Broken Crown

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy watched him go, pausing to consider her options. She could follow, most certainly, and help the man who had so openly asked for it before, or she could head out to her own ship sitting, likely, in a large dune of sand in the aftermath of the storm and make her way to the next planet. The next journey. The next anything.

In the end, the woman turned to the receptionist droid, now operating after being awakened by the HK, and placed down her own credits, double.

"Hold my room," whether or not she would actually need it for another night she couldn't say, but it was the only real secure place to leave her bag without having to worry. Or so she thought.

Heading off in the direction the man disappeared, she followed after, swearing in Panatha upon hitting the stairs, toes still numb and tingly.

"What's your plan?" she asked him when she finally caught up.



Sarge Potteiger:
He didn't turn his head as he heard her, instead ducking down a side corridor towards the smaller hangars along the outskirts of the circular starport. "Plan? Go find out why they wanted the Houk gone and why they needed to neutralize my droid to do so. Not like a protocol droid is dangerous, and most Rodians look the same."

It wasn't even a specist remark, really. Other than the differences in skin color, most Rodians did look almost exactly alike. He'd never puzzled that one out.

"So, we find the base - which HK is doing right now - and then we go have a nice little chat with the idiots."

With that, he took a sharp right and there, smack dab in the middle of the mostly empty hangar, were two old 74-Z Imperial Speeders from a time when the original Galactic Empire was still in power.

Spinning his weapon around so that it lay across his broad back, the man took the speeder on the right and motioned for her to get on the other. With a flick of his wrist at the controls, the repulsors turned on, hovering the bike a foot over the deck.

"Otherwise? Don't get shot."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"I'm a pretty small target," Ivy assured him, pulling her goggles down over her eyes and tugging the folds of her cloak wrap over her lower face. She mounted the speeder in a single fluid motion before engaging the repulsors. The woman motioned for him to take the lead and moved to follow.



Sarge Potteiger:
"I wouldn't say you were smaaaallll...", he begins. Kicking the right pedal back, the speeder lifted and he roared off and over the top of the starport, lowering his altitude once he'd cleared the buildings. With a maximum cieling of something over twenty meters clearing small buildings was something fairly easy for most speeders.

Or Jedi with incredibly strong legs, perhaps. He, on the other hand, wouldn't be able to clear tall buildings in a single bound.

"Keep up.", he mutters, speeding low across the dunes, following a waypoint sent to him by the droid flying his freighter. The howl of the engines echoed back to him from all sides, and with a blink of his eye his helmet shut out the sound. The joys of Mandalorian armor.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy did not hear the mutter for the cacophony of engine and wind in her ears. Likely she would have ignored him anyways. The woman didn't need to be told to keep up.

She kept up just fine, perfectly capable of kicking her traveling speed up a notch when the time called for it. She might've been a bit lackadaisical about it before, but there be bad guys afoot, or something to that extent.



Sarge Potteiger:
After nearly twenty minutes of endless sand and grit, dust kicking up in great clouds in the wake of the disturbance caused by his engines.

Finally, he slowed as he neared the top of a dune which rose enough to give a commanding view of the area around them.

He didn't actually stop, instead throwing himself off the speeder so that it's failsafe would activate and it would stop immediately.

The speeder sat, motionless, repulsers locked in an activated mode.

Standing from the crouch he'd landed in, the man turned around slowly, taking in his surroundings.

"Waypoint says here. See anything?" He asks, walking over to the other end of the dune to find a sheer drop.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy's speeder came to a far less dramatic stop at the top of the dune, engines chugging while it hovered. Wiping a film of sand and dust from her goggles, the woman scanned the horizon. She shook her head and pulled the wrap of cloth from her face to speak over the sound of the speeder, "Nothing. Perhaps they're set up underground."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Start looking for a hatch." He calls, staring down the cliff and frowning beneath his helmet. "Wish I'd brought climbing equipment...", he mumbles.

Turning back towards Hazel, he sighed and began looking around the sand. Rocks dotted the rise, and trial and error would tell him an entrance would be under one of them... or somewhere down the cliff.

It was hard to tell without access codes. He should have thought this through better.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Dismounting the speeder, Ivy left it running and moved to trudge through the sand along the opposite side of the dune. She dragged one foot through, disturbing the grains to watch them roll down the side. Doing this along the spine of the dune, she then carefully stepped halfway down and repeated the process. A quarter of the way she noticed something.

"There's a depression in the sand at the bottom of the dune," she said, though it was possible he didn't hear. Moving to investigate, Ivy picked her way down along the slope, watching the disturbed sand pool in the same area at the very bottom. It wouldn't have been something they'd have seen on their own - the distinct drop was very faint, but as she looked now she thought she spied several others. Likely a network of passages that would allow access even in the dunes happened to shift.

Clamoring to stop her momentum when she hit the base, arms spread to keep her balance, Ivy eyed the area around her. Now that the sand had stopped ... it was hard to see the depressions at this level.

"Oh hell," the woman swore, took a step, and immediately felt the ground beneath her give way.



Sarge Potteiger:
"There's usually depressions near the bottom of dunes...", he yells to make sure she can hear, turning towards her and walking across the sands and towards her.

And as he cleared the edge... he couldn't see her. "You down there?!", he yells, sliding down the dune and towards where her voice had come from before.

You didn't just disappear into sand without it being a lengthy process.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Not an entrance. No. A trap.

After a decent twenty foot fall Ivy landed on something that squelched and crunched beneath her rather grotesquely. It was dark and as she moved around the sounds echoed briefly.

The stench was so overwhelmingly thick on the air that when she took a breath it caught immediately in her throat with a gag. Ivy coughed and attempted to push herself to her feet.

"Here-" she coughed over a gag, "down here. Something....dead. Or dying-ugh."



Sarge Potteiger:
Moving slowly, he moved towards the sound of her voice, going slowly so as not to wind up in the same situation she was. But as he got closer to where the voice had come from, he nearly stumbled into her new home.

"Kark!" he exclaimed, foot nearly going into the pit.

Taking a step back, he kneeled and poked his head over the gaping hole he'd nearly missed.

"Think you can get out?" He wasn't sure he had climbing gear for her.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

There came the faint sound of retching from below. He might be able to see her figure hunched over the freshly deceased corpse of a pack animal, it's belly bloated and internal fluids leaking from the gaping mouth.

Ivy spat, tightly pulling the cloak wrap around her face, eyes watering from the putrid stench. She looked up, blinking into the brightness of the sun. Sarge was nothing more than a pinprick of a silhouette.

"No, I don't think so," she called up, "but...there's a tunnel down here and this thing had a mount. There's a shoe. Just one..."

Ivy carefully stepped around the carcass, back against the wall of the shute, and stooped down by the tunnel. It was crudely lined by posts and stone, so it had to be man-made, "I'm gonna follow it. See where it leads."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Well, kark me." He says, zooming in on the rotting husk that she'd managed to find a way to sleep in. "One second!", he yells.

With that, he blinked at a small communication symbol on his HUD. It immediately ran a scan of frequencies in nearby use. There were several, and it immediately locked on the closest.

"That you, Hazel?", he asks, hoping that it was the right comm frequency.

If not, the bad guys knew they were here.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"Affirmative," she replied, bringing a hand up to her right ear where she wore an otherwise unremarkable stud piercing. It was, in fact, the receiver of her comm.

The woman ducked out of view, intent on getting as far away from the overpowering smell as possible. She had to stoop to fit into the tunnel, "careful where you walk up there. I saw a few of those depressions in that area."

Grunting with a curse, Ivy paused as she found herself having to squeeze through an area of the tunnel that had partially collapsed. It looked like the last victim had attempted to latch onto one of the wooden posts only to pull it apart.

"/Weh/ ... there's light ... I think I found your friends-oh feth-"



Sarge Potteiger:
"Hazel?" He asks, stepping back from the ledge and climbing back towards the speeders at the top of the dune.

He couldn't fashion a plan until he knew whether or not she could respond.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Static. A bit of garbled swearing. Bit more static.

Ivy, in the tunnel, shoved the body of...well, she couldn't quite tell what exactly it had been in the dark, but it was heavy and it had minimal armor on. She'd managed to stun it, at any rate.

"I'm fine," she replied, "must be some sort of alert when the traps fill, someone came to check their catch. I imagine it's only time before they notice he's not come back."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Alright. I'll try to find another way in, unless you find one for me first. I'll start with the cliff."

Approaching the speeders, he began rummaging through the saddlebags. Maybe he'd get lucky and HK would have packed climbing equipment. "Give me details... what do you see."

He didn't have much he could add though as he ducked behind the speeder. Shapes were moving on the horizon. If he was still, he may be able to pass the speeders off as long rocks.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Reaching the end of the tunnel Ivy carefully leaned to look in on a dank chamber lit by a single yellow bulb clouded over by dust.

"Not much ... " she pulled at her goggles, blinking into the darkness. There wasn't anyone else around to be seen so the woman carefully pried herself free, landing on the floor of the chamber with minimal sound. Movement in one corner caught her eye and she moved, swiftly, Vor'cha stick charged and in hand, to silence whoever it was. When she moved in closer, however, she found a battered alien tied and gagged with only one shoe. It eyed her with apparent terror.

She frowned, "I found the rider. Looks like a local trader. He's..." she swallowed, lifting her free hand in a sign of peace to him, "he's in rough shape."

Ivy hovered over him, wanting to help but knowing that currently he'd be more of a hindrance. Frown deepening, she placed a gentle hand on his forehead, "I'm sorry, I'll come back for you," and swept off towards the only exit.



Sarge Potteiger:
Sighing, pulling a leg up to his chest and resting his head back against the heated metal of the speeder.

"Where are you. What do you see. Details... in case I have to follow you."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"There's a holding chamber after the tunnel, one doorway that leads into a hall and another antechamber. These traps are all networked together," she replied as she quietly made her way down the hall. She stopped a few feet at the end where it opened up into the antechamber. This room was larger and lined with several doors that, as she mentally calculated their paths, would lead directly to the area where she had noted the other traps in the sand above.

"I hear people...but I can't understand them," Ivy whispered, leaning to carefully peer around the corner of the hall, "Rodians. Armed." She pulled back as they turned her direction and watched as three of them strode towards a broader passage to her left.



Sarge Potteiger:
"Where are they going? They look like our targets? If so, they may have knocked off a man turning against them." He shrugged. "Alternatively, they're different and we're no closer than before."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy had to take a moment to figure direction. It was hard, as she didn't have a fancy helmet with a display to tell her what direction she was facing.

"Due north..." she didn't sound positive, but her next words felt more concrete, "towards the cliff face. I don't think you went down far enough before, ground level here is at least twenty feet down from the base of the dune."

Checking again to see if the coast was clear, Ivy carefully gave chase to her targets, "I don't know what your targets are supposed to look like, but they all look like criminals to me."



Sarge Potteiger:
"I literally showed you the holo of the Rodians shooting the droids." He sounded exasperated. Probably was.

"Due north? Don't think I can go down through the dunes. Might have to try and find an access panel of some sort."

Sighing, he peeked his head over the speeder to find the shapes... gone. That didn't seem right. Crawling to the edge of the dune, he found himself looking down at a convoy of dewbacks that were maybe a quarter kilometer away. "Might have company soon. Or maybe I'm dehydrated."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"I'm /old/," came Ivy's retort, because clearly that was an excuse. She wasn't that old, though, not by a long shot, but the holo hadn't exactly been hi-res, nor had it shown her any particularly distinctive features to go off of, "and they look like /Rodians/."

Ivy was about to make a remark about him making sand castles but was cut off as the hall came to an abrupt end. There was a great amount of light pouring in from the massive chamber beyond - one that was carved into the cliff, and there were at least a dozen others inside.

"I've got plenty of company down here already. I don't think I can stay out of sight for long, not too many places to go."



Sarge Potteiger:
"Well, if you're old, guess I'll have to keep you limber." Giving a snort, he watched as the wagon train of supplies meandered its way towards the cliff face. She did have a point though. Rodians were Rodians.

Stupid aliens and their lack of distinquishing features... ironic considering he was wearing a helmet. Exhaling slowly, realizing that he was burning up out here in the sun, he waited for the last guy to head inside and then positioned himself above where the entrance should be.

He couldn't risk a rope being left out to alert them, so he began climbing down the front of the cliff as carefully as he could. He wasn't a small guy, and he wasn't light... and he wasn't very good at rock climbing.

Not even halfway down, he tumbled to the ground, landing awkwardly on his shoulder although his armor kept anything from breaking. "HMPH.", he grunts as air was forced from his lungs. "Awesome."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

There was a muttering of something in Panathan before Ivy's comm cut short and was taken over by hissing static.

Back in the hall, Ivy felt the tap of a finger on her shoulder. It wasn't even so much the tap that caught her attention, but the stench that wafted in with it. The woman turned in time to see a blaster pointed at her and reacted instinctively. A hand shot out to the gun, hitching underneath it and swinging it upwards. A shot was fired into the ceiling above followed by a grunt as the Rodian dropped to the floor, stunned by the Vor'Cha stick she'd stuck him with.

The others in the chamber froze as they came to the awareness that someone had gotten in uninvited and unbeknownst to them.

Turning, Ivy flipped the blaster into her left hand - ambidextrous as she was, it mattered not which had she shot with - and pointed it at them.

"-Don't-" the woman barked, as in 'don't do anything that will get you into trouble'. Apparently they didn't understand her because two of them advanced while the third shot off down into the hall.

She sighed, exasperated, because she truly was, and calmly stepped forward to meet them halfway. That was the polite thing to do. What ensued happened quickly and without much fuss. She ducked the first, stuck the second with the Vor'cha, shoving him away once it was lights-out, and twisted in the same movement to introduce the butt of the blaster to the head of the first as he turned to face her again.

Ivy stepped away quietly, slipping the blaster under her left arm and raising her right hand to her ear to test her comm. A few more seconds of static before it came through clear again, "Sorry." was all she said.

It wouldn't take long for the alert to go out.



Sarge Potteiger:
Sarge could hear the blaster fire from outside - the alert was already out. Pushing himself up, he found the door sealed... and sighed. Loudly. Reaching into a pack, he pulled out a stick of plastic explosive and pressed it to the 'cliff.'

"Don't worry. We'll be alright."

Taking a few long steps back, he pulled out his blaster pistol and shot the charge, buckling part of the 'door' inward. Stepping up, he kicked right at the middle of the dent and sent the door careening inward, where it slid across sand caked metal flooring.

That would serve as her distraction. "If you're gonna do something... do it now."

Taking a step away from the doorway, he barely missed the screams of blaster fire coming out from inside.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Frowning, Ivy paused in the chamber at those words, 'we'll be alright.' It seemed to touch a nerve, or a memory, one that she had to forcibly shake from her thoughts. Eyes narrowing towards the hall the third Rodian had disappeared down, the Mercenary followed after with a slow, methodical stride.

She stepped into the larger chamber where streaks of golden sunlight crossed through the air from narrow slits in the rock walls to her right. The group of Rodians were buzzing with activity, grabbing weapons, barking orders -

THUNK.

Ivy glanced towards the only exit on the far right wall. The group, alerted now to the noise, came to a short standstill as they looked around and, consequently, spotted her standing in the doorway. Funny how things hid in plain sight.

One of the Rodians nearby shouted what was certainly an expletive in his own language and pointed at her, to which four jumped at the orders.

So he was the one in charge.

B-KOOM!

A cloud of sand, dust and smoke billowed inward through the partially destroyed door, giving them pause again. There was the crunching of footsteps and then the door was kicked in. The hum of blaster charges filled the chamber next, followed by the pitch of fire. Ivy lunged forward into the fray, cloak whipping around her in the smoke and blaze of blaster bolts. Her Vor'Cha stun stick sizzled through the air, and in a dance that was almost too fast to follow with the human eye, Rodian after Rodian came to fall - disarmed by a flurry of movements, until their leader found himself in an arm lock with his head to the floor, blaster gun resting against the back of it.

"It's not on stun," the woman said to him, "call them off."



Sarge Potteiger:
Sarge didn't dare move into the gaping maw of his improvised entrance until the blaster fire slowed to a trickle and then a sudden halt. Even with beskar, he was still too exposed in too many places to have a chance of surviving that onslaught.

The moment, however, it was clear that the fire had stopped, he poked his head around the corner, realizing that he wasn't going to see anything through the swirling eddies of sand and grit.

Toggling his vision over to thermals he found a series of bodies on the ground and a pair in the middle. Pushing off the cliff face, he strode in through the doorway, shoulders hunched in caution.

It was clear that Hazel had a Rodian in a headlock, and the alien kicked its feet feebly in an attempt to free himself. "Shhh, buddy.", he whispers in Huttese. "Do as the lady asks."

He'd caught a faint bit of noise that implied she'd asked something of him, and he hoped he was right. He'd look like an idiot otherwise. The Rodian squealed, but a series of heavy plates began to lift along the wall above them.

The shell, once lifted, revealed an office that was clearly a means of monitoring the loading bay - and in it stood a very disgruntled Sullustun.

Sarge waved cheekily.

"Hey buddy." He yells. "Mind telling me why you deactivated my droid."

Judging by the flurry of curses, the Sullustun both did and didn't know exactly what he was talking about. Humorous.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

With a grunt Ivy shoved her captor against the ground to push herself up, releasing him from the headlock long enough for him to look back at her and swear something awful. She lofted a brow at this, "Do you talk to your mother with that mouth? Nn-nn," not that she had understood anything he said, but the intent was fairly clear.

Lifting a foot, Ivy placed it squarely on the Rodian's back while maintaining hold of his arm, twisted back in a fashion that she knew to be quite painful. The woman turned her attention to her partner, clearing her throat and motioning for him to continue. You know, now that all the hard work was done.



Sarge Potteiger:
"Yeah, he does. Says he don't got a mother though.", he adds, translating the squealing that became what amounted to a whimper as the Rodian was pinned. The Sullustan glared down at him, folding his arms across his chest.

Sarge tilted his head to the side.

"Well, buddy?"

With that, he extended his arms out to his sides. "Gonna tell me?"

There was a long pause as Mandalorian and crime boss stared each other down. "Tying up loose ends." It finally says in passable Basic.

"Oh? Yeah? That's why you can touch my chit." He wasn't happy, but neither was the alien. "Also don't mind the woman."

"Either way, this goes down a number of ways. You pay me to fix the damage done to my droid. I kill you and take the money. Or I just blow this place sky high. I prefer the latter."

Considering the fact that armed guards weren't streaming in, the place wasn't too heavily guarded right now.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy hadn't bothered to look over at the Sullustan while he shared words with her friend. She was taking a moment to herself, frown lines etched clearly across her face, and was distracted enough not to realize she was putting a bit more weight than was necessary on the Rodian's back.

He coughed and began sputtering for air.

Ivy did glance to Sarge at the mention of blowing the place up. It occurred to her there might be more prisoners in the other holding chambers. Potentially innocent beings that could be caught in the cross fire. This didn't sit well with her.



Sarge Potteiger:
A long pause stretched out as the Sullustan glared down at them before it shook its head and began closing the shutters again. "Gorram karkhole.", the Mandalorian swore, looking around the bay for a moment.

Each Rodian had different gear on and the weapons were as varied as the Rodians themselves were not. But he found what he was looking for.

Turning his head towards Hazel and giving a nod of his head before covering one 'eye' with a hand to sign a wink, he rolled an unconscious thug over and pulled a small metal sphere from his belt.

Standing and clicking the red button at the top, he planted his feet and gave a length wind up of his arm. Like the spearwielding amazons of Dathomir, he hefted the device in an arc towards the metal protection of the office.

However, it didn't explode. It just stuck there.

A moment later, the termite inside when critical, creating an expanding sphere of flame that stopped suddenly, leaving anything outside of it untouched. The office, however, had simply ceased to be.

The metal that had surrounded it had quite literally been vaporized. There was, after all, a reason that thermal detonators were illegal.

"He'd better be dead.", the Mandalorian snarled, looking around for a few moments. "How do we get up there?", he asks, turning his attention to Hazel again.

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Watching with obvious interest now, Ivy marveled silently at the wonders of technology.

"That is a good trick," she muttered to herself, wincing in the resulting shower of dust and sand from the ceiling of the chamber. Her attention shifted back to Sarge and to his question she frowned, blinked, and then looked down to her gasping, sputtering Rodian captive.

She lifted her boot from his back and he wheezed in response, swearing up a storm. "On your feet," Ivy tossed her blaster aside and pulled at his twisted arm while reaching to grab his other elbow, hoisting the alien up with curious ease. With a kick to his heel with her armored boot she pushed him over to stand before Sarge, "with this," she replied.



Sarge Potteiger:
"And what exactly am I supposed to do with this? He can't fly."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

"You're probably right. But he might know how to get up there, has to be a way to do it on foot." Cause piggy wouldn't be able to get up there otherwise.


Sarge Potteiger:
Sarge took the hand off of their prisoner and grunted, wrapping a powerful arm around the Rodian's neck and pulling him along, blaster in his side. "Right, mate, you and I are going to go see how your boss is doin'."

Grinning under his helmet, he flexed his arm. "Lead on." With that, he released the Rodian and watched him shuffle off and towards a nearby door. "Let's go, Hazel. Hopefully he ain't no idiot."

 

[Hazel Scheler]

Ivy had been watching a Rodian on the ground begin to squirm. She turned to look at Sarge as he followed after their captor and gave a nod, leaning to stick the squirmer with the Vor'cha once more for good measure before stepping after him.

The door lead to a narrow metal stairwell that spiraled upwards. It was lit by a single lamp at the top and their steps echoed loudly as they tramped upwards.



Sarge Potteiger:
Moving up the stairs, would she be attentive, she'd find that there seemed to only be the sound of two pairs of feet. Sarge himself was making next to no noise, and it was times like this he was thankful for the light weight of beskar.

It didn't hinder as much as heavier armor and still allowed him to remain fairly stealthy. The Mandalorians of ages passed had been renowned for being able to move quietly in their armor, and he now knew it was due to just how featherlight it was.

Still, two pairs were more than enough to make him cringe at the lack of noise discipline. He said nothing, however, as they go to the top of the stairs and their captive pushed open a door and began leading them down a dimly lit hall which was roughly the height of the office.

Turning a faint bend in the hallway, they were greeted by a left wall that had been crumpled by explosives. The target should be around here. Moving forward hurriedly, he grasped the captive around the neck, palm covering his 'mouth' before clamping down tightly to halt his breathing.

Once the body went limp, he lowered it to the floor and began moving forward, poking his head around the remnants of wall to see if their target was still inside.