OOC:

This is open for anyone in Osk. So yeah.

“I don’t care how much it costs; I just want to be able to pick it up in an hour. You understand? Good. See you then.” As she hung up the call, she sighed and moved a hand up to her face, placing it there as she leaned back in the pilot’s chair, taking deep (hopefully calming) breaths. The viewport of the Redthorn-class Scout showed the deep, vast ocean of space, splash-painted by millions of stars and a multitude of hunks of rock. But the one hunk of rock that was most important was quite possibly the most pitiful looking one. Jae allowed her hand to slide down her face, resting on an arm-rest of the pilot’s chair. She stared out the viewport at the pitiful thing. At Eyesore. The devastated hunk of… whatever hung in space like a dull marble covered in dirt and grime. A scoff flew from her lips as she moved both hands to the control panel of the Renegade Ghost and began to type in the clearance pass code so that she could land. Pass code... Hah. Like she needed one. She was part of the company that had the protection and security of the entire planet in their domain. At least... she liked to think she was.

Truth was, she had no idea whether or not to consider herself one of Snipe's pirates or not. Sure she had been welcomed into the group a year before now and now had been welcomed in again. But she was so utterly lost on what she should be doing. Why? She had been dealing with the reckless decision she had made to try and stand up and become a Squad Leader again. That just ended in a sad call to Havock, telling the woman she loved that she was resigning from the Army.

Jaenna realized, after three tries at being Squad Leader, that she was no longer mentally stable enough to stay in that position and be a help with the title. She looked back on her first run as RAIDERS SL, and she couldn't help but feel tears well up in her steel blue eyes. Those days were perfect. She was at the peak of her career in the Stormtrooper Corps. But then, shit just had to start going down hill. The fiasco with Ghost squad sent her through a mental loop. Havock going into a coma, and herself getting so banged up on Arkania didn't help much at all. And then... she went off and assassinated her father.

Yeah. That's a mentally stable person who's just screaming, "I'm PERFECT FOR THE JOB!" isn't it? Not quite.

So a month ago, Jaenna had finally given in and called Havock. The call was awkward, especially after what had happened with the dinner party that Jaenna had tried to through for both iron Horse and RAIDERS (that had ended on a rather bad note after the entire dinner was ruined by a brawl that had broken out between a few of the squadies). Jaenna had wanted to do something that night, but the dinner party ending like it did just made her take what was in her pocket that night and lock it away in a drawer she used for her most personal things on the Renegade Ghost.


After all of that, Jaenna’s call to Havock was one of the worst things she’s ever had to sit through, especially with what she had failed to ask the woman she loved that night sitting in the back of her mind.

“Ayme I uh…”

The line was silent for a few moments, then an aggravated scoff came through the other end. “What is it, Jae?” Havock had already been swamped with a load of work, trying to get all of the weekly squad reports in check and have everything organized.

“Well first off, I’m sorry about the dinner party turning sour.”

“Yeah. You need to learn to keep control of Saph, hun.” Havock let go of a soft, forced chuckle. She was far too annoyed to show any true joking empathy for the Squad Leader.

Jaenna sighed, tapping her foot on the ground, her knee bouncing along with the tapping. It was an anxious habit she had started not too long after she had gotten back from assassinating her father. “Havock… I want to resign.”

“…No.”

Another sigh rolled over Jae’s lips, her eyes had started to tear up, her head reasting on her forearms, her arms cross on top of her desk, the headset sitting in an awkward position in a way that probably made her voice seem a little too far away to the Platoon Commander on the other end of the line. “I have to Havock. I have too much going on right-“

“You know what? Fine. Give up.”

“I’m not giving up!” Jaenna had snapped at that comment. She knew Havock was busy with her PC duties, but to her there was no reason to have taken it that far. She growled to herself, sitting back up and slamming her right fist down onto the desk, creating an indent in the steel because of the cybernetics that made up that particular limb.

Havock’s turn to snap was then. “How are you not giving up?! Huh? You just made SL again and you’re resigning?”

“Just… put me in reserves then. I just can’t deal with any of this right now.”

“What are you going to do then? Go back to Coruscant? Hunt down your mother-“

“You don’t speak about that, you got it?”

“…Whatever. You're in reserves. Have fun doing whatever you're gonna do now"

And before Jaenna could say anything else, or even apologize for snapping, the connection was dead. She had just stared down at the indent she had made in the steel of her desk, eyes watery and threatening to let the tears that had formed fall.

An hour or so passed before she finally got up the energy to move again, to finish packing her things from the barracks, and what she wanted to grab from her apartment, toss it into the Renegade Ghost and leave Tadath. Now a month had gone by and she had been roaming aimlessly, going back and forth between Coruscant and Eyesore, trying to get things straight with both Osk and Star Struck. But everytime she went to Eyesore, she never  ran into any of the other Oskers. Now... she was back. Not only for another try at running into an Osker to try and secure her place in the company, but to pick up an order of the spice she had been mixing and smoking for the past couple of months in order to try and calm her nerves.

It turns out the spice had just been turning her into an overly hostile gang leader/pirate swabbie. Such an odd combination of titles.

Finally coming out of that strange daze, she took her brain off of metaphorical auto-pilot and landed her Redthorn in the only area she figured was alright: Next to the hanger that housed all of the Osk ships. She stood, grabbed her messenger bag, put it on and grabbed a small gas mask she had been using every time she needed to step out into the barely breathable air of Eyesore. She looked ahead and saw it, the large, half abandoned base that was nestled into the mountain. The Locker. The place where everything happened. The place where a multitude of cantinas brothels and other small merchant shops were housed.

------

The alley was dark, considering the Locker didn't really provide much light as it was. Jae stood there, back against the wall, her right side facing out to the streets of the smugglers' paradise. Her left palm was resting light on top of the DH-17 she kept at her side. Despite being right-handed, she always shot with her left. This would seem odd to anyone who didn't know what she normally reserved her right hand for. But if one were to get a closer look at her right fist now, they would see the pair of vibro-knucklers she was sporting. Both arms came into play when she decided to do some slicing and dicing with her trusty dual Treppus II blades.

For this job, though, she only needed her DH-17 and those vibro-knucklers. She was pretty sure the dealer she was about to meet up with knew who he was er... dealing with. She had gotten his name from one of her lower-ranking flunkies in Star Struck back on Coruscant. And of course, when she contacted the spice dealer, he knew exactly who she was because of the aforementioned flunky.

Now, she waited, outwardly patient (while inside her mind was reeling with suspicion on why he hadn't gotten there yet), her left foot propped up on the wall she was leaning her back against. Finally, after what seemed to be another ten minutes, a figure turned a left into the alley, and approached Jaenna. Slowly, she looked up, her dark sunglasses falling just enough so that the man could see her steel blue eyes, a sunburst of light green surrounding the pupil, showing her annoyance. "You're late, buddy."

"Not my problem, lady."

It took less than a second for her right hand to lash out and grab him by the throat, slamming him up against the wall opposite the one she had been leaning against. The man's feet dangled a foot above the ground, and as he looked down, all he could see were bright green eyes staring at him from over the rim of those dark sunglasses. "No you're problem? My fist in your throat is about your problem. Now just give me the spice so I can pay you and you can get the hell outta here." She let him fall back to the ground and she stepped back, once again leaning against the wall, her eyes shifting back to their original steel color. "You smell funny."

His entire body shaking, the man stood up, digging through his pockets to then pull out three small bags of different spices. "Whatever... Here." He held them out to Jae. "Three grams of Gree, three grams of Pixie and three grams of Muon. That's 10k."

Jae growled and dug through the inner pocket of her vest to pull out the credits. "This better be worth it."

"It is." And with that, the funny smelling man vanished back into the Locker's crown of smugglers and other criminals.

Jae stuck the bags into her messenger bag and took a deep breath. She turned and headed out into the crowed street as well, hands in her pockets, head down, but eyes flickering from side to side behind her sunglasses, always alert.

The Renegade Ghost filled her viewscreen in the small messy office that she had been in for more hours than she could count. Havock rubbed her eyes and reached for her turquoise mug which was half filled with cold caf. She grimaced then with a shrug drank the frigid beverage down.

Havock had no time for a personal life since being made Platoon Commander, hell she wasn't sure how she dealt with it even before. Her and Jaenna's relationship had been stressful to begin with but the past months had seen it turn even for the worse. Jaenna resigned her position as Iron Horse SL and took off on one of her many jaunts into the unknown that she often did. Leaving a stressed and frankly confused Havock in her wake.

So if she was too busy for all of this drama, then why was she sitting there not getting a damn thing done while she starred at the picture of her girlfriend's ship parked on some asteroid. Havock started to rhythmically pound her head back on the tall office chair as her foot rocked it back and forth.

"Oh dammit all to hell." Havock threw the datapad in her hand as hard as she could to the desk. Her hand reached for the comm controls then hesitated. This was crazy, a stupid impulsive decision which she should be better than given her position in the Army. She could almost hear Aeos scolding her for even thinking of doing something so juvenile. Her hand slowly fell to the messy desk as she struggled with herself over what to do.

"Why did I hang up on her? Why does that woman do nothing but infuriate me? Yet do you stop subjecting yourself to it? No you don't, dumbass." Havock shook her head and gave up as she pushed the comm button. "Control, this is Lieutenant Katash going off planet for some R&R. Log leave hours."

"Control acknowledged, permission for leave pending."

One of these days I really should wait for that permission to go through I suppose , she thought as she grabbed her jacket and exited her office.

====~====

"You can't just leave."

Havock shook her head and attempted to walk even faster. "Damn every other day I take the long way to the hanger but today I just had to take the short-cut past your barracks."

She reached the hanger and swiped her access card nodding to the guard and shooting a glare at Aeos. "Ayme, fine. You never listen anyways. At least take Trix with you, she needs to go anyways and it shouldn't be that difficult to find Kami, even for you."

"Even for me huh? You really know how to sweet talk a lady." She yanked her key card out of her sack for her E-9 Explorer which ironically had been a gift from Aeos not all that long ago. The access ramp slowly descended before her forcing her to stop her rapid pace away from her older, and currently very annoying sister. "You know what, no, I'm not taking her. You figure out your own way to get her to that fraking asteroid."

Havock turned and stomped up the boarding ramp. Her hand slapped the controls, leaving Aeos on the tarmac in disbelief. She had no doubt she would never hear the end of this one, but Havock had enough. Aeos conveniently didn't recognize Ayme as her sister so why should she bother. "Because your a softy, that's why."

She closed her eyes and let all the stress and doubt wash over her in a wave. The whole exercise made her eye twitch but Karash was convinced that if she relaxed and thought about things before she acted impulsively she would get shot less. With a groan she returned to the landing ramp and rested her head on her wrist as it descended. She opened one eye barely to a slit, just enough to see the blonde woman glaring at her with crossed arms as she tapped her foot.

"I don't have time for this childishness Ayme."

Havock shook her head and laughed a bit to herself. She repositioned so she was leaning against the door opening and looked around nonchalantly. "Okay Zasati, I tell ya what. I'll take the brat, but you're coming too. I'm no babysitter. Before you start, this isn't negotiable. You and her in this ship in fifteen minutes or you find an empty tarmac." With a somewhat sarcastic two fingered salute Havock turned and headed towards the cockpit to get the engines ready. "I think I need my head examined, again."