MOS ESPA, TATOOINE
Anakin and Kitster were heading down Krayt Street, the only part of Mos Espa that was in any way a decent place to live. That said, it was also where all fancy brothels and taverns were located and as such attracted the rich, the greedy and anyone prepared to swindle their way to power.
Gundarks Den was one such loathsome establishment, making its earnings from selling alcohol, drugs and sex. Female dancers were halfnaked and writhing their bodies on multiple stages all across the large room. Music was provided by a live-band and all sixteen booths and thirty-six tables were overcrowded with patrons from over two dozen worlds, a prostitute sitting in the laps of pirates, smugglers, freighter-captains and merchants alike.
The two young boys, one sixteen and the other eighteen, walked over to a male rodian enjoying a good time with a couple of unsavory-looking nikto and weequay, with twi'lek and rodian pleasure-girls in their laps. As the boys came up to the booth, the male rodian chuckled and adressed them in Huttese.
"Anakin! Kitster! Watto's little slave dowgas. What can I help you with? Drinks, spice, women?"
"Watto sent us to tell you that the crates were delivered" Anakin said, speaking fluent Huttese himself.
"As was Gardullas special cargo" Kitster filled in, him too in fluent Huttese.
The rodian was pleased and had he been able to smile, he would have. "Good work, boys. Tell Watto to swing by my shop later tonight and we will talk some more. Now get out of here."
The two youngsters headed for the exit, taking care to avoid bumping into all the drunk and intoxicated thieves, smugglers, murderers and marauders that visited the tavern. Halfway to the exit, their path was suddenly blocked by a woman dressed in a garb that only covered the essentials.
"Anakin! What are you doing here?!"
"We were just leaving, mom."
Shmi grabbed her son by the arm. "What have I told you about coming here? What was it this time? Selling slick for Heegra in the slave-quadrant? Or have you stolen from Watto again and sold it to BaronnGa?"
Kitster tried to save the situation. "We only ran an errand for Watto. That was all."
"Shut up, Kitster!" Shmi growled like the feroscious mother she was.
"Mom, what's going on?" another of the dancers asked. "Cholgra is looking." As she came up to Shmi and the boys, she too recognized the youngsters. "Anakin? What have you done this time?"
"Nothing, Beru. We were just leaving" Anakin said to his older sister and grabbed Kitster and dragged him with him towards the exit.
"We will finish this conversation tonight, young man" Shmi snapped at her son.
Anakin stopped and turned with anger radiating from his eyes. "No, we wont" he said with a low angry voice and then pushed Kitster infront of him as they went on.
Shmi suddenly calmed down and spoke softly. "We will not have this conversation tonight" she said and then seemed to regain her senses, shook her head with frustration and went back to work.
Beru could not understand what just happened. "Mom?" she said but when she got no response, she went back to work aswell, before earning herself a cut in her waterrations.
XXX XXX
The twin suns of Tatooine were setting, igniting the horizon in all versions of yellow and red imaginable. Anakin sat and watched the sunset up on the rooftop, while his friends Kitster and Wald were busy installing new parts in the swoop they were building in secret; the extra time away from work was earned by helping Watto with his shady business. The kids often acted as lookouts and at times even as backup for the toydarian, and in return he would grant them an hour or two of freetime to spend at leisure in town. Building the swoop had demanded many such hours.
Wald, a young rodian, hit his head against the swoop and everyone began to laugh, except for him.
"What an idiot" Melee said, the girl being of the same age as the others. She shook her head and sat down on a toolbox, sandwich in hand. "What are you thinking, Ani?" she asked when she noticed her friend looking out across the horizon and the endless desert.
"He's dreaming again" Kitster said while tightening a nut and bolt.
"Yeah" Wald said while rubbing his sore head. "What is it this time? Flying starships? Or maybe being a general?"
Kitster chuckled. "Face it Anakin, we were born as slaves and we will die as slaves."
Melee wasn't so sure. "I think it's brave. To dream of freedom I mean. Most of us don't dare to."
Kitster simply shook his head. "That's just what freedom is. A dream, nothing more."
"Let's hope so" Anakin said and allowed a crooked grin on his lips. "For in one dream, I came back here and killed you, Kitster."
They all burst into laughter and Anakin joined his friends in tinkering with the swoop.
HEDNA, REPUBLIC PRISON-WORLD
The entire planet of Hedna served as a toxic-waste dump, with massive facilities to dispose of the unwanted biproducts of the civilized galaxy. But finding a capable workforce to ensure that the facilities would run smoothly had from the very start been difficult. No wonder that Hedna now served as one of the oldest prison-worlds in the Republic, populated by captured and sentenced criminals forced to repay their debt to society through hard labour. The atmosphere was thick with gases, fumes, poison and toxix air. Massive pools and lakes with industrial waste dotted the landscape. Enormous mounds, hills and even mountains, made from stacked debris littered the surface, dropped off by ships carrying the unwanted remains of broken or no longer needed technology from more than a hundred worlds.
Governor Wilhuff Tarkin, warden and commendant of the planet and its prisons, studied as three transports emerged through the cloudcover, preparing to dock with the facilities intended to swallow their deadly cargo of waste and wreckage. A moan distracted him and the governor of Hedna turned to inspect the broken man strapped to a chair; two torture-droids backed away and a medical-droid administered drugs, both to keep the captive awake but also alive.
"Well?" Tarkin asked. "Anything to add on the matter?"
The tortured man nodded, covered in sweat and blood. "The senator... The senator... has a deal with Pyke... with the Pyke Syndicate."
"Go on" the governor and warden of Hedna said.
"They supp... support him... with cash... to stay in office."
Tarkin walked on over to the captive and leaned in somewhat over the abused man where he was strapped to a chair. "What does he do for Pyke?"
"He... smuggles... for them... His ship... smuggles to Coruscant."
Tarkin straightened his back and glanced at the medical-droid, "Patch him up." Then he turned and headed for the far end of the room, passing a guard in the process, "Send him back to his cell."
"Yes, sir" the guard said and then waited for the droids to finish.
Tarkin stepped up to a desk and poured himself a proper drink; he had always found interrogation to be thirsty work. He turned and watched as his staff carried away the latest victim of Tarkins interrogation-techniques, casually sipping his drink.
"There we are" the warden said. "Senator Orn Free Taa of Ryloth is a smuggler."
"I must commend you... once again" the governors guest said, sitting in a comfortable chair with his own drink in hand, fiddling with the fingers of his other hand on the grip of a cane made from the most expensive minerals and types of wood. "The senator of Ryloth will be of great use to me. There is high value in this information."
Tarkin moved to find his seat behind his desk. "Information goes beyond value" he said, sipping his own drink once more. "It is power."
His guest smiled and nodded. "Indeed."
"So I take it we are ready?" Tarkin asked. "The senator of Ryloth was the last piece of the puzzle, was he not?"
"Patience, governor. All in due time."
Tarkin chuckled and studied the alcohol in his glas. "Was it patience that had you come here to kill me, senator, all those years ago?"
Tarkins guest smiled at the memory. "No, that was necessity. You had afterall managed to dig up evidence of my deals with the Hutts. That piece of information would be murder for my career."
"Little did I know back then" Tarkin added, considering what he had learned over the years, the plot he had become involved in. "Little did I know, that the good senator of Naboo, was a man of such ambition."
Baron Sheev Palpatine, senator on behalf of Naboo, smiled before sipping from his glas of alcohol. "Well" the elder of the two men said, "Now you know."
Tarkin, a greedy and vile man who took pleasure in inflicting pain and watching cruelty being commited, had early in his career figured out that many lowlife scum in the galaxy had valuable knowledge. Bits and pieces that on their own had no real value, but when put together to shape a bigger picture, often told stories of immense corruption at the highest levels of power. Now, Wilhuff Tarkin had gathered a treasure-trove of such information, forced from a thousand victims of his interrogations; information used for extortion and blackmail to fill his own pockets with duggats. It had been profitable, a very lucrative business to say the least, until the governor had found evidence that the current senator of Naboo, a man who had based his entire career on being a man of righteous virtues, had been involved with the Hutt clans and their criminal activities back on his homeworld. Tarkin had not expected what happened next.
"When I first came here" Senator Palpatine said, placing the drink to the side, "you were a simple man, governor. You tried to blackmail me, and I was going to kill you for it." He glanced briefly at Tarkin, taking joy in the governors discomfort at the mention of his early demise. "But you made a good offer. A source of information to rival that of the bothans, no less. Most impressive, governor, something I have always admitted. And I knew that your hard work, your hidden network of lies and deceit, your determination to collect the information at any cost, your ambition to stay alive no matter what... I knew that I needed you for an ally."
"As long as I can provide you with information" Tarkin added, stating cold fact.
Senator Palpatine simply smiled. "Remain loyal and your service will be rewarded."
Tarkin could not hide, however, a growing sense of hesitation. "Once we go through with this, there will be no turning back. And the jedi..."
"The jedi are of no concern!" Palpatine said, his voice turning harsh and cold as his eyes flared with hatred and contempt. "Jedi are keepers of the peace; not soldiers. The war will force the jedi to confront the Dark Side of the Force and they will all be tempted by fear, anger and hate daily. The war will keep them distracted and occupied, too busy with their own Order; fearing the Dark Side to corrupt them all as the conflict spreads. The great irony is that the so-called guardians of peace and justice will become impotent when faced with war." Senator Palpatine placed his drink to the side and then slowly leaned into the chair, each arm at ease on either armrest, turning to face the governor as he did. "The jedi will be unable to protect the Republic... I have forseen it."
GEONOSIS
Stalagmites and lonely mountains dotted the red sands of the desolate planet that was Geonosis. Duststorms swepts across the dry landscape on a daily basis and at first glance, one would not suspect that this world harboured vast riches deep beneath its surface. Riches mined by the geonosians, selling ore and minerals to factories all across the galaxy.
Outrider landed in an abandoned mining-complex, covered in dust and overrun by vermin. But they were not alone as a geonosian shuttle stood waiting for them, along with a larger vessel of an older Selkath design, a Corona-class escort-frigate, that had been heavily modified.
Dash Rendar exited his vessel while Eadan and Leebo started unloading the crates filled with the drug commonly known as Slick. Three geonosians walked over to the corellian together with a droid that dragged a sled behind it, carrying a single crate. Dash recognized the leader of the geonosians as a Forager, due to its twin set of wings and slender body. The other two were obviously Workers, big and strong and not with too much brains.
The Forager spoke, as all geonosians only able to communicate in their own language. The oversized grasshopper opened one of the crates brought to her by the Outrider and picked up a small package containing Slick. She turned and informed Dash how pleased she was, her double set of compound-eyes reflecting the Geonosian sun.
Dash turned to his nautilan co-pilot. "Eadan, check the baradium."
Eadan walked over to the crate intended for them to transport to Naboo and opened it. Carefully, he retrieved a large cylinder and studied it. "Tremor-protected surface" he then said. "Shock-absorbing layer, dual stabilizer cores." The nautilan nodded and returned the cylinder to its secure position in the crate. "We're good."
Dash smiled at the geonosian Forager. "A pleasure doing business, mam."
The Workers stacked the crates with Slick on the sled and then helped the droid drag the cargo to their own shuttle. The Forager did not lift a finger to help, but rather flew on ahead and boarded the shuttle.
"Filthy swine."
Dash, Eadan and Leebo turned on their feet and spotted the man who had unnoticed made his way to their ship and now stood and rested his shoulder against its landing-grear.
"Hondo" Dash said as he recognized the weequay captain. "I thought I recognized that selkath frigate."
The weequay glanced at the large saucer-shaped ship with all its extra armor, antennas and scanners, not to mention added armament. "Yes, she is a thing of beauty, isn't she."
"Why are you here?" Dash asked, his hand slowly moving to his blaster by his thigh.
"I am here" Hondo said and left the landing-grear and walked closer to the crew of the Outrider, "to pick up a little something from Gardulla of clan Desilijic. I was told you would bring it to me."
"Alright, Hondo" Dash said, his hand now holding his blaster, ready to free it from the holster. "What is the codeword?"
"Corellian nerf-herder" Hondo said with a confident smile.
Dash relaxed and let go of his weapon. Instead, he retrieved the data-tape from his innerpocket and handed it over to the weequay captain.
"My thanks, captain" Hondo said with a grin and then moved on past the smugglers, heading for his own vessel. "As always, a pleasure leaving you on your own, Rendar."
Dash frowned. "As always, a pleasure imagining shooting you in the back."
"Now, now, captain" Hondo said over his shoulder, holding up a warning finger, "let us not ruin our long rivalry. After all, it does have its charm, doesn't it."
The weequay kept walking and Leebo made sure to secure the crate of baradium onboard. Eadan stepped up next to Dash as they both watched Hondo walking away and heading for his own vessel.
"Hondo is no ordinary courier" the nautilan said. "That data-tape has put us all in great danger."
Dash spat to clear his mouth. "Getting involved with Hutts internal politics is always dangerous. Come on, let's get to Naboo as soon as possible so we can return to Tatooine and collect our pay."
XXX XXX
As Hondo reached his own ship, behind him the corellian freighter Ourider took off and moments later so did the geonosian shuttle. Hondo Ohnaka was approached by his second in command as he walked up the boarding-ramp of their ship, The Gambit.
"Hyperdrive has been set for Coruscant, captain. We are ready to depart."
Hondo retrieved the data-tape from his pocket and studied it for a second. "No... No, Coruscant will have to wait. At least for now. Set a trajectory for Bothawui. I think I shall speak to the bothans before I deliver this to clan Durgiljiic and senator Braga."
"As you wish, captain."