The first rule of getting free run of a place: Act like you already have free run of the place. That was Beril's approach to the mission. She had questions, the station had answers; getting the two to meet was just details. Details like pulling the wall panel off its wall, exposing the inconsistent mass of cabling.
Rian was there to help with the second rule of getting free run of a place: Convince everyone that you better have free run of the place. It didn't take him much effort either, he simply looked like cooperation was in everyone's best interests.
Setting the panel aside didn't take any mental effort, so she quickly considered the surroundings while she gently lay it aside the wall next to her. It was hardly the fanciest docking bay in existence: Metal sheeting comprised the floor, the bottom two meters of the perimeter, a small expanse around each corridor access, and a large section around the single large bulkhead door; the rest of the place was exposed rock. Which made each doorway obvious, and the density of traffic through each easy to gauge; she'd found this secluded computer terminal before she even stepped onto the dingy floor.
This wasn't the docking bay they'd been guided to during their recent visit, that one was shiny and well-lit. And quite a bit larger than this little run-down retrofit cavern thing, which was going to struggle with the next light freighter that tried to find a spot to land. Beril didn't like fancy docking bays anyway, but that wasn't the important part: This bay would be intended for maintenance personnel, not traders. If the Customs dragnet thing was severe enough for them to break out the bottom-of-the-barrel landing areas...
She'd ponder all the implications later, she didn't want to hear Sareena complain about "stalling" again. The wires were an intertwined mess, but there was an open socket in easy reach; she pulled out her custom datapad, plugged it in, and got to work. She'd taken the liberty of acquiring some access codes during the last trip, and the outpost's security procedure proved too ineffective to have invalidated them since then.
Her fingers danced over the keypad as she navigated across disparate systems. Maintenance records, environmental history, traffic logs, inspection documents, accounting...She chose general housekeeping as the first place to make some adjustments.
"Company?" Rian whispered. Knowing that was the signal for potential "interested" visitors, she quickly finished copying biometrics into the record she had just added. The transfer completed right as she heard the approaching heavy footfalls.
"What do you think you're doing?!" demanded a gruff male voice. The degree of insistence suggested he didn't want an argument, and the "halt" command not conforming to Imperial protocols meant this wasn't Imperial security. The combination was good for her, not so much for him.
Placing a stern look on her face, she quickly forced herself to a standing position, using the distracting motion to push the datapad out of sight. Glaring at the source of the noise indicated not only that the young man was lacking an Imperial uniform, unlike herself, but also that he was accompanied by some type of humanoid-shaped droid. The Empire frowned on droids in public-facing positions, as a matter of de facto policy.
"Imperial business," she answered, deliberately sounding aloof and impatient at the same time. "A better question is what do you think you're doing, hmm?"
"Officer Mar," the droid stated in a clearly synthesized voice. Almost certainly a security droid, then; she made a mental note of the conclusion. "Your arrival was not on record."
That was why she planted the falsified credentials first, after all. "Clearly organization is not the word of the day," she declared snidely. "Now if you'll excuse yourselves, I have work to do."
"But...I have procedures to follow," the security man said, clearly uncomfortable.
She rolled her eyes. "So do I. But I guess if you want to shut down landing pads so I can follow protocol properly—"
His eyes widened. "I'm not sure that's—"
"Don't worry," she cut him off nonchalantly, "it'll be fine. Protocol says my escort here is supposed to be in armor too, I bet everybody would love to see a stormtrooper behemoth firsthand. Maybe they'll tell all their fellow merchants about it."
"...maybe procedural details aren't worth causing headaches for the administrator."
"Well then," she said flatly, "Perhaps you should leave me to do my system inspection, while you prevent interference with normal operations from occurring."
"Very well, Officer Mar," he said after a short pause, clearly trying to put on a facade of decorum. "Come along, Tee-Eight," he ordered his droid companion.
Beril slowly returned to a crouching position, watching the two of them walk away from the site of her operation.
Sucker.
She turned her head to look up at Rian behind her.
He was simply standing there with his arms at his sides, staring at the wall as if he were a trooper standing at attention. His eyes did swivel to meet hers, however.
"What?" she asked softly, dropping her facial and vocal facade.
He wordlessly crossed his arms in response.
She shrugged. "Yes, I know, I got work to do."
"We do, so do it."
She ignored him, and picked her datapad back up. She enjoyed the brief periods of his silence, and they lasted longer when she didn't give him something to respond to.
She navigated to the station's security logs. Their buddy T8 clearly had a connection to pull her forgery over...
"OK," she muttered to herself, "The droid didn't log us while they were standing here, so no need to rush out."
"Didn't see droids working for the port last time," Rian commented quietly.
"Me either, or I'd have handled it in advance. Better get our stuff in case someone starts a rumor."
"Getting something extra?"
How did he keep doing that? "Maybe. You know what."
The station had an active HoloNet connection, with which she could tap into Imperial databases without anyone being able to connect it to Beril. That was why she ditched Laani, it was unlikely she'd appreciate being a subject of inquiry, and Beril didn't want to risk her finding out.
After setting her search up to bounce around the station, she turned to the trivial task of gathering the logs Sareena wanted. The frequency of customs inspection log entries for the last couple days was furious, compared to the lazy couple-a-day rate it was before. While downloading those days' entries, she checked the arrival and departure logs for every ship between when the Silver Sparrow was last spotted and when they had left this station the last time.
Interesting...she intended to go over all the data in detail back on the ship, away from so many obnoxious eyes; but from the vehicle identifiers she remembered, every ship that'd been inspected had also arrived during that time period at least once. Unlikely to be a coincidence. It could be a really lousy day for any ship with a Togruta crewmember...Which included their ship, of course. It was a good thing no one knew Laani was even there.
Speaking of Laani, a blue blinking shape in the corner of Beril's datapad screen indicated the search had concluded. Something else she'd have to examine in depth later...A quick glance didn't reveal anything that looked more unusual than a non-clone serving in a role usually reserved for clones, but the records looked sparse, like she was deployed very infrequently. Which could be true...
Beril glanced around. No undue attention...She started another search, this time for whoever that Ahsoka was. No sense being bashful about the subject of the bounty, Laani'd already been dragged into it whether she wanted it or not.
While that was running, she checked through her finally-downloaded records for the ship they'd followed from here that eventually led them to the Sparrow's engine...And found it had arrived once, and departed once, in the middle of the timespan she was checking. Highly convenient; for it to have left with the engine, one of the ships before it had to have brought it, which narrowed the range of the ship search significantly.
The datapad notified her of the search's completion again. Quite a few more records of "Commander" Tano's deployments...and to Beril's recollection, the rank would mean Ahsoka was an apprentice to another Jedi, who would have the rank of General and likely lead the battle group she was deployed to. More for her to figure out later; the next leg of their journey was likely to be a boring trip to a barely-inhabited system, she'd have time to burn anyway.
A cold shiver suddenly manifested on her shoulder. She quickly turned her head to look behind her, in her best guess of the direction the "you're being watched" sensation came from.
Her view went across the entire width of the hangar bay to end at the exposed rock on the opposite side. Rock so dimly lit, it almost didn't qualify as lit. She didn't see anyone milling around in that direction, though she couldn't be sure that meant no one was there. And she'd already checked for surveillance equipment and hidden alcoves in the rock; if anything mechanical had been deployed it had to have been done after she was already on the floor, and she'd like to think someone would've noticed.
Out of the corner of her eye, Rian's otherwise stoic form cast a look of suspicion in her direction. No sense hanging around to guarantee someone could be watching. "Thought someone was watching us," she whispered as she began disconnecting her datapad from the socket.
"I thought so when the 'captain' and I came out, too," he commented in the same hushed tone.
Not mentioning Sareena by name would mean he wouldn't need to check for eavesdroppers, she supposed. "Well, no sense wasting more time here," she said as she put the panel back where she found it.
She got on her feet and, after putting her datapad away, deliberately walked towards the nearby corridor entry, with Rian following behind her. As the door slid open, she noticed the corridor was much better lit than the expanse of the docking bay. A matter of width, she knew; providing adequate light across a few meters was a heck of a lot easier than doing so across a few hundred meters.
As soon as she determined there was no one ahead of or behind them, she quickly removed the Imperial insignia she was wearing, relaxed her posture, and shifted her pace to a casual speed to end up walking besides Rian rather than in front of him. Without the Imperial markings or bearing, she just appeared to enjoy wearing black...which was true, after all.
"Well that was fun," she commented playfully. No one who hadn't seen her in character would recognize her as the same person, and taking the long way around to the ship should keep anyone who had seen her in character from noticing her now.
"Anything genuinely helpful?"
"Of course."
"About our job or your curiosity?"
"...Yes."
Back in the ship's cargo bay, Rian stood in the corner, watching and listening while the other three were holding a discussion a few meters away.
"Obviously," Beril was telling Sareena, "the ship that brought the Sparrow's engine here had to have arrived before the ship that took it away actually took it, and after the Sparrow went missing."
"So if we have a list of every ship that arrived between those two times," Sareena said while she thought through the statement, "one of them has to be the one we're looking for."
"There aren't many that could actually hold the engine," Laani added, "so we go through the list."
"Starting with the one that's docked here now," Beril suggested.
Rian remembered way back, when he was first starting out at the Corellian Security Force, that a few of the lieutenants were particularly dismissive towards women officers. It always seemed like willful short-sightedness to him, like it was simply convenient to have a low opinion without finding a reason to have a low opinion first. He preferred to avoid the unpleasant surprises that came with ignoring the exceptional. A great many people over the years assumed he was just a dimwitted brute, after all; the list of people who didn't come to regret that assumption was quite a bit shorter.
Not that he had any pretensions about his intelligence on this assignment. He was looking at a girl who had danced around computer security since she was a teenager, a lady with a genuine medical education, and a woman who had to be on par with mechanics who were literally trained from birth to be engineers; he wasn't there for his brainpower. But viewing it as a competition was just more willful short-sightedness. They all had their roles to play, and the only people worth competing against were the opposition.
That was something he learned from Commander Sal. Or Thera Sal, technically, since she was discharged from CorSec shortly after he'd left...and quite probably because he left, being his commanding officer. She knew how to run a squad...which was the main reason he didn't think she had anything to do with the failed attempt on his life when he left, she'd have been there herself and not let the attempt be so disorganized, if she were in charge of it. Sareena was no Thera...but then, Sareena wasn't leading a team of law enforcement agents so elite they bordered on paramilitary; why would she need to be the same?
"Something wrong, Rian?" Sareena asked.
"Besides the thought that we're racing against some sort of Imperial anti-Jedi squad?" he countered. He hadn't been daydreaming, after all. "What could the Empire have that wouldn't make short work of a freighter like the one we're in? It's not like conventional blasters are even an option."
"The Empire has a number of...I don't know, evil Jedi or something similar," Sareena explained.
"The point stands," Laani said firmly, "even if they just settle for a squad all armed with missile launchers. Not something I'd want to be on the receiving end of."
"It isn't a race unless we both know we're racing," Beril said pointedly.
"Right," he agreed, still facing Sareena. "Which means I'm staying here, since I was in both the welcoming party and the you-better-be-welcoming party—"
"You know that's how these things work!" Beril cut in defiantly.
"—and Laani's staying here," he continued without a pause, "because if this whole theory is correct then she's their trophy."
Laani sighed. "That's sure how it looks," she agreed with resignation.
"So the immediate question is what you and Beril will do."
Beril rolled her eyes. "I did say we'd start with the ship that's still docked here."
Sareena turned her head sharply towards Beril. "Can you find where the crew is now?"
"Of course, but why would that matter?"
"Suppose they're here to meet clients...or as clients."
Laani leaned forward slightly. "And if they're not?"
"Our pre-arrival plan was to track down traders, which we'd have to start by looking somewhere. Any arbitrary location is as good as any other, may as well be one that could give us other leads."
"Hmm. And I suppose our plan if it fails is the same as if we didn't try: getting official itineraries for the whole list."
"Yep," Beril chimed in, "I acquired all their transponder codes. If they're legitimate, or trying to look legitimate, the Bureau of Ships and Services will have records of every legitimate spaceport they've ever docked at."
Rian snorted. "Because we already found the only engine in existence with fake transponder codes?" he asked sarcastically.
She sighed in exasperation. "Of course not, but the codes I found had to be used here to be in the spaceport records in the first place, duh. We can at least rule out the squeaky-cleaners, and check for gaps in the ships' travel time for clues on where their shadowports might be."
He shrugged. That amounted to finding a series of systems to guess at looking in, but it was still a vast improvement over checking the entire galaxy. A tolerable backup plan, at least, if Sareena's long shot at finding the trail here didn't pan out. "Then what are the two of you waiting for?"
"First and foremost," Sareena declared, "for Beril to find the crew."
"And after the triviality?" Beril prompted in response.
"We'll head there with...alternate uniforms."
Laani frowned skeptically. Her eyes darted back and forth between Sareena and Beril, with a noticeable diagonal motion. "You really think you can disguise your...heights?"
"Dunno about Miss Organa over there—" Beril started blithely.
Sareena hissed, cutting her off. "I'm far more worried about being placed here together," she explained, "than I am with either of us being spotted individually. Disguises will work well enough for our purposes."
Laani's face relaxed. "Well then, if Beril will get me the list of ships, I'll start filtering out the ones that can't house the engine."
Beril paused, but only for a split second. "Sure," she said with fake enthusiasm, "I can do that."
Laani's eyes widened slightly, before glancing suspiciously at Beril. "Good."
"And I guess I'll stand here and look foreboding while you do the real work," Rian added sarcastically, before Beril went beyond simply tipping her hand on her suspicion.
Beril snorted. "You are an expert, after all," she said playfully.
"The time for beating people into submission is later," Sareena said firmly. "Come along, Beril."
Beril rolled her eyes, but followed Sareena deeper into the ship, clearly feeling she'd pushed Sareena's patience enough. Beril was good at deciphering social cues, as any infiltrator had to be; But self-interest deeply colored her concern for others' emotions, to the point that it was rarely noticeable that she cared about anyone else. Rian knew better, of course, and not purely from first-hand experience.
Right then, though, that experience was telling him he had his usual part in Beril's games: drawing attention away from them. "So why couldn't we have checked this bureau's records back home?" he asked once Laani was the only person left in sight, before she had the chance to wonder about Beril's tone.
"Two reasons," Laani answered. "Most obvious is that we still don't know if these were all reported back to the Bureau of Ships and Services. If they neglected to send some of them to BoSS for their own convenience, we'd have no way to know, short of coming here for their internal records anyway."
That was right. No sign of naivete there.
"Equally important," she continued, "is that the compiled information regularly distributed to spaceports doesn't include complete histories, and their databases are keyed off transponder codes. To even try to narrow it down by location and time would require breaking into their private staging data, assuming something suitable even exists, or getting the history of every ship in the galaxy and then going through it all...which would be pointless if the visit wasn't reported in the first place. Meanwhile, looking up a bunch of transponder codes is trivial, at least from a technical perspective."
At least the gist of it was correct, as he didn't know that much about the minutiae himself. She was at least knowledgeable about the subject, which was outside her stated area of expertise. Which likely meant his question was too simple to throw her off Beril's trail, so he added another step just in case: "And you think the local records are going to be accurate?"
"Probably, yes. This outpost is a colony, answerable to its parent planet, and all activity comes in or out through the spaceport. Falsified records here mean someone's padding their account in a highly visible way, it'd be a huge risk. And if that is happening, it'd be even more suspicious for anything BoSS has to be missing from the local records, not to mention it'd make no sense. It's a draw at worst."
"Makes sense," he concluded. No sense letting her know she passed his test, that he was testing her, or that the test itself was a distraction. He figured he'd done enough to keep her from wondering about Beril.
"So is Beril really as good as she thinks she is?" Laani asked.
Or maybe not. But there could be a new opportunity there.
"Usually," he answered with only a slight pause. Beril liked bragging about things she was talented with, after all. "Are you as good as Sareena thinks you are?"
She was taken off guard, but only for a second. "I don't know how good Sareena thinks I am, so how could I tell?"
Distraction: Successful. "You didn't seem the sulky sort the first trip," he explained, "but that's how you sound whenever Sareena says anything to you now."
She glared at him briefly, before sighing. "Sareena thinks I won't blend in," she admitted, breaking eye contact.
"More than before?" he asked. "Hey," he protested when she scowled again, "I'm not the moron who decided the best way to ensure everyone was safe is to intimidate everyone who isn't human. Moron probably thinks calling Coruscant 'Imperial Center' makes sense, too."
"She thinks I could fit in," she said with a slight growl, "just that I won't."
He wouldn't dispute Sareena on that. Not that he'd have voiced his suspicions without more evidence backing them up, but Sareena was the boss so making calls like that was her responsibility. And the defensive pride in Laani's tone of voice didn't do her any favors. "Try harder to prove her wrong, then," he said bluntly.
"You think I'm not?" she countered defiantly.
"You sound too worked up over blending in to blend in," he replied snidely.
She looked right at his eyes with a frown across her face. He stared right back, slowly folding his arms. It'd take more than a staring contest to intimidate him, especially since it was looking like a draw; but he started to feel that she wasn't trying to cow him into submission with no hope of success.
It was an intense, unwavering glare Laani was shooting at him. Being no stranger to this kind of contest, Rian knew wanting him to back off would have an icy glaze like the one he was using himself, and full-on murderous intent would flare like a nova. She had no fear, and didn't even consider him a threat. He was no stranger to that critical oversight, either, though rarely from someone who wasn't packing heavy weaponry.
Nevertheless, she sighed and firmly turned her head to her left. "Fine," she muttered unconvincingly as she crossed her arms.
Rian thought Beril could use that kind of self-restraint, he'd long since given up on counting the times he had to bail her out of a mess she confidently dove into. The two of them could both use some improvement with their threat assessment, though. "You might do fine," he said, "if you quit stabbing yourself in the back."
Laani had turned her head to look in the opposite direction as he said the last word. And as he guessed, Beril came into the room. She was calmly walking to Laani with a datapad in her hand...and some sort of atrocious brown spiral of hair on her head. "Lost another bet?" he asked her mockingly.
"No. Maybe. Shut up." she responded defensively.
"No," he countered flatly.
Beril sighed sharply. "Here," she said to Laani as she held out the datapad, "have a list of ships."
"Thanks," Laani said as she took the datapad by the corner. He noticed she didn't even glance at Beril's transmogrified hair. Of course, Togruta didn't have hair of their own, maybe it just wasn't any stranger to her than it was before.
He heard Sareena before he saw her, and her heavy steps resembled marching more than walking. "No time to waste, Beril," she said as she strode through the cargo bay. Long black hair, a jet black jacket and deep blue pants...all in stark contrast to her cream-colored shirt. Must've been a sale at the "Smugglers Without Fashion" boutique.
Beril groaned as she left, since she had to break into a run to catch up with Sareena's determined pace.
"Comms," Laani called out after them, without actually looking in their direction. He almost missed her sliding the datacard out of the datapad Beril handed her.
"Got it," Sareena half-yelled in response, reminding him that the bay's sound damping field was active. He didn't miss Laani picking up a datapad off an empty crate and putting the datacard into it. He'd have been suspicious, if he hadn't seen Sareena put it there after some phase of the earlier discussion; as it was, Laani didn't trust Beril not to have done something to the datapad.
Which she wouldn't do. Beril liked seeing the excitement in her schemes, she'd only do something subtle if she was there to feel clever over how she was fooling everyone. But Laani didn't know Beril, any more than he knew Laani; it was prudent suspicion.
"So," Laani said while she was doing whatever with her datapad, "You want to keep an ear on the comm system? I'm just going to be hitting 'yes' and 'no' a lot with this thing."
"Where?" he asked.
"If it's all the same to you," she answered, "I was going to route it out here so we can both hear it."
She intended to respond too? "You do realize you're more likely to draw trouble than they are, right?" he inquired.
That drew her attention away from her ship triage. "Yes," she said with some annoyance, "but if it's bad enough that they're calling us, it's going to be too late for subtlety. We'll get through things faster if both of us are there."
No wonder Sareena didn't think she would blend in. "Fair enough. I doubt they'll get into anything Sareena can't handle, though." Sareena would talk Beril out of getting into something they couldn't handle. Again.
"I hope you're right."
Beril squinted as she took another sip of her bantha milk; the flavor was quite a bit more intense than she was used to in beverages. Which was why she ordered it, keeping her gustatory sense active would ensure her other senses stayed sharp.
From her seat in one of the cantina's booths, she could see and hear the nearby tables, where Sareena was asking pointed questions to anyone who looked like they might be reselling starship components. It was all part of the plan: while they travelled near the cantina's entrance together, they entered separately; Sareena was already working the crowd when Beril got up to the bar.
Beril was keeping an eye and ear out for indirect reactions from that crowd. So far, that had been limited to a couple whispering to each other about how stupid Sareena's stupid shirt looked. Beril did agree that the vertical cream-colored stripe didn't go with the otherwise dark wardrobe; but the simple fact that no one had even glanced in Beril's direction since she sat down told her what Sareena had been thinking.
Sareena was paying attention too, of course. Beril knew because when the bartender gave her a weird look for wanting a drink as soft as bantha milk, she explained how she had to be ready for take off at a moment's notice and her captain was too cheap to buy provisions with any flavor; Sareena paused midstep for a quarter of a second. She was partially exaggerating, of course, and hadn't actually indicated Sareena one way or the other, but it was still funny.
Right now, though, Sareena was in the midst of what seemed like a fruitful conversation. "You'd really pay that much for a hyperdrive?" a suspicious male voice was asking her.
"Of the same type, yes," Sareena confirmed casually. "My client can afford to be picky, so I can cover your expense of locating something so specific. If this were easy I'd have already found one."
Beril's attention was briefly distracted by a Trandoshan in a beige flight suit walking in front of her on his way to the bar. "—but I can certainly put the word out for what you're offering," she heard the man. She had her hidden monitoring device set to record both comms traffic and normal sound; if she really wanted to hear the first half of his sentence, she could replay it later.
"That's for intact," Sareena clarified. "As long as the chromium casing is all there, or nearly all there, I can make it work; but my repair costs would have to come out of the final payment. I'm sure you understand."
"Of course. Now, about my fee..."
Now a Zabrak walking in front of her draw Beril's attention...or more specifically, the horns rising out of her head. Beril's mind wandered over a series of hairstyles which would be improved if she had natural horns of that type, none of her attempts with prosthetics over the years had ever justified the cosmetic maintenance involved.
Realizing she had gotten distracted again, Beril reached for her overly strong beverage. But before she could put the glass to her lips, another sight grabbed her attention. One that looked like she should've been paying attention to it already.
"Hey," one of the two human men walking towards the bar said with an air of control, "we don't like your kind here, lizzy." Trying to boss Trandoshans around made them feel better about themselves, apparently. And safety in numbers was the traditional support system of speciesist stupidity. Though two was a pretty small number on their part, the claws weren't cosmetic.
Their target sighed softly. "Let me get you sssomething," he said casually, as he slowly turned in the direction of the bartender. Beril did note the attempt at patience, but it wasn't foremost on her mind. She'd known several Trandoshans during her childhood on Nar Shaddaa, with varying accents on their Basic...and the drawn-out hiss this guy was using was a blatant fabrication. It'd likely fool anyone who didn't know better, but why would he be trying to fool anyone over it in the first place?
The brown-haired man of the two declined by throwing a punch. It failed to connect, however; the Trandoshan, in an unusual display of agility for his species, pushed himself into a standing position before he could be hit. He wasted no time in slamming his opponent's head against the counter. His blond-haired accomplice clumsily charged forward, but his red-scaled target simply dodged before shoving him off to the side...and into the table Sareena was at.
Sareena jumped out of the way without taking her eyes off the fight, while her conversation partner was knocked over along with the table. She quickly stepped next to the support column separating two booths, putting her out of range of the fight while still in position to observe it. Beril knew the look in Sareena's eyes; she wanted to intervene on the Trandoshan's behalf, but couldn't justify the amount of attention she'd draw.
As the two men picked themselves up off the table, two others stood up and ran over, intent on entering the fray. Their target simply faced the center of the room, rather than any of the four combatants. Beril decided to release her grip on the glass she'd unconsciously set down on the table, deeming the container an inadequate weapon should the fight break in her direction.
The nearest man, not expecting to be seen from behind, charged in. He also wasn't expecting a Trandoshan to move fast enough for a scaled palm to strike his stomach, if the look on his face was any indication; the elbow that slammed into his face on his head's ground-ward descent didn't leave an opportunity for more facial evaluation.
Another human brandished a vibroknife, enough of a display for the other two humans standing to hold off. The Trandoshan exhaled loudly as he gently stepped away from the body on the ground, assuming some sort of defensive posture.
The vibroknife-wielder attempted to hit the Trandoshan with an overextended plunging motion from overhead, instead of the short stabbing thrust someone who actually knew what they were doing would try. Beril mentally sighed. What was the galaxy coming to when even bar brawls were full of more incompetently amateurish incompetent amateurs?
A blur of red motion deftly illustrated the oversight: the Trandoshan grabbed the other man's arm on both sides of the elbow, and forced the knife into the human's own belly. Beril couldn't tell whether the man's cry of pain was a direct result, or because of the claws being dragged across his upper arm. Probably both.
"No blasters! No blasters!" the bartender yelled before diving behind the counter. Why did bartenders always do that? Did anyone, in the history of ever, actually put their blasters away in response?
With a snarl, the Trandoshan used a single hand to push his bleeding adversary off his feet. For a brief instant it seemed he had his own areas of incompetence, getting rid of a body to block blaster bolts with.
That brief instant was all it took for him to produce a glowing length of red energy. Beril hadn't been living under a rock during the Clone Wars, despite the feeling that she was living on one at the time, so she of course recognized a lightsaber. The instant that passed before the firing started wasn't long enough to congratulate herself for recognizing the Jedi-bait ploy, she'd have to do that later.
With a smooth arc, the lightsaber intercepted the first shot almost as soon as she heard it fired, and the deflected bolt hit some spot on the metal floor. She hadn't seen anyone standing in the direction of the shot's origin before, though. A quick check of her peripheral vision suggested there were about two more men, and one woman, in position to open fire around the room.
The Trandoshan didn't appear concerned. He calmly swung his lightsaber around himself in close arcs, blocking each of several blaster shots with little more than a twist of his wrist. The nearest shooter didn't even have the chance to be surprised when a single wide swing severed his arm...followed closely by his neck. The shooter's accomplice didn't have a chance either: an angled thrust blocked his next shot and punctured his heart with the same motion, before the lightsaber exited through his shoulder to intercept a bolt from behind.
Most of the would-be assailants were already fleeing the cantina by this point, while Beril knew that getting out of her seat would guarantee she'd be the next target. A realization shared by all the other bystanders, it seemed. Unfortunately for the remaining shooter, the last shot had earned her something she could only wish to return: the Trandoshan's attention.
He quickly turned to face her, adopting some weird stance with his right arm held behind him but pointing his weapon forward, with his other hand open a short ways in front of him. After a brief pause, he stretched the clawed fingers of his open hand, and the woman's blaster pistol was somehow pulled straight out of her grip, and flew through the air several meters to rest in his hand. He nonchalantly tossed the weapon towards the tip of his own, not even flinching at the sparks produced when the two made contact.
The disarmed woman turned to run. But with a snarl, the Trandoshan thrust his empty hand forward, and she was lurched through the air just like her blaster had been. It sounded like she had started to scream, but Beril couldn't tell; the lightsaber lazily bisected her skull while she was in mid-air, along with the rest of her body. The energy blade didn't counteract inertia, and both halves slammed into the booth to Beril's left with a slightly squishy thud. It seemed as though energy blades were effective at cauterizing flesh as well, as the only smell Beril could distinguish was burnt hair.
With the floor clear of other combatants, and with a noticeable trail of blood from the clawed and knifed man, it certainly looked like the fight was over. Beril resolutely stayed where she was, though; the continued presence of a lightsaber's hum meant a new conflict could start with minimal provocation, and end with another corpse just as quickly.
While the Trandoshan was slowly shaking his head at the aftermath, Beril spared a glance for her royal compatriot. Sareena appeared unharmed, but her eyes had that stoic gaze of hers, directed at the red-scaled man. As if she was studying his every move. Sensible to be sure, although Beril really wanted to know what Sareena intended to do if she were to become his target.
Beril had heard the heavy footfalls approaching from outside the cantina, but the sound hadn't seemed like a priority. Which was just as well: The running steps came into view, revealing the white armor of Imperial stormtroopers that made them; and that was a much higher priority in its own right. Beril tried not to look panicked at their arrival, which was rather easy when there was a slaughter machine with a lightsaber in the same room to be panicked about instead.
The Trandoshan faced them directly. "The situation does not require your attention," he declared as the red beam receded into the device in his hand. Beril noticed the counterfeit hiss was completely absent now...and no particular accent of Dosh took its place. Basic was his primary language, as far as she could tell. "Return to your posts."
"Of course, Inquisitor," the lead stormtrooper said with a salute. The Trandoshan Inquisitor sighed, a vocal display anyone else would assume was a low hiss, before heading out into the corridor behind the Imperial troops. He was gently shaking his head on his way out, but Beril was pretty sure he'd made direct eye contact with her for a split second.
The rest of the cantina started clearing out in a hurry shortly after the stormtroopers were out of sight. Not getting trampled by walking into the flow of traffic seemed like a good idea, so she opted to remain in her seat for the moment.
The bustle of the mass exodus threatened to overshadow Sareena's voice, but Beril had experience with this kind of focused listening. "Will you be back in a week?"
"What?!" answered the man she'd been talking to earlier, before he was knocked to the floor he was presumably getting off of as he spoke. "With stormtroopers wandering around here? You're crazy!"
"Crazy enough to still pay your fee for doing your job, yes," she countered calmly.
By then, there were enough gaps in the outward stream of people for Beril to make out where Sareena and her hopeful hire were standing.
"Fine," he responded after a brief pause. "No promise anyone can make it here or have what you're looking for."
"The fee covers your time and effort, does it not?"
He nodded. "It does, and you will have them," he agreed on his way out of the door.
The cantina was all but empty at that point. Sareena casually walked over by Beril's booth, where Beril got out of her seat to walk out beside her.
"I thought there wasn't a garrison here," Beril asked, as the two of them headed towards the exit.
"So did I," Sareena answered without looking back.
"And what exactly is an 'Inquisitor'?"
"Follow me," Sareena commanded as the door opened, without answering the question.
Beril complied. The original plan was to split up to head back to the ship, much as they arrived at the cantina from different directions, but that was before there was a risk of being ambushed by Imperial forces. A risk, she mentally noted, that would last at least until they left the asteroid behind.