Wildcards

[Kaiden Rohn]

Wildcard. He remembered his callsign. He remembered the man. Kaiden didn't have a lot of friends. But he was about the closest thing to it. Havoc Squad was gone now. Dead. Missing. Or in his case, failed. He failed to lead them. He failed to rally them. To keep them together. So they left, or died in some distant place, surrounded by strangers or utterly alone. And it broke Kaiden's heart. So he was trying to do some good. Trying. The only way he knew, the only thing he knew how to do- was to kill. He was a medic at one point, but that was far too long ago to matter. He couldn't do any good nowadays. He was a washed-up trooper with no purpose. But he was trying to find one. And that just so happened to be taking on one of the bigger criminal groups on Coruscant. It wasn't easy work- after all, the constant shift of governments, battles, and lack of control on the planet made it easy for ne'er-do-well types to take control of large swaths. So Kaiden had begun a campaign of terror. He wanted to make a point, so he donned the only thing that he knew could make a point: his old Havoc squad armor. The white and red made a good impact where it needed to- visages of days gone by struck fear into the hearts of thugs. They were a superstitious lot, which Kaiden exploited during nighttime raids. He never made a pattern or a habit, just a constant string of attacks that were brutally efficient. Coruscant Security Forces turned a blind eye, initially marking it as gang violence, but the efficiency was too much for criminals, after a while.

IEDs, beheadings, ambushes- it all was culminating now. He had found them. He found the big cheese of one of the larger three groups. A Trandoshan going by Baric. Baric would be the one to earn his ire, earn his wrath. Baric was known for his savagery- and rumors of cannibalism of his enemies. He had killed Trandoshans before. He'd do it again. But this time, he needed help. He needed help from someone whom he could trust. Someone who was the best of the best.

@Kiyron. The wildcard. He was playing it.

Kaiden sat in the Trooper, the bar that he had reformed Havoc Squad in. It was run-down and abandoned after the Sith occupation. But the building was still there, and more importantly, the backroom. He'd been using it as a base of operations, and it showed. An actual cork board was hung on the wall, with paper readouts of targets, intel, and anything that Kaiden had gathered regarding his mission. Ammo crates, stolen weapons and gear littered the walls. On the table was a holographic map of the target area, a large warehouse surrounded by landing platforms. Isolated from the rest of the level that they were on, it was a highly defensible position that he couldn't breach alone. He ran a hand through his hair, and set the helmet down on the table, waiting for his old friend. He hadn't spoken to him in years, and was even more surprised when he came to respond to his message. It was a shot in the dark that landed somehow. He was lucky to have at least one friend that was alive and willing to help him. A real wildcard. A real good man. He glanced around the table, seeing the ghosts of his past come to life for a moment.

He smiled, a weary, exhausted smile.

"I'll do right by you all, I promise."

 

[Kiyron]

Kiyron studied the missive, turning it over and over in his hands. Kaiden was alive and well still- even still active in a way. Not unlike Kiyron's own method of staying active- bounty hunting. But from what Kiyron had been able to gather on Coruscant's recent activities, he suspected Kaiden had taken it in another direction.

The speeder slowed to a crawl, the driver giving him the thumb to get out. Kiyron nodded, helmet dipping as he slipped over the side. His gear was tied to the back of his armor and it shifted as he hit the ground with a thud. The speeder sped off, roaring up and away. He wasn't sticking around on this level, not with the boarded up buildings coated in gang graffiti. It was not a nice place. He frowned at the thought and considered. It never really had been. But the cantina was still here.

He strode over to the door, debris and garbage crunching beneath his boots. The door creaked open with a shrill groan of protest before grinding to a halt. He let out a slow chuckle that echoed. The place had actually gone downhill. Hard to believe. The helmet readouts sprang to life in the dark room and he filtered through to low-light vision. The place was a wreck- coated in yet more graffiti, with scattered and broken furniture, with evidence lying around that creatures had made it their home for a time being. He couldn't see any sign of Kaiden, but if the man was around here, he'd be in the back.

Kiyron picked his way through the abandoned doorway, hosting the pack higher on his back as he stepped in through the last door. There was Kaiden- older and more exhausted looking than Kiyron remembered, but that was the way of the galaxy. He reached up and pulled off his own helmet, setting it on the table by the holoprojector, eyes sweeping the room. It was well-stocked for a war, especially one against the criminal element. off came the gauntlets as he leaned forward on the table, both cybernetic hands clearly visible and softly whirring as he flexed them.

"Been a long time," he said at last, after a couple moments, eyes still sweeping the room before focusing on the hologram. "Looks like you've been busy." He unslung his backpack and set it on the floor. It clanked as the weapons settled on the duracrete floor. "But still hanging out here." A thought occurred to him and Kiyron pursed his lips for a moment, but let it pass. He'd wait to hear what Kaiden wanted to say beforehand.

Kaiden had been among the first to welcome Kiyron into the Republic and its behemoth military structure. Kei and the Wildcards had been first. It's where the callsign had come from, and Kiyron had kept it though everything that happened later. But after they had defected to the Army of Light, Kiyron had stayed behind. Drifted for a while, but then had found a home with Havoc Squad under the other man's wings. It had been a good time before the Republic fell apart and died from the inside. They'd been scattered to the stars after. Some to the Silvers. Others to the Alliance. And some out for themselves.

Was this a new beginning then?

[member="Kaiden Rohn"]

 

[Kaiden Rohn]

He'd been busy all right.

Busy being a drunkard. Busy being a man with nothing left. Busy with- what was he busy with? He had nothing. He felt nothing. He only felt memories and regret. He looked up at his old friend, and sighed. He ran his hands through his eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. He eyed the hands. Hands defined humanity. And there he was, with two sets of false hands. Two artificial hands. Two hands that couldn't hold a lover the same. Hold a child the same. He looked solemn at his friend, a man whom he was placed in charge of at one point. He sighed, and stood up slowly. It had been a long time. Too long. He looked at the armor- distinctly one of a Mandalorian. Kaiden followed his gaze around the room.


"I never got to make things right with the team. I should've been there for you all."He said solemnly, and leaned forward on the table."I should've been there when the Republic fell apart. We could've..."He waved his hand. Trailing off into a tangent would only make the pain worse. He looked at the hologram in the center of the room, then over to Kiyron."Any good Republic Trooper worth his salt puts his boots here when he's weary."He said, smirking at Kiyron. He wanted to say that he should've, but that was in both their pasts now. The part that defined Kaiden was gone. His beloved Republic, reduced to ruin by apathy and neglect from it's leaders.

"I uh, need your help. I need you."Truth be told, he needed his team. But Kiyron was the only team he knew was left. And he knew he could count on him.

[member="Kiyron"]

 

[Kiyron]

[member="Kaiden Rohn"]

Kiyron watched his old friend as the discussion went on. Kaiden was older.. perhaps more washed out, like a streambed after high rains. Edges worn down and gutted until only a hard core remained. His eyebrows narrowed slightly as he listened, trying to get a sense of who he had become. he shifted his gaze to take in the room around them. It was an arsenal- that was clear. An arsenal for a one man army.

He knew the feeling. What was left for a soldier when their government ceased to exist? Or worse, in the case of very recent Republic events, turn to terrorism against neutral worlds and allying with Sith to attack neutral ships. Piracy for all intents and purposes. It was a government that had lost its soul and become the very monster it wanted to protect against.

That robbed a man of his purpose, left him alone and drifting. Angry, bitter. No, that had been what happened to Kiyron. First to the Mandalorians. Then to the Galactic Alliance and, for a time, the Dreadguard program before it was shut down. None had been a home for him the way the Republic had been. But then, things were changing now. Kiyron had been recruited as an agent for the Strategic Intelligence Service. The chance to be part of something bigger with a simple mandate that he could believe in- to do good.

Perhaps he could do the same for Kaiden. Help him find his path again, wherever that might take the man. Kiyron nodded slowly as Kaiden finished.

"What's happened has happened," his voice was quiet, "None of us could have prevented what happened. The Republic lost its soul and we couldn't fix it if we tried. But," he added after a moment, "I'll help with this. What's the situation? Hostages? Snatch and grab? Or we talking something else?"

A thought struck him and looked back around the old room. "We might even be able to get this place up and running again." It was a spur of the moment comment, without thinking it through, but it had some merit. Maybe even a quiet base of operations for Kaiden's work here.

 

[Kaiden Rohn]

He smiled at his old friend's enthusiasm. Kiyron was right, in his private thoughts. Kaiden had little left. He wasn't Sergeant Rohn anymore, he wasn't Doc, he wasn't Papa, he wasn't boss- he was just Kaiden Rohn. A driftless man who had more skills in his pocket than most, but still, just a man. No title, no rank, no salary, no benefits- all disappeared. The sentiment for the Republic wasn't shared by Kaiden, when Kiyron thought of it as a monster it sought to defeat. It was pity. Pity and sadness. The Republic, with it's blue flags, stout men and women who fought for it. Soldiers clad in white and blue, defeating the scourge of the Sith. He remembered fondly their first meeting here. Standing up to the Chancellor was ballsy. Continuing to form the team after he told them no was even ballsier.

He smiled at him, looking up from his trip down memory lane.

"How do you feel about taking on one of the last remaining organized crime gangs left on Coruscant? The third of the three-"He clicked the hologram on the table to life. A great number of mugshots of mostly Trandoshans popped up."They came after the Sith invasion. Set up shop quickly. Used bruiser tactics to beat out the competition. Paramilitary guys. Mercenaries that were far better at stacking bodies than the rank and file crook. They took over a large swath of the sublevels in record time. And by record time, I mean days."He played him a video. Trandoshans stormed a restaurant, ruthlessly slaughtering five specific targets. They left, as quick as they came. To Kiyron and Kaiden, they were amateurs, but to the rest of the underworld- they were professional killers.

"Big shows of force. Military tactics- on the base level. Someone got these guys good gear, somewhat good tactics, and told them they were all soldiers in his army. And that man-"He popped up a final mugshot, singular, instead of the grid of the dozens he showed before."Is Jin Orla. Former Republic soldier turned mercenary. Found money in the drug trade. Found himself an army in the Trandoshans. And went back home."He leaned back in the chair, staring Kiyron in the eye.

"I want to kill them all. There is no real plan, not without you. I don't need a fancy tactic. I just need to kill them all. I need Jin Orla dead. I have a secondary objective, but that'll require a larger team. Right now, we take out Jin Orla, we wipe out all the guys he has with him- which by the way, is almost about one hundred, give or take- we wipe these assholes from the playing board."He put up a finger.

"And I want them to know it was us who did it, so nobody, not for a while, tries to rebuild what they made."

[member="Kiyron"]

 

[Kiyron]

[member="Kaiden Rohn"]

Kiyron leaned forward, listening as Kaiden ran through the situation. As the mugshots flashed by, he just let his eyes skim over them. The details of the targets weren't particiularly important at present. Not for most of the gang members. Just for the leader. Kiyron pursed his lips and let out a slow breath. This one, he focused on, memorizing the target's face.

Traitor. He'd heard of Republic soldiers disappearing into the underworld after returning from war. It had happened before. Some had even joined up with the warlords in the core- embracing oligarchy and tyrants. But this? This was something else. Murder and drugs on the old capital of the Republic itself? He nodded, running his hand through his close-cropped hair.

"I'll do this with you."

Probabilities began running through his head. Roughly a hundred gangsters, all trained to at least basic military standards. Two of them, with the best training available in the galaxy. No support. Only thing that gave them close to legitimacy was his status as an Agent with the SIS, giving him authorization to act as he saw fit anywhere in the galaxy. Within Alliance territory itself? That was a touch more of a gray area. Regardless, the odds weren't exactly in their favor.

He'd seen worse though. His first real mission with the Wildcards had significantly worse odds, but they came through just fine. Should work exactly the same here.

Kiyron added another thought after a moment. "I'm guessing you're not going to want a sniper's war." Such things would be the best route to handle this, but it wouldn't get the message across like Kaiden seemed to want.

"But for this Jin, you have something in mind? I can take him out from a few levels up with no issue."

As long as he had the targeting intelligence, there wasn't a target he couldn't hit. Especially on Coruscant. No winds, no trees. Everything was automated, thus making it fairly predictable, minus the speeder traffic. But the odds for that becoming an issue were still in his favor, especially with the pellet gun. He knelt beside the table and opened his pack, pulling out several crates containing his equipment.

A modular blaster rifle and high quality sniper rifle. Those should be enough to handle this, depending on what mission parameters came into effect.

 

[Kaiden Rohn]

Kaiden smiled and looked down at his feet. Even after all this time, all he needed was a simple request. He could've asked him to do anything, and he would've followed him into hell. Because they both knew the truth- they really only had each other now. He watched the gaze and the emotion run across his friend's face, something that he shared initially. He rested his hand on the table, looking to the face of Jin. Then, Kaiden's eyes turned to face his friend."Kind of odd, isn't it? Harboring these feelings of being betrayed. Especially since what he betrayed no longer exists."He ran a hand through his hair, and sighed."I suppose that's what makes it all the more difficult to bear, the reality of this man, that is."He blinked at Jin's unflinching holographic expression. He looked over at Kiyron, wounded ever so slightly.

"Do you think the pain will ever go away? The loss of the Republic, that is. The loss of all that we fought for- gone?"He had it tattooed on his skin, marked with scars and with sleepless nights, nightmares that drove him to near insanity from the severity of his wars- all for the Republic. All to keep the people safe. People that he never got to meet. Children he never got to hold hands with. Men who wanted to live their lives with their children. He never would have known their names, and yet he fought so hard and endured so much for them all- and it all went up in smoke.

Kaiden took a moment, then returned back to the task at hand. The image on the table went up to a diagram. It was a diagram of a platform- right above the one they were hitting.

"I want Jin dead. But I also want everyone who he works with dead. I want everyone who looks at this and drops pack and leaves the system. I want men to die, die for a cause that's our own."And suddenly, red blips appeared across the screen on the platform above Jin's base of operations."Jin has every entrance to his platform covered. So that's why I want to make my own."He pointed to a particularly stolen-looking crate near the entrance to the room."And I want to crash his party in the most spectacular way possible. I'm going to drop several tons of steel on top of him and all his boys, and whoevers left, we deal with."He ran a hand through his hair. The above platform was significantly smaller- and based on the way Coruscant was designed, the idea had ran across the engineers, and it was engineered so that it wouldn't be too damaging if it fell on top of the platform. The platform would be fine- but the structures, screw it, the engineers thought.

And also they didn't plan on washed up commandos blowing them up.

Kaiden couldn't help but smile.

"I've been waging my own wars for too long by myself. It's good to have some company."


[member="Kiyron"]