D-M0N // KILL_PROCESS
OBJECTIVE I → OBJECTIVE II | ORBITAL DEBRIS / BEASTIE BOYS
Location: Mahporeem Imperial Remnant Space → Rust Haven Station Exterior
Ship: Modified Vanguard-class Gunship | Hyperviolet Drive Retrofit
CONFEDERACY DIRECTIVE: NULL
ACTIVE COMMAND CHAIN: DORMANT
INDEPENDENT CONTRACTING AUTHORIZATION: ACTIVE
BOUNTY LICENSE APPLICATION: FILED
CONTRACT ACCESS: PROVISIONAL
CLAIM STATUS: PENDING VALIDATION
CONTRACT: MAHPOREEM SALVAGE YARD
PRIMARY CONDITION: SABOTAGE / DESTRUCTION
SECONDARY CONDITION: RECOVER VALUE WHERE PRACTICAL
TERTIARY CONDITION: RONHAR TANE // ALIVE IF ECONOMICALLY JUSTIFIABLE
OPERATIONAL PURPOSE: MAINTAIN READINESS
RESOURCE ALLOCATION: VANGUARD REFIT FUND
IDLE STATE: UNACCEPTABLE
Statistics did not comfort machines. They only identified the shape of a problem before it arrived, reducing chaos to patterns, patterns to predictions, and predictions to executable action. At the far edge of the patrol zone, where Rust Haven Station was still little more than black geometry pinned against the shine of Mahporeem below, a point of violet light tore open and died in the same breath. It was not bright enough to be a flare. It was not loud enough to be a warning. It came and went with the ugly precision of a system error corrected before most sensors had time to agree it had happened at all.
A Vanguard-class gunship translated from hyperspace in the wake of that violet afterglow, its silhouette familiar by registry and increasingly dishonest by inspection. Its frame was still recognizably Hex-built: compact, brutal, and made to carry violence through heavy fire. Yet parts of it had already been stripped, reworked, and scarred by modifications that had no concern for symmetry. External panels had been removed and replaced with temporary plating. Cable runs followed new paths along the dorsal spine. The hyperdrive housing did not belong there. It functioned. That was sufficient.
Within the cockpit, D-M0N did not sit so much as occupy the command position. The skeletal droid's bone-white face remained motionless beneath the dim pulse of the interior lights, red optics fixed on the widening tactical projection. The system was already polluted with overlapping signatures: patrol craft, escorts, cargo traffic, station emissions, emergency grid fluctuations, encrypted bursts, and scrambled battlenet ghosts. The first signs of intrusion had already bloomed across Rust Haven's skin. Others had arrived first. This did not alter the contract.
LOCAL THEATER UPDATE:
RUST HAVEN STATION: ACTIVE
PRIMARY POWER GRID: DEGRADED
EMERGENCY RESPONSE: INITIATED
BOARDING EVENT: CONFIRMED
HOSTILE / FRIENDLY IDENTIFICATION: UNRESOLVED
PARALLEL CONTRACTORS DETECTED.
CLASSIFICATION: NON-ALLY / NON-OBSTRUCTION
ENGAGEMENT RULE: IGNORE UNLESS INTERFERENCE OCCURS.
D-M0N allowed the Vanguard to drift cold among the debris clutter. The gunship's active emissions bled down to a predatory minimum, one unnecessary system after another going silent until the ship was little more than a dark shape with weapons, engines, and intent. The violet pulse in the Hyperviolet retrofit dimmed behind matte-black housing, reduced from a trademark glow to a faint internal bruise.
No challenge was broadcast. No rebel frequency was answered. No pirate channel was hailed. The droid observed the patrol pattern instead, marking the fighter moving along one of the outer routes. Casual enough to suggest boredom. Armed enough to make boredom dangerous. D-M0N calculated an evasion cone and filed the craft beneath acceptable risk. There was no profit in beginning the contract with a dogfight, and no logic in announcing an arrival that had not yet been noticed.
A narrow-band transmission left the Vanguard in a compressed burst toward the nearest bounty relay node, routed twice and stripped of sentiment.
<D-M0N. Alias "Demon." Contract interest confirmed. Sabotage/destruction criteria accepted. Live recovery clause acknowledged.>
The message ended there. Anything more would have been personality.
The Vanguard rotated slowly, presenting its ventral profile toward the station. External clamps unlocked with a muted tremor through the hull. Inside the troop compartment, the empty seats waited in two dead rows, not yet replaced by prisoner cages, cryo-stasis frames, carbonite infrastructure, restraint racks, interrogation hardware, or the other systems the droid had already allocated future credits toward. For now, the vessel was not complete. For now, it was a chassis with weapons, engines, and potential.
D-M0N rose. His cloak shifted around the angular lines of his frame as he moved through the gunship's interior, purple fabric dragging over scarred plating and concealed hardpoints, softening nothing. A
weapon locked against his spine.
Another locked low against his frame. He grabbed two sets of
restraints, securing them beneath the fall of his cloak. Lethal force remained the simplest solution to most variables. It was not always the most profitable. His gait carried no haste; each step landed with the exact same interval as the one before it.
At the ventral hatch, he paused while the gunship's systems painted a fresh entry vector across his vision.
INSERTION VECTOR SELECTED:
PRIMARY AIRLOCKS: COMPROMISED / CONTESTED
KNOWN BREACH POINTS: ACTIVE / HIGH TRAFFIC
SALVAGE PROCESSING ACCESS: VIABLE
MAINTENANCE CRAWL NETWORK: VIABLE
EXTERIOR HULL APPROACH: RECOMMENDED
TARGET PATH:
1. BOARD THROUGH LOW-TRAFFIC MAINTENANCE ACCESS
2. LOCATE LOGISTICS CORE
3. QUERY PERSONNEL MOVEMENT RECORDS
4. IDENTIFY RONHAR TANE LOCATION PROBABILITY
5. ASSESS SABOTAGE COMPLETION STATE
6. RECOVER HIGH-VALUE TECHNOLOGY WHERE PRACTICAL
The hatch opened, and space took him without drama. D-M0N fell upward from the Vanguard, magnetic grapples firing in silence as micro-thrusters corrected his drift. Rust Haven Station expanded before him, huge and wounded, its industrial bones wrapped in emergency light and old metal. It was a machine built to eat the dead remnants of war and produce something useful from them. D-M0N approved of the concept. He did not approve of its ownership.
A roar trembled faintly through the station structure as his audio receptors filtered through hull vibration and emergency comm chatter. Massive organic. Irritated. Armed. Moving toward the intrusion. The droid tagged the sound, compared it against known threat classes, and assigned it a temporary designation.
AUDIO EVENT: INTERNAL ROAR
SOURCE: LARGE BIOLOGICAL / UNKNOWN SPECIES
DISTANCE: INDETERMINATE
DIRECTION: TOWARD PRIMARY BREACH
THREAT INDEX: ELEVATED
CONTRACT RELEVANCE: CONDITIONAL
PRIORITY: UNCHANGED
His boots struck the station hull. Magnetic locks bit.
D-M0N crouched against the exterior plating, one clawed hand braced to the cold metal while his optics narrowed against reflected emergency light. Beneath him, Rust Haven shuddered with alarms, reactors, machinery, and fear. Organic fear bled through comm discipline in small, predictable ways: sharper voices, faster orders, unnecessary repetition. The station was not dead yet, but parts of it already understood the possibility.
A cutting tool extended from D-M0N's wrist. He selected a seam near a maintenance access panel, not because it was weak, but because it was useful. The first bright line of heat carved into the metal. He worked without flourish, without anger, and without the animal impatience of raiders or the ideological heat of rebels. Each motion was economical. Each spark fell away into the void.
Inside, someone wanted to sabotage the station. Someone wanted to defend it. Someone wanted to profit from it. D-M0N wanted the contract state resolved.
The panel gave way with a silent twist. He caught it before it could drift, secured it to the hull, and folded his frame through the access space with the unsettling ease of something designed to fit where organics could not. The station's internal maintenance crawl accepted him into darkness. Behind him, the maintenance panel remained open to space for three seconds longer, just enough for the darkness outside to look like it was watching. Then the panel sealed itself shut.
PROCESS STARTED: RUST_HAVEN_CONTRACT.EXE
CURRENT OBJECTIVE:
LOCATE LOGISTICS CORE.
SECONDARY QUERY:
RONHAR TANE // LIVE CAPTURE VALUE
PARALLEL EVENT:
STATION SABOTAGE IN PROGRESS.
STATUS:
HUNTING.
Zoro Igala
slipped into the Mahporeem system quietly. Waiting with their full stealth suites engaged, waiting for the arrival of whomever was coming. The Imperials had to be none the wiser.
Ronhar Tane
himself, a man wanted in several systems. Should one find him and bring him in alive to the rebellion, would be worth quite the payout. The only question is where he is.
