AN: Hey there ladies and germs. I don't know how many of you are reading this, but that's the life I suppose, can't expect instant success. Your boy is gonna keep on plucking, and hopefully y'all will enjoy what I've got cooking. Cheers!
Chapter 4: All That Matters
"Again."
Wren slapped his face, groaning. "Blast, really?"
"Ret'lini, ner'vod," Shana insisted. "Just in case. I'm the outsider here, I need to fully grasp my role."
Shana had her armor and arsenal entirely stripped out and arrayed on her bed. All her DCs, the -15A, the -15S, her pair of -17s, and oh the things she'd do to get her hands on a DC-17m. Not yet though. There was her bes'kad, already sharpened and oiled; that she'd done first. There was her jetpack, the Mitrinomon Z-6; a temperamental but potent classic. It was awaiting a full tuneup, the needy thing. Next to it was a pair of missiles, conical anti-armor models, one for the launcher and a spare for carry on her chest rig. They were expensive medicine, and Shana dearly hoped she wouldn't need them. Still, the risk of running into vehicles or crew-served weapons couldn't be ignored. There were assorted grenades; two frags, two thermals, two cryobans, and two stuns. Her armor was laid out across the rest of the bed. She had her gauntlets at the workstation table; contained within the right was her Czerka Multithrower, a flamethrower and slugthrower combo contained in the over-under mount along the side of the gauntlet. The slugthrower was, in Shana's mind, a highly underrated piece of kit, with a pair of internal 20 round magazines that Shana filled with tranquilizers and bolos for capture missions and lethal slugs for missions like this one. Within the left gauntlet was a Dur-24 wrist laser and an Arakyd micro-missile launcher, contained in the same Czerka-manufactured modular over-under mount. Those gauntlet mounted weapons were known for being popular with Mando'ade, but were not actually a component of traditional beskar'gam, or even Mandalorian built. Shana had her helmet plugged into the computer terminal; SENA had described it's computer system as cozy. She had added some criteria that constituted cozy for her, before taking a hacksaw to Shana's system preferences, insisting the new configuration would be 'the same as before, but better'.
Shana wasn't really game to all that, never much for code or droidcraft. She wasn't sure how to regard SENA. On the one hand, the ostensibly female presence was welcome; being around a strange young man, alone in space was just an unnecessarily stressful proposition, for countless reasons. And having someone else who understood Mando'a was a surprise beyond pleasent, so far from Mandalore. At the same time, it was more than a little unnerving to be watched and listened to all times by an unblinking, never-sleeping presence. Not that Shana planned on unnecessary mischief, but she didn't need to have anything to hide to be a little skeeved out. At least when she'd asked SENA about it, the response was heartening. "Don't worry," she had said. "I show him the feeds when I see something pertinent, I'd space him before I let him use the cameras to peep. Not that I think he would." So there was that; at least the eyes and ears on the walls were also enforcing her privacy.
Shana reassembled her gauntlets, laying them down with the rest of her armor before heading over to the refresher sink mirror, a wooden box the size of a small parcel in her hands. "Aliit'buir's Mythosaur bone beads." Shana rolled one around in her palm. Carved into each durasteel-tough bone shard were symbols of strength and power; Krayt Dragons, Rancors, Wampa, and great mountain sized Mythosaurs, each being hunted by carved Taung warriors. Also depicted were Mandalorian triumphs over various traditional foes; Sith, Jedi, and Old Republic forces cast down by heroes of old bearing the T-shaped visor. 12 beads in all, designed specifically to hold long hair securely during combat; a gift passed from mother to daughter after being recieved by Shana's maternal ancestor going five generations back, a gift from the Mandalore himself given for sacrifice and bravery under his service. There was a story that came with the beads, one Shana had first heard in reassurance from her grandmother, when her mother and father would leave Mandalore together on missions and jobs. There was power in the beads; the power of the Mythosaur attracted spirits to the Taung and Mandalorian warriors carved into the charms. If the wearer was a true Mando'ad, brave and honorable, the warrior spirits would watch over that being, tugging on the strings of fate to keep that Mando'ad safe. Shana didn't strictly believe such things, but she felt the strength of her ancestors in the beads regardless. She sat and began braiding, the way her mother taught her; tied far enough down so that Shana's helmet could fit securely on top with the beaded braids hanging visible about her shoulders, or tied up again within the helmet's environmental seal.
"Your objective is the High Administrator's office and anything within it that incriminates the Administrator in Splinqui's murder. From written documents to computer files to a verbal confession, however you can manage it. We roll in, cut through, get the dirt, and split. SENA will insert it into the holonet tracelessly, giving Hakyo and his friends the perfect jutificaction and opportunity to organize a food riot that will change this rust clod forever. Me and SENA will insert you and extract you from the Lady; our transport records will read that the Lady left system half a day ago with a full shipment of durasteel oxides, backed up by that little fake exit vector we pulled and the Lady's ECM suite. Hakyo will meet us in orbit once he's done planetside, and we'll all leave with nobody the wiser but us." Wren sat in the hall on the other side of the durasteel bulkhead, talking through the open doorway while Shana ran her underwear-clad gear check, out of his sight.
"You're not coming?" Shana finished her braids, shaking her head side to side to make sure the mechanism within the beads would hold, not that they'd ever given in any way before. She then moved for her armor's undersuit.
"No," Wren answered. "Any connection that can be made between the raid and the podracing clubs will sink the ship; forget the Hutts, the New Republic would back the Administrator. These guys already know me, I can't be seen as a part of this. But they don't know the Lady, and they don't know you. That's the only way this was gonna work."
Shana pulled on her breastplate and gauntlets, and then began fixing the smaller leg and arm plates to their magnetic binders within the fabric of her undersuit. Shana frowned, chewing her next words around carefully within her head. "You seem to have a lot of history with this place," she finally said, immediately cursing herself. "Di'kutla adiik. Silly girl. That didn't sound nosy at all."
She heard Wren sigh to himself, along with a soft bonk as he let his head rest back on the wall between them. "Yeah," he responded, chewing over his own words now. "Go ahead," he told himself. "Just tell her that this is where you ran to after you helped the galaxy's most infamous tyrant with his second run of it. See how fast that moral streak of hers turns on you once she knows who you are and what you've done." The spacer ran a hand through his curly brown hair. "I spent a lot of time here between jobs," he said. "As a hooligan, with Hakyo."
"Scandalous," Shana replied, her tone dry as she attended to her jetpack, removing its outer casing so she could clean its internals.
Wren nodded, simply glad that his moralistic and highly attractive passenger didn't have more to say about his time as a professional rioter. "It was fun," he admitted. "Fighting, food, booze, brotherhood; any red-blooded human male's paradise."
"So then why leave?" Shana had pulled her helmet down over her head; if there was judgement in her voice, it was lost in passage through her helmet.
"Because I inexplicably care what random women think about me," he joked to himself. It took a moment for Wren to muster up an acceptable form of the truth. "Someone showed me how tired I was of living it up while people starved around me," he eventually responded.
Shana took a second to confirm that whatever SENA had done to her helmet was tolerable, and found various things running smoother than normal; her 360 degree feed was clearer, her eye tracking selector and wink-to-command system was more responsive, her ammunition counters were finally registering her Multithrower and micro-missile launcher properly, and Force, the holonet feed for her ID software was back to functional. "So you just left?"
Wren winced. There it was. He couldn't shake the feeling of accusation, despite the fact that none came through the voice filter. Despite his usual resistance to that pesky litte torture device he carried called his moral compass. "Yeah," he said haltingly, his regret on clear broadcast despite his attempt to avoid such.
Shana came through her open doorway, all ready for war, helmet on her hip. She gave him a hand and helped pull him up off the floor. He stood over her there, and she pouted slightly, never a fan of being a shorter woman with a decently handsome male standing over her as she craned her neck back. Wren felt his stomach flip. "You came back," she said quietly, twisting Wren's chest with an invisible fist cast by the flash of her green eyes. "And you're not gonna leave again without changing this place for the better. Isn't that all that matters?"
They stood there, Wren speechless and flush-faced, and soon Shana felt herself blushing as well, forested green locked to steely gray. Then the speaker on the wall cut through the mesmer between them. "Okay, kids. Any closer than this and we're gonna get scrambled on," SENA said.
Shana was the first to break off, jamming her helmet on over her head. Wren quickly came back to himself, and he strode ahead of her, up into the cockpit and right into his chair. "Ready to change a world?" He asked her, hand raised to the ramp-down switch above him.
He couldnt see it through her visor, but a still-blushing Shana Tor'kad was grinning from ear to ear. "Drop me, ner'vod." Wren threw the switch, and the ramp dropped before Shana's feet, the still, thin air of Mon Gazza's upper atmosphere pervading the ship. She nodded that Mando nod, just a tiny tip of the head, before shuffling down the stairs and leaping out into the wind with a shout of "Oya!" Wren flipped the switch again, and guided the Lady higher and wide of the Administrative Palace's sensor bubble.
"Are you reading, Shana?" The spacer fiddled with his comms controls until the Mandalorian's voice came through on his headset.
"Clear as Shuror spring," she squaked back at him.
"Perfect. Me and SENA will isolate the palace from here, jam it out with the Lady's ECM suite. Call us when you need us." Wren leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair, before heading into his room to roll up a cigarra.
"She's really got your number," SENA said softly. Wren took a long drag, holding it, and letting it go into the vent, before heading back to the cockpit with his herb and papers. He slung himself hard into his chair.
"Yeah," he admitted. There was a silence, a scant moment's pause. A true rarity; SENA could crash local holonet access and run every system on the Hasty Lady ragged at the same time. That kind of mind didn't generally need actual effort to find her words.
"Are you gonna be alright?"
Wren couldn't help but snicker. "No kriffing way."
Shana dropped. Legs together, arms tight by her sides, she dropped. A tilt here, a twist there; a truly skilled jumper saved her fuel for use in the target area and exfitration, finding her way to the drop zone using as little thrust as possible. So Shana did, till the palace began to loom before her, a hexagonal target of durasteel with a high tower.
"The Administrator's palace is a repurposed IM-455 modular garrison base, left over by the Empire from their takeover of the spice industry," Wren gabbed into her ear. "We've got it's defense system jammed up tight, they won't be able to target something human sized. Just keep in mind that if the Lady is coming in to get you, she's not gonna be able to hide herself. Not at that range."
Shana didn't respond. Her mind was already fixed on all the many things she'd do to the being responsible for every twisted thing she'd seen and heard in her stay on Mon Gazza.
High Administrator Gevil Orotus was a simple man, with simple desires. Food. Wine. Women. Creature comforts. With all the ruckus and squabbling to settle between the various factions, a well rounded relaxation at the end of each day was a minor indulgence. Fair payment for his services to his world. He had the first two at his desk, a luscious portion of prime rib of nerf, with a mushroom gravy, root mash, and a simply divine Corellian dry red. He had just been contemplating the third pleasure when something unbelievable crossed his vision. There was a man outside his window. A man with a missile launching off his back.
The adminstrator found himself on the other side of his office, confused and battered, a symphony of pain playing across his body. By the time he could lift his head, the figure was there, standing on the shards of glass and wood strewn about the gaping hole in the side of the high observation tower. By the time he drew himself to his feet, the fear had seized him in the realization. One of those miserable ingrates had hired some Boba Fett wannabe to oust him from his rightful rule at blasterpoint.
"You've made the worst mistake of your career, assassin," he coughed, desperately searching for the sound of his guards through the ringing in his ears. To his profound relief they burst in then, through the doors and into a hail of blaster fire, then slugthrower rounds, cones of flame, micro-missiles, and all manner of violence and assault. Gevil watched paralyzed as this monster slaughtered his security teams. Then, the assassin turned that wretched visor his way. Out came a short, wicked saber.
"Panic button," the Mandalorian hissed, far too close to Gevil. "Now."
The Administrator opened his mouth, but the Mandalorian hovered the tip of his blade before his mark's tongue, and the beurocrat begrudgingly pressed the brooch on his lapel. Durasteel security doors slammed shut and immediately thrummed under a powerful magnetic seal.
"W-well?" He said, trying to sound unafraid. "Do it already. Scum."
The Mando laughed, loud and barking, and Gevil winced. "Oh, I'd love to," Shana said, pulling her helmet off her head. "But first, you're talking. Splinqui. Why?"
Gevil scoffed. "Why would I have anything to do with...-" The saber flashed, the administrator's ear flying off and bouncing onto the floor with a wet bloody slap. He howled; "You schutta!" Shana grabbed him by the collar and hooked him with the guard of her bes'kad, decking him hard till his face was exploded to her satisfaction.
"I will feed you your own kriffing choobies!" She roared to him. "Splinqui! Why! Now!"
"Why not!?" Gevil gasped. The man could hardly think; he hadn't been struck this hard since he had his father killed. "The slime, those worthless specks of rust don't deserve... What's your word? Bas neral?"
Shana's look of disgust deepened, and the administrator just cackled nervously, until Shana pulled a small cylinder from the blaster pack pouches of her chest rig and beaned him in the forehead with it. "Anything else you'd like to add?"
"Wren, I'm reading a flight of Z-95s and a LAAT/i launching from the palace."
The spacer ground out his cigarra and hopped to the controls with a string of expletives, though SENA had already brought them about and kicked up the throttle. The four snubfighters were grouped tight, each dumping a pair of concussion missiles. SENA set the quad lasers to single fire and turned the composite beams live, stitching warheads with streams of red bolts. Wren spun his selector wheel to cluster missiles, locking targets with three twitches of the eye and launching two rounds. Missiles passed each other, smashing into tight packets or solid rays of red energy on one end and bursting open to dispense submunitions on the other. The Headhunters were quickly swarmed and wrecked. Wren spun his thumbwheel to the dual cannons.
"Time to pick up a chick," he jested.
"Y-yeah." Gevil spat a wad of blood and mucous onto Shana's breastplate. "Smile for the cams."
Shana took just a moment to comprehend, before slamming her helmet back on and letting all the sensor warnings she'd been missing flood across her vision. Then she dove left, behind a tall pillar of polished natural stone, as the gunship behind her kicked up little green explosions in her wake. That slime Gevil scrambled away, but Shana couldn't spare the time to waste him, clawing at her chest rig for her second missile. As the LAAT/i gunship chewed away at her cover, she fixed it to the launcher, caught one of Aliit'biur's hairbeads in her hand for just a moment, and then sprang, rolling over till she was in position before launching her weapon. The missile burst, throwing Shana with the proximity of the shockwave. But as the smoke cleared, her heart sank. The gunship had gained twenty feet of altitude at the last moment; her missile had hit the ceiling, dealing no damage to her target. Damning herself for losing her cool at the sight of her mark and wasting her first shot, Shana saw the gunship's chin guns line themselves up, and raised her left arm in final desperation. The blaster bolts chewed their path towards her as she emptied her Arakyd MML, smashing the LAAT/i with all-too-small general purpose rounds; a lethal guided surprise for infantry but sorely underpowered against vehicular armor. When the gunship pitched violently, it's weapons fire spraying wildly off target as it dropped into a tailspin, she regarded her launcher with amazement.
"Pretty sure that one counts as mine," Wren said in her ear. He smiled to her through the Lady's canopy as the YZ-series transport pulled up in place of the LAAT/i crashing into the rust below, the dorsal and ventral dual turbos venting hot depleted tibana. The Hasty Lady dropped ramp, and with a short dash and a burst from her jetpack, she felt that durasteel plate under her feet again. Shana scrambled into the cockpit as the ramp closed and Wren began selecting his exit vector.
"Did it work?" She panted, collapsing into the copilot's chair.
Wren couldn't stop grinning as he handed her a headset. "Take a listen for yourself," he said. So Shana sat and listened, as Mon Gazzans swept through the helplessly outnumbered and conspicuously directionless Administrator's forces, to claim the first real meals of their lives.
"Political turmoil on the Outer Rim today as Mon Gazzan citizens riot throughout the capital city. These riots have come on the heels of decades of debate over Mon Gazza's infamous food laws, once a necessary rationing system on the barely inhabitable world, but now seen as a backwards relic of the ruling Orotus regime, a dynasty backed by the Hutts which has owned and governed Mon Gazza since its initial colonization, save for the period of Imperial rule. We now know that these riots were precipitated by a local holonet post, sent from the High Administrator's office though his public relations account, containing a confession to the assassination of Splinqui Horbaht. Known and beloved on Mon Gazza as Splinqui the Charitable, Horbaht had amassed a huge fortune via decades of championships, and leveraged that fortune politically in the form of the Open Table Movement, a political entity focused on the food laws and their repeal. We are also now receiving reports that desertion has indeed spread through the Orotus administration, and that OTM has taken control of the capital building, the capital spaceport, and potentially the administrator's palace as well. The Hutts have also released a statement, calling for talks with OTM leadership and a focus on normalizing trade as soon as possible. More updates on this developing story as they come in."
"Shut off that prattle, Captain. I've heard enough."
The newsfeed cut out, allowing the ambient bustle of the bridge to wash over Admiral Uyoroi Kemin. She peered out through the shark-toothed viewports into the wash of color before her. There was such beauty here; vibrant washes of gas and dust, rich in a cornucopia of exotic materials and lit by a bizarre energy reaction, an aftereffect of the particle desintigration warhead that had doomed this world. Here and there were chunks of solid matter that had been thrown by the blast wave clear of the annihilating matter-energy reaction. Some still glowed, hot embers of the planet's shattered core, like a heart; murdered and still bleeding.
The Shards of Byss.
"Report from Mon Gazza," said Denil Tranthra, her ever-faithful right hand. Uyoroi sighed, sinking back into her chair while waving her subordinate to proceed. "The High Administrator was assaulted in his palace by a lone Mandalorian assassin wearing white armor with red trim. This assassin then left in a YZ-775 light freighter, which also jammed the palace defense systems during the insertion, and defeated palace defenses, Z-95 Headhunters, and an LAAT/i gunship scrambled to respond. Additionally, the Administrator did not make the alleged transmission. The YZ transport spoofed the transmission's origin flawlessly to appear as though it originated through the official government channels."
Uyoroi grinned viciously. "That's one of Dodonna's, if I'm not mistaken. The Mandalorian, I mean. But the YZ... One that has brains and brawn far beyond it's stock configuration? And all this comes together to overturn the Mon Gazza food laws, of all things?" Uyoroi had the scent, and could practically taste her prey. "I think we've found our loose end, Denil. And so have the Rebels."
"Shall we set out in pursuit, ma'am?"
Admiral Kemin flashed her icy blue eyes his way. "No, Captain. With the destruction if the Byss Run we have but one shot out of the Deep Core, and we must reserve it for when our objective is revealed," she explained. "Lest we find ourselves on one end of the galaxy with our catch on the other, vulnerable to the upstart New Republic. We'll need to secure the services of an auxiliary. One capable of capturing our prey alive. And I think I know just the outfit to call."