Private If Not For That Lousy Ithorian Foreign Legion

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Star Yacht Lanvarok Whisper
Unaffiliated Deep Space

"Does that rise to the level of rule for you, Captain?" said Jaccath, sensitively, as if hesitant to probe a wound, likely unsure what she was feeling or how strongly she felt it. "Not killing those you've worked with, unless they earned it?"

"Not a rule, dear," Ashin told the hulking Massassi in the pilot seat. For her part she sat in the commscan chair, hands folded in her lap, watching a nova's aftershock churn. It was a beautiful sight. "Not a rule. Certainly not a principle. I'd go so far as to call it a hesitation. I quite liked Castillon the one time we collaborated; I quite liked most of that Rebel Alliance crew. Good enemies. And yet this really is important enough to wrap up whoever's left of them, whoever might have known."

"Known the suddenly-critical old secret that I'm definitively not asking about?" Jaccath said.

"Quite." Ashin sighed briskly. "Let's move forward with this. You're certain all the rest are dead?"

"Captain Castillon is the last loose end. I've sent you the sourcing that confirmed the rest."

"And she's where?"

Jaccath smiled in a way that looked bemused or wry. "The Tingel Arm. Specifically, my homeworld."

Deserts, scrimshaw, scrappers, ruins, unspoiled budget Korriban — "What in Pomojema's name is someone like Delila Castillon doing on Tash-Taral?"

The bridge controls' general-purpose screen showed a map of Tash-Taral with icons depicting violence.

"It seems she's purging or defending an oasis two days from Lasaraleen. Something about past, present, or future environmental reclamation — that's the best I could do. She's signed on with an outfit called the..." Jaccath double-checked. "...Ithorian Foreign Legion."

"The same people who liberated Ruusan and claimed they purged the Core Worlds?"

"Claimed being the operative word on that one, Captain, but yes, it looks like the same crew."

"Well. For the Ithorians' sake, I hope they've been too busy to swap old war stories."

"Ma'am, I do need to say... it's been many years. Whatever the secret is, she could have told anyone. Assuming she even knows she knows it, knows the detail was meaningful — or remembers it at all."

"All you need to know is that I know nobody's grasped it, or a certain place would be a crater. So consider Castillon an unexploded bomb."

 

[Delila Castillon]

Lasaraleen , Tash-Taral, Ithorian Foreign Legion​

Hot, sweaty, dangerous work awaited her.

For two days the Ithorian Foreign Legion had been entrenched in a hardscrabble battle for the oasis of Lasaraleen. They were attempting to take back the small area from entrenched warlords. Always an issue considering warlords, especially out in the backwater, tend to have a great deal of credits and gear. The IFL? Not so much.

Hiding behind a crashed fighter, Delila had never expected to be back in the fight. Last situation didn't work out. Shame too. Which left her drifting around in the hyperlanes on her own. Never a good thing when her piloting skills were horrible. Turned her back to mercenary work and soldiering once again. IFL had caught her attention when they liberated Empress Teta and since then she had traveled and fought with the group. They were impressive, hard scrabble fighters.

Taking a breather, two soldiers were at her side. One offered a canteen of water and she gladly accepted before passing it back.

"I think we may have underestimated this warlord."

"Intelligence underestimated the amount of weapons underground. Didn't send in air support."

"I think even if we had air support the tunnels may be too far underground. This desert is nothing but sand and rock...we'd still be entrenched. Maybe less on their side."

Over the comm, their General spoke,

"...air support expected in twelve hours. We must hold Lasaraleen until they arrive..."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

An orbital bombardment of the area was out of the question for several reasons.

Kill verification, for one. Awkward questions too. Collateral damage to the town of Lasaraleen, a place that had sheltered both Ashin and her sole crew member in past years and still boasted a nice market of Tashai scrimshaw artifacts. The Lanvarok Whisper's armament wasn't really up to the task, and more powerful ships would invite, again, questions. Dignity, too: only a coward would tie it off like that against a helpless target.

But it all came down to respect. Some people you just plain murdered in person.

Jaccath put down the Lanvarok Whisper at the back side of the town and set the multifarious anti-intruder measures. Since the local hostilities could easily spill over to a Naboo yacht, Jaccath stayed to move it if necessary, over his protests.

Ashin wore her customary black armourweave robes and the mask of Anger. She brought a lightsaber, of course, and a Dzuskuri lanvarok on her left forearm, and a blaster rifle over her shoulder with good accurate range. On a speeder bike, she set out over the desert through the outskirts of the shell-shocked town. Small Dark Eye probe droids ranged out in search of her prey.

Delila Castillon

 

[Delila Castillon]

At this point they were trading potshots. Both sides doing their best to make sure the other did not advance. By now Delila had made her way to a half-shelled out shed-like structure. Partially open to the desert but enough walls and shade to gain some cover. After all, gingers did not do well in the baking sun, and despite her layers of protection against the elements she wasn't going to risk it.

Tucked against one wall, she was rigging a few explosives while three others kept watch. Just small pieces to place around their shed-like 'home', especially as evening would draw to a close. It would give a sense of protection, at this moment it was unfortunate she couldn't set up discrete trip explosives in chokepoints. Perhaps if they advanced more.

"....ship just landed. Naboo-design." A private charge with watch mentioned it casually, using his macrobinoculars to get a better sense of what was going on.

"The warlord himself? Or a friend?" Some uneasy shifting in their shed...the others going through possibilities.

"I can't see a Naboo-design type landing for kicks and giggles. They always draw attention. If it was some fancy Merc or warlord I'd come more armed than Nabooian vessels. Those are for after you annihilate your enemy."

Having flown in a Naboo-type a name or two, it was all aesthetics and less focused on weapons. Unless it was modified. Someone who wanted plush nerf-leather interiors but also total destruction?

"....give it a moment before we investigate. Could be a trap."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Three, four, five Dark Eyes went dead on the speeder's monitor panel, victims of the IFL or the warlord or the locals.

"They call themselves 'semi-pacifist,' Captain," Jaccath murmured in Ashin's mask comm, still paging through files as asked. "The Ithorians who serve in the Foreign Legion, which is mostly non-Ithorian. It's all connected to the diaspora: tens of billions of Ithorians on dozens of worlds isolated by the Gulag Virus for centuries. Nature priests are still strictly pacifist, and they overlap with political and class hierarchy, but it's a big chaotic universe."

Ashin eased her speeder bike through bombed-out moisture farms toward the most obvious battlefront. "Define semi-pacifist."

"Self-defense, proactive self-defense, aggressive self-defense, bloodthirsty self-defense. It's all personal — between them and the Bafforr trees."

"Time to sunset?"

"Point eight standard hours. Keep an eye on the horizon just after sunset. There's a coruscating lensing effect we call mykithri."

She spoke ur-Kittat just fine, but Tashai Massassi dialects weren't her strong suit. "'Knotted transformation?'"

"More like 'twisting paths.' The hour of possibility. The hour of the unforeseen."

There was a wariness in his voice that sounded like warning.

One of the last Dark Eyes flagged a pattern recognition hit: human female, late middle age, red hair, active combatant. Ashin turned her speeder bike that way and accelerated.

Her bike's blaster cannon barked twice, smashing open an emplacement of the warlord's crew. She ducked into their cover, a scorched permacrete half-circle stinking of burned meat, and unshouldered the rifle.

Delila Castillon

 

[Delila Castillon]

"....nerf steak. A big, fat nerf steak. All the trimmings. I haven't been able to afford one for a long, long time. I mean I guess I could have used credits I got from a merc job but..." Delila paused for a long moment, carefully wiring one of the last of her explosives. "Things just aren't the same."

The same as in reference to her life. Single once again. Incredibly poor once again. Seemed her life was on some hopeless loop. Serve in the military, find love, get somewhere - then watch it all collapse and be left sitting on her ass looking to take odd jobs. Delila was back on the rock bottom stage and the older she got, the more she didn't like it.

"Things are no longer the same anywhere. The sentiment is mutual in many cultures." A Rodian, a newcomer to the group, answered her, his eye on the scope in their impromptu hiding spot. A keen shot, the Rodian had already taken out two of the warlords crew in the last hour, the other side seemingly growing restless at being entrenched.

"Hm. Good point." Delila carefully pushed the explosive to the side when the familiar thunk, thunk of a blaster canon could be heard. She carefully crawled over, grabbing the macros and holding them to her eyes. Smoke was rising on the warlords side, her brows furrowing.

"Friendly fire?" A small pause. "In fighting? We can only be so lucky...they should be running out of food. I don't see much...Maybe a little scuffle going on, hard to tell."

Another pause.

"Maybe another warlord coming to claim territory?"

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin cleared out the pair of dead with a gesture and let them flop on the sand outside the scorched permacrete half-circle. Not her most unobtrusive work, nor had the speeder bike approach been, nor was the mask. At some level she figured she wanted to be seen. Just like her determination to kill Castillon in person, that was probably bound up in her lifelong disdain for those who punched down.

She was pondering that, weighing what she wanted most, when her rifle scope caught a tuft of red hair under good cover. A lens glint too, just for a heartbeat: a scope or macrobinoculars.

Being cavalier about visibility seemed much more foolish than it had a moment ago. Ashin held very still. Where was that tuft?

Delila Castillon

 

[Delila Castillon]

Ashin Cardé Varanin


Brows furrowed as the commotion on the other side stopped. Oddly quiet on the other side of the line, as if their enemy was equally shocked that the situation had occurred. An interloper, no doubt. Delila popped back up with the macros, searching the area, only to see a glint of a mask. The mask looked vaguely familiar to her. As if she had seen it before....certainly struck a cord. Something from long ago. Perhaps someone she had encountered on the battlefied.

Battlefield....Dipping down back to cover, she started to think. Off in the distsance, some pot shots were being taken, an exchange of blaster fire as someone got off course or got too close to their invisible line.

Reaching for her blaster rifle, it struck her. Varanin. Of the Rebel Alliance. What were they doing on the opposing side? Most likely for credits. Delila certainly had been there - taking whatever job paid the most. Perhaps a similar situation. Collecting an explosive and her rifle, the redhead began to move closer to the opposite side, finding cover where she could.

Time to investigate further.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

From her large collection of marksman, sniper, and anti-materiel long guns, Ashin had selected her GSS-11 sporting blaster. Sleek homogoni-wood stock, good range, low rate of fire but a hitter with authority. The scope was unremarkable and versatile for medium ranges. Against humanoid targets, with this gun, she could make a lethal hit at five hundred meters with limited preparation. The IFL line was significantly closer than that, so much so that the scope was not an asset, and she took it off and stowed it with an eye on all the land between her and that red hair. The hair wasn't visible just now. With her mask off, she kept low and watched.

There - red.

She sighted and fired. Whoever it was had ducked in behind a piece of cover, some kind of gutted vehicle, and Ashin aimed to skim a shot through the gaps of its warped undercarriage to endanger this person's feet.

Motion in the corner of her eye spun her around. The rifle was a hair too slow to recharge; what came out by instinct, one hand snapping up, was a sizzle of lightning that sent a warlord's grunt spasming away. High-visibility; her instincts had betrayed her.

Delila Castillon

 

[Delila Castillon]

By now who she assumed was Ashin Cardé Varanin was taking shots at the gutted speeder she had hid behind. Yet it was a sloppy, unwieldy shot that seemed one of an amateur rather than a trained warrior. Curious, Delila stuck herself out of hiding for a moment to see the woman in question going to town with some force lightning.

Odd.

While the woman was distracted with force lightning on some unfortunate soul, the old redhead worked quickly. A foolish idea but one that had just struck her. One that may advance fighting in the standoff with the Ithorian Foreign Legion so they could win and go home. A distraction? Diversion? Stupidity? Delila would classify it as all the above.

Moving low and quickly in a semi-circle using burnt out speeders as coverage, Delila managed to leap into the fortified and glorified fox hole Varanin was in. Boots landed right next to her, dropping in almost casually, as if she had just used the latrine and came back to catch up on any missed events.

"When did I become the enemy? Varanin right? Weren't we in a rebellion together?"

Tone was miffed. Insulted even. As if she couldn't see why Varanin was singling her out when there was an entire line of soldiers with her. She wasn't even in any sort of command!

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Now on the one hand, explanation would verge on villainous monologue and, if Castillon escaped, could jeopardize this and that. On the other hand, the basic dignity of the task — and the lightning-burned corpse beside the fortified foxhole — seemed to require at least a rationale.

"Loose ends," she said. "Only loose ends."

The method of attempted murder that she chose, since opportunity presented itself, was painless. Risky, too, but such was the cost of respect. Moments like this had undone the greatest Sith. She's always sneered at those choices not to kill but in this moment she understood them. Priorities, not folly.

She reached out in her mind's eye and tried to steal — yes, steal — Castillon's body.

What that process would feel like to Castillon, she couldn't say.


Delila Castillon