Overseer Bonari looked up as his observation window shattered in an eruption of transparisteel, dust, and electric blue light. Massive shards of the broken window rained down into the hangar, and as he looked out, he could see a distant crimson and white shape move away from the motor pool, accompanied by the low rumble of repulsors.
He stood, dumbstruck, as an armored vehicle, moved south to the dividing wall and then skirted the motor pool, heading towards the hangar's door on the west end. More blue light streaked towards the upper corner of the massive door; where its massive chain-drive opener sat. The motor erupted in a brilliant flash of orange fire as the shots slammed home; a thundering double-shockwave from the impact reached his ears.
The Overseer staggered back to his holocam station, grabbing the back of his chair for balance. He sat down heavily and pressed the comm unit in his ear. "All stations, full alert, there's an armored intercept vehicle loose in Hangar Two. I repeat, all stations, full alert, front arms in Hangar Two." He spat out the order in a rush. The shock was still staggering, and with it, his blood was beginning to boil. Not here, not now, not in my facility, he thought.
There was nothing more that he could do except wait for his guard's responses. He looked over the various feeds into his security console. There must have been some clue that he'd overlooked since the old control booth went up in flames, something that would tell him what was going on.
As Bonari clicked through the recordings of the previous half hour, he saw a TX-130S heave itself from its resting place and lumber away, leaving a mangled corpse in its wake. He rewound the footage.
There! he thought as he watched a miniature Mandalorian climb into the tank's upper hatch, while another pumped flechette rounds into one of his men. Seething in pure rage, the Overseer screamed out loud, "The two bounty hunters, alive? "
He keyed his comm again, "All units, there are two Mandalorians running free in the facility. They are in possession of a Saber-class assault tank. Subdue them immediately and return the vehicle to me!"
XXX
"Kandosii, ner vod! Nice shot!" shouted Cairn from his perch atop the Saber; he pumped his arm in the air in triumph. The motor on the hangar door went up in a pall of smoke and flame, and it seemed like, for the first time since they'd taken this job, everything was going smoothly. Cairn quickly settled down; this was not the time to drop his guard.
The area ahead of the vehicle was clear, so he twisted the antipersonnel turret around to cover the path they were clearing. No one was following them yet, but he was going to need to keep a watchful eye.
Kar'tan called up from the cockpit as the tank began heading towards the gap in the dividing wall. "That's one door down, one more to go!" he said, his voice brimming with excitement. "By the way, try not to shoot too much of the ordinance lying around."
Cairn blinked a few times as he comprehended the statement, "Wait, wait, wait... You don't want wanton destruction?" he asked, astounded, "Are you sure they didn't hit you that hard? Because that's the second time today that I've had cause to doubt your sanity."
"Salvage,"Kar'tan responded.
Then it hit Cairn: the majority of the equipment surrounding them was not the property of the Empire, at least not directly; even their tank had Old Republic badges all over it. Clearly Kar'tan figured that they would be in an excellent position to lay claim on it when Bonari "passed away."
"Ori'jate, Ner Vod. Fantastic," Cairn said quietly.
XXX
Hugging the east wall, the tank passed the motor pool again. A contingent of about thirty pirates scrambled into formation in its path. Stupidly, none of them were packing any sort of heavy weapons, but they stood as though they had nothing to fear. Kar'tan smirked at the prospect of running them over, but out of of a desire to keep the tank away from potential land mines, he slowed to a stop.
He was close enough to see some of the stupid grins on the pirates faces. His smile increased as he aimed the main cannons at the floor in front of him.
Electric blue light splashed all over, and where it impacted, small, molten orange craters opened up in the stone floor, Kar'tan kept firing until the ground was so pockmarked that it looked like the surface of a small moon; several times there was a small eruption as an EMP mine went off. After the barrage, he brought the main cannon back to bear on the pirates and edged the tank forward. The thugs scattered; this part of the floor was now definitely mine-free.
As the TX-130 started moving again, Kar'tan saw a continuous blue beam shoot out from above him, catching various pirates in what could be described as the most efficient mop-up in all of history. When the pillar of blinding light touched a gang member, nearly all of his flesh seemed to evaporate, leaving a grilled skeleton in place of the fleeing thug.
Kar'tan keyed his comm, "Having fun are we?"
"I hardly even need to bloody aim," Cairn replied,
"Yes, you do." Kar'tan reprimanded, "Salvage, don't hit the salvage."
"Sorry, forgot about that." Despite the apology, Kar'tan could tell that his partner was smiling at the "wanton destruction" the cannon was causing.
Out in the open, many of the pirates had failed to find cover before they were vaporized, but the few that did would not likely be making a return appearance.
As the Saber approached the north hangar's pallet field, Kar'tan slowed and turned on all of the tank's forward illumination; the pirates may have been stupid enough to mount a frontal assault, but he wasn't taking the chance that one of them would have the luck to place a mine in the one place he was hesitant to open fire, right next to the stored equipment. Despite his precautions, Kar'tan's visibility was limited by the vehicle's minuscule windows, and there was no telling if the available sensors could pick up devices potentially 20 years more advanced.
"Cairn, we need eyes up front," he said calmly, "I'd rather not run into any mines in this narrow corridor."
"Affirmative," responded Cairn as he swiveled the upper turret forward with a mechanical whir. A pair of eyes inside a Mando helmet would more than make up for out-of-date sensors.
The gap in the wall loomed, and Kar'tan could see through the forward ports that while it was certainly wide enough to accommodate the tank, there might be an issue with height. Having no choice but to press on, he dialed down the repulsors in an attempt to fit.
The Saber-class sank nearly half a meter, and Cairn called from the beam turret, "You're fine, just a little more."
The dampened repulsors slowed the craft to a crawl, and as Kar'tan turned them down even more, he began to hear a low scraping noise from the underside of the tank. Cairn sounded optimistic, but he did have a better view, "Perfect. Keep like this and we'll be fine."
Kar'tan winced as the grinding noise continued; it wasn't like he was worried about resale value, but the Mandalorian didn't want to damage an already vulnerable area of their armored transport.
The tunnel was, thankfully, very short, and as they cleared the gap and rumbled into the south hangar, Kar'tan revved the repulsor units back up to full power. He heard the same mechanical whir as Cairn perform a full sweep in the turret.
"No contacts," he said calmly.
Kar'tan breathed a sigh of relief; resistance had been minimal thus far, and while he knew that their luck was likely to change for the worse, Kar'tan took the time to enjoy the momentary feeling of invincibility that the tank provided.
XXX
Bonari dithered in his decision-making.
He had never been in combat, and his post on Kuat, combined with his clandestine duties as Overseer, had made him complacent in the familiar, day-to-day minutia of a relatively peaceful planet. Worse, his masterminding of the raid on the Imperial armory had built his confidence to a point of arrogance. When the two Mandalorians had thrown themselves into the mix, single-minded in their efforts to capture his patsy, Opus Crane, they had operated completely out of his normal thought parameters.
Someone would need to be blamed for this travesty, and as Bonari watched the holo-footage of the rogue tank and planned his next move, he thought of the man who had summoned the bounty hunters in the first place, summoned them against his advice...
Karjeel, he thought venomously, He knows. The old bastard set me up with these psychos. They must have had secret orders, somehow he got past me.
It was clear to him now; if his operation was to continue unhindered, he would have to dispose of Karjeel and all of those loyal to him. When the dust settled, he could make up his own story and be put back in power, with or without a doddering old fool "administering" above him.
Bonari stood up from his chair, and keyed the comm board for his entire operation.
"All squads, this is The Overseer. Groups Aurek-1 through Grek-14, converge on the stolen vehicle in south hangar, grid C-1. Destroy it if necessary. Use everything at your disposal." Bonari shuddered with anger as he said the words. The blasted mercenaries were making him pulverize a priceless antique to get to them.
"Groups Grek-15 through Krill-7, assemble on my position, we have business to take care of on the surface."
The orders would split his forces more-or-less evenly, of the two hundred men he had started with, one hundred and forty remained; Bonari was certain that seventy men armed with the required heavy weapons could easily destroy one clone wars-era tank.
XXX
Heavy blaster fire pelted the front, rear, and sides of the vehicle, and as it surged forward, Cairn wondered how mad his partner had become.
"You do realize that I'm exposed up here, don't you?" he shouted indignantly as the explosion from a grenade rocked the vehicle. With only partial cover, Cairn was forced to crouch down, and the actuators for the antipersonnel turret wouldn't work if he wasn't standing. All he could do was fire somewhat blindly forward, hoping that one of the thugs wouldn't get a lucky grenade toss into the hatch, killing them both.
"Sorry, but I don't have much of a choice," replied Kar'tan as he wrestled with the tank's controls in between shots with the main guns. It floated higher, causing the repulsors to whine with the added strain. "I'm having enough trouble trying to maneuver in this cramped space. If we don't get torn up by a mine, I might be able to bring us around and get you out of trouble."
"No offense, but I've got a better idea," said Cairn as he grabbed his FC-1. The flechette cannon would hopefully force the thugs to keep their heads down long enough for him to bring the beam turret, and its gunner shield, to bear. He lifted his visor just above the surface of the hatch and put the quad barrel of the metal-spewing weapon on the lip of the opening. A few pirates stood in sight, and Cairn began pouring fire onto their positions. The thugs that weren't torn to shreds by the super-heated chunks of durasteel quickly moved into cover behind the pallet stacks, and the volume of heavy blasterfire decreased drastically, enough that Cairn risked standing a bit taller.
He had a moment to rotate the gun, and as the bounty hunter moved his turret left to begin firing, it became clear that most of the opposing force had been passed by, and his main threats were from the rear. Cairn took care to avoid hitting the stacks, and the beam cannon dispatched at least half a dozen thugs before the rest ducked further into cover.
The tank hovered out from behind the pallet field and into the more open area around the processing station. The vehicle sank from its abnormally high plane, its anti-grav units calming, but Cairn couldn't help noticing a severe list to the left.
"Kar'tan...?"
"That detonation must have damaged one of the repulsors," Kar'tan replied as the tank scraped the floor, sending them veering into a stray pallet stack. Crates scattered hither and yon across the floor. "I'm trying to compensate."
As the vehicle righted itself, Cairn sighed in relief and took a moment to survey the crate-processing station.
The pallets in this area were much more loosely packed; most of the gaps were wide enough for the Saber-class to travel through easily. In between the wide rows, several three-meter-tall load-lifters were hard at work moving various separated crates on to and off of the automated trams surrounding the facility. The vaguely humanoid machines would carefully lift a crate from a pallet stack and delicately place it on a cargo tram in a predetermined pattern. The haulers themselves were only two meters wide, but each lead car pulled several nine meter long trailers behind it. Once they reached maximum weight, the trams slowly lumbered off towards the narrow opening at the west end of the hangar. Cairn suspected that some of Bonari's men waited at the other end of the entrance tunnel to check manifests and oversee the loading of cargo onto inter-system shuttles, but there was a distinct lack of human workers on this end of the supply line. He guessed that the entire detachment of pirates in this hangar had taken cover in the denser pallet field. It was understandable, given the bounty hunter's presence in the tank, but it still struck Cairn as strange that no one had stayed to protect the processing station.
Perhaps they're under-trained and under-paid, he thought.
The armored vehicle cautiously hovered around the entire depot, giving the Mandalorians a chance to check for stragglers, before delicately maneuvering past one of the more active load-lifters; at the end of the circuit, Kar'tan's voice came over the comm.
"We need to block the door," he said evenly as the vehicle slowed to a stop near a group of unsorted crates, "I was thinking explosives."
"That's your solution to everything," said Cairn sarcastically. He took a sharp breath as an idea came to him, "It looks like those automated trams might be easy enough to hijack, how about we jam one or two into the opening?"
"Fair enough, but it probably won't be enough without some demo on top of it," replied Kar'tan, and Cairn could just hear the mischievous grin in his voice, "just so that it can't move."
"Fine," he said, clasping his head in his hands, silently laughing at his partner's need to make things explode, "but I'm sure you're nearly out of detonite by now."
Kar'tan paused for a moment.
"Take over driving for a minute," he said. "I need to make a stop for groceries."
XXX
Kar'tan watched as the blaster-scored tank floated awkwardly away, banging into several crates and a load-lifter as it made a path back to the corridor along the north edge of the pallet field. He winced as Cairn put a deep gouge in the north wall, and as the vehicle disappeared from sight, he turned to check the stacks beside him for provisions.
Most of the kit was locked into clone-wars era ordinance crates that could withstand light cannon fire and most projectile damage without incident. The first few packs were marked with symbols for automated blaster turrets, survival gear, and even capital ship-sized tibanna shells, but as enticing as all this paraphernalia was, Kar'tan needed professional demolitions equipment.
He searched for nearly ten minutes, and while the distinct twangs of heavy blaster fire and deeper booms of the TX-130's side-mounted cannons stayed fairly quiet, Kar'tan could hear that the shots were getting closer to his position. Cairn must have been drawing the pirates further west, something that wouldn't have happened if he had been carrying a gunner.
Doesn't matter, Kar'tan thought. I'll have the kit we need soon enough.
He pulled open a crate marked "DDC-15/41," and inside sat exactly what the bomb-happy Mando needed: Deuterium-Detonite Compound, otherwise known as "Rock-Cracker." Kar'tan grinned at the green bricks of explosive as he pulled them from the crate and stuffed nine of them into his pockets. Two would have been more than enough, but there was no shame in being prepared. P is for plenty, he remembered from training.
Kar'tan keyed his comm. "Cairn, I've found our groceries, come on back."
Cairn's reply was fraught with frustration. "I'll be right there; how did you manage to maneuver this shabla thing?"
"Take it easy," said Kar'tan, trying to placate his partner, "I'll walk to the edge of the field so we can do a quick change-over."
Avoiding the ungainly 3 meter tall load-lifters, he began a brisk run towards where the tank had turned along the wall. It wasn't far, but as he reached the edge of the pallet field, he heard the all-to-distinct whine of a blaster being primed.
Kar'tan turned to face his attacker, but only saw a bright red flash.
XXX
Cairn wrestled with the tank's controls; the damaged repulsor bank kept forcing him to awkwardly correct a list to the left, but he finally managed to put a crater where the last visible thug had been standing. With no other attackers in sight, he began reversing the vehicle back to where he had left his partner, but as he reached the western edge of the field, the tank's instruments failed to spot any humanoid figures.
Concerned, Cairn checked his comm. "Kar'tan, what's your 20?"
It crackled for a moment before a response came, "*shhhk*-re in a second."
"You're breaking up," said Cairn, confused that there would be comm trouble when his partner should be within a few meters. "Repeat your last transmission."
Kar'tan's irritated voice came over clearly this time, "I'm right here. Open up."
Cairn stopped the tank and extricated himself from the crash couch. The hatch over the gunner's position could be locked from the inside, and as he lifted the lid and looked out, he saw Kar'tan climb up onto the side of the vehicle's hull.
Cairn's partner appeared no worse for the wear, but there was a rather hideous set of bloodspatter covering his side. The duster's right sleeve was stained the worst, and Cairn could see that more blood was leaking from that arm's vibroknife glove.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
"Ran into a couple friends on the way over, and it looks like I'm going to have to stay close for the time being," said Kar'tan, pointing to a blaster scar on the left side of his helmet, highlighting a lucky shot that had disabled his helmet's transmitter. The bead in his ear would work in a pinch, but its range was limited.
"But I got the goods," he finished.
From his pocket, Kar'tan produced a 4x12x20 centimeter green brick. "'Rock Cracker,'" he said, "this should be more than enough to screw up the door."
XXX
As Cairn leapt from his handhold onto the loaded tram, Kar'tan kept a close eye on his rearward sensors. By best guess, the bounty hunters had put down nearly 30 men with the armored vehicle, but there would definitely be more trouble when they returned to the denser pallet field, especially since they had given the pirates time to rally together and take up defensive positions.
Kar'tan maneuvered in front of the slow moving automated tram; despite the handicap on the tank, he could still out-pace his prey, so he took the time to turn around so that the tank's splayed 'pontoons' blocked the carriage's movement to either side. The simple droid brain installed on the lead car brought the vehicle to a steady halt when it determined that there was no way around the unfamiliar bulk in front of it.
Through the miniature viewports in the front of the tank, Kar'tan watched as his partner opened the panel covering the lead car's 'brain' and began working his magic on the droid computer inside. Convincing the automated tram to abandon all previous programming and drive head-first into the corner of the hangar door would be a difficult process.
Several minutes passed, and as much as he wanted to keep checking his comm for range, Kar'tan had no choice but to wait in silence so as not to disturb his partner. He checked the tank's long-range sensors every few seconds, paranoid that a group of thugs might sneak up on the pair of the Mandalorians and force them to separate.
Still, this should be the last door we need to seal, Kar'tan thought hopefully, The rest of the job is just staying in the tank and causing as much terror as we can.
Cairn gave a thumb's up signal to show that the tram was ready to crash; he pulled a wad of the 'Rock Cracker' from his pocket and primed the small detonator that his partner had given him. Kar'tan had set the ring-adjusted device to 'IMPACT,' so the detonator's on-board accelerometer would force it to explode during the impact of the tram's 'accident.'
Cairn leapt back onto the Saber, and as the tank pulled away from the suicide train, Kar'tan interrupted his partner's climb into the gunner's seat.
"You know," he said playfully, "I think its time to demolish a building."
Cairn groaned, "I was hoping you'd forget about that."
XXX
The orders Cairn had programmed into the lead car's droid brain changed the hauler's behavior significantly. For starters, its only concern was now maximum velocity, so like a teenager's first day alone with the family speeder, the tram accelerated so quickly that several of the carefully loaded crates fell off the rear of the last few cars.
But the droid brain no longer cared about its cargo, and as the train covered the two hundred meter distance from where it had been reprogrammed to its intended destination, it lost several more crates off the sides and back of its many trailers. The hauler's acceleration and top speed values were not on par with the high performance speeders that rich civilians bought, but even with its heavy burden, the tram reached a respectable 85 kilometers per hour.
When it was within fifteen meters of the door's edge, an emergency fail-safe kicked in, but the devious Mando had anticipated basic safety concerns. On his way through the droid brain's subsystems, Cairn had made several key wiring adjustments.
Rather than apply full reverse thrust, as the fail-safe was instructed to do, the lead car decoupled from its trailers, and shot off at an even greater velocity than before. Even with twelve meters to go, the tram collided a half second before its cargo could make it to the door, meaning that the shock-sensitive device attached to it detonated before the rest of the cars reached the crashsite.
DDC-41/15, or 'Rock Cracker,' lived up to its namesake. Its powerful shockwave threw what remained of the lead car away into the south hangar, warped the massive door, and pulverized the stone wall that made up the massive door jamb it had crashed into; dust and granulated rock flew into the air from the force of the detonation. When the trailing platforms made it to the site, they collided with the weakened support structure; the first few cars retained enough force to knock out sizable chunks of rock at the bottom, and as more smashed into the door jamb, larger blocks of stone, further from the crashsite, began to fall to the ground, creating a pile that the last few trailers had just enough momentum to mount before tipping over.
The pile of pulverized rock, upended tram cars, and ordinance crates reached 7 meters in height, and with unaltered trams beginning to crowd the area, there would soon be no way for the pirates to get through the door any time soon.
XXX
Cairn leaned out from the right side of the tank with a detonator-primed dollop of DDC in his hand. As the tram station flew by, he plastered the lump onto a support column; he was careful not to inadvertently tear himself off the vehicle. The last thing they needed was for him to get severely injured or end up stuck outside Kar'tan's communications range.
Worrying about the comms seemed like an unnecessary paranoia from both Cairn and his partner, but he didn't question it. Mandalorian philosophy revolved around loyalty to clan; concern and support were part-and-parcel of their training.
The bounty hunter grabbed another green wad from his pocket, slapping one on each column as the passed. In a single run, the entire north wall of the crate processing station had devices rigged to blow simultaneously within five minutes.
"Now that we've broken enough of their toys," Cairn said with a smirk, "Don't you think it's time to return to our hosts?"
"My thoughts exactly," said Kar'tan as the tank turned towards the pallet fields and picked up speed. Cairn hopped back into his place on the gunner's seat and checked the turret's alignment.
As the bounty hunters approached the northwestern corner of the field, the vehicle rotated to face the pallets as it passed, strafing sideways to present its heaviest armor towards the most likely place the pirates would be hiding. Through the light haze caused by the tram's detonation, Cairn's position atop the tank gave him the unimpeded view he needed to effectively search for hostiles.
Clear...
Clear...
Cl- "Kar'tan, I've got movement, 1 o'clock."
Cairn revved up the beam cannon to lay down suppressive fire, but before he could pull the trigger on a possible contact, a flurry of red blaster bolts and molten durasteel erupted from a concealed gun emplacement further along the dividing wall. The Mandalorian barely had time to duck before his position was inundated with fire.
"Hostiles, 9 o'clock!"
Bits of still-warm metal pinged off his helmet and ricocheted over him as the tank turned parallel with the wall to face its attackers. The armor plate in front of his cannon protected Cairn as he climbed back to his feet. Kar'tan opened up on the fairly distant emplacement with the primary guns, and the group that had assaulted them took cover to avoid the torrent of blue fire.
Confident behind his armored turret, Cairn turned back to look at what he had initially spotted. In the distance, he saw several pirates hefting large missile launchers on shoulder mounts. Shab, he thought. Looks like they wised up.
"Kar'tan, missile team, 3 o'clock!" He shouted into his comm, loud enough that the volume limiters kicked in. "Evasive maneuvers, NOW!"
Cairn watched as a pair of rockets, one after the other, streaked from the launcher team's position. In the split second that it took to cover the 30 meters to the tank, the bounty hunter's adrenaline infused mind took in every small detail. The angry black missiles streaked forward, and dual white plumes of smoke trailed behind, billowing like clouds on a crisp summer day. In the same moment, several stray blaster shots pinged off the armor in front of him and others threatened to hit the projectiles as they approached. The Mandalorian felt the Saber-class become a wild animal, lurching under him, throwing him forward into the turret controls, and his helmet knocked against the off-white armor plate he'd been hiding behind. Cairn could see the rockets pass as they just missed the tank's cockpit.
However, they couldn't miss the wall just behind it.
The detonation would have killed Cairn had he not been behind the upper turret's dense armor. His helmet protected his ears from the shockwave, but the heat washed over his beskar like an ocean torrent, any longer than the few seconds of exposure to the blast and he would have been cooked alive.
When the first missile impacted, the Saber-class was still in the process of lurching backwards, all of its weight pushed to the rear. The pressure wave that emanated from the wall was enough to overload the tank's already limit-bound drive systems, and the rear repulsors quietly died.
The vehicle's now unsupported rear end drove straight into the ground, creating a fulcrum; the second missile's pressure wave and the overclocked front repulsors did the rest.
As Cairn's mind grasped what was happening, he instinctively grabbed an interior handhold and pulled himself as far as he could inside the overturning vehicle. The tank was nearly vertical as his helmet passed beneath the level of the turret controls, and as it finished its skyward arc and crashed to the ground, the impact jarred Cairn enough that he let go, landing back first on the granite floor beneath him.
The tank had settled at an angle on the cockpit and one of its pontoons, so Cairn had plenty of room to crawl out of the downed vehicle. As he got to his feet, he brought his flechette cannon to bear and checked his comm.
"Kar'tan, are you alright?" he asked nervously. There was no telling if his partner had been knocked unconscious from the blast or the following crash.
A cough came over the line, "Yeah. I'm fine; I'm alright," Kar'tan responded, and he continued with a dazed sounding, "That was fun."
Cairn breathed a small sigh of relief, but kept his eyes on the pallet field as he took cover behind the tank's stuck pontoon. The heavy blaster bolt and durasteel flechette spewing group had ceased fire after the missiles had hit, but there was no telling when they would start attacking again.
"Get out here," Cairn said tersely, adrenaline had him on high alert. "We need to find cover before they come looking for us."
"Coming... -Ow!" shouted Kar'tan as a click, followed by a hard clang emanated from the tank.
"What?" asked Cairn.
"Nothing," his partner responded, "Just hit my head."
Kar'tan emerged from the toppled vehicle with a new scuff on his reinforced helmet, and the pair of Mandalorians darted for the pallet field before their pirate attackers could come into view.
XXX
This area of the storage yard was much more loosely packed than the group Kar'tan had first navigated through in what felt like a lifetime ago, and as he and Cairn gathered their bearings behind one of the taller pallet stacks, the larger Mandalorian spoke up.
"Well, there goes plan A," he said as he shook his head; his ears were still ringing from the inverted fall out of the Saber's crash couch. "Where are the aruetiise now?"
"The missile team was about thirty meters deep from where they hit the wall, looks like they're still there ," Cairn replied from his perch at the top edge of the stack. "The blaster and flechette teams have merged together, and now they're heading for the tank."
He dropped to the ground as quietly as he could and unslung his pilfered FC-1.
"How much do you have left in that cannon?" asked Kar'tan as he checked his E-11-A.
"`Bout half a drum," answered Cairn, "Why?"
Kar'tan silently brought his left gauntlet up to chin level; he made a fist, and the mounted vibroknife popped out of this glove with a sharp *shunk.*
Cairn nodded in understanding, wordlessly ejecting and retracting his own blades.
XXX
The pair of Mandalorians silently approached the missile team. The small contingent of human pirates, eight in total, stood in a sparse formation behind hastily organized pallet stacks as they waited for their fellows with the heavy blasters to return.
Kar'tan waited behind a stack while his partner crept into position on the opposite side of the group. The plan was a synchronized assault on the relaxing pirates; with any luck, the pair of them would be able to take down at least a third of the missile team before anyone else could get a shot off.
An acknowledgement light clicked on inside Kar'tan's helmet; Cairn was ready to strike. They had fallen into an almost routine tactical approach; Kar'tan would crash in and draw attention to himself while Cairn would sneak around behind to wreak the most havoc uninterrupted.
Kar'tan took a deep breath, psyching himself up for the confrontation; the human in front of him was taking a break, not concentrating on anything in particular, but another pirate, this one in roughly the middle of the group, raised a hand to his left ear. He was receiving a call from the main team.
He motioned for the others to come closer, "Hey. Hey! They've checked the vehicle-"
Kar'tan quickly realized that it was now or never for their attack; most of the pirates were in the process of grabbing weapons, but half still had their backs to him.
"Now," he said tersely, angrily, as he shot forward onto the nearest PLX wielder. Kar'tan lead the attack with his left hand, grabbing a shoulder and shoving the target to his knees as he jammed his right gauntlet lance into the man's collar. The Mandalorian held the blade in for a heartbeat, then tore the edge forward as he let go of the victim's shoulder. The man collapsed at Kar'tan's feet; in a few moments, he'd be dead.
The other pirates' faces were studies in shock. Moving quickly, Kar'tan reached left and grabbed the tunic on the nearest man, pulling him in and shielding himself from the others as he brought the still ejected blade up into the man's carotid artery. Blood poured out past his clenched fist in a torrent, soaking his duster's right arm again.
On the opposite side of the congregation, two pirates quietly disappeared from the fray as the remaining four pointed their weapons at Kar'tan; he recognized that the men with the PLX launchers would be the bigger threat. While they wouldn't intentionally fire with their target so close, adrenaline and fear could make them twitchy and stupid.
His second victim was still falling with the pull; the big Mandalorian pivoted and shoved, using the momentum of the falling body to toss the pirate into the nearest PLX jockey on his right.
The missile jockey staggered under the weight of his quickly dying compatriot and fell backwards, potentially knocking him out on the ground, but definitely removing him from the fight for the next several seconds.
Kar'tan rolled his hips back in preparation to follow through to the next target on his left. The pirate was only half turned towards Kar'tan; a hard stab, backed up by the rage in his blood and the momentum of his fist would be enough to down the man, but after dealing with him, there would be an enemy at Kar'tan's back.
There was no stopping to reevaluate. The killing blow came swiftly, cutting into the man's pectoral muscle and sawing through bone to put a fissure in the heart of his target. As the knuckles of Kar'tan's outstretched fist connected with the man's chest, he took another step forward.
The bounty hunter retracted his glove-blade, put his left knee down behind the victim, and grabbed the man's tunic in both hands, putting the soon-to-be-dead pirate between him and the next assailant.
This far in, there was only flow and rage. Kar'tan shifted his stance and lunged for the last target, shoving the semi-conscious meatshield in front of him. The last man's fellows had been incapacitated or killed within seconds, and as the Mandalorian bowled into him, he awkwardly crashed backwards onto a short pallet stack.
As the man lay flat on his back, Cairn's combat knife dove into his juglar. Kar'tan let go of his meatshield and rolled right, coming to his feet over the pirate he'd knocked aside moments before. A fast drop and a stab to the chest finished the job before Kar'tan leapt to his feet again, ready to keep fighting. Cairn was the only figure in sight, cleaning and resheathing his blades as he stood over his last kill. The part of Kar'tan's mind still enthralled in rage and bloodlust said Threat: Destroy, but he had to stop.
Control, control, he thought consciously, clenching and unclenching his fists; the blades in his gloves made their distinct *shunk* sounds several times. The fight's over, he's on my side.
The big Mandalorian took a deep breath as he forced himself to stop, pushing the bloodrage back into the compartment in his head where it belonged.
"Thanks for the assist," he said with forced calmness.
"Hey, ner vod," replied Cairn as he started moving towards a tall stack. "You were the entertainment, I was just pickpocketing the crowd."
Kar'tan laughed more naturally as he clapped his partner on the back, and Cairn climbed the stack for another look at where the rest of the pirates would be. His helmet provided him with night vision that the Overseer likely would not have given his "employees," even those working in the dim sections of the hangar.
"There's the tank," he said, calmly analyzing the battlefield, "so where's the... - There they are, south of the vehicle, just about where we took cover after it flipped."
"Any ideas on where they'll go next?" asked Kar'tan.
"Can't tell from here," replied Cairn, "Looks like they're starting a search pattern."
He looked down from his perch, "What's our next move?"
Kar'tan hefted a PLX launcher. "I was thinking: 'explosive conclusion,'" he said as he pulled a brick of DDC from his pocket.
XXX
As the Overseer's patsy for the armory raid, Opus Crane had earned the trust he had so long desired from the gang, and when the tank had been flipped over because of his strategy, he had felt justified in his command. Now he just needed to find the blasted mercenaries so that they could end this nightmare.
The overturned vehicle was empty, that much was certain, but the PLX team had not returned hails and Crane felt himself growing impatient.
"Where are those psychotic bastards?" he demanded rhetorically. The outsiders had spent over half of the afternoon giving the Kuati Underground's forces an absolute runaround; Crane, like the Overseer commanding him, was done with their games.
He needed the assistance of the PLX team. While others might think a crateful of Rocket-Propelled High Explosives would be overkill for two men, Crane had witnessed these two men smash through several levels of carefully crafted conspiracy, kill over a dozen men in hand-to-hand, break out of an interrogation chamber, and wreak unbelievable amounts of havoc in a 30 year old armored vehicle, all in a matter of days.
He was not taking any more chances.
The promoted patsy rallied his troops. "East! We go East! The PLeX Team needs our assistance, and with them, we will finally stop this madness!"
The contingent of underpaid mercs, ragtag thugs, and disgruntled Imperial workers marched forward into the pallet field, ready to face the outsider threat lurking in the dark. Unbeknownst to them, Mandalorians worked best when concealed in shadow.
XXX
The PLX team had strangely disappeared from their assigned location, and Crane cursed the forces besetting his operation for the thousandth time.
"Sir! We found traces of blood all over the emplacement, but nothing else, not even corpses," said a human mercenary from the front of his pack of thugs.
"Well, check for trails, or something!" Crane was beginning to falter. The complete absence of the rocket team was just another mishap in a continuing string of problems with his first command. The Overseer would not be pleased with his failure; Crane was expected to support the attack against the surface with reinforcements, and there was no way he could help if the entire team was stuck down here on a wild bantha chase.
The mercenary gang milled about as the patsy-in-command sat at the base of an exceptionally tall stack in an attempt to recollect his composure and determine the group's next steps when a drop of what felt like warm water fell onto his ear. Irritated, Crane brushed the liquid away only to discover that he had been splashed by bright red blood.
"Guh!" he exclaimed in surprise as the gang members all turned to look where their leader was pointing. Glowsticks aimed up at the top of the stack to reveal every single PLX team member in a bloodsoaked pile.
After a moment of shock, Crane spoke first. "Get them off of there! Check their vitals!" The men under his command leapt onto the stack to rescue their fallen comrades, but as they clumped together, Nero approached from behind.
"Opus! The rockets! They are missing!" the rodian squeaked in his native tongue.
"Not now." Crane said dismissively. "We have to recover our casualties." He had latched onto the ideal of comradery in a vain attempt to regain control of the situation.
Vain, because the gangsters' fates had already been decided. A human thug at the top of the stack pulled aside a corpse to uncover a lump of green paste with a cred-coin sized detonator beeping at him. The device emitted a sharp click.
The concussive blast from the shaped charge collapsed the casings of several armed PLX missiles, detonating them in a cascade. The resulting fusion ball, which involved six times the amount of reactive materials as the explosion that had flipped the TX-130, evaporated both the stacked corpses and the men climbing towards them. The pressure wave expanded at a lethal velocity to encompass all of the men gathered in the hastily constructed emplacement.
The last thing Crane felt before he died was an overwhelming sense of depression. The Patsy had failed to stop the bounty hunters for the last time.