Duty Recalled

[Bloodcrest]

"Atten-shun! Alright you maggots, listen up! You know nothing of what it means to be in the Corporate Sector Authority Security Division! Everything you think you know, forget. You are about to go through some of the most brutal training this side of the galaxy! If I tell you to jump, you had better hope you jump high enough to make me miss. You are maggots and have no names, no rights, and no money. I am god. I am the commander. I am the only face you're gonna see for the next 6 months. If you think your rich parents can help you now, you are wrong. Every last one of you will be broken so help me."

One hundred fresh, Corporate Sector Authority Security Division Officers stood silently, arms across their Merr-Sonn KZZ riot armored chests, feet spread, blaster rifles, stun batons, and riot guns at their sides and on their belts as they received what many at the CSASD Academy called "The Warm Welcome". The same thought crossed all their minds as they stood at attention being berated by the man with the loud voice, irritating attitude, and pay rank five times removed from their own...if this was the warm welcome, what was the cold welcome like?

All one hundred of the officers had just recently finished their Basic Training Course and so were used to being called maggots among other, less appealing things. Racuto Bloodcrest, heir to the Bloodcrest Transporting Services Inc., cursed his parents at having sent him to be an officer in the, as far as he was concerned, godforsaken life of the CSASD. Then he cursed his commanding officer for being such a butthead. What he didn't do was pay attention...which got him in trouble to his despair.

"MAGGOT!" The commander was standing right in front of Racuto as he noticed the rest of the officers had been dismissed and he had missed the order. The commander was yelling something at him, but like most who went through Basic Training, yelling only made him ignore the person that much more...which only served to infuriate the commander until Racuto decided to notice the now strangely silent man. The commander was looking straight into Racuto's eyes when he said, "You...you have the spirit it takes to be a great commander. In the face of a court-martial for disobeying my orders, you still remained silent. For that you've earned a little respect...but you're still gonna spend your first night here in the brig. Insubordination is not acceptable here."

Racuto looked at the man like he was crazy. The brig?! Wonderful! He was saved! Ther had been an...accident on the shuttle there and Racuto had...accidentally landed his fist into another man's face, something the other man resented very much as well as the man's friends. Racuto wondered how long he could keep a stay in the brig up without getting kicked out of the service completely.

Bloody and beaten, Racuto took a moment to fire more stims into his blood before rounding the corner and having all hell break loose around him as the corridor filled with smoke and laser blasts directed, if poorly aimed, at him. A casual, though painful, toss of a grenade ended the firing in an abrupt explosion. A warning siren began wailing in his ears indicating that the ship he was on was headed for a gravitational anomoly. The ship couldn't be saved and Racuto knew it. It was a pity really, for the last five years, the ship had been his home along with his friend, Jean. Jean... His determination revived by thoughts of his purpose there, Racuto continued on, his left leg limping as he headed towards the bridge.

[Bloodcrest]

The commander stood on his pedestal as he had for every morning for the last 6 months. "What is your creed?" He yelled so that everyone present could hear him.
In unison, ninty-nine CSASD Officers replied, "Duty to the Authority! Duty to the economy! Duty to our own! Duty to ourselves! The credits must flow!"

The commander nodded, "Very good. This is your last day here at the Academy. After this day, you will go to the farthest corners of the Corporate Sector upholding the business law. It is not an easy life, it is not an especially wealthy or comfortable life either, but the security of the sector must be upheld and the charge falls on your shoulders. It has been my honor and privilage to have known you. Every single one of you have been some of the best officers I've trained and I will be sorry to see you go." The commander smiled and then saluted the full-fledged officers he had just spent the last 6 months training them from rich boys to trained men. "You are dismissed. Good luck."

Racuto Bloodcrest came right to the commander's side as the commander began walking back towards his office. It had been that way since a training mission where Racuto had been unfortunate enough to be assigned to the "Commander's Guard". The opposing team had been strategizing and their ambush pulled off perfectly. At the end, it had been Racuto and the commander back to back firing at anything that moved. They had done well too, having picked a defensible position and holding off half the other team before getting painted by officers who had slipped into sniping positions.
The commander broke the silence. "You know Racuto, that means you too. Despite whatever reservations I had about you in the beginning, you proved me right. You've turned out to be a good commander, and a good soldier...even if you still can't take orders." The commander grinned because he knew Racuto's answer to that.
"Well sir, I for some reason, my helmet malfunctions whenever a stupid order comes through it." Racuto shrugged, "I can't be held responsible for equipment malfunctions. I'd have a word with the quartermaster."
The commander snorted, yeah right. "We both know your equipment works fine and that you keep it in good shape. Anyways, I'm glad we had time to talk because while the other officers will be dispersed and get their assignments from whereever they're going, I pulled some strings and got an assignment all set up for you specifically."
Racuto raised his eyebrows. "An assignment? Already?...What kind?"
The commander grinned, "Your kind of mission. The top researcher of a large corporation has been assassinated by the company's competitors. The company has requested that his family be put under guard so that no more assassination attempts are successful. You'll be joining a group of 4 SD Officers to move the family from their home to a more secure location. Here's the details." The commander gave Racuto a file with some offical looking papers in it. "Oh, congrats on your first mission and good luck.

Racuto shot the last man between him and the bridge. He limped over to the control panel for the bridge and punched in a code. The door didn't open. Racuto slammed his fist into the wall. Despite the blur of his vision, he pulled the panel off and began cutting wires from it until one side of the door opened. A green bolt of ionized energy spat out of the opening. Racuto grabbed a stun grenade and tossed it in. After a moment, he heard the familiar sound of it going off and limped into the room. Five guards were unconscious and Jean was gagged and bound in a chair where one of the five guards had had a gun to her head. She was unconscious also so Racuto untied her from the chair, injected far more than the recommended stims into his blood, threw her over his back, and limped out of the bridge. Every moment was precious as he made his way slowly towards the hanger where his small ship had originally landed. He met little resistance, most of the pirates having gotten back aboard their own ship and headed out as soon as the ship had gone out of control. Racuto hoisted Jean up into the passenger seat behind the pilot seat of his ship and climbed in himself. He initiated the engines and got them out of the ship before looking back to watch it pass the line of no return that he had just barely missed. Anyone left on the ship would have the unfortunate pleasure of being crushed by the forces of a black hole.

Racuto placed a breathing mask over Jean before placing one on himself. He pressed one more button before the gases in the breathing mask put him to sleep. The ship began an automatic jump sequence that would take them to the edge of the Corporate Sector while the cabin filled with bacta fluid. It was a nifty system that Jean had worked out to heal Racuto in between missions and jobs. Ship goes to preset coordinates, cockpit fills with bacta fluid, gases put pilot and passenger to drug induced sleep while ship is in hyperspace and bacta fluid heals any wounds. The drain at the bottom of the cockpit closed, metal plates slid across the controls to protect them, and the ship's small supply of bacta began filling up the cockpit. Racuto was still a little nervous about the ship because there was always the possibility that the ship would get caught in an interdiction field. That had happened once and Racuto had been forced to evade turbo laser blasts from an Imperial picket ship while slowly coming out of the groggy, drug-induced sleep. Racuto's last thought before drifting off to sleep was to thank Jean for that when he woke up.

[Bloodcrest]

Racuto Bloodcrest, Corporate Sector Authority Security Division Officer, or simply SDO, glanced at his chronometer as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. He stood in the darkest shadows he could find in the small apartment that had been rented as a safe house as he transported the last two remaining members of a Corporate Dynasty, a family that controlled a major company in the Corporate Sector. The head of the Dynasty had been assassinated five days ago and the company had requested Security Division intervention. SDO Bloodcrest had been hand-picked right out of the academy to be part of the response team that would try to keep the remaining four members of the family alive. Within the four days that Bloodcrest had been on the team, four had been hunted down to two and the response team of five had been taken down to two. Bloodcrest's only remaining partner, SDO Mikhail, was patrolling the streets outside the apartment complex. They had been tipped through an information broker that an assassination attempt was likely that night. After paying a considerable sum of credits, courtesy of the company's abundant security budget, the information broker had been convinced to put out false information regarding the location of the remaining family members. Now, Bloodcrest laid in wait to see if their considerable bribe would pay off. With skill, Bloodcrest could at least eliminate the would-be assassin. With luck, he'd be able to capture the assassin and find incriminating evidence against the competition company that was obviously the source of the assassination attempts but was legally clean. All the prisoners so far had the tendency to die in captivity before being able to present any evidence.
There was a subtle, almost undetectable noise outside the entrance to the room Bloodcrest was in. Bloodcrest drew his blaster and aimed it carefully at about eye level at the door. Normally, Bloodcrest would have contacted Mikhail, but he was afraid to tip off the person on the other side of the door to his presence. The radio piece in Racuto's ear suddenly came alive as Mikhail's voice came through on a signal distorted by static. Bloodcrest barely got a few words. "Bloodcrest *static* two *static* coming *static* disruptor *static* wounded *static*"
It was at that moment that the door decided to blast inward, showering Bloodcrest with metal fragments that bounced off his armor or cut into the thick but flexible joints. The stun was only momentary before Bloodcrest began letting off round after round of his blaster. The response was a thud-bounce of a flash grenade lobbed into the room. While Bloodcrest's visor absorbed most of the flash, the sensors were momentarily overloaded. The assailant wisely chose that moment to attack. Bloodcrest recieved a jab with a vibro-knife that managed to pierce his armor and shallowly cut his side beneath. Bloodcrest's response was a disoriented swing with a standard SDO stun baton. A normally non-lethal weapon effective against most creatures, a connecting hit with a stun baton on full power packs enough of a punch to knock a man or woman unconscious for several hours. Unfortunately for the his opponent, Bloodcrest's blow happen to slip right up the back of the skull. The resulting cascade of energy was sufficient enough to shut the man's brain down...permanently.

[Bloodcrest]

What am I going to do?

Thoughts swirled around inside Racuto's mind as he thought of all his options. The only place he had called home in the last five years was now a charred wreckage in the middle of nowhere several parsecs behind them. There were many people Racuto could contact that should be able to help them, but he hadn't trusted them with the knowledge of Jean's existence then and he certainly wouldn't start now. He had taken every precaution, or so he thought, to hide their trails, to continue to perform the last mission given to him by the Corporate Sector Authorities. At the start of what could have been a brilliant career in the CSA, Racuto had been handed a delicate protection mission right out of the academy. To this day, he still performed the mission though now he answered to no one in the CSA and it would be marked as a failed mission in the logs that the CSA kept. As long as Jean still lived, his mission would not end in failure.

Jean stirred behind Racuto, bringing him back to thoughts of the future. Someone had obviously found them and had ambushed Jean's ship while he was gone.

The Rebels could probably help me...but then, there would be too many questions...

Racuto knew that his only option lay in returning to the Corporate Sector to retrieve the last legacy his father's company had left him. Unfortunately, as soon as he would arrive, his ship would be tagged, sought after, found, captured, and he would be bound and carried away in chains while Jean was forced into the same fate many of the galaxy's most intelligent people fell into...namely thinking up new and inventive ways for someone else to kill or take over other people.

But first he would need people. Racuto Bloodcrest, pirate/merc/rebel/entrepreneur/ex-CSA officer, needed five people he could trust to a certain point, five people that could do a job without him having to worry about if they could do it. Even as his ship slipped through hyperspace, Racuto began thinking of a few candidates.

[Bloodcrest]

"Racuto Bloodcrest, you are hearby under arrest by authority of the CSASD. You are hearby charged with first-degree murder, kidnap, assault, resisting arrest, escaping arrest-"
Racuto offhandedly cut the officer off, "You should have noticed that last one before deciding to try again. You know, last time I was in this situation, I broke my hand. Never fight with a closed fist...even if it IS especially armored. Of course, you should have seen the OTHER guy." Racuto laughed only slightly drunk. He squinted his eyes in the dark and read the designation number off the man's uniform. "But then, he was your partner so I'm sure that you must have seen him, eh?" He took another swing of a questionable drink.

The officer, was only [I/]slightly[I] angered by Racuto's mention of his partner, currently spending four days in a bacta tank. He'd never walk, run, or do anything with his hands ever again, of course, that was mostly from falling four stories before landing hard on duracrete. "I promised him I'd catch you and bring you in. That way, when he got better, he could do whatever he wanted with you. But maybe he'll be fine with simply seeing your dead body."

Racuto smiled, "Tsk tsk tsk. I'm unarmed and helpless, whatever am I going to do?" Jean materialized out of the shadows behind the man and shot her blaster at point blank range. The man went down with a hard [I/]thump[I]. "Stun? Are you kidding me? You know what this guy would do to me if he stayed alive?" Racuto mocked a hurt tone, "He might even try to kill me."

Jean sighed, "You kill him then. You're the one who's supposed to have no feelings about killing a man in cold-blood and I'm the one who's supposed to stay innocent...remember?"

Racuto HAD indeed told her that when she had almost shot another man. He was, after all, rescueing her from a fate where she would be responsible for killing innocent people. It didn't make sense let her kill one or two if the whole point was for her to not have to kill any.

After the death of Jean's mother, Racuto, while searching a would-be assassin come to supposedly finish the family off, discovered a comlink with a frequency set to a specific channel used by higher-ups in the CSASD. After a little information gathering, he had learned that the people after Jean was the CSA itself. Racuto had talked to a friend of his father's who worked in CSASD Intelligence and discovered that Jean was targeted for the CSA's research and development program but her parents had refused. Jean, Racuto found out, was a genuine genius.

After the media had gotten tired of the story of one of the most wealthy families in the CSA being murdered, or more likely, after the CSA had gotten tired of those stories being aired, the subject was dropped. Racuto had then received orders telling him to take Jean into custody and bring her to a designated rendezvous point to deliever her and debrief.

Racuto refused.

The CSA had been on him ever since. They had ruined his father's corporation under the pretense that it was "out-sourcing", giving more jobs to other CSA companies as well as Imperial corporations. His father, after hearing Racuto's side of the story, placed all remaining assets to his son's disposal. Racuto returned to the company under a false identity and Jean joined the research and development department of the company, also under falsified identity as well as falsified credentials, and was given a minor role that would hide her for a little while at least. Striving to improve bio-engineering technologies instead of destructive ones, Jean flourished and helped invent several new technologies that helped the company get back on its feet...for a little while.

The CSA, after several frustrating months of searching for Racuto and Jean, turned their attention, once again, to his father's company. Eventually, Racuto and Jean were found out and forced to flee while Racuto's father was executed as a traitor to the CSA. Most of the companies assets were seized, but not before Racuto and Jean had ransacked most of the prototype technology.

They had been running ever since and had only recently been caught by a CSASD hunter-seeker team. One had attacked them in a crowded bar on a backwater planet in the Corporate Sector, the other had followed them all the way out of the Corporate Sector completely and had just caught up to them in an apartment on Nar Shaddaa.

Jean was looking in the strange, kinda creepy way she did without blinking, trying to unnerve Racuto out of his thoughts. It finally worked, Racuto looked up at her, "What?"

She smiled, a small triumph, "What are we going to do now? We can't stay here."

Racuto thought the question over. "Is the Tetra ready yet?" The question was hopeful at best.

Jean smiled but shook her head no. "I have a few things left to work out with the navigation system. If SOMEONE hadn't insisted that we could leave the prototype one behind and 'just rewrite' the programming, we wouldn't be in this situation."

Racuto grinned, remembering. They HAD been in quite a hurry. The Espos had only been literally minutes behind them. "Yeah, too bad we couldn't have taken the Ogre Chrono."

Jean looked at him funny. "You said it was destroyed!"

Racuto had been strongly against using the ship and had told Jean it got destroyed...and had sequentially forgotten about that particular lie. He didn't quite trust all the prototype technology inside the Ogre Chrono.

"ANYWAYS, let's get going. We have one other choice."

Thus started Racuto's career as a pirate. After two years of pirating, he decided it was getting too expensive and switched careers to mercenary. The Tetra did eventually get completed and served as Racuto and Jean's mobile hideout while Racuto took on assignments for various organizations, some legitimate, some not.