Wrehn walked as quietly as her armored boots on the metal floor of the warehouse would let her. The wreckage of the five burnt speeder buses were piled in a tight heap in a corner of the warehouse. The heavy duty work droid came in handy for that. At the other corner, at that end of the warehouse, the bodies of the dead from both outside and inside the warehouse had been tightly stacked in the three big, stolen freezers which had been connected to the building's power.
Mako had ordered the three industrial freezers, in addition to a regular refrigeration unit, from an illicit holo-net site in the forbidden warrens of the Dark-Holo-net. The frozen food items which had been stored in them had been sold to other sketchy buyers.
The six Chiss dropships were parked close to each other near the huge warehouse roll up doorway located at the center of the west facing exterior wall of the warehouse. The massive door was rolled down and locked shut.
The floor of the warehouse had been cleaned of the spilled blood and other bodily fluids and waste using the cleaning supplies she had ordered and which arrived several hours ago. This permitted the Mandalorian warriors of Clan Sharratt to slumber on the now sparkling metal floor of the warehouse.
Wrehn's team were asleep underneath their dropship, while the two Sith lords slept on the top of it. The Chiss crews slept within their ships.
Wrehn tried to step lightly, so as not to wake the slumbering warriors, but her armored boots insisted on clanking with each step she took to the far end of the warehouse, where the medi-aid station had been established.
Clan Sharratt had suffered ten casualties. Two seriously wounded, and the rest suffering varying levels of wounds and injuries from their vicious battle eight hours earlier. The blood and other waste of death had been cleaned up from the metallic road outside of the warehouse park lot, as well. The signs of burning wreckage had also been removed, leaving a suspiciously clean stretch of roadway in front of the abandoned property.
"The gods of war have looked favorably on us," Ymmiir said to Wrehn, in Mando'a, "No deaths, yet."
"I'm surprised we got away with so few wounded," Wrehn replied, "We were very lucky."
"We were very lucky," Ymmiir repeated, "that our first battle was against a bunch of undisciplined uncoordinated hooligans who knew nothing of armor, shielding, or warfare."
"This is true," she answered, nodding her agreement.
She left Ymmiir with his wounded and continued her inspection.
Wrehn walked back the way she'd come, clanking and stomping, as quietly as she could, all the way back to the far end of the warehouse. There she walked passed the buckled wall of the office that she'd thrown a grenade into. Not far from the warped office door she walked to a set of stairs. These led to offices at the second level of the warehouse, above the office where she'd made her explosive entry very early that morning.
There she saw the two Mandalorians whose turn it was to be on watch in the darkened room. One of them signaled to her, and she squatted down, walking in a crouch.
"What have you got?" she asked, instantly worried something might be wrong.
Wordlessly, one of the sentries on duty pointed towards the window. Wrehn, standing back - away from the window, carefully peeked through the gaps of the bent, thin metal strips that made up the horizontal slats of the blinds that covered the window.
Outside, parked in the street, were two black and white speeders. She couldn't see inside of the speeders' dark tinted windows, but she imagined there were four lawmen in each police duty speeder.
Despite how well of a job the warriors had done to clean up the signs of battle on the road surface, there were still quite a number of blaster scorch marks on the metallic facades of the vacant buildings across the street. The soot of the large fires, which destroyed their speeder buses, stained the upper levels of those buildings, and the smell of burning speeders still lingered in the air. Wrehn realized that the lawmen had to know that something big had happened at the location.
Wrehn took note that the lighting was much brighter. She looked at her chronometer. It was ten minutes after the ninth hour of the morning.
"How long have they been there?" she whispered to the sentries.
"They'd only been there a minute before you arrived, Great Hunt Champion," the senior in rank sentry whispered back, "I was about to send Benni Tor Sharratt to report to the Clan Chief, but you're here. So…, I consider the situation as reported."
One police speeder began to move, slowly gliding over the metal road and stopped beside the lead speeder. Wrehn looked at the metal fence which the warriors had cut down with their blaster rifles on their laser cutting settings. The fence had been righted and welded back in place, but you could tell it had been cut down and welded again, recently.
The speeder which had pulled up next to the lead silently glided off. A minute passed and the driver side door of the remaining speeder opened. A single lawman got out and walked up to the fence. He grabbed the vertical bars and pulled and pushed at various bars along the length of fence which had been welded back together. Then he walked to the closed gate and tried opening it.
"I guess I gotta go talk to him," she thought, disgusted. Aloud, to the sentry, "Send a report to the clan chief. Let him know that I'm going to go talk to the lawman. Then go to the sentries at the other posts and tell them to keep a lookout for more police."
"Yes, Champion," the sentry replied. Then, "Benni, go tell the clan chief and alert the other posts.
"Very well," the female warrior replied, before duck-walking out of the office.
Wrehn duck-walked after the warrior, to the door and exited the office, standing straight, she walked to the stairs and went down them. Wrehn removed her turtle shell, wide-brimmed helm, her cuirass with builtin rocket-pack, vambraces, and armored gloves.
She left on her armored leggings, with the holster attachments and their overpowered blaster pistols on each thigh, and she left on her armored boots. Wrehn, then, walked out through the blasted out office, and then out the wrecked doorway.
She walked towards the gate, a scowl on her face. Her eyes squinting in the brightness of the simulated daylight lighting.
"What happened to the regular guys?" the officer demanded, "Go get The Fuse. I usually talk to The Fuse."
"The Fuse got burned out," Wrehn said, instantly getting dirty cop vibes from the lawman on the other side of the gate from her.
"Listen," the cop said, becoming quite annoyed with Wrehn's surly attitude, "this is my property. I'm the landlord, here. Rent is due, and The Fuse has to get the blasted stars out here to pay."
Wrehn sighed, shaking her head, greatly relieved for a chance to bribe her way out of a potential mess.
"How much was The Fuse's rent?" Wrehn asked, hoping the dirty cop would bite.
"That's none of your business, Chiss," the cop replied, curt.
"The Fuse went on vacation," Wrehn said, "I'm house sitting for him."
"Her," the cop corrected.
"Her," Wrehn amended, "I guess that makes me responsible to pay the rent this month. Yeah? Tell me how much."
The cop gave Wrehn a real hard look.
"I guess I better inspect my property. Have a look around."
"I'm telling you, I'll pay the rent, and you don't got to have a look around. The place is in tip top shape," she said, becoming worried that he might not bite, "Tell me how much."
"Fifty thousand credits," he said, "Due right now."
Wrehn reached for her utility belt and pulled out her data pad, inserted a credit card into it, punched in the amount, and after removing the credit card from her datapad, handed it over to the dirty cop.
He took it and waved it over his datapad. His eyebrows arched when he saw that it was fifty thousand in Hutt currency, which translated to fifty two thousand six hundred thirty two credits, Republic currency.
"The Hutts are here, huh?" he asked, not happy about the development.
Wrehn tilted her head sideways a bit and gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. The cop handed Wrehn her emptied credit card back to her.
"Come back in seven days. The Fuse will be back from vacation, and I'll be done house sitting," she replied, as she secured her datapad and credit card in her utility belt, "You can inspect the place, then."
"Yeah," the cop said, skeptical, "Sure."
He turned and walked back to his patrol unit and drove down the street. Wrehn followed the speeder with her eyes and saw the other black and white unit, parked half a block down the street. Its occupant had been aiming a blaster rifle, with a scope attached to it, at her. He put the rifle away when his partner in crime came to a stop next to his speeder.
Wrehn watched as the two speeders remained side by side for a few minutes. Presumably, the occupants were exchanging words and splitting their dirty money. The black and white units finally departed the scene.
The speeder with the sniper glided slowly past the gate, as though the driver was getting a good look at Wrehn as it crept past her. Unfortunately, the permaglass of the police unit was tinted, and she could not see in to get a look at its occupant.
Wrehn turned back, making her way to the warehouse.
"So, there were only two of them," she thought to herself, "They took my bribe, but…," but she was not happy, "I got a bad feeling about them."
Wrehn's instincts told her those two might be trouble for her, later.
Having put on the other parts of her armor, she stomped her way back to where Ymmiir had set up his sleeping bag and the medi-aid station, at the far end of the warehouse. She found him in conference with his subordinate commanders. She stopped a few paces away and waited to be recognized.
"Great Hunt Champion," Ymmiir called to her, "Please, join us. We're almost through with our business."
Wrehn stepped forward and sat on the metallic floor with the others and listened in to the end of their meeting.
"Finally, of the wounded, all but three should be able to return to duty in two days," Ymmiir reported, "So, you'll get most of your men back in time for the main objective. The only issue is, were any of them members of the special units assigned to the secondary objectives?"
"Uylan Tradet Sharratt is, Clan Chief," one of Ymmiir's lieutenants replied, "She's hurt badly, and will miss out the rest of the operation, as well. I've already assigned her replacement, one of the supernumeraries."
"Good," Ymmiir replied, nodding his satisfaction, "Have you any questions, Great Hunt Champion? How did your… conference go? Will there be trouble?"
"I'd like to get the leaders' recon started soon. I want to be done well before six days are up," Wrehn answered, getting to the point, "We may not have a week. I just confronted two local law enforcement officials. One asked for a bribe. I paid it. They left, but I think they'll come back soon."
"Shall we strike the primary objective immediately after the secondary objectives?" one of Ymmiir's lieutenants asked.
"I don't like that idea," Ymmiir answered.
"Neither do I," Wrehn agreed, "That means too much moving around between objectives on the same day. It risks making mistakes."
"Instead of moving between objectives on the same day," Ymmiir proposed, as a compromise, "What about on the very next morning? We'll forego the pause between objectives."
"Then, to give them as little time to respond," the lieutenant suggested, "Let us attack our secondaries at night, in their homes."
"We have to conduct a leaders' recon, first," Wrehn insisted, "We have to know what the terrain is like, local security, obstacles."
"Then we should also have a look at the primary objective, as well," Ymmiir recommended, "If we're going to attack our objectives back to back, then we must have a good look at the terrain at the main objective."
Wrehn nodded her concurrence to Ymmiir's recommendation.
"After we're done at the primary objective, we won't come back here," Wrehn informed her hired guns, explaining, "We'll head straight back to the Nova Star. So, after we return from our secondary objectives, we'll pack all of our gear aboard the dropships.
"So, the plan will be that we'll move out in four groups for our leader's recon. I want to move out in an hour," Wrehn declared, to the officers' nods of acknowledgment, "Then, tonight, we'll go after our secondary targets. When we get back from that, we'll pack everything up. Then we'll rest the warriors. Finally, tomorrow morning, we'll go for the main objective and, after that, go straight back to the Nova Star."
The officers all gave their acknowledgments with grunts and shouts of approval while thumping their armored chests. With that, Wrehn got up off the floor and proceeded to where her team were just waking from their slumber.
Wrehn walked in front of the dropships, parked closely together, in a row. Hers was at the far end. As she approached, she saw Vindis seated on top of the ship with her legs dangling over the side, and Calaverous stuffing his rolled up sleeping bag into its storage bag. Only, he was using The Force, and not his hands, so the rolled up sleeping bag and its storage bag both floated in the air, seeming to act on their own.
Under the ship, Torian and Gault were conversing while Skadge and Mako packed up their own sleeping bags.
Wrehn signaled to Vindis to come to her, while she also called out to both Torian and Gault.
The two Sith lords leapt down from the top of the dropship, and joined Gault and Torian, assembling before Wrehn.
"Everything is changing," she told them, "The cops were sniffing around, two of 'em. I talked to one of them and ended up bribing him. They left, but I don't know how much time that bought us."
"You think they've noticed two hundred thugs gone missing?" Gault quipped, causing Torian to give a short chuckle.
"They wanted to talk to one of 'em and collect their rent" Wrehn said, using air quotes, "for using this warehouse as their hangout."
"How will this affect our mission?" Vindis asked, wanting the inane chatter to end.
"The time tables for everything will be moved up by a lot," Wrehn answered, succinctly, and then proceeded to get into the details, "Vindis, you'll go with the team leader for your secondary objective, and scope it out, get an idea of the layout of the location, what kind of security, what will be in your way, that sort of thing.
"Calaverous, you'll take Torian and Gault with you. You'll scope out our secondary target. Same thing as Vindis, get us a good idea of what we could expect when we strike.
"We're striking all of our secondaries, late, tonight," Wrehn went on, "Early tomorrow, we're going on to the primary objective, and we're not gonna come back here. Directly after we strike, we're going back to the Nova Star. So, be sure you don't leave nothing behind. When we come back from tonight's raid on our secondary targets, we'll pack everything up and then get some rest for tomorrow morning's main operation. Any questions?"
No one had any to ask.
"Get some chow, and relieve your bowels. We'll be moving out in less than an hour," Wrehn said, causing Vindis to wrinkle her nose at Wrehn's distasteful wording.
The Chiss designed probe droid, manufactured by Tethrir-Ymani Automated Systems based on Jamiron, a manufacturing world within Chiss Ascendancy Space, was quite an innovative piece of droid design. It was compact, at just over ninety one centimeters in diameter, and only thirty eight centimeters high. It was light weight at just over one hundred ninety eight kilograms.
It used very quiet levitation propulsion technologies, with an encrypted and suppressed signal detection capability for communications at a range of sixteen kilometers in unstealthed mode, or a an encrypted and suppressed signal detection capability for communications at a range of three kilometers in stealthed mode.
What this meant was that whether in unstealthed or in stealthed modes of operation its signals and communications could not be detected by the enemy. However, because of the limitations of this technology, the operators could only communicate without losing contact at those maximum ranges in unstealthed and in stealthed modes. Beyond those ranges contact with the probes would be lost.
The stealth feature was power intensive, but was extremely effective at evading biological visual and auditory detection as close as ten meters! It could also evade and spoof electronic sensor detection as close as an astounding fifteen meters for the newest detector sensor technologies. Older detector sensor technologies could be evaded and spoofed as near as six meters!
It featured a wide range of operating options with the ability to be remotely operated using a control joystick and command panel, or remotely operated with voice commands, or it could be set up to operate autonomously using preprogrammed search pattern algorithms using an existing library of parameters. Custom defined parameters could also be written using the suite of builtin proprietary programming applications.
It came with a patented, long life battery developed by Iuhnameh Battery Innovations, also based on Jamiron, that gave the probe droid a mission operating life of six hours without stealth enabled, or two hours with stealth enabled.
Wrehn fell in love with it and wanted one for herself, until she heard what the unit price was for one, just under eighty million credits.
"You're too damned cheap, Boss!" Mako complained loudly at her employer, while they ate a breakfast of reconstituted field rations, in the warehouse, "Do you have any idea what I would be able to do if I had one of these to poke around with?! Uhgg!"
The Chiss copilot, Gunter, controlled the stealthed probe droid, directing it where Calaverous, Torian, or Gault asked. Nancy, the load master of the dropship, operated the scanners and sensors at Gunter's direction, based on what was asked of him by his passengers. Edrik, the ship's pilot and ship commander, had landed the stealth-concealed dropship on the half empty top level of a six story parking structure two city blocks from the Jedi's residential sub-building.
The tallest sub-building on this mega floor was twenty stories high, but the Jedi's residential tower was sixteen stories high, and Master Jun Seros lived on the fifteenth floor. He oversaw the martial arts training of Jedi who were on their way to knighthood at the Jedi temple on Coruscant. Master Jun Seros was asked, occasionally to work with the Galactic Republic government on various problems, but the Galactic Republic's SIS (Strategic Intelligence Service) had called on his service more than a few times.
His apartment faced away from the main boulevard. His view was of the back of another sub-building across the alleyway from his. The building behind his blocked any scenic views. Additionally, the neighbors across the alley would have been able to see into his apartment, and he into theirs', except that the special polarized permaglass of their windows were designed to black out each others' windows.
His neighbors' windows appeared to be a black rectangle which he could not peer through, yet without blocking the view of the outside. Sadly, all he could see outside was the building across the alley. Needless to say, his neighbors across the alley couldn't see into his apartment either.
The droid was carefully, piloted to the side of the window, and a small hatch opened from the top allowing a remotely controlled folded mechanical probe arm to stick out from the opening. It unfolded and extended sideways, holding a tiny multi light bandwidth camera to peek inside of the apartment.
There was no sign of the Jedi inside, but one could tell that a Jedi lived there. The large living room was bare. It didn't even have any art hanging from the walls. The only thing that furnished the room was a padded foam mat, four meters to a side. Presumably the Jedi sat and meditated on the mat, and likely practiced marshal arts falls, rolls, and other training regimens and exercises on its foam rubber surface.
The Jedi finally came into view as Master Jun Seros entered from an adjoining room. He was barefoot, and naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. He appeared freshly bathed. For an instant he hesitated, nearly freezing in place. His eyes quickly darted to and then from the window. To everyone watching the monitor, nothing untoward had happened, but Calaverous was a skilled Force user, he caught the Jedi's reaction which only lasted a thousandth of a second.
"He knows he's being watched. Get the probe back here, now. Quickly. We must depart before he comes looking for us."
The copilot did not hesitate, piloting the probe droid away from the window, and activating an override routine that quickly recalled the probe arm. It quickly and smoothly folded into its stowage configuration and slipped down the opening. The small hatch slid into position and sunk flush with the droids hull.
The droid was now on emergency autonomous recall mode. The copilot simply made sure the tiny docking bay at the bottom of the dropship was opened for the droid to enter and to plug itself in, both to upload the data it had collected, and to recharge its batteries.
The stealthed dropship rose into the air and retracted its, invisible to the unaided eye, landing struts and began to quickly climb away and accelerate, unheard by the civilians walking to their parked speeders. None on the park lot entering or exiting their parked speeders were aware of the slowly circling stealth dropship overhead.
Although one civilian shouted, out of great shock, having become greatly startled when a naked man suddenly appeared, grasping a short metallic baton. The Jedi had jumped up onto the topmost parking level of the parking structure from the street below.
Master Jun Seros looked the park lot over carefully, ignoring the indignant shouts at him to go put on some clothes. He turned about slowly, listening intently for the telltales of a shuttle over the sounds of thousands of speeders rushing about in the traffic patterns high over the parking structure.
He scrutinized the tops of buildings and the spaces between them. He carefully inspected the mega floor's ceiling, high over the sub-buildings, with its bright lights illuminating the buildings, the rushing speeder traffic, the wide boulevards with parked speeders lining both sides, and the crowded walkways of the mega floor below. Yet, he could find nothing.
Calaverous, to Gunter's annoyance, sat in the copilot's seat. The Sith lord looked out the side canopy onto the park lot, watching the Jedi Master search the air around him.
"Get us out of here, before he finds us," Calaverous ordered the pilot. To himself, he thought, "I've got a very strong opponent."
Meanwhile, Edrik was amazed that the Naked man was on the top level of the park lot. He imagined that the Jedi had to, first, go down fifteen stories to the street. Then run two city blocks to the parking structure. Then run up the stairs to the sixth level park lot, all in the time it took the probe droid to return to the dropship, and for the dropship to lift off.
"All under two minutes!" he thought to himself, amazed.
In reality, Master Jun Seros had run out of his apartment then ran up the emergency stairs to the rooftop. From there he went over the side of the rooftop, jumping back and forth between his building and the building across the alley as he descended to the alley below. Then he ran the two blocks to the park structure and ran up the side of the park structure to the top. He'd lost his towel on the way down from his apartment building.
Calaverous got out of the copilot's seat and returned to the troop section, resuming his seat. After strapping in, he began to meditate. Torian and Gault quickly understood that Calaverous considered the Jedi a tough opponent by the way the Sith lord carried himself at that moment.
"This Jedi isn't going to be easy, huh?" Torian asked the Sith lord, whose eyes were closed in contemplation.
"Nonsense," Calaverous quipped, cheerily, "This will be a leisurely walk in the park."
It was not lost on both Gault and Torian that the Sith lord's cheery quip was not matched by a smile, but paired with a scowl.
Vindis was the first to deliver her report. In the end she was disgusted by her target assignment.
"It will be entirely too easy," she groused, "he'll be no challenge at all."
"Are you sure you aren't underestimating your enemy?" Calaverous asked, seriously concerned by her attitude.
"I stood across the road from his building and waited there for five minutes," she said, utterly disgusted at her opponent's seeming weakness, "I could see him in his apartment. He was cleaning, and never once looked out the window at me.
"Then I walked back to the shopping center park lot across the boulevard, and leaned against a park lot lamp post, and waited an hour, where he could see me. Nothing! He didn't come out, no reaction from law enforcement, or any other response. He had no idea I was right there! I walked back to the small green park and got onto the dropship to return. Nothing! No reaction. He's weak!"
"He should have sensed something," Calaverous thought to himself. Aloud, to Vindis, "He might have been trying to lure you into attacking."
"I thought of that possibility," Vindis confessed, "That's why I waited an hour for him at the shopping center park lot."
Wrehn gave her report.
"The layout of the chancellor's estate is just how we had it during training," Wrehn said, reporting her observations about the main objective, "but it's bigger. Everything is more spread out. The neighboring estates are larger and more spread apart. When our dropships land at the target scene, they'll need to spread out some, but not too much."
Lieutenant Trentan Ysrett Sharratt, who was third to last to present his findings, completed his leader's recon report.
"This concludes my report," he said in Mando'a, being unable to speak Basic, turning to look at Wrehn, "Great Hunt Champion, have you any questions for me?"
"Will you have any trouble breaching the security gate to get to her apartment?" Wrehn asked, also in Mando'a. She was concerned that Thelonia Redrish, a retired general in the Republic's Commando forces might escape, "There's no getting around the fact that you're going to make a lot of noise busting that gate down. She's going to hear all the commotion and make a break for it."
"I will set warriors to cover all of the escape routes around the building," the Mandalorian officer replied, "As for the gate, I will use a high intensity thermite charge to melt the lock. No noise."
"Yeah, no noise," Wrehn countered, "but it will cost time, and there's bound to be sensors that will trip any alarms that will alert the residents, including Redrish, plus those building security guards will slow you down if they're alerted."
"Use a blaster rifle on its laser cutter setting," Ymmiir said in Mando'a, a bit annoyed at the officer for not thinking of these things himself, "It is noisy, and the alarms will sound, but you will be inside faster, and you will defeat the building security quickly. Your target will have no time for escape."
Wrehn nodded her concurrence with Ymmiir Sharratt.
"I will consider your recommendations, Clan Chief," Lieutenant Trentan Ysrett Sharratt replied, a bit embarrassed that his attempt to impress the Grand Champion of The Great Hunt, blew up in his face.
"Finally is Calaverous," Ymmiir intoned, this time in Basic, "What did you learn?"
"He is strong," Calaverous said, looking Vindis in the eye. Turning to face Wrehn, he added, "I wonder if Lord Vindis and I should attack Master Jun Seros together, and leave that weakling alone?"
"What do you think?" Wrehn asked Vindis, which rankled Calaverous for being doubted by this unwashed Chiss alien trash.
"If Lord Calaverous says that he and I should team up against him," Vindis said, looking at Wrehn, "then that is what we should do."
"Alright," Wrehn said, without hesitation, "Vindis, you'll take your team of Mandalorians and Calaverous. You two, and your team will go after Jun Seros. My team will go after Adelino Marr."
"It would be preferable to leave Adelino Marr alone as a lost target," Calaverous said, "We shouldn't risk losing you for this operation. To be frankly honest, if we lose you, nobody will get paid."
Ymmiir laughed on hearing that.
"You are most correct," the grizzled warrior said, "Yet, I am sure Great Hunt Champion knows her limits. Yehw'reh'nomai knows what jobs she can do and cannot do."
"We'll handle it," Wrehn said, to the point.
"Just like Dromund Kaas, eh Wrehn?" Gault asked deadpan.
Wrehn was reminded by the near instant slaughter in the warehouse perpetrated by the two Sith attending the meeting.
"We'll handle it," she repeated, more confidently than she felt.