Jagged Mirror (ORC Dominion of Alakaha)

[Janick Beauchamp]

[Mirror-Janick­]

"If Darth Sanya ordered those massacres, then what was your role in those massacres?" mirror-Janick asked.

"Massacres? I was there on Kaeshana and on Skor"

"Why weren't you on Asmeru, Barkhesh, Hoth or Bespin?"

"After Kaeshana, Darth Sanya assigned me to garrison duty on Zarnathea, and after Skor I had 1/10 of my crew executed; I couldn't effectively fight on Hoth or Bespin with my crew diminished by that many"

"Nice try, Mustafarian Sith lord!"

The Mustafarian Sith lord proved most uncooperative when asked to provide more details. Mirror-Janick was just one of those Jedi doing her job with captured Zero Sith personnel. Nevertheless, something wasn't right: why would Darth Sanya punish someone committing atrocities when their MO revolves around the committment of atrocities? From what she knew about how the Zero Sith operated, relegating a Sith Lord to garrison duty in wartime is regarded as a punishment. And decimation is for unit-wide insubordination. What sort of things would the Mustafarian Sith Lord disobey back on Skor? Meanwhile, in the orbit outside, Darth Sanya's ships still remaining, were engaged by the Pimbrellan League and the Uukaablians, tearing her escorts to shreds and, in effect, the rest of the Zero Sith's fleet. Mirror-Janick was scrambling to get other ways to extract the information on his involvement in those massacres on Kaeshana and Skor, especially given her impressions of the Mustafarian lying.

[Real-Janick]

"Darth Sanya wanted to perform a ritual and create a dark side nexus on Kaeshana, to be exploited as an amusement park" the mirror-Charon answered.

"What benefits are there for the... Zero Sith to do such a thing? Your fallen comrades once claimed that the Zero Sith weren't monsters because, while they killed many people, they didn't consider all life to be an abomination"

"The Zero Sith wants to show that they aren't purely monsters"

The last attempts to commercially exploit a dark side nexus didn't end well; the most recent attempt on Jiroch-Reslia ended in a scandal that embroiled the governor of the planet and the two most senior commissioners, together called the Assemblage of Three in Tunroth circles. It was precisely that sort of thing Star Tours got flak for; that sort of stuff that just made the First Order cringe. Then again, stranded in realspace, the Charon present began to wonder how they are going to go back to Otherspace or how to get the stuff to the Zero Sith now that their fleet was going to be torn to shreds in space.

 

[Xin Boa]

Someone had spotted him. The whine of speeder was drowned in the noise of the wall he had his back to being torn apart by blaster bolts. At first he was standing and chunks of molten duracrete rained over him, burning his head tails. He ducked down, then sat down as the laser cannon on the bike obliterated his shelter.

Couldn't run. If he stepped to either side he had to much open ground to cover and would be cut down. Xin laid on his back as red bolts lanced perilously close to him. The wall was little more than a frame of metal bars holding loose chunks of duracrete.

The laser fire stopped. The whine of the engine grew. Xin took his blaster in both hand and let his index finger rest in the trigger. This should would have to be perfect. Xin took a deep breath of dust-filled air.

His hands came up before the speeder appeared. He fired. He missed. Xin swore and pushed himself up to his knees. Powdered duracrete fell from his shoulders. The biker banked hard having though the nautolan cut down. Xin fired three more times. One bolt clipped the fuel tank and that was the end of it. The ball of flame smashed through the wall of an abandoned house. The rider didn't even cry out.

Xin holstered his blaster and tried to get some of the debris off his clothing as he walked to where he'd seen the airspeeder come to a halt.

 

[Mia Monroe]

Mia didn't respond to the garbled greeting, bolstering her bolters and holing her scattergun off her back to reload, her eyes were on the 'clone' of herself. The mirror image of Mia had slunk back at seeing herself, half concealed in shadow. The barrel snapped up as Jorus mention his 'otherself'. "Yeah, I met him."

Somewhere to Jorus' left, her own voice squeaked out a terrified cry of "No!"

CRACKBOOM

Verse-Mia's pleading cry was cut brutally short. Mia blinked, resting the barel of the scattergun on her shoulder like it was nothing and looked at the Jedi. "You alright?"

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Leo Vandermolen]

Leo found him in the burnt out husk of what used to be the town's cantina, because that would be exactly where Leo would've been in a situation like this. He sauntered forward and took one of the remaining seats next to himself pouring himself a whiskey as the pair sat in silence. Minutes passed, minutes that felt like hours until he decided to break the silence, "Rum?" Leo questioned his alternate self, noticing his choice of drink.

"Rum." The scraggly man confirmed as he sipped his drink, "Funny, I never picked us a a whiskey type of man."

"Really?" Leo's surprise was genuine, to both the comment and this man's choice of liquor. "Hmm..." He shrugged, returning to his own drink.

The silence resumed as the two men finished their drink, a mutual respect of each other before what would come next. "We may as well get this over with now, our drinks are empty and there's only one way either of us are leaving this building, alone." The strange, yet so very familiar Leo admitted.

"Agreed." In that exact moment, a silent agreement was made, weapons were drawn. Two identical Westar-34's gleamed in the ashes of the building, a matching set, as the two men dived from their stools behind the charcoaled pieces of furniture that lay scattered throughout the room. Gunfire lit up the night.

| [member="Mia Monroe"] | [member="Xin Boa"] | [member="Janick Beauchamp"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"] | [member="Joza Perl"] |

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

[Mirror-Janick]

The Zero Sith was defeated on Skor, but it was all too obvious that the Mustafarian was lying about the Mustafar campaign, which was also fought on the Asmeru, Barkhesh and Rutan theaters, and the Anoat campaign; even if his fleet had to operate with 1/10 short of a full crew complement, he could still have been able to fight, Sure his ability to carry out damage control or repelling boarders would have been compromised somewhat, but the core functions of the ships would still be effective. Mirror-Janick fought on Mustafar, but at the time she was on garrison duty inside Vader's Castle. But she wasn't in on the orbital action at all. Yet, given what she knew about the Mustafarian Sith lord, it was more than likely that said Lord was in the Mustafar theater, one way or another, so she decided to point in another direction. Were there more to the relationship between Darth Sanya, who clearly was outranking him in the Sith pecking order, than simply a relationship regarding the commitment of atrocities?

"It appears that, rather than to be garrisoned on Zarnathea, you were taking the point on Mustafar proper during the Mustafar campaign. What do you have to say about this?"

"Darth Sanya promised that I would govern Mustafar if I took the lead of the Mustafar theater in the Mustafar campaign"

[Real-Janick]

"Then how would the Zero Sith go about exploiting an amusement park near Santaissa, with a dark side nexus?"

"Guaranteed thrills or money back" the Charon curtly answered.

Charon logic was just different: no use to reason with those monsters. Yet the only locations suitable for building a dark-side nexus with an amusement park on Kaeshana were close or in Santaissa. It was obvious that the thrills the 0S would guarantee were key for the viability of the nexus, much as the last case study about Jiroch-Reslia detailed exactly what Star Tours' business plan was going into the project, into the scandal. The business plan assumed that a fraction would get the money back; she knew as much. The Tunroth may be a little clueless about the financial aspect of governance, but the Zero Sith didn't have much of a track record in governance either. Did the Zero Sith actually use high-pressure tactics for state-owned businesses? This whole business of commercially exploiting a dark-sided nexus is worth exploring at a later date, she thought, before the annoyed Charon starts to get more aggressive with her.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Mia Monroe"]

"Holy feth." Jorus spat over the edge of the truck in surprise. Whoever and whatever Mia's double had been, clearly the real Mia had considered the summary execution necessary. He glanced back at his own double, also dead by Mia's hand. A reminder, if he needed it, that she'd been responsible for even more deaths than him.

He shoved the remains of.his double out of the speeder and slouched into the empty seat. A simple comm unit presented itself.

"Thissis Merrill," he slurred. "Bad guys broke and ran from my location. Any Coalition folks or Judges, this is a safe spot to set down. Drop by and...yeah." He blinked rapidly; it didn't help with the fog. "Consider things wrapped up here. Any friendlies, check in, yeah. Yeah."

 

[Mia Monroe]

Mia rolled her eyes at Jorus's reaction. "The last time a double of me was left to walk around, she put a bullet in the back of my brothers head. Excuse me for not taking any chances." She moved to the edge of the speeder truck and sat down, her legs hanging over the sand swinging slightly. The body behind her forgotten already as she checked over her weapons and ammunition.

"Have many mandalorians have taken refuge in this Coaliton?" She asked looking up. If any of these 'judges' were mandalorian, she may have more of a problem than a double to worry about.

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Mia Monroe"]

Jorus' mouth twisted, but he nodded.

"Not many. There's the Rekalis, what's left of'em outside the Roil, and they've kept a low profile. Lok Munin ran off to play empire or some such. Been ages since I've seen a Mando around here. You'd be the only one, far as I know, if that's the path you're still on."

The speeder truck shivered and pivoted, giving Jorus a clear view of everything around: the dunes, the bodies, the columns of smoke.

"They had Charon here. That's a level of not good that we don't run into often. You fought Charon before? Know what might have brought them?"

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

[Real-Janick]

While the mirror Governor-General of Mustafar was being locked up in a cell as a prisoner of war, with special handcuffs that would paralyze him if he tried using the Force, down on the surface, the Charon down on the surface began to attempt a charge towards her, to which she could only respond via Force-lightning aimed at its shoulder joint, due to the anger she feels by being interrupted in the interrogation of that particular Charon. Might have stunned him for a while, until the Otherspace-dweller, through his various attempts to punch her, forced her to draw the lightsaber, which has, hopefully cooled down somewhat. As she ignited the lightsaber, she was able to slice several limbs off the surprised Charon while it was flying to her hand, and started using telekinesis to move it around, so as to cause additional problems to the Charon.

 

[Mia Monroe]

"It is, not that they would agree with me on that point, but since when have mandalorians ever been able to agree what is the correct path?" that, and she'd convinced Ijaat to drop a bomb on Manda'yaim's core, but she wasn't entirely sure if Jorus knew that, or even if she wanted him to know that. Friends were few and far between, and she'd like to think she could call Jorus one yet somehow she figured the fact that she'd been partially responsible for the death of millions might tarnish that friendship somewhat.

Then again, she could be wrong.

"I've not, but I'm familiar with them. Think life on the whole is an abomination and needs to be erdicated, what more of reason would they need to crawl out of otherspace than that?"

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Leo Vandermolen]

A lone body emerged from the collapsing shell of the cantina, making its way back towards the safe zone established by ORC forces on the planet. The majority of the soldiers would recognise their commander on sight, and they would also notice the blaster wounds in his side as he staggered towards them, a grim look, plastered across his usually optimistic face. Leo made his way towards the other leaders and notables, giving a curt nod to his friend Jorus as he approached. "The village is clear, no more hostiles left lurking around trying to hide. My guys also safely evacuated what civilians they could to a safe distance away from the village while it was secured and the fires put out." They'd done good work that day, sacrifices had been made. Leo hoisted himself onto the truck bed with the others and plunked himself down, about ready to pass out. Tomorrow was another day...

Meanwhile.

He opened his eyes, breathing heavily through the leftover fumes of the charred building as he craned his head, noticing the distinct blaster mark on the wall he slumped against, inched from his head. He'd been spared... by himself. This mutual respect would not be forgotten, and he would find a way to pay back the mercy that had been shown to him, and maybe earn some extra credits along the way... But now was the time for escape, getting off this godforsaken planet and finding his way to the nearest working cantina.

| [member="Mia Monroe"] | [member="Janick Beauchamp"] | [member="Jorus Merrill"] |