A/N: Don't forget to google the fic :-)
Chapter 50
It was over within moments, yet it still took me a few seconds to recover from the shock of being within spitting distance of the explosion.
A brief frantic scan from my position lying on top of Ulvy told me that it had not been a thermal detonator. The building's structure was too intact and the floor above us hadn't collapsed. This grenade seemed like someone had combined the concepts of a shrapnel spitter and incendiary device. It was firmly an anti-personnel weapon and whoever had thrown it or was organizing this attack still wanted this building in one piece, but not the people in it or its contents.
Thankfully there wasn't a lot that could catch fire. There were no huge racks of clothes, merely stands that contained a few dozen exemplar outfits, all of which had been blasted apart and burning merrily. The entire store was a scorched mess, with shrapnel and the overpressure destroying everything electronic. The smoke of what was burning was steadily filling the room.
I felt Ulvy stirring beneath me and I delved hard into my prescience.
I rolled off her and hissed, "We need to move. Now."
"W- wh- what… what… how…"
I grabbed her by the collar, using the Force to augment my strength and a bit of TK. It meant I dragged her easily along the floor towards the thickest structural support near an exterior wall, directly underneath the two blown out windows here. She made no initial protest at being manhandled like this. Her wits were still scrambled.
What was with this woman?
This was a full blown hit on her life, with all potential witnesses and bystanders also being taken care of. There was a sniper on the opposite street and in another probability line, he'd blasted me in the back and it was only instinctual Tutaminis that stopped me from dying instantly, but it had left me gravely injured.
I opened myself to every sense I had, stretching it to a full kilometer in every direction, but narrowed my focus to everything in the immediate area.
"What- what's happening?" she babbled.
"You tell me, Ulvy. Stay down! There's a sniper on the opposite building, including a ten strong squad of armed goons backing him in various firing positions."
"How can you tell?"
"That doesn't matter, feel free to stick your head out and see," I jerked a thumb up to the window.
She gulped, her eyes only now taking in the state of the store and finally some gears began turning in her head. "I think… I'll take your word for it."
"Do you have a speeder?"
She nodded, "It's in the back, we'd need to open the main doors there…"
"Sithspit," I swore as another probability hit me.
I raised my right WESTAR, pointing it out the window and 'blind fired' two shots. The characteristic energetic whining moan of the weapon echoed through the smoky shop.
On the roof of the opposite building, the ganger wielding the grenade launcher, including two fellow goons, died when the blaster bolts found their way right onto the tubular launcher he had been holding and intending to send another explosive device our way. It wrecked the weapon and made a mess of the grenade already in the tube, which exploded.
Ulvy gaped at me in surprise and her hand flexed on her blaster. She took advantage of the confusion and briefly exposed the smallest bit of her face for a moment to take in what had happened, unable to contain her curiosity. She flinched back down immediately and just a second later an orange blaster bolt seared through the air where her head had been and spent itself on the floor of the smoldering shop.
It heralded a storm of fire as the poorly disciplined goons started to pepper the window with bolts where my shot had come from.
"Satisfied?!" I asked wryly.
She nodded frantically.
I reached out with the Force towards the dressing room.
Three things came flying at me.
My gun belt, thankfully intact but scorched, my shoes in similar state, and the burnt mess of my overall.
I sent the latter off to the side to continue smoldering, whilst I guided the belt to hover around my hips and close. My shoes flew to my feet and I stuck them in, using TK to act much like hands would and put them on. I could've been less flashy about this, but I couldn't afford to let go of my WESTARs, not in this situation.
She was gaping again.
I rolled away from the window, getting my feet under me and crouch walked to another window a few meters away that was not being targeted.
I stuck my left WESTAR out and fired three times.
Two goons died messily as the shots connected with their faces, whilst the third hit lower and went through a neck.
That was the problem with the WESTAR, it was obviously not a long range weapon, and only the Force and my senses were letting me 'cheat' like this.
Five left and the sniper.
They shifted their fire uselessly to try to tag me.
"Can you fire that thing?!" I snapped at her.
"At this range it's useless," she retorted angrily, brandishing her blaster.
"The threat of your fire is enough!" I said, sending off more shots at our attackers from another window. "There's a backup team that will flank us soon."
"Fine!"
She stuck her arm out, as little of her head as she could get away with and started firing.
Naturally, all she hit was either sky or the neighboring building our attackers were using for their high ground. The effect it did have though was to split the enemy fire raining down on us.
It left me enough of an opening to actually use both my WESTARs, firing four times and finally killing the sniper.
It was the final straw that finally pulled the wind out of their sails. Their confidence flagged, especially as another burst of shots from me killed two more.
They broke ranks and ran, heading for a small staircase desperately.
I was on my feet and rushed over to grab Ulvy to get her on her feet. "Lead the way, we have a small escape window now."
That finally seemed to energize her and we ran for another adjoining door. This led to a narrow hallway with more doors, which we sprinted down. She slammed her hand down on the controls of a door at the end of this hallway and we rushed inside.
This was a small garage that looked like it could fit five speeders at most. There was only one here and it was not something that inspired confidence in a smooth getaway.
It had a large blunt nose, with a tapered narrowing fuselage to its aft end. On either side of the nose were relatively small nacelles which housed the thrusters. It had a decent white paint job and at least looked like it would do its job. It was meant for only one person, but I could see how both of us could fit on the saddle in a pinch. There was no indication who the manufacturer was, which only added to my apprehension.
Ulvy ripped the other side of her dress with a wince before she flung her leg over the seat and sat down on it.
It drew my attention to my own state of dress or lack thereof, I cast off that distraction.
I probed the future on whether it would be better for me to pilot…
Nope.
I rushed forward and hopped on the back end, causing the onboard repulsor to briefly whine at the extra weight, before it compensated.
"We have to go, now."
She nodded, flicked a few switches and the bike's engines hissed and whined to life. The garage door opened by itself after she tapped a button that definitely looked like an aftermarket addition.
A random human ganger stopped dead and his eyes widened as he stared straight at the nose of our speeder.
I felt Ulvy's contempt and she twisted hard on the throttle.
The speeder rocketed forward and I felt the goon smacking off the blunt nose with a meaty thump.
She twisted hard left on the handlebars. We both leaned properly to aid the turn.
The backup squad of Pyke syndicate goons reacted quickly, shouting and raised their blasters to shoot, but we were already down the street and no shots came close to hitting us.
The speeder was nowhere near its max speed at 70kph, but traffic and the short twisty streets were slowing us down.
"Where are you heading?!" I shouted.
"Somewhere safe!"
I looked behind me as the hum of speeders rapidly approaching from behind us reached my montrals. Half a dozen of them, all bearing armed riders and the Force screamed in warning.
My TK grabbed a hold of the controls and slewed us right and left whilst keeping our forward momentum going.
Blaster shots from our pursuers whizzed by agonizingly close.
"What the…" Ulvy fought uselessly against my control for a moment, but I let her have the controls back.
"Go anywhere but there! We're being pursued and they have a tracker on this speeder!"
"What? But…"
"Listen to me! I don't care what you're involved in or why the syndicate is after you, but they couldn't have reacquired us so quickly without a tracking device. If you go back to where you think you're safe, you will compromise that location!"
I pointed my right WESTAR behind us and fired.
Our pursuers immediately began weaving and trying to dodge my fire, but I simply timed the shots and the two lead speeders ended up dodging themselves into the bolts. One shot nailed a ganger straight in the chest, causing him to flop lifelessly onto the front of his speeder, pushing on the controls so it swerved right into another speeder.
Both veered off course and crashed into a building with a crunch of crumpling metal and a brief small explosion.
I fired a last shot right into the control vane of the next enemy speeder, sending it wobbling at high speed to the right where its rider decided to bail out rather than crash.
My thumb flicked out the spent power cell, and a fresh one leaped into the base of the grip from my gun belt under the power of TK.
Ulvy made a hard right turn and sped up a smaller side street, before turning left onto another larger two-way street.
"We need to ditch this thing!" I shouted at her as the syndicate speeders briefly lost visual sightline, before again catching up.
She nodded and gunned the throttle as the street opened with a break in traffic.
There.
A few hundred meters ahead of us was a whole bunch of parked speeders near a cantina. I pointed at them and she angled the speeder towards it.
"We're gonna need to first deal with them!" she shouted.
"Leave that to me, can you hotwire a speeder?!"
"I can, but it'll depend on how good the security system is!"
She left the braking for as late as possible, to not clue in our pursuers that we were making a stand.
The instant we were at a dead stop at the cantina, I vaulted off the speeder and began walking into the middle of the street
The three syndicate speeders were two hundred meters distant and closing fast.
I embraced the Force to a heightened level, letting it flow and surge.
The gangers clearly spotted me and there was a brief pause, before they began shooting.
They were such terrible shots with their blasters at this range, that I only needed to lean left to dodge a lucky bolt that had gotten close.
Their speeders bore down on me, clearly intending to run me over.
The instant they were sixty meters away, my WESTARs snapped up.
I fired four times and gave a large sidestep to the right and presented my right side to them.
Two seconds later the enemy speeders blurred past me, one of them missing me by an arm length.
The syndicate goons all slumped on top of their speeders, dead, or fell off, until they all crashed with muted crunches of metal and flame.
I was unable to resist giving both my pistols a single spin before holstering them and walking off the road towards Ulvy.
She was already busy working on an ugly speeder that looked like someone had taken a car seat and mounted it on the guts of a normal bike-type speeder, then jury-rigged the entire thing to work. It was clearly a backyard build and was unlikely to have modern security measures.
She gaped at me, including a number of bystanders outside the cantina who had seen the whole thing.
I tapped my wrist and flicked my fingers in front of her face.
She blinked and glared at me briefly before ripping open a small maintenance panel near the speeder's controls.
I headed over to our old speeder and started a search for the bug which was transmitting its location. I spotted it eventually lodged in a small gap on the underside of the speeder. So it could've been placed there by anyone at any time who passed the vehicle as it was parked in the street. My hand grabbed it and after a few hard tugs, it was dislodged - a simple magnetic clamp system. It was a white painted disc about a centimeter thick and would not have been easy to see unless you were purposefully looking for it.
Then I gave it a few casual tosses in the air, catching it, to test the weight.
My eyes scanned around looking for a suitable candidate.
A very rickety public passenger ground shuttle was approaching.
I grinned in amusement and threw the tracker as it passed me. It latched on the side of the shuttle and went on its merry way.
Enjoy assholes, I thought uncharitably to the syndicate goons who would intercept the shuttle after a frantic race from their HQ.
"Hey, what are you doing?! That's my speeder!"
I sighed wearily and headed over to Ulvy. She was being confronted by the owner of the ugly speeder. A short, thin man who looked like he had just walked out of a classic steampunk setting or a scrapyard. He wore brown overalls with goggles and a wide brimmed hat, an angry face stained with grease and tanned skin. It seemed like he was in his mid thirties but I couldn't be entirely sure. He was even brandishing a large hyperspanner at her like a weapon.
I could probably Mind Trick the guy to happily give us the key or access code, but that was just too much with all the potential witnesses on scene. Revealing myself as an obvious Jedi to Ulvy just to survive was one thing, this was different. I needed to remain in my undercover character out in public like this.
"Excuse me, Mr…?" I stopped next to Ulvy and folded my arms.
He blinked, looked me up and down in astonishment, which I endured patiently, then he answered, "Uh, Kenau, I'm… Jafan Kenau."
"Mr. Kenau, we have two options here," I said, my hands blurred with speed and in my right was a WESTAR, not pointed at him, but held lazily with the barrel safely pointed in the sky and in my left hand was a 500 credit chit. "You either accept the money, which would actually allow you to build a much better speeder or we choose the cheaper and easier route."
He visibly gulped and I sensed a weird conflict of emotions going through the guy. He felt fear but… he was also getting turned on by me and in turn felt guilty for doing so. He pointed at the credit chit nervously.
I flicked at him and he awkwardly caught it, nearly fumbling the catch in a rather hilarious manner. When he had it, he squinted at the chit and after making sure it was the real deal, pocketed it. He reached into his other pocket, pulled out a remote key and chucked it at Ulvy.
"Just push the red button to unlock, yellow to lock," he instructed.
Ulvy hopped onto the speeder's seat and after working the key, its engines started up, reverberating with a deep growl. The HOTAS controls were rather unusual for a speeder, but she seemed confident with them, testing the play and flexibility of the stick and throttle setup.
She frowned at me when she saw me making no move to get on.
"Aren't you coming?"
"That depends, will you still be able to get me what I ordered at your shop, considering it's probably on fire by now," I smiled pleasantly while waving at Kenau pointedly and gesturing with my pistol. He gulped again, gave us a frightened look and re-entered the cantina.
"I don't actually own the shop, just work there. I can make your outfits at home as well."
I holstered my blaster and hopped on the speeder, taking an awkward seat next to her as she shifted left on it as far as she could.
She pulled back on the throttle for a full reverse, twisting the stick, to turn the rear of the speeder properly into the street, before pushing forward on the throttle and twisting the stick right.
The speeder shot forward with a surprising kick, and we were soon cruising at nearly 90 kph through the streets of Mon Gazza. The speeder even had a forward air shield, which Ulvy found the controls for after a bit of experimentation.
"You realize your home is being watched by the Pykers," I continued the conversation, raising my voice a little to be heard over the noisy engine. "This was an assassination attempt disguised as a shakedown. Your speeder was bugged with a location tracker, so they learned your routine for who knows how long. So now my only question is why do you merit this attention, Ulvy?"
"Why should I answer you?" she retorted. "You may have saved my life. Thank you for that, but it doesn't mean I owe you my life story, Miss Jedi."
"Do you see a lightsaber anywhere on me?" I waved my hand pointedly at myself.
"No, which can mean you're either here undercover or you've left the Jedi Order for some reason. Since you want pantoran clothes, I'm going to guess it's the former."
"You can assume whatever you want about me, Ulvy."
"Oh, really? How about this… What would it take to hire your amazing talents and trigger finger?"
"I'm just a freighter captain, Ulvy. Trying to find my way in the galaxy, earn a living. I just so happen to be going on a run towards Pantora and I've found an opportunity there that will require me to appear before some high officials. Something I can't do in either my underwear or stained overalls."
"Ten thousand," she said abruptly.
I gave her an incredulous stare, even as I sensed she was fully confident in stating that number.
"Ten thousand credits?"
She nodded, "Yes, to hire you on to… well, let's just say there is a group here on Mon Gazza that would rather the Syndicate find another planet to exploit."
My brain had a slight hiccup as I processed that. The Force then decided to throw a bit of prescience my way, focused on Miss Ulvy.
…Mon Gazza city aflame… smoke rising from multiple points… fighting in the streets, masses of people charging into various buildings wielding fire, blasters and vibroswords… the spice mines of the planet erupting in earth shaking explosions visible from space… Syndicate members killing hundreds, thousands, but in turn being slaughtered by mobs…
And it would all happen if the woman next to me died.
A planetary scale revolt.
Why?
She was by all appearances just a seamstress and dancer… who also happened to be involved somehow in a plan to destroy the Pyke Syndicate on Mon Gazza. She was targeted for assassination, meaning that already the group behind this had a security leak. How extensive was it?
This couldn't be a John Connor situation. No, it was more that she was somehow the match that would ignite the flames of revolution on this world.
I reached into a compartment on my belt and pulled out a generalized comlink that belonged to my alias. Then slapped it onto my bare forearm, before powering it up. A small holo of the navigation routes appeared along the Corellian Run and I fiddled with it to get a calculation going. It spat out a result before I put it on standby.
There was also the bigger picture to consider. Mon Gazza falling into civil war and strife could potentially slice the tail end of the Corellian Run off from civilian traffic. Ships using the crossroads it sat on could be diverted using alternate routing, but it would mean adding multiple days to any typical hyper journey and pushing up transport costs by significant amounts. The ripple effect this would have on worlds in the adjoining sectors, including Pantora, was hard to even estimate, but the price of shipping out here would naturally rise… on top of the rise that the war had already produced.
Never mind Pantora being blockaded and facing increasing pressure to secede to the CIS, a civil war in Mon Gazza could bring multiple sectors into the Separatist fold including a significant portion of the Corellian Run hyper lane.
Could this 'group' be the CIS? Or were they least backed by them?
I looked at her, "If you or your people pay, then you have my time for the next two days and potentially longer in other ways. I still have an appointment to keep and I'm not tying myself to whatever banner you have. I also have the condition that you keep my Jedi-ness to yourself."
"It'll be difficult to prove your worth if you don't at least mention it to the group, you're getting a lot of money. Saving my life only gets you in the door, Captain Mizal."
"If you can so easily offer me a contract like that and I can tell you're being truthful, then this little revolution of yours is not lacking in funds. It tells me you're somewhat short on the teeth to make it stick and to actually kick the Pyke Syndicate off this world."
"We can be accommodating on the minor details, captain, but we want value for our money," she said, twisting the controls to swing us around an annoyingly slow speeder.
"Very well, let's see what your leaders have to say."
Great, becoming an undercover merc was not how I imagined this trip. I just wanted some frakking pantoran clothes and now I was trying to stop or at least delay this powderkeg of a planet from blowing up.
Ulvy ended up flying us through the city in circles for a few hours before she was satisfied we weren't being followed.
Finally she stopped outside a sixty floor building in the south west quadrant of the city. On the outside it looked very imposing, almost monolithic. It had no windows whatsoever and the exterior looked quite dilapidated and hadn't seen a cleaning or repaint in decades. Other clues on the exterior started to give me the impression that this place had been the local's attempt at the idea of a megabuilding - a place where people lived, worked and shopped inside and would have very little need to leave.
I sensed a few thousand living beings inside, a small fraction of what it should've been able to hold.
"Here we are," she said, securing the speeder and switching off its engines. Then handed the remote key to me.
We hopped off and began climbing the extensive wide stairs that led up to the main entrance.
There were no doors or security perimeter, everything was wide open and people of every description and species were entering and leaving.
Inside was a gigantic multi floor lobby that looked like it had been converted into a bustling indoor market of sorts. It catered mostly food but there was the occasional stall that had electronics and mechanical components, even a very ramshackle droid shop.
The other thing that struck me was how little attention I was actually garnering walking around in underwear so brief that I might as well be not wearing them at all. Everyone was just keeping their heads down and going about their day. Even those who spotted me didn't bat an eye and it was only the occasional human or twi'lek who I sensed a reaction from, and even then it was the emotional equivalent of 'Oh, nice, anyway…' or they saw my guns and quickly went out of their way to avoid staring or attracting my attention.
Ulvy led the way to a bank of central elevators and we entered the middle one that was marked '40 - 60'. She tapped the controls, which failed to respond. She tapped again, still nothing, then smashed her fist on the panel.
It lit up and the doors closed, the car rocked a bit and began to rise.
I immediately became aware that we were being watched and my technometric senses registered a very subtle scan happening throughout the car.
It stopped on the 50th floor after a slow, groaning ascent. She tapped a few seemingly random buttons on the control pad.
The lift resumed its ascent.
It stopped again on the 55th.
The doors opened and I was faced with a wall of guns.
Said guns were wielded by an eclectic collection of people arrayed around the landing.
"Easy everyone, she's with me!" Ulvy rushed forward and raised her hands.
I had sensed no danger, but everyone in that firing line was tensely wound; anger and fear radiated from them all like small suns. Their fingers poised on the triggers of their blasters.
Then a voice spoke from behind them. "Passphrase!"
"Freedom comes only to those with the strength to seize it," said Ulvy.
There was a long pause.
"Stand down! Off you go gentle beings, thanks for the quick response."
The firing line lowered their weapons and they quickly dispersed down a variety of exits in the large reception type room the elevator opened up into.
The person ordering them around walked forward and smiled at Ulvy, before she rushed forward and embraced him tightly.
The feelings I was getting from both spoke volumes.
"You're alive, thank the Force. When we heard about the store and we couldn't find you…" He spoke with a voice deep in pain yet relief.
"Yes, thanks to her."
Ulvy's… lover, was a human male roughly a full head taller than me, and it seemed like he was in his mid to late forties. He had light coffee colored skin with short flowing hair that was decently styled and was showing no trace of baldness that usually came at that age. His nose was also quite prominent, but the high cheekboned facial structure evened it out. He was dressed in an outfit of patterned brown trousers and white shirt, with a partial robe flowing over both shoulders. His shoes, made of worn leather, had soles that were well worn with dust and wouldn't be an impediment to running.
All in all, I was looking at someone wealthy and had the air of a corporate businessman, but his all-terrain shoes and strong hands showed he wasn't afraid of work. His eyes and the Force, was telling me this was a hard man, who'd been tested and wouldn't hesitate in ordering people to their death.
If he'd been part of a faction fighting the Pykes for a long time then I could understand how such a man could be shaped.
He looked me up and down with an evaluating gaze.
"Then you have my thanks…" He trailed off invitingly, breaking his hug from Ulvy to face me properly.
"Captain Mizal, trader and bystander who was caught in the middle of a Syndicate hit squad trying to take out your… girlfriend," I said flatly.
"Well met, I'm Jaol Heidrer, the owner of Sarg's Fine Clothiers and other legitimate businesses here on Mon Gazza."
"I offered her the merc contract," Ulvy explained shortly.
"Really now Ulv?" he asked, giving her a skeptical eye.
"Those guns on her hips are not just for show, Jaol. She took out a double strength hit squad with sniper support and the back up during the speeder chase. She also sussed out they had a tracker on my speeder, then planted it on public transport. The Pykes should be in chaos trying to figure out what happened."
Jaol nodded, his eyebrows rising with astonishment and gave me another critical stare, his eyes dropping down to my hips briefly then back to my face.
He suddenly bowed his head slightly and said, "Vor entye, verd be Mando'ad." (Thank you, warrior of Mandalore.)
"Ni vorer," (You're welcome), I replied with a mild grin. "Well, that is surprising."
He shrugged modestly, "I'm a man of the galaxy and have business in the Mandalore sector on occasion. Those blasters are not just sold to anyone with the credits for them."
"Wait, wait, Jaol, how can she be a Mandalorian?" Ulvy was clearly baffled, the poor thing.
"Mandalorians are not just humans, Ulv, though the majority of them are."
"And you're a long way from the core worlds… Chandrilan?"
Jaol chuckled. "Correct, what gave it away?"
"Family name and you still roll your 'r's in their accent of Basic."
"I've tried so hard to get rid of that, but it just won't go away," he smiled ruefully. "Now that we've cleared the air somewhat, let's retire to a more comfortable setting and we can discuss the contract."
He led me straight to what could be the office of any high level exec in the galaxy. Despite his attempt to limit what I saw, I could tell that I had just walked into a combination of a safehouse and waystation. A number of the people I saw had fresh bruising and sores around their necks in a pattern that told me that they recently had slave collars removed. They felt relief and hope but fear was ever present. Everyone in this place had a variation of these emotions.
"Have a seat," he invited, gesturing to a tall high backed leather chair sitting on the other side of his desk.
It was a desk overflowing with datapads of every description, including flimsiplast organized in binders. Behind his own chair was an active large screen showing news feeds from what I recognized as mostly core world channels.
Sitting down sent a spike of cold across my back and butt from the leather, firmly reminding me of my state of dress. The interior of the megabuilding was on the slightly chilly side but at least this floor seemed to have some form of HVAC still going on.
"Sorry to bother, but you wouldn't happen to have a spare set of clothing here, Ulvy?"
The seamstress, who had about been ready to take her lover's lap as a seat, stopped dead and her eyes widened with the realization of someone who had forgotten something.
"Oh sorry, I have a few spare sets of my clothing here, but nothing that would fit you, captain."
"And given that this is a safehouse for slaves you've rescued-" I said pointedly.
"I had wondered about that," Jaol said delicately.
"Yeah, the hit squad caught us in the middle of a fitting session," she explained. "Again, this is a safehouse, we have food, spare beds. We generally have to make or acquire new clothes and do makeovers to change the identities of rescued slaves, but it's done on demand and varies too much for us to really keep stocks of anything like that here."
"I'll see that something is arranged as soon as possible, Captain Mizal," he said.
"Thank you."
"Now, let's talk business, shall we?
It was evening, and I was meditating in a small bedroom of the safehouse that had been given for my use. I couldn't use the traditional pose as it was somewhat of an obvious tell that I was a Jedi, so I was simply laid back on the small cot with my hands folded under my head. There was no surveillance camera I could sense in the room, which was either remarkably trusting of Jaol or he was simply testing me, as there definitely were cameras in the hallway outside the room.
Until my clothes arrived I had to stay off the streets as Jaol had received reports that the syndicate was scouring the city for Ulvy and myself. The primary descriptor of which would be, 'a practically naked togruta wearing only shoes and armed with dual blasters'.
It also gave me time to thoroughly check out every person assigned to the safehouse via the Force. Jaol had indicated that most of the security seen and unseen was focused on rooting out clawdite changelings, which the Pyke Syndicate was known to use on Mon Gazza. Given the level of security that was required to keep changelings out, it was amazing to think that there was a leak at all, but recent setbacks in their ops and the assassination attempt on his girlfriend was a big red flag.
I had so far surveyed a dozen people in detail with a combination of Farsight, checking their emotions and what they were busy doing in general in the safehouse but hadn't come up with anything suspicious.
"The Force can take us to the strangest places, make us experience things we never thought could happen. I must admit that this is rather unique in my own experience," Kina Ha said.
I cracked open an eye and sure enough, she was standing right at the foot of my bed, towering over me with an amused look on her kaminoan face.
"Did you never have to fight butt naked in the wars, master?"
"Generally, we would always have plenty of advanced warning of the enemy coming, surprise is a difficult thing to achieve when you have armies of Force sensitives fighting."
"Indeed, hang on…" I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at her. Something was off, she was there but some part of my senses was pointing out a discrepancy. "Anyway, how's the Twilight, master?"
"It's partly the reason I'm here. The ship itself is fine, but it's been locked down by tractor beams and the bay doors closed above it."
"Guess I left an impression on the dockmaster and then when the syndicate announced they're looking for a young, armed, female togruta, he was all too eager to volunteer the information."
"Correct, they attempted to force a boarding by bringing in a slicer, but he was completely unable to gain entry to the ship's systems. They next tried to physically cut into the hull at the embarkation ramp, but the automated defenses emerged and dispatched them all."
"My master has been making constant upgrades since we got her," I said with a satisfied grin.
"If he is responsible for such an impressive system, then I can honestly say I wish we had a Jedi like him with us during the Cold War," she mused. "No one can even show their face in the docking bay or any of the windows looking out over it. The turrets snipe them all. I am concerned, however, that they will simply open the bay doors again and blast the ship from a higher altitude."
"ECM kicks in at that point and the ship will sense the attempt, it'll begin overloading its reactors as a threatening gesture to discourage that. So unless the Pykes are willing to write off half the city and their own lives to just blow up a light freighter, that won't happen. If things get bad enough master, the main guns can traverse to destroy the tractor emitters and you can fly it out of there," I explained.
"Oh and how will I do that, seeing as I'm not there at the moment?"
I gave her a raised brow and grinned, "Your projection is almost flawless, Master Ha. There is one thing that you missed though."
She folded her large hands and looked at me with expectation, "Oh, and what is that?"
"I've recently had a lot of tutelage in countering Force Lightning and one thing that followed on from that was my perception of electrically charged particles in the air. In your case, they're going right through you… you're not displacing the air as a solid body would."
I used TK to propel one of my shoes abruptly, and it zipped through her 'image' with a slight flare of white.
"To be thwarted by a padawan," she said wryly. "I must be getting old at last. Now, let me hear everything."
I gave a quick summary of events and also included what Jaol and I had talked about in our 'contract' negotiations.
"He's part of an alliance of business interests here, who call themselves the Gazzan Chamber. Their stated goal is to kick the syndicate off the planet permanently and they use various means to do that, freeing slaves and getting them smuggled off-world is just one part of it, but it takes up the majority of their time."
"That is surprising, most businesses on worlds such as this would be firmly in bed with the Pykes," Master Ha pointed out.
"Well, they were for a long time, but the Pykes got greedy enough about fifteen years ago that the cost of doing business with them firmly turned the wheel of opinion against them among the business leaders. Initially, they did what most companies would, pull up and out. Until the syndicate saw the writing on the wall and decided to make an example of one of them. Apparently they blew up an entire bulk freighter in full view of the city with that businessman still on board. That is how the Chamber got formed."
"The local companies are in effect hostages."
I nodded, "By now the Chamber has a large network of safehouses and places out of which they muster and coordinate getting slaves freed. However, I think there's much more that they're doing behind the scenes. There has to be off-world backing and finance behind them as well."
"What leads you to that conclusion, padawan?"
"A vision from the Force, the level of tech and hardware they're using here and what it would truly require to not only kick the syndicate off Mon Gazza, but keep them from coming back. They're an interstellar crime organization with distributed assets and firepower to match."
Kina nodded and fell into a brief contemplation before saying one word, "Spice."
"Exactly, I have the strong suspicion that the Chamber is also getting their assets in place slowly and steadily, to wreck spice production on this world in a fashion that would make it non-economical to restart. That would mean destruction and collapse of all the mines. Combine this with a conventional revolution with the masses descending on all syndicate members, then they could do it."
"Even should everything go to plan, the Pykes will still be seeking retribution for such an act. Their reputation and standing will demand it."
"These businessmen are long term thinkers, judging by Jaol, which is why there has to be a larger player behind this. It could be the CIS, pulling Mon Gazza into their fold would bring multiple sectors of this part of the Outer Rim effectively under their control. The Republic will have to respond, especially since it threatens cutting off Kamino from the Corellian Run. Shipping will have to be rerouted through less economical routes."
"I see, padawan. Have you considered other potential suspects as the backers?"
"Yes… it could also be the hutts. If Mon Gazza's spice production was suddenly gone, Kessel would enjoy a sudden boom in market share and prices would also see a sharp increase due to lowered production volumes. The problem is that I doubt the hutts would care about the aftermath enough to secure Mon Gazza from the Pyke's potential retribution."
"It is a conundrum then. I suspect the truth will require some investigation. In the meantime, does this organization have any specific plans or operations they want you to perform?"
"Not as yet, we just mostly negotiated my contract. It felt rather disingenuous on my part."
Kina reached forward and patted my shoulder, somehow solidifying her projection now. "The perils of undercover work, padawan. Worry not, I think you may have just given me my calling for the immediate future, however."
I blinked as I processed her words. "You'd stay here and…"
"The people of this planet are in pain and need help. Their future is in doubt and peril. There can be no higher calling for a Jedi, than to be here and help them throw off these shackles. Here I can also be part of your network, be your eyes and should the need arise, a blade for you. I can also work with this Gazzan Chamber. If you seek further training, you simply need to come here."
I felt very conflicted but saw the advantages it could have. It'd keep her far away from Coruscant and while she was very recognizable, the kaminoans had re-entered the galactic scene since the start of the war. With her infiltration abilities she could only appear to people when she wanted or needed to be seen. She could become a literal boogeyman to the Pykes on this planet.
Just thinking of the shenanigans and damage an unleashed Kina Ha could do made me a bit giddy.
"Let's speak of how we're going to get the Twilight off the ground. You still have a senator to guard."
The next day I emerged from the building dressed in an outfit Ulvy had termed 'pantoran traveling casual'. It was a royal red blouse, long pants, boots, with a poncho hood combination as outerwear, with a duffel bag of three more outfits of various utility and occasion. It was very elegantly embroidered as befitting someone acting as a senatorial aide.
I hated it.
It was the only way I wouldn't be pegged as a togruta from a distance. Aiding my 'stealth' was a technique Master Ha had taught me. It was essentially what Obi-Wan in another timeline, would do to sneak around aboard the Death Star. It was the Force equivalent of a perception filter that acted in a certain radius around the user or an Alter Mind area of effect skill. It wasn't easy at all and required concentration and constant attention on the various minds in that radius, which was why I had to carefully judge where I was walking.
Too many people and I wouldn't be able to distort their perception enough.
The other limitation was that if I drew too much interest or if someone was searching for me too intently and had a strong mind, the effect would fail as well.
I arrived at the spot where I had parked the commandeered speeder yesterday to find nothing.
No surprise there.
I turned onto the street sidewalk and began a steady trek in the general direction of the spaceport.
It took roughly half an hour to get to the closest public transport stop that was actually being serviced by working shuttles.
I had been doing pretty well holding up the Perception Filter up until that point, but as I sat down in the crowded open top shuttle I immediately began running into problems.
Three minds were not being affected and if any of them looked directly at me, there would be nothing to stop them perceiving a hooded figure with obvious montrals hidden beneath that hood.
The first resistant mind belonged to an older twi'lek female, whose body and bearing reminded me of one of those typical grandmothers who had raised a bunch of kids and were now also helping raise her grandchildren. Ruling her brood with a velvet glove over an iron fist.
The second was a weathered, bald old man, dressed in a tank top, shorts and decent shoes. An outfit that he should've stopped wearing long ago. His attention was hyperfocused on a datapad that he furiously typing into with an intensity that looked like he was deep into a coding fugue.
The third was the most worrying. He didn't have the outright look and feel of a typical street ganger that worked for the syndicate. Tall, thin, in his thirties, missing a right lower leg that had been replaced with a crude but working cyberlimb. His arms were folded across his chest, obscuring a stained shirt that bore the signs of splattered cooking oil.
His attention was not on the exterior as most passengers on public transport, but rather he was carefully looking at each of his fellow passengers in turn, with an assessing gaze.
Now why would an apparent cook be so interested?
I pushed all my perceptions to him and even gazed into prescience.
Oh, great… just my luck to run into a people watcher and what made it worse, he was actually a genuinely good natured guy. In ten seconds he would see me and decide I was the most interesting thing on the shuttle and head over to the empty seat next to me to strike up a conversation. I just wanted to get to the spaceport without leaving a trail in anyone's memory!
Was that so much to ask?
Sure enough, his eyes alighted on me and I felt his mind perk with interest.
I really hated having to do this.
Just as he made his first step, my TK grabbed a hold of his artificial leg.
At that moment, his legs were tangled up and he face planted in a rather embarrassing way. The whole shuttle's attention was diverted and I pretended to also be startled at the event. A number of people laughed, girls giggled and a few men closest helped the cook back to his feet.
I was already on my feet as that happened and walking to the rear of the shuttle, standing by the rear doors as if I wanted to get off at the next stop.
Thankfully, that had worked. The embarrassed cook thanked his helpers and returned to his original seat after he saw me waiting at the door.
The shuttle stopped and I disembarked, resolving to make the rest of the journey on foot where I could better manage the attention being paid to me.
When I was a mere street away from the spaceport, I turned off into an alley.
It was about as pleasant as a gamorrean's backside; garbage skips overfilled with junk and rotting food from a nearby restaurant. The unpleasantness meant no one liked to be back here or even look at it and so I was relatively assured of some privacy.
Master Ha had given me a memory of her own journey through the spaceport and in so doing gave me a number of routes to use for infiltrating the place.
Naturally, the Pykes knew that Captain Mizal with her very deadly ship would want to get it back. So they had come out in force to turn the spaceport into Pyke central. Checking every person that went in and out thoroughly, searching through cargo vigorously. The various spice smugglers, most of whom were very nasty characters, were not taking the delays this incurred well. Tempers around the spaceport were very short and the entire place was a simmering pot of anger and resentment that was just waiting for the right event to make it all boil over.
I pushed my Farsight forward and reviewed the current state of the route I would have to take.
It wasn't bad, but could be better.
I mentally reviewed my own actions and the contingencies I had worked out with Master Ha.
For being a super tall kaminoan, she could probably write a thousand page manual on infiltration for a Jedi and still not come close to truly covering the subject properly. She made Anakin and I's efforts thus far in the war look rather amateurish in comparison.
Satisfied, I walked with just the right tempo of casualness out of the alley and straight for the checkpoint of three very bored Pyke gangers who were attending to the line of people trying to enter the spaceport.
I entered the queue and waited patiently.
They were doing a general visual search, pulling off the hoods of people if they were dressed as such and even using a hand sized scanner to look for weapon signatures. Almost everyone carried some form of blaster in the city, so that scanner was getting a workout.
When there were only five people ahead of me in the queue I pulled out a comlink and initiated a call.
It picked up after about five seconds and the small holo of the dockmaster appeared.
"Yes, hello?"
I didn't answer, as I was too busy getting a mental picture of his office and who was with him.
He was alone.
"Hello? Who is this? How- how- did you…"
He slumped out of his own comlink's pickup range, completely asleep.
I put away the link and looked up to my right, searching the street-facing side of the spaceport building.
Then found the two very bored minds overlooking the street, a sniper and his spotter.
It was a cakewalk to put Force Sleep on both.
The line moved on and the conversation of the three syndicate goons made me perk my montrals.
"How long are we doing this?" moaned goon number one.
"As long as we're told to, idiot," retorted goon two in irritation.
Goon three, who truly looked like he was an actual bouncer for a club somewhere on the planet, just grunted in annoyance that they were bickering.
"Have you heard what they're calling her?" asked goon one.
"Probably something stupid."
"Nope, it's actually pretty catchy, 'The Naked Gun'."
Goon two looked at his partner incredulously, "Seriously? That's the best they can come up with?"
"Hey, it's wizard."
"Uh-huh, for mindless simpletons it is. I'd rather go with 'The Togrutan Quick Gun' or 'Sly Eye'"
"That's dumb, it totally doesn't mention her most striking feature!"
It was at this point that I wished a hole would open up beneath me. The queue moved on and they continued this conversation arguing about what would be the best nickname for my undercover identity.
Finally it was my turn.
"Hood down," goon two ordered.
"All three of you don't need to see that."
"We don't need to see that," they chorused.
"Your scanner picked up no weapons."
"My scanner found no weapons," said goon one, waving his scanner at me.
"I can enter."
"You can enter."
I walked forward and with a few more steps was in the spaceport building.
In here, there were even more syndicate goons, as they clearly did not have much confidence that a mere checkpoint would be enough to discourage Captain Abehla 'The Naked Gun' Mizal.
I kept walking forward with casual confidence and slipped through the large entrance/exit lobby, using various people as moving cover to avoid the gazes and sightlines of the goons milling to and fro through the crowd.
I managed to fall in with a rather rough grouping of people heading down the adjoining corridor in the direction of my ship. Most were spice smugglers; they were armed with pistols, but some even carried rifles slung on their backs and they were very unhappy.
"This is ridiculous. I have clients that I'll have to give discounts to because of these delays! And all because these Pykies can't even kill some dancer and got their teeth kicked in by a togruta who doesn't even have fully grown horns yet!"
It's not horns you numbskull, I thought angrily.
Thankfully, my route needed me to break away from them and I turned into another corridor.
Here I had to short circuit a few visual sensors with the Force. It wouldn't do to get caught on camera, even though the dockmaster was in la-la land, their computer was recording and I couldn't take the chance that the Pykes had set up remote taps to feed back to their local HQs.
I crossed a corridor and had to pause in a doorway with my Perception Filter up to let a pair of goons walk on by.
The closer I got to Bay 93, the less people there were, but I didn't let that phase me and continued on.
I turned into the corridor that held the access door to the bay.
Facing me were eight syndicate members of various races. Two were manning a Repeater blaster on a tripod, whilst the other six all had a variety of nasty weapons, including a disruptor rifle.
If I was here as a Jedi I would either rip all their weapons out of their hands, throw a blanket Force Sleep and go to town on them with my lightsabers.
I was Captain Mizal at this moment, and while I could get away with a subtle Force Sleep here and there. This was different.
Luckily for me, Bay 93 was not the last one attached to this corridor. To get to 94 through 97, you also had to use this route. Therefore this wasn't a full on barricade, they had to let people through, so there was a gap and most of the goons were leaning against the walls.
I kept walking and my approach did serve to somewhat rouse them from boredom.
I fell under their critical gazes and I was hard pressed to keep my Alteration in their minds. I had to go bare bones on the illusion, and to their eyes, my hood was casting a deep shadow that obscured my features, even though the lighting in the corridor didn't really match. It was deeply odd to them, and as a result was very unnerving.
Nevertheless, I managed to keep doubt in their minds long enough that I walked past the Repeater and the goon with the disruptor.
Showtime.
I closed my eyes and from my duffle bag two flash grenades dropped.
Thank you Jaol.
Two muted thumps and a sizzling sound heralded the goons being blinded by seven megacandela of light.
They screamed and clawed at their eyes, flailing and in some cases even dropping their weapons.
My WESTARs were drawn and I fired left and right simultaneously, adjusted my aim, then fired four times, walking my fire over them.
I calmly walked to the doors and a brief test of the keypad showed they were locked shut.
I reached into the duffle and slapped a directional charge, set the timer for three seconds and stook a step back. I formed a TK shield around my head to stop the concussion from hitting my montrals in a nasty fashion.
The door blasted into pieces, the old and poor quality steel not up to resisting a modern explosive.
I pulled down my hood and entered the bay.
The Twilight's anti-personnel turrets swung immediately to target me but didn't fire.
A few moments later they swung away and instead began blasting into a number of overhead windows as the Pykes began reacting to my presence.
The walk to the embarkation ramp of the Twilight as it opened for me felt much longer than it should be.
I hated showboating and valued efficiency, but I needed to establish a rep for Captain Mizal.
My left WESTAR came up and I fired twice into a window that nailed a twi'lek goon that had tried to bring a grenade launcher to bear.
They were trying to overwhelm the Twilight's defense by flooding it with multiple targets, then trying to get a shot off at me.
Marginally clever. The problem was that it was technically a full droid level intelligence that managed the security systems. It could prioritize and only fired when it had a true shot.
I walked up the ramp and closed it behind me.
Now that I was out of sight, I used a full burst of speed to rush into the cockpit and begin the emergency startup sequence.
The bay doors above me were still closed.
Time to rectify that.
I tapped my comlink, "Master Ha?"
The thick doors whined on old motivator motors and split apart into four pieces, exposing the sky above.
I keyed up the Twilight's embedded droid intelligence, "Twilight, raise shields, destroy the tractor emitters."
"Affirmative, captain."
The main anti-fighter guns swiveled on their mounts and decisively fired four times in rapid succession, traversing to each tractor emitter in the bay. Muted explosions rumbled through the bay as the emitters shattered, releasing their energy in an uncontrolled fashion. Twilight's shields didn't even blip resisting it.
"Tractor systems destroyed, captain."
"Thank you."
I pulled on the yoke and throttle.
The Twilight rose out of the bay and into the sky.
I did a quick scan for any sign of those Firesprays and found only open sky.
"Master Ha, thank you. I have a clear ascent."
I pushed forward on the throttle and rocketed into the air, rapidly gaining altitude.
"You're welcome, padawan. The pilots of the Firesprays are enjoying a rather long rest. You should have no further problems. Don't delay, they might scramble more from other parts of the planet."
"I won't, master."
"I'll be in touch soon, padawan. Good luck. May the Force be with you."
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