You And I Are Going To Have Words [Noah]

[Trayx Ariko]

Immediately after getting clearance to land on Fondor, Trayx had intended to march up to whatever government headquarters were closest and start asking for/demanding answers. But a hunch - more like a shift in her perception - led her into an alley, where halfway down, she scraped away at the dirt at one edge of the ally with her nails. A few inches under the surface was a brown bag. Grunting with effort, she pulled the bag out of the ground and shook off the dirt.

Her jaw dropped.

It was Skree's bag. Hastily, she opened the bag and rifled through the contents. Yes - Skree's blueprints, diagrams, ideas...and a communicator, as it turned out. Eyes narrowing, Trayx quickly activated it and scrolled through the numbers she had stored. Most of them were protected by an encryption - a good encryption - but Trayx knew her little sister like the back of her hand, and with a little creativity, she cracked them and the names were available. One of them - [member="Noah Corek"] - had 'call if in trouble' as a side note. Trayx's eyes narrowed.

Someone had some explaining to do. She called this Noah Corek on Skree's communicator at that moment, standing in the ally, with her dead - call it a hunch - dead sister's bad slung over her shoulder and a borderline murderous expression.

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah sighed as he assembled his rifle and disassembled it for what seemed like the sixth time today. It had been a month to the day, five months to the day that Skree had been killed. Noah had regretted that day for a long time. He had been on a night on the town, Skree had told him that she was afraid, that she had been receiving weird holo-calls in the middle of the night, she felt like someone was following her, that one time she had even found a mynock nailed to her front door and that she had come home once to find her apartment ransacked, not like they were looking for something though, but like they had done it exactly to screw with her. Noah had listened and patted her on the shoulder and told her everything would be fine and assigned three of his best men to guard her. One inside in the apartment complexes main lobby and two outside in a speeder. It had been at eleven-thirty at night when Skree had called in a panic, saying she had locked herself in the bathroom because someone was pounding on her front door. Upon hearing this, Noah, [member="Ven'Rain Sekairo"] and two Pyre soldiers had piled into a speeder and made it there in under a minute and a half. Once there, they had found the two speeder guards with bullets in their skull and upon entering the main lobby, the found the receptionist and the guard dead. Upon entering Skree's apartment, they had found Skree dead. Noah sighed as he tried to get the image of Skree's murdered and mutilated body out of his mind, Skree had been a good kid, like a little sister to Noah, if only he had taken it seriously and guarded Skree herself. Looking down at the parts of his rifle, Noah jumped when all of the sudden his comm went off and suprisingly it turned out to be Skree's number. "Who is this!?" Noah demanded as he spoke through the comm.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

(You legitimately made me cry for my character. Well done, sir)

Trayx's mind was racing, horrible scenarios flashing through her head - Skree betrayed, Skree's brains and blood were splattered across the blood as mad laughter echoed off the walls of small room - and the answering voice made her jump back to reality with a start. Noah Corek's snarl - whether it was or not, Trayx perceived it as one - came through the comm and Trayx's hand clenched around the small device.

"What happened?" She snarled back, unconsciously lapsing into the same whiplash-esque speech that Skree had often used. "What happened to my sister?" She demanded, her voice cracking on the last word.

My sister. Skree.
Skree.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah's breath caught in his throat when he heard who it was, Skree's older sister. Skree had mentioned her sister, Trayx in passing before but never had went beyond telling Noah that she was a smuggler and Skree wasn't privy to her whereabouts. "You must be Trayx, Skree had a lot of good words about you. This conversation is unfit for civilian comm channels. I'm sending you the address to my apartment. You can come if you want your answers." Noah informed her before hanging up.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Civilian channels my pretty blue lekku. You have no idea how heavily encrypted Skree's stuff was, do you? Still, Trayx wanted answers and she meant to have them. So she went to the address, swearing over the stuffed-shirt reaction of Corek to Trayx's question, and bit her tongue before knocking on the door.

It wouldn't do to alienate her information source right off the bat, after all.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah sighed as he heard a knock on the door as he finished re-assembling his rifle. Standing, Noah answered the door to find a twi'lek standing there. Eyeing her up, Noah saw the obvious family resemblance between Trayx and Skree. One was their obvious natural beauty, though it seemed Trayx was much more beautiful than her sister. Another was the way they carried themselves, in a confident manner. The final thing was in the way that their jaw set in a determined manner. "Come on in, we have much to discuss."

 

[Trayx Ariko]

That we do indeed.

Trayx stepped inside the apartment, eyes darting around it once to take in the new area before coming back to rest on the man in front of her. "Noah Corek?" She asked, although he fit the critera. His voice matched the comm, his appearance matched Skree's descriptions, and his general personality did as well - even if the stuffed-shirtiness hadn't been mentioned. Wait - it had once, briefly, when Skree first joined the Protectorate. So, this was almost certainly Corek. Still, never hurt to check.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah nodded his head when the Twi'lek asked if he was Noah Corek. "That's me, Colonel Noah Corek of the Omega Pyre, your sister and me were good friends." Noah informed her as he guided her into his living room of the apartment and motioned for her to sit. Reaching over to a nearby tray Noah grabbed a bottle of whiskey and two shot glass and put them on the coffee table between him and Trayx.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Trayx suspected she was going to need the services of that shot glass before this was over, but she held off for now. "She talked about you a lot." Trayx noted, a slight smile curling her lips as she recalled all the messages detailing her work on the Solomon. "Skree loved that ship, you know. The Solomon." She shook her head, driving away the memories for the present. "What happened to her?" She asked, adjusting the strap of Skree's bag so it didn't chafe her neck.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah chuckled when Trayx mentioned that Skree had loved the Solomon. "Yeah your right. Hell, Skree treated that ship like it was more hers than it was mine." Noah sighed as he poured himself his own drink and gulped it down. "You know I actually put Skree in for a promotion the week before she did. It was confirmed she got it, she would have been a Lieutenant and that would've put her in control of the Solomon." Noah informed her, purposely not telling her what happened.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Trayx smiled sadly. "That would have made her world. Her own ship." She mused, then continued. "I mean, she already had the Spacewing, but..." She shook her head again. Stay on target.

"What happened to her, exactly?" She asked again.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah sighed as he stood and walked over to his kitchen counter. Searching through the files on the counter, Noah finally found one that on the front was a OPIB file with the words: Murder of S. Ariko.

Looking at the file one last time, Noah walked back over to Trayx and put a small waste basket next to her and the file in her lap.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Trayx opened the file with trembling fingers. Inside were pictures of the murder scene. It was - disturbingly - exactly the same as the nightmare images she'd gotten while waiting for Corek to answer his comm. Skree, dead on the floor of a small room - a bathroom. Blood and brains on the floor. Trayx felt her stomach heave and had to bite her tongue to keep from ruining Corek's carpeting. Slowly, she went through the entire file, reading every word. When she was done, she set the file aside and cradled her head in her shaking hands.

"My god..." She whispered. "Skree..."

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Trayx would find a hand laid on her shoulder. "Skree was a good kid, she was like a little sister to me. She always looked at the positive side of people and things. Always tried to rationalize the bad things people did. I'm just saddened that not only did she die but she died alone. She deserved to live to old age, get married and have children. But her dreams were cut short by a pyshcopath who had a hard-on for young Twi'lek girls. But I can assure you Trayx, when we find her killer, we're going to flay the motherfether alive."

 

[Trayx Ariko]

"After I break his nose, arm, legs, fingers, and ribs, yeah, we're gonna flay the motherfether alive." Trayx was murderous now. That was her little sister that was dead. She turned to look at Corek. "Any idea who the motherfether in question might be, where he might be, or anything else at all useful?"

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah sighed and rubbed the hand that wasn't on Trayx shoulder over his face. "The only thing we have are some fingerprints but so far they've come up with nothing. The OPIB, The Pyre, ODF Internal Affairs, all of us are searching for the killer Trayx, he doesn't have anywhere to hide." Noah told her as he took his hand off of her shoulder and then sat down next to her on the couch.

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Trayx nodded, then frowned slightly as she had an idea. She turned to Skree's bag and rummaged through it, stacking the blueprints neatly. One caught her eye and she unfolded it, raised her eyebrows and nodded, impressed, and put on the pile. "Hel-lo..." Trayx exclaimed, dredging up a small metallic object from the bottom of the bag. "This ain't my sister's."

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah raised a eyebrow as Trayx pulled out a small circular object that wasn't Skree's. Noah had seen something of its type before, it was a data storage device, but in particular it was used by MICO for their more sensitive operations. "How in the hell did Skree get her hands on a MICO data storage device?"

 

[Trayx Ariko]

Trayx looked at him in confusion. "A what kind of storage device?" She asked, examining the device. She turned it over to check the bottom, and frowned in concentration, biting her lip. "There's letters here...initials of some kind, I think." She mentioned, glancing up at Noah.

"What was the name of that wackjob Duros again? Chief Engineer on Solomon when Skree showed up?" She asked, trying to keep her voice casual and failing miserably as she offered Noah the device.

[member="Noah Corek"]

 

[Noah Corek]

[member="Trayx Ariko"]
Noah raised a eyebrow when Trayx asked about the Duros. "Him? Damn. I can't even remember his name. It has been so long ago and I barely interacted with him. Though I'm pretty sure if we cross-checked the crew manifest of the time Skree came aboard the Solomon to any Duros crew members I would remember his name."