Boqo stood at the top of the ramp and waved Delni up it. “Come on! Come on! It’s rude to keep Mr.Graeff waiting, the pays good but he’s come to expect a certain standard of work.” Before Delni was even up the ramp Boqo turned back into the craft and walked back in it, as Delni no doubt climbed the ramp he re-appeared shoving some blaster resistant clothing into her hands before disappearing again. When he re-appeared this time he carried a holo tablet, again thrusting it at her before turning to the turbolift to take them to the cockpit. When Delni arrived in the cockpit Boqos hands had already expertly glided over the controls of his vessel, running the pre-flight procedures.
“So we’re going to Nar Shadda, you’re going to do some slicing. Then once we’re finished slicing we’re going to return with the information back here, sounds easy right?” He chuckled slightly. “It should be but it probably won’t be. So how’d you land this gig?”
Although she, in theory, knew what she had been signing up for, it was still something of a shock for her to suddenly be thrusting herself into mercenary work. This pilot certainly seemed to be in a hurry, which made sense, and seemed to expect that Delni already knew what she was doing. The best she could do was to act like she did and hope she was not as far off from the reality of it as she feared. She did not even know why he had forced a new set of clothes into her arms, but she did not question it and found a place to change into them before he returned. She was glad that they were quite a bit more modest than the clothes she had borrowed from Elias.
In the cockpit, Delni mostly just stayed out of the man’s way until he finally addressed her directly. “Oh, well, guess you could say it was a...recommendation. My sister earned some trust from her recent job for Koren, and she recommended me for this one.” She explained. It was a simplification of the situation that left out
exactly how Sirka felt about her taking jobs like this, but she figured that the pilot was not looking for her life story.
“Ahhh, the old. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Boqo pulled a lever flinging the ship into hyperspace, before leaning back in his chair. “So the jobs pretty simple, there’s a small ex-Imperial mercenary gang that the boss thinks has ties to the Pruidii Verda. The boss isn’t a fan of there being things he doesn’t know, and this group is a threat to everything he has planned. They’re infiltration specialists, they can effectively destabilise a small government in a week before anyone knows what happens. This isn’t a group that can go unchecked, as such the boss wants all the information he can get on them. Even the cards a little bit.”
Delni found the nearest seat to her as the pilot was explaining the job. It did sound dangerous, or at least, this Pruidii Verda sounded dangerous. As long as they were not going anywhere near them on this job, she supposed it would not matter. “Dangerous infiltration specialists? Well, they sound like people who would have actual good security on their computer systems, though I suppose that’s why we’re not going after them directly. I’ve never known smaller groups like these ex-Imperials to be very security-savvy. Especially on Nar Shaddaa. Usually, they focus a lot more on their ability to shoot things, and just put whoever they have who happens to have worked the most with computer systems before in charge of maintaining it. I remember, back when I worked in that field, that I was usually hired to help fix things
after something had gone horribly wrong.”
Boqo shrugged. “That’s why you’re going in to assist, if this was surgery consider yourself the nurse assisting the doctor who does all the heavy lifting. In terms of security, we’ll be alright. We’re not going near their base of operations, because we frankly don’t know where their base of operations is. That’s what we’re trying to find out, the best we know is that they are based out of their old spaceship.” Boqo leaned back from the controls and clapped his hands. “Well I’m going to get some shut eye before we get there, feel free to help yourself to a bunk.” With that Boqo stood up and walked towards the lift. “You got anything you want to ask before I get some shut-eye?”
Delni shook her head. “No, I think I’ll be fine. It all seems pretty straightforward. I don’t know if I’m tired enough to sleep, but I might just lay down for a while on the way. I’ll see you when we get there.” She replied. Of course, since the bunks were not in the cockpit, Delni ended up, somewhat awkwardly, taking the very same lift down with him in silence before they finally parted for the journey.
The ship dropped out of hyperspace in orbit of the chaos induced Nar Shadda. Boqo sat in the cockpit and pinged Delni to come up at her earliest convenience. Boqo swung the ship down into atmosphere, cutting through the stratosphere as it headed towards the spaceport. Landing it’s legs extended and it touched down gently. Boqo then escorted Delni to the ramp. At the bottom of which stood a Givin escorted by two commando droids. He nodded his head slightly in a graceful manner. "Greetings. In the equation A = (π/1012 × 16,072)(R×R)(E∞)², can you tell me what the value of A is?”. The Givin didn’t truly expect the correct response, he had lived among non-Givin long enough to understand that not everyone conversed in the way of complex mathematical equations.
Delni was surprised enough by the sudden question from the strange, almost skeleton-like being that she did not even stop to consider why he would be asking such a thing. Fortunately for her, Boqo handled the greeting quickly, as they needed to get on their way as soon as possible. She was going to be slicing into the computer systems of an ex-Imperial mercenary gang for any information they had on this “Pruidii Verda”. It required them to get close to the gang’s outpost, but fortunately, Koren’s people had already done enough scouting to find the ideal spot for Delni to do her work. As with most places on Nar Shaddaa, the mercenaries’ base was in an old building of questionable construction, cramped close together with spaces owned by many other people. It just so happened that the mercenaries’ base was on the same physical network as a droid repair shop on a lower floor of the same building, with their computer systems being separated only by software blockers. It was a huge security flaw for the mercenaries, but one that Delni had seen plenty of times on Nar Shadda. She guessed that, at some point, someone had owned both spaces and never bothered separating the networks before selling them. In any case, it was an opening for Delni to be able to slice in. The shop owner had already been paid off to allow it. If all went to plan, they would be in and out without notice.
Nar Shaddaa
One Hour Later
“This is
nothing like the plan! Nothing like what you said! It was supposed to be safe, supposed to be...not like this!” Delni shouted in a panic, holding her hands to her ears reflexively after a frighteningly loud shot from some kind of weapon outside. She was in the droid repair shop, crouched down by the electrical panel she and the Givin had been working on since they arrived. At first, everything had seemed fine. The shop owner had been perfectly cooperative from the moment they had identified themselves. He had even taken the liberty of exposing the panel for them before they arrived. Now, he had locked himself in one of the back rooms of his shop, fearing for his life. Just like Delni was.
Boqo, kneeling down beside Delni, put a firm hand on her shoulder and spoke quietly, but seriously. “I know, I know, but quiet down, would you? They haven’t noticed us yet, and if we stay hidden, we might just stay out of this.”
Outside the shop was like a warzone, even before the bombing that practically took down a nearby building. There was some kind of fight going on in the wide alleyway just outside the windows of the shop. She had only caught glimpses of those involved, but this did not look like the average gang fight. Now, she could swear she could even hear TIEs overhead, and she just wanted to be anywhere else aside from where she currently was. Unfortunately, leaving the shop would just so happen to put them right into the line of fire.
Gurkenkrater
Cath
StarfrostedFox
Not a Sayan
Raqueltrper
Love Dove