Nubian Princess - 9.???

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Nuba City. It glittered at night like a neon crusted corusca ring.

Nubia, part of the Outlier Systems in the Corellian Sector, was for all intents and purposes a Core world with all the connotations thereof. It was also home to PharmaCorp, TradeCo, Inc., Industrial Automaton, and Nubia Star Drives, Inc. In short, Nubia was a bastion of production, it's assembly lines producing necessary items that kept the galaxy running, and running on time.

The planet itself was hardly industrialized, by Coruscant standards at least. There were vast growing fields and agricultural products were a large export as well, due to the long temperate growing system. Nubia lacked a great deal of surface water, but there were immense aqueducts and pumps that brought water from below the crust to the surface where it could be utilized. The cities were modern and competently planned, and the people were diverse and well behaved.

Because of it's importance to the Empire, as soon as the Galactic Republic changed it's name they had put an Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit of Nubia and installed Stormtroopers and an Imperial governor to keep the planet loyal and in check. These days not much had changed, and as Lilaena De'Ville piloted the small shuttle she'd been allocated by the Alliance to the surface of the planet she was struck by the inane peacefulness of it all.

She couldn't exactly write her own ticket within SpecOps, but she was a successful soldier who'd always performed within specified parameters for completion of her missions. Command trusted her. When she was given the Industrial Automaton mission she'd requested to work with a Jedi, namely the one she'd brought to the Alliance in the first place.

Padawan Akasha Kahn.

Lilaena cast a sideways look at her silent apprentice, but left her to her thoughts. There was time enough to find out if the young one's time among the Jedi (the true Jedi, she thought with a sardonic twist) had changed the spark of anger that De'Ville had fanned into a flame.

[Akasha Khan]

The deadliest part of space travel, Akasha had decided, wasn't the proximity of the life-sucking vacuum, the random blasts of cosmic radiation, or the threat of attack by pirates, Imperials, or mythical space monsters. No, the thing that made space so singularly hostile to sentient life was the boredom. Nothing could possibly be more dull and monotonous than... than nothing. After three days trapped in the astronautical equivalent of a sardine can, she was desperate for any kind of sensory stimulation other than gunmetal gray bulkheads, humming engines, and the stale smell of industrial lubricant that infected the air scrubbers. When Nubia loomed in the forward canopy, it was the first thing she'd seen in the window that wasn't a matte of unblinking stars or a twisting hyperspace corridor since she'd stepped from the deck of the Challenger to the gangplank of her master's borrowed shuttle. Her wide yellow eyes pored hungrily over the glittering orb with its cities glowing like luminous spiderwebs bounded by a slim crescent of blue daylight.

It would probably be dull again within ten minutes of landing, but for now it was something new. The young Orryxian rose from her seat and leaned over the console for a better look.

"Are we landing on the day side or the night side, Master?" she asked.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"The night side," she said, the shuttle nosing down as if to punctuate the sentence. "We are landing in Nuba City and then traveling by speeder to Rordis."

Lilaena checked the flight plan she'd been forwarded by the spaceport, and made an adjustment. She didn't pilot very often, but thankfully shuttles were fairly simple things. "Industrial Automaton has their headquarters there, and the majority share holder, Ms. Dillean, has her main apartment in one of the upscale buildings downtown."

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha grabbed onto one of the overhead handrails as the shuttle dipped below the golden horizon toward the atmosphere, and the sturdy little craft rumbled like a speedboat skipping over breakers as the forward thrusters slowed them down to a safe entry speed. Swallowing down a wave of motion sickness, the Orryxian surveyed the growing landscape before her and matched it up with the maps and dossiers Master De'Ville had given her to study. She recognized Nuba City as a smear of brown light on the west coast of the larger of Nubia's two continents, a city bathed in its own industrial haze. Even from this distance, it looked dirty.

"I saw the floor plans in the notes you gave me," Akasha said. "The place is bigger than the Whaladon. Four levels, private guards and automated defenses... this Dillean lady must be a real paranoid."

She tried to look unflappably cool as the shuttle lurched into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, but it was hard to keep an air of feline dignity when the morning's ration bars were fighting their way up one's throat.

"Of course, I guess she's got a right to be. Considering we're about to kill her."

She looked in vain for any kind of reaction from her master. This kind of banter played well with Tionne or Kala - well, minus the talk about killing people - but in present company it was just so much useless noise. Akasha coughed self-consciously.

"So, how far are we carrying our little charade?" she asked. "Are you an Alliance assassin with a Jedi accomplice, or are you my Master again?"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Technically both." De'Ville eased up on the yoke and kept toward the sensor beacon the spaceport was projecting. "I am an Alliance assassin and your master, and you are my accomplice."

She didn't talk again until the 'port's tractor beam was settling them on an available pad. "I see you have made yourself a lightsaber. May I?" De'Ville held her hand out for it.

[Akasha Khan]

When the retros let go, Akasha stumbled back and landed with a thump in her seat. She stayed there, warily gripping her armrests, until the shuttle settled into the tractor beam's gentle grasp.

The Orryxian wasted no time debating the difference between an order and a request where her master was concerned. She reached down to the holster on her belt that until recently had held her Echani fighting staff. Now it held something considerably bulkier - a length of durasteel piping nearly half a meter long, clipped in two places to her thigh to keep it from swinging freely. The control surfaces were minimal, recessed into the chassis wherever possible to keep the weapon nimble in her paws. The whole thing was painted matte black to keep it from glinting in the shadows, all except the dull coppery emitter coils that were only visible if you viewed the weapon end-on. Either end-on, in fact.

Akasha freed the light staff from her belt and presented it to her master, effortlessly balanced across one paw. Despite her best efforts, her ears flattened when Lilaena took it from her.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

She took it gently, knowing full well how attached one could get to a lightsaber due to the labor intensive process of making one. De'Ville did not activate it but instead examined the outside and touched it with the Force for a picture of the inside. A dual bladed lightsaber required a great deal of skill to operate successfully, and was a great achievement for the young apprentice.

She handed it back as the shuttle clunked into place on the landing pad, and began turning off the ship. The engines whirred as they ticked over into their cool down mode.

"It is a good weapon, and one that will not suffer fools lightly." She looked sideways at her apprentice. "I trust you are not a fool."

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha felt much better with the weapon stowed safely at her side again.

"No, Master," she replied. "I rather doubt a fool could have memorized a plan this complicated."

She rose and slid open the storage locker sitting at the back of the cockpit. Hanging from a hook was a dark cloak and cowl that would serve as an ample disguise from any angle. The Orryxian already made a convincing midnight assassin in her obsidian fur and black combat fatigues - in this, she would be a wraith.

"It does have a certain appeal to it, though," Akasha added, smiling coolly. "A Dark Jedi apprentice pretending to be a Jedi padawan pretending to be a Dark Side adept? Certainly more fun than watching children smack sticks together in the docking bay."

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena smiled thinly as she stood up and followed Akasha to the lockers. Opening hers she brought out a thick black hooded cloak, a far cry from the threadbare brown one she used to wear. "How far you've come, then," she said. "We shall see if you have managed to set yourself apart from the other children."

She buckled a blaster to her hip and tucked a vibroblade into her boot before sweeping the cloak about her shoulders. She fastened it at the neck and then adjusted the dark folds. A minute of work with a mirror resulted in a dark pattern painted on her face, jagged lines bisecting her eyes. A bit of theater that she had not used in quite some time.

De'Ville looked at her apprentice, who was waiting, a bundle of pressurized energy. She nodded to her, pulled up her hood, and the pair made their way out of the shuttle and into Nuba City. Their first stop was finding a speeder to use, and Akasha was going to pick the one they were going to... commandeer.

[Akasha Khan]

There was something empowering about moving through a city under hood and cloak. Few beings saw you, and those that did generally preferred to pretend they hadn't, as a measure of self-preservation. Those who went about with their faces hidden either had danger following them or brought it with them. For the general public, it was simply safer to look the other way.

"I assume we don't want to create a stir before we get there," Akasha said as they passed through a darkened alley behind a commercial hangar. "I'm afraid they haven't covered hotwiring a speeder yet in practicals..."

Lined up in the street at the end of an alley were a handful of taxis waiting to pick up new arrivals to the Nuba City Spaceport. Akasha considered them for a few moments and then reached up to the clasp at her collar. "Master, could you hold my cloak for a minute?"

Moments later the Orryxian was running toward the street in her shirt and trousers, waving her paw frantically at the last cab in the row. The back seat hatch swung open, and Akasha piled in, panting. "Oh, thank gods, you're a lifesaver."

It was a modest four-door sedan with a transparisteel shield separating the driver's cockpit from the passenger compartment. The Gossam driver peered suspiciously at the Orryxian through the rear-view mirror. "Where to, miss?"

Akasha smiled sweetly and grasped at the air with her paw. Suddenly the Gossam found his head pressed back against the transparisteel shield as an invisible force closed around his throat.

"Just down that alley," she said with a tilt of her head. "Nice and slow. Do as I say, and no harm will come to you."

Eyes bulging, the Gossam put the speeder into gear and lurched into the alley and away from the streetlights. As soon as Akasha saw Lilaena standing by the roadside, she released the Gossam just long enough to pull the parking brake, and then she gripped him around the throat again.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville raised an eyebrow as the taxi coasted into the alley, and leaned down to look in the window as it came alongside her. A wide eyed Gossam stared at her, a three fingered hand scratching at his throat, and then she looked in the back at Akasha.

"Interesting technique," she allowed, pulling open the back seat for her apprentice. "What do you think we will have to do with this driver now?" De'Ville walked around to the driver's side door and opened it, extracting the Gossam male and holding the frail saurian by the shoulder while Akasha kept up the threatening pressure on his neck.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha examined the squirming reptile under hooded eyes, as if he were a small creature she'd trapped under her paw.

"We could kill him," she said.

The Gossam moaned through his constricted windpipe, and he struggled all the harder, but Lilaena's iron grip might as well have been a manacle.

"But!" Akasha lifted one claw theatrically. "I'm sure he won't cause any trouble if we give him a chance. Say, tied up and gagged in the trunk? Would you prefer that?"

The reptilian's eyes bulged at her, and he nodded vigorously.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena watched her apprentice as she dangled hope in front of the desperate man. How like a felinoid, to play when one should be getting to business. She frogmarched the taxi driver toward the trunk and used the Force to pop the lid. Akasha looked pleased with herself, and then Lilaena snapped the thin neck that supported the Gossam's ridiculous head, letting the body tumble into the trunk.

She picked up his dangling legs and tucked them inside, then closed the trunk up tightly and walked back to the drivers seat. She closed the door and looked over her shoulder, putting the taxi into reverse but not moving it until her apprentice joined her inside.

[Akasha Khan]

The sudden and callous murder made Akasha's ears bat back, but she schooled her face before slipping into the passenger seat next to her master.

"I thought we could have used him," she said, eyes forward.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"For what?" She asked, reversing out of the alley and setting them on their way out of Nuba City.

De'Ville met Akasha's eyes in the rear view mirror, and added, "I am not being sarcastic. What good could a witness do us?"

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha wrinkled her nose. "A distraction, perhaps," she said. "Or bait. Something to confuse security."

She held her master's eyes with some effort while some part of her told her to look away, to study her claws or find something interesting just outside the speeder canopy. She wasn't sure what it was. Surely not conscience.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"We have our plan already." De'Ville returned her attention to the front of the speeder, pulling it up and away from the ground and into the main thoroughfare. Neon lights blurred past the taxi windows. "There is little room for improvisation, unfortunately. Killing a bystander is not something I do lightly, but you brought him into this, rather than finding an unoccupied vehicle."

They traveled in silence for a moment, and she added, "Do not let it trouble your mind. Many will die tonight because of our actions. We are not here to spread hope but to take care of a problem with Industrial Automaton. Ms. Dillean stands in the way of a deal with the Alliance. The minority shareholders are willing to deal, but she stands on the principles of her father, and so is loyal to the Empire to a fault.

"If we are discovered or captured we will be executed as the Sith assassins we are pretending to be, as the Rebellion will disavow any knowledge of either of us. As soon as we landed it became us... or them." The speeder lurched forward through the evening traffic, and they began the turn toward Rordis.

[Akasha Khan]

It was degrading to hear the basics of their mission explained to her again as if she were a child, but Akasha knew her master was right - about the Gossam cab driver as well as about the conditions of their own survival. It was foolish to think she could involve a bystander without consequences. Was that why it was bothering her so much? Maiur's mane, perhaps her time among the Jedi had warped her mind. It wasn't like he was even the first reptilian sentient she'd killed.

The Orryxian forced those brooding thoughts from her head and settled in for what was sure to be a very dull ride to the neighboring city of Rordis. She decided to fill time by reviewing the points of their plan for the umpteenth time so as to avoid another lapse. The whole thing was a twisted knot of subterfuge and misdirection. The trick wasn't so much in fooling Dillean's security into thinking they were under attack by Sith assassins - after all, that's essentially what they were - it was fooling Alliance Special Operations into thinking that it had all been an act.

In the backseat sat a satchel bulging with thermal explosives, stun grenades, shockboxing gloves, grapnels and ziplines, and a few other supplies that could be creatively used to simulate various Jedi abilities. Master De'Ville had requisitioned far more than they actually planned to use, as at some point artifice would give way to the real thing. But by the time Akasha and her master were performing undeniably Force-assisted feats, all recording equipment in the penthouse would be disabled, leaving only the testimony of shell-shocked eyewitnesses. No doubt their superiors would commend them for verisimilitude.

Akasha looked back to her Master, who maintained a machinelike focus on the skylanes ahead. "Master, I've delivered my reports on the Jedi faithfully for more than a cycle now. Has there been any word about my... long-term position among the Circle?"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

De'Ville didn't answer for almost a minute as traffic thinned out and they flew through a skylane between urban sprawls.

"Your position within the Circle is secure, Akasha, save for one final test." Her eyes tracked sideways to her apprentice, and then back to the skylane. "Soon your time among the Jedi will be through, once my master has his position secured with the Rebellion."

De'Ville used her signal to change into another lane, dropping down a level. It would be tempting to race to their destination but she kept the speeder within the prescribed limits. Drawing attention was the last thing they wanted to do, and the taxi would be missed soon enough.

"You have proven yourself very capable. A true warrior learns from whoever will teach her, as you have learned from me, and the Mando'ade, and even the Jedi."

[Akasha Khan]

The approbation was a welcome boost to Akasha's confidence - not her confidence in her own abilities, because Maiur help her if she ever needed help with that - but confidence that she had not simply been thrown aside into the wilderness to wither or thrive among the Circle's rivals, a mere afterthought to Darth Callidus's plans. But being told that her time among the Jedi was coming to an end... well, it was inevitable, but her feelings upon hearing it were difficult to categorize. Not because she had any loyalty to the Jedi as a concept, but because she'd grown used to some of the people there, like Kala, or her Jedi master Tionne Thanewolf. She still entertained the idea that they might be persuaded to come along with her when she left.

And then she heard a bump from the speeder's trunk as it heaved around a turn, and she quickly turned her thoughts elsewhere.

"You mentioned one final test," the Orryxian said. "What sort of test is that, may I ask?"