[@mackielars][@Gardevoiran][@Xandrya][@Hawlin][@Rultaos][@Silver Carrot][@BKburke]

[hider=Joe's Last Stand]
Joe took another peek out from the trenches, a line of pirates and militia were moving in. Way too many to take out, way too many to run from, they'd be completely overwhelmed either way. Joe sighed as he made a decision.

"Go, get to the ship!" he shouted to SAL "You and Tobi grab the bug man and get out, I'll cover you!"

He just had to keep them busy long enough for the robots to get clear. Taking short breaths, he reloaded both of his weapons, engaged his exoskeleton and dived out into the open. He fought valiantly, not giving an inch on the imaginary line he had stood on, not until the sheer numbers completely overwhelmed him. He smiled as he died, because he had one last present for the sons of bitches- his exoskeleton was rigged to explode as soon as it detected his heart stop beating.[/hider]

[hider=Slaying A Behemoth]
The twins had caught up to Qresh, and despite their inexperience in combat situations, seemed to be holding their own. Generally, one of the sisters would draw his attention, while the other would zip around to a prime position to strike. Despite his size, Qresh had deceptively quick reflexes and on one such attempt on his life, quickly wheeled around to catch Jen as she leapt in to try and sink her knife into his neck. He held the petite girl immobile in his grip. With the full force of his being, he swings the girl and bashes her head against a wall, killing her instantly. Juli flies in in a fit of rage, but that only gives Qresh an open opportunity to take her out as well. Vulcaan arrives, guns blazing a moment too late to save her life, and engages Qresh,
unveiling the full might of his arsenal. After a drawn out battle where both combatants refuse to flinch, Qresh falls and Vulcaan soon follows, lamenting the loss of everything as he bleeds out.[/hider]

[hider=The Showdown]Stryker/Carver/Kira Vs Sylva. Despite his appearance and stature, Sylva proves to be the toughest of Sol's lieutenants. He takes everything the trio dish out at him and gives it right back. After injuring Carver and incapacitating Stryker, he takes on Kira, who puts up a good fight, but is ultimately bested. Her cybernetic arm smashed and the life literally squeezed from her body. Stryker recovers and gets a gun over to Carver, the duo's combined firepower kills Sylva and Carver crawls over to mourn his wife.[/hider]

[hider=Carver's Gambit]
A resounding boom echoed through the canyon, something that sent a shockwave of air rocketing down from on high. All at once the sky darkened, as if night had decided to fall hours early. Stryker leapt back to his feet, and turned towards the source of the noise. The sight of it would haunt Stryker's nightmares for years to come.
For breaking through the atmosphere was Sol's dreadnought.
The nose of the massive ship pierced through the heavens, it's mere presence wreaking havoc on the planet's ecosystem. Day became night, storms began and ended in a matter of seconds, tides churned into tsunamis, earth that had been still for thousands of generations began to quake, and the winds whipped and roared into hurricanes and tornados. Through the chaos, a voice came down, booming and clear, despite the gales of winds that rushed through the canyon.
"How's that for an entrance?" Vanderos declared "I must say, this has worked out beautifully. We got tired of waiting, so I killed Farek and all his men and we came to join the party. I must say Stryker and Carver, if you're still alive down there, I really can't thank you enough for all the gifts you've given me, I mean that sincerely, who else would gift-wrap an entire station just for me and my boys? You're too kind. And that's not to mention this ship, this absolute beauty, oh I wish you could see it, all the destructive power at my fingertips. Push of a button and all my worries would just disappear. In fact, now that I mention it, I really don't know what's going on down there, do I? Maybe that old bastard Sol is gutting you right this moment, maybe I oughta flip a few switches and fire down a blast, just to be sure. I wasn't really looking forward to dealing with any more fucking pawns of the Alliance, so this is farewell. It's been real fun gentlemen, goodbye."
Carver, still clutching on to Kira as hard as he could, had turned to face the sky, to witness what he had wrought. This was his fault, he had vetted Vanderos personally, been sure that he was stable enough to work with, but the pirate crumbled under the temptation of absolute power, and now, now it was over. His crew lay dead or dying, scattered across this godforsaken planet, soon he'd join them.... maybe he should end it now.......
"CARVER!"
Stryker's yell snapped him back to attention, he faced his doomed comrade.
"We have to stop him, there must be something we can do!"
"It's pointless!" Carver said, the tears flowing free now, streaming down his face "We're all dead! I put that crazy fucking asshole in that chair, and now he's about to kill us all, not that it matters, everyone I love is already gone..."
"Well mine aren't! And I'll be damned if it all ends here, I refuse to lay down and let Vanderos nuke this planet! There has to be something, fucking anything!"
As Carver looked down into Kira's lifeless face, so still and peaceful, he thought of something. Something she told him long ago, when they barely knew each other. It was a long shot, but it was just insane enough to work. Gently, he lay Kira's body down to the courtyard ground, wiped his eyes and leaned in close to plant one last kiss on Kira's forehead, pausing just long enough to whisper something to her.
"I'll see you soon baby"
He rose to his feet, took a calming breath, then looked across to Stryker.
"We only have a few minutes before that nuke is armed. Get everyone back to the Revenant and get the hell out of here, I got this."
With those words, he ran. Sprinting out of the fortress courtyard like he'd never sprinted before. Stryker called after him, but there was no time to waste, he had to get back to the Maelstrom
"Q, spool up the engines, right now!" He yelled into the comms, his heart on the verge of exploding with every word. He was almost there.... almost there.
Time had to be nearly up when he finally reached the ship, but he couldn't stop yet. He dashed up the ramp and through the cargo bay. He bashed his hand after missing a rung on the ladder up to the main deck, but he didn't feel it. At this point, he was nothing but pure adrenaline, unable to slow down until he reached the cockpit.
"Engines online, ramp raised, we are clear for takeoff" Q-23 said as Carver slid into the chair. Ace's chair. He brought the ship up and started them on their way.
"We have enough juice for a jump?"
"I believe so Captain, but I must ask, where are we going? Where are the others?"
"They're dead Q. Dead or dying, and we're not gonna let that stand. Lock on to the dreadnought's main drive core and plot a jump right for it"
A few moments of silence, then the AI responded, now understanding perfectly, it's response even seemed saddened by the realization as it replied "Yes Captain"
Carver increased the ship's speed and opened up a comms channel to the entire team, he didn't have long so it was short and sweet.
"I'm only about 70% sure this is gonna work, so hope you're getting out of there quickly, though if you've got a second to stop off and finish the job, please do, I'd hate to see this all be for nothing. Seth, Ace, hope you guys are still standing, and if you are, then I guess this is goodbye. Stryker, you finish this fight and treat my people like your own, you hear me?"
The comms crackled, beginning to break up as the Maelstrom moved out of range, but Stryker's reply was crystal clear.
"I will Alessio, you have my word."
The comms died out a few seconds later, leaving Carver alone, barreling down on a collision course with the dreadnought.
"Captain, drive core is nearing maximum capacity, spooling up FTL reactor, we will be ready to jump in 15 seconds"
"Thank you Q. Really, thank you for everything"
"I believe you humans say 'it was an honor serving with you' this statement reflects my recollection of our time together"
"Yeah, it was an honor serving with you too buddy."
Carver gritted his teeth, leaned forward in his seat as he pushed the thrusters to their maximum, collision warnings flashed across the control board and engine overload alarms whirred and wailed throughout the empty ship. Carver calmly lifted the glass covering over the FTL jump switch, and flipped it. The end came instantaneously.
[/hider]

[hider=Lataniva's Sacrifice]
The sky lit up in a blaze of orange as explosions rocked the ship and it began to crumble from within. Sonic booms from the destruction rocketed towards the surface, nearly knocking the few left standing to the ground. From where she stood, Lataniva could barely see the faint glimmer as something flew away from the imploding dreadnought. For a moment, she thought it was the Maelstrom. That the ship had pulled away at the last second, but she could detect no signs of life in the UFO. Instead, she felt the encroaching, overwhelming darkness and stench of devastation. She had only felt this once before, and the realization of what it was chilled her to the bone.
It was a nuclear warhead.
Lataniva rushed forward, her eyes peeling around the immediate area looking for a way to elevate herself, her hands were already floating about, almost automatically, as she began to weave a psionic barrier and reached out to hold the warhead back.
Over at the Revenant's cargo bay, Seth felt something awaken in him. He didn't know exactly what it was, but he suddenly seemed to be brimming with power that hadn't been there before. He knew that his people were genetically gifted with powerful psionics, but he had never personally developed such skills.
Until now.
Pushing his way through the crowd as they rushed aboard, Seth began to leave the ship.
"What are ya doin? Get back aboard!" Grayson yelled after him.
"Just go" he replied as he brought his arm up in a wide arc. His hands lit up in a brilliant shade of blue, and he vanished with a flash of light.
He re-materialized on top of one of the cliffs, where he found Lataniva, struggling to maintain her barrier, and keep the warhead at bay. He walked forward and joined her.
"I detected no psionic energy within you when we met. Explain yourself" The Dalentian huffed, physically exhausted under the strain of her efforts.
"Call me a late bloomer I guess" Seth smirked as he began to mimic her hand movements. Together their combined energies stabilized the weakening hold on the suspended warhead.
"It's no use" she said "We can't hold it forever!"
She was right. The inherent pressure of their psionic telekinesis pushing back on the nuke was beginning to show, the nose of it beginning to crumble. If it destabilized further, it would go off.
"You need to strengthen the barrier!" Seth cried over the roring winds "I can hold it, but only if you weave it together!" He sensed her weakening, she may not have even been able to do anything. With one hand still holding the nuke aloft, he reached out towards her, and sent a stream of psionic energies flowing into her body. She looked over, and he nodded encouragingly. Her psionic barriers, previously flickering and dull, loosely suspended by her waning powers, now shined bright gold and zeroed in around the warhead. She saw the first vestiges of the explosion just in time to avert her eyes, but she never faltered her hold, even as the metric force of the nuclear fire pushed out against her barriers. The warhead had begun to fully destablize and erupt, but Seth held up his end of the bargain, and reinforced the barrier as best he could.
"We can hold it until the Revenant takes off" Lataniva said, not just to Seth, but to the whole group via a quick burst of telepathy.
The nuclear blast now neatly contained in a massive orb of psionic barriers, Seth felt his own untrained power levels dropping rapidly. He sensed that even with the boost he had given her, Lataniva was equally low on reserves.
"I have a plan" he began to speak "Lower it, bring it in close to us. One of my people's inherent abilities is matter relocation. I can weave together a wormhole and we can toss this blast into an empty corner of space"
She nodded and slowly the orb began to sink towards them. Seth looped his hands around and around until a dark blue and purple ball formed in his hands. He kept weaving, expanding the wormhole until it was ready. It definitely wasn't stable, but Seth was sure he could hold it until Lataniva pushed the barrier through.
Therein presented one final problem- the wormhole was rejecting the sheer mass of the barriers.
"No, we can't fail now!" Lataniva exclaimed
"There's only one way we can end this..... expand the barrier, envelop ourselves in it. I'll hold the wormhole open long enough to absorb the explosion"
"You'll die!"
"We'll all die if we don't, do it!"
In unison, the psionics stepped forward, within the radius of the barrier, fully exposed to the scorching radioactive fires of the nuke. Against all odds, the gambit worked. The barrier faded away slowly to reveal no sign of the nuke or the wormhole it had gone through.
However Lataniva and Seth had both vanished as well. Perhaps they had been consumed wholly by the nuclear fire, or maybe they were pulled into the wormhole themselves, and translocated across the galaxy. Sadly, none aboard the Revenant would ever truly know what happened.
The sun continued to rise over Sovereign Valley, the sky bathed in red. By all accounts, it appeared to be the makings of a beautiful day, although none still in the valley lived to see it.[/hider]

[h2][b]Aftermath[/b][/h2]
In the immediate days following the battle of Rokarr, The Revenant returned to Serros Station, and by virtue of luck, were able to strike a baseline deal with Leonid Skilna, the lone surviving pirate captain, and de facto new leader of the station. That was good enough for the Alliance at any rate. The crew tried to return to the planet and claim the bodies of their fallen comrades, but the system was already swarming with Federation ships. A vigil was held in memory of Arex, Joe, Lataniva, and the entire crew of the Maelstrom. Stryker convinced the Alliance to let him keep Kaeci and Ace on the crew, explaining the circumstances of the mission. It was all for nothing though, as a few weeks out from Rokarr, Ace slipped away when they made port at a station in the Deadzone and didn't return. Kaeci, still enraged over the death of Harriet, got progressively more and more reckless in the field, until that recklessness caught up with him and led him to his end. Maxi wasn't long for the crew either, distraught over how much death had surrounded the crew, he requested to be removed from the ship, to serve his sentence to the Alliance out in other ways. And most mysterious of all, the Ren platforms packed up one night and disappeared in one of the escape pods. They had left the Tower behind, as well as all of the wiring it had burrowed into the ship's systems, but the consciousness had gone from the machine. In its place was a rudimentary VI system that allowed Stryker to control certain systems of the ship in the same way Ren had. New crew members came and went over the following months, none survived long. The core crew thrived and completed several more missions at the Alliances bequest, and most miraculously of all, Benny and Matija eventually woke up. 

It had now been 8 months since the battle of Rokarr. For the past several weeks, the Revenant has been fairly quiet. No orders had come in from the Alliance, there was no pressing personal business among any of the crew, nothing that had been brought to Stryker's attention anyway, so they wandered aimlessly through the Expanse, just waiting for the next adventure to begin.....