It was the twenty third hour of the night. Some of Clan Sharratt's warriors slept, others were on watch, and some couldn't sleep. These sleepless warriors spent the time watching as three special operations teams loaded up into their three dropships for their secondary objectives.
The ultra quiet ships could only be heard as a gentle breeze blowing through the warehouse. The warehouse became filled with the sound of a buzzing hum and the rattle of chains as the huge roll up door opened. The three dropships, in their commercial heavy duty lory paint jobs, glided out into the dimmed lighting, which simulated night time at the virtually abandoned light industrial district.
Wrehn had given the go ahead to move out, despite the solitary black and white speeder parked a block away, but with a clear line of sight to the main gate. The police unit was easily spotted by a stealth probe droid which had been deployed to scout the area outside of the warehouse.
The message was clear. We're watching you.
"At least they don't got a huge raid force out there ready to give us any trouble," she had groused to Edrik the dropship commander and her estranged cousin.
The dropships glided out of the opened park lot gate and into the street, making a right turn, one behind the other, two meters over the durasteel road. The gate rolled closed after the last dropship, disguised as a heavy duty lory pulled into the street. The three ships glided past the parked police unit and entered the expressway traffic pattern. The police unit glided away from its parking spot on the side of the road and glided towards the warehouse.
"So, it looks like he's not gonna try to follow us, Wrehn said to her team.
The traffic transponders on each dropship measured their speeds and direction of travel on each traffic lane. The three heavy duty lories traveled a short distance in the expressway lanes and got off at the next exit. Returning to the local traffic lanes.
Turning into a dark lonely alleyway, the dropships each deactivated their traffic transponders and activated their stealth fields. At the other end of the alleyway, the stealth-concealed dropships flew outside of the traffic lanes. Making their way up through the mega building until they had exited the roof into open air.
From there, the three ships went their separate ways to their assigned secondary objectives.
A sleepless woman sat at her window looking across the metallic road at the empty park lot of the grocery store, which was closed for the day. She was suffering from insomnia and was feeling miserable. The woman had to blink her eyes and shake her head, unable to believe what she was seeing. People in metallic armor seemed to be appearing from thin air. They ran, clanking their way towards her building.
"I have to be dreaming!" she exclaimed to herself, laughing out loud.
Her grin left her, as she watched a shower of sparks stream from the gate, as the realization hit her that the armored people were cutting the lock. Suddenly, the intruders were rushing into the courtyard, clattering their way to her building. As the armored intruders neared her building entrance, she noticed that they were carrying weapons, causing her heart rate to increase dramatically.
From her perspective, the heavily armed and armored intruders disappeared below her second story window, where the building entrance was. Then all nine hells broke loose as, for only a brief moment, the thunderous racket of blaster rifles exploded in her building's lobby. She could hear the weapons through the floor of her apartment! Her fear became terror, making her heart beat so hard that she though it would tear lose and crash out of her chest.
"I'm not dreaming!" she shouted in absolute terror.
The woman ran to her sofa and moved it away from the wall. She crawled behind it and sat on the floor, hoping that if they attacked her apartment, they wouldn't see her.
Shortly after, she heard the metallic stomping of many armored boots in the hallway outside her apartment, causing her to fear the worst would happen. She became greatly startled by a powerful blast that rattled her sliding apartment door and shook the floor of her apartment. This was immediately followed by an even more powerful blast that shook the two dimensional print framed art off of her walls and onto the floor. Her apartment sliding door slammed in its tracks, and the floor of her apartment shook so hard that it fairly kicked her buttocks.
Immediately following the blasts, a violently loud, but short staccato burst of blaster rifle fire ripped loose, then silence. She stared at the back of her couch, weeping as quietly as she could, covering her mouth with both hands, but the terror rampaging through her entire being would not allow her weep silently. Her sobs refused to keep silent.
The metallic clatter of the marauding raiders became a cacophonous clashing of metallic stomping as they stampeded down her hallway. Soon, she heard them outside of her building, in the courtyard.
She scurried from behind her sofa and ran to the window, where her chair had been knocked over. Looking out of the window again, she watched the armored raiders rush back to the park lot across the road and vanish out of sight, swallowed up by a nothingness.
For some time, except for the building fire alarm, it remained quiet. Finally, she started hearing the excited and panicked voices of her neighbors, as they called to each other, or shouted epithets in the hallway outside of her door.
The insomniac woman turned from the window and quickly made her way to her door. The door track had become slightly warped from the powerful blasts, so the motorized door had some difficulty sliding open a crack. The woman immediately caught the acrid stench of fire, and of something else, she couldn't identify, but one of her neighbors knew what it was.
"They used chemical explosives," an elderly man said, "I remember that smell from my Republic Army days."
"They took her head!" a woman screamed, running down the hall back to her own apartment, "They killed her and took her head!"
The insomniac quickly touched the contact to close her door, but the warped track would not let the door seat properly. She had to assist the motorized sliding door, pushing the door until it clicked into place and locked. The sleepless woman fearfully ran back to her chair at the window.
She righted the chair and sat, looking out the window, scanning the empty park lot of the grocery store across the street, closed for the day. She feared that the ghostly metallic, clanking men would return. Soon the woman began to hear the sirens of first responders, becoming louder as they neared her sub-building.
Mako stuck her hand just past the corner of the building, holding a tiny video recorder. Wrehn held a small holographic projector which showed the alleyway behind the sub-building of her target. Adelino Marr, her target, resided here. He was the Jedi who'd led the SIS raid at the hotel suite where her fellow Great Hunt Champions had been killed in ambush.
"I don't see any sensors in the alley, but there is one security camera at the door we're going to bust through," Mako said.
The cybernetically enhanced woman, seemingly stared off into space. She had a direct link to the hand held video device and also to the projector which Wrehn held. Mako directly manipulated the holographic image via her cybernetic wireless network connection to the projector so that the others could see the security camera mounted over the door.
"We could take it out with an EMP grenade," Torian suggested.
"I think that will mess up a lot of peoples' home appliances, and probably set off alarms," Gault countered, "A lot of people will be tipped off that something is up."
"And tip off the building security guards, too," Wrehn said, backing Gault, then adding, "We have to go in hard and fast, and take out the guards if they respond to engage us."
"If they're smart they'll wait for all of the explosions and the high powered blaster fire to be over before responding," Gault said.
"I hope they're smart," Mako said, "Lucky for us, the Jedi lives on the first floor."
"Can we stop it with all of the yapping, already?" Skadge asked, irritably, "Let's get in there and start blasting, already."
The cybernetically enhanced petite woman disengaged from the two devices and placed both in their niches on her utility belt.
"We'll try the door, first, see if it's locked. Weapons' safeties off," Wrehn commanded, then waited for her team to unsafe their weapons, before giving their cue, "On 'one,' everyone."
"Three. Two. One!"
Torian, followed by Gault, Wrehn, Skadge, and Mako, bringing up the rear, dashed into the alleyway. They ran fifty meters to the back alley door of the building. Upon reaching it, Torian tapped the door contact. Surprisingly, it slid open, and he immediately entered, and immediately shot the guard that was sitting by the door, before she could draw her sidearm.
His aim was rushed and sloppy. The security guard's desktop exploded into metal shrapnel. The guard dropped her blaster pistol, fell to the floor, and rolled back and forth in agony, both hands covering her face. A piece of shrapnel pierced her face near her mouth and shattered an upper canine tooth. Also, the terrible heat of the disbursing blaster bolt energies, scorched the exposed skin of her face, and throat. Her hair had become noticeably singed.
Torian stopped and aimed in on her to finish her off. However, he judged that she was out of the fight, and proceeded to move on, with the rest of the team behind him. Before he'd met Mako, he would have finished her off without another thought, but Mako's influence on him was causing him to soften up a bit.
They rushed even faster, now that the element of surprise was gone. Wrehn's team turned a corner in the hallway and rushed towards the door at the end of the hallway where another hallway crossed it in a T intersection.
A few tenants stuck their heads out of their apartments, and upon spotting Wrehn's team stomping down their hallway, just as quickly stuck their heads back in, locking their doors.
Torian and Gault took up positions, on either side of the door, two meters away from the door. Skadge leveled his blaster cannon and let loose a stream of bolts that blasted the door to partially molten red glowing durasteel shrapnel. As soon as the explosive staccato of his blaster cannon ended, Torian and Gault rushed to the sides of the smoldering wreckage of a doorway and tossed grenades into the apartment.
"GRENADE!" they both shouted.
Everyone in Wrehn's team activated their personal shield generators. Wrehn, Skadge, and Mako also went prone in the hallway, while Torian and Gault stood a little away from the wall they used for cover.
Both grenades went off in terrific blasts that shook the building and shattered windows and buckled the wall that both Torian and Gault stood away from, missing them both. The two both immediately entered, the now smoldering apartment, and began blasting.
The frightened tenants' screams and shouts could be heard through the doors and walls from several apartments all around.
Wrehn ran in behind them, both overpowered blaster pistols drawn, while Mako and Skadge remained outside to provide cover. A security guard, armed with a light duty blaster pistol, ran into the far end of the hallway from around the corner, but as soon as he saw Skadge with his blaster cannon he turned back the way he'd come, ducking around the corner, shouting.
"THEY'VE GOT BLASTER CANNONS! THEY'VE GOT BLASTER CANNONS!"
Skadge happened to be looking down the other hallway and didn't see the security guard, but Mako did. She held her fire when the guard turned around and ran away.
Two more massive grenade blasts shook the building, Torian and Gault shouting their warnings again, followed by another long series of blaster rifle fire.
"Well, I guess they're smart," Mako quipped about the security guard that ran, "That should take care of our security problem."
"Crap! I missed a chance to blast some scrub?!" Skadge shouted his question, disappointed.
"He wasn't worth your time anyway," Mako replied, "He wasn't even wearing armor, and only had a light duty blaster pistol."
"Nobody was home!" Wrehn shouted running out of the apartment with Gault and Torian running out behind her, "Lets get out of here!"
As the team made their way towards the back alley entrance, Torian noticed the guard, he'd shot earlier. She seemed to have weakened greatly. Her hands still covered her face, she slowly kicked one of her booted feet, onto the floor on which she lay on her back.
Torian dropped to his knee and, extracting a high pressure hypodermic injector from his medi-aid kit, proceeded to administer two doses of kolto to his victim. He then ran out into the alley, having to run extra hard to catch up with Mako at the tail end of his team.
Skadge and Mako ran past Torian, after the others, as Wrehn's crew made their escape. The crew ran down the alleyway the way they'd come. Mako turned and started to run back, but she only took two steps when Torian ran out of the building and into the alley. She turned about again, greatly relieved, and immediately ran to the small grassy park, behind the rest of her team ahead of her. The entire area was dimly illuminated by the mega floor's ceiling lights, simulating night time.
As soon as her team boarded the stealth-concealed dropship, and Nancy counted to be sure she had all of her passengers, the load master reported to the pilots in her native language.
"The raid team is back! Raise, seal, and lock the ramp!"
"Torian!" Wrehn blasted, "What in the Nine Hells were you doing?! Have you lost your blasted mind?!"
In the alleyway, Mako was filled with terrible worry about her man. At first she thought that he'd tripped over the wounded security officer. Then she'd thought the worst, thinking he'd been struck by blaster fire from the security guard that she'd spared. The petite, cybernetically enhanced woman cursed herself for sparing that guard.
"Torian," she said, her voice tiny and cracking, "I thought I'd lost you when you fell. What happened back there?"
"That woman fought bravely, knowing she would die. I didn't think she should suffer," he said, shrugging his shoulders. She deserved some respect for going for her weapon and not running away or putting up her hands in surrender. Such courage should not be ignored."
"That's just lame, Torian," Gault said, quite critical of his team mate, "Did you think she'd give you some kind of medallion as a trophy for your kindness?"
"I administered kolto to her!" Torian shouted angrily at the Devaronian, "It was the least I could do after nearly killing her!"
"You getting soft, Torian? Skadge asked.
Torian looked at the Houk, listening to the deep concern in his voice.
"I thought Mandalorians were all about fighting, killing, and wars, and stuff," Skadge said, genuinely worried about his team mate.
Torian shook his head, smiling sadly.
"When Skadge shows worry and concern for a team mate, then you have to know that you've really screwed up," Torian said, suddenly bursting into a short round of laughter.
"I just wanted to stop that woman's suffering. She had chosen to fight a losing battle. She knew she was dead. I could see it in her eyes, yet she drew her weapon to fight. I had to respect that. The gods of war had chosen not to end her life, and I didn't want the gods angry at me for not honoring her courage. There was no cause to let her suffer, needlessly."
As per the plan, the dropship had already lifted into the air and was now hovering about fifteen stories up. Wrehn wanted to watch the aftermath. She wanted to watch the local law enforcement's reaction to such attacks. She'd decided that she didn't have time to go over Torian's screw up.
Police speeders began arriving to the scene, deploying around the front and covering both ends of the alley behind the sub-building. There, they waited for the arrival of the Special Operations Police Unit, SOPU, a heavily armored, and heavily armed response team for dealing with situations involving terrorist attacks, high violence gang activity, or active shooter incidents.
Wrehn looked at the chronometer.
"Fifteen minutes for the regular cops," Wrehn thought, disgusted, "That's just awful! People depending on the cops don't stand a chance…"
She had started the timer from the time Torian opened the back door and blasted the guard. Her team had been in and out in less than five minutes. The police response time, and what they did when they arrived was what she wanted to know.
Two fire suppression units arrived a minute after the initial police response, but they had to wait for SOPU to clear the scene before they could do their jobs. Meanwhile, smoke and flames billowed out of the smashed windows of the Jedi's apartment.
Wrehn wanted to watch the SOPU in operation, to gauge their response times, tactics, and equipment. The stealthy probe droid, maneuvered by the copilot, captured the activity around the building. The Special Operations Police Unit finally arrived on scene, and immediately stormed the front of the building.
"They didn't stop to get a situation report from the units on scene," Torian noted, aloud.
"They must have gotten the report and a visual of the scene on the way in," Gault speculated.
"Twenty minutes for the SOPU to show up," Wrehn thought, shaking her head at the disgraceful response time.
"I've seen enough," Wrehn declared, then ordered, "Recall the droid and let's get out of here. Mako, keep an eye out for news reports about our raids."
"Got it."
The copilot activated the automatic recall feature and waited for the droid to enter its cubby hole in the ship's underside. He then returned to his copilot's seat, while Wrehn and her team buckled up in their seats. After Nancy checked everyone's restraints, she sat in her load master's seat, and buckled up.
"Everyone ist properly secured in zeir seats," she reported in Chiss accented Basic, "Vee are ready to depart."
With that, the dropship glided quietly away from the scene. The fire suppression units had finally been given clearance to approach to fight the fire, as the invisible dropship silently left the scene.
Before that, the fire suppression team members anxiously watched the blaze become worse with each passing moment they had to wait for SOPU to finish doing their job. By the time they were given the all clear, the fire had already spread to the adjacent apartments and to the apartment above.
Wrehn descended the ramp of the dropship and could tell that the other raiders had returned, because their dropships were returned to the warehouse.
"Gault," Wrehn called to him, "Get the team together to load all of our gear into the dropship. The Sith's gear, too. Then get some rest, we're only gonna have a couple hours before we go."
"Yeah, uh…, Right," the Devaronian replied.
When it came to giving orders about leading the team, Wrehn always chose Torian. Sure, there were times when Wrehn chose Gault to do stuff, but it always involved logistical stuff, get us extra supplies, find out who I can bribe easily, plant the seeds of corruption so that a chance to bribe can bear fruit later, go make sure they don't mix our stuff up with the others' crap.
"This isn't right," Gault thought, perplexed, "Torian always sees to this kind of thing. Wrehn sure is pissed at Torian if she's telling me to do his job."
He could see it in Torian's disappointed eyes, that the traditionalist Mandalorian had picked up on this change, too.
"I'm gonna meet up with the clan chief and find out how the other raids went," she said, as she walked away.
"Got it," Gault answered, turning his eyes to regard Torian, who kept his eyes cast down to the deck of the warehouse.
Even from a long ways away in the massive warehouse, Wrehn could see the Sith were already speaking with Ymmiir and with the leader of the other raid team.
"You're alive!" Vindis said, as though surprised, "He must have been exceptionally weaker than I thought."
"He wasn't there," Wrehn said, disgustedly shaking her head.
The looks Vindis, Calaverous, and Ymmiir traded told Wrehn that something was wrong.
"Master Jun Seros wasn't at his home, either," Calaverous said, to Vindis' annoyance, and to Wrehn's great disappointment.
"At least we got one," Ymmiir said, pointing at a portable refrigeration unit.
Wrehn bent down to it and opened the top of it. And there it was, Thelonia Redrish's head.
"At least we got one," Wrehn repeated, clearly dissatisfied, but adding, "We'll leave it here for the authorities to find with the rest of the bodies."
"We will get bonus?" the Mandalorian officer asked, hopeful.
"I never agreed to a bonus," Wrehn immediately replied sharply, "I just wanted the head as proof of mission accomplishment."
The officer, knowing this, shrugged his shoulders with a sheepish grin. His ploy to get a few extra credits failed miserably.
"Was there any trouble while I was away, Clan Chief?" the Chiss hunter asked Ymmiir.
"Great Hunt Champion," he answered in broken Galactic Basic, "After you left, policeman knocked on door."
Vindis and Calaverous were both surprised to hear this, since the clan chief didn't mention it before. They traded looks of concern.
"Blast it!" Wrehn cursed, vehemently. After a moment, wherein she recovered her composure, she asked, "What he'd have to say?"
"He said don't make trouble. I smiled and I said, 'Do not worry.' He got nervous. Perhaps my accent?" Ymmiir said, with a short chuckle, then continued, "He saw my men behind me. He saw Mandalorian armor. He left quickly."
"The Republic haven't sent any troops, yet?" Wrehn asked, rhetorically, and then speculated, "Maybe he hasn't reported us, yet."
"He is scared," Ymmiir declared, "He took bribe from Mandalorians. He is crapping in pants. He is scared that he helped us. He ran, wants to stay far from mess."
A Mando warrior came running from the far end of the warehouse. He stopped, saluted in the Mandalorian fashion, and reported in Mando'a.
"A large force of police are arriving! Many, many black and white speeders!"
Thus proving Ymmiir's theory of a frightened policeman, incorrect.
"Wake everyone up! To arms! Prepare for combat!" Ymmiir ordered his officers in Mando'a.
The officers ran, scattering to their platoons, shouting their orders. The ruckus caused the slumbering warriors to be startled awake. They quickly rose from their beds, made on the durasteel warehouse floor.
A very loud knock, banging would be more accurate, came from the closed, very large roll-up door at the far end of the warehouse. The very loud, echoing banging caused the warriors to move faster as they donned their armor and readied their weapons. This was not the same roll-up door the dropships used to enter and exit the warehouse. This roll-up door was next to the office Wrehn and her crew had forcibly entered very early that day.
Meanwhile, Wrehn began to quickly make her way to the far end of the warehouse.
"Shall we accompany you?" Vindis asked, eager to get into a good fight.
"Nah," Wrehn answered, "It's bad enough that they saw Mandalorians here. Seeing Sith here, too, might be too much for them."
On her way to the far end, from which another loud knock emanated, Wrehn stopped at her dropship, and waited for her crew to finish getting ready. Her crew had quickly begun armoring up when Torian asked the sentry, running on his way to report to the clan chief, what was the trouble, and getting a quick answer.
Wrehn and her crew rushed to the office where they'd made their explosive entry. She removed the barricade that had been set up to replace the door Skadge had blasted into molten shrapnel and stepped outside with her crew.
"Good evening officer," Wrehn said to the corrupt cop, who stood in front of the roll-up door, watching as Wrehn and her crew exited the building, "I sure am glad you decided to knock. It could have turned out bad if you hadn't."
She swept her eyes across the thirty black and white police units, four officers stood at each police unit, blaster rifles aimed at she and her crew.
Wrehn kept looking until she spotted them. Five Special Operations Police Units, heavily armored, and heavily armed were standing by. This was the Special Operations Police Unit for this sector.
"What's Mandalorians doing here on Coruscant?" the officer demanded.
"We're doing work," Wrehn replied, returning her attention to the precinct captain, then asking, "What are you back so soon, for?"
"We can't let you stay here anymore," he told her, "You have to leave."
"Wait," Wrehn said, as though shocked, "Is the rent due again, so soon? How much do we owe you?"
The officer smiled at her theatrics, as though she'd told a joke.
"What kind of work are you doing?" he asked.
"Mercenary stuff. A couple of hit jobs. Nothing too out of the ordinary," Wrehn said, partly lying.
"Who are you hitting?" the officer asked.
"Read about it in the news. It'll be in the headlines."
She could see that he didn't like that answer.
"Mandalorians like fighting," she told him, "You wanna fight," she asked as though hopeful, "or do you want the rent?" she asked as though that would be disappointing to her.
"Ten million," he said, knowing full well she would balk and attempt to negotiate.
To his shock and surprise, Wrehn got her datapad and credit card out. She typed in the amount demanded, and offered the credit card to the officer. This told the officer, that she had someone with very deep pockets, funding this team of mercenaries.
He hesitated, knowing that if he took the card, the officers present would know that a transaction had been successfully completed and an understanding had been reached, but if he turned his back there was going to be a small war.
"My warriors are armed for combat against Republic troops," she told him, "You cops aren't Republic troops. Are you gonna take the rent, or what?"
Ymmiir in full heavy armor, including his decidedly Mandalorian visored helmet, stepped out with five heavily armored warriors.
"Good evening, Officer. Is there problem?" he asked, in his thick Mandalorian accent.
The dirty cop's face betrayed his sudden apprehension of what a fight with Mandalorian warriors would look like. Without another word, he quickly reached for and took the credit card, waved it over his datapad and returned the emptied card to Wrehn.
"We got one last job," Wrehn told him, "We'll do it, and leave the planet right after. We're not coming back here, no more. Come by later today and inspect your property if you want."
"Yeah, sure," he answered before turning to return to his vehicle.
He retrieved an audio only communicator and spoke a few words into it. The over two hundred police officers all reentered their police speeders and special operations armored vans. A parade of dirty cops glided down the street in front of the warehouse on their way back to their precinct station.
The decision had been made to stay on schedule and to let the warriors rest, though most couldn't sleep, because of the excitement with the police, earlier. A search outside, with a stealthed probe droid, revealed a single black and white unit parked two blocks down the street. It was parked where the cops could get a good view of the warehouse.
The huge roll-up door was opened at the long side of the warehouse and the six loaded dropships glided out onto the park lot, spreading out to give themselves a little space.
"What are they doing with six big lory vans?" Jond Rove, the precinct captain asked himself, aloud.
He typed in the name of the freighter company painted on the side of one of the lories, expecting that they were all stolen. Unexpectedly, no stolen speeder reports were filed under that shipping company's name. Next, he did a search for that shipping company.
The search results came back on the display of his onboard police unit computer.
"No such company exists," he read aloud to himself.
He looked up in time to watch as the lorries began to lift up higher, and their landing gear retract.
To his astonishment the lories began vanishing, one after the other.
"They're not lories! They're troop transporters! Troop landers!" he realized in greater astonishment, "That means they have a warship somewhere in the star system!"
Precinct Captain Jond Rove waited a few minutes before speaking into his audio only police communicator.
"Alright, boys and girls, let's have a look around the warehouse," he called out on his audio only communicator.
Jond Rove, started up his speeder and drove to the park lot gate. Meanwhile, five police units pulled out from a warehouse four blocks down the street from the opposite side of the warehouse.
Twenty corrupt lawmen, police lieutenants and sergeants all, approached their corrupt precinct captain.
"Open the gate," the Jond Rove ordered.
Two sergeants got to work, using a device that overcame the security lock, and activated the automatic gate. The lawmen then proceeded to walk onto the vacant park lot, making their way to the warehouse.
"For once in their lives the Kranst Street Nexu Cats are going to be glad to see the police," one of the lieutenants joked. He laughed, as he added in falsetto, "Oh! We're saved! The cops have come to our rescue!"
He was rewarded with laughter from his fellow corrupt officers, although very few of them expected to see the Kranst Street Nexu Cats alive.
"The whole gang is missing," another corrupt cop said, revealing her naivety as she speculated, "I'll bet they surrendered in a flash to the Mandalorians. So, there will probably be a couple hundred bound and gagged inside."
The other officers laughed at her prediction. At the office door, they could see the level of destruction and utter devastation in the ruined office.
"Oh, yeah, those Mandos went in hard!" a sergeant, noted.
In the warehouse proper, they looked about and saw nothing but empty space.
"A few of you go up those stairs and have a look at the upper level offices," Jond Rove ordered.
A lieutenant and three sergeants responded to the order by walking towards the stairs next to the office. Meanwhile, Jond Rove examined the walls, the floor, and the ceiling of the massive warehouse. Here and there, he saw blaster scorch marks on the walls and the high ceiling of the structure.
He walked quite a ways in until he noticed some of the damage to the floor was not characteristic of blaster fire. The durasteel warehouse floor had curved marks on it that looked like the metal had partially melted.
"The floor is so damned clean," he thought, finally noticing. Aloud, he said to his men and women, "Not a spec of dust on the floors, but the walls and cross beams are all caked in dust."
"Maybe they cleaned up in here," a lieutenant suggested, "Not a good sign."
At the far end, the officers neared the three massive refrigeration units, and the burnt wreckage of several speeder busses neatly piled beside the refrigeration units. He'd assumed the giant coolers were not operational, because of the quiet in the warehouse, but then one of them started up, giving him chills.
"Someone go open one of those coolers," he ordered, fearing the worst.
One of his sergeants, a woman, walked to one of the large freezers and fairly screamed, jumping back at what she saw.
"I found the Nexu Cats, Captain!" she shouted, making her way to the other freezers to open the doors.
Jond Rove walked to the first freezer and looked inside. The bodies were neatly stacked chest high. He noticed that many of the frozen bodies were missing heads, and had severed limbs. A closer inspection of one of the bodies revealed that where the limb had been severed, was a clean, partly cauterized cut. The strange damage on the metallic floor came back to him.
"Lightsabers," he said, aloud, to no one. In horror, he thought, "Jed… Sith!"
"Blasted balls of cannon thunder!" he cursed under his breath, "What are Mandalorians and Sith doing here?!"
"Everybody, gather close!" he shouted his order.
"We didn't find nothing upstairs, Captain," one of the four approaching the precinct captain, a lieutenant, reported.
"The Nexu Cats are all dead. They're stacked in these freezers, figuring out who to blame for these killings isn't going to be the hard part. The hard part will be explaining why some of these dead have lightsaber burns and cuts on them."
"You think the Jedi were here, Captain?" one of his sergeants asked, doubtful.
"Why would the Jedi work with Mandalorians, Sergeant Markoly?" Jond Rove asked his subordinate.
After a brief moment of silence, another of his subordinate officers, another lieutenant, asked, "Why do you think the Sith are on Coruscant, Captain?"
"I don't know, but I've got a real bad feeling something big is going to happen," the precinct captain replied, "We've got to make this look like a rival gang did it, or some big league organized crime family did it. Not the Mandalorians. The Mandalorians were never here. You got it?"
The lieutenants and sergeants replied in the affirmative. A buzzing sound caught their attention. One of the sergeants walked towards the sound and found a small portable refrigeration unit. He bent down, crouching in front of the portable unit and opened it.
"I found a severed head, Captain," the sergeant reported.
Jond Rove walked over to it and looked inside at the head of an auburn haired woman in her mid sixties.
"Anyone recognize who this woman was?" the precinct captain asked.
Everyone present looked inside, but none recognized the woman. The portable refrigeration unit was closed shut, but not before one of the lieutenants recorded an image of the face, to run a facial recognition program to identify the victim.
Precinct Captain Jond Rove shouted new orders to his corrupt subordinates.
"Spread the word to the rank and file, everybody in our precinct, not to talk about Mandalorians. What we've got here is a majorly powerful crime syndicate that did this to the Nexu Cats to teach the other gangs a lesson," he told them.
"This is gonna get the attention of the chief of police, Captain," one of his other men replied, "He's gonna want to send investigators from the head office to look into it."
"This is why it is so very important that no one talks about Mandalorians," he told his subordinates, "The guys from headquarters are going to find the bodies with the lightsaber wounds. They're going to ask questions about that.
"Don't forget, the Mandalorians are here to do certain jobs, and since the Sith are with 'em, we can only assume it's going to be something big. We don't want this crime scene connected to them. That will bring the Galactic Republic Special Investigations Bureau down here, and likely the SIS, too. They'll find out everything, including our side business, and we don't want that."
"How do we explain why we're here looking around, Captain?" another of his lieutenants asked.
"We're investigating a growing missing persons anomaly. A lot of families are reporting missing relatives who all happen to be known members of the Nexu Cats. We were looking around one of their known hangouts, and found… this," he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder, "Someone take investigative still images of the freezer contents and then close those freezer doors. We've got to preserve the crime scene, and start looking for someone to blame for all of this."
Coruscant Prime was still low on the horizon in the early morning, giving the landscape it's golden morning light. The six invisible dropships waited, parked in the huge yards of six estates not immediately near the chancellor's mansion. A probe droid monitored the chancellor's driveway. On the driveway, immediately in front of the mansion, was a train of six speeders. Wrehn and her hired mercenaries waited for the supreme chancellor to exit his official residence and to enter his armored speeder.
The front double doors slid apart and several men and women exited. They made their way to the other speeders, and one stood by the chancellor's speeder.
"All teams go! GO! GO! GO!" Wrehn shouted into the audio only encrypted communicator, breaking radio silence for the first time since entering into a distant orbit around Coruscant.
All six dropships lurched into the air and flew towards the target scene. Wrehn continued to monitor the holographic video of the chancellor's estate. Her target finally exited the mansion and entered his speeder. The security detail also entered their speeders and soon the train of speeders began to move.
Wrehn's dropship landed hard, and the ramp dropped.
"GO! GO! GO!" she shouted to her team.
This made Nancy feel a bit cheated. Telling the passengers to GO was her job, and now her little part in the operation was taken from her.
Wrehn had changed her mind about leaving her team members aboard the dropships to keep the Chiss from leaving them behind. Since Kepler told her that the patriarch of House Omai was watching her, and because her cousins were piloting her dropship to keep a close eye on her, she realized that the Chiss would not shame themselves by fleeing the battle and abandon her.
The train of speeders attempted to accelerate away as soon as they saw the Mandalorians seemingly materialize from thin air. However, the chancellor's speeder suddenly plowed into the driveway and skidded into the grassy lawn. Blaster cannons started blasting the other speeders as they attempted to return to the ground to protect the chancellor's speeder.
Just as had been drilled during their training, the two combat training droids provided ray shielding for the heavy duty work droid. Meanwhile, the team of Mandalorian warriors and the Sith rushed ahead of the droids, making their way to the Chancellor's disabled armored speeder.
The security near the chancellor's armored speeder was quickly annihilated, while the other security from the other speeders were suppressed, and in the process of getting decimated.
Vindis, Calaverous, and the squad of Mandalorians on her team protected the droids as the heavy duty droid went to work tearing the heavily armored passenger door open. That's when the two Sith lords felt their presence. Two Jedi emerged from the mansion and charged the team attempting to get at the chancellor.
The two Sith immediately counter charged, meeting the two Jedi in lightsaber combat several meters away from the grounded speeder.
"All Nine Hells!" Wrehn cursed, recognizing the two Jedi attacking her operation. "Blasted Jedi knew we were coming!"
The Jedi were the ones from her kill list, who weren't in their homes when the special teams attacked.
"Come on, team," she urged her crew, "We're gonna lend the Sith a hand!"
Wrehn, with her team following, ran around the long way to get behind the Jedi. Meanwhile, Vindis could see that Calaverous' assessment of Master Jun Seros was not an exaggeration. She tried hard to quickly dispatch her opponent, Adelino Marr.
Adelino Marr wasn't as weak as she portrayed him, but he wasn't as good as she was, either. The trouble was that Jun Seros was a duel wielding combatant, and despite his opponent, Calaverous, doing a credible job of dealing with his duel wielding enemy, Jun snuck in an attack on Vindis every now and then. These attacks from Jun forced her to cancel her killing move each time she was just about to strike down her opponent, in order to defend herself.
"Take the ones behind us," Jun ordered, in Tythos, the ancient dead language of the ancient inhabitants of Tython, "Come back when you're done with them."
Vindis and Calaverous were both surprised when Adelino Marr suddenly leapt backwards, away from the fight. Wrehn was aiming in on Jun's back when Adelino Marr surprised her with his sudden leap backwards. He was about to land in front of Skadge.
Skadge shifted his aim to the airborne Jedi heading straight for him, and started blasting. The Jedi deflected every bolt, with a few striking Skadge's personal generated force shield. The Jedi landed just a few meters from the Houk brute and used Force Push. Skadge went flying off his feet, tumbling through the air.
Meanwhile, Gault, the team's sniper fired two quick bolts at the Jedi's head, Adelino Marr deflected, one shot and dodged the next.
By this time, all of Wrehn's crew had shifted their aim from Jun to Adelino. They hadn't even fired a single shot at Jun when Adelino began his attack.
They remembered his face from the fake orphanage on Nar Shaddaa, when Wrehn's crew wiped the remaining SIS strike team. He was the Jedi that led the SIS kill team that assassinated the former Great Hunt Champions on Nar Shaddaa. Adelino Marr fled the scene after a short but desperately intense blaster battle, where the Jedi Knight received massive burns, forcing him to withdraw.
Wrehn cranked up the power of her twin overpowered blaster pistols and fired a single bolt from one of her pistols. The Jedi blocked it with his lightsaber, but instead of deflecting, it quickly destabilized, disbursing its rapidly disorganizing searing energies into a quickly expanding field of explosively intense heat wave.
Adelino's personal shield generator absorbed the energy, but quickly depleted its battery to almost empty.
"Sleep!" he commanded, waving his hand towards Skadge.
The Houk brute was in the process of getting back onto his feet, but fell back down, face first, dead asleep. Mako, finally began firing her weapon at the Jedi, Torian also fired his weapon. Wrehn aimed in her second pistol and fired off a single shot. This time, instead of blocking it with his lightsaber, as he'd been doing with Mako, Torian, and now Gault's blaster fire, he dodged Wrehn's shot.
Wrehn aimed her left arm, with her hand bent unnaturally down, and let loose a stream of burning liquid, dowsing the Jedi, who was nearly on top of her, with only seven meters separating them. Adelino Marr, used The Force to put out the flames, and tore off his smoldering drab brown robe, exposing his white enameled durasteel armor. Just as the Jedi leapt towards Wrehn, she activated her rocket pack, builtin to the back of her armored cuirass.
Wrehn rocketed up high, and shot backwards a few meters, to create some lateral distance, and began blasting at the Jedi who'd just landed in front of where she'd stood an instant before. Adelino was caught under a deadly rain of overpowered blaster fire.
He dodged each bolt, but the disbursing energies exploded on the ground around him, depleting the remaining power of his shield generator. Thus, his armor began to heat up from the ultra high temperatures of the blaster bolts disbursing on the ground immediately all around him.
Despite his success in dodging every overpowered bolt, he was still greatly affected. Adelino Marr began to experience painful burns on his exposed skin from the intense energies radiating around him. He also began to feel the intense disbursing energies heating up his armor, which quickly began to threaten the Jedi Knight with the scalding heat his armor had absorbed.
The Jedi decided to retreat and get out of the rain of the high energy blasts, but he was too late. The incredible heat caused him to lose his concentration. Thus, he failed to notice several blaster bolts from Mako, Torian, and Gault. The Jedi took several direct hits and fell, face first.
Wrehn came back down to the ground and began to walk towards the fallen, unmoving Jedi.
Her twin blasters had overheated and automatically shut themselves down. First one, and then the other, Wrehn activated the rapid cooling system of each weapon. She had to depress a knob into the back of each pistol frame before turning it until it clicked. This activated the rapid cooling system of each overpowered, scorching hot pistol.
Highly compressed carbon dioxide gas nearly instantly expanded, becoming super cold, before shooting through the energy bolt generators and through the step-up power actuators of her twin blasters, taking much of the heat from the greatly overheated weapons components and pistol frames.
The rapidly expanding frozen gas nearly instantly absorbed much of the heat, venting from several gas ports on each pistol as scalding hot gas, blasting out with very loud hisses. Wrehn was careful to direct the hot gases away from herself, so as to avoid burning herself.
By the time Wrehn came to a stop, standing over the still Jedi, Wrehn's blasters had exhausted all of their cooling gas. Her blaster pistols had cooled enough to operate in single shot mode while in the overpowered setting. She returned her offhand pistol to its holster, attached to the outer left thigh armor.
Wrehn kicked the Jedi a couple of times, tapping his head and then his shoulder, not too roughly, with the toe of her armored boot. There was no question about it. He was undeniably dead. Four scorched holes in the back and left side of his armored cuirass showed where her team's blaster bolts vaporized his armor and disbursed their energies within. However, Wrehn wanted to be absolutely sure.
She stepped back a few paces, aiming her main hand blaster. She let him have one last bolt. The overpowered blaster bolt tore through his armor, shredding the dead Jedi's cuirass and flinging the pieces of his torn and partially vaporized corpse apart.
Jun used Force Push, causing both Sith lords to be hurled backwards, and immediately attempted to escape. However, both Sith lords landed on their feet, and attacked with Force Lightning, causing him to fall to his face. He used The Force to redirect the Force Lightning away from himself, and began to regain his feet. However, at that moment, he was caught in a storm of blaster fire from Torian and Gault and fell back onto his face. However, his shield generator absorbed most of the energies.
Gault and Torian ran back to help with Skadge after watching their blaster bolts connect with the Jedi Master. Meanwhile, Vindis and Calaverous approached Jun Seros, who'd managed turn himself over onto his back.
"If you hadn't have sent your fellow back," Calaverous said, "you might have got us."
"It… It was… an impossible… situation," Jun replied, gasping in agony from the lightning and residual blaster bolt burns.
"Cut down by a Sith lord's lightsaber, or get felled by blaster bolts to the back," Vindis replied, adding facetiously, "If you have to choose how you're going to die, I can understand why you'd rather die at the hands of a worthy foe, like a Sith lord than by random blaster fire from some weak bounty hunters. You must be mortified for having been brought down by a couple of lowly riff raff aliens."
"I wouldn't be able to stand it," Calaverous agreed, facetiously, "I'd want someone to end me with a lightsaber, at the very least."
Vindis gave a tittering laugh at Calaverous' sarcastic declaration. Then Calaverous spoke as though showing great concern for a needy stranger.
"Master Jedi, shall we leave you here to bleed out, or would you like us to end your misery?"
"There is no death," Jun Seros said, closing his eyes to meditate, "There is only The Force."
Calaverous swept both of his hands, palms up, gesturing towards the dying Jedi.
"Help yourself," he said to Vindis with a smile.
She immediately thrust her ignited weapon, stabbing it through his armor and plunging it into his heart.
"He was strong," Vindis said, to her peer as she deactivated her weapon.
"Strong, but stupid," Calaverous partly agreed, "Splitting himself and that other fellow. They both should have fled, or both should have attacked Yehw'reh'nomai and her crew, before resuming their duel with us."
"Lets go take the Chancellor's head," Vindis declared, grinning with anticipation.
However, she hadn't taken but a few steps when she was forced to come to a stop again. A running female Mandalorian came to a crashing halt before the Sith lord, to report.
A few moments earlier, at the speeder, the droid had finally succeeded in tearing the heavily armored door from the speeder, the remaining security detail had been defeated, but reinforcements were on the way. The Mandalorians killed everyone inside the speeder, and pulled the chancellor's body out, but there was a problem.
Mako and Wrehn finally succeeded in waking Skadge from his Force induced slumber.
"Get back to the dropships, everyone!" Wrehn shouted to her crew, "I got a bad feeling this was a trap! We're getting out of here!"
Vindis listened, in growing rage, to the female Mandalorian's report.
"Chancellor not here!" she reported, in Mandalorian accented Basic, "Droid with fake mask!"
"Everyone back to the dropship," Vindis told her subordinate, "We're leaving."
The Mandalorian stomped her boot and ran back to her other team mates, shouting their new orders in Mando'a.
"We have failed," Vindis said, fury causing her voice to shake, "Darth Tormen will be furious!"
"I hope we'll still get paid," Calaverous said, not smiling.
Vindis began to worry about what troubles not getting paid would bring.
"She will pay me," Vindis said, with a scowl replacing the grin she'd worn a moment before, "She had better pay me. Then, I will pay you."
Another Mandalorian from Vindis' team had just delivered the same report to Ymmiir before being dismissed by the clan chief.
"Tell your team to return to their dropship," Ymmiir told the young Mandalorian.
The warrior saluted in the Mandalorian style, turned about and ran back to his team mates.
Ymmiir was bitterly disappointed, as he shouted his new orders.
"Back onto the dropships!" he shouted in Mando'a, "We're leaving!
"Clan Chief," Wrehn called to him in Mando'a on her audio only communicator, "Did the special team get the chancellor?"
"The chancellor was not here," he gravely reported, "It was a decoy. This is a trap. We are boarding the dropships and will depart."
Wrehn's face became a mask of fury. She had a strong expectation of what the clan chief would report to her, but it still stung her to hear it confirmed. However, Wrehn was a sore loser.
"Grab ten volunteers and get on my dropship. You're coming with me. The rest of the dropships can return to the Nova Star."
"Very well," Ymmiir replied, realizing that the Great Hunt Champion was up to something.
"Another chance? How?" Ymmiir asked himself as he called for ten volunteers.
Everyone wanted to volunteer. Ymmiir quickly chose ten from among them.
"Follow me!" he ordered, taking his first running steps to Wrehn's dropship.
The enemy reinforcements were spotted by the perimeter defense team, which took immediate action.
Mandalorian blaster cannon operators, providing perimeter security, began firing on the approaching speeders, while they were still at a great distance. The speeders were all forced to the ground, and rapidly disgorged the security forces, which quickly took cover and began to return fire.
With the reinforcements forced to halt such a distance away, the perimeter defense team ceased firing and ran, hard, to their dropships.
The commander of the reinforcement force watched as the last of the Mandalorians got into their transports, and then watched as the dropships vanished.
"Get back into your speeders!" he shouted to his security team, "Let's get to the mansion!"
The security forces ceased firing, with nothing for them to shoot at, and rushed back into their lightly armored speeder vans to resume their approach to the chancellor's mansion. Their mission would be one of rescue and recovery, but except for a few house servants held at blaster point by the warriors of House Bruuga, there were none left to rescue.