Seen Better Days

[Grym Kandle]

I dreamed I was missing
You were so scared
But no one would listen
Cause no one else cared

After my dreaming
I woke with this fear
What am I leaving
When I'm done here

So if you're asking me
I want you to know

When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some
Reasons to be missed

And don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory

Leave out all the rest
Leave out all the rest

Coronet, Corellia

Grym inhaled simultaneously with the gust of wind that pressed against him. He could feel the swell as it ran against, around, and past his body. The breeze died down and he exhaled, one with the environment he was in. Grym Kandle smiled slowly as he looked up to the sky, taking in the stars of the evening. This was too nice of a night to be doing this, really, it was.

One gloved hand reached out and found a hold in the stone wall before Grym. With fluid ease, his other hand found the next, and very soon thereafter, Grym was scaling the three meter high wall. The grace involved went unnoticed, as expected as Grym's movements had propelled him entirely through the five second window there was to clear the wall before the scanners came back around. It wasn't the most sophisticated system but then again, this was Corellia.

One would expect the Corellian Security Force to actually keep Grym's type from even getting this far but they had a slew of space pirate issues to handle in space conveniently. They couldn't have pirates raiding every convoy that jumped into the system with loads of materials that were intended for the Corellian shipyards. So what was the appearance of a relatively low profile character such as Grym Kandle? CorSec was efficient, that was for sure; Grym wouldn't set up any satellites of his franchise in this system. He was more prone to just direct deliveries, there was almost more pay in that avenue, almost.

But he wasn't here to sell glitterstim. Grym was here to collect a default actually on behalf of the Black Sun. He'd seen the guy's record and unfortunately this man had been played. An unfortunate situation wasn't anything that would stop Grym and his nearly routine assassinations though. Amos Rk'Well was a well-to-do industrialist, owning many factories in the metallurgy business and made a lot of business anywhere there was business to be made. That was not an unfortunate business, that was actually very profitable and Grym wished that Amos had almost spent some of that profit on a better security system.

No, the unfortunate situation was that Mr. Amos Rk'Well had begun business with the Black Sun. Black Sun was more than profitting from his contributions and even doubly so because Rk'Well was supplying even dummy companies of the Black Sun. Whoever was pushing it, had obviously pushed Amos too far because Rk'Well had failed to make the last two shipments to three of five of the dummy companies. Not to mention the shipments to the company he knew to actually be Black Sun had been reported late. The demand had been pressed and maybe Rk'Well's eyes had just been too much for his stomach, because by the end of it, the supply had not equaled out. And from that stand point, who knows how many other companies have been stalled due to this recent shortage.

Grym had happened to be in the area... A mutual interest of his had been in town recently, and then the word had come down on all channels for any and all bounty hunters and sweepers alike, that someone needed to die. Kandle made a delivery he'd rather do himself and then sent word he'd be taking the job. Generally Kandle expected most competition to disappear when Black Sun got word that Grym was taking it on, but it wasn't a surprise when others still participated. The Black Sun paid killers well.

The building was old, old old actually. and Grym immediately made a note not to underestimate the building by its appearance. Just because it looked old, doesn't necessarily mean a thing. People were too fond of retro styling these days and this place could look as old or however Amos wanted it to as long as he had the money.

The mask Grym wore changed its scope of vision suddenly to meet his needs. It actively searched for security measures and found them one by one, active seals and sensors at every window and door. Kandle wondered if there were guards anywhere or Amos' estate simply had the local authorities on call if the alarm was tripped. The estate was in the rural areas of Coronet and if that was the case, there would surely be a gap in the response time.

From the first floor, Grym looked in through the windows, examinging the courtyard that led further inside the building, but Grym didn't feel like cornering himself just yet, and then peeking through two large glass doors. The butler was awake, in a robe, and watching some holovid in a lounge of sorts. Grym stood there for some time in fact, simply waiting. The night was still young but late enough that unsurprisingly, the butler stretched and stood after checking the emptied bowl of snacks for the fourth time that he'd already finished maybe five minutes ago.

The aged twi'lek yawned and stood, taking the empty bowl into the small kitchenette near the door leading to where Grym now stood. After allowing the butler a little time. Kandle simply knocked, slowly and deliberately.

[Grym Kandle]

The locks slowly undid themselves, and the door opened very slowly.

"Zyrra? Is that... is that you?""

Who he opened the door for, Grym could havecared less. It was a simple trick that worked sometimes and then sometimes didn't, and then very rarely would result in the wrong kind of consequence but Grym would've been willing to accept those consequences in this situation. The peering eyes of the butler suddenly widening at the sight of Grym standing there at the doorstep. Some kind of question almost began to stumble out of the elderly man's mouth but that action was halted rather quickly.

In a fluid movement, Grym was already standing inside, beside the unfortunate servant as a slim blade was removed from the twi'lek's chin. It had gone in at an angle, pierced the brain, and left the corpse's mouth still moving as the last seconds of life faded out of him with a gurgling sigh. Kandle slowly let the body down, closed the man's eyes and wiped the blood from the blade on the dead man's robe.

He didn't stop to stare or anything, there was nothing for him to be fascinated with or that he found attractive. He had business to conduct and it was unfortunate with the circumstances present that others would have to die for Amos' mistakes. Grym carefully picked through the man's pockets until he had withdrawn several objects. Two were some fashion of keys or another and both were slid into concealed pockets lining the inside of Grym's cloak. This scenario was very routine for Grym by now and the lax luxury that Amos Rk'Well lived in made it easier than usual. Trying to pull this kind of job in the slums was generally much trickier as bodyguards and all sorts of annoying traps were laid by the paranoid mob bosses.

Grym was making his way up the skinny flight of stairs, used by servants generally in such houses, and stepped into a long corridor. He hadn't a clue which room Amos might be residing in at the moment but he figured none of these were them. No light shone from under the doors and all the rooms, just from a glance, appeared to be the same size. One would not expect the master of the household to have just any ordinary room in his own estate. The master bedroom had to be further on.

There might've been people in these other rooms but Grym had no urgent need to interact with them on any basis. The butler had been a simple decision, the risk of something going wrong was too great if he had left the twi'lek alive and Grym needed the free roaming access, not to mention the initial access. This was a matter of proffesionalism, not wanton massacre.

The house was dead quite though, and left Grym wondering if someone else, maybe better than him, had already come in and finished off Amos. It had taken Kandle two days to respond to the job and two days was more than enough for any other free lancers, bounty hunters, or assassins to have prepared and made their attempts. Amos had still been alive as of this afternoon so Grym figured someone else might've been able to pull it off in the three hours between the last time he was seen by Grym and now. He'd find out he was sure as he quietly made his way down the corridor towards the center of the second floor.

[Luna Eclypse]

Why was he wanted dead? She had not asked, nor would she. She worked with no questions asked, that's why she got jobs like this. Business rivals did not want the puppet who pulled the trigger to know the who, when, why, what, and how of the dirty little secrets in the background that bring this shadow and cloak business to birth. Nor did she want to know. Knowing things of that manner was a good way to get yourself killed. If you know something not widely known by others then you either have the guy on the left trying to get the information from you or the guy on the right who wants to silence you so you do not tell the guy on the left.

And people think politics are complicated. This is not politics. It's business.

Amos Rk'Well's manor hardly appeared modern with it's aged exterior, but the view through an pair electronic binoculars allowed one to spot the security devices that were not hidden at all, as if Amos Rk'Well wanted outsiders to know this his home was secure. It might frighten off petty criminals, but the woman standing on the rooftop across from the manor with the high powered sniper rifle in her hand was not discouraged in the slightest. She had not made it this far in her career by getting weak ankles at the first sight of security. Compared to a few of the jobs she'd done in the past, this one should be a piece of aircake. Using the greater magnification offered by the Oracle-class scope on her Blastech laser rifle, she was able to survey the yard around the mansion with better clarity. There was a wall, but she was high enough to see above most of it, but that was nothing. Walls there created for jumping over. What she was looking for was guards or any form of sentient security on the grounds around the mansion.

She saw nothing.

Either Amos Rk'Well was a fool and thought he did not need live security due to his other security systems or he was crafty and had something hidden. Traps, perhaps. That would be unfortunate, for him, because then she would have to break a finger for every trap she was forced to waste time going around or disabling. And if he ran out of fingers, then she would move on to toes, and then limbs, and finally vital organs. Then she would kill him, as per her contract. She preferred assassination to kidnapping. With assassination you only had to worry about the occasional need to hide the body, not lug it around while it's living.

Setting her rifle back in it's foam padded carrying case, which she closed, locked, and tied to a rooftop air vent pipe, she then saw to liberate several other items from her person that she would not be needing on this operation, such as the frag grenades. She wanted a silent kill, not a lot of noise. And if she needed them, they were right here, stashed away on this rooftop across the street with the handy fire escape ladders for easy access.

Peeking out into the street below, she waited a few moments until it was empty, and then she slid down to street level using a combination of handholds/footholds, pipes, and window ledges to get to the ground. Her gray electromesh underlayed bodysuit hardly hid her in the shadows, but it did her her completely freedom of movement where it was needed. Sprinting across the street, her genetic augmentations allowing her to move much quicker then the average human as she crossed over to the other side, jumped into the air, and landed halfway up the wall. It took only a matter of a few seconds to pull herself up and over during the brief blind spot created by the irregular rotations of the security scanners, something she had observed and timed perfectly from her previous perch in the distance. Sliding up to the wall of the manor, she stood directly below one of the scanners, her back pressed up against the cold wall. It had often puzzled her why, with all the technological advances of this day and age that no one had seen to gift the scanners with the ability to see directly below themselves. Silly mortals.

She slunk along the wall, staying within the scanner's blind spot. She was looking for a handhold, and found one in the form of a drooping eave of the roof of the first story of the manor. Waiting for the scanner to look the other way, she quickly jumped, pushed off the wall with one foot, and grabbed the edge of the eave. Her enhanced strength allowed her to pull herself quickly up on to the eave, but not before she peaked over the edge to make sure there was not another scanner waiting for her. There was nothing but dark windows. Slinking up, she moved to an area of the wall between two windows. The last thing she needed was to be seen by someone within.

Employing a camera probe, she slid the device over to the window and used the small screen built into the wrist of her gauntlet to see what the probe saw as it surveyed the room. Empty. It looked like a guest room, complete with quaint furniture and an ugly floral-pattern bedspread. The window was large and regal, like all the windows on this house. Pity people never understood that large windows, even if regal and posh, allowed for people to get through them all the more easier.

Employing the glass cutter she kept with her at all times, she cut the window at the sill, cutting the entire window out. Returning the blade to her utility belt, she eased the glass back until she could get a handhold on it at the top, and at which point she moved the glass inside, being careful not to break it. Slipping through the hole, she moved into the guest room and quickly replaced the glass, using a fusion welder to secure it at the corners, just enough to keep it there but still make it easy to kick it out and escape through. Hopefully no one would notice the warping at the corners the heat of the miniature fusion welder caused, or seen the light of the device as she used it.

Moving slowly and quietly, she moved from the guest room into the hallway. She knew which room was Amos Rk'Well, it was at the other end of this hall. She had a lot of ground to cover. Virtually, only a few yards, but she would not risk moving quickly. Instead she moved slow and silently, like a snake in the brush. She reached the door into Amos Rk'Well's room and had her hand poised, ready to open the door, when she heard something, or rather the lack of something. There are two kinds of silence, the kind created by natural lack of noise, and then the kind created by someone trying not to make noise.

Instead of opening the door and moving in for the kill, she ducked into the office room beside it, which thankfully had it's door ajar so she could open it without worrying about making noise with the doorknob. Retro houses were so much harder to sneak through with those pesky, noisy doorknobs.

In the officer room, she flattened herself against the wall on the hinge-side of the door, so that if anyone opened it she would become concealed behind the opening door, which would hopefully hide her from anyone looking into this room.

But the type if silence begged a question: Who else was sneaking around in Amos Rk'Well's home at this time of night?