I Need You Foolish

[Lev Surrel]

High orbit over Nubia...

Draped in the silent menace of a descending plague, the armored freighter Irreverent drifted slowly planetward at the head of a seven-vessel convoy. The pristine skies of the planet below were draped in deep blue night, dotted with clouds that promised a light rain come morning. The freighters pierced them like daggers, the high-pitched whine of their engines becoming audible once more as clean air surrounded them. Docking codes were transmitted, and Nuba City Spaceport Control cleared them in seconds, well ahead of the half-dozen other vessels that had already been waiting nearly an hour - the power of a well-placed bribe was one that the Guavian Death Gang had long ago learned to exploit to the fullest. Long ago, before their fall from true power.

An injury that would begin to be corrected that very day.

Smog billowed up from Nuba City's industrial complexes, blanketing the Atzerri-registered ships in familiar pollution. Far more than clear skies, this was where they were meant to operate. The factories and habitation blocks below hummed with greed, with desperation, with discontent and escapism. To Lev Surrel, sitting just behind the Irreverent's pilot and watching the convoy's progress toward the docking station, all of that translated to demand - demand for the products with which the Death Gang had filled their cargo holds on the way out of Atzerri, now carefully screened from the prying eyes of local law enforcement with sensor baffles, hidden compartments, and legal technicalities. All that remained was to get them to market.

Docking bays slid open, and one by one the freighters set down. There would be no customs inspection; a few more credits in the right places had arranged for the relevant officials to be "held up" at a lavish party across town while the arrivals record system was down for "routine" maintenance. However much the gang had spent in arranging their covert arrival, Lev was confident they could make it up in the first twenty-four hours of business. Because this was more than just another planet for the Guavians to sink their hooks into; it was the first step to reclaiming their old glory, their first inroads into the Core systems where they had once operated with impunity. And as the cargo ramps lowered, a shiver ran through Lev like the breaking of a seal.

The waters had gathered and swelled. Now came the flood.

 

[Lev Surrel]

Binary loadlifters stomped up and down the cargo ramps, transferring crate after crate into a fleet of unmarked speeder trucks that had once belonged to a now-defunct catering company. Lev silently surveyed the operation, her cybernetic lenses communicating a steady feed of extra information for rapid processing. She alone wore the heavy crimson armor of the Death Gang's soldiers, or at least the modified version that sustained her damaged body; her henchmen wore nondescript spacers' clothes, baggy enough to hide a plethora of vibroknives and holdout blasters. She wasn't expecting an attack, and it would pay to keep a low profile and avoid police entanglements, but she didn't plan to be caught flat-footed either. She was aggressive, not reckless.

The operation ran like clockwork, with the freighters unloaded thirty seconds ahead of her exacting seven minute schedule. She had made the men and droids run it again and again in the hangars back on Atzerri, repeating the motions until they could have done them in their sleep and then again until done to her complete satisfaction. It was such training and coordination that made the Death Gang stand out from rabble like Kanjiklub or some Hutt's slave army of dirt-stupid Gamorreans; finesse was their byword far more than brute strength. Lev silently communicated a thought into her cybernetics - a bonus for the freighter crews. She rewarded good work; that was the way to both attract and keep real talent. Fear, respect, and greed were a delicate balance with skilled underlings.

With machine-like efficiency Lev took her position in the cargo module of the lead speeder truck, sweeping her ocular implants over the crates that lay within. Within seconds the truck's repulsorlifts roared to life, taking it along the circuitous route the gang's spies had planned to throw off potential pursuit. The drivers split off from one another, two by two. They varied their speeds, blended with traffic, made stops outside a few major businesses to drop off empty packages that the gang's agents would quietly dispose of. On a Core World, with countless cameras, scanners, and potential witnesses, they had to go above and beyond to sell the illusion that they were an ordinary part of the bustle and not the wolves among the proverbial sheep.

And they would not risk arriving at the safehouse until they were confident they had done so.

 

[Lev Surrel]

The safehouse had until recently been a four-star restaurant catering to the crowds that bet on the ronto races at the nearby Tallera Downs, but a sudden gizka infestation had convinced the owner to accept a low-ball bid for the location and move on. The creatures had been almost as easy to clear out as they had been to introduce; the Guavian Death Gang didn't have to worry about health codes. The building's elegant patio dining had been walled in with screens that let the night breeze through, becoming a reception area that preserved visitors' privacy. And the inside, once adorned with faux-Alderaanian decor, had seen a far more significant change. The dining rooms had been partitioned into clinics, storerooms, and demonstration ranges.

The speeder trucks halted in the underground garage beneath the building, their rear doors sliding smoothly open as Lev's troops moved into action. Crates were unloaded, opened, checked, resealed, and carried up the cargo turbolifts into the storage areas. Medical supplies, prostheses, skin grafts, implants, guns, and vial after vial of stims passed under Lev's careful gaze, each one instantly scanned and cross-checked with the inventory list stored in her processing implants. As she would expect, her men had been consummate professionals; not a power cell nor a drip of bacta was out of place. It would take hours to get the hidden storefront properly set up, but it would be done to perfection. And the timing would be perfect to open that very night, the night of a major ronto race.

Here on Nubia, their target market was not composed of their typical business partners - soldiers, pirates, and survivalists. No, here it would be a harvest of fools. From the poorest factory worker to the richest corporate brat, everyone was looking for a pick-me-up. But rather than the cheap, destructive thrills of spice, the Guavian Death Gang dealt in false dreams. Feed this adrenal to your ronto of choice and you'll win that ten-thousand credit bet you have riding on it. Get these muscle fiber replacements and watch the ladies swoon as you bench-press a speeder bike. Install these armored skin grafts and walk through fistfights like a god among men. Take this stimm cocktail and think seven steps ahead of your sabaac rivals. Any dream for a price.

And if it fell through, well, the gang was ready to sell you another.

 

[Lev Surrel]

Of course, there were weapons too. That had always been the basis of the Guavians' trade.

Here, the crates of micro-grenade launchers and percussive cannons were intended not to answer a dream but a nightmare. The fear of the One Sith, so close to this planet which lay largely defenseless against any potential attack, would drive the men and women of Nubia to buy. Never mind that, if the Sith did come knocking, one gun would hardly make a difference. Sell it as personal protection. Sell it as insurance, a way to save one's family. No matter why the guns were bought, and no matter what happened to their owners, the Death Gang's profits would grow. Crates of weapons were set out on soundproof firing ranges, ready to covertly display their effectiveness to potential buyers.

With the safehouse prepared, it was time to secure customers. In the Death Gang's line of business, that was best done by word of mouth - straightforward and untraceable. Guavian agents struck up conversations in cantinas, spaceport arrivals terminals, and the stands of the ronto racetracks, dropping hints of the newest, greatest thrill on Nubia and what it could do for you. It was a well-worn tactic; each customer who followed the rumors would multiply them when they left. Of course, there were security concerns. But Lev had other ways of dealing with those. She would welcome the first - it would be her opportunity to send a sanguine message.

Sangine - a word that meant both "clear" and "bloody." It was the perfect way to describe her specialty.

 

[Lev Surrel]

They caught the law officer snooping around halfway through the night.

Even without their signature crimson armor, soldiers of the Guavian Death Gang were formidable. Chemical reservoirs pumped within their veins like a second heart, flooding them with a secret cocktail of stimulants on command. With that powerful poison flowing through them, they were deadlier unarmed than most beings holding heavy weapons. And they knew how to spot "customers" who didn't belong, like the tall, clean-cut human who was a little too old to be your average thrill-seeker and a little too interested in the stimms to be a worried family man. Long before he could reach for his blaster, the Guavian thugs had twisted his arms behind his back and hustled him into the backroom.

Lev looked him over, memorizing his face. "Poor planning," she remarked dryly, "to follow up on this lead the same night you got it." The man stuck his chin out, defiant. "I'm with the imports bureau," he said, his voice trembling only a little, "and I can have a full squad of backup here in five minutes." Lev clucked her tongue. The guard on the officer's right twisted his arm up, chemically-enhanced strength driving it past the limit of the socket; there was a loud pop-crunch that melded with the harsh note of the man's scream. "If you could do that," the crime boss replied, "you would have already. Instead you're going to try to bluff, because you know how this ends for you."

"Please," the man panted, eyes shut against the blinding pain in his shoulder. "I won't tell anyone. I have a family. My daughter..." "Is someone you should have thought about before you went snooping," Lev said mildly, crouching down to put her face at the same level as her captive's. One armored hand lifted his chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. "But you're thinking of her now, which is good. It doesn't have to end the same way for her. And because you don't want it to, here's the report you'll compose and sign for me. And then I will kill you, and only you, quickly and without further pain." The unspoken threat of the alternative hung over the room like a dark cloud.

 

[Lev Surrel]

Officer Wyl Anstiss was found in a back alley outside an infamously dangerous habitation block, his arm broken and a vibroknife planted at the base of his neck, neatly severing his spine. His operational notes indicated that he had trailed a likely spice trafficker out of a local cantina across town, where several people could verify he had been that night (but none could identify the man he'd been following). Trace amounts of Ryll on the handle of the knife, which was otherwise clean of genetic indicators, led to the arrest of a Quarren transient in the hab complex's lobby; he was high and holding an empty knife sheath that fit the knife that had killed Anstiss. His frantic, jumbled protests that the sheath wasn't his were ignored.

Lev knew that the gang would have to tread carefully for a while; she was certain that law enforcement had been effectively thrown off the trail for now, but murder was a delicate balance. One might distract and discourage, but one too many would bring the law down in force. And it wasn't just the local police that concerned her; there would be consequences from other shadow organizations for invading their turf, and the policeman's death would alert the local gangs and syndicates. And so, as the first night of business drew to a close, the soldiers of the Guavian Death Gang unpacked their crimson armor and deadly weapons, preparing them for the further violence that the following days would surely bring.

Their beachhead was secure, but it was only the first step in a quiet war for the respect of the local underworld, which could be won by blood alone.

 

[Lev Surrel]

The challenge came two nights later in a burst of blasterfire.

Lev had been waiting, patient, silent. Her cybernetic modifications and blood filtration system meant that sleep was more luxury than necessity, and though the attack came late into the dark hours she was alert and ready in an instant. A heavy blaster pistol slid easily to hand, its weight neatly balanced by the servos in her wrists. Her lenses engaged night vision, piercing the semidarkness of Nuba City's neon-lit alleyways as she strode out of the safehouse. Several blaster bolts pinged off of her armor as she stepped through the door, but she didn't even break stride, her weapon whipping up to return fire as she surveyed the damage. Two guards down, though perhaps not dead - Guavian armor was notoriously resistant to lighter blasters.

Their attackers had good aim, well practiced from years of urban fighting, but through her lenses Lev could see that they were little more than trumped-up street punks. Most hadn't seen twenty cycles, and wore a mishmash of leatheris jackets and scavenged durasteel bent into armor pieces. In a gang war, with the advantage of surprise, they might have been top dogs. But the Guavian Death Gang was much more than a group of back alley thugs; their training and munitions were on a level with private military groups, as their enemies were about to discover. Marking her targets, Lev stitched fiery orange blaster bolts across the night in an unbroken line of screaming death. The young, stupid beings had no idea what was in store for them. But they were learning.

As the survivors fell back to the improvised cover of light fixtures and trash receptacles, Lev hauled one of the downed guards roughly to his feet. His chemical reservoir was pumping the combat cocktail now, overcoming the pain and replacing it with rage. More guards, dressed in their faceless crimson armor and with heavy repeating blasters and micro-grenade launchers in hand, streamed out of the building in practiced formation, laying down fire to cover each new soldier as he stepped out into the night. The odds tilted as the street thugs found themselves outnumbered. With frantic shouts and Huttese curses they began to fall back, disorganized and broken, their footfalls echoing as they fled down the alleys that had borne them here.

 

[Lev Surrel]

But Lev Surrel did not appreciate loose ends, particularly when messages remained to be sent.

"Cut them off," she ordered, her voice calm and cold. "No survivors." Behind the helmets of the Guavian soldiers, readouts of the city's layout parsed through optimal routes to cut off the street gang's retreat. Swoop engines fired up as the far pursuit groups prepared themselves. It would have to be done quickly, before law enforcement arrived, but that was something they had trained for as well. The next five minutes were punctuated with scattered blasterfire and high-pitched screams. Lev never moved from her spot at the safehouse entrance, her audio-receptors turned up to high so that she could savor the symphony. This was what it was like to be powerful, her revenge on the galaxy for all those years when she had been the one left screaming.

By the time the police arrived to answer the reports of gunfire, it was all over. The city security camera recordings for the area would be found blank in the morning thanks to another well-placed agent. The bodies of the gangsters, however, would turn up. They were found the next night, riddled with blasterfire and strung up by their ankles from the light fixtures surrounding the apartment block where their leaders operated. The area was a major residential complex, the streets outside heavily trafficked by foot and speeder, but law enforcement was unable to find anyone who claimed to have seen how they got there. It was another troubling enigma that worried their analysts deeply and their veterans even moreso.

The challenge had been answered. Soon, it would be reciprocated.

 

[Lev Surrel]

The spice lab beneath the Theed Street public laundromat, recent street intel suggested, had long been the most major earner for the Ronto Jockeys street gang. It was a logical target for a revenge strike, so security had been increased threefold, with virtually every soldier of the gang rotating through guard shifts or positioned nearby to respond to any attack. Lev recognized it as a rookie mistake; with so much focus on the defense of a single location, she could easily expand her operations all over the district practically unopposed. But even taking everything else away from the Jockeys would not make the point she had in mind. So she decided to prove their paranoia justified with her own brand of cleverness mixed with overwhelming force.

A hidden service turbolift at the back of the laundromat led to the spice lab, and was guarded by nearly ten soldiers, heavily armed and armored. The hallway running from the bottom of the turbolift to the lab itself was a killbox, with nowhere for invaders to maneuver; they would have to come one by one up the hall, fully exposed to the defenders' weapons. Beyond that, some thirty gangsters had positions guarding every part of the lab proper, prepared to reinforce the entrance and hold it against any intruder. Storming the complex would be a challenge for even a Jedi. But the Guavian Death Gang did not deploy its soldiers. Instead paid two street urchins a handful of credits each to place a few small cylinders among the bundles of laundry, against the support columns.

That night, flowers of flame lit up Theed Street, their blazing blossoms consuming the laundromat as the foundations collapsed. The lab below was buried beneath ten tons of broken duracrete, and its escort along with it. A police investigation would indicate an electrical failure that ignited the power cells of the laundry machines in a cataclysmic chain reaction. The lab below was revealed by chance, leading to the arrest of several high profile Ronto Jockey bosses who had ties to the property. The last remnants of the gang fled to lick their wounds, most of the soldiers joining up with other outfits. The Guavians took none of them; none would make the cut, and the Death Gang did not tolerate incompetence among its troops.

 

[Lev Surrel]

It was over within a week. The Guavian presence in Nuba City was established, and fear would keep it secure.

Lev was almost disappointed with the paper-thin resistance they'd encountered. In the Core Worlds, she'd somehow expected more. But these were deeply uncertain times, with divided regional governments rising and falling by the day as wars and shadow conflicts raged across the galaxy; the stability of the Core, save perhaps among those worlds under the tyrannical boot of the One Sith, was shattered, hardly more present than in the Outer Rim. Under such conditions, this would be but the first of many moves in the Death Gang's great game against the rivals who had seen it driven out. Its power and wealth would swell with each victory, with every harvest of fools, and Lev would ride that wave to the top of the galaxy.

But she was more businesswoman than conqueror. She would never sit atop a throne. Instead she would wait in shadow, devising the plans that would cut the throats of rivals and open markets like vibroblade wounds. As she boarded the freighter back to Atzerri, the capital of her little hidden empire, she sent one last glace back over the bright lights of Nuba City. Hundreds of thousands of people, scrambling through their daily lives in the bright light of day, blissfully unaware of the cancer spreading through their back alleys until the day that became desperate enough to buy a fool's dream. And on that day they would discover that the brightest lights cast the deepest shadows, and the price of a dream is dear indeed...