Nico's Gambit

Avenging Angel

Odette stood strongly, blasters pointed at Dareg and Skavak. In turn, Skavak had his pointed at Corso and her.  The rest of toadies in the room looked like they weren't sure where they should point. It was chicken. And she hated playing chicken.

"You wish," Odette said. "I'm going help you with that shoddy job your tattoo artist did on your face and then I'm gonna get my ship back."

"You worthless vermin dared to invade my fortress?" Dareg yelled. "How many of my brothers-in-arms did you kill to get in here?"

"None," Odette said. "Though the two we stole our uniforms from are probably having a cold morning on the beach. Now, listen up. Skavak stole my ship. I want it back."

Dareg's grating laugh echoed through the room. "You will get no ship. For your crimes against the oppressed people of Ord Mantell, you both have been sentenced to death. Any last words, degenerate scum?"

Odette held in a laugh at the ridiculousness of the separatist leader's over-inflated pompousness.

"These won't be my last words," Odette said.

She dove for some near-by crates but not before one zoomed over the top of her shoulder, slicing a nice little trench into her muscle. She gasped and hit the side of the crates hard. Corso took refuge behind a single crate on the other side and was already shooting.

"That son of a -" he shouted.

Odette, who had managed to get to a sitting position, looked up at Corso's exclamation and saw Skavak running for the exit of the room. She grabbed her pistol with her good arm and for a fraction of a moment considered sending some parting blaster bolts his way.

"Captain!" Corso shouted.

She turned around and peeked her head up over the crates. Corso managed to take out one of the toadies. With as good as aim as she could manage with her shoulder throbbing, she wingclipped the other toadie. He fell to the ground clutching his side, his blaster sliding across the floor and away from reach. She took aim at Dareg when she heard a snarl coming from Corso He stood up and blasted the separatist leader square in the forehead. Like a ragdoll, the stout man fell to the ground. Corso marched up the toadie who had been injured and pointed the gun at his head.

"Please!" the man whined. "I surrender! I surrender! I don't want to die."

Corso put the end of his blaster directly to the man's forehead.

"I know why you're here," the man said desperately. "You're wasting your time. We were tipped off. We knew you were coming so we were ready for you. Skavak said picking you off would be easy."

"He was wrong," Odette said. "You'll find he's wrong a lot of the time. I'm here to get my ship back. Skavak taking a blaster bolt to the head would have been a nice bonus."

"He's probably long gone by now," the man said. "He pretended to be on our side, but he turned a yellow tail and ran the second you started firing."

"What about the weapons shipment?" she said.

"It was in the hangar with your ship," the man said, tears running down his face. "He probably took that with him along with that rusty, antique droid Dareg had."

"An old droid?" Corso asked.

"That's Skavak's problem," Odette said to Corso. Looking back down at the sniveling mess on the floor, she said, "You, take us to the hangar where my ship is."

Painfully, he got to his feet and started to shuffle back the way they had entered. Corso poked the man in the back with his blaster for good measure and the man yelped. "Hurry up, we don't have all day," Corso growled at him.

When they arrived at the hanger, it was empty. No ship. No weapons, and certainly no droid.

Odette swore. "Where'd he plan on going?" she said. "He must have said something to Dareg about his next stop."

"I don't know anything, I swear," he said. "But I bet you I know who does. He keeps a girlfriend up at Fort Garnik - Syreena."

"Syreena just made my hit list," Odette said, grinding her teeth.

The man collapsed to the floor, sweat beading on his brow. "She deserves it. She was the one that told us you were coming," he said as he adjusted himself to a begging position. "Please. Let me go now. I showed you what you asked. I have a family."

At the mention of family, Corso's face twisted in rage and he once again pointed his blaster directly at the man's temple. "Separatist scum killed my family. I promised that every last one of them would die. I'm sentencing you to death."

Odette moved over to where Corso stood and leaned into him. "Um, Corso," she said. "Are you sure that's what you want to do? We already got the separatist leader. They won't be able to recover from that."

"I can't just let him go and pretend nothing ever happened," Corso said. "Every single one of them deserves the same as what my family got."

"Would your family really want you to be executing people?"

His jaw tightened and he closed his eyes for just a moment.  He looked at her, anger and confusion warring in his eyes. He lowered his blaster. When Odette tried to touch his arm, he glowered at her and stepped away. He kicked the man to the floor. "Take us back to Fort Garnik in that shuttle over there. Then you better get out of my sight before I have a chance to change my mind."

Once they landed at Fort Garnik the man, even as injured as he was, ran so fast he was out the fort and down the road before anyone could stop him.

"Let's go find Syreena," Odette said. "We're going to show Viidu what kind of scum he keeps around. Then I'm gonna need a stiff drink."

"The drinks are on me," Corso said.