the butt of his blaster rifle at the avians and scaring them off the mounds they were gathering atop.

Onashi and Fli'lik stopped next to De'Ville, the sensitive Twi'lek putting a hand to her nose for a moment. The plain was vast, and it was almost completely full of piles of dead bodies.

"I think we found our agent."

Onashi had seen some morbid things in his life. A man searching or his arm, finding it, and running off the battlefield; a blast crater from an orbital bombardment that wiped out a town of five thousand people; he had even participated in a mass execution, fighting an armed insurgency on a Corporate Sector planet.

Those weren't nothing in comparison, but sheer scale of death was something he had never seen before.

Mountains of bodies littered the vast plain, some mounds taller than the trees that bordered the grasslands.

One of De'Ville's men kept walking, smacking away the carrion-birds with the butt of his rifle, and screamed.

"Get away! Get away! That's not food!" he yelled, his face contorted into a furious expression.

Onashi looked over at the twilek, who was visibly sick at the sight of the corpses. He'd smelled this before, and worse too, though these people weren't more than a day dead, or the smell would likely have covered the entire area.

"Graaaaaaaaahh!" the Rebel yelled, panting and bending over. Onashi turned to De'Ville.

"I don't think the man's alive," he said. "No one seems to have survived. We need to go."

"Normally I would agree," she said, scanning the horizon that writhed with flapping wings, and then looking down at the padd in her hand. The signal still blipped gently on the screen, somewhere in front of them.

"Take Grenn and Lellan, find the agent's body to confirm he's actually here. A quick scan of the body should suffice to convince Intel." Her eyes kept getting drawn to roughly the center of the plain, where the wrongness kept pulling at her. "Fli'lik, you're with me. Mano - " De'Ville looked back at the sniper, who was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, still kneeling on the grass.

"You and Dirge stay here. You see anything moving that's not a scavenger, you radio." He nodded, pushing himself up to his feet and squaring his shoulders.

Lellan had given up flailing at the birds, and the eaters of the dead swooped back down, squawking noisily as they landed on the corpses, sharp beaks flashing. De'Ville jerked her head at the Twi'lek, and the woman nodded, following her into the piles of the citizens of Karallon.

She was focused on whatever it was that was drawing her toward the center, her body following her eyes and picking it's own way through the bodies. There was enough of a space between mounds that they did not have to step on any of the dead, but the occasional arm or leg would block the path and needed to be stepped over. De'Ville flinched when Fli'lik touched her shoulder.

"Look," said Fli'lik, pointing to the side. "Look at their faces." Her voice was quiet.

Lilaena stopped her trek, and turned to see what she was talking about. The bodies seemed unharmed, other than being dead. There were no pools of blood or sticky wounds, except for what could easily be traced to the post-mortem work of the scavengers. But the faces...

...each face that she could see was stretched into a grimace of horrific terror, mouths agape, eyes open and unblinking. Fli'lik shuddered, behind her.

De'Ville reached out and touched one on the forehead, reaching out with the Force. "What did this to them?" She snatched her hand back almost as soon as she touched the cold, slick skin, and her head snapped back to where she had been headed. "We need to hurry. The fleet needs to hear this."

"But what are we looking for?" asked Fli'lik, lengthening her stride to keep up with De'Ville.

"I do not know yet," ground out the Dark Jedi between gritted teeth as she ran toward the wrongness.

Onashi grunted and accepted the pad that indicated the missing agent's body, looking at it and up at the two men who were to help him.

He looked at the mountains of dead and realized what she'd actually said.

"How am I supposed to find a single body in this?" he shouted after her. De'Ville didn't answer, seemingly absorbed in her task. He turned back to Grenn and Lellan, a decidedly irritated expression painting his features.

"Well," he said, looking at the pad and then at the piles of bodies surrounding them. "Let's start looking then."

There was a clearing in the midst of the bodies, large enough for a good sized freighter to set down. De'Ville and Fli'lik approached it cautiously, the grotesque that surrounded them giving way to empty space.

Not quite empty. A trio of what might have been tables were sitting on the other side of the clearing, one upended toward the sky. De'Ville jerked her head toward them, and Fli'lik nodded in reply. The two women jogged across the expanse, where once native grasses and flowers had grown and bloomed, now a muddy expanse of trampled flora, criss-crossed with footprints and drag marks. Without being asked the Twi'lek took out her datapad, using the built in holocam to record visuals as they approached.

This was, as a mystery writer might put it, a Clue.

De'Ville felt every fiber of her being screaming at her to get away, but she put one foot in front of the other and stood before the tables. They were split into three segments, a large upper half with the lower half split in two, with adjustable restraints. At least thirteen centimeters thick, the tables were obviously some sort of tech, with sockets and plugs that lay empty. She couldn't bring herself to touch them, looking at the one that was on end. The restraints lay open, as though whoever had used it hadn't bothered to close it down after the last body had fallen from it's cold grasp.

"Torture devices of some kind?" she managed. "I have never seen their like." Fli'lik scanned the table, recording everything they could glean from a sensor sweep, and De'Ville's foot kicked a tiny cylinder. She bent and picked it up, holding it up to the light. It was nearly empty, a few drops of a clear liquid still contained within. It appeared very similar to a syringe, minus a needle. Double checking to make sure she couldn't be pricked, De'Ville secured it into a velcroed pocket.

"Look," said Fli'lik, pointing beyond the three devices. "I was recording the ground, and... well... look." Her lekku were twitching, signing something that De'Ville couldn't translate even if she'd wanted to. The soft ground was dented with imprints from the tables' support system, where perhaps a hundred of them must have stood. For what purpose, she could only guess at.

"Keep recording." De'Ville touched her throat mic, transmitting to the others. "We're heading back to Dirge and Mano. Any luck finding our man?" While she waited to hear from the other team, she forced herself to touch the table in front of her.

A blinding wave of terror washed over her, and she flailed backward, her ears full of silent screams. She bent over and threw up.

"...I think we have," Onashi said in reply, looking at a pile of bodies with distaste, and wiping off sweat from his forehead.

Lellan and Grenn were standing on either side, trying desperately to get the growing smell of decay from their noses. Onashi had pulled out his pipe and lit it to cover the smell, puffing away and crossing his arms.

"Kids," Lellan said with disgust. "They did... whatever they did with kids."

"I think we deserve something for having to dig through a pile of children's bodies," Onashi grunted, nudging the dead agent's body with his foot.

Both men on either side looked more ill than they had before.

"Great," said Fli'lik in response to Onashi while De'Ville took a deep breath and wiped her mouth. "See you in two."

She pulled De'Ville to her feet and they double timed it back to where they'd exited the forest. The rest of the team was waiting, and they silently took their positions, making good time back to where the shuttle was waiting. The slaved recall for the ship wasn't working with all the interference in the atmosphere, meaning it was a hot run through the trees for long, excruciating minutes.

Grenn threw himself into the pilot seat and the shuttle was taking off almost before the ramp was closed. "I guess we're rendezvousing with Novgorod, since we picked up some strays," De'Ville said, a half-hearted attempt at humor that fell flat. No one was in the mood to point it out, however, and the ride to the black was tense and quiet.

"Captain, the shore party is aboard, sir."

Mallin put an end to an eternity of waiting. Cirr exhaled, rising from his seat.

"We can't stay herre. Sajine, plot a courrse to get us back to Alljiance terrrjitorry."

"Captain, Major Glayde is informing us that they've linked up with an Intel element on Karallon. Part of the shore party liased with them to complete some ground reconaissance."

The Captain glanced back at Mallin, who wore an inscrutable expression. No sense in killing the messenger, so to speak. Frustrated, he took his seat again. The moment he had clearance from his hangar chief that the Comet was secured, he patched a line through.

"Majorr, don't keep me jin suspense herre. jI want yourr team up herre and rreporrtjing now."

"Keep your ears on," Glayde grunted under his breath, weaving his way through the swarm of technicians that were approaching the landed Comet to do whatever it was that they did. He didn't know. Didn't much care. He just found it intensely frustrating.

Forced to stop by a mechanic who wasn't paying enough attention for his liking, Glayde grabbed him firmly by either shoulder, and manhandled him clear of his path before marching onwards, navigating the path of least resistance towards the turbolift.

His hand strayed to his ear, and triggered the comlink wrapped around it. "Copy that, Captain," he replied, managing to scrub a little of the frustration from his voice. "We're already on our way."

A glance around him revealed that his companions weren't progressing through the herd of mechanics quite as swiftly as he was. He turned around, still moving towards the elevator but facing the opposite way as his lips pursed, and a loud whistle blasted between his tongue and palette. "MARCUS," he barked, jerking his head at the automaton. "Heel."

It wasn't really a meandering pace that she'd adopted, but it was certainly nothing that could be described as hurried either. More to the point it was a halting gait that involved a bit of careful navigation.

How many damn mechanics did this ship need?!

It was frustrating, but nothing that couldn't be worked around, and she knifed her way through the herd of bodies around her. She wasn't that far behind Glayde; she was close enough to to see the impatience in his gaze at least. It made her scowl slightly.

"I'm here too you know," she grumbled beneath her breath, disgruntled as she pushed her way past him and closing the rest of the distance between herself and the lift.