Despite the rumors that he might have been involved in Dacar's demise, his inferiors were not wont to go questioning it and his superiors seemingly could not have cared less.
It was all of this that went through the mind of Lieutenant Corrin Dax as he approached Ayro, looming above one of the command pits and staring out of a viewport into the void of space, broken up only by the planet Karideph.
"Admiral?" He questioned after several seconds, gauging the man's disposition.
"...what?" The answer came several seconds later, Ayro not looking back from the planet they orbited around at that very moment.
"I...I have the morning reports for you, sir." Dax intoned, respectfully, holding out the datapad to him.
"All quiet, I expect?" Ayro asked.
"Yes, sir." Dax said. "All quiet."
"Very well." Ayro said, holding out his hand for the pad, which Dax put into his hand. "You may leave, Lieutenant."
"Yes, sir." Dax said, his feet clicking together and him turning to leave.
"Have you ever seen anything like it?" Ayro asked, stopping the young man in his tracks.
"...sir?" Dax asked, turning back to him.
The Admiral pointed out toward the planet. "Karideph. Unremarkable, backwater place in the days of the Republic." He said. "Just a little marble floating out here...at the far end of nowhere. And now, look at it. It's almost civilized."
"Yes, sir." Dax said.
"Where are you from, Lieutenant?"
Dax found the question most curious. "Coruscant, sir." Ayro pointed to the planet again.
"Little Coruscant." He intoned. "That's what they call it, anyway. I find it rather amusing, really. Some pathetic attempt to claim the civility of it."
"I...suppose so, sir." Dax said, not entirely sure where the Admiral was going with this.
"...you are dismissed, Lieutenant." As the young man headed off, the Admiral sighed. This posting was dull, to be certain. But it was his, and he was not a man to do anything less than make it his own. Dacar had allowed the place to fall into corruption and chaos, but it would not be so under his leadership! Karideph was secure, as the centerpiece of the entire Cluster. Soon, its sister systems would fall into place.
"Admiral?" Dax had returned, Ayro actually turned to him, looking at the fair-haired young man. Clad in his uniform, his cap atop his head and his insignia and code cylinders arranged to perfection. The very model of an Imperial officer.
"What is it?" The Admiral asked.
"You have received a communication. Specifically." Ayro's brow raised.
"I shall take it in my ready room. Patch it through." Ayro said, turning without another word and journeying from the command deck toward the room in question. Entering it, and securing the doors behind him, he moved over to a central column that served as the communications device, a hologram projector warming up at the top of it. The Admiral's arms crossed over his chest as he watched the blue light take the form of a familiar face. "Tin Daheel. You seem to have some difficulty in keeping a time table."
"A thousand pardons for the delay, Admiral." The image of the Twi'lek intoned.
"I assume this means you have retrieved what we agreed upon?"
"Not exactly, Admiral. You see-"
"You do not have it, then?" Ayro's eyes narrowed upon the image. He could feel the worry radiating from off the criminal even from across subspace.
"There were...complications on the ground."
"You are an imbecile!"
"There was nothing I could do! Caius's crew proved to be far too capable."
"You could not defeat four armed men? Two of which were beyond middle age?" A derisive snort came from the human.
"Five. And one of them managed to wound me..." Even with the blue light of the hologram, Ayro could clearly make out that the Twi'lek's hand had been injured severely by an energy weapon. The red-brown skin of his arm gave way to severe, bubbling black skin at the wrist and the back of the hand. "We did retrieve the cargo, however."
"That is only part of our deal, Daheel." Ayro said. "Complete the other one. Now."
"You cannot give me orders, Admiral! I do not work for you! I work for-"
"I know who you work for!" The Admiral spat, slamming a fist against the table top. "And I know that you are nothing to them. You would do well to remember that. Get. That. Ship." He closed the channel before Daheel could respond. The psuedo-alliance with the Gauntlet was getting more and more tenuous. Perhaps it would be time to break it off, following the acquisition of what he desired. For now, though, it remained, festering like a cancer upon his being. One that, very soon, he would tear away.
Several light years away from where the Vigilant Warden orbited around Karideph, the Triumphant Dawn was getting shaken by another turbolaser blast.
"Deflector screen is holding at eighty-four percent." Red reported, going over the terminals he was interfaced with. Another blast hit the shit. "...seventy-six percent." Ordos sat at the pilot's chair, taking the ship through the path that Red had projected for them to make the jump into hyperspace. It seemed, however, that Tin Daheel was a sore loser. "Daheel's ship is not breaking off pursuit."
"Keep that deflector stabilized." Ordos gritted his teeth as he did his best to run maneuvers. He had never been a pilot, that had been more Caius' way than his. Ships were useful to get from place to place, but that was it. Even with all his training, he must have been getting worse in his old age to be outmaneuvered by a piloting droid. Daheel's cargo freighter had returned and had begun mercilessly opening fire, not a single lifeform aboard. "Damn droids...no offense."
"Noted." Red said. The ship was rocked again. "Deflector at sixty-eight percent."
"Begin calculations for lightspeed." Ordos said. "Plot a course to Karideph."
"Calculating lightspeed jump." Red said, running the computer through all the necessary complex combinations it would need to plot out their course. Ordos reached over, smacking the "accept" key on the comm system.
"Calen! Are you patched up?" Down in the medbay, Calen could hear the words of Ordos through the speaker as the medical droid worked on him.
"Hold still please, sir." The droid had applied bacta to his back wound and was now working on the front.
"Doing my best." Calen reached over, smacking the button to open the comm channel. "The droid's still working on me. What's going on?"
"Daheel brought the cargo freighter back. Our shields are taking hits. Need you up here. Now."
"Hold still ple-"
"I got it!" Calen snapped at the droid. The Dawn was rocked by another hit that nearly sent him off the table.
"Deflector at forty-eight percent, activating secondary measures." Red's voice could be heard chirping through. The moment that the droid finished the sealant, Calen got up and immediately pulled back on his tattered shirt.
"I would advise you to wait a few hours before any sternuo-" The medical droid began.
"Yes, right. Thanks." Calen said, taking off from the medbay, heading to the stairs leading up toward the bridge, getting in after the hatch had hissed its way open once more. "What have we got?" He asked, Ordos getting up and allowing him to take the yoke.
"Just the cargo vessel." Ordos told him. "The droids running it seem to be high tier. Enough to outflank me, the kriffing piles of scrap."
"Okay, I have an idea." Calen said, looking to the scanner readouts. "Red, pour everything you can into the engines."
"You have a plan then, I take it?" Red asked.
"Not really a plan. More of a thing. Respect the thing." Calen said. Once the readouts showed that the engines were primed, Calen began the job of turning the ship about.
"What the hell are you doing?" Ordos demanded.
"We're about to find out." Calen said, lurching the ship forward. They moved toward Onadax, moving up toward the top of its globe. The scanners read that the cargo ship was giving hot pursuit.
"You're making us a target!" Ordos snapped.
"Wait for it..." Calen said as they crested upward, toward the top, the ship lurching with another hit just as they hit the atmosphere once again.
"Deflectors at thirty-seven percent." Red reported. Calen jerked the control yoke to the side, veering them back around to the direction they'd come, the momentum from the turn at the sharp angle sent them careening right toward Daheel's ship...and then right under it as smoothly as silk, another turboblast flying through the spot where the Dawn had been. As the ship made a move to turn and follow it, the Dawn was already jetting ahead, preparing for the jump to lightspeed.
"Punch it!" Red flipped the switch the moment they were free of Onadax's gravity well, sending them careening off from the planet. The Triumphant Dawn could be seen from a far distance...and then it disappeared into hyperspace.
Aboard his vessel, Tin Daheel screamed out his rage, slamming his free hand into the nearby table.
"Sir, please...you must remain still." His personal medical droid begged as it continued to work on the blaster burned remains of his right hand. The Twi'lek seethed, looking at the feed he had into his cargo vessel. This would not do. This would not do at all. With his other hand, he punched a key combination into the control pad, setting the cargo ship's course for Pergitor. The comms system buzzed into life, an incoming transmission. He recognized the code ident...and he sighed.
This would not end well...
He was back in the medbay and hating every second of it.
"You overextended yourself, sir." Calen sighed as the medical droid chided him, reapplying the bacta gel to his front wound.
"This is intolerable." He muttered.
"Please be patient, you will be mended soon." The droid said in the most unsympathetic monotone, continuing its work. The door at the far end of the room opened up, Ordos entering.
"Doing alright?" He asked, approaching the table that Calen sat on while being tended to.
"It's not as bad as it looks." Calen said.
"Yes, but how do you feel?"
"Like I was skewered by a crazed pig-man with a really, really sharp stick." Calen said. "But I'll be alright. It missed everything vital."
"Good to know." Ordos said, his arms crossing over his chest. "Before...the battle...did Caius say anything to do?"
"Just to let him do the talking." Calen said. Not that that had, ultimately, done much good.
"I thought as much." Ordos sighed. "But nothing out of the ordinary?"
"No," Calen said, shaking his head. He considered this for a moment, "after...after he'd been shot, though..."
"Go on." Ordos uncrossed his arms, regarding the younger man.
"The Twi'lek, Daheel...he said something to him 'Remember the Grand'. And Captain...he kept saying it. Over and over and over again." Calen said. "Like it was important."
"The Grand..." Ordos echoed the words, his eyes distant as he was clearly lost in thought.
"You don't know what he was talking about either, do you?" Calen asked.
"Unfortunately not." Ordos said. "Did he say anything else?"
"Just...to tell...Maddox? Yes, I think it was Maddox. To tell Maddox that he was sorry." Calen told him. Ordos looked...surprised? Thinking back, Calen thought it was the first time he'd seen anything but a stoicism that could have rivaled pure durasteel in its utter featurelessness upon the face of the Dawn's first officer.
"Maddox, he said." Ordos once more looked...distant. A gaze of...wistfulness, perhaps? Calen couldn't say. Even showing that he could show emotions, the man was as unreadable as ever.
"We can't just let this stand." Calen said after a minute, getting the man's attention once more. "We have to find Daheel. He has to pay for what he did."
"Going up against the Gauntlet would be suicide, kid." Ordos said. "If we're going to pursue this, then we need to make it clear that Tin is who we're after. Not them. If you're still with us, that is."
"What do you mean?"
"Caius is dead. So is the rest of the crew besides you, me, that droid, and Red." Ordos told him. "If you want to bail out, we can drop you off at the nearest spaceport." Calen considered this. Was this going to be his life now? After leaving Coruscant, a life of going from ship to ship getting into scrapes like this again and again, keeping his head down?
He considered the day he had left. The day that vid had been broadcast across the holonet. That little voice that had told him to run. Run as far and as fast away from the place he had known as possible and to not look back. There was no voice now, however. He had carried the Captain aboard the vessel, and was left now only with the choice.
And the choice was not a choice at all.
"You gave me a home when I didn't have one. And a job." Calen said to him. "Until I know that his killer has been brought to justice...I can't leave. Not like that."
"Good answer." Ordos said, patting the young man's shoulder and giving him a look that vaguely seemed approving as the droid cleared Calen from the medbay. He slipped into his shirt again, lamenting the hole left by the electro-pike. "Then we need to figure out where Daheel is going. And why he wanted to kill us. I highly doubt it was just to get a five-finger discount on mining equipment."
"Why would the Gauntlet need so much of it?" Calen asked.
"I don't know." Ordos shrugged. "But we're going to find out."
"Then we should find that Maddox guy." Calen said, nodding in agreement with Ordos.
"Oh, we won't have to look far for him."
"You know him?"
"Of course I know him!" Ordos said. "He's me." Calen must have looked surprised at that, as, after a moment, Ordos added, "What? Did you assume that I didn't have a first name?"
"The Captain called your Ordos. Everyone did." Calen said. "I just assumed that-"
"Easy mistake to make. Old habit from my soldiering days." Once more, his features seemed to darken, thinking back to some bygone time. "So...what do you remember of the fight?" He asked.
"Uh...Daheel's droids took the cargo up. Captain asked about payment-"
"No, I mean during the fight." Ordos waved a hand to stop him. "When you went up against the Gamorrean." Calen blinked, those few seconds having been harrowing...and yet were clear as a bell to him.
"I...tried to get the Captain up onto the ship. It attacked me on the ramp. Skewered me in the back and the stomach...I dropped the Captain, and I thought I'd dropped my blaster, too."
"Thought?"
"Well, I mean...I thought I had. But it was in my hand...and I shot him." Calen said. "The pain had to have been making me delirious." Ordos now had an odd look on his face as he gazed upon him. Calen felt...unsettled by it, as though the man were trying to divine some secret he was keeping, but Calen had none such to give him. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Ordos spoke again.
"Was there anything else?"
"No, I don't..." Calen started, hands slipping into his pockets and one of them closing around a flat, rectangular object. "...wait! This! The Captain put this in my pocket!" He pulled it out and recognized it immediately: a data card. Ordos reached out, hand raised as if he meant for Calen to put it in his hand and he did so. "What is it?"
"I don't know." Ordos said, turning it over in his hand. "Caius wore it around his neck, but never spoke of it. At least not to me." There was a hurt in those words, even Calen could pick it up. Ordos closed his hand around the card. "Get some rest. We'll be at Karideph in a day or so."
"Karideph?" Calen asked.
"The jewel of the Minos Cluster." Ordos said. "Or so the Imperial propaganda would have you believe. A friend of mine is there...he might be able to help us." He turned, heading for the door again, it opening with a hiss and him stepping into the frame.
"Thank you." Calen said. Ordos stopped in the doorway, but did not turn back.
"For?"
"Saving my life." Calen said. "I would have bled out in the cargo bay if not for you."
"Considering how you got us out of that jam with Daheel's cruiser, I'd say we're even." Ordos said. He was about to move again when Calen spoke.
"Ordos..."
"What?" He did not look back.
"Why did Captain Caius want to apologize to you?" Calen asked. The question was met with silence again. Ordos seemed more like a statue as time went on, silent and unmoving. For a moment, all that could be heard was the soft, barely there hum of the ship's engines through the deck plates and the beeping of the equipment of the medbay.
"Get some rest, Calen." The man's voice was almost softer than the hum of the engines as he walked through the doorway, it closing behind him. Calen did indeed take the time to rest, and it was about a day before Ordos called him up to the bridge. When he entered, Calen found that the lights had been dimmed and that a massive cloud of pin pricks of light were projected from a point in the middle of the bridge.
"...a starmap?" Calen asked.
"Part of one, yes." Ordos nodded and Calen saw, upon further examination, that it was not a complete starmap. Several swathes of it were completely missing, as if they hadn't been programmed in...or had been deliberately taken out. "This was what was on the data card."
"I don't get it. Why carry an incomplete starmap?" Calen asked.
"Search me." Ordos said. "But we at least have some idea of where to start. My friend on Karideph should be able to help us."
"You said Karideph was the jewel of the Cluster, yeah?"
"Little Coruscant itself, you bet." Ordos nodded. "The last bit of the civilized life before the vast nothingness out there. We're at the very tips of the Empire's fingers."
"Well, we should keep flying then." Calen deadpanned. Ordos looked up at him and then, much to Calen's surprise, actually cracked a smile.
"Would that I could, kid. Would that I could." He tapped a few buttons on the controls, the starmap fading away and the lights going back to their normal illumination. He pulled the data card from the ship's reader. "But we have a job to do. And this chip to decode."
"What? Red couldn't decode it?" Calen asked.
"I'm a navigator, not a slicer." Red chirped up from the navigation seat.
"The cipher on it is very advanced." Ordos explained. "As it happens, my friend is a slicer, so he should be able to work around it."
"So there could be more on the card?" Calen asked.
"That's what we're going to find out." Ordos nodded, getting put from the pilot's seat. "Given that Glin Gaxan can outpace most droids in decoding, I think we'll be in good hands. No offense, Red."
"Noted." Red replied, and Ordos looked to him before looking back to Calen with a raised brow. Calen just shrugged, taking his place at the pilot's seat. "We have two hours before we reach Karideph."
"Awesome." Calen said, settling in, watching hyperspace pass them by...or them passing it. It was near impossible to tell. All he knew was that they were a step closer to where they needed to be. He had...a good feeling about this.
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