Ask I'm Rootan for you.

HK 24

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With a distinct fizzling noise, smoke rose from the pilot's body as he slid to the floor. Behind him, HK-24 lowered his rifle, currently in standard firing mode, and considered how best to dispose of the numerous bodies that now filled the Sheatheipede shuttle. The pilot had been most insistent that HK should not terminate him, indeed, the begging had been insufferable.

He had not understood why the pilot had been so adamant he should not be subject to kill order. After all, HK had asked for the ship, and the man had refused, citing company policy or some such nonsense. What followed was therefore logical.

HK-24 had fired a single shot into the pilot's chest, ending his life in a mere second. However, that left him with multiple issues - namely the other people on board the shuttle, and the disposal of their bodies. The droid considered this less of an issue, and more an opportunity. He tapped the door controls back to the rest of the shuttle, which slid open to reveal the rest of the passengers.

Being a transportation ship from a nearby world, bound for the planet Rago, the shuttle had a small group of nine passengers, only one of which, his partner for this mission, was not going to be liquidated. He clocked them, a family of three Rodians, two humans in their late sixties, and a group of students bound for the University making up the rest of their number. Kara stood at the back, looking painfully organic as usual.

"Attention passengers." he closed the door to the cockpit as the pilot's body continue to smoke "You have reached your destination."

He fired a brace of shots into the students, their age bracket making them the only physically threatening members of the target cluster. One bolt fired through the torso of the nearest student, a second through the next students head, and a final two into the midrift of those left. HK-24 remained stationary as he fired a single bolt through the older human couple, killing both, and then turned his attention to the Rodian family.

It was over in a matter of seconds, and HK-24 let out a satisfying sigh.

"The ship is ours, Mistress Lok. Please, if you have mag boots and a filtration mask, apply them now. Otherwise, please enter the cockpit." he asked, dragging the pilot's body into the main room.
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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Kara had only recently bought the HK-24 droid for back-up on the more dangerous kind of bounties. With her continuing to grow her skills as a slicer she was more and more restricted in her movements. It made sense to buy a droid that could pull the trigger, bag a bounty and move for her. HK-24 had all the protocols to fill that required, but she'd learn the hard way that his programming wasn't...well, as desired. After entering the shuttle she had to take an encrypted holo-call from one of her employers and had ordered the droid to "take care" of this part of the plan in the meantime. It wasn't until the door to the cockpit opened again that she realized that HK-24 had only limited options in his out-dated software. All of which ended with a kill command.

She looked on in horror as HK-24 gunned down the rodian family, but she was more startled by her own thoughts, for instead of mourning the dead she was also disappointeed that the rodian's remarkable stink didn't stop after their death and she envied the HK-droid for his lack of smell. "Remind me to make changes to your programming, HK-" she shook her head and walked over to the cockpit to seal herself in, using the intercom to communicate with the droid. "Repeat target identity and kill specification, HK-24" she commanded just to make sure the droid's memory bank and root programming knew what it had to do and could not stray from.

What she had told him was simple and to confirm what he told her was correst, she held up the bounty info on her datapad:


Target: Rootan Smidt (NPC)
Wanted: Dead
Bounty: 50,000 Credits
Contractor: Anonymous
  • Target is currently running for President of Rago
  • Can be found on the planet of Rago
  • Is Pro-Republic
  • Bonus 50,000 Credits if evidence is planted that the FWA or ISC was involved.



@Nor'baal
 

HK 24

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Their 'new ship' continued down toward the planet, whilst HK waited for his mistress to stow herself in the cockpit. He looked impassively - the only way he could look, given he was a droid - across the mound of bodies he had prepared by the exit ramp of the ship. Hearing the hiss of the cockpit door shutting, he held on to the side of the ship with one hand and opened the exit ramp with the other.

Within seconds the transport area of the ship became a vacuum, and HK-24 was ripped off his feet, rag-dolled by the drag as he held himself in place whilst the bodies flew out the back of the ship. Using his other arm, he closed the door again and fell to the floor with a loud clang.

"Repeat target identity and kill specification, HK-24" he heard the instruction as he stood back up. Quickly he ran a search through his memory banks, a veritable maze to the observer, as he found the file for today's contract.

"Target is Rootan Smidt, a candidate for the Presidency of Rago, and favourite to win. Additional stipulations on the contract state that the killing look like an FWA or ISC sanctioned hit. The target is currently in the Hyprax Hotel in the planet's capital, ahead of a fundraising dinner later this evening. The contract does not have a collateral damage limitation clause - which expands on our avenues of attack considerably."

He stopped speaking, as the shuttle came into land at the landing pad for which they were bound. "I would recommend a direct assault. A sniper mission is unlikely to net the exact outcome we need, harder to make this look like an FWA or ISC killing. If I enter the hotel directly and commence termination, you can provide the relevant cover to meet the bonus clause, I hope?"
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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Okay, it was official. Either this droid was the best bargain Kara had ever made or he would no doubt kill them both. Suggesting a lone frontal assault on a man that was a shoe-in for ruling the planet. Come on. However, Kara mulled her options. If the HK-droid was destroyed in the attempt then the dataplague and additional software she uploaded to its brain would only ever identify her slicer handle of LEO404 as having an encrypted comm line with it. Her real identity was safe and it did just take out all witnesses that could have placed her in the vicinity.

Making an ISC connection wouldn't be a problem, either. She had video-footage of a ISC ranger she shot on Coruscant from when the ISC president had been kidnapped. She could use her portable computer and use the technology of the TC-SC 23006 droid the KnowOnes also owned, to create grainy footage of the ISC ranger ordering the droid to kill Rootan Schmidt.

With the shuttle almost landing, kara opened the doors that separated her from her droid and nodded affirmatively. "Don't rush it, I'll need some time to prepare the evidence. I'll send footage to your brain." That part was such a failsafe. If the droid gets disabled then the footage would be on his brain and from his POV with the damage done to him in the attempted assassination to serve as reason for the bad quality. She'd try to collect the brain later, ofcourse, for that was all she needed to have him rebuilt on Coruscant at a later date.



@Nor'baal
 

HK 24

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As the ship touched down, and the boarding ramp lowered, HK-24 turned on his comlink and spoke to his mistress "You will have the time you need. Please ensure any information you have on the area comes through." he asked, as politely as he could manage, before setting off down the ramp and up toward the door. They had landed on the roof of the hotel, and so HK was presented with a door, a service entrance to the roof, or in this case, an assassins entrance to the hotel.

He raised his weapon, to fire at the lock, but stopped short of pulling the trigger.

Lowering the weapon he reached forwards and grabbed the door handle. The door opened with ease. Unlocked - incredible.

Walking through the door, he headed down the stairs to the top floor of the hotel, the penthouse suite where the target was staying.

HK looked down the corridor, spying the commanding door that led to the penthouse itself, two heavy-set guards standing in front of it, pistols and stun batons at their sides. Humans would be easy to take care of. The droid worked out that he would need to get through the door the men guarded, and into the soft underbelly of the target erstwhile home, to do that there were two swift options. Either he could blow the door off its hinges, or he could use the access cards the guards would have.

The latter was preferable.

He raised his weapon and fired two shots, each with precision accuracy into each of the guard's heads. They fell to the floor with a satisfying slump, no doubt alerting other security personnel inside that there was an armed, and dangerous, intruder on site.

"I would recommend taking off, mistress." he suggested, as he covered the distance between himself and the now-dead guards in a few swift strides. Quickly, he gathered one of their keycards and opened the door to the penthouse, wherein a further three guards would be waiting for him.

Standing in a loose formation in the main lobby, the guards swung their shock rods intimidatingly, covering the scrambling form of the target, who was scrabbling for a panic room at the back of the penthouse.

Unfortunate.

He shot the first guard and stepped to his right to avoid the swing of the second guard's stun rod, before planting the butt of his rifle in the man's face and grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. He shoved the man toward the second guard and fired a well-placed shot over the head of the target, and into the door controls of his panic room, slamming the door down before he could enter.

The target bolted for the next room, as HK returned his focus to the two guards, now picking themselves up from the floor, for round two.
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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Kara pulled the memory banks of the shuttle's internal security camera and stepped out of the shuttle, though she didn't follow the HK-droid into the building and instead headed for the antenna on the roof. Her port scanner had shown that it was an access point to the hotel's main hub and from there the slicer went to work. She sat down on the floor, placed her portable computer to her right and plugged in the port scanner and her datapad, which she then also connected to the antenna.

Creating the false video wasn't actually that difficult if you had the right programs for it and she had. Creating fake evidence was about fifty percent of her job in the KnowOnes. She used the footage of the HK-droid murdering everyone in the shuttle and altered her own features, length and size to better fit the ISC ranger. Then she merely used the footage of him that she did have and she put it in in place of her own. The result was an ISC ranger apparently ordering a HK-droid to steal a shuttle and the murder of all its occupants. The same droid that would soon be witnessed killing Rootan Schmidt.

Then she made sure to leave the breadcrumps. The shuttle with the right designation codes was set to land at this time, so even if they used it as their escape vehicle it would be found over the course of the investigation. It would seem like they hired an assassin droid to ensure staying out of the picture, but were neglectful in covering up all the details. Luckily the hotel didn't have a security camera for the roof.

@Nor'baal
OOC: Post 1/3 for the slicing and faking evidence
 

HK 24

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HK moved toward the two men quickly, striding at them and closing distance whilst they did likewise. It took one step back as the first of the remaining guards threw themselves at him, driving his knee up into the man's gut as he stumbled due to the droids dodge. As the man double over, he slammed the butt of his rifle on the back of his head, before ducking out of the way of the second guard's shock prod.

He jumped back out of the way, firing a single shot into the prone body of the first guard, before throwing himself to one side in a sliding dive to avoid the third and final guards blasts. Finally, the final man had realised he should be using a blaster, rather than a shock rod.

These organics are so inept.

From his position behind the sofa, he heard the man grunting as he stepped over the dead body of his comrade, and made his way toward HK-24s hiding spot. HK rolled on the floor and rose to one knee, levelling two shots at the guard who scrabbled for cover, diving through the door frame next to him, and hiding behind the sidewall.

Disappointed, HK swiftly scanned the room. The walls were thin, not built for sustained fire - how foolish.

He kept his weapon up and aimed for the wall behind which the final guard was standing.
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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Next up was the insurance. While the tampered footage rendered and uploaded, Kara took another datacard from her pocket. This one was a closely guarded Zaa Fenn secret dataplague that was an absolute droid-killer. If activated Kara would gain complete control over the infected droid and could from a distance erase its entire memory banks and protocols. She didn't like to use it, but the KnowOnes said that Marissa Zaa Fenn herself swore by it and so she stuck the card in her datapad and opened the encrypted line with HK-24.

A few moments later and the data would be loaded directly into the droid's brain. From now on, whenever he got compromised, an investigator or slicer would find a file in the droid's brain that read 'Owner Registry.exe' but instead of opening a file to reveal whoever owned this particular HK-unit, it would execute the dataplague and render any further investigation utterly useless.

It was fortunate that HK-24 had already been infected with that Sector Ranger dataplague, so not only would slicing the droid be useless for an investigation, but it would open up investigators to a class three dataplague infected their systems like a cruel counter-measure. Kara enjoyed the thought and was glad someone like Marissa was crimelord of the Zaa Fenn Crime Family.


@Nor'baal
OOC: Post 2/3 for the slicing and faking evidence
 

HK 24

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HK loosed his shots at the wall, firing low, striking the final guard's legs and causing him to drop to the floor howling in pain. "How utterly predictable." the droid closed in on the man, kicking away his weapon and stamping his other foot down on the injured guard's neck. The man died quickly, with a distinct spasm that the droid ignored, waiting for the final twitch to signify he had finally expired, before turning around the face the terrifying looking target.

He stepped across the room with a slow and purposeful walk.

"You should stop relying on organics." he offered some advice, which would be rather useless to the man in the coming minutes "They are slow and squishy." he informed the target, who appeared to have wet himself. Typical, these organics leak something wicked - the assassin thought to himself as stopped in front of the man.

The target reached for a gun at his side, prompting the droid to slam a foot on his hand, breaking it with a crunch.

He levelled his rifle at the target, and contacted Mistress Lok "Awaiting your command Mistress."
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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Kara had a smug look on her face when she noticed that her upload into the shuttle memory banks had completed. The hotel security camera's had also successfully been wiped and the HK-24 had received the malicious package. It was all going according to once again a surprisingly simple plan. She was already packing up, pulling out cables and stuffing her devices back into her bag when the droid came in over the encrypted comm. "You have a green light for the kill order on Rootan Schmidt, HK-24, under the condition that he is recognizable and identifiable after." In other words, blast him to pieces but not in the face.

Then she rose to both feet and turned back towards the shuttle. It would take a few minutes to place the memory banks back into the-

"Hold it right there!" a man said from the direction of the rooftop door, "Drop the bag and turn around!"

Kara complied, but as she dropped the bag she whispered something over her encrypted line with the droid. "I'm compromised. Need back-up." No doubt the HK-droid would soon face additional security forces, too. Apparently they had been too slow in executing their plan and Kara blamed herself. Two blasters going in would've been much quicker, but despite that she wanted to try her fancy new skills and go for the bonus.

As she raised her hands and turned to face the lone security guard that aimed his stun pistol at her chest, Kara couldn't think of anything to do but smile uncomfortably. "I'm just the pilot?" she said, unconvincingly.

@Nor'baal
 

HK 24

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"Affirmative Mistress." the HK droid responded with a hint of menace in his voice as he took aim at the prone figure of his target. "Please! No! I'll pay yo-"

The voice was cut off by a lancing bolt to the chest, burning through the man's lungs and heart in an instant. HK turned on his heels and headed back for the penthouse entrance, making ground at a run to make up for lost time, he was by the stairs and heading back up them within a matter of moments, sprinting at full speed as he did so. He knew others would be on the way to stop them, the alarm having been raised, they needed to get out, and fast.

"I'm compromised. Need back-up."

A feeling approaching panic rushed through him. The mistress could not be compromised, nobody could know she had been here or the entire operation was bust. He kicked the door to the roof open with a slam, dragging the man's attention to him as he turned in the direction of the sound. HK fired a single shot into the man's face, sending him spinning to the floor, as he heard footsteps on the stairs up which he had just arrived.

"Leave." he instructed Kara, knowing she would understand the urgency of his request. He fired a stream of shots at the doorway, preventing the new arrivals from entering the rooftop until Kara had got onto the ship, and thus, could not be seen. HK, deep within his sub-routines, could not let her been seen.

Once Kara was on board, he would walk backwards toward the ledge of the roof, continuing to lay a stream of fire at the door. "mistress, kindly bring the shuttle down, around three floors if you please, level to floor 134 of the building east side." he asked as if it was the most natural request in the world.
 

Kara Zaa Fenn

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The metallic footsteps were the first thing Kara heard and then HK-24's entrance distracted the guard, making him turn just in time to catch a bolt in his face. Kara was grateful for the droid, truly, although it was just a collection of wires and data, right now it was her best friend. "Thank you, HK-" she began, but was interrupted by its instruction to leave. Not even a moment later she, too, heard the footsteps and the shouts coming from the staircase so she grabbed her bag from the rooftop floor and dashed towards the shuttle.

She had barely reached the cockpit and thrown her bag on the co-pilot's chair when the droid came in with a request. The barrage of bolts it was sending towards the staircase was enough for her to follow his instructions again and as quickly as she could she engaged the still dormant engines of the shuttle and forced it to more or less glide off the platform. Kara was by no means a skilled pilot, so arranged the shuttle's descent for three floors and the quick, yet stable, movement to keep it hovering on the east side of the building close to level 134 took her considerable effort. But she managed it.

"It's done, HK." she breathed through their shared line, sweat covering her forehead and her forearms feeling particularly strained from the stress of flying a shuttle this close to a building. She feared that one small mistake, one centimeter she moved the steering wheel the wrong way, would cause her to crash to her death against the building. To avoid it she tensed up and didn't allow her forearms a second of rest as he hands clenched the wheel. "I'm in position."



@Nor'baal
 

HK 24

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Continuing to lay down a stream of fire on the door, keeping the incoming enemies in place and sheltering behind the cover of the doorframe, HK-24 made steady progress toward the roof ledge. Once he heard from his mistress, he simply dropped over the edge, and fell three stories, crashing into the top of the shuttle, and sliding down the side to the exit door, where he knocked, politely.

Opening the door once it was unlocked, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Well, that was easy." the droid remarked with a degree of irony in his voice. A job well done.

/exiththread
 
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