Look out for what's yours

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

Melihas cried suddenly halted, and a not seen in weeks smile broke out across her small, baby fat face, hands reached out fingers grasping over Henns back toward something only she could sense.

"There we go, there's a good girl, there's Uncle Henns brave girl. Just like her momma."

The hand not supporting the infant rose to rub at eyes stinging from lack of sleep. He very nearly considered handing her over to the FAU-V1 and trying to get just an hour, an hours peaceful rest, but quite frankly he was terrified she'd start wailing again. The silence alone was almost as good as actual rest.

Instead he contented himself to sit in the chair, the only piece of furniture other than the bed within the room, infant on his chest, watched as always, by the photoreceptors of the silent FAU-V1, recording and monitoring the health statuses of both it's 'charges'.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I could feel the small child's presence become at ease, so I continued sending her warming thoughts and connecting with the child. <I am almost there Meliha, everything will be alright.> I projected towards her, hoping for the best. We were closing on her, but she was several thousand kilometers away it felt like. Like she was on a different continent and while we were pressing towards her with all haste, we could have gone faster on a ship. Netra was fast, but he wasn't really built for airspeed. He had been built for combat, which hopefully we would not see today.

The vapor cone behind Netra continued, but he couldn't maintain this speed for hours, and riding him at this speed was uncomfortable, meant only for short bursts. Even at his maximum speed the trip would take several hours, and through that whole trip I intended to keep soothing her. She had been alone for too long, and I didn't want her to feel alone anymore, or ever again. <She was our responsibility>, the voice was harsh and cruel, speaking my frustration at Henn having left me clueless and forcing me to track him down instead of coming to me. Chiasa was my wife, and Meliha was my child as far as I was concerned. They were my responsibility, and he had taken her.

I knew better. I knew he cared for them both, but not like I did. Assuming he didn't cause problems for me here, I didn't expect I would lash out or loose control of myself here. There was far too much at stake for that. I had finally, despite everything I had believed, I had known when it happened, I had finally found a specter of hope. Maybe I could repair my psyche around them once again. Already once before I had been saved from myself by Chiasa and Meliha. I had been lost, with nothing of value when I fell in love with Chiasa, and she had given me a home, a family, her heart. "Any news about his Ship?" I asked over the local comm channel.

"They found a ship that might be it, but its been used quite a bit. It might be his, but I don't think he is using it if he is staying way out here sir." Good, perhaps he didn't have an express ticket off the planet if he got spooked.

The trip was uncomfortable and long, leaving us achy when I had decided we were very close. Close enough that stealth was more preferred than speed. "Alright, go to the four corners of the village, stick out about one kilometer so we can close quickly if we need to. I'll go in alone once you all get in position." The seconds ticked by as I waited for them to slowly move to their designated areas, at the four cardinal directions from the village, just in case he did try to run. Once they quietly clicked confirmation of the encrypted channel i silently urged Netra forward. I knew they were aching and sore from a long ride to this island, but I would not wait. I was sore as well, ready to be done with this journey, with this hunt. The big catlike droid padded quietly into the tropical trees around the village as I sought out my daughter in the Force.

There she was, slightly jovial, only a mere hundred meters away in a shack on this backwater world, in this poor village. She was my princess. She deserved a floating palace that a Hapan princess would be envious of, not this paltry shack. "Circle around the shack, make sure he can't escape if he's planning to."

Once Netra circled around the small shack I could feel her presence inside, along with a droid and Henn's own presence, I found the door, and knocked.

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

"Huhn!?"

Henn jerked away at the knock on the door, having dozed off. Not entirely unexpected. After all, he'd been taking any odd jobs the other inhabitants had for him for awhile now. He grimaced once, at having his too-rare rest interrupted, but a job meant a little longer being able to support Meliha without drawing attention to themselves.

Pulling his shirt straight he set the infant into the modified FAU-V1 where to his relief she continued to smile and laugh, eyes on the door. Maybe she'd been teething? That was a baby thing right? With an internal shrug he went to open the door. He had a small holdout blaster in the small of his back, but it hardly crossed his mind. When he did, [member="Draco Vereen"] would see the Togrutas familiar face, though very little of his usual roguish cheer. He'd lost weight, there were black circles under his eyes, and even his clothes were beginning to look hard used. A closer inspection would reveal healing nicks on his hands, and half healed blisters. Testament to the unfamiliar jobs he'd been turning his hands to.

When his own eyes fell not on an islander but the hardened visage of Draco, he started in surprise, eyes widening. That was one way to go from half asleep to wide awake.

"Where the feth have you been?"

Though a crooked smile tugged up one side of the Togrutas mouth, it was hardly more than an echo of his usual irreverent sass. He hadn't really been expecting to see Draco turn up on his doorstep, but he wasn't as opposed to it as he might have been a week ago. He was tired and trying to do something he was quite frankly not suited for with resources he didn't have.

Stepping back, he moved to allow the burlier man into the shack.

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I didn't say a word to the Togruta, I simply let him get out of my way and made straight for Meliha, picking her up for her droid crib smiling broadly. "I missed you Meliha." I said to her, my voice a bit higher than it had been. Henn's casual greeting had kind of assured me, but more so I was now delving into his mind, seeing his thoughts, his intentions. "Thank you for taking care of her. Her being okay is the only reason you aren't a drooling puddle on the floor." I said, just as cheery as I had been when I had spoken to Meliha. "Netra, come on in, its clear." A few seconds later, the large beskar droid cat, growled and made its way from the back side of the hut to the door, which turned out to be too small for him which for a moment stalled him in the door frame. His claws extended and he seemed ready to tear his way into the hut when I shot him an annoyed look that made him become uninterested in what was going on.

It was only a minute or so of me holding her against my chest, soft and gentle, careful with her, but it felt like an eternity had passed before I looked back to the Togruta. "I would say pack your things but it looks like you don't have anything here. I have a ship coming for us, and I figure I owe you that much. Thank you for looking after her. You are welcome to come with me to where I am going." I nodded to the Togruta as the sound of speeder bikes was heard outside. Seconds later four commandos stood by just outside. "Building secure sir. The ship is in bound and the shuttles are moving to pick up the rest of the boys. We should be all clear of the planet in an hour."

"Have the Shuttles make their way back to Mandalore and Concordia, we are going elsewhere for a few days."

[member="Chiasa Kritivaas"]

 

[Chiasa Kritivaas]

What Henn really wished for right that moment was a smoke. Or a deathstick. A deathstick would be even better. Ooh, spice.

Now that he wasn't responsible for some tiny little beings life anyway. Not that the FAU-V1 couldn't have seen to her physical well-being if he'd checked out for a little while now and again, and it had while he was going through the worst of the detoxing, but something about that just felt off. A droid might technically be able to care for an infant, but that was probably how you wound up with Sith, and the Galaxy had enough of those already.

His only real response to Dracos quasi threat was a roll of his tired eyes. He was a hardened criminal after all, it wasn't like he hadn't heard these sorts of things before and from people who meant it much more. Sure things had been pretty easy under Chiasa, as criminal lives went, but he remembered when he'd lived each day much closer to death.

"Appreciate that Boss, ain't really got a ship or credits left."

Came the dry reply. He didn't know what was next, but quite frankly as long as someone let him get a few hours sleep, he didn't much care.

"Yo Rustbucket, let's go."

"My chassis is still fully operational."

"Yeah good job. What did I say about speaking."

"..."

"Theeeeere you go."

[member="Draco Vereen"]

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I finally had Meliha back in my arms, safe again. It was like a hole had been torn from my heart and it was patched again. The hole was there, but it was smaller now, and there was hope for the future and getting her mother, my beloved wife back. There was some work to be done to ensure my family's safety in this galaxy full of terrors and those that would wish us dead, but I could see to those in due time. Until then I had no intention of letting Meliha out of my sight. There was a good few weeks that she and I had been totally separated, and even the few times I had visited Chiasa not every time involved the infant.

"Come one Meliha, do you wanna see daddy's ship?" I asked her, looking into her gleaming brown eyes, finally happy, finally safe and she could feel the change.

A commando stepped into the hut, "Sir, ship is landing outside, we are ready for you." He said glancing at the togruta and the twi'lek child in my arms. Many of the Dragons had been positive I was going to kill Henn when we found him, but my mood had lightened imeasurably just having the child in my custody again, and Henn had done well in taking care of her.

"Alright, let's go home." I said the babe laughing for the first time in a long time playing with my gauntleted fingers as the soldiers, Netra, the droid, Henn, and I all walked aboard the corvette leaving the world of Da Soocha behind.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The short trip from Da Soocha to Iego wasn't very bad, no bumps or hazards and the FAU-V1 droid remained in my suite aboard the corvette as we made our way to the shipyards ArmaTech had on Iego. The Station was being built in sections and smuggled to an undisclosed location in pieces to be completed elsewhere, and it was hardly halfway finished when we arrived. I walked up behind the elderly duros standing looking out the panoramic view of the corporate city ArmaTech managed on the world's surface. Meliha was looking around, mainly back behind me at the soldiers standing guard at the doors to the large office on the atmospheric station. "I figured I would find you here Benji." I said calmly, keeping Meliha in my line of sight.

The old creature turned his head in acknowledgement. "I am old Draco. That is why I left ArmaTech once it had grown too large for me to handle on my own. I can handle these one off jobs on occasion, but this last mission was rough on all of us." He pointed out at a piece of superstructure being loaded onto a cargo ship. "Even this one is pretty rough with all the security and secrecy revolving around it. At my age you just don't have a lot let in you, and you don't want to waste what you have left." He sighed heavily and smiled at Meliha.

"This is probably the last time I will ask you for help old friend. You and your old lady are more than welcome on the station once it gets completed. I could use you there, to look after this little one." It was a hollow offer. For years Benji had just wanted the occasional harmless job to keep himself busy, and for a short time I had given him that, but after a few months driving ArmaTech forward, it had been too hard on him.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Stealth systems were fairly common, and there were a dozen different types of them out there. Friends from Arakyd Industries could see to supplying the station with Nightshadow coating in order to block the fairly small station from sensors and scanners, but it would be helpful in conjunction with some other systems added on for good measure. "What do you think. Nightshadow and an Optical shield to block the station from sensors. The two don't even have to be active simultaneously if we stick the thing in the right system and have some proper surveillance in the system." I said to the elderly duros as the sun rose over the horizon. The small orange child slept soundly in her crib, her life sign monitors synchronized to my HUD and Wrist Panel now so that I could keep track of her vitals.

The duros nodded. "I have experience with enough of them. In think tanks Stealth Operations always come up, even if you are talking about something completely irrelevant. I have worked with enough to know that if you are going to be using redundant systems like Nightshadow, Gravitic Modulators, and anything else, hibridium works just as well as stygium. We can work the two things together, but we don't have a hole lot of experienced hands you trust to do so, so expect a few delays in the process. I will work on it in my spare time while we get the station itself good to go with Nightshadow, and the other specialty sensor negators up and running in the thing. Luckily this thing isn't expected to hold a bunch of people or weapons or you would be right screwed." He muttered the last part under his breath but I caught it.

"As long as it works and I can trust the thing with my family, I don't mind how you do it, Benji. Its been twenty four hours since I got back to Iego and so far I have been able to keep my presence her relatively secret and the workings of the station quiet. I am playing it off as a prototype prior to production to keep the noise down, but someone is bound to track it to Saqqar if we don't get it built soon. Arakyd has given us permission to use Nightshadow, use it for now, we will add the other systems as we are able when we can. Every moment we waste is closer to this being found out, and further from me being able to go get Chiasa from her captors. The trail is cold and it is not easy to pick up." I was loosing my patience, not because he was doing anything wrong or unnecessary, but because I missed Chiasa more than the flower misses the morning sun. She was my Starbird and I had been running on embers for too long. I needed her back, I needed her fire once more.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Work is often slow and begrudging. Rarely does one find themselves working at a menial task and take joy or pride in it, regardless as to how much money was to be made, or how much notoriety the completed project might get. That was what manual labor was. Boring and slow. Long dragging hours spent welding pieces of metal together into large armored sheets across the structure of one of the arms that would be apart of the Station once it was completed. Looking out from the view port one could see the workers slowly building the station above Iego and preparing the pieces of it to be discretely shipped to Saqqar for assembly. "What is the status of the stealth systems?" I asked the foreman as he walked into my office. In the corner baby Meliha sat, pinned in, playing with a few toys that I had had sent here while we waited for our home to be completed.

"Mister Idiro is working on the secondary stealth systems and the Cloaking system itself. His progress seems to be going well but he won't be able to calibrate and test some of the systems until the station is complete. Something about magnetic relevance or relativity. I don't know, I am not a scientist. All he said that I could make out was that the system was functional but its limitations and capabilities couldn't be properly documented without it being installed on the completed project." The man said, placing a datapad on my desk and nodding before taking his leave. The FAU-V1 droid sat closer to the door, observing Meliha as I stood up. It was always better to go interupt Benji than expect him to drop what he was doing and come tell me his progress. Besides, I could use getting out of this stuffy office anyway, and I know Meliha simply enjoyed being on the station.

The short walk from office to workshop with the small orange babe squirming around, looking at everything she could and reaching for everything she could see, but she was otherwise jovial and happy. As I walked into the workshop, which was quite a bit smaller than the ones on Jabiim or Mandalore, Benji looked up, glancing at me and the child. "Good afternoon, can you give me the rundown bud?" I asked looking over the cobbled together systems around the shop.

He stood up, popping his back and neck before smiling. "Well, I designed something that will counter at least some ways of detecting magnetic signatures, but it won't be fool proof and it won't be the end all be all, but it could work. It basically emits magnetic waves opposite those of the station in an attempt to counter them. It, ah, should make locking on to the magnetic signature very difficult, basically impossible at long ranges, but, if the station is moving, it will decrease the system's effectiveness." He picked up a datapad and took a moment. "Next we have fairly basic Crystal Grav-Trap countermeasures in the form of Gravitic modulators to hide it from all forms of mass detectors. Thrust trace dampeners to cover the acceleration for when it moves, and Anti-Ion Emission tracers to make tracking it through hyperspace basically impossible. Basically stick somewhere no one will think to look, then if someone happens across it, you can move it quietly and without being followed to somewhere else." He said, sighing.

"Good. I will check on making sure Nightshadow is properly delivered to Hypori to be moved to Saqqar and then the only thing left is working out the cloaking field. What do you need for that?" I asked quietly taking a tool away from Meliha and putting it just out of her reach on the work bench.

"Hibridium would be good. Stygium would be better, but both of them work on the same principal and the difference isn't exactly enormous. You really just want a system to cloak the station if someone accidentally visits you where ever it is you are planning on running off to." The old duros said quietly, turning his attention back to what he was working on. "I will keep working and fine tuning this signature reduction system until you can get me all the components you need for a cloaking device."

 

[Laira Darkhold]

It had been two days since the team sent to gather Hibridium had left Iego for Garos. Being in friendly territory it wasn't a dangerous mission, just a time consuming one. The team was expected to gather a significant amount of the substance in order to produce a large enough cloaking device for the station. Captain Arems, the commander of the mission on the bridge of the little Corvette they were expected to load up and transport the Hibridium as well as protect the mining droids while they worked. The ship landed on the coast of the world with a hiss as landing pads took the weight of the ship, sinking slightly into the packed sand of the coastal region. "Alright boys, lets go get to work. Have the droids unloaded as soon as the area is cleared. Team one, south, team two, north, team three, east, team four, sentry duty. Secure the area, prep for operations to begin." He said, the soldiers moving with military precision. The Eight Darksteel Dragons accompanying the Security Group nodded silently, only here to protect the CEO's interests in the mission, nothing more.

Why they had been sent alone without proper workers or set up, Captain Arems couldn't say, but he was certain it had to do with how quickly and how closed lipped the people in charge had been when they made the order for Hibridium. Not that it mattered. It was overtime pay, and it wasn't like they weren't well taken care of to begin with, plus the soldiers were geared up and ready for combat if need be. They didn't have a reputation in the military industrial complex as a paramilitary force, which was kind of the point of having them. Most people would assume ArmaTech employed mercenaries or standard security personnel rather than a fully trained paramilitary to protect its assets. Comms buzzed with squad to squad activity as the teams moved out and locked down different areas. "All clear." came across the command channel in a number of different voices before he responded. "Alright, half guard at five hundred meters. Lets get to work." The soldiers started regrouping and moving closer to the ship as they hurried to follow his orders.

Within a few minutes the soldiers were rapidly unloading the mining droids and crates for the materials from the ship and were prepping the mining site as quickly as they could. It paid to be done swiftly with this project. The boss was on Iego waiting for this to be done and that meant he wanted this stuff now. "Alright, kids, get those mining droids up and moving." He called over the comms, watching the soldiers swiftly get the five droids moving. "All green, and operational sir, beginning mining now." The droids fairly basic operating systems were set to locate Hibridium and extract it from the earth taking the most direct path to do so. With five of the droids working, and the haul meant only for a single relatively small space station, it wouldn't take very long to complete this stage of the mission. The most important thing was keeping it under wraps what they were doing here. At least part of the reason Garos was chosen was because Maramere would have been easier to go to, and hopefully the switch would throw anyone wishing to know about the project for a loop. Once the system was completed it wouldn't matter much who was interested.

Minutes became Hours, and the sun rose to shine down on the soldiers and their project as things began to finish up on Garos after eighteen hours of mining, working, and alternating shifts. Captain Arems looked around, dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep over the past day. It had been an arduous day, but the day was almost over. Soldiers dragged around, tired and ready to call it quits, but they were still doing their job, just like they had been trained to do. The eight black armored soldiers accompanying the unit stood around, unwavering around the crates their master had sent them to protect. A soldier walked up to the captain. "Sir, looks like we have the requested amount. I assume they adjusted for some waste material?" he asked, his exhaustion obvious. "Yeah, last I had heard they were adamant that they needed all the crates full, and well, its not like we were given extras to fill up. I would hope the big wigs are smart enough to make sure we can haul more than they need. Get it loaded up and lets get back to base so we can sleep." He snapped his fingers and whistled over the comms, gesturing for the soldiers to load up and get off world. Silently the black armored warriors nodded and ascended the ramp with the Hibridium, staying in the back nearest the cargo bay as the ship prepared to leave Garos behind.