With five minutes left on the timer, Kar'tan stepped over the baradium bomb and retrieved his helmet from the corner of the interrogation room. He adjusted its internal comlink and placed it back on his head with a familiar clack. Kar'tan sighed; he felt safe again.
"So you're just going to let that thing go off." said Cairn, pointing at the rig that had been strapped to his partner's chest. "Are you sure they didn't hit you that hard?"
"Oh, ha ha," Kar'tan responded sarcastically as they walked out of the small room and into the cafeteria. "Look, Bonari probably has a timer on his person to remind him of when I'm supposed to die. He'll likely be waiting for an explosion to shake the dust off his hat."
He began searching the bodies for the rest of his kit, starting with the human that had stolen his duster. As Kar'tan finished with each corpse, he threw them into the interrogation room to let the bomb disintegrate them. "Besides, I'm not a miracle worker; I wouldn't be able to disarm it now anyway."
Cairn sat down on one of the chairs that hadn't been hit during the firefight. "Hold on a second, Bonari? You mean we were right the whole time?" he asked.
"Yes, it's all recorded." said Kar'tan, tapping his helmet as he spoke.
"How does a chakaar like that stumble onto a place like this?" asked Cairn rhetorically.
Kar'tan stood up and replaced his E-11-A and SE-14r into their respective holsters. That's everything, he thought as he tossed the last corpse into 'The Pit.' The bomb was nearly ready to go off, and the pair of bounty hunters had other things to attend to.
As the duo reached the cafeteria door, the room filled with a shrill beeping. The bomb was thirty seconds from exploding. Kar'tan slipped inside and closed the door behind his partner.
"Here it comes," said Kar'tan, grinning, as he watched Cairn hunch his shoulders forward, stick his elbows out, and mime putting fingers in his ears.
The beeping increased its pace as the bomb grew closer to detonation, culminating in a static tone that preceded a massive WHUMP. The sliding door rattled a little from the pressure wave, but was otherwise unharmed.
"Well, that was easy," said Cairn as he checked the exterior of the commissary area for more guards. "But seriously, Bonari? You've got some explaining to do."
As the pair entered the hangar, Kar'tan started to describe all that had happened since his fall. Cairn filled in any gaps he could with what the bartender had told him while they took cover in the north hangar's pallet field. The relatively dark area would keep them hidden long enough to sort out the details and plan their next move.
"...and I told him to keep an eye on the motor pool, because that's what I'd do," he finished.
"That is what you would do," Cairn responded, "and he was stupid enough to think I would be the same way?"
"What can I say?" Kar'tan shrugged, "People think Mandalorians are all the same."
"Must be our unique sense of chivalry," quipped Cairn, "But in all seriousness, do you have a plan, or is it my turn?"
Kar'tan thought for a moment, remembering what sort of men they were up against.
"To be honest, grabbing a tank would be a sufficient equalizer," he said, thinking out loud, "Now that there's two of us."
"Yeah, sure, except thanks to your misinformation, the motor pool is crawling with guards," Cairn reminded his partner, "What we need is another distraction."
A light went on in Kar'tan's mind as a small detail came back to him. "Exactly, and I have just the perfect place, come on!"
XXX
The muted thump of the interrogation bomb brought a small smile to Bonari's lips. One down, one to go, he thought blissfully as he turned back to the holocam feeds. There was still no sign of the other Mandalorian, but it was no matter, his guards would catch the man soon enough.
Regardless, he would need to verify his first kill.
"Group A-45, report status of the prisoner." Bonari spoke into his comm unit with barely contained glee, but there was no response. "Group A-45, report!"
He sighed. Now what?
He tried a different channel. "Group A-47, go in the cafeteria and check on A-45. The idiots probably forgot to reset their comlinks when the bomb went off."
A-47 was stationed just outside the commissary, the limited range of a baradium bomb's comm scrambling abilities shouldn't have affected them, but again, Bonari received no response.
Stifling his worry, he called in one of the patrols much further away from the blast.
"Patrol G-11, this is Overseer, re-route to the cafeteria, Groups A-45 and 47 have yet to report in."
"Right away sir."
Bonari let out a sigh of relief after turning off his transmitter. At least someone was answering the comm; he made a mental note to start installing holocams inside the cafeteria and stop using baradium in the gang's explosives. He had loads of the stuff in his stockpile, but the electronic interference it generated whenever it detonated was beginning to wear on his patience.
It should go for quite the price on Coruscant, he thought mirthfully.
XXX
"Mar'e, I got it!" said Kar'tan as he pushed aside the door into what he had correctly identified as the secondary control center. He was greeted with row upon row of dusty computer panels and ancient viewscreens. Clearly this room hadn't been used since at least the Clone Wars.
"Took you long enough," jibed Cairn as he stepped in behind his partner. "I thought you were good at breaking-and-entering."
Kar'tan made a rude gesture. "It's not my fault the locks are over 30 years old," he responded, "I had to bend three probes to get them to fit right."
Both Mandalorians took cover just out of sight from the transparisteel windows in the corners of the booth. Cairn kept watch on the south hangar's patrols. After lurking from one side of the complex to the other, he knew well enough that the southern hangar was much more active than its northern counterpart.
Kar'tan backed far into a dark corner and began examining the equipment in the shallow, but wide, control room. It was obvious from the start that much of this gear was manufactured in a wartime environment, and had been built to last. There were redundancies everywhere, a lot of them mechanical. None of it would catch fire easily.
Fierfek, he thought as he approached the east side of the room, how am I going to get this distraction up and running without flammables?
Momentarily confounded, Kar'tan began to pace along the rear wall when he noticed a section of duraplast that had begun to peel away with age. Hoping that there might be some flammable insulation behind it, Kar'tan finished pulling the piece back, but he did not find what he expected.
Behind the damaged panel was a large, rusted hatch.
"Well I'll be a monkey-lizard's uncle."
Across the room, Cairn tilted his head in confusion. "What?"
"Another hidden door," responded Kar'tan. He started pulling it open; the door had nearly frozen shut with rust, but after a few minutes of persuasion, it yielded. Behind the portal was an absolutely ancient ladder. Its rungs had decades of rust, but the passage itself was slim enough that Kar'tan could easily brace his weight on the walls.
"It's an escape hatch," he said, looking up the narrow tunnel. Kar'tan was deep enough that even with light enhancement and magnification, he couldn't make out any detail towards the top of the shaft.
"I bet I can get above the interference plate with this," said Kar'tan.
"Well, why don't you?" asked Cairn.
"You mean to call in the cavalry?" asked Kar'tan, "We don't know how to open the armory passage, and I doubt Karjeel's going to want to perform a hostile takeover on what he probably thinks is a legitimate business."
Cairn didn't respond for a moment.
"It wouldn't matter if he wanted to come in through the pub anyway," he said, "I welded the main door after I figured out how to open it."
"Oh," said Kar'tan, killing the conversation.
Well, that's one problem solved, he thought. Still, we need some sort of plan if we're going to make it out alive. Kar'tan relaxed against the hidden ladder as he began to mentally reconstruct the facility based on what he remembered. One entrance from the armory, that we know about; two hangar doors, a one-way entrance from the KDY not, this escape tunnel, a motor pool, military-grade armaments, he thought, absentmindedly ejecting and retracting his right gauntlet blade. How can I fit it all together?
Several minutes passed, and Kar'tan watched as his partner shifted his posture to be more comfortable in front of the window.
At that moment, a random idea sprang into Kar'tan's mind. He recalled his father's teachings about Mandalore the Ultimate. One of those all-important history lessons that had the tendency to stick only because of its explicit violence. Te Ani'la Mand'alor, as he was known, started the Mandalorian wars of ancient times, and elements of his battle strategy were still used in the modern age. "Cut off his movements, terrorize him at every step, and the enemy will go only forward to his doom," Kar'tan's father had recited. The deep psychology of the statement was lost on a five-year-old Kar'tan, but its application was perfect for their current problem: Force Bonari into the hands of the authorities by making that road seem the most likely to incur success.
"Perfect," Kar'tan said out loud. "I've got our plan."
"Good," groaned Cairn, "My backside's starting to cramp from waiting."
"I'm going to head up top to give Karjeel our SitRep." continued Kar'tan, oblivious to his partners invectives. "When I come back, we're gonna give Bonari and his thugs the biggest beating of their lives."
XXX
Kar'tan held position on the ladder for a moment to recollect himself. The injuries he'd suffered during his capture would heal, but after climbing what felt like 6 stories through a cramped passage, he needed time to rest his sore organs.
There wasn't much further to go, and the payoff of this long climb would be worth it if he could get in contact with Colonel Karjeel. Hopefully his evidence, and some well placed persuasion, would be enough to convince the old soldier to take action.
Another few minutes passed as Kar'tan climbed before he stopped again to look up. This time, the end was a mere two meters above him. The tunnel at this end was blocked by ferrocrete bricks reinforced with durasteel beams, but Kar'tan was sure that he was far enough above the interference plate to connect with the Stormtrooper Barracks.
He opened a channel on one of the standard Imperial frequencies. "Freelancer Kar'tan Venn under contract F-612S to Port 17 Ground Barracks, do you read? Port 17 Ground Barracks, this is Freelancer Kar'tan Venn, please respond."
After a tense moment, his comm crackled, "Freelancer Venn, this is Ensign Derrick, number CL-637, at Base E-2847, go ahead."
Kar'tan breathed a sigh of relief; he was over the interference plate, and the operator on the other end was willing to cooperate.
"I need to relay important information about my investigation to Colonel Horatio Karjeel. Is he available?"
The communications officer was silent for several moments. Kar'tan waited patiently; the ensign hadn't outright rejected his query, and the man was likely checking to be sure that the contract paperwork matched their rosters.
"I have your credentials, Bounty Hunter Venn," said Ensign Derrick, "relaying your call now."
"Copy that," Kar'tan replied.
He listened to the busy tone as he stood on the ladder. It wasn't the most comfortable place to be, but Kar'tan kept thinking about how much worse the situation could have been.
If I'd been just a bit less lucky today, Cairn would be scooping me up with a vacuum. His shoulders twitched involuntarily at the memory of the bomb that had been strapped to his chest. He broke out of his internal ramblings when he heard a soft click from the opposite end of the line. Karjeel's authoritative voice boomed through his helmet speakers. "Good evening, Mr. Venn. Do you have the whereabouts of Opus Crane?"
Kar'tan did his best to break the news smoothly. "Colonel, I have some good news and some bad news."
"Proceed."
"Well," Kar'tan thought of the best way to break the news, and decided that backing up his claims would be easiest, "The bad news is that Lieutenant Bonari is fully responsible for your security breach. I'm uploading a data packet to you now, and I advise you sit down."
Kar'tan sent his recordings of the entire conversation with the Security Chief, from his dramatic entrance on the throne all the way to the bit about dirty jobs. He calculated that Karjeel would take approximately three minutes to view the complete data packet.
The Colonel did not respond for nearly ten. When he finally spoke, Kar'tan nearly slipped off his perch on the ladder.
"It was never like this in the field," said Karjeel. He stopped to draw a deep breath before continuing, his tone growing more sullen and even... nostalgic. "Out there, against the enemy, a commander could rely on his men. That they would do their duty without question was the only way the men thought. Here, in this gilded cage, it's so easy to be led astray by those who would hide behind their experience, those men that say they can help me adjust."
"Sir," Kar'tan interrupted. Clearly his disgust with the position was something the old Colonel wrestled with daily, but both Kar'tan and Karjeel had to focus on their duty.
"Sir, we can set this right," Kar'tan paused to let the statement sink in. Maybe he could inspire the Colonel into action. "My partner and I have a plan; the facility where the traitor and his band of thugs has set up shop in is an old secret projects hangar of some kind. The complex possesses at least four entrances that they have been using to commit their crimes: a concealed door in the south wall of your Armory, two large -probably camouflaged- entrances to the east, and a hidden tunnel located in the back room of a pub known as the KDY Not. Cairn has already welded the passage from the pub, and we believe that with the correct application of terror, and some well placed explosives, we can force the traitor and his gang to you."
Karjeel spoke again.
"Your people have quite the reputation: carnage, firepower, brutality, dominating will, impenetrable defense," said the Colonel, fire seemed to be spreading through him as he spoke the words. "Your plan is bold, perhaps overly so. There will be too many men, even for a Mandalorian, though I doubt that even I could change your mind."
The bounty hunter smirked, "Not a chance Colonel. "
"Then I'll have my men ready. Drive the traitor to us and we'll finish the job." Kar'tan smiled as he heard a new fervor creeping into the old soldier's tone.
"Sir, yes sir!" He said, getting caught up in the command in Karjeel's voice. Kar'tan, professional soldier and mechanic, suppressed a subconscious urge to salute the ladder in front of him, but he meant every word.
Still, there was a remaining issue to cover before he could climb down.
"Sir, one last detail. I don't know the extent of the traitor's intelligence network, but our investigation has led us to believe that no stormtrooper is directly involved with him. I cannot say the same for the civilian crews."
"Understood, Mr. Venn," responded Colonel Karjeel, "I will lead my chargepersonally, and we will be very precise"
XXX
"Sir, there seems to be a lot of blood outside," said the pirate over the comm, "And no trace of the prisoner in here."
Bonari clasped his head in his hands. Wonderful, he thought, 15 more men dead, none of them where that bounty hunter said his partner would be, and I have no idea whether or not he escaped the bomb.
He forced himself to respond, "Is there any sign of his equipment?" If the man had died, and his partner had killed the guards, the confiscated equipment would still be in the room somewhere.
"No sir, and no sign of the men you put here to look after him." The pirate sounded confused, mirroring Bonari's own bafflement. He had no idea if his men inside had been killed before the bomb detonated and tossed in, or if they had stupidly thought they could disarm the explosives -without telling him- in an attempt to save themselves.
This is madness, he thought. What sort of lunatic could deter, much less kill, seven of my best men?
"Keep looking," spat Bonari, "There has to be a clue that one of you can pick out from the scrap pile!"
XXX
Cairn sat in the control room, watching the guards move past without even looking in his direction. In this lax period, he felt his adrenaline ebb away and the stresses, physical and mental, of all the running, hiding, and killing flood back to him.
As a Mandalorian, he'd been trained to fight, win, and kill from before he was eight years old; it was part of his culture, and Cairn didn't have a reason to question it. Over the years, his parents had encouraged him to learn other skills, things he had talents for, like agriculture and hunting, but combat and survival had always been most important. If you won't fight, kill, or die to defend your own, then you don't deserve any of them, his father had said during training, but I know you will, because you're my son.
Still, the human body could only take so much. Cairn wasn't anywhere close to his usual limits, but when combat was part of an almost daily routine, the need to stop and take a deep breath periodically was high on the list of priorities.
He leaned further back into shadow and closed his eyes. In the confines of his helmet, Cairn steadied his breathing and let the stillness of the room creep into his body. His heart slowed, his muscles relaxed, and the world seemed to just float around him.
After taking several, long, slow breaths, Cairn opened his eyes again. On his chrono, 5 minutes had slipped by, and when he looked out the window again, he saw that another patrol was passing by in the south hangar.
Now relaxed, Cairn shifted his legs to reach a more comfortable sitting position.
Almost as if on cue, he heard the sound of heavy boots from the rear of the booth.
Kar'tan jumped the last meter to the bottom of the escape hatch; from Cairn's view, his partner's stride seemed a bit lighter, as if the man had just had a cup of Caf, prompting him to ask, "Have a good chat with our employer?"
"You might say that," said Kar'tan as he peeked around the edge of the north window, "I shared with him all the juicy details, and it seemed like some fire had come back when I told him our plan."
"So he got excited about waiting for us to send his traitorous lieutenant up the chute so he could shoot him down?" Cairn asked with a touch of sarcasm.
"What can I say? Vengeance is cathartic," replied Kar'tan, ignoring his partner's baiting, "Though to be honest, I think this has gotten a little symbolic for the old man."
"Whatever," returned Cairn.
He had been sitting for what felt like ages, and even with the time for a good rest, he was starting to get bored. "These guards must be blind and deaf. I've been here for," he checked his chrono, "half an hour, and they haven't even considered looking this way."
"How regular are the patrols?" asked Kar'tan.
"About once every five minutes on the south side, once every fifteen on the north." He paused to check his chrono again, "Both sides should be here in about 4." Cairn looked back at his partner, "why?"
Kar'tan pulled a double-fist sized wad of detonite from his pockets, a lump that must have been at least a three quarters of his supply. Between the two of them, Kar'tan was the demolitions specialist, but Cairn knew that a nugget of high grade detonite that big could level a building.
"A distraction," he said with a shrug.
XXX
A resounding BOOM shook the consoles surrounding the Overseer. He looked up from his security center as the vibrations died down. What in Coruscant's black sky was that? he thought worryingly.
"Overseer to all points. What was that explosion?" Bonari waited for some sort of report to come in while he ran to the observation window. The detonation had been close; there was an excellent chance he'd be able to see the damage from up here.
He glanced over the entire hangar, and his eyes came to rest on the wall between the north and south halves of the facility. In the easternmost corner, nearly out of his field of view, a massive plume of smoke was crawling out of an enormous crater in the wall. The pallets nearby had all fallen over, and even at this distance, the Overseer could see his troops moving in to clear to area and put out fires.
A response finally came over the radio, "-some kind of explosion." There was a bout of what sounded like heavy breathing. "-came from the secondary control room. I thought-" Several incoherent shouts cut over the line. "Definitely not one of ours, sir."
The Overseer looked at his console, but his holocam network showed nothing. He sighed before contacting his team leaders with forced composure, "Rally the men, and put double forces on the delivery station once you've secured the fire and assessed damages." Bonari's heart sank. It was clear now that Mr. Venn had lied, even after they'd broken into his armor; in all likelyhood, he'd taken the knowledge of his partner's whereabouts to his grave.
I have no idea how to handle this, he thought dejectedly, Tracyn is completely unpredictable.
A voice crackled onto the radio, "-Sir, there's not much left here, no fires, and there's no sign of the groups stationed in this sector."
"How many men?" Bonari asked, dreading the answer.
"I count twelve missing, on top of those dead already," the gang member hesitated, "I think that's... 31 in all, sir."
XXX
The crimson and white Saber-class TX-130S sat calmly in the glowpanel light, and from Kar'tan's position, it looked as pristine as the day it had hovered off of Rothana Heavy Engineering's assembly lines. A pirate passed into the line of sight, and the pair of bounty hunters ducked back into cover between the 'wings' of a positively ancient Vulture-class droid starfighter.
"Come on, we can take him," said Cairn
Since their little 'distraction' 20 minutes ago, the pair had been covertly making their way back to the motor pool, and it was clear that the bomb had fulfilled its intended purpose. The area was now staffed by only two guards, and there was no better chance to run for the vehicle than now.
"Just a few more seconds," responded Kar'tan, "I'd like to be in the tank before we start a firefight."
He poked his head out again; the pirate was walking in the opposite direction.
"Now or never," he said, and the pair of Mandalorians vaulted the starfighter's wing and dashed for the tank. Kar'tan covered the 20 meters at a dead run and leapt onto the vehicle's left repulsorlift 'pontoon' so that he could climb to the upper hatch. Cairn slowed early and withdrew his pilfered FC-1. As Kar'tan began working on the locked hatch, his partner patrolled around the vehicle. It wouldn't do to have a guard sneak up on them.
Being of a more modern design, the small padlock securing the hatch was, thankfully, less difficult than the one on the control booth's door, and Kar'tan had the lid open in under a minute.
"I'm in," he said to Cairn as he dropped into the open hatch. Standing in the gunner's position, the majority of his body was well above the tank. "I should be able to light this up in no time!"
Cairn began climbing towards the upper hatch when Kar'tan heard the distinct click-and-whine of a blaster being primed. He instinctively ducked just before a voice rang out.
"You!" shouted what could only be the other guard. He must have just come around the corner as Cairn had turned to get on the TX-130. "Get off there! That's property of the Kuati Underground!"
Cairn, who had his back to the pirate, slowly raised his hands and turned to face the man. His flechette cannon dangled on its sling in front of his chest.
Kar'tan didn't dare move a muscle, lest he startle the guard. While his partner had high survival odds against the poorly trained thug and his cheap BlasTech, neither Mando wanted to get shot at today.
Then, out of of nowhere, Cairn brought his hands forward and together in a pleading gesture and affected a childlike tone, "I just wanted to take it out for a test drive; I'll bring it right back, honest!"
"What?" the pirate asked as he lowered his weapon in utter bewilderment.
Kar'tan saw the genius in the impromptu ploy as Cairn snatched the FC-1 from his chest before the guard could react and put a single round into him. One was enough, as a spray of metal shot out of the quad barrel of the weapon, tearing into the man's flesh like a rock through wet flimsi.
Cairn quickly turned away and began climbing up the tank towards the upper hatch. Neither man said anything at first, but Kar'tan couldn't contain himself. "Where did that come from?" he asked, nearly laughing at the absurdity of what he had just witnessed.
"I figured he'd want to know that we were going to bring it back," replied Cairn with a shrug.
