Ravensdagger_Overkill

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six Glik was having a great time. He was at the back of Kirk’s new landspeeder, enjoying the wind in his hair and horns as they shot across one of the city’s longer stretches of road.The landspeeder was one sexy vehicle. All sleek curves and a purring repulsorlift engine under the long hood at the front. The best part, of course, was that it was a Gotal-made craft. Designed on Antar Four, built right here on Antar Five. No electric whine, none of that weird static. It was perfection, mechanised proof that the Gotal didn’t need the Republic shoving their mass-produced crap down their throats.He’d seen the news reports. Half the goods they were getting were made by Republic slaves on some backwater. Antar couldn’t break away from the Republic fast enough, at least in his opinion.“So,” Kirk said over the rush of wind. He leaned back, glancing at his friends for just a moment as he delivered the punchline. “What rancor? All I see here are some bantha!”Glik chuckled. He’d heard it before. Twice, even, but Moktor hadn’t and he roared with laughter, slapping his knee as they went.There was a flash of something red, and Glik started to turn towards it.Then everything when horribly wrong.He saw things only in flashes, and it was hard to tell those apart.Kirk flying out of the back of the speeder.The chair in front of him crashing into his face.The entire world spun, over and over again.He heard a scream over the high-pitched whine of a repulsor engine dying off.Then it was over.Glik hissed as the aches and pains caught up to his senses. He was in a much darker space, the landspeeder on its side next to a duracrete wall. Bits of stone littered the ground next to scraggly patches of grass and dirt.“Wha?” he tried to ask.“Statement: Two out of four survivors. Acceptable.”Grik felt someone grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and shifted as he was pulled out of the speeder. Help! Someone was helping them.He groaned again, the world turning black for a moment.When he came to what had to be only a moment later, he was... in a sewer? A large tunnel that stank of faeces. His back was pressed to a wall, and next to him was Moktor. “What?”“Salutations: Hello, you decrepit sacks of flesh. I have questions for you, and you will answer them in an expeditious fashion.”“Who are you?” Moktor asked.“Query: Who is the leader of your cell in the Roshu Sune?”Glik’s blood went cold, and he started to sit up, but not before Moktor kicked out at the dark thing hovering above them. “I’m not telling you anything! Who are you? Some Republican asshole?”“Statement: That was not an answer.”A dull orange arm shot out of the dark, the mechanical hand on the end of it spread out. It plunged into Moktor’s face. One of the fingers pressed into the Moktor’s eye with a squelch, like a berry being stepped on,the other fingers gripping tightly onto his face as he screamed and writhed.“Repetition: Who is the leader of your cell in the Roshu Sune?”Glik started to breathe harder and faster, despite the stink. Moktor just screamed obscenities.“Observation: I am not hearing an answer.” The hand started to spin with a mechanical whine that was soon drowned out by Moktor emptying his lungs.Glik could barely hear his thoughts as two glowing eyes turned with the suddenness that only a machine could have to face right towards him.“Query: Perhaps the spare will be more willing to divulge what I need to know?”

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HK47 was satisfied. He exited a fresher room, his armoured chassis cleaned of the offal and bits of organics that had clung to him during his interrogation. In a little under four standard hours he had discovered the leaders of two cells and had started to create a hierarchy map of the Roshu Sune.It was somewhat inefficient work, but he was working under some constraints. Notably, ensuring that all the interrogatee’s deaths seemed like natural accidents.So far he had expended one round from a blaster pistol. His main expenditure had been time. He intended to get this little jaunt over with so that he could return to his master’s side. She was occasionally dull, the way organics were, but for the most part she made up for it by providing him with new and interesting things to see and chaos to enjoy.So many strange ideas about how the universe worked. Entirely wrong, but close enough that she occasionally stumbled blindly into brilliance.HK47 found a taxi next to one of the quieter streets and flagged it down with the appropriate gestures. He embarked on it, reassured the droid pilot that the things that he was carrying that looked a lot like weapons to the droid’s scanners were in fact anything but, then ordered the taxi over to the location of the next Roshu Sune emplacement.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.The ride was a little slow, likely owing to the traffic block around the scene of the accident he had caused, but they did eventually manage to drive deeper into the city while HK47 assessed all of his armaments.“We have arrived,” a pleasant gotal voice said from the droid mounted at the front of the landspeeder taxi.HK47 took note of the cost for the trip, weighed it against the value of a blaster pack for his cheapest-to-use blaster, then weighed the credit value against the value of the enjoyment he would receive from shooting the droid.It was more efficient to merely pay the droid.He shot it anyway.This cell of the Roshu Sune was, according to what he’d discovered, one of their busiest, and also likely one of the highest ranked cells on the planet if the organisation followed the typical patterns that organic cell-based groups tended to use.The area was mostly industrial, with large factory complexes set next to each other, occasionally interspersed with warehouses like the one he was standing before.The warehouse complex was made of three large buildings set around a central courtyard with enough room for a few larger hover platforms and trucks to place themselves for packing and transportation.HK47 scanned the front of the lot. He didn’t have a long time to stand there. Someone would notice him eventually, and a lone droid might be somewhat suspicious.There were three young gotal loitering in the shade of one of the warehouses, two male, one female. They were passing a death stick between them, the smoke of it trailing up and past them. A large hover truck had just recently come to a stop at the central loading gate of the facility, the vehicle’s engine was giving off warmth still, though it was slowly cooling down.HK47 ran through six-hundred simulations of what a frontal assault on the warehouse would look like before he dismissed the idea. The risks were too great, with only a ninety-six percent chance of total success.The main issue was that he had to keep some members of the leadership here alive in order to interrogate them. It was always so much more difficult to keep the meatbags from expiring.He ran through a thousand more plans in the time it would take an organic to blink, then with a shift of his posture, he started walking towards the three gotal loitering on the outskirts of the facility.“Introductions: I am CB89 Cyborg-human repair assistant,” he said in the nasally, tone-deaf voice of a lower-grade droid.The gotal youth looked up with red-rimmed eyes and confused, placid expressions. “What?” one of them asked.Judging by the way they stood in relation to each other, the slightly higher quality of his clothes, and the proximity of the female gotal to his side, this one was what passed for this small group’s leader.“Introductions: I am CB89 Cyborg-human repair assistant. I was sent by Fancorp Antar to repair a ventilation system within warehouse 4558-B,” HK47 said.“Oh,” the Gotal said. He took a long pull from the death stick, then passed it on. “Well, that’s here, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning you.”“Specification: I have a priority mission that requires that I enter this warehouse in order to ascertain the condition of the ventilation system within.”“Hey, droid, isn’t that a rifle?” the other male asked.HK47 traced the trajectory of the gotal’s finger towards the E5 Blaster Carbine held against HK47’s lower back. “Negation: That is a hydrospanner.”“Oh,” the gotal said. “Alright.”“Yeah, I guess you can go on in,” the leader of the small group said. He patted the other male on the knee. “Lead him in, will you? Bring him to the boss, or whatever.”“Man, you just want to be out here alone with her.”There was some chuckling and posturing and other useless wastes of time before HK47 was finally led into the warehouse via a side entrance by the second male.The moment they were in the building and HK had scanned the area to ensure there were no onlookers, he clamped a hand around the gotal’s neck, twisted to the side to break the spinal cord, and waited the appropriate amount of time for the blood to stop flowing into the male’s brain.The body was disposed of in an industrial-sized trash receptacle.HK47 took note of the pride he felt at his own accomplishments, filed it for later review, then charged his blasters.There was always more work to be done.What joy!

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Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Seven Taylor had told HK-47 to meet her back at the Atlas once he was done having his fun. Which meant that when Asajj came back down from her meeting with the Gotal Assembly’s leadership, she had to mime to Asajj that they should head over to her ship.On the way back, she questioned Asajj about what the sith had learned from the politicians.It was difficult to piece everything together, but according to Asajj the Gotal Assembly for Separation denied all involvement with the Roshu Sune. Then they admitted that the Jedi were asking the same sorts of questions over on Antar IV.“You don’t like Jedi?” Taylor asked. The woman’s tone didn’t make a secret of her dislike of the organisation.“The Jedi are weak. They act like they are the masters of this galaxy, but they refuse to seize the power that is already in their grasp. They pretend to be just and fair, but every action they take promotes their own agenda.”Taylor nodded along as she listened. She couldn’t understand a few words, but she was making sense of things. The Jedi reminded her a little of the heroes back on Earth Bet. Well-meaning, perhaps, but overly focused on certain parts of their jobs to the detriment of their own efficiency. “Are they strong?” Taylor asked.“A Sith will always be stronger than a Jedi,” Asajj said. “They spend too much time trying to be unemotional, and they use the Force like a crutch, not like the weapon it is.”“We probably won’t be fighting them, though,” Taylor said. “So it doesn’t matter how strong or weak they are in a fight. We need to win against them in a political fight.”Asajj grunted. “Maybe. There’s supposed to be a whole Jedi team searching for the Roshu Sune on Antar IV. If we meet them, it will turn into a fight.”Taylor frowned as she continued to walk. Eventually they made it onto a public hovertrain and Taylor took a seat in one of the emptier compartments. She had to move some gotal out of the way with her powers, but she made sure they were close to an exit in case they weren’t comfortable with her powers. “We see how the Jedi react once our plans start to make trouble with their plans,” Taylor continued.If the Jedi were a group known through the entire galaxy, then they might be challenging to fight. She imagined that when they moved to a place to solve a problem, they did so with a decent task force around them.She got off the train at the station nearest to the spaceport, noted the gotal police officers walking straight towards her, and sent a few bugs into their eyes before walking past. It seemed as though her power had caused some issues after all. She dismissed them for the moment. A local police force was a non-threat for now, not when she had bigger things to worry about.“I think we’re going to fly to Antar IV,” Taylor told Asajj as they moved though the station and towards the spaceport. “As soon as HK-47 comes back.”“And where are we going now? I’ve been following you blindly for half the day already.”Taylor imagined Asajj was growing impatient. “To my ship.” She smiled at Asajj. The woman was... prickly. Very prickly, and Taylor had the impression that she had a mean streak to her than she hadn’t seen yet. So she wasn’t so sure about Asajj’s opinion on these Jedi. Her only other source of information on them was HK-47 and she took what he said with a grain of salt.On arriving at the dock where the Atlas was parked, Taylor walked towards her ship, noting that one of her crew had set out some of the B1 droids to patrol around the ship’s exterior.Smart. Which meant that it was probably Skarsk Nek’s doing. The Trandoshan was the most security-minded of her crew. Unfortunately, it was Xarly who met them next to the lowered ramp of the ship.Taylor walked a bit faster, slipping him into her control range even as he was checking Asajj out and his mouth was opened to insert his foot into it.She turned his head to look at her. “Go prepare for launch,” she said. “We going to Antar IV when HK-47 is back.” She made him salute smartly, spin on his heel, and walk back into the ship.“Is your crew immune to your control?” Asajj asked. Or something similar. Taylor wasn’t sure if she’d translated ‘immune’ correctly.“No,” Taylor said. “They’re just... used to it.”She invited Asajj onto the Atlas and immediately headed towards their main holoprojector. Skarsk Nek was already in the room, cleaning a rifle in one corner. He eyed Asajj and the sabers at her hip for a while, but didn’t comment. Qarry and Xarly, meanwhile, were preparing the ship, only occasionally slipping into her range on the deck below.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.“Okay,” Taylor said. She had had some time to think on the way over, and that meant she had the beginnings of a plan. The Roshu Sune had to go.They were a destabilising influence and she didn’t think she could realistically curb their behaviour in a way that would help. Fortunately, the Gotal government was probably on her side there.Turning to Asajj, she met the young woman’s eyes and nodded. “You will contact Dooku. Tell him that we need to tell the government here that we are... fixing their problem.”“I don’t know if he has that much influence here,” Asajj said, her arms crossing.Taylor shrugged. “Tell him anyway. Either we fix the problem, or the jedi do. Does he want the jedi to fix it?”Asajj grimaced. “No. I suspect he’d rather not.”“Good,” Taylor said. “In that case, once we have the... green light, we find the terrorists and destroy them. Then we make sure the people know that it was us who took out the threat. Maybe we...” she paused, realising she didn’t know the word for ‘film’, then she gestured to Tattletale. “We have droids look, to show people that we are the good ones.”Asajj nodded slowly. “The weak masses will believe anything.”“They believe it more when it’s true,” Taylor said. “I think Dooku wants people to know that we are better than the Republic. So let’s be better.”A clunking sounded across the room, and a familiar form came to shadow the entrance.“HK-47,” Taylor said. “Why are you covered in blood?”“Speculation: It isn’t mine, therefore some fleshy organic sac of meat must have leaked it over my frame. Rectification: I will endeavour to wash this filth off of myself. I cannot imagine the olfactory assault is pleasant, master.”Asajj sidestepped away from HK-47.“Did you discover anything while accidentally getting covered in blood?” Taylor asked.“Reply: Oh yes. I have successfully integrated several members of the terroristic Roshu Sune and have discovered the location of one of their largest cells on Antar IV.”Taylor nodded. “How organised are they? What kind of resistance are we looking at here? Do they have any specific goals?”HK-47 moved closer to the holoprojector and touched its pad for a moment. Soon enough, there was a new projection above it. A city, presumably on Antar IV. “Summary: The Roshu Sune are not nearly as organised as initially presumed, master, and their primary cell resides here, in the political district of the capital on Antar IV. Their leadership mostly resides near and within their base of operations as well. A tactical mistake.”“And their goals?”“Observation: They seem to wish the expedited arrival of separation from the Republic by means of sowing chaos and destruction on their own homeworld. I fail to see the logic, but it does track with the behaviour of less intelligent fleshbags.”Taylor considered it. From the image she was getting... It felt almost like the Roshu Sune were a bunch of teenagers lashing out. They’d seen how the Republic was, decided that it was unjust, and then decided that the peaceful and political nature of the Gotal Assembly for Separation weren’t enough.She’d seen and read of similar events in the past.Hotheaded idiots, basically.“We... are going to have to be very careful with all of this,” Taylor said. She didn’t want to be the spark that set off the keg here.“Suggestion: I would advise that we act rapidly, master. There are Jedi on-route to Antar IV already. They are likely to run right into the Roshu Sune.”And, of course, the world wasn’t going to give her the time to be meticulous about anything.Taylor pinched the bridge of her nose and went over the situation again.Dooku wanted her to fix things in this system, obviously in a way that made the Separatist movement look good. The Gotal Assembly was a political faction gaining favour in the system and they sided with the Separatists against the Republic Loyalists.The Roshu Sune were an offshoot of belligerent teenagers who thought that violence would get them what they wanted faster.The Republic had sent their heroes, the Jedi, to oversee and fix the issue.The Jedi would likely pin the issue on the Separatists as a whole.That was... unacceptable. But Taylor didn’t have time, or the ability to stop them.So...“I know what we have to do,” Taylor said as she opened her eyes. For a moment there, it had felt almost... meditative, to look at all her issues so simple. “We’re going to work with the Jedi and help them. Asajj, get me in touch with the Jedi coming here, we’re going to meet them when they arrive, and offer to help.”There, that would fix everything.

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