Angry Prodigal Sons

[Darth Osano]

PROCOPIA
ESTALLE ISLAND, RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

Plagues or not, the Tapani had a reputation to uphold as the cultural elite of the galaxy, rivaled only by the Tionese. Maleagant had gone on a trip to the Tapani Sector when he was younger. It was for his school's debate team. Some tournament they had lost right out, but at least they spent the remaining days loafing about and enjoying the city. Those had been happier times. Prior to everyone he had been on the team with being interrogated by Blackblades and more than a few of them being roughed up for it. Maleagant had yet to reach out and apologize, for what he wasn't sure, but one day when he had the time to spare...

Maleagant was not back on Estalle Island to debate. He was here on business. As usual, his informants were proving a reliable bunch. Aside from the Warrior-Witch, there was another weak link in the Zambrano chain. A marred bastard by the name of Arkaitz Zambrano. If Braxus lived and thrived in the shadow of Kaine, Arkaitz was languishing painfully. He hated his father, hated his family, hated his life. These were things he had in common with Maleagant. While his surname instinctively made Maleagant want to track him down and strangle him to death, he would be worth more alive.

He could serve a purpose.

An informant not just within Carnifex's court but his family? That would provide Maleagant more than enough intelligence to carry out what he needed to carry out. He just had to nudge the outcast in the right direction. Offer the right bargains. Recently, Arkaitz had been entreating with a Tapani nobleman. Arkaitz was frequently involved in their local politics for some reason, but Maleagant did not care enough to hear the details. It was not relevant to his desires. Today, Arkaitz was meeting with Baron Norvil of House Dumont. It was to be here, in Baron Norvil's private study in his lavish mansion. When Arkaitz came to the mansion, he would be informed by one of Norvil's servants that the Baron was waiting for him in his study.

Then, upon being guided there, he would step inside only to Maleagant sitting behind the desk. Deglarch the Morgukai, waiting to the side of the door, would close it shut behind Arkaitz. Alone at last. From where he sat, the Shi'ido indicated the seat on the other side of the desk.

"Sit."

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

The last and most worthless of the Zambrano brood alighted from a landspeeder whose hull glinted silver in the daylight. From behind a skullish mask two eyes stared, their depths a red-tinged tortured gold, at estate Dumont, vassal to the great and storied House Mecetti.

The arbored walk to the front door led past two babbling fountains. Song birds chirped among the trees. All was green and fresh and good. All but him.

With a scornful twist of the lips, Arkaitz Zambrano glided along the path and into the house, crimson cape fluttering behind him like a banner in the light breeze.

"Good noon to you Prince Zambrano, his lordship awaits you in the study. Do you require any refreshments?"

"No, thank you, that will be all, Mr. Gelding."

This was not his first visit to the sunny estate. Baron Norvil had proved a pliable ally. Easily tuned to beat that suited Zambrano ears. And, more importantly, a line into one of the true players among the Tapani houses: the Mecetti. Their support, and that of the Order they financed, would prove invaluable if matters turned for the worse in the Reach. His father had thought it a fool's errand, especially with Pelagia controlling the Procopian sessions due to the Galactic Alliance's resurgence. Small minded men could never think past what they themselves might achieve in others' stead.

Arkaitz's lips curled up in pretense of a smile, which abruptly vanished when he arrived in the study to find two complete strangers.

The first was a Nikto, plain as day. The other? Eyes like hot embers stared out from cavernous sockets, all beneath a jutting brow. The tattoed barbarian could only be a Rattataki. Thin black lips peeled apart to utter a single word.

"Sit."

The princeling raised a deformed eyebrow beneath his mask. "As neither of you are the Baron Norvil I can only presume that he has been waylaid. If this is an attempt at abduction I'm afraid you'll find the godking's sole currency is pain."

Sighing, Arkaitz seated himself as if he had actually intended to do so all along. He glanced around at the study's luxurious interior.

"Such a pretty, pretty place for us ugly creatures."

[member="Maleagant"]

 

[Darth Osano]

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

"He will be late." Maleagant replied. The good Baron had an engagement with his country club this morning. He would have been on time had his landspeeder not shorted out and his commlink hadn't been jammed. As it currently stood, both would resume functioning after Maleagant's business here was concluded and the Acolyte had exited out the back door and into his waiting shuttle. "We will speak until he arrives."

Maleagant would never dream of abducting a Zambrano. Their family was too depraved to even consider dispensing money to save one of their own. Then again, Maleagant's family probably wouldn't either. But they tended to get a free pass on such things, since they were unjustifiably murdered by the father of the mutated henchchild sitting across from Maleagant right now. Maleagant only frowned when Arkaitz lopped him into a group as broad as "ugly creatures." He had once been told he was quite the looker. From a distance no less than seventy feet. In the dark. If you covered one eye with your hand and regarded Maleagant solely through a mirror.

Perhaps he was harder on the eyes than he would have liked to be, but that was not the topic of discussion for today.

"You despise your father." Maleagant flatly declared, clearly convinced of the statement's authenticity. "Yet you do his dirty work in the Tapani Sector. Why?"

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

The interpretations of the word "late" in this instance could be manifold, ranging from something as simple as a late breakfast check to the more situationallys apropos "he was killed and his body dumped in a landfill. When they find the body he will be late by twenty years."

Regardless, the fate of the Baron, the miscreant before him seemed to prefer to state the obvious. "We will speak." Yes, indeed. And were they not speaking beforehand? Arkaitz's lips twitched. He wondered from where this malfeasant ruffian and his silent thug hailed. Nowhere civilized, he assumed. But then, neither did he.

"The art of diplomacy, dirty? You'd send the nobles into a fine frenzy." Attending soirees and garden parties did tend to put Arkaitz in a murderous mood, but few would think it so. "But let us suppose that is what I do. You think I despise the King of Pacanth, the Black Iron Tyrant, a man so feared that even those bearing his surname gives cause to set the nobles' knees knocking?"

Arkaitz leaned back in his seat, right elbow resting on the arm of the chair. He rubbed thumb against forefingers thoughtfully.

"Even if I were, what makes you think I would give utterance of such sentiment to accosting, unnamed strangers?"

[member="Maleagant"]

 

[Darth Osano]

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

Great. This one was a talker. Lots of words. Maleagant would have loved to take shears to those sentences, cutting off every stray word that showed no purpose than to highlight his own intelligence. Could Maleagant really blamed him? If he had the permanent look of burnt meat then maybe he would slide superfluous words into his own vocabulary. "If you won't, then the rumors were baseless. Unfortunate." Maleagant was not hear to have some exhausting conversation, trying to worm a confession out of Arkaitz. "I should leave the lowest of his Majesty's lapdogs to his middling affairs, then."

He leaned forward, meshing his hands together on the desk and fixing Arkaitz with a stare that might have killed a lesser man on the spot. Already red eyes glowed with an additional degree of malice.

"Unless he would like to confirm now what everyone else already knows."

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Lips thinning to a grimace, Arkaitz's hand dropped to hang off the arm of the chair. Idle fingers played with the polished wood. He sighed through the nose, the sound of a man defeated... or patience worn thin.

"It's clear wherever you come from failed to teach you the proper way to make veiled threats. Unfortunately, the members of my family failed me in that regard too. Suppose I do feel that way about my father. What's to stop me from having you pilloried to return to his good graces. Aside from your silent friend, of course."

[member="Maleagant"]

 

[Darth Osano]

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

In the back of the room, Deglarch's grip on his force pike tightened. Maleagant, meanwhile, merely snorted- a short, contemptuous sound. "That would do you no more good than handing him any random agricorps serviceman."

There were countless people in the galaxy who would have liked to see Kaine Zambrano deposed. Not all of them were known by the Butcher King on a personal basis. Just because Jedi Steve would gladly volunteer to fight against him did not mean Kaine Zambrano knew who Jedi Steve was. And therefor he would not find it particularly endearing if Arkaitz dragged his corpse to Vain Hollow, spouting some enormously tall, unverifiable tales about how Jedi Steve was the ringleader for some byzantine conspiracy that Arkaitz himself had thwarted. Maleagant, for all intents and purposes, was nobody. Sith Lords did not know him, Jedi Masters did not fear him, governments did not vilify him.

He was a drop of water in the ocean of the galaxy. Maleagant just happened to have a large amount of drops backing him up in the form of his Syndicate. Not that Arkaitz would be even dimly aware of this connection. Not yet, anyway.

"Suppose I'm not going to ask you to confirm a third time."

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

"Fine. I hate my father and want him dead. Oh what a relief to finally say it out loud."

Arkaitz did not sound relieved.

"Now, what do you want?"

[member="Maleagant"]

 

[Darth Osano]

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

Maleagant was more relieved than Arkaitz. Not that he showed it. Instead, Maleagant reached down, retrieving a folder that had been resting against the side of his chair. He opened it, removing a photograph of [member="Irajah Ven"]. He placed it on the table and slid it towards Arkaitz. "This woman was tortured in Vain Hollow." He said, simply, offering no indication of her identity or importance. If Arkaitz recognized her, good for him. If he did not, it was hardly relevant. "I have narrowed the exact time of her torture to the following window." He flipped the sheet over, revealing a set of dates and times. It would be local to the timezone Vain Hollow was in. The window was surprisingly narrow.

He had [member="Nisha Skaiyr"] to thank for that.

"You will recover the footage between those times recorded by the security camera in his majesty's office using this."

From his breast pocket, Maleagant produced a data logger. Maleagant liked to keep his plans foolproof. As soon as Arkaitz inserted the datalogger into the mainframe Vain Hollow's security cameras were doubtlessly hooked up to, everything that took place from there would be automatic. If the data were deleted (which seemed unlikely - the Zambranos had little to no reason to suspect anyone knew of the torture or would come looking), the datalogger had the necessary programming to skim the remnants. It would not retrieve the whole video, but enough to make Maleagant's case.

The Acolyte continued, "You contact me. I take the footage. I protect you from reprisal."

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

"Oh, is that all."

Arkaitz glanced at the data logger, then back up at the vagabond making such ridiculous demands. What a load of absurdity. Maybe this, as he thought, all just a test orchestrated by Kaine and members of the Blackblade were about to waltz into the room and haul him off to the torture chambers beneath Vain Hollow.

"You and what army?"

The aforementioned Blackblade numbered in the thousands, veterans all. Not to mention the armada Kaine could assemble should someone truly draw his ire. Arkaitz struggled to believe that a man who had to sneak into a Baron's estate just to get a meeting with the lowliest Zambrano happened to have something in his backpocket that could thwart those grim legions.

[member="Maleagant"]

 

[Darth Osano]

[member="Arkaitz Zambrano"]

"The First Order will prosecute Kaine for his crime. So theirs." Maleagant replied. "I will arrange you be pardoned for your cooperation."

This was what Maleagant liked to refer to as "an encouraging lie." He had absolutely no idea how the upper echelons of First Order society would react to this. Irajah Ven had saved the lives of the Grand Moff and an ambassador. She was also being monitored by the Knights of Ren, though for what purpose he did not know. Surely this amounted to some form of political clout and the First Order would be as prudent in seeking vengeance as they were on Eriadu, except maybe less genocide. Besides, while Maleagant did have an army and could contract a sizable fleet, neither would be necessary to obscure Arkaitz. Most people would have elected to simply murder Arkaitz once he had fulfilled his task.

Maleagant was intentionally trying for a less murderous approach when it came to treatment of his allies and employees.

It was a small thing to be done to keep ample distance between himself and the Zambranos. He was not like them. He could not be like them.

"A new identity will be arranged for you in the Mid-Rim, far from the Reach. Free of charge." Arkaitz Zambrano looked like a walking identity crisis to Maleagant. Especially with that poorly done dye-job and the bone mask. What did he need to vanish? Reconstructive surgery. Wash his hair. Throw out the stupid mask. Give him a new name, something innocuous. Aleister Buckwell. Perfect. Then give him a change of clothes and an apartment on Planet Innocuous and Old King Kaine would be none-the-wiser. If this worked, the Tyrant would hardly have the resources to try and track Arkaitz down.

So both of them would have to be extra sure this went exactly as planned.

 

[Gorba the Hutt]

Arkaitz found the offer intriguing, to say the least. If this shady individual could make good on his promises then he would no longer have to be beholden to his father. On the other hand, he very well might be an operative of his father, or one of his father's henchmen.

He thoughtfully tapped his forefinger against the arm of the chair, then at last he rose.

"Very well. You will have your data."

[member="Maleagant"]