A Walk On The Wild Side

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Aela rounded on the woman.

"Three days ago this man's associates captured one hundred and thirty five Twi'leks from a little village on Ryloth." Her voice was hushed, but not a whisper. "They can't afford the time it would take to do this quietly."

Her voice was filled with passion. "I understand if you don't like my methods, but I don't care."

That was the end of the conversation. With an odd splattering sound the cloak that had clung to Aela's shoulders suddenly fell onto the ground. The garment freed her, and suddenly Aela's back seemed to stiffen, her chest rose as her lungs filled with air, and her shoulders straightened out. She didn't even give a second look towards the other woman, there was no time to.

Within the back of her mind she could see it, the odd little alcove where the Rodian was hiding.

She wasn't sure, she was never sure, but the force pushed her forward, the thrum of her lightsaber ringing in her ear as she moved through the halls of the compound. A security camera panned from left to right and her hand shot up. Before it caught a glimpse of her the small device was crushed into tiny ball, she had no time for games today.

 

[Adder]

Her eyebrows, having just been given a moment of reprieve, were forced to ascend her forehead again at the brusque manner in which she was addressed the second she crawled out of the shaft. It seemed that the blonde's bluntness in battle carried over into speech as well.

"They also can't afford their savior dying a heroic death because she couldn't wai—" she started, but the girl was already gone. "Well, kark."

Shaking her head, Adder took off after the non-Jedi, reaching into one of the many pockets of her armor for the silencer that she would use in a desperate attempt to mollify the other's impact on their somewhat stealthy approach. Of course she realized that avenue had been mostly destroyed by the girl's less-than-favorable handling of the guard outside, but crying over spilt juma juice never did any good.

Even as her headstrong accomplice disabled the camera above, the ex-cop dropped on one knee at the bend of the corridor to down a pair of patrolling thugs. As soon as they hit the floor, Adder rushed over to relieve them of any communications devices they might possess, hoping to delay the discovery of their intrusion for a few minutes more.

As they rounded another corner, the redhead finally saw her chance, grasping at the blonde's arm to pull her back just before she would bludgeon straight into a room full of lounging mercenaries. She pulled them both flush against the wall and pointed at the exposed wiring panel barely visible through the ruined portal, doing her best to keep the girl in place as she took aim with her left, and then squeezed the trigger just as one of the thugs glanced at the doorway.

There was a sizzle, a loud pop, and then everything went dark.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

The flaw in the womans plan was the incredibly loud and bright pink thrumming lightsaber within Aela's hand.

Of course the mercenaries were startled, confused, but the moment the lights went out their eyes jumped immediately to the thrumming bright pink source of light just outside their hallway. They stood, their shouts carrying quickly into the hallway. Aela scowled, though it did make things easier. She pulled out and away from the woman's grasp, placing herself directly into the center of the doorway and raising her palm.

Blaster shots began to soar towards her, each one breaking against an invisible wall.

She pushed forward, pressing her palm out just as the majority of the mercenaries found their weapons without charge. A tide of the force ripped through the room, the pressure of the force push scattering tables, documents, and people into one another. There were loud crashing sounds, and then Aela dashed forward.

A man who aimed his rifle at her went down onto the ground, his blaster sliced in half and his leg broken.

She was the only bright light within the room, her lightsaber flicking forward and slicing through blasters, armor, and even a table or two. She moved with an odd liquid like grace, passing through the room as a force of nature.

 

[Adder]

There was no time to ponder her tactical blunder as the pink beam remained as a sure beacon, as traitorous as it was luminous, and Adder sank forward into a roll, trusting that the girl could take care of herself well enough.

While her weapon was far less proficient in announcing her position, the ex-cop still didn't feel like standing in one place, resorting instead to moving along the wall in a low crouch that offered her a good starting point whenever it became necessary to dodge to the side.

While the non-Jedi kept the majority of the room distracted, Adder circled around in the back, finding support in her cybernetic vision enhancement that allowed her to pick out her targets in the dark. One, two, three, they all went down, accompanied with surprised cries of pain when the silenced bolts seared through joints.

Even though it was only partially effective, the distraction still proved invaluable, and soon enough, the pair had dealt with the whole group, leaving naught but groaning and unconscious grunts sprawled on the floor and across whatever furniture still remained upright.

"Well… now they certainly know we're here," Adder dryly quipped as she swept past the girl, checking the next corridor swiftly before ducking right. She covered the long expanse of exposed space with a quiet jog, taking care to keep an eye out for any doors that might open to reveal a new threat.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

While [member="Adder"] moved with an odd tactical grace through the building, Aela followed in the steps of her forefathers.

She moved without regarding or thought, stalking through the middle of the hallway and keeping her lightsaber up in a defensive stance. Every now and again she would lash out, slicing into a metal door and cuttings its seams to weld them together, the heat of the plasma melting the metal in an instant before the cool air sealed them shut once again. A few times she heard banging on the doors, loud calls of protest. It would take time to open those doors, and by then she would be gone.

"Upstairs." Aela commanded, her voice flat and her off hand pointing to the stairwell at the end of the hall. Her eyes folded closed for a few seconds and she focused, remembering what she had seen. A nod escaped her as she moved forward, as though she was confirming the memory that had formed in her mind.

She let the other woman go first, covering their ascent up the stairs with a look back. Vaguely she could hear yelling from the second story, likely soldiers gathering their equipment in preparation for a fight. Her teeth ground against one another, and then suddenly the light exploded back on. Her eyes closed in recoil, and she heard a voice shouting.

"There they are!"

Blaster fire rained down.

 

[Adder]

Any protests she might have uttered in response to the girl's commanding tone were nipped in the bud by the shouting ahead, and Adder had just enough time to dive forward flat onto her stomach as the lights bathed the narrow stairs with their blinding light, accompanied by a hail of bolts.

Unlike the forcer behind her, the redhead had no space magicks at her disposal, and was forced to resolve to more…. Pedestrian measures when it came to avoiding fire. Oh, well. Anything was better than death, right?

Ignoring the blossoming pain in her chest, Adder fired off a few quick shots at the figures standing in the doorway, sacrificing some of her accuracy in favor of speed. She just needed to hold them off long enough that the blonde could get close and dispose of them, allowing them both to proceed forward.

By the number of people opposing them and and the sheer firepower they were packing, Adder presumed this was their last stand — something they could have avoided completely if that blonde troll could manage to lighten her step — and once they were done, there would be no more surprises.

Hopefully.

She rolled over to the side, wincing when her shoulder blade was rather unpleasantly introduced to a cold edge of a stair, abandoning the single shots of her westar in favor of sweet, sweet revenge. The ex-cop squinted for a second and then lobbed a flashbang over their heads and into the room they were holding out in, snapping her eyes shut as the grenade went off.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

Aela took the loud pop of the flash bang as her cue to go. Not many would have expected that knowledge of her, when to attack and when to turn away, but the past four years of working closely with the Republic Military had afforded her at least some measure of tactical strength, and the loud bang of the flash grenade along with the garbled moans of more than a few of the mercenaries was a good mark to send Aela off the edge and into the fray once more.

Her lightsaber flicked forward and cut through a heavy repeating blaster, her hand striking out and catching someone by the throat.

She moved like flowing water, faster than she had in that dark room.

The force came into play more and more, a barrier here, a force push there, quickly she made her way through the small barricade that had been formed, cutting apart the odd half-way that had been hastily constructed. She paid little mind to the woman behind her, knowing that she was at least half way competent by now.

One of the mercenaries began to run, dropping his weapon and uttering a curse. Aela caught glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye and latched onto him with the force, wrenching him back and pulling him towards herself. The bright pink blade of her lightsaber swept down and sliced into his leg, cutting the appendage just barely enough to ground the man for the foreseeable future.

 

[Adder]

She was glad to see that for once, her plan — however hastily it had been thrown together — worked out fairly well, all things considered. The blonde rushed forward into the fray, as was apparently her preference, while the redhead was content to hang back a little taking care with her aim with all the moving bodies squirming in the doorway.

It was a good choke-point, really, and with the way the non-Jedi fought, Adder had a pretty easy job of picking the rest of them off. One by one, the last of the mercenaries fell to their joined effort, lying on the floor in various stages of pain or unconsciousness, but all of them were, ultimately, left alive.

When the ex-cop finally scrambled back to her feet, a small lance of pain ran through her shoulder, and the woman bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a hiss. It was her right, thankfully, which is also why her aim hadn't been affected, but it could prove to be highly unpleasant if there were even more thugs hiding somewhere in the compound.

To push those thoughts from her mind, Adder focused on the familiar face of a rodian amongst the bodies littering the floor, approaching him with long strides. Without ado she grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back on his feet, her features hardening in disgust when he let out a groan.

"Shut the kark up," she growled out, her green eyes growing impossibly cold as she stared him down. Even with the objective size difference, nobody in that moment would claim that it was the bandit who was the taller of the two.

"Now listen to me, you little chit, and listen to me closely," she almost whispered, leaning in just a bit more. "You're going to tell me where those Twi'lek are, and who your bosses are, and you're not. going. to lie."

By the time she was finished, her voice was little more than breath against his ear.


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

Her lightsaber suddenly winked out of existence as the fighting ceased.

Aela's chest rose and fell, her hair was a wet mess, and her clothes were completely soaked. In reality the fight had only taken a few seconds, but to her, it felt like an hour had passed. Bright orange eyes scanned the bodies, latching onto the face of the Rodian almost as soon as he peeked out from beneath one of his dead compatriots. Her lips thinned, but before she could move her unwilling partner dashed forward and grasped the man by the collar, wrenching him up and yelling into his face, threatening him.

She stopped for a second, hesitating for a moment.

Would he speak? Would he tell her what they wanted to know? It seemed unlikely. The man was working for the Hutts, slavers, he wouldn't give up information unless he absolutely had to. Then again he was facing down two women who had just taken down his entire group of mercenaries, though the fact that they had not killed a single one likely made that less threatening.

Slowly she ambled over towards the two, watching the expression of the Rodian was she moved. His big black eyes seemed to shift from Adder, then to Aela, then back to Adder. Aela looked down at the man, her hand flexing at her side. She waved it slightly, pressing the force into the mans mind. "Tell her."

Her voice was not a whisper, but a strong resounding command.

It would echo within the aliens mind, resound and bounce over and over again. It would tear through every thought, every memory, every inkling that the Rodian could ever have. It would become his psyche, and slowly he would be compelled to say exactly what the two women wanted to know.

 

[Adder]

Though she had no idea what the blonde had done, Adder found it to be effective, and that was all that she really needed to know. It was better, sometimes, if one did not know what exactly had been necessary to achieve a certain goal; it was a lesson she'd been taught a long time ago, and one she still couldn't readily accept. It made her feel dirty, marred, as if she herself had committed possible acts that no decent human being could hope to carry upon their shoulders and still look another in the eye.

With a defiant grunt, Adder pushed those thoughts out of mind and refocused upon the subject in her grasp, underlining the blonde's order with a sharp gaze of her own.

It was enough.

As if following suit to the downpour outside, the rodian gave in, and from his mouth spilled forth secrets, names, contacts, places, drop sites, delivery routes; anything, really, that he felt would spare him a fate as agonizing as the one that his devaronian friend was currently living. Though alive and well, the horned alien would never be able to walk properly again, not with the budget prostheses scum like him could afford.

Adder was content to let him babble for a time, tightening her grip and shaking the man whenever the torrent of words faltered or threatened to die down, but it seemed that between the two of them, they were intimidating enough to squeeze every last bit of information out of the man.

"Well," the redhead supplied emptily as the rodian finally ran out of things to say, relinquishing her hold upon his collar so that the thug unceremoniously dropped onto the cold floor with a low thud.

"Alright, lady, you got yours, I got mine," Adder offered after another second or so, seeking out those weird orange eyes of the blonde to find confirmation of the stated fact. "You sure you can handle an extraction op all by yourself?"


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

She didn't say anything for a while, only listened.

Every bit of information offered up by the Rodian was carefully logged in her mind and filed away. Some things weren't relevant, others were bits of information she didn't even know she wanted, yet they were all absorbed anyway. Everything seemed to work well, and finally when the strange alien finished speaking Aela only looked at him for a second. Part of her wanted him gone, part of her had that same urge that she knew her father carried. Scum like this didn't deserve to be treated fairly.

Yet as always the good overcame the bad, and slowly she nodded her head.

"I won't be alone." Aela answered the woman cryptically. The Covenant would be on stand by, the slavers, now that she knew where they were would suffer her wrath, and that of her friends. It would be quick, efficient, and hopefully without casualties. Her lips thinned at that thought, but her head quickly shook as if to dispel it.

"What about him?" She motioned to the Rodian. "And them?"

The rest of the mercenaries were not to be forgotten. All of them would have to go to prison, she had to make sure of that. Some of them would be local gang members, others would be professionals. Either way they needed to be put away, especially so that the Slavers couldn't be alerted ahead of time.

 

[Adder]

The first reply that teetered on the brink of her wind-chapped lips was 'they can go kark themselves', but it was both rude and pointless, so Adder held her tongue and averted her gaze with a long sigh. Her green eyes swept over her surroundings, noting the number of squirming and prone bodies littering the floor.

And that was just one room.

Her sigh deepened, and the ex-cop reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose as she pondered for a few seconds.

"Eh, kark this," she finally muttered and brought up her holo-display, dismissing the now useless tracking interface as she brought up her comlink instead. With a quick, surreptitious glance over at her unknown associate, Adder resigned to being overheard as she hailed one of her old acqaintances that still worked law enforcement. With a few succinct sentences, the redhead described the situation, conveniently omitting any incriminating facts as she passed the relevant information on to her contact.

"There," she nodded to herself and flashed the blonde a lopsided grin. "All taken care of. These bastards don't deserve to die." Her voice turned cold as she stared down the rodian, who inched away from her with discomfort and fear written all over his features.

"Have fun rotting in prison," Adder hissed at nobody in particular, resisting the urge to end their pitiful lives. No. She was better than them. She wouldn't stoop so low, she would make sure they wer—

"Wait, what was that about not being alone?" she interrupted her own train of thought, curiously finding those fiery eyes again as her anger momentarily faded into the back of her mind. "You have people working with ya?"


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

"Yes." There was no hesitation in that answer.

Perhaps a month, even a week ago there would have been, but now there wasn't. The Covenant had grown, it had become something greater than Aela could have ever envisioned. It contained nearly a thousand people, Force Users, non-force users, Adults, teenagers, people from all walks of life. They had ships, camps, and even a fortress now. They had grown beyond themselves and had become something great, something that could sustain itself.

There was no thread by telling one more person.

She still felt that urgency though, that pressing need to go. She needed to find those slaves, needed to find those people. Aela didn't have time to stand around and gossip about the Primeval, she needed to go, she needed to get to the others and tell them what she knew now. She bit her lip, and then tossed her head to the side, quickly moving away from Adder and the captured criminals.

Perhaps the other woman would take it as a cue to follow her, perhaps she wouldn't.

 

[Adder]

She found herself staring at the blonde with an odd glint in her cybernetic eye, for that one, simple word carried so much weight beyond mere affirmation. It meant… it meant so much.

Adder ran a nervous hand through her hair — what was she, seventeen? — and her gaze flickered about the room, absently noting small details that had escaped her before.

It meant… there were people who did this, together. Fighting scum like these, rescuing others, planning missions… cooperating. Kark.

A soft sigh slipped forth between her lips, and Adder forcibly swallowed the tightness in her throat, looking back up to ask the blonde where she could join. To her great dismay, the woman in question was just disappearing down the stairs they'd ascended moments prior, maneuvering around the criminals who lay incapacitated on the steps like physical monuments to the havoc they'd wrought with the compound.

Kark!

She hurried after the non-Jedi with long strides, eliciting a few pained groans from felled thugs when she stepped on a foot or hand with her durasteel-capped boot. Not that she cared.

"Hey, wait up!" she called after orange-eyes as she jumped over the last of the outlaws, landing lightly like a cat before she continued her jog. "You're gonna extract them, aren't you?"

Even as she asked the question, Adder knew it was a moot one; the lines of determination set in the corners of the blonde's mouth and eyes were answer enough.

"Yeah, figured," the redhead nodded to herself and shot the other woman a grin. "Need a second? I can pilot anything this side of Netherworld."


[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Adder"]

That much was obvious. "Yes."

This woman had helped her gain the information that she needed, there was no point in lying to her now. Besides she had already guessed the point of her mission and by the time Aela answered her she was already talking about coming with. For a moment her lips thinned, her eyes wandered over towards the mercenaries that lay bound on the floor.

The word pilot meant something to her, if only because Aela was sorely lacking in capability in that department.

Kaili could pilot a ship, but only because she had a necklace that allowed her to do so. Aela had no such necklace, and usually she relied on a pilot droid to get her to where she was going. Said droid was of course actually rather good at his job, but...she would be flying head long into the belly of the beast so to speak. Of course the rest of the Covenant would be arriving with the Rising Tide eventually, but what if they didn't arrive in time?

"Okay." Aela said in confirmation. "You fly."

The ship she had was little more than a freighter, unarmed and not exactly heavily shielded either. Fancy flying would be a must.

 

[Adder]

Adder couldn't help but smile when the stone-faced non-Jedi relented, but she schooled her features back into a semblance of professionalism as quickly as she could.

"Right. Thanks," she blurted out as they sped out of the slums the same way they'd come in, expect at a much faster pace. Heads turned as they came sprinting by, but before anybody could draw any relevant conclusions in regards to the shots fired down in the compound and two people who resembled fleeing perpetrators very nicely, the pair of women was already long gone.

The redhead's face fell somewhat as she realized what ship she'd be flying into the lion's den, but there was no way she was going back on her word. Not now.

With excitement and urgency flowing through her veins in a potent, heady mix, Adder was in the pilot's seat in the blink of an eye, flicking on the various switches and ignition as she did her best to familiarize herself with the vessel. It was fairly standard, and she could pick the rest up on the fly as it was; it was time to go.

She gave a quick nod to the blonde, and then they were off.


[member="Aela Talith"]