"So, I've… been looking for my family."
Aqura stopped in the middle of a series of punches and looked over at Mako. "Uncle Sherkan's still trying to keep us from comming him?" She sighed. "I need to talk to him about that. Gault and me were in real trouble back on Tatooine. At least Vormur and her squad pulled us out of that one."
Mako made a face at the nickname and said, "no…"
She trailed off.
"No, what?" Aqura asked. "The name makes sense. She's green, with silvery hair and red eyes. That's a flower. Tell me it isn't."
"Vormur aren't even-" Mako cut herself off. This wasn't the point. "No, I mean, I'm not looking for Sherkan. I'm looking for… my other family."
Aqura finally stepped away from the training dummy, wiping sweat from her forehead. "That's great," she said. "Find anything?"
Mako glanced up to meet her gaze, just for a moment. "You're not angry?"
"Angry?" The taller woman frowned, and Mako couldn't bring herself to meet her gaze. "Why would I be angry?"
Mako did her very best to shrink into the bulkhead without actually looking like that was exactly what she was trying to do. "I thought, well…"
"You thought I wouldn't want you to meet your family, Mako? Manda, why would you think that?"
"Because I've already got one. You said…" A lot. Aqura had said a lot. And she'd meant it, like she always did. That was the problem.
Aqura chuckled and leaned over to hug Mako. It was sweaty and hot and gross, and Mako squirmed to get away, but Aqura was a lot stronger than the little slicer.
"I said we're your family. I didn't say you couldn't have more. Osik, how do you think Mandalorian clans keep on? When a boy Mandalorian and a girl Mandalorian - or, well, a boy Mandalorian and a boy Mandalorian, since there's always adoption- you get the idea."
Having suitably embarrassed the poor girl, Aqura let her escape only moderately scathed and slightly damp. Mako let out a disgusted sound and tried to cover her red face with newly sweat-soaked sleeves.
"I'm not having a baby, Aqura!"
"Heh. Good thing, too. At the rate we're going, you'd be fighting Tarro Blood with a bump."
"Aqura!"
Aqura raised her hands and relented. "Look, I just don't see what the big deal is. You're looking for your family. Do you need help? What've you found? Should I get uncle Gault to help?"
"I'm not having a baby!"
"No, he's your uncle. If you were having a baby, he'd be… Hey, Gault! What's it called in Basic when your niece has a kid?"
"It's called, 'not my problem'," Gault called from across the ship.
"Aw, don't be like that! You'd make a great uncle, teaching the kid how to get away with mischief, showering them with lavish gifts that turn out to be moderately dangerous booby traps…"
Gault stuck his head out from around a corner and gave Aqura a surprisingly eloquent, "I am not dealing with this waste of time," look. Then he withdrew his head, leaving Aqura to shrug and ask Mako, "so, what've you found?"
The indulgent look on Mako's face dropped and she wandered over to the Torrent's ramp and sat down. "That's just it," she explained, running a hand through her hair. "I haven't found anything. There's no data on any adults matching my genetic profile around Nar Shadaa in that time. So I changed tac."
Aqura came over to sit by Mako and, though the slicer wrinkled her nose a bit, she accepted the hand on her knee.
"I started looking into my implant," she explained. "This was… a while back. It just occurred to me that I've had them forever, so I must have been teched out as a baby or something. Between that and whatever model I've got, there must be a lead, right?"
Aqura nodded along, stopping only when she saw the look on Mako's face.
"There.. was. Kind of. Turns out the tech I've got is as classified as it gets. Exclusively government contractor."
Aqura leaned into Mako, shoulder to shoulder. It was comforting, even if it was a little gross from sweat. Aqura could be like that, never quite seeing where her displays of affection should stop. Sometimes it helped, though, to always be sure somebody cared.
"Do you want me to grab Gault? I bet he can help with something this shady. I could even call in that favour from Captain Medle so he can look into the government stuff."
The girl shook her head and tapped her implant. "No, I already got it. And… it's not that government."
"Republic?" The look of surprise Aqura gave her matched the one Mako'd had when she first found out. The Republic had a certain reputation. Teching up babies, that was Sith stuff, or maybe Hutts. Not the squeaky-cleans of the galaxy.
Of course, that was always what that sort of people would want everyone to think.
"Yeah…"
"Mako," Aqura said, "This is a lot. How long have you been working on this? Why didn't you tell me about it?"
It turned out that Mako's boots were suddenly very interesting, and there definitely wasn't any reason to look up from them to catch Aqura's eyes, especially not to admit, "it's been almost two months now. It started out little. Just a thing I wondered about once in a while, you know? Then I got on the tech angle, and suddenly I was looking at SIS classified files, and now… well, from what I've found on, well, me, I probably wasn't even born on Nar Shadaa."
Aqura nodded. She probably understood more than she was saying. She talked up a storm, but Aqura always figured out so much that there was no way she could admit to it all. It was intimidating, even if Mako was definitely a genius by normal-people standards.
She wasn't a genius at this. Whatever that nod meant, it was a mystery to Mako. But… her instincts said she wasn't in trouble yet, so that was good.
"I'm out of my usual options. I've reached out to some of my old contacts on Nar Shadaa, and I'm just waiting now, hoping somebody will know something about my parents."
"So why come to her now?"
Both Mako and Aqura jumped, and the Mandalorian swore at Gault, who was moving to stand over the both of them. "Osik, Gault, either join in or butt out. You want to help or what?"
Gault looked about to say something unhelpful, but Aqura made a face that stopped him cold. For her, this was as serious as it got. This was family they were talking about.
The devaronian grimaced. "Well, I suppose I have a few people who have wires tapped in the right places. It's too early for me to stick my head out, but I can tell you what to say to get some information quick, if you're looking."
Mako perked up. A chance at Tyresius Lokai's information network? This was huge!
"You'd do that? Really?" The girl stood up fast, her arms caught halfway between cheering and hugging the old man, and she had no idea what she actually wanted to do with them. Gault stepped back to give her some room, so Mako opted just to throw her arms in the air and grin.
"Sure," he said. "Come upstairs, we'll call a couple of them right now, and I'll write up a list for the rest. Just keep me out of the holo when you get them on comm."
Aqura stood up and started following the two upstairs towards the comm room. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Sure," Gault said, "put on your armour and look Mandalorian while Mako talks. I'd let you do the talking, but I get the feeling she'll do a better job with an information network."
Mako's grin widened. This was a huge step into the big leagues. With an information network and a reputation for having helped win the Great Hunt, Mako would be able to do anything.
Gault was right, too. Mako would be better with contacts than her partner. Aqura had a habit of making quick friends and quicker enemies when she wanted information, and she didn't go hunting for information often enough, anyway. She wouldn't have any idea what to do with an actual network.
Aqura darted off to grab her armour while Mako started asking Gault about their plan. "What sort of things should I offer? How many resources do these guys have? Should I start out short-term or work out something for the long haul?"
Then something else occurred to her. "Am I too young? Are they going to take me seriously? What if I make a mistake? Do these guys all know each other, will they start talking about me? Should I try intimidating them? Can I intimidate them?!"
Hands came down on her shoulders and shook her once, and Mako was suddenly focusing on Gault's long red nose.
Well, it was the real world, so there was that.
"Stars, girl, take a breath. You're not calling right now, we're going to do a couple test runs first." He pointed a thumb at the cockpit. "I'm going to go stand in there, you're going to route a call from the cockpit to the main holoterminal, and you're going to pretend you've just uncovered the notorious Gault Rennow's real identity. Then you're going to try to pump me for information on your family. Got it?"
"Uh… why are we doing that? I mean, why that scenario?"
Gault grinned and patted Mako's shoulder. "Because, Mako, you're the smartest slicer I've ever met. When we get to the part with the real scumbags, you get ten minutes to find every dirty little secret you can. That's your intimidation. And," he thumbed at Aqura, walking back from her room in the full suit of armour, "a fully-armed Mandalorian at your shoulder."
"Something about rehearsals?" Aqura asked, looking between them and fiddling with her left bracer. The one that had most of the gadgets in it. It better not be broken again.
"Don't worry," Gault said. He stepped back and started walking towards the cockpit. "Even you can't screw up standing and looking tough. Just try not to say anything."
Aqura snorted and Mako made sure not to say anything she was thinking about how right Gault was.
She was still fiddling with that bracer.
"Aqura, wait, give it here." Mako grabbed her friend's arm and smacked away the other hand, which probably wasn't a good idea, because it was armoured. After a few seconds with her knuckles in her mouth, Mako shook out her hand and started fixing the bracer properly.
Gault called from across the ship, "still waiting on that call, Mako."
"In a minute!" Mako shook her head and started pulling on a magnetic clamp holding one of two tiny missiles. Technically, it wasn't supposed to be snug with its partner, but there was this awkward thing where, if it was too tight, a missile wouldn't fire, and if it was too loose, the bracer wouldn't close up properly.
"I can't believe you were trying to fix this one-handed," Mako muttered.
"It usually works," Aqura grumbled.
That was another thing. It was was really weird to hear somebody grumble through a voice synthesizer. Like watching a droid tap-dance. Machinery and life didn't mix that way.
"No, it doesn't. Remember the Colicoid tunnels? You fixed a jam by knocking your arm against a wall!"
"I was in a hurry," Aqura protested.
"You could have blown your arm off! There, done." She closed the bracer smoothly. "Just stop trying to do that alone until we can commission a better build on it, okay? I can name three one-armed bounty hunters off the top of my head, and their rates suck."
Aqura snorted. "You looked that up just now."
"Yes, I did." Implants counted as the top of her head. With barely a blink, Mako activated the Cosmic Torrent's (still a great name) holoterminal and called (well, not called, but it sounded better than, 'created a bizarre glitch to activate two systems in tandem rather than in parallel') the front of the ship.
Gault showed up, looking blue and cocky.
"You've reached Gault Rennow, bounty hunter extraordinaire. What's a Mandalorian want with me?"
Mako tried not to growl. "Nothing," she said. "I'm the one in charge here. That goes for the Mandalorian, and it goes for you, Tyresius Lokai."
Gault raised an eyebrow. "Uh, who? I've got two partners, and neither of them have a name that long."
Mako held back a smirk. "Tyresius Lokai," she repeated, "wanted from Hutt Space to the Core Worlds for a pretty impressive string of cons, thefts, extortions, and blackmailings. Faked his own death a while back and has been running around the galaxy as a participant in the Great Hunt ever since. I figure you were pretty good at hiding, now you're pretty good at finding people who don't want to be found. I want a piece of the second so you can keep enjoying the first."
Wow. This was really easy. She sounded exactly like the holovids!
"No."
Wait, what?
"Wai-" Mako shut her mouth with a clack, then tried again. "You understand the position you're in, don't you?"
Gault shrugged. "I get that you think I'm some famous con-man - which, by the way, would imply I was truly terrible at my job - but I've got no reason to help you. Tyresius Lokai didn't disappear, his body was delivered to Desad the Hutt himself, with DNA confirmation. Besides, like you said, I'm running around the galaxy. With some of the best and brightest in the galaxy as partners. What are you going to do about that? Gault Rennow out."
Mako stared dumbly as Gault flicked a switch and the holocall ended. She continued staring as Gault walked out of the cockpit with a grin on his face and a bounce in his step.
"Well," he said, "I'd say that went pretty well."
Mako shook her head to clear out the static. "Went well? What do you mean, went well? You hung up on me!"
"You realize," Aqura added, "I would have to hunt you down and kill you after doing that to Mako, right? If that were real, I mean."
Mako blinked. "Why?"
Aqura shrugged, which was a bigger deal than it looked. With all the armour she was wearing, she had to do a lot of lifting to make a perceptible shrug. "One person hangs up on you like that, you lose reputation. Besides, you're my sister. Nobody gets to insult you. And I'm not good at conflict resolution."
Mako stared at Aqura with astonishment that slowly turned to skepticism. Then Aqura giggled and Gault started chuckling, too. Soon they were all laughing together, until Mako wasn't even sure what they were all laughing at anymore.
When they'd all finally calmed down (of course, Aqura took longest), Mako asked again, "what do you mean, it went well?"
"Good question," Gault said. "And I've got one for you: why didn't you say anything when I asked what you were going to do?"
"Because it didn't make any sense!"
Gault winced and stuck a finger in his ear, waggling it around for a second before leaning towards her, ear-first.
"Sorry," Mako mumbled. "It's just, why would you do that? I threatened to drop the whole galaxy on you."
"Mm-hm," Gault said, "you sure did. You were a complete unknown dropping into my life and threatening to destroy it, Taris-style. So I would have ended the call and disappeared all over again."
"Hettir vheh." Aqura murmured (translation said, "burned earth/soil"), dragging her knuckles along her helmet's jaw in that annoyingly distracting way. "Makes sense. You fought fire with fire."
She paused and stopped with the loud metal-on-metal scratching. Probably because Gault was glaring at her.
"Oh," the Mandalorian said. "Sorry."
For somebody as clever as Aqura was, she could be really dense.
Still, Mako wasn't like her. She didn't mind being told the right answer once in a while.
"I escalated too quickly, is what you're saying."
Gault nodded, but shot Aqura another dirty look. At least Aqura had the sense to shrink away, stepping out of the conversation to let Gault teach his lesson in peace.
The devaronian leaned against the console and crossed his arms. "You want something more manageable, something that can do damage, but won't destroy the guy. Threats are stock and trade in our line of business, and you have to be able to carry through on them, but you can't play your whole hand at once. Makes people panic."
Before Mako could even finish nodding, Gault patted the holocomm and said, "so, want to try the real thing?"
Mako straightened so fast she thought she heard her spine crack, but it was Aqura who yelped, "what!?"
Gault shrugged and grinned the grin that made Mako want to punch him in the face. "You're a natural, kid. All you need to do is look into the guy for a minute or two and things should work out. Besides, and trust me on this, you'll learn a lot faster jumping right in. Sure, somebody'll probably send people to kill you if you screw up too bad, but I'll let you know if you're getting past the one-hired-gun mark."
Aqura grunted. "I can handle one hired gun. Sounds like a good deal to me."
This was… this was insane. They wanted to set things up now?
Gault was already tapping out something on the console, and Aqura had her hand on Mako's shoulder.
"Oya, vod. Oya."
Translation: "let's hunt, sister. Let's hunt."
And Gault was grinning like the evil shebs he was. He turned away from the console for a second and said, "his name's Detaron. He's a bit of a pushover, but he knows some of the Republic's best secrets. Have fun."
With that, he pressed the call button and sidled out of the way, leaving Mako to frantically start looking for information on a man named Detaron affiliated with Republic SIS.
There was nothing on the holonet about a man named Detaron. There wasn't even time to get into the SIS archives before the holo flickered with an image, a balding human man with at least three chins and a belt that had seen better days. Pretty sure he had a blaster on his hip, but there wasn't exactly a straight line from his shoulder to his hip.
"Carteri here," the man said. Then he did a double-take. "Coral? I don't believe it." Then horror dawned on his face. "You're monitoring SIS transmissions. That's the only way you could know I was sent after you. I- I have to call command."
"Woah, there, buster," Mako interrupted, scrambling to figure out where she'd missed the conversation. "Coral? My name's Mako." Then something else clicked, and she mouthed to Gault, "Carteri?"
Gault smiled that smile he got when he played pazaak. "Detaron," he mouthed back.
Advantage, team Mako.
"And yours is Detaron," she finished.
Huh. Turned out you could go visibly pale over holocomm.
"You shouldn't know that. Coral, I'm warning you-"
"Mako," she snapped. "Get it right. I've never heard of a Coral, and I don't care much what name you're using. I'm just a kid looking for my family, and I was told you'd be a good person to ask."
The man stumbled and practically cowered. "No," he whispered, "no, no no. I know what you did to the others. I wasn't involved in the project! You'll never find me!"
Then the comm went dead, leaving the crew of the Cosmic Torrent standing in silence.
Gault was the first one to speak.
"Well, Detaron always was a bit of a lightweight, but that was something else."
"What it was was a dead end." Mako kicked the console petulantly. She sighed. "Well, I guess we can try somebody else. Maybe it won't be as weird."
"Wait."
Gault and Mako turned to Aqura, who was pulling off her helmet. When she had it off, she peered at Mako close enough to make the girl uncomfortable, then turned on her holocomm. She didn't call anyone, just projected a holo of Mako.
When had she taken that picture? It looked as old as Kaas city, by the outfit.
Aqura just stood there, though, looking between the picture and Mako and generally just making Mako uncomfortable.
Just before Mako lost her temper and told the woman to stop, Aqura put away the holo and shook her head.
"No," she said. "No way he confused you for somebody else. You're too young to be SIS, but that's spy tech in your head. Plus, you're too cute not to recognize."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"What are you saying?" Gault asked.
"I'm saying," Aqura said, "I think Detaron, or Carteri, has some information we need, and we're going to find him. Mako, where was he?"
The slicer did a quick double-check on the call's ID, then blurted out, "Nar Shadaa."
Aqura grinned her hunting grin. "Then we're going to Nar Shadaa."
