739. Omicron Delta Facility - Raezyr

Dianna wasn't sure she wanted to examine the ship, afraid of what she might find, so Rhox came out to help Raezyr and Trychon. They moved carefully about the interior of the Twi'lek's ship. She had been an assassin, and as such, was prone to being wary of intruders. It didn't appear as though she had left any traps, or hadn't set them if they were present.

They found two bodies in the med bay. It appeared that Teera and Dek had spent the last few moments using the medical oxygen tanks.

"Frakking Republic bastards," Trychon muttered inside his enviro-suit as the three looked down on the bodies of their friends.

"What was that?" Raezyr asked, not quite catching what he had said.

"Nevermind," he said brusquely before turning to his brother. "Raez, can you get their remains inside the base? I need to check the computers and figure out what happened here."

At that moment, their suit comms crackled to life. "Guys, I'm in the engine room. Come take a look," Rhox said.


They both arrived a moment later. The blackened mess had melted almost everything in the room. Raezyr ran his fingers across the back soot and examined it closely, noticing a crystalline structure to it. "Plasma fire... burned up all the Oh-two and destroyed the oxy-scrubbers as well."


"Can you tell what caused it?" Rhox asked.


"No, but maybe there's something in the logs," Raezyr said and looked at his brother.


"It was probably the kriffing Si..." Trychon started to mumble before catching himself and the glares headed in his direction.  "I'm on it," He said and headed for the cockpit.

It only took him a few minutes to access the proper logs, most of which was spent decrypting his own algorithms.  Seconds thereafter, his datapad had analyzed the data.

"Hmmm."  He said to himself before keying the comm.  "Alright... I've got the results.  Nothing surprising, for what it's worth.  You can come take a look though."

Rhox and Raezyr arrived seconds apart.  Trychon didn't look up immediately, but continued his work as he held up a hand gesturing for them to wait.

"What's the deal?  I thought you had it already."  Rhox tapped her foot impatiently.

"Hang on to your tauntaun.... I'm going to do even better.  I hope."

As if he had timed it on purpose, the display nearest him began playing back a video log.

The screen showed nothing but static at first, but the audio had alarm klaxons as well as the static.  As the picture began to resolve, they could make out a shadow of what seemed to be a humanoid in front of the camera.  They began to hear coughing and muted cursing over the blaring computer warnings. 

Slowly the video began to focus.  It was still dark and grainy, but they could make out Dek's face obscured by an oxygen mask.

"Finally..."  He gasped, breaking into another coughing fit.  "I'm not sure how long I have now, so I'll get to the point.  We're not doing so hot."  He paused to continue trying to clear his lungs.  "We got hit as we made our jump out of the system.  We tried to feign compliance and get out without any further damage, but it didn't work."

"The hyperdrive took some damage, but our first jump was locked in.  When we came out of hyperspace, the alarms... only got worse with the wear and tear.  We knew we were taking a risk... by making the second jump, but with the Republic possibly right on our tail, and the course already locked in... we were risking more by staying.  We couldn't risk everyone else."

"When the fire started, I was able to lock it into the engine room and contain... it.  I don't know how the drive survived to keep us going, but it all happened... so quick.  I think my lungs are..."  His eyes began to water and he went into a long coughing fit.  "I think they're scarred.  My lungs.  Teera took a nasty hit on the head and has been unconscious.  Probably for the best, because her air just may last her long enough.  I'm... wasting mine at least twice as much as I should.  Not... not for long though."

"Di.  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry... about... Teera.  I'm sorry about everyone else."  His eyes began pouring out water, and it was more evident that it was emotional, not physical damage that was causing it now.  He was holding in his sobs as best he could.  "I don't... know why they did this.  Why... did they do this to us?  I didn't do anything to... to them.  Not... my fault.  Please... please... save Teera if you... can.  Save yourselves."

"Good...bye."

With his last words spent, he unhooked the oxygen canister from his own mask and walked over to Teera's unconscious form on the table behind him.  Barely able to hold himself up, he connected what oxygen he had left to the secondary input on her mask before collapsing.

738. Omicron Delta Facility - Raezyr

Dianna struggled to remain calm, fighting the panic that threatened to overwhelm her as she and Raezyr made their way to the control room. The big Sith was walking briskly, and it was all she could do to keep from breaking out into a run. The fear that the Republic had found them here was all to real, and she was sure that someone had been followed or tracked somehow.

Yet somewhere deep down inside, despite whatever this turned out to be, she was thankful that she had been able to get out of her discussion with the man she loved, because she wasn't sure she could give him the answers he wanted. She wasn't even sure what the answer even was yet.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was in reality only a few moments, they arrived. She spoke before the door had even whooshed closed behind her. "Is it the Republic? Were you followed?"

Trychon was seated at the control terminal with Rhox leaning over his shoulder, looking intently at some readout on one of the display screens. The Sith slicer turned his head and spoke over his other shoulder. "Ship entered the system, and it's markings match that of the Arctic Seduction," he explained, referring to the single ship which had slipped through the Republic's grasp, escaping to hyperspace just before the Twilight Stalker had succumbed to it's wounds.

"That's Teera's ship," Dianna stated. "Why are you calling me up here for that?"

"She don't appear to have any power to her ion drive. Your Sith maintenance guy here," Rhox said, indicating Trychon with a jerk of her thumb, which was met with a brief glare from the aforementioned," managed to get the communications array up and running. We attempted to hail them on the Kingsmen's emergency comm frequency, but haven't gotten any answer."

"Something's wrong," Dianna surmised.

"Excellent deduction, Captain Obvious," Trychon said with a chuckle. His joke was met with glares all around.

Not the time, Raezyr thought to his brother, who returned a silent acknowledgement.

Trychon cleared his throat. "Uh... Di... um, you want Raez and I to go tow them in?" the older brother suggested, attempting to get past the awkward silence.

"That's probably a good idea," the pirate captain answered. "Don't try to get in, just tow them in."

The Sith brothers headed for the door simultaneously, and the women watched them go. Once gone, Rhox turned to her captain. "Everything okay, boss?" In reality, she had begun to think of the red-haired woman as much more than an employer, rather a friend, and a close one at that.

The reverse was true as well. Dianna collapsed into the chair, and looked up at her friend. "I don't know, Rhox. I just have a bad feeling about this."

"About the Seduction?"

"About everything."

------------------

As soon as the control room doors had closed behind them, Trychon asked what he'd been dying to ask in the room. "How'd the talk go?"

"Shut up, Trych," Raezyr growled.

"Whatever, man," the older Sith replied. "Just remember that I'm on your side. There's no call to snap at me."

The two were silent for a few moments, their sound of their boots contacting the durasteel walkway echoing down the corridor. Finally Raezyr spoke. "You're right. Tensions are high, but our priorities haven't wavered. Dianna is going to do whatever she needs to do. I want that to be coming with us to Den Var, but right now she's messed up, Trych. She's lost everything, including her focus on what's important. She may need a few days to clear her mind."

Trychon thought about it for a moment. "She'll come to us. It's not like she has any other options at this point, right?"

-------------------

The Jet Razor drifted closer to the other vessel as it tumbled on it's slow roll.

"Sensor readings are inconclusive, showing minimal power readings although it could be enough to sustain the life support systems, but all power to the drives is out," Trychon was saying into the comm, "and we can't see any lights in the cockpit either." He didn't need to extrapolate on what that indicated. The person on the other end of the transmission knew very well that the probability of anyone being alive was next to nil.

"And they're not answering your comm?" Rhox's voice replied over the speaker.

"No, and we've tried flashing landing lights at them in Standard Galactic Communication Patterns but there's been no reply either," Trychon said.

Rhox clicked back on. "Captain says to bring it in if you can."

"Roger that," the Sith said, then turned to his younger brother. "I'll use the tractor beam to stabilize the Seduction's roll while you suit up." The tractor beam aboard the Jet Razor was only a small one, useful for hauling in small objects or rescuing a being who's tether had snapped while outside the ship. Trychon was going to see if he could use it to alter the other ship's course enough so they could clamp on with their landing claw and piggy back the ship in.

Of course, that would mean someone had to go out there and make sure it was secure.  It'd be a nightmare if the landing claw slipped and the ships came unhooked at the wrong time.

Raezyr nodded and headed toward the cargo area where they stored the space suits. It'd been a while since he'd been out on a "walk." Zero-G wasn't something he was particularly fond of, but his old Master had made him practice a lot of Zero-G sports, and he'd been good at them.

Donning an enviro-suit and going outside of a space ship was a much different prospect than playing grav-ball. Grav-ball was in a controlled environment with an arena and plenty of breathable air. A little tear in your exercise close wouldn't wouldn't kill you. Out here, there wasn't much besides some being-made materials between you and death, and beings were plenty fallible.

The big Sith shrugged into his suit, double checked the seals, and ran a self-diagnostic on the power cell and air system. All systems reported nominal, with green indicator lights showing on the forearm display readout of his suit.

After getting the "go" signal from his brother, indicating that he had indeed stabilized the trajectory of the other ship, Raezyr cycled the airlock.

The outer door opened to reveal the brilliant view of a nearby planet devoid of any life, the milky glow of the galactic disk could be seen beyond. He took it in for only a brief moment before he pushed out into the black void.

His comm inside his suit crackled to life. "I'm picking you up on sensors and I've got a visual as well," his brother's voice said into his ear.

It didn't take long for Raezyr to cross the expanse. He took his time and even tried to peek into the view ports of the cock pit, but the interior was dark and he was unable to make out any details.

Once he had guided his brother in, and secured the landing claw, he crossed back over to his own ship, happy to be back inside and not having the invisible weight of the expanse surrounding him.

They were already underway when he slid into the seat next to Trychon. "How'd it look?" his brother asked.

"I couldn't get a good look inside. Everything is dark."

"I couldn't sense any thing living on board," Trychon said flatly. His thoughts drifted back to that last night back on Hoth, to the party and the excitement, and to Teera, the owner of the Arctic Seduction. Deep inside he didn't know whether he wanted to find her inside the ship or not. Not finding her meant she had been one of the ones captured while trying to escape the King's Lair, and as far as he was concerned, death was probably preferable to that.

"Neither could I," Raezyr responded.

737. Omicron Delta Facility - Raezyr

Raezyr's face went red. All his training told him to release his anger, lash out, destroy, but this was Dianna. He strained to keep his emotions in check despite everything he had been taught, because patience was also a quality a Sith was supposed to possess.

All he could manage to say was a single word. "Why?"

"Do you mean, aside from the fact that you punched me in the face and then convinced my second in command to do the very thing that you knew I didn't want? Do you mean, 'why,' aside from that?" She said coldly and calmly.

"You never would have gone willingly, and had you not, you'd probably be dead right now, or worse: in a Republic prison cell awaiting trial," the big man said. Her words had robbed him of a lot of his indignant anger. He had stupidly assumed that she'd get over the physical assault once she came to and realized that this was best, but he should have known better.

"Look, this way the Kingsmen can carry on. You can set up here or somewhere else and start over again," Raezyr reasoned. "But without you, it's over."

"It's over anyway," she said.

"Trych and I can help you out," Raezyr offered. "Our investments on Den Var were sound and they're flourishing like mad. You'll never believe how well they're doing. We can stake you again."

"No, I still owe you two more credits than I can ever repay now," she said sadly. "It's over."

"It's not over," the big man insisted. "Forget about those credits you owe..."

"You're not getting it, Raez!" Dianna exclaimed. "It's over. Not because I don't have money. Not because I already owe massive debts, it's over because of you. It's over because of Trychon. In the end, it's over because of me."

Raezyr opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted. "I failed in my judgement. I never should have allowed the Sith to stay at my base. Since then there's been nothing but trouble with the Republic and the Jedi. You've been the only redeeming aspect of that failure."

The Sith's eyes grew cold. "Now you're sounding like Rhox."

"Yeah, well I trust her judgement, and she's had you Sith pegged as trouble makers from the start!"

"So did Zanz," Raezyr retorted. "Where did trusting him get you?"

Dianna turned her back to Raezyr but said nothing.

"Look, babe. Just come to Den Var with Trych and I," Raezyr said calmly. "This whole thing was a major blow to all of us, and we're all upset right now." He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.

She shrugged away from his touch. "Just go, Raez. I need time to sort this out."

"Absolutely," he agreed. "Take a few days, then come and meet us in Den Var. Things will look better once you've been able to get some perspective."

She spun around to face him again. "You're not hearing what I'm saying, Raez. I need time. Not a few days. Not even a few weeks. I need to sort my life out. I need to figure my future out, and I have no idea how long that will take."

Raezyr nodded slowly. "Take as long as you need, just promise that you'll come to me on Den Var when it's all over."

Dianna closed her eyes tightly in a wince for a moment, then looked up into her lover's eyes before she began. "Raez... I..."

Suddenly she was interrupted by the squawking of the comm box on the wall. "Di, Raez, you two better come up to Main Control. A ship just popped into the system."

736. Omicron Delta Facility - Raezyr

Rhox Vegha stood with her hands on her hips and a determined set to her jaw.

Raezyr ignored her and continued to remove his eviro-suit. "Nice to see you again too, Rhox," the big warrior said sarcastically.

"I mean it," she said. "You're not welcome here." Her hand moved almost imperceptibly closer to her M-45 blaster pistol in it's drop holster at her hip. Still it was enough for Raezyr and Trychon to notice.

Their movements became slow and deliberate as they removed the last pieces of their bulky space-wear. Raezyr stepped closer to her, testing her. He wanted to see just how serious she was.

"Go ahead, Rhox," Raezyr said carefully. "Jerk that plasma wagon and see what happens."

For a tense moment, both the Sith thought she might actually be foolhardy enough to go through with her unspoken threat, but in the end she relaxed, her shoulders slumping just slightly and she moved her hand away from her pistol.

"Captain Kingsdoom said she didn't want to see you," Rhox said, the defeat evident in her voice.

Raezyr pushed on passed the security officer. "Then she can tell me that to my face."

----------------

Rhox followed a few steps behind Raezyr without speaking. Despite his lack of familiarity with the enormous facility, he didn't need anyone to guide him. There was only one other life force in the complex and it called to him.

Initially Trychon had considered just loading up the supplies and staying out of the way, but with the probability of entertainment at his half-brother's expense, there was no way he was going to miss it.

The three finally found the former pirate captain on her knees and up to her elbows in wiring in a room filled with various outdated electronic equipment. All of it was covered in a thick layer of dust just like everything else in the base.

Despite being the second person into the room, Rhox was the first one to speak. "Captain, they insisted on seeing you."

Dianna stood up, brushed her dusty hands off on her fatigue pants and pushed a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. "I see you made it," she said flatly.

Raezyr ignored the comment. "What's this about not wanting to see us?" the big man demanded.

"Well, that's not exactly what I said," Dianna said. Raezyr detected a coldness in her tone, but why it was there he wasn't exactly sure.

"Then what exactly did you say?"

Dianna looked into Raezyr's eyes for a moment, then looked away. When she spoke, it was to the other people in the room. "Trych, there's something wrong with the comm system, can you see if you can get it working?"

"Uh, sure," Trychon said, a little disappointed, and walked out the door, headed to the main control deck of the complex.

"Rhox, can you go see if he needs help?" the red haired woman added.

Rhox Vegha hesitated. She wasn't sure she should leave her captain alone in what appeared to her as a volatile situation. Finally she decided that she'd do as she was told. Still, she glanced one last time over her shoulder before she left the room.

When her security officer was finally gone, Dianna turned her eyes back to that of her lover. "Rhox might have gotten a bit zealous, Raez."

"But did you tell her we weren't welcome here?" the Sith pushed for an answer. "Did you tell her that I wasn't welcome here?"

Dianna looked Raezyr straight in the eye, her jaw set. "Your stay here needs to be as brief possible."

735. Omicron Delta Facility - Raezyr

"Rendezvous Point Omicron Delta" was actually a deserted asteroid mining facility which Dianna's father had purchased many years ago for emergency purposes, such as this. In the past several years the facility hadn't been touched and had probably been forgotten by even the original mining corporation which had built the facility, if it was even still in existence.

Dianna's father had purchased the facility through a front corporation under a fake name, and then let the "company" go out of business. For all intents and purposes the facility was abandoned, unowned, and forgotten about years ago.

The chances of it even being discovered was slim as the system it was located in was not only off the beaten path, but contained no habitable planets, or at least not habitable to any known sentient life form. The system didn't even have a name, only an alpha-numeric designation for mapping purposes. There was no imaginable reason a ship might exit hyperspace here, but here was the Jet Razor, cruising along the edge of the unamed system's asteroid belt as it had been for several hours now.

"Omicron Delta, this is Jet Razor. Do you copy?" Raezyr spoke into the comm for what seemed like the hundredth time, but had yet to receive an answer. The Sith brothers had never really bothered to get an exact location of the facility. They had never really ever expected to have a reason to stop there.

Raezyr tapped the ship comm again, but instead of transmitting out into the black void, his voice traveled to a maintenance tube within the ship. "Hey, you get that sensor adjusted yet?"

His brother's voice came back across the speaker. "No, and I won't get it done any time soon if I have to keep answering that question every five minutes. Just keep your tunic on. You're as jittery as a Kowakian monkey-lizard."

Raezyr ignored the jab and continued. "Something may have happened to them. We have to find that old mining base. If they didn't make it, we need to know that so we can get looking for them."

"You've said that already. You're starting to sound like a shorted out holo-recording," Trychon retorted with a chuckle. The click that followed told Raezyr his brother had shut off the comm, essentially ending the conversation.

For the next thirty minutes, Raezyr continued to send out his hail across a wide range of frequencies in case for some reason they were having trouble monitoring their usual frequency, but to no avail. Finally Trychon stepped through and sat down on the co-pilot's couch and began to fiddle with the sensor knobs.

"Is it working? Did you make the adjustments?" Raezyr asked excitedly. He'd been going crazy not knowing what had happened. They had been forced to take a longer route to get here, and despite the fact the Jet Razor could make point five past light speed, the other ships should have arrived here long before now.

"Patience, my young apprentice," Trychon said. Raezyr could hear the grin in the words even though his half-brother's face was turned away from him and chose to ignore the comment.

The older brother continued to fiddle with the controls until he finally leaned back, a look of satisfaction on his face. "Alright, it's working. If there's a power source big enough to light up a glow stick anywhere within half a million kilometers, we'll know about it."

Trychon had spent the last few hours turning the sensitivity up on the sensors. It had required him to spend most of the time crawling around in cramped access tunnels rewiring power converters and bypassing filters. He'd even had to suit up and crawl around the hull for an hour, slicing into the sensor array.

Normally, sensors were geared only to pick up large power sources such as ships, satellites and planetary settlements, but they had failed to record any signs of a facility after two slow orbits around the entire asteroid ring.

Fearing the worst, Trychon had amped up the sensitivity beyond anything they would normally be capable of. They'd have to turn it down before they left the system, though. If they flew into an inhabited system where ships and other sources of power were common, it'd blow the fuses. It'd be the electronic equivalent of a concussion grenade going off next to someone's ear.

Raezyr flew slowly, hoping the improvised sensor upgrade was really working. Even a powered down ship still had trace amounts of power flowing through it. If Rhox and Dianna had crashed, hopefully it'd pick it up, or at the very least, be able to pick up the minute traces of power that the dormant mining facility would use.

Suddenly Trychon notified Raezyr there was a faint signal on the edge of the sensor. Instantly Raezyer gunned it toward the source, quickly closing in on a huge asteroid nearly 400 kilometers in diameter on the edge of the dangerous belt of  space rocks.

They consulted the sensor readouts the closer they came, and located the source of the reading in what looked like a cave in a large crater. Upon closer inspection, the opening was too uniform in size and shape to be naturally occurring, and as they drifted slowly inside on repulsor lifts, they saw the Ice Spectre sitting on a landing pad inside and looked to be in perfect shape.

As Raezyr was setting down, Trychon leaned forward and looked through the transparisteel view ports. "There's equipment set up for a mag-con field, but it doesn't appear to be on," he surmised. "We'd better suit up. If it really is off, then there's no atmo between us and the airlock to the base."

It took Raezyr a bit longer to pull on his Enviro-suit as Trychon had already done it once already today, but they were both ready rather quickly. Neither spoke. They didn't want to think about why Dianna's ship was sitting in the landing bay and appeared to be in good condition.

When they were ready, Trychon mashed the button which activated the ship's airlock. Once it cycled through, purging the oxygen and equalizing the pressure to that of the outside, the loading ramp lowered and they plodded slowly down and toward the main entrance to the mining facility.

They lumbered on in the suits like two huge, ungainly beasts, moving slower than Raezyr would have liked, although they finally made it. He punched in Dianna's standard access code given to all her crew members and the lights on the airlock control panel lit up, indicating it was cycling. Finally the doors slid open silently in the vacuum and they stepped in.

Once again, Raezyr activated the controls and cycle began again, this time in reverse, air filling the airlock and equalizing to the air pressure in the base. They took it as a good sign that there even was air pressure in the base.

Still, anything could be wrong, and they waited until the inner doors had opened, and the indicators built into the wrists of the their enviro-suits told them the air was safe to breath before they began to remove the bulky suits.

The helmets popped open with a hiss, one after the other. They pulled them off and tucked them under an arm as they heard footsteps clanking on the durasteel floor grates coming from down the corridor and around the bend.

Raezyr reached out with the Force, sensing the approaching lifeform. It wasn't who he had hoped. Still he pressed his senses out further, deeper and deeper into the asteroid facility and finally sensed the mind he sought. He sighed in relief.

Rhox Vegha came marching around the corner, a stern look on her face. "Don't even take those off, Sith," she began with a near snarl. "You can fuel up and grab some emergency supplies if you need them, then get out. The captain doesn't want you here."