Chapter Two: Trouble
An insistent chime dragged Ais'liin away from her grief, and she pulled herself together. A quick prayer to the manda and she hit the recieve button.
"This is Carth Onasi on your personal communicator. I'm tracking your position, as well as that of our enemies, through the Endar Spire's life support systems. Bastila's escape pod is away; you're the last surviving crew member of the Endar Spire. I can't wait for you much longer, though, so you have to get to the Pod Bay. But be careful - - There's a Sith patrol just down the corridor from me. Use the stealth field generator that was part of your kit to sneak past him." Rolling her eyes, Ais'liin flipped the comm off and unlocked the turbolift doors.
"Gee, I couldn't figure out how to get past a mir'osik Sith on my own, Onasi," she muttered, drawing her blaster and proceeding down the hall with her back to the metal wall. Peeking around the corner, she drew back hastily. Four Sith, one of which had a belt of grenades.
"Just great..." she snarled under her breath. Opening the flap of her birgaan silently, she rifled through the assorted grenades and finally found the one she was looking for. Crouching down, she set the timer and rolled the grenade just as she had in the hallway leading to the barracks, but this time the grenade did make a lot of noise.
"Come out with your hands up!"
"Rodder," she sighed and hung her blaster from her thumb, in the universal position of surrender. A plan came to mind, assuming things went right, and she stepped from around the corner with her hands raised.
"Su'cuyi." she said, her Concord Dawn accent at its strongest in years. "Ni dar'anar." [Hello. I am without defense.]
"Mandalorian scum," the one in lead said, with the grenade in his hand. He was tossing it up and down, a stupid thing to do with a grenade in any case, so he must have been content that he'd deactivated it. Good thing he didn't know about her little triggers then... "What are you doing here?"
"Ni tsad droten ru'verborir." [The Republic hired me.]
"The Republic hired you? Must be getting desperate," the lead seemed not to notice the little blue light blinking underneath the switch. She only had to keep him talking a little longer.
"Tion'meh ganar luubid waadas Ni verborir?" [What if you had enough credits to hire me?]
"And why exactly would I want to hire you? Mercenary." But he sounded considering.
"Ni copaani aikiyc'la buy'ce gal...MEH gar waadas." [I really want a pint of ale. IF you have the cash.]
He laughed. "You're inventive, I'll give you that." Oh, you have no idea, di'kut... "I'd like a pint of ale right about now too. But I still haven't seen a reason to hire you, unless you want creds for sheer guts." He tossed it up one more time, and she watched it fall into his palm.
Now she switched to Basic. "No. But this might do well instead." The leader threw the grenade again and she hit the ground, bringing her blaster to optimum firing arc in her prone position, and watched as the little blue grenade detonated with a bang and flash of bright light; two of the four, including the leader, were thrown to the ground to thrash about in the blue mass slowly writihing on the deck plating. The other two were pulling in desperation at their legs, trying to free them from the adhesive resin. Ais'liin took down the struggling two, and the one on the ground.
"But I deactivated it!" the leader protested, even as she brought her blaster to bear.
She shrugged, aim never wavering. "Basic trigger; if it's deactivated, the dead-man's switch kicks in exactly two minutes later. Nothing personal." There was a faint whirring sound as he tried to power up his blaster rifle but couldn't get his arm up to fire. "Should've hired me when you had the chance." One plasma bolt ended his struggles for good.
Carth Onasi watched the little blue dot moving through the schematics of the Enadr Spire. He could hear snatches of what was going on through the comlink when he sliced into it, but all he really heard was a foreign language. Lots of little red dots were converging on her position, and he opened his link.
"Be careful, there's a whole squad of troopers on the other side of that door. You'll need to find a way to thin out their numbers."
Ais'liin groaned, muttering a choicy curse in Mando'a, before extracting one of her hands from the rusty innards of the combat droid she was reactivating. Her hand groped along her belt and grabbed her comlink, opening the channel to Onasi. "I know that, thanks, Onasi. Working on it now, if you'd quit distracting me!" There was a distinct huff, and the link clicked off. If she knew what he looked like, she could probably imagine him sulking on the other end.
But then again, trapped behind a bulkhead door with a Sith patrol meters away, he had a right to sulk.
Finally, there was a spark from the chassis, and she could see the servos begin the self-lubrication process. Satisfied, she extracted her hands and stepped around to watch the photoreceptors light up orange. She inclined her head at the droid's questioning sound.
"Listen up, my little beskar'vod, there's a whole squad of Sith on the other side of that door. I don't know how they're equipped, I don't know how many of them there are, and I don't know whether you'll come back in one piece. But you're a combat model. You up for it?" she asked, one hand on her hip with her middle finger resting on the flip-switch for her stealth unit. "I gave your shields maximum power, and even changed the Tibanna cartridge on your rifle."
There was a stream of Binary from the droid, and Ais'liin had long stopped questioning how she could understand it. "Yes, you might die. In a sense."
More Binary.
"What do you mean, what is death?" She sighed, rummaging in her birgaan for the spare cache of discs she kept. "Death is nothing to you, if you are really worried about it. Here," she thrust the datastick into the port near the droid's still-open chassis, waiting for the little light to switch from green to red. "Download everything you have in your memory banks and I promise, if I live, I will find you another shell. Build one, if I have to. I'm pretty handy with a hydrospanner."
At the droid's matter-of-fact reply, Ais'liin snorted. "Yeah, well, we Mandalorians aren't known for generosity. I'm offering you a position because you seem useful." The droid inclined its head and ejected the datastick, which Ais'liin put into the inner pocket of her birgaan before flipping the button on her stealth unit.
Impassively, but with an approving eye, she watched as the droid meticulously and cleanly picked off each Sith as she skirted the carnage and stripped the bodies of identifying cards, jewelry, anything of value in any sense; she was nothing if not thorough. Finally, with a sigh and a brow-clearing swipe of her hand, she stood and made her way over to the battered door, blaster out and set on 'kill.'
With a tired flick, the door opened, and she stared, keeping the blaster aimed directly at him.
"You!"
"Tuber boy?"
"Tuber boy?" he asked incredulously. "My name is Carth Onasi."
"Yeah, you're still tuber boy," the flicker of hesitation in his eyes as he glanced at the still-aimed-and-powered blaster didn't miss her keen gaze.
"I take it you're Ais'liin Vhel, then?" he asked after a moment of silence.
She still gave no answer.
"You made it just in time, you know," Carth tried again. "There's only one active pod left." Keeping her blaster aimed steadily, she glanced down the row of inactive lights and the one blinking green light seemed to corroborate his story,
"We can hide out on the planet below," he said, forcing himself to hit the button to open the doors.
"How do I know that I can trust you?" Her blaster powered up with a twitch of finger pressure, warning him not to move without permission or invitation again. Slowly he stepped forward, hands held high in surrender.
"I'm a soldier with the Republic, just like you."
"You're nothing like me, aruetii," she hissed, shoving him back with the barrel of the gun. He vaguely recognized the word from his days in the Mandalorian Wars; something like traitor, or outsider or something about their non-existent code of honor they supposedly had.
"Come on now, miss. We're the last two surviving crew members of the Spire's crew. Bastila's pod is already away. There's not really a reason for us to stick around and get shot by the Sith, is there?" he advanced slowly, so that she could track his every move.
"No moving, tuber boy, I gotta think this through." A powerful tremor rocked the ship, throwing him into her with astounding speed. Seeing an opportunity, Carth grabbed his own blaster from his belt and knocked the woman in the head with it, right on the temple. She went down with a crash and he groaned, grabbing her blaster and bag, throwing them into the escape pod. Shouldering her weight easily, he ducked into the escape pod himself and settled her into the seat, strapping her with crash webbing with a not-quite-as-impersonal touch as he would've liked.
As the pod took off, he shook his head.
Something told him that this woman was going to be trouble.