As eager as Hawke was to go over the details on the data disc, he knew that every moment of the early game was precious. He had to focus on finding her first, and figure out just exactly what he was getting into later.
He made it back to his ship with less interruption than he anticipated. He genuinely expected to be ambushed by the opposition or hired guns meant to slow him down, but as he boarded, an explanation occurred to him: they could likely be watching him, hoping that he would lead them to the target faster than they could find her, and then take her from him by force.
Come to think of it, that was probably the exact thing Kosh was trying to avoid by having all the bounty hunters stay under one roof. He got the bitter rivals to kill each other off ahead of time, making the actual hunt for the Twi'lek less risky, at least for the target. Perhaps Kosh wasn't as witless as he had assumed.
"Kylsa, are you online?" Hawke asked as the loading ramp closed behind him. The lights in the cargo bay flickered to life and the sound of generators sinning up filled the large, empty hold.
"All systems operating nominally, power levels charged and sustained at 94 percent," an automated female voice reported over the coms.
"Warms up the engines, we'll be leaving soon."
"Destination?" Kylsa queried.
"I'll let you know when I figure it out."
Hawke made his way in a few short strides from the cargo hold, through the interior shaft, and into a room he thought of as the staging room. It was where he did most of his research and planning. He had a digitized reference program that he had updated on almost every planet he had ever visited, giving him a vast source of information on species, planets, histories, and cultures, as well as links to several on-world data storage cells. He even had a tap into a Omwati research facility on Coruscant that kept him up to speed on some pretty cutting edge tidbits. In this case, he needed very little of his fancy gadgetry to find what he needed.
Hunting people was no harder than hunting anything else: To be successful, you had to understand what you were hunting. In this case, Hawke might not have known this Twi'lek personally, but knowing where she came from and how she lived was really enough. Mix that with a little human nature, which really wasn't much different than Twi'lek nature, and she was a rather predictable prey.
"She would go to a nearby spaceport for time's sake. The threat of her being recognized and captured would seem more imminent having just fled." The first thing he pulled up were the departure schedules for every spacedock within ten miles of the Vaelin Tower.
"If she knew she was important to Kosh, she would try to flee offworld," he said. The holotable displayed a grid of the nearby systems with all the departure times from the last few days up until tomorrow. Hawke was quite grateful to the Internal Shaddarian Import Agency for keeping such thorough and up-to-date records. "We'll assume she did know, or more likely, just found out, as something spurred her to run now."
Hawke eyed the systems displayed, sorting them in his mind into different probabilities.
"Narrus has influence in these three systems and might as well own these two planets." Hawke swiped away at the hologram and the flight information for those systems vanished.
"Let's assume she knows that much and narrow it down some."
More labels fell off the hologram with the wave of his hand.
"The question of means, though...that is a tough one." Hawke rubbed the stubble on his face and took noted that he needed to shave as he pondered. "How does a penniless slave make ship fare?"
The question had a few obvious immoral answers, but you would have to be a fool on Nar Shadaah to help a creditless Twi'lek off world. This culture didn't look very kindly on those who would aid fugitive slaves, and made examples of enough people that there were likely not many more people willing to risk it.
"She either stowed away, which would mean that it a low budget, independent freightship," he tapped three labels on the screen. Each displayed more information causing Hawle to frown. They were all going to nearby planets, each closely affiliated with Narrus. "Well, it was unlikely anyway."
He stared through the hologram and contemplated her options. Honestly, it was more of a surprise that she hadn't been caught already. Slave escapes were notoriously unsuccessful - they had too few connections, too little street savvy, and nowhere near enough money. Generally the only times bounty hunters got called in were when slaves went missing because they'd been stolen. And yet this girl, who had lived almost her entire life as a lab specimen in a tower, had eluded Kosh's forces and baffled Kosh to the point where he was willing to organize this massive manhunt for her. Which meant...
"...she had help." A grin crept across Hawke's face. He thought back to how the head of security had spoken of her, almost like he was defending her. "Carsul, you sneaky old grunt."
It was a long shot, but Hawke started to bring up the larger offworld vessels. A passenger vessel wouldn't do, they were too formal and kept records and had ID checks. A freightliner was more likely, but it would have to be a crew willing to be a bit shady, and one that was either ignorant of the risks or just plain not planning on ever coming back here. Of course there was always the possibility that someone was just plain stupid, but that was hard to plan for.
Hawke was just about to start over where a ship name seemed to jump out to him: The Glimmer. He almost laughed to himself as he looked at their arrival and departure details. They apparently came, dropped three unspecified containers designated only as "personal effects" on the registry, and then departed with a load of workers and industrial and agricultural equipment to the planet Tol Amn.
The Glimmer was a freightliner first and foremost, but Hawke had seen her crew on Denon once running like hell to get her unloaded before the authorities had time to inspect her. As he recalled, the Glimmer made it away, but with a few blaster burns to show for it.
Tol Amn was an ideal planet, small, unimportant, and generally uninformed. Not to mention it was as near to the Inner Rim as you could get and still be in Hutt Space, and The Glimmer's crew were just shady enough to take on an extra Twi'lek runaway for a quick payout. Hawke scanned over the rest of the departure details.
"Seems she has about a three day head start. I think we can make up most of that in travel time."
Hawke made his way to the bridge, feeling rather smug.
"Kylsa, get us under way to Tol Amn."
He sat down at the helm, though he was more than happy to let the automated pilot do the flying. Still, he liked to watch the scenery go by as they departed. He settled in and divided his attention between the view and the information he was scanning on the data disk that Carsul had given him. The hunting part didn't seem like it was going to be much of a challenge, so naturally he began to grow more wary about the other aspects of his task.
All he knew was that she was carrying something in her blood that they wanted back. That alone had a multitude of possibilities. It could be anything from cloned immuno-toughening organisms to full out planet killing blood born pathogens. He doubted the information provided would be too specific on the point. Either way, he had a while before they would catch up to her, plenty of time for some light reading.
The Smuggler's moon steadily became smaller as Hawke's ship moved further from it and finally out of it's orbit. The sound of the hyperspace drive started winding up, and suddenly, they only view beyond the cockpit was a spacial haze. Hawke looked up to admire the swirl of colors and light for a moment before he dragged his eyes back down to the data disc.
"Hmm," Hawke mused out loud to his AI.
"A wealth of information here, and most of it is pretty useless." He leaned back in his chair and the screen expanded for him to read at the greater distance.
"Height: five foot six, weight: 123lbs, skin color: light purple/lavender..." he rattled off one fact after the next, half committing them to memory and half conversing with the only companion he had, an AI system.
"Eye color: violet, diet, activities she excels in, color garb she prefers... wait, languages: none. How do you have "none" for a language? Even slaves and test subjects have to communicate, right?"
"The need for a slave, of any variety, to communicate at some point over the course of their lifespan seems most probable." Kylsa responded.
"Exactly."
Hawke looked over the material a second time before putting it away. Nothing included seem particularly threatening except the part where it described the contact with any of the Twi'lek's bodily fluids as "ill advised" and "producing unpredictable results". It all seemed rather cut and dry. Catch girl, bring her back before other bounty hunters figure out where she is, and don't let her spit on anyone.
He was more or less satisfied with this plan. Sure, he felt like he didn't have all the answers, but sometimes the easy solution for that nagging feeling was to just not ask the questions.
Then it dawned on him, what the the report was missing. He had her respiratory and cardiac ratings at different stress levels, the different forms of dance she was instructed in, her daily cardiac exercise routines, he even knew that Garsian Cream covered Jyir Fruit was her favorite food. (Though he had no idea what a Jyir fruit even looked like.) All of this, and the report didn't even include the girl's name.