Kanan landed his ship at the tiny and out of the way fueling station. He patted the controls fondly before he got up, making his way towards the exit. He liked being on The Ghost's crew well enough, but at the same time he hadn't exactly hesitated to take a long solo mission. On The Ghost he never forgot it was Hera's ship. Hera didn't like anyone else touching the controls, Hera liked things done a certain way, Hera made the supply lists, Hera gave the orders. Kanan didn't blame her one bit, he was sure he'd be just as possessive of The Escape if he had any sort of a crew. After a while, though, it was good to take off before they started getting on each other's nerves too badly. He didn't feel too guilty, Zeb had settled in just fine as Specter Four and would provide any extra muscle she needed. If Zeb felt any annoyance at having to take orders he didn't show it. Even if he never talked about it, Kanan would have put serious money on Zeb being former military. He was probably used to or even enjoyed the rigid rules that irritated Kanan.
There was also always the subtle pressure that he was disappointing her that constantly lurked in the back of his mind. She was usually the one pushing to be subtle, be careful, not draw attention to themselves. But then her eyes would flick to his empty belt clip and her lips would narrow just a fraction and he'd have to bite back the dozen or so things that sprang to the tip of his tongue to remind her that announcing to the Galaxy that he had once been a Jedi was a Very Bad Idea. It might help them once, maybe twice, as long as the enemy wasn't suspecting it. But after that there wouldn't be a safe corner in the galaxy for him and anyone who stood with him.
The first impression of Lothal was a good one. It was a flat, open area with rolling grassland outside the areas mowed short for ships to land. The sun was warm, but the breeze held a hint of a chill that kept it from being too hot to be pleasant. It might turn less comfortable if the breeze kept up in colder weather, but for now there were so many worse places Kanan could have volunteered to go. He glanced up at the sign and then headed into Old Jho's to pay for fuel and see if anyone felt chatty. This was entirely reconnaissance, the Empire had recently been increasing the amount of resources and manpower they were sending to this out of the way Outer Rim planet, and he was to see if anyone knew why. Kanan still didn't know how he felt about only being given a fraction of the information he knew Hera had gotten concerning the planet and Imperial forces on it and why it was so important to gather additional information. He understood that if he was caught there was less information he could give up, but it meant he might miss something important just because he didn't know it was important. Or alternatively he might discover some important piece of information that Hera had already known about for ages, making it useless.
Kanan had arrived early enough in the day it was only him and the person behind the bar, an Ithorian that he suspected might be the owner. He took a seat, ordering a sandwich and drink. The food would give him an excuse to linger.
"What brings you to Lothal?" The Ithorian asked, setting down the drink first. The translator box around his neck taking his speech and providing a Basic translation.
"Looking for temp work, maybe something seasonal." It was the truth, a job would provide a cover story as well as enough credits to cover his expenses.
"You might have better luck checking around Capitol City, but some friendly advice if you want it. Keep on going, everyone's looking for work around here," Jho cautioned as he handed over the plate. Kanan frowned.
"I've done a fair bit of cargo hauling, and I've never known an agricultural planet that couldn't use a few more willing workers," Kanan said, taking a bite of the sandwich. The meat was typical autochef protein fare, but the vegetables and bread were both fresh, which put it a notch above what he was used to eating on ship.
"Your information's out of date, a few cycles ago the fishing industry went under along with most of the main commercial farms. What's left is all individual owned and what temporary work they need is fought over by dozens of skilled workers. If you have an Imperial cargo license you might be in luck, but you'd need to ask elsewhere about that," Jho said, even the flat tone of the translation box managing to convey discouragement.
"I'll keep that in mind, thanks for the advice." Kanan passed over credits for the food, making sure to tip well enough. It never hurt to keep on the good side of people willing to be chatty like this, as long as it turned out the information was correct.
Kanan's first impressions of Capitol City were decidedly less positive than his general impression of the planet. The city was, at first glance, no different from a dozen others. People were people, the whole galaxy over, and tended to follow patterns if you knew what to look for. The expected things were there, roads, shops, vehicles, people bustling around on their own business. What wasn't normal was the feeling of the place, a sort of exhausted nervousness he'd felt a few times before. Usually it was in a single business with truly awful management and he'd learned to avoid those places like the plague. When punishments were too strict and at the same time too random the people responded by self-correcting and over-correcting, staying on guard in hopes of anticipating the next punishment. The mantra became 'Be careful and you won't get hurt', with an undercurrent of 'be careful and they'll hurt someone else.'
It wasn't hard to see why everyone was caught up in the cycle either, not when Imperial uniforms and armor were scattered among the people moving along the street. A very small part of him snarled at the injustice of it, it shouldn't be this way. In the places he'd worked in the past, people welcomed the appearance of people in authority because you knew they'd have your back. There might be some nervousness, yes, for making sure you made a good impression, but not the sort of constant fear that led to a helpless exhaustion leaving nothing left to try and hope for better.
Kanan gritted his teeth, doing his best to shake off the way the sight of so many Imperials made the hairs on the back of his neck crawl, and started looking for likely businesses. He couldn't let them make him as jumpy as everyone else or it would throw him off his game. There wasn't any reason for them to be interested in Kanan Jarrus, and he'd keep it that way.
After three businesses reluctantly gave him the same story Kanan came to the conclusion that Jho's information had been all too correct. The only real jobs were with the Empire, and there were enough locals squabbling over the dwindling outside jobs that it wasn't likely a newcomer was going to get their foot in the door. Even if people sometimes got arrested for this or that and left an opening, it may have been a morbid way to job hunt, but people were more than desperate enough to keep an eye on arrests and pounce on the opportunity. The advice was to keep moving, Garel was only a hop away and there was plenty of work for a cargo pilot there. He hadn't intended to give up so easily on his first plan, originally he had all of the first day or longer planned to hunt for a regular job, but he was fairly certain all that would do was waste time. That was the good part about leading his own mission, he could go ahead and move on to plan B. But first, he needed to get good and drunk.
It took Kanan longer than he would have liked to find a suitable bar. The first couple he tried were too clean cut, and he wasn't about to accomplish anything drinking with off-duty Imperials. Finally after a stopping a few people and asking for directions to somewhere a little less crowded he found the kind of bar he was looking for and ducked inside to make some new friends. There were a number of tricks to making it look like you were drinking a lot more than you were, and Kanan knew most of them. As long as he was buying things and not making trouble he could start establishing himself as the right kind of person. And then… he could start looking for the jobs you couldn't just stroll in and ask nicely about. He was certain that the stranglehold the Empire had on the city had resulted in a healthy and thriving underground, it always did. He just couldn't exactly start asking about it without raising suspicions and probably getting himself a few new scars for being too nosy. Kanan had really hoped Plan A would have worked out, he knew he'd probably have ended up feeling out the less savory parts of the planet anyway, but he preferred to do so on his own terms as a freelancer. Actively joining criminal groups, however temporary, was almost always so much more trouble than it was worth. Kanan tried to ignore the little voice that piped up and asked if that wasn't exactly what he'd done with the Ghost, that was different. He could walk away if he wanted to without worrying about a knife in the back.
Kanan settled in to nurse a couple drinks and buy for others, listening and occasionally offering a sympathetic prompt to the general grumblings. He was getting a good feel for the situation timeline, the Empire had taken a small notice of Lothal roughly a decade ago and done their standard takeover of political structure and communications, and then like most Outer Rim planets not much had changed. For the average farmer or fisherman or other inhabitant there wasn't much difference between the Republic and the Empire. Then the Academies were built, then the shipyards, and the mining operations, and everything started to collapse. The thing that was starting to frustrate Kanan was no one even seemed to be asking why. There were countless planets, better located, better suited for those things. Planets were you wouldn't have ruined a productive agricultural system in order to build them. People, and the Empire was no different, tended to be motivated by three things; greed, spite, or ideology. Either there was some hidden profit that outweighed the loss, someone wanted Lothal ruined, or someone thought they were helping. There wasn't much of anything he could do about the second two, for all he knew whoever was in charge of assigning what was built where happened to have a grudge with someone on Lothal and it was as petty as that. If it was a hidden profit though, that could be important. It had the right feel of the kind of information he was supposed to bring back. He just wished he had the foggiest clue of what that might be.
Finally Kanan decided he'd spent long enough in the bar, he'd been there long enough to be seen as sympathetic to those being hurt by the Empire and he was starting to get tipsy even spacing out his drinks. He paid his bill and headed out, relaxed and feigning a little more unsteady than he actually was.
Kanan shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when a warning tingle in the back of his mind made him turn quickly without even thinking, grabbing at the wrist of the hand that was about to slip into his pocket. An offworlder coming out of a bar made for a tempting target, but it wasn't that late and the street was well lit. The pickpocket was either very confident or desperate and he met startled bright blue eyes and held them in a steady gaze.
"What do you think you're doing?"