Objective: Strike it Rich
Weapons: Vibroknife |
Vibrosword |
Blaster
Equipment: Modified Uniform |
Hidden Choker |
Wristwear |
Personal Shield
Tags:
Warpriest Prime
The Hound’s Mercy settled into the Citadel’s shadow like a cat folding around a warm stone. Dock clamps bit clean and silent.
There were no alarms to greet them for now. The Ark’s lights washed the hull in a ceremonial wash of pale gold that made the beskar inside look almost kindly. For all its hymn-sung menace, the Iron Citadel slept, indulgent, proud, and blind.
Veyra Saelis was already at the airlock when the boarding lock forced open their entrance. A maintenance hatch sliced open with a line directly into the Hound’s cargo bay. A cargo elevator extending with freshly greased quiet into the unaware Ark. Veyra’s cybernetic left arm flexed once, servos whispering.
The rest of the team flowed behind her in practiced silence. Shae Drav at her flank, Keln Varo shadowing with a tactical slate, Jirra Taan hauling tool-rigs, Ralo Brenn lugging a small crate of improvised breaching charges, Tessa Morn in comms-ready stance, Drix Kael with data-sleeves and false registries, Dr. Neth Vairen with med-pack and diagnostics, and Lyra Fen already murmuring to a portable slicer console.
“Keep your faces plain,” Veyra said, low.
“We’re technicians and port handlers if seen. No grudges, no salvation, no icons.”
Shae’s helmet hung at her hip; she moved without show, every step precise. Her voice was the same: quiet, edged with something that felt like steel and doctrine.
“We take what keeps us alive and what buys the next week. We leave their altars, their priests, and the Iron Heart alone. You desecrate a shrine and you do not only make enemies. You make a crusade.”
Keln nodded, eyes scanning projected approaches on his slate.
“Strategy; fast in, clean pockets, soft out. No long stays. Lyra, get me the floor manifests, which bays are hosting harvest cargo and which are reliquary holdings.”
Lyra’s fingers flew.
“I’m ghosted on the local net. Drix’s proxy cleared our hit signature. They’ve got Harvesters unloading ore in bay C-113. Two sealed crates marked as ‘Ceremonial Conduits’ in hold 7B flagged for surface transfer tomorrow. I can reroute the manifest to us, but if we lift anything tagged as ‘core relic’ it’ll ping their warders.”
“Exactly,” Shae said.
“Conduits, maybe. Cinders, if they’re in transport locks and stable, maybe one or two. Heart? Not a fething chance. Leave the Heart. Leave the altars. Take practical things; fuel cores, forge modules, drone servos, tractor matrix spools. Those feed us. Those don’t demand a war.”
Jirra cracked a grin as she slung her toolbox.
“And if the Mandalorians are offended, we’ll leave them something nice to remember us by. Like a vacancy in their supply chains.”
Ralo hefted his crate.
“And a few of their weapons. Not the ceremonial blades for feths sake. Those will make a whole culture’s head tilt. But turbolaser capacitors, plasma regulators, a few working proton canisters. Nice, quiet money.”
They moved as a unit. Veyra led them down the cavernous corridor, her masked calm a metronome. Shae walked directly ahead when they reached the storage cluster making her familiarity with Mandalorian order apparent in how she read the labels, the way her hand skimmed the lip of a crate and then moved on. She did not touch the reliquaries. She paused only when they passed a trove of rune-etched panels that hummed faintly with embedded wards.
“Leave those,” she said, almost to herself.
“Wards and priests will turn half the hangar into a furnace if we crack those wrong.” Then, louder, to the crew.
“Take the logistical spools, the energy cells in the green crates, the field-repair kits, the Azurite ledger boxes if they’re sealed in containment foam. Don’t touch loose cinders. If a cinder is free in the open it’s either stabilized or someone’s set a trap.”
Drix moved like a man counting coins already earned. He fingered a sleeve of forged manifests and slipped them into the local terminal with Lyra’s overwatch.
“I’ll mark the haul as internal reallocation during the pre-dawn redistribution. No flags if Lyra holds the sensor trace to us.”
Dr. Neth crouched by an open crate and peered inside, scanner in hand.
“Fuel sacs, low volatility; there’s a couple of biotech crates labeled ‘encephalic stabilizers’. Could be worth a lot to the right buyer. Check containment seals before we move them. A misread could hurt a man." she warned, glancing at Veyra as if to underscore the practical limits of their operation.
Shae’s blade hung across her back, untouched. She scanned the bay, then nodded toward a maintenance chute half-hidden behind stacked pallets.
“We slip cinders into lined casings and feed them through the chute. No open handling. Jirra, you and Ralo secure containment. Keln, you walk point. Drix, you shepherd the manifests. Lyra, keep comm scrambles on loop. Tessa, twenty minutes from launch to clear. Don’t let us be late.”
Tessa’s reply was a single, calm confirmation.
“I’ll fly the shadow home.”
Veyra crouched for a moment by the nearest crate, fingers brushing a banded fuel core.
“We aren’t trophy hunters,” she said.
“We’re precise. No blasphemy, no souvenir ornaments. We take what keeps the crew fed and the Mercy working. Everything else is a sermon we don’t need.”
Shae’s answer was a brief, unexpected thing. Not soft, but not dismissive either.
“Honor isn’t just a thing you recite. It’s what keeps your kin from becoming ghosts. You keep that in mind and you’ll stay alive longer.”
They moved into the work with mechanical efficiency. Jirra and Ralo unbolted crates with quiet tools, padded and strapped the stable Azurite containment boxes into shock-cases, and sealed energy cores into dampening skins. Lyra hummed beneath her breath, slicing sensor-pings and leaving nothing but a faint ghost-signature. Drix interpolated the manifest bytes into the Ark’s ledger while Keln watched the corridor and watched the crew. Strategist’s instincts pacing like a heartbeat.
No idols were toppled. No altars touched. Shae personally dragged one crate back from the edge of a reliquary alcove and placed it where Veyra could see as an unspoken check.
“We keep blood off the doorsteps,” she said.
“We take the means to survive. Anything else turns this into a vendetta.”
When the load was done, the team retraced its steps with the same silence they’d used to enter. At the airlock, Veyra counted the cases by feel, then nodded.
“Good. Fast. Clean.”
Shae secured the last latch on the containment case, then met Veyra’s eyes. There was no warmth in the Mandalorian’s look. Just a steady, cautious respect.
“You did wrong, Captain,” she said flatly.
“But you did it without being a fool.”
Veyra’s smile was a small thing.
“I prefer being useful.”
The ship still clung to the Citadel’s hull like a remora as the two lingered outside of the ship. The engines whispering against the void as bodies inside moved with practiced speed stowing their haul. Inside the Iron Citadel, the boarding party had moved with precision. A rhythm of soft steps, clipped murmurs, and restrained greed.
They had come for supplies, for survival. And by the time the last sealed crate was loaded with energy cores and stabilized cinders, Veyra Saelis was ready to give the order to pull out.
Their ships docking clamps holding steady as the hum of the final trips of the cargo lifts echoed through the bay. The smell of metal, ozone, and forge oil filled the stale air as Ralo Brenn and Jirra Taan worked through the last of the crates.
“That’s the last of the stabilized cores,” Jirra called over her shoulder, her lekku twitching with concentration.
“Another few minutes and we’re gone.”
“Make it five,” Veyra replied, her tone distant, eyes drawn toward a narrow corridor at the far end of the hangar.
Shae Drav followed her gaze, helm tucked beneath her arm. That faint orange light pulsed from deeper within the Citadel. A slow, rhythmic glow like breath.
“That’s the Vault,” Shae murmured.
“Domina Prime’s forge chamber. No guards, no wards. She’s not here.”
“And you want to see it.” Veyra said, not as a question.
“If she’s gone, this might be the only chance. Her work’s more than weapons. It’s faith given form. I’ve heard the stories.”
Veyra’s cybernetic hand flexed once, a whisper of servos.
“Five minutes,” she said at last.
“Lyra, lock the hangar and loop the surveillance. We’re going for a walk.”
“Copy that,” Lyra Fen’s voice crackled back from the comm.
“You’ve got a clean corridor. Just don’t wake any gods while you’re down there.”
The passage leading to the Vault sloped downward, lined with murals carved into dark beskar. The carvings told no clear story. Only fragments of battles, symbols of Ha’rangir, and streaks of molten metal frozen mid-flow. The air grew warmer with each step.
At the end of the corridor, a door of layered alloy stood half-open, light spilling through its seam like sunlight through storm clouds. Veyra pushed it aside with her cybernetic arm, and they stepped into the Vault.
It was less a workshop and more a sanctum. Each step made it clear even the walls were alive. Veins of molten ore running through crystalline conduits around them. The Forge Hammer of Domina Prime rested on an altar-like dais, its surface still radiating faint heat. Surrounding it were forged artifacts, weapons, armor, and vessels that shimmered with a strange alchemical luminescence.
Shae froze just inside the threshold. Even without Domina’s presence, the space felt alive.
“Ha’rangir’s breath,” she whispered.
“She’s still working it… even when she’s gone.”
Veyra circled the dais, eyes sharp and calculating.
“This isn’t engineering,” she said softly.
“It’s something older. The metal’s shifting on its own.”
She crouched, studying a curved breastplate. The alloy rippled. Not molten, but not solid. As though it could move, like it was breathing.
Shae stepped closer, reverence in every motion.
“She fuses through resonance. The hammer channels it. Binds energy to memory. Every strike leaves an imprint. Every creation remembers its maker.”
Veyra straightened slowly, eyes catching the flickering reflection of her cybernetic arm in the molten pool.
“And that makes her more than a smith. It makes her dangerous.”
“To the unfaithful,” Shae said, voice steady.
“To her people, she’s divine. You can’t kill a god that knows how to rebuild herself.” The hum of the forge deepened, low and resonant, like the ship itself was listening. The molten veins pulsed once, a heartbeat in metal.
Veyra’s hand hovered briefly over the hammer, feeling its warmth from a distance. Her expression was unreadable, half fascination, half warning.
“This is what happens when belief finds a tool sharp enough to hold it.”
Shae nodded slowly.
“Or when power decides it deserves worship.”
Their comms crackled to life with Keln Varo’s voice, crisp and urgent.
“Captain, loading’s complete. Patrols are rotating. We should be gone.”
