A/N: Thank you to the great reviews from Pulsar and Brick88! Glad people are enjoying Tamri's story; OCs can be tricky subjects, and Tamri and Sae, as the two primary OCs of the story (and more everyman-ish characters compared to the power and influence of people like Anakin and Dooku), are characters I've tried to both give their due while balancing them against the main cast of established heroes and villains. I'm happy some of those notes are landing! In this chapter, though, let's first catch back up with Maul at a familiar setting…
"Whatever power lurks on this world, they are protective of it. A whole fleet in orbit. There will be no landing on the surface without their notice."
Maul broods in the lonely cockpit of his Sarisa-class Pyke Syndicate gunship, eyes fixed on the long-range scanners. A hundred capital ships, maybe more, comprise the Separatist defense fleet in orbit over frosty Ziost. He is safe for now here in the outer bands of the system, but there is no getting around the dauntingly obvious problem: The moment his ship approaches the ancient Dark Side world, Separatist IFF systems will flag him as an intruder and the armada will tear his quick but poorly-armored gunship to shreds. There's no going around them, and there are no inbound freighters or transports to hitch a ride on to evade detection.
He resolves to wait, but he is not so alone as it seems in this two-man cockpit. As he leans back and rests his hands behind his head, a wisp of green mist slithers from out of his chest. Maul does not even look down as it happens: He is used to this by now.
The mist coalesces into a fog, twirling into cyclonic form in the vacant copilot's seat. The air grows heavy, thick, humid; Maul feels as if his ears are stuffed with cotton. Then he glances over to the adjacent seat, where now there is not a vacancy but the green-tinged, ethereal form of Mother Talzin looking out into the starfield. "You assign your enemies too much credit," Talzin says to him as she materializes. "A fleet sees with nothing but eyes—physical eyes, electronic eyes. But few eyes can see what our magicks veil."
"Your magicks," Maul muses.
"You only do yourself a disservice when you deny your power and your birthright," Talzin chides. "You are the son of the Dathomir. From our world springs a power beyond the strength of the Sith. Far beyond anything those primitive droids above Ziost can comprehend." She points forward. "Proceed towards the planet. They will not fire. They will not even see you."
"They have a hundred ships. I do not have a cloaking device."
"They could have a thousand. It will make no difference. Proceed, my son. A Nightsister awaits on Ziost. Go to her. Be bold."
Maul pauses, watching, waiting. Then he grumbles and throws the throttle forward.
As the gunship approaches the frozen world, the power of the Separatist armada becomes clear. Dooku does not intend to lose this planet at any cost: Two dozen Lucrehulk-class battleships lurk in orbit, protecting Ziost from attack by any approach vector. Heavy cruisers litter the local space like swarming insects, sporting enough turbolasers between them to contest even the mightiest Republic war fleet. A ring of patrolling vulture droids revolves about the planet's equator. Maul could bring the entire combined force of his Shadow Collective to bear and still not survive an attack on this fortress planet.
Talzin is not concerned. "You seek power beyond your own," she says as the ship nears the Separatist fleet's active sensor range, "but you already have it in you. That is the legacy of Dathomir, my son. Now: Witness power."
She spreads her hands wide, closes her eyes, and the mist washes about her arms. As Maul glances between his sensors and her, she begins to chant in the old tongue. Dathomirian of yore, a blasphemous language too ancient and profane for the galaxy. Maul knows not a word. He continues on his course, eyes narrow, watching for the first flash of turbolaser fire from the assembled Separatist fleet as Ziost draws nearer, nearer.
The fire never comes. The gunship slips past the lurking cruisers and battleships, all their batteries and turrets cold and quiet, a thousand guns worthless against the old magicks, Talzin's chanting the only noise amid the black-silent space. Maul passes right past the bridge of a Munificent-class frigate, close enough that through his long-range spectrometers he can see the piloting droids at their computer stations. But they do not see him. For them there is nothing out of the ordinary: No ship, no magicks, nothing but the darkness.
Talzin's Nightsister camouflage sees the ship through the fleet line and into the planet's upper atmospheew. She lowers her arms and smiles. Tendrils of green fog lap at the cockpit. "They are nothing before you," she says. "Now reach out and find our lost sister. Find Asajj Ventress. Bring her back from Dooku's clutches and give her purpose once more."
But a new sight distracts Maul from Talzin's words as he descends. Below clouds swirl and rage: A massive storm twists in a great cyclone over Ziost's icy surface, churning and turning in the sky and lit by flashes of electricity. Maul does reach out, but not for Ventress. He feels something more. Down there is real power, not of Talzin and Dathomir but of the Dark Side, the Force raw and unbridled and angry. This. This is where Dooku found his strength. This is where he learned how to destroy Sidious.
Maul will have that power, too.
"No," Talzin says quickly, sensing Maul's focus. "That is poison. The Celestial is deceit and betrayal. It has corrupted Dooku and it will destroy you too if you seek it out. You are here for a reason, my son. Not for that. That is not yours."
"No," Maul murmurs, a smile playing across his lips, "but it will be."
Anakin takes a decidedly less comfortable ride to Ziost than does Maul.
His meteor-turned-Bothan stealth ship bucks as it bursts from hyperspace into the Ziost system, and only the shoulder straps on the piloting seat keep Anakin from bouncing around the cramped cockpit. "'Gah," he groans as he straightens up, rubbing his neck as the computer monitors before him flash with warning lights. "Blasted Bothans."
He didn't expect a luxury yacht when Fey'lya had offered him this ship back on Kothlis, but the ride to Ziost has been anything but fun. More than a dozen times Anakin has thought his meteor ship would've broken apart in hyperspace, between the internal systems shrieking and whining at complete non-issues to the vessel's cobbled-together rock-and-iron hull rattling as if ready to explode. If this is what the Bothan Spynet considers fit for their intelligence agents, then Anakin is happy Fey'lya didn't give him something even worse.
Now it's time to see if the bumpy ride was worth it. He leans forward—not an easy feat in a cockpit so cramped it feels as if the walls are caving in (not even a window. How did none of the design engineers ever complain when making this?). A digital layout of the Ziost system unfolds on the eye-level computer monitor. Star and planets and enough asteroids in the system's belt that Anakin's ship will have no trouble fitting in. And there, above the frigid fourth planet in orbit where Kit FIsto, Admiral Yularen, and the bulk of the Open Circle Fleet met its end in orbit—
"That is a lot of ships," Anakin murmurs when he sees it. A hundred or more capital-grade warships hanging above Ziost, the Separatist flotilla out in force to defend Dooku's Dark Side stronghold. Forget trying to take it when they'd first attacked; his fleet would barely even scratch the assembled firepower over the planet now. The defenses make Sullust look like a playground.
Beginning approach, the computer reads as the meteor-ship nears Ziost and the Separatist fleet. Initiating deceleration sequence. Firing retrorockets.
The reverse thrusters light up a breaking burn and the ship decelerates little by little, velocity falling as it nears the planet. Once it draws near enough to almost enter Separatist sensor range, the retrorockets fire their last burst, decouple from the ship, and fall away. It's all physics from here on out, inertia carrying Anakin and the meteor-ship the rest of the way to Ziost. He's in the universe's hands until then.
While he waits, Anakin sizes up the Separatist fleet. Strong enough that it'd take at least two campaign-grade Republic armadas to contest the flotilla in orbit, a daunting thought given that half the navy ran away with Tarkin to the Outer Rim. And this is only one planet. Whatever Dark Side power is here, Anakin has to find it now. There will be no coming back here as long as these defenses are in place—unless the Bothans have a whole stack of these ships lying around. And even then, Anakin has no wish to ride this hunk of rock and junk again.
As if reading his thoughts and disapproving, the computer flashes another message: Retracting thermal and electrostatic radiators. Heat advisory for all onboard personnel.
Great. He'll be sure to let everyone else in this one-man vessel know.
The Bothans take their stealth seriously, at least—that Anakin cannot deny. As the ship nears Ziost, it withdraws every emission-producing system possible into the rock-covered hull, venting heat and energy into a series of internal sinks arranged in a sphere around the cockpit to avoid giving off any more signals than absolutely necessary to anyone watching. It's supposed to be a meteor, after all. Still, as Anakin wipes a bead of sweat off of his arm, he wishes the Bothans would've given at least a little thought to creature comforts. Star destroyers seem like pleasure cruises in comparison.
A screen to Anakin's left flashes. Sensor sweep by an outriding Separatist corvette. He holds his breath, hoping the ruse works. There's nothing he can do now. The Force can do many things, but defy the cold vacuum of space he'll face if the corvette opens fire…that it cannot fight.
Seconds tick by. Moments like minutes. Breaths spanning hours in Anakin's head as he watches the screen. Closer. Closer.
The corvette banks off and Anakin exhales. First test passed.
Ziost grows huge on his scanner. In space Anakin can't feel the Dark Side he knows billows on this planet, yet his memories of the last time he was here bubble and spit in the back of his mind. Ships falling to pieces under enemy fire. Ahsoka in his arms, half-dead from Grievous's lightsaber. That mad rush to the escape pod, with only Dodonna and Pellaeon's timely action the difference between survival and joining Kit Fisto and Yularen among the dead. Too close. Never again, that. Not for his sake: He can handle the risks. But seeing Ahsoka nearly torn in two, seeing Rex beside himself, all the mechanical stoicism and duty of the soldier falling away in the moment…it's all Anakin can do to push the scene out of his mind. Focus. You have a job to do here, and there's no one here to lose but you.
And you won't lose.
Ten seconds to ejection pod release, the computer console reads out.
"Ten seconds? That's it?" Anakin blurts. "That's all the warning you're giving me?"
Three. Two. One.
"Blazes, damn it!"
Mind the bump.
Anakin tilts his head and scowls. It's all he has time to do before atmospheric seals hiss around the cockpit and an ejection launch chute opens above. Then the cockpit—that's all the ejection pod is—is shot from the meteor-ship into space right at Ziost, taking Anakin along with it.
It's the equivalent to a battlefield drop from orbit, only without the usual comfort of an accompanying friendly fleet. Hostile territory and Anakin has only a few centimeters of durasteel cowling keeping him safe from the great beyond as he hurtles towards Ziost at a thousand kilometers per hour. He grits his teeth as the pod plunges through the planet's mesosphere, fire bursting all around as the turbulence rattles the hull. As the pod descends lower, it fires a blast from its rear and deploys a deceleration parachute—not enough to bring Anakin in to any soft landing, but enough drag to keep him from splattering on impact.
The pod drops lower, and as it slices into the troposphere, warning lights flash on the console. Unexpected disturbance.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Anakin mutters, tapping on the console. When nothing happens, he slams his fist against the computer. "Come on!"
The screen flashes again. Unexpected weather pattern. Hazardous conditions detected.
The screen shits and displays an enormous cyclone fixed in one spot and savaging the ground with lightning, winds coursing at hurricane speeds. As if to reinforce the danger, when the pod enters one of the outer cloud arms of the storm, the winds hammer the tiny vessel and a great shearing noise screams from over Anakin's head. The pod bucks and spins, slamming Anakin against his seat's restraints as a weight is torn free from the top of the pod. Anakin looks up, then back to the console. The parachute. "We lost something," he mutters to the computer.
The wind hurls the pod like a toy. Thrown far off-course, the pod rolls and dives, its minute stabilizer thrusters impotent against the raging weather. Anakin hangs on to his straps for dear life as the computer console flashes, Brace for impact.
"Coulda fooled me," Anakin mutters as the ground races up.
A kilometer becomes a hundred meters becomes ten. Then the pod slams down into the rocky earth and Anakin pitches forward, his restraints somehow holding together even though he feels as if the whole world is exploding all around him.
Then it is over. Alien silence save for the hissing of leaking fluids and the smell of smoke from a busted thruster nozzle. Anakin works his jaw, checking to make sure all his teeth are in the right place—hopefully the bloody Bothans didn't give a concussion—before yanking open the exit hatch's lever and kicking the door free.
He topples out of the broken pod and falls face-first into a pile of snow. The wind whips around him, the outermost black band of the cyclone waving overhead, snow falling nearly horizontal. Everything hurts. His head. His shoulders. His tailbone is probably a whole foot into his stomach after that landing. Anakin rolls over, balls a fistful of snow into his hand, and plants it on his aching face.
"I hate this place already," he mutters.
Coruscant feels different now. Maybe it's the sight of the Senate, intact but vacant, the mushrooming clamshell of a monument still there dominating the city skyline but no meetings taking place within its burnt-out innards. Maybe it's all the vacant offices here in the Executive Building. More than half of the offices have no one to call them their own, whether their former inhabitants fled with Tarkin or died in the bombing. Maybe it's the media on the Holonet news outlets shrieking about every battle and every ship movement as if the Republic is on the very verge of destruction, as if the fall of Corsin to the Separatists means there's naught to do but capitulate before Coruscant itself burns. As if the war is already over, and the capital of the Republic is simply waiting for the verdict to be read aloud.
From the former office of Chancellor Palpatine, Bail Organa rests his chin on his palm and gazes out at the world-city. "Like some revelation is at hand," he mutters.
"Beg your pardon?" Padme says, looking up from a datapad.
"It feels as if we're all waiting for a drop," Bail says. "Tarkin's betrayal and the loss of so many systems and good people to his cause was one drop. You'd think our luck can't get worse. Yet the mood around here is that we're simply waiting for worse to come. Like Tarkin's break was an appetizer."
Padme sets her datapad down and leans forward in her chair. She does not envy Bail; if anything, she is glad no one considered her for the role of Supreme Chancellor. Holding together this great colossus that so desperately wants to break apart—first the Separatists, now the Tarkinists; who next?—is a feat beyond any worldly ability. But Bail tries. He tries with every last waking minute he has since Padme and Riyo Chuchi maneuvered him into this office. And Padme knows he won't stop trying until they win this war or the battle droids are right here in the office with them. "Let the talking heads talk. That's all they do. Same with the crowds," she says. "And let our fighters fight. They won on Kamino. Master Kenobi's group is coming back tomorrow, and we can regroup to make some serious headway in this war. Maybe even try and find another avenue for a diplomatic solution."
"Among Tarkin's loyalists, those avenues have all closed up," says Bail, turning to her. His office is cheerier than Palpatine decorated it: Gone is the blood-crimson ambiance and the sharp-fanged angular décor, replaced by soft curves and white-and-violet plasteel walls and statuary of dignitaries and diplomats from the Republic's earliest years. In stone and gleaming metal carved are galactic heroes from twenty-five millennia ago to as recent as the High Republic period. There's even the statue of a Jedi, as if to cement the bond between the government and the Order: A marble bust of the famed Jedi Grand Master Nomi Sunrider, four thousand years gone since her time, watches over the office, exuding an air of control and calm. Think of peace. Remember patience. But at the former Jedi Master's hip, so close to her hand, is her lightsaber hilt—the reminder that for those who would call themselves an enemy there is only justice waiting. "Malastare, Eriadu, Thyferra—their people won't even so much as listen to our diplomatic hails."
"There's always the Separatists. There's no obstructionists keeping us from diplomacy now, if you want to look on the bright side."
He nods. "That's true, and I won't discount that possibility. But they have the upper hand, Padme, and they know it. The war was already a back-and-forth affair before Tarkin's betrayal, and now the Separatists are holding the right hand in a sabacc game that's nearing the end. They have no reason to deal when they can win outright. They know what we're facing. And they know morale around here is low."
Padme takes a breath and steadies herself. Patience. That word again. Words so easy. This is the sort of thing she wants to leave to Anakin: Let him rush in with his lightsaber raised high, warding back all the enemies at the gates. But he is off with the Kamino battlegroup, still a day away from returning. She wishes she could turn the clock forward, hurry this day up, watch the fleet's arrival and rush back into his arms. Lay down the sun and lay down with him in the privacy of their apartment, where their whole world sets into the evening of their love.
But the Republic does not flit from happy moment to moment, and she needs every minute she can get now with the war growing bleaker by the day. She is not some love-struck girl with time on her side. She is a senator, a leader, and a confidante of Chancellor Organa. She cannot twirl about in fantasy when reality calls. "We need to switch tactics, then," she says as Bail broods. "If there's no negotiating with Tarkin's people, then that's that. Can we say the same about the Separatists?"
"Not until we try," Bail muses.
"Well…"
"What we need is to find a division in our foes. The Separatists appear united under Dooku. But what if that's not the case?"
Padme hesitates. That's not exactly where she was going with her thinking. "I don't know. What if?"
"We've focused so much on Tarkin since he fled Coruscant and declared himself the rightful chancellor of the rightful Republic. But the victory on Kamino means we can hold him at bay for now. We can't let the Separatists take advantage in the meantime. We need to find a weakness, exploit it—and use that to force the diplomatic solution we both know is possible. We don't need to shoot our way out of this war. Not with all of our enemies, at least," Bail says. He presses his finger to the table. "We need to convene with the Jedi once Master Kenobi's fleet returns. We need bold action to restore confidence. Even a bold defeat is better than the slow death of being whittled away planet by planet by our foes. If it means risking it all to secure peace, then so be it. We're out of time to set aside that course of action."
Fortunately, Padme thinks, she knows just the Jedi who walks hand-in-hand with bold action. Hurry back soon, Anakin. For all of our sakes.
It takes under a minute for Tamri's worlds to change on Manaan. One moment and she is in the midst of Baron Bonamma's party, energy still coursing through her body from Korkie taking her hand and leading their dance. The movement. The emotion. The energy. Thrills and feelings. A moment made magic.
Yet the moment passes and now here she is, ten minutes later with dirt and grease speckling her formal gloves as she climbs up a wall-mounted pipe fixed to an outer wall of the baronial manor after Dominion and Kesh's call. Despite knowing that she'd come here to find the Tath base and to help Avea out, part of her had hoped that Isard's tip about Bonamma would fall flat. A naïve, airy part of her had wanted nothing more than this little slice of a life she has never known and likely never will. But business has a habit of rearing its head at the worst of times, and the Jedi life withdraws just as much as it offers.
So she sighs, reaches up on the pipe, and pulls herself a little higher up the wall. It took only a trivial effort to make her escape from the courtyard, having lost Korkie after he went to follow Bonamma. A few twists and turns through the manor's halls and Tamri made it to an outer window facing the moon-gleaming sea. A beautiful sight, she thinks, pausing her climb a moment to look over her shoulder at the slumbering world-ocean. No storm-spoiled Kamino is this. Just the lapping of endless tides, blue-black pelagic abode home to mysteries and dreams beneath cloudless midnight with only the milky moon to overlook it all.
A shame the moment ends so quickly.
Tamri climbs her way up to the tiled roof and peeks over. Sharpshooters up here all right, just as Korkie spotted from down below. The music from the party is softer here to the point she can hear the click-click of the sentries' boots on the tile. Long rifles in their hands. A strange symbol on the shoulders of their grey uniforms. Tamri ducks below the roof's lip as two sentries pass in either direction, then pokes out once they've passed. That symbol—a Republic insignia, but not quite. Discolored. An odd icon behind the Republic logo. She wracks her brain, trying to think back to the Republic's many branches. Judicial Forces? Each of the many Sector Fleets has its own iconography and standards; is it something local?
Her thoughts race back to the two system patrol craft the War Maiden destroyed on the outskirts of the system. Back to Isard's warning. Something more nefarious afoot.
She creeps past the sentries, lying flat over the tile and slipping down to a fourth-floor porch before calling Dominion and Kesh. "Hey," she whispers into the commlink, just loud enough for them to hear, "you said top floor for Bonamma's private quarters, yes?"
"Top floor, but you are slightly off. I have your position," Dominion answers her. "Circle around to your left. First patio from there is his private overlook. There is no one inside, but I would recommend being quick. Baron Bonamma and his personal guests are currently on the third floor, and I do not have confirmation as to what they are discussing. Or where that discussion might lead them."
Tamri bites her lip and looks to her left. Nothing but a freefall into the sea. Gonna have to shimmy around the rooftop. "Where's Korkie?"
"I do not have his position."
Delightful. She ends the call, chiding herself for worrying about Korkie now. He rode a blasted Basilisk War Droid against Taron Malicos's droid army. He can handle himself.
Tamri scurries up to the roof once more, checks for guards, and heads to her left. Around the bend, first patio. One more look and she drops down, hand drifting towards her lightsaber strapped to her thigh. But Dominion is right: No one comes to meet her. No one stops her. No one on sleepy Manaan is expecting Jedi at a party.
No complaints.
Even the all-glass door leading into the Baron's quarters is unlocked. Too easy. Tamri lets herself in without so much as a peep. She glances about quickly for security cameras or other devices, sees nothing, and then takes stock of her surroundings beyond the threat of immediate danger. If she hadn't already figured out the Baron's proclivity towards riches, this room would give it away. Full-size gold and ivory statues of diplomatic-looking icons. All of them human. Odd for a Twi'lek governor stationed on a non-human homeworld like Manaan, but she puts that suspicion aside for the moment. A whole wall lined with shelves bearing data disks. Light reading that the Holonet can't provide, or dirty data too vulnerable to keep on a network?
Moving through his quarters, Tamri finds what she's looking for. In the third room off from the porch is a private study including a workstation with a computer console. A half-empty bottle of brownish liquor—a big bottle, two liters—tells Tamri it's something important. After taking one last look around the lavish quarters to ensure she's alone, she plops down in the seat behind the console and looks the personal computer over. Offline, of course. Bonamma's not that poor with regards to information security. System's probably locked behind some sort of biometric reader. Standard stuff. Enough security to ward away a novice.
But Tamri is far from a novice. She handled all the computer work in her missions with Sae, and even as a youngling she had a talent for finagling software and code. Moreover, she came prepared tonight—and the datadisks on that wall make everything so much easier.
Her lightsaber isn't the only thing she has tucked away under her evening dress. Strapped to her other thigh is a pouch of useful tools—a credit chit, an identity falsifier—but most useful here is a standard slicing drive. Little more than a glossy black fingernail-like chip, inside the drive is enough garbage code to overload any civilian computer system's security, backed by a limited, miniaturized droid brain capable of keeping simple computers busy deciphering the trash code for years. And all Tamri needs is a few minutes—a few minutes to punch through the security, ensure this console's connected to the manor's security suite, and allow Dominion—wherever he and the others are right now—to connect remotely. Then it's game over for Baron Bonamma's network.
It doesn't even take that much work. Moments after Tamri loads her slicer chip into the console's datadisk slot, her commlink lights up. She glances around—always best to stay safe—then answers: "What? I'm working on it."
"I am through, Miss Dallin."
She leans back and looks at her wrist. "Uh, I've barely even started."
"I have a limited onboard cyberwarfare suite that Yurica Tath installed into my primary connective cortex," Dominion answers her. "Baron Bonamma's security is an inferior system. It took little time."
That's putting it mildly. "Uh…what sort of cyberwarfare are we talking about?" Tamri says. "Because that would've been nice to mention before, y'know, we fought a bunch of battle droids back there on Mandalore."
"Separatist battle droids only connect wirelessly to a host control system, and Separatist military-grade signals are considerably well-defended. Against an army, my capabilities are no more useful than a blaster. Against single units—and better yet, against standard civilian- or corporate-grade security drones, let alone networked systems with mediocre security such as this—my offensive capabilities are far more potent."
"Right, got it. 'Shut up, Tamri.' Just asking."
"That is not—"
"How 'bout we find something useful, hey?" Kesh interrupts over the comm.
Dominion wastes little time in that. In mere seconds the computer console before Tamri flashes to life and readouts flare over the screen. "There appears to be two main items you might find of interest," Dominion says as the computer whirs and the readouts scroll. They stop abruptly with a blueprint of what looks like a hanger bay, complete with individual ship docking ports. "This is a private submersible port, just off of the Ahto City Undersea Transport Authority's main headquarters. Three-submarine capacity, with two vessels currently docked, all personally registered to Bonamma himself. Curiously enough, the submarines have been moving in between only two different undersea locations in the past two months, one located near an undersea residential hub for the native Selkath—"
"I know that one," Kesh interjects over the comm as Tamri looks on. "It's a…gathering spot of sorts. Long story. What's this other spot?"
"Unknown. Only that it reads by a codename. There is no local data on it."
"Could be the Tath installation, if the Baron is working with them," Tamri murmurs. Her eyes flit up when she thinks she hears sound outside of the study. No—nothing. Just her imagination and her nerves. "What was the other thing you found?"
The screen flashes and swaps blueprints. The hanger is gone; replacing it on the display is a much larger blueprint of a similar boxy facility, complete with what Tamri thinks is a freight yard at first glance. "This is a private warehouse. 'Warehouse' is putting it lightly: It is capable of handling enough cargo to outfit a battlecruiser with necessities for a moderate-length campaign. It has no registration on local Ahto City transport manifests, yet the land area, which is substantial, is registered to the city itself."
"A black site?" Tamri posits.
"Possibly. Also note," Dominion says as arrows light up on the screen, identifying shafts on either side of the facility, "here and here. One is a docking port for spacecraft. A number of bulk freighters have docked here in past weeks, without registering any other stops at commercial stardocks around Ahto City. None of the freight loads are registered in the system. Moreover, the dock on the other side is not a stardock, but a submersible port—"
"Which has played host to Bonamma's subs, hm?" Tamri finishes.
"Indeed. And only his vessels. Furthermore, the vessels never arrive directly at the freight bay. Their patterns of transit from the seabed always first connect to the submarine yard."
"So he's smuggling something off of the seafloor to his private yard—and from there off into space, to who knows where—but he's paranoid about it, so he's taking another stop along the way in case anyone in the city's watching. Well, that's definitely not suspicious at all."
"On the contrary, it's highly suspicious—"
"She was being sarcastic," Kesh interrupts.
"Oh. I see."
Tamri wants to see more, but her commlink lights up with another channel. Korkie. She silences Dominion and Kesh and switches over to his call: "Are you okay?"
"Tam? Where are you?" he says quickly.
"I'm in Bonamma's quarters. We've found—"
"Get out of there."
"What? Why?"
"He's heading up with some people of his. Get out of there. Now!"
No time to argue. She pries her slicer's chip out of the datadisk slot, manually powers down the computer console, and hurries to the patio. She's only just made it outside—without time to shut the outer door—when Bonamma barges into his quarters in the middle of an argument with an aide. "—don't care what he says. Krennic can eat his own ass, for all I care," the Baron snarls.
Tamri slips over the side of the patio, clinging to the edge, hoping her pounding heartbeat doesn't give her away. Too close. Way too close. And that name…Krennic. She's heard that one before.
"—wants way too much," Bonamma continues ranting as Tamri listens in from outside. "What am I supposed to do, dredge up every last Selkath on this damnable bathtub of a planet? I don't care. I don't care what he's doing on Geonosis, I don't care what he wants, I don't care. I just don't. Krennic was some piss-level Republic officer-cum-bureaucrat not even a year ago, and now I'm supposed to lick his boots like he's the second coming of Palpatine?"
The aide coughs. Politely, Tamri notes. The kind of cough when one has something to say but doesn't want to upset anyone's feelings. Or incur their wrath. "Sir, if I may—"
"What? Do you want in on this, too? Go ahead. I'm in it already. My frustration knows no bounds and my night is ruined."
"It is that…if we tell him no, even if we only try to negotiate a lower settlement, he will send the Arkanian woman. Or at least her people."
"Oh, blast it all."
"The last time—"
A pounding. Someone punched a table. "I know. I know."
"Then…"
Listen: A heavy object slumps into a seat. A cork pops. Liquid pours into a glass. Tamri closes her eyes and hones her focus, so that she will miss no detail. "Poodoo."
"Sir?"
"He'll have it. All of it. But not tonight. Not right now. We can stall his badgering for a little while."
"Then if we—"
"Not right now. Just get out. Get out. Leave me in peace, damn it. Go enjoy this shit of a party and say I came down with Drovian pox or something, I don't care. Leave me in peace."
A door closes. A glass slams on a tabletop. More liquid is poured. Tamri opens her eyes and hesitates. The aide is gone; he is alone. She could confront Bonamma here and now, force everything out of him at lightsaber-point. Sae would certainly tell her to do it. Treat him like a crime boss, like a Hutt. They only listen to might.
Instead Tamri heeds her Jedi lessons. Patience. She doesn't need to go in with her saber swinging. Have patience, practice your due diligence, check every lead. It'll all come to you in time. You don't need to solve every mystery of Manaan in one night. Patience.
Hand by hand, noiselessly she climbs back up to the rooftop and slips away beneath the watchful eye of the moon and into the night.
