Last time: The trio checked the night club and found something.

Now: The clue reveals something unnerving.

Chapter 17- There Is A Mole

After a quick drive back to the militia headquarters, Sasha followed Oppie and Viran into the building as they headed for Colonel Ceros' office. Oppie knocked on the door, and Colonel Ceros bid them to enter.

"How was your trip to the north?" He asked as they came into the office.

"It was good," Sasha said as she took a seat. "We brought you some candy. As requested."

"However, we didn't find much else," Viran added. "It was a dead end."

"Well then I am both pleased and disappointed." Colonel Ceros responded leaning back in his seat.

"Viran found something when we returned to the nightclub, though." Oppie said, taking a seat. They had left Ceros' candy back in their rooms when they dropped everything off after the brief trip north, and he felt a little bad about that.

Viran reached into his pocket and produced the commlink. He set it on the desk before Ceros. "Someone was careless and left this behind."

"And you thought it best to keep this between us?" Ceros asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Viran said. "Nothing happened up north and you weren't at the nightclub. Let's just say we can trust you with this." He joked slightly at that.

"I appreciate that." The colonel said, "but if you take this down to the lab, more people will be aware of it." He said. "Do you have another way to examine it?"

"We do, yes," Sasha answered. "The same way we figured out about the hidden cartel communication location and the nightclub. We are going to call on some outside help we trust."

"And whatever we figure out we will let you know," Viran added.

"Very well. I wish you luck." Ceros replied.

"Thanks." Oppie said, standing up.

"Yes, thank you," Sasha said as she stood too.

"Let's get to work," Viran said as he headed for the door.

Oppie followed after Viran and Sasha, and glanced around the large workspace they walked into. He hid a worried expression when he didn't see Kait here, either.

"Guys can you please just shut up for one minute so I can explain what I need you to do?" Viran asked, annoyed as he put his face in his hands.

Tac and QT both went silent for a second before they started arguing over that it was the other one that was being disruptive. Sasha chuckled as she leaned back in her chair at the table, eating some of the chocolates she got earlier for herself.

"You're both being disruptive. Can we just agree on that?" Viran asked, irritated. He muted the comm for a moment. "I swear I'm going to make them a universal mute button."

There was a hailstorm of reproachful and indignant beeps arguing against Viran's newest heard the slightly muffled noise of a door opening and then Kyr's voice coming over the com as if muted by a great distance. "Hey! Be quiet!" They heard him shout, before they heard the door slam shut. The droids were shocked into silence at that.

Viran snickered at that as he unmuted the comm. "Okay it appears to be late over there. So let's keep this quiet. Alright, so here is what I need you guys to do this time," he started. "We found a burner commlink that I need you two to hack into. Find any information on it that you can. Previous calls or communications. Or even potentially who it belongs to. Whatever dirt you can dig up would be great."

Tac and QT responded with an acknowledgement very quietly, as if whispering over the comline to them, waiting for Viran to establish the datalink. Viran pulled out the burner comm and connected it to the computer. After a few button presses, he connected it to the droids.

"Alright, there you go," Viran said before muting the commline. "And now we wait."

And they did. For about ten seconds. Tac triumphantly beeped and QT did the audio equivalent of rolling her eye at him, so to speak. And Tac replied with a raspberry.

"Okay, tell me what you've got," Viran said after he unmuted the commlink.

Sasha leaned forward in curiosity, while Oppie listened intently.

There was a series of beeps and whistles, quiet ones, as Tac explained what he saw, and data started scrolling up on the datapad as he sent the data over to Viran to review. QT filled in a few details when she thought Tac wasn't going to include them or had missed them, but they bit their tongues, so to speak, and didn't devolve into another arguing match as they explained. Viran eyed the information with a furrowed brow. After a read through it, he glanced at the others.

"You may want to read this," Viran said as he gestured to the screen. He moved away from the computer to let them look. They both moved closer and started reading. Tac or QT had found the call logs. No calls ever originated from the comlink, they were only received. Late in the evenings, every other day. From one source only. And all of the calls had been received either from within the militia headquarters or the Republic embassy. This had only been going on for a month, though.

"This is the mole's burner," Sasha observed. "Nice find, hun."

"Thanks," Viran said, begrudgingly. "But this is concerning. This means that they will be expecting the mole to answer this comm tomorrow at the same exact time as always."

"Yeah." Oppie said, "and it also confirms that the mole is Kait or J'onz." Oppie said in a troubled voice.

"I didn't want to say it, but yeah it does," Viran said, his voice also troubled.

"Can we narrow it down further?" Sasha asked, frowning.

"I don't think so, but I'll see what they can do," Viran said as he moved closer to the computer. He unmuted the commline. "Great find guys. But is there any way to narrow down its owner?"

Tac and QT both replied with a negative. There were no voice logs. However the mole communicated out to the cartel, it wasn't through this burner. It was just for receiving messages.

"Damn, alright thanks guys," Viran said. "I owe you both." He hung up the commlink and slammed his fist on the desk. "This complicates things."

"What do we do?" Sasha asked, looking between them.

Oppie was silent as he wiped his face with his palm, not sure how to answer. "Not sure. We need to tell Ceros" Oppie said. "I guess one thing we could do would be to give each of them some false bit of information the cartel would need to act on, and see which information the cartel actually acts on." He suggested.

"And that leads us to the mole," Sasha said with a nod.

"I really don't like this idea," Viran voiced, concerned.

"Do you have a better idea?" Sasha asked him.

"No, but I feel that this might blow up in our face," Viran stated.

"It doesn't need to be something critical, something that would be dangerous." Oppie replied. "I remember during the Clone Wars there was an instance where there was supposed to be a seperatist attack on a planet, but we couldn't figure out which one because they kept referring to it by a code name. Some of the intelligence officers thought it was one planet, others thought it was a different one. We didn't know which one we had to defend." He said, "so one of the planets sent out a call that its desalination plant had failed. The other one stated it was running low on bacta. Normal wartime logistics issues so it didn't seem obvious. Later on, the intelligence guys were able to figure out they were talking about the first planet, since they reported that their target was running low on water reserves." Oppie finished. "So it doesn't need to be anything too critical, just something that would give us some kind of reaction from the cartel if they find out about it. Ceros might have an idea of some juicy targets that we could dangle like that."

"Alright, when should we talk to him?" Sasha asked. "I think the sooner the better."

"I agree," Viran said as he sat looking at the computer as if in deep thought.

Ceros looked up from the report as someone knocked on his door first thing in the morning. "Enter." He answered, looking back down at the report to remember where he had left off.

The three Jedi walked in, Oppie closing the door behind them. "We discovered some interesting information late yesterday." He said as they stepped into his office.

Ceros gestured for them to sit and they did so. "What sort of information?" He asked.

Viran reached into his jacket and produced a datapad. He placed it on Ceros's desk. "We hacked into the burner and discovered that whoever the mole is gets a call every other day from the cartel. This datapad has all of the details," he said gesturing to the datapad.

"And we also narrowed down who might be the mole," Sasha added.

"How so?" Ceros asked, very interested in the information they had to offer.

"The burner was receiving calls from the cartel, and doing so from either here at the headquarters or from the Republic embassy for the last month or so." Oppie said, trying to keep the grimace from his voice. "So that means it would be either Marshal J'onz or Deputy Messan. Unless there are any other embassy staff that are regularly here." Oppie added.

"But since we found the burner at the nightclub, we have to guess it is either of them," Viran said, troubled.

"That is indeed troubling to think either of them has been compromised, though it is as we thought." Ceros said, glancing away. "I admit, I still thought it might be one of my own people, since it seemed unlikely that anyone from the republic could be compromised so quickly." He finished with a far away look.

"I hate to say it, but I'm guessing they were paid off well enough that they were willing to betray Caranas and the Republic," Sasha admitted. "But since we have figured this out then that means we can set a trap for the actual mole and hopefully stop them before the cartel gets away with more."

"Indeed." The Colonel said, turning back to them. "What do you have in mind?" He asked.

"Oppie had told us a tale about an instance in the Clone Wars where they had to figure out which planet was going to be attacked by the Separatists. And that gave us an idea," Viran said as he leaned forward, clasping his hands before him. "Our plan was to have a fake cartel informant who either works as a mole for us or wants to defect from the cartel. Anyway, the plan is to have them meet with you or us or both somewhere safe and secret to give information that will devastate the cartel. The mole will want to make sure this informant is quieted before any important intel is given to us."

"However, we want to avoid putting any actual militia members at risk as this might turn into a firefight," Sasha continued. "So we were thinking of using a high resolution hologram to provide the illusion. And it's a hologram, nothing hurts them." She smirked slightly at that. "What do you think?"

Oppie finally spoke, "the thought was that we give them both separate information, so we tell J'onz one thing, one place and time, and we tell Kait another place and time. And then we see which one the cartel acts against."

Ceros nodded. "A scheme we have used now and then when we were lucky enough to have such breaks." He thought for a moment. "I like it, but we will have to keep this secret between us, and perhaps only a very few trusted officers I can absolutely vouch for. When would we enact this plan?"

"The sooner the better," Viran answered. "Who knows what all the mole has given the cartel already and how much delaying they have caused this investigation. We think it's about time we turn the tables on them."

Ceros nodded and thought for a moment. "I can have my people set up the holoprojectors. I think we may have a few that can serve this purpose. We may be able to get that set up this afternoon, and possibly leak to them that the informant will be picked up this evening, or tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow, to give the cartel time to martial an…. Appropriate response?"

"Tomorrow would work better, especially since that would line up with the mole calling the cartel," Viran said, smirking.

"Very well." Ceros nodded. "I will get my people to set it up, and then perhaps we can allow them to know this afternoon that the pick up will be sometime tomorrow afternoon?"

"That sounds good," Sasha agreeing. "We just need to determine what time we plan to take J'onz and what time we take Kait. Also making sure that they are not together at either informant meeting."

"And however we can help, let us know," Viran added.

"Indeed." Ceros agreed. "Once we decide, I can inform Marshal J'onz, if you would want to inform Deputy Messan?" He suggested, looking between them.

"We can do that," Sasha accepted. Viran glanced at Oppie on that, trying to hide a frown. Oppie just nodded slightly in agreement.

"Alright, so what time?" Viran said after a silent sigh. "And where do we want this to go down?"

"Let me meet with my people and I will get back to you in an hour or so after deciding on the locations." Ceros said. "This is excellent work, especially for your having been here for such a short time. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Sasha said, simply.

Oppie nodded as he stood up. Sasha and Viran followed in suit.

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