That Had Holes in it When I Got It

[Kalla Caranthyr]

"I'll never join you!"

The masked figure stood atop the broken crown of what had once been a gargantuan stone sentinel. Labored breathing was broken up by staccato clips of sinister laughter. Casually, the dark figure marched down the side of the sundered stone, his every step menaced by the rhythmic hum of the bloodstained lightsaber. "You foolish child. Your master was weak, his teachings based on a thousand years of spineless drivel and failures." He raised a hand up suddenly and closed his fist. In the same motion, the woman suddenly found herself effortlessly hauled into the air by invisible strands. Her face contorted in shock and fear, but she mustered a mask of resolve.

"Master Rendorr wasn't weak! And he wasn't a failure!"

"Then where is he now?" Doubt crept into her eyes and she cast a look aside. "I will tell you where he is. I know." Stunned, her gaze snapped back to that emotionless mask. Denial and a growing sense of horror slowly filled her features, damp tears of regret and sorrow growing in her eyes. "I killed him."

"NO!" Her shriek shattered the figure's control. Stone and metal shards were flung every which way as the two hit the ground; he in a startled heap, her in a composed crouch. Tears flowed freely from her cheeks and splashed against the ground with gentle whispers. Yet her eyes shone a fierce light that would not be extinguished with her Master's passing. Something had awoken in her, a warm light that flowed freely in her limbs now. Unconsciously, she held out one hand and found it suddenly clutching a cylinder of metal and crystal. She knew what this was, whose it was. He had never let her use it; he had said it was the personal weapon of a Jedi. She had seen how dangerous it could be. Now it was to be her instrument.

Magenta light framed her side as she ignited the blade. The Rakshis Amulets worn by her Master's killer, their ampules of skin and corrupted effluence, did nothing to hide him from her newly awoken senses. Though shaken, she watched him quickly rise to his feet and stretch out with both hands. Tendrils of electric blue shot across the distance, but were blocked by her saber's glowing light. The foul stench of ozone did nothing to diminish her glare. Confidently, she took a step forward. And then another. And another.

Soon she was running. The blade thrummed and sung in her ears as she jumped over the first hurled stone. A second was bisected by her before she had even consciously registered its approach. A screeching noise tore at her ears as the man somersaulted high into the air. She distantly recognized it as an ancient and profane language in much the same way as she instinctively knew that the coming Lances of Shadow would not be seen, but could be felt through the Force.

Sh tucked and rolled, the ground behind her exploding in a tremendous flash of dirt and violet light. Already she felt the torrential waves of light crash against her head and pool at her feet. It wasn't even a question of if she could, she simply stepped forward and her foot only caught air. Yet she rose. Again and again she rose, each successive step quicker than the last. Magenta blade met crimson and suddenly the two were locked in mortal combat that stretched across the valley.

Sweat poured down her temples and across her brow as she stood over the collapsed figure, his weapon lying broken and useless to his far right. Her lip trembled, her hands quivered, yet the blade in her hand did not waiver. "Tell me why! Why did you kill him?"

"He was in your way. You could never have become the One you were meant to be with him in the away." The figure struggled to remove its helmet, fingers wearily fumbling at the clasps that held it to his face. At long last, the guise was discarded and the woman gave a soft cry as she fell to her knees. Her own master's face stared up at her, his face a mixture of pride and pain.

"I loved y-"

"Nope." A click broke the reverie the scene had attempted to showcase. With a sigh, Kalla tossed the control behind her onto the bed and gave a disappointed sigh. "And here I though Force Hearts II: Darkness Rises was going to be just as exciting as the first. What a ripoff..." She picked up the gauntlet of plasteel and wire and quickly slipped it onto her forearm. A display snapped to life at the warm contact of her skin. Mostly it displayed useless data such as the air quality on the ship (Class I, or Healthy), or the time of day (0255 Galactic Standard Time). It did indicate that her ship was approaching the outskirts of the Asmeru Sector. It had been a few weeks since the Galactic Alliance, noble defenders of the masses, had clashed with the First Order, tyrannical despots.

No, it has be the First Order, stalwart egalitarian sentinels, that had ambushed the corrupt, fallen miltary junta parading as the Galactic Alliance. Each tale, and dozens more, were cycled across the Holonet. Kalla could not have cared less about such noble ideas as "justice" or "freedom". She did not care who ruled the galaxy, so long as she was free to do what she did best. And best she did was find salvage to sell. A faint tremble touched her hand, but was quickly quashed. Though the biggest and best scrap had probably long since been taken, there was still valuables to be picked clean from the metallic corpses of giants. She'd do a little picking and then retire for her well-deserved break. It wouldn't be long, she told herself as she finished suiting up. The spice could wait for just a bit longer.

 

[Zef Halo]

The cheap freighter he'd gotten from a lowly Dug loan shark on Ryloth calmly floated through the debris filled space in the Asmeru system. Jorel wished he had his own ship but that ship was torn to pieces when Imperial ships glassed Hapes while he had been there looking for work.

So here he was, looking for data cores a client was interested in. Jorel could not tell whether his client was an information broker or whether he worked for a state-controlled intelligence agency or something totally else. Nor did he care. After the events on Hapes, the agent was in dire need of income.

Abruptly, a blinking dot on his sensors alerted him of a nearby vessel. Due to the congestion of debris, the dot kept disappearing every few seconds.

"Try a hail." The unnaturally deep voice of the pilot droid startled him. He'd bought this one on Ryloth too. It's circuitry had been fried and rewiring it had made the droid...weird.

"Geez, okay, boss." Jorel waved his hands sarcastically. He pressed a button and attempted to hail the unknown vessel. Hopefully, this wouldn't result in his ship getting obliterated into dust again.

[member="Kalla Caranthyr"]​

 

[Kalla Caranthyr]

The stripped-down and battered form of a BTL-V12 H-Wing began to move through the debris that had brought the Lohopan woman out. The first field of debris that the debt-contract ship entered was the largest; a ruined cloud of what had at one point been innumerable transports and fighters. Though the most plentiful source of salvage, their smaller size meant that most lethal blows tended to obliterate the majority of the salvageable components. Thankfully, or unfortunately depending on how one looked at it, there had been a fairly sizable presence of such ships, so the odds were in her favor to find something useful.

Dotting the sparse fighter debris cloud, small clumps of large metallic corpses hung in the cloud. If she didn't have much luck plucking some things out of the fighter debris cloud, she'd take her chances with the capital ship husks. Though their size generally guaranteed valuable salvage, just because the ship died didn't always mean the crew had followed suit. There had been jobs where Kalla had boarded the broken half of a ship and found herself chased by the ship's droid security force or half-starved survivors looking for one more meal. Those had been memories that she had just assumed never remember, and the spice-binges that followed meant that she had a hard time recalling the exact specifies of what went down on those jobs. Simply that they had been unpleasant was what she recalled, and was happy to leave it at that.

As the ship approached its first target, an unfortunate fighter that looked like it had two of its four wings blown off, an alert sounded in Kalla's ear followed by a clipped, emotionless voice. "Incoming hail." Some pilots liked to have droids automate functions of the ship or help repair things, but Kalla never had the spare credits to afford those luxuries. Instead she had cobbled together a rudimentary VI that responded to simple commands and gave basic feedback. It wasn't much, but it helped her enough to let her run her own ship for the time being. "Vivi, broadcast greeting Besh-Three." The VI gave a soft beep of acknowledgement before broadcasting the selected message script.

This is the salvage ships Wings of Fire, here lawfully salvaging materials in an unclaimed salvage zone. As long as no hostile action is taken against us, we will not take action against you.

Of course, her ship wasn't really named the Wings of Fire, but then again most salvage ships tended to cycle through semi-legitimate identities. All that really mattered was that the message declared her intent and hope to keep things peaceable. So long as the other ship didn't approach or start taking potshots, they'd get along swimmingly. In the meantime, Kalla attached the tether to her suit and began the depressurization process. Once the door opened, she gave a faint tap of her left foot to deactivate her magboots. Gently pushing off, she drifted across the void towards her intended target. Just before she made contact, Kalla pulled a small secondary tether from her waist and pressed the tab at the end against the fighter wreckage, effectively anchoring herself to it. It didn't hurt to be careful in the vaccum of space.

Secured, Kalla started humming to herself while she fished a hydrospanner from one forearm and started unfastening bolts. Military-grade sensor suites fetched a good price on the market, but were rather fickle when it came to such trivial things such as surviving explosions and warzones. She was pleased to see that this one appeared to be in good working order, at least in a physical sense. She wouldn't know for sure until she plugged it into a power source with a computer to interface with, but those things came later. For now, the gameplan was to cut it out of the wreckage and store it on the ship.

[member="Jorel Imos"]

 

[Zef Halo]

"Wings of Fire? What the hell of a name is that?" Jorel exclaimed with a baffled face.

"I do not believe you are one to talk." The droid replied and the scoundrel's head turned to face the machine.

"Look, I was not the one who named the ship...this way. So it doesn't count."

"It does."

"No, it doesn't."

"I still cannot fathom why this ship was named Dirty Merry."

"I don't think you want to know-" Jorel was cut short by the large object that began obscuring their viewport rapidly. "Hey, hey, hey! Move us out of the way!"

The droid remained static and silent as the ship continued its collision course with the large metallic object. Abruptly and in panic, Jorel scrambled to wrestle control of the joystick from the frozen droid.

"Damn. This. Piece. Of. Junk." He clenched his jaw as he pulled the joystick down taking the slow freighter up. A screeching sound and intense vibration coming from below deck signaled that the cheap junk freighter barely made it from fully crashing into the large object. What Jorel did not expect to see on the viewport another ship that followed with alarms blaring as the Dirty Merry lunged into a collision course with the Wings of Fire.

"Droid. Damn it! Evasive Maneuvers." The man shouted and immediately after the twirling sounds of servo motors activating could be heard from the droid.

"Reverse thrusters fully engaged." The droid's unnatural calm voice came through but the situation improved only slightly. "Engaging minimal crash damage protocols."

Was that even a thing?

Dirty Merry swung helplessly to one side and bumped into the Wings of Fire with its starboard. The ship rocked wildly inside and Jorel fell from his unusual position straight on the durasteel floor. He swore he heard his ship crying for repairs.

Feth.

[member="Kalla Caranthyr"]​