as written by Calcos and Tiko
The trek into Volary was carried out at a sluggish pace; pedestrians and rusted automobiles alike clogged the streets and roadways, congesting all incoming and outgoing traffic, making it difficult to maneuver about with any ease. However, the multitude of people present would make blending in and disappearing all the more easier.
Thalgan and his accomplice trudged along, through the inner city. They elected to hit a marketplace, a crucial location for the bustling city's commerce. They eased along at less than ten miles per hour, stopping periodically as not to tap the rear bumper of the cars ahead of them. They kept the windows rolled up and the A/C turned on maximum, allowing as much cool air as possible to permeate the inside of their vehicle so as to combat the sweltering heat outside.
Before arriving within the city, they had covered the beds of the trucks with simple blue tarps, further concealing the payloads each vehicle carried, which were already stored in durable, insulated metal cases; in a place like this, such packages wouldn't necessarily stand out, but it was better to cover all of one's bases than to risk exposure.
The two mercenaries could make out the market square up ahead. At the speed they were going, however, they'd possibly reach it within the next ten or twenty minutes, give or take traffic flow. Thalgan became incessantly bored as time wore on. He checked his watch multiple times, fruitlessly and without actually giving any attention to the time. With a final glance at the timepiece, he decided it was time to contact the others to confirm their positions.
Firing up the encrypted comm. link, he reached out to each truck simultaneously. "This is Package 4; we are inbound for target, ETA in approximately twenty minutes, how copy?" He waited for a brief moment before responses came, each team chiming in and reporting their locations. Packages 2 and 3, whose targets were the spaceport and a temple, respectively, were already in position. Package 1, the hospital, stated they were at least a eight minutes away from their hit.
The Mandalorian sat back, closing his eyes. "This is gonna be fun."
____
The market place was packed beneath the afternoon sun, and while the payload in the back of the truck didn't draw any attention, the foreign nature of Thalgan and his driver drew some.
"Sami, sami," a poor man kept saying at the window of Thalgan's truck before he became lost in the crowd only to be replaced by a young lad of about eight years of age.
"Five chota, five chota!" the boy kept saying as he tried to push some tourist pamphlets off on Thalgan by banging on the window. His unwashed face, the somewhat worn state of his clothes, and their appearance of being a few sizes too small suggested the boy was probably little above the lot of a street-rat looking to make a few coins off from the tourists.
All around them was much the same, and it was fast apparent that the city wasn't doing well. Merchants were peddled their wares while beggars and homeless people were just sitting out on the sides of the streets, hoping for a charitable coin or some food.
There was an edge of desperation in the eyes of many as they sought to make ends meet.
____
The peddlers outside the truck's perimeter went mostly ignored. Thalgan attempted to usher away the boy who was pestering him, waving a dismissive hand and returning his attention to the roadway ahead. He wasn't inclined to roll down his window and hand out his hard-earned money to some beggar kid on the street. It wasn't that he couldn't empathize with the boy; he'd been in that position in his youth. However, he knew how the street rats worked, trying to sucker you out of that extra credit or two out of sympathetic pity. Besides, he was probably about to ruin this kid's day, so it was better not to get his hopes up with some easy money.
Finally, they rolled up to the perimeter of the target location, parking off to the right in order to get a better vantage point. From inside the truck, Thalgan looked out amongst all the pedestrians, thought about the panic he was about to create, the chaos that was about to descend upon these streets, and the lives that would pay the price for his employer's little war.
Ultimately, though, he thought of the payday he would assuredly reap, and the former thoughts had no bearing of consequence on his conscience. He looked to his driver, nodding, and they both stepped out of the truck. Walking, calmly, to the bed of the vehicle, they removed the tarp that had been concealing their cargo, rolling it up and stuffing it towards the back. Thalgan clambered into the truck, opening up one of the cases and peering inside.
It was time to start a war.
____
The boy hadn't been so easily discouraged though. As the truck inched through the crowd, the lad hoisted himself up into the back of it in search of something to steal. The cases offered little cover for him though as the vehicle came to a stop and Thalgan threw the tarp back. He kept crouched down behind one of the crates, but his eyes went wide as he caught sight of a glimpse of Thalgan's side-arm hidden inside his jacket, and the strange nuclear paraphernalia inside the crate itself.
The boy's back hit the side of the truck as he scrambled backwards, shouting loudly in the local tongue.
"Bamha! Bahma! Mada!"
Whatever the lad was shouting had the result of causing an immediate panic among the crowd that started to scramble away from the truck.
____
Thalgan wasn't familiar with the local tongue around this particular area, but he knew enough about picking up on context clues to know that the young boy who had been snooping around their truck had likely caught a glimpse of their destructive cargo. Words that sounded like "bomb" erupting from the little twerp's mouth likely aided his understanding of what was shouted loud enough for several cities over to hear.
The stampeding crowd fleeing in horror helped clarify exactly what was happening in this situation, their shrieks a deafening roar, the cacophonous sound of their collective footsteps like drums in the mercenary's ears.
"Shit," he said under his breath. Quickly, he fired up the comm. link, signalling Trevor, the driver, to set up the launcher in the truck's bed. "This is Package 4! We've been compromised! All packages are a go! Repeat: commence the attack and let's get the hell outta here!" Trevor was done setting up the truck-mounted launcher as soon as Thalgan closed off the comm. link's signal, the Mandalorian arming the launcher with one of the special warheads provided to him by the Jupiter Corporation.
Manning the deadly contraption, he swiveled it towards a cluster of fleeing pedestrians approximately three and a half kilometers ahead. Taking a deep breath, he squeezed hard on the trigger, hurling a warhead towards the terrified crowd of citizens, watching as the missile broke up into four separate fuel rods which each released a volatile, radioactive explosion upon impact, causing massive amounts of damage to pedestrians and infrastructure alike.
The walls of buildings were easily penetrated, creating debris and rubble that caved and fell all over the streets, crushing many a hapless civilian as they tried desperately to escape, only to meet their end as a pile of broken bones and crushed organs and pools of blood. Several people were killed on impact as the explosives found their marks, and many more still were killed by the concussive force emitted by the catastrophic munitions.
To top it off, the fuel rods would irradiate the area, possibly infecting any unlucky pedestrians in the vicinity for years to come.
With the chaos ensuing about them, Thalgan and Trevor decided it was time to high-tail it out of there. Clambering out of the truck, they hit the streets at a walking pace, striding away from the center of the calamity and ducking in and out of nearby alleyways, being careful not to get trampled and ready to fire upon anyone that would give them trouble.
Across other targeted areas of La'ita Hara, the remaining three packages were being delivered in a similar manner, adding further to the havoc that had just been rained down.
