Several hours later, Wrehn was roused from her sleep by Nancy.
"We are thirty minutes from the planet's atmosphere," she whispered to Wrehn in Cheunh, "I've woken some of the others, but I fear waking those two."
Wrehn sat up on the deck of the transport, and looked around. She found the members of her team putting on their armored boots, vambraces, and the like.
Both Vindis and Calaverous were out cold, asleep with all but their leggings removed as well.
"Rise and shine, everyone. We're almost to Coruscant's atmosphere."
Vindis and Calaverous both instantly came awake and immediately began to don their armor.
"We're pretty lucky," Skadge said, "We got to stretch out and take a nap on this flight. Think how bad it was for them scrubs on the other dropships. They must be miserable already."
"That's a pretty good point, Skadge!" Mako chirped, brightly, "We could have had it real bad! They've got eighty troops on each of those five dropships, with all of their extra gear crammed in! Compared to them, we traveled like kings!"
"And three of those dropships has a large droid stuff in there with 'em," Wrehn added.
"Now that's looking at things from the bright side of possibilities," Calaverous said, in an upbeat tone, "It makes me feel grateful for this otherwise supremely uncomfortable environment!"
Wrehn found that funny and added her two credits.
"Yeah," this crick in my neck and my half asleep arm are all worth it when I realize I didn't have to breath that nasty air in those over-packed fish cans!"
"With that bit of positivity, even I feel better about our conditions," Vindis chimed in, uncharacteristically upbeat.
Fifteen minutes later, Nancy was testing her passengers' safety restraints before taking her place, beside Wrehn.
Soon, everyone in the troop compartment and in the cockpit began to be jostled and tossed as the dropship began to be buffeted by Coruscant's atmosphere. They also felt the ship's great deceleration, and could feel the lurching, sickening feeling in their stomachs as the ship practically dove towards the planet's surface.
Buzzing alarms began to sound off in the flight deck, causing greater anxiety in Wrehn and the others.
"Are we gonna crash?" Wrehn whispered her inquiry in Basic to Nancy, beside her.
"No," the load master replied in Chiss accented Basic, "Zeh enemy have detected our presence und are trying to find us."
"I thought we was stealthed up," Wrehn said, concern in her tone.
"Vee are," Nancy answered, "It ist vhy zey have not found us."
The alarms sounded again, and again Edrik maneuvered the dropship, taking it out of the Republic fighters' search scanners.
"What's happening out there?" Vindis demanded, "Why the alarms?"
"A squadron of twenty fighters are searching for us," the copilot shouted back through the open entryway of the cockpit, "Zis ist normal. Initial entry through zeh atmosphere makes it very difficult to maintain stealth."
Wrehn's eyes bugged open on hearing the copilot's voice. She felt that it was quite familiar to her. From the side of the troop compartment where she sat, she could see the back of the pilot's helmeted head, but she could not see the copilot, but knowing that her cousin Edrik was piloting, it dawned on her that the copilot might be his younger brother, Erudeg'unte'romai, whose core name was Gunter.
"Erok'eple'romai likes to keep the family close," Wrehn smirked at the thought, "Or he reeeally wants to keep an eye on me!"
"Zey are just conducting a vide area search, but zey have not detected us," Gunter had been saying, "Zeh alarms are just telling us vhen zeir active scanners are aimed in our direction. Zey cannot see us. All ve have to do ist turn a few degrees to get out of zeir search cone and zhey von't get close enough to get a return signal."
This explanation went a long ways towards settling everyone's nerves.
"We must guard our thoughts," Calaverous said, to Vindis, in archaic Sith, the very seldom used original language of the Sith Pureblood race, "All of this stealth will mean nothing if the Jedi can sense our presence."
Vindis nodded her agreement, as the two Sith lords made sure that their thoughts and feelings were well masked. However, it was already too late. The Jedi on Coruscant had already been feeling the very fleeting, extraordinarily tenuous hints of a dark presence for the last twelve hours.
The six dropships had been moving in a single file column about five hundred meters apart, flying in stealth, about five hundred meters above the heavy Coruscant traffic. They followed this route until they reached a huge rectangular opening in the roof top of a massive mega building. Several tightly controlled streams of speeder traffic flowed in to and out of this opening, which fortunately presented plenty of opportunities for the stealth dropships to fly in between the streams of traffic.
The dropships moved at the speed of traffic, not because they didn't want any traffic citations, but because they wanted to avoid traffic collisions. This strategy paid off, as they discovered that the empty spaces between traffic streams were not so empty after all.
There were traffic transponder sensors, and traffic enforcement droid sentries posted, hovering. Their strategy of moving within the traffic lanes at the speed of local traffic paid off. It prevented their collision into the traffic enforcement droids. These droids, and the levitating traffic transponder receivers were not part of the simulation. Now that their existence was known, the stealth dropship pilots knew what to look for to avoid flying into them.
While their flight from the Nova Star to the planet's atmosphere did take twelve hours, their estimated time of arrival had failed to take into account their very long commute to their ultimate destination.
However, the pilots were grateful to Wrehn, for thinking to put them through their stringent computer simulation training, transiting these heavy traffic conditions. Because of it, they finally touched down, safely, three hours later, at twenty three hundred hours ship time, twenty four hundred local time.
Wrehn's local contact provided her with exceptionally good information. The abandoned warehouse, with it's empty park lot for large lory speeders was perfect. The area was fenced off and empty of any vehicles.
The six stealthy dropships parked diagonally side by side, with ten meters separating each ship, with plenty of room to spare over the rest of the lot.
From Wrehn's dropship, the pilots released a stealthed hovering probe droid from a compartment underneath the ship's hull. The droid reconnoitered the entire, expansive park lot, and then entered the giant warehouse through an open window, exploring the largely empty facility.
However, as expected, the warehouse was not entirely abandoned. Someone was using it. They were squatters. Likely, the local gang. They seemed be to guarding stacks of crates, filled with who knew what sorts of illicit contraband or stolen goods.
The droid returned to its compartment under the dropship, and plugged itself in to upload the gathered intelligence of their immediate surroundings. Inside the apparently abandoned warehouse, there were seventy gangsters. Most were asleep, or in a spice induced stupor. The ones on duty, guarding the crates, sat on or around the crates. Some played sabacc or pazaak, while others had gathered around a holo-projector to watch a holographic action show.
Meanwhile, stealthed levitating probe droids departed the other five stealth dropships. The five probe droids began to quickly go up and down the surrounding streets,where they inspected light poles, went up and down, inspecting the sub-building facades, and where they inspected the ceiling of the mega floor overhead the immediate area.
The idea behind the thorough inspection was to make a detailed map of security cameras, blaster shot sound detectors, used to triangulate the location of weapons being fired, and energy spike triangulators, which were used to detect and to pin point the location of blaster pistols or rifles powering up. These sensors could alert local security and law enforcement forces of trouble in the neighborhood.
As it turned out, all of the security cameras and sensors that had been found had all been vandalized and made inoperable, likely by the local gangs. Wrehn decided it was safe to unstealth the dropships, and to allow the Mandalorians to debark and to spread out, stretch their legs and get something to eat and drink.
Wrehn stepped down the ramp of her dropship, happy to stretch her legs. She was immediately struck with a feeling of nostalgia as she looked around the dilapidated vacant subbuildings across the metal road from the warehouse. It reminded her, again, of her life in the mean streets of lower Coruscant in her youth. However, Wrehn took note of the activities of her hired guns and became worried that things might go wrong.
She realized her hired warriors were tactically deployed from their dropships, having taken up defensive positions around their ships, and beginning to scout around the property, for potential trouble. This worried her. She didn't want them getting into any shootouts with the local gangs. So, she ran quickly towards the Mandalorian officer at the dropship nearest to hers.
"Say, Lieutenant!" she called to the officer, getting his attention, "Spread the word to all forces, not to shoot at anything or anyone unless I give the word. We're not at any of the target locations."
"What if they shoot at us, Great Hunt Champion?" he asked, in Mando'a.
"I'm going to enter into a business arrangement with the locals. Don't mess up my negotiations."
"Understood, Great Hunt Champion," the lieutenant answered before immediately passing on her orders to the other officers, and to Ymmiir.
Wrehn returned to her team at her dropship. On her way back, she noted that the warriors were already quickly returning and were beginning to assemble in front of their dropships.
"I didn't expect them to go deploying all tactical like that. Good thing I talked to one of the officers. I think they were gonna start shooting up the locals until I talked them out of it," Wrehn told her team and the Sith lords.
"What about the scum inside the warehouse," Calaverous asked, "are we going to go in and talk to them?"
"Nah," Wrehn answered, "Let them come out and talk to me. Then I'll make a deal with them to rent us some space inside the warehouse."
"That makes sense," Calaverous said, nodding his approval of Wrehn's plan.
"What if they don't want to make a deal?" Vindis asked, skeptical, "Are you going to keep offering more credits until they accept?"
"Nah," Wrehn answered, "I'll only make them the offer once or twice. If they get on my nerves, we'll start blasting."
Vindis nodded acceptance of Wrehn's plan. Calaverous, smiled in anticipation. And Skadge was Skadge.
"I sure hope they get on your nerves, Wrehn," the Houk brute said, "I really want to pound in some heads, soon."
"Don't pound anyone without my permission, Skadge," Wrehn warned the brute, "or I won't let you take part in any of our missions."
"Don't worry, I won't go causing any trouble," Skadge assured his employer.
Wrehn returned her attention to the warriors of Clan Sharratt, watching as the Mandalorians began to relax, breaking out their field rations, taking sips of water. Knowing that things had settled down, she decided to do the same with her team and the Sith lords.
Quite a bit of time had passed before she realized that none of the gangsters inside the warehouse had come out. At that moment, she heard one of the warriors on watch shout out a warning.
"SOMEONE APPROACHES!"
Wrehn looked in the direction of the shouted warning and noticed five large speeder vans quietly gliding down the street with their anti collision lights and headlamps tuned off.
She immediately got to her feet, as Ymmiir Sharratt began shouting orders to his warriors to take up defensive positions and stand by for orders.
"Clan Chief!" Wrehn shouted across the park lot in Mando'a, "Join me at the gate!" Turning to her team, she started giving orders, in Basic, "Torian! With me! The rest of you charge up your blaster rifles. Skadge charge up your blaster cannon. Do not shoot until I say you can shoot!"
"Alright!" the Houk brute declared, "Finally, a little fun!"
"Vindis, Calaverous," Wrehn spoke in a normal tone, "Please, keep an eye at the warehouse. I think they might try to hit us from behind, while I talk to their boss at the gate."
"Very well. If you start shooting here at the gate, then we'll destroy them in the warehouse," Vindis said, to Wrehn. To Calaverous, Vindis said, "Lord Calaverous, let us go inside and stalk them from behind."
"Sounds like a plan, Lord Vindis," Calaverous replied.
"Thank you," Wrehn said to the Sith, pleasantly surprising them with her politeness.
The two Sith lords immediately dashed, in a blur towards the warehouse, startling the Chiss bounty hunter with their Force powered speed. However, with the situation developing out in the street, she didn't have time to keep gawking. Wrehn turned about and made her way to the gate. She watched as Ymmiir and two of his warriors approached the gate and her.
Wrehn and Torian, joined by Ymmiir and his two escorts, stood just outside the gate. Wrehn put her glove armored hands on her hips and waited.
The speeder vans stopped and what Wrehn estimated to be around a hundred and fifty, or maybe two hundred, lightly armored but heavily armed thugs began pouring out of the busses. Wrehn spotted a party of five approach her at the gate. She couldn't believe what she saw. It was one of her old bounty heads approaching.
"Torian," Wrehn said to her employee, in a low voice, "Look who that is! Can you believe it?"
"Orlo Borlan," Torian replied, equally amazed.
"So, you've finally tracked me down and came for my bounty, Yehw'reh'nomai!" her bounty head said.
"Man are you ugly!" Wrehn said to him, smiling as though she'd told a joke.
"I may not be handsome, but I'm not ugly," the Weequay pirate countered, smiling in return.
"Orlo Borlan," Wrehn said, still wearing her smile, "I'm not here for your bounty. I'm here on other business."
"That's nice to hear, Yehw'reh'nomai," Orlo replied, coming to a stop in the street about fifteen meters in front of Wrehn and her party, "but I'm kind of skeptical. Convince me."
"I waited out in your parking lot, nice and polite like, and I didn't disturb your seventy boys slouching off inside. I wanted to do a little business with the boss of this place. It turns out you're the boss of this place, and that's fantastic. Seeing familiar faces makes doing business a lot easier. Don't you agree?"
Wrehn and Orlo were the only ones smiling in that conversation. The others wore hard expressions and shifted their eyes as they scanned each other for threatening movements.
"Are those real Mandalorians, or are they just playing dress up?" Orlo asked, knowing that Wrehn was, herself, Mandalorian.
"Perhaps you will enjoy sample of our fighting spirit?" Ymmiir asked in his Mandalorian accented basic, "Perhaps fighting spirit will convince you we are real Mandalorians?"
"Don't let that mynock's turd provoke you, Clan Chief," Torian whispered in Mando'a.
"Well, I have to admit it, Wrehn," Orlo said, a look of admiration complementing his otherwise insincere smile, "You have got big, big orbs, sneaking into Republic Space and landing on the capital of the Galactic Republic itself."
"It's like I said, Orlo," Wrehn said, her smile starting to falter, "I've got business here."
"Come on, Wrehn!" Skadge shouted, "When are you gonna let me start blasting?!"
Wrehn's smile completely deteriorated as she turned about.
"Shut it, Skadge! Not another blasted word out of you!"
She turned back to face Orlo.
"Sorry for the interruption, Orlo," Wrehn said to the Weequay gang boss, "but I'm running out of patience, here. You wanna do business or not? It's good credits."
"What do you want from me, Wrehn?" Orlo asked, irking Wrehn, because she didn't give him permission to use her core name.
"I wanna pay you some rent money so that I can stash my speeder lories inside your warehouse and put a roof over my warriors' heads for a few days."
Orlo looked at the dropships. They really did look like speeder lories to him, until she called them "speeder lories."
"You painted them up real nice," he told her, "Had me fooled until I took another look at your starships.
Saying the word, starship, made him realize they were too small for that. Looking at all of Wrehn's Mandalorians tactically dispersed and aimed in on his gaggle of thugs who weren't doing such a good job of taking cover. He realized how cramped they were in those ships.
"Those are dropships! They're too small to have hyperdrives in 'em," he thought to himself, looking at Wrehn with wonderment, "That means she snuck a Mandalorian warship into Republic Space, or she used a freighter or a barge to sneak them dropships to Coruscant." but rather than ask the Chiss woman about it, he got to business, "How long you planning on staying?"
"I probably won't be here longer than six days," Wrehn said, her smile hadn't returned.
"Fifty million credits," Orlo said, easily.
"I'm not paying you more than ten million," Wrehn said, with a frown developing on her facade.
"Ten million?" Orlo asked astonished, "That's pretty damned cheap of you, Wrehn. How about thirty million?"
"You're lucky if you make five million a year, Orlo," Wrehn countered, adding, "I'm not paying you more than ten million."
"You got, what, three, four hundred Mandos, six dropships, so maybe a warship hiding out in orbit somewhere. You're running a pretty big operation, Wrehn. You must be getting some pretty big backing to be running a job this big on Coruscant. I know you can afford it."
Wrehn was scowling at this point.
"What are you trying to say, Orlo?"
"I need to keep my boys happy. You know? That costs credits. If my boys got unhappy, they'd be liable to do stupid things. You know? You wouldn't want any of my unhappy boys to report you to the law, do you, Wrehn?" Orlo said, in his ultimatum, adding, "thirty million, firm."
Wrehn surprised everyone when she suddenly rocketed into the air and started blasting Orlo and his backup down below her on the road. The Mandalorians immediately let loose a well coordinated barrage of blaster rifle, and blaster cannon fire at the gaggle of thugs bunched up around their speeder buses.
"Destroy those speeders!" Ymmiir shouted, in Mando'a, into his helmet mounted, audio only, encrypted communicator.
Then the grizzled old warrior activated his personal shield generator, aimed his blaster rifle and just started blasting at the gaggle of thugs trying to run for cover around the other side of the speeder buses. Wrehn had already obliterated Orlo Borlan and the thugs he'd brought with him to parlay, so the tough old warrior didn't need to waste time on them.
"Ymmiir Sharratt!" Wrehn shouted, upon descending to the street again, "Take care of this mess out here! I'm taking my team to the warehouse to give the Sith a hand with the trash inside!"
"Understood!" he shouted his acknowledgment, then issued orders to his fighters, "Cut down that fence, then conduct a general forward assault on those pieces of bantha poo! Don't let a single one of them get away!"
His five platoon leaders acknowledged their orders and began to carry them out. Meanwhile, Wrehn, with Torian following behind, ran back to her team in front of their dropship.
"Skadge! Team, follow me! We're going into the warehouse to give the Sith a hand with the trash inside!"
Wrehn's team ceased firing at the small army of gangsters, trapped behind their burning speeder buses, and got up from the prone, running behind Wrehn, as she led the way to an office door of the warehouse.
The door was locked. Wrehn took four large steps to the right, creating distance for herself from the door.
"Skadge, blast this door down!" she shouted.
"Oh, Yeah!" the Houk replied, excited.
After making a quick adjustment of the fire controls, he let loose a short stream of high energy bolts. Nearly instantly, the door was shredded into red hot metal shrapnel that went flying into the office of the abandoned warehouse. He ceased firing when the door was gone and watched as Wrehn ran to the side of the shattered doorway, whereupon she tossed a grenade into the office.
"GRENADE!" the Chiss bounty hunter shouted at the top of her lungs as she jumped back to the right, and a bit away from the wall.
The blast shook the building's outer metallic wall, causing it to bulge noticeably outward. Wrehn immediately rushed into the office, with her team following her in.
Inside, the office was choked with the smoke of smoldering furnishings and years of accumulated dust shaken loose from the blast. The plasticine office furnishings had been tossed about and left in splintered smoldering ruins from the superheated blast wave, and a flimsy door, leading into the warehouse proper, had been blasted off of its tracks. The inner wall, separating the office from the warehouse interior, was not only bulging outward, but it had also been torn in places. However, there were no enemies inside the office.
Torian and Gault both ran out, through the ruined interior doorway. Gault hooked to the left of the doorway and Torian to the right.
"Clear!" the two shouted, nearly in unison.
Wrehn, with Mako and Skadge following, ran through the door and stopped on either side of Wrehn. At the far end of the gargantuan warehouse building interior, Wrehn saw the two Sith lords standing, near the crates the thugs had been guarding. The Sith lords were looking her way.
On the vast open floor, between Wrehn and the Sith lords, lay dozens of bodies, some of them cleaved in two, but most of them missing their heads. Many torsos were missing limbs, and the pooled blood virtually coated the entire metallic floor of the warehouse.
Wrehn looked around, quickly scanning the warehouse interior. She could see the scorch marks of blaster fire against the walls and the floor of the huge open space, and could smell the smells of ozone, burnt paint, burnt metal, and burnt flesh. There had definitely been a fight inside the warehouse.
"Looks like they got 'em all," Gault observed, greatly shaken at the absolute slaughter strewn across the entire floor of the massive space.
"Did you get 'em all?!" Wrehn had been shouting, when the two Sith lords zapped their way to Wrehn and her people.
"Wow! That's fast!" Mako shouted, in her surprise at how quickly the two Sith lords made their way all the way from the opposite end of the massive building.
"They're all dead," Vindis reported.
"Not even breathing hard!" Gault thought, thoroughly impressed.
Wrehn was shocked at the carnage inside the massive warehouse, and carefully inspecting the two Sith lords.
"Are you hurt?" Wrehn asked rapid fire, "Did you sustain any wounds? How'd you kill 'em all so fast? Did you start killing them before I started shooting?"
"We waited for you to start the shooting, as Lord Vindis said to you," Calaverous explained, a bit annoyed that Wrehn would think them incompetent to carry out simple instructions.
"We are Lords of Sith," Vindis said, indignant, as though that should answer all of Wrehn's inane questions.
Gault and Torian quietly exchanged shocked glances after having seen a real life example of the very real power a Force user could unleash, and at how quickly the slaughter had been accomplished by those two, alone.
Wrehn got on her audio only communicator, which was just an earpiece and a small microphone held in front of her mouth by a thin, flexible boom.
"Clan Chief," Wrehn called out in Mando'a, noting that the blaster fire was dying down, outside, "What's your status?"
There was no answer for a time. Wrehn was about to call again, but the blaster fire ended, and immediately after, Ymmiir's voice came on.
"We've just finished off the last of them, Yehw'reh'nomai. How are you doing in there? Do you need reinforcements?"
"No," Wrehn replied, "The Sith had everything, everything, in hand. Bring all the bodies you've got outside into the warehouse. Get the speeder buses into the warehouse, too," Wrehn ordered, "I don't want anything left out there for law enforcement to get all riled up about. Make sure to leave room for the dropships."
"Understood," Ymmiir acknowledged, thinking to himself, "The Sith had it all in hand? Then the two took out seventy foes on their own?!"
The way his client had relayed that bit of information to him, made him realize that she wanted him to know how strong those two were. It was a warning. With this information, he would work with his officers to come up with a way to ambush and kill the two Sith lords, if his client, the Grand Champion of The Great Hunt, required it of him.
"Mako," Wrehn called out, thinking of the massive cleanup operation that would have to be undertaken inside the warehouse and out in the street. "Find me a couple of huge freezers to store the dead." Looking around, Wrehn could see the abandoned warehouse had electrical power. "Try to get them cheap, and hire some sketchy drop shippers to deliver it to the warehouse, here."
"On it," Mako replied.
"Oh, yeah," Wrehn said, "Also get me a regular refrigeration unit to store a single body in it. Not a freezer, though."
"Got it," Mako replied.
"And order a ton of cleaning supplies," Wrehn added, "We've got to clean up inside and out in the street, too."
"Yep, sure," Mako replied.
"Gault, Skadge go out there and get Orlo Borlan's body. It's worth credits."
"On it," Gault replied, laughing, "You're going to be filthy rich, but you'll still stop to pick up a two credit chip off the ground!"
That made Skadge and Mako laugh out loud. Torian didn't laugh out loud, and his face was hidden beneath his Mandalorian visored helmet, so his grin was hidden.
"He's worth seven hundred and fifty thousand credits!" Wrehn objected, "That's NOT two credits!"
"That's, alive," Mako corrected, still laughing, "Dead he's worth a quarter million credits."
Vindis noticed the way Calaverous was looking at Mako. It was obvious he was regarding her with great disdain and disapproval. To him it appeared that the petite mercenary was wasting time, laughing and making inane comments, instead of carrying out her orders.
"Didn't she get orders from her employer?" he whispered, disgustedly to Vindis.
He was obviously greatly annoyed by the petite woman's lackadaisical attitude.
"She is a cyborg with electronic implants that connect her to the holo-net," she whispered back to him.
Vindis saw the change in his demeanor. He now seemed interested.
"She seems to be goofing off, but she's actually searching the holo-net, now," She whispered to Calaverous, "She may have other capabilities, with her implants. Watch what you do or say around her."
Suddenly it made sense to Calaverous when, on the long flight in the dropship, Wrehn had told Mako to capture a recording of Torian admitting that Gault had not cheated in their game. Which meant this was one of her capabilities.
"I see," he told Vindis, nodding his head with a new found understanding of the competence of Wrehn and her crew.
Right on cue, he witnessed an example of Mako's capabilities, and began to wonder how she could be made to serve him.
"Skadge was just like a kid, playing with his toys!" Mako had been saying, as though that was a bad thing, "How could you have so much fun, with all of that shooting, Skadge? You could die, or you could… Wrehn, I got your freezers. I got three of them. I got them to throw in a regular fridge for free.
"I got the used freezers," Mako made air quotes, "from some shady company with its own shipping. They want payment in full on delivery and direct credit card to credit card transfer of credits. No bank deposits. They'll be here at zero four hundred local time. I promised a bonus if they get here at zero two."
"Good job Mako," Wrehn said, nodding her satisfaction.
"Well, Skadge?" Mako picked up where she'd left off, "How could you enjoy it so much?"
"Because it's fun, Mako," Skadge said, as though pointing out such an obvious truth, "It's a lot of fun."
"Torian does this job because of honor and glory," Mako said, trying to change Skadge's mind, "Gault does it for the money, and no other reason. Neither of them thinks this is fun. Right guys?"
"I enjoy the thrill," Torian said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Yeah, I kind of like the adrenaline rush," Gault said, deadpan. Enjoying Mako's shocked disappointment plastered on her face, he rubbed it in, "The money is great, Mako, but the thrills. Oh, the thrills!"
"Wrehn! Say something!" Mako pleaded, and then added, "By the way, I got your cleaning supplies from a legit vendor. It'll be here in two hours. They're charging a premium for the rush delivery."
"Great job, Mako," her employer replied, but then proceeded to crush Mako's attempts to show Skadge the error of his ways, "Mako, if you aren't enjoying your work, then you're in the wrong business."
"Why do you do this work, Mako?" Gault asked, genuinely curious.
"I like catching the bad guys," she emphasized, with air quotes, to justify why she was doing this line of work, "and bringing them to justice. I like finding the cheats and scumbags who've ripped honest people off and bringing them in to pay for their crimes, but I don't like the fighting and the killing."
"Most of our jobs end without a fight, or without much of a fight," Wrehn said, shrugging her shoulders in confusion, "We hardly get into any blaster battles, but you make it sound like we're in a fight every other day."
"It's because these battles are so far and few in between that we can savor them," Torian said.
"Until you get killed," Mako countered, with judgment in her tone.
"When you die," Gault countered, sagely, "you won't know it."
"I can offer you work in my domain," Calaverous proposed, "It's in an office building. You'll never see a battle of any kind. It's exciting work, investigations and accounting. You'd be helping me root out corruption, bring those who who steal from the government to justice."
"Hey!" Wrehn objected, "No poaching allowed! She works for me!"
"She isn't free to leave?" Calaverous asked as though surprised, "Oh! I see! Yes, I didn't realize, she's your slave. Then under the circumstance, I must rescind my offer."
"I'm not her slave!" "She's not my slave!" Mako and Wrehn objected, simultaneously.
"Then my offer stands," Calaverous answered, "Think about it, Mako. I pay my best talent the best wages, and you'll find that work as an investigator within the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge to be quite rewarding in itself."
"I think you'll like it, Mako," Skadge said, dispensing wisdom for the first time in the memory of anyone who knew him, "You won't have to fight and kill, and you still get to catch bad guys and cheats. That ought to make you happy."
"That's enough of this talk!" Wrehn declared, steamed under the collar that someone was trying to poach her talent, "We've got too much work to do! Gault, when are you and Skadge gonna go get Orlo's body?"
"Come on, Skadge," Gault said to his teammate, "Let's go get Wrehn's two credit chip."
The Devaronian enjoyed a laugh for the scathing look Wrehn gave him. He'd gotten under her skin again.
"Too easy," he thought, "but so much fun!"
"Torian," Wrehn, barely reining in her temper, continued issuing her orders, "Go find the clan chief and ask him to send in a couple of squads to help clean up this mess," she said, referring to the bodies scattered throughout the warehouse.
Wrehn carefully considered the Sith lords. She could see the outrage building up in Vindis' face.
"She's getting steamed 'cause she thinks I'm gonna order her around," Wrehn thought to herself, finding it funny.
However, Wrehn did not follow through with the idea of teasing Vindis. She needed to stay focused and she didn't want the Sith to go off on a tangent. Instead, she turned her eyes to the warehouse floor, at the sea of severed bodies.
"I'm kind of glad I ended up hiring you, Vindis," Wrehn said, then turning her eyes to Calaverous she added, "and I'm glad Vindis hired you, too. If the Jedi are anything like you two, I would have run into a lot of trouble."
"You wouldn't be able to handle them on your own," Vindis said, haughtily.
Calaverous rolled his eyes on hearing this from his peer, but he didn't disagree with her.
"There's got to be tricks we could try to trap guys like Jedi and Sith," Wrehn said, giving in to a sudden urge to poke at the rancor that was Vindis, "We'd have to think things through, but I'm sure we can find ways."
"You have it exactly right," Calaverous said to Vindis' great displeasure, "Inventiveness, planning, timing, surprise, those must all come into play if you wish to overcome a powerful Force user. However, if only one thing in that chain goes wrong, then it will be all over for your entire team."
"Yeah," Wrehn said, turning her eyes back towards the field of severed corpses, "I see that now."
The Chiss woman thought back to the hanger bay of the Nova Star, when she and Vindis momentarily faced off. She remembered what Torian and Gault had told her about Vindis not being weak. Now she felt the weight of their warnings.