As expected, the other man was positively in awe of the place. For Kovereg, the place was simply intriguing, if only because of how foreign it was. Never had he chosen to dabble in ancient mechanics, not in the least because he had never enjoyed the company of machines except those he used in his job. But he still expected to knowledgeable on a great deal of things. To see things he didn't know invoked a rare feeling. These strange constructions taunted Kovereg with curiosity, something which he had learned from his time in the Underworld could be fatal.
Moving over to the tanks, Kovereg began to inspect the shattered ones. The way the transparisteel had fractured suggested it was a blow from the outside, and there was still some of that green fluid on the ground. So whoever had broken these tanks had done it recently.
"Someone got here before us," he said to White,
"and they damaged these tanks recently. I'd say less than an hour ago. There's a chance they're still somewhere in the complex." Which would be a good thing, naturally. Kovereg was better at dealing with organics than he was with droids. As he walked over to a tank that was still intact, examining the green fluid within, he recalled the disabled Magnaguards on the floor and added,
"Probably took down those two droids as well."
Or not.
Even with the green liquid within the tanks, the transparisteel still reflected light, and as Kovereg looked into the tank, he could see a shape approaching him from behind. One that wasn't White, and one whose movements carried a sinister edge. As its image clarified in the transparisteel to that of one of the disabled Magnaguards he had just seen on the floor, Kovereg took the measure of it through its reflection, then spun and fired his blaster straight at the droid's face.
He should have known that Magnaguards, with their absurdly fast processors and hypersophisticated heuristic combat algorithms, could easily react to a non-Force sensitive middle-aged man spinning around and trying to get them by surprise. Even in its seemingly damaged and rusted state, it was a pitifully easy task to swing its electrostaff to strike the underside of the silencer attached to Kovereg's
H.T.E. blaster pistol with enough force to tear the entire weapon from his grip.
What it didn't know was that an old man needed to make up for his shortcomings with adaptable, unpredictable weapons. By design, the blaster's silencer was attached with a click-on mechanism, and when struck, it would snap off from the pistol's barrel and leave the main weapon virtually unaffected. The Magnaguard's blow sent the silencer bouncing away across the floor, but only offered a minor alteration to the position of the blaster itself. Instead of shooting between the Magnaguard's eyes, the blaster bolt that emerged struck the droid in its left eye, shorting it out and causing the Magnaguard to recoil for a moment. Just enough to snap off another two shots.
Even recoiling, the droid was far from defenceless. Once again those hypersophisticated combat algorithms came into play, and it weaved its body such that the first shot merely glanced off its shoulder plate and the second missed entirely. Then it struck back, a swing of the staff dislodging the blaster from Kovereg's hand followed by a stab at his head. He barely snapped his head back in time to miss the crackling end of the staff, which instead smashed into the tank behind him. Transparisteel fragmented into many shards on the floor and the green fluid within seeped out. Kovereg grabbed onto its staff before it could fully retract its weapon, engaging in a vicious struggle against the droid. It was a mistake; flesh and bone were no match for durasteel and servomotors, and the assassin found himself peering into the droid's one red eye, cold and devoid of life as it was. The machine pushed him back, and his feet instinctively planted themselves on earth unhallowed by the slipperiness of the green fluid from the tank, compromising their grip. He was losing this match.
The sudden call of his true name from White — how had he known? — one he hadn't even used in professional business, proved disruptive and distracting. Well-intentioned as it might have been, the random cry robbed Kovereg of his full strength for just a moment, causing his grip on the staff to weaken. Another mistake. The droid yanked hard, and now Kovereg found his entire body pulled through the air. He landed heavily behind the droid and skidded for a moment to a stop near the centre of the room. As he rolled to face his attacker, he caught a glimpse of the door, now barred by an additional two Magnaguards who had seemingly emerged from thin air. They were pushing the door against its frame, intent on trapping White and Kovereg in this dastardly chamber, while their other hands spun their electrostaffs like shields to bar any possible exit.
Kovereg wasn't even afforded a moment to contemplate what that meant, because the Magnaguard he had been fighting was almost on top of him now. It plunged its crackling staff downwards at where his head was, and a last-minute jerk to the side was all that saved Kovereg from having his head skewered. The assassin followed up with a scissor-kick — about the only attack he could execute from his prone position — aimed at his attacker's legs. As the Magnaguard tripped, Kovereg executed another roll to clear himself of its saberstaff, then he was back on his feet, running towards where he had dropped his blaster.
Vahliath Imperious 
