Log:Sith Empire: Black in Deed

Sith Empire: Black in Deed

OOC Date: February 22, 2022
Location: Spearhead Base
Participants: Sith Empire: Tarq Najjic, Imani Xavier Harcourt, Tamsin Cas, Syrus, and Darth Ferren as GM

The !Knights of Ren have infiltrated Spearhead Base on the ephemeral pretense that they've simply been away on important business and have now returned and everything is Normal and Fine. This has worked surprisingly well, with the help of ample Force-driven persuasion, until the Sith councilors reached the Knights' wing. From there, they split up, with several going to the library and others heading to parts unknown to the core group.

Now, though, the three Holocron-laden Sith acolytes and their newly-reunited librarian protocol droid are boxed in, with black-armored stormtroopers blocking their exit down the corridor to the hangar. The droid toddles backward with surprise upon seeing this. "My goodness, this a surprise. And here I had concluded that no one wants to read anymore. What an outstanding day this has been!"

"Is infiltrators. Tarq Najjic is /sure/." It sure will be awkward to explain the situation later, but that is future-Tarq's or maybe not-Tarq's problem. "/Stay/ behind, but do not /fall/ behind, yes?" He is laden. He is, in fact, carrying a bag of old scrolls, the strap over his shoulder really cramping his cape's style, but the holocrons have been distributed one apiece to everyone.

Not having all your eggs in one basket is a sound strategy, usually, but with Sith holocrons, in retrospect? It sounds like a mistake. The Kuati's hand is near his left side, where his lightsaber awaits.

<<"Tarq Najjic suspects jig - is - up.">> The latter, said quietly into their group comms. He's wearing Sith Airpods. Deal with it.

Imani has been somewhere on the familiar base, but she's with the group now as they approach the trooper. She doesn't speak now, she hasn't the force capacity to control anything, so she waits for now. Waits to see if violence will errupt or not.

Xavier is pressed up against the wall right by the open door leading to the corridor, staying out of the line of fire and seriously contemplating another smoke. "Well, it was nice while it lasted," he laments more annoyed than worried. His hand disappears into his black robes to double check that the two holocrons are secure in the pouches on his belt. Satisfied, the hand emerges with a metallic cylinder grasped and the button pressed to ignite the humming white blade. "Enough practice with this thing, eh, Najjic?" Wherever the most eccentric of the Councillors is.

Speaking of...

"Where is that other one? Syrus?"

Tamsin, who slipped the two holocrons she had been handed by Tarq into secure pockets in her robes, had gone ahead to meet the incoming troopers head on. Helmed, robed, she looked every inch the Knight of Ren she had always been when she was here. Rather than cower before the troopers she advanced on them, the vocoder on her helm tuned for maximum effect. "The station is under attack. Standing here trying to impede our attempt to salvage all that we can from the base before the Bloodmoon fires on the station with its planet killer and destroy everything we've worked for. Get to your battle stations!"

"I am here," remarks Syrus as he steps out of the door that leads into the private quarters. He'd made a stop by his own room in the interim and collected his helmet, his armor set not complete without it. It's lifted with one hand and pulled down over his head, clicking into place.

Eyes turning towards their exit, Syrus's leather-gripped saber is pulled from his belt and ignited, snapping quickly to life.

There is a moment of consternation among the assembled stormtroopers, for there are ten of them and Tamsin is presenting what sounds like ample reason to get away from this particular hallway, if only to avoid her ire. By and large, they're trained to submit to authoritative commands coming from people in scary helmets, and right now she fits that bill. Not to mention the alarms that have begun to waft through the base given the abrupt arrival of the Harbinger in its orbit. Outside the viewports, it's difficult to get a full picture of what's happening from this corridor, but the Merciless can be seen turning to align broadsides to the new arrival.

Until Syrus's lightsaber activates, and then they all turn immediately to face him, leaving their flank exposed to the other Sith while they all level their guns at the glowing, humming weapon that's just appeared.

"Stop right there! We're taking you into custody!"

He's loaded down. Not loaded for bear, simply burdened. So when he starts walking forward, there should be perhaps more noise, or more sign of him. Instead, he's difficult to see, difficult to focus on - until he's right next to one of the three senior-most stormtroopers. That minutiae like rank insignias actually comes in handy.

Then he whips the saber up and at the stormtrooper, who may be taken by half-surprise, but knows the sound of a lightsaber activating when he sees one. He sidesteps the blow, and another, until he finally lands a swipe across the neck and shoulder. The stormtrooper topples in twain.

"It was good try." Tamsin's peacemaking? These stormtroopers attempting to waylay them?

Both, really.

This base was once home, these troopers might be people she knew from the base. Does that stop Imani from attacking? No it does not. The moment that the trooper says anything about taking them into custody, she's got her weapon in hand and is on the move. It's the nearest poor sucker that is on the receiving end of her attack. "You really all should just leave, you see what's here, there's no winning today. Walk away and you won't end up like this guy," she points to the pile of armor at her feet.

Still within the library, Xavier is listening to Tamsin's attempt to sway the guards to go to their battlestations. A well thought-out attempt to avoid confrontation as long as possible. Perhaps they can make some progress back towards the hangar before they are forced to---

The snaphiss of another blade beyond where he is pressed immediately and effectively changes the mood. "There goes that." With two bulks hanging off each hip under his robes, Xavier draws in a deep breath through his nose and rolls around the edge of the door.

A large hands snaps out to the first target he sees, hitting Captain ST-5012 hard enough to send him careening backwards and opening a hole -- perhaps temporarily -- in their line. "We can't get stuck here fighting them! This place is crawling with more! We should move!"

"You forget yourselves, troopers. The base is under the command of the Knights of Ren, not its troopers. We do not tolerate those who attempt to rise above their station." Tamsin strode forward, calling her saber to hand, the blade igniting almost before gloved fingers closed around the hilt. "Consider this your aggressive reconditioning." As she was already close to the stormtroopers to begin with, it was the matter of only a few steps to stand in their midst, blade cutting down one of the better armored stormtroopers, before she advanced on another, though she could not reach close enough to strike as he dodged to evade her.

Apparently Syrus is just ready to get out of here. He is untethered and his rage knows no bounds.

Hefting his laser sword above his head, he swipes it down harshly at the feet of one of the soldiers, causing the man to leap back. Then again, and a third time, the saber carving chunks out of the durasteel floor as Syrus continues his march.

"Good heavens!" the librarian droid squeaks as VIOLENCE ensues, and D7-L1 shuffles for cover, a phrase which here means 'stands in the open near one of the viewports, covering his face with his arms'.

One of the stormtroopers is taken down before they can even open fire. "Hostiles! Hostiles!" It seems obvious but given the confusion, at least one of the troopers feels it bears repeating. Weapons start to fire fast and furious, which feels perilous next to a viewport that opens out onto the vacuum of space, but no one has time to worry about that. Their ranks are pushed open by Xavier's use of the Force, and also by Imani's use of force as she just destroys one of them. Numbers are on the troopers' side, though, and enough survive the blitz attack to return fire.

Cut off the head, and the body will fall.

Tarq gives the lie to the weight he's carrying as he sidesteps two blaster bolts just as they're fired, going harmlessly into the wall of the corridor. His lightsaber tricks this evening are all one-handed, his left hand, as he spins the blade around at his wrist to lop off the arm of the last captain and give just a love tap to his head. Love, in this case, is in the form of magnetically-encased all-consuming plasma burns. Down the last senior officer falls.

He makes a few wide, sweeping swings as he continues to advance parallel to Tamsin and Syrus. None connect. For some reason the First Order troops really don't want to be cut-burned, and backpedaling aplenty is happening.

Hostiles. Imani absolutely qualifies as one of those, and she made that apparent by cutting down one of the troopers without hesitation or remorse. It's the job, it's the mission, it's what has to be done and so she does it. Which unfortunately also left her wide open to being shot when the troopers begin to return fire and she gets hit right in the chest. It's bad. There is a hole in her armor that's smoking a bit as she's thrown to the ground with a less than graceful thud. A groan follows, and a wheeze that is wheezy enough to carry through the vocoder for everyone to hear. Ow. It takes a moment but she recovers just enough to get back to her feet, and then move in to try and attack again. She only staggers a little bit, but it's enough that the attack glances off the white armor leaving nothing more than a scuff.

A nice, big. welcoming breech in the blockade opens up and Xavier is making his way for it when the Force all but /screams/ at him in pain. He looks over in time to see Imani in the process of taking a hit strong enough to bring down a bantha.

He looks back to the hole -- that perfect opportunity to start with the tactical retreat. Then to Imani. Then ST-5012 starts staggering to their feet and lumbering back into formation. Xavier hisses out a curse in a foreign language.

Another burst of invisible force WHAMS into ST-5012, sending the elite stormtrooper right back into the dent in the wall he had created moments ago with his body.

The rising anger sated for the moment, Xavier runs over towards their injured compatriot, putting himself between Imani and the troopers and holding the humming white blade up in defense. "This isn't sustainable."

In the midst of the stormtroopers, there was no way for Tamsin to avoid becoming one of their targets, and certainly not after threatening them with aggressive reconditioning. But she was not a hapless victim, and as one of the stormtroopers turned to fire on her, Tamsin centered herself, allowing the saber to go where it was meant to, and the bolt that flew across the space rather than impacting the armored woman, was deflected by her saber, the bolt sizzling as it burned through the plasteel of the trooper's chest armor.

One of the troopers gets a lucky shot in on Syrus, but the Kiffar's hand is jammed out in the bolt's direction, causing a huge corona of light flashing as the laser is dissipated in his palm.

With his attention elsewhere, the trooper nearest to Syrus likely imagines that he's safe. That illusion is shattered when a wild strike slashes into the wall next to him. He doesn't think quick enough to avoid the next one, his body slumping against the bulkhead. "Is Imani alright?" he asks, driving his blade into another trooper's chest, before wrenching his wrist and dragging it to burst out of the soldier's side, readying itself in a defensive stance.

These troops are dressed in black armor. The Vanguard program never really stopped, it just got adapted from fighting next to Force-users to fighting against them. There was always a chance that this would happen; the First Order learned when Kylo Ren defected what a disaster it could be if a Force-wielding warrior went off the reservation, and the Knights of Ren were an entire squad of them.

Of course, they're still just troopers, no matter how skilled they are, and in these tight quarters they're quickly being divided into quarters. The survivors of the first clash alternately run and stumble back to the main chamber of the Knight Wing, seeking space and reinforcements.

"Silicon and circuitry, whatever has gotten into them? These are the masters!" D7-L1 protests over the sounds of battle, standing stock still by the viewport even as the Sith infiltrators move to give chase/fight their way out.

Outside of the viewport, the Merciless is now in full view, trading salvos of turbolaser cannon fire with the Harbinger (presumably, it's not in view).

The chase through the garden is oddly silent, with the troopers in full retreat, heading past it towards the Common Wing. One of the troopers yells "Seal the blast doors!" and the threshold begins to close, grey durasteel planes moving in towards the center along a shrinking parallelogram frame. The first two run through, the third hops over it, ducking, and the fourth, Xavier's punching bag, is too late, trapped haplessly on this side of the blast door.

One soldier remains on this side of the door! One utterly ignored, already-injured soldier. What's he going to do, break his bones at them?

"Tarq Najjic thinks we can pull door open. All of us, together. We are not slicers, but we - can - pull." He taps the side of his head once and then raises his free hand to take grip of one half of the bulkhead door. His eyes close to slits, his breathing slows, and his fingers tighten.

Imani doesn't have of that mind power the others here have, so while they look very seriously at the blast door doing things in ways she'll never understand, she turns on the remaining trooper. She is hurt. It's evident in the way that she moves to anyone who has ever seen her fight before, and also probably to those who haven't. Hole in the chest area is usually an indication of bad things. She is breathing hard as she moves, and there's a sheen of unseen sweat on her brow as every move takes on a new level of difficulty, but she does it. Step, lunge, the first one scrapes off the black armor (haha got the color right this time), but the second attack lands with an unpleasant sound and a cry from the person inside the armor. Imani yanks the chain whip back, then staggers to the side to lean against the wall, waiting for the wizards to do their work.

How's Imani?

That's a damn good question. Xavier looks over his shoulder to find the woman--- gone. His friend ST-5012 is getting acquainted with her over by the blast doors and Xavier gives a slight shrug. "I think she's doing okay," is the answer offered to Syrus. "But once the adrenaline wears off, one of us might end up having to carry."

Tarq's suggestion gets a slight nod, fingers already twining and weaving around the tendrils of the Force. One by one plucked and coiled around his knuckles until he has enough of a 'grip' on the blast doors to begin literally trying to wedge them open with the sheer concenrtation of his mind.

Tamsin frowned, hidden behind her mask, as she watched their only exit closing, leaving troopers on one side and them on the other. Her helmet canted upward, as she looked for anything else they might use as a mode of escape, a ventilation shaft, something (hey it worked for those Jedi fools). But when Tarq spoke, she looked back to the door, fingers flexing in her gloves as she focused her will on the work, all of her mind bent on pulling the doors apart.

Sy's visor rests on Tarq for a time before it acquiesces in a nod. Since losing one arm and most of the digits on his other hand, his finer force powers have been lacking. Thankfully, this application requires broad strokes. Sy's half-organic hand reaches out towards the door; murky black tendrils echoing out through the aether to latch onto the blast door to add to the group effort of getting them the hell out of here.

"Oh, that was- that was gratuitous, was it not?" The protocol droid is still back on the far side of the room, but it's making its way over slowly. Very slowly. In fact, there's almost no way he'll make it by the time the door is open, if it opens. D7-L1 is a liability in a fight.

When the Sith infiltrators put their minds into it, initially nothing happens. The blast doors are huge and they're specifically designed to stay closed. The clock ticks away, replaced by rhythmic sounds of straining metal, until finally the doors begin to creep open with a metallic shriek of protesting gears. It stops far short of fully open, though. The parallelogram-shaped gap is just wide enough to crawl through, several feet off the ground.

On the other side...

The stormtroopers guarding the base have had a chance to set up slightly more robust defenses. Two separate squads are lined up here, and an emplaced turret has been fired up and is now online. The First Order put those in here all the way back when the base was captured from the Resistance and never got to use them, but it probably still works.

It doesn't have to be too open for someone to work their way in and go after that emplacement. No one will have any cover from it after they finish opening the blast doors. Deactivating his lightsaber for a moment, Tarq dives nimbly through the opening.

And abruptly stops moving with a hitch that hauls his neck back, not that those still inside can see it. His cape is caught in the door. Wait, not just the cape, the cape is covering the pouches of holocrons, and they are jammed up against the doors.

The rest of the Sith can just see his two legs, kicking for a moment, then boots lowering to try to get purchase on the floor. They reach, but he's not going anywhere.

The First Order troopers and their emplaced turret can just see Tarq Najjic's head, shoulders, and both arms, his cape having snapped off of the quick-release meant for exactly this purpose when his head snapped up. "Awwk-warrrrrrd..." The lightsaber reignites with a hiss of red as he gives a purse-lipped smile at the black-armored stormtroopers.

Imani is off to one side so she doesn't properly see the acrobatic move that leads to Tarq being stuck, but she can see those dangling, and the pouches that stopped his progress. "That was a great move, Tarq," she says, that wheeze still in her voice as she straightens and fastens the weapon to her hip. She'll need both hands for this. "Just need a little help here." The distance is crossed at a slightly slower pace than is normal, but she gets there to where Tarq is trapped, and before she starts pushing she flips that cape back. He'll feel it as she works to unfasten and remove those pouches with the holocrons, attaching them to her own belt. How many are there? She'll take as many as she can see as quickly as she can, and then tries to give the fancily dressed wizard a shove in an attempt to push him through the opening in the blast doors.

Another curse, this one sounding more feral than the last. Less of a word and more of a hissing, slithery sound that takes on almost a wetness to its syllabels. Tarq goes sailing. Falling. Stuck then shoved. "Graceful."

With the opening cleared, Xavier makes the knee-jerk reaction to follow his brother-in-arms. His attempt is not graceful, either, but the lumbering man is a singer, not a dancer. Xavier leaps through outstretched arms first; threading the opening in the doors like a fat cable cord.

But to the otherside Xavier makes and he stands next to Tarq with a grunt. "This is going well."

Tamsin, who, quite oddly, did not follow after Tarq, made use of the fact that Imani was down by the blast doors and possibly shielded, and she tucked her saber away as she pulled out a few pieces from her field kit that was scattered all around her good self, taking a knee as she came up behind Imani, "I'm afraid I don't have the time to do this gently." A stab here, a prod there, and a patch slapped on Imani's chest (the hole in her armor was so convenient, you know?). "It'll keep you, I hope, until we get out of here." A beat, "Stay behind us." For the moment, she stayed with her patient, though she did duck her head out far enough to try to get a picture of the room and layout. Surely there must be some kind of way to make a quick escape.

With the passageway clear...no wait Tarq's stuck...no wait he's fine. With the passageway clear, Syrus manages to get himself slowly but steadily through to the other side, blade held at the ready and looking to the other two Sith. "Don't die," he offers as his plan of attack.

Tarq's plan to cause some sort of distraction may not have gone exactly as he envisioned it, but it does work, at least to a degree. The manner of his appearance is so ridiculous that the stormtroopers freeze momentarily. This wears off around the time the second Sith starts clambering through the gap.

It's not the most hellish environment they've ever found themselves in, but it might be the most tactically disadvantaged. They're literally bottlenecked by the door, and when the stormtroopers give an opening salvo, there's not much variety for targets. Even missing Tarq might mean hitting Syrus. This is why generally raiding a space station is considered A Bad Idea. The turret is last to fire up, but when it does turn its double barrels on the door, its assault is positively withering.

It wasn't a particularly good plan, but Tarq Najjic has finessed himself through worse ploys.

Not this time, though. After rolling through and onto the ground sans cape thanks to Imani's strong push, he is only starting to get his feet under him when a red blaster bolt sizzles into his arm as it moves, too slow, to intercept the bolt with his blade. There's a sharp, rough gasp, but no words, and there's also the abrupt smell of a barbecue. He passes the saber hilt to his right hand, leaving his left free to sizzle.

"That - was - a /mistake/." You can tell he's serious, because he bothered to include an article in his threat. Apparently unslowed by the wound, he darts forward and with a wide swing lops off both off the offending stormtrooper commander's legs and the tip of his blaster barrel just in passing. His two subsequent strikes at another commander - he's beelining past the others to reach them, heedless of the danger - are deflected by something on that soldier's forearm. Do they have a novel anti-lightsaber defense?

Maybe he's just not connecting the way he thinks he is.

Imani is leaning against the blast door after liberating the holocron pouches and helping Tarq through. Seeing Tamsin coming, she reaches up to lift her helmet. It's not off completely, it's just propped up long enough for her to fish out small container that rattles with a few pills. A couple are tipped out into her hand and popped into her mouth. Stims, maybe. "Thanks, doc," she says to Tamsin, then hisses at the prodding and poking. It /hurts/, but it might keep her from dying, also she's already hurting, so why not more. When the patching up concludes she slides her helmet back into place and takes a deep-- nope not a deep breath still hurts-- a shallow breath and turns to look at the door. "If I don't make it through, know I love you all." Does she? She sounds like she means it. Either way, she takes a few steps back, runs for the door again and manages to jump and slip through the opening without an issue. The landing hurts, but she doesn't make a mess of that either.

The inevitable, expect happens. The stormtroopers on the other side open fire though it isn't the barrage Xavier was expecting. He's rushing forward to try to cut some off at the pass while they're distracted by Tarq's antics. And really, who wouldn't be distracted by Tarq's antics?

Slipping past a bolt whizzing by him, Xavier makes it up to the line and swings his white-bladed stunsaber through the air. It bounces off a shiny black helmet; no doubt giving the wearer a killer headache but little more. Oh, how he longs for the red hum of death.

"You're welcome." It was always nice when a patient said thank you. But there was more work to do. Tamsin, as Imani made her way through the opening, moved as well. And now she was channeling, perhaps, a bit more of the anger she so rarely showed, whether she felt it or not, as she saw more of her team getting injured. And Tarq had lost his cape. That was an insult not to be borne. "Librarian, proceed immediately to the hangar bay."

She looked past the troopers, the slightest flex of her fingers sending a targeted wave of force at the viewport behind where the stormtroopers had set up their line, "Aggressive reconditioning." The impact of her attack was not seen, but it was heard, as the glass of the viewport directly behind the troopers cracked and spidered, the whistling sound of air from inside the station filling the space as the glass shattered under the strain of vacuum, hopefully sucking the troopers back and out of the fight. If they were very lucky, the bodies would clog up the hole long enough to allow the team to escape. Or the blast shield that hopefully, some helpful engineer had build to handle just such dangers slammed down into place. "Run! Now!"

For a moment, Syrus's mind was awash with images of him being too slow to react. He watches himself absolutely obliterated by the heavy bolt and dashed against the door behind them.

Snapping back to the here and now, Syrus does a Very Stylish spin and swings his saber at the incoming bolt like a trained wicket ball star, sending the thing crashing back from whence it came.

When the viewport cracks, the sound of it is so different from the rest of the battle and so loud that everyone stops to look at it. In the moment of horrified silence that follows, a pindrop would echo, but then the transparisteel fails completely and the vacuum of space whooshes out like a thousand Dysons. Distorted screams fill the air before being whisked off into the soundlessness, and nearly all of the stormtrooper contingent are tugged out into the beyond before a blue energy field stretches over the wound in the station's hull, sealing the atmosphere in. The Sith hold on, either to objects or with the Force itself.

The alarm lights flashing over the station change color around this time, from orange to red, signalling critical damage. <<"Warning. The station has sustained critical damage,">> an automated voice explains calmly over the PA system, a relic of its time as a pleasure spa. <<"Please make your way to the nearest escape pod.">>

The emplaced turret, robbed of its remote operator, spins uselessly, the remote fallen on its joystick. At the gap in the blast doors, the librarian droid, D7-L1, has finally caught up and is looking through, holding two holobooks over its head. "You've forgotten the items you were checking out!" it calls to them. But surely there are more important things to deal with.

The path to the hangar is clear, and the scene inside is pandemonium. No one is checking who's coming through the door; an evacuation is under way. The JAS Assault Lander the Sith flew in on has already been flown out. Other ships are currently being powered up or in the process of taking off, and out of the hangar mouth the view of the Harbinger pummeling the station and the Merciless spells out why. And then, they see them:

The Night Buzzard, and Syrus's personal ship. No one else had the codes to get in.

Pandemonium! Tarq's arm is charred where it's visible in the hole burned in his shirt, his cape is gone, and his makeup is thoroughly disheveled by being rolled out of a hole in the blast door. Still, he's determined, and when he sees the Night Buzzard, he stares walking towards it with a determined gait and steely gaze. <<""We're taking the Buzzard. When you've got everything, get in.">>

Through the rush he stalks until he can put in the code and the ramp lowers. As he walks in, he taps the control to close it. No one but our people will get out this way, and most of the others know the code themselves.

He drops heavily into the pilot's seat. Flipping a series of switches, adjusting a dial, and waiting for systems to come online. He lets out a relieved sigh. "It's been refueled." That would be a sad ending, wouldn't it?

The whine of repulsorlifts warming up can be heard in the vicinity, just one more evacuation ship among many, but he's not lifting off. Not until everyone's on.

The pressure in the area drops from one to zero very quickly and Xavier, in his swinging of the whappin' bat, is not prepared. His ears pop and his eyes bulge. For a moment, his heart stops. There is a MIGHTY burning in his lungs and Xavier has an eternity to reflect upon nearly two centuries of smoking.

His peripheral starts to dim and then--- the blue field generators kick in and the area is re-pressurized. Now that there is air once more, Xavier is wracked with a coughing fit. One to write home about if he had one.

The librarian droid on the other side of the partially open blast doors finds himself grabbed by a large, unseen hand and all but YANKED through the door. There is a lot of power to draw from pain and adrenaline and Xavier has both in spades.

No words. Just coughing and running as Xavier makes a break for the Buzzard with a flailing and confused droid holding more holo-loot floating in his wake behind him.

Tamsin, well, managed to grab onto some edge of an already opened door, to avoid, just, ending up being lifted off her feet and flapping in the wind like a black flag. An actual flag, not the alternate reality band. She glanced back as the droid called out, "Your orders are to come with us, Librarian!" Tamsin did try, once the shield was down, to pull the droid to her, but the poor thing only wobbled a bit. "Someone get the droid!" That would have to do, as Tamsin darted after Tarq, hands checking to make sure she still had both holocrons on her (she did). It was the only ship worth taking in this wreck of the house which they once called home, and Tamsin was soon dashing aboard and heading for the cockpit. It was all hands to the wheel now, and until they were clear. As soon as she could get to the controls, she patched into the comms for the Harbinger. "Harbinger, this is Councilor Cas, the team will be departing aboard a Dungeon-class, IDF reads 'Night Buzzard'. Do not fire on us."

With the situation handled by Tamsin's quick thinking, Sy's lightsaber is deactivated and hung on his belt as the man makes a bee line towards the Brigand, the poor WTK-85A interstellar transport that was left abandoned when the Kiffar man went into his exile. The IFF transponder in his armor pings out a signal and the boarding ramp begins creaking into action, reaching the floor as Sy's booted foot lights atop it.

<<"There are matters I must attend to,">> Syrus comms to the rest of the group, unclasping his helmet and tossing it aside to clatter along the floor.

He slides into position behind the pilot's yoke and completes a Zhu Yan amount of pre-flight checks before spinning up the engines and angling the stick exit-wards.

Once he's free of the Base, the Brigand will flit off into the void; a streak of light destined for parts unknown.

This is not how Imani wanted to die. Not that she's really looking to bite it anytime soon, but being sucked out into the vacuum of space isn't it. Thankfully she manages to cling to the door she just passed through long enough for that shield to seal the breach. She relaxes her grip on the door and turns to make a run for it with the others. She isn't a pilot, she can barely even turn a ship on, so while Tarq sees to ship things, she drops into a seat on the familiar ship, helmeted head tipping back to look up at the familiar space. "Still have that lesai," she says to no one that's on the ship, and then she settles back, waiting for them to make their escape.

When the Buzzard picks up and goes shooming out into space, there ARE several guns that pivot towards it on the Harbinger's decks, but they stand down when Tamsin broadcasts their identities. Once the streak of noxious fumes ends inside the belly of the Bloodmoon, the miniaturized Acolyte gun on its main deck fires the waiting charge into the side of Spearhead Base.

The damage is considerable, maybe even existential, but before the dust settles, the red-trimmed destroyer follows Syrus' example and stretches to a mile long in an instant before vanishing into hyperspace.