Burned Books and Pickaxes (Lords of the Fringe)

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

‘Could be a woman, or a Sith bureaucrat with long platinum hair.’

Tried to take a whiff too, didn’t get anything, only the copperness of blood and the odour of decaying meat. Never had been the guy who could easily expand his senses with the breath, hell didn’t have much with my nose either way.

They could do two things. Either go and see what that cake was all about, or press on. Didn’t particularly care which way we would go, so I just waited, checking our surroundings every once in a while.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

"How many long-platinum-haired male Sith bureaucrats do you know?"

He banged clots of hssiss-blood out of the lever's gear-toothed end. The motion dug up a coprolite -- crap turned to rock. It cracked with the impact, revealing a gentle shine.

"Well how about that. Ancient hssiss liked adegan crystals. Maybe just some roughage in the diet. Come on. Let's see if it's a woman."

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

‘More than I would like.’ the former Jedi thought to himself, reminiscing about that ugly mug and his ridiculous style sense. There truly was no hipness excreting from that one persona - but why think about the ancient past.

Sardun pondered about the crystals, at least it meant they hadn’t come here for nothing. The Fringe would probably be pleased, though it didn’t really look like much to him, might be there were more veins hidden though.

‘Let’s roll.’

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"]

Prudence suggested he move in silence, though travel with Akona generally devolved into commentary. That probably meant, if he remembered his basic logic, that prudence wouldn't suggest travelling with Akona. But his fellow Dark Jedi was competent, for all the factors that separated them. More to the point, he'd had opportunities to take Seren down or leave him for his own benefit, and hadn't taken them. Insofar as sixteen years of prison left Seren capable of trust, that about did it.

 

[Arage Bao]

Gotta admit, Sardun wasn’t entirely sure why he was so talkative around Seren. He hadn’t been much of a talker for a long while, in the past? Oh yeah, when he was younger and more idealistic he had spend hours orating about this or that. It had been his forte, not his strategical sense, his moderate experience with a lightsaber, the strengthening of his body through the Force.

It had been talking, boosting the morale of his men with a simple word or two. Not that he had liked doing it, but when you are in the army, you gotta do what ya gotta do.

Everyone had their job and that had been his.

Anyway, while he wanted to be the silent nancy again, for some reason he kept voicing things, pointing ‘em out for Ordavo. It was annoying, to a degree. So Sardun resolved himself to talk less, which he did during this walk, simply trying to sense all around ‘em.

The sound of the bellowing monster beneath was getting less noisy the farther they walked away from it and the closer they came to miss Cake. Bit by bit he started drawing in the breath and enhance himself, they did not know if this was an ally or a target.

Better be prepared.

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

He moved carefully, toe-heel to toe-heel, his Force presence scattered so he felt like he was everywhere, anywhere, nowhere. He thought of telling Akona not to hesitate if this turned out to be a hostile, regardless of what certainly smelled like pretty hair. Lacking a lightsabre, he set down his improvised anti-hssiss mace and drew the Fringe taserblade. Akona hadn't spent too long on Hellgotha, but their region had developed an old system of hand signals, one Seren had taught Akona in the most basic sense. He signalled two chambers over to indicate their remaining distance to Spencer.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Akona wanted to convey the same feeling, their eyes met and they both knew no hesitation would be given. This galaxy? Can’t do it, you either survive or get frecked, nature of the beast and setting they lived in. Sometimes you pick wrong, sometimes you feth up, that too was the nature of the beast. Signaled back to him that he got it, wasn’t even necessary though.

Closer they came? The more the feeling of… well feth, power or whatever started filling the rooms. Whoever it was, she got breath spades and that worried him. Good thing was though, with that kind of presence? It would be hard to disconcern foreign entities, downside to being all present.

Nasty shiv, twisted form was revealed. Simple alchemical blade, nothing fancy, kept an edge, stayed true to its form. It would work perfectly in the cramped environment, one chamber in and out, and they were almost upon pretty hair.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

The closer he got to the person he sensed, the more memory intruded. Part of being half-Epicanthix was a somewhat longer life, and he felt like he'd had several. Sixteen years in prison, ten as an inquisitor, eight as an accountant. The man he'd once been would never have snuck through tunnels, coated in the blood of Dark Side dragons, intending to knife a woman. He'd become that man out of necessity, and spent well over a decade surviving without questioning what he needed to do.

He'd been smarter than this, once.

"We're right beside Fringe territory," he murmured, crouching in the dark. "That's a lightsabre. Neither of us is really known to them -- we're just the muscle. They sent someone to watch, claim the crystals, see if we're any good." The taserblade slipped back into his belt. "Let's go introduce ourselves."

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

Nui shrugged and made the shiv go away again. He hadn’t always been this way, but just like with Seren… life had a funny way of making things more complicated than you would expect at first glance. Mockery of his former self, one could say. Sadly he hadn’t had any cares to give these days.

Do whatcha gotta do, stay alive, maybe make a few allies along the way. That was the name of the game, the Order wasn’t his place anymore, not after everything that had happened. So that left putting his own particular brand of justice, Korr would have made mock and judged, well… Sardun had been a judger too, see where that got him.

Desperately hoped it wasn’t a Jedi though. Fringe weren’t all that fond of Jedi, but you could never know. Things would have gone awkward real fast.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"]

Seren paused as Sardun put away his own blade. He couldn't decide whether Sardun had been just plain susceptible, or whether he'd been thinking the same. Could be either, or anything; Sardun had been a Jedi, and though the details of that remained unspoken, it certainly hadn't been more than a couple of years. Seren had hunted enough Jedi to know their mannerisms, and the scent of their link to the Force. Sardun still had an echo of that. Maybe he still thought of himself as one.

Seren wasn't overly given to curiosity, but it occurred to him that he had no idea what had precipitated Sardun's fall. The scars likely had something to do with it.

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"]

Had Seren asked Sardun wouldn’t have been able to give ‘im a straight answer, mostly because he himself wasn’t all that interested in figuring out the twisted routes his mind.

Did he want to hurt the girl? ‘Course not. Did he think it was necessary? Maybe. Would he take the opportunity to not stab someone, before being attacked himself? Most definitely.

He saw Seren pause, wonder and then put it aside. One of the reasons Sardun rolled with him, Ordavo wasn’t an overly curious man.

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"]

[member="Spencer Jacobs"] had to sense them by now, though Seren was scattering their presence, making them feel like they could be anywhere within several kilometres. He generally found it more useful than straight-up Force presence nullification, through qey'tek or something like it; there were some skills that just didn't come up too often. Oh, sure, somewhere out there Sith acolytes and Jedi padawans were hiding their Force signatures en masse. Didn't mean he couldn't smell them coming, or wake-trace them. And speaking of that...

"I'm wake-tracing her," he murmured in the dark of the tunnel. "The hssiss -- she has their attention. Anger, fear. She couldn't hide if she tried. Even when Masters hide in the Force, all you gotta do is learn to follow the wake -- the people they scare or get mad."

 

[Allyson Locke]

This was getting uglier and uglier by the second. The lightsaber flashed back and forth in front of me, unskilled. Yet it did its job destroying the hidden creatures that felt I would be their perfect meal. Annoying. I felt them yet there was more. My heart raced despite the fact that I was a master of the force.

The lightsaber wasn't going to cut it for much longer. Focusing my mind on the absorption talent I've mastered I grabbed the light blade and let the armor I wore distribute the energy through my body. All contact points fueled everything and from my center shot out the manifestation of lighting, targeting everything that was a threat.

[member="Seren Ordavo"] [member="Nui Akona"]

 

[Arage Bao]

[member="Seren Ordavo"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Call it what you want, Will of the Force, gut feeling, intuition or just plain bad luck. Point is… I could fething feel the hair suddenly raising itself up my neck, that bad feeling sinking in your gut when you realize that the game had suddenly changed, ya didn’t know why, ya didn’t know how, hell you probably didn’t even know what. Point was… it had happened and you just had to play with the cards ya had.

We were too far away for the lightning to really take effect on us, but the hssiss around the girl, cause it was definitely a female, weren’t as lucky. Fried meat everywhere. Gotta feeling that ain’t our problem though, gotta feeling… shet was gonna go down and gonna go down hard.

‘Gotta gut feeling, Ordavo.’ I looked around, trying to disconcern if something was here with us. Didn’t seem to be the case. ‘Something has changed, you feel it?’

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Nui Akona"] [member="Spencer Jacobs"]

Lightning spiderwebbed through the tunnels, turning sandy walls to glass. Stray voltage danced over Seren's hands, collected and was shunted away into excess heat. The ambient temperature of the tunnel rose by a couple of degrees. "Girl's got some juice," he rumbled, squinting down the tunnel at the mess of hssiss and blonde. About to intervene, he paused at Akona's warning and drew a deep breath.

"Smells like death and metal. That ain't hssiss on the way."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Garden of Unending Delights touched down on Halm, crewed and captained by people in the process of negotiating a composite identity. Exchange? Underground? Both?

The discussion had been going on for a little while, not because they disagreed, but because they had nothing better to do other than sex, and if Alec had any rules in that department, don't screw the boss certainly ranked pretty high on the list. She didn't answer to [member="Khaleel Malvern"] in the Underground, but in the Exchange she certainly did. So no sex for Malvern.

"So we keep the crystals out of Fringe hands for the Underground, and we sell them for the Exchange. That's win-win. Only problem? The Underground filled my gas tank, and I don't want to get shorted next time for not paying my dues. It's gotta be fifty-fifty on the take."

 

[Geneviève Lasedri]

The call for help had arrived at Chief Lasedri's desk after being relayed through the Alliance's RedNet. The Rebels had formed ties with the people of Halm--primarily Gran--and, in exchange for their right to a supply of adegan crystals, they had committed forces to the planet for defense of these peaceful and isolated inhabitants. Hearing of unsavory--though unconfirmed--activity in the mines was irritating to the Benefactor, and she immediately authorized the Rebel forces to engage in any methods that might smoke out intruders.

"Falcon, falcon, twenty-five, Rieekan. Forecaster," she responded over the encrypted line, voice also distorted through redundant filters to prevent anyone who might try to crack the signal from ever knowing who the voice belonged to. No one would be rolling on their backs for this.

Spoiler

[member="Aleksandyr Gaillard"], [member="Corruck Kazen"], [member="DasGeneral"], [member="Jase Torar"], [member="Juliette Molière"], [member="Juwiela Melec"], [member="Kenshi Mitsumoto"], [member="Kharen Promethien"], [member="Lan Graendal"], [member="Leea Pandac"], [member="Marrik Aloxum"], [member="Mrrew"], [member="Nagate Hei"], [member="Roth Tillian"], [member="Shado CZ MK 001"], [member="Silus Tivar"], [member="Solan Charr"], [member="Thane Drexel"], [member="Tugoro Taidarious"]

 

[Arage Bao]

Was chewing on some pringles, while looking over a magazine of ‘Galaxy’s Voice.’ wasn’t all the pretty I tell ya. Don’t understand why people would degrade ‘emselves in such a fashion, one of them partygoers was a little girl called Boney Hoo Hoo.

Apparently she was pretty popular in the middle levels of Coruscant. Something about the middle and lower classes being represented on the HoloNet.

I looked up from the magazine and gave a nod. ‘We ain’t all dem big names yet, Rekali. Fifty-fifty sounds more than reasonable.’

Especially considering just how much they could get for the crystals.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Geneviève Lasedri"]

OOC/ Dominion aren't open threads, but I've got no problem with your people jumping in; just PM or hit me up on Skype next time.

IC/ Thus far, the Fringe hadn't done much of anything to occupy or oppress Halm, but the local Gran were on the right track: the presence of a handful of Fringe contractors in various abandoned mines did presage a near-future interest in the place. Halm was within spitting distance of Annaj and even closer to the eavesdropping facility on Chalcedon, and deep within the most heavily monitored portions of the Omega Neutral Zone (a long-defunct name). Though the direct line between the Rebellion's Gran contacts and the Republic's new Chief of Senate was immune to casual SIGINT, the internal Gran agitation that had prompted the call raised a smallish flag. That flag combined with the presence of Ashin's wife on Halm, and the Star Destroyer Chimaera exited hyperspace over Halm. One heavily modified Invictus-class, just in case, and just enough to inform the Gran that the Fringe had finally come calling -- as politely as the Fringe ever did.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Khaleel Malvern"]

"Well...good, then." She'd been leading up to the fifty-fifty pitch for a little bit. His acquiescence threw her. Maybe not as much as the freakin Star Destroyer that had just appeared in orbit, but some.

"We've got a new sensor contact," she hissed. The ship could run with a skeleton crew of fifteen, most of whom kept things running elsewhere in the repurposed frigate; the bridge, at the moment, was just her, Malvern, and a taciturn Arcona. "Star Destroyer, Invictus-class, high orbit but not above us or headed there. Feth. I knew I should have brought a smaller boat, this close to Fringe lines."