For What It's Worth

[Arage Bao]

Wild Space, the final frontier or at least it was a couple of thousand of years ago. Back when the Galaxy made more sense and people (minus the crazy pioneers) sticked to the Core and let other folks do the exploration for them. Before the entire Galaxy was filled up with all kinds of different factions, running on resources that didn’t really seem to exist in the common sense reality.

But you couldn’t argue with stupid, couldn’t try and fix it, at some point you just had to expect that they were here to stay and you simply had to make the best out of a crappy situation.

Once upon a time the Prism had been a secret facility, made to hold the most dangerous of criminals in its cold, durasteel clutches. Operated by a single Master of the Force and a skeleton crew of a few hundred droids the station’s location was secret, classified to the highest ranks of the Order, the location itself didn’t hurt the classification either.

Hugging the mass shadow of the sixth moon of Diab it was almost impossible to pin-point. Diab’s electrical storms on the surface only complicated the matter, sensory data and transmissions were all but impossible to execute.

But once in a while you get lucky, Ovmar was one of those lucky bastards, he had been to the Prism before - hunting down an ancient holocron made by an ancient Master. He knew where it was, knew that few, if any people actually realized it was still there after all those years.

So he decided to put up a claim on the station, Starchaser had been notified of this, of course. You don’t piss in your cornflakes and common courtesy between the members of the Tion Hegemony was a must, it was like… like… cutting off the finger of your associate’s father to coerce him into action.

Such things shouldn’t happen between businessmen and associates.

Ovmar and Janus sat in the cockpit of one of the Sith Lord’s stealth transports, they were here for preliminary reconnaissance; the station should still be pretty much empty, no stormtrooper zombies, techno beasts, rampant AIs, just one big, empty station ripe for the taking.

But plans had a tendency to go wrong these days.

So before the tugging fleet arrived, they would check out the station. Both of ‘em being well-versed in techno-force-magicka Janus and Ovmar should have a home turf-advantage here anyway.

‘So. How’s life?’ Ovmar asked Janus, while steering the shuttle closer to the Prism, while trying to not crash the vehicle against the debris.

[member="Darth Janus"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

Piloting was for droids. It had been eons since Janus had piloted anything on his own, much less sat in the cockpit of a vessel and could see what was actively going on. He swiftly found that he was not a fan of his associate's piloting. His grip on the armrest tightened and the Umbaran found himself leaning back as a chunk of debris swooped up and past the vessel, missing them by mere meters. At least, that was what it looked like. Something must be wrong with the current situation if Janus was more keen to board an abandoned, likely hostile space station than spend another moment on this floating metal box of inevitable death with Ovmar.

"Oh, wonderful. Without a doubt." Janus used his speech to cover up the creaking sound his chair made as he moved it back to an upright position. "Really. Truly. Beyond-"

Janus paused and swallowed hard as another gargantuan piece of rubble darted on by the primary viewport. Never again would he agree to this seating arrangement. Ignorance was bliss.

"-Perfect. Yes."

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darth Janus"]

This is probably a good moment to mention that every time Ovmar decided to sit in a piloting chair the shuttle in question has crash landed somewhere. Janus thankfully didn’t know that… yet, but at this point in time he might start assuming the story is heading that direction anyway, on top of that a commlink was opened into Ovmar’s earpiece.

They were just outside the storm’s commlink call problem thingie, so this was all still pretty realistically, don’t think about it too much. Your head might start hurting and we wouldn’t want that.

“Master, you wished me to inform you when the Dama-question was answered, or at the very least broadened.”

“Yes.”

“So… I can report?”

Ovmar sighed.

“Yes.”

“Your findings from the lightsaber were very helpful, Master. We have managed to isolate a direct link between him and the Wise, though we are having problems with… locating the holdings themselves.”

The Sith Lord didn’t dignify that with a response and waited, his minion caught the hint and quickly went on.

“It’s fairly logical, of course. A long time has passed since those days and now, but your assumption has merit. If the lightsaber still exists, why not the holdings or at the very least what they contained. I am not sure if my men will be able to get them to talk though, my Lord, they are very stingy about their privacy, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kaz. Sent me the report and I will handle it personally.”

“Yes, my Lord, thank you, my Lord.”

During that entire conversation they only hit one or two bumps on the way, Ovmar had just turned his head to look with some measure of triumph at his friend when he felt that something… was clearly wrong. Take it as a gut-feeling, Sith Lords of their caliber weren’t adverse against a fair bit of precognition.
He quickly looked back, but it was already too late. The ship hit an enlarged piece of the scattered debris and was starting to spin out of control, luckily their tradictory was aimed at the hangar doors of the Station - closed hangar doors, I might add.

‘Eh… Janus. Mind opening those doors, before your hair gets thrown all out of model?’

Ovmar would have done it himself, but he was fairly busy trying to keep steering the damn shuttle towards the doors and not towards the storm-wrecked planet next to the station.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

By the power of the Dark Side and every warped, malformed creature it had ever spawned- was Ovmar taking a personal call right this instant? Janus kept opening and closing his mouth as debris continued to spiral dangerously close to their vessel. On the inside, there was a battle being waged between the sensibilities of Darth Janus. On one side, his fear and sense of self-preservation. He really ought to yell at Ovmar and tell the man he needs to keep his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel. You know, so they didn't die. On the other side, however, was his pride and desire to maintain his cool. If Janus yelled at Ovmar in such a manner, he would only make a fool of himself and expose his fears.

Never mind the fact that his chair was now as reclined back as far as it could and his hands clutching the arm rests with such ferocity that at any given moment either his fingers or the arm rest were liable to break. Never mind the fact that his mouth was currently trying to form words he couldn't quite piece together due to the heightened state of panic he found himself in. Speaking out of term and interrupting Ovmar's personal call was what would be the clincher on the immortal mystery of "just how terrified is Darth Janus right now."

The mind of a Tyrin was truly a boggling thing.

Janus could only identify the holocall as background noise, flinching every time a piece of debris smacked into the ship and jostled the occupants. It was easy for Ovmar to be such a lackadaisical psychopath. He could essence transfer himself into Mikhail Shorn or a toaster oven or something at any given point. Janus was not so fortunate to have mastered such an ancient and complex power. After what felt like an eternity, Ovmar's holocall ended. It took all Janus was worth to not wheeze in relief. Instead he converted his frustration into a much calmer warning.

"Would you kindly focus on piloting the-"

Too little, too late. Some other unseen chunk of garbage had smacked into the ship, spinning it around several times before Ovmar was able to stabilize it. Unfortunately, now they were on a collision course with hangar doors. A fast approaching collision. Ovmar politely requested that Janus work his techno-force-magicka or whatever the kids were calling it these days. Before he did any of that, Janus took one hand and swept his hair back into place. Priorities.

"Slow our advance, please." Janus requested, panic now completely shelved and switched out for self-preservation and the kind of focus one needed to engage in this particular act of technometry.

The Umbaran shut his eyes, envisioning the fast-approaching hangar doors and the inner mechanisms that controlled them. It would have been rather dire if the facility was lacking for power. Fortunately, an emergency generator had been chugging along all these centuries. Albeit faintly. Janus seized control of the electrical signals running through the door's control mechanisms and commanded it to open. Having been shut for the better part of a century, they were slow to do so. He imagined they would hear audible groaning of machinery and metal if sound actually traveled through space.

Unfortunately, it didn't look like the doors would open in time for their shuttle to squeeze on through.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darth Janus"]

It was entirely true that Ovmar’s lack of immediate concern stemmed from an almost godly ability to shift into a different body at a moment’s notice, death was no longer a huge factor in the Sith Lord’s life and through it apathy reigned. That said - dying wasn’t an entirely pleasant experience, take that one episode where Jared had to spent his days in Shorn’s mind.

You’d think that it was comfortable, the sheer lack of intellectual aptitude would have to make for a cozy and spacious temporal house for a spirit to live in, to a degree it had been all of that and more. But it was that last addition of ‘more’ which kinda ruined the entire deal.

Regardless of what the Telekinetic Wonder Boy wished others to think, Mikhail was still very much a human, which brought all kinds of… nasty truths to the surface. For example, the hourly bathroom-break, if you had ever wondered why Ovmar had a hard time taking Shorn seriously… it was that break.

And then he wasn’t even considering the times Shorn went back to his inner-sanctum to… oh the horror. The /horror/. The sheer amount of times Micki did that every day put some speed bumps and wrinkles into the stories of the self-professed playboy.

The Horror.

At any rate.

Ovmar tried to accommodate the horror-struck Sith Lord by slowing their descent, but one could only do so much (especially when one wasn’t exactly a very good pilot anyway). He too saw that they were waltzing in far too hard for their own good and would probably smash against the hangar doors, if they wouldn’t open just a bit faster.

His shoulders were already going for a noncommittal shrug, preparing for the feeling of his soul being yanked out of his corporeal body, while trying to come up with a few good words to say to his staunch and loyal henchman, that was Janus.

But wait!

‘Just a bit faster.’!

And so it came to be that all those months spent trapped in the, sometimes quite literal, cesspit of Mikhail Shorn’s body was actually a good thing. The Sith Lord concentrated furiously, his brow furrowed in deep contemplation and his hands moving away from each other - each a sign that Ovmar was up to something.

If only the cold, chilling cruelty of vacuum’s medium was able to transport the vibrations of sound to such a degree that the two occupants heard the sheer indignant screech the metal made in protest of being manhandled this way. It was truly something.

Oh well.

At least Ovmar also had the presence of mind to turn the shuttle they were in sideways, it would probably rustle Janus’ hair and as a further advantage it allowed the ship to narrowly escape the fate it had almost sealed itself in.

…of course the ship still crashed, because Ovmar sucked and Janus sucked even more. Its form twisted and turned, crash landing into the hangar bay of the station.

Crap happens.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

The shuttle smashed through the doors of the hangar with a terrifying jolt, the station's ray shields activating to keep oxygen and basically everything else from being sucked out of the hangar. That would have been rather unfortunate for the two of them to survive the crash only to asphyxiate. Their now thoroughly-broken vessel crashed into the deck, sliding across the durasteel flooring with an awful sound. Fortunately Janus was wearing his seat-belt. As a result, his face merely smashed into the dashboard of the cockpit, leaving a nasty laceration on his forehead. Tough luck, but it was either that or be ejected from the ship. He was thankful.

Well, not that any of this needed to happen in the first place. If Ovmar had just focused on piloting, or better yet gotten a droid to do it for him. After this crash, the only thing more rustled than Janus' hair was his jimmies. The Umbaran muttered a wide variety of profane things and swear words as he unbuckled his seat belt, dabbing his forehead so he could come to terms with the presence of blood. He didn't even bother to fix his hair again, leaving it a jostled mess as he stood from his seat, staggering for the exit.

"You are an abysmal pilot." He declared, trying to keep the room from spinning. Was that a concussion he was feeling? It might have been a concussion.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darth Janus"]

Ovmar planted his rather neatly into the dashboard of the shuttle. Something crunched, probably his nose again, and made a right mess out of the entire thing. It was a better thing that the Sith Lord’s head was hard, like… beskar hard, otherwise he would have probably had a big concussion, instead of a small one.

Still.

As he unbuckled himself and followed Ardik out of the shuttle he could only grumble a bit about the whole situation. It seemed that every time Ovmar interacted with Tyrin, Hannibal or someone else from that particular line-up things tended to go awry, zombified cyber rancors and the sort.

He simply needed to find the link between all those people, what was the /connection/.

That particular trail of though evaporated almost immediately when he saw Tyrin Ardik with his hands held up high in a gesture of defeat, anguish and utter giving up-mentality. A moment later, when his eyes finally recentered themselves on the rest of the scene the Sith Lord found his own hands raising themselves up as well - they were surrounded by techno beasts.

Ovmar shot Ardik a venomous glance and whispered.

‘This is /your/ fault.’

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

Janus rolled his eyes. Of course it was his fault. It was always his fault. He should have known better than to leave a small army of technobeasts laying around on a blasted, abandoned space station he had never even heard of before. Stupid, stupid, Janus! What had he been thinking? Clearly he had not suffered enough defeats to be properly taught that lesson in technobeast management. Namely "do not leave unattended." Janus' lightsaber was called into his hand by the Force, un-clipping from his belt and flying into his waiting palm. The crimson blade activated with that familiar snap-hiss.

"Oh, be quiet."

Rather than charge the technobeasts encroaching on their position head on, Darth Janus instead opted to lash out with a powerful Force Push, flooring the six or seven techno beasts directly in front of them. Not waiting much longer after that, he dashed forward. Naturally his head still hurt something fierce, but that pain would be insignificant if he ended up being torn apart by these malformed beasts. He passed by one that was still standing, it having lucked out by sitting just on the edge of where it would've been knocked over with its friends. Janus rectified this luck with a slash of his lightsaber as he ran on by, bisecting the blasted quasi-automaton.

Ovmar was free to find his own way.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darth Janus"]

If only Janus had waited two more seconds.

Then one of those techno-beasts would have showed some faint measure of intelligence and led them to their leader, which would have turned out to be some freaky, biochemical-techno Artificial Intelligence, which they could have taken over and through that win the game without exerting a single tear.

Instead, Janus - in an unusual display of mettle and lightsaber prowess - decided to charge the enemy head on with his platinum locks dashing swiftly through the air, following the rest of his body as he disabled beast after beast after beast.

Truly a more impressive sight had never been seen.

It was sad that only Ovmar was there to witness it.

It was even sadder that when Shorn decided to lay down a world of smack and pain on Tyrin everyone had seen it, and he hadn’t been able to show this kind of strength, fierceness and utter magnificent badassery.

Perhaps it was something about these enemies that turned Ardik into Rambo.

Perhaps they were simply not as intimidating as a full-fledged emo TK Goddess ala Mikhail Shorn.

One could only ponder this question.

Ovmar sighed to himself and started to take over a couple of the beasts, wrestling control from the freaky AI-node, which was located - conveniently - in the sublevels of the station and turned them against their brothers.

Most of them were too busy shooting Ardik with their disruptor blasters anyway, they didn’t see Ovmar as a threat, /because/ the guy wasn’t dashing around with a lightsaber trying to hit them.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

Of course Janus was displaying mettle and badassery. He was a PC, and they were but NPCs. NPCs spawned in from the vast nothingness of Andrew's limited imagination to add color and conflict to an otherwise droll, meaningless mission that one could scarcely read even if they were paid to do so. But that is far too much meta for one line of thought. Needless to say, Janus had not run past the downed Technobeasts in order to confront them directly. He had done so because being surrounded was never a good thing and he wanted all of them where he could see them. That way, defending himself would be easier.

The fortunate thing about disruptor rifles was that they did not have a very high rate of fire. This made it very leisurely for Janus to deflect the shots back into them. After retreating back a reasonable distance, Janus whirled about and took his favorite Soresu stance. One of them fired, and the shot was immediately reflected off of Janus' lightsaber and into another one that had been taking aim. Given the amount of technobeasts with disruptors, the Umbaran was forced to keep moving for a majority of the time. His tactic, however, remained the same. Run, deflect, run, deflect, and so forth.

Meanwhile, Ovmar was puppeting some of the damn things. He could tell because a gaggle of the technobeasts had turned on their compatriots, while the others remained focused on him. Once again, it was up to Darth Janus to do most of the heavy lifting for Ovmar. Typical, typical Ovmar. Darth Janus continued to whittle the technobeasts down with lazy tactics, neglecting to voice his complaints.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Darth Janus"]

Ovmar was far too busy with trying to survive this battle to really bother with paying attention to the snide remarks made by the unworthy master of Janus’ soul and essence.

While those Beasts were being ‘taken care of’ by Janus, Ovmar quickly made work out of the rest of the Beasts, in the meanwhile he kept pondering the number one question.
Who the hell had put these things in here?

In the story, of course. We aren’t talking about the sadomasochistic writer who had decided to shove the beast into the station with no regard to logic or rationality, we are talking about the end-boss of the level.

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Jared Ovmar"]

The last of the technobeasts rapidly disintegrated, courtesy of another deflected disruptor shot from Darth Janus. With the ramshackle, mutant cyborgs safely defeated or in hasty retreat, Darth Janus now had the time to appreciate the full depth of the situation. That is, stuck on a derelict space station without the ability to leave it. And also bleeding profusely from his forehead. How utterly miserable. Sensing that he could now lower his guard safely, Janus deactivated his lightsaber and touched his forehead. Still bleeding.

"Please tell me you have a plan- or can at least fabricate one before I bleed out and die."