Beril turned around just in time to see the Gamorrean charging straight at her. She started to run behind the building, despite thinking she couldn't get out of his reach; but he simply shoved her into the alleyway as he went by. Struggling to stay on her feet, she wasn't able to react when he plowed into Laani, who she had to guess was his intended target all along, nor when the three Rodians behind him brandished their blasters in her direction.
Their attention, as well as hers, was quickly drawn back to their boss. She wasn't sure how, but Laani had turned him around and he crashed into two of the Rodians he'd come with, knocking them to the ground before tripping himself. The last man standing barely dodged the blue stun bolt from Sareena's blaster, but he couldn't respond in kind before Laani caught up with him, pulling the pistol out of his grasp and tossing it aside with a single swift motion of her hand.
He brought his fist back for a punch, but she couldn't see what happened next; she felt a hand plant itself between her shoulders and shove her towards the opposite side of the alley. She stayed on her feet and managed to stop just before she hit the wall of the building, behind a set of sealed crates.
"Down," Rian commanded as he strode forward from where she had just been.
Snarling, she defiantly remained standing as she drew a blaster of her own. She found no good target, however: the Gamorrean was presumably outside her field of vision, the two Rodians hadn't picked themselves off the ground yet, and the third was exchanging blows with Laani...for some definition of the word "blows".
Beril was no expert on martial arts, but Laani seemed to be deflecting every swing of the man's fist with the platinum bracers on her forearms, then using the same forearm to hit him with her fist or elbow. As near as she could tell, he wasn't hurt much but he had yet to actually hit her. She seriously doubted they taught that in the Republic Navy.
Rian continued to walk out of the alleyway, while Sareena quickly moved into position behind the corner. They seemed to have the same idea, keeping the downed opposition down, but Rian acted first: He simply walked between them as they got to their knees, then swung his elbows into their faces as he made a show of cracking his knuckles, sending them sprawling to the street once more.
Laani's assailant, tired of getting beat on with nothing to show for it, abandoned restraint and lunged towards her. But even with as little distance as there was between them, she sidestepped out of his path and behind him. His anger was palpable, but it didn't matter; she was far enough away that friendly fire wasn't a consideration.
Beril fired her blaster at him; but without having time to aim, her quick shot went wide. He wasn't so lucky with Sareena's second attempt, and he fell to ground shortly after the blue bolt hit him directly in the chest.
The sound of bodies colliding drew everyone's attention, as Rian stumbled backwards into view with one hand over his face. He was still moving backwards when the Gamorrean appeared, squealing angrily as he charged with his head forward.
With an abrupt shift in posture, Rian's erratic footwork became resolute footing and he swung an uppercut, hitting his opponent square in the snout. The force of the impact was enough to halt his charge, but he had enough weight to remain standing. Beril'd seen Rian do this not-really-dizzy routine several times, however, so she wasn't surprised when he followed with a haymaker to correct the situation.
He grinned as he looked at the four unconscious bodies. Then he snapped his head towards Beril, and his face instantly took on an irritated expression.
"Nice shot," he said sarcastically. "I told you to stay down!"
"Yeah," she spat back, "and I didn't listen!"
"Guys," Sareena cut in, "if I could have a moment of your time, please?"
Rian wordlessly turned away and walked to where Sareena and Laani were trying to figure out what provoked the unprovoked attack. Beril sighed in annoyance and rolled her eyes before joining them.
Laani snarled in disgust, as she looked at the datapad one of the Rodians had dropped. "Damn it," she said, "I'm going to be harassed by every bounty hunter who can't tell Togruta apart, aren't I?"
Beril absentmindedly reached for the datapad before stopping herself. Laani didn't look in her direction, but she did hand the datapad over.
The absurdly large number on the bounty posting practically spoke for itself. "'Two million credits alive'? Yes, we are going to be harassed repeatedly."
"At least we know why we were attacked," Sareena said weakly.
Beril, meanwhile, was darting her eyes back and forth between the image on the bounty and Laani. The sienna jumpsuit looked the same, other than Laani's bracers...same orange skin tone...the pattern of the facial markings looked dissimilar, although the bounty picture looked slightly out of focus for some—
She shifted her head to look askance at the image. She'd almost missed it, but there were telltale signs of pixelation...and the artifacts weren't in line with the image itself. "Geez," she said, "They couldn't find a quality image anywhere?"
"It's a fake?" Sareena asked. Laani exhaled slowly.
Beril shot a curious look at Laani before answering. "Don't think so; they'd have tried to mask the image artifacts if they doctored it. If I had to guess, I'd say a zoomed-and-rotated image off of out-of-range surveillance footage was the best they could do." Realizing she hadn't actually read the rest of the posting, she quickly glanced at it. "Only fifty thousand dead? Yeah, this is no Hutt after..." She looked at it again, but the name appeared too unusual for her to parse correctly. "How do you pronounce that?"
"Ahsoka Tano," Laani answered fluently.
"Thanks." Her guess on the surname was wrong. "Someone in the Empire is after this Ahsoka, whoever she is. Moff with a severe grudge, I'd guess."
"Why do you say that?" Sareena asked.
"Which? The Empire, because no crime lord is so secure that they bet 1,950,000 credits on keeping a target alive. A Moff, because no one lower has that kind of monetary clout. A grudge, because the Empire normally frowns on bounty hunters; the only reason an Imperial would post a bounty is to get it done outside the Imperial system, away from Imperial eyes."
"You seem to know a lot about bounties," Laani commented.
"I guess," she answered dismissively, "like I imagine you know a lot about Jedi from your time in the Republic Navy." She didn't feel like getting into the story of finding herself the target of a bounty several years back.
Laani paused briefly. "I wouldn't say a lot, but your point is taken."
Some swift motion registered out of the corner of each of Beril's eyes. Her peripheral vision was good enough that she recognized the beige uniforms of local security—which, this being a shadowport instead of a legal spaceport, amounted to a squad of ordained thugs.
"Step back!" a helmet-filtered male voice commanded, as several blaster rifles were leveled in their direction. No one defied the order, as right now their best defense was that they hadn't actually done anything wrong.
While a few troopers checked each of the bodies on the ground for vital signs, Beril noted to herself that her implied connection to bounty hunters was taken quite calmly by Laani. In fact...other than finding herself targeted over a two million credit bounty, she hadn't even sounded stressed. She hadn't actively noticed before, but even Sareena was breathing a little more heavily, working off the adrenaline, and all she'd done was fire a couple shots from a blaster.
But somehow Laani, who'd redirected someone literally twice her weight, was taking it like a walk in a park? That was far too suspicious, no matter how she'd survived after the end of the Republic Navy...assuming she was ever there, something Beril realized she shouldn't take at face value. Certainly some 'restricted' database in the Empire had to have archive records on Laani Sy, she just had to find it. Even if that wasn't her name, it's not like there would be a ton of non-clone crew during the Clone Wars to dig through.
"Move along," the same voice ordered.
"What?" came a separate, but similar voice next to him.
"Are you questioning me?" he countered angrily, turning his head slightly to the side.
"Sorry sir, but you know Boss'll ask."
"Fine. What we have here, is local scum attacking paying visitors over an Imperial bounty. Even if she were the actual target, the Empire wanting her is reason for us to deny it. And no one died, so this is all a waste of our time. Like your questions are a waste of mine!"
"Sorry sir!"
The apparent squad leader snapped his head towards Laani. "I said, move along!"
"Alright already," Sareena answered for her as the four of them started down the street, which was slowly repopulating now that the fighting was definitively over.
"So...now what?" Beril asked.
"We get our engine and we go home," Sareena answered.
"I was thinking we could get something to eat at one of the diners," Laani said, "but now I just want to get out of here as soon as we can."
"Yeah," Rian agreed, "this place is boring."
"What?" Beril said mockingly. "You're not going to run around with your holocam, capture all the vistas?"
He scoffed. "The dull grey surface of this shallow crater, the dull grey mountains in the distance, or the dark grey street we're walking on? This port's clean for a heap, but it's still a heap."
Sareena took a deep breath before the cockpit door of the freighter opened.
The blue light of hyperspace travel bathed the various consoles, highlighting the seemingly-empty pilot chair.
Of course, she knew it wasn't actually empty. "Beril."
"Sareena," she responded, as she poked her head past the side of the chair. "Don't suppose you're here to free me from the tedium."
She sighed. "You know you're easily the best pilot here."
"Well, obviously, but that's the opposite of making it entertaining."
"Look," Sareena stated with irritation, "If I could make a tunnel of air from here all the way to Alderaan—"
"But you can't, so there isn't, so I'm bored. The autopilot can handle trivial space navigation."
"Normally, I'd agree with letting the autopilot handle it. But in case you forgot, we were seen in port where at least four people think we're carrying millions of credits worth of personnel, I don't want to give any 'surprises' a time advantage."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one stuck up here, staring at space with no one to talk to and nothing to do."
"So...you want me to stay up here."
"...Yeah, actually. And since you brought her up, let's talk about the new girl."
Ahsoka's name is Laani, Sareena mentally reminded herself as she moved to the side by Beril's seat. "She was staring out one of the windows, last I saw her."
"That's not what I mean. The way she talked past those guys, and fought past the other guys. You really think she learned that in the Navy?"
"No," she answered honestly, "but the Republic Navy as we knew it only existed for three years, it can't have been the majority of her life."
"You think she just picked that up?" Beril asked incredulously.
"Where did you pick up slicing into Imperial archives remotely?" she countered.
"Taught myself with Republic archives when I was a kid, but that's completely—"
"So why couldn't someone have taught Laani when she was a kid?"
"Who teaches a little kid stuff like that?!"
"I can't say, the Empire hasn't been kind on Shili's recordkeeping." She kind of suspected the Jedi Order taught it to Ahsoka, but she wanted a location less prone to eavesdropping before asking her directly.
Beril paused. "She's actually from the Togruta homeworld?"
Sareena took a deep breath. "Yeah, at least originally. She moved to Coruscant at some point prior to the Navy. And after the Navy...well, I think she was intentionally avoiding making it into records, a situation I know you can appreciate. Incidentally, I hear the bounty on you has stayed withdrawn these past few years."
She scoffed. "Of course it has, my ex-boss wouldn't want the other Hutts to know I was still valuable. No, when Xanna finds me it'll be through her own agents. But speaking of bounties...What do you think: Could that Ahsoka actually be Laani?"
Sareena clenched her teeth to hide her initial reaction of discovery, before realizing that Ahsoka being Laani would be the converse of the actual situation of Laani being Ahsoka; Beril wouldn't have phrased it the way she did if she'd already figured it out. "I'd like to think our people would've noticed if there was such an unusual bounty on anyone traveling with us." She intended to have a little chat with someone about that very subject when they got to Alderaan, in fact. "Are you saying she matches the image on the posting?"
"I'm not exactly an expert on Togruta physiology, but I'd say she's at least a false positive given the quality of that image. My guess, this Ahsoka had disabled all the security at whatever compound she was in, and some out-of-range accidental footage from some security camera was the only thing they could pull a picture from."
"Not too surprising," Sareena muttered.
Beril turned her head sharply towards Sareena. "Oh? You know something I don't?"
Sareena exhaled slowly and looked at the ceiling, trying to pull up memories that would make it seem like she hadn't seen Ahsoka during the past week and a half. "Possibly, though I don't remember it well. Ahsoka Tano was a Jedi, on trial for murdering a witness to the bombing of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, near the end of the Clone Wars. I was actually on Coruscant for my medical training at the time, so it was kind of a hot topic. She was acquitted after another Jedi came forward and confessed to framing her."
"A Jedi? Wow...Well that would explain two million credits at least. But doesn't the Empire have its own agents specially trained to track down Jedi? Why would there be a bounty? Especially one with one-fortieth the sum dead and without even hinting that she's a Jedi; everyone's going to find out the hard way."
Sareena shook her head. "That's what worries me. Someone's invested two million credits to get bounty hunters in over their heads, and Laani's gotten mixed up in it all." Another thing she intended to go over when they got to Alderaan. Ahsoka'd gone saber-to-saber with the strongest arm in the Empire and survived, what chance did unprepared bounty hunters have? There had to be some ulterior motive to the bounty, because it made no damn sense otherwise.
"So what does she have to say about the whole thing?"
"She told me, 'We got what we came for, and no one died. I'd call that a victory.' Sounds reasonable to me, too."
"That's fair, yeah. So we're going to drop the engine off on Alderaan?"
"With the assignment we're on, I imagine we'll be contacted once we enter the system, and get directions to dock with whatever station or ship is available to analyze our cargo. Then we'll land on Alderaan itself."
"Need to report to the Senator in person, Miss Organa?"
Sareena rolled her eyes. Yes, she was a blood relative of Senator Bail Organa, which technically made her a member of the Royal Family of Alderaan. But even if she were inclined to care, he was her third uncle; her own father just shared a great-grandparent with Bail. The connection was too distant in her eyes for nepotism to even be a possibility; little Leia was going to be the next Queen of Alderaan, no one was going to look at her third cousin for anything.
Beril enjoyed bringing it up though, like there should be something magical in the name itself. Which hadn't ceased to feel like an affront to her as a person over the last couple years. "No, Miss Iset, but I expect he'll want us to handle whatever the next step ends up being, so we may as well land somewhere in the meantime. It'll be nice to look at something besides ramshackle buildings and spaceship interiors."
"If you say so, leader ma'am," Beril responded playfully.
Sareena exhaled slowly. Was she trying to be accommodating or infuriating? Either way, pressing the subject felt unwise.
Beril seemed to agree. "So what 'next step' are you expecting, anyway?"
Sareena looked up at the ceiling as she quickly evaluated the scenario. They had transponder signatures the Pantorans wanted, which they wouldn't want broadcast, in something they could acquire physically..."They'll want to get the engine for themselves, and I doubt they'll risk drawing attention by sending a ship to Alderaan. Probably plan on making a dead drop to transfer the engine without either of us seeing each other."
"At a location of their choosing, closer to Pantoran space than ours, I'm sure. Could easily be a trap."
"Could, assuming my guess is right, but it seems unlikely. We'd just be making a drop off, the only thing they'd want from us is what we'd be giving them anyway."
Beril paused. "Again, you know something I don't?"
Apparently, Beril hadn't been given details of where this operation fit into Bail's strategy...which meant Rian hadn't either, or she'd have gotten them from him. Since she wasn't at liberty to fully disclose those details..."As I understand it, this is basically a favor trade. The Pantoran Assembly will do something for Senator Organa once they've recovered, or at least located, their missing man. That will be our 'payment', not a transfer of assets."
"Huh. I thought Pantora and Alderaan were, like, Senate buddies."
"Wasn't enough, I guess. Hmm." Some thoughts had started ironing themselves out in her head. "Hey, tell you what: You go get some rest or take a break or something, I'll handle the pilot seat from here."
"Really? I'm still the better pilot, you know," Beril commented in jest.
"Not when you're bored out of your mind, you're not."
"Eh. You've got a point. It's all yours," she said as she quickly got out of the seat and jogged towards the cockpit door.
"Hey," Sareena called out before she left, "Don't go rewriting the autopilot again."
"You just said I shouldn't be bored!"
"Remember how far off course we ended up last time?"
"It was only a couple hours, and only because the navicomputer rebooted before I could debug the software! Laani can keep it—"
"Beril," Sareena said sternly.
"Fine! Spoilsport," she muttered as she walked out.
Sareena rolled her eyes, again, as she settled into the seat. Beril was talented, no doubt about it, but she let her judgement lapse in the face of her own entertainment. If she didn't let herself be talked out of her ill-advised boredom breakers, she'd be impossible to work with. In fact, Sareena guessed that was why Beril didn't just bury herself in a more secure, and more tedious, working arrangement.
She couldn't be talked out of her curiosity, though, which is why Sareena hadn't directly tried. All that'd have accomplished was make Beril even more curious about "Laani" and what someone was trying to hide. If she still intended to go poking around wherever she did her poking and research the name "Laani Sy", well...Ahsoka wasn't the first Jedi who benefited from a false identity and all the documentation that entailed, and the people responsible for setting that up were not the same as those responsible for keeping her informed of developments like multi-million credit bounties. With any luck, Beril would get bored before she found anything out of order.
What she said about "Senate buddies" concerned her, though. Sareena was there for that meeting, and Senator Chuchi was certainly enthusiastic that Bail had brought Ahsoka along. Sareena didn't really understand how a Senator and a Jedi found time during the Clone Wars to form a friendship in the first place, but it was obvious that the Imperial era was not a time for taking such things for granted; and she felt that the Senator and Ahsoka were more pleased just to see each other in good health, than that Bail had brought them together to further their goals. Nevertheless, the gesture moved Senator Chuchi to intercede with Pantora's planetary government, and they responded almost immediately, leading to the search-and-investigate mission of the past several days.
But the immediacy of the response seemed odd. Especially since during the course of their investigation, it turned up that the ship carrying their quarry had left Pantora a week prior. It was urgent enough that he was foremost on their minds, but yet not urgent enough to send investigators of their own after him. At the time she'd assumed they didn't want anyone on Pantora to know he'd gone missing, but it was looking more and more like they didn't want anyone to know what he was actually doing.
Which would put the four of them in a rather precarious position, depending on how things concluded.
Or more accurately, put Beril, Rian and herself in a precarious position. She didn't want to believe Senator Chuchi would put Ahsoka in harm's way, but she quickly realized that putting Ahsoka at risk would be quite a feat; she'd witnessed first-hand how severely Ahsoka outclassed the Empire's Jedi-hunting "experts". And Ahsoka certainly wasn't worried either; she said she accepted "Laani" not for her protection, but for their protection, because the Empire wouldn't think twice about obliterating them if they saw the slightest chance of catching her in the carnage.
So was the Senator from Pantora naive enough not to know the risks they were walking into? Was she connected enough to know for certain there was no actual risk? Or was she shrewd enough not to let them take that risk until someone who could trivially negate it was available? Sareena had no way of knowing.
She supposed her only option was to raise her concerns when they got to Alderaan; someone there could figure it out, assuming the answers weren't already waiting for their arrival. All that was left was to get there.
Looking at the blue tunnel of hyperspace travel outside the cockpit, she accepted Beril's assessment of the monotony. But boredom was safe. She could handle safety in extended doses. Because until the Empire fell, she could never rely on it being there when she needed it.