Dangerous Catch

[Lina Zambrano]

With the republic busy watching the western front Korriban was more or less unoccupied. Mia had done a few runs here in the early years of the dark age, scavenging through old temples for relics to sell. The last run she'd done had landed her with a sith sword belonging to Moridin, and her life had been chewed at by sith ever since. It was a desolate and dark world; a graveyard, littered with ghosts and monsters. It was the latter that drew Mia here.

The resol'nare transport glided over the deserts, heat reflecting of its hull as she followed the coordinates the scouts had given her. "Anything?" came a voice over the commlink, eyes flicked down to the sensors. "Negative, but its there. We just need to draw it out." For a moment her wingmate said nothing, and Mia rolled her eyes as she knew what was coming. "Permission to speak freely, Ma'am?"

"If it involves you trying to convince me for the third time today that this a stupid idea the answer is no. I need to catch this damn thing."

"What the hell for?"

"That's classified."

"Sometimes, ma'am, I really frakking hate you."

Mia grinned. "Good, you're not supposed to like me. Lets return to camp."

The two ships swung about heading for a makeshift base camp, busy with technicians and soldiers alike as they bustled around a beskar container, running various tests to ensure its security. In truth, Mia had no idea how she was going to bring a terentatek down without killing it, but she had half a plan at least. The luring it out part, and the cage part. The rest would be left to improvisation... and an expert. The engines slowed from a roar to a whine as Mia clambered down form the cockpit and made her way to the tent the centred the temporary camp.

Rally Master Gaim saluted her as she entered. "Ma'am, communication is up and running and the perimeter is secure."

"Good, keep half an eye out for any republic movement, we don't want to piss them off any more than we have, though i doubt they even know we're here. Make sure that you have every sensor available to pick up movement within five klicks of the perimeter. Don't want anything sneaking up on us." Moving to a control panel, Mia composed a breif message to [member="Seydon of Arda"], having exchanged contact details with him on Etti IV.

Seydon,

I have some work for you on Korriban if you're interested. A touch different from your usual seek and destroy. Coordinates are attached.

Mia Monroe.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[member="Mia Monroe"]

~Outer Rim Territories: The Stygian Caldera~
~Esstran Sector~
~Horuset System~
~Korriban~

[Six Days Later: Dreshdae]

Dawn side. Along the horizon's glowing crescent edge. Blistering light rose to streak shadows in the shade of Korribanian mountain chains and high-altitude plateaus, drawing up solar wind. Clouds of grainy lichen-chaff blown off curly heads of maidenhair issued down the roughened rock and smoothstone, over littered fields flat as cultivation acres save for perched, sun-cooked boulders scowling with crowns of red-eyed pigeons. Flocks in their hundred-thousands took to wing at the sonic approach of a wobbling freighter.

Two of its six engines were failing in consecutive sequences that was beginning to worry her otherwise implacable pilot. It'd been cobbled together from fire-pierced hulling and engine housing recovered by scavenging operators in the Roche and Mon Cal debris fields some eight years prior. The fore-sectioning was the command-mast from a Republic sprint-cruiser, its stern cobbled together from three Imperial destroyers torn in half along their superstructure. Hordes of relay wiring had been re-stripped, components ingeniously cobbled from extant black market parts floating about, paid out by favours, credits, and off-book specialty cargo delivery runs.

The bridge was a narrow deck wedged between auxiliary cargo and hydroponics, with crew quarters set behind in reconstructed module. There were no passenger suites. Ordinarily, the Wicked Wasp conducted dry-good runs between Ziost, Thule, braving the Republic border watch to service Korriban clients requiring Mandalorian produced arms and kit, manufactured to higher standards than encountered in 'Pub fabrication plants. They didn't entertain boarders. Not ordinarily. Bodies had to be fed and facilities shared, not to mention difficulties dividing threadbare rationing, and a sight harder to stow away in the event of any unscheduled gunboat inspections. The captain glanced at their bundled stowaway lounging against a portion of bulkhead between the emptied imaging and intra-net consoles.

He looked away when wolf-eyes locked up to exchange gazes. The captain murmured a few practiced commands and settled the Wasp into approach for Dreshdae. Pilots chased several leading drones onto a stowing vector, easing throttles down. One engine backfired and threatened to kick the vessel over in an ungainly roll. Amber warning hololiths blinked on, faded to red, warning to service several portions of Enginer #4: smoke was gusting from a localized fire beneath heatshield-plates just above the diverging nozzle. Vessel-traffic control redirected them to a secondary landing field west of the hanger-bays. Fire-teams were scrambling in the event of a total propulsion system failure, which case the Wasp would detonate as hard as a thermal grenade. All aboard held their breath. Save the man with wolven eyes, who drew up his hood, waiting.

Dreshdae was an expanded habitat built out from initial settlement grounds founded some several thousand years prior. Population census' swelled and ebbed. Despite Republic interests in fielding further archeological and archeoxeno expeditions to dig out the much famed, equally maligned Valley of the Dark Lords, only handfuls of dispirited thousands kept up consistent habitation. Dreshdae was still frontier territory. The Wicked Wasp caught sight of wide thoroughfares strewn abandoned with dusty speeder frames weld-cut for stolen parts and bulk-carriers bundled beneath drab green tarpaulin. Architecture was low, stocky, and building lines spoke of a penchant for stylistic brutalism. They put down at the outer fields and blasted out previously sand buried guide lights with landing jet downwash. Repulsor-trucks, swollen with extinguishing foam tank-nacelles, ejected in a haphazard train out of a concealed maintenance bay.

The Passenger was already fast departing. He followed a staircase from the bridge into a tight air-lock cycling in dry air from vents sheet-stamped around an ill-fitting hatch, waiting in off-light darkness. A heady chemical stench began filling the chamber. He clenched at his nose while the hatch yawned aside and folded out segmented metal steps and guard rails. Old travel robes obscured his visage, and he carried a leather-sheathed bundle in one gloved hand. The captain watched him deal briefly with one safety-overseer asking that he remain aboard. Their stowaway turned, leaned the man closer and seemed to say something in quiet, gruff tones. He turned, kept walking on for a hanger auto-door leading into Dreshdae's port; the overseer looked ahead in a brief, sleepy daze before shaking himself back to lucidity and barking orders of his crackling collar-mic.

He came to the Drunk Side; it had been converted from hardware shelf-space into a roughly patched cantina decorated with bleak oil-paintings avidly portraying the horror of Korriban's austere desert tundras with heady mixtures of titian and carmine strokes. Lighting was provided by cheap sodium lamps suspended by tensile wiring, snaked with power-sheathes, casting ill tints of piss-yellow onto brackish decking. Patrons either sat at the central bar or kept to themselves back in one of the many veiled booths fitted with partially destroyed leather sedans. The Passenger came up to the bar, shouldering past surly-faced mechanics in unraveling overalls, eyes filmed, intoxicated, bending around small crowds of miss-stepping , ill dressed Republic soldiery bitching into their cups on their off-shift hours. He came to the bar, sat atop a metal-faced stool, and began typing into a dataslate.

ENCR OS V .85
Packet Shield 077RZ65k.bit
Pass: ***********
TransMode: Beta-Thule/0#0Q
Redirecting...
From Karcharias;
Am here. The Drunk Side. Keeping lonely company. No tails, but come wary.
~Seydon

 

[Lina Zambrano]

It was unwise, for a former Mand'alor to wander into a republic run station. Especially when said former Mand'alor had dropped a fleet over its capitals airspace to make a point. So less than two hours after she received Seydon's message a snake eyes tumbler roared into Dreshdae, a lone beskar clad mandalorian on its back. This was not unusual, mandalorians were notorious for being alone and in the shady parts of various systems, so they paid him no mind. He pulled free his helmet and scanned the area, spotting the Drunk Side cantina.

Heavy boots carried him inside. He'd been given a description by Mia and strict instructions not to be rigid. He was a commando by nature so this wasn't something he shook away easily. He found the target, seated at the bar and relaxed slightly, coming to his side, ignoring sidelong glances from the republic soldiers he leant on the bar top, ordered a whisky on the rocks and tried very hard not to look around.

"The Liberator sent me to collect you. Ain't wise for someone as well known as her to waltz into a place like this." He glanced around him then and grinned "Not that the midget couldn't handle this lot with her hands tied." He scooped up the glass, drained it and slid a handful of cred chips to the barman.

"Shall we?" he offered to the nameless hunter.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He took them out of Dreshdae aboard a third-hand use low-flier speeder, a fell-nosed model ugly with scraped lines, foul demeanor, planed with exhausting grilling across the back-quarters where a high guide-rudder stapled with secondary maneuvering jets kicked off. Seydon leaned into his passenger seat and buckled on the waist strap. The Mandalorian chuckled, flaring the engines wide before gunning them down Dreshdae's wide thoroughfare. Citizens howled in their wake, snapping trash off the fore engine-hulling, someone managing to deck the guidance rudder with a partially emptied paint-bucket. Grey paint mixed with moisture streamers behind them. The Mandalorian gunned the throttle. Dreshdae was swiftly left behind in whorl-clouds of sand, grit, and stone.

Seydon looked after Korriban's passing vista's of wasteland valleys choked with creosoke bushes, scant creeks pouring down out of stone-lipped, stagnant black-water lakes pungent with fungal growers peaking up from their silt-beds. Distantly, on the broken horizon, atop toothy mountain ranges, were shapes cavorting against bloody sunlight. They drove through a cupped, smooth walled canyon, into thatches of petrified forests. Skeletal things, dead and fleshless, hung from crucifixes bolted onto the trees.

It was seven hours all told when they arrived at the base camp. He counted at least a half score of modular sheds and a handful of personnel tipi's erected out of pre-fab sheeting materials. Warriors in slit-visor helms, sporting worn duraplast armor and modified webgear harnesses, patrolled a fixed perimeter lousy with motion detectors, heat alarms, linked to tracking auto-turrets beaming faint guidance lights through the gloomy twilight. Sunset was painting the sky black and humourless. Foreign stars that didn't twinkle lanced cold light as they winked through the pitch. The Mandalorian keyed off transmission passwords alongside verbal tests, and parked them amidst a motorpool behind the encampment.

An escort of ten mercenaries, faceless in their helms, waited at a camp entrance: three meter two-by four beams staked into the stone, upholding a sign.

"Camp Krif."

"Good as home as any on this shid-pile," Said the Mando, hopping out of the open-air cabin.

Seydon fast followed suit, undoing his leather bundle. Razorlight and Winterfang spilled out into his grasp and he quickly buckled them back behind his shoulder. He followed after his driver, flanked on either side by guardsmen. They all smelled of fyceline and ozone, sporting tabanna magazines, helm-systems linked in and gathering up his spoor-traces, locking him in against tactical computers already running possible scenarios.

He was taken to a center tipi coloured black with inky tarpaulin. Somewhere, in a tented mess-hall, soldiers now off their watch shifts were singing raucously, smashing heavy steel tankards together. It smelled thick of spilled ales, stale ration foodstuffs, steam, and trace vomit from someone who'd been sick six days prior. Seydon could smell it against chemical scrubbers and bleach. Within the command-tipi, archeo-cogitator machines, hyperlink 'puters, several cots arranged around fold-out aluminum tables. The desks were arraigned tall beneath stacked dataslates and print-out topography maps, alongside geological surveys and scout reports.

Their Supercommando amongst Supercommandos was standing framed by fusion-lamps hissing bright, blue-white light. Seydon nodded slightly. "Field Marshal Monroe."

[member="Mia Monroe"]

 

[Lina Zambrano]

Mia looked up, blinking away the residue left by staring too long at a holovid. "Seydon." She greeted offering a smile and a firm handshake. " Good to see you, Etti four fares well?"

The singing increased a few decibles and she frowned. "Ne'johaa!" She barked over Seydon's shoulder and the singing died down, with a few grumbled protests. Shaking her head she returned her attention to the hunter before her. "Sorry." She scooped up a holo projector from the desk beside her.

"Come on, lets walk and talk. Been cooped up with these idiots for too many hours "

"You love us really Monroe." Piped up Seydon's driver as he scooped up a mug and began to fill it. She ignored him and led Seydon back out into the cool night air.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

"Etti V's still in the Authority's bed and most of us suspect that's where she'll remain so long as the Direx Board and their ExO retain their resources," Seydon said while strolling in close step beside Marshal Monroe, following her lead and passing round a makeshift med-tent so far empty, bored field-medics rearranging the cot headboards for the dozenth time that day. Over the far horizon line, beaded with ember sunset, gaggles of falling stars lit up the pitched sky. "But having Levantines on patrol has put the corporatocracy under more intensive scrutiny than anything they've had to abide by. We have remit to investigate and lend aid, case-by-case, as crisis' arise. But we're beholden to check abuses done against civilians. That's our first and greatest mission. The Direx Board is chaffing. ...We'll see how things go."

They walked along fenced perimeter rayshield-struts crackling bright with occasional electro-arcs. Seydon saw a scout motorcade with pronged, grilled lance-bikes come hurtling towards their makeshift refuel station out of the night. "You said you had work for me."

[member="Mia Monroe"]

 

[Lina Zambrano]

"I'm sure you'll do fine. If there was ever a bunch of force users I wanted on my side, it would be the Levantines. The board will realise it soon enough." Mia stopped their walk watching the bikers refuel, their voices carrying over the cooling air towards them. "Aye, I have work for you." She tore her eyes away and brought the holo projector up in her hand, a gentle thumb pressing it to life. A blue tinted vid of a terentatek annihilating a scout group, hovered between them, sith hounds darted across the image occasionally.

"I made the fatal mistake of sending in a group to scout on foot about a week ago to look for this old girl. She tore them apart, literally. Since then, we've been watching her from the air. She's old, she's valuable and she's extremely dangerous. I'm not prepared to ask my men to go in again on foot, but I need her, and I need her alive." she deactivated the holovid and slid it into her pocket.

"I need your help to lure her out of the tomb she guards so we can catch her."

[member="Seydon of Arda"]