796. The Rough Exchange

"I can't tell if you're listening to me or not with your damn helmet on," Rhox Vegha said to the armor clad figure sitting next to her in the cockpit of the air speeder. At one time, the craft would have been considered the ultimate in luxury speeders, but that time was a couple centuries past. Now, it needed a paint job and an engine overhaul, not to mention a complete renovation of the interior. The last time that had happened was probably more than twenty years ago, by the looks of things. Still, it afforded the privacy that people of their passengers status was required without giving the appearance of opulence which was unbecoming of any monk, no matter which order they belonged to.

"I'm listening," Dianna Kingsdoom's muffled and distorted voice said through the vocabulator of the helmet. It was weird hearing her own voice sound like that, but Trychon and Raezyr had insisted on disguising her voice on the off chance it might be recognized.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but you told me you were going to avoid getting back together with that Sith, and take it slow if you did, didn't you? Or was I dreaming that conversation?" Rhox chided.

"Yes. That's what I said," Dianna said, turning away from Rhox and pretending to look out the window.

"Well, seeing you come out of Raez's sleeping quarters this morning kinda throws all that out the window, doesn't it?"

"First of all, we slept. That's it," Dianna said. "Second, he caught me off guard. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to try this armor on, make sure it fit. I wasn't expecting to see him in the middle of the night... at least..." she paused, remembering how Raezyr had looked; disheveled hair, shirt off, that wry smile off his. "At least not like that."

"Whatever," Rhox said curtly.

"I'm sorry, Rhox. I can't help it when I'm around him. You know that."

"I do know that," the dark haired woman responded in exasperation. "You know I only have your best interests at heart, and it's not just you I'm thinking of."

"I know... I know," she said, and even though a helmet and disguised voice, she could hear her friend's smile. "I promise I'm going to take things slow. I haven't forgotten about all the changes he's caused in my life... the good or the bad."

"I guess that'll have to do," Rhox said, turning her attention to the upcoming landing.

795. The Rough Exchange

"So tell me again who we're looking for," Trychon said after the issue of disguises were settled. It was usual for most monks of S'pann to travel with a body guard so it had been decided that Dianna Kingsdoom would don a suit of Eriadu armor and play that role, while Rhox Vegha would pretend to be hired aircar driver and wait outside. If things went badly she could either come in as reinforcement, rescue, or just play the role of get away driver. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

"The being our trail led us to was a Weequay named Que-do Ulvik, but other than the fact he belongs to the Exchange organization, we have no information about him," Dianna Kingsdoom informed them. "We suspect, although we've never been able to confirm, that Ulvik is on Orbital Station at Telos IV."

For the next few hours they hashed out some more details of their plan, then finally decided to turn in. Raezyr lay in his bunk, unable to sleep yet unable to pin point a particular reason why. After a couple of hours, he got up pulled on a pair of sleep trousers and went out to the main room to get something to drink.

As he entered the room, he noticed Di across the room, her back to him. She hadn't heard him. Instead, she continued to strap on the Eriadu armor she was supposed to wear the following day, adjusting various straps and ensuring a snug fit.

Raezyr grabbed a drink canister and walked across the room toward the fiery haired woman. "Something about a woman in armor," he commented quietly. She turned and looked him in the eyes.

"I wanted to make sure it fit properly," she said. "Help me adjust this strap, will you?" she asked, indicating a strap by her waist.

He walked over and connected the strap, making sure the fit was snug. He then put his hands on her hips and drew her to him, pressing his lips to hers. She tried to pull back. She put her hands against him to push away, but he held her tight. Slowly he felt her resolve melt as she gave herself to him, her hands beginning to run over his muscled chest.

Long moments passed as they drank each other in. Slowly Raezyr's hands began to disconnect her armor, and finally she pulled back. "Raez... no."

He wrapped his hands around her waist once more and pulled her close. She didn't try to fight. She didn't want to fight. She told him so even as she turned her head away. "Raez, you don't know how badly I want this... but I can't right now. There are things..."

"None of that matters," the big Sith interrupted, caressing her chin and turning her eyes back to his. "All that's happened is the past. Your past, my past, it's nothing. What matters is that you and I are here, together. I've become even more powerful than you can imagine, and I promise you this: Nothing will come between us. I won't let it. And I won't let you go again... Ever."

He looked into her eyes, and through the Force he felt her relief and... something else. Was that a flash of fear? He told himself he was mistaken as he lost himself in her.

794. The Rough Exchange

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.”

793. The Rough Exchange

Rhox Vegha pulled the massive cargo speeder truck up to the darkened warehouse storage facility and waited for the receiving doors to open after punching in the security code. Slowly, the massive doors groaned open and she pulled the vehicle into the opening. She had the brief sensation of what a Torrolian sardine must feel like when it's being swallowed by a kruk whale as she passed through the doors which were large enough to admit even a large space freighter.

Inside the warehouse itself her an even more insignificant feeling as the ceiling was about 500 meters above her... and this was just the ground floor. The height of the building itself didn't surprise her as many of the buildings on Nar Shaddaa were just as tall, if not taller. The difference was that most of the other buildings weren't designed to have cargo ships pull inside and unload their freight.

All over were individual storage units, some with regular sized doors, others with doors large enough to pull a speeder inside, but she maneuvered her vehicle on past them all, pulling up to and onto a large elevator platform which, after yellow warning beacons began flashing, started to rise into the air, taking them up to the third floor.

Despite it being after hours, there she noticed there was actually people loading or unloading plasteel crates or duroplast bins from individual storage lockers, but on the entire first floor, she estimated there weren't more than four, beings. Probably quite busy for this time of day, but not abnormal given the size of the facility.

When the elevator finally stopped moving, she noticed the third floor was much more normal sized, and while you couldn't fly a ship down the corridors, her large cargo speeder still maneuvered easily. She counted the numbers on the doors, stopping at eleven thirty-eight.

Rhox hopped out and ran around to the back doors of the vehicle and, after a quick look around, opened them.

A man jumped down to the ground and Rhox barely scrambled out of his way. "Watch where you're going, Sith Lord," she said sarcastically to Trychon, clearly annoyed as she reached her hand up to help Dianna Kingsdoom down.

Trychon ignored her and walked over to the doors on the storage unit, punched in a code, then held his hand up to door for a minute.

Dianna watched Trychon for a moment, then turned to Raezyr, who had jumped out and stepped up beside her. "I don't know why you would risk us being seen like this. Why not just let Rhox open the door?"

"See him holding his hand there?" Raezyr noted. "That's not just for fun. There's a mechanism on the other side that can only be deactivated manually. Which means unless a Force user, who knows the device is there, deactivates it before the door is opened, we'd have all been blown to pieces," he explained. "Besides, there's really no danger of being seen. We own the building and none of the storage units on this level are rented out."

Rhox opened her mouth to comment, but before she could, the storage unit doors began to creak open. Dianna was glad for it too, as she was sure there was some sort of wise crack about to leak from her friend's mouth.

Trychon hit the light switch and the glow rods flickered on, revealing what appeared to be a fairly comfortable living space, combined with some sort of technical center, one wall being lined with computers, the other lined with racks of all manner of weaponry. Scattered about were tables and couches and along the back was a kitchen area with a door placed awkwardly in the middle.

"Where's that door lead?" Rhox asked, unloading some gear from the truck.

"Bunks. Refresher," Trychon called over his shoulder as he began flicking switches, powering up the electronics. He paused, turned to the two ladies and grinned. "Welcome to our Nar Shaddaa base of operations."

792. The Rough Exchange

The shuddering of the small cargo ship brought Raezyr out of his reverie. "What's the problem?" he asked Dianna, trying to look past her to see the ship's readout screen.

"Looks like a hyper stabilizer has broken loose. Can you see if you can go lock it down?" she replied, trying not to sound like it was a big deal, when in fact it was a pretty big deal. If the stabilizer wasn't fixed it could draw them off course while still in hyperspace and who knows where they'd come out. Worst case scenario, it would break completely and drop them out of hyperspace in interstellar space, requiring weeks or even months to get to the nearest system, which may or may not even be inhabited.

Trychon appeared as if he were annoyed by the vibrations, his nose still in his tome, and Rhox looked as if she might try to follow, but Raezyr didn't wait. He shot down the cramped corridor as quickly as he could, nearly smacking his head on two or three bulkheads as he ducked through hatchways.

Finally he entered the cramped engine compartment and flung open the hatch which held the hyperdrive. Immediately he spotted the problem. A box of tools which Daxter had been told to load for them, had apparently been set on top of the hyperdrive engine itself and had some how vibrated off, dumping the tools everywhere and dislodging the hyperstabilizer in the process. Wordlessly cursing the accident prone rodent they had picked up on Tatooine, the Sith carefully dislodged the hydrospanner and reconnected the hyper stabilizer.

He stepped over to the com panel on the wall and hit the switch which buzzed the cockpit. "Did that do it?"
Rhox Vegha's voice, distorted by the ancient comm system, answered him. "Yeah. We're fine now."

He glared at the box on the wall, wondering if a comment about Rhox's lack of appreciation was in order, but decided it wasn't worth it, instead turning his irritation at the tools spread all over the engine compartment deck, then marched over to the starboard side cargo hold and opened the hatch. Inside, staring at a data pad was Raezyr and Trychon's black armored apprentice, Invictus. The only signs of acknowledgement were the data pad lowering slightly and the helmed head raising, turning it's black glassed face screen toward the Sith Lord.

"Daxter made a mess in the engine compartment. I want you to clean it up," Raezyr instructed.

The helmet of the figure inside the omnipresent armor nodded in reluctant acquiescence to his master, then moved past the Sith Lord and down the corridor toward his new task. Raezyr watched him go for a moment. Once, the apprentice had held great promise but had become too hungry for power, attempting to wrest that power from his two masters as all Sith apprentices are expected to do.

The problem was that his attempt had failed, and his failure had left him scarred and broken. Raezyr had been ready to finish him, a fitting punishment his own weakness and failure, but Trychon stayed his brothers hand. The elder brother was loathe to toss away useful tools, and while they both recognized that Invictus would never become the heir to their power they had once hoped for, Trychon had seen that their apprentice might still be useful in carrying out their bidding.

Raezyr hoped he was right, because so far Invictus hadn't done much except cost them a lot of credits for in customized cybernetic limbs and physical rehabilitation.