Bounty Into the Jaws of the Beast

[Siv Dragr]

H U N T

Objective: Bounty on Jaivant Graush
Location: Malsheem, Deep Space
Tag: Jaivant | Darth Carnifex

[] 12:36 Hours Until Intercept []​

The hum of Siv's CVT-48 Outlander-class Starfighter had become a constant presence during the currently-elapsed three days of his voyage. Omnipresent and unaible to fully be voided no matter what sort of audial dampening settings Siv tangled with, he'd eventually accepted that the humming of the engines would be drilled into his brain until he could finally land. And it wasn't like he'd have any sort of rest once he did.

The Mandalorian Karjr and Bounty Hunter was hard on the trail of a certain young boy called Jaivant Graush, according to the bounty. It had been posted anonymously, and required whoever was hunting him to venture deep into Sith-controlled space -- what little Sith-controlled space there still was -- to hunt a teenager who'd been taken in as a ward by probably one of the most powerful Sith alive. At the very least? The job compensated well, and with the fuel markets on a six-month high and the entire northern galaxy ablaze, even Siv's Karjr work was barely turning a profit. He'd found himself slipping back into his old days of bounty hunting. More criminal, to be sure, but it payed enough that he could cover starfuel and even begin to set a little aside for "insurance".

But these bounty hunting missions were much more demanding than his Karjr patrols. And sneaking into a Sith worldship was no mean feat. Siv's starfighter was made for deep space voyages, a top-of-the-line 0.8 grade hyperdrive and twin engines giving the fighter power and thrust that was useful when traversing the galaxy. But he couldn't just hyperjump into the worldship's orbit, unless he wanted to fight through millions of sith warships and soldiers single handedly. This mission required stealth, stealth that unfortunately Siv was low on in the technology department. Had he known what the mission entailed, he might've been able to nab one of the new GRL-109 Moonlighter-class Stealth Fighters, except for the fact that they didn't have enough cabin space to hold a captive.

So instead he'd resorted to jumping out almost four days travel away from the massive worldship and letting the sublight drives accelerate him to fast enough speeds. He'd subsisted off of ration cubes and long periods of drug-induced sleep to pass the time. But now he was nearing the end of the journey, and came the tricky part. Siv checked his calculations one more time before beginning to power down the ship's systems one by one; power, sublight drives, weapons, etc. Only life support remained active, and on a low power cycle. Now his ship wouldn't be any different to the massive worldship's sensor systems than a passing asteroid, and small enough that the defensive systems wouldn't take note either. With three days worth of acceleration, he had enough momentum to get close enough to the worldship to manuever in undetected. Hopefully.

He settled in for the long rest of the flight.

[] 03:14 Hours Until Intercept []
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The worldship had now come into Siv's range of view, a distant bright orb of metal. It was massive and smooth, distinctly artificial, and Sith ships large and small clung to the ship like a swarm of flies. Siv made sure to control his breathing. One false error and the entire Sith fleet would be on him, something that he'd have slim chances of surviving. Finding the worldship had been no easy feat either. A combination of spacer tales, Enclave intelligence networks, captured Sith, and complicated calculations by the ancient Mandalorian artificial intellience 'Artus' had given him the estimations for his trip. At long last, though, all of that work was being vindicated.

He found himself typing out a quick message to Vren Rook , a last resort if anything went wrong. He withheld from sending it though, instead attaching it a command in his HUD, to be sent only if he really needed too.

He quickly inspected his blaster. It was in working condition -- that was good.

[] 00:57 Hours Until Intercept []
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Siv's ship drifted pass Sith warship after warship, a lifeless chunk of metal compared to the gleaming cruisers and star destroyers. Lights flickered from viewports and subsystems like their own individual miniature cities, the only source of light out in deep space other than the stars themselves. The worldship seemed to almost be its own planet, except it had a surface of metal rather than rock and liquid.

Siv breathed, his hands resting on the stick of the cockpit. There was less than an hour until he'd be in the gigantic station, if everything went as according to plan.

[] 00:03 Hours Until Intercept []
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Siv's voice was audible, but only barely slow, as he counted down the distance between his ship and the Malsheem. Only a few more seconds and he'd be within the ships threshold, able to mask himself from detection and still pilot his starfighter into a docking bay. From there? He'd have to improvise.

Three.

Two.

One.

In a single deft motion, Siv activated the ship's sublight drive systems, the engine's coming back online with a familiar hum of thrust. His target destination wasn't a conventional hangar bay -- no, instead the Mandalorian was entering through the starfighter assembly line. It would provide him enough anonymity to hopefully get into the station without causing alarm. Just a little further . . . and he'd be just one more step closer to getting his target and getting the hell out of this infernal place.
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[Eye of Solomon]

White light bathed the hangar, sterilizing brilliance illuminating a space several magnitudes larger than any Gravball field in the galaxy. Beyond this brilliance was the faint shimmering of an azure magnetic field, and beyond even that was the darkness of the void. The void may have been sparsely illuminated by the sleek silhouettes of warships and the accompanying light of distant stars, but otherwise, it was as cold and unforgiving as the deepest benthic abyss.

Cold and unforgiving was how Guvaith Rook preferred the galaxy. He stood, back straight and head angled forward, with the brown carbon-scored helmet of his Mandalorian ancestry tucked under the crook of his left arm. His right hand idled near the holster on his hip, fingers anxious to suddenly pull the disruptor from its sheath and feel the muscles in his hand grow taut as he squeezed the trigger. Such was the urge to violence that permeated his existence.

His beady eyes stared directly ahead under a hairless brow, those deep pits of remorseless hatred catching the sight of a Vicar-class cargo frigate as it pulled into the wide white expanse. Slipping his helmet over his bald scalp, Guvaith turned to descend the lift that would bring him to level with the frigate's landing gear. Already laborers were detaching the containers magnetically anchored to the Vicar's underbelly, guiding them with repulsorlifts and grappling cranes onto the ground where they were unlocked by technicians.

Each container held the same cargo.

Slaves.

They had been harvested from the worlds of the galaxy, the reaping vessels of the Kainate descending on hapless world after hapless world. Not even the worlds of the Galactic Alliance were spared, though the Kainate never struck the same world twice as a precaution. Often, the Kainate suffered losses from these brazen incursions, but such losses were compensated through intense gene-manipulation to breed more and more soldiers with every passing day.

The slaves that were herded out from the containers moved as if in a trance, their faces devoid of emotion and their eyes glazed over white. No longer did the Kainate wrangle slaves still fiery with independence and personalities, that had been the fault of the previous regime. Instead, the Kainate subjected their captives to the power of the Derriphan, a spherical creature that fed on thoughts and experiences. Once the Derriphan had you in its grasp, there was no escape. What emerged from the containers were little more than empty husks, driven only by external stimuli such as the batons and whips of their captors. They would be put to work on one of the many quarry-worlds that the Kainate held dominion over in Deep Space, once they had been processed through Malsheem.

And it was Guvaith's role as Slavemaster to oversee all new acquisitions. Once he had overseen the slave pits of Moridinae, that wretched world once known as Mandalore, but he had been forced to flee when the Empire lost its grip. Not that it mattered, by the time the Empire had departed the planet had been stripped of nearly all of its resources. Beskar, chief among them, had been viciously harvested by the Empire for its strength and durability. Guvaith had been one of the few traitor smiths that had passed along the secret knowledge of Beskar smithing to the Sith, earning him a place of importance in their regime as a slavemaster.

In this he excelled, his brutality unmatched among the non-Sith of Malsheem. Had he been blessed by the embrace of the Dark Side, he would have been elevated as a Lord of the Sith by now. But such things were not to be, and he found no use in dwelling on what could have been.

Now that the routine ritual of offloading new slaves had been complete, Guvaith was free to pursue his own desires until his masters called upon him again. He strode out of the hangar and into the more dimly lit halls of Malsheem, passing by cultists and soldiers alike through the labyrinthine catacombs of the Eternal Father's domain. Being a Mandalorian in these hallowed halls was a rarity, a bold oddity that still sent questioning glances in his direction. Few of the Death Watch that had remained loyal to the Lords of the Sith were allowed to step foot on Malsheem, but he was chief among them. There wasn't a Mandalorian still living that had betrayed his people so thoroughly than he, having divulged their secrets without reservation.

No doubt he was hated by the clans who still resisted the Sith, but what they thought of him never once entered his mind. In this galaxy, you fought and clawed your way to survive. Chivalry and honor was a fool's gold, and he had no use for it. He had cast his lot in with those who valued strength, who found a use for his talents, and who allowed him to indulge in his darkest impulses without judgment. His mind drifted to some of the new arrivals, and he logged it in his mind that he would have to review some of the tastier cuts of meat himself.

He allowed a grim chuckle to pass by his lips, which briefly were wettened by unbidden salivation as his thoughts turned dark and grotesque. He had spent far too much time with the ambassadors of the Makesh Cartel, who often referred to other sentient creatures as meat, primarily because of their voracious predisposition. Through them, Guvaith had acquired a taste for certain dishes.

Later, he would have to indulge in that peculiar taste.

Siv Dragr | Jaivant ​