Oh... this was yours?

[Sarge Potteiger]

Ossus
Classified Orbital Research Station

"How long?", the captor asked.

"...two hours? It depends on how quickly they get the signal and mobilize!"

"Conservative estimate then."

"Hour and a half!", he yells before a metal fist connects with his face and sends him unconscious.

"Thank you.", Sarge says to the scientist now on the ground, a smirk plastered under the skull helmet he wore. 38 scientists, twelve security guards. Twelve dead, 38 incapacitated. Not bad. Attaching his shotgun to the magnetic clamp on his back, he steps over the body and takes a seat at the command console.

He'd been hired by an anonymous group to hack information from this station on the right side of the border with the Sith Empire. It had taken some planning and deliberation, but ultimately it was decided that the time it would take to hard plug into the system, break the codes it was using and then download what was needed would take too long to do by stealth.

So he'd done things the fun way.

Still, he'd picked up the silent alarm they'd set off to whoever was in charge of this operation and he wasn't about to stick around to find out who it was. Worst case scenario? Sith.

Best case? Some Hutts.

Had Sarge known that Ossus had items of huge importance to the Jedi he might have known who'd hired him, and more importantly, who would be protecting this station. But... ignorance is bliss, they say.

Sticking a wire into the system and letting his AI plow through code walls and layered protection, he settles himself into the chair and waits for the download to begin. Hopefully he'd be long gone before 'help' arrived.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

'Help,' as it happened, was sunbathing on Ossus, at the very edge of one of the reclamation zones. Eight hundred years of peace and dedicated Ithorians had brought back the forest here and there, but a good portion of Ossus remained wasteland. Desert.

Beach, even.

Ashin put down the comm and threw an arm over her eyes, cursing bitterly. “My one vacation. All I wanted. Just one fething little vacation.”

Serves you right for putting a classified facility above a world you don't technically own, said a metaphorical voice in the back of her mind. She grimaced and brushed sand from her skin, then trudged up the beach to her combat speeder, something along the lines of an old Chariot LAV. The mobile command station served as a change room, as panicked reports streamed in. She had a ship less than half an hour away, and she wouldn't be able to make the station for another half hour after that.

“No intervention,” she said to unspecified others, cinching the last buckles of her armor. “Let them have their hour. I'll handle this myself. Yes, I know they'll know something's coming.”

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

An hour passed, the download nearly complete - he'd not anticipated that the gathering of the information would take triple the time that accessing it took. "Sensors indicate a vessel approaching." The metallic feminine voice intones into his ears.

"Well shit.", he grumbles.

"Download complete. We've no time to erase it."

Making a faint 'hrm' to himself, Sarge leans forward and rests his chin into a palm.

"Will we get away in time?"

"...no."

"Alright then. Lets set the stage. Erase what you can.", laughing, wire still trailing from the back of his helmet he loads up his shotgun and points it at the door.

"Brandon."

"Yes, droid lady?"

"This isn't a stage."

"Feth off, I'm aware."

"It's hardly set."

"I hate you."

"Tone indicates amusement. You're lying to me."

"Just shut up."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Her ship's sensors picked up thirty-nine lifesigns, only one of which was in the control room. She stretched out to the Force to get a sense of that one and found...nothing.

Feth.

It was either a Vong, a ysalamiri-carrying Mando, or someone like that plasma-bow-wielding merc who had tried to keep her from taking Spencer. She docked and stepped through the airlock, then made her way through the station to the command deck. She kept her instincts open for traps -- those, at least, would register to her precognition.

With a shrug, she reached up to the door to the command deck, and knocked on it with her gauntleted knuckle.

"Mind if I come in?" she called.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

There was a momentary pause and some muttered angry words exchanged with something else in the room before a response came. "Yeah come on in, was just touching myself cause I was bored." She might, perhaps, recognize the voice.

"I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU SAY ONE MORE WORD." That wasn't directed at Ashin, but when she came in she'd find a thickly armored man, skull painted on a mirrored visor with a shotgun pointed right at the door.

Always the crazy ones that did these missions alone.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The armor was, frankly, intimidating. The shotgun could probably remove her face. Thankfully, even though she couldn't sense the man, she could most definitely sense the gun.

"I'd ask who you're talking to, but I see a whole host of phallic symbols around, so I'll assume you're addressing one of them. Put them away before I break them off."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"Har-fething-har.", the figure says, voice not quite matching the armor... and yet, the vocabulary certainly did. "I see we meet again... Ashin, I believe it is.", he waved her to a seat with the barrel of the weapon.

"Nope, no penis here except mine. Unless you count the folks unconscious down in the labs." He shrugs a shoulder. "Whataya want me to put away? The gun?"

He snorts, "Not likely."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Ashin sat down in one of the control room's chairs. It groaned under the impact of forty pounds of alchemical plate armor.

"Fine. Let's talk."

The barrel of the gun crimped shut.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"Well that's no fun!", he complains, a dejected sigh crackling like static through the helmet speaker. "Not like I've ever done anything to you." False by most standards, true by his own. Setting the gun in his lap, he shakes his head.

"So, you look like you were in the middle of something. I hope I didn't interrupt you."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"I was tanning. Down there." She pointed through the window at the planet. "First vacation I've taken since I became a Sith Master. You, personally, interrupted it."

Her nose twitched.

"What, exactly, are you?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"That's an interesting question.", he begins slowly, rotating the chair slowly back and forth with his feet planted. "And one that rather depends on what factors lead to said query being put forward." The helmet cocks to the side.

"I assume it has something to do with the uneasiness people feel around me? That strange aura of the Force Null that makes us a bit.... unpalatable to others."

There had to be a smirk under that helmet. "Or maybe it's just my rugged charm. Who knows!"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Oh, I don't find you unusually unpalatable or charming. Merely odd. I'm more than a little tempted to take you apart and look inside, but that's not really my style. And your unique aura presents a few technical obstacles, anyway.

"So? What are you?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"A pain in the ass.", he says rather succinctly as though there was no other way to label himself. "At times a dick." He still wasn't giving up his species, and her little title drop had done little to perturb the man. Either he was stupid or just didn't care.

"Why do you wanna know?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Because I'm just like you. When you came aboard this station you separated the wheat from the tares. Killed twelve, spared thirty-eight, or something like that. I'm trying to determine whether you're wheat or tares. So far you're looking remarkably non-glutenous."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"Good. Hear some people can't eat gluten. I'd rather avoid causing allergic reactions." Oh, the irony. "One of your scientists almost went hero, until he saw what he was up against. Shut him down right quick. Otherwise it would be 13 right now."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Well, then, here's my other question. Are you here for you, or did someone hire you? I rather like my research. I like it a lot, to be frank."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"I enjoy research too, although it has to be of the historical variety." Sarge did love his history. The history of Star Wars had never been his strong suit though. "I was hired, if you must know. Not entirely sure why. Company handed me the contract and that was that."

Most likely this meant OmegaPyre, who were halfway across the galaxy. Mercenaries always filled a neutral area in terms of whose side they were actually on. "But that's hardly research."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"I meant the research here. At the base." Ashin massaged the bridge of her nose between gauntleted thumb and forefinger in a desperate, doomed attempt to stave off a headache. "How much do I have to pay you to make you go away?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"Clarity. Research is such a broad term." At this point the man was likely just trying to annoy her. No one this stupid would be handed such gear and sent somewhere solo unless they were intelligent and skilled enough to see things through.

He begins digging around in a pouch on his waist. "Hrrrmm. Might have something for you." He begins muttering before pulling something out. "No, no. That's just the blue pill....", he looks around some more in the pouch then back to her. "I've got a red and a handful of Advil. What's your poison - not... ya know, literally of course."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"Red. I would give basically anything to escape this particular reality."