Chapter Sixteen: Best-Laid Plans

15 ATC. After Rakata Prime.

I'll be in touch, Lana says as they all leave Manaan, separate ships in separate directions, when it's safe.

Theron says the same, and she knows it's really if and not when, but in spite of herself she wishes them all luck. They're going to need it.

She goes home to Dromund Kaas for two weeks, trying to keep herself on the radar and an ear to the ground at the same time, looking for any scrap of information about the Revanites or their plans; there's nothing, which is suspicious in itself. If their network is anywhere near as big as it appears, given the number of ships in play over Rakata Prime, secret-keeping on that scale ought to be impossible. Someone gets drunk in a cantina or lets a secret slip to a mistress or talks once too often on a bugged line- intel bleed's inevitable, yet somehow, even with all her considerable resources in play, she still doesn't know anything. It doesn't make sense.

So when, two days in a row, she sees the same man with the same black hat and tan satchel sitting on the bench outside her building, she gets the fuck out of town.

(He might, to be fair, just have been waiting for the shuttle.

But one doesn't survive as a Cipher for long by assuming the best of people, and besides his hat was at least three years out of style. Her Kaas City apartment had been a patron-gift at the end of her training days; she'd paid a single credit to make the transfer legal, but she's some idea of what it would have cost- more than she could afford, even now. No one with the credits to live on this block would have been caught dead wearing that hat in public.)

They hit Nar Shaddaa first, she and her crew, to get lost in the roar of it and to stock up on supplies in case they really do need to go to ground: obvious things, mostly, ship parts and rations and energy cells, but also clothes and cosmetics and contact lenses, all the usual trappings of disguise. Who she'll need to be depends on where she ends up, but it seems likely she won't be able to be Cipher Nine for a while.

On Nar Shaddaa that's never been a problem- she's got a dozen active options there, from dancer to gunrunner to dilettante. She slips from role to role, easy as life, shoring up her information networks, but even there real intel's scarce. No sign of Lana or Theron- or Jakarro, which is remarkable, given she's never met a Wookiee in her life who understood the concept of low profile. After a month or so, when she gets desperate enough to start asking about Revan directly, the only lead's dodgy as anything; the Sith's completely strung out, for one thing, eyes bloodshot with more than just dark energy and track marks down to the backs of his hands, and he points her toward a part of Shadow Town she knows better than to go anywhere near. She thanks him anyway, of course, and hands over the credits.

As she gets up to leave the cantina, a pretty dark-haired girl brushes past her on her way toward the exit, slurring an apology. It happens a dozen times a night in any bar in this district, so she'd have thought nothing of it- except that the girl doesn't smell of alcohol and her eyes are too sharp for spice and, when Nine catches a glimpse of her walking away in the mirror above the door, she's pulling a tracker from her pocket and folding it into her palm.

Sloppy little thing. Bold, to be sure, but sloppy. Not one of hers.

Outside, she ducks into the second-closest alley- not the closest; that would be the expected thing- and checks herself over, her fingers brushing over a needle-thin sliver of metal threaded into the fabric of her sleeve. It'd be alarming, really, if it wasn't so insulting. A tracking chip. Honestly.

She stabs it into the nearest convenient vagrant, takes the long way out of the alley, and when she gets back to the safehouse she and Vector wipe it clean while the rest of them head back to the dock.

Time to go.

(I didn't realize they'd gotten so close, Lana murmurs.

She laughs. Close was shots near enough to split your hair, footsteps echoing off pavement from feet you know are there but can't see. Close was fingers on your throat and knives in the dark, words layered with triple meanings and poison in champagne glasses. Close was twenty hours and thirty-two minutes of pain and spitting up blood afterward in a Coronet City gutter, slung- carefully, almost, surprising in its gentleness- over SCORPIO's cold metal shoulder because you can't feel your own feet. Close? Hardly. It just meant I needed to change tactics.)

Year's End, 15 ATC. Port Nowhere.

If she couldn't pin down the Revanites, she'd figured, perhaps she'd have better luck finding the rest of their odd little quartet. And when one wants to find someone, well- that meant bounty hunting, and given the options she's already burned that meant Port Nowhere.

Port Nowhere's a good place to lie low.

Imperial Intelligence always had an agent or two posted here, as did the SIS. But with no official military presence on either side and few Force-users (openly, at least) the smugglers mostly run things- the Voidhound, the closest thing this place has to a ruler, ostensibly threw her hand in with the Republic, but that doesn't mean much this far into uncharted space. There was no shortage of work to be had, either off the record for the Empire or as a freelancer, and if it ever seemed like the walls were closing in she's got multiple exit strategies in play.

Besides, she thinks to herself, settling brown lenses onto green eyes, tucking her hair, braided and pinned flat across the crown of her head, into a neatly bobbed black wig, there's no rule against a bit of fun along with all this work.

Kaliyo, priming the airbrush in the 'fresher of their latest hideout, shouts over the noise of the compressor. "You had to go with 'ravi, didn't you? Her tattoos are a pain in my ass… every three days for a damn month. Dirala's way easier, just that one scar."

"Dirala got made on Nar Shaddaa. You know that." She teases the hairline down, shakes her head to let it settle properly. "If I showed up here as her, assuming there are any of Revan's people around, it was going to be more just than a tracker. Whereas Vairavi-" slipping out of her robe, she crosses the room to the open door, holds her arms out to the sides- "has enough of an in with the Hunters' Guild to pull a high-credit bounty. And if you can show me an ex-Sun runner that doesn't have tattoos I will eat my favorite hat, feathers and all."

"Eh. Doesn't explain why we're still here." Kaliyo grumbles, pressing the stencils into place along her back and around the curve of her biceps. "All the bounty leads have been dead ends so far."

"Not entirely. We made enough money hunting side targets to get you that new gun."

"Fair."

The cool air through the brush hits her bare skin, making her shiver. "And we know Lana was on Tatooine six weeks ago and Jakarro passed through Molavar. Helps pin down a quadrant, at least."

"We don't know it was Jakarro. Still no news of the 'pub, either."

"Oh, come on. How many Wookiees are running around with protocol droid heads strapped to their chests?" She looks back over her shoulder. "I doubt we'll hear much of Theron, anyway- he ought to know how to go to ground, and without an official bounty no one's really looking for him besides the SIS and it's not as though I can walk up and ask them." They'd basically all committed treason, as far as their bosses were concerned, and he'd skated by with a nonlethal disavowal- whoever he is, Theron Shan's got powerful friends.

(Lana makes a strangled little noise, her teeth sunk into her lower lip.

Oh, don't you dare. You didn't know any better than I did, then.)

A shrug; a change of stencil. "You could always try."

"I could. But I thought I heard Jori Itera mention Revan last night when he was arguing with the Kelborns. Might see if I can find him and see if he's drunk enough to let something slip."

"And if he's not?"

"Then we'll all talk tomorrow about moving on. Tatooine might be worth a shot- I've got a contact in the spaceport who still owes me a big favor. As for tonight-" she turns at an angle to check her reflection, the clean etching of the Black Sun emblem on her right shoulder blade and decorative lines running down the backs of her arms- "it's the last night of the year, in a bar full of Mandalorians. I'm sure I'll find something to keep me entertained."

Her back still needs time to dry, but while she waits, standing in front of the air vent, she pulls her skirt on and tugs it down over the tops of her thighs, clips her little gun into the waistband and does up the fastenings. Her boots are- hm. Not next to her bed where they ought to be, nor in the trunk with her proper armor and her rifle, nor on the chair next to Vairavi's armor (cheaper than hers, of course, assembled piecemeal as a bounty hunter's usually was, and heavier too).

"'liyo." When she says it, there's a noncommittal murmur from the general direction of the 'fresher. "Did you, by chance, happen to steal my heeled boots when you went out last night?"

"What? No." The tap shuts off, and Kaliyo peers out around the door. "Maybe. Steal's such a negative word."

She sighs.

"I'll get 'em. Hang on." She vanishes out into the common room (where Vector's diligently going through bounty leads and Temple's napping- she'd left Lokin to his work shipboard and SCORPIO guarding the dock, seeing as how unlike the rest of them she doesn't need to sleep or eat) and comes back a few minutes later, the boots in question dangling from her fingertips. "See, good as new."

"Just tell me you didn't fuck that awful smuggler while wearing my boots. You're going to give me some kind of disease by proxy."

Kaliyo raises her left hand, places her right squarely over her heart. "I did not fuck anyone while wearing your boots. I promise."

"Good." The paint finally dry, she pulls a shirt over her head and smooths it down, adjusting the neckline carefully to best effect. It's mostly a work night- it's always a work night for her, even when it isn't; that part of her brain never shuts off, ever- but it's still a holiday. One plans for all possibilities.

"Although-" Kaliyo's hand falls, her eyes wicked as she grins- "I might have been wearing your jacket."

The first rule of bounty hunting is to never pretend to be a Mandalorian.

Officially, that's probably about the fourth rule, but in practice everyone knows the first few- everything gets logged through the Guild, don't steal kills, don't try to hunt above your pay grade. Somehow, though, every cantina on every backwater in every quadrant of the galaxy contains at least one idiot claiming to be the next Mandalore. The problem's that, as low as their numbers have gotten and as insular as the clans are, every cantina in the galaxy also contains at least one person who's at least second cousins with the current Mandalore.

She knows better than to try. Wearing this face she's just plain Vairavi, the kind of girl who never had a surname and ended up running with the Black Sun because, awful as the Sun was, it was better than whoring or dying, which are the other two options for girls like that in the places where the light doesn't touch. Her contract years done, she'd lit out on her own- fame and fortune and all that trite shit. A plausible story.

Which, paired with a big enough gun and a big enough swagger, will get you just about anywhere.

But when she has to duck back from the entrance to the Drunken Rancor- the Rancor's her usual, at least in a hunter's guise, with the Kessel Run under Imperial surveillance and the Backfire SIS territory- because someone's exiting it face-first, she only understands half the words hurled after him but she can guess what he was trying to do; sure enough, she finally makes it through the door and Eri Kelborn, flushed and rumpled in a tight black dress quite a bit more revealing than her usual armor, is dusting off her hands and scowling.

"Can you believe that asshole?" The woman's not talking to anyone in particular. "Tried to claim kinship. Like I wouldn't know my mother's sister's child."

"Fuckin' idiot." She nods agreement as she steps past her, slipping into an undercity Coruscanti drawl. "And nice throw, too. Good loft."

"I thought so." Eri grins, picking up her glass from the floor beside her. "Oya, Vairavi. You just missed your friend."

That stops her short, four steps into the foyer, and she angles herself to get her back out of the line of the doorway. "Yeah? I've got a few of those. Did you catch a name?"

"I was only joking. He sounded like you, only posher, 's all- don't get so many Core Worlders slumming it out here. Cute enough, though. Red jacket."

"We all sound alike, eh? I'll have to track him down. Is he still here?" If her smile looks forced, hopefully Eri's drunk enough not to notice. Coruscanti accent, red jacket. He couldn't possibly be that stupid. Right?

(I told him, Lana says, he needed something less conspicuous, but I'm not sure he actually owns any other jackets.

In that moment, she resolves herself. The next time they're anywhere with a decent tailor, she's taking Theron shopping.)

She shakes her head over the edge of her mug. "Had one drink and left half an hour ago. If you're bored, though, Nikko Bralor's looking for you."

"I'll pass. 'm never going to be that bored."

"Smart woman." Eri waves her toward the bar. "Go get a drink, at least."

She does, ordering up a whiskey- double, neat- and leans against the counter, surveying the rest of the room: crowded, with most of the crews out of armor taking the festival week as a chance to relax, even the Ubese at the far tables in uncommonly good temper (which is to say, not actively trying to stab anyone). Jori Itera's alone at the far end of the long row of stools, three empty glasses stacked in front of him and a fourth, half-full, in his hand, his usual pose for the last six days since he'd come back from Belsavis. Rumor had it that he and Haniya'd gone after a rogue Jedi, hoping for a big payout. He'd come back alone, though, with a shattered helmet and armor painted mourning-grey and hadn't been sober since, but she's certain she heard him say Revan last night in the middle of a dozen Mando'a curses.

It's a better lead than she's had all month.

She orders a second whiskey, slides it in front of him until it clinks against the stack of empties. "Jori," she says, "I heard about Haniya. I'm sorry."

He grunts and doesn't look up at her, but when he drains the glass in his hand he reaches for the one she put down. "Girl, I'll tell you what. You're hunting a Sith, aren't you?"

She nods. Only technically- with her name on Lana's bounty it made another team less likely to claim it- but still.

"It en't worth the payout, trust me, dealing with that Force shit." He sighs. "Should've listened to Hani."

"She didn't want to take it?"

"She wanted to go home. Hadn't been back in years- she was a Beroya before we got married- but her sister called a few weeks ago and asked her to come visit- said there was bad business afoot, that they might be back to fighting soon and that Torch said they'd need-" he stops. "Never mind. Not for you to know, aruetii."

Carefully, nonchalantly, she shrugs. "Means nothing to me, anyway. Was that what you were fighting with Eri and Ket about last night? Only word I understood was Revan, but I figured that's like a swear word for you lot after what he did, yeah?"

His fifth glass, empty, hits the bartop with a dull thud, and his lip curls. "Leave it, 'ravi. I'll only say it once."

"Is that a threat?" She gestures to the bartender, holds up a finger and points- even if it is, another full glass ought to go a fair way toward calming him. Jori only laughs, though, and shakes his head.

"No. But you don't want to kick that nest." Drink in front of him again, he takes it in hand and lifts it toward hers. "Now, I'll take your drink for my Haniya, and then I'll be asking you to leave me be."

Their glasses touch; she drinks, nods, and turns away.

Well, it's something.

Making her way back to the other end of the bar, she lifts her comm to her mouth. "Vector? I've got a new search for you."

He answers almost immediately, as always. "We were just finishing the last of the reports. We'll take the parameters when you're ready."

(I miss him, she says. She'd have given her eyeteeth for a dozen of him except for the Killik business. It made her skin crawl, which wasn't his fault, of course. Poor Vector.

But he had known, even when she couldn't say it in that awful year when every word out of her mouth was one of Hunter's lies, when her hands stuttered over keypads and even putting a pen to paper yielded only splotches of ink instead of letters her body flatly refused to shape, that something was wrong. In black moments he'd simply press his hands to her temples and close his eyes, humming. She'd asked him why, later, when she could, and he had said only that he was trying to help her remember the Song.)

"Current location of Clan Beroya. Cross-reference Torch. I think it's a nickname, but definitely a person."

"The scent of our prey?"

"I don't know. Something related, at least. You have until morning." Vector had no plans to celebrate, she knew. Alcohol, apparently, did awful things to Joiner physiology.

She can already hear the soft tap of fingertips on a datapad. "As you say. Shall we call with updates?"

"Hm." Eyes on her back, from somewhere nearby. "No. No-" louder, enough that whomever's watching should be able to hear- "tell him the contract's off. He must think I'm fresh out of the sublevels, giving those terms."

"Understood." His voice curls around the word in amusement. "We'll speak in the morning."

She closes the channel.

When she turns to see who's watching she has to duck under an outstretched arm that's about two seconds away from snaking its way around her neck. She catches said arm by the wrist and twists, driving her other hand in at the shoulder until its owner yelps and staggers and-

"I was just comin' to wish you happy- ow!"

"Damn it, Nikko. Next time you try that I'll break your arm." She lets him go, rather than slamming his head into the wall like she meant to; she should let him hit the wall, honestly, and teach him a lesson given the way he's been pestering her, but then he'd probably bleed all over her shoes. "What part of 'fuck off' 're you having trouble with?"

As he rubs his shoulder sheepishly there's a snort of laughter from the nearest table, where a tiny woman she doesn't recognize sits with her feet propped up, ankles crossed on the tabletop. "I told you she wasn't interested, idiot. You owe me fifty credits."

Lifting one hand in an obscene gesture, Nikko scowls. "Oh, shut it, Ves. Like you'd do any better with that pretty face of yours."

She'd never seen Vesja with her helmet off; they'd run into each other at the brokerage a few times, but Ves hunted on her own, not with her brother, and had been off-station for most of her own time here. When the woman turns out of profile she can tell what Nikko meant- the right side of her face is a ruin of scars half-hidden by fair hair, three long slashes that span the distance from chin to forehead, her eye clouded white and the corner of her mouth drawn up in a perpetual smirk.

At the moment, it's half a smirk and half a snarl as Vesja hops out of her her chair. "Double it, then."

"It's your money, but fine. A hundred credits." He folds his arms across his chest, looking absurdly smug. She really should have let him hit the wall.

Her eyebrow arched, she looks back and forth between the two of them- up and down, really, with Nikko towering well above her head and his sister barely shoulder height. "Can I ask," she says, "what exactly you're betting on?"

Vesja sighs. "Hey, 'ravi. My charmer of a baby brother doesn't think you'd care to join me for a drink."

"Hi, Vesja. No offense, but your brother's kind of a cunt."

The other woman grins. "Ain't he, though?"

"And I'll take that drink on one condition." She turns her back on him completely, his stammering disbelief delightful in its incoherence. "Tell me how you got those scars."

"I think I can manage that. C'mon, then," Ves says, an arm around her waist, and-

(She stops. You… probably don't need to hear the rest of that story.

A happy new year, indeed?

She winks drolly at Lana, who definitely doesn't need to hear the rest of that particular story- after a handful of drinks they'd gone upstairs, and she'd spent midnight, and most of the rest of the night, with her skirt pushed up above her hipbones and her thighs clamped tight around Ves' ears. Say what one likes about Mandalorians, but to a one they fight like demons and they fuck just as hard as they fight; it was a damn good thing that bar was loud.

Lana shakes her head. Honestly, I have no idea how you ever get any work done.

I'm very good at multitasking. Ask Theron.

All things considered, Lana says, I think I shouldn't.)

The next morning, Vector's report's still running when she makes it back to the safehouse, and they all agree it's time to move. Back on the ship, she's changing back into her armor when Kaliyo knocks on her cabin door.

"Hey. There's something wrong with the navicomputer."

"Wrong how?" Hair unplaited, it stands around her face in tight waves until she shakes her head.

"It's locked on one destination- some planet I've never heard of. Come see."

Kaliyo's right, when she looks; no matter how many times she resets it or how hard she smacks it with the flat of her hand, it's stubbornly locked on-

"Oh." Vector, head tilted, peers over her shoulder as he steps onto the bridge. "We didn't realize you had already seen the results of our report."

"What are you talking about? I can't get this bloody thing to work properly." She kicks it again. "SCORPIO? Get in here and fix this."

"Rishi." He points at the screen, at the planet they're apparently heading to whether they like it or not. "You asked us to locate Clan Beroya. The most recent intelligence available suggests that they have settled, along with several other allied clans, on Rishi."

That's a hell of a coincidence.

"Well, then. I suppose we're headed to Rishi."

(You'd had better luck tracking the Revanites than I did, clearly, she says with a shrug. You'd been on Rishi for a while before I got there, hadn't you?

Lana nods, then shakes her head- Yes, and no. We'd been there perhaps a month, but finding them at all was half luck and half recklessness- I almost got caught on Tatooine twice. That Theron noticed your ship on Port Nowhere was a complete coincidence. We'd lost track of you, too, by then.

That hangar was locked up tight. He didn't stumble on it by accident.

No. In his words, you poached it out from under him. He had to scramble for a new landing platform, and when he went to find out who'd stolen his secure dock he realized it was you.

That answers that question- she's never been sure how he'd managed to slice her ship. Not remotely- no one was that good, not even Theron, with SCORPIO embedded in Nightshrike's system- so it must have been the old-fashioned way, when she'd hooked into Port Nowhere's database to update the astrogation charts. I did wonder how he'd pulled that off.

We weren't ready yet, not really. Hence the whole pirate nonsense. Rolling her eyes at the memory, Lana sneaks the bottle out of her hand again. She at least has the decency to look mostly sorry- though only mostly, the effect rather spoiled by the whiskey bottle at her lips. But it was either that or risk not being able to find you again. And it could have been worse.

I fail to see how.

We settled on the Howling Tempest eventually, but Theron suggested the Red Hulls. Lana grins. Who, apparently, were cannibal pirates.)