Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Shopping Trip

@[member="Captain Larraq"]

TO: Mandal Hypernautics
FROM: Office of High Councilor Merrill, High Council of the Fringe Confederacy, Annaj

Captain-

On advice from our urban warfare specialists, I'm overhauling the way my government does business in close quarters. Mandal Hypernautics comes well recommended in terms of innovation. I intend to visit Manda'yaim next week, and I'd like to meet with you or a trusted associated while I'm there.

-R.M.
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]

The message from the Fringe representative crossed Rygel Larraq's desk and garnered an arched eyebrow from the CEO of Mandal Hypernautics. Unsure if the representative had a specific product in mind or not, Larraq arranged for a small product demonstration to be performed upon her arrival. Preparations in motion, Larraq drafted his response personally.

-Mandal Hypernautics would like to thank you for your consideration. We have a wide range of products available to resolve all your military and security needs. For your convenience, a product demonstration will await your arrival at MHHQ.-
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

A week's passage found Rave on Manda'yaim, her transport an unassuming Washburn-class. The main purpose of the visit involved serving as a courier for a special visitor to the battered planet, but that was another story, and Rave had time to kill. Hence leaving things open enough to get the product show.

She dressed simply enough for the demonstration, in a red-and-black robe with a hood that covered her eyes. She was not, as it happened, Miraluka, but her victorious kaggath against a Sith Lord of the Empire had left her upper face scarred, and she needed the practice at perceiving her surroundings with instinct. Her escorts were Rakata in Fringe Confederation uniforms.

"Captain Larraq, I presume?"
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]

Rygel Larraq held out his hand to the woman. "You presume correctly ms Merrill." He said to the woman as he shook her hand. Even while his eyes darted around her covered upper face, he knew better than to ask the reason for such coverings. Judging by her lips and jawline, he knew that the adornment was not from shame or modesty as to her features.

As Larraq nodded his greetings to the woman's escorts, the roar of a powerful engine heralded the arrival of a red, civilian model Oya'karir ground vehicle. The vehicle came to a stop just beside the two representatives and a young man in a cheap suit with a red vest stepped from the vehicle's driver compartment. Larraq held the passenger door open for the woman as the young valet attendant motioned for her associates to seat themselves in the four center-facing seats at the rear of the vehicle. "It's a bit of a drive to the testing range, but I think you'll like what we have planned for you in the desert." Said Larraq to the woman. "And the trip should be pretty fun as well. Have you ever driven a wheeled vehicle?" Larraq asked the woman as he helped her into the seat.
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

She accepted his help with good grace, and, in truth, it didn't feel so bad to operate with a little attention. Normally her style of interaction, High Councilor or not, was more self-sufficient. Opaque cloth fluttered over her eyes as she chuckled. "I have, yes," she said. "I spent a handful of years as copilot on a freighter. We had wheeled vehicles for planets with odd magnetic fields."

She leaned in to tap the speed readout on the dashboard, just once. "I'm curious how much of this two-twenty can be safely achieved in a desert, Captain."
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]


Larraq laughed as he took his place in the driver's seat and instructed his passengers to utilize the safety straps. Once satisfied that his VIP and her people in the back were safely restrained within the vehicle, he shifted gears and slammed the accelerate to the floor. The engine roared and the tires gripped the concrete beneath them as the vehicle catapulted forwards and rocketed towards the boundary wall of Sundari City. Buildings rushed past them as the vehicle trundled across the concrete and the speedometer rapidly arched along its path as it tracked the speed of the vehicle. For all of its efforts to race over the bumps and divisions of streets made for walking and not ground vehicles, which hadn't been used heavily in far more than centuries, the ride was as smooth as any repulsor speeder as advanced shock systems balanced the frame of the vehicle against the violent bumps and grinds that were abusing the durasteel-mesh tires that gripped the ground.

As the outer-wall of the domed city loomed ahead of them, Larraq could feel the passengers in the back getting nervous and fidgety. The outer wall got closer and closer as the vehicle continued its acceleration and pedestrians startled as the roaring machine raced past them. When it finally looked like Larraq's suicidal driving would murder them all, two massive doors slid aside and blinding daylight rushed to greet the approaching vehicle.

Once outside the city, the blinding light of a desert sun beat down upon them and the forward window tinted slightly against the ultraviolet radiation that now battered the vehicle. On the inside of the transparisteel window in front of them, holographic maps and coordinates displayed upon the tinted windows. For the moment, Larraq was doing the equivalent of 'flying by the ball'. The vehicle slowed slightly as it roared over the sand and kicked up a huge dust-trail behind itself.
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

The Rakata guards in the back seat were borderline primitive, culturally cannibalistic, more at home with a solid blade than anything technological. They'd tackled immense monstrosities, but speed still had the potential to unnerve them. And Larraq's breakneck pace chewed that potential down to the bone.

The low hood blew back, revealing purple eyes surrounded by mild scarring, and hair that wasn't quite black. The face couldn't be more than twenty; the mood of eyes, scars aside, was closer to fifty. She held onto the straps that crossed her chest, and didn't bother to put the hood back up until they left the walls and the sun beat down. She held the Miralukan veil-hood down over her eyes with thumb and forefinger, and her concentration, such as it was, remained on keeping the Rakata calm.
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]

The vehicle bounced and leaped across the sands that surrounded Sundari. Rocks and ridges launched the vehicle into the air for a few sickening moments before it found purchase with the ground once more. After 15 minutes of such treatment, they approached a line of signs secured into the desert sand. As they roared past the signs, the letters revealed themselves into a warning written in both Mando and Basic.

-Caution. Live-fire testing range. Do not enter.-

As the vehicle continued to race into the desert and past the row of signs, two plumes of dust erupted from behind nearby dunes as two military grade Oya'karir Ground Vehicles intercepted the civilian model of the vehicle. Each vehicle was crewed by three Beskar'gam wearing Mandalorians sporting Hyperion Security colors. The same colors worn by Rygel Larraq in the driver's seat of the red sport vehicle. As the two armed and armored vehicles took up flanking formations on either side of the sport vehicle, the specific weapons on their rear mountings became apparent. A Gatling slugthrower on one and the light mass-driver on the other.

After a few moments of moving in tandem, the three vehicles slowed to a stop at the crest of a ridge and a vast array of small buildings and vehicles revealed themselves to the occupants of the vehicles. Long-wrecked vehicles sat half covered in sand near functioning models of the same vehicles and massive walking machines strode across the sand. Five of the armored ground vehicles sat with revving engines as yellow and black painted Cyclops Battle Droids occupied the crew seats of the vehicles. Dozens of other Cyclops Battle Droids stood in formation in the sands with blasters and assorted weapons in their hands. Arranged next to the vehicles were three Tracyaat Walker artillery vehicles and four Trat'aab Walkers with various weapons.

On the other side of the testing area stood fifteen Guardian Recon Droids and three Automated Gun Platforms. From their vantage point, the occupants of the three spectating vehicles could get a clear view of the two kilometer square testing range. Turning to the woman in the seat next to him, Larraq asked "Would you like to get a closer look at the products before the demonstration?"
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

"Yes, thank you." She unbuckled and strode out onto the sand flanked by her Rakata guards. Eloquence evaded her; she had her eye on the prize. It'd be a schutta of a trap, she recognized, but money would pretty probably do a better job of keeping her safe than anything else she could bring to the table.

The bulky Cyclops units came first, and to be frank she didn't think much of them - apart from their intimidation potential -- until she got close and noted their gyroscopes' minute adjustments to balance and posture. From there she moved to the Tracyaat walkers, basically just big parabolic plasma guns on legs -- and from there to the Tra'taab. She lingered over those, examining the modular weapons mounts and the options available. The Guardian, she knew from friends, but those modular mounts got just as much of her time as the Tra'taab. And then, of course, the Kebii'tra Aranar, both hovering and grounded. The preliminary inspection took about fifteen minutes, though she said nothing until she backed off.

"If you're ready to begin, Captain, I'm ready to watch."
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]

Rygel Larraq smiled at the woman and returned to the driver's seat of the vehicle. Sitting down, he spoke into the communicator in his ear and ordered the demonstration to begin. At once, the droids moved towards their designated starting areas and waited for a second signal. Once all of the droids were in their assigned locations, Larraq honked the horn of the car once and the mock battle began.

Armored vehicles began racing to the flanks of the engagement zone and infantry droids began triple-time marching their way directly forwards. Lumbering walking vehicles strode forward behind the infantry and lobbed fire over the heads of the smaller battle droids at the opposing team. To the rear, the large artillery vehicles simply stood their ground and began firing at the other side of the field. The ammo was obviously non-lethal variants of standard. The plasma artillery weapons were replaced with simple rubber balls, as were the projectiles of the slugthrowers. Blaster weaponry had their power reduced to the lowest settings, and each droid had been programmed to respond in a specific way for the duration of the demonstration. Larraq would have rather demonstrated with live ammunition, but he simply couldn't justify the destruction of so much valuable product for a simple demonstration.

So for now, this would work.

Larraq pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit one as he watched the show. The large battle droids on the left side of the field were moving forward in packs. Those with heavy weaponry targeted red-team's support vehicles and those with rapid-fire weapons targeted the smaller battle droids. The droids of red-team took shelter behind debris and obstacles that had been placed on the battlefield and returned fire. Both red-team and blue-team were performing admirably and were displaying tactic and counter-tactic behaviors as Larraq had intended them to.

Rygel Larraq smiled slightly as he saw blue-team pull forwards one of the Automated Gun Platforms to help deal with a cluster of Cyclops Battle Droids that had taken shelter in an old building. The four mass-driver flak cannons equipped on the droid were starship grade anti-starfighter weapons. Each time the weapon fired, a round was pre-set to explode at a specific distance from the weapon. It was a highly effective weapon against fighters and other light aerospace craft. But against infantry, the weapon was about as deadly as a weapon could be. Hot rubber spread in all directions as the ammunition detonated in front of and inside the structure, spraying melted rubber onto the two squads of battle droids that hid there. On the highlighted display that was projecting on the windshield of the vehicle, Larraq watched the red icons of the two squads of droids turn black, indicating their confirmation of defeat.
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

She'd expected something less thorough -- or perhaps she'd just expected a lesser product. To see mixed units coordinate tactically against each other, rubber shot or not, piqued the interest of the part of her brain that had commanded warfleets. In surface combat, both she and the Nightsister Elder whose memories resided in her had always worked alone, so the exercise wasn't exactly speaking to her expertise, but she'd seen battle droid units in combat before, and this impressed her much more.

Well, that, and she'd done her research, as best she could.

"This is more than acceptable, Captain," she said when the thunder ceased to roll. "I came here intending to select one or two of your products, but your demonstration makes a good case for how well they work together. We'll take the lot -- enough for rapid-response forces in population centers on seven worlds. We've recently had to deal with two unprovoked invasions, both of which we successfully repelled using inferior military hardware; we'd like to broaden our assets."
 
Rygel Larraq smiled at the woman seated next to him and issued an order over his communicator. The droids all began walking, hovering, or rolling off to some destination to the west as a small army of Modular General Labor Droids approached the mock war-zone and began cleaning it of shell casings and other debris. Wind and sand whipped around them as a Galaar-class Heavy Shuttle descended to the ground behind them. Nodding at the transport, "I've arranged for us to take a more comfortable ride back to the office. Drinks and refreshments should be waiting for us on the shuttle." Larraq said to @[member="Rave Merrill"] as he stepped from his personal vehicle and walked to the rear of the vehicle where he waited for her. "My people are drafting up the orders now. By the time we get back to the office, everything should be ready for review and signatures."
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

Rave shielded her eyes from the dust that rose from the shuttle's landing. "Much obliged, Captain," she said. "I don't mind the heat -- Force knows I spend enough of my time at a forge -- but I've heard of this shuttle. I was hoping I'd have a chance to see one. The design aesthetic is...striking. I'm told my brother was moderately furious when he saw it on the market. He'd been working on something that I think was visually similar."

She boarded. "This is the civilian variant, I take it. I'd like to purchase one of these, the military variant, for personal use. If I like it well enough, you'll probably see a larger offer, though naval procurement is somewhat outside my purview."
 
Larraq smiled at @[member="Rave Merrill"] as they boarded the shuttle. "This one is my personal shuttle, but I have a number that are just like it. The 'luxury model' if you will..." Larraq said to the woman. "If you have an eye for it though, I can work one into the contract. On the house."

"Though, if ship contracts are on the table, who exactly would I need to be speaking with? I've been looking to branch out and obtain contracts and sponsorship outside of Mandalorian boarders." Larraq added as the ramp closed behind them.
 
@[member="Captain Larraq"]

"Ship procurement, your best bet is Grand Admiral Ashin Varanin. I know she's...waxed eloquent to the High Council over her frustrations with our combat capacity, in a few roles, anywhere from corvette to heavy cruiser. Our light Star Destroyers and up can match or exceed anything in the galaxy in their tonnage, our fightercraft are solid for the most part, but we apparently have some gaps in between. I'm told you specialize in small capital ships. If you were to present her with some options and my recommendation that she take you seriously, you'd likely get some traction."
 
@[member="Rave Merrill"]

"I think that would be a sound maneuver." Larraq said as they took their seats in the lounge area of the craft. "Let her know my interest in further dealings with the Fringe and we'll arrange for war-game scenarios to be played out for her review. I think she'll be quite pleased with some of the vessels that Mandal Hypernautics has been developing."

Larraq took a glass of wine from a nearby server and felt the slight shift in gravity as the craft ascended from the desert floor. Soon they would be back at his office and even sooner would he find his company several million credits richer. The benefits of providing quality product to those that needed it.

Distantly, Larraq wondered what poor fools would end up encountering his warmachines on Fringe worlds as the shuttle accelerated towards its destination.
 

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