Ask Dazed Mantell

[Jan Eccles]

DAZED MANTELL​

No more Alliance. Jan had found the door to the Captain's office open with a pile of badges on the desk. On top was the Captain's own. Ranger Captain Narr Noft, veteran from before the Sith resurgence, didn't know a way out this time. Without the Alliance the rangers didn't have any intersectional jurisdiction anymore. No more central funding coming in from the senate either. A long sigh escaped the lone ranger as Jan unclipped his own badge from his jacket and held it up, looking at one last time before he'd put it on the pile with the others. "Kriff, guess this is it. Ranger Eccles, thanks for your service."

Moments flashed by. Criminal gangs he helped apprehend. Black Sun scoundrels he personally escorted to New Republic prisons for sentences much longer than their lifespans. Faces of friends lost in pursuit of criminals. That one red lightsaber he ever witnessed in person. The burned remains of its victims.. Jan wanted to stop these memories pouring in, these nightmares, but as he closed his eyes he looked at his wife. His late wife. He had married young to a fellow ranger. No assignments together. She'd been idealistic. Wanted to make the Galaxy a better place. Jan realized the memory of her made him smile and he opened his eyes again, looked at his badge for a moment and then simply clipped it back onto his jacket, "Got nothing to lose but your dream, eh?" he remarked that his voice was deterministic and yet devoid of any sense of hope. Sure, he'd give her dream another go.. until a blaster ends him, most likely.

Guessing he was the sole remaining sector ranger on Ord Mantell, Jan walked around the desk and checked the Captain's calendar. > 11 AM > Meeting with Magistrate Cordan. Most likely his weekly with the magistrate to discuss their progress towards a safer planet. His Nalphone said that was in thirty minutes. Might as well take it.

Thirty-Five minutes later he walked into the Magistrate's building. It was a circular red-ish building and the first thing that Jan noticed was that the clerk at the door sat with her hands in her hair. Her holo-screen was filled with red text showing cancellations, notices and crisis-team invites. There was no chance she was going to look up and take the time to direct the last ranger on Ord Mantell to the Magistrate's office. So, Jan simply went on his own. It took him a few minutes but eventually he did find the Magistrate's office.. the secretary seemed to be off..

Knocking on the -already open- door, Jan set a first foot through. "Magistrate Cordan? I'm Sector Ranger Eccles; replacing Captain Noft for your weekly?"


@Nor'baal

 

[Koors Cordan]

News that the Alliance 'simply didn't exist anymore' had struck the Magistrate like a hovertrain. However, Magistrate Cordan had tried not to let it outwardly affect him. So this morning, the day after the message came through, he did what he always did.

He got ready for work.

In front of the mirror, Cordan adjusted his uniform and combed his hair. He affixed the two metallic clips to his collar and paused as he went to clip on his badge of office. Adorned with the Alliance sigil, the badge was to be worn over his heart to 'signify the respect owed to it', or so they had been taught in training.

All that counted for nothing now.

He left the badge on the side of his dresser and instead straightened the collar clips. Awarded to him by a 'grateful Ord Mantell' one year to the day after he had taken up office as Magistrate, he allowed a small smile to play across his lips. The planet's population had voted to grant him the 'Pips' as a sign of their thanks and their respect after he had finally codified a set of laws that relied on Mantellian Common Law, not on Hutt Law as was when he had arrived.

His hand dropped to his side, where a cruel scar marked the place a Gamorrean enforcer of the Hutts had made his master's view of the change known.

Yet he had not allowed their intimidation to dissuade him. He looked over to the holo-picture display on the wall of his chamber. There, he spotted the picture taken on the day he had opened the Sector Ranger Outpost, enabling a small but effective force to work directly with his office, circumventing the often corrupt local police.

Magistrate Cordan sighed.

All of that was gone now.

Walking out of his room, he took a left turn and, with his hat smartly under his arm, walked into his office a few minutes before the Ranger arrived.

Even they had gone now.

Everyone had. The clerks in his office, local Rangers, the administrators down at the cities spaceport - the power base of the Magistrates Office had been torn away when the paycheques had stopped coming. The Alliance collapse had left him and Ord Mantell with nothing. Law and Order were on the brink of total collapse, a facade of power and authority being the only thing between them and savagery.

A facade that was so easy to see through it could fade in an instant.

Sitting down at his desk, he instructed the cleaning and service droids (the only things that had yet to abandon their posts) to get the Magistrates building back into a presentable order and to raise the banner of his office in the main square immediately.

Finally, he checked his schedule and stood as someone stepped through the door. "Ranger Eccles, thank you for coming. I assume Ranger Noft is -" he cut himself short. He knew Noft had left the planet, there was no point pretending otherwise. "Scratch that. Take a seat."

[/QUOTE]

 

[Jan Eccles]

The pin of office could've been polished to equal the brightness of a sun and yet the fact that it was missing was the most glaring thing about it. It had been one of the most logical things for decades, if not for more than a century. An alliance magistrate's uniform had a pin over the heart. Koors Cordan wasn't wearing his and the Sector Ranger noticed. Still, he couldn't fault the man. Koors had bled for Ord Mantell. He was the kind of man the alliance had once been built upon. Their sweat, their tears and their blood.

"Not gonna ignore the bantha in the room, Magistrate," a grimace showed on the ranger's face as he stepped forward and instead of walking over to the man's desk, kept standing and motioned for the cabinet with the opened bottle of Corellian whiskey. "You're looking at the lone ranger of Ord Mantell's outpost," he tapped his badge as he said it. He wasn't sure why, maybe to point out that the magistrate had 'forgotten' to wear his pin. "Narr only left empty bottles and I have a feeling we both need some of that," he gestured towards the bottle again. Something about admitting -out loud- that he was the only Sector Ranger left on Ord Mantell was enough to make him hunker for a drink, or two.


@Nor'baal

 

[Koors Cordan]

The only one left? Magistrate Cordan shook his head. Everyone had dropped their oaths and bolted the system as soon as the credits had run dry. Dissappointing.

On the bright side, the remaining ones were either too loyal to leave or so desperate they couldn't. He could work with that - hell, he had no choice. Ranger Eccles had been with the Ord Mantell station a while, and from what the Magistrate could see, he had been a standard Ranger, getting on with the job, checking into his shifts, and keeping out of trouble.

He had big boots to fill.

Yet Magistrate Cordan was sure that with the proper support, hard times would make this Ranger or break him. He ardently hoped it would be the former.

"It would seem we have a challenge ahead of us then, Ranger." he replied, a flash of a sarcastic smile playing across his face "With the Alliance gone, Law and Order must be upheld on this planet - and there is nobody else to do it but us." a flash of zeal entered his tone, making it clear he was committed to the task ahead of them.

"I will not allow this planet to fall under the thrall of the Hutts. People have worked too hard and lost too much to slip back into the backward ways of old. We can either leave, as others have, and let that happen, or we can remain and do whatever we can to ensure a brighter future for the people of Ord Mantell."

Magistrate Cordan looked directly at the Ranger.

They both would know that this would be a challenging task. There would be forces on this planet that would seek to fill the power vacuum, and there would be forces off-world that would seek to do likewise.

"Do you think you have what it takes?"

 

[Jan Eccles]

The magistrate flat out ignored his nudges towards the bottle and started a zealous pitch better left to the constituents, so Jan did was any self-respecting sector ranger would do in a situation like this; he went for the bottle himself. "I'm here aren't I?" he replied as he removed the cap from the bottle with a single twist and poured it directly into the two glasses. "but if you're asking whether my blaster is enough to replace those of an entire ranger posse," he placed the bottle down on the cabinet and took the two glasses as he turned back towards the desk and approached it.

"I'm no Preef Callo," his left hand extended to give the magistrate the glass of whiskey that he so clearly needed. Jan had made his choice, but that didn't make him a miracle worker. "and last I checked I'm not Jedi Master either," as if to both mock the magistrate and demonstrate his own insignificance, Jan turned his right palm upwards, glass in hand and fingers outstretched as if he was trying to lift his drink with the Force. It, predictably, remained still.

"But I'm all you got," he smiled and nodded slightly as if to say that he wasn't impressed with his words either. There was a pause then, a silence shared among them as the ranger took a sip of the -admittedly very good- whiskey. "and at least I'm still wearing my pin."

@Nor'baal

 

[Koors Cordan]

Bristling slightly at the remark about his pins absence, Magistrate Cordan took the drink as it was offered. Of course, the Ranger was probably correct - removing the pin was a sign that he had given up on the Alliance, or at least it could be taken as such. Truth be told Cordan was unsure whether he could wear the badge given it was an office of authority from an organisation that simply no longer existed. In the stroke of a pen, when the Alliance had been dissolved, so to had the authority it imposed across the planets its members protected. It felt wrong to wear it, when quite simply, it had no meaning anymore.

"Can't say I'm not dissapointed." he chuckled, an odd sound from a severe man "But I suppose we can work with what we have." Cordan took a sip of the drink and sighed. There where both in a bind. Thousands across the planet would look to them for some sort of aid - the weak, those unable to defend themselves from others with a nefarious purpose. They wouldn't turn their backs on them. "There's a Senator here, elected or no - but he has the voice of the planets Government. We need to see him, and anyone else who has an interest in stopping this place falling to disorder and chaos." he began.

Gently, he placed a small book on the table. Embossed on the front was the sigil of the Alliance Judicial Courts. It was the book given to every Magistrate upon their first appointment, and contained the basic tennants of Alliance 'Common Law', some of which dated back centuries. "There are provisions in here for a change in Legal Authority, we head back to common rather than consititional law. Our authority to act remains unchanged, but as ever, we must do so with the consent of the Governed."

Magistrate Cordan was not about to see this as a way to grab power, but as a way to balance it for those over whom the power was to be held.

"Warlords, Criminals, Empires - all could want to take this world, and turn it into their playground. We cannot allow Ord Mantell to fall to lawlessness. We must rebuild - and that will take time, blood, and sweat." he waved his hand as if dismissing these things as 'part of the job'. "To begin with, we need to get the basics sorted. Something to keep the lights on, and some more boots on the ground, alongside a better rrelationship with some of the local powerbrokers."

 

[Jan Eccles]

Ranger Eccles took a sip as he listened to the magistrate talk. It still felt like he was addressing a crowd in an attempt to convince them to support his own brand of idealism instead of sitting in his office, without his pin and with most of his support staff having bailed in hope to find greener pastures somewhere else. Or at least a job that could actually still afford their salary. "You don't happen to have the right frequency to call The Warden, do you?" a slight smirk escaped Jan's lips.

The Warden was a Force sensitive vigilante that operated on Ord Mantell for a while. He made short work of a vested local Crimson Dawn outfit. The rangers -Jan in particular- hadn't been able to find anything that stuck. No hot blaster, no corpse. The syndicates had a level of sophistication that made it really difficult to actually convict them for their more heinous acts. The Warden hadn't cared two bantha shits about getting proof. He just took them out. It was a brand of justice Jan officially couldn't approve of, but Force be kriffed if he didn't admire it.

"I'm not really the person to do the talking," he remarked as he emptied his glass in a single gulp and placed it on the desk in front of him. "but I'll stick around. Bodyguard duty, basically. Until there's more boots and the senator agrees to pay the salaries of the folk that used to work here."

@Nor'baal

 

[Koors Cordan]

"Pah!" he nearly spat his drink. The Warden was a thorn in their side as much as he was an asset. Vigilianteeism would almost certainly be on the rise in the coming months, as the desperate looked to the eager in order to see a bright way forward. Magistrate Cordan was in no position to do so, it was on them to step up and provide legal routes to justice to try and styme this move.

"But look, I appreciate the loyalty. In times like this it is important those of us who have a shared agenda stick together whilst we get the carpet back under our feet." he used an outdated expression, but pressed ahead anyway. "Hopefully the Senator will agree to back our efforts." he went to continue, but stopped short. There was a noise outside the shuttered window.

"What the..." he stood, muttering under his breath. Peering through the shutter, he saw a small crowd had gathered outside, around three figures, one of whom was standing on a literal soapbox, a rifle in his hand as he riled up the crowd with talks of the Alliance 'abandoning them'. Magistrate Cordan listened on as the lead figure, a large Rodian, shouting that 'only the Clans' could provide them the safety they needed. He rolled his eyes.

"Never a dull moment. Come on." he started toward the door, gesturing for the Ranger to follow him

 

[Jan Eccles]

The commotion outside drew both of their attention and the retoric was -unfortunately- a common one on Ord Mantell lately. The Hutt Clans were gaining influence in the Galactic Underworld and their sphere of influence expanded well beyond their own physical borders. Something that was a real pain in the ass to deal with. Sure, the other syndicates had their own representatives on the planet. Sometimes even a gang or two on their payroll, but the Hutts were always more brazen and seeking more overt control than the others.

The Droid Gotra were holed up in an old underground facility on the outskirts of third biggest city. Jan knew, or at least suspected, that they facilitated Crymorah slicers loyal to the Mothkari Crime Family. The Crimson Dawn had a ringleader run a cantina right here in the spaceport capital and she operated as a fixer for smugglers and the planetbound gangs. Going offplanet on your own dime was still a luxury, after all. Regardless, these two syndicates were subtle and you could make a deal with them if you went after an outlaw operating in or through their territories.

The clans were way too arrogant because of their dominant position. The large rodian struck a nerve for Jan as he recognized him immediately. "Well, I'll be kriffed. That's Bek Neekto. Last time I saw him he was kissing the slimey trails of that Hutt Mordreth." and said Hutt Diamyo had disappeared years ago, right around the start of when Jan first came to Ord Mantell. She was rumored to have lost a battle for control over Nal Hutta and seeing whose clan currently reign supreme as moguls of Hutta, there was little speculation needed to figure out who won.

Ranger Eccles didn't need to be told to follow the Magistrate outside, for he was way too eager to find out more about Bek and his lowlife ambitions. The building was considerably more empty on their way outside than it had been when he had come in, but Jan didn't want to focus on that right now. He was aware of the blaster on his hip and tried to recall as much as possible about the rodian.

@Nor'baal

 

[Koors Cordan]

Magistrate Cordan took a deep breath as he stepped up. 'Safe' in the knowledge that he had a Ranger at his side, he confronted the Hutt enforcer. Sure. Mordreth may have vanished, but in Cordans experience, Hutts tended to linger like a bad smell long after they stepped out of public view. She was probably languishing in some decadent palace somewhere, growing fatter off the riches of her ill-gotten trade, and leaving saps like Neekto to do the dirty work.

"Why you got to be riling these good people up with that sort of talk, Bek?" Cordan started as they stepped out onto the steps in front of the Magistrates 'house' which lead down to the square. His hand held over the butt of his blaster, he scanned the square for any other signs of trouble. Bek spat on the dusty ground and jumped off his soapbox to start toward the Magistrate, his two goons in two. "Good of you come out your palace, Magistrate. 'spose you got the message, you ain't needed?"

Palace? That was generous.

Cordan thought about his next words carefully. A firefight in the open was best to be avoided, so he chose a more cautious route "We both know that ain't true Bek. Without me, where'd you get your kicks on a Benduday, eh?" a few snickers went up from the gathered crowd - best to hit the Gangsters ego, rather than come to literal blows. "Look buddy, you don't want me to lay you out in front of your pals, so why not come back another time?" his expression hardened "Surely your boss has work for you anyway?"