Raezyr withdrew the blood red blade from the thick durasteel door and threw forth an open palm. The slab flew backward and into the opposite wall of the safe room with a deep clang. The opening was still outlined in bright orange, popping and hissing as the metal cooled.
"Door's open, brother," said the big man in the dark blue armor. "If you and the boss lady would like to finish conveying our Life Day wishes to her wormness, I'll go check on Mannix."
He didn't wait for an answer, but rather headed out of the room once filled with merry revelers bent on currying favor with a small-time crime boss and now littered with bodies, debris, and droid wreckage.
"Ladies first?" Trychon asked with a grin, pointing toward the opening in the blast door.
"Age before beauty," Dianna retorted, giving the Sith a shove who in turn mock stumbled toward the entrance, then dove through headfirst and into a tuck-roll. She watched as he popped to his feet, lightsaber seeming to emerge from nowhere to deflect a couple of blaster bolts.
She shook her head wondering if that over-confident flamboyance would get him hurt or worse someday. She replaced the power cartridge in her blaster carbine and, holding it close in a tactical crouch, stepped through to face Sootoo the Hutt and whatever else might be waiting inside.
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Mannix disappeared down the hall and around the corner, leaving Master Trychon, Master Raezyr and Captain Kingsdoom alone in that room full of mercs and battle droids. Okay, so the room wasn't so full of mercs any more, the four of them had really cut down on the numbers in the initial lightfight. Then in the heavy smoke that followed it was easy to pick out a target and cut them down with the lightsaber Master Raezyr had tossed to him.
It had been almost like when he was a kid, and the children in his village played a game where one person was blindfolded and the rest only had to stay out of their reach. They would taunt the blindfolded person, jumping in and out of arm reach. Easy enough when you can see and the other person couldn't.
This hadn't been much different. He could feel each target through the Force, and could almost walk right up to them. The tricky part had been turning the light saber on. The glow from the emerald blade could bee seen through the thick white smoke and would instantly draw blasterfire from all over.
Things had gotten easier and harder at the same time as the short battle progressed. They quickly whittled down the number of their opponents, but it was harder to sneak up on them as the smoke dissipated, and as they finally finished off the last of them, and the smoke was nearly gone, the battle droids arrived.
Mannix was jolted back to his present task of making his way to the escape area when two a Rodian and a human came around the corner. The young would-be Sith ignited his blade as he was already performing his first attack, taking the gun hand of the Rodian off at the wrist, then reversing the blade in his grip and driving the weapon to it's hilt into the chest of the human.
He withdrew it as the man's knees began to buckle, then finished off the Rodian as he screamed, writhing in pain on the floor, holding the stump where his hand used to be. He moved on quickly and it dawned on him that maybe he needn't have killed the Rodian.
Mannix shrugged to himself and quickly moved on. He had a long way to go to reach Schyrt and Reed, and one Rodian more or less really didn't matter in the over all scheme of things.
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Trychon easily deflected the bolts that Sootoo fired at him, but he didn't advance. The fat, slimy Hutt wasn't alone. She was holding the blaster in one hand, and her other held a chain. At the end of the chain was a blue female Twi'lekki dancer. It was Deera, and she wasn't in very good shape, and the fact the blaster was pointed at her head was the only thing keeping Trychon at bay.
For the briefest instant, the Sith warrior considered attacking anyway, but that plan was gone as Dianna Kingsdoom came through the opening, blaster carbine leveled and ready for action.
"Let the Twi'lek go, Sootoo," Dianna exclaimed, still sighting down the barrel of her weapon. "That poor dancer girl has nothing to do with this."
"Bantha crap," replied the female Hutt in a voice that was somehow resonating, yet not that deep at the same time. "You can cut the charade, Kingsdoom. I know she works for you. She was caught attempting to slice my mainframe and I personally beat the truth out of her."
It dawned on both Trychon and Dianna that the Hutt was speaking basic now, rather than some obscure Huttese dialect, a tactic the Hutts liked to employ to put their adversaries off balance. Apparently she had decided that tactic wasn't of much use when bargaining for your life and your translator was most likely lying dead in the next room.
"I'm surprised you had the ambition to do that. Normally you're too lazy to lift your arms to feed your skinny face," Dianna replied. Sootoo was anything but thin, but she said it anyway, knowing it was a major slap in the face to a Hutt. It had the desired effect.
"What?" Screamed the Hutt, flinging the Twi'lek aside. With more speed than either Dianna or Trychon thought possible, Sootoo dashed across the room, trying to crush the two insolent humans against the wall behind them.
Trychon launched himself into the air over the giant gastropod, landing a grazing blow on the Hutt in mid-air as he avoided the charge. Dianna jerked the trigger and dove to the side, barely avoiding a bone crushing blow from Sootoo's tail. She noted her quick shot was successful, taking the crime-lord in the belly, but had little effect.
For a moment she thought they may be in for a hell of a fight. She rolled to her knees and took aim again, firing her weapon as fast as she could jerk the trigger. In the small room, you couldn't miss a target of that size. The problem was that Hutt's possessed such a thick layer of fat, it was going to take several shots in the same area to get to any vital organs.
But then the Hutt opened her giant maw and screamed. Dianna saw her opportunity. She didn't bother to aim, instead trusting her years of firearms training under the skilled tutelage of the ex-Sith commando Zanz, once almost an uncle before his betrayal, and fired twice from the hip.
Her shots went true and bore a hole through the soft tissue on the roof of Sootoo's mouth and into the Hutt's brain. The crime lord's eyes rolled back into her head her body went limp, flopping to the floor.
Trychon got up from his crouch and deactivated his lightsaber. He walked over and kicked the Hutt several times.
"What are you doing?" Dianna asked. "Sootoo's gone, and so is any chance of us finding out how she knew about the aurodium heist."
"I know," Trychon answered. "I just always wondered what kicking a Hutt would sound like. Figured this was the best chance I might ever get to find out."
"Well?" the pirate queen asked, more surprised she even asked and realizing she didn't really want to know the answer.
"Sort of a squishy 'thwacking' noise," the Sith answered. He kicked the body again. "Strike that. Make it a squishy 'thwocking' noise."
Dianna rolled her eyes at Trychon and helped Deera to her feet. "I can handle myself, Captain," the infiltrator said. "I wasn't as hurt or beat up as I let on, and I promise you, I gave them no vital information."
"We know, Deera," Dianna said.
She tried to take a step on her own but her knees buckled and she fell forward. Trychon stepped forward and caught her. She looked up and their eyes met. "Thank you... for everything."
"No problem," he replied helping her up. She held on to him tightly for support. Maybe a bit tighter than was necessary. Hoo boy... this could either be a lot of fun or a lot of trouble.
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