- OOC:
- Here. It. Is. The end. The end of the end. Or...the end of the beginning of 8.5. I didn't get much chance to clean some bits up, so bear with the errors until I get back. It's kind of long, more so than my norm. So...enjoy!
Arnaut waited. And waited. And then waited some more. And then shoved down a man who tried to block his vision of the road. That one got some venomous glares from the crowd around him, but he didn’t care. He waited even more. The parade seemed to drag on
forever. And it wasn’t even fun. The music blared incredibly loud, rendering Arnaut near-deaf. The neon lights flashed, twirled, spun, flew, danced, and did all sorts of things lights weren’t supposed to do, making Arnaut’s head hurt. Those were the things that the recordings didn’t show too well.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his feet getting pretty tired by this point. He’d been standing for…longer than he would’ve liked. Float after float passed by, a blaringly loud, confusing jumble of audio and visual hell. The people next to him seemed to like it no more than he did, but they, at least, were used to been blinded and deafened each year. It was a law to attend these events, so no one but the sick and elderly got to miss it.
Lucky them.“You still there? The men are getting anxious,” Jan’re piped over the comlink. Arnaut welcomed the distraction. The voice in his ear almost made him forget about the music.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. This music is getting me antsy too. So frigging loud. Anyway, what’s happening over there?”
“Nothing, like I said. The boys are getting anxious. I’m afraid they might want to jump the gun,” came the reply.
“Yeah, keep them in line. The
last thing we need is for the riot to start too soon.”
Other than that brief respite, Arnaut waited in peace. Or as much peace as the parade would allow. A riot disrupting the train of floats might actually be welcome, if they kept up with the music and lights.
Another person bumped into him, and he turned to see him scurry back into the crowds. He had the same anxious look he'd seen on those other two guys, quite a few hours ago. Arnaut didn’t know what was going on; for some reason those people kept popping up in his idle thoughts. Whatever it was, it had them jumpy and running all over the place.
If they’re planning something… The problem that Arnaut had dreaded more than most was that another party would try and go for Shelov. Whether to capture him or kill him, that provided a major roadblock to their plan. This late, they probably wouldn’t welcome too kindly strangers who wanted in on their plan. So if they
were planning on disrupting the parade, then Arnaut had to deal with it. Before Shelov got there. Arnaut started to worm his way through the crowds, after the man he’d seen.
It was easy to find him; he was the only one facing away from the parade streets. His short, cropped black hair stood above everyone else’s do to the man’s size. He wasn’t very wide or strong looking, just extremely tall. Arnaut pushed and shoved his way after him, slowly gaining on him. Arnaut wasn’t too short either, but he knew his way through a crowd. He had almost gotten to the man, when there was s sudden roar from the crowd. Arnaut turned, just in time to see Shelov’s parade float making its way down the hill at the end of the street. The crowds went wild. If they hated everything else about the parade, at least they showed a bit of enthusiasm for their Planetary Governor. Shelov stood tall, waving as he went. He was massive, towering over Snipes and Tnepres, who were standing at his side. At least Arnaut hoped they were still Snipes and Tnepres. He couldn’t make out the faces from such a distance.
Arnaut turned around, and soon realized he could no longer see his quarry. Off to the right there was connecting small alleyway, empty of spectators, but filled with trash. To the left there was a small trinkets shop. Arnaut went left. The view from the top of the building would be better for anyone planning something than the small dead-end alleyway. The sign on the door said it was closed, but Arnaut went in anyway. The door was unlocked.
Once inside, Arnaut breathed in the musty, dust-filled air and coughed slightly. There was a creaking of the floorboards from upstairs. Arnaut made his way to the back, jumped over the back counter, and quietly made his way up the stairs.
The attic area was dusty too, even more so, and Arnaut had to keep from sneezing. Peeking around the wall at the end of the stairs, he confirmed his fears. Four or so men, dressed in light fitting field military jackets, were sorting through a crate of rifles and distributing them amongst themselves. One of them was the tall man he’d seen. Each was armed to the teeth with grenades, pistols, knives, a rifle, and much more. It looked like they were going to war. In the corner of the room, inspected by a fifth member Arnaut hadn’t seen at first, was the worst thing of all. A salvaged PLX-1 portable missile launcher. It looked as if it hadn’t been used since the Clone Wars. But from the way the man was inspecting it, Arnaut could tell it was very,
very operational.
One of them went over to the window, looked out, and then hurried back, obviously very excited. He whispered something to the other men, and they all went over to the windows to look out. The fifth man brought over the missile launcher and rested it on the windowsill and his shoulder, aiming out. Arnaut knew what they were going to do, and he had to stop it. Now or never. Arnaut broke from cover.
“Stop! Now! Do not fire that weapon!” Arnaut commanded, bringing his rifle to train on the men. The four with the rifles whipped around in the surprise. The fifth, half turned his head, jerking his finger back. The launcher fired.
Outside, the missile streaked across the sky, thrown slightly off its trajectory by Arnaut’s distraction. Coming within feet of Shelov’s float, it flew into the store next to it and exploded. Chaos ensued.
Inside the trinkets shop, the man cursed, thew down the empty launcher tube, and started to reload. The others came for Arnaut. He didn’t want to kill, them, so Arnaut resorted to trying to knock them out of action. Jumping sideways for the cover of the weapons crate, he put a round neatly through the first man’s knee. The force blew the man against the wall, and then onto the ground, his knee blood tatters. They opened ire, peppering the metal crate with rounds. It held it off fairly well, and when they went to reload, Arnaut popped out again and blasted away. The spray took out another two, catching them both in the gut, and sending them toppling over spitting out blood.
The second dropped his rifle and lunged at Arnaut. Two knives were already in Arnaut’s hands, and he went for the man’s neck. But the man had surprises too. With a near silent click, the blades he had hidden in his gauntlets locked into place. Six inches of steel connected with each of Arnaut’s blades. Their eyes locked, and for a second he wavered. Then it was back to fighting. He was a good knife handler, Arnaut could give him that, but Arnaut had practiced more. One of his blades found a sheath in the man’s right thigh, and left a large gash going down the man’s left shoulder. Finally, Arnaut broke through his defenses and punched him in the throat. He staggered back, reeling from the blow. Arnaut hit him over the head with the lid to the crate. He fell unconscious.
Looking around, he saw there was no one left conscious, the others having passed out from blood loss, except for the man with the launcher. He stared at Arnaut, eyes wide, mouth agape. The second launcher tube was forgotten in his hand. Arnaut walked over, knocked the missile launcher off of the windowsill, and unloaded half a clip into it.
“You won’t be needing that. Clean your men up, tend to their wounds, and get out of here before the police come to take you away. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a governor to kidnap.”
He walked toward the stairs, had a thought, and went back. Removing the gauntlets from the knife-man, he slipped them on. They fit perfectly. He was sure he would be using them a lot. With that, he slipped out of the building and into the chaos below.
Arnaut was surprised to find that only less than a minute had passed since the launcher had been shot. It felt like hours. Shelov’s float was still speeding down the street, barely visible above the heads of the crowds, and the crowds were still running amok, not knowing what was happening or where to go.
“Arnaut! Arnaut, what happened!? What do we do now? Where are you? Arnaut!” The call came in frantically as Jan’re yelled into his comlink.
“Things took a bad turn! I have a new job for you. Get your men together, get them ready, and then make sure no guards in the area get in the way of that float!”
“Y-yes sire!” he responded shakily. He was frightened, as Arnaut would’ve been in his shoes. Unlike Arnaut, he wasn’t leaving the planet or the city, away from the police. They could hunt him down for the murders of the murders of the parade guards. That’s if the Government actually cared to investigate those murders before getting back Shelov. No, if all worked out, Jan’re and the resistance fighters would be fine.
If only everything worked out. The float was more visible now, speeding even more as it blew through the crowds. The people parted around it, giving it a sort of ‘bubble’ of space. Arnaut could see now that Tnepres was driving it. The driver had been taken out by a lucky piece of shrapnel.
With a turn that almost flipped it over, the float careened into the street Arnaut was standing in. Arnaut dove out of the way, avoiding getting hit. Others weren’t so lucky and were thrown through the air on both sides. The panicked crowds didn’t even stop for them.
The crowds should’ve been a bit more calmed down by then, Arnaut though hesitantly. But they weren’t. They were still running around. And that’s when Arnaut heard the gunshots. Arnaut glimpsed through the crowd one, no two, three, four…more than he could count. Men dressed in dark colors, faces masked, holding rifles into the air and firing. It was from them that the crowds were running.
Another group who doesn’t like the government, Arnaut thought. Terrorist group, it looked like from Arnaut’s view. It made sense that the Resistance wasn’t the only ones rebelling against the government. They had chosen just
this time and
this date to strike at the governor. Arnaut cursed their luck and ran off down the street after the speeding parade float.
The float had missed the alleyway where it was supposed to turn. Virius, Spartan, and the resistance fighters he had met up with
weren’t there waiting for the float in the street it
did turn into. Tnepres and Snipes had no backup to take down Shelov. Arnaut needed to correct that. He opened the comlink channel to Virius.
“Virius, where are you? The plan is going awry pretty quickly!”
“We’re speeding through the alley. We saw the float turn down your street, and we think we can head it off in…two blocks or so. One of the fighters had a speeder. We’re making good time.”
“Good. I’ll see if I can catch up.”
Arnaut ran over to the nearest landspeeder he could see. He jumped in next to a small, frightened old man. He looked at Arnaut and began to quiver.
“I need the speeder. I’ll return it to you when I’m done.” The man was so frightened, he practically fell out of the car and ran off into the crowds.
“If I can ever find you again,” Arnaut muttered under his breath, turned the ignition and speeding off after the runaway float.
As Arnaut moved on, he could tell the whole city was disrupted now. Armed men ran through the streets firing at anything that moved, landspeeders and people alike. One popped in front of Arnaut, gun aimed at the speeder. Arnaut ran him down, the speeder only jerking slightly as it cast the man’s limp form aside. The streets were less crowded away from the parade route, though, since most of the city’s populace was
at the parade. He didn’t have to slow down for the crowds anymore, and instead pushed his speeder to go even faster.
Zipping by a street, he glimpsed the float flying off in that direction. Tnepres was heading for their overnight base, Arnaut realized. Stopping and spinning his speeder around, he made to fly into the road, but another speeder shot out of an alleyway on his right, and went into the street in front of him.
Virius and Spartan, Arnaut thought with a smile. He maneuvered his speeder into the street and sped off once more.
The parade float wasn’t very fast, and the two speeders caught up almost immediately. On the float, Shelov was starting to get the impression something was wrong. Quietly, he tapped a button on the side of his custom chronometer and turned toward Snipes.
“Where are we going?” His voiced boomed loudly. “Who are they?” Snipes looked won to Tnepres, nodded, and turned back toward Shelov.
“Sir, we are here to take you into custody, order of the Resistance force of Abregado-rae,” Snipes replied, already taking out the tranquilizer they were going to use to pacify Shelov.
“Treason!” Shelov bellowed. And with that, he jumped. Snipes ran to the back-end of the float just in time to see him go clear over Virius’ speeder, and straight for Arnaut.
Herglics are a massive species. Standing between six to seven feet tall, their broad bodies resembled other aquatic mammals such as the whaladons of Mon Calamari that Arnaut had seen picts of when he was younger. All one and a half tons of the Herglic named Shelov came crashing down onto Arnaut’s speeder. The weight crushed the front end and sent the speeder flying wildly out of control into a nearby shop.
Arnaut coughed out bits of dust and looked up in time to see Shelov pulling himself off the ground. Small, fractured pieces of the wall fell from him like rain. He started to growl, a nasally sound that came from the two blow holes on the top of his head, and charged Arnaut’s speeder. Arnaut pulled open the door and jumped out just as Shelov hit the speeder and sent it flying out of the building and across the road.
Arnaut went to fire, but Shelov turned with amazing agility and hit the gun aside, out of Arnaut’s hands. Arnaut had to duck to miss the next swipe, and jump to miss the third. Shelov punched out as Arnaut landed, hitting him in the chest and throwing him clear into the air.
Arnaut landed hard on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Shelov turned his attention to the first resistance fighter to step out of Virius’ speeder. Lunging at him, shoulder down, Shelov sent the man tumbling into the permacrete wall just a few feet from Arnaut. The wall cracked and the man slumped down. He was dead; no man could survive a blow like that.
Shelov gave no time for the rest of the people to exit the speeder. With a great leap, he landed next to the speeder, grabbed it, and hurled it at the parade car. The two connected and shrapnel went everywhere. Virius stepped out of the wreckage and fired his pistol at Shelov. The herglic roared in pain as they scorched his arm. He rose up to crush Virius into the ground. His blow never fell.
Standing dumbly, he lowered his arms, and stared blankly at Virius. Slowly, he lifted a hand to feel behind his neck. The tranquilizer, usually used on large game, had found its mark. Slowly, Tnepres approached Shelov, the gun in his hand. With a great sigh, Shelov collapsed to his knees, and then fell face first on the pavement, breathing slowly.
The survivors of the wreck formed a circle around him, looking down.
“We did it,” Arnaut breathed.
“We did it,” Tnepres echoed.
With an effort that required six people, Shelov was raised onto the parade float. They’d pulled off the wreckage of the speeder and stripped it of it’s neon lights and Shelov’s chair, bringing it down the basic landspeeder it was. The weight of Shelov caused the speeder to sag a little, but other than that it was fine.
“Alright Arnaut, I think we’ve played our part,” came Jan’re’s weary voice over the comlink. “The terrorists and the PDF's are fighting it out in the streets, and most of the population is holed up in their houses. Did you get Shelov?” Arnaut took another look at the giant Shelov, so peaceful as the strong chemicals of the tranquilizer seeped through his bloodstream and caused him to sleep.
“Yes we did. He’s about ten feet in front of me, actually,” Arnaut replied simply. “Do you have any idea who these terrorists
are?”
“They seem familiar. There was a group like them, I remember, that was trying to be rooted out of the city’s they had agents everywhere, even in our resistance cells. They must’ve gotten a hint that Shelov was going to be kidnapped during the parade from one of our resistance fighters and decided to try and kill him before that happened. At least, that’s what I think. They do look familiar, though…” Jan’re trailed off, lost in thought.
“See if you can get any information from their dead. They almost cost us the mission, and I want to know why.”
“I’ll get right to it.”
“See that you do. We'll be in touch.”
* * *“Mission accomplished, sir.” Kanderin said grinning. Arnaut was about to respond when the celebrations were cut short. Kanderin looked up into the sky, and his eyes widened. Tnepres yelled something and began firing, as did most of the other squad members. Some one yelled the name Shelov. And then something very large and hard hit Arnaut in the back of the head, causing him to black out. The last thing he remembered, seen from the flat of his back in the middle of the street, was a loud roaring noise and people falling from the sky.
* * *Arnaut woke sometime later. He didn’t at first realize where he was, or even who he was. The pain in his head was immense, and his vision was blurry. A face loomed in his vision, blocking out the meager light that there was.
“Well, good to know you’re still alive,” Virius said, grinning. Dark shapes – other people – could be made out past him. Kanderin was talking with someone Arnaut didn’t recognize while the others hurried about carrying gear and crates around. None seemed the least bit hurried.
“W-what happened?” Arnaut asked stutteringly.
“Oh, about a dozen or so of Shelov’s personal guards dropped from airlift onto our position. Must’ve called them during the fight. We had to get out of there pretty quickly. One of the first grenades they dropped on us brought up some rubble, and apparently…you got hit.” Arnaut rubbed his sore head and sat up.
“I noticed,” he said through clenched teeth. Maybe sitting up wasn’t the best idea right now. His head got very light, very quickly, causing the room to spin. Virius caught him before he could fall off the table and the dizzy spell faded. Arnaut blinked away the black spots in his vision and shook his head. Squeezing his eyes shut in pain, he realized that might not have been the smartest thing to do either.
“Try to take it slow,” Virius said. Arnaut nodded slightly, wincing at the small amount of pain, and then gently lay back down.
“So…where are we?” he asked when he felt a little less pained.
“This? Oh, this is one of the resistance’s many hideouts. You’re sitting on one of their two med tables. One of their ‘field supply caves’ or something. Apparently they just store weapons, ammo, and basic supplies here should the cells in the city run out. Also makes a nice place to meet with the resistance forces taking Shelov.”
“So they have him? We’re safe? Shelov’s in their hands?” Arnaut asked hurriedly.
“Yes, yes, he’s with them. Mission accomplished. Finally.” Arnaut nodded.
“Mission accomplished. Alright, try and get an encrypted signal back home about this. We’ll stay here for a few more days and then move out as…” Arnaut began to dictate orders from his bedside, about how they were going to get off the planet and other matters at hand. But inside all he could think about was the mission.
Mission accomplished. It was about time.
THUS ENDS AUREK MISSION IV- OOC:
- Now, Kand might start Phase II, or I might when I get back. Whoever is faster. So, not long to wait now. Oh, and the NPCs on Phase II are going to be Jan're and Fraot. Just to...clear that up. I know Kand, you wanted Fraot, so you can bring her. Jan're is just coming along because he liked how we worked and wanted offworld and such. Whatever. Have fun while I'm gone!
