Post by Dire Wolf on May 9, 2014 19:33:06 GMT -5
(so this is a little google docs thing that Faeruy and I started back when I was still in Afghanistan and couldn't effectively log onto swu. Its been a long time coming, but here she is. Tag, btw, fae.)
Loc: Draga the Hutt’s Compound
Time: 2300 hours (Local Time)
Ropes of crimson gushed from the second mouth made in a made in a man’s neck mere moments after cold steel slid across the thin skin that protected it. A surprisingly loud gurgle bubbled up from the man’s second mouth as he fell to the ground in a heap of muscle and blood. The dead man was the last of a three man patrol and his gurgling hadn’t gone without notice. The two men turned to see a thin dark figure over his corpse with a short sword in hand. It had crimson eyes without an iris or a pupil that glared out at them, but they only had a mere moment before they were a blur of motion. Steel flashed out from the figure’s hand and tumbled through the air until it sunk into the second man’s eyes.
The third man barely had the time to raise his blaster before the short piece of steel slid into his ribs and through his heart. A gloved hand closed around his throat to hold the scream at bay. His heart beat petered off against the blade as they gazed into each other’s eyes, and in under a minute he passed on into the great beyond. Dehja scoffed beneath her mask. Humans and those that mirrored their shape were hilariously fragile creatures.
Dehja’s short sword had been painstakingly sharpened to the point where it could slice through skin with its own weight alone. A sickening wet noise emanated from the man’s chest when her sword was yanked from it out of the man’s chest. Crimson rivers had snaked their way down the length of her prized sword. After a moment of disgust the streams of blood were lazily brushed from the steel and onto the black cloth that covered her forearm before she slid it into the sheathe on the small of her back.
People are so much easier to kill once you realize that they’re just bags of meat with bones to hold them up. Blasters, bullets, or lightsabers. It didn’t matter. Hell, stopping too fast hurt them. All of that was boring, though. Watching the skin open up thanks to a blade or feeling bones break under her fist always brought a certain wonder to the woman’s mind. There was something fascinating about how the internal organs of the body worked or pushed themselves once a serious wound was inflicted.
Every kill was different. Every heartbeat that she felt through the length of her steel sword petered out differently, some even refused to acknowledge the steel that destroyed it for a trice, making each kill different. Make no mistake though, Dehja didn’t enjoy killing. She merely found the whole process of life and the “living machine” of a person’s body fascinating.
It was in those last moments that men set themselves apart. The brave from the cowardly. The weak from the strong. The final man she killed was a good one; brave and strong. Pity. Once her throwing dagger was retrieved and the bodies hidden, the chiss woman melted back into the shadows that she called home.
------
Dragga the Hutt. Llokin hated Hutts with a fiery passion. They were ruthless criminals with no hope of redemption. He hated their shady practices, hated the way they encouraged chaos, and most of all he hated their ugly, sluggish appearance. He’d had dealings with agents of the Hutts in the past, and it never ended well for the agents. They were too intractable, too greedy, and too comfortable in their corruption for Llokin to bring them to his side, and so he destroyed them outright. Which didn’t endear the Chiss Force-user to the Hutts much.
Which is why, when everything he had was destroyed, the first place that Llokin went to was the home of the one spy he had among the Hutts. The Riordan he had paid to keep an eye on things nervously told him about some talk he overheard at Dragga the Hutt’s compound about the death and loss of some of the smugglers in the area. It sounded to the Chiss like Dragga had been planning to do something about it; like destroy Llokin’s entire army. Such things must be revenged. And if Dragga didn’t do it, then there was a good chance he would know who did. If he did know, Llokin would find out. One way or another.
Killing one of the greatest agents of chaos in the galaxy wouldn’t hurt either.
The Chiss landed his craft on Yselia and was immediately unhappy. It had been twenty years since Llokin lived on Csilla, and yet his affinity to the cold never left him. The muggy, humid rainforest atmosphere was not at all to his liking. Luckily for him, however a lack of security meant that his sour mood wouldn’t cause any alarming and unexpected deaths. The lack of security should have been an alert all on it’s own, but the heat had gotten to his mind.
Still, he had the presence of mind to keep one hand on his lightsaber at all times, his red eyes ever watchful for anyone getting in his way. Llokin had one simple rule; those who were useful to him got to live. Those who hindered him were destroyed. He expected to see a lot of death today.
He didn’t expect the death to precede him. Upon entering the compound he was immediately greeted by the presence of three dead men. He paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. Were they guards, or intruders? They looked like guards, dressed like guards. But if they were, who killed them? And what were they after? He knelt down besides the bodies, slowly drawing his saber out of his belt holster while he examined them closely. It was odd. The wounds were clearly done by a blade, but not one he was used to seeing. The cuts were clean and sharp, and simpler than he had seen. A true steel blade. Definitely not something he was used to seeing.
Llokin closed his eyes and gathered his Senses. Was the person who killed these men still around? Were they a friend or an enemy? Were they watching him right now? His saber flared up, the blade as red as his eyes, ready for a fight.
------
Paranoia was one of the most problematic issues for Dehja to face while executing a mission within a compound. This attribute some would consider a lapse in sanity drove men to double or even triple their security protocols, hire more guards of better quality, and fortify the grounds of one’s estate with sensors and turrets. Despite all of this there was no such thing as an impregnable fortress, an uncrackable safe, or an unslicable terminal. The problem is only compounded when the mark is wealthy. The mark was wealthy. His well equipped and numerous guards told her that he was paranoid. Not to mention the minefield of sensors that she had disabled just long enough to cross undetected.
The next patrol wouldn’t have circled around for another ten minutes, which was more than enough time for the woman to infiltrate the compound, take back the stolen data disk, and leave. A month of careful planning, observation, and preparation had gone into the plan that was irrevocably set in motion. Thirty four galactic standard days. It took exactly thirty five seconds for the woman to sprint the distance between the jungle and the wall. Every single sensor was taken off of its false loop of data on the thirty-seventh second.
Five minutes after that an idiot Wroonian waltzed down the road as if he were on a mission to trip every sensor and pressure plate in his path. Thirty-four days. Wasted. A bolt of hot anger flashed into the cold woman’s mind as she observed his back, and she prepared to dash out at his back when the report of a lightsaber that exploded to life turned her feet into cement blocks. Crimson light cast a menacing shadow that pulsed with the humming lightsaber, but his status as a Dark Jedi hardly phased her. Dehja had never crossed blades with a Jedi, though she had been taught their arts and a means to combat them. Despite this fact her objective had suddenly changed. Plough the contract and the stolen data, survival was her primary goal.
Then he turned around.
This Dark Jedi had red eyes. Not eyes like a normal humans where there was the white, a pupil, and a colored iris. No. His eyes were red like hers. His skin held the same color as her albeit a few shades darker. Dehja had never encountered another member of her species, nor did she have any recollection of her parents. The only thing that linked her provenance was a pair of military style dog tags. One was her name, Dehja, and the other was a collection of words and apostrophes that she surmised was a formal name. The woman hadn’t given it much thought until then.
Anger was replaced with curiosity almost instantly, though her bloody shortsword was still carefully held in her right hand. He hadn’t seen her, but his lightsaber was active and he was still a threat, weapon or no. Species or no.
Dehja rose from the shadows as a spectre would emerge from the wall, though she was sure to do so directly in his line of sight. Even though her reveal was one that was less than threatening the tip of her sword was pointed directly at the man’s chest. There wasn’t any threat in Dehja’s voice or posture besides that gesture as she walked towards him, but was sure to give him a healthy berth before she slowed to a stop.
“That was a month of preparation that you just ruined,” her voice held a hint of irritation, “I hope there’s a good reason for you tripping every sensor he has.” The woman wanted nothing more than to discuss her species at length, and where they hail from, but there were better times and places. Instead she stood twenty feet from him with nothing but a foot and a half hunk of cortosis-steel alloy between her and that red sun of his.
------
He Sensed her. She was hard to See, hard to Find, hidden in the shadows, but Llokin was good, very good. So he Saw her before she stepped from the shadows behind him.
A Chiss.
Another Chiss. Llokin hadn’t seen many Chiss in the past twenty years. Maybe five in total, and most of them were far divorced from their homeworld and culture. So it always took him by surprise to see another. He certainly didn’t expect to see another in the same compound as him. His eyes travelled down to the weapon in her hand. Bloody. So she killed the guards. She was Chiss, and she killed the guards. So at least she wasn’t on Dragga’s side, but he still couldn’t tell if she was a friend or an enemy.
“Who are you?” He asked the other girl in Cheunh. She hadn’t spoken it but that didn’t mean she didn’t know it. He stood still, he didn’t retract his saber, he didn’t move towards or away from her, and he completely ignored the bloody short sword pointed at his chest. For a brief moment, he considered the possibility of using Battlemind. It always took him a little bit of meditation to use his power; he thought he had it, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that with her. She was Chiss, and she killed his enemies. He could use her. “What are you doing here?” He asked her, still speaking the language of home.
He didn’t have time to get an answer to either question, at least not right away. It started very faintly, but with Llokin’s Sense still somewhat active, he could hear it clearly enough. An angry buzz, like a nest of insects that had been disturbed. The buzz got louder and angrier as it converged on the location of the two Chiss. The girl had been right about one thing. He had clearly tripped some kind of alarm.
“Ktah!” He spat, and turned smartly away from the strange Chiss. His lightsaber flared hotter and his stance changed; preparation for battle. “We’ve got company. Can you fight them head on?” Now he was really hoping she spoke Cheunh. Or that at least she was smart enough to figure out they were both in danger. He moved to the doorway where the angry buzz had now turned into a dull roar of shouting voices and stomping boots. A harsh smile crossed Chiss’s face; harsh because any movement of his mouth made the scar on the left side of his face stand out, rough and ugly. He smiled though, despite the presence of at least half a dozen guards down the hallway. He smiled because those six or so guards had likely never faced a Dark Jedi, let alone one who was trained in the Chiss military. In other words, they had never faced Llokin.
The leader never got a chance to learn what it was to face someone like the male Chiss. The Twi’lek and a blaster out, and was hollering fit to be tied, but the Dark Jedi was faster; before anyone could manage to shoot, the Twi’lek was down with a slash across his chest. The rest of the welcoming committee paused, but only for a moment.
Then the fight began in earnest.
------
Things happened rather quickly after her kinsman (for lack of a better term) spat out a few gutteral words in that foreign tongue of his. He spun around and dashed into the heart of the fight with the kind of reckless abandon that would get her killed, though she didn’t wield the kind of power that a force user had at his fingertips. Her powers were far more mundane and while she could handle herself in a fair fight the woman didn’t being presented with that situation. The fight at hand was hardly “fair,” in fact is was weighted against her, but she still found her legs to be sprinting towards the door to jump into the fray with this newfound dark jedi.
-
Damn Jedi killed Lews. Theron grimaced at the blue skinned Jedi cut a path through his friends, some of the best mercenaries in the outer rim, as if they were butter. The Feeorin towered over most men, including the red-eyed Jedi that hit away the powerful bolts of his heavy repeating blaster as one swats away a fly. A grimace twisted the man’s face as he continued to spew bolt after bolt of energy at his enemy, but that twisted look quickly turned into one of pain as a curved sword erupted through the center of his chest. That mere look of pain turned into a scream as the bloody blade turned in his chest, and a sharp kick to the crook of his knee sent him down on them.
Darkness began to creep at the corners of his blurred vision, and he vaguely became aware of the crash of his heavy blaster hitting the steel floor. An arm slunk around his neck not to choke him, but rather to hold him in place as his over sized pistol was drawn from its holster. One blue arm came into his vision with a pistol in its tiny hands, and the muffled sound of the pistol filled his ears as the last of his blood crept out of the sword wound. Moments later the tenuous grasp that the tiny blue arm had on his weight fell short, and he collapsed in a broken heap of muscle and a growing pool of blood.
-
For all of their size and muscle, Feeorins were vastly overrated. A big gun may have meant more firepower, but it also meant that he couldn’t have possibly heard her soft-soled feet as they sprinted towards them thanks to the volume of fire he poured on her kinsman. Two other mercenaries had fallen to their dying comrade’s pistol just before he collapsed to the ground, and once the chiss woman was sure that he had passed on she cast the pistol away as if it had bit her. Blasters had caused fear in her heart ever since she lost her hand to a malfunction-born detonation. A quick scan of the room told her that the rest of the men had been dealt with, though she knew that there were plenty more where they came from.
“I don’t know who you are, what we are,” she paused only to yank her curved sword out from the cadaver, “but I don’t speak the language. Basic will have to do.” On the outside it looked as if the woman cared little for the blue skinned man while she sheathed her sword, but on the inside her curiosity was piqued. Definitely piqued. She had never met another of her species before, and for the first one to be a Force user? It was too good to be true.
“Why are you here,” disinterest and almost disdain plagued her voice as she pulled a dead merc’s thermal detonator off of his armor, pressed the detonation button, and carefully laid him down ontop of it. Once the body was lifted, the fuze would initiate and the entire room would turn into a cinder. After that small task was accomplished, Dehja calmly walked towards the nearest door and began to type at the terminal beside it.
Slicing always calmed her nerves, “and more importantly, why did you alert the entire compound? Are you suicidal, or just an idiot.” Her tone was monotone, and sound more like she had commented on the shape of a cloud rather than the complication that his presence had presented.
------
Deflecting their blasters was easy; Djem So was Llokin’s preferred method of lightsaber combat, one which proved very effective when he was dealing with non-Force users. He had no time to pay attention to the Chiss girl, but she seemed to be acquitting herself well. The glimpses he did get of her fighting style confused him slightly though in that he did not recognize them. They were not tactics used by the CEDF and the rest of the Chiss military, and it made him wonder where she received her training.
Not that he had much time to wonder about it. After all, he had his own enemies to deal with him. They clearly weren’t counting on a Force user, especially not one like Llokin. Three started shooting at him; a bad move when he could send it right back to them. One went down, and Llokin closed, his red saber glowing like the fire of a small sun. He could see and sense their fear as they faced death at his hands.
It was a good feeling.
All too soon it was over; those who attacked were now too far gone to benefit from the important lesson Llokin doled out to them about going against the Chiss. He retracted his saber, and surveyed the damage. The female’s voice cut through his contemplation, and he looked at her with some annoyance and a little dismay.
“I am Frel’loki’nashandu of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force.” He said, in response to her rudely asked question. It was true that Llokin hadn’t officially been part of the CEDF for going on twenty years, but he still considered himself such. One day, he would rejoin his people and take his rightful place in the Ascendency. “My mission is none of your concern, provided you don’t get in my way.”
Something she had said while they were fighting perturbed him, however. He watched the girl busy herself around the room, one eye on any further interruptions.
“What do you mean you don’t know what we are?” Now that was unusual. How could she not know? She didn’t know Csilla either, and that was equally strange. “Where do you come from, little girl?” He walked over to the terminal she was slicing, watching her fingers move with mild interest. He had neither skill nor aptitude in that direction, but that was because his studies focused on other things. Even a little knowledge of slicing could come in handy later. If he had the slightest clue what she was doing.
“What will this accomplish?” As far as he could tell, she could be doing anything; including setting this entire compound to blow. Which, if it did so before he reached Dagga, would mean dire consequences for this strange girl.
------
“Dehja,” she replied to his name with a quirked brow while she focused on her work. Truth be told the man’s name sounded like a mouth full of gibberish to her, though she could vaguely remember her mother’s voice just before her death. Unfortunately Two and a half decades had passed since her mother’s voice chimed in her ears, and the words themselves had been muted to mere noises. All that the woman remembered was that she had introduced herself as Dehja to Master Maire and that was all that he used to address her since.
Chiss?
Was that the name of her species? A smile almost managed to pull one side of the blue woman’s lips apart, but she checked the motion and the thoughts that had caused it. There was only time for one thing at that moment: the mission. Distractions would only get her killed and cause a mission failure. Dehja had never failed before; not once. She didn’t intend to start now simply because some idiot with a lightsaber and a winning complexion waltzed into her operation.
“... and this is neither the time nor the place to discuss what we are, and where I come from isn’t your concern. As far as what this will accomplish,” she glanced back at the chiss man as one slender finger pressed one final button. Llokin had barely spoke when the terminal’s display lit up with pulsing red alarms. Wonderful. The alarms had been tripped at the opposite end of the fortress, and all of the hutt’s mercs flooded into the ‘breached’ areas. A door slid open beside the terminal a few moments later she turned to face the dark jedi.
“There’s more than one way to breach a door. Good day, Dark Jedi.”
Dehja drew her sword from its scabbard on her thigh as she passed through the doorway, and held it so that the blade was concealed behind her back. After a few paces the assassin pulled a hood over her head and a half mask over her face as she walked down the barren hallway. It wouldn’t be long before the mercs learned that the alarms were just a distraction and moved to intercept the intruders. When that happened the woman hoped that they would meet with the Dark jedi, who could far more easily handle the armed intruders than she. Her pace quickened to a sprint as she took off towards the security room, which was the opposite direction from the Hutt’s chamber.
During that month of preparation before the ill fated execution of her job, Dehja had committed the entire layout of Dragga the Hutt’s compound to memory. Bathrooms, service closets, and every last nook and cranny that she could slice from the holonet was within her mind and, failing that, was stored on her wrist computer. Technology was a wonderful thing, but relying on anything but one’s eyes was simply bad for business. It would be one minute before she reached the security room, another thirty seconds before she breached the door and killed those inside, and finally another six before she broke the security protocols to mine the data. The contract’s principal objective would be accomplished, and soon after that the secondary principal would be attempted after that…
A smirk pursed her lips beneath the mask. The odds were good.
------
Llokin swore under his breath as the alarms started to go. And she accused him of being reckless? At least the sound was coming from some distance away - smart to send the the Hutt’s people elsewhere. But it didn’t give them very much time.
“What’s…” He started to say as he turned back towards the younger Chiss. She was gone. To where, he didn’t know, especially since she refused to tell him. The oath he uttered was said with even more venom than before. She could be after the same thing he was. Perhaps not for the same reason, but reasons didn’t matter. Even if she was’t there for the same thing, she could still screw things up for him, and Llokin couldn’t allow that. Not if it meant losing weeks worth of work just to get to this point. Not if it meant he couldn’t find the person who betrayed him, not if it meant he could get back all he had lost. He wouldn’t lose that over some girl who didn’t have a clue as to who she was.
She had disappeared, but that was no matter. Llokin was strong in Sense and Body; she couldn’t begin to compete with that. He closed his eyes, feeling the Force flow around him, looking for her. There.
If Llokin was the smiling type, he would have smiled.
Instead he took off running after her. He could hear the alarms blaring still, but more, he could hear the cadence of boots, Dragga’s guards hurrying in their pursuit of the intruders. His lightsaber blazed red in his hands. Let them come. He could take them all. And the girl too if need be. He was not so sentimental that he would let her live if she got in his way but a part of him, homesick and bereft of anything familiar to him, hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
She was fast. He could Sense her getting further and further away. Llokin furrowed his brow in concentration, forcing himself to run faster, calling on Dark Side to aid him. She had to stop at some point, and he… he could keep on going. At least the footfalls behind him were receding as well. Looked like they were even slower than he was.
She had stopped. She was near others as well. Was she in trouble yet? There was no fighting though, no movement, only tension; like the calm before the storm. Llokin gritted his teeth and pushed forward. He had to make it before his chance was gone. He turned a corner, and finally he could see her, working away at the door. Where it led, he wasn’t sure; he hadn’t completely studied the layout and as he followed the girl he had gotten himself completely turned around. It could lead to Dragga, though he hadn’t sensed the Hutt in that direction, or it could lead to something even more valuable.
There was a click as he reached the other Chiss; Llokin reached out with his free hand, and grabbed her shoulder.
“Tell me girl…”
But that was as far as he got. The door slid open to reveal several guards, who looked at the two aliens in surprise.
For the third time in as many minutes, Llokin swore.
------
Soft blue light reflected off of the upper half of the assassins face as her fingers danced along surface of the touchpad that served as the terminal’s keyboard. Twenty seconds was all it took to burn through the rudimentary systems. Twenty seconds. Deja could have burst into hysterical laughter. For all of the external security measures that Dragga had in place, their internal counterparts were archaic. Perhaps the hubris that nothing short of an army could slip past his million credit defense caused him to short change the secondary encryptions, or the fact that he had just run out of funding by the end and digital security was an afterthought.
A sudden hand around her shoulder ripped the blue skinned woman from the brief lapse in concentration that she’d allowed herself. A loud curse screamed within Dehja’s mind as she lashed out at the hand with her cortosis-weave short blade only to pull the motion when she saw that it was Llokin’s hand that latched onto her.
“Tell you what,” she spat as her free hand ripped the cloth half mask down from her face only to hear the curse uttered in their guttural, nonsensical mother tongue. Her thoughts roared at her brief albeit critical lapse in concentration: the door to the security room had opened to reveal five guards. A curse word of her own was uttered beneath the cloth mask just before the clink of a metallic cylinder against the duracrete floor was heard. Moments later a mind piercing flash and a world shattering crash erupted into the tiny room.
Dehja threw herself into the security room after detonation of the flash-bang to see the five mercenaries doubled over or writhing on the deck like a worm. Three received their bloody end at the tip of the assassin’s short sword with the same amount of ceremony one would use in beheading chickens. The three crimson pools of blood had barely begun to expand out from the final cadaver before she had her datapad plugged into the terminal. Behind schedule. Perfect. Just perfect. Gloved fingers turned into a blur as they rapidly tapped across the holoterminal.
“Watch my back while I get the data, Alphabet” she growled over her shoulder without being bothered to stop her fingers’ relentless assault on the keyboard. Truth be told the apathetic assassin had already forgotten her chiss brethren’s name, and never really understood it in the first place.
Alphabet would have to work until they could speak, which was an outcome that she had no doubt of… seeing as he followed her around like some kind of dark side empowered puppy.
Loc: Draga the Hutt’s Compound
Time: 2300 hours (Local Time)
Ropes of crimson gushed from the second mouth made in a made in a man’s neck mere moments after cold steel slid across the thin skin that protected it. A surprisingly loud gurgle bubbled up from the man’s second mouth as he fell to the ground in a heap of muscle and blood. The dead man was the last of a three man patrol and his gurgling hadn’t gone without notice. The two men turned to see a thin dark figure over his corpse with a short sword in hand. It had crimson eyes without an iris or a pupil that glared out at them, but they only had a mere moment before they were a blur of motion. Steel flashed out from the figure’s hand and tumbled through the air until it sunk into the second man’s eyes.
The third man barely had the time to raise his blaster before the short piece of steel slid into his ribs and through his heart. A gloved hand closed around his throat to hold the scream at bay. His heart beat petered off against the blade as they gazed into each other’s eyes, and in under a minute he passed on into the great beyond. Dehja scoffed beneath her mask. Humans and those that mirrored their shape were hilariously fragile creatures.
Dehja’s short sword had been painstakingly sharpened to the point where it could slice through skin with its own weight alone. A sickening wet noise emanated from the man’s chest when her sword was yanked from it out of the man’s chest. Crimson rivers had snaked their way down the length of her prized sword. After a moment of disgust the streams of blood were lazily brushed from the steel and onto the black cloth that covered her forearm before she slid it into the sheathe on the small of her back.
People are so much easier to kill once you realize that they’re just bags of meat with bones to hold them up. Blasters, bullets, or lightsabers. It didn’t matter. Hell, stopping too fast hurt them. All of that was boring, though. Watching the skin open up thanks to a blade or feeling bones break under her fist always brought a certain wonder to the woman’s mind. There was something fascinating about how the internal organs of the body worked or pushed themselves once a serious wound was inflicted.
Every kill was different. Every heartbeat that she felt through the length of her steel sword petered out differently, some even refused to acknowledge the steel that destroyed it for a trice, making each kill different. Make no mistake though, Dehja didn’t enjoy killing. She merely found the whole process of life and the “living machine” of a person’s body fascinating.
It was in those last moments that men set themselves apart. The brave from the cowardly. The weak from the strong. The final man she killed was a good one; brave and strong. Pity. Once her throwing dagger was retrieved and the bodies hidden, the chiss woman melted back into the shadows that she called home.
------
Dragga the Hutt. Llokin hated Hutts with a fiery passion. They were ruthless criminals with no hope of redemption. He hated their shady practices, hated the way they encouraged chaos, and most of all he hated their ugly, sluggish appearance. He’d had dealings with agents of the Hutts in the past, and it never ended well for the agents. They were too intractable, too greedy, and too comfortable in their corruption for Llokin to bring them to his side, and so he destroyed them outright. Which didn’t endear the Chiss Force-user to the Hutts much.
Which is why, when everything he had was destroyed, the first place that Llokin went to was the home of the one spy he had among the Hutts. The Riordan he had paid to keep an eye on things nervously told him about some talk he overheard at Dragga the Hutt’s compound about the death and loss of some of the smugglers in the area. It sounded to the Chiss like Dragga had been planning to do something about it; like destroy Llokin’s entire army. Such things must be revenged. And if Dragga didn’t do it, then there was a good chance he would know who did. If he did know, Llokin would find out. One way or another.
Killing one of the greatest agents of chaos in the galaxy wouldn’t hurt either.
The Chiss landed his craft on Yselia and was immediately unhappy. It had been twenty years since Llokin lived on Csilla, and yet his affinity to the cold never left him. The muggy, humid rainforest atmosphere was not at all to his liking. Luckily for him, however a lack of security meant that his sour mood wouldn’t cause any alarming and unexpected deaths. The lack of security should have been an alert all on it’s own, but the heat had gotten to his mind.
Still, he had the presence of mind to keep one hand on his lightsaber at all times, his red eyes ever watchful for anyone getting in his way. Llokin had one simple rule; those who were useful to him got to live. Those who hindered him were destroyed. He expected to see a lot of death today.
He didn’t expect the death to precede him. Upon entering the compound he was immediately greeted by the presence of three dead men. He paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. Were they guards, or intruders? They looked like guards, dressed like guards. But if they were, who killed them? And what were they after? He knelt down besides the bodies, slowly drawing his saber out of his belt holster while he examined them closely. It was odd. The wounds were clearly done by a blade, but not one he was used to seeing. The cuts were clean and sharp, and simpler than he had seen. A true steel blade. Definitely not something he was used to seeing.
Llokin closed his eyes and gathered his Senses. Was the person who killed these men still around? Were they a friend or an enemy? Were they watching him right now? His saber flared up, the blade as red as his eyes, ready for a fight.
------
Paranoia was one of the most problematic issues for Dehja to face while executing a mission within a compound. This attribute some would consider a lapse in sanity drove men to double or even triple their security protocols, hire more guards of better quality, and fortify the grounds of one’s estate with sensors and turrets. Despite all of this there was no such thing as an impregnable fortress, an uncrackable safe, or an unslicable terminal. The problem is only compounded when the mark is wealthy. The mark was wealthy. His well equipped and numerous guards told her that he was paranoid. Not to mention the minefield of sensors that she had disabled just long enough to cross undetected.
The next patrol wouldn’t have circled around for another ten minutes, which was more than enough time for the woman to infiltrate the compound, take back the stolen data disk, and leave. A month of careful planning, observation, and preparation had gone into the plan that was irrevocably set in motion. Thirty four galactic standard days. It took exactly thirty five seconds for the woman to sprint the distance between the jungle and the wall. Every single sensor was taken off of its false loop of data on the thirty-seventh second.
Five minutes after that an idiot Wroonian waltzed down the road as if he were on a mission to trip every sensor and pressure plate in his path. Thirty-four days. Wasted. A bolt of hot anger flashed into the cold woman’s mind as she observed his back, and she prepared to dash out at his back when the report of a lightsaber that exploded to life turned her feet into cement blocks. Crimson light cast a menacing shadow that pulsed with the humming lightsaber, but his status as a Dark Jedi hardly phased her. Dehja had never crossed blades with a Jedi, though she had been taught their arts and a means to combat them. Despite this fact her objective had suddenly changed. Plough the contract and the stolen data, survival was her primary goal.
Then he turned around.
This Dark Jedi had red eyes. Not eyes like a normal humans where there was the white, a pupil, and a colored iris. No. His eyes were red like hers. His skin held the same color as her albeit a few shades darker. Dehja had never encountered another member of her species, nor did she have any recollection of her parents. The only thing that linked her provenance was a pair of military style dog tags. One was her name, Dehja, and the other was a collection of words and apostrophes that she surmised was a formal name. The woman hadn’t given it much thought until then.
Anger was replaced with curiosity almost instantly, though her bloody shortsword was still carefully held in her right hand. He hadn’t seen her, but his lightsaber was active and he was still a threat, weapon or no. Species or no.
Dehja rose from the shadows as a spectre would emerge from the wall, though she was sure to do so directly in his line of sight. Even though her reveal was one that was less than threatening the tip of her sword was pointed directly at the man’s chest. There wasn’t any threat in Dehja’s voice or posture besides that gesture as she walked towards him, but was sure to give him a healthy berth before she slowed to a stop.
“That was a month of preparation that you just ruined,” her voice held a hint of irritation, “I hope there’s a good reason for you tripping every sensor he has.” The woman wanted nothing more than to discuss her species at length, and where they hail from, but there were better times and places. Instead she stood twenty feet from him with nothing but a foot and a half hunk of cortosis-steel alloy between her and that red sun of his.
------
He Sensed her. She was hard to See, hard to Find, hidden in the shadows, but Llokin was good, very good. So he Saw her before she stepped from the shadows behind him.
A Chiss.
Another Chiss. Llokin hadn’t seen many Chiss in the past twenty years. Maybe five in total, and most of them were far divorced from their homeworld and culture. So it always took him by surprise to see another. He certainly didn’t expect to see another in the same compound as him. His eyes travelled down to the weapon in her hand. Bloody. So she killed the guards. She was Chiss, and she killed the guards. So at least she wasn’t on Dragga’s side, but he still couldn’t tell if she was a friend or an enemy.
“Who are you?” He asked the other girl in Cheunh. She hadn’t spoken it but that didn’t mean she didn’t know it. He stood still, he didn’t retract his saber, he didn’t move towards or away from her, and he completely ignored the bloody short sword pointed at his chest. For a brief moment, he considered the possibility of using Battlemind. It always took him a little bit of meditation to use his power; he thought he had it, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that with her. She was Chiss, and she killed his enemies. He could use her. “What are you doing here?” He asked her, still speaking the language of home.
He didn’t have time to get an answer to either question, at least not right away. It started very faintly, but with Llokin’s Sense still somewhat active, he could hear it clearly enough. An angry buzz, like a nest of insects that had been disturbed. The buzz got louder and angrier as it converged on the location of the two Chiss. The girl had been right about one thing. He had clearly tripped some kind of alarm.
“Ktah!” He spat, and turned smartly away from the strange Chiss. His lightsaber flared hotter and his stance changed; preparation for battle. “We’ve got company. Can you fight them head on?” Now he was really hoping she spoke Cheunh. Or that at least she was smart enough to figure out they were both in danger. He moved to the doorway where the angry buzz had now turned into a dull roar of shouting voices and stomping boots. A harsh smile crossed Chiss’s face; harsh because any movement of his mouth made the scar on the left side of his face stand out, rough and ugly. He smiled though, despite the presence of at least half a dozen guards down the hallway. He smiled because those six or so guards had likely never faced a Dark Jedi, let alone one who was trained in the Chiss military. In other words, they had never faced Llokin.
The leader never got a chance to learn what it was to face someone like the male Chiss. The Twi’lek and a blaster out, and was hollering fit to be tied, but the Dark Jedi was faster; before anyone could manage to shoot, the Twi’lek was down with a slash across his chest. The rest of the welcoming committee paused, but only for a moment.
Then the fight began in earnest.
------
Things happened rather quickly after her kinsman (for lack of a better term) spat out a few gutteral words in that foreign tongue of his. He spun around and dashed into the heart of the fight with the kind of reckless abandon that would get her killed, though she didn’t wield the kind of power that a force user had at his fingertips. Her powers were far more mundane and while she could handle herself in a fair fight the woman didn’t being presented with that situation. The fight at hand was hardly “fair,” in fact is was weighted against her, but she still found her legs to be sprinting towards the door to jump into the fray with this newfound dark jedi.
-
Damn Jedi killed Lews. Theron grimaced at the blue skinned Jedi cut a path through his friends, some of the best mercenaries in the outer rim, as if they were butter. The Feeorin towered over most men, including the red-eyed Jedi that hit away the powerful bolts of his heavy repeating blaster as one swats away a fly. A grimace twisted the man’s face as he continued to spew bolt after bolt of energy at his enemy, but that twisted look quickly turned into one of pain as a curved sword erupted through the center of his chest. That mere look of pain turned into a scream as the bloody blade turned in his chest, and a sharp kick to the crook of his knee sent him down on them.
Darkness began to creep at the corners of his blurred vision, and he vaguely became aware of the crash of his heavy blaster hitting the steel floor. An arm slunk around his neck not to choke him, but rather to hold him in place as his over sized pistol was drawn from its holster. One blue arm came into his vision with a pistol in its tiny hands, and the muffled sound of the pistol filled his ears as the last of his blood crept out of the sword wound. Moments later the tenuous grasp that the tiny blue arm had on his weight fell short, and he collapsed in a broken heap of muscle and a growing pool of blood.
-
For all of their size and muscle, Feeorins were vastly overrated. A big gun may have meant more firepower, but it also meant that he couldn’t have possibly heard her soft-soled feet as they sprinted towards them thanks to the volume of fire he poured on her kinsman. Two other mercenaries had fallen to their dying comrade’s pistol just before he collapsed to the ground, and once the chiss woman was sure that he had passed on she cast the pistol away as if it had bit her. Blasters had caused fear in her heart ever since she lost her hand to a malfunction-born detonation. A quick scan of the room told her that the rest of the men had been dealt with, though she knew that there were plenty more where they came from.
“I don’t know who you are, what we are,” she paused only to yank her curved sword out from the cadaver, “but I don’t speak the language. Basic will have to do.” On the outside it looked as if the woman cared little for the blue skinned man while she sheathed her sword, but on the inside her curiosity was piqued. Definitely piqued. She had never met another of her species before, and for the first one to be a Force user? It was too good to be true.
“Why are you here,” disinterest and almost disdain plagued her voice as she pulled a dead merc’s thermal detonator off of his armor, pressed the detonation button, and carefully laid him down ontop of it. Once the body was lifted, the fuze would initiate and the entire room would turn into a cinder. After that small task was accomplished, Dehja calmly walked towards the nearest door and began to type at the terminal beside it.
Slicing always calmed her nerves, “and more importantly, why did you alert the entire compound? Are you suicidal, or just an idiot.” Her tone was monotone, and sound more like she had commented on the shape of a cloud rather than the complication that his presence had presented.
------
Deflecting their blasters was easy; Djem So was Llokin’s preferred method of lightsaber combat, one which proved very effective when he was dealing with non-Force users. He had no time to pay attention to the Chiss girl, but she seemed to be acquitting herself well. The glimpses he did get of her fighting style confused him slightly though in that he did not recognize them. They were not tactics used by the CEDF and the rest of the Chiss military, and it made him wonder where she received her training.
Not that he had much time to wonder about it. After all, he had his own enemies to deal with him. They clearly weren’t counting on a Force user, especially not one like Llokin. Three started shooting at him; a bad move when he could send it right back to them. One went down, and Llokin closed, his red saber glowing like the fire of a small sun. He could see and sense their fear as they faced death at his hands.
It was a good feeling.
All too soon it was over; those who attacked were now too far gone to benefit from the important lesson Llokin doled out to them about going against the Chiss. He retracted his saber, and surveyed the damage. The female’s voice cut through his contemplation, and he looked at her with some annoyance and a little dismay.
“I am Frel’loki’nashandu of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Force.” He said, in response to her rudely asked question. It was true that Llokin hadn’t officially been part of the CEDF for going on twenty years, but he still considered himself such. One day, he would rejoin his people and take his rightful place in the Ascendency. “My mission is none of your concern, provided you don’t get in my way.”
Something she had said while they were fighting perturbed him, however. He watched the girl busy herself around the room, one eye on any further interruptions.
“What do you mean you don’t know what we are?” Now that was unusual. How could she not know? She didn’t know Csilla either, and that was equally strange. “Where do you come from, little girl?” He walked over to the terminal she was slicing, watching her fingers move with mild interest. He had neither skill nor aptitude in that direction, but that was because his studies focused on other things. Even a little knowledge of slicing could come in handy later. If he had the slightest clue what she was doing.
“What will this accomplish?” As far as he could tell, she could be doing anything; including setting this entire compound to blow. Which, if it did so before he reached Dagga, would mean dire consequences for this strange girl.
------
“Dehja,” she replied to his name with a quirked brow while she focused on her work. Truth be told the man’s name sounded like a mouth full of gibberish to her, though she could vaguely remember her mother’s voice just before her death. Unfortunately Two and a half decades had passed since her mother’s voice chimed in her ears, and the words themselves had been muted to mere noises. All that the woman remembered was that she had introduced herself as Dehja to Master Maire and that was all that he used to address her since.
Chiss?
Was that the name of her species? A smile almost managed to pull one side of the blue woman’s lips apart, but she checked the motion and the thoughts that had caused it. There was only time for one thing at that moment: the mission. Distractions would only get her killed and cause a mission failure. Dehja had never failed before; not once. She didn’t intend to start now simply because some idiot with a lightsaber and a winning complexion waltzed into her operation.
“... and this is neither the time nor the place to discuss what we are, and where I come from isn’t your concern. As far as what this will accomplish,” she glanced back at the chiss man as one slender finger pressed one final button. Llokin had barely spoke when the terminal’s display lit up with pulsing red alarms. Wonderful. The alarms had been tripped at the opposite end of the fortress, and all of the hutt’s mercs flooded into the ‘breached’ areas. A door slid open beside the terminal a few moments later she turned to face the dark jedi.
“There’s more than one way to breach a door. Good day, Dark Jedi.”
Dehja drew her sword from its scabbard on her thigh as she passed through the doorway, and held it so that the blade was concealed behind her back. After a few paces the assassin pulled a hood over her head and a half mask over her face as she walked down the barren hallway. It wouldn’t be long before the mercs learned that the alarms were just a distraction and moved to intercept the intruders. When that happened the woman hoped that they would meet with the Dark jedi, who could far more easily handle the armed intruders than she. Her pace quickened to a sprint as she took off towards the security room, which was the opposite direction from the Hutt’s chamber.
During that month of preparation before the ill fated execution of her job, Dehja had committed the entire layout of Dragga the Hutt’s compound to memory. Bathrooms, service closets, and every last nook and cranny that she could slice from the holonet was within her mind and, failing that, was stored on her wrist computer. Technology was a wonderful thing, but relying on anything but one’s eyes was simply bad for business. It would be one minute before she reached the security room, another thirty seconds before she breached the door and killed those inside, and finally another six before she broke the security protocols to mine the data. The contract’s principal objective would be accomplished, and soon after that the secondary principal would be attempted after that…
A smirk pursed her lips beneath the mask. The odds were good.
------
Llokin swore under his breath as the alarms started to go. And she accused him of being reckless? At least the sound was coming from some distance away - smart to send the the Hutt’s people elsewhere. But it didn’t give them very much time.
“What’s…” He started to say as he turned back towards the younger Chiss. She was gone. To where, he didn’t know, especially since she refused to tell him. The oath he uttered was said with even more venom than before. She could be after the same thing he was. Perhaps not for the same reason, but reasons didn’t matter. Even if she was’t there for the same thing, she could still screw things up for him, and Llokin couldn’t allow that. Not if it meant losing weeks worth of work just to get to this point. Not if it meant he couldn’t find the person who betrayed him, not if it meant he could get back all he had lost. He wouldn’t lose that over some girl who didn’t have a clue as to who she was.
She had disappeared, but that was no matter. Llokin was strong in Sense and Body; she couldn’t begin to compete with that. He closed his eyes, feeling the Force flow around him, looking for her. There.
If Llokin was the smiling type, he would have smiled.
Instead he took off running after her. He could hear the alarms blaring still, but more, he could hear the cadence of boots, Dragga’s guards hurrying in their pursuit of the intruders. His lightsaber blazed red in his hands. Let them come. He could take them all. And the girl too if need be. He was not so sentimental that he would let her live if she got in his way but a part of him, homesick and bereft of anything familiar to him, hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
She was fast. He could Sense her getting further and further away. Llokin furrowed his brow in concentration, forcing himself to run faster, calling on Dark Side to aid him. She had to stop at some point, and he… he could keep on going. At least the footfalls behind him were receding as well. Looked like they were even slower than he was.
She had stopped. She was near others as well. Was she in trouble yet? There was no fighting though, no movement, only tension; like the calm before the storm. Llokin gritted his teeth and pushed forward. He had to make it before his chance was gone. He turned a corner, and finally he could see her, working away at the door. Where it led, he wasn’t sure; he hadn’t completely studied the layout and as he followed the girl he had gotten himself completely turned around. It could lead to Dragga, though he hadn’t sensed the Hutt in that direction, or it could lead to something even more valuable.
There was a click as he reached the other Chiss; Llokin reached out with his free hand, and grabbed her shoulder.
“Tell me girl…”
But that was as far as he got. The door slid open to reveal several guards, who looked at the two aliens in surprise.
For the third time in as many minutes, Llokin swore.
------
Soft blue light reflected off of the upper half of the assassins face as her fingers danced along surface of the touchpad that served as the terminal’s keyboard. Twenty seconds was all it took to burn through the rudimentary systems. Twenty seconds. Deja could have burst into hysterical laughter. For all of the external security measures that Dragga had in place, their internal counterparts were archaic. Perhaps the hubris that nothing short of an army could slip past his million credit defense caused him to short change the secondary encryptions, or the fact that he had just run out of funding by the end and digital security was an afterthought.
A sudden hand around her shoulder ripped the blue skinned woman from the brief lapse in concentration that she’d allowed herself. A loud curse screamed within Dehja’s mind as she lashed out at the hand with her cortosis-weave short blade only to pull the motion when she saw that it was Llokin’s hand that latched onto her.
“Tell you what,” she spat as her free hand ripped the cloth half mask down from her face only to hear the curse uttered in their guttural, nonsensical mother tongue. Her thoughts roared at her brief albeit critical lapse in concentration: the door to the security room had opened to reveal five guards. A curse word of her own was uttered beneath the cloth mask just before the clink of a metallic cylinder against the duracrete floor was heard. Moments later a mind piercing flash and a world shattering crash erupted into the tiny room.
Dehja threw herself into the security room after detonation of the flash-bang to see the five mercenaries doubled over or writhing on the deck like a worm. Three received their bloody end at the tip of the assassin’s short sword with the same amount of ceremony one would use in beheading chickens. The three crimson pools of blood had barely begun to expand out from the final cadaver before she had her datapad plugged into the terminal. Behind schedule. Perfect. Just perfect. Gloved fingers turned into a blur as they rapidly tapped across the holoterminal.
“Watch my back while I get the data, Alphabet” she growled over her shoulder without being bothered to stop her fingers’ relentless assault on the keyboard. Truth be told the apathetic assassin had already forgotten her chiss brethren’s name, and never really understood it in the first place.
Alphabet would have to work until they could speak, which was an outcome that she had no doubt of… seeing as he followed her around like some kind of dark side empowered puppy.