Mighty

[Jairus Starvald]

"We don’t need her."
"This again?"
"It is the truth."

Cerita shrugged, while keeping an eye on the building. The girl she was supposed to meet had wandered into the bar a few minutes ago. But the thing with paranoia was that you liked to know every card that is and could be put into play at a moment’s notice. So Scarra and her had decided to stick around for a little while longer.

See if there wasn’t an ambush being planned or something else. Yeah, it was paranoia, but as long as it kept her alive… well, Cerita didn’t care all that much what people might think.

"We can keep this in-house and you won’t have to share that big a percentage with someone we haven’t ever met!"

The woman nodded. "This is true, but at the same time… sharing such a prize with her will bind her to me. Even if she doesn’t realize that yet."

Scarra snorted. "Another one of your Sith teachings?"

"The common law of dependency, my old friend. Some people can handle a sudden windfall of billions of credits… others not so much."

"And what if she disappears and you never hear of her again?"

That wasn’t an unreasonable question, of course. Neither was his indignation about using this new girl. But Cerita liked to keep tabs on what Rave’s old students were doing - maybe through it she would feel closer to her old Master or maybe she was just bored - but the point was that Verd had taught this one a few things here and there.

Some alchemy among other things.

"Then my hypothesis was clearly flawed and this experiment will have unearthed said flaw. A win-win situation, if you ask me."

The uplifted Tuk’ata rolled his eyes and then shrugged.

"I can see you have decided already."
"Quite. Now, I am going to go inside and have a drink with the nice lady. Why don’t you hold the fort in the meanwhile, yes?"

Cerita did not wait for him to complain again. Instead she marched off and entered the rinky dink bar. The sounds and scents of the cantina hit her immediately, but she was used to it by now. Quickly locating Runi somewhere farther into the corner of the room - with already a drink on her side of the table - she wove her way through the crowd and finally settled down on the other side of the table.

"Miss Verin. Nice to meet you."

[member="Runi Verin"]

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

A frequenter of dives such as this, Runi Verin was quite at home in the small booth she had commandeered in the far back of the establishment, carving out her own private slice of the cantina in which to toast her victories and lick her wounds. An empty bottle of tihaar languished at the edge of the table, its last remnants in the smeary tumbler that the woman was currently utilising as a makeshift cold press against the purple bruise that stretched across the right side of her cheek.

A souvenir from her most recent salvaging run; one that was increasingly familiar in recent months. With the continuous rise of empires and encroaching territory lines, competition was getting fierce in the small pockets of independent space that were caught in the middle of it all. It seemed like every other run now brought her up against some form of opposition. She wouldn’t have minded, but the profit margins were still the same. Even slimmer now, what with debts the Boracyk accrued hanging over her head. Like the rest of his species, Dasooga Besadii Tan was as greedy as they came, and with her marker held firmly in those greasy, worm like fingers, Runi would be lucky if she broke even after this recent escapade.

An unexpected voice snapped her back to the present, spoiling the quite reverie and lament of her current financial status that had settled in somewhere between the third or fourth drink. She hadn’t heard them approach; no mean feat given that this corner of the cantina was almost completely empty. It was one of, if not the only, reasons she frequented this place. This was a private and age old ritual that had existed since she was old enough to drink. It was also an almost exclusively private affair. A detail that was reflected in the way she eyed the intruder up, viewing them as something akin to what the vornskr dragged in.

“I know you, cheeka?” She shifted slightly, placing the tumbler down on the weathered table. As watered down as the tihaar was, it was enough to mollify her normal reaction into something a touch more civil. “That was one of those, whatchamacallit, rhetoric questions. Pretty sure I’d remember a face like yours. So that either means one of three things: you think I owe you money, you’re looking to hire me or are here to settle a score.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

She suppressed the urge to either raise an eyebrow at the bruise on the girl’s face or smirk at her audacity. Most girls her age were meek little things. Broken and left behind by a Galaxy that did not care about either innocence and naivety, but it seemed that this girl had not been broken.

Yet.

"Option number two." Though Cerita cataloged the fact that Runi automatically had to assume she was owing people money.

She would have to look into her debt history.

Perhaps there was leverage to gain from there.

"I am in need of an experienced scavenger and pilot for an… excavation of sorts."

Money was a commodity accepted throughout the Galaxy.

It meant little to Cerita personally. A consequence of having Rave and Dissero take care of her for most of her youth. At least in the financial sense, because she had to repay the favor in a lot of other ways. But she understood the necessity of it.

Without credits everything was just so much harder.

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

Option two, huh? She lofted a brow at that, her gaze turning a trace more appraising as she attempted to get a read on the green woman before her. Given her limited and woeful financials, the prospect of money had earned her a seat at the table, not that she had asked for one in the first place.

“So? Pick up a stone, you could hit twenty just from here.” Runi gestured to the ragtag looking crowd at the other end of the bar, knowing more than a few either by face or reputation. Some she had faced off against just a few weeks ago; water under the proverbial bridge while in the neutral grounds of the cantina. She cocked her head to the side, toying with the tumbler. “But you don’t want just anyone, ‘lek? You called me by name, which means you came for me specific. Which is funny since, as I said, I’d remember your face and I’m pretty karking sure we don’t run in the same social circles.”

Seat at the table or not, in Runi’s experience, credits could only be trusted when they were in your palm. She had been reeled into a sticky situation more than once by not properly vetting a client. Situations, as the constant pang in her elbow sought to remind her, she still bore the scars from to this day. Besides which, if holofilms had taught her anything, attractive women approaching you in bars in the middle of nowhere hardly panned out well for the protagonist.

“So, just in case you were wondering, my next question might be three fold, but it ain’t rhetorical. Who the kark are you, why should I care, and who sent you my way?”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

She got quite the mouth on her.

It was not a wonder that someone had bruised her up like that. Once again Cerita had to remind herself that these people weren’t like her and hers. They had no diplomacy and their entire existence was founded on the foundation of being contrary.

But, Runi had spirit and most importantly she seemed to be just as paranoid as she was, if not more.

This endeared her to the green-skinned lady, if only a bit.

It was probably also one of the few reasons why Cerita didn’t just use either her pheromones or modified the air molecules around her face into something less… airy.

"My name is Cerita Sarova." From Ovmar she had learned that having multiple identities made things easier, but from Rave she had learned that hiding yourself behind all those identities made you forget about yourself and was certainly less entertaining.

"You care because I have money and I am generous with it."

Sarova looked pointedly at the bruises.

"And it seems to me you can use a windfall... or two."

Who send you my way?

Now, explaining to her about the whole Verd-Merrill-Sarova connection would probably be a waste of time. But she had been keeping tabs on her and Rave’s brother still ran the Underground as far as she knew.

"I have some contacts in the Underground. They pointed me your way."

Sometimes a lie was prettier than the truth and Cerita was a real good liar.

 

[Runi Verin]

Cerita Sarova.

The woman might as well have been speaking Catherese, because those two words meant absolutely nothing to Runi Verin. And that was assuming they were indeed genuine. Having turned her hand at the smuggling trade when it suited her, Runi knew just how easy it was to adopt and abandon a false name at a whim. Lacking any alternative, or evidence to the contrary, she supposed the name could serve its purpose for now, however.

The Underground. They hadn’t struck her as the chatty types, but it was possible that one of them passed her name along. She could definitely think of two likely candidates that would have fit the bill. Not that she was about to voice them aloud. No point in giving [member="Cerita Sarova"] the answers to her questions. Not when it would make trapping her in her lie, assuming it was one, a whole lot easier.

“Okay, so let’s assume for a moment we’ve settled that.” Her lips curled into a rough approximation of a smile, ignoring the sting the expression elicited from her abused cheek. There was little warmth behind it and only a fool would view it as friendly. If anything it looked completely out of place on her features; as if the simple act of a genuine smile was a foreign concept.

“They say talk is cheap, but it ain’t that cheap. Tell me about this job you’ve got. If you’re as generous with those credits as you want me to believe, maybe it might just be worth my time. If not, well..” She nodded towards the far end of the bar as she spoke, bringing her tihaar up to her lips once more. “I don’t need to show you were the door is, ‘lek?”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Few people would know who Cerita Sarova was.

Not because she tried to keep a low-profile, though she did. It was simply because of the nature of her work and who she was working with. Men like Dissero and Valik, they implemented her with their paranoia, but also with their love for alchemy and science.

You don’t often see figures like that on the frontpage of Billionaire Weekly or leading at the frontlines for this war or that.

They were more subtle than that.

Usually.

"The Nova Vaults of Kakitai bel Toyouin, you have heard of them, yes?" Of course she had. Any scavenger worth their salt had heard of the Nova Vaults buried deep beneath the surface of Tartaglia.

Or so the legends said, of course.

Few people these days truly believed they existed. What with the thousands of fortune finders and treasure hunters digging holes across the world and leaving it a barren surface of random empty spaces.

But Cerita wasn’t a simple treasure hunter. There were ways to find out for real if there was something there.

Some Alchemy here, some science there and they would not even need to dig a million holes all across Tartaglia.

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

The glass stilled for a moment, hesitating a hairsbreadth away from its intended destination for a several stolen heartbeats as Runi tried to process what she’d just heard. The Nova Vaults. In her youth, a time not too far removed from the here and now, she had once tried her hand at tracking them down. Most folks in this region had at one point or another. Like them, she had come home empty handed. No, the vaults were likely as fictional as they were legendary. Nothing more than fanciful tall tales to pass the time between drinks in cantinas like this one.

Yet Cerita sounded a little too certain of their existence, the green skinned woman speaking in a tone of voice that held the special brand of confidence that would have brought a cold sweat at a sabacc table. That meant she either she thought she was on to something or was just plain crazy. Not that the two were mutually exclusive in Runi’s experience. She snorted softly as she took a swig of her tihaar, savouring the faintly pleasant burn that came with such an action before swallowing.

“I might have heard of them,” she agreed after a moment or two, setting the now empty glass back down, sliding it across the table to rejoin the equally depleted bottle. “Enough that I know they’re a myth. People have been tearing Tartaglia apart for millennia and haven’t even caught a whiff of them. Nothing there but dust and whispers. Neither of them profitable enough to get my shebs off this chair, even for a pretty face.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

It’s true.

For a lot of people it would be a wild goose-chase.

Where would you start? How would you locate the vaults in an entire planet’s worth of hay? Especially after so many have tried digging holes for centuries and never found anything. Part of Cerita was surprised Larraq hadn’t tried to simply crack the planet in half and snatch the vaults that way.

But then again.

Nobody knew what the vaults were made up of. Could be beskar or phrik and that would mean the contents would be relatively safe regardless of exterior conditions, but if it was durasteel plating? Well, everyone could say bye-bye to their treasure planet then.

"Then it’s a good thing I will be paying you regardless of what we find there."

Sarova replied, while ignoring the last comment. She wasn’t here for that, well, she wasn’t ever there for that.

"Consider it a paid holiday."

It wasn’t that simple, of course. What Cerita needed was someone who knew her kind, the smugglers and mercs, the vile and scummy. Because regardless of what the woman was capable of… she realized that she didn’t know all that much about how to handle the vagrants and criminals of this Galaxy.

And she suspected they would encounter both plenty.

 

[Runi Verin]

“Kinda of the opion that my idea of a paid holiday and yours differ a little, cheeka. But fair enough. You’ll pay me a flat rate,” Runi agreed amiably enough, only to tag on her own amendment on a second later. “Plus a percentage of whatever is recovered. Standard salvaging deal.”

She didn’t actually expect anything to come of it if she was honest. Even assuming the vaults were real, and assuming the treasure was as worthwhile as the legends claimed, there was still a fair chance someone had already absconded with the treasure, slipping out for parts unknown and leaving everyone else none the wiser. It was what she would have done. Sipping umbrella drinks on some exotic, faraway beach while everyone else was still duking it out over where it could be.

“I would also expect any expenses or damages to be covered while under contract.” She continued on, partially just to see how far she could push the woman’s so called generosity where the credits were concerned, also to get a better sense of [member="Cerita Sarova"] as a person. Jacaro was always of the opinion that you could tell a lot about a person from the way they bartered. “How long will you be needing my services, anyway? I don’t exactly intend to spend half my life running around in circles, looking for some phantom treasure.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Cerita nodded and then snorted.

"Poo told me you’d try that. Don’t get too greedy, cheeka." She wasn’t entirely sure what a ‘cheeka’ was, but she assumed it wasn’t anything too overly insulting, otherwise she wouldn’t keep using it every other sentence.

She hoped.

"Contrary to the average treasure hunter we won’t have to run around in circles, though."

The brilliance of being an alchemist is that you can co-opt nature to do your work for you in a variety of situations.

For instance bio-engineering critters to do the searching for you. Make them small and resilient enough, ensure they have at least a basic form of sonar capabilities and you were already halfway there. It probably wasn’t really fair to the regular scavenger.

But when was life ever fair?

A shrug.

"Three weeks? I think that will be enough, but let’s prepare for unforeseen consequences."

A whole lot of things could happen in three weeks.

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

Poo.

The smirk twisted into a faint grimace. She should have known that greasy Sullustan waste of space was the one to blame for this. After all, he’d already crashed a ship on her, might as well compound on that by selling out her name to a stranger. Being damned simply by moronic association, Runi’s opinion of the woman dropped a few notches. Considering she had interrupted her drinking, it wasn't that high to begin with.

“If you’re as confident as finding this vaults as you think you are, a few extra credits shouldn’t be a problem. Not after just boasting that you’re oh so ‘generous’ with them.”

Three weeks. She had hoped to have slunk back to the Kathol Outback before then, having designs on salvaging a few of the wrecks created by the recent conflict, but she supposed that there was no real rush.

Word was still filtering out from the region at a huttish pace, she would wager that half the aforementioned crews at the bar knew nothing about it and the other half had no clue where it was or even how to navigate the twist and turns that bundled through the region.

“I guess since I’m getting paid one way or the other. “ She wiped her hand on her flight jacket before offering it to the woman, “Fine, you got yourself three weeks.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Sarova smirked then.

"Generous. Not wasteful." She corrected her smoothly.

There was a difference between paying well for the job at hand and forking out funds by the dime, all that would do was motivate the pilot slash scavenger to be less than efficient in her approach. Maybe even cause a few incidents on purpose and then obfuscate just how much damage there really was done.

Considering Cerita had little experience with ship maintenance she would have trouble pinpointing what was really an issue and what was exactly made up.

You couldn’t call it paranoia if everyone was out there to get at you and lied by the dozen.

"Excellent." A brief inch of a second was spent quantifying if she had poison on her hand, but it seemed the atoms were all made up of regular old fashioned human skin. With some dirt and grease, but considering what Cerita did in the weekends… a bit of grease didn’t put the fear of the Force in her anymore.

Once you are elbow deep in a Hutt corpse, digging around for their organs, well, there was little that could disturb you.

Hands were shaken and then let go again.

"How long will you need to round off your business… here?"

She refused the instinct to take a wide look around the bar at the last portion of her statement.

 

[Runi Verin]

“I suppose,” Runi nodded as she rose from the table with surprising ease, a testament to either her constitution or just how watered down the tihaar was in this dive of a cantina. She would have to swing past actual Mandalorian space on the way back, pick up a real bottle or two courtesy of Sarova’s fabled generosity. Maybe a whole distillery, assuming this little job actually panned out. The thought alone brought a fleeting, yet honest quality to her smirk, one that vanished almost as quickly as water on the sands of Tatooine. “Unless you feel the need buying one for the road, I’m done here.”

Catching the bartender’s eye, she made a visible show of slapping a few coins down on the table, a ragtag collection of varying dominations and currencies. Loose change, mostly, but enough to cover her tab with the Socorran until she next passed through. That was the story of her life right there; flitting from one backward planet to the next, precariously balancing the debt that dogged her at each and every turn. Another one of the reasons she was willing to indulge the greenskin woman’s flight of fancy. A little solvency would go along way right about now.

“You got any baggage I need to know about?” She asked as she navigated her way through the knocked over chairs, broken glass and the odd passed out drunk that littered the floor. She had frequented this place so often that she barely even registered them anymore, accepting them as just part of the questionable decore. Her gaze flickered to [member="Cerita Sarova"] oncemore, “I’m assuming you’ve got some equipment in mind for this job, ‘lek? Because I’m not exactly set up for the type of digging we’ll be needing to do. The vault, sure. That I can do. Shifting a few million tons of dirt, not so much.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

Now there was a reason why Sarova was so confident about this all.

See, in the field of alchemy there were few these days that had the sheer theoretical know-how that she possessed. There was Valik, if he was still alive, Dissero obviously, Ostanes on a good day- though he was more focused on Dathomiri crafting these days and that was really about it.

She was probably forgetting a few here and there, but there are little better ways to become the best of the best when were trained by Valik, Dissero and Rave.

Perhaps the three best Alchemists in the Galaxy at one point or the other.

"A couple things here and there." She replied as they walked out of the bar.

On the other side of the road the Qo’saarai Tuk’atahttp://starwarsrp.net/topic/37415-qosaarai-tukata-tukata-subspecies/ were already gathering up. Scarra chatting with three of his brothers, making up a pack of four for this journey. They had some assorted material, but no big digging equipment.

Strange.

"I have everything in hand on my end, cheeka. Lead the way."

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

Having spent the better part of the last few months dodging monsters and creatures from the darkest depths of the galaxy, Runi had thought herself almost immune to the icy chill of fear creeping up her spine. Yet at the sight of the four creatures loping along in their wake, the Mandalorian couldn’t help but take pause. Her gaze hardened as she tracked their ungainly gait, the smirk on her face becoming distinctly brittle, losing what little warmth it might have once entertained.

Tuk’ata.

She had never seen one herself; few people had and lived to tell the tale. Her knowledge of them came second, third and fourth hand from the few tales and scattered stories that existed in the dingy backroom cantinas and taphouses. Lurking in the shadows that came about in the wee hours of the morning like some phantom ghoul. Like all alcohol fuelled tales, the details varied immensely from account to account, altered or fashioned by the passage of time and mouth. They were all dark and bloody affairs, however. And all settled around a fragmented, distorted description that settled quite neatly around the broad shoulders of the creatures before her.

Her fingers reflexively curled. Hungry for the reassuring presence of the short beskad at her back, only stilled by the very real realisation that she would likely be dead before the blade even left the scabbard. Instead she found herself turning back to Cerita yet again, a questioning brow lofting as she tried to take the woman’s measure. The sight of those sithforsaken mutt-breeds warranting a second stab at the impossible.

“Friends of yours, I take it.” It was less a question, more a statement. One filled with enough sharpened steel for her hands to be envious of. People who could command creatures like that were rarely those you wanted to count amongst your friends. Of course, the fact they were also the sort of people you didn’t want counted as your enemies wasn't completely lost on the brunette, either. “For your sake, they better be house-trained.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

She forgot that for most people Tuk’ata weren’t exactly a regular sight.

Even now with some of them being uplifted in a state of sentience, they mostly stuck to Tash-Taral and Kelsier on the reservations established by Rave. They had always been formidable opponents in battle, but now with their intelligence boosted, opposable thumbs attached and a plethora of different modifications given… they were on a whole new order of dangerous.

Fierce warriors with loyalty that few others possessed.

"Oh, they will play nice." Sarova eyed Scarra who was smiling a toothy smile at Runi, but lucky enough the Tuk'ata went back to his work soon after.

This wasn’t the time for him to start picking up fancies for pretty faces.

Looking at the rigid posture of Verin she would probably wet herself if Scarra tried anything too overtly, before she got acclimatized to their presence.

"I wouldn’t suggest aggravating them too much, though. They are far less diplomatic than I am."

Scarra’s idea of diplomacy was ripping out the offending throat and presenting it in the direction of Horuset’s rising. Not something she wanted to see now, what with the contract already been set and ready to go. Finding a new pilot would just be annoying and explaining to Verd why his… what was she again?

His daughter? Just a close Apprentice?

It was tough to tell with Isley these days. That man had his… ‘fingers’ in so many pots.

"Now then, your ship?"

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

“Play nice? By whose standards, theirs or mine?”

She watched the leader of the pack warily for a few seconds more. Toying with the idea that maybe, just maybe, wiping that twisted, fang ridden smile off the creature’s face was worth risking being torn limb from limb. There were worse ways to go; force above knew she had seen more than her fair share first hand to make that assessment.

Runi gave a dismissive shake of her head and resumed her journey, already feeling that she was getting the short end of the stick in this little bargain of theirs. If she had known she was going to be transporting sith hounds, she would have asked for more money. A lot more money.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your view point, the path to the spaceport (which in itself was an overly generous description) was a short one indeed. All too soon were they standing beneath the heavy shadows cast by the ramshackle hull of the Boracyk. Had the journey been longer Runi might have had a chance to fully reconsider their little arrangement, but as it was she found herself palming the access codes for the landing ramp before she knew it.

“She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, cheeka.” There was an element of pride to her voice as she regarded the ship in question, seeming to be able to overlook the battered and piecemeal appearance that was the YTA-1300f light freighter. Not even with the newer, more sleek vessel awarded to her at Mygeeto could replace it in her eyes. “’sides, I have a feeling low key is pretty important on a job like this, ‘lek? They don’t get much low key than the Boracyk. I'll show you where you can stash your gear and your... Friends.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Runi Verin"]

"Depends on if you want to get eaten alive or not, really."

It was delivered with such casual disregard for the actual context of the sentence that one would start to doubt if they heard it right in the first place. But before they could add many more words to that particular discussion they already got to the ship.

Anyone else might have sneered or otherwise signified their dislike of this ship.

It was ugly, rusty and clearly in a state of disarray. Sarova simply took one long look at it, studying the angles, the hull and pondered how difficult it would be to alchemize at least the superstructure of the ship. That would make it heavier, but also a lot more difficult to destroy - perhaps something to discuss with Verin at a later point.

"She will do." Cerita did not seem impressed, but neither did she seem disappointed. At the end of the day she didn’t have a lot of experience with ships: engineering some weapon of mass destruction was one thing, the inner-workings of a little ship was a different scale.

A scale she had not been all that interested in, until now.

"Lead the way, Verin."

 

[Runi Verin]

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

“Runi.” The salvager corrected absently as she surmounted the landing ramp. Despite having worn it for several years now, the name Verin still didn’t sit comfortably on her shoulders, reminding her too much of the man that had once been like a father to her. More so, in every regard, than the man that now tried to lay claim to that very title. It was had to decide which had proven to be the bigger disappointment.

It would be unfair to describe the interior of the Boracyk as matching the exterior, it was certainly cleaner and less rickety looking for one, yet it still bore the same hallmarks of wear and tear that came from working the edges of the outer rim. Boxes of junk seemed to be packed into the corners, full to the brim of trinkets and parts claimed from countless excursions and salvaging runs, most of which seeming to be borderline useless or otherwise unvaluable.

“As I said, she ain’t much to look at, but she’s got all the standard comforts.” She nodded her head down the left passage, “You can find your cabin down that way. A little tight, but she’s got a decent refresher. Just put in a new sonic showerhead.”

Runi rounded her attention on the four lumbering, faintly canine figures that lurched along in Cerita’s wake. Not even bothering to hide the flicker of distaste that curled her lips. “Unless you feel like hot bunking, they can stay in the hold. I offloaded my last cargo before setting down on this rock, so there’s enough space for them to… Do whatever they need to do. Just keep in mind I wasn’t joking about them being house-trained. First steaming pile of osik, I’m spacing them. Tayli’bac?”