The Rebel Faction

Pasha was, in every literal sense of the word, drunk. She had even somehow managed to reach cloud nine, which just so happened to be one small step beneath alcohol poisoning and quite possibly death. However, she was no amateur to the art of consuming ridiculously large quantities of alcohol, and she had the liver pains to prove it. It took time and serious dedication to reach the nigh impossible level of inebriation she had attained this day, which led to the sole reason she liked Coruscant, considering it was the capital of the New Order: their cantinas never closed.

The Corellian had been drinking like this almost every day since the Sonata of War had fallen into the hands of the New Order, her sorrows efficiently drowned and forgotten within the pleasant haze of inebriation. It was through a good tide of fortunes that Mikal had been with her when the Corvette had been apprehended, and even better fortunes that the son of Aldric Thorin - Dak Thorin - had found her only just recently. She and Mikal had a penchant for getting into trouble; the specific kind of trouble that required the YT-2000 Blue Otana getting repaired.

Pasha's right arm was currently draped around Mikal's shoulders, as he was in fact the only thing keeping her upright, though he wasn't walking all that straight himself. A victorious smile was adorned upon her features as they both strolled into the hangar bay, at last returning from their supposedly brief visit to the cantina that had somehow turned into several hours. She had managed to accrue five-hundred credits through her gambling, and as far as she was concerned she had made credits rather than spent them.

"By the Force, Dak," Pasha slurred out, a somewhat worried expression crossing her features upon seeing a pair of legs sticking out awkwardly from the Blue Otana. "Are you still alive in there?"

Dak straightened slightly, heaving himself out of the hyperdrive manifold with the strength of his arms. Unfortunately his balance wasn't quite equal to his strength, but what did one expect from a fighter pilot fix-it guy? Staggering haphazardly as his head cleared the hyperdrive manifold, he almost fell, only barely catching his balance against the Blue Otana. Smoothing the front of his jumpsuit with the back of his left hand Dak's fingers thrummed against the starship.

"Well, if it isn't the merry partiers, you'll be happy to know that the airlock modifications are almost complete," the youthful repair man said as he motioned with the hand that had been smoothing his jumpsuit.

Mounting rings had been set against the outer hull of the Blue Otana right over where the airlock was. The smooth metal rings were designed to latch the pilot pod of the B-Wing, and allow it to fully attach itself. For in flight detachment, the airlock was modified to allow a small chute to competely seal the pod away from space, allowing the pilot to enter or exit, supposing there wasn't some type of malfunction.

"You know, I've been thinking, having this fighter on this planet, and being all that's happened in the past... do you think it's about time we left?" Dak's voice was bright, enthusiasm painted on his face as he waited for his friends to comment on his question, and his handiwork.

Rolling his shoulders to banish the shadow-arm he still felt around them, Mikal moved to catch a better view of what Dak had done to the Blue Otana. The paint job hadn't been great to start with - white and the trademark blue - but Mikal imagined that Dak had marred it, somehow. Crossing his arms and scrutinizing the addition, Mikal couldn't help but be a little bit skeptical - even if they had all decided it was the best course of action. The Ion injector was far, far more important. If he found that Dak had skipped over reparing it properly, and it malfunctioned...

The injector didn't just affect the thrusters, it affected the cannons - and if the cannons weren't powered, or were overpowered, they were too close to the cockpit. It'd be the end of him. It was a thought that played on his nerves and worried him to no small extent. They'd just taken on this mechanic a few months ago; so far, no screwups, but that was just a couple months. Proved nothing.

Pasha's smoke caught his attention, and for a moment his throughts derailed. Patting his jacket pocket, he pulled out his own pack and lit up in a similar fashion. 'If this guy patched it up with duct-tape, paperclips, and used chewing gum, we're so fucked.'

"Don't mention me when you sign for it," he said absently to Dak, looking warily to the ship's forward mandibles, and the Ion Cannons attached just out of view, "I have a few violations, they wouldn't give it to you."

Captain Ortho Gutt


Captain Ortho Gutt was glad to be off of his ship and in the fresh air of Imperial Center. The ISD Predator had come in for slight repairs much to the relief of he and his crew.

Their performance reviews were under par for the grating standards set by their Supreme Commander, Simon Kaine. He had enjoyed his tenure as Governor Elect of Garqi overseeing the supplying of the Outer Rim Imperial Fleet operations. At least, ensuring that such operations were well fed.

As he himself was.

A quite rotund man, he fancied himself a hunter and took on any challenge that would prove to others (as he already knew himself) that his prowess was unmatched.

He felt that the Imperial Training Surveyor had a personal dislike towards Ortho and that he had abused his privilege as a Surveyor by failing the Predator's crew and Ortho's command.

Rather than strip Ortho of his ship and leave him deskbound on Garqi, which he would not have minded as he was living like a king, the Imperial High Command reassigned Ortho to active duty as a starship captain. They made it his first order of business to whip his crew back into shape which he did mercilessly.

He was angry. His wife had left him when she saw his star falling from Imperial grace and ran off with half his accumulated wealth...and his Accountant. He no longer had servants caring for his every whim, no longer had mistresses pretending to love him...mistresses he could mistreat with impunity.

No. The galaxy hated Captain Gutt and so he made his way back to the Core leaving it to another up and coming Imperial political officer to replace him.

He tried to take as much of his wealth as he could, wealth accumulated from skimming from each purchase that fell under his oversight. Things would appear a little more expensive than they really were and he'd pocket the difference. Never alot of money for it to be a glaring figure on an auditor's report but even the little bits add up eventually.

He had just been getting used to the role when he was betrayed by a crew who did not perform to standards. Some of the crew had shared in his success with preferential treatment and first choices in quite a bit of things. Soon, duties became neglected and while performance reviews were hidden from the far off Imperial High command, it was only a matter of time before someone investigated.

His crew had gotten lazy.

Now he paid for their laziness by losing his prestigious position as Governor and now had to follow the same orders as any other starfleet captain.

He was relegated to boring banality.

And so he worked his crew and reworked them. They would have to meet his stringent (and sometimes unreasonable) standards and so with nothing short of tyranny, his lazy crew began the arduous attempt to 'tow their own weight' (as he put it).

One such demonstration had damaged the interior of the warship and so, being in Sector 00.00.00, they had turned toward the capital to put in for repairs.


While in the area, he tried to rebuild his old contacts in an effort to score more money. Even though his income had dropped, he was still used to the finer things in life.

His contacts, however, being shrewd businessmen themselves avoided Ortho. A response that irritated him to no end.

Well, he had shown them!

Enroute, during the training exercise that had damaged the ship, they came across a convoy bound for the Bastion Salvage Yards where most of the Imperial wreckage went after being scoured by engineers and Intelligences divisions enmasse.

The convoy consisted of discontinued ships and partial remains of perhaps vessels once famous. It was not the convoy itself that stirred his greed but the fact that what was being taken into salvage was from military seizures in caches hidden by a bureaucratic process constantly evolving and discarding concerns of the earlier generation. With the Rebellion ultimately crushed and ground into fine powder, who cared about their outdated and irrelevant material?

There were some caches still known to the government and so guarded but there were others that were simply dropping points or forgotten points like mechanichal galactic garbage dumps.

If Ortho could get his hands on such a cache, he might be able to sell items to the less fortunate on the black market for a tidy sum.

Fancying himself a businessman (which he wasn't), he felt he could use his rank to uncover these locations and profit from them.

Oh, his old business associates would want to talk to them then!

In fact, some had a noted curiosity towards his latest proposal and agreed to a meeting.

Oh, they'd beg to be a part of my operation! They'd beg to be a part of my grand designs!

And so here he was. Coruscant! Gem of the Empire, Jewel of the Galaxy, Seat of the Emperor and all that broo-ha.

“Nothing to it, really,” Mikal said, unsmiling, to Dak. “Got to know your ship.”

Mikal left the briefing of the poor mechanic to Pasha. It was routine information, and he didn't need to get involved with it. He had other things on his mind. The uneasiness that he'd been drinking in order to shake hadn’t left him; it was coming back gradually now, with this talk of permits and legal bullshit, but this time it had changed a little bit. He felt watched. Casting about with the edge of his eyes, so as not to excite the suspicions of those who watched, he caught Pasha’s gaze and focused on her for a few moments. He refocused on the shape that the cigarra smoke took when he breathed it out.

She wasn’t that bad a woman, Pasha - he certainly knew more of her than she did of him, though. After a few months trapped on the same ship with each other, things came out into the open, and a good number of lines had been drawn between them. Lines of war, entirely necessary. In this business, you only stuck close to your mates, and even then only loosely. Some smugglers had more honor than others. She’d proven trustworthy, though some secrets were worth keeping. Some secrets meant death.

Life for the past few months had been difficult, to say the least.

It was about then that he fell out of his musings and started truly listening to what Pasha was saying. What he heard surprised and alarmed him, so much that his eyes fixed on Pasha, searching her face more carefully than before. A weird glint came into his eyes, and he felt his stomach clench as a long forgotten voice echoed within his mind.

‘An officer is a leader. You will be asked to give your all for the men that you lead, and for the Empire that you serve. If you cannot stand up straight, cannot salute worth a damn, cannot press your uniform, cannot, as an officer, set an example - if you cannot even do these simple things, you are a disgrace to both.’

As the words resounded in his head, he considered Pasha‘s suggestion, and wondered where she had found the uniform she spoke of. His hand itched for his gun, but he touched his cigarra instead, inhaling deeply. When he removed it from his mouth and looked down on it, he noticed his hand was shaking. He steadied it, and focused on an indistinct point before him. He'd been careful, there was no need to worry about that.

“Whatever,” he replied, looking back to the Blue Otana’s fore and replacing his cigarra. Lion’s den indeed - If she truly knew the qualifications of an officer, she would not lightly joke about going into an officer’s club.