Breaker of Minds
Location: Rothana System, Shipyard Periphery
Tags:
Marlon Sularen
|
Maverick Steele
|
Mae Tecono
|
Jos Krayt
|
Anja Doreva
|
Verin Oldo
|
Electra-12
|
Andras Garon
- As the shipyards are destroyed by the Mandalorians, Mawite scavengers pick over the wreckage
The Enclave forces were more ruthless than Tu'teggacha had anticipated.
As the Star Destroyer Ha'Rangir unmoored from the plummeting shipyards, which were already doomed to be destroyed upon impact with Rothana (and probably to mostly burn up on reentry), the Mandalorian vessel immediately turned its heavy guns upon the station. The logic seemed to be that, with a Sith VIP on board, it was worth any sacrifice to destroy her. Perhaps the Mandalorian warriors who had been fighting back the Maw there would have understood, if the decision had been explained to them. Perhaps their honor would have compelled them to see the greater good as they were blown apart.
But it wasn't just fearless and honorable Enclave warriors aboard, nor just Mawite fanatics. A shipyard like this required tens of thousands of workers to operate. They weren't military personnel. They weren't true believers in the Mandalorian code. They were just ordinary people working 9 - 5 jobs at a starship production facility. They were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. They were people the Enclave had promised to protect when the Mandalorians had annexed this system and the others around it. But that promise was evidently worth less than a Sith Lord's death.
Some would manage to evacuate. Many would die under the guns of their protectors.
Locked in sealed panic rooms and crammed into packed evacuation hangars, hiding in storage closets and crouching beneath production lines, civilian workers met their end in a hail of missiles and heavy turbolaser fire. Kiearma Motaso, hyperdrive assembly shift manager, mother of two - vaporized when an M20 Dragonfly missile slammed into the parts storage room where she was taking shelter. Amos Isirbal, sublight propellant engineer, refugee from old Sith Empire space - sucked out into space when a turbolaser battery annihilated the corridor he was fleeing down. Two among thousands.
Taskmaster Tu'teggacha slammed a knobby fist down on his control panel in irritation. Well, so much for capturing intact ships. He would have to settle for having his army of scavs make off with as much wreckage as they could. Military-grade armor plating, relatively intact subsystems, tibanna gas and hyperdrive coolant, all could be wrenched from the wreckage, but they would require extensive processing before they could be fed back into Mawite factories - a much slower injection of fuel into their war machine than they had hoped for. But that could not be helped now. They would take what they could get.
The Brotherhood had begun from hard-won battlefield scrap such as this.
And if it meant the enemy utterly losing one of the galaxy's great shipyards...
... well, it was the kind of trade-off that Tu'teggacha was fully willing to accept.
Many of the scavengers would die, of course. The Ha'Rangir was opening fire with its light turbolasers and flak into the Mawite fleet, and the salvor mercs would have to navigate that crossfire. But their deaths were irrelevant, costing the Brotherhood nothing - they did not have to replace the ships or lives of hired contractors, who were not part of their military in the first place. So let them struggle. Let them die. Let the cleverest among them succeed, bringing back a bounty of Mandalorian scrap, and be well-rewarded with Mawite plunder. It was only opportunity for them from here on out.
