Chapter Nine
For the first six weeks of her new orders, N'Lola charted a path around the Inner Rim that carried the fleet from one imperial world to the next, feigning obedience to the orders by traversing a precise path. Her fleet remained equidistant from both the Expansion Region and what N'Lola referred to as the 'Colonial Rim,' which most star-maps regarded more briefly as the Colonies. As her ship entered the Pa Tho system and took a high, temporary orbit above the planet of the same name, she was prepared for a few days of planetary oversight to see that the planet was remaining lawful, when she received a call to the bridge of the Vindicator. Immediately, she walked the corridors to the bridge, with a warm and friendly smile for every person on her crew as she passed them in one hallway or another, on their way to or from either work, practice, bathing, or having something to eat.
"Report," N'Lola said, as she stepped onto the bridge and approached the admiral's seat, settling comfortably into it as her chief communications officer answered her prompt.
"We are receiving a long-range communique, Admiral, twenty-second delay; text-only, originating from the Wroona system, grid coordinates L-15. Admiral Tandres entreats for the pleasure of your dialogue," reported Aerla.
"… entreats for the pleasure of my dialogue?"
"His words, Admiral," replied Aerla.
"Ik'ya hoga-tu," she said to herself and Aerla half-turned in her seat to look at her, though the eyebrows of her fellow natives of Bpfassh rose a bit in response. It was a Bpfassh exclamation, and not a particularly nice one, that was primarily used by farmers, ranchers, and orchard-keepers, on their homeworld.
"Admiral?" queried Aerla.
"Inform Admiral Tandres that I am listening," N'Lola replied, and Aerla nodded, rotating her seat, and then transmitting the admiral's official response, politely excluding the exclamation she had never heard and did not know how to spell.
"A militant criminal syndicate has moved into the Wroona system and is now threatening imperial authority. The Wroonians refuse to engage the criminals directly, citing that following the Empire's forceful conquest, they have learned it is not their place to bear arms or usurp imperial authority. Admiral Tandres laments that he is presently out of his depth and desperately requires assistance from an experienced veteran of the admiralty."
"Helm, set a course for the Wroona system, optimal speed," N'Lola instructed, "Aerla, advise the admiral to await our arrival at a high orbit, and instruct him to be prepared to come aboard for a debrief on the situation at hand." In answer, Aerla nodded as the fleet activated their hyperdrive engines, transmitting the instruction while the engines were still in the activation process. It would take a few hours to arrive, though the twenty-two-year-old admiral found herself unconcerned about that, instead contemplating her impending meeting with the system admiral.
As they arrived, she found the system admiral commanded a fleet that consisted of one Executor accompanied by ten Procurators and thirteen Gladiators. It was surprising to her that he needed assistance: he undoubtedly had more personnel in his fleet than her, though she had a substantial contingent of forces compatible with landing soldiers on the ground if the situation were to demand it. Immediately upon their arrival, she saw a GR-75 medium transport as it emerged from the Executor's hangar bay, approaching the Vindicator. N'Lola descended through the decks until she stood in the hangar bay, watching as the medium transport floated up and passed through the force field that permitted the hangar bay to remain pressurized. Once it was inside, the massive hangar bay doors whirred shut as the force field was deactivated, and she stood on the fourth-level balcony as the transport's doors opened to lower the disembarkation ramp. Once it was down, she watched as a squad of twenty armed men disembarked, the admiral's personal bodyguard, taking positions to stand at attention in a semicircular loop around the ramp, two curved rows deep. Finally, the admiral himself walked down the ramp, wearing a dark grey-green uniform with admiral's markings on it, including a black leather belt with a large steel buckle that housed a secret compartment.
The Admiral, himself, was a man of forty-eight years, with long black hair impeccably well maintained and in a ponytail of elbow-length. An example of the human potential for masculine beauty, he had soft, light-toned skin, athletic but not in the manner of a veteran soldier. He had manicured nails, a clean-cut countenance devoid of either moustache or beard, and the blaster pistol on his hip had a polished grip with a chromatic, gunmetal-grey pigmentation. He was neither career soldier nor career sailor; indeed, it seemed rather obvious that he was from an aristocratic family, which no doubt provided imperial coffers with a voluminous donation, for which he was rewarded with an admiralty. Still, he was roughly the same height as her, perhaps less than an inch taller.
His black leather boots, having similar steel buckles, touched down on the hangar floor as he took a moment to look around; she could see he was taken aback by the number of nonhumans. He had probably never seen so many, all at the same time, all in the same place. She could sense his surprise at the sight of so many nonhumans, not merely moving about freely but serving as armed members of the crew. As he stared in wonderment, N'Lola took a moment, and channeled her inner serenity and self-discipline through the lens of the Force.
"Welcome aboard the Vindicator, Admiral," N'Lola said, from the fourth level balcony of the hangar bay, to which Admiral Tandres responded by looking up, startled out of his observation of average crewmen. Once his eyes and the eyes of his bodyguard were on her, blinking in surprise that the admiral was herself a Bpfassh and not a human, she tapped into the Force. Casually, smoothly, her entire form rose up from the balcony, hovering over the edge of the balcony's rail and then floating down in that direction as their eyes widened, awestruck by the demonstration of power. She maintained her body's precise posture, standing upright with her hands in front of her, pressing the tips of her small, middle, and index fingers, as well as her thumbs, together. Likewise, N'Lola pressed the middle bone of each ring finger pressed against each other, as she slid with a seemingly effortless grace through the air at a diagonal, until she stood a scant ten metres ahead of him. Fortunately for him, the admiral managed to recover his composure before N'Lola touched down on the hangar floor, at which point he approached with an aristocratic sort of self-confidence.
"System Admiral Garamond Tandres, Wroona system," said the admiral as a self-introduction.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, I am Admiral N'Lola Vurkoth," she replied, "You command a rather impressive fleet, Admiral, and right on the borders of the Givin Domain and the Harrin Sector, no less." Between the more than three hundred thousand personnel on his flagship, twelve thousand on each Procurator, and probably nearly two thousand five hundred personnel on each Gladiator, she suspected his fleet had at least sixty thousand personnel more than her own had.
"Indeed, the Empire has entrusted me with a rather considerable level of manpower. However, I must confess, I had thought this would be… a far easier appointment than it has turned out to be," said the admiral, "We are deep in imperial territory, and I had not expected that anyone would challenge us here. Lamentably, I am far out of my depth, and I do not know how to handle this situation."
"I take it this is your first command, then?" she asked, and he nodded in answer.
"It is, and I am not ashamed to defer to the counsel of an experienced veteran," he replied, grudgingly offering control over the situation to someone not only nonhuman but also considerably younger and prettier than he was.
"Understood, Admiral," she replied, with a faint intake of breath, "I will require an incident report regarding the situation on Wroona."
"Of course," replied Admiral Tandres, "The criminal element is called the Crymorah syndicate. It is allegedly run by a handful of wealthy families with centuries-old connections to organized crime, who at some point started to work together for mutual interest. They are now attempting to extend their reach into Wroona system, and they have taken some extremely antagonistic measures in the pursuit of such. Already, the Crymorah syndicate has assassinated the planetary governor, the planetary general, all four continental dukes, every imperial infantry colonel on the planet, and roughly nine out of every ten majors. They also managed to seize control of several planetary defense mechanisms, as well, but we were able to destroy those before they were able to begin firing on my fleet."
"I see, and what do we know about the Crymorah syndicate?"
"Sadly, extremely little is known about them. They are secretive and reclusive, doing their best to remain as unnoticed as possible on the planets where their ruling families live. They were a thorn for the old Republic, and have remained a thorn for the Empire subsequently; we have never been able to truly eliminate them, nor have we ever had success in curbing their expansionism… but this is the first time they have become militarily violent."
"I see. I may have a solution, but it will involve battle and it will involve you entrusting the captains in your command to act freely in the engagement of the enemy," she replied, "Your captains will need to be granted autonomy to do what is necessary against the enemies that will come on your fleet."
"Understood," he replied, then blinked, "Wait, where will you be?"
"Elsewhere," she said simply, and then added, "breaking the syndicate – permanently. They have trifled the Empire for more than time enough as it is, but to dare to carry out the assassination of authorities and launching openly militant operations against the imperial military, demands… a more austere response." The Admiral's eyes widened a little in response to the statement, but he nodded slowly.
"Understood, Admiral," he replied, "I will return to my ship and instruct my fleet to be prepared for battle at any moment." She nodded, and watched as he and then his bodyguard boarded the vessel and quickly departed from the ship, soon vanishing from sight as the hangar doors shut once more.
"Nuav, I will need Tenat Noore," N'Lola said, following the departure of the aristocratic admiral, "Our first task will be to identify the locations of this Crymorah syndicate's ruling families." Nuav nodded, and departed while N'Lola returned to her ready room to await the arrival of one of her Jilruan assassins. Less than an hour later, a chime sounded throughout her ready room.
"Enter," she said, and the doors whirred open to reveal the Jilruan she had called for. Seven feet two inches in height and two hundred seventy pounds of slim, corded musculature, he had an impressive frame with pale, bluish skin that looked to her as if it had the faintest hint of a violet-blue tint to it. He was wearing the traditional uniform of imperial naval security personnel, though she knew it bothered him she also knew that he knew the importance of all their current efforts. He stepped in, keeping his shimmering, bioluminescent irises of cornsilk yellow focused on her.
"How can I be of service, Admiral?"
"I need you to make contact with the Black Sun. Our current target is the Crymorah syndicate, and I need to know the location of the estates of the ruling families of the syndicate," she replied, "The Black Sun will no doubt be able to provide this. Inform them that I have need to have a direct communication with them over a secure transmission line." In answer, Tenat nodded promptly.
"Understood, Admiral, it will be my pleasure to assist in this task," he replied, and she smiled a little bit at the thirty-year-old assassin.
"Someday, Tenat, we may all be less formal," she said, and the Jilruan offered a smile she found charming. A fair number of people found it hard to get around, the fact that Jilruans did not have noses, but for her part, N'Lola had never thought of that as too big an issue. In some ways, perhaps it made them more secure against being killed as easily, having no nosebone that could be struck from underneath and jabbed fatally into the brain, after all.
"That is the day I work for, my Lady," replied Tenat, in a moment of warmth, before bowing his head to her respectfully and departing from the ready-room, requiring a change of clothes to slip into the criminal underworld. It would be easier for him than most: everyone knew, most Jilruans were enslaved by the Hutts, who were themselves notorious crime lords. The fact that he might have been in service to someone as cruel, vindictive, brutal, and wealthy, as a Hutt, meant most of the underworld would give him a wide berth, because most lacked the spine to challenge the Hutts and their economic power.
Finally, eight days after his departure from the fleet aboard a Curich-class shuttle, Tenat returned, landing in the Vindicator's hangar bay and proceeding to the admiral's ready-room immediately.
"The Black Sun instructed me to return to you with this holo-communicator, which I naturally disassembled, examined, and reassembled; it is not trapped in any manner and contains no self-destruct protocol. They also wished me to express their irritation at your elimination of several Black Sun operatives on your previous encounter with their organization, and warned that whatever you seek, that will factor into the cost."
"Naturally," she said, then nodded to him, "Excellently done, Tenat. Please return to the hangar bay, instruct the flight mechanics to prepare the Wraith for transit." The Jilruan nodded immediately, turning and exiting the ready-room to grant the admiral privacy, before moving quickly to the hangar bay to inform them the admiral would require her personal transport prepared for use. Then, she activated the holo-communicator and waited a moment for a reaction from the one who had sent it with her assassin. About one minute later, the holo-communicator beeped two times and then chimed, before emitting luminous, pale blue light in the form of a translucent human figure, hooded and robed.
"Admiral Vurkoth," greeted the man, his gruff voice sounding hollow and mechanical because of the holo-communicator, "I must admit, we of the Black Sun were… surprised, when you sent a messenger to us."
"The fact that some of your agents once attempted to kill me does not diminish the fact that you are some of the galaxy's best information vendors," she replied coolly, seated behind her desk with the holo-communicator sitting on top of it.
"This is quite true. As you were no doubt warned, the deaths of the operatives you killed will be factored into the price of whatever information you wish to purchase."
"I am well aware."
"Very well, then. What is it you wish to know?"
"Do you have information on the Crymorah syndicate?" For a heartbeat, she thought she could see a hint of a bristle in his visceral reaction.
"Yes. The Black Sun is … aware … of the Crymorah 'syndicate,' and their expansion," he replied, with what sounded like a decidedly disdainful tone at the word 'syndicate,' on which he'd placed special emphasis.
"I require the names of their ruling families and the locations of those families' estates," N'Lola replied, and the shrouded figure nodded slowly.
"There are three ruling families. It will cost seventy-eight thousand credits to transmit the information which you desire, however," replied the cloaked man.
"That is acceptable. However, you may want to waive the price in its entirety, due to current circumstances," she replied. She had a feeling as if he was lifting one eyebrow at her boldness, but if he had any emotional responses, he was offering no indication of it to her.
"Your words intrigue."
"It is no secret that the Crymorah crime families grow more powerful, with each passing day, nor that they've been pursuing an aggressive expansion of their power. They may soon challenge the Black Sun for supremacy in the galaxy's criminal underworld."
"This … is a true statement. However, I see no connection between this fact and the reason you suggest that we provide you information at no expense."
"If you were to provide the information to me at no cost to me, I will cripple the Crymorah syndicate, at no cost to you, rendering it briefly inert and vulnerable to alternative methods of diminishment."
"Hmm… and how would you cripple the Crymorah 'syndicate,' precisely, Admiral? As you say, they begin to challenge our superiority in the circles we move in, with thousands of enforcers of their own."
"The Crymorah syndicate may have thousands of enforcers, but it still operates on the authority of a handful, on the authority of selected bloodlines," she replied casually, "I will end, those bloodlines." The hooded figure blinked in answer to the statement of intent to terminate the leadership of the Crymorah syndicate, and without any transfer of funds needed to occur. Not a single individual, but numerous, a task which would otherwise require a team of assassins and would undoubtedly have a cost well into the range of millions of credits. All she needed was the exact locations.
"An intriguing offer, and one indeed more than acceptable," answered the man at last, "Indeed, if you should succeed in such a task, we will provide you a small portion of what such a task would have otherwise cost us."
"If you wish to compensate me for the impending destruction of the Crymorah syndicate, do so by releasing from enslavement or indentured servitude, however many slaves could be purchased by the amount of money having them assassinated would cost you. Return those released to their native planets," she replied, and saw the hooded head jerk back about an inch in immediate answer.
"You are… easily the most intriguing admiral I have ever met," replied the hooded and shrouded figure, "Or, for that matter, the most intriguing cooperator, I have ever met. Your price is noted." She felt as if he was looking at her intently from under his hood, across the vast tract of space to be considered by the long-range holo-communicator. For a moment, she wondered what he might be thinking.
"The crime families are based on the planet of Harrin in the city of Velton, on the planet Moorja in the city of Avisio, and on the planet Calus in the city of Hyperia," continued the hooded man, "Their compounds are defended heavily. The ruling families of the Crymorah group are the Gruth family on Harrin, the Trook family on Moorja, and the Vord family on Calus. The Gruth estate is in the centre of Velton and will not be difficult to find, since it is the sole civilian-owned property in such a location, sprawled out over roughly one hundred twenty-five thousand square metres of land. The Trook compound is suburban, on the west outskirts of the city, you will know it by the fortress-like construction, as their home is a stone manse and it is surrounded by a low granite wall. The Vord family's estate has a low brick wall with wrought iron bars emerging from the top with a stabilizing crossbar, the brick portion is about one metre in height; the metal section is an added two metres tall. Their compound is on the northern outskirts of the city."
"Thank you. I will keep this holo-communicator, in the event of some mutually beneficial collaborations in the future," she replied, then deactivated the device and placed it in one of the drawers in the desk of her ready-room. Then, she moved from her ready-room to the helm.
"Helm, set a course for the Harrin system at maximum speed," she instructed, "Aerla, instruct L'Ellu Dondibu to wait for me in the hangar bay, at the Wraith." As the fleet leapt to hyperspace, Aerla located his comlink, activating it and informing him he had been selected for a mission and instructing him to wait in the ship's primary hangar bay for the arrival of the admiral, whom he was to accompany. Given the short distance, it took them less than an hour to reach the unconquered planet, located on the Corellian Trade Spine. As the fleet arrived, there was an immediate hail from the planet as her ships assumed a geosynchronous, extra-orbital position over Velton.
"Admiral, we are receiving a hail from the planet," Aerla reported, and when N'Lola nodded in response, the Twi'lek immediately patched through the signal to the ship, opening the communications channel. Immediately, the view-screen illuminated and presented the image of a man more than sixty years old, with whitening grey hair of chin-length with light complexion and blue-grey eyes.
"I am Governor-General Wilhelm Tennison, present lord of Harrin. What brings you to my homeworld?"
"I am Admiral N'Lola Vurkoth of the Galactic Empire. I have personal business that brings me to the city of Velton, which would be brief; I am taking the opportunity to attend to this private matter while my fleet awaits orders."
"I see. So you would be coming down alone, then?"
"Almost," she replied, "I would be accompanied by one member of my ship's security personnel, to ensure the security of my personal shuttle while I am attending to my business."
"I see," repeated the governor-general, "You have permission to enter Harrin's atmosphere. I hope that your business meeting goes well." He said, undoubtedly assuming that she was already planning for what to do following her military career, or some such thing. N'Lola was more than happy to allow him to draw whatever conclusions he wanted to about her reason for being on the planet, as long as it allowed her the time needed for her to handle Gruth family and return to her starfighter.
"Thank you, Governor," N'Lola replied, to which the elderly man nodded before he closed the channel. She then stood, descending to the hangar bay where her personal shuttle had been prepped for launch: it had been a special order from MandalMotors, built to custom specifications. The vehicle was an Aka'jor class shuttle, modified to serve the purpose of an impressive and intimidating starfighter, equipped with a Class 0.6 Hyperdrive and a backup of Class 0.8 Hyperdrive. Additionally, it had been armed with two Hi-Fex proton torpedo launchers in the nose, one double-barreled Ht-12 heavy laser cannon on either side of the nose, and two KT6 heavy blaster cannons mounted in each of the vehicle's wings. Just under eighteen metres long from the back of each wing to the front, the central section was a little shorter, though it had two seats in the cockpit and could probably have carried a handful of people behind that. Such individuals would be irrelevant to the ship's operations, but it could undoubtedly carry six additional people if it absolutely had to do so. For now, she only felt the need to bring one.
The fighter itself was in landing configuration, the wings held vertical and the broad part of the back of each wing pressed to the hangar floor as part of the landing gear. Standing beneath the shuttle, in the three-metre space that separated the ventral plate from the hangar floor due to the landing gear, was one of her Miraluka assassins. A young, handsome man of a pallid, almond complexion and bright red hair in a silky, shimmery, shoulder-length ponytail, and dressed in the typical uniform of an imperial officer. In accompaniment to this, he wore a piece of custom-made phrik jewelry: almost like a pair of glasses but lacking lenses, it completely covered his vestigial eye sockets, with a notch for his nosebone. At either side, it had a small loop, to which was connected a chain that went around behind the head, latching almost like a necklace, the chain on each side going over his ears before hooking directly under his ponytail. A man of about twenty-eight years, L'Ellu was not much older than she was; he was armed with the same matching pair of heavy blaster pistols and the same medium blaster carbine as N'Lola herself carried.
"Thank you for selecting me to accompany you, Admiral," said L'Ellu, with a warm smile in her direction.
"You are quite welcome, L'Ellu," she replied, "even if I will only need you to protect the landing pad and ensure the security of the shuttle."
"Understood, Admiral," the Miraluka assassin replied, as the Wraith's boarding lift lowered out of the aft of the customized shuttle. Quickly N'Lola boarded, with L'Ellu joining her on the lift, and the deck clearing out room to allow for the shuttle's departure once the boarding lift had been retracted and sealed. Within a few minutes, they were sweeping down into the planetary atmosphere, approaching the terrestrial spaceport in downtown Velton, on the dark side of the planet. It was late in the evening according to local time, but the darkness would work in favour of N'Lola's needs for this evening, or at least it would not prove to be a hindrance. As they landed, a troupe of ten men approached, waiting to one side of the vehicle as the boarding lift was lowered out of the aft section.
"Admiral Vurkoth, Governor-General Tennison sent us, we are here to offer our assistance in consideration of your stated security concerns," said the squad leader. She could sense nothing but truthfulness from him, and with a brief glance toward L'Ellu, he nodded in personal confirmation.
~Their words are truthful, Admiral,~ came the words in her mind as he used the Force to communicate with her in a much more subtle, clandestine manner.
"Thank you, gentlemen," she said as she stepped off the boarding lift toward them, while L'Ellu moved off in the opposite direction. He used the Force to make an enhanced leap, leaping high up into the air to land on the small vessel's dorsal plate, where he pulled his carbine and adopted a readied, alert stance.
"Whoa," said the squad leader in reaction, impressed by the demonstration of physical ability, "I wish I could do that." She could tell his words mirrored the sentiments of several members of his rifle-armed squad, who stared up at the Miraluka, wide-eyed and briefly mesmerized.
"I will return as soon as my business is concluded," she replied, then looked up toward L'Ellu, "Please ensure the lieutenant and his men remain alive and well in the event of an attack on the landing pad."
"Yes, Admiral," replied L'Ellu calmly.
"Lieutenant, this is my first time on Harrin or in Velton in particular. Can you indicate for me which direction is considered to be downtown?" she asked, "I am here to meet someone for a private discussion, and they indicated I should meet them somewhere in downtown Velton."
"Ah, yes, of course, Admiral," replied the squad leader, turning and pointing north, "This spaceport is a few miles south of the city centre."
"Thank you, lieutenant," N'Lola answered, before setting out in that direction and soon disappearing through the spaceport's north gates on foot. It took little time for her to locate a twenty-four-hour speeder rental, one that was quite agreeable to accepting imperial credits. A moment later, she programmed in the desired location, and then piloted the Balutar-class swoop according to the vehicle's onboard navigations, quickly sweeping between buildings as she worked her way toward the target destination. Finally, she decelerated the highly compact speeder, which was a mere two and two-thirds metres in length, as she reached the mid-city compound of the Gruth family. It was hard to miss, in light of the four-metre wall of ivory-coloured brick with a polished steel gate in the front that gleamed in the light of the city's nearby streetlamps. The city was small enough that it lacked for high-rises, and only a few of the buildings nearby would have been tall enough to spy on the goings-on in the compound. It no doubt helped ensure that the Gruth family's unlawful activities went unnoticed. She parked the Balutar-class swoop in the shadow of an alleyway nearby, looking on the western section of the compound's brick wall, which was too thin to be used as a rampart. Once parked, she waited for a moment, sensing the movement of a handful of lifeforms, narrowing her eyes as three armed civilians emerged from one of the buildings between which she parked.
"You're not from around here," said their leader, and she lifted her eyebrow in answer, "and everything from the Gruth west wall to about six miles west of the Gruth west wall? That's our turf." She examined them for an instant, with not only her eyes but also with the Force, scanning them intensely for several moments, though no weapons had been drawn yet. Her examination yielded an interesting discovery.
"Listen carefully, Sergeant," she replied in a conspiratorially low voice, "I am not here for you or your men. You are here to investigate the Gruth family on suspicion of criminal activities, suspicions easily confirmed under the present circumstances. Even so, all four of us here know, in consideration of their tremendous wealth, they would be able to bribe witnesses, intimidate jurors, and afford an entire platoon of the best lawyers on Harrin; you are extremely well aware of the futility of your assignment." The three men blinked at her in surprise as she went right through their cover-identities and somehow realized that she knew they were undercover detectives, despite the fact she was most decidedly not a local.
"Wait, what?" said one in response, blinking at her blankly.
"So what do you propose? All we can do is wait for them to make a blunder in the course of doing something so bad it incites the people to rise above their fear of retaliation."
"You've been undercover for three years on this operation, and have obtained not even a shred of evidence," she pointed out, "However, there is an alternative. You are sworn to protect and serve, to ensure the health and safety of the people of Velton."
"What do you propose?"
"The Gruth family is one of the governing families of the Crymorah syndicate. The Crymorah syndicate has recently begun an effort to expand their territory to include the imperial planet of Wroona, to which end they prompted the assassination of several of the Empire's civilian authorities and high-ranking military officers," N'Lola replied. In response, the undercover officers blinked and stared at her in wide-eyed disbelief. It was hard to imagine an intentional, concentrated assault had been contracted against not just civilian authorities, but even targeting commanding officers in a military hierarchy.
"They also seized control of several planetary defense installations on Wroona, forcing the System Admiral's fleet to destroy those emplacements. This, of course, cannot stand. There must be consequences for such impertinence and such extreme criminal misconduct," she continued.
"What are you planning to do?" queried one of the members of the sergeant's team.
"Simple. I am planning to kill them all," she replied, and they stared at her once more in disbelief.
"Er, by yourself?" asked the sergeant.
"There is something you can do to assist me."
"What do you need us to do?"
"Stay here, watch my speeder, and don't die," she answered the sergeant's question simply, then turned and looked toward the high brick wall, "And if anyone asks, tell them you saw nothing, heard nothing. Considering their wall, that should not be all that surprising, especially since I am sure you have no surveillance equipment inside of it."
"Ah… yeah, okay," replied the sergeant's other team-member.
"Good luck," said the first member of the sergeant's team.
"Somehow, I get the feeling she won't be needing it," the sergeant said, as N'Lola lifted one hand and nearby streetlights started to flicker before shattering and plunging an entire section of the street into intense darkness. Then, she broke from a standstill into a sprint, dashing toward the wall before making a Force-enhanced leap that carried her up over the wall, leaving the undercover officers staring in wide-eyed disbelief.
As she swept up through the air, she saw the revealed terrain of the Gruth family compound, a broad expanse of thick green grass as she came down, to land in a braced crouch. She concentrated on the Force, using it to amplify her senses and heighten her awareness, at which time her eyes acclimated abruptly to the darkness. Then, she saw the Gruth family's first line of defense: Phlog enforcer thugs, a couple dozen of them patrolling far enough from the wall that they would not be seen, more than eighty percent of the way toward the massive central compound structure. Each Phlog was roughly eleven times her own size or thereabouts, ranging sixty-five to sixty-seven feet in height and with multiple tons of body weight, with hairless sap-green skin and large, pointed ears. Like all Phlogs, they had four-toed feet and hands with four short-clawed fingers that included an opposable thumb, but dissimilar to normal Phlogs, these were clad in steel-studded leather armour. Moreover, each one was wearing a belt, and boots, the leather throughout all of this being of a dark brown colouration, and each was armed with what she could see was quite clearly a massive vibrosword. Unlike the fireworms of Eol Sha, however, Phlogs had no resistance to lightsabers, for which N'Lola was quite thankful as she swept stealthily forward.
Admittedly, it would have been quite a bit less stealthy if not for the fact that insomuch as that Phlogs were larger than her shuttle, they barely noticed her movement until it was too late. She raced toward them, using the Force to make a powerful leap up into the air as she neared one patrol team, rising powerfully through the darkness, drawing her long-handled lightsaber and activating it. It caused a faint hum to fill the air as she swept through it, a dark glimmer that was almost imperceptible in the gloom of night, until she landed on his shoulder and brought her arm around in a powerful sweep. Even before he could so much as turn his head in reaction, the roughly metre-and-a-half lightsaber blade sheared smoothly through the unarmoured flesh of a neck more than a metre in diameter, itself. The Phlog went slack immediately, his head toppling off his head and slamming into the ground with an audible thunk heavy enough it allowed the other Phlog to hear it. She calmed herself and focused, riding the dead Phlog's shoulder to the ground, energy gathering in her right arm, and as the Phlog's form neared the ground, she leapt once more. Verdant lightning crackled out of her gauntlet and struck the second enforcer thug, conducted directly to the vibrosword and immediately sending electricity ripping through the monumental thug's body, rupturing dozens of blood vessels.
"… holy frell, it's a good thing these massive monsters are vulnerable to lightning … what idiot decided they should be armed with vibro-weapons?" she said to herself, as the second Phlog fell to the ground, gasping in pain as he slammed into the earth and ruptured blood vessels caused him to bleed to death in seconds, his size notwithstanding. The sound of two bodies of such size striking the dirt and grass, however, had the unfortunate effect of resulting in a surge in attention: there would be no further element of surprise, no additional subtleties. The lights of the compound still a kilometer away were coming on, and the remaining Phlogs had turned and were now sprinting toward the place where their fallen brethren now lay as mountainous corpses. As they approached, N'Lola brought her gauntleted right hand about once more, lightning arcing out with a flare of luminescent green that crackled, chaining across several of the vibroswords with fatal effect. Even rupturing just the blood vessels in their arms all the way up to the shoulder, it quickly discoloured the skin with internal bleeding into the body cavity. Their blood vessels were so massive and so numerous, to be able to keep their bodies functioning and ambulatory, that internal bleeding was one of their biggest vulnerabilities as a species.
As she leapt out of the path of one blade and then another, the massive Phlogs swarming her, lightning flared from her gauntlet-clad right hand. Despite their size, every shock of lightning killed several with a flare of green, and she was thankful that this was not an area where she had to be concerned with Sith or Dark Jedi roaming around. She needed all her focus simply to avoid the cleaving chops of massive, vibration-humming blades, and sustaining serenity long enough to strike them all. Finally, nearly four minutes after they had charged her, the whole count of them were dead, their bodies scattered about in the grass like mountains of flesh and bone multiple times the size of an elephant. Her breath had quickened, and she took a moment to focus on replenishing her serenity, drawing her carbine with her right hand and activating it while keeping her lightsaber out. Forty humans were approaching, racing toward her with pistols in their hands. As they neared, she turned her body to minimize the cross-section available for them to fire at, complicating the fact that they were still out of range as they entered hers. Then, the air filled with a raucous thumping sound with every shot, concentrated blaster-bolts ripping across the distance as soon as they came within the roughly six hundred seventy-foot reach of her carbine.
Even as they approached, brilliant blue blaster-bolts swept across and delivered a fatal impact to one after another. Every ten metres, another man was flung backward as a bolt slammed into him, cutting their numbers from forty to twenty-two even before they were able to get near enough to fire at her. Once they neared enough to fire at a proximity where they could rely on their aim, she turned her body to a different position, bringing her lightsaber about to deflect shots back in their direction while continuing to fire at those who remained. In mere moments, all forty were dead, though her carbine was down to seventy-one shots remaining, as she checked the illuminated indicator on one side, directly above her grip. Once more, she paused and tapped into the Force, this time using Force Healing to restore her energy, and then burst into a smooth, loping run as she approached the compound.
The main compound was a massive stone structure, one forty metres in height, though she noticed there were people walking on the rim of the wall with rifles. As she came into the range of her carbine, she aimed and fired with another voluminous thump filling the air, and as one man was flung backward, twenty-four more approached, though she continued to fire. Each shot turned a man into a corpse, and flung that corpse backward with the force of impact, even at a range of nearly six hundred and seventy feet. As they began to fire at her, she deactivated and holstered her long-handled lightsaber and twisted out of the way of some shots, while using Tutaminis to catch other shots with her hand, transforming their energies into a replenishment of her force. Even as she did this, she continued to fire with the blaster carbine, until none remained who dared stand on the wall regardless of whatever their masters might have said to them on the topic. Then, she approached the citadel-like manse until she stood before the massive double-doors at the front, and when they did not open, she holstered her carbine and took a step back. As she lifted her right hand, her hair started to flutter, and the heavy metal doors began to shudder and clank against one another noisily. Then, the air filled with a series of loud metallic snaps, as she separated each door from the bindings that connected it, before finally flinging both doors inward.
As the doors landed with a loud clap of metal upon polished marble flooring, sliding with a grinding, scraping sound, she walked in, drawing her tonfa lightsabers and activating them as she did. The entry room of the Gruth manse was a single monumental chamber with two balconies overlooking it, and stairs coming down from those balconies to connect all three floors, with a ceiling thirty-five metres high. As a man came to stand on the highest balcony to gaze down on her at a steep angle, she noticed his smirk and the casual motion of his hand, and heard a series of metallic clicks and clacks as if of some tremendous mechanism activating. She noticed a gargantuan door on either side of the room and set back near the corner, felt the presence of lifeforms of a scale even greater than the Phlogs. The scent of fur filled her nostrils, guttural growling and snarling filled her ears, as each door was slowly being brought downward, lowered into the floor to release the inhabitant behind.
"You know, the Gorax is a fascinating creature," said the man in a condescending tone, as two monumental beasts with thick, long fur of a sort of medium taupe colour lumbered out of their containment. Vaguely humanoid in shape they had four-fingered hands having opposable thumbs, faces somewhere midway between a human and a lower primate's, massive pointed ears and their longest hair being on the head around hairless faces. Like the Phlogs, these Gorax were dressed oddly, insomuch as that they were dressed at all, clothed in a pair of monumental leather breeches of knee-length, which did little to conceal the fact their endowment was several times larger than a full-grown man.
As she stood before doors too small to have possibly granted entrance to the creatures, she realized they must have been brought in through some other means. For a moment, the massive creatures simply looked at her, though it clearly started to anger them that they were being watched by a few dozen men. The fact the small, black-clad, grey-white creature had remained unmoving was perhaps either angering them or confusing them, as she gripped the cross-handle of each weapon. N'Lola, on the other hand, was not idle, as she might have first seemed, instead using the brief trance of serenity to prepare herself to battle two creatures of such size and power.
"You may want to consider retreating, now," warned the man on the third balcony.
"I will be with you shortly," replied N'Lola, feigning a sort of snide confidence as she considered what would be the most effective way to kill these massive creatures. Killing them would deliver suitable intimidation to all those she had come to kill, both bosses and enforcers, and put them more fully on the defensive than she had by killing two dozen Phlogs and sixty-five men, already. Finally, one of the Gorax lurched at her hungrily, thumping across the floor as he moved toward her, ears twitching alertly as he swung inward and one hand swept out at her in a powerful attempt to seize. Far quicker than she had anticipated for the size, she rolled out of the path of the grabbing motion, then came out of the roll with a leaping slash of both shimmering, charcoal-grey blades, cutting two twenty-inch-deep incisions across one Gorax's lower left calf. As he roared in pain, rearing upward, the other surged in and lurched forward, and brought one arm sweeping in between the other Gorax's feet to reach for her. Knocked off balance by the cut across the left leg, the first stumbled backward and hit the wall, though the wall was built so reinforced that the entire building shook, but his monumental weight did not break through the wall.
As the second one reached for her, she leapt and twisted through the air, coming down on his arm above the wrist, bringing both blades down to chop into it. The monstrous male roared in pain as his body jerked upright, back straightening in pain as she leapt a second time, this time coming up toward his arm where she brought her blades into the muscle just below the shoulder. Once more, her blades left two deep gouges that further ruined and disabled that arm, rendering it irreparably wounded. Even as the great creature roared and straightened, she leapt once more, as the first regained his balance and lunged toward the other from the wall, arm snapping out to snatch at her, unsuccessfully. She used the Force to throw herself sideward until she landed in a braced crouch on the wall, sliding downward from the pull of gravity, before leaping from the wall in a powerful upward arc. N'Lola knew she needed to deliver greater damage, still, more than a couple incisions on one calf, and four incisions on the other's arm, wouldn't be enough for her to kill them.
As she swept through the air, she twisted out of the path of another slicing attempt, until she landed upon the left shoulder of the one whose calf she had cut. She spun quickly around on his shoulder, slicing an eighteen-inch gash into his neck in two places, and the monumental Gorax roared his anguish as the Gruth family's enforcers stared wide-eyed in disbelief. The massive beast teetered for a moment, swaying in the air as he attempted to maintain his balance and survive the attack. N'Lola used the opportunity this represented to leap upwards once more, landing on the top of the monumental male's head. As she landed, she dropped into a braced crouch that brought her lightsabers into the skull with such strength they punctured through twelve inches of bone plating. The male's form went instantaneously slack, wobbling violently before beginning to plunge toward the ground, giving N'Lola the needed opportunity to leap across at the other male. Still suffering the brief debilitation of the deafening wail of the other Gorax as she clove into his neck and then impaled his skull, the second Gorax's reaction time was hampered greatly during the key moment of her approach. She swept past, slashing his throat eighteen inches deep across one side, before tapping into the Force to curve her path in the air around his neck, until she landed on his opposite shoulder.
As she pulled her lightsaber out of his neck, she left an eighteen-inch-deep cut incised into three quarters of his neck, including the back, severing the spinal column. As the first had, he fell to the ground dead, and she leapt to somersault gracefully to the ground, whirling to face the dumbfounded enforcers and stunned bosses. The force of his impact shook the earth, rocked dust loose from the stone blocks, and left more than four dozen staring at her in wide-eyed disbelief as she cut through two of the largest and strongest enforcers the Gruth family had been able to acquire.
"Who are you?" asked the elderly patriarch of the Gruth family, six foot tall and seventy years old, built thin.
"I am Admiral Ricona of the imperial navy," she replied, and he stared in disbelief, having never imagined a member of the imperial navy could have been so dangerous. He immediately fled into the interior of the third floor of the building, as N'Lola switched from her tonfa lightsabers to the heavy blaster pistols. Even as he fled, N'Lola began firing brilliant blue blaster-bolts that whipped across the great entrance-room to kill their target and fling each man they hit six feet backward, lying his corpse out flat. As she fired, she burst into motion once more, moving out of the path of blaster-bolts fired from the second and third balconies. Focus brought the ability of Tutaminis forward again, as men in the first great hall fired at her, and she used the Force to absorb some of the bolts with the back of her hand as she spun out of the path of others. Ahead of her, the twenty men in the hall fell in a rapid succession as she drained part of the power cell in her heavy blaster pistols into them. She used the Force to fling fancy mahogany doors cleanly off their hinges to reveal the rooms beyond, occasionally discovering enforcers whom she promptly executed in the course of her self-appointed mission.
Even before she reached the second floor, her pistols were down to under half of their maximum capacity, before reaching the second floor landing. At once, there was the sound of blaster-fire, a near miss whipping past her face as she dropped to a one-knee crouch and fired, killing several more who had almost gotten the drop on her even as they attempted to modify their aim. As she rose, she checked the power cells with a quick glance, the indicator on the underside indicating twelve shots remained in one, and ten in the other. She moved through the second floor, soon switching from her pistols to the carbine, dodging behind a wall as she reached a junction of hallways and several men fired at her. For a moment, she paused and took a deep breath, centering her focus before rolling out from behind that wall, clenching the fingers of her right hand and activating the kyber crystal in her gauntlet. Then, she pivoted out from behind the wall, bringing her right arm around to block blaster-bolts, causing a sudden pause in their firing as a bolt hit her unarmoured upper arm and vanished in a sparkling flare of bluish-white. Even as they froze, a sequence of loud thumping sounds echoed down the hall as bright blue blaster-bolts swept down the hall, killing the six men on the second floor who had been firing at her. The sound of blaster pistols mingled with the sporadic, energized thump of her 9118 carbine, as she carved a path to the third floor and left a trail of corpses behind her.
Finally, as she reached the second floor balcony, she crept up the stairs to the third, rising enough to fire and shooting two more men before they realized she was there. Each man's eyes widened as a four-inch hole bored through his chest from right to left, before falling dead with the fact that most of each man's heart had been vapourized by the carbine's powerful shot at comparatively close range. She then leapt up into the balcony area, firing down the hallway as she did, and striking another four men as she passed the hallway across the cross junction, using the Force to aim. When she landed, N'Lola pivoted around to put her back against the wall on the other side of the third floor's one and only hallway, flanked with bedchambers. She could sense the presence of twelve men in the hallway, one man in each of three bedrooms and a woman in a fourth bedroom, and as she checked her carbine, she sighed faintly. There were only ten shots remaining in the carbine, which meant she was going to need to switch to lightsaber before she ran out of enemies, though she was relatively unconcerned by that.
She took another deep breath to concentrate, another moment of pause as she used the battle-trance to refocus and to replenish her inner calm. Then, using the Force to aim, she pivoted out from behind the wall, firing twice before blocking blaster bolts with her gauntlet and firing twice more, dropping their number from twelve to eight. She leapt forward, twisting in the air as they fired, landing in a rolling movement and coming up firing at her enemies again, to cut their number down even further, until there were only two remaining in the hall. As she rose, one hand holstered the carbine while the other drew her long-handled lightsaber and activated it, soon spinning to hold it in both hands at opposite ends of the handgrip.
"What are you?" asked the two men who remained in the massive hall that had doors to a quartet of massive, exorbitantly extravagant bedchambers.
"I am a Dark Jedi trained by the Sith," she replied, "Your masters were foolish to challenge the rule of law." Then, she leapt, catching them unaware with the suddenness of it as she passed between them, landing in a wheeling cleave that sheared through both men just above the waist with fatal impact.
Here, she paused, and regarded the profligate ornateness of the hall, which was a hundred metres long, ten metres wide, with a high ceiling. Bodies of their enforcers littered the entire compound in dozens of rooms, shot dead or cut down, but one way or the other, there were none to stand between her and the crime bosses themselves, anymore.
"Hiding in your rooms? I can feel your fear, I can taste your terror. Is your bravado so easily broken, is your courage so easily crippled?" as she challenged them, she deactivated and holstered her long-handled lightsaber, now switching back to the tonfa lightsaber as she sensed the youngest two of three males approaching their bedroom doors.
"You will not insult our father like that!" declared one, as the doors opened almost in unison, and each one emerged wielding a phrik-forged, single-edged sword with a thirty-six-inch blade. They paused, however, as they took note of the carnage that trailed behind her, for perhaps they had never seen so much death so close to them.
"I need not insult your father. Your father insults himself. What kind of man hides behind his children?"
"One who raised us to love and admire him, and all that he has achieved," replied one of the sons confidently.
"No, that is the answer to the question of what kind of man has children who would give their lives to defend him. The question I asked was what kind of man hides from death behind his children?" she said, infuriating both of the young men, "The answer to that question, is a spineless coward. He may be an excellent father, but he is not much of a man. You are better and braver men." As she spoke, she examined each man, and was thankful that both of them were clearly older than she was, which allowed her to feel no great sorrow for the fact that she had come to kill them: there were no children here. One was twenty-nine, with shoulder-length hair of zinnwaldite brown and matching eyes, a light complexion with an excellent tan, clothed in the fanciness of black silk and matching lambskin. He wore ankle-length pants and a three-quarter-sleeved shirt that wouldn't impede his swordfighting, a belt of black lambskin and combat-intended shoes of the same with black rubber soles rounded out his ensemble. The other was dressed similarly, with a similar tan, though his hair was a dusty brown colour with fallow brown irises, and appeared to be thirty-one. Each one was the same height, roughly six feet tall and two hundred ten pounds, though she was hardly concerned by either of those traits.
As they moved in to attack, she blocked one phrik blade with her tonfa, rolling out of the path of the other's slash and forcing him to jerk back to avoid cutting his brother. She spun on one foot while the other lifted, coming to slam into the small of the back of the one whose blade she had blocked, throwing him forward to land face down near the corpses of the last two enforcers. Meanwhile, she whirled on his brother, catching his incoming chop with an X formed by both tonfa, before her foot rose again and slammed into his chin. His entire body lifted off the ground and into the air as her heel slammed into his chin, before he fell flat on his back with a grunt of pain and a brief moment of stillness. She turned as the younger brother rushed her, recovered from the kick, though she batted his blade away with one tonfa before whirling her other tonfa and slamming it into the back of his head with a loud metallic cracking sound. Even as one brother recovered, she flung the other face down on the hallway floor for the second time, whirling to meet the other's downward, right-to-left slash.
This time, as she blocked with one tonfa, she spun the other one in her hand and brought it up in a powerful uppercut thrust, the blade passing through the underside of his chin. It pierced through his mouth and then his brain, before protruding through the top of his head, eyes widening in the disbelieving stare of the dead, before she withdrew the blade. As his corpse stood wobbling, she brought her foot up again, kicking in the sternum and causing the corpse to land directly beside his brother. He yelled and rolled, then jumped to his feet and leapt toward her in a rage, though it was clear he had never learned to fight while angry. She parried his assault easily, before thrusting her blade again, this time puncturing through the nose and out the back of the head with the same lethality.
"Who's next?" she asked loudly, as she proceeded down the hall, and another door opened with a shrieking of mindless, grieving fury. The man's daughter emerged from her room, wielding a double-edged blade that was also forged out of phrik alloy, which N'Lola blocked with an X-cross of her tonfa when the twenty-four-year-old attempted to chop her in half. Driven mad by wroth and woe, she was easy to read, and for more than a minute, N'Lola allowed her father to hear the sound of his daughter battling to protect him and avenge her brothers. Then, she twisted out of the path of yet another cleaving movement, bringing both tonfa blades around and shearing a wide, shallow X through the daughter's form from behind, splitting her body into four sections, two of them wedges. As her upper body thunked into the floor and her lower section dropped first onto the knees and then fell completely, the wedges of either side of her lower torso hit the ground with a much softer sound for their lack of weight. Then, she turned to the last door, and deactivated her tonfa lightsabers, drawing and activating the long-handled lightsaber before using the Force to throw the door from its hinges as she stepped in.
"Are you ready to meet your end, now?" she asked, taking the moment's pause to centre once more, purging the emotions that sought to infect her inner calm. She forced herself to expel the disgust she felt at a man being willing to let his children fight and die in an attempt to protect him, renewing in herself the serene focus she most relied upon.
"I never realized the power of the Empire was so great. You killed two hundred and thirty-three people to get to my children and I; a relentless and inexorable engine of destruction," he said in answer, perhaps as much to himself as to her, "I underestimated the brutality and the might of the Empire, if even one single admiral is this powerful, there is nothing anyone can do to oppose it."
"It is not that you challenged the Empire, or the Republic that preceded it, or the Republic that will follow it if the civil war that rages outside this planet is won by the rebels. None of this," she replied, approaching him cautiously slowly, "would have happened, if the syndicate on whose ruling council you sit had not attempted to seize control of an entire planet for itself. I wish that I could say your error was in choosing a life of crime, but that would be untruthful; your error was in attempting to commandeer planetary defense installations and assassinating politicians and military officers."
"I understand," he said, following a moment's consideration, "Do you plan to deliver your fury on the Trook family, and the Vord family, as well?"
"Yes," she answered, "I do."
"Then I can accept my fate, and die in peace," he replied, turning toward her as she closed to a distance of a scant ten feet, to reveal that he held a sword of his own, "I have not used this in many years. I will try to provide you a battle worthy of those who gave their lives in a valiant attempt to protect an old fool, but I would like to make one final request of you."
"And that would be what?"
"When you write your report, please let history remember not my own cowardice this night. Let it only recall the bravery of those who tried to protect me."
"This promise I can make to you," she said with a nod and a deep breath of self-resolution. Then, the elderly boss of the Gruth family drew his phrik-forged, single-edged blade, with a ten-inch handle and a fifty-seven-inch blade with a noticeable curvature to it. He half-turned, lying the scabbard on the top surface of the dresser behind him, then turned back to face her fully once more, grasping the blade in both hands. She grasped the handgrip of her lightsaber in both hands, though she had them at opposite ends for superior support and balance, and he nodded. Then, he lunged, bringing his blade in a sweeping slash that whirred softly through the air, ending in the loud hum of collision with her lightsaber, though the phrik blade was not hewn by the impact. Phrik was one of the few alloys that could go head to head with the sheer power of a lightsaber, though he twisted immediately and brought his blade around for another slash in her direction, ending in another loud hum. He pressed close to her, stepping forward with an overhand chop, which she blocked with the horizontal barrier of her lightsaber's blade, and another loud hum.
She nodded, then thrust to knock his blade up before going on the attack, though for his age he was a skilled enough warrior to block twice in a row and in rapid succession. Then, he brought the blade of his sword down in another chop, this one ending with a loud metallic clang as it struck between her hands, hitting the grip of her lightsaber directly. His eyes widened a bit in surprise, discovering that the handle of her weapon was a poorer target than he had hoped, before she twisted both of her hands. Her lightsaber blade hummed first through air and then threw flesh, when it sheared through his throat and severed his head from the rest of his body, allowing his entire frame to go limp with death, before falling to the ground with two heavy thumping sounds. The task completed, she deactivated the blade of it before turning and walking out of the manse, retracing her steps by the trail of bodies until she finally reached the same section of wall where no lights shone, and leapt over it.
"Our lady returns," said the sergeant as she slipped into the alleyway, "I told you she wouldn't need luck."
"The Gruth family will not trouble Harrin again. I warn you, they had some impressive enforcers… of whom, none happened to survive," she replied, as she mounted the Balutar-class speeder.
"Somehow, I had a feeling that would be the case," the sergeant replied, "Thank you. Now we can be assigned to investigations that have an actual chance of successful prosecution someday. I must warn you, though, we heard on our scanners that there was a confrontation at the landing pad, which I assume is where your ship is." He sounded as if he was impressed by what he heard, which indicated to her thinking that L'Ellu had performed extraordinarily well, himself, when Gruth enforcers had attacked the starport. She bade them farewell, and then immediately set her course for the starport.
On her return, she discovered there had indeed been a considerable attack by enforcers from the Gruth crime family, with more than two hundred bodies were scattered around the landing pad as she approached on foot. As she approached, she noticed that the ten soldiers had survived, unharmed if not unscathed: each man's uniform bore tears where blaster-bolts had made a nonfatal hit, but none seemed wounded.
"My lady, your bodyguard is … both frightening and comforting, in equal measure. He never missed a shot, my men and I killed… less than half," the squad-leader reported, "although, we also took injuries. Your man, though, seemed all but impossible to hit or even come close to, he started firing before we even knew we were under attack… and then when the last man fell, he came to us, and healed our wounds."
"You and your men were instrumental, Lieutenant," L'Ellu said in response, gracious but also truthful, "Only ten of you, and you killed more than seventy enforcers."
"Thank you for saying so," the lieutenant replied, "and thank you for protecting us in addition to protecting the admiral's shuttle." L'Ellu smiled warmly and nodded.
"It was my honour to be tasked with ensuring the survival of allies with higher priority than killing enemies," L'Ellu replied, "Too often, a soldier's job is to kill, not to save." In answer to that truth, the lieutenant and his men all nodded their agreement.
"Too true, indeed," the lieutenant replied, "Fly well, admiral. I have some inkling of what your mission here was, and I think that Harrin shall remember you fondly for it." N'Lola nodded with a warm smile in reply, then boarded the Wraith with her assassin standing beside her, moving to the cockpit immediately once the aft panels sealed beneath the boarding lift.
"Excellently done, L'Ellu," she said, as she powered on the ship and activated the engines, rotating the wings into flight position.
"Thank you, Admiral," the Miraluka assassin replied, as they soared up out of the atmosphere of the planet and the sound of a soft chime broke the ensuing silence. N'Lola tapped a button or two, bringing up the image of the planet's governor-general less than a minute after they crossed out of the atmosphere and back into the stellar vacuum.
"Admiral, I have a feeling that your business in Harrin was quite a bit more hostile than you initially led me to believe," said Governor-General Tennison, "I do not like to be uninformed of such things, Admiral."
"I did what had to be done. You were told only what you needed to know, and nothing that would become a liability for you in Harrin's next election," she replied, and he blinked in surprise at her response.
"Excuse me?"
"I came to eliminate the Gruth crime family. If I had told you that, you would have been legally obligated to make a series of responses to protect of a criminal family you have no desire to protect. Responses that would include ordering me not to enter Harrin's atmosphere, which I would have had to disregard, then having to scramble your fighters in an attempt to insist on escorting me out of the atmosphere. This would have been followed by sending some of your infantry to attempt to detain me on the ground when I landed at the starport. Since you are legally required to protect any permanent resident of your planet, you would have then been required to deploy soldiers to the compound of the Gruth family in an attempt to protect them despite their ties to organized crime. All of this would have cost you pilots and infantrymen whom I assume you would much prefer not to lose in an attempt to protect one of the leading families of the Crymorah syndicate," N'Lola replied at length. The Governor-General blinked as she laid it all out for him in a format that would make it as easily understood as possible.
"Failure to take all of these steps, or even any one of these steps, would have resulted in severe complications for your attempt to secure reelection in the next cycle. In this way, you have plausible deniability to having known in advance the reason for my visit to your rather lovely planet, and no obligation to take any legal action against me. I'm an imperial admiral and I am now outside your jurisdiction: no one can ask or expect you to take any action whatsoever, as to do so might provoke a much larger conflict with the Galactic Empire, who has thus far left you in peace because your planet is inhabited almost exclusively by humans. No one would want Harrin to draw the ire of the Empire, since even with a galaxy-wide civil war raging between the Galactic Empire and the Republic Remnant, neither you nor I nor any on your planet would want Harrin drawn into the middle of that conflict."
"I see," the Governor-General said in answer to her lengthy but excellent explanation, "Though, how would I then ensure that future Governors-General do not attempt to have you apprehended?"
"Simply wait a year or two, letting people have time to recognize the benefit that Harrin experiences with the absence of the Gruth crime family operating off the planet. Then, author a document granting clemency to a few dozen offenders who violated planetary law in some manner not expressly destructive to Harrin's economy, commuting the death sentences of a couple dozen inmates down to lifetime imprisonment, and commuting the sentences of a couple hundred nonviolent offenders with exorbitantly long prison terms down to time served. Slip my name in amongst that first group, and your problem is solved and praised as a demonstration of your planet's merciful legal system."
"Your cleverness is far greater than I had ever imagined an Admiral of the Galactic Empire would possess," the Governor-General replied, "Thank you, Admiral, and may you always have safe travels." Moments later, N'Lola piloted her Aka'jor up into the hangar bay of the Vindicator, disembarked, and ordered the fleet to proceed at once to the Moorja system.
The incident in the Moorja system went much like that in the Harrin system, and when she reached the Calus system, the chain of events was nearly identical. Finally, the fleet was able to set their course to return to Wroona, and N'Lola returned to her ready-room for the duration of the trip. As she sat, she heard a familiar sound from one drawer, opening it and pulling out the holo-communicator, placing it on the desk before tapping the activation button on the device's touchscreen. Immediately, the hooded form of the Black Sun representative appeared.
"We have already received word of your success through our network. I must confess that I am impressed, I had expected we would not hear from you again," he said, "However, we are maintaining our end of the arrangement. The value of the assassination of the number of targets that our operatives inform us you have eliminated is placed at a number equivalent to the sales value of ten thousand slaves. Ten thousand individuals have been chosen nearly at random throughout our network, with family members being chosen with priority, followed by a sort of lottery for the others. They have been loaded onto starships and are already being ferried back to their homeworlds; our business is concluded. We will be in contact if there is some collaboration we might wish to request of you for which we would be willing to offer any manner of remuneration." The image immediately vanished as he terminated the channel, and she smirked faintly as she placed the holo-communicator back into the drawer and shut it.
A short while later, the fleet swept back into the Wroona system, a few minutes after N'Lola returned to the bridge and her admiral's chair. As she noticed the massive amount of debris in the system, far enough from Wroona it would not fall on the planet, the young admiral blinked a little bit in surprise as she surveyed the other imperial fleet. It had diminished dramatically, from twenty-four warships to ten: the three surviving star destroyers and six surviving star battlecruisers were all critically damaged, with two Gladiators and a Procurator being crippled utterly. Meanwhile, the Admiral's star dreadnought had taken such severe damage that it was frankly surprising the ship was in one piece and had not blown up. It was had no more likelihood of moving again than the most-damaged Procurator, but despite the fact the ship was in tatters, a chime indicated a hail incoming.
"Admiral, receiving a hail from Admiral Tandres aboard the Devastator," Aerla said, before commenting just under her breath that it looked like the Devastator had been devastated.
"On-screen," she replied, and the bridge of the Devastator came up on-screen, showing that the bridge was nearly obliterated in the midst of the fighting. The Admiral himself had a gash on his upper left arm, singe-marks on his face and uniform, a broad and shredded opening on his shirt with a faintly blooded bandaging wrapped around his lower torso visible through the gaping hole. He'd taken considerable injuries himself, and his features showed that he was traumatized by the entire experience, having perhaps never realized how real war was, and having just gotten his first unpleasant taste of combat.
"Admiral, I must confess that I am thankful to see you. Does this mean that Crymorah has been crippled?"
"For now, Admiral," she replied, "I am glad that I was able to crush the syndicate before their wrath could completely overwhelm your fleet."
"So many ships have been lost, I never knew that war would be such hell, Admiral," replied Garamond, and then turned his head as one of his bridge crew reported further on the situation.
"Admiral, final tally on the death toll has been reached; there are approximately four hundred and fifty-two thousand dead." Out of what had initially been nearly half a million imperial soldiers, having the survivors numbering somewhere around seventeen thousand was a devastating loss. N'Lola almost felt sorry for the blanching admiral, but she knew that he would never have a fleet again and would never have to run the risk of having to experience this kind of trauma at any point in the future. She had no doubt he would be mandatorily retired to the position of retired admiral, but his family was one of wealthy, influential, hardline loyalists whose loyalty would change swiftly if a member of their family, magnitude of failure notwithstanding, were executed or simply disappeared.
"I will summon Wroonian engineering crews for you, Admiral Tandres," N'Lola said, nodding to Aerla for her to do so, "we will remain here for a few days until your ships are repaired and your survivors have received proper medical attention."
"Thank you, Admiral Vurkoth. My family will speak well of you, you have my word, for assisting my fleet and crippling the Crymorah syndicate." N'Lola nodded to that before terminating the communications channel, so the admiral could get to some bacta himself, and heal for his journey home. Several days later, N'Lola and her fleet then continued their ordered patrol; she was unsurprised when she received no commendations for her efforts, but equally surprised when a Tandres family transport caught up to them with a gratuity of one million credits.