Shade had expected her first operation connected to Mahporeem to involve considerably more preparation than this.
That expectation had lasted until shortly after reaching Vlemoth Port, when the scale of the Imperial operation became impossible to ignore. Forces were advancing through Sanshur Flats, armor was maneuvering around Vlemoth Station, and enough military traffic crowded the local channels that Shade had stopped listening to most of it within minutes. She wasn't here to direct soldiers, and nobody had given her responsibility for the city. That suited her perfectly well. Her attention had settled instead upon the smaller operation unfolding beyond it, where a suspected InterStellar Regulators armory offered the sort of target she understood considerably better.
Weapons themselves didn't interest her much. They could be replaced, ammunition purchased again, buildings rebuilt. What interested Shade were the people, records, communications, and whatever someone decided was valuable enough to carry when they suddenly realized staying put had become a very bad idea.
She moved through the wooded outskirts at an unhurried pace, dark armor carrying nothing that visibly identified her with Mahporeem. Ronhar had offered her employment rather than a uniform, and Shade had no particular desire to advertise a new professional association to anyone who happened to recognize Imperial markings. The arrangement was still new enough to feel slightly strange anyway. A few days ago she'd been discussing terms with Captain Tane. Now his voice periodically filtered through the communications traffic while his gunship operated somewhere above the battlefield.
Apparently, Mahporeem strongly believed in efficient onboarding.
A faint smile touched her lips at the thought before she returned her attention to the terrain. The closer she came to the marked coordinates, the more evidence of repeated passage appeared beneath the trees. Vegetation had been disturbed along several stretches, while artificial structures occasionally interrupted the natural lines ahead. Shade slowed, rather than trusting the tactical marker too much. Coordinates had been given to her indicating where someone believed the armory was. They did not guarantee the most convenient approach had somehow become the safest.
Then a woman's voice reached her through the secured channel.
"Tane, I hear you. Hit the armory and I'll start nabbing those that flee. I'm about five minutes out."
Shade paused to listen until the transmission ended. She didn't recognize the voice, and unlike Ronhar, there was no familiarity attached to whoever was speaking. That wasn't particularly surprising. Shade had agreed to work for Mahporeem. She hadn't agreed to memorize everyone else who happened to be doing the same.
Access to the secured channel told her enough for the moment. Whoever the woman was, she was coordinating directly with Tane and intended to intercept anyone fleeing the armory once his attack began. Shade also knew enough from the wider communications traffic to understand that this wasn't a two-person operation. Other independent personnel were somewhere in the area, apparently converging upon the same objective while Ronhar prepared to strike it from above.
Shade considered that for a moment.
Perhaps
this was why he'd been so enthusiastic about adding an instructor.
She adjusted her route rather than continuing directly toward the armory. If the other operative intended to catch anyone fleeing one approach, there was little reason for Shade to crowd the same ground. People escaping a compromised position tended to choose whatever route looked least likely to be observed, and those were usually the people worth paying attention to anyway. Someone running away with a rifle was predictable. Someone running away with a datapad, case, or anything else they seemed unusually reluctant to abandon was considerably more interesting.
The forest grew quieter as she angled farther around the perimeter, or perhaps she was simply listening more carefully now. Something shifted through the undergrowth somewhere ahead and to her right. Shade stopped and waited, resisting the extremely reasonable temptation to draw conclusions from a sound she couldn't identify. The woman from the transmission was somewhere in these woods, and there was every possibility other friendly personnel were as well. Accidentally introducing herself to one of them with a blaster bolt seemed unnecessarily awkward.
She touched her comm instead.
"Unknown friendly approaching the armory; this is Shade. I heard your exchange with Tane." Her voice remained quiet, without the clipped urgency filling some of the wider Imperial channels.
"I'm approaching from another direction. Chiss woman, dark armor, and currently making a sincere effort not to shoot anyone working for Mahporeem." A hint of amusement slipped into her voice.
"I'd appreciate the same courtesy."
It wasn't much of an introduction, but it provided enough information to distinguish her from the people they were supposed to be fighting. If Mahporeem had somehow deployed another blue-skinned woman in dark armor to the same patch of forest without telling either of them, Shade was prepared to accept that the situation had become unnecessarily complicated.
She continued around the perimeter, keeping her attention on the ground as much as the trees ahead. A narrow depression passed between the vegetation nearby, too shallow for a proper road but possibly enough to indicate repeated foot traffic. Shade followed its direction with her eyes before speaking again.
"I'll keep clear of your approach and watch another way out. If someone leaves after the strike carrying something they seem unusually attached to, I may follow them rather than stop them immediately." A brief pause followed before the dry humor returned.
"No sense making them tell us where they're going if they're willing to show us for free."
The closer she came to the suspected position, the more carefully she searched for routes personnel familiar with the facility might choose. Service access, maintenance paths, old vehicle tracks, anything less obvious than the primary entrances. She wasn't particularly interested in being first through the door. Whoever else was operating in the area could decide for themselves how they wanted to approach the fight, and Shade was perfectly content to let Ronhar provide the loudest part of their introduction from above.
There was, however, one thing she hoped the others might keep in mind. Her fingers returned to the comm.
"One request for anyone working the armory, if circumstances allow it. Command personnel, records, communications equipment, or anyone trying very hard to escape with a datapad instead of a weapon would be useful intact. They may tell us more than whatever's left of the building afterward."
She left it there. It was a request, nothing more. Shade had neither the authority nor the inclination to tell people she'd never met how to conduct their part of the operation, and she had spent far too much time in the field to ask someone to risk getting shot for the sake of preserving a terminal or keeping an enemy officer conscious.
If circumstances allowed, it meant exactly that.
Ahead, the terrain offered her a better view toward one side of the suspected position, though not enough to tempt her into moving closer without reason. Somewhere above, Ronhar was preparing to make the armory a considerably less desirable place to spend the afternoon. Somewhere nearby were people Shade hadn't met yet, at least one of whom now knew to look for a Chiss woman in dark armor before deciding whether to shoot her.
That was probably sufficient introduction for the moment.
Shade settled into a position with enough cover to observe without trapping herself, her attention moving across the less obvious approaches to the armory. For once, she was perfectly content not to be the person starting the trouble. Ronhar seemed more than capable of handling that part, and another small smile touched her lips as she waited for the situation to change.
Whatever the Regulators valued most might not be sitting inside the armory when the dust settled. It might be the person trying hardest to get away with it.
Fiona Tierney
Zavik Maltheris
Shae'ri Mor
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QV-611
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Hunchun T’vok
Ronhar Tane
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