Alderaan – A New Approach As Karr sat in a cell in a sub-level of the prison, his mind raced. There was entirely too much security here. He should have been taken to a drunk tank, not a high-security prison. Only one reasonable explanation: Karr’s detainment here was planned. This revelation in itself brought forth a host of possibilities, but one in particular was immensely unsettling: There was new player on the board, and they not only knew about him, but had a vested interest in keeping Karr from accomplishing his mission. This means that this new player was someone who knew about Karr’s mission, which meant someone close to the Senator. They also have an interest in keeping Karr from retrieving the plans, which meant that they were getting a cut of the profits, which explains how the plans were stolen so easily in the first place. The answer was obviously an insider, but who? Not the Senator; he invested too much of his own personal fortune into the Safety Net, he would never be able to make enough from it’s sale to make it worth his while. Not Nason; if he wanted the sale to go through, he never would have hired someone with even slimmest chance to actually retrieve the plans. Not family; they would personally have more to gain from the Safety Net’s success than it’s theft. That means inner circle. One of the top two or three most trusted agents of the Senator. Someone who had access to the plans, but doesn’t stand to make a profit from it’s implementation. Karr could do no more to discern the identity of the traitor while in this cell. Regardless, there was nothing he could do except carry on with his mission. The traitor would be dealt with in time. For now was the question of how long it would take Firias to get him out. There was easily ten times more security than Karr estimated during his initial assessment, but Firias was making great strides in learning to think outside the box. Karr initially estimated two days in confinement, but with the increased security, he revised his initial estimate to two and a half days before Firias would break him out. There were no clocks that he could see, but based on the rotation of the guards and his own internal clock, Karr estimated that he been incarcerated for a little over two and half- *BANG* A series of short screams. ...days. The blast door to the cell block opened and a tall shadowy figure walked through the haze of a smoke bomb. Firias came to stand before the door of Karr’s cell. His hand still resting on his chin, Karr glanced at Firias. “Well it’s about time isn’t it?” says Karr nonchalantly. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two days later, and Karr was driving a “borrowed” speeder to a house far removed from the city. After some friendly banter with Firias on the way out of the prison, Karr had checked his datapad to find that Raynor had actually landed the day after he was locked up. Figures. But now, Firias had once again gone off on his own unknowable business, while Karr drove to Malcolm Raynor’s private residence to attempt to recruit a pilot. Raynor’s house was set in a very idyllic setting. Open fields of green with mountains in the distance and crisp, fresh air carried by a pleasant breeze. Karr suddenly thought that he might perhaps have difficulty recruiting Raynor for no greater reason than that even he would have found it difficult to abandon such a beautiful landscape to charge into certain danger. Regardless, Karr’s team needed a pilot, so he had to try. The house itself was very open, with no doors or shutters that Karr could see. Interesting design choice, he thought. Karr got out of the speeder and walked to the house, then knocked loudly on the wall. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As Karr drove back to the starport to meet with Firias, the vacancy of the passenger’s seat of the speeder only served to haunt him. Raynor had all the qualifications and experience that would have made him ideal for this mission. Although Raynor had been grateful for Karr’s assistance in steering Neeska the Hutt’s goons away from his trail, he was understandably hesitant about not only revealing himself so soon, but doing so for the sake of what was practically a suicide mission. Karr couldn’t begrudge him his choice. Were their situations reversed, Karr probably would have said the same thing. The open top of the speeder allowed the crisp, clean Alderaan air to rush by, helping to clear Karr’s head as he analyzed the situation. The plans for the Safety Net were stolen almost two months ago. Assuming a week for the thief to deliver the plans, two to three weeks to reprogram the Safety Net to produce war droids, depending on the quality of the slicer, another two to three days to error check the new programming, another week to run test programs, and at least a month to perform the initial testing required to ensure the ‘War Net’ will work properly before it goes up for sale, and the time table for retrieving the plans before they were sold was rapidly running out. By now the final testing would already be well underway, and once it was completed potential buyers would be contacted, bidding wars would take place, and arrangements for delivery would have to be made. By Karr’s estimates, he had three weeks at worst, and a month at best, in order to assemble the rest of him team and retrieve the plans before they changed hands. They had to retrieve the plans before the buyer had a chance to activate the War Net. Once the War Net was activated, and the first batch of self-replicating droids were produced, it would be almost impossible to stop. There was also the matter of the traitor to deal with. Time was running out, and Karr needed a new approach. Karr pulled into a garage in the capital city of Alderaan and abandoned the speeder. He made his way to a cantina next to the starport were Firias’ ship was docked. He pulled out his datapad and pulled up his list of potential recruits, now painfully thin. Karr didn’t have the luxury of time to continue meeting with each recruit one at a time. He assessed his options. At minimum, he would need a dedicated pilot and a slicer in order to retrieve the plans. Raynor’s rejection had exhausted his primary list of pilots, so Karr brought up his back-up list. There were only four pilots to choose from before Karr would have to revisit his profiles and take another look at the pilots that he had previously disregarded. Karr looked at the short list of names: Jack Harkness, Antarys Vane, Drake Rhazinkarias, and Richard Nightson. According to the data profiles, Vane and Nightson were fortunately both located on Tython, so he would start there. Of greater concern, however, was finding a hacker. Slicers were, by nature, not given to working well with others. Most of them had an almost fanatic loyalty to their personal agendas; destroying the ‘oppressive’ government, distributing secrets and information, humbling and embarrassing the famous or wealthy, proving their own electronic superiority, or sowing anarchy just for the sheer entertainment. In all his research, Karr had only encountered two possible candidates: Allast Prime and a slicer known only as ‘Argent Knight’. Allast Prime was last known to be on Ord Mantell, which was closer to Tython than Argent Knight’s last known location. Karr considered his options and found them to be terribly short. He decided that he would have to risk a gamble. He placed his trust Firias’s ability to reason. Karr would venture to Tython to speak with the pilots, and he would have Firias go to Ord Mantell and try to find and persuade the slicer. Karr was naturally concerned about sending Firias to negotiate, but Firias was developing his capacity for subtlety at an incredible rate, and, what’s more, Karr sensed a deeper change occurring within the Sith. Karr knew that Firias had come to view Karr as a mentor, if not a friend, so Karr would extend a hand. He would place his trust in Firias. His broad plan in place, Karr returned to Firias’s ship to work out the details.