Private Slow Night

[Sergeant Omen]

Location: The Mythosaur's Den Cantina
Time: After hours

Omen was putting up chairs onto tables at the end of the day as he tried to clean up his bar. He had given the staff the night off as a gesture of good face for all of their hard work. Plus... cleaning up all the blood from the fighting pit got boring after a while so he thought he would take on the burden for at least one night. But in his haste to clean up around his business, he had evidently left the "Open" sign on. Now only the Ones could guess who would knock on the restaurant's door.

Raze Krayt

 

[Raze Krayt]

The door to the establishment opened with a bang. A bitter chill swept through the passageway. With a snap, the ends of the visitor's cloak cracked in the air under the tempestuous assault of wind. Their cowl was up and drawn low, whether to keep the cold out or to hide their features, though a yellow glow peeked out from the shadows within.

Heavy boots clomped across the floor as the visitor crossed over the threshold. They paused, turned, and reached out with a black-gloved hand to take hold of the door. With little effort, the seal was restored and the outside air kept out of the restaurant and bar.

They turned back around, and one hand lifted to cast the hood back.

"Krayt Dragon's sphincter it is cold outside," a deep voice bellowed as the six foot tall woman with an extra four-inches of two, thick, swept-back horns stood near the front of the establishment. The glow seen earlier came from patches along her neck and cheeks that possessed a natural bioluminescent quality. Her bright eyes scanned the interior and narrowed at the scene before her. "But not that cold. Where in a Bantha's ass is everyone?"

Her gaze landed on Omen where he stood cleaning up the place. Seemed like he was the only other living soul there. Staff, then. How could she be the only customer here? "Piss off an Elder God or something? Can't be a bad Health and Safety Inspection report; no one reads those anyway."

Tag: Sergeant Omen

 

[Sergeant Omen]

Omen would look up from his task of wiping down a table with a small smirk on his face when he first heard the bursting open of the front door. Apparently, some off-worlder needed shelter from Kestri's constant winter storms. Well, he wasn't going to throw her out back into the storm just because he wanted to finish up so he might as well figure out what she wanted.

The Clone raised an eyebrow when he first looked at the stranger's face. Her eyes blazed a dull yellow and with her dark red face and without the way she talked being specifically Mando, he would have sworn she was a Sith. Krayt Dragon's sphincter... yeah she was a mando alright.

Standing up straight, the former ARC turned barkeep would regard her with both suspension and curiosity. Hell, he couldn't even figure out what species she was. "Welcome to Kestri, Hoth's little brother. As you can see it's the happiest place in all of the galaxy. As for the lack of people, the locals know we close at midnight and it's 12:30 am. I'm just staying to clean up but I'll see what I can do for you in the meantime." It would be easy enough for him to go into the kitchen and whip up so food for the unknown alien but right now he had some questions. "To be honest, I'm surprised you weren't executed in some alley before getting here. With that get up and your skin... plus the enclave's no sith policy... well you can see where people might get the wrong idea."

Raze Krayt

 

[Raze Krayt]

"Executed?" Raze snorted. "I may not be the Alor of the Krayt Clan with that fiery dog [ Shai Maji ] whose bite is worse than her bark, but anyone that tries taking me on won't walk straight for a full year!" With a flourish, the red woman swept the cloak aside and whipped it over her head in one fluid motion. The outer covering draped over her left arm revealing the metal suit of armor and leather that had been hidden in an effort to stay warm. It wasn't that of a Commando ready to wage war, but it would do well in a fight.

"Everyone on this rock think red people are Sith now? Hadn't realized we'd become racists. Might have been building my Crew in the Core for a good while -- building some fine buildings, ships, and even a planet some Dathomiri Whore would like -- but I doubted this lot would change that much in so little time." Raze strode deeper into the establishment, her yellow eyes noting the man had put up the chairs. With a grunt, she turned toward the bar to drop her cloak atop a stool.

Raze's eyes fixed on the man once more. "As for your hours of operation... Have we become light-weights at that? Some curfew I didn't bother to pay attention to in the 'Welcome to the Ice Sphincter of the Galaxy' brochure? Some day I will give that Quartermaster [ The Quartermaster ] a piece of my mind about this place. Convince her to loosen up and let me terraform this place somewhere tolerable."

"Name's Raze. Raze Krayt. My Crew's the one that'll come along and rebuild whatever everyone else breaks."

Tag: Sergeant Omen

 

[Sergeant Omen]

Omen just chuckled at the Vod's response. Glad to know he had someone else in his corner when it came to Shai Krayt. "Didn't mean to offend you. Just wanted you to know what the worst scenario is. Some of the more revenge-filled of us tend to hate the sith a lot still and the government's policy and the sponsored raid on the EE didn't help that."

The different colored eyes followed the new patron and he moved over to the bar with her. Pulling another stool down for her before getting her a glass of lemon-flavored Tihaar, he took notice of her claim that she was a builder, an architect. He would have to stick it in the back of his mind for later while answering her questions. "Would you want to walk home in that weather at night? Its mostly just my own policy honestly. My staff needs its sleep and I can afford to do reduced hours. We also deliver so there is that excuse for people to stay at home."

The Clone chuckled at her grips about what to terraform the entire planet. You got to hand it to her, she did have big ideas. "I agree somewhat or at least putting a biodome over Kestri and some of the land around the city to reflect on Mandalore's hay day. Maybe the same designs that existed during the Clone Wars. It would be nice showing our young people where our culture was birthed" Extending his hand, his own name came out in greeting when the engineer had offered hers. "Omen, its a pleasure to meet you Raze. Maybe we can work together in the future."

"Oh, I had been meaning to maybe get a hearing on this too." The former ARC quietly ducked under the table and brought out blueprint for what looked like a nuclear reactor, spreading it across the bar. "I've wanted to put this as the cites main power source with various buildings getting smaller backup versions. After the breakout, it is clear we need a better power system than what we have now. I was going to try to get a hearing on my little doodle but now that you are here, a professional's opinion wouldn't hurt. So what do you think? Hopefully, I got the underground springwater cooling pipes right."

Raze Krayt

 

[Raze Krayt]

"Offend me?" Raze snorted. A sharp wave of the hand dismissed the thought. "You should hear the kark my crew says. There's even a few genuine xenophobes among them. Forced to work with me because they got no where else to go. Best motivation, really. As for revenge-filled vod," the woman shrugged before she lifted her right arm and flexed bulging muscle mass, "I'll put them straight."

"That's why you draw them in before it gets Yeti-sack cold. Now they'll stay until almost the crack of dawn drinking the time away. Sure, you might get a hole in a wall here or there from all the excitement, but that's living." Raze grinned over at the man. "Now as for you delivering," the red woman leaned in close as though there were anyone to overhear, "that I can go for. Sometimes we get stuck on a job late. Could use some stiff drinks to stay afloat." Drunken Construction? She was a Master in the Art.

"Ha." Raze straightened up with a renewed grin. "Biodome? Could build one of those in my sleep. Very nearly did once." She tapped her lips with a single finger for a moment in reflection. Odd the man mentioned like designs during the Clone Wars. Raze's brow dipped a bit at the reference. History wasn't her strong suit, but sounded old. Really old. Like, could not be bothered to pay attention to a teacher yapping about it old. How'd he know something about designs from back then? He study architecture?

Raze clasped the man's offered hand with a firm grip. As Omen might have expected given the none too humble muscles she'd shown off earlier. "You need something built, fixed, or remodeled my Crew can do it. I can scrounge up people for small and large jobs alike. Know what they're about too; I eat anyone that tries lying like a Sith to my face."

Speaking of which, the man then drew out some plans and spread them out for a look. Raze had to admit, walking into a bar she hadn't expected to be confronted with plans for a power plant. Her eyes quickly slid over the blueprints without a terse sound, however. She'd only get irate if she left without getting a drink. "We had to rush getting the backup generator online during that mess," Raze growled more to herself than anything. "Sith didn't screw around with the damage done to the main facility either. Just lucky the grid hadn't been built by a Gungan, or we'd have been out of power for more than a day."

After a few seconds she nodded. "One thing you can say about this ice ball is it makes cooling things more efficient. Its keeping them from being too cold that's the trick. Condensation doesn't mesh well with power generators. Yeah," Raze straightened up and looked over at Omen, "distributed power generation. Not bad. Already accounted for overloads? You put the small ones closer to houses without an energy sink and it could get nasty if the Sith figure out how to pop them. You do this kind of thing often, Omen?" Bartenders could do blueprints of power plants, sure; but it wasn't common. Definitely not what she'd expected walking in the door.

Tag: Sergeant Omen

 

[Sergeant Omen]

Omen chuckled as Raze told him how to run his bar. Well, he wouldn't say anything for now but if she kept on telling him how to run his bar they would have problems. "I'll keep it in mind. As for the delivery. I'll make sure you're a priority so you can get your booze faster."

As he pulled his hand away, the clone wondered if she really was telling the whole truth about her really building an entire biodome from scratch but decided not to question it for now. "I'll make sure to advertise your crew on the community board. Hopefully, you'll get a lot more business that way."

With a sigh, the former ARC shook his head as the Alien growled at the mention of the breakout. Why she was so mad he did not know but maybe she just hated failure as much as he did. He would point out the facts of the design as she brought them up. "The pipes would have insolated heating coils to keep the water that would cool the generator at the right temperature. As for the overloads, I was hoping to have a central control room to help regulate the entire system and if the worst came to worst, a two-key system would blow every generator sky high and make Kestri a smoking crater. We don't want the Sith to get our prize intact, do we?"

Omen blushed slightly when Raze asked if he did this thing often. "Not really... I mainly just find something that needs doing, get obsessed with it and then complete it. Same thing with making blueprints. It is not that hard to put something on paper, especially when it has good logic and research behind it." He vaguely gestured to a door that lead to the kitchens. "I have a replica of the smaller ones downstairs if you want to see it."

Raze Krayt

 

[Raze Krayt]

Community board? Eh, maybe someone rich would see it. Never knew who dropped in on a joint for a pint. And Raze did say her Crew could do small jobs; which had been the truth, she could always find experienced people that could use a little more experience before they got thrown into the big ones.

Ordinarily you could build a heat pump to help with the regulation rather than wasting a lot of energy keeping the pipes from freezing; Kestri, however, was a ball of ice. The cold penetrated the surface of the planet far deeper than those with ticklish grassy meadows. Some of the alternative methods of power generation would probably be best in the frozen wastes. Something that didn't need water or heat. Still, it wasn't an impossible task to build what Omen had in mind.

Her bright eyes lifted to regard the clone for a moment after he described a means to deliberately blow the whole damn thing up. Raze stood there for several seconds just looking at the man without blinking. Blaster-loving-grenade-humping-son-of-a... Why did these militant type always think of building in a self-destruct that killed as many people as possible? It was an energy source not a Sith-kissing bomb! It pained a builder like Raze to make something just so it could turn into a smoldering heap.

Sudden laughter and a clap on the shoulder followed Omen's gun-ho attitude toward learning. "You say that like it's easy. Most people can't draw a map of their bed room let alone make blueprints." Raze had seen some attempts. They were about as complete as someone drawing a stick figure and calling themselves the next Master Painter.

"You built one, huh? Yeah, let's go take a look at this. Fewer that can design things actually have the mechanical knowledge to build it. The number of people that say 'just follow the instructions' always amuses me. Especially when they get upset trying to do that building a dresser. A dresser," Raze roared with laughter.

Tag: Sergeant Omen

 

[Sergeant Omen]

Omen frowned as he saw he had made a misstep when saying that he would blow up the energy source if the Sith managed to take hold of Kestri. Time to correct his statement. "Let me be clear. A reactor meltdown would be the last resort opinion and pretty much the Enclave's last middle finger before its probable destruction. I'm not taking blowing the whole reactor system up lightly. At least then our attackers won't get into our records and hunt us down one by one."

The Clone would just give an awkward chuckle at the alien's laughter. "I didn't have a chance for education growing up or at least a well-rounded one so I'm trying to make up for it by reading all the guides I can. Just want to make up for the lost time you know? I'm not saying I know everything but I do like looking at the past for today's problems. Who knows, maybe it will work out. As for the generator, we will think of what you think of it."

He led her through the double doors and the kitchen before getting into an elevator and pulling a gate shut behind her as she entered. "And down into the earth, we go..." Quickly they descend into the ground, with one person knowing what was ahead and the other in the dark.

When the doors opened up, there was another set of heavy double doors with a retina scanner which Omen activated. In a flash, the door opened and revealed a normal tidy workshop with workstations, a little library, and a big fat 7-foot tall plasma generator with tubes snaking out of it and into the dirt ceiling above. "I decided to go with plasma because I thought that would be the easiest substance to contain plus it's one of most available sources. With the Confederacies collapse, it leaves Naboo's plasma supplies open for outside parties to grab up at bargain prices. That is where I got the material for the generator and I still got more for other generators besides."

The former ARC would look at her with complete honesty on his face, wanting to know her true thoughts on this project. "So what do you think of the medium-sized prototype?"

Raze Krayt

 

[Raze Krayt]

Raze nodded slight with a grunt at Omen explaining how blowing it up was to keep it out of enemy hands. Didn't much like the thought of it being the Enclave's 'probable destruction,' but Raze was far from the star-crossed lover of the Enclave. They were big. They were vod. They had creds. Seemed like a great place for an honest business woman to find work for her crews.

With a rolling shrug, Raze regarded the man. "Education's nothing fancy. You put in the effort then or now that's all that matters. Half the stuff you learn gets forgotten anyway; best it's for is getting the young to figure out where their talents lay." If you weren't introduced to a certain field of study you might never know it was the perfect fit for who you were. History meant something to someone, for instance, but not much for Raze. You could use some historical methods of constructing things, but times and materials changed; so did the architectural decisions and construction methods.

The red woman strode through the place after the man. Was it a good idea entering the basement of some random person whose bar was apparently closed, and they were all alone? No. No, it was not a good idea. For him. Good thing Raze wasn't a serial killer though. Thought of her being in danger never so much as crossed her mind.

After they left the lift, she leaned to the side to look at the security Omen had installed on this secret lab of his. Optic scanner? Taking it kind of seriously. Either the bar overcharged on its drink, or Omen wasn't just a humble barkeep. Security, a lab, and a reactor prototype weren't all cheap -- individually or all together.

Once they were in, Raze slowly strode toward the reactor and planted her hands on her hips. "Huh." Cheap plasma from Naboo? Explained a little of the affordability. Not everything, but fueling the beastie would have been a significant cost component. Guy wasn't a fool that much was certain. Slowly she began to walk around it with her glowing gaze sliding up and down the construction.

After a few moments she reached forward to give a tug on one of the conduits. Visually it looked solid, but nothing was certain until you had a good grasp of something. "Looks like good work. Few spots you could improve the efficiency of the design, but for someone that built this on their own in a secret lab I'm not complaining." Guides were only as good as whoever wrote them, and most always skipped something or didn't bother explaining why something should be the way it was. Little details mattered. In the end, though, the guides got you there and the subtle changes weren't earth-shattering. Omen could pick up on them over time and use them or not. Engineering and construction had a certain, subtle art to it -- a piece of its designer like fingerprints.

"So what's your plan?" Raze looked back over at Omen. "You thinking of presenting this to the Council? I could tell you which office to submit the plan through. Paperwork has to start in the right spot for a chance it'll get where it needs to go."

Sergeant Omen

 

[Sergeant Omen]

Omen managed a soft chuckle to contrast to the alien's shrug. "Pretty much the reason I'm doing it now. The flash training I received trained me for combat but it left a lot of areas in the civilian landscape pretty barren. So here I am, running a bar, making a distribution business go and trying to make up for the lost time. Plus I'm 13 going on 14 now so I guess I'm pretty young to reinvent myself."

Downstairs, Omen with a small confident smile as he stood back to let the professional look over his work. He was happy that so far she hadn't cited any flaws in the design. He had spent the last couple of weeks pounding out the design and he was glad that he made good use of the time. To kill the expert especially before she gave a ruling on his generator would be very bad form.

The conduits were solid and could not be pulled out of place when the vod tugged at them. They seemed stable enough but definitely could be sliced through and or tampered with. "I need to put some metal over that in the final design or just make the whole thing into a pillar. Just easier to tinker with it this way."

He would nod at Raze's comments. It definitely wasn't a final design by any means and still needed some more tweaking just as the engineer had pointed out. "Hey, its why I brought you down here, to have a second pair of eyes point out its flaws. If there is any way I can improve the design then I'm more than willing to hear you out on them. Details mattered a great deal and the Clone knew they could make or break any design. The Death Star wasn't still around for a reason after all.

When asked what his plan was, the former ARC would just shrug. "Well, to be honest, I just finished with this version yesterday so I haven't really had the time to make a plan yet. Now that you got me thinking about it, I would probably file it at the patent office if we have one, and then if it gets approved, present it to the council." After a moment, he would present a plan that might just interest her. "Would you be willing to cosponsor it? If the government decides to put a contract in for these things, we would split the profits say... 75/25. I made up the actual rough design so far I would get the majority but you would still get a large chunk for assistance in filing the patent and helping me get the final design hammered out. We could put your payment out as a consultation fee. But yes, if you are willing to help me out, I will gladly take it and hopefully, we both can get the reward we want."

Raze Krayt