Deathwish

[Beowoof]

Dinner on a girder. Now that was not something one often imagined actually doing. It was more of a novelty thought of ages long past, with posters of construction workers perched atop a precariously angled durasteel beam dangling from beside the skeleton of another spacescraper.

But, this afternoon, Tanie was actually sitting in quite a similar position. Except in her Bactarma and with a couple rather dangerous 'friends' packed onto her, not including the ATRS-50 lying across her lap. She was being lowered by a thin hovercraft into the dark, whistling chasm that separated the Financial District from the former Senate District. (Former because no Senate existed except some piece of show crap that pretended to be this sad excuse for a representative government.) Her hair fluttered from underneath her Force-shield helmet as the endless, cyclonic winds collided and battered the in-between.

"Sock Puppet in. Arrival at floor DD-23 expected within the next minute." Tanie paused to catch her breath. This experience was understandably quite stressful. "I have the crown jewels. Where's the maguffin?"

"Eyes on the prize, Sock Puppet," returned her contact. "Just stay on target. Bag the crown jewels and set the table. Knives on right; sporks on left."

"Okay... Roger roger." She sighed, though it was unlikely that the other speaker would be able to hear it against the howling turbulence that was the hurricane of winds. The hovercraft eased itself closer and closer to the wall of one of the towering, kilometers-tall bases for the still-higher city atop. Don't look down, and don't miss your step.

At least her life would have plenty of time to pass before her eyes if she accidentally descended this crevice.

 

[William Stryke]

A loud noise woke the creature known as Stryke up from his nap. This particular nap had been taking place on a rather thin durasteel railing that he'd only managed to stay on by virtue of an amazing sense of balance and a great deal of luck. A relatively dangerous leap from said railing to the faraway floor of the room was a piece of cake for the mutant creature.​

​

As he walked farther from his chosen napping spot, he heard the droning noise get louder and louder until it sounded like a hurricane. His natural armor-like black skin covered everything but his face as he got the sense that there was danger nearby. He walked out a door onto a terrace... and saw that some idiot was floating on what looked like a giant piece of scrap metal.​

​

It was far too loud to hear anything the armored person was saying, or for them to hear him, but his facial expression and body language said it all: why in the hell would you do something that stupid?​

​

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"]​

 

[Sebastian Santelli]

Coruscant.

It was probably one of the most intoxicating worlds he had ever been to; so far, at least. Sensory overload almost had him collapse in shock the moment he stepped foot off onto this planet just days prior. The sights, smells, sounds, sensations of artificial breezes and everything in between. Contained within his host body were four of the five senses, with taste being the only one excluded from a droid model. Be that as it may, he surely satiated his metaphoric hunger with eye-fulls of flashing neon light, the smell of greasy, yet apparently tasty snack stands, and the ambient chorus of airspeeder traffic and pedestrian congestion.

The Shard's body was draped in a simple black robe, a hood tugged over his head just enough to conceal the most of his visage. It wasn't like droids were an uncommon sight here on the most populated world in the known galaxy - it was just that the Imperial and Sith rulers didn't take kindly to seeing armed and armored automatons prowling the streets with seemingly malicious intent.

Quite frankly, Sirus was just as curious about this world as the Sith were about him.

"Strange," the Shard murmured to itself as his sensors pinged, his targeting system automatically registering combat algorithms as black optics veered upwards. Something sparked within the Force, a foreshadowing of sorts.

[member="William Stryke"], [member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"]

 

[Beowoof]

Her heart was stilled for a few seconds--half of eternity to her--as the hovercraft sidled alongside an emergency catwalk that likely could not handle any sort of emergency at this point in time. It was the most frightening thing she had ever done. "Resistance fighter falls to her death." Not that anyone would ever find out what happened to her should she slip and plummet into that pitch-black abyss. No one would ever find her body. And no one outside her family would care to look, anyway. (And even they would not travel down to the ground floor. Almost no one ever came back from that trip alive.) People disappeared all the time.

Tanie winced as she thrust the trio of parts that made up her very large rifle onto the rickety catwalk. Missing her target would likely lose the entire mission. So would falling short of a necessary leap. That would be really great.

But the breathless blonde would not fail--at least, not at this point of her objective--and the complete rifle would wind up safely battering onto the grated deck, beckoning her to follow. And so she did. There was no use hesitating. That would only make things worse. Still, she screamed for the entirety of her mighty leap and continued to scream even for a few seconds after she had landed and secured her footing. Tanie curled into a ball and wept for a handful of minutes, betraying no apathy for life. She was still alive. She could fight another day. For the people who are still alive.

After she had regained her composure and maybe some sanity, Tanie picked up the stock piece of her portable artillery and repeatedly smash it into the glass window she was meant to enter the level through. "I will kiss you every night before bed, Mom and Dad," she vowed. That might not actually happen in the end, but it was certainly something to think about after just leaping over a gap five kilometers deep.

Having then pitched the rest of the rifle through the broken window, Tanie clambered over the sill as well and sat down again with her back to the wall, listening to the ghostly howl of air being sucked out of this dark, abandoned casino and into that dreadful void. "Sock Puppet has secured landing," she rasped into her comm.

[member="William Stryke"], [member="Sirus"]

 

[Commander Lusk]

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"]

To better understand your enemy you need to observe your enemy. You need to watch what they do, know their routines, their formations, their tactics. You needed to know what exactly made them who they were, and in the case of Coruscant the garrison here were fat lazy slobs who didn't even know how to march in a column properly. This of course was coming from someone who was born to be warrior, a person who was literally a genetic match to be the perfect soldier. The person of course was Commander Lusk of the Spaarti Creations Clone Army Program. The One Sith army of course was a good and very professional fighting force with lots of battles under their belts, but their training was nowhere near as extensive as his own and the standards set for them weren't close to those whose entire existence was created to fight.

A small but unnoticed barrel of a republic brand sniper rifle stuck out of the boarded up windows of a closed down casino. Crosshairs focused on a lieutenant leading a patrol of sith law enforcement personnel through the streets on a daily patrol. Lusk watched as the column moved through the financial district pushing through crowds of people going about their business. If he wanted to, if he really truly wanted to he could pick off the officer and probably everyone else in that patrol at his current three thousand meters post.

"Formations are sloppy. Gear and weapons high quality." The man said as he whispered into his microphone to record this experience.

There was dead silence in the casino, a place where normally there would be the sounds of joy and fun. Where hundreds of people would gamble away fortunes to the system. But today there was only a small population. Lusk, his sniper, and a Ysalamir set next to him within an armored nutrient pack.

Covering his body and armor in a dull brown drab was a poncho type get up made of Terentatek hide. It helped blend into the dull dusty exterior of the building and give him something to work with in case the Ysalamir was ever lost. So the man simply watched until the casino's population grew by one. With the sound of someone tumbling in Lusk quickly and quietly dropped down and pulled up his Imperial DC-17 set to CQC mode. With the hide covering his body he hid under a casino table with his rifle pointed at whoever was coming towards him. Trigger discipline, don't fire unless fired upon. He thought as his breathing steadied and he prepared for a potential fight.

 

[Beowoof]

Tanie's hands quivered as she crawled to fetch the pieces of the ATRS-50, still not wanting to stand up so close to the window and the abyss that dropped just outside. The hovercraft was gone by now and there was no way out of this but by more conventional ways--which she was mostly fine with, save the obvious factor of being spotted with a load of military gear by Sith patrolmen. That was the whole reason behind her death-defying maneuver, was it not? Her man should be around here now.

Finally staggering to her feet, Vosstanie held the trio of gun elements--lower and upper receiver, and barrel--and padded carefully out of the cobweb-strewn luxury box and onto the main perimeter balcony that overlooked the rest of the dim and dilapidated casino. If she had thought everything would be easy from here on, then she had already realized how much she was mistaken. The young freedom fighter brushed her silvery-blond hair out of her eyes and looked about the eerily quiet great room of the old gambling house, its gaping chamber still possessing card tables, pools, and its massive bar from years before. What a waste. But maybe she could claim a deck of cards or some chips as 'souvenirs'. This was only her second big mission, after all.

And one she might not survive. Tanie abruptly halted in her tracks as she found herself face-to-face with a man very much armed and dangerous. The barrel of his rifle was pointed directly at her chest. Her heart practically burst out of her chest and her lungs nearly felt like they were collapsed. "Don't shoot!" she squeaked. "I'm Sock Puppet."

She held the heavy, disassembled weapon forward as if offering tribute. "I have the crown jewels."

[member="Sirus"], [member="Commander Lusk"]

 

[Saff]

Now here was a place Ebony felt she'd never find herself in again, it'd be far more accurate to say that there would be absolutely no way that someone would be able to force her to go down here, not back down to these festering cesspools of the once crowded undercity. However, here she was, finding herself gliding down through the hole, her heels dragging along the walls of the chasm as the winds tore at her, the vile howl ripping into her rather delicate ears as she looked for the right building, right room or window more like it. She would't have come down here if she wasn't being paid a whole lot or someone she had favours towards asked her. This was an instance of the latter. One of her underground friends had asked her to look out for a new girl, and new was an understatement for this one. The underground was well equipped for small operations so she new this girl wasn't from the underground, she was too well equipped, the huge gun put her on that train of thought. That was just the faint glimpse that Ebony could catch with the force as the girl dissapeared into an abandoned casino.

With a glancing look, she spotted no others, Ebony was hoping that she didn't need to interfere too much herself, just oversee the operation and make sure the newbie didn't get blown up in translation. So when she saw the flash of light across the vast expanse, she was slightly glad her black latex suit was rather good at camouflage in the night.

Ebony cracked her neck as she dug a foot into the wall and then with as much force as she could muster, she didn't dare to look down, she just launched herself across the expanse and her jump pack soared to life, exploding her across the rift to the opposite wall. Just above the window into the casino did Ebony find herself, she hooked her belt onto the seal and stood upright, the thin cables holding her to the wall as her magnetised heels did the rest of the balancing. She peered into the window as she stood perfectly horizontally, the girl had stopped, and held out the giant gun. She held it out to an armoured man, with his rifle levelled at her chest. Ebony crooked her lips and rolled her eyes, the girl might have been good at whatever it was she was sent for, but damn was she no good at figuring out someone was an imperial agent.

"C'mon Ebony, maybe she's right and you're wrong, you're not getting yourself into another fight for no reason" She thought to herself with a visible sigh.

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"] [member="Commander Lusk"]

 

[Commander Lusk]

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"] [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

Sock puppet? Crown Jewels? Lusk being a military man immediately caught on to what the girl was throwing his way, it wasn't that hard to do either way. So cobbling together what she was saying Lusk had a few things in mind. She was obviously Sock Puppet, the rifle might be the Crown Jewels, or perhaps it was some Intel she had on her. During training for Beta Troopers, Lusk was privy to commando classes that would give him the basic powers of deduction. She didn't look like sith that was for damn sure, too young and fresh faced to be a mercenary or contractor, maybe she was just a runner for any of the local resistance groups. Either way it came down to a few things, if this girl was on the opposite side and had spotted him with his helmet off she had to die. It was nothing personal it was just that the mission couldn't be compromised. So lusk quickly stood up with his rifle still on her and asked her a very simple question.

"Are you resistance?" he said calmly and sternly with the rifle leveled at the kid's chest.

"Republic." He said more mentioning to himself.

With his rifle still set and ready to blast the girl he would give her a few moments to answer. That was until he heard a loud thump and crashing noise above him, like the sound of another unexpected guest.

"Did you bring any friends?" Lusk said letting the girl visibly see his finger shifting to rest on the trigger.

 

[Beowoof]

"What answer will get me killed?" Tanie whispered as the gun pieces began to rattle in the hook of her trembling arms. The armed figure before her had uttered the word 'Republic', but deception was the name of the game for war. It might be a trap. "And I don't have any friends."

Then she saw his trigger finger move into position. Time to come out. "Okay! I'm resistance!" Tanie confessed, yet another wave of tears streaming from her eyes. The late teen was practically in hysterics, this moment being third time in the span of about fifteen minutes that she had looked death in the eye. Perhaps her luck had run out this round. Her life was in this soldier's hands now. It was all up to the man's loyalties and his character to decide her fate.

She begged, "Please don't shoot me..."

[member="Ebony Blackheart"], [member="Commander Lusk"]

 

[Commander Lusk]

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"]

Lusk had never seen anything like this, a young girl cry and fear for her life. There was always training about how you'd have to kill someone like her or be discovered, and with a face like his he was pretty sure Preliat Mantis was on the Sith's most wanted list. So telling authorities Hey I'm not Preliat, I'm his clone that was grown to help lead an army purchased by the republic to kill you guys didn't seem like it was going to pan out well no matter how he answered questioning. But the moment he placed his finger on the trigger the girl cracked and came out with Information that she was resistance. His rifle lowered towards the ground and he gave the girl a nod that he was who he said he was.

"Let's go get your mission done soldier." He said in a very stern voice as he slung his sniper behind his back.

"Whoever is following you might not be friendly so it's important that we move now." Quickly walking past the girl he looked down the hall from whence she had come and quickly walked back to her.

"You take point." Lusk said now going along with this woman.

In truth he was having her take point for a few reasons. She was who she said she was and she knew the fastest way out of here before he was spotted for real. Or she was a good liar and that way he could shoot her in the back without much fuss. Either way each scenario would work out for him in the long run, now all there was to do was wait for his new little soldier to move forward.

 

[Saff]

Ebony stood watching the girl break out into tears, that's what set off the alarm bells for her. She decided now she'd go to work while the sith agent seemed to have managed to get the poor girl to calm down. Ebony held her arms before her face and became to go to work on her wrist mounted computer. She was good, not amazing when it came to hacking, but whatever it was that this girl had in terms of defences against a hacker in her systems, it was bare basic and rudimentary so ebony shook her head and tapped into her Comms in a second.
she disconnected from the wall and swung silently inside the casino, she caught herself on the rafters on the inside and connected her harness to the roof cross bars. She thumbed her computer once more and haunched down, "tanie is what they call you right?" Ebony's silk smooth voice echoed into the girl's ears and ebony could see her confusion as she heard the voice in her Comms, but out of panic she said nothing.
"Okay, my name's Ebony, I'll be your captain for this evening" She said with a smile, no reply "bad time for jokes sorry, now I'm here to keep you alive love, so don't aggravate the guy, you've got a well trained sith agent with a gun to your back. So nod very slight if you're gonna let me help"
Ebony said calmly, as she kept her eyes locked onto the poor frightened girl.

 

[Beowoof]

Tanie's breaths were rapid and without rhythm when she managed to quell her tears, realizing that she had at least a few moments more to live. Hopefully more, considering the fact that she believed this man to be the operative she was looking for. It had been months since she had really had a cry, much less two in a row. Maybe war was not for her. If this was how it was going to be, then maybe she needed to leave it to the more hardened characters.

Okay," she responded to his command, carrying forth with a little less anxiety in her composure. Everything was fine, it was all fine, all was underway... She clamped the rifle--seemingly increasing in weight with each passing minute--tightly in the crook of her arms and proceeded towards one of the boarded-up windows that used to overlook the underground promenade district and all its shops and dealers. Nowadays, it was just a zone full of whorehouses and underground gaming--all pretty much illegal. Or at least it was when the Republic was present.

Halfway around the balcony to the street-facing side of this run-down gambling house, Tanie's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a foreign voice emitting from her earpiece. And it made her question everything.

The man she had just met was a Sith agent? Was this a resistance agent speaking to her over the comms? Who was real? On the one hand, the soldier walking behind Pozhaluysta seemed to be a little clueless about who Sock Puppet was. On the other hand, Tanie wondered why the woman on the line used her real name. Who was actually on her side?

Tanie swallowed nervously but kept her head facing straight and eyes steady, not betraying any doubts to the man to her rear. It won't hurt to nod, at least. And so she nodded the affirmative to her mysterious caller, wondering what the invisible woman's plan was.

[member="Commander Lusk"], [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

 

[Saff]

Ebony took a deep breath and face palmed, her own breath catching as she just realised how much she must have scared the poor girl, so she detached one of her cables and sent it flying to another cross beam in the roof and detached her remaining cable, sending her swinging across before she caught herself once more and reattached her second cable.

"Great way of saying it ebony" She said into the girl's comms, forgetting she was connected still. "Look Tanie, got off on the wrong foot, now, if you don't want the trigger happy man behind you to shoot you in the back, don't speak, he can't hear me, only you can. My name's Ebony Blackheart, if you want a call sign for me to fit into this all, not sure if they briefed you on my presence but i'm mummabear, I'll be your lifeline here. I was wrong about the man behind you, he's no sith agent. Sorry for the heart attack, but he's a clone, a republic man. However friendly he is is unknown. I won't let you get hurt. That's a promise... Now if you want something about me, I'm from the underground, a merry band of hit and run rebels, and i'm from the galactic alliance. Now simple enough question to wrap this up, would you like me to come down there?" Ebony said, her voice stern but calm and soothing, like melted chocolate and silk on a summers day. She had to admit her own error of judgement, but in no way did she trust the man, she knew who it was a clone of, but couldn't put name to face or in this case, armour.

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"] [member="Commander Lusk"]

 

[Commander Lusk]

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"] [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

If there was anything that Lusk wasn't, it was stupid. Body language on the woman said that she was very tense about his presence still. Which that was only natural when a six foot two clone trooper commander was following you, things such as nervousness tended to happen. But there was one thing that the mystery caller had forgotten to remember about speaking on a secure line. The line could be secure all you wanted it to be, but when the person standing only a few feet in front of you didn't have a helmet to cancel out the noise and instead just a mask, it meant you were going to pick up some radio chatter. Was it going to be HD hearing every word and syllable, of course not. But it was enough to pick up every few words.

"Tell your friend I can hear them." Lusk said as he kept his head on a swivel whilst the two moved through the casino.

Lusk's Terentatek poncho and hood draped over his nutrition pack as his sniper hung slung over his shoulder. His helmet laid out a map of their current area and how they had to get to stepping very quickly before anything happened, squatters would have no problem ratting out people who just identified themselves as enemies of the state and while Lusk's first sweep of the building indicated no life forms, but as recent guests who kept showing up to his position, you never knew who was listening.

"So if guys are done having your private conversation, there's a job to do. Wherever that rifle is going it needs to get there." Lusk said as he kept his rifle in the at ready position.

 

[Beowoof]

"Yeah, uh... Come on down," Tanie sighed, responding to "Mummabear". She sucked in some air through gritted teeth, concerned that she had either botched everything up or the entire resistance had botched this opportunity up. "He says he can hear you, anyway."

Still, she proceeded carefully to the destination for setting up the heavy weapon, coming face-to-face with the boarded window that separated them from the outside promenade where their target was to be expected soon. Slowly crouching, Vosstanie gently allowed the heavy rifle parts to roll out of her arms and onto the soft-but-grimy carpet that dressed the elliptical balcony. She promptly took to snapping the trio of parts into place and forming the single, egregiously deadly firearm that was the ATRS-50. Though she was extremely careful about the process, she could not prevent the clattering of some of the action elements of the gun.

"Have you fired one of these before?" she asked the clone, simultaneously looking about to see if Mummabear was going to show up.

[member="Commander Lusk"], [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

 

[Saff]

Ebony sighed, she did quite so hate these clones, they were too good for her liking, not the first time she's had to face one either, the other, was now dead somewhere on the back end of tattooine. Ebony sighed and pulled her arm up again, fingers dancing across the key pad, "mister clone, I can hear you too" she said into his Comms and with a groan of metal, Ebony slowly lowered down to the casino floor, a few meters behind the duo. Her heels dropped onto the floor and she straightened up, flicking a button on her waist, the cables receded back into her belt and she stood with a hand on her hip and the other by her side.
"I shall be your tactical advisor for this evening" ebony bowed, "but I guess my advising has been replaced with doing" she said as she stood upright, the faint lights dancing around the tight leather catsuit she wore.

 

[Commander Lusk]

[member="Vosstanie Pozhaluysta"] [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

If it didn't mean taking his hand off his weapon Lusk would be face palming at this moment, the amount of sheer embarrassment he felt for having to work on the same side as this woman made him want to vomit. She was untrained, unprofessional, and down right amateurish. She clogged up the radio waves of Coruscant which the One Sith clearly monitored seeing how this was an authoritarian state of living and they could do what they wanted to, she had no regard for using comms when necessary and the fact of the matter was that she needed a bullet put in her leg to send her home with a Purple Heart to keep the two competent people from getting killed.

"Shut off your comm, she's going to get us killed if she keeps talking." Lusk said as he set down his sniper and pack.

Taking a look at the rifle he paused and examined it for a moment. It was massive, obviously an anti vehicle rifle of some kind. Maybe it was used to take out a tank, but the question was could he shoot it? The answer was of course he could, he could hit a grape off the nose of a gungan at a thousand meters. But with a round that big it was going to take the grape and the gungan's head along with it.

"I can operate it, yes. Whose your target?" Lusk asked as he picked up his own rifle staring through the slots of the planks, using his scope to read look at the crowd bellow.

 

[Saff]

She liked this one, in that kind of "what a bastard" kind of way, he was sure of himself, that was fact. No doubt because he had a reason to be, but he did overlook one thing, there was no surveillance down below, there was no way for the One Sith to track personal Comms, unless they knew the frequencies of a highly personalised device, which was very much so not the case, or they were staring at the user and could tell where the radio waves were coming from. Then the fun part, the force sensitivity kicked in, she knew from the man's thought patterns that he was criticising her. Internally that was, and she didn't mind it, since he didn't do anything about it. So she simply kicked out a leg and leaned against the wall, a reed sitting between her lips as she chewed it.

"For a republic type, you aren't the friendliest bugger" Ebony commented, "And i daresay no regular coruscant garrison intel agent is gonna pickup my little blip of chatter on an unregistered and unknown frequency, nearly an entire click below the planet's surface. SO no one is gonna get killed by me being on these little old Comms. Besides, i said i wasn't going to let the girl get hurt. So here i am, not letting her get hurt... The underground ain't a big organisation, but we sure as hell aren't bad at what we do. Me in particular, besides that, I've got some friends amongst the sith, we're not getting disturbed as far as sith intelligence is concerned. It's just whoever we're shooting at that's gonna be shooting us" She commented as she split the reed in her teeth and spat it out, standing upright once again.

"So Tanie or sock puppet, which do you rather i use? Also, who are we shooting at?" Ebony asked, turning to the girl, she was young and Ebony certainly didn't like seeing that in soldiers.

 

[Beowoof]

The blonde glanced up at the clone with a glum expression and deactivated her comm unit. She doubted anyone else was listening in on their specific conversation, but anyone who spent enough time doing Resistance things eventually learned that it was better to be safe than sorry. "Done."

Tanie then extended the bipod for the anti-tank rifle and stepped back a bit, hands on hips as Mummabear simply walked down the walls like some magnetic spider woman. It caused the young freedom fighter to peer around the expansive room--especially the ceiling--to see if anyone else could be hiding in the shadowy depths of this great gambling hall. She spotted no one, but the eyes could deceive...

Anyway, time to explain the mission. They were this far now. If she was going to die in their hands, that had already been decided. All she had left was simple faith. And an AR-47 slung around her shoulders, which she could actually use now that her armload was relieved. "Our target is a Darth Byznus." Apparently he was the average Sith with a penchant for sleazy prostitutes. Poor girls. "If we have our intel right, he's going to be across the street very soon after making a 'deal' with some corporate guy and banging some poor ho. This is the best time to catch him because he kind of keeps solo when doin' the dirty, and there is almost no surveillance in this part of town whatsoever. Plus people usually give Sith Lords their privacy.

"So one of us takes the Sparrovi here..." Tanie bent down again and tapped the scope of the artillery she had just delivered, then procured a magazine containing five huge anti-armor rounds and clicked it into the receiver. It was ready to fire. "And we shoot him." Ouch.

[member="Commander Lusk"], [member="Ebony Blackheart"]

 

[Saff]

Ebony liked the girl, she had a cute charm about her, she could still not help but feel sorry for the little one, but she must have had her reasons for taking on such a career path. Not Ebony's place to pry into a teenage girl's private life. "So one shoots, the clone that is, and you and I twiddle our thumbs until then? Because if that's the case, i reckon we could go and recon the exit because a tank rifle makes a bit of a splash when you try hit a single guy" Ebony commented, not caring for the Clone's input.

"Your choice Tanie" Ebony commented finally when she leaned back against the wall.