A New Mission

Dawn was still an hour away when Raven made it to the building adjacent to Omto's building. About halfway up was a catwalk designed to get into the building so that the environmental and water systems could be maintained by the planet without ever actually entering the building. There were doors between, of course, which Raven planned to use. She was maybe one hundred meters below, carefully watching the guard who lazily monitored the catwalk. The Jedi estimated that she had about ten minutes until he disappeared into the building, presumably to fetch himself some caf to make it through the last hour. In the end, it didn't matter to her what he did, just as long as he left.

Raven fingered the trigger to her blaster, which was clutched in her right hand. It was fitted with a piece over the muzzle which had a cord and a clamp on the end. She had to resist the urge to click the safety on and off to pass the long moments. A small knot of concern had settled into her stomach, but it was easy enough for her to ignore.

Finally, the guard seemed to give himself a shake and walk away, his boots clicking metallically on the catwalk as he disappeared from view. Raven exhaled and slowly counted to twenty-five before taking careful aim. She inhaled and fired with the exhale, gratified by the dull thud of the clamp grasping the steel support of the catwalk. Setting her grip, she thumbed the retractor and was lifted from the ground.

A few seconds later, she was at the support. Giving herself a gentle swing, she hooked a leg onto the walking surface and pulled herself up. Then, she detached the clamp and tucked the blaster back into her belt after removing the attachment. She ducked into the first service entrance for the maintenance area.

The maintenance area was a maze of pipes and tunnels, all carrying something important to the building. The hard part would be locating one of the doors that actually opened into the secure part of the building without tripping one of the alarms she assumed were set for such an occurrence.

She moved farther into the area, the rumble of moving air and water masking her footsteps. It didn't take long for the Jedi to find a wall that seemed to stretch infinitely to either side of her, a common wall to the building proper. Arbitrarily, she chose left.

Raven moved along the catwalk, running her hand along the wall, feeling for a door. She was frustrated with the dimness of the area. There were probably lights, but the problem was knowing how to activate them. She traveled a few minutes before a panel lit up beneath her hand.

The rogue paused to inspect the display, which prompted her for an access code. Then, the backlighting flickered off, leaving her in the dark. She grunted thoughtfully to herself, reaching into her flight suit to the belt that was settled tightly onto her hips over her unitard, hidden beneath the suit's folds. From one of the pouches she produced the lock pick set that Kieran had given her. Many of them were traditional picks for old fashioned key locks, but there were three digital picks, more slicers than actual picks.

Raven bit her tongue as she studied the three digital picks, trying to decide which one to use. She selected the medium sized one, estimating that it would fit into the droid port on the display the easiest. The pick slipped right on, colored lights on its own display tracking its progress.

"C'mon…" the rogue murmured to the electronic device. It worked on, flickering gently, completely oblivious to her impatience. With a sigh, Raven calmed herself. Getting excited wouldn't get her any closer to one of the computer terminals on the other side of the wall.

The pick's display flashed yellow, showing her the code that was used to open the door. Then, it went blank, and Raven removed it from the port, replacing it on her belt. She entered the code, and the door slid open with a hiss. The dark-haired woman peered carefully out into the hall, relieved to find it deserted.

So far, so good, she thought to herself as she moved through the doorway. Raven heard it close behind her. She could sense some beings down the hall to her left, some distance away, as well as some of the other sentients on other floors. The rogue had made the assumption that she'd be able to move about freely at least for a while, banking that Omto's organization was large enough that every smuggler wasn't recognizable to his people. Still, she was a little nervous about pressing her luck. She headed to her right down the hall, away from the other beings.

***

There were very few doors in this particular hallway, and Raven began to look for a cross hall, hoping that it might have a door. Finding one, she found doors spaced evenly along the hallway. Every one she had tried was locked, and she could sense no one behind the doors. The rogue searched the floor systematically, finding the same situation in every hall she encountered, discovering that the building was laid out in a huge square with the center broken away into a garden. The walls along the garden were transparisteel, so that Raven could look out into the plants and across to other levels. She could see being moving in the halls there, busily attending to whatever tasks they'd been assigned.

Raven's internal clock told her that too much time had passed, and she was beginning to feel nervous. The woman was confident that it was only a matter of time before someone realized that the maintenance area had been breeched and there was a stranger in their midst.

It was next to a rather lavish staircase that she found another droid port. The port was far too unsheltered for her tastes, but the rogue was getting uncomfortable. Heightening her senses to pick up on anyone before they stumbled onto her, Raven produced her data pad and an adapter and plugged into the network.

Omto was no idiot, as she suspected. There was a security shell on the system, demanding a user name and password of some kind. Raven grunted quietly to herself, mentally running through her limited options.

"He's not going to change."

The voice echoed through the hallway, and Raven suddenly became aware of the fact that two sentients were headed her direction. Swearing quietly to herself in ten different languages, she unplugged her data pad and darted into a cross hall to surreptitiously observe them.

One was a Dug, happily plodding along on what looked like its front legs, the hind ones tucked close to its chest. The other was a species that Raven wasn't familiar with, sporting a ridge around its skull that looked almost like a crown. "He's always going to yell at us for things we can't control. That's why he's the captain," continued the unknown species.

"Then maybe I ought to find myself a new captain," the Dug said haughtily.

The other species just snickered. "Yeah? Where?"

Raven pressed herself against the wall as they walked past. She bit her lip with a realization; the Jedi could easily pick up information from one of them just by pulling a mind trick. Instead, she had another idea, deciding that that would be a last resort. She ruffled her hair, loosing some of it from her ponytail and then began to breathe heavily. "Excuse me!" she cried, jogging from her position in the cross hallway to where the two were passing.

Both looked at her, the Dug somewhat suspicious and the other species merely confused. Raven grinned at them attempting to look sheepish. The expressions on their faces didn't change. She stuck out her hand. "The name's Ash," she beamed, trying to appear as polite as possible, but a little misplaced. "I work for Coruscant Security, 'We keep your unmentionables unmentioned!'"

The other species glanced at his companion before hesitantly taking her hand. "I'm Zip," he replied slowly, "And this is Sinat." Sinat waved one of his hind limbs noncommittally.

"I hate to interrupt you two, but I have a little problem. You see, I'm a migrant from the Outer Rim, trained in debugging security shells. But…. I don't know what I did with the user name and passcode I was given. I know what you're thinking, but please don't tell your boss! If I get fired, I'm in a world of trouble! They may even ship me back! Will one of you get me into the shell? Please? I don't want to go back to Genosis!" Raven pouted, glancing from one to the other in what she hoped was a desperate look.

"I don't know…" Sinat seemed reluctant. Raven watched as the crown on Zip unfurled a little.

"Please? I promise it won't take me but ten minutes after you let me in to debug the system. I do know what I'm doing. I'm qualified!"

"How about an ID?" asked Zip. Raven fumbled inside her flight suit, using her clumsiness to mask the blaster on other implements hidden. Then she produced the card, which simply had her picture, her name, and the general heading of programs specialist. Zip inspected it. "Programs specialist?" he asked. "You a slicer?"

Raven smiled shyly. "Force," she replied, "I'm good at what I do, but not that good." Then she winked. "But I'm working on it." Mentally, she decided that enough was enough. This was worrying her. She gave them a little nudge with the Force, pushing them, although it didn't seem to take much, into accepting her story.

"All right, but make it quick." Sinat said grumpily.

"Thanks a million, I can't ever repay you. I think you just saved my job." She led them back to the droid port and hooked her datapad back in. Zip put in his name and passcode, making Raven look away. A few deft fingerstrokes, and the pad was running a query, although it didn't say what for. It blinked green. Raven murmured to herself, speaking quietly in Ancient Alderaanian for effect. What the pad had come up with was a list of what ships ran with shipments. Not what she wanted. Kieran and Dane had given her the name of the ship, the Falcon's Dive. This merely listed it.

"There we go." She clicked a few more buttons, noticing that the pair was rather uninterested, given their earlier reluctance. The datapad began searching. This time, it came up with a current location for the ship. Raven quickly scanned it, but it held no information as to whether it had a cargo or not.

"Uh oh." Zip was glancing down the hallway, and his comment made Raven aware of the click of boots on the tile. The datapad still was hunting. Raven felt a twinge of concern. "It's Two Sticks," Zip hissed to Sinat, who suddenly looked very concerned.

"Who's Two Sticks?" The datapad was still sifting the files. Raven swallowed. Something had to be here!

"He's our boss's second in command. He's called Two Sticks that's what he is; second. Well, that and really thin. But powerful." Raven murmured something in response. Her datapad had found something. The Jedi's eyes widened; it was the log of the Dive. Just to make sure, she skimmed the tail end of it. Sure enough, it made mention of Jabba's shipment, dropped off somewhere on the borders of the Inner and Outer Rims, presumably for more profit.

Raven yanked the connection out. "That's it!" she announced cheerfully. But Zip and Sinat had vacated.

Instead, there was a human standing in front of her, his head slightly tipped to the side, the lightbanks catching the red in his hair, making it look like it was on fire. "That's what?"

***

"I… I…" Raven backed away, letting fear show on her face. She gestured with the datapad. "I work for Coruscant Security, 'We keep your…" Two Sticks narrowed his eyes, and Raven broke up, pretty confident that that explanation was going to get her no where. It was then she had an idea what was just crazy enough to work. With a sigh, she tucked the datapad in her suit and produced her blaster, which she handed to Two Sticks.

"All right, you got me."

Two Sticks looked curiously the blaster. "Got you?" He stuck it in his belt.

Raven shrugged. "I'm Ash Suul. I'm a part of your training, you might say. Onto hired me to keep you on your toes. From his praise of you, I'm rather disappointed I got in and into your system. I expected more."

Two Sticks's face darkened. "A training exercise? What's Onto pulling now?"

"Your outside security is rather disappointing, and that security shell? Pretty easy to break… I'm surprised you haven't lost something important yet."

"You shut up!" He demanded, grabbing her arm. "I think you and I need to take a little walk."

"What's this?" Raven yanked her arm back away from him. "Don't touch me."

"You're coming with me." He grabbed her arm again. Waiting for this, the former Jedi tromped on his instep then elbowed him in the gut. She heard his breath leave through his mouth, and Two Sticks had to bend over, wheezing. She thought about using the Force to get away, or make sure that he was incapacitated, but that felt a little out of bounds for her Jedi ethics.

"I don't think so." She turned to leave, but he grabbed her boot, tripping Raven neatly. She rolled onto her back, looking between her legs to see him crouched on his hands and knees, her ankle locked in the grasp of his hands.

"Going somewhere?" He yanked her forward quickly, sliding her on the tile. Raven caught his stomach with her free knee, maneuvering it to his chest and leveling his body over hers, her calf positioned on his breastbone. With a little help from the Force, he landed heavily beyond her head, something making a crack. The former Jedi scrambled to her feet, calling her blaster to her hand.

Raven clicked off the safety and leveled it at him. With her other hand, she steadied the blaster and switched it from kill to stun, hiding that motion in her steadying one. Raven was ready to leave. "As a matter of fact…" Raven trailed off and fired.

He immediately went slack. Raven double-checked to see she had her datapad, then she sprinted away, looking for the hallway with the door she'd come in. Once she found the door, however, it was locked again.

Swearing quietly Raven grabbed the digital lockpick and hooked it to the lock. She watched the hallway nervously as she waited. After what seemed like an eternity, the pick clicked. Raven grabbed the pick and slipped inside, the door sliding closed behind her.

***

Raven found the noise of the maintenance area comforting after the silence of the hallways. She was still a little jumpy from her encounter with Two Sticks, but as she walked, she shook her arms and moved a little more with each step to get rid of the energy. Her mind was already running through calming techniques that were second nature to her from her training, releasing energy into the Force and tapping into it for a center.

As she walked, the rogue checked her chrono; it was a little after midday. Raven had taken much longer than she had expected. She wound her way through the maintenance area, and easily got down from the catwalk with a Force assisted jump.

With her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jumpsuit, Raven made her way quietly through the walkways of the district, absorbed in her own thoughts, although she carried over her a Force haze, something that would prevent the people around her from remembering she ever existed.

One person, however, was not fooled but the manipulation. The shorter redhead followed a short distance away, her dark outer cloak rustling as she moved. She darted through the other people with ease, as though it were a well-practiced maneuver. Raven only became aware of her when she was close enough to touch the Rogue. Raven turned, stopping to one side of the walkway, to look at Daré.

"I've not come to try to bring you back." The statement was just as it was, no guilt or sorrow evident in her tone. Daré tucked her hands into her sleeves in a familiar gesture. "I trust that you will do as you must. You've always been good at that, even when it hasn't been what you wanted."

Raven shrugged, a little unnerved by her master's appearance. "Then why are you here?"

Daré shook her head slightly, her braided hair catching some of the midday light. "I have a bond with you, padawan, wherever you may go. I guess I wanted to tell you that the hardest thing you will face is forgiving yourself. But you have my blessing, no matter how far you wander from your home."

"I've lost the right to call anywhere my home," Raven said quietly, "especially the Temple."

The Jedi Master resettled her hands in her sleeves, and Raven could almost see pain in her blue eyes. "It will be hardest to forgive yourself," she repeated. "You think that by leaving the Temple, you won't be responsible for others, that you won't be able to hurt others again. But I know you, Raven. You will help others because you can. You've been trained a Jedi, and that will never leave you."

The rogue shifted nervously. "Master, I need to go."

Daré nodded once. "Of course."

The small master watched her walk away. "May the Force be will you always," she said finally, softly, the words nestled in a sigh, intoning the phrase traditionally said when a new Knight leaves on his first journey alone.