Ten years, first month, and eighteenth day after the Battle of Yavin…
Or the forty-fifth year, first month, and eighteenth day after the Great Resynchronization.
(Eight months and third day since the arrival).
Aveka Dunn adjusted her tool belt so that the wrench swung and tapped against her right thigh, and not against…
Well, let's call that part of her body "the place where Vex usually preferred to sit."
The belt, the tools, the duraplast helmet, and the unassuming muddy-yellow jumpsuit with a multitude of pockets from which tools protruded, completed the disguise with her bright-red hair pulled into a tight braid.
What caught the eye were the time-worn logos of the corporation on her shoulder and the right side of her chest—a white circle with three red four-pointed stars inside.
And all of it—not exactly fresh off the shelf.
Combined with emerald-green eyes, a couple of streaks of technical fluids on her face, and several synthetic-flesh freckles on her nose, this whole masquerade perfectly emphasized her belonging to the maintenance crew of the building housing the Hoersch-Kessel office.
An image too mundane for those around her to pay close attention.
Rederick, in turn, had acquired exactly the same set of clothing and gear, except that his face bore several aged scars made from the same synthetic flesh, the contact lenses were a brown shade, and his hair was dyed a greasy gray reminiscent of days-old grime.
Vex kept stopping every now and then, examining something on the datapad screen, then pointing authoritatively first one way, then another, creating the impression of a boss issuing valuable instructions to a dim-witted subordinate who ignored their meaning.
The expression on his face, one of universal torment from the flood of verbiage his "boss" unleashed on him, drew sympathetic glances from employees of the numerous offices and organizations passing by, leaving the building after the end of the workday.
But as soon as anyone approached this sweet pair, they abruptly changed their minds about inquiring into the reasons for a couple of maintenance techs being on the office floor.
Because both reeked so unmistakably of sewage that everyone preferred to give them a wide berth.
"I tell you, the liquid waste disposal pipe runs right here," Vex jabbed a fingernail chipped from cheap polish into the datapad, knowingly pointing at the building's load-bearing wall sheathed in decorative paneling. "And it's already three hundred years old…"
"The material it's made of will last another three hundred," Rederick said wearily, smirking bitterly as his gaze met that of a pretty middle-aged Twi'lek who shot flirty eyes at the young tech.
A minor office drone he'd crossed paths with a few times during his undercover stint.
Nothing special about her, but that face, that figure hugged by the strict office…
Rederick turned his head, following the familiar figure with his eyes, and smiled when she glanced back over her shoulder.
But she immediately turned away and hurried off on her long legs, clicking across the tiled floor without looking back.
Rederick, however, did look back.
And locked eyes with Aveka, whose posture radiated disapproval and impatience in equal measure.
"Look at her one more time, and I'll gouge your eyes out," Vex said in the same tone she'd used for the sewage.
Rederick shook his head dejectedly.
"One day this nightmare of working with you will end," he said dreamily, forcing a smile when Aveka looked at him.
"Baby, I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you and ever will," the agent batted her long lashes, turning her back to him and continuing her ramble along the wall. "So don't settle for second-rate easy lays who've had every first desk jockey from the office where she works reception plowing her, and she brings caf to her boss every hour."
"So you're spying on me too," Rederick snorted, noting that the second turbolift arriving in the building lobby was half-empty. "Making contacts in the office was on my conscience."
"Trust a girl with a keen eye for that sort of riffraff— the only thing you'll pick up from her company is something you'll have to treat with a doctor for a very long time, one you try not to look in the eye," Vex said.
"I don't even want to know how you got that kind of experience," Rederick shook his head mournfully.
"Good call, baby," Aveka nodded in agreement. "Sometimes there's knowledge that, once acquired, you can never go back to being who you were."
"Where did I sin so badly that I have to work with you?" Rederick rolled his eyes to the ceiling, recalling that in one religion, they believed certain divine forces lived in the heavens.
Superstition, of course.
Pilots ascending above the cloud layer in their flying machines could easily disprove that thesis.
But religious cults can't be swayed by facts…
"I'm surprised myself," Vex said. "But pull in those tears—we're just at the beginning. I think the pipes have nothing to do with it—we need to head to the technical floor, check the distribution and pump stations. Maybe they ramped up the pressure, and that's why all that nasty sludge ended up in the basement."
With Vex, it was always like this—she wove work and personal moments into her chatter so skillfully that your head started to ache from the thought that somewhere in her words there was a double meaning.
Or triple.
"It's not too late to file a transfer request to fleet spec ops," Rederick thought.
But he dismissed the idea on the grounds that even if he ended up piloting a one-man recon ship, Vex wouldn't leave him alone.
"Then we'll have to work on the roof," he sighed, catching sight of a guard approaching them out of the corner of his eye. "Hey!"
He forced a good-natured but weary smile.
"Something wrong?" the Zabrak asked, glancing at Vex's form-fitting jumpsuit but pretending he was interested in hearing what her partner had to say.
"The basement comms burst," Rederick reported. "We patched the sewer hole," after first helping it form, "now we need to check why it burst in the first place. Got to get to the technical floor."
Questions about why all the critical comms were routed above the top office floor belonged to anyone who understood Hutt architecture even a little.
Rederick wasn't one of those experts.
"Everyone's already gone," the guard said, still eyeing Vex while she pretended to be engrossed in the datapad screen.
"Maybe they're the lucky ones," Rederick smiled sadly. "They won't have to smell what we'll be digging through while disassembling the equipment. By morning, the whole nasty odor will have aired out."
"Actually, work in the building isn't allowed after hours," the guard stated. "You need an escort."
Of course they did.
And that's how it always went, on a regular weekday.
But Vex and Rederick hadn't come here in the last hours of the workweek for nothing.
An hour before shift end on the last day, only one guard came on duty, sticking around through the weekend, staring at surveillance monitors and fiddling with the HoloNet on his datapad.
"Would it be better if the pump fails and the toilet contents blast back under pressure?" Vex clarified. "I'm no art expert, but I suspect the staff won't be thrilled by the characteristic smell and trendy Republican-style yellow-brown streaks on the walls, floor, and ceiling…"
"All right, all right," the guard waved his hands. "I'll let you through, check and fix it. Just make it quick!"
"One foot in, the other out," Rederick promised.
"Watch it," the Zabrak pretended to warn. "I don't want to get my neck wrung for letting office stink interfere. They'd shake my soul out for that!"
"They won't," Vex assured him with a charming smile. "We'll do it clean—no one but you will even know we were there."
Vex, subjected once more to the guard's oily gaze, impassively summoned the turbolift.
Rederick, feigning utter reluctance to work, sheepishly lowered his eyes, earning a look from his "boss," and followed her into the arriving turbolift cab; the doors closed behind them.
They selected the top floor, from which the technical level required foot travel via the service stairs.
The girl ran her palm over the cab's paneling.
"Real wroshyr wood from Kashyyyk, not some fibroplast or hollow metal panels. Very stylish and costs a fortune."
"It's Hoersch-Kessel, remember," Rederick reminded her. "With their annual turnover, they could ship half the trees from Kashyyyk to Nar Shaddaa or any regional office."
"Given that their main office security on Nimban is all Trandoshans, I wouldn't be surprised if they did," Vex declared. "I suspect they shipped the trees out with the Wookiees, whom Trandoshans just love to use as hunting prey. And as slaves that fetch top cred on any slaver market in our beloved disgusting galaxy."
Rederick snorted.
"And here I thought nothing was sacred to you," he said. "But no, look at the disgust you have for Trandoshans and slavers."
"Show me a sentient who burns with great love for them, and I'll personally give the bastard a fireworks funeral."
"Dressing stormtroopers as pallbearers and gunning down everyone at the funeral?" Rederick clarified.
"Ugh," Aveka grimaced. "What low opinion you have of me! Of course, I'd never shoot the mourners…"
Rederick thought he'd misheard.
"…I'd stuff ryll into the corpse and blow it during the farewell ceremony," Vex finished.
"Note to self," Rederick muttered. "And make sure you don't hear if I die suddenly. I don't want a skyscraper-sized crater where my grave should be."
Dunn twisted a fiery curl around her finger, making a funny face.
"Don't die, baby," she batted her eyes. "If you leave this mortal world, my heart will break, and I'll wither away after you, like a flower deprived of life-giving moisture and natural light."
"Sometimes I'm even scared that everything you say and do isn't an act, but what you really think and intend to do," Rederick said cautiously.
Aveka forced a smile.
"It's called 'accentuated character,' baby."
"And that's a mental disorder, isn't it?" the Dominion agent tensed, realizing he was paired with a deranged mercenary.
"We women call it a 'spark' that adds spice and helps us stand out from the gray mass of our kind to attract male attention," Aveka rattled off, as if hosing down an enemy bunker with a heavy repeater burst. "See, in a galaxy with no small number of races considered beautiful, like Zeltrons or those same easy Twi'leks, human women have to take radical steps to fulfill their biological need and acquire offspring. It's in our genes, and by around thirty, every girl's itching to expel a couple of little bandits from her uterine concentration camp. And for that, you need a suitable partner. Strong, able to protect and provide, help and support. But those types usually fall for easy lays, so we're left with one option—either fight the enemy with their own weapons, i.e., adopt the tactics our biological rivals use to deprive the human gene pool of the most promising males, or settle for the leftovers. From experience, I'll tell you that all willful and strong men first notice accentuated behavior. So we live—fighting to preserve the human race."
Rederick blinked.
Then again.
And again.
"Where did you even get that from?!" he blurted. "I haven't heard such eugenics theory since studying the historical chronicles of the Pius Dea crusades. When humans exterminated non-humans."
"From there," Aveka yawned. "Or do you think that because I'm beautiful and attractive, I only know how to fight and kill? No, I'm trained to read and self-improve too."
"Tell me you were joking about all this fight for the future of the human race and such," Rederick grimaced. "It sounds repulsive and contrived, especially since humans and near-human races outnumber all aliens combined in the galaxy."
"Baby," Aveka approached her partner and ran her palm over his face. "I just gave you the biggest female secret. Yeah, I couldn't resist and wrapped it in tinsel from Pius Dea crusader racist theories and human feminists, sprinkled in my own inventions, but otherwise—pure truth."
"What's the 'otherwise'?!" Rederick blurted in shock. "I didn't even get what part of what you said was true!"
"That girls act provocatively to attract a man they're interested in," Vex winked, playfully hip-checking him in the groin. "You know, there's a button here, we could stop the cab…"
"Why is she doing this on a mission?!" Rederick fumed internally. "Why not before or after? Verbal diarrhea is the simplest way to shed tension and the tremor of danger and…"
And, suddenly for himself, he understood what was happening.
"You're scared," he blurted.
Aveka shot him a look.
But not a playful one.
Not enticing.
Wary and suspicious.
Even a bit bewildered.
"All your games and flirtations are stress dumps from what's happening," Rederick continued. "Now I'm sure of it. You don't take this seriously to avoid fearing the dangers and possible consequences ahead. Your whole behavior is aimed at lowering the brain's danger level and muffling the fear."
Aveka stepped back a couple paces and looked at her partner with undisguised interest.
"And when did you become a behavioral psychologist?" she asked curiously, forcing a smile.
"A couple minutes ago," Rederick didn't lie.
"So no caf mug stain on the diploma yet," Aveka pursed her lips. "Well… Good for you, growing on yourself. Not fast, but making progress. Understanding your partner is the first step to becoming a full team, where you can read each other without words."
She said it in a calm, mentoring tone, like a teacher delivering a boring but mandatory lecture.
Which was nothing like Vex's usual behavior.
"So all that you were doing was another stage of my training?" Rederick horrified.
"W-e-e-ll," Aveka drew out. The turbolift stopped at their floor meanwhile. "It's not exactly what Cross asked me to teach you, but better I share what I know than nothing, right?"
"I'm not sure I want to know half your personal experience," Rederick cut off, exiting the cab.
The corridor was quiet, so he, not counting Aveka, was the only living being who could observe the aurodium inlays on the wooden doors.
The corporation's sigil and name in Aurebesh.
And in Galactic Standard.
"Snobs," Aveka declaimed, examining the last inscription. "But we're going the opposite way."
"Uh-huh," Rederick grunted, following Vex to the far end of the corridor where the service stairs were.
Both acted as if they were unaware of the three hidden surveillance cams in the office hall.
Unlocking the hatch to the technical floor, they ascended bickering, closing the passage behind them.
From a belt pouch, Rederick pulled a flat square box the size of a man's palm.
Vex, glancing around, stood to shield his fiddling from possible surveillance.
"Clear," the agent said, stowing the detector.
"Let's work," Aveka sobered. "Alarm devices first."
Together they installed a few simple beacons that would signal if anyone larger than a womp rat approached the technical floor access.
The building where Hoersch-Kessel had fitted out its office (and a good hundred shell intermediary companies) had been built barely a millennium ago, so there were ventilation windows here.
Which, naturally, they intended to use, as the builders on Nar Shaddaa apparently thought even Hutts would squeeze out through such openings.
A five-minute job—check the exterior for sensors, confirm their absence, rig and secure ropes and harnesses for descent.
Another three minutes—to shed the worker jumpsuits and remain in baggy combat suits with light fabric armor, faces hidden behind balaclavas.
One more minute—to crawl out the vent window and rappel to the target floor in the shadow of protruding bas-reliefs.
Thirty seconds—to check again for sensors, but now inside the room.
Rederick had been in this office during work hours before—that's how he knew the receptionist.
He knew the surveillance system layout, but not if the staff applied extra security on weekends.
One minute—to slice the transparisteel and gain access inside the building on the right floor.
Ten seconds—to polarize and reseal the window in place, to avoid questions from passing airspeeder pilots or residents of other buildings.
They were in a conference room squarely in the center of the top floor.
Nothing interesting here—a plain meeting space.
The pair moved to the corridor.
On either side, wooden columns rose from floor to polished ceiling with a silvery sheen.
A multitude of closed wooden doors leading to staff personal offices.
Against the opposite wall sat a low table and cozy, seemingly soft leather chairs.
They oriented quickly and found the archive room they planned to hit first.
"All shipping manifests for metals from the Corporate Sector should be here," Vex said, masterfully using an electronic pick. "Voilà, let's go test our archival aptitude. If they boot us from intel, at least we'll have something to live on."
Rederick didn't comment.
It had taken too long to figure out how and where CorpSec routed its transport ships.
Given that the "corpos" had decent shipyards of their own, the Hoersch-Kessel recipient clearly hid something very interesting.
Doubly intriguing was why a regional office served as the "buffer" instead of the HQ directly.
The windowless room was pitch black, which they pierced only with night-vision goggles.
Vex, closing the archive door, scanned the surroundings.
Endless shelves and drawers surrounded them, stuffed to bursting with data chips.
"Looks like we'll sweat for this," she puffed her lip, realizing the work was untouched.
Given the tight timeline—they couldn't hole up on the technical floor all weekend—they needed to work precisely.
"Their card catalog's in order," Rederick declared, eyeing box labels. "I think we need anything pointing to CorpSec or Black Sun."
"You're a regular investigation genius," came Vex's voice from behind the next shelving unit. "Found it. Come to me, dear."
"Can we skip the performative sarcasm?" the agent grimaced, approaching his partner.
"I'm serious as Boba Fett on a job," Vex announced. "If you knew how much they pay me for your internship and training…"
"Got it," Rederick fished an infochip from a drawer labeled "Operations with the Corporate Sector," skimmed the title. "Take a look—ore shipments from the 'corpos'!"
The chip went into the portable datapad.
It took time to crack the encryption, but what they saw…
"The algorithm looks familiar," Vex commented. "Metal from CorpSec gets funneled to Zygerria, where a shell company shreds the origin docs. Hold on…"
Spotting the recipient corp name, Aveka found its chip too.
"Uh-huh," she concluded after joint review of the docs. "Old scheme, but it works."
"Etti IV mines metal and resources, ships them to a Zygerrian company that supposedly owns the deposit, it books the goods, swaps the papers, and then it's like the Zygerrians send ships to Nar Shaddaa," Rederick said.
"Where the Hoersch-Kessel office swaps manifests again and ships the thoroughly 'laundered' resources to HQ and their own yards," Vex summed up.
Rederick grimaced:
"Too convoluted. Something about this really rubs me wrong. Why go to such lengths, swapping manifests twice, if the 'corpos' collaborate with Hutts?"
"Turns out they don't," Aveka concluded. "At least, not openly. You know… I have an idea."
"Who'd doubt it?" Rederick scowled. "And what is it?"
Aveka, meanwhile, prowled another shelving unit but, not finding the right box, kept searching.
Five minutes later, she returned with another chip.
"Over the last few years—and shipments started after Zsinj's destruction—the 'corpos' supplied Hoersch-Kessel enough metal this way for a good hundred Star Destroyer-class warships," Vex said. "Doesn't that raise questions for you about why the Hutts need it?"
"Laundering sales profits?"
"Please. In the Corporate Sector, you turn a corner, flag down the first grumpy mug in the crowd, ask him to clean 'black cash,'" Vex snorted, decoding the third chip. "All he'll ask is: 'What's my cut?'"
"Then why?" Rederick pressed.
"When's the last time you saw Hoersch-Kessel advertising their goods?" Aveka asked. "I don't recall any HoloNet spots urging orders."
"If they work directly for Hutts, why need outside clients?" Rederick asked.
"That's where you're wrong," Vex stated. "After the Clone Wars, Hoersch-Kessel weathered plenty of crises. Management splintered the company into pieces hoping it'd squeeze more profit and wash off the Separatist sympathizer stain. Every new client—and they clearly have one, given the resource needs. Ah, think I found it. 'Nar Shaddaa Shipping' ordered about a hundred ships from this Hoersch-Kessel office."
"First I've heard of them," Rederick admitted.
"It's a transport outfit, based in Dravian Spaceport in the Tamarin sector. They recruited freighters with crews a few years back… Oh," Vex drew out. "Well, these starships handle the CorpSec shipments."
"The company hired private contractors to haul 'laundered' metal for building their own ships?" Rederick clarified. "Now it's completely baffling."
"To me, it's the opposite," Vex said, pocketing the data crystals. "Two hundred fifty years ago, that sector and neighboring Rseik were a real pirate free-for-all. The Trade Federation tried to clean it up, but apparently after the Empire fell, it circled back. True, I heard some moff still holds power there, but I won't swear that's current. And yeah, you won't be surprised what ships 'Nar Shaddaa Shipping' ordered."
"Spill."
"Lucrehulks," Rederick's face fell. "Yes-yes-yes, old Trade Federation battle-freighters. Huge capacity, able to haul a full invasion army in their holds. And very expensive to maintain. And, if what I read is true—they're ordering them in pretty combat-ready shape, with modern weapons and tech. How many guesses on who and why needs ships like that, in that config, obtained that way?"
"It's no coincidence," Rederick said, not even diving into guesses. "We head back and report to command."
"No objections," Vex said.
A couple minutes to cover tracks and exit the archive.
"And here I thought you'd settle in there for good," the earlier guard leveled a disintegrator at both. "Come on, spies. No funny business."
In the corridor, Rederick spotted at least five fighters in the room.
All armed, clad in enclosed armor…
Very familiar armor.
So familiar that the agents' teeth ground in sync.
"Move it," the apparent leader of the Zann Consortium's Defilers ordered.
"You've got a most unpleasant trip ahead," the Zabrak guard snickered, trailing Vex.
But before either Dominionite could utter a word, the nearest Defiler to the guard drove a combat knife into his temple with lightning speed.
The blow's force was so great that the blade pierced the tough skull without resistance and sank into the brain.
The body hit the floor with a thud.
"Incompetence is punished," the killer said matter-of-factly, extracting his weapon from the victim's body and sheathing the knife. "Move, don't dawdle."