Private The Greatest of All Time [Koda]

[Darth Carnifex]

It had been a long time since they had stood face-to-face. After the Sack of Mandalore and the crackdown on the Mandalorian's warrior-faith by the Empire, the bounty hunter had seemed to distance himself from his former employer and sought work elsewhere in the galaxy. Some believed that the hunter had renounced his employer and turned his back on them because of what happened to Mandalore, ancient honor preventing him from selling his weapon to a man that had uprooted and degraded untold generations of staunch creed and tradition.

But the Dark Lord knew Koda Fett to be different.

He was not shackled by a past that he had not witnessed, not bound to tradition like his more orthodox brethren. Koda Fett was a man who did things by his own rules, who blazed his own trails. He would not blindly follow some path laid down by long-dead ancestors.

Thus, the Greatest Hunter found himself in one of Malsheem's cavernous hangar bays. A message had been sent to him, summoning him to the Dark Lord's elusive fortress. His ship had passed the perimeter fleet unmolested and had been given clearance to land in a high-ranking VIP dock. A cadre of soldiers awaited him, a dozen men and women bound by conviction and the uniformity of their dress escorted Fett through the winding and labyrinthine corridors of the station. Unlike other guests, he was not taken to the throne room but rather an auxiliary office where bottles of brandy and whiskey had been arranged for the hunter's pleasure.

For you see, Koda Fett was not though of as a subordinate to the Dark Lord.

He was a business partner.

The Dark Lord did not wear the vestments of His order, rather He wore a fine noble's tunic embroidered with His family crest alongside other garments tailor-made to His exact dimensions. He swirled a glass of cognac as the hunter was granted entry, placing the drink down and rising as Fett approached.

"It has been a long time, Fett."

Koda Fett ​

 

[Koda Fett]

The Mandalorian once retreated from the forefront of the action, his attention consumed elsewhere for one reason or another - far from the central conflict that seemed to determine the life and death of those that believed themselves able to see the tide turned in their favour; Hutt territories had stolen him, taken his contract and ensured his coffers had been as filled as their own. Sith fell as Imperials rose to take them, and Fett watched on from the sidelines. Even as old enemies and allies both rose from their own once-believed deaths, his focus on bounties busied Fett. But not all had been as it seemed.

He considered the old Sith beaten, destroyed, their remnants to fold in beneath this Brotherood of the Maw.

It had not been until the Spear III, a marvel of Sith Empire creation, had come before the Malsheem that the Bounty Hunter had realised the truth. Carnifex had lost his Empire, but this was still the Dark Lord of the Sith that wielded as much control as ever before.

In due time, he boarded and came before the Dark Lord himself in the side-office that seemed better suited to leisure than business. His T-visor noted the seated Sith as he first entered, before the rise of the Zambrano's frame that considerably dwarfed his own, a fact he remembered from all their time. His vision had been sent about the room, as if to examine it, before it craned to see Kaine.

"Yet here I am now," the Mandalorian remarked in his often cold tone, "You had not called on me in some time, is there now someone the Sith cannot handle themselves?"

It had been odd to return to Darth Carnifex absent the reason for his summons of sorts, but the Sith had been reliable in all their earlier contracts. He trusted this to prove much the same.

"I've seen this new Sith interference, that and the dramatics between the Imperials and the Alliance."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Brusque and straight to the point, the Dark Lord appreciated the Hunter's candor. There were few in the galaxy who could speak so openly before the Dark Lord and not receive some manner of reprimand, and the long storied history between Fett and Zambrano ensured that the Hunter could speak his mind. They would not need to banter and trade empty words, there was no place for that here.

Carnifex removed a small holographic device from His tunic and placed it on the polished mahogany. Once set, it began to project the transparent blue image of a man, woman, and small child. The image itself looked like it had been cropped out of a larger image, one that had been taken from a distance through some sort of recon device; a droid potentially.

"The child is your target. Her name is Vera Noble. The mother is Valery Noble, the father is Kahlil Zambrano. Together, the mother and father are formidable opponents. Our strategy will be to isolate them and separate them from the child. Your task will be to secure the child and bring her to me."

The Dark Lord had been formulating this plan ever since He had become aware of His granddaughter's existence, and His escape from Ashlan custody had given Him the opportunity to act on His long-formulated scheme. Through His puppet, He had seen the power of their bond and the dangers it posed. A single operative was no longer sufficient, it would require a more devious touch.

A more sinister strategy.

Koda Fett ​

 

[Koda Fett]

His visor fell onto the two of them, and then the third; a moment in time stolen from the three, unaware that another two men far from themselves had seen it and held sinister intentions. Fett fell into a silence for a moment, and then one moment more - either a careful consideration, of the decision to follow on or even refuse, it had been lost behind the near-indestructable metal that concealed his features. If an inner-conflict, of sorts, festered then it had been brief and unseen, an invisible war beneath the surface of the Mandalorian.

"Hnh." It was the sound that fell out from beneath it, an audible reminder of the decision that need be made.

Had a child been too far...

"You say 'our'," Fett turned back towards the Dark Lord, "Is that another hunter, soldiers, Sith?"

Son failed father and now the former -Emperor had come to collect on this failure, and the Mandalorian seemed to have the most crucial role of them all.

So much for the fabled Jedi code.

"I need the distraction to be worthwhile, a Jedi is a difficult kill as is; the ire of a Jedi mother or father as I hold their child is attention I can be without."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"You needn't be concerned, Koda Fett. Those that I have chosen to concentrate the attention of the mother and father will be sufficient to keep them from interfering with your mission."

Everything required careful consideration and planning, a precarious balancing act that could unravel if one piece was out of alignment. To distract the Jedi was an easy enough task, but the Dark Lord required one who would not be sensed to approach and apprehend the child. Koda Fett was invaluable, he possessed the skill to carry out the mission as well as a lack of distinct Dark Side corruption to tip off the Jedi.

Carnifex had the perfect bait to dangle in front of the Jedi to get their undivided attention. His own other half, Demiurge, and the dark mirror of his son, Kaahlil , would provide too enticing a target for either Valery or Kahlil to ignore.

Especially when the fate of innocents hung in the balance.

"My armory will be opened to you, Fett. You may request any provision that I can provide, there will be little that we can not give. As for your payment, it shall be ten times our usual fee. And, as an incentive..." The Dark Lord snapped His fingers and the door to the office opened as a servant pushed in a sealed crate on a repulsorcart. The servant then opened the top of the crate and moved aside for Koda to look inside. What awaited him was stacks upon stacks, rows upon rows, of beskar ingots. Each ingot was stamped with the seal of the now defunct Sith Empire, marking them as spoils of the Desolation.

"The treasures of your estranged kin."

Koda Fett ​

 

[Koda Fett]

The Desolation; the Mandalore system had been set aflame, a knife thrust into it and torn, the carcass left to rot beneath the centre sun as eons of memories had been rendered mute. He aimed his vision low, to the iron that flashed an ashen crimson in his mind as a small sense of shame had come now that Fett stood before it all now - no matter the lives lost to secure it, the lot that suffered, then and all the times before. In one swift command, the Darth had torn it asunder and seen the distanced kin become victims of a crusade, not too different to the same merciless acts the Mandalorians had conducted for centuries- for millenia.

But for ten times the fee, it seemed as if there was no one to deter Fett from his task now.

He returned to the Mandalorians in the Enclave in order to aid them, an owed vow made to an old smith, and the small concern festered about the old tensions and their desire to see himself slain. If not then, now, the man conceded. 'No Sith, No Exceptions' had been the common mantra, and now Fett fell into business beside their most hated, most destructive foe. If but one of them learned of this, Fett mused, it was to be another death sentence from another set of Mandalorians.

Had the two been much different? Had their kindness been no more than a ruse, a tactic for recruitment that blurred the lines between the Enclave and the scum that peddled their arms, their spice, and slaves? It made the burden far easier to bear if the worst had been believable, after all... the Mandalorians under Yasha once had him fooled.

Fett reached out and ran his touch across the iron, the texture felt as much as the scar the Sith embedded into the metal. He allowed it to sit there for a moment, and then a moment more. Professionalism above all else, Fett had reminded himself, a Bounty Hunter before a Mandalorian.

His visor altered course from the stacks of the stolen, the taken, and the looted beskar towards the Darth. Fett stirred in his own silence for but a second.

"Is there more I should be made aware of? I doubt this child is normal."

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Carnifex watched Koda Fett's reaction to the Beskar, His own face mirroring the implacable stoicism of the Mandalorian's helmet. This in itself had been a sort of test, to see whether Fett would accept such a sumptuous bounty torn from Mandalore's very flesh. There was enough Mandalorian Iron here to forge several sets of Beskar'gam, enough to arm an entire troop of Mandalorian crusaders. A portion of it had been smelted down from harvest Beskar'gam, peeled from the corpses of so many slaughtered Mandalorians.

In battle, the Dark Lord wore a cloak interwoven with Beskar'gam plating taken from the lost children of the Great Houses, an eternal insult against a people He perceived as lesser.

But the Bounty Hunter put forth no protest, he did not take offense to the offering of his people's spoils. Their covenant was still secure, strengthened by stolen iron and thirst slaked by endless tides of blood. The Dark Lord silently approved, He always believed Koda Fett to be made of greater material than his superstitious counterparts.

"The child is an offspring of a Dyad, a special union between Force-users. Two souls that are one in the Force, their powers amplified through their connection. Any child born of such a union will have immense potential in the Force. I would deny the Light such a boon."

There were other Dyads in the galaxy, existing between several Jedi, but so few shared between Sith. Carnifex Himself was part of a Dyad between Himself and His great-uncle, Prazutis. Through this union, He had engineered His escape from the Ashlan Crusade and imprisoned their cherished Saint.

"When you have the child, it would be best to incapacitate it."

Koda Fett ​

 

[Koda Fett]

It was a storied connection to those that once owned the iron, for the two of them. Even in the fated Red Coronation as all the men and women had lost their lives in the bid to secure another on the Sundari Throne, most to believe it Ronan Vizsla, Fett remembered the moment their fate had been sealed; it had not come an instant, but the stone had been cast and in due time, however the amount of time it was to be, Mandalore was to be torched. Carnifex's own son slain, reduced to another fallen soldier in the bout, and if it had been treated that way then Carnifex's wroth was maybe avoidable.

It was not.

The Zambrano child had been lost, and a father mourned. Mandalore paid the price, in time.

"Once I have it, I'll return to the Malsheem." Fett told the Dark Lord, as if no room for debate. "Pointless to take the risk should those Jedi catch me on-world."

The Spear III could outrun most vessels, and if his task was to be secured... there was no cause to interfere in another bout between father and son. He had seen what their family had been capable of before.

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Of course, that is wise."

None could claim that Koda Fett was a fool, a hunter did not survive long if they were. Ruthless pragmatism was a quality that the Dark Lord actively sought out in those enlisted on His payroll, and Koda Fett possessed those qualities in bountiful spades. He'd rarely fallen short of the mark in the jobs he'd run for the Dark Lord before, and there was no reason for the Dark Lord to believe that Koda Fett would this time.

Still, there was another matter to attend to that would heighten Fett's chances of success. The Dark Lord pressed a button and closed the Beskar container. He then told the servant, "Transfer the crate to Fett's vessel." The servant obeyed without question, disappearing from the room with the hover-sled in tow.

Then, in the same breath, the Dark Lord spoke. "Come with me," He said to Fett, moving almost wraith-like through the doorway and down the corridor. They journeyed for some time until they reached a guarded door with a pair of sentinels standing tall and silent at its entrance, who stepping aside to allow the Dark Lord and His guest past.

Inside the vault was an enormous armory, weapons and gadgets of every make and model imaginable in the known galaxy. Through His shadow web of informants and spies, the Dark Lord had amassed a databank of technological schematics. His engineers took these schematics and replicated them perfectly, mass-producing everything from armor, starships, and weapons. Anything that Koda Fett desired to bolster his already considerable arsenal was now at his fingertips.

"Mark what you need, it will be given to you."

Koda Fett ​

 

[Koda Fett]

It was a stunned silence that overcame Fett. His career had enabled the Mandalorian to see, and have access to various collections from all across the star systems. From those of a Hutt to that of a Mandalorian, the Bounty Hunter had believed that he had seen it all until the Sith revealed his array of armaments and more before him. From Sith owned manufacturers to the more neutral, Darth Carnifex had it all.

"Hnh," Fett muttered as he motioned forwards, slowly, as if to view them all closer. JAEGAR earned his attention first, a customer of theirs several times over; lethal and brutal, the most apt descriptor of their solutions. NB-013 to be the most useful of the entire collection, for this mission at least.

He was careful, selective, and in time answered the Dark Lord himself.

"The ND-013, I need that for the two Jedi. For now, the X8-H suits fine and so does the AC-14 in order to stay close. It all varies on the task at hand - I'm certain I'll be back for more."

He turned over to the Sith, then. His T-visor onto Carnifex's eyes.

"Should much resistence other than the two be expected?"

Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Carnifex watched passively as Koda Fett purveyed the armory, looking over vast quantities of weapons and other armaments. Many of the corporations these weapons belonged to had little inkling that their catalog was being used in the service of the Sith, dozens of third-party fronts utilized to amass stockpiles from all over the galaxy. Those that sold willingly to the Sith were few and far between, but they were indispensable to the Kainate Shadow Network that the Dark Lord maintained.

"Anything you request shall be granted, there are no limits to what I can procure." It was not an idle boast either, the Dark Lord's reach was among the farthest in the galaxy and rivaled by only a scant few. Not even the cradles of enemy power were safe from Him. "Master Noble has accumulated a few students that keep in regular contact, but they possess only a fraction of her power and skill. They may be in the vicinity, or they may not be, only our preliminary reconnaissance will determine this. Either way, they will not be difficult for a Hunter as skilled as you to overcome."

Even if Fett were pressed by the Jedi, the Dark Lord would place reinforcements nearby to alleviate any strain placed upon the Mandalorian. His legions were endless and infinitely replenishable, He could spare whatever was necessary. Hundreds of thousands were at His beck and call, eager to expend their own lives at any given moment. He would spare a few of these fanatics to serve at Fett's pleasure.

"Our greatest ally is our enemy's ignorance, they will not know of our ambitions until it is too late."

Koda Fett ​