After Kad'ika and Gotab refuelled and restocked the Aay'han on Corellia, they decided to travel not directly to the Imperial Remnant as Kad'ika originally planned, but rather, he and Gotab were travelling to the Core.
Specifically Coruscant, where Gotab estimated they would find their old family members.
A few days after the Aay'han left Corellia via hyperspace, the ship found its way back out into normal space in the Coruscant system.
As Gotab looked out at Coruscant, memories flooded back to him, like the last time he saw Mandalore. Except here, where Mandalore was a place full of natural beauty and ecological richness, Coruscant looked ugly in its urban landscape. From orbit, the planet looked like a dirty brown ball with orange and yellow lines that were lights, which were intersecting each other throughout the world. At this view, the light-lines looked like rivers of lava, similar to planets like Mustafar, Gotab noted. Whatever traces of habitation that the Yuuzhan Vong left on the planet's surface more than a decade ago were gone, and whatever would be left was most likely in the world's underbelly, which was almost never seen.
In fact, Coruscant's appearance from orbit was a perfect metaphor to Gotab. Its ugliness reflected the bad memories he had of this planet. Sure, there were good times, such as when he chatted and socialized with the clone Commandos during the Jabiimi terrorist operation, which took place just after the first year of the Clone Wars. But most of the time, Gotab saw just how brainwashed he had been thanks to the old Jedi Order into believing that their outdated traditions and practices were what kept the galaxy and the Force together like glue.
Of course, those were just bad memories in retrospect, for they weren't horrible to him for the time that he had been taught under the likes of Masters Yoda and Arligan Zey. The bad memories that Gotab had where he was fully aware of how bad it had been were when he was first in the Valorum Center and on the night of Order 66.
The Valorum Center was a mental hospital, and from what he heard, it had been among the thousands of buildings on Coruscant that were destroyed when the Yuuzhan Vong had captured it. When Bardan Jusik had first visited the Center on a mission to find a way to get Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan to freedom–which didn't happen until the Separatists invaded Coruscant prior to Order 66–Jusik had sensed and felt the insanity, the disturbances, and the occasional misery of such mental patients.
The night of Order 66 took the cake though. And it wasn't that the Jedi Order had been brought down by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's rule. No, it was the fact that it was the night where Etain Tur-Mukan, one of Jusik's friends, had died. And she didn't even die under the hand of a clone trooper, who had been ordered to wipe out all Jedi throughout the galaxy at the time. Ironically, she died under the hand of one of her fellow Jedi during a skirmish on a bridge whose name Gotab had long forgotten by now.
Watching Etain die like that had been bad enough. But what made the situation worse was when Jusik witnessed one of the clone Commandos he had associated with–Niner–had fallen off the bridge and ended up with a broken spine. His brother, Darman, who was also Etain's husband, saw that with his wife's death, the one person he could save from death at that point was Niner.
But what truly topped that scene off was watching Kal Skirata, who would later become Jusik's father after the Empire replaced the Republic in galactic power, losing his mind over Etain's death and just attacking the Jedi who killed her with sheer brutality and raw rage. Though Skirata had always been described as a stone cold killer, Jusik had always looked upon the old man as a kind, warm, loving father–even if he almost only displayed those emotions to his clone sons, of course. But watching Skirata go insane like that... While it certainly didn't change Jusik's view of the man in the aftermath of that horrible night, it was still quite shocking for him to watch.
Gotab wiped those memories of Coruscant away for the moment and watched as Kad'ika piloted the Aay'han through the atmosphere and eventually settled the ship down onto a landing pad somewhere in the Northern Districts. After getting out and locking up, the two of them began travelling down via turbolift towards the lower levels where they suspected that their family members would be.
"Can you sense them, Kad'ika?" Gotab asked.
Kad'ika adopted a look of concentration before answering, "Yes. They are here. And they are you figured they'd be after all."
Gotab smirked. "Figured that even with all the credits, they'd still like to live a humble life."
"Well, humbleness does have the intriguing prospect of discretion," Kad'ika countered. "Especially when you're bounty hunters."
"Good point," Gotab agreed.
Eventually, Kad'ika and Gotab stopped the turbolift at the desired level. The doors opened up in front of them, and they started travelling down the lower level apartment blocks. Not too long later, Kad'ika and Gotab reached a familiar safe house. Gotab knocked, and a few moments later, a familiar voice, "Who is it?"
"It's us, Jaing," Gotab said. "Kad'ika and I."
"I who?" Jaing asked.
"C'mon, stop fooling around, don't you recognize me?" Gotab asked. "It's Gotab!"
"If you're Gotab, then tell me something about yourself that no one outside the Circle would ever know about," Jaing demanded.
The Circle that Jaing was referring to was the Circle of Clan Skirata. It was the official term for all family members under Kal's name after he eventually passed away.
"My name was Bardan Jusik," Gotab began. "I was once a Jedi General in the Clone Wars; Darman and Etain Tur-Mukan were lovers; they had a kid named Venku who calls himself Kad'ika. Good for you yet?"
Two seconds later, the door unlocked and it was open. Jaing greeted the two of them and invited them inside.
"So where's Kom'rk?" Kad'ika asked.
"Here," another familiar voice called from the dining room, where he had been eating uj cake. "I just came back yesterday from a job within the Galactic Alliance itself."
"Oh?" Gotab asked. "What was it about?"
"Sorry. I'm on government contract not to release any details to anyone," Kom'rk replied. "Though to level with you, there'd been something from the Imperial Remnant that had tried to leak into Coruscant's systems."
"Does it have anything to do with nanobots?" Kad'ika asked, still thinking about the nanovirus plaguing Mandalore's atmosphere.
"Again, not allowed to release any confidential info like that," Kom'rk said.
"The answer is yes," Jaing said. "Not sure why the Remnant would wanna do that to the GA, considering the trouble that the Moffs had almost gone through for nearly assassinating that bimbo Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo."
"It was dated," Kom'rk said, disregarding his government contract now. "It'd been something that the Imperials attempted to do while Darth Caedus was still in power. Everything's settled now, and the Moffs are off the hook yet again."
"I wouldn't say that just yet, Kom'rk," Kad'ika said. "Because the Moffs are the exact reason that Gotab and I are here."
Jaing and Kom'rk looked at Kad'ika and Gotab. "Let me guess," Jaing said. "It has something to do with Mandalore, doesn't it?"
"What if we said it was?" Gotab asked rhetorically. "Would you help us in our attempt at payback?"
"You know we would," Jaing said before he turned to Kom'rk. "Isn't that right, Kom'rk?"
"You betcha," he said before addressing Kad'ika and Gotab. "So what did you two have in mind?"
"Well, Kad'ika originally thought of simply flying into the Empire's space, hunt down the Moffs, and kill them," Gotab replied. "So I figured we'd come here to seek assistance from you two in navigating through the Remnant's defences."
"What'd you like us to do, then?" Jaing asked.
"Well, I was wondering if you had any idea of slipping past those defences both inward and outward without being detected?" Gotab asked.
"Well, we are going to need a layout of their territory, a layout of where their defences would be most active, and any blank spaces where hidden security forces may be hiding," Kom'rk spoke for both him and Jaing. "After all, we should expect the unexpected."
"A galactic map isn't the hardest thing to get in, well, the galaxy," Kad'ika said. "And I'm sure that the HoloNet can highlight the territories of the various factions throughout the galaxy. Shouldn't be too hard for a couple of geniuses like you in finding the Remnant's forces from there, because I doubt they'd release such sensitive info to the public like that."
"It'll have to do," Jaing said. "Just let us print a map out, give us a day or two, and you'll have all the likely info you'll need that'll help you bypass Imperial forces."
"Good, we'll be on Coruscant 'til then," Gotab said.
And with that, he and Kad'ika turned around and left.
