The most loyal companion cannot turn on you (Invite)

[Storm]

The GP-103 droid really was one of the best in the galaxy at this moment in time, in Venator's opinion. Programmable, dependable, and with a variety of skills, an important trait was that it was, of course, loyal; as a droid, it couldn't turn on you, couldn't betray you. Oh yes, Venator knew all about betrayal. Hell, he was a master in the "art", having usurped Van Tien, former leader of the Alsakan Union, and brought about his death. That's why protection from such a droid was very important. These droids, however, were expensive and hard to get; Republic space had a number of them, but Venator had a considerably large bounty in Republic space, and spending a great deal of time searching for a droid to buy in such space wasn't his idea of a smart move. And so, in his traditional style, Venator didn't intend to buy the droid. He'd heard of a particular droid scavenger who'd acquired such a droid, and had the protection of said droid and a number of bodyguards. This scavenger, however, occupied neutral space, space Venator had complete control of.

And so Venator was going to reaccquisition the droid from him.

The ship had been sighted on their scanner some time after they'd first picked up the rough vicinity, a relatively short chase. Scavenger ships were built more for ploughing through dangerous, asteroid field areas, rather than speed, which meant Venator's ship was easily able to catch up with it, gaining on it over the course of the day. They were still quite some way away from the ship, but they'd be boarding it relatively soon. That, of course, was a good thing; the sooner they got this droid, the better. Of course, the droid would almost undoubtedly be used in combat against them, and they'd have to incapacitate it. Luckily, however, Venator had a number of tools perfect for such a job, and couldn't foresee much trouble. After all, he was an Alsakan Admiral, and if the scavenger were to kill him, the repercussions on him would be terrible.

That was a benefit of the job.

Yet Venator wasn't planning on going alone. This scavenger wouldn't have too much protection, and so Venator had merely decided, on his way to Xa Fel, to pull this off as a detour, with Meara Alahara. Ah, yes. Meara Alahara. Venator still didn't know exactly what to do about that. He'd never felt this sort of feelings before, yet he felt sure these were genuine; what else could make him feel as he did, so confused and odd around her? This wasn't like him, not at all, so he was almost sure it was genuine... He hadn't spoken to her much since the kiss, past what needed to be said to keep her up to speed. He wished she'd say something, almost to break the silence between them. Venator made a mental note that, when he next saw her, to initiate conversation or something if she didn't get there first. Yes. Yes, that would be a good idea. Venator would do that, and see how it went from there.

God, he was new to this sort of thing.

 

[Phil]

Gunshots went firing off inside The Shining Ruby as metal slugs were fired out both of GP-103's wrist guns. The bullets were hitting the empty ale bottles as they shattered to the ground and fell off the crates that contained illegal goods. It was not too long ago that GP was retrieved from the Smuggler Eul Tymn, when what appeared to be a group of GP-101 droids armed with blaster rifles stunned 103 and removed him from the ship he was on and onto another. The 101 Droids were sent by the mysterious Mister Kasleev who wanted his creation in more capable hands, and that was when the Smuggler known as Kanju bought GP-103, as well as several of the 101 Security droids aswell.

None of the droids could think for themselves, and acted only on orders given to them, which meant that none of the droids could act on their own or betray their master.

Once all the bottles were shattered and on the ground, GP-103's wrist guns retracted back into his wrists as he turned around to face Master Kanju, who was watching his droid the entire time. Kanju was a smuggler, and not the nice kind either, he had blonde hair that was braided down to his shoulder, where he had quite a few metal rings inside his right ear. However, even he was not as tall as 103, standing about a foot smaller then his creation, but knew so long as he was it's master, he had little to fear.

"You do good, Droid. Come, we take you to work station, get you a nice paint job."

"Very well, Master Kanju. Following." GP-103 said without any emotion or feeling in it's robotic voice as it followed it's master out of the storage room and down one of the halls. One thing was for sure, was that the ship's name was very untrue as nothing was shiny about it.

 

[Emma Lou]

Meara had barely left her cabin since the kiss. She had wanted it to happen so bad and now that it had she was scared. She spoke to Venator a few times since it happened but neither brought it up. She knew they were taking a detour, but she had no idea where they were going. She knew the basics of the stop though.

She was dressed and ready for whatever happened. Her lightsaber swung at her side as she made her way through the ship to find Venator.

 

[Storm]

As Venator rose from the seat, to check over the equipment before making their way out for the mission once more, he almost felt Meara's presence in the ship, as if he were a Force sensitive too. Which he was not, of course. The words almost came out as a jumble as he turned the corner and almost walked into her, stepping back and smiling at her. His helmet was still off; he'd not replaced it at all since he'd taken it off. "Sorry." He said, the word unfamiliar in his mouth. When was the last time he'd said that? Not for quite some time. It suddenly occurred to Venator that Meara wasn't familiar with what was going on in the mission; well, that'd make a good conversation starter at least. "We'll be boarding their ship in about twenty minutes time." Venator said, looking into her emerald eyes as he did so. They seemed to almost draw him in, enrapture him, so it was almost an effort to speak. "When on board, we grab what we can, but we're primarily after the droid I told you about."

Venator had told her about the droid, he was pretty sure.

"Any sort of resistance, we want it incapacitated." Venator considered, for a moment; he'd keep it nice, here. "I don't necessarily mean dead, just out of our way so we can get off the ship and back onto here with the droid and whatever other loot we have." He looked around for any sort of weapon, and saw Meara's lightsaber dangling at her hip. Good. That'd more than likely be enough; this wasn't a heavily protected joint, overall. Just some small scale guy who'd stolen the droid from someone else in the first place. To the moral man, Venator taking the droid now might have been equalised by the fact that the droid was stolen in the first place. But Venator wasn't a moral man, so it was all irrelevant. That was about it, really. "That's about it," Venator said, voicing his thoughts. "Anything else and I'll update you. There's some time to go, yet, though, before we're ready to board. But they won't be escaping; we're much faster as a ship than they are." Was he going on? Was he boring her? Well, it was a job.

And she didn't look bored.

What did she look? Well, beautiful was the first word to come to mind, much to Venator's surprise. Venator hadn't even realised these feelings were even alive in him until they'd crept up on him and overpowered him; the only enemy Venator had failed to defeat. Well, as good a time as any, now, to confront it, then. Venator let out an audible sigh as he leant against the wall of the companionway and gently took Meara's hands in his. He hoped she wouldn't mind. And now, here he was... And he'd never been much good at these sorta words... "Meara..." He said, softly. "I... I think I love you. When I'm not with you, my heart almost aches... You're there in my mind, your face, your hair, your body, you..." He didn't really know how to put this, and he got the distinct feeling he was mangling this somewhat. "And... And I want to know... How do you feel about this? I don't want to scare you. I don't want to hurt you."

Venator really did wonder when this started happening to him.

 

[Emma Lou]

Meara didn't know what to say. She just stared at Venator for a second then looked down at the ground. This was not what she had been expecting and it certainly was a surprise. She did love him back, but she was not sure if she really wanted him to know. It couldn't be okay for them to be together.

"Maybe you should transfer me to another group. Two people in love cannot work together. We will not get any work done and if there are raids then we will save each other instead of doing what needs to be done"

It hurt to say this, but it was true. Maybe he would disagree and say they could find a way to work everything out or maybe he would agree and that would be the end of her working directly with him all the time.

 

[Phil]

Kanju had dropped off GP-103 at the garage where his personal speeder was stored, as well as the other GP-101 droid units. After they were to be diagnosed, they would have new paint jobs to replace the pale yellowish white color that covered them, maybe even make GP-103 look even more subtle appearance. After all, he was a General Purpose droid that had hidden illegal modifications installed to them, and Kanju was the one who acquired him as he was.

Once he sat down in his office, he grabbed his bottle of booze, biting into the cork as he spit it out and chugged down a good amount of the liquids as he logged into his computer.

Computer Station 08261 Operational.

LOGIN: Boss
PASSWORD: ********

Confirmed. Welcome, Kanju.


>Mail
>Setup
>Inventory
>Cameras(Urgent Message)
>Schedule

Seeing that there appeared to be something important that his ship's cameras picked up, he set the bottle down and accessed the cameras. Scrolling through them to see which one was flashing red, he noticed that it was the one at the bow of his ship. Looking into it, he could see that another ship was a distance away from it. Now concerned, he looked into it a little closer, not being able to tell if the ship was Republic based or a Pirate class ship.

Either way, he did not like the look of this.

 

[Storm]

The response was like a punch in the gut to Venator, although punch in the guts generally didn't hurt like this. "You know we've got no cordial relations with other groups for a transfer of personnel, Meara..." Venator started, choosing instead with picking up on Meara's logic flaws. "And I will do both. I don't care whatever may come, whatever may face us, I won't allow the mission to be compromised but, more importantly, I won't allow anything like this to happen to you." Fire and passion began to fill Venator's words as he spoke faster, more passionately. "Work will be done, and you say this now, but you know of Kamryn and Ivan Valtiere - the Bloodied Hand was a strong organisation even before the merge. If he can do something like this, so can I. So can we. We can do this, Meara, we can do this if you choose to take my hand and make the jump." Venator extended his hand towards her, his whole body alive with the hope that she'd choose to do it.

 

[Emma Lou]

Meara looked up at him. After actually seeing him she had fallen in love all over again and now she could not even believe this was the same man who wanted to kill everyone all the time. She looked down at the floor for a few seconds then took a step closer to him. She put her hand in his and leaned up to kiss him softly.

"Let's get this mission going"

She whispered softly before pulling away.

 

[Phil]

"I'm not expecting anyone today, who the hell is this?" Not wasting anytime, he cleared some of the junk on his table and into the floor, including his booze that spilled all over. Once he was not crowded, Kanju pulled out what appeared to be a comn speaker as he typed in some keywords onto his PC, attempting to contact the ship as he held the speaker close to his mouth. He had a bad feeling about all this...

 

[Storm]

A multitude of feelings ran through Venator's mind as her lips touched his, her hair brushing his face as she did so. And then she was gone, all too quickly. Yet the meaning had been there, and Venator appreciated that. "Yeah." He almost whispered, not quite comprehending what she'd said. The mission... yeah... They'd get back to that eventually... Well, not eventually; now. They were ready. The ship was almost right next to them and, without Venator even knowing, time had crept past so that now it was almost time to launch the raid mission. Good. The faster this got going and they burned out of here with the droid, the better. The faster the Raider's Coalition got into the actual meat of what they wanted to do in the galaxy, the better. The Republic didn't yet know fully about them, and Venator knew that he wanted to rectify that. A lot of potential customers went on an organisations reputation, or infamy, therefore it was vital that the Raider's Coalition build up stores of both. This was going to be one big organisation, and to keep it running they'd need investment.

Cold, hard, credits.

Even from the companionway, Venator heard the buzzing of the communications system. Slightly annoyed at having to break things up at such a time, Venator strode over to the desk and hit the button which would allow the message to be relayed. Venator's annoyance lessened as he heard the message, smiling as he opened up the channel for a response. "We generally don't wait until we're invited places. You might have heard of me; my name is Venator Furtificus." Venator waited, allowing the man to stew over. If he had heard of Venator, chances were that he might be able to be scared out of controlling the droid. "You have a particular droid myself, my fellow workers and my organisation wants control of. The GP-103 unit. Now, we're quite happy to do this the easy way. You can give us the droid, and we'll burn out of here the second we've got it. You'll also be able to collect money from the Republic for reporting our latest position, although we won't be hanging around." Venator smiled; a fair enough deal, in his opinion.

"Or we can do this the hard way."

"If you really want, we can take the droid from you which would not only cause you problems but would cause you, your droids, your ship and your business damages. That would cost you a lot more in time, money and damages. Now, you seem an intelligent man; I'm sure you'll take the nice option. I'd advise you not to move your ship, or we'll ram it. So, what's it going to be?" As Venator had been talking, he'd been carefully guiding the ship towards the other, and had locked it on. The second the other ship tried to move, Venator would be able to easily ram it, causing damages and allowing a proper hold for his ship on the others. Most likely it would come to a boarding, therefore Venator had replaced his helmet and had his array of weapons at the ready. Meara was resourceful; he knew she'd be ready and armed so that if it did come to an armed fight they'd be fine, and they'd be able to get the droid. Good. They were ready. Soon, GP-103 would be aboard Venator's ship.

"So, what's it going to be? I'm not going to wait all day."

 

[Phil]

"We generally don't wait until we're invited places. You might have heard of me; my name is Venator Furtificus. You have a particular droid myself, my fellow workers and my organisation wants control of. The GP-103 unit. Now, we're quite happy to do this the easy way. You can give us the droid, and we'll burn out of here the second we've got it. You'll also be able to collect money from the Republic for reporting our latest position, although we won't be hanging around."

"Or we can do this the hard way."

"If you really want, we can take the droid from you which would not only cause you problems but would cause you, your droids, your ship and your business damages. That would cost you a lot more in time, money and damages. Now, you seem an intelligent man; I'm sure you'll take the nice option. I'd advise you not to move your ship, or we'll ram it. So, what's it going to be?"

He was screwed, Kanjun was now sweating as he heard the words come out of the speaker. He heard rumors of Venator Furtificus, and just what he was capable of and knew there would be only one outcome. But possibly two...

"Er... you want my droid? My droid that I acquired through my own means? He is one of a kind, a rare find in this galaxy. But... perhaps we can work something out... Dock up with my ship and we can work something out. Me and "The Droid" will meet you."

He then turned off the comn channel, not waiting for a response as he quickly got off his ass and ran out of his office and down several halls until he reached the garage. When he entered, he saw his engineer finishing up on polishing off GP-103 as he turned towards his boss Kanjun.

"Get this droid working, now. And get the other droids, those GP-101 units up and running too!"

He knew he did not have alot of time, but enough so that he could get GP-103 and the four GP-101 units ready to meet Venator. After about two and a half minutes, Kanjun, 103, and the four 101 units were walking down the halls of the filthy ship, towards the airlock room where he knew the outside ship would connect with his. It was insane, and he would most likely lose these droids, but he was not about to give up GP-103 without a fight. He would not give up the one droid that could make him the richest smuggler in this sector. He entered the room with GP-103, both unarmed, as they stood and waited for the door to open as the four GP-101 units waited right outside the room, two armed with standard blaster rifles while the other two had semi-automatic slugthrower rifles. All they needed was a signal and they would barge into the airlock room, combat protocols activated, and Venator would be nothing more then a bloodied corpse if he made the wrong move.

 

[Storm]

"Very well. But any combat on your part will see you punished." Venator keyed off, gliding the ship closer before locking on and turning to Meara.
"Be careful. He's going to try something; I know it." Venator, however, wouldn't be sending himself or Meara anywhere near the droids in the meeting point. Well, Venator would come close, but not actually entering. "Meara, head over to port two and be ready, please; I'm just going to incapacitate these droids first. Venator made his way, over the ship, to the docking port, the incapacitation grenades ready in his hand. These would be enough to stun the droids, to put them out of action for around ten hours, but not destroy or permanently damage any of them. Venator stepped over to the lock, flicking on the grenades with a twenty second timer as he did so, ready, keying in the code that would open the door the second he was ready for it too. Blaster clenched in the other hand, Venator mentally prepared himself. Fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds until the droids would be incapacitated.

Venator stepped forwards and the door shot open with a whoosh.

With one hand, Venator threw the collection of grenades into the capsule, dimly aware of the GP-103 droid he was after standing amongst others as he fired at the control pad on the other side, sealing them from getting out that way. Rolling away, Venator slammed a fist into the key panel on the other side, locking it off and, if the plan had worked correctly, locking all droids in a room in which they would soon be sitting, incapacitated, for some ten hours. Yet he couldn't be sure the droid that they wanted was in there, or that his attempt had even been successful, therefore he and Meara would need to board the ship and make sure it had worked. Meara would, hopefully, be ready. Now all Venator needed to do was make sure he met her correctly and then board the ship, before confronting this man Venator was almost definitely sure had tried to kill, or at least injure, him. I mean, who the hell sends a bunch of combat droids as an escort for a man who's quite capable of defending himself and those with him?

Someone who wants to kill him, of course.

Venator strode across the ship, making sure that the capsule was correctly sealed first, heading across the bridge and towards the aft quarters were the second crossover point would be being made now. All ships these days had two entry ports, in case a ship was unable to access one, and Venator would just have to hope that the other one wasn't defended. Well, their adversary had expected them to come through the one Venator had just executed his plan on, to be fair... "Meara," he called, across the ship, "be ready; there might be droids on the other side." Venator examined the keypad for any signs of tampering, to check that no one had somehow infiltrated the ship whilst they were dealing with the scavenger, before keying in the command for the doors to open. There was a whoosh as it did so, and Venator thought that he really hoped Meara was nearby. Coming face to face with a bunch of droids who'd doubtlessly want to kill him, and alone to boot, wasn't his idea of fun.

Well, to be fair, combat was his idea of fun.

 

[Phil]

When he saw the door open briefly and an object flew into the room that he and GP-103 were standing in, Kanju knew that Venator was onto him. He watched as what was apparently a grenade of some sort flew past him and bounced off the wall behind him. Now waiting to wonder what it really was, Kanju made a dashing move and leaped out through the doorway back to his part of the ship, seconds before the grenade went off, disrupting GP-103 as his visor flashed red briefly before slowly fading so it was no longer glowing.

"Systems... shutting do-do-do-do-do-wnnnnnnnnnn....." It spoke before it's arms and head slumped down. Kanju was out of the blast radios, as well as the GP-101 droids that were waiting in the next room, the walls they were behind protecting them from the grenade.

"We're under attack! Droids, get in there, board that ship docked next to us, and kill anyone onboard! Move now!" Kanju screamed, having to give these less intelligent droids specific orders as they all primed their rifles and went into the room, passing the now disabled GP-103. It did not take them long to get the door open before the four security droids now boarded Venator's vessel. Their orders were clear: Search and Destroy any organics.

 

[Emma Lou]

Meara had her lightsaber out and she was right by Venators side. She was ready for whatever came her way and she was going to protect her love too.

"Ready?"

 

[Storm]

Venator nodded. "Ready." As he raised his blaster, however, there was a crash, the noise of breaking metal and machinery echoing from somewhere nearby and yet not all that close as to be dangerous. Venator swore, viciously; quick response. "They've boarded the ship!" He cursed, spinning round on his heel towards the third entrance or exit port, weapons in hand. "Meara, your choice; feel free to join me attacking on the front, but you might want to peel around the back and attack from behind; surprise the hell out of them and cut most of them down. Good luck." He added, almost as an afterthought. Sprinting down the corridor, he leapt around it to twist around as he hurtled towards the opposite wall, gunning down the corridor at the droids he saw before flying behind the wall at the other side with a smack. Leaning around the corridor, he laced it once again with deadly fire from his blasters. These droids, unlike the one he had waiting in the capsule, were expendable.

And Venator would make use of that fact.

 

[Phil]

All four droids were together in a group, not being told to split up as they walked down a hall in a tight formation. Once they saw one of the organics peak around the corner with his blasters firing at them, one droid called out the target as the droid on the far right was caught in the gunfire, the blaster bolts slamming into it's chassis, left leg and then head. The shot up droid mumbled something through static before it collapsed in a heap of scrap that it was now, it's slug thrower rifle scattering to the floor. The other droids opened fire with their blasters, one droid using it's slug thrower as they slowly walked towards where the target was.

"One Unit down. Closing in on organic target." The lead droid muttered with no feeling in a monotone voice.

 

[Emma Lou]

Meara nodded and took out the few droids around her then sprinted down the hall behind Venator. She did not want to get split up from him at all and risk anything happening from him. She knew this was not going to be easy, but she was not too worried about it.



(Sorry it took forever...I haven't been online)