Conspiracies

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 21



In truth, Navet hadn’t really had an option—once the job of killing the Twin Hutts had been offered to him, rejection guaranteed death. No way Kusk the Hutt was going to just allow him to walk out of there uncommitted to the task yet knowing Kusk’s full intentions to kill Feer and Jagar.

The details were rather intricate. The Twin Hutts had an estate on Denon, but no one seemed to know exactly where on Denon, and that was a problem. Navet had never been to Denon, but he knew it was an ecumenopolis; a world whose entire surface was covered with a single worldwide city. He’d heard that it resembled Coruscant a great deal, only with the architecture having a slightly greater emphasis towards Twi’leki design rather than Human. Denon was technically part of the Core Worlds, but just far enough away to be considered a part of the Colonies and/or Inner Rim.

Feer and Jagar were currently running a rather complicated credit scam involving hotels: hotels had traditionally been favorite targets of slicers and those keen on defrauding. A study released this year by CruxLabs, a part of the data-security consulting company TrustNet, found that 39 percent of the credit card slicing cases last year involved the hotel industry. The sector was well ahead of the financial services industry (19 percent), retailing (14.2 percent), and restaurants and bars (13 percent).

Why hotels? Well, to paraphrase the great bank robber X’ton La’barra, slicers hit hotels because that was where the richest vein of personal credit card data was. At hotels with inadequate data security, the greatest amount of credit card information can be obtained using the most simplified methods. Honestly, it just didn’t require brilliance on the part of the slicer. Most of the chronic security breaches in the hotel industry were the result of a failure to equip, or to properly store or transmit, this kind of data, and that started with the point-of-sale credit card or datachip swiping systems.

Navet had known a few slicers in his day. He knew that the sophistication of such systems could vary widely from one hotel to the next, even within the same corporate chain, making it an easy route for slicers. Overall, organizations large and small were found to be moving forward with plans to implement new technology, while leaving basic security threats overlooked.

It didn’t hurt that the Besadii kajidic had private contractors working for them within such fields as corporate security, which gave them an inside look to the methods that were employed to find them—in this way, the Hutts read from their opponents’ playbook daily, and just went the other way. Red had said that Kusk’s own connections had informed him that the time was ripe, but that the Twin Hutts, his and every other Hutt’s despised rivals, were ahead of the game.

One of their informants, who they left nameless in the discussions, worked with hotels to improve security technology, and said that as the industry hit tough economic times and hotel owners cut spending, security upgrades sometimes lagged. Proper technology security required purchasing not only of software and hardware, firewalls and encryption programs, but training staff and constantly monitoring of transactions and data access. In short, the hotel business just couldn’t keep up, not in these economic times.

It often took months for these attacks to be discovered by hotels — and by customers who were on the road frequently and not monitoring card activity reports carefully enough. Fraud experts knew that slicers often stole personal data and made multiple small charges to validate a card, probe its vulnerability, and test the vigilance of a cardholder before making bigger charges.

Feer and Jagar the Hutts had apparently cornered the market on this scam, at least on Denon where they made their home. Denon was a bit more ripe for the plucking than most other city-planets, and the Twin Hutts had moved in some three years ago to set up shop, getting away from the rest of their species, allowing those that despised them to have Hutt Space all to their lonesome.

But many active leaders in the Hutt Cartels were not satisfied with having the Twin Hutts making a profit anywhere. They had to be stopped, if for no other reason than to not allow someone they had mocked and despised for so long to eventually rise above them—it was the bully’s worst nightmare, seeing an old victim move to new heights, become successful, and, possibly (the worst thing of all for a bully), to be forgotten. The Twin Hutts were showing real promise to open and expand their own consortium, their Andoba clan.

“Kusk here feels they are getting too cocky,” Red had said before she dismissed Navet. “Their activities might make them wealthy enough to someday return to Hutt Space, make of themselves a nuisance. He would like that never to happen. Are ya up to it, Odd Job?”

Navet had only pretended to mull it over for a few seconds. But it was only a momentary ruse. Of course he intended to take the job. “I’ll do it,” he had said. “But it could take some time. From what I understand, they could be anywhere on Denon. Literally, anywhere.” He blew out a few smoke rings, and then chewed on the end of his cigarra. “The Undercity there…it’s about as bad as Coruscant’s. Convoluted, without structure or clear design, a real mess. A maze with no end, just one terrible neighborhood after the other. Nothin’ but landspeeders down there, an’ typically junker speeder bikes. No quick shuttles to any one place. I can’t just keep goin’ up an’ down, up an’ down, an’ all throughout those levels, from the surface back to the Undercity an’ back again to the surface, lookin’ around an’ askin’, hopin’ someone will just be kind enough to surrender the whereabouts of the most powerful syndicate leaders on Denon—Feer and Jagar have kept that information close for a reason. They know that some people want them…neutralized.” He had glanced at Kusk, but the Hutt had not flinched, or even blinked.

“We have someone who can help with that,” Red had said.

“Really? You have someone on the inside willin’ to fork that info over for a price?”

Red glanced at Kusk, who gave an assent with merely a look. “Not exactly on the inside,” Red said, and shrugged. “But someone who is quite familiar with their practices. They’ve done a lot of work for the Twin Hutts, managed their accounts, and even been the mastermind behind quite a few of these slicer scams.”

“Oh, yeah?” Navet took a toke of his cigarra. “That sounds promising. Who is this slicer? Gotta a name or a handle I can work with?”

Again, Red checked with her boss before she relinquished the information. “Have you ever heard of Ruse, Odd Job?”

He paused. The smoke in front of his face obscured his vision for a moment, and he wondered if he saw a subtle small split Kusk’s huge face. Navet looked between Red and the Hutt. He said, “Sithspit…that’s a myth.”

Red smirked. “Is it?”


* * *


The Bando Gora crime syndicate was in splinters—three major factions had splintered off: the Gracens, the Ballazes, and the Nunsas. The Gracens had sent Navet Hrn to infiltrate Kusk’s little portion of the Besadii kajidic to see if their primary rivals, the Ballaz faction, had plans to seriously merge with Kusk, perhaps back a play Kusk had in mind for overthrowing his uncle, Aroppa, for control of the crime family. So far, in order to gain trust with Kusk the Hutt, Navet had had to steal, guard, kill, and put himself directly in harm’s way for plays that had nothing to do with him.

Some small rewards had come his way, as had some headaches, but so far he hadn’t discovered a single fact about the deal between the Ballazes and Kusk. But I’m gaining his trust. That’s what counts. I’ve got the attention of the Hutt himself, and now I’m doing work directly for him. He needs a few good workers if he’s going to someday take down his uncle, and Kusk is savvy enough to know that it takes time to build an army. Navet had to keep telling himself that, even as he read the message waiting for him back at his room at the Catch Her Quickly; the h-mail was from his contact within the Federation, Noquan Shiblis—it was short and to the point: We need to talk, was all it said.

When Navet threw a response back asking when and where, he got a response on his datapad that said, In one hour, at Guuvann’s Cantina.

At that, he gave pause. Shiblis is here, on-planet? Navet now sat at his usual booth at Guuvann’s, lighting another cigarra. If it was indeed Shiblis, then the bastard was late. Navet ordered a couple of drinks, a Dentarian Ripple followed by Chadian Rum.

He waited, drumming his fingers on the table, smoking his cigarra and looking around. Guuvann’s was bustling tonight; a jizz band was playing terribly in the corner, but then they were as drunk as any of the patrons. Navet was watching them trying to get through “A Corellian Dream” when a Twi’lek stepped in through the front door, and immediately made a beeline for his booth in the corner. Navet always faced the door of any establishment, and watched all the patrons who stepped in—this guy meant business. With one hand he took the cigarra out of his mouth, and with the other he touched his DH-17 holstered just within his jacket.

The green-skinned Twi’lek took a seat without waiting for an invitation. “Noquan Shiblis says hello,” he said.

“Yeah? Well, tell ’im I said hey back. We done here?”

The Twi’lek smiled. Navet didn’t like the look of this guy. He was a little too ruggedly dressed for a Mos Espa regular, an over-the-top attempt to appear to be one of the locals. He said, “He wants to know why you’re taking so long.”

“So long on what?”

“Don’t play games. I don’t get sent around to play games. I relay messages. Important ones. Now, what do you have?”

“I have a complicated shift in the syndicate world, good enough for ya?” Navet blew out a jet of smoke, and watched the Twi’lek purse his lips. “Didn’t think so. Look, listen,” he said, leaning in, “I’m in the middle of a major tectonic shift here. Now the underworld hasn’t seen this much of a boom, or this much upheaval, since I’ve been alive. I’ve never seen anythin’ like it. You thought it was cutthroat before, pal?” He scoffed. “You’re down here, in the thick of it. These people, if they find out who I’m really workin’ for, or if they knew who you really were an’ that I was havin’ this conversation with ya—I’d be dead before the first sun rises tomorrow on Tatooine.”

“Enlighten me and Shiblis to your plight, sir,” said the Twi’lek with dripping sarcasm.

“My plight is that I’m bein’ watched. Carefully. Maybe not every minute of every day, but my actions are bein’ scrutinized, an’ soon enough a crafty grig like Kusk will have me checked out—he’s probably already done the cursory background. Next’ll be a deep red scan: he’ll monitor who I talk to, put someone on me to make sure I don’t converse with people from his competitors. I’m here because the Gracen faction sent me on this errand, an’ I also have to appear to them to be on the level.”

“You’re here because we sent you,” said the Twi’lek, folding his arms.

“An’ you impatient pieces of Bantha poodoo sent me to the Gracens—ya wanted to know the extent of the Bando Gora’s movements outside of Hutt Space, an’ I’m workin’ on it. But to do that I have to a little bit o’ time. My lookin’ brought me here, to Hutt Space. I have to start somewhere. The Hutts may have expanded their regimes, an’ Shiblis’s people may be right, they may be supplying information an’ other services to the NR, as a means to fray them an’ upset cohesiveness, forcin’ them to fight on multiple fronts, bleed the economy dry fightin’ I all directions.

“Everything went haywire for you guys on Sarapin, ya don’t know left from right anymore, no matter how much ya wanna deny it. An’ the NR may be takin’ advantage of that—settin’ the Hutts loose, givin’ ’em leeway to ransack Cademimu Sector, Kessel, Kubini, Corellia, Barab, an’ who knows what else! I’m gainin’ some trust with some o’ the key members. But, like I said, I need time to work.”

“Just don’t take too much time,” the Twi’lek warned. “You’ve got a longer leash than most, but don’t go thinking it’s never-ending.”

“An’ that’s why you’re really here, isn’t it?” said Navet, grimacing and putting his cigarra between his teeth. “To warn me.”

The Twi’lek said nothing, an admission. “Can you give me anything else to report to Shiblis?” he asked, changing the subject. “I need something, anything if I want to tell him I did my job and got something out of you, Hrn.”

Navet thought for a moment, and then he figured, Why not? “Ever heard o’ Ruse before?”

The Twi’lek made a face. “No, who is that?” he asked, leaning in slowly. “A cover name, or a real one?”

“Nobody knows. It’s a slicer. Kusk an’ his people have teamed us for this next score I’ve got with them.”

“Who is he? What side does he work for, the Hutts or Bando Gora?”

This guy’s an idiot. Slicers by their very nature are freelancers. But, hey, messengers are usually messengers because they lack any other real skill. Navet said, “He doesn’t have a side.” He took another toke, blew it out slowly. “Not even sure it’s a ‘he.’ Not even sure it’s a biological life form.”

The Twi’lek blanched. “What does that mean?”

Here we go. Navet sighed. “Ever heard the term ‘rogue program’?” he asked. The Twi’lek just shook his head and shrugged. “You should have—your ISIS people came up with the term. A rogue program is any advanced virus, malware, software, or other program that has been left alone for long enough that it has begun to develop a ‘personality.’ Similar to a droid’s personality if its memory is not regularly wipes. These programs, I dunno...apparently they usually emerge from the doings of cyberterrorists, or simply from advanced proto-AI software meant to keep cyber criminals out—if the programs go ‘adrift’—either because their creator or moderator dies or goes to prison or has to leave it alone for other reasons—then the habit of collectin’ data to automatically upgrade themselves can speed up. If enough o’ these rogue pieces get together, or collect in a common cause of survival—well, they can theoretically form a piecemeal brain, develop an identity. I dunno, I’m no slicer or computer expert.

“I know enough about ’em to know about ’em, an’ that’s about it. Typically, cyber crime specialists seek to destroy these programs as soon as they are discovered, to prevent ’em from reflexively attackin’ other programs an’ systems. They are sometimes referred to as a ‘nautical cell,’ a theorized entity that can emerge from the ‘sea’ of information.”

Navet had done his research on rogue programs over the years, since he had a more than passing interest in the workings of the criminal world. Slicers were a tremendous part of the profit that criminal consortiums gather, and recent studies on rogue programs had shown that these “masterless programs” sometimes exhibit more sentient capability than attempts at artificial intelligence; a consequence of having neural connectors via natural user interfaces for users on the HoloNet, which sometimes utilized thoughts coming from imtech (implant technology) users, and in some cases even counted on mood changes in order to interact with the data on the HoloNet, such as pay-for-pleasure sites. It was theorized by some that these programs took their personalities from users themselves, and could adapt and evolve in the sea of information, even gaining the “ambition” to survive. They were the ghosts in the machine.

Cyber crime prevention agencies encountered rogue programs all the time, and there were many legends about encountering these “nautical sells,” but they were just that, legends. Not a single shred of evidence had ever been produced to prove beyond any shadow of any doubt that they exist. Yes, exceedingly vicious malware or viruses had wreaked havoc, and yes, some had been “clever” in avoiding capture/deletion, but this was always chalked up to the programming their masters put in there, written code that had them preprogrammed to deal with certain obstacles in certain ways, not because these rogue programs had developed the will to live or any ability to think on their own.

But Ruse was supposed to be the One. Slicers talked about it like it was a spook story. Most agreed it was highly unlikely that Ruse was anything but an excellent slicer working out there under the guise of a formidable and unstoppable reputation—it would behoove this person to be perceived as inorganic, so that no one ever actually pursued them in the real world.

In Navet’s mind, Ruse was likely a name passed around the slicer/hacker community, one that allowed them to have a kind of hero of their own, a champion that could never be caught. If the real Ruse ever went down, others would crop up, claiming to be the One. Whatever the case, Navet’s new employers trusted this slicer enough to place him in direct cooperation with Navet for the duration of this mission.

The Twi’lek looked at him, and made a sound of disgust. “You’re insulting my intelligence with such a ridiculous—”

“Then I guess Kusk an’ his people are insultin’ mine,” he said. “They’ve put me up with Ruse, an’ said that he, she, or it has another colleague I’m supposed to team with in order to accomplish my next task.”

“Which is?”

“I’ve got to find Feer an’ Jagar the Hutts. The Twin Hutts of Tatooine—although, they haven’t lived her for a long time. They’re on Denon somewhere, an’ Kusk wants to know what they’re up to.” Navet opted to leave out the part about Kusk and Red implying heavily that the Twin Hutts needed to be killed.

“This…Ruse. It’s most likely a real, organic creature then, right? I mean, how can a messed up and lost rogue program help you with that?”

This creature has no imagination, Navet thought. He didn’t tell the Twi’lek messenger anything but what he wanted to hear. “Sure. Probably,” said Navet. He took a toke of his cigarra, and said, “Take that back to Shiblis, an’ see if he won’t leave me alone for another month or two or three. Tell him, if he doesn’t want me dead, an’ he really wants his ISIS Organized Crime Division to have a serious leg up over these cartels, then he’ll leave me be, an’ let me do what I do best.”

“And what is that?”

Navet smiled, with the cigarra clenched in his teeth. “Play all sides against the middle.”


* * *


Navet had made his first contact with the holo-site where Red had informed him Ruse currently dwelt. He had left Guuvann’s Cantina after tersely parting ways with Shiblis’s messenger. As if I don’t have enough on my plate, ISIS sends me this loser with his threats and the reminder of my leash, he thought.

Back in his room at the Catch Her Quickly, Navet sat on his dusty bed, looking down at his datapad, and waited for a response from Ruse. He felt silly, and half like he was being set up somehow. It all just seemed so farfetched. He was just beginning to wish that Red and Kusk really had been pulling his leg when he got a response. Navet connected to the HoloNet, and read the message:


TO: Navet Hrn
FROM: Ruse
RE: Red sent me

Hell there, friend Navet Hrn. I am most pleased to be interacting with your entity. I am happy. Feeling joy. (*_*) I am having many extrapolations on how we may proceed. I am already collating/gathering/assembling the necessary data, reframing it, analyzing it, and soon I will have a trace on the funds I last transferred on the behalf of my good friends Feer and Jagar. I am looking forward to more interactions with your entity. I am happy. I will also be introducing you to my good friend Ma’gonogon. You are already liking him, I am knowing it. (*_-) I am happy, friend Navet. Look at me!


Navet read the message again. What the hell? The reply was almost incoherent, but if this was the person(s) that Red believed had truly worked with Feer and Jagar enough to know the movements of all their dirty credits, then the trace to what banks and personal accounts should be easy, giving them a place to start.

He sent a quick message to Shiblis to his private account, saying only, I have contact, I’m on the move to Denon. Navet packed up his belongings, gathered up his fake IDs and tossed them in with the rest of his tools in his go-ready satchel. His ARC-180 was waiting for him at the docking bay he’d been renting. He wasn’t looking forward to flying the machine again, but it was his only quick mode of transportation at the moment.

Moving downstairs, he passed by a group of gamblers and drinkers playing a game of catch-her-quickly; two women were already passed out on the floor. He nodded to Dotjin Obass, the proprietor. “I won’t be back for at least a couple weeks,” he told the skinny, greasy-haired old man. “Feel free to give my room to someone else.”

“If anybody’ll take it,” said Dotjin, rinsing out a glass.

Down one street after the next, Navet took roundabout ways to the spaceport, dodging down alleyways and double-backing frequently. Who knew what sort of enemies he had created by now without even knowing it? Working for ISIS, and for the Gracens, and for Kusk the Hutt was only going to increase his profile, despite his best efforts to remain below radar. Still, he thought, slipping through a crowd on his way to Docking Bay 81, never a good idea to get out of practice.

He spotted no one on his tail, but that didn’t mean anything. A pickpocket tried to snatch his datapad, but Navet caught the street urchin by his wrist, twisted it around, and kicked him in the butt, where the boy fell face-first into the dirt. A Twi’lek prostitute pressed against him on a sidewalk as he went, rubbing a hand against his chest. “A charming night’s romp with me, traveler,” she said. “To protect you from evil.”

“I am evil,” Navet said, chuckling and checking over his shoulder. He was glad he did, because, unless he was mistaken, he caught sight of Grwrrrr.

Yes, Red had lied. Grwrrrr was not dead, he had not died in their assassination of Aroppa’s financial officers on Phaeda. Instead, the Wookiee was about thirty meters behind him, at an outdoor café across the street from the spaceport, trying to move surreptitiously and almost succeeding. They told me he was dead, Navet thought, pretending not to notice the Wookiee moving around server droid at the café. But that’s because they gave him another job. To follow me. Otherwise, they knew I might be looking for him.

Navet was wrong when he told the Twi’lek that the Hutts likely weren’t giving him a deep red background scan. They’re already testing my methods, my loyalty, and how far I’ll go for them. He shook his head, taking another toke of his cigarra, and smiling. Gods above help me, I love this job!

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 22



Navet came out of hyperspace, and was directly above the planet of Denon, the world-city which held as much space traffic as Coruscant, and on some days more so. There were a few large refueling space stations around the planet with platforms and fueling connectors jutting out of them, making them appear to be giant burs from the canopy of the ARC-170.

Navet commed in to the nearest station, giving his ship’s transponder code and his fake name—for this run, he was going by Bressh Kory. He decreased his speed to something that could be easily matched by a tractor beam; a show of faith to the locals. Flight traffic controllers always liked it when you did that for them. Navet waited his turn like everyone else in the skies around Denon. A YT-2000 swooped in front of him, slowed down, and took its own course, while a Lambda-class shuttle showing official NR markings flew parallel to him.

Space all around glittered with the teeny, tiny dots of thruster exhaust. A swarm of flies in his view.

He finally got a response from the flight traffic control station. “ARC-One-Seventy Starfighter, we have you on our scopes and you are cleared for landing. Follow your present course. You will be passed off to planetary sky traffic and receive your coordinates to land in one of eighteen spaceports in the sector you have requested. Welcome to Denon.”

Navet tapped a switch to send a reply. “Thank you, flight traffic control. I hear you and will do.” He had been trying to familiarize himself with the controls for a couple of days before he left on his assignment. Neither Kusk nor Red had given him a timeline, they had merely made him feel the urgency of the matter, which to him meant “as soon as possible.” He knew they were sending him because he had proven himself, yet he was still somewhat disposable. If he died in his effort, and there was a chance of that, then Kusk and his people had plausible deniability. Who the kriff is Navet Hrn? Navet’s name only meant something in very specific holes in the galaxy—a cantina here, a smuggling ring there—but it carried no clout. He was not a known assassin or earner for any organized group.

And that made him both valuable and disposable, a rare balancing act for anyone. For this moment in time, this window in his career, he was a wonderful nobody. Better enjoy it now, my mother always said. These may be the best days of your life.

Navet broke through the clouds, and began his landing cycle through Denon’s atmosphere. There was a bit of rocking, and the R2 unit sitting in the astromech’s nest behind him gave off a trill that he could just barely hear, while its words were interpreted for him in Basic on a panel in front of his face: We will need to refuel before we leave.

Navet sighed. He hated the stupid astromech. It had kept warning him about the dangers of smoking while in such a small canopy and without proper filtration systems in a fighter such as this.

But the droid was right. They were going to need fuel. He had earned a deal of credits in his time working for Red, but he had barely had enough to pay for a hangar bay for his new ARC-170 to stay in and fueling on top of it. “We’ll make due for now,” he told the astromech.

The city-planet sprawled out in front of them, a thousand thousand spires of various designs, almost all of them influenced to some degree by Twi'lek culture. There was a mist in the air, a few rainbows, which indicated a rain had come and gone recently. The essence of the city below him was of speed and efficiency; there were neat lines of traffic organized precisely, moving directly above or below other lines of traffic. There were holographic advertisements displayed across building sides or on the vehicles themselves, indicative of a culture obsessed with profit, capitalism, and spreading its ideals.

Navet had always found that hypocritical of city-planets. The citizens dealt in simulation, their entire lives were simulations, either through HoloNet dramas or flight sims or gaming sims, and all of them simulating a culture or a lifestyle of either another world or of times gone by on Denon. If they liked things to be different, or they preferred things the way they had once been, then why push for more progress? Why propagate the city culture until it removed all natural wonders from the planet?

Because they want their cake, but they wanna eat it, too, he thought, glancing out the right side of his canopy and seeing a large, two-storey hologram of a woman drinking some new energy booster from Ssizz Drinks.

They landed at one of Denon’s prominent spaceports in the Southern hemisphere, in the a’Gnon District, or District T-92. It was Terris-Ecknon Memorial Spaceport, and Platform 217 was available, as was made plainly clear just as responsibility for Navet’s ARC was passed off from the space station to the planetary air traffic controllers. “ARC-One-Seventy Starfighter, we have you coming in at an eight-thirty-six, and you are cleared for Platform Two-seventeen. I repeat, Two-seventeen. Follow the coordinates we’ve set in, and you’ll be just fine. Welcome to Denon. Enjoy your stay.”

Navet let the astromech handle the landing, since it seemed to know what it was doing more than he. Before the ARC had ever landed, he had already popped the canopy, pulled out a lighter, and became enraptured after he was finally able to light a cigarra. The ladder was already descending by the time he flung his legs over the side and hopped out, much to the dismay of the R2 unit, who squealed at him.

Standing out in the open on Denon, watching the sky traffic and enjoying the fresh smell of exhaust fumes, Navet glanced across at the setting sun. The place was alive and thriving, with no sign of rest in sight. Just as it was on Coruscant. It had been too long since Navet had been back there, but this would have to do.

An automated hologram appeared about twenty feet from him. It was a beautiful female Twi’lek in ornate dress, smiling too big and needlessly repeating the sentiments of the air traffic controller. “Welcome to Denon,” she said in Basic and bowing subserviently to him. Behind him, the astromech droid was being let down by a magnetic claw. “If you have any need of assistance, please direct your question to me right now. If you wish me to speak another language, specify it at this time. Or, if you have a specific question, or just wish to speak to a live operator, you may request it at this time…”

She went on, while Navet spoke to the droid. “Stay with the ship. Do a HoloNet search. Check out the cheapest fueling stations around, an’ keep yourself busy diddling or doing maintenance or whatever the kriff ya do for fun.” He climbed to top of the ladder, reached inside the canopy, and grabbed hold of his go-ready satchel.

The holographic Twi’lek continued. “For entertainment and leisure, may I suggest Districts U-12 through U15? And for fine dining, you’re not likely to taste anything better than what Denon has to serve in District M-85. For sporting events, the Q’aundaril Coliseum in District Y-11 is most exceptional. Shuttle rides and other public transit can be provided upon request at any kiosk you pass. I hope this has been informative, sir or ma’am. Take good care, and enjoy your stay on Denon, traveler.”

“Oh,” said Navet, winking at the hologram and shrugging the go-ready satchel onto his left shoulder. “I plan to.”


* * *


The first Navet had to check for was a HoloNet transceiver/receiver, and those could be found at just about any kiosk on Denon. He was in the middle of Sullust City, a large district so-called because of its enormous Sullustan population. Sullustan cuisine and Sullustan-style cultural entertainment could be found at the turn of nearly every corner.

He stood in a clear, closed-off capsule, speaking to the kiosk and trying to establish a link through the various link-net-sys (link-up networking systems) that his contact demanded in order to keep his “position in the ether” protected. Ruse claimed to be a sentient computer virus, something that had been created ages ago and had developed a personality not unlike droids were able to do through lack of memory wipe, only across the sea of information. That was a bold claim, but whatever. Navet only needed to know that Red and Kusk trusted this contact, and that he/she/it had the information he desired.

He sent off a message, saying only: I’m on-site. Waiting on you.

So, Navet waited. And he waited. And he waited. Finally, after an hour and after he had just started to consider stepping outside for something to eat, his kiosk chimed. Navet saw a rotating symbol emerge in front of him, a hologram of an atom with the protons, neutrons and electrons cycling through it. There was a reply, which came in a series of raised, holographic typed letters in front of his face: Hello, my friend Navet Hrn. I am most pleased to be speaking with your entity. Your biomass is most pleasing to me. You will need to go to the Undercity. To the Bowery, to be exact, which encompasses the lower parts of Districts R-56 through R-58. Go to Ablatori Lane. Contact me once you are there. There are still working kiosks there. Goodbye! (*_*)

Navet squinted at the screen. “What? Why can’t you just—?” He decided to type his question out and sent it back: Why can’t you tell me where it is right now?

A few minutes passed, and finally he got a response: Because, friend Navet, many things are changing in the Bowery, such as safe houses and storage places. Not so much because of fear of law enforcement down in the depths, but because of gangs feuding over territory. It is no good leaving your merch in one place for too long. Oh, no no no! You will have to go down to the Bowery, describe to me what you see once you are being at Albatori Lane. (*_-)

Navet sighed, and then sucked on his cigarra.


* * *


The journey down to the Bowery was not one Navet ever hoped to repeat again.

He started with general shuttle transit, which pretty much stopped at District R-55, necessitating that he go down a series of lifts and stairs, getting farther and farther away from the already dying sunlight. Very soon, he started to notice that the streets weren’t at all kept clean by much more than a few shabby droids. Once he found a sign marking his entrance into District R-56, Navet found a taxi speeder service, walked inside, said, “I need to get to Albatori Lane,” and summarily watched the service’s owner and his wife turn their back on him.

The next time he found a taxi service, Navet didn’t mention Albatori Lane, he just called one up that he found out of the HoloNet’s local directory and told them he needed a lift home. It was about halfway through the speeder right that his pilot droid asked specifically where he was going. When Navet told it, he found himself standing on the side of the slidewalk, walking. The pilot droid likely had no fear of where it was going, its owners had probably told it to refuse business heading in that direction. I thought the Twin Hutts were supposed to be living the lap of luxury, he thought to himself as he shouldered his go-ready satchel and moved deeper into District R-57.

Through a series of careful conversations in the streets with a few homeless urchins here and there, Navet ascertained the general direction he should be moving in, although one group of kids obviously scammed him for a few credits, putting him way off-course.

Two women helping one another to walk limped by him, and cowered in their spice-induced helplessness when they spotted Navet. The streets were tight and cluttered down here in the Bowery. It was similar to the Alienation Zone on Coruscant, where still to this day outcast aliens from the days of Palpatine’s Empire grew up, generations after he had given “relocated” them for “their sake” to get away from “genuine prejudice.”

There weren’t many places like the Bowery on Denon, but they did exist, and if a person wasn’t careful they might turn a corner and find themselves suddenly inside the Bowery, right in the middle of a place where no laws existed.

The police didn’t come down here. Hell, the light of day barely made it down here anymore. Skyscrapers behind and all around this section of the city pretty much dominated the sky, it was almost impossible to see the stars at night, yet rain destroyed and pulverized these sections of cities badly—the streets were basically back-up irrigation systems for the massive city that had climbed higher and higher over time, leaving the streets to be runoffs, and small little “towns” had developed around the water supply, as bizarre as that was. Navet had been in places like this before, had seen this kind of place practically flooded with people going to their small places of business in makeshift boats. The Bowery and places like it had their own economy, an incredibly weak one that only worked off of trade and animalistic, territorial regimes.

Skanks, pimps, and war veterans littered these streets. After the Rebel Alliance had claimed a miraculous victory, the veterans of some of those wars hadn’t been able to find jobs they were able to do, having trained for a long, long time in guerilla warfare, they found they weren’t too good at selling pottery.

The neighborhoods of the Bowery were like the neighborhoods in other non-corporate territories, made up of shoddy masonry work and half-assed architecture that had been put together from the remnants of other buildings. What passed for a bridge around here usually floated away after the first hard rain. The piecemeal structures were pitiful huddles, which were little more than shacks with found debris propping them up or even decorating the depressing things. A bit of public vandalism went mostly ignored down here.

Albatori Lane was located several levels below him in the heart of the Bowery. Thankfully, it wasn’t located so low that he would have to deal with a civilization of marauders, rapists and bandits. But Albatori was low enough that there were the usual roving, feral droids whose programming was so corrupted and unchecked that they basically only spoke in static-filled gibberish, so he couldn’t even trust most of them for any kind of help.

It was pitch-black when Navet finally got to Albatori Lane, which was located along a tight, narrow stretch of ill-lit duracrete pavement where only a few speeder bikes passed by every hour or so. He stood in the darkest shadow he could find behind an abandoned bakery, his right hand holding onto his go-ready satchel while his left hand touched the handle of his DH-17 just inside his jacket. There was a public kiosk that looked somewhat functional across the street, but it was in plain sight of one of the only working streetlights.

At the far end of Albatori Lane, there was a warehouse. Lights were turned on and off erratically in dozens of different windows on the top floor, while the windows on the bottom floor remained on constantly. Random graffiti scrawled the names of gangs, lovers, killers and artists. Outside of that warehouse there were no less than twenty creatures on patrol—a trio of Trandoshans walked about with a Garf and a Wookiee, who held a blaster rifle cradled in his arms while a vornskr hound walked behind it on a leash. Not only that, but using his single-eye night-vision reticle, Navet spotted three snipers on the roof, one of them in mismatched stormtrooper armor, some black, some white, and parts of it spray-painted. A single Zeeo droid regularly floated around the building on patrol. Please, gods above, below, and the spirits of the Force, don’t say I have to go in there.

The warehouse was about a hundred meters away, so Navet figured he was far enough away from it not to attract their attention specifically, but who else might spot him from various tenement windows all around him? Finally, after an hour of watching the traffic on the street and determining how safe it was to walk out into the open, Navet walked in what he hoped was a casual gait over to the kiosk and dialed up Ruse’s HoloNet link-net-sys as quickly as he’d ever dialed anything before.

The wait was horrifically eternal.

When finally the answer did come, it was very brief: Can you see the warehouse from where you are, friend Navet?

Navet emphatically typed: YES! He looked around, at the windows of the abandoned bakery, at the roof of a nearby tenement building. A Human, either male or female, crossed the street fifteen meters to his left.

Ruse’s reply came back: Look at the graffiti on the wall, friend Navet. Is there being a green circle with a droopy line going through its middle? Or is there being a red circle anywhere with a cross at its center?

Navet nearly cursed out loud. “What the kriff does a circle have to do with—?” He fumed, and stepped out of the kiosk for a moment. He zoomed in with his reticle, looking for whatever it was that Ruse was talking about. Behind him, someone stirred in an alleyway. Or maybe it was an alley dog, or another feral droid moving about, or maybe it was only his imagination. Whatever it was, it unnerved him.

Finally, he found one of the symbols that Ruse had described. Navet typed in a response to Ruse: I see the green circle, with the sagging line through the middle.

Ruse’s reply came quickly this time: Then the Twin Hutts are not there. Their lieutenants are the only ones who know what those symbols mean—and me. The green circle means they can be found on the upper levels, in the gambling sectors R-30 and R-31. If it was the other circle it would mean that they were staying at their villa in the Twi’lek Sectors . This is being for their lieutenants’ sake, so that they can find their bosses if need be. They are moving frequently, the Twin Hutts, but not without leaving a means for their top-level people to find them. The Twin Hutts know they are hunted. They don’t communicate with any of their street-level people via HoloNet or any technological means—they are extremely low-tech in their communications, keeping them relatively off the grid. Hope this was helpful! I will be giving you more help. I am sending you Ma’gonogon. You may leave the Bowery now.

With that, the slicer signed off.

Navet was left standing there for a moment, searching all around, making sure he had not been seen. I had to come all this way just to look at a wall? Navet couldn’t help but feel extremely frustrated with the whole ordeal. Still, if that was the way the Twin Hutts communicated, then there was no real way around that. No cameras on these levels meant that there was no way to slice into them and view the wall remotely from anywhere else.

He moved quickly to get the hell out of there. But, on his way, Navet couldn’t help turning a question over in his mind. What the hell is a Ma’gonogon?

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 23



Navet stayed in a hotel in the gambling sector of R-30, known as the Casino Sector. A quick search in the HoloNet directory had found him this place for a deal; 300 credits for three nights. It was a middling casino hotel called the Winner Stays. He was listed as a guest under the name Bressh Kory, and had asked that his room be left undisturbed by all cleaning droids.

Navet had gotten in touch with Ruse again about where exactly to find the Twin Hutts. Ruse said that they stayed in an enormous suite on the top floor of the tallest building in the Casino Sector. It was the Corusca Glimmer Casino, and it shone brilliantly in the morning sunlight. Navet could see it from the room he’d rented at the Winner Stays; he’d asked for a room on the west side just for this reason. Using a pair of onoculars, he had zeroed in on the floors below where Feer and Jagar the Hutts were staying—the top floor itself had windows, but they were all shuttered. The floors below had patrolling S-22K security droids, top of the line from Cybot Galactica, and at least one Droideka-9s from Industrial Automaton. As well, there were a multitude of security droid vehicles sweeping the outside of the building, including the roof and lower levels closer to the “ground.”

He watched the Corusca Glimmer Casino all throughout that day while listening to music playing on the HoloNet behind him. Navet had ordered food to his room, otherwise he’d had no contact with the outside world. When he finally did step out to go and actually visit the downstairs, it wasn’t to gamble. Navet wasn’t all that big on gambling, he preferred a sure-fire win, or at least one close enough to take risk with. He preferred to bring things together, to plan carefully, allow events to cultivate according to a certain design. As a boy in the streets, Navet’s fellow gang pals had briefly nicknamed him the “Architect,” because of these designs.

“I don’t build buildings!” he had told them, not understanding the meaning. They had always laughed at him.

Presently, Navet plopped onto a stool at the bar, facing an array of sabacc tables. The dealer droids were fast at working, clarifying the rules from one game to the next—to keep it interesting, with each round they alternated between Bespin Standard and Denon Local Rules. Navet bit down on a cigarra and lit it, waiting for the call. It was only a few minutes before he got the tap on his shoulder. The bartender behind him said, “You Kory? Bressh Kory?” Navet nodded. “Call for you at the terminal.”

“Thanks,” he said, blowing out a jet of smoke. He walked around the bar to the HoloNet terminal the bartender had indicated, and there stood a phony avatar of some dancing rancor. “Is that you, Ruse?” he said to the mic in front of his face. Some shouted behind him, screaming since they had won something on one of the rollabout tables.

“Yes,” said a very crisp and bright voice. “It is me. I am Ruse. How are you, friend Navet?” His HoloNet avatar continued dancing, changing colors intermittently.

“I’m all right. I take it from your call that everything’s square?”

“Yes. He is here.”

“He is?"

"Yes," said Ruse.

“Where is he?” Navet asked.

“He is being twenty levels down, in the uppermost parking deck of the hotel you are currently staying in. Row thirty-seven, the blue lane, section F. He will be beside a blue IS-78 airspeeder. He will take you where you need to go.” With that, the slicer signed off. Navet was left standing there, sighing and contemplating whether or not he was being tugged around like a joke.

He found the nearest turbolift, navigating his way through the many lanes of deck gamblers and pazaak players. Once he finally reached the lift, he got inside and thankfully left behind the hustle and bustle of the game rooms. The HoloNet news announced overhead that the New Republic had sent representatives to neutral territories to meet with Federation officials to demand restitution for Sarapin. They’re still on about that? He chuckled. They should know by now, they're not gettin' nothin' from the Feds.

Twenty levels down, Navet stepped out onto the parking deck, a pair of Wookiees and a Rodian were waiting to get on. Navet nodded to both of them as he stepped out and started looking for row 37. He glanced behind him when the turbolift doors closed, just to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

The parking deck was flooded with activity. Gamblers too drunk to stand could be found collapsed against walls, trying to compose themselves into something resembling thinking creatures. Navet had to go down a short flight of stairs to get to the vehicle he was looking for. There was a Twi’lek in green robes waiting on him, leaning against the blue IS-78, just where Ruse had said he would be. He saw Navet approach, turned to look at him, and said, “Kory?”

He nodded. “Ma’gonogon?”

The Twi’lek blanched, and then snorted with laughter. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not Ma’gonogon.”

Navet didn’t like where this was going already. “Ruse sent me down here to—”

“Meet with me. And I’m going to take you to Ma’gonogon.”

“Why can’t he come to me?”

The Twi’lek looked at him like he was crazy. “Ma’gonogon wouldn’t fit through these cargo bay doors in this place.” It was Navet’s turn to blanch and appear disbelieving. The Twi’lek said, “I’m Mor. That’s all you need in the way of a name. I’ll take you to the machine.”

“Machine?”


* * *


They flew through the skies of Denon in those perfect lanes of sky traffic, all synched up to air traffic control towers so that no accidents occurred. Navet saw a couple of airspeeders ahead of them attempt to get out of the lanes and move ahead of traffic, but they were each corrected quickly by patrol droid vehicles. “Mind if I smoke in here?” Navet asked. Mor made a gesture with his hand that said go ahead. Navet lit up another cigarra, and puffed away. “So where is this Ma’gonogon? Is it nearby?”

“It’s not an it,” said Mor. “It’s a he.”

“But ya said Ma’gonogon is a machine.”

“He is.”

Navet tried to unriddle that. “AI?”

Mor smirked. “Not exactly. The ‘artificial’ part would be accurate, though.”

Navet sighed heavily. “All right, listen, in the last three days I’ve been jerked around by some slicer on the Net that says he’s a sentient computer virus, an’ now he’s got me meetin’ with ugly Twi’leks down in the parking lot of dingy casinos, hoppin’ into airspeeders goin’ to places I don’t know anything about to meet more people I don’t know. If you don’t level with me, my friend, I can’t take the next step o’ this journey. Savvy?”

Mor chortled. “Paranoid?”

“A little, yeah,” Navet complained. He felt it was a completely rational way to feel at the moment. After all, Ruse had had him go all over the lower levels of the Bowery, into dangerous gang territories he didn’t belong in just to scout out a few locales. He figured he had a right to know where the rest of this was headed.

“Well, you can relax,” said Mor, turning his IS-78 just a little. They listed off to the left, to merge with a lane that slowly gained altitude, ultimately merging them with a higher lane of traffic. “All we’re working out here is a few logistics. I’ll be helping you and Ma’gonogon out, but only with resources. Kusk and Red have paid me up through the month, to be at your disposal. Whatever you need, I’m at yours and his command for the remainder of this job.”

“Then who is Ma’gonogon, an’ why do we need him for this job?” Navet asked. “If you’re really at my disposal, at least answer me that.”

Mor gave him a sideways glance, and sighed. “It’s going to sound weird hearing it from me right now, without standing in front of him, but…” He looked down at speeder’s control panel, and checked their GPS. “Ma’gonogon used to be Human,” he said. “I think. That’s what I've been told, anyways. He’s been through some stuff, did some work for the NIF for a time, apparently was a higher-up. At least, from what I understand. If you believe the word in the ether, he’s dead. Been dead several times, as a matter of fact. Some of the rumors are true. He has been killed before.”

Navet looked at the Twi’lek. “That…doesn’t help me. At all.”

“Lots of injuries throughout his career, understand? Lots of replacements.”

“Cybernetics?”

Again, the Twi’lek sighed. “That begins to cover it.”

“An’ why do we need this guy?”

“Because,” he said. “Ma’gonogon knows everybody. He’s in on everything. He’s a specter in the world of black operations, not really off the books, not really on them, either. He’s been around for a while now, done work for Black Sun, the Bando Gora in their heyday, the Hutts, the Federation, the NR, the Galactic Empire, the Old Republic, you name it he’s done it. He’s got sources from here to the Unknown Regions, and probably a few beyond. He did work for the Twin Hutts once for a great deal of money, knows a lot about how they work, their security, where everything and everyone moves to and when.”

“An’ now what? He’s workin’ for Kusk the Hutt?”

“Ma’gonogon works for the highest bidder. Has for a long time now. He was an agent for some top-level group in ISIS, they say. Lots of things changed for him then. He got a lot of stuff done, and a lot of stuff got done to him. He’s made due, and basically withdrawn from public life. He transports himself across the galaxy in a variety of cargo holds—just packages himself up, puts a stamp on the crate, and gets mailed to wherever he’s going.”

“What doesn’t he just take public transport?”

“He’s a cyborg. An’ he sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s still got some enemies around.”

“There’re people with cybernetic replacements all throughout the galaxy. Surely he can’t be anymore unusual-looking than them?”

Mor looked at him, and then looked straight ahead.


* * *


The building they were in was a sixty-storey warehouse, built for mass storage for shipping companies around this sector of Denon. They parked at an external parking deck, a docking claw holding on to them as they were gently planted atop an exterior platform. Navet got out, stretched his legs, and looked around for anything suspicious. He checked the DH-17 inside his jacket, just to make sure it was loose enough to get at.

“Come on,” said Mor, waving him to a series of large turbolift tubes at the other end of the platform, where a central hub to the parking deck was located.

They got inside along with a few others, but once they had gone down to the lowermost level, they were alone in their lift. Navet found himself sucking on his cigarra a little nervously, and quietly wondering just how far they were going to go. Are we headed to the kriffin’ basement? That was very nearly the case, and once they finally exited, they went down row after row of massive plasteel crates and a series of two-storey shelves holding unknown cargo, with stamps in multiple alien languages, points of origin coming from Malastare, Corellia, Fresia, Nar Shaddaa, Muunilinst, Kamino, Duro, Byss, Zeltros, Adumar, Deyer, Ord Canfre, Kuat, Caamas, Mygeeto, Bespin, Deyer, Coruscant, on and on and on…

Crates bigger than most landspeeders were stacked one on top of the other. They rounded one row, and then another, and then another, until finally Navet started becoming lost. He tried to remember the turns in case he needed to get the hell out of here later. Where is he taking me? he thought.

Mor seemed to know exactly where he was going, and moved at a leisurely pace. He didn’t seem to be nervous about moving freely through a section of the warehouse where they clearly had no business. Yet all of packaging droids they passed paid them no mind. Mor even waved to a few Ugnaught technicians, who seemed to know him.

When they finally stopped, it was in front of a massive crate twice the size of Mor’s IS-78. The Twi’lek started tapping a few keys on the side of the plasteel crate. “What’s in there?” Navet asked. He bit down on his cigarra, nervously glancing about like they were about to get caught. But no droid or Ugnaught seemed to care. Mor obviously had clout down here. Kusk certainly knew which people to buy off.

Mor glanced over his shoulder. “I told you. Ma’gonogon.”

The keypad beeped, a red light switched to green, and suddenly the crate’s massive front side swung open, like it was on a hinge, which Navet soon discovered it was. It opened up, and inside there was a large, oblong object covered in a dusty black tarp. Mor moved into the crate, which barely had enough room to fit him inside, and grabbed the tarp in two fistfuls and jerked hard twice. Dust flew into the air, and while Navet fanned it out of his eyes, he caught a glance of something squarish, something many jagged angles, and something that completely did not fit into his understanding.

“He’s still on his recharge cycle,” Mor said.

Navet could barely understand what he was being told. This thing was supposed to be Human? “He’s sleepin’?”

“Ma’gonogon doesn’t sleep,” he told him. “He’s got a recharge cycle. Takes him two hours to complete.” He checked his chrono. “I left him over an hour ago, he should be finishing up here in a second.”

“What is it?”

“It is a he, I told you. And be careful how you speak. He’s listening to us right now.”

Navet took a step closer, clearing more dust out of the air. He took a toke of his cigarra, blew the smoke out slowly, and rolling the thought over in his mind. “There’s a Human inside all o’ that?” He wasn't sure he quite believed.

“A brain and a spinal column, and not much else,” Mor said.

A few seconds after he said that, it moved. Navet was just about to ask another question when two Durasteel latches suddenly snapped open, and two massive Durasteel arms spread out, elbows first, and then the hands. The head was flat and square, with an single camera for an eye that swiveled around the head like a planet orbiting a sun in a small-scale solar system model. The thing whined very little as it stood up, spread its arms, and trembled a bit as power was sent to its extremities. It rose to its full height, which looked around 3 ½ meters tall.

“Initializing,” said a deep voice generated by a voice box somewhere on the beast. It said nothing else. Apparently, that was Ma’gonogon’s way of saying hello. Then, it looked at the Twi’lek and said, “Mor.”

“I brought him,” said Mor.

“Navet Hrn?” said Ma’gonogon.

Navet’s mouth was hanging open without him realizing it, and his cigarra had fallen out. His hands were quick enough to catch it, and when he did he almost burned his finger. He looked back up at the machine and said, “Yeah…yeah, that’s me.”

“We have a great deal to discuss,” said the cyborg.

“Yeah. I couldn’t agree more.”


* * *


Ma’gonogon, as it turned out, was everything Mor had described. And Navet now knew why the Twi’lek had had a hard time trying to make him understand without having yet taken in the cyborg’s full visage. It was simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying to stand in front of him, or it, or whatever. While Ma’gonogon went through his cycling up phase, Mor took the time to explain to Navet some of what he was seeing.

Ma’gonogon’s limbs were only really meant to move massive loads of missiles across an aircraft carrier of some kind. Ma’gonogon’s left arm was a T-894 SmartClaw and the right arm was a slightly more advanced T-998; they looked almost exactly the same, and the connective shoulder mount that joined them was a Krobosi-910A Duel Turbolaser Turret Mount, designed to mount two turrets onto one rotating spindle at the end of a major assault vehicle—this, Mor explained, gave Ma’gonogon massive recoil compensation, as well as allowing him the articulated 21 degrees of freedom for a humanoid arm.

His torso, along with his genitals and intestines, had been removed long ago. In their place was a synthetic circulatory and respiratory system. Ma’gonogon used a Lifesaver Inc., model called an MM3t Life-Extender, an emergency life-support used for keeping Human vegetables in stasis, and the entire apparatus was housed within his innermost shell, along with his motor nerve attachments.

While Ma’gonogon had overall master control over all his body parts, all of his actions were really more of a collaborative effort from all the parts working together. Each piece had its own hardware, and its own software, and almost every individual joint and limb had a motor-brain (either an S21.c or a T42.f model, depending on the appendage) that controls the limbs’ countless functions. Even a standard cybernetic/synthetic body would require incredibly advanced platforms and several hundred terabytes, but all of Ma’gonogon’s parts concealed a weapon of some kind, along with advanced targeting tech to help him use it with very little thought, so his memory systems were at the current maximum capable in the galaxy, according to Mor, and because of that he required an ongoing cleaning/sweeping period where he went through his many systems and searched for problems, such as viruses and malware that may have come with upgrades he downloads off of the HoloNet, or basic congruency problems between programs.

For most people, convenience and discretion were the goals in cyberware, with unobtrusive limbs disguised with state-of-the-art polymers, and it helped to reroute the motor nerves that control limbs to the chest, where they could be read by the robotic arm’s equally disguised shoulder mount. Of course, rerouting motor nerves to the chest also created necessary sensations for more awareness and interactivity with the environment—in Ma’gonogon’s case, there was no longer any chest, and all motor nerves are rerouted to the brain and spinal column; virtually all that was left of his former human body.

Mor described the cyborg has having three major shells, with his motor nerves bundled into his innermost shell, along with the rest of what remained of him. He had over 4,000 electrodes implanted into his motor cortex. These connections allowed him to move cursors and run search programs within himself on thought alone.

Also, because he had almost nothing left of his original body, Ma’gonogon needn’t ever worry about biocompatibility—an organic body can still sometimes reject a limb replacement, so for synthetch and/or cyberware to be implemented, a cybernetic appendage must illicit no immune response from the organism, and the wares needed to be able to integrate with particular cell types and tissues—so with almost no organic parts left to him, biocompatibility wasn’t a problem, and Ma’gonogon could make virtually any addition he wanted to himself, as long as he worked out the logistics and engineering problems first. Another benefit to having no organic body left was that it also made it less of a burden to fire a weapon, since recoil is more of a burden on biological structures than it is on cybertechtural structures.

Some of Ma’gonogon’s mass had come together with the help of droid parts, such as kinematical systems from a Basilisk wardroid and targeting systems from a hunter-killer droid.

The cyborg’s swiveling eye swept the entire warehouse, and the Ugnaughts who went by barely gave him a glance, a sign that they had seen this sight many times before. Obviously, Ma’gonogon frequented these lower levels of the storage warehouse. It was his home.

“What do you need from me?” asked Mor.

“Just transportation out of here,” said Ma’gonogon. “When or if I decide to leave. Hrn and I have things to discuss.”

“I’ll leave you two alone, then.” He turned to walk away.

Navet nearly lost his cigarra again. “You’re just gonna leave me down here?”

“Why not? You’re in good hands.” He walked backwards as he went away, calling out to the cyborg, “Oh, hey, Ma’gonogon. Your precious is inside the crate next to you. Hope you won’t be needing her. If you do, call me, so I’ll know to leave the sector. See you guys. Ma’gonogon, you’ve got my holo-connection number. Hit me up if you guys need something.” He waved and turned to leave them.

Navet looked back at the cyborg, not even knowing where to begin. So, he asked, “What’s your ‘precious’?”

“I’ll get to that,” said the cyborg. His voice was generated from a voice box somewhere on his undulating mechanical mass. It was cold, simple, without emotion. Like a non-protocol droid’s voice, not meant for small talk. So he waited in silence while the cyborg just stood there, presumably running through diagnostics checks and last-minute cycling-up protocols.

Before he had left, Mor had described Ma’gonogon as existing within three main shells, each one made of Dura-Titan titanium mixed-weave cobalt alloy, an improvement in some ways over Durasteel. To further armor himself, the cyborg had a rapidly-oscillating kinetic grid (ROK), which is a high-energy shielding coursing throughout the entire outermost shell at nearly the speed of light, creating a distortion against concussion shots for maximum stopping power.

According to Mor, the three shells could be broken down like this: The innermost shell protected all his life support, including his brain, two eyes, and what remained of his spinal column; the sum of his remaining original organic matter. All of that organic material was hooked up to Sys7.31 NeuroBond interfacing fibers and was suspended in a nutrient soup that required regular nutrient wash injections to continue “feeding” the organic parts. The secondary shell was a buffer between the outer shell and the inner shell, and it was filled with Security Foam, made of advanced shear-thickening liquid, as well as Rotator-10 shock absorbers, all of it protected by the shell’s interlocking ceramic plates, which were encased within a proprietary tungsten alloy weave. Some minor motor functions were grounded here, but for the most part motor skills were governed by the response between the neural fiber-tendril lacing (which connected it all to the outer shell, that being the bulk of the Ma’gonogon’s cyberware) and the brain and spine in the innermost shell.

On Ma’gonogon’s back, there was a massive, bulbous steel growth that made the cyborg look kind of like a hunchback. And, as a matter of fact, that was what Mor had called it. Apparently, the cyborg had a veritable arsenal of both small and heavy arms inside that steel hump on its back. Mor knew a great deal about the cyborg’s specs, and had said that inside the Hunchback-P12 greater casing on his back, an internal heavy weapons bay housed a modified SSM-65 cannon, firing AMRAAM missiles. For constant combat suppression fire there was the NAMAN-S10, a twin barrel rotary cannon which could rapidly fire turbolaser rounds, an improvement over the standardized SuroSuub GAU-661/Y “Demonizer.” For pinpoint accuracy on a heavily armored target, his Hunchback also housed a .50 caliber P3S-88 anti-tank sniper cannon, with a range of accuracy up to 2,000 meters. For simple cutting and saving on ammo, he had a Scimitar-220q, a five-foot arched vibroblade that shot out from the top of his left wrist, was as sharp as was currently possible, and which he rubbed down every day with bright red oil. The Hunchback (along with all its weapons and ammunition) was contained within his outermost shell, and constituted just under half of Ma’gonogon’s weight.

Ma’gonogon also protected his weapons. Every weapon on his body was covered in an integrated netting up to UUA specs, a high-tensile fiber-weave tempered under heavy ultraviolent light. Apparently, that netting kept the weapon cool, making it difficult to see with infrared scanning while also holding certain parts together.

Some of that was like trying to read ancient Sith runes to Navet, he had no idea what it meant. But he knew a weapon when he saw one, and if Kusk had had enough credits to afford someone like Ma’gonogon, then what in all the nine hells did he need Navet Hrn for?

When the cyborg was finally finished cycling up and was ready to speak, his swiveling eye, an Ocular-33Z locked onto Navet. It was a high-resolution camera/video protected within a small case of aluminum silicate glass windows encased in transparisteel. “I’m going to need you to carry a tracking signal directly up to our targets,” he said, getting right to business. “And then I’m going to need you to activate it once you’re in their presence.”

Navet took another toke of his cigarra, to calm his nerves. “And then?” he said, blowing the smoke out.

“And then I’ll do the rest.”

“Ya just need me…to get inside that buildin’, in their presence…so you can, what, annihilate them?”

“I have information that will assist you,” said Ma’gonogon. “You complete your end, I’ll complete mine.”

“If Kusk thinks we need you, then my end is startin’ to sound a whole lot more dangerous.”

“You’re going to be compensated. As am I.”

“Compensation is little compensation when you’re dead.”


* * *


Ma’gonogon opened up the large plasteel crate beside him, and removed his “precious.” If Navet had been slack-jawed when first taking in the cyborg for the first time, he was outright astonished at the sight of him with this massive weapon in his hands. It was long, shimmering, wide, and with parts jutting out of it seemingly at random. It looked like it was being held in reverse, and for a time, Navet couldn’t figure out what he was looking at. Packaging material fell out all around is Ma’gonogon’s four-fingered claws cleaned them off. “Can I ask what that is?”

There was a part in the middle where the weapon looked sloppily truncated, as though split in half and welded back together. It was there that the cyborg inserted his hand, and raised the weapon as though it were an extension of itself. “This,” said Ma’gonogon, “is the contingency plan.”

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 24



The information Ma’gonogon had was actually quite in depth. The Twin Hutts didn’t just remain in the Corusca Glimmer Casino because it was swanky. No, they stayed inside it because it was one of the most secured buildings on all of Denon, with structural reinforcements that protected it against terroristic attacks of most any kind, the most professional and expensive security staff in the planet’s executive protection business, and more security shuttles moving around it than most government buildings.

The building was exactly 400 stories, with every twentieth story being filled with security specialists watching monitors around the clock, monitors that were connected to facial-recognition software. The higher one went up in the casino, the wealthier one needed to be. The top ten floors were only for the highest of high rollers, those who dared bet entire businesses or the like. The casino only closed for two hours every night, and that was to give the business pause to close out its official business day—those two hours of downtime were actually in the middle of the day, when business was at its slowest.

“The games are rigged,” Ma’gonogon said. They sat in a vessel of his called the Renovator, an old YT-2000. Much of it had been gutted to allow the massive cyborg to walk around his ship. It carried only him, and barely had a functioning life-support system, since he breathed little air, but he kept it on right full right now since he had a human guest. “But you could probably have guessed that,” said the cyborg through his voice box. He shifted uncomfortably, looking out the cockpit, inside of which he could never fit—it had taken a special freight lift and three SmartClaws to get him out of the lower levels of the warehouse he had been shipped to. “What you wouldn’t know about is how the Twin Hutts make their most serious money.”

Navet looked at him. He was leaning against what remained of the corridor. “Oh yeah?” he said, lighting up a cigarra. “Do tell.”

“Skimming,” said Ma’gonogon.

Navet blew out a smoke ring. “You mean credit card fraud?”

“Yes, and lots of it. Do you know how many credits go in there every day?” the cyborg asked. “That’s right. None. All the money is brought in by personal datachips and chits, or personal debit/credit cards or datapad transactions, or HoloNet transactions. No paper currency or coins, not even official money from Denon.”

Navet nodded. He knew about skimming pretty well. In fact, he had been in on a few skimming runs himself when he was an up-and-comer. ATMs were under siege more than ever from skimming. Skimming, where ATM thieves steal a person’s PIN and account number using remote devices, was increasing dramatically every decade. Often done by sophisticated crime rings from Hutt Space or Cademimu Sector countries, ATM skimming had become a high-tech art that was hard to detect.

Skimming wasn’t new. It had been around for as long as digital money had been. What had changed was that the technology of the bad guy was getting better and better every year. It was up to consumers to watch their own backs...and consumers were notoriously lazy.

Typically, credit chit and ATM thieves used two devices to capture a target’s PIN and card data. One device, a “reader,” sat near where the target swiped their card and read the magnetic stripe on their card with their account number. What’s more, the device mimicked the card slot. If it was done with CIN (citizen identification number) stamping from a RFID chip in the skin, as some citizens preferred to do it, then it merely scanned it remotely. The technology had evolved to a point where the molded plastic fit like it belonged there. These kinds of devices were readily available in any tech store or over the HoloNet for next to nothing.

A camera that was typically hidden from the target's view captured the PIN. A criminal could thus get the data in real time. Thieves then easily copied that data to a blank datachip or chit or ATM card or whatever they wanted to access all of a target’s money.

It was a real burden on law enforcement, which had never effectively found a way to deal with financial fraud, especially when it was being done with simple tech right under their noses.

“So, Feer an' Jagar just sit in there, laughin’ their Hutt heads off, while their customers come an’ go, gamblin’ away their life savings on rigged games, an’ all the while they’re also stealin’ the gamblers’ identities, an’ their credits directly from their accounts.” Navet shook his head. “That’s…a little hard to swallow. I mean, that’s a big scam. Too big. How’re they keepin’ it from public view? How has no one called ’em on it, yet?”

The cyborg looked out from the cockpit at the Corusca Glimmer Casino, then back at Navet. “They keep it out of public view,” he said, “by keeping directly in public view. They’re hiding in plain sight. And the Twin Hutts aren’t stupid. They don’t extract money from all of their gambling customers all at once. No. Five credits from this account here, twenty credits from that account there—make the charges out to the Corusca Glimmer Casino, and most of them will only assume that they made the transaction while they were drunk at one of the casino’s bars. Besides, most of the regulars who get hit by the skimming are ones that the Hutts’ people scope out first, making sure they’re of ill repute, someone that no one will believe if they ever do make a claim that the casino is ripping them off. Plus,” he said, looking back at the casino out the cockpit, “the Twin Hutts have half this gambling sector’s police in their pockets.”

Navet took another toke of his cigarra. “Well, like ya said, they’re not stupid.”

“No. No, they’re not.”

“All right,” he sighed out a cloud of smoke, “hit me with the specifics. What’re we lookin’ at here in terms o’ security?”

“You are looking at a logistical nightmare,” Ma’gonogon said. Coming from a machine built for the end of days, that meant a lot. “The walls are several inches thick with Durasteel, and with hydraulic pistol compensators reinforced behind X1 Safety Foam shear-thickening liquid, for maximum stopping power. You’re not getting through that with anything less than heavy artillery. Security is overseen by a Twi’lek named Yom Jutwekwa, and overall security works primarily by automation, but on several separate slaved circuit AIs. Droids are on random algorithms for their patrols, so no predictability there. Redundancy protocols are utilized. The sentient creature guards are regularly rotated to reduce familiarity, so as to reduce complacency. No single guard guards the same area more than two weeks in a row.

“Piezoelectric oscillators and radio noise saturation keeps anyone from eavesdropping on anything or anyone on the top floors. There is only one left going to those top floors. From the top floor, you must exit that lift, and enter into another one in order to get to a set of stairs only accessible for those who have the key, which gets them to the roof, where three landing platforms are set up for large shuttles. So far that I’ve ever known, no shuttle beside Feer and Jagar’s has ever been parked up there. It is an SJ-222 Luxury Airspeeder. It is Jagar’s pride and joy, though Feer has little love for material possessions. He prefers the fleshly pleasures in life. Jagar indulges Feer’s love of all things flesh, but only to keep the peace between them.

“As for the security’s training, you’re basically looking at trained elite paramilitary tactical units, or at least that’s the level of training these people receive before they can become employed at the Corusca Glimmer Casino. Anyone walking in there not equipped as I am now, and looking to start trouble, won’t be walking out of there alive.

“I can give you a few pieces of information to help you get in. They change the codes to access the top level lifts once ever thirty hours, I happen to have access to the security chief’s comlink channel, so you can listen in and hear him switch the code, and write the new one down, each time he does. Also, there is a six-digit security code to get into the maintenance elevator: it’s nine-six-six-oh-one-three. And the next bit is a password: Benevolence. Use it any time there is a radio check, or a personnel check over the comlink. There’s a source you might use in the lobby, owes me a favor. He’s a Rodian, named Henda. He works most days at the front desk—if you mention my name, he can get you limited access to some of the employee areas, such as break rooms and such, but not much more. And lastly, there’s a partial schematic I can give you to upload to you datapad, so you can peruse it any time you need. It’s not much, but it’ll help with basic air ducts and behind-the-scenes corridors, should you need them.

“Now, they’ll be suspicious of anyone new, so don’t expect a warm welcome if you go seeking work with them just to get close. The Twin Hutts are dug in, and they are ready. By the way, we’ve got to kill them inside the Corusca Glimmer Casino, because my sources tell me that they won’t be leaving that place for another year.”

Navet nearly choked on his cigarra. “A year? What for?”

“They know it’s getting hot for them. They know that there are assassins out here, sent by one of their rivals or another. They know that the other kajidics are constantly wishing them dead.” Ma’gonogon swiveled his rotating eye back around to look at Navet. “So we’re going in.”

“But all you need me to do is just get in there, am I right?”

“Yes, get in there, and identify exactly where the Twin Hutts are. Notify me as soon as you’re in their presence, so that I know I’ve got them in my sights. After that,” he said, swiveling his eye back around to look out the transparisteel view, “I can take care of them from long range.”

“But I’ll have to get outta there before ya shoot that…that thing o’ yours. That big assault cannon. If I’m not outta there when ya fire, then I’ll be caught in it, too.”

Navet couldn't say he was surprised by the cyborg's response. Ma’gonogon swiveled his eye back around to look at him. “That’s your problem.”

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 25



The cyborg had dropped him off near the landing platform where his own ARC-170 starfighter was parked. It was dusk now, and Navet stood leaning with his back against his ship, smoking a good cigarra and mulling everything over while the R2 astromech tinkered with the starfighter. It was a tall order he had been given by Kusk the Hutt, and the cyborg Ma’gonogon had only proven just how suicidal this whole task seemed by detailing the security and fortifications behind the Corusca Glimmer Casino, the top floors of which held his targets, the conjoined Hutt crime lords, Feer and Jagar.

The Twin Hutts, he thought, looking out over the entertainment sector of Denon. Ma’gonogon said they’ll be dug in, won’t be leavin’ again for a whole year. Kusk said he wants the job done soon, not later. That gave Navet little choice but to proceed, but how?

His first move was to contact this resource of Ma’gonogon’s on the inside. Henda, the Rodian, worked the front desk in the lobby. Navet stepped inside the next day, waiting to see if the Rodian described with his name tag. Henda showed up for the second shift, dressed in a gray suit with silvery gloves and boots to match. He walked in the front lobby and loitered amid the crowd of comers and goers—the goers were those forlorn losers who had gambled and likely lost a great deal at the tables today. The Corusca Glimmer Casino was busy at almost all hours, even at midday, when its traditional “downtime” happened.

Navet hung about the lobby, pretending to be waiting on someone while he spoke into his comlink at no one. Finally, when Henda broke for the restroom, Navet cut him off and walked up beside him. He bumped into the Rodian, and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He slipped a piece of flimsi into a pocket. Navet murmured, “Check your right pocket. And again, I’m sorry.”

“Wait…what?” said the Rodian.

Navet walked back outside and waited across the street. If the Rodian read the note and dialed the channel up, he would be calling in a moment. When his comlink finally twittered, Navet answered and said, “Your gigantic cyborg friend told me to give ya a try. Says ya can get me into place. I didn’t want anyone seein’ us talkin’ too closely to one another. D’ya have a minute?”

The Rodian kept it short. “I do.”

“I’m gonna put in an application to work there. You need to put in a good word for me. Okay?”

A moment. “I can do that,” Henda said.

“Good. The name’s Kory. Bressh Kory. Where was the last place ya worked before this?”

Another moment while the Rodian thought. “Laxton Security,” he said.

“How long ago?”

“Four years.”

“Good. Then ya worked with Bressh Kory at Laxton Security a few years ago,” Navet said. “Where’s the biggest need for new employees? Where are you guys short?”

“Cleaning,” said the Rodian. “The casino always needs cleaning staff. But it pays really low since most of the staff are cleaning droids. Most positions remain open. We have a high turnover rate there. Most people who are willing to accept that kind of low-paying job are scum, and can’t pass background checks.”

“That’s excellent, because, as ya know, Bressh Kory was a trusted o’ yers, right? An’ Laxton employed him for five years before he had to move.”

The Rodian followed. “Yes, I do recall that Bressh Kory was loyal and trusted,” he said.

“Make sure ya pass that along. I’ll contact ya later once I’ve put the application in. Pass my name along to your superiors. Build my reputation up a little, but not too much. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m comming off, but be lookin’ for my call.”

“All right.”

Navet commed off and then turned and stepped onto the slidewalk. He maneuvered through the clouds, taking snapshots with of Corusca Glimmer Casino with a handheld mini-datapad complete with a tiny camera. He kept it in his go-ready satchel, which he took with him everywhere when he was out and about.

He sat in a ten-storey café called the Vroxio, which was built on a high platform far, far above the cities ground level. Navet sat and sipped Bothan tea while he culled information for the casino on the HoloNet, checking out its holo-site and directory. He had selected the café because every table had a holo-projector. Navet called up Ruse, the slicer which lived somewhere in the ether. After only a few seconds, he got a response from Ruse: Hello, friend Navet! I am most pleased to be interacting with your entity again!

Navet keyed in his response: Let’s cut to it. Laxton Security. I need you to give me a false employment record with them. It will need to be very thorough! I won’t just need to have records of being there four years ago and for five years consecutive, I’ll need records of regular paychecks, as well as transfers and federal withholdings from each paycheck.

It only took a few seconds for Ruse’s reply: That will cost you, friend Navet!

Navet smirked, and corrected him: No, it will cost Kusk. I have you on loan from the Hutt, and he’s willing to pay you for whatever task I need done to finish this job. Can you do it?

Ruse’s reply was as chipper and confident as ever: I can and I will. It will be done by the end of the day, friend Navet! I am billing Kusk even as we interface now! I have enjoyed working with you so far. This had been joyful. I’m happy. Goodbye!

Navet sighed, and closed the connection. He continued to peruse the HoloNet for more information about the casino owned by the Twin Hutts. He knew that their HR people would conduct strict background checks before ever hiring him. For the moment, he would have to assume that Ruse was as good as his reputation said he was, and just get down to business about more logistics. He checked his chrono. There was still time enough in the day to get a few more things squared away.


* * *


The major problem with a “long con” was that there was so much that needed adjusting as the perpetrator went along. The perp in this case was Navet, and he spent the next two days sitting in his hotel suite across from the Corusca Glimmer Casino, looking out the window and monitoring it with the use of onoculars. He zoomed in and out, using the night-vision setting to check out the security at night. He did this to see what all changed, what routines were broken up, and what, if any security alerts went up.

Navet walked down the slidewalk of Dre’sdul Avenue and Martanby Street, the two major on-foot paths that surrounded the Corusca Glimmer Casino, every few hours. He just walked around, went up and down turbolifts to glance at the mid-level floors, and then even took a few unnecessary sky taxi rides around and around the area to get a look at its topmost floors.

A call came to his comlink on the third day after his contact with the Rodian. Henda only had five words to say. “They’re going to hire you.” With that, he had commed off.


* * *


Navet prepared for his first interview for the job by walking right up to a janitor working at another casino twenty kilometers away and paying him half of what he made in a week cleaning toilets to just sit and talk to him at lunch, describing what all his duties would be. It would give him some idea of the kind of questions he would be asked in his interview. “I start by emptying out the trash bins first thing when I come in, no matter which shift they put me on,” said the janitor, a Twi’lek. He had been working as a janitor for the Yoqu’qay Casino for eight years. “But that’s only after I’ve gone through the usual pat down.”

“The pat down?” Navet had asked him, taking notes on a flimsiplast pad.

“Yeah, every day before you start work, there’s at least two droids that scan you before your shift begins, and some kind of living security guard do a quick, full-body pat down, to ensure that you don’t bring in any contraband—you get the treatment again before you leave every night.”

“They do this every day?”

“Sure. Janitors don’t get paid much, so they know the allure is there to steal.”

Navet nodded. That only made sense. Still, it was only a window into the variegated assortment of procedures and processes that most people never knew about casinos. Understanding these mechanics of working for a major casino would help him to complete his cover. “What else do they do to ensure against stealing?”

“A lie detector test,” he said, nibbling on the steak that Navet had bought for him. It was all part of the bribe for the man’s time and honest answers. “Two of them before you can even get hired; you havet to scan clear in the green, and then there are random ones, and random drug tests every so often.”

“About how often, would ya say?”

The Twi’lek shrugged, took a sip of water. “Maybe once, twice a year?”

Navet wrote that down. The Twi’lek watched him scribble his notes, and while he must have been curious as to why someone was so interested in his little meaningless life, he didn’t say much about it. He was just happy to have an expensive, well-cooked steak. “What about your bosses? How closely do they monitor you?”

“Not very much,” the Twi’lek scoffed, picking some food out from between his sharp teeth. “They let the droids run you around. Yeah, I know, you’ve sunk pretty low when you’re taking orders from a droid, but welcome to my world. You writing an article or something?”

“Yeah,” said Navet, lighting up a cigarra. “Is that okay? Mind if I use your name in print?”

The Twi’lek beamed at that. His name in print. Imagine that!


* * *


“Are you all okay with working with a cleaning droid team, Mr. Kory?”

The day of the interview had arrived, and Navet now sat in a comfortable repulsor chair across from the droid that was running his lie detector test. Navet pressed the heel of his foot hard into his shoe, shoving the needle straight up into it—a search on the HoloNet about how to get around lie detector tests had come up with a rather strange solution. By causing a sudden burst of sharp pain, and as long as you focused on the lie a moment before you said it and just went ahead with saying it automatically while your brain dealt with the pain response, it was possible to have the creative centers of the brain not show nearly enough activity to rouse suspicion—the creative centers were, of course, where imaginative ideas and lies were conjured up. This only worked, of course, assuming that the person doing this could avoid showing outward signs of pain, of course.

“I’m used to takin’ orders from droids by now,” Navet told the interviewer.

“How about random drug tests?” The interviewer was as Zabrak, a female with a kindly face and gentile eyes. She had looked perfectly serene while asking him about his past.

He pressed his heel into his shoe, stabbing himself with the needle standing upright within his shoe. The reflexive wince of pain he played off as him just thinking back really quickly. “At the last place I worked, they tested us about once or twice a year,” Navet said. “So, I’m pretty used to that, too.”

She smiled, nodded, and made a note. “Well, that all sounds good,” she said.

Navet smiled. He glanced up to look at the vent above her head, and thought, I need to look more at the floor plans Ma'gonogon gave me. Ventilation shafts were necessary in any building, and invariably were full of security holes no one cared to look into.


* * *


He got his call back a day later, confirming that he had the job. Navet was told to speak with Notman, a Sullustan in charge of maintenance and cleaning for the 165th through the 205th floors. Navet was to report for his first day of work in three days. He spent those days gathering what information he could from more surveillance. He took a tour sky bus around the entire R-30 sector, known far and wide as the Casino Sector. From up above, Navet noticed a few armed guards on the rooftops of buildings that neighbored the Corusca Glimmer Casino.

Then, with a wig, a change into some nice clothes, and a few credits he decided he didn’t mind losing, Navet stepped inside the casino for the first time as a gambler. He could not afford the upper levels, and so made for the middling levels, where the stakes weren’t so life-alteringly high.

The sabacc tables were utterly filled, but every so often a defeated gambler (or else the rare victorious one) would push himself or herself away from a table, pick up their jacket or other belongings, and stomp away. Navet went directly to a smoking section on the 202nd floor, and lit a cigarra as he tossed a couple of chips to the Automated Sabacc Dealer droid, which was always considered good manners and paid respect to the casino’s owners. “Deal me in,” he said, glancing around.

“The rules are Corellian Gambit,” said one gambler, a Sullustan puffing on his own cigarra.

“My specialty,” Navet said, tossing a few chips into the center for the sabacc pot. The cards were dealt, the droid tossed out three to each player so fast and smooth that Navet barely caught the motion. He lifted his up just barely enough to read their values. He had the nine of Staves, the three of Sabres, and the face card of Demise.

Navet looked up at a pair of security guards escorting a Human to a turbolift to take him out of the building. He glanced to where they had come from—a set of double doors that split open and slid into the walls, leading to a corridor that appeared to go into an employee access center. The doors closed, but Navet marked the doors and the look of the corridor. He glanced around the room, marking the holo-camera outlets, the obvious ones, and the not-so-obvious ones. The statue of a nude Twi’lek dancer was a crafty place to hide a camera where nobody was looking—her eyes.

Navet lost the first three rounds, but finally won a round with the five of Staves, the six of Coins, and the Commander—he had obtained a Pure Sabacc, taking the big pot. However, he didn’t quit while he was ahead—mainly because he needed a reason to remain there and take in a bit more of the décor, but also because he didn’t want to become conspicuous—so he lost everything he had gained, and then a little more just to be sure no security guards paid him any mind when looking through the security feeds.

After a couple more hours and three cigarras later, Navet finally pushed himself away from the table and said, “Well, that’s about all I can afford to lose, gentlecreatures.” He laughed and tossed the dealer droid another chip. On his way out, he bumped into a security guard on purpose to see his reaction. It was a little harsh, and the guard did not acknowledge his apology, just glared at him for a beat before walking away. Serious grigs in this place, Navet thought.


* * *


His first day on the job was acting as a made for the various suites on the lower and mid-levels. Navet had to not only scrub toilets, but he also had to made beds, vacuum, and take orders from droids who had specific requests for him. Navet had never quite felt like a slave before, but being directed by droids was like being spoken down to by an adult.

The lunch breaks he got were the most informative. He got to listen to some of the gossip from the other workers, and heard what managers they did not like. While pretending to doodle on a pad, he jotted down important names and complaints that the employees dropped.

Almost every day that he walked into the casino, Navet nodded to the Rodian at the front desk. Henda barely acknowledged him, playing it very low key.

Navet got particularly friendly with a man named Sossio, who was the security lead for floors 200-215. Responsibilities of security were divvied up, while all of these security leads reported ultimately to Yom Jutwekwa, a pale-skinned Twi’lek with a love of Human women, if the gossip in the break room could be believe.

Navet only glimpsed the Twin Hutts once in his first week on the job, and it was too brief to have contacted Ma’gonogon there on the spot to have them executed. Feer and Jagar were as bizarre-looking as the stories had them. Jagar was the main “head” of their shared body, with his head the most upright of the two of them, and his body pushing them right along, while Feer’s head was almost completely dead to one side. Still, the conjoined twins cooperated enough when they approached the large turbolift where Navet had been vacuuming nearby, and he had counted the cadre of guards with as numbering twenty-eight. All of them were armed professionals in business suits—they all looked more like menacing accountants than trained killers.

The Twin Hutts slipped into the turbolift and that was the last time Navet had seen them. It was said amongst the staff that seeing the Twin Hutts anywhere below the 395th floor was extremely rare. Rumor had it that they had only come down this low to speak with a few security leads in person, and to fire three sentient dealers who some said had been caught cheating.

Navet asked Sossio what would ultimately happen to the cheating dealers, to which he replied, “Don’t ask.” Of course, Navet knew exactly what happened when you messed with a Hutt, he had only asked to feign innocence. Better to have your superiors think you’re too stupid than too smart.


* * *


Diagramming was important for a long con, or else a con artist could get lost in all the details. Navet had a wipe-board up in his hotel room. At night, he watched casino security from his window and made notes on his wipe-board. At the center of the board, he had two words written: Twin Hutts. Coming out of that nucleus were lines that divided the information he had gathered on them thus far into five comprehensible categories—confidantes, colleagues, trusted employees, business partners, and enemies. So far, Navet hadn’t pinned down any local enemies big enough to really help him.

From these categories, he had names written down, from Sossio to Yom Jutwekwa to the exact registered call numbers of the Automated Sabacc Dealer droids and the tables they typically haunted. He had the security leads for each section of the building listed, as well as their numbered command posts. In his mind, a general understanding of the building was beginning to form, but no real plan could take shape until his comprehension solidified.

“The upper floors,” he said to himself. He stood naked except for his underwear in front of the wipe-board, smoking his cigarra and shaking his head. “I gotta get up there.” He’d been working there for only two weeks, and had gone in there gambling at night under another of his aliases, Grona bar’Solas. In that time, he had accumulated enough evidence to move about as freely as he wanted to on the lower and middle floors; if caught or questioned about what he was doing in the kitchen, he now knew enough names to confuse security and get himself out of a jam.

But not on the topmost floors. Apparently, an employee only got access to those floors after years of loyal service on the lower levels of the Corusca Glimmer Casino.

I don’t have years, Navet thought to himself. It was three in the morning. He had to report to work in just four hours. He couldn’t sleep, though. He kept working through this in his mind, going through every possible scenario thus far. But, as it stood, he just didn’t yet know enough about the behind-the-scenes movements to make this long con move quicker. I need to be in the presence o' the Twin Hutts for more than five minutes, enough time to signal Ma’gonogon an' give him time to set up shop with that cannon of his. That was all Navet needed, and yet it was asking so much—still, he could be thankful that his employer didn’t want this done too surreptitiously. Kusk the Hutt didn’t care if the job was done sloppily, he just wanted Feer and Jagar dead. They were protected within this fortress, surrounded by security at all hours, and the only person whose weapon could penetrate was Ma’gonogon. However, with one blast, it would surely alert every law enforcement agency in this sector of a terrorist attack.

Navet had the interactive hologram of the casino's schematics that Ma'gonogon had given him downloaded into his room's holo-projector. It was only about 40% complete, there were missing sections of plumbing and air ducts with portions filled in and highlighted in blue. Those blue highlighted areas were conjectures made by the cyborg when he assembled this floor plan. Ma'gonogon said he had paid out a lot of bribes to even get a glimpse at this much from the sector R-30 City Planning House; the schematics to such buildings were typically unavailable to the public.

Most of what was missing from the schematics were the upper floors, and Navet soon realized that all his planning and resources were only going to get him access to those floors. From there, it'll be improvisation.

He spent all that night poring over these details, and reworking them on his wipe-board. He put question marks wherever he didn't have an answer for something, and made mental notes to ask about those details when next he went into work.

We’ll only get one shot, an’ we have to make it count. Navet looked at his chrono. Three hours until I have to start work again. He chuckled to himself, puffed on his cigarra, and thought, If I wanted a job cleanin’ toilets, I woulda gone legit a long time ago.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 26



The next week brought about many trials for Navet. Forced to wash and scrub more toilets and change more bed sheets at the casino hotel all for the sake of reconnaissance, he endured berates from both cleaning droids and security leads of certain sections of the Corusca Glimmer Casino. Just by keeping his eyes open, though, he had already made some progress. For instance, one morning a guard who had stayed over after his shift to gamble and drink had passed out in the men’s restroom. A casino visitor had come and grabbed Navet to tell him, and Navet had helped the security guard up…but not before lifting his security clearance card off of his shirt. Little opportunities such as these existed everywhere, you just had to be in the right frame of mind constantly to know when they presented themselves, and take advantage.

Navet had another little piece of good fortune when Sossio, the security lead for floors 200-215, had fallen asleep during his shift. He was the only one at his command post that late at night, and Navet surreptitiously stood beside him, watching him to see if he would wake up, and tapped a few keys to gain administrator’s access to a few of the security feeds around the floors. He wanted to send access to those security feeds to a remote location, where he could view them from outside of the casino any time he wanted.

There were a few firewalls he needed to get through in order to do this, but he had smuggled in pieces to make his own computer spike—a Tunneler spike was pretty much the best around, and got the job done quickly and quietly while Sossio slept. Navet managed to create an open channel to the outside, to a random HoloNet site of his choosing, and he left it open and accepted that remote site as part of the system’s network.

That night, when Navet got to his hotel room, he tested the security feed. It was a little jumpy, because firewalls and I-Spy programs were detecting anomalies, but he believed he was going mostly unnoticed by the system, and if he only accessed it for a couple hours at a time each day, he figured he wouldn’t be detected. There were four entire floors of the Corusca Glimmer Casino dedicated to counter-slicers, who protected the casino from cyber attack and theft. With this feed, Navet was able to slice a bit into their systems without much risk—however, there was risk, and he needed to be careful.

With the security clearance card he had lifted from the drunken guard, Navet accessed a few restricted areas the next day, but he never went very far in them—he only went to areas on floors 200 through 215 where he could loop security footage. He remotely preset the times for the loops before he left his hotel room each day, and then synchronized that with his chrono. Navet was able to slip into a few closets and a couple of rooms that held servers. He utilized more computer spikes he had smuggled in to gain him access to these servers.

During his lunch breaks, Navet typically sat at the café Vroxio across from the casino and watched his various security feeds while maneuvering his way through various files in the casino’s system. This generated a few more leads, such as the security guards who were the laziest, the ones who the other hardworking security professionals secretly loathed. At night, Navet culled more feeds, while sipping at his Abrax Cognac and smoking his cigarra.

As the days went by, his wipe-board got filled in more and more. From the security end of things he had SOSSIO written, with the numbers 200-215 written to define the floors he was responsible for. Then, out from there, he had names scribbled—ar’Asten, Diniog, Chaparten, Jarsol, Enningsi, and on and on, each of them the names of security agents directly under Sossio’s command. He had the hours each guard preferred to work, because one of the security feeds was into their break room, where the bulletin board revealed their schedules for each week—Navet could see the disappointed ones and the relieved ones.

Out from each man’s name, he had details about them that he had written—for instance, ar’Asten ate lunch every day in the break room, he brought his own, and shared with no one. He was a loner, an older man who kept to himself it seemed but did his job with a deal of seriousness. Jarsol, on the other hand, often came in late, went to lunch too early, came back too late, and appeared to be close to losing his job if the arguments he got into his Sossio were any indication.

On the holographic schematic, he had filled in missing portions of the building with graphics of his own, making Ma’gonogon’s work more complete. Navet pored over the information morning, noon, and night, and often dreamt of it. In the morning, he woke up to start his work all over again.


* * *


He spotted the screws that were loose on the vent cover on the 214th floor’s break room that next morning. It was another opportunity that Navet felt obligated to take advantage of. One evening, he purposely spilled a bottle of volatile cleaning solvents just so he could keep everyone out while he cleaned it up, apologizing profusely to Sossio and the others as he put up the DO NOT ENTER sign; he advised them to use the break rooms on the other floors.

Navet had on a mask to protect him from getting dizzy off the fumes, and he locked the door behind him. On his lunch break, he had gone across to Vroxio café to link-up to the HoloNet, where he remotely sliced into his back door feed and looped the footage to that particular break room. Now, splashing some water across the floor and doing a bit of mopping, Navet climbed up on a table and fiddled with the loose screws on the vent cover until it came off. He jumped straight, grabbed the lip of the vent, did a pull-up, and climbed on inside. Over the next hour, he crawled through the tight confines and made a mental map of all the avenues the shafts might take him—one led to an outlet of a maintenance shaft with a ladder going straight up a narrow shaft. Navet wondered just how far it went.

He didn’t have enough time to explore it that day, but two days later he found another excuse to be alone in the break room—Navet had thought ahead, and on his first trip into the vents he had placed a dead rodent inside, a rodent he had gotten from a local pet shop. The smell was pretty atrocious within the first couple of days, and eventually he “volunteered” to climb inside to see what the odor’s source was. Four hours later, he had mapped out the rest of the shaft, now knowing definitively that the shaft went directly up, up, up to some of the topmost floors, yet splintered off into a couple of different directions. Navet found that some of the vents came out into various break rooms—he marked the spots mentally, and approximated them later on the holographic schematics of the casino.

He now had the beginning of an escape route planned, a place he could go to hide if necessary once the poodoo hit the fan.


* * *


Navet woke up to room service. He went to the door, said, “No, thank ya,” and shut the door in the droid’s face. He was exhausted. He had stayed up all night going over it all in his head again and again, and had rearranged some priorities on his wipe-board. Wherever there was a question about a room, or there was something about their background he had not yet determined, he left a question mark somewhere around the name or the room. He had labels like “218th floor break room = ?” because he hadn’t found it anywhere yet and “???Marston?” since Marston was a security guard back from vacation, and one that Navet hadn’t met until the day before. Marston’s presence changed up some of the guard routines since they had an extra man now.

Today was technically his day off, yet he had a lot of work to do.

On top of adding Marston to the wipe-board, Navet also marked timelines. Going about his daily janitorial duties, he had counted the steps and timed himself on his chrono to see what the distance was between certain points, and how long it took him to traverse those distances going at a medium pace and at a slow pace. On the schematic he marked the vent covers that would take him to the maintenance shaft hidden behind the reinforced Durasteel walls, and he smoked through seven cigarras before he had finalized every single timeline.

He sent Ruse an h-mail that morning, saying that tomorrow at noon he would need a blackout. Navet wanted to see what the reaction of the casino’s security and average employees would be during a standard blackout, and how fast the back-up generators brought everything back online.

The response came back from Ruse promptly: Can do, friend Navet!


* * *


The blackout only lasted about fifteen seconds before the back-up generators were activated, but it took a full three minutes before all of the holocams were giving 100% feed. Navet had been in one of the bathrooms cleaning out the urinals during the blackout, and stepped outside for a moment to observe the hustle and bustle of security guards heading towards the main gambling floors. They were going to make sure that no one had tried anything during the blackout. That happened at casinos when the lights went out for any length of time—people down on their luck scattered the chips to confuse the record of their losses, or just tried to take the stolen chips and surreptitiously walk towards the door to try and exchange the chips for real money before anyone noticed. Opportunists were abound in casinos.

That night, Navet returned to the Corusca Glimmer Casino to play a bit of pazaak, again going under a bit of disguise as Grona bar’Solas. The plan was to make sure he lost more than he won, but he needn’t have bothered—the table he sat down at was obviously filled with professional players. Navet lost almost everything he brought with him that night to a Zabrak and a Sullustan, the former never even seemed to notice he existed at all during the game, and the latter laughed stupidly every hand he won.

Navet used that game to check and see the security routines a bit more. A pair of turbolifts going straight up to penthouse levels were always guarded by at least three security officers, who merely stared down anyone who tried to approach the lifts; it was obvious only high rollers could walk in there, as Navet had watched a few come and go. He had asked around. Casino security ran a credit check on you before you could even be considered eligible to walk through those turbolift doors, and there was a minimum 400,000CR payment required to enter the games that were played up there.

That night, Navet sat in front of his wipe-board, and the enormous diagram he had written across it. A lot of the question marks had been removed as he had found answers to those unknowns, and more and more of the schematic was getting filled in. C’mon, he thought at the wipe-board. Talk to me! He was trying to demand answers from it, yet it all seemed so impenetrable.

He thought about the corridor that led to the employee access center that he spotted the other day while playing sabacc, he thought about the maintenance shaft he had uncovered behind the walls, and slowly, as he stood up late looking out over Denon’s night sky with a cigarra burning between his fingers, Navet began to finally develop a plan.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 27



It wasn’t straightforward at all. It was Navet’s day off and he had to use a series of cons to maneuver his way through the Corusca Glimmer Casino that morning, when he assumed everything was about to change. He was dressed in a black Bafflo-Imargo suit, with a perfect Hindsor knot in his tie, with a company tie clip placed firmly on the front of it. He had checked the embroidery of the tie in the mirror before leaving his room that morning, just to make sure everything appeared square.

Navet had shaved his head a bit, and his face was completely clean shaven. He walked right up to the secured doors at the far end of the game room on the 215th floor, and used a cloned version of the magnetic strip from the card he had taken off the drunken guard in the bathroom almost two weeks prior, and used it to allow him through the doors. A guard nearby watched him walk in, but Navet never broke character—he was supposed to be there, as far as the guard was concerned. Navet had used his back door into the security holocams to loop them again, to prevent them from using facial-recognition to tell that he was, actually, an employee of the casino.

Navet stepped through those double doors, and walked through that back area like he owned the place. He even nodded to one or two people, who nodded back politely. One woman, who was not totally sold on him, stopped to ask, “Um, may I help you? What are you doing back here?”

“I’m with Sossio,” he smiled. “Meeting him for lunch up on the three-hundredth floor. The jerk’s late. Again!” He kept walking, and the woman gave a wan smile before turning away and stepping into an office.

Navet made his way through a few rooms, marking them in his memory and making a few quick notes on his datapad. This back area was obviously meant for employees to circumnavigate the crowded game floors, so that they could get their jobs done in a timely fashion. Navet figured he could move through this area often enough—he had already fooled the one lady, and the next time she saw him she would be less likely to think anything strange about him.

He spent his time searching until he found what he was looking for. An opportunity. There was a turbolift, but one that was marked MAINTENANCE ONLY! Navet had been looking for a maintenance elevator since he had started working on the casino. He figured it had to be back here someplace. He recalled the six-digit code for the maintenance elevator that Ma’gonogon had given him: nine-six-six-oh-one-three. So, he punched it in: 966013.

The doors opened. He stepped inside.

Up he went. When the doors finally opened, he stepped out onto another floor that he had to immediately pretend to be familiar with. He nodded to a couple of faces as he walked about and discovered he was exactly where he wanted to be. Every room was filled with computers or servers—this wasn’t only an access lift for mechanical maintenance, but for systems maintenance, as well.

A couple of minutes perusing brought him to an ideal location. A room filled with servers but few people. Navet checked his chrono. Still seventeen minutes left. He found a men’s restroom across from his targeted server room and waited there until Ruse came through again, this time with a series of quick power surges that blinked lights on and off in the hallways, and turned more than a few computers off in various offices. While everyone was complaining and stepping out into the hall to express their frustration over lost work, Navet glided over to the room where the servers were and moved around a few techies who both saw him and didn’t see him—they physically saw him with their eyes, but never really appreciated his presence.

While the techies tried to straighten out the hiccups the power surge had caused to their servers, Navet moved around in the back around the enormous, library bookshelf-sized servers and tagged them with a scanner. That should give Ruse the connection he needed. These servers must be networked with the rest, at least on this floor. Now, it was time to move.

Navet retraced his steps, went down the maintenance lift and down through the corridors until he was back out of the employee access center again. He felt eyes on the back of his head, but Navet knew that was only paranoia. He had made this move during hours he had determined, from the information culled on his wipe-board’s diagram, when the fewest people who knew him as Bressh Kory would be working security details on the game room floor. And once he had retreated across the loud gaming floor and was certain no one had noticed him, he slipped back across the street, down the slidewalk, and changed clothes once again to become the third solid fake ID he had on him—Han Pretorik, from Corellia.


* * *


The deep connection to the Corusca Glimmer Casino’s servers he had given to Ruse allowed the slicer to give Han Pretorik a temporary but incredibly high credit check—enough to maybe get him at least access to the turbolifts going up to the high roller floors of the casino.

Han Pretorik was a nobody, an identity grown from a dead infant who hadn’t survived longer than a couple of hours in Coronet City. Navet had purchased the identity from a slicer much like Ruse many years ago, but had put most of the legwork in himself to cultivate the identity over the years. According to the intergalactic system, Han Pretorik had attended Coronet University, and was an upstanding member of the Intergalactic Gentlemen’s Dejarik Club, and was an entrepreneur with currently no businesses, but living off of the proceeds from past business ventures that had gone well for him.

In other words, Han Pretorik was a playboy. Navet only ever broke him out when the time was just right for such an identity.

Of course, no amount of ID cultivation could thoroughly fake having extremely good credit on every planet—if that could be forged, then why would a person need to do anything else except pretend to be someone they’re not? So Navet had gotten Ruse something he’d needed to complete the illusion—right at that moment, if all had gone well, then the casino’s computers ought to be finding that Han Pretorik had unusually excellent credit around the galaxy.

The handshake from the guard in front of him, and the pleasant welcome, “Enjoy your game, sir,” was all Navet needed to know that Ruse had kept his end of the bargain. Now, exactly how close will this get me to the topmost floors, an’ to the Twin Hutts? he wondered.


* * *


The turbolift halted on the 370th floor. Almost there, Navet thought. If the Twin Hutts are in here, then my job might just get completed sooner than expected. But that was expecting far too much. Ma’gonogon had said that Feer and Jagar rarely ever come down this far. Still, a boy could dream, couldn’t he?

The games were more subdued up here, but around fifty gentlecreatures, mostly males, sat around tables playing at sabacc. A haze of smoke hung over every table, and Twi’lek dancers danced atop a stage to quiet, soulful music while almost no one paid them any attention. Four security guards greeted him at the turbolift as its transparisteel doors parted.

The high-roller floor was decked floor to ceiling in red—red carpet, red drapes, and red chandeliers that emitted a light-red light. There were sculptures from a hundred different cultures, most of them probably originals, though Navet wasn’t very knowledgeable about art. He did know that there were gems adorning crowns of certain sculptures, or there were gems in place of the eyes—obviously, the corusca gem was the theme up here, with red the predominant color, while there were touches of green and blue on the tabeltops.

Immediately out of the turbolift, a massive waft of smoke shot out in front of his face. A pale-green Hutt, unknown to Navet, was playing a game of sabacc with a Rodian, two Zabraks, and a Human. Another plume of smoke shot out from the Hutt once it took a look at him, contemplated, and chewed on its own Hookah pipe, attached to a well. On the Hutt’s right arm was a tattoo, two pitchforks turning into one another, which identified it as belonging to the Desilijic clan. Navet bowed, as all Hutts expected other beings to do in their presence, and continued on, mentioning nothing about the smoke in his face.

Navet wandered over to a bar, where a pale-skinned male Twi’lek was tending. “An Algarine wine, please,” he said.

“Four hundred credits, sir,” he said. “I’ll put it on a tab for you.”

Navet looked at the small glass the Twi’lek handed him. “Four hundred creds. For this?”

“It’s been aged over five hundred years, sir.”

“An’ yet it still ends up in the toilet,” he said, smelling it.

“I’m sorry, sir?”

“Nothin’. Put it on my tab, like ya said.”

“Of course, sir.”

Navet turned back to face the game tables. He sipped the Algarine. It was far too sweet, but he could tell that it had fermented and aged for a while. The bartender hadn’t lied. Navet walked around the room casually with one hand in his pocket, showing interest in one table and applauding when someone pulled out a Pure Sabacc hand. He watched the game for half an hour. The one to beat was a Rodian, dressed in an expensive S’ah’Sayi suit with cufflinks that glimmered like corusca gems—Navet wondered if they were real.

The others at the table were decent enough sabacc players…for rich guys.

When a seat became available, and no one stepped up, Navet cleared his throat and approached the table. “May I buy in?” he asked. The Automated Sabacc Dealer droid waved a hand towards a seat without looking at him. A security droid standing nearby ran a wand over him, no doubt looking for skifter cards more than weapons. It then moved to one side to allow him to sit.

“Thanks. Hello, gentlecreatures!” Only one of the players, a dark-skinned Zabrak, acknowledged him, and it was only with the merest of nods. The Rodian said nothing at all, moving his chips closer to him as though he worried someone might take it. The only other player was a brown-skinned Sullustan, who was looking off into space while he fondled a single gambling chip between his fingers.

Chips were supplied to Navet based on his superb credit, which had been falsified by Ruse. The tray emerged from the table itself as a panel slid to one side and elevated them to the point they were directly in front of him. Fancy, he thought as he used an interface screen beside the chips to punch in the account he wanted his earnings to go to and his losings to come from. “The buy-in is twenty thousand,” said the dealer droid matter-of-factly. “Five thousand to the ante pot, and fifteen thousand to the sabacc pot.”

Navet had been taking another sip of his Algarine wine when the droid spoke, and he had to pretend to wince at the sweetness to hide his astonishment. Ma’gonogon had told him that these upper levels were meant for the high rollers, but he hadn’t said that the buy-in was 20,000 bleedin’ credits! But, there was nothing left to say except, “I’m in, boys!” He smiled and pretended it was nothing as he tossed in one of the chips that represented twenty grand.

He had to play, else he might look suspicious, being just some new face that nobody knew walking around and not gambling.

“It’s Fin’ya Standard Rules, sir,” the dealer droid said to him. The cards were dealt quickly and efficiently, and Navet took a quick glance at his three cards. He had the Nine of Coins, the Master, and the Queen of Air and Darkness. That gave him a total of +21. Close e-freakin’-nuff, he thought, tossing another chip into the middle, raising the wager to stay in to 40,000CR from each player. Every single player did this casually, as though gambling 40,000 credits was chump change—which, most likely, it was for these fellows.

Navet then tossed all three cards into the interference field at the center of the table. Everyone looked at him, including the dealer droid. “Sir, you are aware that if you throw all of your cards into the interference field, the cards can no change face value, and that you cannot ask for any other cards.”

“I’m aware,” Navet said, playing it cool and taking a sip of his wine. In truth, +21 in sabacc wasn’t all that excellent of a hand. In Fin’ya Standard Rules, though, the winning hand was closest without going over +23 or under -23. However, his confidence gave at least one of the players pause. The Rodian folded immediately. He was a careful player, and a damn good one because of it—his pile of chips was three times the size of anyone else’s. The Sullustan and the Zabrak went back and forth, betting. The Zabrak was betting aggressively, and Navet felt himself sweating inside his suit when he and the Sullustan got into a betting war.

When all was said and done, the cards were finally flipped—the Sullustan had -25, because the cards had switched at the last minute, forcing him to bomb-out after all that aggressive betting. The Zabrak showed his hand—he had the Moderation card, the Evil One, and the Eight of Staves—that gave him a total of -21. In most versions of sabacc, a positive number trumped a negative, and Fin’ya Standard was no different.

Navet had won the ante pot, but the sabacc pot was still out there. Because of the Zabrak’s and the Rodian’s betting war, the ante pot came to 197,000CR. Navet tried to look only nominally pleased when the droid’s long, spindly arm reached out to rake the chips over to his side of the table. “Thank you,” he said modestly.

Navet just wanted to run. He wanted to run with his money, but there was nothing left to do but play some more. How terrible would the reputation of his new persona be if he were to win just one hand for not even 200,000 credits (a modest hand at best in these high roller circles) and then leave instantly after just starting?

“Post your ante to both pots, gentlecreatures,” the dealer droid reminded them all.

Navet stayed in for two more games, watching around the room for any sign of the Twin Hutts. They never appeared. So, he watched the security instead, and noted their signs to one another—a tug at the ear obviously meant emotions were getting high at one table. Navet saw where extra guards silently stepped over to where a male Human was starting to get very vocal about his upset, and two guards tugged their ears meaningfully to one another.

Over the next few hands, Navet surreptitiously took in more of his surroundings. There was only one window, and that was a bay window directly behind him. Outside, the various airspeeders winked sunshine at him as they traversed the skies. A clear shot to this window, he thought. From at least three different rooftops. Everything else was sealed up, and Ma’gonogon’s large weapon, as powerful as it was, might not penetrate deeply enough unless the shell came through this window—the rest of the walls were so reinforced, they would only absorb a great deal of the impact. If they missed their chance this one time to kill the hard-to-pin-down Twin Hutts, then Feer and Jagar might never show their faces again.

We have to be sure about the hit.

Navet folded on the next hand after betting half of his earnings from the previous hand, losing them. He stayed in the next hand because it wasn’t so fierce in the betting, but he still lost to the Rodian. He won the next two hands for a “modest” 107,000 credits total, and then lost big on the very next hand for 80,000, before gaining back 70,000 on the next hand. “Well, gentlecreatures, it’s best to quit while you’re ahead, even if you’re only slightly so,” he said, pushing himself away from the table.

The Zabrak looked at him. “You’re not going to give us a chance to take back our money? We typically play until we have no chips left on the casino’s allowance, friend.”

“You’ll have more occasions to wipe the floor with me, I promise ya,” Navet said. “I’ll be back up here from time to time.” Only the Sullustan offered his hand for a shake, but all others just let him go with hardly a smile. Someone was already moving forward from the surrounding crowd to take his seat.

Navet would remember later to send a message to Ruse, moving his winnings from the fake account to an off-planet account, one he had used before with the InterGalactic Banking Clan. In all, he had wound up with over 100,000 credits in winnings, and that was more than he had intended when coming up here. Some of that money, of course, would have come from Kusk the Hutt, as part of his “budget” for this operation. Kusk would eventually take back what was left over, and there was no need for him to know that Navet had gambled with his money. And Navet would be sure put a little bit back towards Kusk, just to put a little cherry on top.

Navet stepped up to one of the security guards before leaving and said, “My first time up here. Is there a restroom nearby, sir?” The guard, a well-dressed green-skinned Twi’lek, pointed wordlessly to the far side of the room, to a hallway. “Thank you,” he said, and went there.

Navet passed by a half dozen more guards before he stepped into the bathroom, where he found one Zabrak security guard stationed in the guise of a service attendant, waiting with towels. Navet nodded to him as he stepped up to the urinal. He sighed heavily as he relieved himself, and glanced around the bathroom to get a feel for it. When he was finished, he walked over to the sink to wash his hands, and accepted the towel from the service attendant. “Saw a Hutt out there,” he said, wiping his hands. “Didn’t expect that. I thought Feer an’ Jagar the Hutts were disliked among the rest o’ their kind.”

The Zabrak bowed and said, “My lords are highly respected in local circles.”

“Course they are,” he said, handing the towel back to him. After a single use, the Zabrak folded the towel neatly and placed it in a pile of other “dirty” ones. “But are they gamblers themselves? You guys seem much of ’em down this far?”

“My lords only gamble once a week, but once they start they can go all day.”

“Really?” Navet logged that away. That’s interesting. Wonder how long Ruse can keep up the ruse that I’m a rich guy named Han Pretorik before anyone smells somethin’ suspicious? Can I keep comin’ back, waitin’ for the Twin Hutts to show up? “Hm. Well, are they any good?”

“Any good, sir?”

“Yeah, at gamblin’.”

“They are very good, sir.”

Navet nodded. “I look forward to playin’ with ’em, then.” He turned to leave. “See ya later.”

“Of course, sir.”

Back out on the floor, Navet got the lay of the area, marked the windows and the curtains. He got back inside the turbolift, under guard once again, and left once he got back to the 215th floor. One of the guards told him, “I hope you enjoyed your game, sir.”

“I did,” he said, smiling. “And thank you.” Still sweating, Navet exited through the front lobby, out onto the glidewalks. As far as he knew, he was home free for the moment.


* * *


The wipe-board grew cluttered, and he had added more information to the holographic schematic. Navet’s plan was developing. He was getting closer to the Hutts. He had a couple of escape routes for if (when) the poodoo hit the fan, and he had an idea of how to get close enough to the Twin Hutts and hold them in place long enough for Ma’gonogon to set up position.

That left only a few variables, and most of those included the various security guards at almost every turn on the top floor. Smoke bombs and flash-bang grenades would help if he could only get them up to those topmost floors without being detected through all the security scanners that existed not just in the form of wands, but no doubt scanners hidden inside the walls of those upper floors, as well.

Navet decided. It was risky, but he would have to continue making appearances among the high-roller gambling floors, and keep an eye out for the Twin Hutts. If he spotted them, he would have to get word to Ma’gonogon quickly. The cyborg had said that piezoelectric oscillators and radio noise saturation kept anyone from eavesdropping on anything or anyone on the top floors—which meant he wouldn’t be able to contact the cyborg from the top floors.

However…if he were to hide a remote transmission relay on one of the lower floors and send a transmission down to it while he was on the topmost floors watching the Twin Hutts gambles, it could alert the cyborg, plus give Navet time to make his escape.

He dialed up Ruse, and sent him a message: Ruse, I need an RX-221A remote transceiver/receiver, STAT!

A few seconds later, he got his reply: Not a problem, friend Navet. I am always pleased to assist your entity!

Navet rolled his eyes, closed his datapad, and went back to work studying the holo schematic. In a few hours, he would need to sleep. Tomorrow, he went back to work for the casino’s cleaning service.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 28



The next day, Navet pick-pocketed a random, upstanding but gullible-looking citizen on the street. It was also a Human that had roughly his build, if not his facial structure. He bumped into him on a public transit airspeeder, apologized, “Oh, sorry!”, chuckled, and walked away after he had purloined the man’s wallet.

An hour later, after sifting through the man’s wallet and getting all the information he could from it, he took the banking card and called the man using a HoloNet public listing service. Navet called him on a prepaid mini-datapad. The man, named Cobry Azinint, answered, “Hello?”

“Mr. Azinint,” Navet said in the most official tones, “my name is Vergun Bamsten, and I’m with Galactic Enterprise Credit. Are you currently trying to purchase a landspeeder in the T-44 corporate sector of Denon?”

“What? No. No, I’m not.”

“Have you lost your GEC card, sir, or any other items with personal information on them?”

“No. Well, um…hold on, let me check.” After a few seconds of audible rummaging, he came back. “Oh, my…sithspit! It looks like I did! Somebody must’ve—”

“Taken it, yes. Hm. Well, this happens all the time, sir. For security purposes, I’m going to have to go ahead and ask for your password you’ve set up with us.”

“Password?”

“Yes, sir. To make sure you are who you say you are. To make sure I’m not talking to someone who also stole your comlink or datapad or otherwise.” He chuckled. “A bit much, I know, but I need to know it’s you I’m speaking with.”

“Password…oh, yes. It’s, um, prototype.”

“Thank you, sir. And your mother’s maiden name?”

“Hutchins.”

“And your security number?”

“Security number? Is that, like, a PIN number or something?”

Navet chuckled. “Well, it shouldn’t be, but we often find that it is.”

“All right, then. Give it a try. One-four-eight-eight.”

“Thank you, sir. Yes, I am seeing that that is it. I can now confirm your identity, and that you are indeed the primary name on this account. I will put a stop payment on that payment in the corporate sector, and we’ll see if we can’t send some police over there shortly to catch them before they leave.”

“Thank you!” Azinint said, relieved. “Thank you so much.”

“Not a problem. And in the future, Mr. Azinint, be more careful.”

“I will, thank you.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

Navet disconnected the call, and immediately went to the HoloNet. He was sitting in the café Vroxio across from the Corusca Glimmer Casino. He used the public holo-projector at his table and accessed Azinint’s account, to see how much he had to his name in his GEC account—using the personal information Navet had conned out of Azinint, he used his card in a reader slot on the table, and remotely accessed all of his credits, all 57,844 of them. With a few quick clicks, he had transferred all of those funds into another account, a dummy one he had set up yesterday with the IGBC.

Navet now had a good bit of credits to use rather than have to rely on calling up Kusk every few days to ask for more. Of course, there was always the chance that he could get caught doing this, especially when he went to get money out of his dummy account later, but Navet intended to be gone from here soon enough, ditching both Azinint’s money and the various identities he had used here on Denon once the job was finished. He intended to get as far away from this as possible if the job went like it was supposed to. Almost as important as the job itself was a clean getaway.


* * *


Navet, going under the name of Bressh Kory, cleaned guest rooms within the casino for four more days while losing sleep at night attending high-stakes sabacc as Han Pretorik on the top floors. He saw neither hide nor slobber of the Twin Hutts, nor did he even hear of their presence. He was starting to wonder if Jagar and Feer were even still around when, late one evening while playing sabacc against a few other rich gentlecreatures, that the rumor was that the Twin Hutts were out of town for the moment, working on some business in the lower levels (which meant the Boweries, of course, though no one said it), and would be coming back the next day. They said that the Twin Hutts always had a hankering for sabacc after returning from a business trip.

This might be it. Navet had received the RX-221A remote transceiver/receiver Ruse had sent him in his hotel mailbox days ago, and had already utilized Ma’gonogon’s contact in the lobby, the Rodian named Henda, to set up the remote transceiver/receiver underneath his desk, where it would stay hidden and less likely to be spotted by cleaners. The RX-221A would allow Navet to send a transmission through the interference field from the top floors, down to the transceiver/receiver itself, and out to Ma’gonogon, who he had already told to go ahead and set up on the roof of the hotel adjacent to the Corusca Glimmer Casino.

Navet had gotten a call from Henda during the night. It was sure, only five words. “The Twin Hutts are in,” he said, and quickly hung up. Navet had climbed out of the bed after having stayed up all night looking over the holographic schematics of the casino for the millionth time, and sent a quick message to Ma’gonogon: Tomorrow. I think this is it.

A few minutes later, he only got back a warning: You had better be ready to run.

Navet sighed as he sat on the edge of his bed, looking out across the night sky at the Corusca Glimmer Casino. Almost two months worth of work and planning—it had gone on longer than he had believed it would, but the casino had proved more formidable than he had initially comprehended. Tomorrow’s the day, he thought, lighting a cigarra and preparing himself mentally for the dangers of the next day.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 29



Navet stepped into the Corusca Glimmer Casino as Han Pretorik, a well-dressed entrepreneur with excellent credit and a growing reputation as the “new guy” on the upper floors where all the high rollers played their high stakes games. That morning, while stepping into the casino, he had cloned a comlink that he’d pick-pocketed off of a casino security guard, and used the stolen ID card from another guard he’d found drunk in a bathroom more than a week ago to get into a server room to make sure that Ruse, his slicer partner for this operation, still had a good link to the casino’s systems. Part of Han Pretorik’s ruse was that he had exemplary credit with the IGBC. Without that false credit score, his fake ID as Pretorik was useless.

He got onto the turbolift and ascended into the opulent upper floors, and as soon as he got out he knew that something was different. There were more performers, more dancers, and the music was a bit louder. Obviously, everyone was anticipating the arrival of the Twin Hutts. But so far, Feer and Jagar hadn’t made an appearance.

Navet took a seat at the first available sabacc table and put up the 20,000-credit buy-in. He went right into playing and lost the first five hands, but won three of the next four. He had a lit cigarra clenched between his teeth, and he sipped at a glass of Algarine wine while a Twi’lek dancer sat in his lap from time to time, counting his chips for him and flirting with him intermittently. But Navet wouldn’t be distracted from the game, and after she sensed this the woman lost interest and walked away.

Navet ended up playing with a Rodian, the same one that had been giving him trouble all week, and whose name he had learned was Pamtha Immo—the Pamtha Immo, the same one who had won the ISO (Intergalactic Sabacc Open) just five years ago. He was known for never saying a word throughout entire tournaments, just placing his bets quietly, and tipping his cards down with a nod to the Automated Dealer Droid to show when he was folding. No wonder he’s been kicking everyone’s tail from here to Hoth, Navet thought. This was the same Pamtha Immo who would be participating in the next ISO in just a couple of weeks, and was already favored to win.

Presently, Navet glanced down at his cards. He had the Evil One, Balance, Demise, and the Star. That was after the first face-changing shuffle, and it happened within seconds of getting a look at his first hand. Fed up, he said, “Fold.” He took a toke of his cigarra and glanced around the room, still looking for the Twin Hutts. He had already primed Ma’gonogon, the cyborg assassin knew that today was the opportune time, but if Feer and Jagar suddenly decided to go against their usual ritual of unwinding with a game of sabacc after a long trip, as their people suggested they preferred to do, then today might be a bust. Navet didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the ruse of being Han Pretorik before someone did their homework on his alias and became suspicious.

“The hand goes to Pamtha Immo,” said the dealer droid.

Not surprising, thought Navet, looking back at the center of the table as the droid began to reshuffle the cards. He got a new and better-looking hand this time. It was the Endurance card, along with an Ace, a Mistress, and the Two of Staves. That gave his hand a value of +22. That was pretty darn close to the target number for sabacc, but if he placed them all within the interference field at once to freeze their value, most likely everyone at the table would fold, knowing that he had an excellent hand, and they wouldn’t risk betting more at each round.

So, Navet merely tossed two into the interference field, hoping that the face-change shuffle wouldn’t happen between now and the next round—he wanted to lure them out. Betting did indeed get intense, with aggressive raises coming from every player. Navet glanced around the room, twiddling a gambling chip between his fingers and looking for the Twin Hutts.

When he looked back at his hand, it was shuffling. He waited with anticipation to see what it would be. A bust or a boon? But Navet never got to see the shuffling finale, because he heard a booming voice from just behind him. “Feer gun Jagar du Hutts!” someone shouted. Navet started, and half turned to see a Twi’leki majordomo standing just outside of the turbolift. He waved his hands ostentatiously, and then stepped to one side.

And all of a sudden, after weeks of waiting, there they were. The whole room went silent, and everyone stood to their feet to receive them. The Twin Hutts, born to a shared body, came out of the turbolift, half wiggling, and half pushing themselves along. Jagar was doing most of the work, it seemed, as his head was the only one that looked half proper affixed to the body. Feer, however, was a disaster to behold—the conjoined twin’s head hung grotesquely off to one side, and looked around at everyone in a manner that tried to maintain some degree of dignity. More drool than usual for a Hutt slid down the side of Feer’s face, and Jagar’s own saliva frothed and collected around the edge of his brother’s mouth.

The Twin Hutts were not especially large. Indeed, they were somewhat small for Hutts. But they still managed to demand the respect of every sentient creature in the room. Navet stood, along with all the others in the room, and bowed slightly. The Twin Hutts slithered their way across the room, to where a large spot had been cleared away at one of the tables. Navet took his seat, and immediately folded. All in all, he had lost 124,000 credits, but he had earned enough earlier in the week so that he was barely going to break about even.

Navet pushed himself away from the table and went to the bathroom. As he did, he walked behind the Twin Hutts, observed their forked rear tail—no one had told him about that part of their body. It looked like a giant, fat snake’s tongue.

When he entered the bathroom, he nodded to the service attendant, and then stepped into a stall at the far end of the bathroom. He got in, locked the door, and sat on the toilet. He pulled out his mini-datapad, and sent a text message to Ma’gonogon. Via the RX-221A remote transceiver/receiver affixed at the front lobby’s desk at the feet of Henda, the cyborg’s inside man, Navet got the word out to Ma’gonogon—without this transceiver/receiver, his transmission would never have gotten beyond the Corusca Glimmer Casino’s piezoelectric oscillators and radio noise saturation devices.

The text message was simple: They are here.

After a few seconds, he received a reply from the cyborg: Keep them in play. I’m getting into position now.

Navet switched off his datapad, flushed the toilet, and stepped outside. He accepted a towel from the service attendant, exchanged some small-talk so as not to appear too anxious, and then stepped back out onto the floor, where the Twin Hutts were just starting to place a bet. There were two available chairs at the table where they were—Navet suspected that the Twin Hutts didn’t get many volunteers to play with them. Who wanted to best a crime lord of any stature in a game of cards, particularly a Hutt?

Navet approached, trying his best to appear casual. He glanced at security, nodded to a few familiar faces, ones he had gotten to know in his few days as the new guy on the top levels. He could hardly believe that weeks of planning had finally culminated into this moment. The Twin Hutts were here. They were actually here, at last! Now, the question was, could he and Ma’gonogon finish the job?

He bowed slightly to the Twin Hutts as he came to their table, and said, “May I have the honor of sittin’ for a few rounds, my lords?” Jagar, the dominant head of the shared body, was the only one who looked at him. Feer, the head listing off to one side, never even responded. With the wave of a hand, Jagar appeared to say, “Whatever.” The Automated Dealer Droid waved one of its own spindly hands and said, “Have a seat, esteemed patron.” He took his seat, one facing the transparisteel window so that he could at least glimpse a bit off in the distance. “Let it be known that Han Pretorik is buying in,” said the dealer droid.

Navet once again passed the credit check as Han Pretorik, and was summarily given his chips from a tray that came from inside the table. He tossed in his 20,000 buy-in, and was told by the dealer droid, “The buy-in for each round at this table is fifty thousand credits, sir.”

Navet tried not to show any surprise, and instead tossed in a couple more chips as though it were nothing. “Ya only live once,” he chuckled. “An’ not very long if you’re a Human.” This got not a single laugh from anyone at the table.

The cards were dealt, and Navet glanced at his. He had the Star, two Aces, and the Seven of Staves, which gave him a total of +20. Off to a not-so-bad start, he thought, glancing to the window. Navet was waiting for the cyborg’s signal, which should give him at least a couple of minutes to get free and clear of this floor before he fired that ridiculously large cannon of his.

Jagar raised, and with his inferior hand his brother Feer called. A Zabrak at the table called, as well, while a Sullustan folded. Navet called, and tossed all of his cards into the interference field. At this point, he finally caught the attention of the Twin Hutts. Both Feer and Jagar looked up at him. After a few seconds of thinking, they both raised. Navet saw their raise, and raised them another 30,000 credits. Feer folded, but his conjoined brother stayed in, meeting Navet’s bet. When the cards were shown, Jagar had a +20, as well, but Navet won the ante pot because he had Aces high—the sabacc pot remained unclaimed.

Wordlessly, expressionlessly, he accepted the winnings raked to his side of the table. And, just as wordless and expressionless, the Twin Hutts watched him. Jagar then placed his bet. It was a raise. The cards hadn’t even been dealt yet. Navet said, “You’re very confident today, milord Hutt.”

Jagar said nothing, only looked at him for a moment with those huge, round eyes. The message seemed obvious. If Navet was going to be cocky so soon in a game as to put all his cards into the interference field, then what happened to a game when everyone acted so impulsive? It was a silent rebuke from a professional gambler.

Navet gave his most amiable smile and saw the Hutt’s bet. The dealer droid, which was programmed to stop such nonsense at the gaming table, was not programmed to be stupid—it knew when to leave a Hutt alone. It dealt the cards like normal, and then everyone else tossed in their regular bets, but obviously on the next round they had to raise in order to meet both Jagar’s and Navet’s initial high bets.

On this round, Navet had the Two of Staves, the Three of Sabres, an Ace, and the Idiot, for a grand total of +20. Not too bad, he thought, and tossed in a bit of a raise. He won that hand because everyone, including the Twin Hutts, eventually folded. The two hands had been played so fast that no face-changing shuffling had occurred. Navet accepted his winnings once again with false modesty, and when the next hand was being dealt Jagar said, in deep, resonating Huttese, “Where are you from, Han Pretorik?”

He looked up. “Lots o’ places, milord Hutt,” Navet said.

“Name one. The first one.”

He sighed, and accepted the first card from the dealer droid. “Coruscant, originally,” he said. “If that’s what ya mean.”

Jagar said nothing, and neither did his brother. They both accepted their cards, looked at them, and placed a bet after the Zabrak raised. “What part of Coruscant?” Jagar finally said.

“The Caspnx District.”

“Do they play sabacc in the Caspnx District?”

“A little, sure,” Navet said. “But it’s much more of a pazaak kind o’ place.” He shrugged, and tossed in a few chips to meet the Zabrak’s raise.

“What sort of rules do they favor when they do play sabacc?” Jagar went on.

Navet took out a cigarra, lit it, and blew out. “It all depends on who ya ask. The upper-class usually liked Empress Teta Preferred. The street urchins I grew up around liked playin’ Corellian Gambit rules, though. There were these five droids, if ya can believe it, who had no masters—completely feral droids, just runnin’ rogue through the lower streets. They grouped together in order to survive. No one knew where they came from. They played a version I’ve never seen before, which involved tellin’ a story to one another—the stories were about the cards themselves, the Star, the Idiot, the Evil One, an’ so on. They called their version o’ sabacc Load. I have no idea why.”

“What was the purpose of this storytelling style?” asked Jagar, seemingly intrigued.

“I could never tell exactly what the rules were, but the droids played it often—it seemed to be important for there to be a storyteller an’ some kinda moderator. I dunno. It seemed like whoever told the best stories involvin’ their cards was awarded a certain amount o’ points, an’ that played into the final tally. In this way, they liked to flex their growin’ sapience an’ sentience, I guess ya could say, while still playin’ a game to pass the time away.” Navet thought back on those droids. “I wonder whatever happened to ’em.”

“Why don’t you go back and find out?” asked Feer all of a sudden. “You’re both giving me a headache with all of your talking. Sabacc is not for talking, it’s for playing. These droids were not truly enlightened or else they would have known that.”

“If milord Hutt says so,” said Navet. “Ya probably know best. You’ve lived far longer than I ever will.”

“Why do you feel that my rebuke was an invitation to speak more?” Feer suddenly raised his voice, slobber leaking out of his slanted mouth in great rivers.

The table went quiet. Even the dealer droid seemed uncertain of what to do next. “Forgive me, milord Hutt,” said Navet, tossing in a few more chips to meet Jagar’s raise. He lost that hand, because Jagar had a Pure Sabacc, which gave him both the ante pot and the sabacc pot. He raked in a fortune, and Navet never said a word. He glanced out the window ahead of him. So far, no message from Ma’gonogon. Will the cyborg fire without sendin’ me a warnin’ first? he thought. Surely not. I’m still on the same payroll he is. We’re both workin’ for Kusk the Hutt, so he won’t set me up to die along with the Twin Hutts…

…will he?

The cards were dealt on the next round, and Navet barely looked at his own. He was just about to raise for no reason at all when he felt a light buzzing at his side. He folded his cards and got up to leave all at once. Considering the exchange he had just had with Feer and Jagar, nobody was likely to think it strange that he decided to get up and leave. And he had lost more than he’d gained, so they weren’t likely to get upset with him for leaving with anyone’s money. He said, “I’m cashin’ out.” The dealer droid accepted this, and made the necessary transfer from his credit line.

Navet once again slipped into the bathroom, nodded to the service attendant again, and went to a stall. He locked himself in, sat on the toilet, and looked at the message. It was not from Ma’gonogon, as he had expected. It was from Ruse. It read: Get out of there. Your identity has been compromised. They’ve discovered my tampering with their systems. I did all I could to prevent them from finding out who you are. They’ll be looking for you any moment.

Navet did not take the time to reread the message. He had a moment to think, No…no, not now. Not now when we’re so close to the end. He stood up calmly, stepped out of the stall and made for the door without a nod to the attendant this time. Just as he was exiting the bathroom, he got another buzz at his side. This time it was from Ma’gonogon: In position. Get out of there if you want to live.

Sweat collected on his brow for the first time in days. Navet glanced around at security. It was thick on this floor now that the Twin Hutts were here. I’m gonna get killed by Hutts or by that maniac cyborg if I don’t outta here now! He thought quickly, and extracted the cloned comlink from his pocket. He activated the encoded security channel for the Corusca Glimmer Casino, and said, “Benevolent. Repeat, benevolent.” That was the password Ma’gonogon had told him that the casino’s security used to ensure that they were in fact speaking with someone with true authority in the casino. “Han Pretorik is leavin’ the premises. Our Hutt lords wish him to be escorted out promptly. All security personnel posted on the high-roller floors, be on the lookout an’ extend them every courtesy.”

That might expedite matters. He walked briskly across the room and right up to the turbolift doors, where the security guards were already opening it for him. “Right this way, Mr. Pretorik,” said one of them.

Navet turned to face out of the clear, transparisteel doors, and spotted the Twin Hutts. They were looking at him. The Twi’leki majordomo who had announced their arrival was whispering something into both of their ears. Feer and Jagar’s eyes locked onto him just as the turbolift started taking him down.

Navet knew now that he only had seconds. Between Ruse’s warning and his instincts, he knew he would never make it out alive—they would detain him for questioning, and Ma’gonogon would destroy the upper floors with him inside. There were two security guards in the lift with him. One of them touched at his ear, getting a transmission. Navet glanced sidelong at him, and saw the guard look back at him meaningfully. Navet smirked. “So,” he said, “what are they sayin’ about me?”

The security officer started for his blaster, and that’s when all hell broke loose in the turbolift.

Navet knew instantly that something had changed. The guard’s countenance made an important shift just before he went for his weapon, and Navet flung himself bodily backwards into the guard, pinning him against the wall. The turbolift was small enough that he could kick out with both his feet at the other guard. Navet was a bridge between them, pinning each man to the opposite wall. He head-butted backwards into the guard’s head, smashing his nose and stunning him for a moment while Navet reached for the guard’s blaster. There was a brief bit of hand wrestling, but ultimately Navet twisted the guard’s wrist, stripping the blaster from his hand and firing backwards over his head, exploding the right temple of the guard before firing directly ahead at the other.

The brief scramble was over, and Navet was panting, panicking, thinking. Then, the turbolift came to an abrupt halt. The exchange of blaster fire had set off sensors that picked up the laser emissions, and the thing just stopped. Tossing the two dead bodies to the center of the turbolift card, he used them like step ladders to reach up and pushed against the roof of the thing—the maintenance hatch was locked down. He used the guard’s holdout blaster to destroy the hinges, then bashed it open. He tucked the gun in his waist, and leapt up, grabbed the edges, did a pull-up, and clambered up into the lift shaft.

A voice over an intercom inside the lift said, “Stay where you are! You have been caught on holocam discharging a blaster! You cannot escape!”

The Sith I can’t! he thought as he stood atop the car and immediately began a climb up the side of the shaft, to where there was a ventilation access panel. He held onto a safety catch cable with one hand while he blasted the panel’s hinges away, and then swung out and back in a few times to smash it in. Navet clambered inside, and in his haste he dropped the holdout blaster down the shaft.

He paid no mind, and pulled himself into the shaft. According to his other explorations, this shaft should come out to a master maintenance shaft within the walls of the casino, a shaft which he had already mapped out in many directions, he just had to find some familiar corridors.

Navet used the comlink to listen in on security channels. “Units twenty-three and twenty-seven!” a voice shouted. “We’ve got an intruder in the turbolifts! Men down in turbolift number eighteen! I repeat, men down in turbolift number eighteen! Suspect is Han Pretorik! Check your security datapads for a holo of him! Check every nook and cranny! Isolate him between floors—”

Navet kept moving. In places, the corridors got tall enough and wide enough to stand in a crouch and run, and when he finally came to a familiar ladder, he slid down it until he hit bottom. At about this time was when he both heard and felt the wrath of Ma’gonogon’s destructive cannon. The Tukon 90X, he called it. It fired shells with enhanced glazeboard discs and heavy beeswax compensation. This missile also had intricate guidance systems, along with a fuzing and three-stage interlocking system. A “micro-nuke,” is what he had called it. A self-limiting nuclear explosion, its blast radius adjustable as necessary, which would no doubt take out most of the upper floors. Ma’gonogon could not have fired it until this moment if he wanted to be absolutely certain he got the Twin Hutts—any other time, they might not have been around, which they obviously hadn’t been these last few weeks.

The building shook all around him, and the obstreperous noise from the explosion nearly deafened him while the power went out all around him. All at once, he was cast into pitch-blackness. He had anticipated this eventuality, and so had taught himself to move through these corridors in darkness by keeping his eyes closed, feeling for the markers.

The Corusca Glimmer Casino was being assailed by forces that its architects and engineers had never anticipated. The building groaned and whined like a dying animal, and it even lurched a bit. For a moment, Navet was afraid the whole thing would come down with him still in it. But it was a strong building, meant to stand even if upper floors didn’t.

Navet stumbled through the darkness, and smoke started shooting in from everywhere, being pushed through the vents from above by sheer force of the explosion—the gases and dust and smoke were finding any crevices they could. Much of Navet’s work in these last couple weeks had been more to ensure himself an escape after he confirmed the Twin Hutts were in position. Infiltrating throughout the facility had been difficult enough, but this mission had required him to “reverse engineer” an escape plan.

Back-up power came back on just as he was coming to another ladder, which took him down, down, down. He slid on it most of the way, passing other corridors and other floors, outrunning the smoke, coughing and wheezing the whole way, trying to his hold his breath until he came to the area just above the bathroom where he had first discovered the maintenance shaft. Navet removed one of the panels, and came crashing down into one of the stalls. The bathrooms had emptied out, and outside on the gambling floors Navet could hear people screaming.

Before stepping outside, he spoke into the comlink, “Benevolent! Repeat, benevolent!” he said. That was the password for any unknown officer speaking over the security channels who either didn’t have time to verify his ID or was too low level to pull any kind of rank over an open channel; in a panicky situation such as this one, he wouldn't need to do much else to convince anyone listening of who he was. “Han Pretorik has been spotted and confirmed on the three-hundred-and-second floor! Repeat, the terror suspect is on the three-hundred-and-second floor!” That should confuse the search a bit. The rest of the security would be focused on getting people out. Navet tossed much of his disguise into one of the stalls, and went with minimum regular everyday clothing so as to not to appear to be Han Pretorik anymore. Then, he stepped out onto the floor.

Things were going crazy. In the darkness, people had scrambled for chips, and a couple of people had busted open a slot machine. Security was trying to handle those people while getting others to safety. Navet blended into the crowd, matching its panic. He ran for the stairs. He was sure that, by now, all turbolifts had surely been switched back on—they would want to keep Han Pretorik inside, but they couldn’t risk not giving patrons a means of escape. However, if Navet were to jump into one of the lifts, his face would likely be spotted by facial-recognition holocams.

So, before he took this route, he contacted Ruse and gave the slicer his own back door into security feeds, which Navet had gotten a week before when a shift commander was asleep—it had been Sossio, who was the security lead for floors 200-215. Navet had used the same feed to get Ruse to loop security footage in order to allow him an escape. He did the same thing this time.

Ruse’s reply came back to his datapad quickly enough: You should be good now, friend Navet!

Navet made his way across the floor and into a turbolift packed with panicked gamblers. “What the blazes happened?!” one man screamed.

“I don’t know!” a woman cried as the lift got moving.

Navet blended to the scene by becoming a speculator. “I think I heard someone say a ship crashed into the top floors! A fully-loaded YT shuttle or somethin’!”

“By the Force!”

People added their own speculations and shared a brief bit about what they had experienced when the explosion first rocked the building. When they reached the lower section of floors, Navet stepped out of the turbolift and ran along with everyone else, although a few security officers were standing there waiting for them, waving them on and shouting, “Do not run, folks!” Navet bolted like all the rest, and made it out the door by ducking his head here and there—he knew the security officers would already have seen a holo of Han Pretorik, and he didn’t want his face conjuring up suspicions.

On his way out, Navet crossed the lobby, and spotted Henda, the Rodian who Ma’gonogon had set him up with weeks ago. The Rodian never saw him, he was too busy waving patrons out the exits. Navet slipped outside, and saw that several dozen emergency shuttles were hovering around the top of the building. People were urged to be careful—already, a great deal of the durasteel and transparisteel had rained down from above, and great chunks of the wall were crashing down at various portions of the slidewalk. Navet moved through a barricade that had been thrown together, and like most people he fled for his life.

As he got farther and farther away, he finally glanced over his shoulder. All of the top twenty floors were completely annihilated—they were disintegrated utterly. It was like a great monster had come down to take a bite out of those floors. Well, I kept them in play long enough, Navet thought. I don’t suppose the Twin Hutts were able to get away from that. Yes, they had sealed the deal, there had been no chance of Feer and Jagar escaping. Navet had been with them up until the penultimate moment to ensure they went nowhere, and then vanished while the upper floors were obliterated.

There could be no escape for the Twin Hutts.


* * *


Navet was now Grona bar’Solas, an identity he had used as a low-level gambler at the Corusca Glimmer Casino. News holos had it that the death toll was estimated to be around 850, mostly high-rollers and security officers working for the Twin Hutts. Feer and Jagar themselves had been confirmed dead. Casualties from smoke inhalation on some of the floors below those destroyed were minimum.

Navet finished reading some of the updates on the attack on his datapad, which had access to the HoloNet. He flipped it shut, and said, “We about ready, Artoo?” The astromech twittered happily to itself as Navet ascended the ladder of the ARC-170. He checked the fuel gauge. “Ya filled us up! That’s a good droid. Maybe I’ll keep yer sorry tin can butt around after all.” Navet felt a buzzing at his side. He checked his micro-datapad. It was from Ma’gonogon. The message said: Good working with you. Be seeing you around.

For the moment, Navet sent nothing back.

The takeoff cycle began, and Navet strapped himself in. The canopy was shutting just as the ARC started to lift off. As he ascended, Navet looked over Denon, over all that was in front of him and behind him. He saw the sprawling expanse, the openness. And, he saw the billows of smoke still rising out of the Corusca Glimmer Casino so many kilometers away. Weeks of plannin’, an’ it finally all worked out. Navet was using the identity of Cobry Azinint, the man whose wallet, money, and ID he had stolen just the day before in order to secure himself funds that he could use to get off-planet that were separate from the funds he’d earned at the gambling tables—if the casino’s security did get to those funds in time, they might be able to trace where Navet used them.

Best to get clean an’ clear first, he thought. Before I go scoopin’ up all my earnings. He could claim his winnings from long-distance, after he had made sure he was away from Denon and that Han Pretorik was being searched for, and not Navet Hrn.

As the starfighter climbed higher and higher, Navet lit a cigarra, took a long, savoring toke, and let it all out with a great sigh. He had narrowly escaped death. He looked at his hands, they were shaking. He hadn’t noticed that until just now. But the cigarra was already taking the edge off.

Yes, it had all worked out. Navet set the coordinates in for Hutt Space. He was on his way back to Tatooine. He had made a great deal of credits off of playing dangerous games of sabacc, which was an unexpected benefit to this job. And he had a big payday coming back to him from Kusk the Hutt. A very, very big payday.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 30



The payment for the Twin Hutts job was more than generous, especially coming from a Hutt. But Kusk had told Red to compensate Navet well for all the work he had put in for the job. The Twin Hutts were no more, and what territories they possessed on Denon and other worlds were now up for grabs by various crime lords throughout the galaxy, especially various Hutt kajidics.

Navet didn’t care for any of that. He had been working nonstop since he got to Tatooine, and figured he needed a vacation, at least a brief one. He spotted Grwrrrr only once while he was exiting the spaceport at Mos Espa. The Wookiee had followed him quietly to and from Denon—Navet had not seen the Wookiee the entire time he was working on the Twin Hutts job. When Navet confronted Red about it, she had only smiled and said, “Yes, he survived. We lied to you. So sue us.”

“Why?” Navet had asked.

“We wanted to keep tabs on you. With you thinking Grwrrrr was dead, you wouldn’t be looking for him. If you spotted him, we didn’t expect you to know it—most Wookiees look same to Humans. Congratulations, you’re more alert than most of our race.”

Navet had only smirked and said, “I don’t like bein’ followed.”

“Well, get used to it. It happens sometimes when you work for Kusk the Hutt. Hell, I’m still spied on from time to time. I advise Kusk to do it. It’s just good business.” She had winked her one good eye at him and said, “Well, you got your payment, Odd Job. You did good work for us. Now, go spend it. We’ll let you know if and when we have more work for you.”

That had been one week ago, and Navet had been spending a bit of time at the race tracks, and more or less enjoying a few rides in and around Mos Espa in his speeder bike, unwinding, and not thinking about all the things that had brought him so much tension of late. He had finished a few hair-raising and dangerous jobs, and he still had issues with the NIF intelligence boys being on his case to get to the bottom of this deal breaking out between Kusk the Hutt and a certain faction of the Bando Gora. And Navet had gotten an h-mail from the people from the Gracen faction that had sent him here to determine the nature of the relationship between Kusk and their rivals in the Ballaz faction. The Gracens wanted results now, but Navet told them that he couldn’t give any to them yet, but that he had made progress in earning Kusk’s trust.

Navet was now unofficially an Enforcer for the Besadii kajidic. Kusk was the nephew and prominent Underboss underneath Aroppa the Hutt, the overlord of so much criminality going on in the galaxy today. Most people just had no idea how powerful Aroppa was, how many deaths and crimes he had authored, and how fast his empire was still growing. To be an enforcer for his kajidic was saying a great deal. To Navet’s understanding in the underworld, the ranks were kind of unofficial, but they were taken very seriously by some. An Enforcer was almost midway up the ladder. He had earned that unofficial rank, it seemed, by assassinating the Twin Hutts.

However, Navet still got his orders directly from Red, who was a Captain, which gave her special powers and abilities. Captains kept teams of certain trusted individuals around them at all times. Red’s crew consisted of Kararkh the Devaronian; Hrowwar the Wookiee, sometimes called “War” for short; a Trandoshan whom Navet still hadn’t learned the name of; and now, apparently, there was Navet the Human. Jobs would soon be coming his way where he would be involved with the whole team, Red had promised. There, she said, was where the serious money was.

Serious and lucrative work was on the way, Red had said, but until such time Navet had nothing to do but to either relax or make a bit of extra creds on the side. But he didn’t need extra creds. Between the gambling he had done at the Corusca Glimmer Casino, the winnings he had ultimately come away with by gambling not only with money that wasn’t his but also his life each day he pretended to be someone he wasn’t, Navet had come away with a total of 228,000 credits at the high-roller tables. He had actually won a bit more, but some of it had been seized once it was known that his alias Han Pretorik was responsible for a few deaths at the casino. The money he had been able to transfer to a safe location in a dummy IGBC account was mostly thanks to Ruse, the slicer who had helped him on that job.

Not only that, but Kusk had had Red pay Navet 250,000 credits for the contract kill. With Feer and Jagar the Hutts both dead, the Hutt was feeling incredibly generous for the nonce, and hadn’t tried to wiggle his way out of the arrangement at all, and, indeed, Kusk seemed to be taking a shining to Navet. If Navet was any judge of character, he had earned a deal of respect with the Hutt. That was good for his overall missions for the Gracen faction of the Bando Gora and the NIF itself.

All totaled, he was now in possession of 478,000 credits to do with as he pleased, as well as an ARC-170 starfighter that was his to use or rell, and a speeder bike that wasn’t in need of any repairs. He also had a reputation in a certain circle that was likely to keep him in work for a while. For the first time in his life, Navet Hrn was becoming wealthy.

Now, the question was, what would he do with it, exactly?

For so long, Navet had had ideas, notions of where he might go in life, of directions that were not previously open to him because of his upbringing, avenues that were not accessible because his constant poverty and his just-as-constant attempt to pay off debts to keep his head slightly above water. Navet hadn’t organized anything besides himself in his time. He hadn’t been the head of any major gangs or affiliations, hadn’t been any kind of community leader or even a community builder. He just hadn’t belonged. Women had been around him, faceless women who came and went throughout his life like the tide.

Navet had never really aimed at anything. He had never aimed at having a family, nor had he aimed at collecting a nest egg for retirement. In truth, he had thought he would be dead by the time he reached twenty years of age, so every day after that had been quite the surprise to him. It wasn’t until now that he started reflecting on the constant dangers he had faced while in the employ of Kusk the Hutt, all the risks he had taken while setting up the Twin Hutts for assassination.

As he sat at a table sipping at an ale and smoking a cigarra at a table at the Catch Her Quickly in Mos Espa, Navet gave himself a bit of time to think, and consider. Presently, he tossed in a couple of chips. He was playing a sabacc game, one that was nowhere near the high stakes games he had played at the Corusca Glimmer Casino. The buy-in was a mere ten credits.

The dealer droid shuffled the deck again, and called out the rules. “We are playing Corellian Gambit rules, gentlecreatures,” it said.

Navet nodded as he accepted his cards. There wasn’t much there. He folded in exasperation and boredom, and then stood up and excused himself from the game. On the way out, he nodded to the Catch Her Quicky’s proprietor, Dotjin Obass, who was still supplying him a room upstairs. The proprietor/bartender just nodded back. That said a lot about the growth of their relationship, and how Navet’s new reputation around Mos Espa, as well as his ability to pay his debts easily, had affected the people all around him.

Navet stepped outside into a dusty, windy day. They said there might be a sandstorm later tonight, and while shopkeepers rushed to close down their various places of business, Navet walked down the street, toking on his cigarra and chewing the end of it in thought. A pair of street urchins ran up to him, a Human and a Rodian. They had their hands out, wanting. He waved them away, and continued down Suhsstal Avenue, on his way past Morochoa’s old chop shop. It was still empty, left that way after Kusk swallowed Morochoa whole for a crime Navet had set him up to take the fall for.

Navet gave pause in front of the shop, and continued on his way.

He eventually took his 74-Z speeder bike for another ride through the city. Navet passed by a few shops on Bazaar Boulevard, and slowed his bike down to peruse them. He purchased a number of fresh foods and a couple of decorative items for the room he was renting at the Catch Her Quickly, a few things to spruce the place up a bit. He would likely be living there for some time, so he might as well have it feeling “homey.” He had a few new curtains, some new bed sheets and even an entirely new bed—he didn’t care what Dotjin said. In truth, the Catch Her Quickly’s owner would probably be delighted to have someone else foot the bill for an upgrade to one of his rooms.

After he dropped the things off at his room and set the place up, he walked down the street to a service shop where cleaning droids could be rented out for the day—Navet paid for a trio of droids to come by his apartment once a week to thoroughly clean it. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing all of this. He supposed that once a person came into money, if they could afford a higher quality of life, no matter how slight, they tended to go for it.

While he was at it, Navet went ahead and got a new wardrobe. For his entire stay on Tatooine, he had had only a handful of shirts and about three pairs of pants—he’d purchased some more clothes on Denon to be part of his various disguises, but he’d had to leave those behind in his haste to make sure he got cleanly away.

Navet went to a clother’s shop at the south end of Bazaar Boulevard, and had himself fitted for a variety of new clothes, some of them pretty sharp-looking. He purchased a few casual suits, and one dress suit. He bought a couple of the open-front robes that acted as dusters, and were the current trend for males across Mos Espa and most of Tatooine. At each purchase, Navet thought, Why not? What else am I gonna do with the creds? Perhaps it was for no other reason that boredom that he was making the upgrades. Perhaps that was why rich people lived so ostentatiously.

Another idea occurred to him, and that was to purchase some Kabalz cigarras, which were expensive, and previously Navet could never have afforded it.

While he was at it, Navet went ahead and purchased a landspeeder, as well. One never knew when they might need one of those—speeder bikes didn’t protect against sandstorms, but a closed-top landspeeder sure could. Navet opted for a V-35 Courier, in mint condition even though the model was pretty old at this point. A collector who lived just on the fringes of Mos Espa had put the offer up on the HoloNet, and Navet took it. The V-35 was a family unit, but Navet figured the extra cargo space would be good for moving merchandise or various people in his future with the Hutts.

Navet had to remind himself, though, to not get too comfortable. After all, he wasn’t truly here to live amongst Hutts. He was here to get to the bottom of the connection between the Ballaz faction of the Bando Gora and Kusk the Hutt, for the sake of the Gracens who had sent him here in the first place. And, ultimately, he was meant to report on all of this to the NIF, who still had him on a leash.

But things were getting interesting. Ever since Navet had discovered the possible rivalry between the Hutts within the Besadii kajidic, and Kusk’s potential plans for overthrowing his uncle Aroppa to become the clan leader, it had appeared as though there was a great deal of money to be made in these little squabbles. So far, he had been right. His true intentions were still secret from Red and Kusk and all the others, as far as Navet knew. They had no idea he was working for the NIF. Hells, not even the Gracens, who had sent him here, knew that. If any of them ever find out, he thought while parking his new V-35 in a garage across the street from the Catch Her Quickly, I’ll be a goner before I know anything’s wrong.

When Navet returned to his room, he saw that he had a couple of h-mails waiting on him. One of them was from Red, saying that he should meet up with her later that night for a few drinks at the Dive. The other h-mail was from Xannadus Farci, who was his contact to the Gracen faction. Farci wanted to know how things were progressing. Navet sent back a message saying only that they were, then pulled off his shoes, laid back down onto his new, soft, clean sheets and marveled at how much better rest a guy could get when the things he slept on cost more.

[Navet Hrn]

Chapter 31



Navet had been resting so well he had almost overslept and missed his opportunity to have drinks with Red at the Dive. But, the woman was there, along with the rest of her usual entourage—Kararkh the Devaronian, Hrowwar the Wookiee, and the Trandoshan with no name. Their boss, Kusk, was nowhere to be seen.

The Dive was covered in a dense fog of smoke. Navet lit his own cigarra, one of the expensive ones he’d purchased that day on Bazaar Boulevard, and maneuvered his way through the ruffians at the bar towards his table. Red was already red in the face, getting drunker. “Well, lookit you, Odd Job!” she laughed, pointing at his clothes. Navet had upgraded his wardrobe just a tad, and while he wasn’t wearing anything extravagant, it obviously caught Red’s attention. “C’mere, have a seat with us! We were just talkin’ about you!”

“Oh, yeah?” he said, sliding into a seat at their booth just as a server droid was already giving him an ale that he hadn’t asked for. At the Dive, a patron couldn’t just sit and not order a drink. Merely stepping in meant that you intended to pay for at least their cruddy ale. “All good things, I hope?”

“Nah! Just about how god awful ugly you are, even for a Human!” She cackled, and across the table Kararkh wheezed with laughter. He had a Devaronian female in his lap, and was squeezing at her and pinching her with his sharpened fingernails. Beside Kararkh, War gave off a howl and a grunt of laughter. The Wookiee had several empty glasses upside-down the table in front of him, and he had two more full glasses of ale that he was working on.

The Trandoshan, for his part, just stared at Navet. While the others carried on about some idiot spice-head who had tried to cheat them earlier that week, Navet just toked on his cigarra and looked the Trandoshan in the eye. He shook his head. “Are we ever gonna be friends?”

“NO!” the Trandoshan suddenly snapped.

Navet blanched, and the whole table stopped in mid-conversation as the others burst out into laughter. But Navet wasn’t laughing, and neither was the Trandoshan. “Oh, c’mon!” Red said to the Trandoshan. “Navet’s our pal now! Isn’t that right?”

Navet took in a long, satisfying toke, felt the smoke fill his lungs, and let it out slowly. “Ya know, I think that’s the first time you’ve called me by my name.” He spotted a couple of other familiar faces in the Dive tonight. There was Odlo P’tenta, the bounty hunter that Navet had spotted at Kusk’s birthday party. And then there was Dokrin Ba’dz, the Bith musician he had known from another life. Gods, I hope he doesn’t spot me, Navet thought, turning his head away. At Kusk’s birthday, Dokrin had gone on incessantly about contemporary music and how it was all going to the crapper—Navet didn’t want to get caught in that kind of conversation again.

So, he was stuck between hanging out with Red and her group, and a bounty hunter and a musician that he wanted no part of. Navet looked back at Red, who was discussing something that had gone on in the Kessel Sector. “Some o’ the old spice mines are getting back up and running,” she was saying to someone who had come over to take a seat beside her—it was a Rodian that Navet didn’t recognize. “But Kusk’s not prepared to make any statements at the moment, and he’s not acceptin’ any offers right for operations in that sector. His uncle’s got us all busy running between Hutt Space and the Cademimu Sector as it is.”

The Rodian said, “Tuweena dusda du utu lindoo cha polo?”

Red tip a sip of her wine, winced, and shook her head. “If Kusk isn’t into it, then Aroppa sure isn’t going to go with it. Aroppa listens to his advisors, and if the cut your people were offering wasn’t sufficient enough the first time, then I’m sure Aroppa hasn’t changed his tune.”

“Duwalla speen,” said the Rodian persuasively. He leaned in tilted his head to one side, and shrugged, and then pointed to Red. “Emanna meez. Tukanna du Kusk yi chipanna yoboki yan. Echantana du utu.”

Red gave the Rodian a serious look. “I don’t do work ‘on the side,’ Veebs. I work for Kusk. That’s my meal ticket, understand? So get it through your head. If ya want somebody local to do your spice-running for you, then you had better look elsewhere.” She jutted a thumb over her shoulder. “Now get lost.” The Rodian held her gaze, then finally sighed, stood up, and walked out of the Dive. “Kriffing Rodians! They think just because their souls are for sale that everybody else’s is, too.”

“What was that all about?” Navet ventured, waving to the server droid to refill his ale. He had already downed it, as disgusting as it was.

Red said, “Veebs works for the Viscotti. He’s one of their major smuggler-generals. It’s because of him that the Viscotti can remain so independent of resources. There’s talk that the Kessel Sector’s older spice mines, which were shut down when NR and NIF militaries came through over the last couple decades, are about to reopen again, and the logical conclusion is that Kusk would be the first one in on it, since he advises his uncle in all matters of business and the reopening of those mines would logically mean more creds. Veebs wants us to open up some of that spice trade between himself and the Viscotti, with him acting as middle man.” She shrugged and took a swig of her own ale. “I hate to tell Veebs, but Kusk doesn’t want anything to do with the Viscotti.”

“Why not?” Navet said.

“Word has it that they’re goin’ down. Some of our people have it on good authority that they’re being targeted by the Federation. It’s all part of the NIF’s crackdown on Cademimu.”

For once, the Devaronian stopped pinching his female companion’s flesh long enough to holler across the table above the Dive’s din, “But there are other concerns besides those!” he said.

“Like what?” asked Navet. Beside him, War growled and grunted. Navet understood Shyrriiwook enough to get his meaning. “The Phaeda-Ithor corridor?” he asked. “But I thought that was more or less settled. The Remnant an’ the Federation shook hands, an’ all o’ that’s over, right?”

Red shook her head. “Not really. It’s gonna heat up there, too. Lots of problems are cropping up all around that region of space. But besides all of that, there are the families to worry about.”

“What families?”

“You ask a lotta questions, Odd Job.”

“So I’m Odd Job again?”

Red snorted, and tossed back another ale, winced a bit less this time. Her face went red, and she eyed him with that single green eye of hers. “The Jhank Shel kajidic,” she said. “They’re all over Lirra, and they’re interested in kick-starting operations not just here, but abroad. In fact, they may be uprooting totally and relocating their entire organization in the Cademimu Sector.”

Navet made a face . “The Jhank Shel. Weren’t they, like, taken care of a long time ago?”

“The Galactic Empire drove them off Lirra, but they’re keen on making a comeback.” She picked up her next ale, which was placed there by the server droid, and gave a mock toast to everyone at the table. “You can’t keep a good Hutt down, can you boys?” There was general laughter from all around. Navet looked at the Trandoshan, who was still eyeing him. “The Jhank Shel had a rivalry with the Jahibakti kajidic, but that’s all over with now, and the Jhank Shel won out. They now control most of the Jahibakti’s territories. The Jhank Shel control most of Aro now.”

“Aro?” Navet shook his head. “I don’t know that kajidic.”

“It isn’t a kajidic,” she laughed. “It’s a security droid manufacturer. They declared bankruptcy a long time ago amid…a certain scandal.” Red left it at that, took another sip. “But now the Jhank Shel are making their comeback through a newer version of that company, called Aro-Corellian Droid Manufacture, Inc. We’re not sure, but we think there’s a lot of spice smuggling happening—shipments hidden within droids that are shipped from here to there, stuff like that. But the Jhank Shel have attracted the attention of both the Vermilic and Nokko kajidics. That’s a problem.”

“Why is that a problem?” Navet realized how stupid that question sounded, so he added, “Let me rephrase that. Why is that any more of a problem than any other day for a Hutt clan?”

“Because the Vermilic and the Nokko are probably about to merge.”

Navet raised his eyebrows, and took another toke of his Kabalz cigarra. “Really? Well, ya don’t hear that every day. A business merger between Hutt clans? Is that even possible under their Code?”

Red said, “Anything’s possible for an enterprising Hutt, especially when bankruptcy is the only other option. The Vermilic were bankrupted twice, once because one of the Hutts assassinated one of the others during a council meeting between clan leaders, something that has always been absolutely forbidden—there are many Hutt kajidics these days that will do absolutely whatever it takes to stay on top. Queer things have been happenin’ in the Hutt world of late. The Twin Hutts were just one of the more overtly bizarre things. And they’re no longer with us.” She eyed him, and winked at him again, smiling into her drink. “Lots of other undercurrents are occurring, though.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She looked over at Kararkh. “Tell him.”

The Devaronian smiled those sharp fangs at him, and said, “I just got back from Malastare. The Romesh kajidic is setting up a gambling circuit there. A racket of sorts. They’re working with Rend gu’Larso.”

Navet said, “Where do I know that name from?”

“A mob boss living on Coruscant,” said Kararkh. “He lives in hiding, always in hiding. He donates money to orphanages to buy him loyalty from the people, especially the downtrodden in the lower levels of the Undercity. Anyways, the Romesh are operating on Malastare now, and my people on the inside tell me that they’ve started a gambling ring on Bazarre.” He shrugged. “But that’s kind of old news, because the Anjiliac, Trinivii, and Vosadii kajidics have all had various smuggling operations working out of Bazarre for years without being detected by any law enforcement agencies.”

“What’s all this got to do with Kusk, though?”

“This Human is stupid!” said the Trandoshan, speaking up at last.

“Finally!” Navet chuckled. “I thought you’d forgotten how to talk.”

“I never forget.”

“I’m sure ya don’t,” said Navet, and looked back at Red. “Well?”

“It has everything to do with Kusk,” she said. “While the Jhank Shel are the most immediate threat, they are just stirring the pot. The others—the Vosadii, the Anjiliac, the Romesh, the Nokko, the Vermilic—they’re all just starting to think like Kusk’s uncle. Aroppa was viewed as stupid and naïve decades ago when he first began all his expansionism throughout the Cademimu Sector, but now everyone is acknowledging that he was smart to do it, even though they’re too proud to say so. And now, with things heating up in Cademimu and Aroppa quietly backing out, he’s being seen as cowardly by those same people who criticized him for going in there in the first place. They’re begging him for assistance, even making threats, but they dare not threaten too much, because he might go silent on them, and many of them cannot survive without the aid of the Besadii kajidic.”

“I was in Cademimu a while back,” he said. “When ya sent Grwrrrr an’ me to…well, anyways, when you sent us.” Navet smiled through a billow of smoke at Red, who smiled back. Is she starting to flirt with me, or is she just getting too drunk? “I saw a lotta the Federation’s presence out that way. They’re crawling all over that place. If Aroppa was smart, he would pull out completely.”

Red shook her head. “If he does that, it’ll look too much like total abandonment of his assets there, and the kajidics who keep operations going around Cademimu will swoop right in and take everything over—with the systems all in place, Aroppa and his people did all the legwork, and so it would be easy for competitors to come in and take the reins.” Red took another sip of her ale, emptying the mug, and slammed it down. She belched, wiped her mouth, and looked at him. “Aroppa’s not stupid. He’s been through this before. He’s hundreds of years old, remember? He’ll probably still be around playin’ these games when the dust from our bones have blown away.” Red shrugged. “But that’s good, right? It means our children, and our children’s children will always have work in Hutt Space, or in the Cademimu Sector.” He raised her empty mug to the rest of the table. “To the Hutts!” she screamed.

“TO THE HUTTS!” came a cry from all around, and not just from their table, either.

“And the Bando Gora,” Navet said. “Where do they fit in?”

Red cackled as she accepted another ale from the server droid who silently swept by to replace her empty mug. “The Bando Gora? Who the hell said anything about the Bando Gora?”

“They’re expandin’ out that way, isn’t that right?” Navet took a toke of his cigarra, blew the smoke into his mug, and took a sip of ale. He was starting to feel a little buzzed. Navet shrugged. “I was just wonderin’, since you were talkin’ so much about the other kajidics, it’s hard to believe that the Hutts have overlooked others like the Bando Gora. Don’t they have operations out that way, too?”

She shrugged. “Sure,” she said, and belched. “But who cares? They’re not strong enough right now, too fragmented to really be much account. They’re too busy fighting one another to fight us. Besides, even if they do get uppity an’ rebellious, we’ve taken care of all those possible contingencies.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. We have one of their stronger factions supplyin’ for us now.”

The Trandoshan sniffed, and said, “Red, should we be telling this idiot anything about that? Kusk told us to keep it quiet for now.”

Navet shook his head. Like all idiots, he likes to call others idiots.

“Relax,” she said. “Odd Job’s proven out. He’s with me now. He doesn’t really even need that nickname anymore, does he? No more odd jobs for you, Odd Job.”

Navet chuckled at that. “Thanks. I feel welcome already.” He took another sip of his ale, and thought about she had worded that. He’s with me now, she said. Not us. “Sounds like you guys covered all your bases,” he said. “That’s a relief in a way. The Bando Gora would only complicate things. Which faction are you guys associated with?”

“We are only temporarily allied with the Ballazes. However, we may also have discussions with the Nunsa faction.” Navet found that somewhat surprising, especially since the Nunsa faction was supposedly trying to operate more in an intelligence-gathering capacity so that they may survive in the future by selling intel to both major galactic governments—the Nunsa faction believed in playing both sides against the middle, a concept that Navet was becoming familiar with, being caught at the center of an invisible web. On one side were the NIF, on another side were the Gracens, and yet on an entirely different side there was Kusk the Hutt and his uncle and the rest of Besadii kajidic, and somewhere in all of this were the Ballaz and Nunsa factions.

But the Nunsa faction was an entirely different beast altogether. The Nunsa faction was led by a mysterious person known only as Nunsa Prime. It wasn’t even clear if Nunsa Prime was a male or a female, or what species he/she was.

“How temporary is this alliance with the Ballazes, an’ what kind of business do you guys have together?”

The red-headed woman leaned back in her seat. “Information,” she said. “Sharing of intel.”

Navet said, “Dare I ask, what sort of intel?”

“Sorry, Odd Job. But I don’t know you that well yet.”

Navet nodded. Behind him, he heard the wind picking up. A sandstorm had started up. Pretty soon, he would have to go home, or else be stuck in here with these people, and all of them were at that point of drunkenness when they were just about to degenerate into total unintelligible nonsense. A game of pazaak started up, but War passed out and knocked the table over, causing everyone including Red to guffaw uncontrollably.

The rest of the night didn’t go much better. The party at the Dive spiraled down into a brawl in one corner and a bit of Liar’s Dice going on at the other end. Navet somehow ended up with Dokrin again, and the Bith went on and on about the break-up of his band again. "And you remember how I told Gardi that Human music isn’t played well by Bith, but he’s still insistent, still saying that he’s ‘exploring new avenues.’ What does that even mean? Human music generally divides the octave into a series of twelve notes that might be included in any music, so how can an instrument so partial as a bandfill or even the ommni box ever hope to capture the harmonic minors, natural minors, or even the most basic of majors? I mean, has he taken complete leave of his senses?"

P'tenta disappeared at some point. Navet had wanted to know more about him, had wanted to broach a few topics of conversation with the bounty hunter and ascertain the exact reason he was hanging around Tatooine these days in the apparent employ of Kusk the Hutt, but it wasn't meant to be tonight. If what Red had said earlier tonight was true, then this would be one of those times in underworld history when organized syndicates everywhere would start arming themselves, having recruitment drives for muscle and enforcers. That's probably one of the reasons they've allowed me in so relatively quickly, he thought, his head spinning from all the ale while he tried to focus on Liar's Dice. And P'tenta, too. I need to have a talk with him, find out what he knows.

Navet eventually passed out, and woke up back in his bed. He assumed Red’s people must have carried him, though he didn’t know seeing as how they were drunker than he had been. In the middle of the night he got up to send an h-mail to both his connection within the Gracens and the NIF, telling them what he had just uncovered from Red. After that, he vomited on the floor and passed out in his chair.