AN: Hello everybody, sorry it's taken so long for this to reach y'all. Things IRL got a little hectic, but I'm pleased to have all that locked down well enough to put more time into writing. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 9:

Drag Them To Their Graves

The grating sound of metal on metal echoed through the silent, empty halls of the Hasty Lady; the great iron beast slept deeply, showing no sign of motive potential. Dead metal. Shana scraped harder, passing the small slate of Quadanium-Corusca durasteel along the lengths of three darkly colored beskar blades.

First her nimble and deadly bes'kad, single-edged and curved forward ever so slightly. It was a geba'kad to be precise, as bes'kad was a general term for a wide variety of beskar-forged sword designs popular among Mandalorians. Geba'kade were infighting blades, the name an amalgamation of the words for close, combat, and swords. Some Mandalorian swords were designs passed down by the Taung. Others were adopted by and then popularized among the contemporary Mandalorian culture. The geba'kad was of the former lineage.

Shana's heavy, cleaving ori'kal knife and smaller cabur'kal dagger were of the latter series of designs. The ori'kal, thick as a thumb, long as a forearm, and sporting broad blade with a generous forward curve, was based upon a design learned from Dantooini mountain folk, and simply meant big knife. The cabur'kal, or the sentry-removing knife, was originally an archeological find from the deepest levels of Coruscant, forged from primitive metals avalible in the ecuminopolis' pre-historic period, but painstakingly preserved with notes on it's history and use. Often considered by Mando'ade to be the ultimate light fighting knife, it's two unbroken edges and symmetrical spearpoint tip were designed with versatility and precision in mind, ideal as a concealed weapon, as an offhand companion to other one handed weapons, or for ambushing and dipatching lone enemies in relative silence.

These were not the ideal tools for this fight, or this enemy. Bartokk warriors were hardy, chitinous foes, their carapaces leaving seldom few gaps vulnerable to a blade. But Shana would carry them anyways; she would savor the deaths of these creatures. As they'd nearly savored hers. These blades were not like the Lady; disected on an operating table, not truly alive until restored to a working configuration. This metal was alive, the points and edges singing with unbroken purpose, extolling Shana to use them as designed, and bathe in the ichor of her hated foe.

Not by trauma but by choice, Shana relented to the call of memory, venturing into spaces she rarely could tread. The years whittled away under her mind's gaze, growing fuzzier and more distant until at least she returned to vividness, glowing fires, billowing smoke, and sky cracking impacts.

Her hair was ragged and tangled about her head. Her feet were bare, cuts on her soles, and her clothes were singed tatters. Bruises, scrapes, and burns covered nearly every inch of her. Shana cowered under the parked repulsorcraft, hidden away in a garage complex while her city exploded around her. Here and there were moments of silence, but the shots still howled in from orbit to smash buildings to rubble. Just not hers, not yet at least. But she silently supposed that instant immolation by the blocky vessels dipping into the atmosphere overhead would be preferable to whatever the roving bands of skittering horrors had in mind for her, jet black with two heads, one on each end, with vicious crimson eyes, glowing slices of uninterrupted color that pierced through the smoke and night.

Shana whimpered in fear as the clatter of hardened carapace limbs against the durracrete parking structure echoed off the walls. Their harsh hissing vocalizations echoed upward from below, gradually growing louder as the host occupied the upper landing pads.

They'd already torched everything she'd known in her short eight years. The orphanage, the factory with the angry foreman, the bitter old lady at the canteen lunch line, the stout 12 year old boy who looked so handsome swinging his impact hammer. The man who ran the food stall, who always gave her extra noodles for free after a long hard day of work. All dust in the wind, scattered by the roving deathsquads of arthropods, blasted apart by sickly green bolts and then incinerated in jets of burning raw plasma. The culling of the industrial colony of any signs of dissent had gone on for months, until the huge warships, all sharp edged rectangles powered by finned drive sections, settled in overhead, and the remains of the butchery were themselves scattered to the wind by devastating volleys of turbolaser fire.

"Inexcusable!" A thin whining voice split the insectile sounds of the Barrtok mercenaries. "Why not just take the skiff I had at the palace?"

"The skiff is a pleasure cruiser, sir, she can't even break atmosphere. We'd never escape successfully in such a vehicle."

Shana watched the robed crybaby pout. "It has such nice accommodations," he tuttered. "I so hate a rough shuttle ride on poor upholstery..."

Little Shana had to struggle not to laugh. Hell had come to roost on an already bleak existence, and this fop at the center of it was worried about hard seats hurting his soft rear. It was Shana's first encounter with that sort of grim irony. Even as she snickered, it hurt her heart to think of it.

"What, what is it? What are they doing?" The clattering noises shifted noticeably, and when the girl peeked, glowing Bartokk eyes stared back at her.

What came next what often difficult to remember. Despite having grown into a warrior of great prowess, it was unyieldingly difficult to pierce the veil of the confusion she had experienced that day. But there were some images that stood out and painted a basic picture for her.

She had been dragged from beneath the repulsorcraft by the rigid, slicing grasps of the chitinous claws of these fouls creatures. Held restrained, struck viciously when she dared resist. The fool and his lackey discussed what to do with her, and then the distant rumble came near. It shocked and deafened Shana, casting her to the floor as it rained from the sky in searing bursts of scarlet agitated matter. One of the huge battleships parted the grey smoke-laden sky with it's thick rectangular bow leading a winged and finned rear section, it's cannons and launchers chewing up the planet all around them, marking their position in the eye of a storm of destruction.

The moment the storm ended, the assault was upon them, two pairs of 40 meter long dropships shaped like huge seagoing creatures, studded with cannons facing forward and back, larger guns mounted upon their backs, and spewing missiles from clustered tubes at the cheeks and rotating launchers under protective shutters flanking the heavy dorsal turret. Shana dove for cover as the dropships fanned out, their four engines swiveling about to bring them into hovering patterns, circling the garage complex as the cannons mowed through the assassin hive. When the feeble resistance was fully crushed under the hail of bolts and warheads, three of the dropships touched down and disgorged infantry. They fanned out through the complex, carefully clearing every inch. These moments were clearer in Shana's mind, as these strange warriors systematically executed every one of the chittering carrapaced warriors. Their fearsome armor, their blank and wicked visors, and the stalking way they moved had scared her nearly as much as the Bartokks, but eventually they found her. Yet instead of pulling her out from under another vehicle, they simply called for their alor.

Shana saw a pair of boots. Then knees, and a pair of hands, and then a T glowing softly blue as this one bent down to peer under the speeder at her. "Udesii, cyar'ika..." he said, pulling off his helmet. The man underneath was weathered and scarred, but his eyes and smile were open, and his voice was calm. "Hey there. Can you hear me? Understand?"

Shana nodded once, still not daring to speak. She had seen people with sweet faces and cruel hearts before. This warrior simply smiled wider. "Good, good. You're not hurt, are you?" She shook her head, and he exclaimed; "Jate'kara! Good stars, little one! You're a very lucky girl. What's your name?"

She studied his face just a moment longer, tanned and marked and grinning like her friends did when work was hard but life had cheer and joy. "Shana," she said.

"It's good to meet you, Shana. I'm Sagen, and I'm glad to see you're still alive." He extended an open gauntlet. "The fighting is over now, so you can come out, okay?"

Shana shrank back, shaking her head, and for a moment Sagen looked crestfallen. But then a mischievous grin crossed his face. "Well, too bad I guess, me and the vode will have to eat all this field stew by ourselves, then."

He moved to leave, his subordinates snickering. Sure enough, before they could take ten strides, they could hear a small voice clear her throat. "D-did you say stew?" She asked timidly, peeking her soot-streaked face out from beneath the speeder. Sagen grinned, nodding his head.

"All that and more, a feast fit for kings," the old soldier promised, waving his hand to indicate the behemoth looming over the nearby city blocks. "Aboard my Keldabe-class over there."

"Then you'll take me away from here?" Hope sprang up out of the girl's broken expression, blunting Sagen's grin.

"You haven't a loved one here to worry for?" He asked, though he already knew the answer. Shana shook her head, and Sagen knelt back down next to her, offering his open gauntlet. "Then yes little one, I can take you from this place. You will live with me, my wife, and our sons, and we will raise you as one of our own; a daughter of Mandalore and a warrior without peer."

Slowly the memory faded, leaving Shana alone again, clutching tight the hilt of her geba'kad, fighting back tears. She steeled herself, and then girded her body with armor and arms, an internal change complete as she lowered her buyce over her head, her soft and tender feelings buried within the armor of her psyche and consumed by the flames of war that burned within. Her DC-15A would remain on the Lady; instead she would bring a WESTAR-M5, so graciously supplied by Fink from one of his for sale weapons stores. The shorter profile would be handier in the cramped station corridors and doorways, and this particular rifle also sported an underbarrel blast cannon, offering a choice between conventional select fire and a scattergun pattern, perfect for pouring on pain at point blank or quickly saturating an area target at a distance.

The Mando'ad left her room, striding down the hall and rapping her fist on the door opposite from hers. It slid open, revealing Wren leaning against the wall on the other side. He stood up straight upon seeing Shana enter, moving past her and beckoning wordlessly before leading his passenger down to the droid bay. Within, the spacer stepped past the whistling astromechs. and approached SENA's system access connection. Ever so carefully, Wren disengaged the cylinder of Corusca gemstone before slipping it into a hard framed clear case that hung from his belt at the small of his back. "Okay girl," he said with a teasing grin. "Wanna go for a walk?"

"You know I could doom us all, right? For all the different ways I hold your life in my hands, you just can't seem to stop needling me," SENA quipped back.

"Love you too, SENA," Wren said through easy chuckles. He made his way further fore, Shana following close behind, and the two disembarked from the Lady. Once they'd stepped off the ramp, the ship sealed itself per SENA's silent command. Wren and Shana progressed into the monitor bay attached to the Lady's berthing. Within, Fink was introducing Hakyo to a new toy.

It was a mammoth weapon, three systems in total; side by side, an LS-150 accelerated charged particle cannon and a Relby v10 micro-grenade launcher, and slung below them was a boxy, four-barreled FC-1 flechette launcher. These three implements of destruction were all tied to a single trigger via a selector switch, and fed by an equally huge ammunition drum that hung from Hakyo's waist. Wren was certain that the Abyssin was the only being he'd met who could handle such a weapon with anything approaching competence, and sure enough the brute hefted the thing with ease by its top-mounted stabilizing grip. "Eschlan, behold!" He barked. "My eye thirsts to see what this one is capable of. And the little engineer found another N'gant Zarvel for me as well."

Fink beamed. "I'm just happy that I finally found that monster a home. Got stuck with it after I siezed a fit-and-fly, could never find anyone who wanted the damn thing. It's just too big!"

The slight mechanic had a pair of holsters on his belt now, wearing a chest rig carrying magazines and a pair of dissipative plastoid trauma plates, and Shana recognized the rifle slung across his slender chest; a Verpine shatter-rifle, and a top of the line model at that, fitted with a short barrel and a low magnification CQB sight. Also hanging from his belt was a short wand capped with a small sphere of durasteel. Shana regarded Fink again; she hadn't marked the boy for a warrior, but he bore his arms with the ease of an experienced fighter.

"Alright," the youthful engineer said, his lackadaisical smile turned hardened and grim. "If we're all set, let's get this ball rolling. My people have evacuated the repair levels, and my security teams are doing well to contain the Bartokks in their occupied decks. But they've hunkered down real tight, and I don't wanna risk my people dislodging them alone. Not when we have help. We're going to cut through to the central transit hub; once we're there, Shana and Hakyo will help my security teams hunt down every one of these things, while me and Wren head up to the command level and activate the crystal gravfield trap sensor; the CGT will help us sniff out the cloaked assault ship that brought this pudu to our fine place of business. Then my defense stations will turn them into salvage."

They assembled at the doorway, first Wren and Hakyo to one side, then Shana and Fink on the other. "How's it look out there?" Wren asked. Fink stopped for a moment, peering into the wall as the mechanisms in his eyes rotated and interlocked.

"Clusterfekked," came the reply. "There's at least six of them. Trying to gain access, if I'm not mistaken."

"I can hear it," SENA said into their comm sets. "What the fosh is that? Wren, these things are making you look like a good slicer."

"Well let's give them a hand, everybody." Wren was all fire, viciously thrilled. He drew his S-5, sliding a red-tipped projectile striped with gray into the underbarrel launcher. "Fink? Hakyo?"

The huge Abyssin hefted his new weapon, standing before the doorway and leveling the oversized implement of destruction. He wore an extension in his comm headset that projected a targeting lenses over his lone eye. Fink punched his administrator code into the door control, hovering his hand over the opening button. Wren counted softly, and at the counts end Fink keyed the door open.

They gawked awkwardly for just a moment, before all seven moved at once, raising their bizarrely shapped blasters as one, but they were too late. With one pass Hakyo cut them down in a hail of deeply penetrating yellow bolts that punched holes straight through the Bartokk, their armor, and deeply into the metal of the bulkheads. He roared in joy as he did it, before ending the fusillade so Wren and Shana could enter the doorway, facing left and right in unison. Each saw more chitinous foes ambling down the curving circular corridor. Wren raised his pistol, firing the bottom barrel; his shot burst into a cloud of red hot metal fragments that ripped through the advancing Bartokk, maiming and remembering them in a storm of durasteel fragmentation, shattered carapace, and sickly ichor. Shana did the same, launching a micromissile from her wrist that leveled the front ranks of the charging insectoids.

"Fink, fill my position," she said in a short and curt tone, raw info transfer with no character or inflection. The young mechanic pulled up behind his new Mandalorian comerade, slapping her on the shoulder plate thrice. When Shana pulled back into the cover of the doorway, Fink seamlessly placed his shatter-rifle along the line of fire Shana had vacated. As Wren and Fink laid down well disciplined volleys of emerald blaster bolts and magnetically propelled metallic rounds, Shana drew one one of her DC-17S pistols. Sure and methodical, she pointed the early model GAR pistol and fired, obliterating the gleaming red eyes of the fallen Bartokk warriors one set at a time.

Wren and Fink both flinched at the unexpected shots within their position, and for a blood chilling moment the weight of shots coming their way began to increase, before Hakyo leaned out to Send a thick burst down each hallway, assisting Wren and Fink in seizing control of the firefight again. Wren signaled Hakyo to take his place, casting his attention back to his chartering passenger. "What the hell?" He demanded.

Shana transferred Wren's attention to the dismembered Bartokk limbs, and the way they still twitched. "Their hive telepathy extends to their distributed nervous systems," she explained. "Until you destroy the primary brain, the limbs will fight on."

This seemed to blunt Wren's outrage at the poor communication, but only just so. "Say something first next time," he hissed, before moving back into a firing position, crouched low behind Hakyo and peering out around his bulk.

"My people want us going this way!" Fink called out, indicating the leftward passage. "I can move up, cover me!"

As Hakyo held down the other side of the fight with a steady spray of ACP shots and an occasional micro-grenade, Shana leveled her new WESTAR and Wren aimed his S-5 past her from a low crouch. Together they filled the air with green particle bolts and blue plasma pulses, forcing the Bartokk back into cover. Firing as he moved, Fink dashed out, ahead, and into a doorway further up the hallway. Fink quickly opened it, and after he cleared the chamber within, the team shifted ahead to join him. They fought this way through several different doorways, executing the creatures whenever possible, until Fink called out as they engaged yet another knot of Bartokk warriors.

"Friendly fire!" He shouted, and the gang noticed that a few of the Bartokk fell before any of the four had fired their weapons. The rest fell slowly as the four warriors and their new allies dispatched them with much more care.

After the last Bartokk fell, Fink slung his rifle low, his posture significantly more relaxed. From further down the hallway, slender insectoids with green carapaces and wearing grey security uniforms left cover. Most advanced past the crew to secure their rears, but one holstered their pistol and greeted Fink with an open hand.

"Guys, this is Tzan, my security chief," Fink explained. "How's it look?"

"Good and bad news, Fink," Tzan said. "My personnel have successful contained the intrusion within the repair and hospitality sections. The engineering sections are free of the enemy, and we receive no reports of intruders in the other spheres. In addition, we have confirmed the status of the command deck." Even on the alien face, distress was obvious. "It was completely destroyed. Everyone on the bridge at the time of the attack perished."

Fink spat a long string of obscenities, gripping his rifle tight till his wrists shook. "Time to put these things out of our misery," he said through gnashed teeth. "Me and Wren are going up to the command deck so we can toast their transport. The Mando and the big guy will help your people wipe out these sorry bastards."

The group split with little fanfare, Shana and Hakyo shifting to follow Tzan's lead. Wren grabbed Hakyo for just a moment, speaking under his voice. He jerked his head in Shana's direction. "Something about these things is getting under the armor," he said, and the look on Hakyo was one Wren recognized as understanding. "Watch her, Hak. Watch her good."

Wren and Fink boarded a turbolift, and then the door slid shut. Wren studied Fink intently as he smouldered in place, reloading his shatter-rifle. "Vx'un was on duty," he blurted suddenly.

"Vx'un," Wren said to himself, silently damning the Verpine naming culture. "He was assigned to your recovery after the implantation."

"We'd been together from the start. The bug practically raised me. I wouldn't know a single thing if it weren't for them. They have a genetic defect, can't take on sex like other Verpines. Well, had. Stuck in sexless form, no way to pass on the hive's knowledge. Except for me. Took me in when I had nothing, nobody. Taught me to think, to see and hear and build. It's not perfect but I could never want something else. Certainly not a life as a stow away, and then probably a slave."

Wren saw the tears forming in the corners of his eerie cybernetic eyes. Part of him was surprised, having thought Fink didn't have working tearducts. He rested his hand on the young man's shoulder. "They're not getting away with this," the spacer promised. "It's personal now; we'll hunt down the fekking mook who had the bright idea to spring this on us. Drag them to their graves by their damn choobies."

The turbolift door slid open, and the smell of smoke and death immediately hung heavy in the air. As they entered the space, the cause was apparent; the entire far wall of the bridge was rent asunder, the sliding, interlocking containment shields the only thing keeping atmosphere inside. As Fink slowly began to examine the details if the ruined room, Wren found a console with a suitable input. "SENA, will this one work?" He asked quietly, before connecting his Corusca-bound friend when she responded that it functioned, if just barely.

The console sputtered to life, displaying the entire complex on a sensor readout screen. "CGT array coming online," SENA announced, and after a few moments the computer system highlighted a new contact detected by the crystal grav trap.

The look on Fink's face was pure rage. Every movement venom, he strode over to the panel, selected the defense grid, and keyed it live. Massive long range proton torpedoes, each a pillar of stack and warhead the size of great ancient obelisks, streaked away from four separate weapons platforms. Intelligently and automatically picking their way through the evacuating starship traffic to mercilessly pound the modified Sentinel-class Imperial transport, sixteen missiles in total. The ship was visible after the first string of five separating proton warheads, dead in space after two more, but Fink's command had been precise, and the wreck was battered into a wide field of debris.

The burning energies released could not match the fury in Fink's eyes.

Hakyo would've roared with joy, had he not been so rushed. Wren had given him a simple and concise order; watch the girl, lest whatever history she was incensed by impair her judgement and land her in trouble. Though it tired him not, the great beast of a weapon he wielded limited Hakyo's mobility, and the compact and athletic human female had charged ahead of him more than once already. And now she'd left his field of vision completely.

"Demon-dogged humans," he swore in his mother tongue. "Always running off into nonsense." Hakyo stomped his way down the courtyard, pausing to dispense a burst of ACP discharge into the faceplate of a shambling Bartokk torso, shearing off its head in a spray of internal matter. Hakyo kicked the corpse over in frustration, but after the clatter of plastoid dropping to the floor ceased his pointed ears detected a familiar blaster shot not too far ahead.

"Vaabir gar aalar chaabar?" Shana hissed as Hakyo came into earshot, twisting the hilt of the blade she'd slid into it's thoracic cavity. The Bartokk's last remaining limb was pinned under Shana's boot; all the others had been reduced to charred stumps. "Does this fekking register? Rotting fetid-eyed ori'dush osi'yaim oya'la shabuir..."

Shana tore her geba'kad free, kicking the Bartokk under the chin and sending its helmet spinning across the floor. Shana sheathed her geba'kad, drawing her bent-leaf ori'kal. With a crunching, whacking sound she raised the cleaving blade and brought it down upon the crawling Bartokk's head, between it's scarlet eyes. The Bartokk and it's cluster of ruined limbs spasmed, and then again as Shana ripped the cleaver free. One whack at a time she maimed the fallen insectoid to death.

"It's dead," Hakyo informed her after the ninth whack. He gazed about, counting mutilated Bartokk corpses. Shana wrenched her ori'kal away, wiped it clean and sheathed it, before stooping low to scoop up her WESTAR. She shouldered her rifle and fired the blast cannon, erasing each and every Bartokk face she could find with a spread of blue plasma until the M5 ran it's circular magazine dry. Hakyo stripped it from her grip before Shana could rearm the weapon. His baleful eye blinked twice. "And you are incensed."

The gore splattered warrior woman sobbed once, casting her arms about the last repair bay left uncleared. "I was saved from these creatures as a girl. Taken from slavery in an illicit mining colony, saved from death in the scuttling of the operation, and raised as a child of a powerful and successful Mandalorian warlord. I thought that slaying them would help ease my loathing. But the hate only grows. This has given me nothing but pain I thought I'd finally buried."

Hakyo passed the WESTAR back to her, regarding her carefully. "You are a girl-child no longer. You've become a master of this life you've come to live. You walk your path with fervor and fortitude, she-warrior. And you have earned my respect."

That blunted Shana's sorrow just a touch, and she removed her helmet to wipe the sweat from her brow and a few shameful tears from her eyes. "Thank you, ori'beskaryc. Mandokarla; You've got the touch, the spark of true courage."

The hunch-backed giant beamed. "Come, friend. We report to the others."

The resturaunts and gambling floors of the entertainment levels were beginning to refill as the lockdown order was finally revoked. Tucked away in a still-empty corner, Wren, Shana, and Hakyo enjoyed a bountiful multi-course feast as they nursed their battle aches with food and drink, smoking and cursing and laughing tiredly. There was a time from the service panel that said a visitor was approaching, and after a few moments Fink dipped inside. He wore a pack on his back, a duffel bag in one hand and a hard rifle-case in the other.

"The Hasty Lady is watered, fed, and ready to fly," the young engineer announced, and the other three cheered with raised glasses. Fink slipped into an open seat, waving at the nearby bar until the tender furnished one of his favored ridiculous cocktails, something ruby red with gold wisps, joining in the toast. "The rear launcher, the new sensors, and the modular ablative armor is all set up; the old girl has never been finer."

"You look like you're ready to fly yourself," Wren commented, grinning ear to ear.

"We've got business to settle," Fink responded. "Once Princess Battle is home safe and sound, you and I are gonna find these sorry little mynocks and space their butts."

"Deal," Wren said. "But we can talk about that scrap when my stomach is done growling."

"That's a tall order," SENA joked, to chuckling approval. The crew dug in, one body deeper and that much closer to their destined port.