Within moments, the cargo speeder was safely secured in a nearby storage locker while the four humans and cyborg were safely inside as well, with their makeshift headquarters fully operational. Trychon sat in the 'command chair' at the main console, inspecting the data scrolling across the numerous screens while Darth Invictus scanned the security feeds, ensuring no one would pay them a surprise visit. Not that they really expected anyone to do so.
"And just how secure are we here?" Rhox Vegha asked Raezyr as they checked the racks of supplies to ensure whatever they might need was already on hand. "How do you know the owners of the building don't know about this place?"
Raezyr paused for a moment and gave Rhox a bored look. "The owners do know about this place."
The dark haired woman's jaw dropped. "How do you know they won't rat you out to the Exchange, or worse, the Hutts?"
The big Sith rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Because the owners are us," he replied as if talking to a small child and indicated Trychon and himself. "And now that we're finally done taking inventory, how about we all sit down and go over everything one more time? Unless of course you feel like raising more concerns that have been taken care of long before you waltzed back into our lives? No?"
Rhox glared at him and plopped down into a chair at the long table in the center of the room. "Oh how I missed your sunny disposition."
"And I, your trusting supportiveness," Raezyr retorted, sitting down opposite.
"Guys!" Dianna said, sitting down at the end of the table, between the two. "Let's focus on what we are here to do," she admonished. "Now, as we told you back on Den Var, someone made multiple in-roads on our private lives. At first, we thought it was an isolated incident, locally related, but then the next attempt was made, and we were unable to trace that one to it's source. We were never able to even find out who had been snooping around our home and businesses. The third attempt, however, was and attack on our lives. We got lucking in that we were able to trace the assassin, but the trail ran cold after it lead to Nar Shaddaa and The Exchange. After being out of the business for so long, our contacts were either dead, unable to be located, or out of the business themselves."
"At that point, we had a choice to make," Rhox said, picking up where Dianna had left off. "We could either go back home, hope whomever it is stops sending people, hope that next time the assassin didn't get lucky, or..." the dark haired woman trailed off, looking over at the red head to continue.
"Or we reach out for help," she said. "Raez, we knew you probably still had connections, at the very least. We couldn't live our lives in fear anymore."
For the next hour, Rhox Vegha and Dianna Kingsdoom laid out the trail they had followed to the point it had gone cold. Dead ended, rather. The Exchange was an intergalactic crime organization that had been insurmountable for many people, including planetary governments and the Galactic Republic itself, let alone two single individuals. It was no surprise they had reached out to the only help they had available.
“Norg,” Trychon finally said aloud, still working on the computer consoles.
Rhox and Dianna looked over at him for an explanation. When it became apparent that one wasn’t coming, they looked back to Raezyr.
“What is a Norg?” the red haired woman asked of the big Sith.
“Norg isn’t a ‘what’, it’s a ‘who,’” he said. “Norg is a Chiss we had some business dealings with a few years ago, but he’s not going to be receptive to just handing over information, even if we do pay him well.”
Trychon got up and grabbed a box from the shelf then walked to the table. “That’s why we use these,” he said, dumping the contents out in front of the other three.
Dianna picked up one of the two red robes which had fallen out. “What are these?”
Rhox grabbed the other one. “These look like the robes belonging to the Monks from the planet S’spann,” she said. “They’re sort of famous for taking knowledge gathering expeditions all across the galaxy. They usually travel in pairs, each with their own body guard. Mostly they’re harmless, but like to have protection anyway. I still don’t understand how these are going to help us.
Trychon looked at the rest of them. “Don’t you get it? Nobody expects the S’spannish Expedition.”
No comments:
Post a Comment