"Slavers," Aric muttered darkly. His fingers tightened on his gun, one by one, in some pattern Lieutenant Azeel couldn't recognize. He was glaring down at the massive warehouse district.
Not that that usually meant much. Except, this time, it did. Aric's glare had a furious heat to it, where it usually burned cold enough to give Azeel chills.
"Get the rappel line ready," Azeel ordered. She didn't bother being quiet. Even if Nar Shadaa weren't one of the noisiest planets she'd ever been on – minus war zones – they were two dozen stories above the target and well out of ear shot. That was the nice thing about Nar Shadaa. One could always get above a target zone.
What she would do for a jet pack.
Aric Jorgan got a great loop of rope out of his backpack and started tying it to a nearby beam without prompting. Azeel knew he would. He was a good soldier. While he worked, she took the chance to take one last look at the "base" below.
Sentients milled about along every street, dozens of alleys and walkways and nearly a hundred buildings. Some would be barracks, others slave pens, and a few, just a few, would be…
Azeel's face went a slightly darker shade of green, contrasting the black tattoos under her eyes and down her nose.
… processing plants.
It was going to be a lot more fun having this job done than doing it. Not something Azeel thought often.
At least she didn't have the same sense of smell Aric did. Cathar noses were way better than mirialan ones, and this was one time Azeel didn't envy that.
The rope flew out over the ledge, unraveling for story after story all the way down to the platforms below, snapping and whipping in the wind until it hit full length and went noticeably more rigid. Not perfect, but better than nothing against the fetid winds of Nar Shadaa.
"No point wasting time," Aric growled, fixing his CO with a glare as he tilted his head towards the rappel line.
Azeel walked up to the line, grabbed it, and swung out to put her feet just on the ledge. Aric's glare actually softened slightly as she let go without a word, dropping out of sight.
Then a crashing rumble hit her ears and she lost concentration. Her hands loosened and her fall accelerated, and she tried to turn and see what she'd heard even as she made to slow her fall as best she could. Her fingers caught, friction-burned enough to feel through environmentally-sealed gloves, and then she hit the ground and rolled.
Lucky roll. Thank the Force. She hit, shot backwards as her momentum shifted to horizontal, stumbled to her feet, and nearly lost her lunch at the sudden change in velocity.
Then her training, both mirialan and Republic special forces, kicked in. Her nausea washed away and she knelt, spun, and drew her rifle all in one motion. Her left hand stayed loose on her rifle barrel, ready to drop and pull the pin on a smoke grenade.
She needn't have bothered.
Brown and rusted streets were lit orange and red with fire, then obscured with the brown and black of smoke. Cracking, rolling explosions washed over the soldier's ears and she dove for the cover of a pair of stray crates beside the nearest warehouse.
What in the galaxy was going on here? This was a slave trade. Nothing flammable or explosive in the entire place, except maybe on the belts of a few paranoid firebug slavers. So why did it look like the street was on fire?
A glance backwards caught Aric taking the rappel line at exactly regulation speeds. He was about three quarters of the way down.
Down the street, amidst the flames, the explosions seemed to have died down. There was a glint of something through the flames, a flash of metal not coated in a patina of grime and grease. Something… gold?
In spite of the lapse in explosions, the roar of fire and the yells of slavers kept Azeel from hearing her squadmate's footsteps. Even so, she felt him arrive before he spoke up.
"Sir," he growled, "the mission is compromised. We should pull back and-"
That made up Azeel's mind.
"Let's go!" She stood up and ran towards the flames, laughing loudly at Aric's cursing behind her. "C'mon, Deadeye, keep up!"
The flames were dying down, and they split before the soldier. She passed through with her gun raised, ready for whatever might be on the other side.
Which turned out to be exactly one golden-armoured Mandalorian putting blaster bolts into two weequay mercenaries.
She almost shot the Mandalorian in the back. Sure, it might not be the honourable thing, but it was a surefire way not to get killed by a Mando.
For some reason, she yelled, "freeze!" instead.
The warrior whirled on Azeel, then hesitated. Both soldiers already had their guns aimed and ready. "Don't even think about it," Aric warned.
"Republic?" asked a synthesized voice incredulously. The warrior lowered the blaster pistol he or she held. "What're you doing here?"
Aric was going to say something needlessly aggressive to the heavily armoured mercenary, so Azeel held one finger up to silence him, then said, "we could ask you the same question."
The Mando shrugged. "Killing slavers." Then the blaster pistol came up again. "Got a problem with that?"
Azeel couldn't help herself. She snorted. "Hells, no," she said. "That's what we came here for, anyway."
"Oh." The armoured figure lifted its blaster away and nodded, "good," then turned away and walked towards the door of the nearest warehouse. After a second, he or she turned back and asked, "you coming?"
Aric and Azeel exchanged a look, then the Mando said, "unless you want to follow the explosions around, that is."
Azeel led the way, leaving cover and trotting up to the person. "What's your name?" she asked. "I mean, I could call out Mando the entire time we're shooting at the same stuff, but it's gonna get old fast."
A shifting of heavy armour in a shrug. "You might as well. I go by Mandokarla."
Azeel raised an eyebrow. "What, you're a Mando named Karla?"
"No, it's- never mind. Call me what you want, Green. Let's go kill some slavers."
Hard to argue with that, even if it was a terrible nickname.
The warehouse was big and filled with boxes and loading equipment. Nothing special, and nothing that would have seemed out of the ordinary in any other place on Nar Shadaa. That might be a bad sign, if it turned out intel was all wrong and the place was filled with average gangsters rather than slavers.
Havoc Squad and their hanger-on picked up the pace across the empty warehouse, heading straight for a normal-sized door beside a loading dock.
There were noises on the other side, people yelling back and forth, general chaos. Definite signs of a fight on the way. When they reached the door, their shoulders clanked together.
Azeel looked at Karla incredulously. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to open this door and hit them hard and fast," Karla replied in that synthetic monotone.
The mirialan shook her head. "That's my job. I'll go first, you come right after."
A T-slit visor stared coldly at Azeel, and she glared it down. After a few seconds, Karla nodded again. "I'll just stand back and watch for a bit, then. No point in getting in each other's way."
"I've got my eye on you, Mandalorian," Aric threatened. "Move carefully."
Karla gave Aric a look, and Azeel suddenly remembered something she should have thought of from the start: the Mandalorians had done their best to commit genocide against the cathar people three hundred years ago in the Mandalorian Wars.
She grit her teeth and hoped Aric was professional enough not to shoot Karla before he or she – probably she, with a name like that – did anything to deserve it. Well, anything else.
Karla slammed the door open and Azeel burst through. On the other side, Azeel blinked against the neon glare of street lights and did an instinctive head count. Outnumbered about four to one. Not bad.
Any more than that didn't matter much, since she was almost among them. That meant they'd be dead too soon for the rest to matter.
Two went down in the first volley of blasterfire, then she hit a particularly ugly Weequay across the face with the butt of her rifle. He went down and stayed down. Blasterfire sounded behind her as Aric laid down a cone of fire that was far more accurate than a cannon that size had any right to be.
With a flick of her thumb on a lever and a pull of both triggers on her rifle – something that had taken weeks to commit to instinct – Azeel filled the air with arcs of lightning. The ion cell in her rifle burned through its usually long life in a pair of seconds, and three slavers fried.
Two left. One had a massive wrench of some kind, the other, a gun.
Two shots took Azeel in the right side and, even with her armour, they pushed her back.
She took the momentum and pivoted, spinning to put the wrench-wielder in between herself and the gunwoman. She had her shoulder to her attackers, a meditative trick running through her head to clear the stunning effects of the blaster bolt, and a wrench coming down towards her head.
She winced preemptively. Her rifle came up to block the blunt instrument. Not fast enough.
Instead of a cracking pain in her head, Azeel heard a whistling roar and then an explosion. Dust and wind blew into her, followed by the man with the wrench. It was a softer impact than she'd been expecting, but heavier, and it took her to the ground. She rolled, trying to untangle herself from the struggling human, and managed to kick him off of her with some judicial application of knees.
As soon as the man was off her, a blast from Aric's cannon made sure he didn't get back up.
The woman who'd fired the blaster was definitely not getting up again. Nor was she all that recognizable as a woman.
Azeel looked up from the carnage-littered street and towards the only person with a weapon capable of putting a crater in the street. Karla the Mandalorian was walking up to her as if everything were perfectly normal.
"Looks like you need eyes in the back of your head and you should be fine," the Mandalorian commented drily. "Sorry about the missile. Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"You could have killed her, Mandalorian," Aric growled, jogging up to the group. His ears were tilted back slightly. He was feeling more on edge than usual, then. Either that was flattering, because he was worried for his CO, or worrying, because he was ready to pick a fight with the woman packing micro-missiles around.
Azeel raised her hands between the two. "But I'm fine," she said, gesturing towards herself. "See? Not a scratch."
Well, not quite true. There was scuff on her shoulder plate from the roll across the ground, and she had two scorch marks on the right side of her stomach.
They'd buff out.
Aric grunted, more than used to her nonchalance. She had no doubt that, after the mission, he'd write up yet another of those complaint forms he never filed and didn't think she knew about. She did. She kept a tally on a calendar in her room.
"And you," she said, rounding on the Mandalorian, who pulled back slightly, "be careful with the missiles and flamethrowers. You can't buy looks like these."
To prove her point, Azeel brushed a hair through silvery dreadlocks and winked a bright red eye at Karla. The combination was striking, especially against her green skin and black tattoos, and she knew it.
The Mando, however, was unimpressed, which either confirmed that Karla was female, or meant he/she simply didn't swing that way. "Why not put on a helmet, then?" she asked in her synthetic voice.
Azeel rolled her eyes. "Like I said: you can't buy looks like these."
Karla stared at her for a second, then shrugged and moved on. Lieutenant Azeel turned to join her, gesturing for Aric to catch up.
It was easy from there, for several blocks. Scattered groups of slavers milled around and looked lost until they spotted the intruders, and seconds later they were on the ground, unmoving. As always with the mini-Havoc Squad's operations, they kept moving. Momentum was key to keeping the bad guys off balance and scared.
One street. Two. Another dozen slavers. For the most part, Karla still hung back and watched, though she took potshots once in a while when she thought it was necessary. Three streets, and a new scorch mark across Azeel's left shoulder. Further on, and Azeel was starting to think they must be running out of slavers. The compound was big, but they must have killed forty or fifty at that point.
She was wrong. She was very wrong.
The sound of pounding feet is usually a quiet thing, certainly quieter than most other things in situations when they came up, like pounding heart, panting breath, or maybe the clank of armour or sounds of whatever is chasing the runner.
The dozens of people running up the street could be heard before Azeel and her sidekicks turned the corner.
Naturally, Azeel walked blithely around the corner anyway.
A hand at the neck of her armour dragged her back before a volley of blaster fire washed over the spot she'd been.
The lieutenant gave Aric a glare, then leaned forward and held onto the rickety edge of the warehouse wall, peeking out at the oncoming horde. Then she pulled back.
"Ten seconds," she reported to Aric, who looked, well, like Aric always did. "Artillery and suppressive fire. We need a barrier, too."
She looked at the Mandalorian, who nodded. "I'll handle it." Then Karla activated her jetpack and leapt two stories up to the top of the warehouse.
Azeel didn't even look at Aric. He was used to taking cues from action instead of words by now. Grumpy, he might be, but he was adaptable.
The lieutenant looked across the garbage-strewn street to the next warehouse.
One of the primary necessities of a successful firefight: crossing and overlapping fields of fire. That meant that Azeel and Aric needed to be attacking from different angles.
She took a deep breath, let it out, and charged. Blaster fire sounded half a second afterward. She pulled the pin on a smoke grenade. In another half a second, her outline was completely invisible. Then she dove, rolled, dropped the grenade, and crawled the last meter into cover.
In her comm bead, Aric's voice hissed. "Check in."
Azeel grunted, "fire."
From opposite sides of the street, Havoc Squad opened fire. Ion trails lit streaks through the smoke. Azeel was firing blind, but it didn't matter. She had a good sense of where the enemy was, and cries of surprise and pain told her she was on the mark more often than not. Not that that was hard, with how many there were.
A part of her counted the seconds that had passed and guessed where the enemy front was. Another part just knew, like it always knew, what she had to do.
A quick thank you to her gun ran through her head. It was a good thing the tech-heads had packed so many tricks into the thing. She'd need them all.
She flicked that lever back to the middle position and once again squeezed both triggers. This time, it's wasn't an ion stream that came from the barrel. It wasn't even the main barrel that fired. Instead, the under-slung barrel launched three grenades in quick succession. Across the way, Aric's cannon roared louder than the slavers screaming in the shrapnel and smoke.
Azeel closed one eye against the wind. The explosions blew away the smoke, and she could see the oncoming enemy again.
Half a dozen were practically on top of her, including a particularly ugly trandoshan.
Why were all trandoshans the colour of a sick mirialan? Every time she got a nasty cold, she'd go look in the mirror and there stood every memory she had of an encounter with a trandoshan. Not happy memories, obviously.
More explosions, not hers or Aric's doing, tore apart many of the slavers still on the street. There were still dozens more.
Azeel stepped forward, kicked the oncoming trandoshan, and fried him and the others near her, burning through another ion cell and four slavers. The other two, she killed with a combination of blaster fire and bludgeoning.
Nar Shadaa. What a great place. The Empire never knew what to expect of "aliens", but on Nar Shadaa, everybody saw a mirialan and thought, "oh, look, it's going to meditate at us." Then they were on the ground. Azeel couldn't ask for a better advantage.
Though, the trandoshan currently simmering on the ground in front of her smelled like unwashed burnt lizard meat. Yuck.
She could just hear Aric: "you should wear a helmet. It would filter the air."
Shut up, imaginary cathar.
The oncoming wall of men and women with guns hesitated then. Many dove for what cover they could find in crates, outcroppings of wall, and piles of refuse. Made sense. Aric was going through energy cells with a gusto he rarely displayed, and the first ones to reach the end of the street had just been fried crispy.
Azeel laughed, then shuddered at the thought of eating trandoshan meat.
Never eat anything from a species that can do calculus, that was what the med officer in basic told her.
Good rule.
Oh, right!
Azeel aimed down the street, picked a target, and put three blaster bolts into center mass. Aric could unload with the cannon. He had bigger energy cells in the thing. Azeel's rifle, she had to be more efficient.
So, three in the closest target, then three in the next, and so on. Stick with the basics until the situation changed and she could use a different trick or retake the initiative.
Like when a group of humans broke off to skirt the wall near Aric, putting them in plain view of Azeel. She smirked, took aim, and launched a grenade above their heads. It hit the wall, the explosion reflected and compounded on itself, and every one of them was blasted into the middle of the street, minus a few important bits.
Quick head count: 10, 20, more, lots.
Azeel scowled, cursed, and kept shooting. This sort of fighting was boring!
A flicker of movement, a glint of gold in the neon lights. The soldier glanced up to the roof of one of the warehouses.
There was Karla, standing high above the street. She raised both her arms.
Azeel's eyes followed her aim. She wasn't aiming at the horde, but above it. What…?
There. A container of some kind on the side of a warehouse, a tank that spanned a story and a half in height. If Karla was going to shoot that, she must have known what was in it.
Except, Karla didn't shoot the tank. Not exactly. Two missiles shot out, one to each side of the container, and punched in the metal walls of the warehouse.
The supports!
With the upper supports ruined, the tank gave a keening wail as its lower supports strained and bent. Then it tore from the wall. The tank fell and crashed into the ground, crushing a few people and stopping the progress of most of the others.
A few, however, were trapped with Azeel and Aric.
Azeel grinned. This was more like it.
She charged, laughing. It took two precious seconds for the slavers to turn away from the tank they'd nearly been crushed by. By then, Azeel was half a second from on top of them.
Two blaster bolts into that one's face. Butt of the rifle into that one's gut. Grab a cryo grenade, toss it to the next one.
This would be so much more interesting with music. Something hard and fast, but with a rhythm she could time. Like Bothan Kark'edep. Kark-edep? Whatever.
That one's frozen. Rail shot through those two, break that one's-
OW!
Azeel wiped her bloody nose.
Thanks for nothing, Force.
She imagined the Force shrugging its collective not-shoulders, like it was her fault for not listening.
The person who'd punched her in the face was coming in for another, and Azeel's eyes were streaming with tears, because that was what happened when somebody got a broken nose.
Her comm crackled, and Aric's voice said, "got your back."
Good.
Unlike most cases, when Aric said he had her back, he meant it a little more literally. As of now, Azeel didn't have to worry about anything behind her.
So she focused on the greenish-grey blur in front of her, which stuck out nicely from the brown and neon around them. She ducked her head and felt the wind of a punch she'd sort of guessed was coming, and charged.
The impact with the man's chest – it was pretty obviously a man's – pushed blood to her head. That blood decided it didn't like its new home so much, and it spurted out of her nose. Even so, she bore the man to the ground, laughing and growling at the same time. The man's breath rushed from his lungs, and Azeel took a good guess where his head was. She curled up a fist and punched as hard as she could. A haymaker, in the hopes that she wouldn't just punch the ground if she missed.
Something broke. Probably the man's cheek. Also probably one of her knuckles. So she wound up her other arm and punched with that one, angling around one of the arms he'd raised to fend her off.
This one also hit, and this time Azeel's fist won, so she wound up and hit again, and again, and again.
Left-handed, Azeel was not, but it worked out.
Finally, the man's hands fell, and the mirialan woman was able to blink the tears away from her eyes. She stood up and surveyed the carnage.
Eight dead, two broken bones. Not bad. She reached into a satchel with her left hand, pulled out a med syringe, and injected her neck with a kolto solution.
Five minutes and some concentration, and her right hand should be pretty usable again.
Also, painkillers. Praise be.
Since she couldn't shake her hair out of her eyes without losing a few mils of blood, Azeel reached up and brushed the white mass out of her face, grinning at Aric. The cathar was jogging up the street towards her.
He nodded his head behind her, and she turned around.
On the other side of the tank, screams, blasterfire, and explosions could be heard, echoing off the warehouse walls.
Karla was stealing all the kills!
Azeel stowed her rifle, ran up to the tank, grabbed hold of a strut, and climbed up. She had to use her right hand to get on top of the tank, but hey, painkillers.
When she saw the other side, the first thought that went through her mind was, "wow. She really didn't need us."
Somehow, Karla had collapsed debris on the other end of the street, cutting off any escape for the slavers. She was in the middle of them, and it was definitely them trapped in there with her, rather than the other way around. There were charred corpses littering the ground, the ground was littered with charred bits that had to be the victims of explosives, and several more had perfectly placed cuts and stab wounds leaking blood onto the ground.
Aric came up beside her. They were both safe. Nobody down there was paying attention to anything but the rampaging Mandalorian amongst them.
"I thought he was wearing heavy armour," grunted Aric.
He? Azeel would have given her squadmate a sidelong glance, but she couldn't take her eyes off Karla. Honestly, she moved like a gymnast. Azeel could brawl with the best of them, but this…
Karla lunged, put a wrist-mounted vibroblade into the throat of a rodian, then spun and followed up with a leg-snapping kick on the next slaver. Her jetpack fired for an instant, and she reversed direction, taking to the air and kicking – with the other leg – a human woman in the chest hard enough to cave it in. She landed, her flamethrower spewing flames into the crowd.
Then Aric opened up with his cannon and, without cover, the slavers had nowhere to run.
Azeel almost yelled at the taciturn soldier. Something along the lines of, "hey, I was watching that," would be appropriate.
She gave a sigh and took a pair of incendiary grenades out of her bandoleer, tossing both as far as she could. One did what it was supposed to, landing on the pile of debris and lighting it on fire. The other didn't get quite as far, and though it started a small fire, it didn't catch on anything that would keep somebody from trying to climb the debris on that side of the street.
It didn't matter. Aric had the escapes covered, and Karla was more than capable of keeping the crowd busy. It took maybe fifteen seconds to wipe out the entire group, and that only because Azeel didn't help much. Not that she was sulking or anything, just that she was missing out on Karla stomping all over a bunch of slavers because Aric felt like helping. They had it handled. Obviously. She didn't need to pitch in much.
When the whole thing was over, Aric and Azeel climbed over the tank and dropped down on the other side. Karla was jogging over to the debris fire. She raised an arm and sprayed the whole thing down with something, probably a carbonite mist, and it fizzled and died.
"Well," the lieutenant commented, grinning, "that was easy."
"I don't know," Karla said in that computer monotone. She rolled her shoulders. "Could have been fewer at once."
Azeel waved a hand dismissively. "Just would have made it all take longer."
Karla nodded once, hesitantly, then asked, "where do you think they're keeping all the slaves? None of these buildings look like anywhere I'd put..."
She trailed off, as if realizing how little it mattered what she thought people deserved for living quarters.
"Hut'uune," she growled. The sound was bizarrely primal through the voice synthesizer. Then she turned to walk away, through the pile of debris she'd managed to throw over the street.
Aric reached out to grab her by the shoulder. She shrugged it off. "Where do you think you're going," he growled.
Karla kept walking, but she called back, "I'm going to go find those slaves, assuming most of the slavers are dead in this suicidal charge, which I'm pretty sure they are."
"Freeze!"
Azeel's eyes went wide. She looked between Karla, who'd stopped and turned around, and Aric, who had his gun pointed at the Mandalorian.
"Is that how it is, Republic?" Karla made no move, but her blaster pistol was already in her hand. She'd never holstered it. This could turn bloody, fast. "As soon as we aren't pointed the same direction, you're aimed at me? You don't want that. I don't care what kind of blood debt my people owe yours, I'm not going to roll over and die for you."
"You're not getting anywhere near the people imprisoned here without us right beside you."
It should have been impossible to tell with the helmet, but Karla obviously stared at Aric for a second. Then she laughed once. "That's the problem? Osik, Grumpy, I wasn't leaving you behind in the first place. Now come on. If we can't split up to search, we should hurry up."
It took the soldiers a bit longer to get over the debris than it took the Mando with the jetpack. Still, she didn't leave them behind, as promised.
"We should check every building," Azeel suggested. "They've got to be here somewhere, now that we're getting to the back of the place."
"You mean, now that we're out of earshot of anywher civilians usually go," Karla muttered darkly. "Yeah. I think the same thing."
They took up positions behind the Mandalorian, which she didn't seem to think was unusual. As soon as they set out, Azeel leaned close to Aric.
"What the hells are you doing, Sergeant?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Lieutenant."
Splitting up to go around a street light gave Azeel ample time to glare at her subordinate. Then they were back to hugging the wall together.
"Picking fights with the Mando," Azeel hissed. "We're getting along fine except for you being all… catty."
Aric's permanent scowl dialed up a notch. "You already know, and you don't understand. I think that's enough for both of us. Sir."
Azeel flinched away and left it at that. There wasn't much to say. The cathar genocide wasn't any less horrible for not being personal. And it wasn't like she wasn't getting her wish. Aric was, indeed, professional enough not to shoot Karla in the back. He just didn't trust her further than he could throw her iron-armoured ass.
Come to think of it, why did she?
Azeel watched Karla's gold-plated back as they poked in and out of various warehouses, all filled with crates, bunks, moving equipment and, to Azeel's disgust and horror, some lab facilities.
There wasn't anything quite as perfect for testing dangerous-but-near-completion drugs as slaves were.
Karla, for her part, seemed to have no reaction to the implications of the labs. Stronger stomach, or just inured to the whole thing. Mandos worked a lot with the Empire, after all.
All the more reason not to trust one. So why was Azeel finding it so easy?
The same reason she always did, probably. A feeling. Because Azeel, like so many mirialans, had a better connection to the Force than most species. Her people might consider her basically Force-blind, but she could feel something trustworthy in this hunter. Maybe familiar.
Of course, a "real" mirialan would know exactly where that feeling came from and would meditate until she also knew what it meant.
Azeel found herself rolling her eyes at the very thought.
This was why she didn't visit home often.
Her thoughts kept wandering as the three of them searched the area. They covered more than half of the warehouses and killed a pair of new slavers before Aric put a hand to her shoulder, startling her. She stopped, letting Karla walk into the warehouse so Aric could say whatever he needed to say.
When he didn't say anything for a couple of seconds, Azeel asked, "what is it?"
"You don't want to go in there," he said simply.
Her eyes snapped to follow the Mandalorian, who'd disappeared into the dimly-lit building. "Why? What's-"
She cut off as the smell wafted out of the building. Antiseptic and the coppery tang of blood. Something else, too, but something she couldn't describe except to say it smelled – tasted, even – like death.
"Oh." She whispered. She didn't say any more before the sound of crashing metal on floorboards could be heard, and Karla shot out of the building at the speed of a launching fighter.
"Karla-"
The Mandalorian ignored her, running across the street in a drunken lurch. She stumbled to the wall, crashed into it shoulder-first, and reached up to her helmet, scrabbling at the clasps on her neck. Azeel jogged over to try to help, and was close enough to get a good look when she got her helmet off.
The soldier's first thought was, "holy hells, she's gorgeous." Her second was, "hey, I was right. She is a woman."
Her third was, "aghk! Gross!" In fairness to the Mandalorian, it wasn't a reaction prompted by her face, but by the fact that she'd started violently heaving any and all contents of her stomach onto the street. Orange-yellow and green stuff splattered on the ground, and Azeel jumped back as if it were blaster fire.
"Hey," she snapped, "watch-"
She cut off.
Tears were streaming down the woman's cheeks, and they didn't look like tears of pain.
Azeel's eyes went wide. She glanced back at the building Karla'd just run out of. Just for a second.
"You didn't know," she whispered.
Either Karla didn't hear her, or she was too busy throwing up to respond. Slowly, the Mandalorian sank to her knees, still wretching.
Slowly, the heaving turned dry, and then trailed off into a painful-sounding retch. A few seconds later, after some exhausted panting, Karla stood up.
Azeel froze. Her brain just stuttered to a halt when the woman caught her eyes. Beautiful eyes. Sapphire blue eyes, with a scar running vertically over the right one.
Familiar eyes.
"Aqura," she murmured. The woman who'd shown up during the evacuation of Alsaffan, who'd saved Azeel's life.
The one who was wanted for sabotaging Alsaffan's orbital defenses and killing their royal guard.
"What they did in there," Aqura croaked, squeezing her eyes shut as if she could unsee it. "The bodies… they were still alive when..."
"You gave an entire planet to the Empire," Azeel accused.
"There aren't any slaves here at all." Aqura actually looked lost, staring right past Azeel's head. "It's an organ-trafficking ring. They brought people here and they tore them apart."
Azeel raised her gun, a bit hesitantly, and pointed it at the warrior. Aqura's eyes finally focused properly. She blinked once at the gun, then looked the mirialan soldier in the face. Her hand tightened on her helmet, but her face kept that same stunned expression.
"What are you doing?"
Azeel sighed and ground her teeth in a frustrated grimace. This wasn't what she wanted to do, she'd admit that. But she was a soldier of the Republic. So she held her gun steady on the Mandalorian's chest and said, "Aqura, Mandokarla, whatever you want to be called, you're under arrest for violation of the Treaty of Coruscant. You will be tried as a war criminal by the Republic Senate-"
"You can't be serious!"
"-for your actions on Alsaffan. I hereby take you into custody, to be transported to the authorities-"
"There are butchers still here!"
"-and thereafter to a Republic holding facility, where you will await trial."
"You're just going to leave all of this?"
Azeel shook her head and called out, "Aric!"
He stood beside her a second later. "Sir."
"Call in for a sweeper team," she ordered, "forensics with an escort, to get here and clear the place out. Our priorities have just shifted. We're taking Aqura in for war crimes."
That pronouncement didn't surprise the cathar. He'd heard the entire thing already. All he did was turn and start up a holocall to a local Republic base. Not many of those on Nar Shadaa. Fewer that were reliable.
Aric would handle it.
"I saved your life on Alsaffan," Aqura hissed, finally over her surprise and shifting rapidly into anger.
Azeel nodded in acknowledgment, but her gun didn't shift. "You did. I'll do what I can to defend you at your trial. But this, here, it's over. I have to deal with the bigger problem."
Aqura stabbed a finger at the building behind Azeel. The soldier flinched minutely, almost pulling the trigger on her rifle. "A bigger problem than that? What happened in there has to be punished! If we've left even a single one of them alive-"
"Then they will be captured and questioned by the next team coming in," Azeel said calmly.
It was a facade. She agreed with Aqura, she really did. But she was a soldier. No matter how she acted to everyone around her, the war came before everything else. Letting someone who'd helped capture an entire planet go… she just couldn't do that, even in the face of what was in that building.
"They'll be gone by then." Aqura's eyes were darting around. It was obvious she was about to make a move. That was insane, even by Azeel's standards. The human was unarmed, had nowhere to run that wasn't in firing sight for twenty meters, and was up against two of Republic's best.
A part of Azeel's mind thought, "she does have a jetpack," a second before Aqura moved.
Later, even in her official report, Lieutenant Azeel would admit she hesitated. How could she not? She had a gun on an unarmed, technically civilian, individual who'd both saved her life and was wanted alive for questioning. And Havoc Squad had no non-lethal methods for incapacitating targets short of hand-to-hand and rope. It was enough to make even the best hesitate. And Azeel was the best.
So, when Aqura moved, Azeel pulled away from the trigger first. Aqura had enough time to lift up her helmet and block the first shot, then kick the soldier's rifle into the air. Then, in a burst of flames, the hunter leapt up into the air, jetpack taking her up and over the warehouse.
The mirialan scrambled for her rifle, which knocked against the wall and fell into the puddle of sick on the ground.
She was going to need hours to take the thing apart and make sure everything still functioned later.
Cursing and ducking under the worthless cover of her own arms, the Azeel tried to get a view of where the armoured Mando had gone. Aric, apparently having unslung his cannon in record time, put a few rounds up over the roof of the warehouse, but it was useless. Aqura was gone.
"Sir," Aric began.
"I hesitated, alright?!" Azeel picked up her rifle as violently as she could manage. "She was unarmed; I didn't want to kill her. Just… argh!"
"Mandalorians are never unarmed," Aric muttered darkly. "We have to track her down."
Their commlinks squawked. They both glanced at each other. Then it happened again.
"-think I've got- yes. Hello?"
Aric waited for Azeel to make a decision. It wasn't a familiar voice on the line. It couldn't be a coincidence, though.
Havoc's CO put a hand to her ear to block out the general noise of Nar Shadaa. "This is Havoc Squad Leader, Lieutenant Azeel. You are on a secure military frequency. What the hells is going on?"
"Secure?" repeated the voice on the other end, laughing. "I think it took- look, never mind. You two need to get out of there right now. The boss is mad, and I'm trying to talk her out of doing something we both know she'll regret. If you run, you'll be fine, okay? But you have to go now."
That feeling in Azeel's gut acted up, the one that told her something bad was about to happen. She traded a glance with Aric. The Sergeant's ears were twitching rapidly, and he appeared to be suppressing a wince.
Yes, Azeel thought, definitely a bad sign.
"Aric," she barked, "we're moving out. NOW."
Aric opened his mouth. He was going to protest. Azeel didn't let him. She picked a direction, the fastest way to the edge of the compound, and ran. He'd catch up because it was his job.
"Oh, good," said the voice on the comm. "I'm really sorry about this."
Before Azeel could ask what, exactly, the voice was sorry about, a screeching sound started building. A high, keening wail of metal on metal, broken up by the sound of sparking electronics and shattering transparisteel and glass.
Something very, very big was falling towards them. And the sound was a lot louder than it should be.
The lieutenant stopped and whirled around to see her squadmate stumbling to the ground, clutching his ears.
Alien biology 101: certain species hear into different frequencies and hear different frequency sets more acutely.
She ran back to Aric, one hand to her ear. "Hey, smarty-pants. If you really want us to get out of here alive, transmit a counter-harmonic for metal-on-metal, right now."
She took off her commpiece and shoved it onto Aric's ear. It didn't fit at all; it was the wrong ear size and shape, and it was on the wrong side, but it was the best she could manage. It would block out sound as much as it could, and she couldn't afford to hold his head. She'd be too busy holding him.
She grabbed hold of the bigger soldier, unclasping the strap of his cannon to leave it behind, and slung his arm over her shoulder. Then she stood and ran. He stumbled along with her as the sound of screeching metal grew louder, punctuated at times by tremendous crashing sounds.
She dared a glance up.
That was a ship. That was a FRIGATE coming down at them from who knew how many stories up.
She nearly tripped for her inattention, but she did what she always did: powered through it. Whatever extra reserve the Force always granted her, she tapped into it, ducked her head, and charged.
The noise grew loud enough to hurt.
There was shelter at the edge of the sector. Two blocks away. One and a half. The sound grew so loud that Azeel couldn't see straight. One block away. She couldn't even hear herself screaming in rage and frustration and pain anymore. Half a block, and the sound cut out. She didn't hear anything anymore. If there were any justice in the galaxy, that would mean it didn't hurt anymore. Except it did. It really, really did.
By the time they stumbled the last steps into shelter, it was Aric supporting her as much as her supporting him, and she had no idea how close the ship was except that she could feel the sound in her bones.
Sergeant Aric tried to stumble to a halt as soon as they were in cover, but the Lieutenant kept going. Maybe she wanted to be safer than sorry. Maybe she wanted as much distance as possible. Maybe she just knew that she was going forward and that meant she shouldn't stop. Whatever it was, when they finally dragged each other those last few steps before the freighter hit, they were both past what they felt they could handle.
Then the world came apart.
Not even surprised, Azeel thought to herself distantly as the ground bucked and the walls caved in. This was what happened when you dropped a ship on something.
The rumbling knocked them around hard, and a few things definitely got battered and broken. It didn't matter to Azeel. She held on to Aric, doing her best to make sure he didn't get too hurt. He couldn't handle that sort of thing like she could.
Force plus kolto equals double-plus healing, she thought. More accurately, she got about halfway through the thought before Aric landed on top of her during a more violent wave of destruction.
Eventually, it was all over. At least, it probably was. It didn't feel like the world was tearing itself apart anymore. She still couldn't hear anything, though, and she was having trouble seeing. Stupid black spots getting in the way of everything. She kept trying to blink them away, and her head sort of waved around as she tried to get her balance back. Wasn't she on her back? Why did she feel off-balance?
Aric's face appeared in her view. Two black spots blotted out his cheeks for a second. She imagined whiskers just underneath, and giggled. He was saying something. She couldn't hear what. He looked unhappy. He always looked unhappy.
"Grumpy," she tried to say, and when she realized she hadn't actually said it, she said it louder. "Grumpy!"
Huh. Why couldn't she hear- Oh, right. She couldn't hear anything anymore.
She should be doing something. Something mom would want her to be doing.
Get up, Azeel. Get up.
That wasn't mom.
But it was somebody worth listening to. It was good advice. Always get up. Always keep moving forward.
She tried to rock forward and stand up. Her head came forward and smashed into Aric's.
"Ow," she mumbled, and didn't hear that either. From the look of Aric, he was even less happy about it than she was.
Ow! Bright light! And Aric wasn't letting her close her eyes. He was holding them open!
Grumpy cat was a jerk.
Get up. Get up and move. Don't stop for anything.
So she tried to stand up again. This time, Aric held a hand to her chest, and it was like he was suddenly super-strong, because she couldn't move at all. Still, she tried. She struggled as best she could, focusing with all her might on standing up.
Stay still and die. Get up and move. Move to win. Victory is always forward.
What the hells, Aric? He should let her go. She had to get moving. There was somewhere… somewhere she had to go… right?
Even though she was angry at Aric – and suddenly she couldn't remember why that was – he put a hand to her head. It felt very nice. Soft and furry. Kind of like a reverse-pet.
Azeel giggled again.
Then there was a sharp pain in her neck, and she hissed. Aric took his hand away.
The spots were back. No, it was all coming from the edges, all getting dark.
Focus. Fight it. That thing mom was always talking about. Do that.
Focus. Meditate.
But it wouldn't come. She was losing the fight. She hated losing!
"Aric," she yelled, or whispered, as darkness took her, "help."
"Mrr… phrgl..."
"As motivational speeches go, I've heard better."
Azeel laughed before she even realized who'd told the joke or where she was.
Aric, however, seemed pretty startled about the woman draped over his shoulders moving at all.
"What the- Lieutenant, status report."
"M'awake… m'wake..."
The cathar shook his head. "That has to be a new record," he muttered. "You know that sedative is supposed to last for six hours? Some day, I'm going to figure out why you react so unusually to every medicine I administer."
"Yaay..." Azeel mumbled, "new record..."
Aric snorted softly. He didn't put her down. That was probably a good thing. She had a pretty amazing headache.
Slowly, Havoc Squad headed back to their ship.
Mission accomplished.
Ugh. What a day.