Information, What Kind of Dessert is That?

[Vrag]

They were… too close to certain things, and too far away from others. It almost pained her to defer the glorious butchery that was about to follow the exchange to their fondest associates, but such were the ways of the Galaxy. One could not fight every single battle.

At least not directly.

The Hand had a bit of personal business to attend to, so to speak, but she'd taken to running the smaller things through proxy. It was more efficient that way, not to mention safer overall. The horned beast was a recognizable sight, and she was less than enthusiastic about unveiling her face when it would inevitably be reconciled with her title in the One Sith. There were precautions a woman learned to take throughout years spent in the grimy underworld of many a planet, and the firrerreo had little wish to be left with a knife in her gut in some ditch. Again.

Thus another would do her bidding, a quiet, nigh invisible a thing of ash and bone, with eyes that were more dead than the gates to Chaos itself. The twentieth worm, so branded by his previous masters, would slip into the booth of the diner without so much as a word, lifting his empty stare from the relatively clean table and to the man opposite him.

His stature was rangy, emaciated even, and as he spoke, his voice croaked slightly, as if he hadn't used it for a long time. "[member="Catalys Maijora"]?"

 

[Catalys Maijora]

Catalys often himself to be little more than a glorified postman.

An Exemplar was many things... Commander of fleets and armies, a specialist, an operative... But a middleman? Not something that really fit their whole deal. Yet that was actually something Catalys specialized in, he often peddled information to and from various sources. He managed to set up a meeting with someone within the Sith whom, despite hiding their identity and meeting through proxy, and promised very valuable information that the Primeval could simply not pass up.

Thus the Exemplar found himself here, sitting across from a stranger.

"Yep," the Umbaran leaned back in his chair. Didn't seem like the zealous type.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

The smaller of the two sniffled, his pale face impassive as ever. Even if he'd been sitting across from the Host Lord herself, Worm 20 would've likely been similarly unimpressed. It was one of the reasons Vrag had chosen the young man as her emissary of sorts, though lacking any formal seal or insignia of her office; the soulless creature was a pet project in every meaning of the phrase, and certainly not something that had been sanctioned through official channels… such as they were in the One Sith.

If you had power, you could do almost anything, and that suited Vrag just fine.

Here she was again exercising that ultimate truth, and though the thin boy was a person on his own, in that moment he was little more than the mouthpiece for the words of the Hand of the Dark Lord. A vessel of sorts, if you will.

He blinked up at the tall man on the other side of the table, then slowly reached down to extract a datapad from his plain robes, placing it gingerly upon the well-abused plasteel surface. He took extreme care to avoid the greasy stains left behind by the previous occupants of the booth, and with a simple press of a finger, the screen lit up.

"Here."

Spoken word was overrated, anyway.

 

[Catalys Maijora]

Catalys looked at the data on the screen, his eyes slid from line-to-line.

Based on what he read and saw, it seemed to be some sort of fortress; a base of operations? Yet it seemed oddly cultural.

"Where did you get this?" The Umbaran would've popped a brow if it wasn't for their natural lack of expressions.

The data on the screen was intriguing, and Catalys certainly wanted to know more... He had an idea of what he was looking at, but he couldn't be exactly sure on it. There was also the matter of what the Sith wanted in return for providing this information. The fact they so readily showed him the datapad meant they were likely trying to give him a taste of the meat. Any Exemplar knew to be cautious around these types of arrangements, eagerness meant lots of risks.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Bony shoulders shrugged for a millimeter or two beneath his robes, barely moving the fabric at all.

"From my Lord," he replied quietly, eyes never moving, never blinking. Anyone else in the Exemplar's position would've been more than a little unsettled by the boy's lack of life, but the agent was similarly dead when it came to facial expression. Nature of the business.

"It is yours, [member="Catalys Maijora"]. In return, you will be there when War calls upon you."

A simple arrangement, then. An exchange of favors, like in times of old. A contract bound not in honor or credits, but in blood, which is infinitely more difficult to wash out than any other substance used to bind men and women in vows. Worm 20 had seen a lot of blood, and he knew enough about his Lord to know that the datapad on the table was only a preamble to whole oceans of it.

For she was War, his Lord, and her largesse always came with a cost. Sometimes it was credits, other times a debt. And, sometimes… sometimes, the price was paid with lives. The ultimate currency of their trade, with a value of all and nothing at the same time.

His face was stone even as he placed into a butcher's hands the knowledge to extinguish a thousand souls and more.

 

[Catalys Maijora]

"I don't like bargaining with Sith," he said, pulling the datapad closer to himself. "But I guess exceptions have to be made. My services are yours," Catalys picked up the Data pad and pulled it into his lap.

How many times had he been down this road? The Exemplar's deals had often angered the priest caste among the Primeval who often felt his actions were treasonous. So what if he aided another faction now and then? As long as he gave the Primeval what they needed it mattered little, honestly. Yet idealistic old men often believed otherwise in the pursuit of divinity. For a man of religion, Catalys seemed quite apathetic towards the tomes and texts of their great prophets.

"How do I know this isn't some trap, though?" He had to ask.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

Worm 20 gave less than zero karks about what [member="Catalys Maijora"] liked or didn't like, but his expression never changed for it. It would be a stretch calling it an expression, even; it was more the default state of his facial muscles, and even then they moved only slightly when he spoke, or, occasionally, blinked. At a quick glance, a passerby could easily mistake him for an upright corpse.

"If it were a trap, you'd already be dead," he pointed out dryly and nodded to their surroundings. Any one of the hundred people populating the diner could have been an agent of the One Sith. All of them, even. They had enough resources to replace a whole block with their personnel and not bat an eyelash at the whole situation.

"My Lord has nothing to gain from your death, and everything to gain from theirs." Another nod, this time towards the datapad in the Exemplar's grasp.

"War wishes to know when you will act upon this information."

 

[Catalys Maijora]

Catalys smirked, a reveal of his inner thoughts. "You misunderstand, friend."

The Exemplar stood from his seat, gripping the datapad in one hand and looking down upon the stranger. "I don't act upon anything, but there are others who will." One last time he looked over the datapad, making sure he didn't miss anything. "Get in touch anytime you'd like," he took out a small data chit with is free hand and laid it on the table.

The chit contained contact information which would allow him or his master to get in touch with Catalys anytime they'd need to.

Of course, the moment they do contact him would be the last time that contact info led to him. Such is the way of an agent.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

"Not you, worm. Your Lord."

It was the first and last time any inflection bled into the ashen creature's voice, and his hollow eyes narrowed ever so slightly, as if the agent's response had somehow been a personal affront. As if he was a person enough to get offended.

"I'll have my Lord get in touch with your Lord."

With that, the thin figure rose from his seat again, cracking his neck as if the two minute conversation had already put a stain on his spine. Another contorsion at a werid angle that would make anyone squirm and look twice, and then the gray man was gone, like soot blown away with the wind.

He might as well have never even been there, for all the trace he left. Even the grease of a burger made for a more notable mark.

It would be sad, if anyone cared enough.


[member="Catalys Maijora"]

 

[Catalys Maijora]

Odd.

Catalys nearly chuckled. It would be fortunate for his 'Lord' if he was the obedient agent of her will, but unfortunately this meeting itself was proof that he was not. The Exemplar had been forbidden to bargain on his own after doing it so many times before. It was only because he had provided results that the Umbaran avoided execution.

There were still many in the Primeval who didn't trust him; people who'd rather seem him dead.

He watched the stranger walk away, off to wherever he came from no doubt. Who was his Lord? Whom was so interested in the Primeval that they'd be willing to offer such data in exchange for one Exemplar's service?

That was a good question.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

He would return to her heel like an obedient dog, his teeth and claws hidden by sad, translucent skin and big, empty eyes. Never had looks been so deceiving as when Worm stared down at his latest victim, covered in its gushing arterial blood as he stared, unblinking.

She, in turn, would grant him the attention he so craved; the quality of being seen without needing to make the effort. It was a feature most curious, and that which played the biggest part in their odd relationship.

Time would pass as the Lord would bide her time until an opportune moment arose to set off the chain reaction that would shake her adversary to their very core. It would be a display like no other; a show she wouldn't miss for anything in the world, not if she could help it.

That, and there was another to whom she'd promised a place in this carnival of creation and carnage. A certain blonde who had made all of this possible, or at least the part that would allow them undiscovered passage through most of enemy territory before they even knew what was going on. There was nothing to lose in this bargain, and everything to gain.

Then one day, claw-adorned digits would peel back for the armorwave to tap safely against the interface, and a call would be placed billions of lightyears away to the contact offered to the twentieth worm all those weeks ago.

"[member="Catalys Maijora"]," a statement, not a question.

"Shall we?"

 

[Catalys Maijora]

A young woman sat up, her soft skin hidden away by a single silken sheet. Her skin was covered in strange symbols etched in a black smoke, these symbols zigzagged across her body and met upon her forehead. The woman's emerald eyes drifted to a bloodied individual sitting in a corner opposite the bed, his back pushed up against the wall. "What are you doing?" She asked, a cold shiver went down her spine as she noticed a body in the corner of her eye. Lying opposite the sitting man was a fresh corpse.

"Sorry," Catalys slid up the wall, raising a pistol towards her, "Orders." His finger slowly moved to the trigger when suddenly the ring of his intercom sounded loudly from his hip. The noise made the Umbaran's heart race before he picked it up. "Yeah, what do you want?" His focus left the girl alone for the time being. She slowly stood from her bed, moving over to clothe herself as he spoke, her eye noticing a weapon near the body.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

"Haven't heard that tone in a while. How refreshing," she shot back jovially, swerving in her chair as she crossed her chitin boots on the edge of the table. Her voice was conveniently warped. Business as usual, of course.

She paused to take a long lungful of expensive smoke, exhaling softly to watch the silver plumes twirl through the air.

"Remember that diner with a kid and a datapad?" A rhetorical question, really. He'd be a crap agent if he didn't, and if she had learned anything about the Primeval in their years of collaboration, it was that they employed nobody but the best. Well, second best. Go home team!

"I want you to clean up whoever you're doing in the background and get on that job," she added after her brief distraction dissipated, eyes narrowing at the plans of the facility that the man on the other end of the line was tasked with assaulting. The rustling noise sounded vaguely like sheets, if Vrag knew her poodoo, and she certainly did.

"We both know the pay is way better."

[member="Catalys Maijora"]

 

[Catalys Maijora]

"If I cared about pay, I'd have become a mercenary a long time ago." He noticed the girl going for the dead man's weapon in the corner of his eye.

Damn it.

Why did they always do something stupid? Why couldn't she understand it would've been so much easier if she just cooperated for a moment.

He knew he had no choice, Catalys raised the pistol and fired. A blaster round exited the chamber and penetrated her skull; just like that--in a split second--a lively body became dead, energy quickly left the body and went to who know's where. Probably somewhere special, according to the Host Lord. "What do you need me to do?" He wasn't so certain he was ready to take on any jobs, but he wasn't going to back out on his word.

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Vrag]

She didn't even blink when the shot went off without warning, merely reaching for her tumbler of rich, smoky Brokellian whiskey to wet her supposedly parched lips. The burn was a long, smooth one, and she could taste the vanilla for days to come. Stifling a low moan in her throat, the Hand of the Dark Lord returned her attention to the call a moment later. It was simply professional courtesy, allowing a killer a moment for clean up.

"I take it you've looked over the files. It's simple, really, and if you do it right, we both get something out of this." Another sip.

"Ossus is… well. Rich doesn't quite cut it. It's legendary. It's historical. It's… everything. Knowledge, artifacts, holocrons, the whole shebang."

She angled her chair forward again, facing the screens in her cabin once more. "Well… you can have it. I don't care for that crap, but I know you lot do."

"What I need you to do… is make sure that every single thing on that planet is leveled to the ground by the time you're done. Annihilated. Razed. Glassed."

"A full DBZ, if you will."

"Grab the young 'uns, though. Impressionable minds, and all that."


[member="Catalys Maijora"]

 

[Catalys Maijora]

"I'm quite used to escorting Jedi," after all his primary role was to pursue force users; he specialized in them.

Yet burning something to the ground on Ossus? That was something else. Something difficult, to say the least. It wasn't going to be a stroll in the park. "You have to understand, even with this data we're not getting there without an insider. My guess is you know someone, because no offense... Sith aren't very good at the spy game." It just wasn't in there nature. Every lie a Sith told was in glorification of themselves, to downplay was rather useless. Of course they had underlings--agents to their will--but a location like Ossus would be difficult to crack. Not as impenetrable as Coruscant, let alone Bastion, but still difficult nonetheless.

Whatever this woman on the comm wanted, she was going to have to tell him more if he was to ever stand a chance doing it.

[member="Vrag"]